putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 116 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt translation techniques and readability of the culture specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice’s adventures in wonderland martinda intan permatahati, mohamad ikhwan rosyidi  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: culture-specific items, translation technique, readability, alice’s adventures in wonderland ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ translation techniques poses somewhat of challenge. addressing the potential problems existing in translation between english and indonesian, culture specific item (csi) is used to translate the untranslatable words in the process of translation into target language. the technique that is used to translate will affect to the readability level. this research has an objective to find and describe the translation techniques that are applied in translating culture-specific items (csi) in sri haryanto’s indonesian translated novel of alice’s adventure in wonderland entitled petualangan di negeri ajaib dan dunia di balik cermin by windi a in 2007 and to explain the readability of culture-specific items (csi) in this translated novel. qualitative method is used in observing and analyzing the phenomenon which affected as an impact of the readability of culture-specific items in the translated text that had found in the indonesian translated novel of alice’s adventures in wonderland and also making interpretations of the meaning of the readability level of culture-specific items in its indonesian translated novel through the readability rating-sheet. from this research, the researcher finds 16 translation techniques that are applied in translating the culture-specific items from alice’s adventure in wonderland novel into its 2007 indonesian translated novel by sri haryanto. established equivalent translation technique is the highest frequency of translation technique that is applied in this novel. it can be concluded that the readability of culture-specific items in sri haryanto’s indonesian translated novel of alice’s in wonderland is readable. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com m. intan permatahati & m. ikhwan rosyidi / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 117 introduction translation of culture-specific items (csis), which becomes problems for translators, has been and still a largely debatable issue in translation study. since the concept of culture is essential to understanding the implications for literary translation and culture-specific items in translation, many translation theorists have dealt with the definition of culture. in 1984, larson defines culture as "a complex of beliefs, attitudes, values, and rules which a group of people share" (larson, 1984: 431). he notes that the translator needs to understand beliefs, attitudes, values, and the rules of the source language (sl) audience in order to adequately understand the source text (st) and adequately translate it for people who have a different set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and rules. in 1998, newmark remarks that culture is "the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression" (newmark, 1998: 94). here, he asserts that each language group has its own culturally specific features. there are so many different cultures in the world that the exact number is impossible to declare (o‟neil 2006). in other words, there are no strict boundaries within the melting pot of the world‟s cultures. to find the best equivalent for culture specific items (csis) in translation is, thus, one of the main concerns and the hardest part for each translator. the translators need to find an equivalent with the same context in the target text (tt). one of the most difficult problems is how to find some words or sentences that are not known in the target text (tt). a translator should be able to find some possibilities that include the diversities of translation strategies which can solve the problem of translating csis. the cultural diversity may be noticeable in literary writings. in fiction, the created characters originated from certain culture. this is expressed it through various culture-specific items. fictional characters from different cultures may confront, and then, certain misunderstanding can occur due to the differences in cultures. moreover, the work of fiction is available for a multicultural society due to the numerous translations into other languages, which cause a clash between cultures because a reader with his/hers own cultural identity reads the book from a different perspective. hence, the writer choose alice in wonderland which will be compared with indonesian translation novel petualangan di negeri ajaib dan dunia di balik cermin by windi a in 2007 in order to identify culture-specific items in a literary text and be able to analyze them. there are so many fiction novels for children. one of them is the little prince. the two books are based on the concept of the naïveté and innocence of the minds of young children. the two novels are comparable to each other in many different ways. several of the notably comparable aspects of the two stories are detectable in the themes, writing style, character development, and voice or tone of the novels. other aspects include the “hero cycle” and symbolic elements of the two books. though the two stories are completely original in their own right, both authors have either similar mindsets or similar inspirations when writing the books. compared to the little prince, the symbolic representations of certain aspects of life is more prominent in alice in wonderland. in the story, most characters represent characteristics of alice’s personality. for example, such character as the caterpillar not only acts as a mentor, but also represents the part of alice's mind that is wise and can make good decisions. other characters like the queen, duchess, cook, represent the parts of alice’s personality that are not as helpful, such as greed, anger, jealousy, sadness, and worry. these feelings are usually hidden away in a child, as they really do not have any cause to feel them, not until they get older. in the little prince, the symbols serve a similar purpose to represent aspects of the mind. however, instead of a child's mind, the traits are of an adult mind, and rather than focusing on one individual, the traits are of all adult minds in general. each trait is represented as a much exaggerated form of what that trait should be, and those individuals, for the most part, do not really have any other m. intan permatahati & m. ikhwan rosyidi / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 118 unique personalities. the flower represents vanity and self-importance, characteristics that are found more in the minds of adults that children. all of the men on the planets represent other parts of the mind: excess vanity and self-importance, distraction from important matters, making bad choices, unfriendliness and, in the prince's words, “strangeness” overall. after reading both stories, it is possible to view the little prince as having been inspired by alice’s adventures in wonderland. both novels center on growing older, and more cynical and aware of the world‟s surroundings. they both state that childhood must be preserved, and not tarnished by the adult world until it is time. these two classic novels are turning points in the literary genre; classic examples of books that will be remembered for their wise and thoughtful insights into the minds of children, and how the rest of the world is affected by them. lewis carroll, the author of alice’s adventures in wonderland was mathematician, photographer, anglican deacon, and also logician (as cited from: www.encyclopedia.com/article1g2-3443000011/caroll-lewis-1832-1898.html). he lived in religious family. his best seller novel was dedicated for his childhood, alice liddell. carroll mentioned that naturally his novel made reference to bible. he wants to educate moral toward the children but in simple way through story. it claimed that some parts of the novel remind the reader toward bible. this rumor attracts the research to analyze this novel compare to others to prove the csi that lewis brought in his writing. methodology of the research the researcher had identified and analyzed the data from the novel and found 413 culture specific-items in alice‟s adventures in wonderland. those culture specific-items were divided into six categories based on newmark‟s categorization. those are: ecology, material culture, social culture, organization, gesture and habits, and proper name. based on those research result and analysis, 115 culture-specific items words categorized as ecology, 141 in material culture, 31 in social culture, 21 in organization, 49 in gestures and habits, and 56 from proper name. from these categories, the most frequent occurrence is the material culture with 141 data. in contrast to material culture category, organization is the fewest categories found with 20 data. the first research question of his study was what translation techniques were applied in translating the culture specific items (csi) in alice‟s adventures in wonderland into the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland. to answer the first research question, besides providing the result of categories and sub-categories of culture-specific items used in this research, the researcher also provided the complete result of what translation techniques that were used by khairi rumantati in translating the alice‟s adventures in wonderland. in this research, the researcher used eighteen translation techniques proposed by mollina and albir in analysing them. out of eighteen translation techniques proposed by mollina and albir, the researcher found that sri haryanto just applied fifteen of them in translating 413 cuture-specific items in alice‟s adventures in wonderland novel into the target language. the results of translation techniques applying classifications are: 30 data were translated using adaptation (7.21%), 17 data were translated using amplification (5.05%), 59 data were translated using borrowing (14.18%), 13 data were translated using calque (3.13%), one data were translated using compensation (0.24%), 3 data were translated using description (0.72%), 15 data were translated using discursive creation (3.61%), 211 data were translated using established equivalent (50.72%), 13 data were translated using generalization (3.13%), 7 data were translated using literal translation (1.68%), 7 data were translated using modulation (1.68%), 2 data were translated using particularization (0.48%), 21 data were translated using reduction (5.05%), 2 data were translated using transposition (0.48%), and one data were translated using variation (0.24%), 13 data were deleted (3.13%).the researcher found that m. intan permatahati & m. ikhwan rosyidi / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 119 the most used translation technique in translating culture-specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland; alice in wonderland is the established equivalent technique. result and discussion the research result showed that the translation technique that was mostly used by sri haryanto in translating culturespecific items in alice‟s adventures in wonderland into the target language was established equivalent technique with 211 (50,72%) of applying. while the most infrequently used were compensation and variation with one (0.24%) applying for each. in this research, material culture is the highest number of culture-specific itmes category with 34.14% and established equivalent translation technique is the most frequently used to translate the culture-specific items with 50,72%. established equivalence got the first position and became the most frequent translation technique to translate alice‟s adventures in wonderland novel. established equivalence occurs when the translator adapting the text to the target language syntactic rules, with minimal adjustments, so that it sounds both correct and idiomatic. the researcher found 211 (50.72%) in 2007 version of alice‟s adventures in wonderland, petualangan di dunia ajaib dan dunia di balik cermin by sri haryanto. the highest number was from ecology category. there were 73 out of 211 culture specific items, eleven from flora, fourty from fauna, eleven from plains, eight from geography, two from geology and one from winds. the second number was from material culture category. fifteen from food, eleven from clothes, twenty three from artifacts, and fifteen from houses and three from places sub-category. from social category, there were 15 culture specific items that translated using established equivalence. nine from education and 5 from occupation sub-category. ten out of 211 were from organization. there were one from customs, two from religious, and seven from institutional terms. 33 out of 211 were from gestures and habits category, 26 from gestures and the rest were from habits. proper name also translated using established equivalence technique. there were eleven from proper name. readability level in this research, the researcher used readability rating sheet to measure the readability level of the translated culture-specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland. the readability rating sheet was filled by 20 respondents after reading alice in wonderland. they were from high school. there were three indicators or more recisely the regulations of the readability rating sheet. if it was not difficult to understand the translated culture-specific items in alice in wonderland, they shoud give score 3 or give a sign of check in the column of number 3. if there was a little difficult to understand the translated culture-specific items in alice in wonderland, they shoud give score 2 or give a sign of check in the column of number 2. it meant that they did not really understand them. while if it was difficult to understand the translated culture-specific items in alice in wonderland, they should give score 1 or give a sign of check in the column of number 1 which meant that they did not understand at all. all of the respondents of in this research were asked to rate the translated culture-specific items in alice in wonderland. based on the readability rating sheet calculation result, the readability score of each culturespecific item category can be concluded as follows: ecology culture-specific item category got 1529 on high readability, 448 on the middle readability, and 243 on the low readability with 115 culturespecific items. by comparison, the material culture got 1837 on high readability, 615 on the middle readability and 368 on low readability with 141 culture-specific items. furthermore, the third m. intan permatahati & m. ikhwan rosyidi / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 120 category used in this study, the social culture got 411 on high readability, 120 on middle readability and 89 on low readability with 31 culture-specific items. the next category, the organization got 259 on high readability, 104 on middle readability, and 57 on low readability with 21 culture-specific items. the fifth category in this study, the gestures and habits got 604 on high readability, 210 on middle readability, and 106 on low readability with 49 culture-specific items. the last category, the proper name got 513 on high readability, 247 on middle readability, and 240 on low readability with 56 culture-specific items. the complete results can be seen in appendix 3. based on the research result above, each culture-specific items category got different readability level. it can be concluded that the culture-specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland, alice di negeri ajaib, overall was readable. relation among culture-specific items, translation techniques, and readability based on the connection among culture-specific items, translation techniques and readability analysis, the researcher found that every culture-specific items category required different translation technique. from the analysis, it can be found that established equivalent is more dominant and suitable in translating the items from ecology category, especially in fauna-sub category, and material culture category, especially in artifacts-sub category, there were also several word that the raters only gave one score. for example, the sentence in flora sub-category, “did you say „pig‟ or „fig‟?”. the word pig and fig were almost the same when we heard it, but it had different meaning and sri haryanto only translated the word pig and fig into bahasa. so the raters did not understand, thirteen person gave one score, five students gave two score and two students gave three scores. from this result, it can be concluded that using literal translation for the words “pig and fig” were not suitable and it was not readable. using established equivalence to translate institutional terms sub-category was suitable. the readers rated high readability for the institutional terms that translated using established equvalence. another research finding showed that using adaptation technique to translate health was very suitable. the raters gave high readability rating for this. three out of 4 borrowing technique were used to translate education sub-category used in translating the culture specific items from this category. there were 56 culture specific items categorized as proper name. 30 out of 56 were translated using borrowing technique. the translator used borrowing technique in translating the csi from this category, since it mostly consists of name of the characters. from the explanation above, it can be summarized that the readability of culture specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland, alice di negeri ajaib was measured by using readability rating sheet with total score 5153 on high readability, score 1744 on medium readability and score 1103 on low readability. based on the score, it can be inferred that the culture specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice‟s adventures in wonderland, alice di negeri ajaib overall was readable. moreover, from the research results, it can be inferred that each subcategory also had its own translation technique suitability. conclusions based on the result of the research analysis, the researcher found 413 cultural-specific items from the alice’s adventures in wonderland novel which were classified into six categories. those item were translated eighteen translation techniques proposed by mollina and albir. the reseracher found that sri haryanto applied fifteen of them in translating those cuture-specific items into the m. intan permatahati & m. ikhwan rosyidi / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 121 target language. the the mostly used translation technique in translating culture-specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice’s adventures in wonderland; alice in wonderland is the established equivalent technique. based on those research result and analysis, the material culture category got the highest frequency with 141 out of 413 items while the lowest frequency was from organization with 21 out of 413 items. based on the research result, the culture-specific items in the 2007 indonesian translation of alice’s adventures in wonderland, alice di negeri ajaib got a high readability score, 5153 on high readability, score 1744 on medium readability and score 1103 on low readability. it can be concluded that those items were quite readable. references baker, m. (1992) in other words: a coursebook on translation. london and new york: routledege. cambridge electronic dictionary. 2008. version 3.0. cambridge university press. carroll, lewis. 1865. petualangan di negeri ajaib dan dunia di balik cermin. new york: tom doherty associates, and its translation by windy a. 2007. alice‟s adventures in wonderland. yogyakarta: penerbit narasi. carroll, lewis. 1988. alice‟s adventures in wonderland. new york: tom doherty associates. dira, ni kadek ayu tedja sari. 2013. directive illocutionary acts used by main characters in alice in wonderland movie script. espindola, e. &vasconcellos, l. m. (2006). two facets in the subtitling process: foreignisation and/or domestication procedures in unequal cultural encounters. retrieved from:http://www.periodicos. ufsc.br/index.php/fragmentos/article/.../7689. gambier, y. 2004. doubts and directions in translation studies. the netherlands: john benjamins. halloran, m. 2006.translating james joyce: culturespecific items in translation.retrieved from: http://french.chass.utoronto.ca/sesdef/ miroir/halloran.pdf. humanika, eko setya. 2008. ideologi penerjemahan wordplay dalam alice‟s adventures in wonderland ke dalam bahasa indonesia. larson, mildred l. 1984. meaning-based translation: a guide to cross language equivalence. united state of america: university press of america,inc. malkki, aila. 2015. translation emotions across time : lewis carroll‟s alice‟s adventuren in wonderland. molina, l & albir, h. 2002. translation techniques revisited: a dynamic and functionalist approach. meta: translators' journal. vol. 47 no.2. available at http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2002/v47/n4/008033ar.pdf. [accessed 16/6/2015] newmark, p. 1988. a textbook of translation. new york: new york and prentice hall. nida, e. a. and taber, cr 2003. the theory and practice of translation. leiden: koninklijke brill nv, leiden, the netherlands. yifeng, sun. 2012. translation and strategies for cross cultural communication. chinese translators journal, 33(1):16–23. 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of blog as a medium to improve students` skill in writing hortatory exposition a classroom action research at the eleventh grade students of sman 12 semarang maulina nur chikmahwati department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: blog, hortatory exposition, writing skill ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the purposes of this study are to investigate students’ problems in writing hortatory exposition, to explain why students have problems in writing hortatory exposition, and to find out how well does blog contribute in improving students’ mastery of writing hortatory exposition in constructing this study, the writer collected data using a classroom action research, which was carried out through four activities. the activities consisted of planning, acting, observing and reflecting. the subjects of this study were 37 students of year eleven of sma negeri 12 semarang in the academic year of 2011/2012. the action was done through teaching learning process. all of the teaching learning processes were presented by the help of blog.the data was analyzed qualitatively, to find the answers. based on the data analysis from each activity, it can be seen that the students’ problems in writing hortatory exposition text were the difficulty in drawing contents, organizing text, using the language and vocabulary, and mastering the mechanics. they were caused by the lack of students’ attention, enthusiasm, activeness in asking answering questions and activeness in doing the task given by the teacher. it was found that there was a significant difference of the students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition from the pre-test, first cycle and second cycle. after the treatments, the students’ achievement in writing hortatory exposition text was improved. therefore, using blog as a medium was effective to improve the students’ writing skill in hortatory exposition text and very beneficial for the students in order to facilitate them in learning english.to explore the advantages of using blog in teaching learning process, in the future study, not only the teachers, but also the students are also recommended to possess blog accounts. by possessing their own blog accounts, students are supposed to compose the blog posts and explore the references of their writings by themselves. it also abridges the students to share their writings and testimonials to the others’ blogs. in this way, the frequency of the communication practice and word building gradually increases that is expected to be able to improve students’ writing skill, especially in hortatory exposition text, and generally in all other text types. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: maulina101@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction since english has been determined as the international language of communication by the united nations in 1948, every nations including indonesia, took the language into the school curriculum. in indonesia, english has begun to be taught in junior high school, even in some elementary school english has been taught as a local subject. the condition shows that indonesia takes english seriously to be learnt. from time to time, english is taught in classical method using classical media as books, while in fact there exists other innovative possible effective media that the technology offers. according to maddux and johnson (2005:121), using technology to foster innovative teaching and learning, or type ii technology applications, should be a priority for all educators. nowadays, children have started to be acquainted with technology, in this matter is internet, since their childhood. as the indonesian students’ internet access has improved significantly, it is the time for the teachers to keep in balance themselves with the students’ interest and ability in accessing the internet. one of the most famous internet’s features is blog. blog has been well received in education owing to its multimedia features, interactivity, and ability to support cooperative and autonomous learning. the strong interconnectedness between bloggers and readers makes blog a powerful tool for global conversation. bloggers can read other blogs, link to them, and reference them in their own blogs. the worldwide blog audience enables students to interact with and have their work viewed by others outside the classroom. blog can benefit students to improve their mastery in learning english. in addition, it will also be a good initiative for the teachers to enrich their teaching variations. in teaching-learning of english, the skills that have to be mastered are listening, speaking, reading and writing. the fact proves that writing is one of the language skills that is a little bit harder to be mastered than the other skills. it needs the combination of ideas that is gotten from listening, reading, thinking and imagining. in this study, writing is more emphasized than the others. the result of the writing can be classified into book, novel, journal, short story, poem, short text, etc. short text is a kind of text type that is used in indonesia curriculum, textbased curriculum. there are many genres of short texts, among others are narrative, recount, news item, anecdote, spoof, hortatory exposition, and analytical exposition. hortatory exposition is one of text type which is taught in senior high school. the writer chooses hortatory exposition as the writing material because as stated in school curriculum, it is one of the genres that must be learnt by students in senior high school. in addition, hortatory exposition is considered as a hard subject since it is the newest in english text genres. not to mention, the various fitures of blog support the character of the medium that can be used to teach writing hortatory exposition text. nowadays ict (information and communication technology) has significantly improved, as technology has a crucial role in people’s life. therefore, making use of the technology, in this case is blog, to improve students’ writing skill in hortatory exposition is very suggestable. thus, blogs with all their comprehensiveness are easy to be accessed by people, especially high school students who have advanced skill in it (information and technology). the comprehensiveness of blog facilities can be a good point for the teacher to make the lesson as creative as possible. specifically the research questions posed in this study are what are the students’ problems in writing hortatory exposition?, why do the students have problems in writing hortatory exposition?, how well does blog contribute in improving students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition? therefore, the main purposes of this research are to investigate students’ problems in writing hortatory exposition, to explain why students have problems in writing hortatory exposition, to find out how well does blog contribute in improving students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition. maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 by conducting this research, the writer expects that the result of this study will theoretically provide the reader, especially english department students, with a new understanding about using blog in improving the students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition and practically give the english teacher some kinds of understanding or reflection that can be used as the basic idea in designing the teaching and learning process. method in this study, the writer chose the eleventh grade students of sma negeri 12 semarang in the academic year of 2011/2012 as the subject of the study. the writer chose the eleventh grade because based on the curriculum, hortatory exposition is taught to this grade. in sma negeri 12 semarang, there were seven classes of the eleventh grade, three science classes, three social classes and one language class. firstly, the writer wrote the entire eleventh grade classes in some pieces of paper. then, randomly, the writer took a piece of paper that determined as the sample. the students of xi social 3 were chosen. this action research was conducted in collaboration between the teacher and the researcher. the researcher created the lesson plan and pre-test items to give to the students in the pre-test. then the researcher assessed the students’ pre-test works then analyzed them. afterwards, the researcher created the lesson plans, the blog medium, test items, and observation note, for the first cycle. after analyzing the first cycle results, the researcher created the next lesson plan, blog medium, test-items, observation note, and questionnaire to conduct the second cycle. in doing the research, the researcher gave the treatments by herself with the help of the classroom english teacher and her colleague. in this study, to collect the data, the researcher used three instruments. the instruments were tests, questionnaires, and observation notes. result and discussion pre-test the pre-test was conducted by the researcher at the beginning of the study. the purpose of giving the pre-test was to check the students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition based on five categories given. those were: content, organization, vocabulary, language use and mechanics. on april 25th 2012, the pre-test was taken by 37 students of xi social 3 class. in this activity the researcher at first asked the students whether they have ever made a speech text and/ or given a speech or not. the students replied, “no, we haven’t/ we only ever listened to speeches!” the researcher then showed the students a hortatory exposition text entitled “watch your students while watching television” and asked whether they were familiar with the text or not and then the students replied, “yes.” therefore, the researcher gave a brief review about hortatory exposition to the students using the earlier text as the example. afterwards, the researcher showed four topics entitled: 1) “sex education course should be taught in high school”, 2) “dying hair should/should not be banned in high school”, 3) “stop eating junk food”, and 4) “study tour is/is not important for high school students”. after they finished writing the hortatory exposition text, the students submitted their works. the result of the students’ works can be seen in table 4.1 below. from the pre-test result, it was found that the students problems were all the five competences, those were: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. in term of content, the students’ average pre-test was “fair to poor”. it was shown by the fact that most of the students’ work contents were still too general and/or incoherent. the students’ work showed that they had limited subject knowledge and had not enough development of the topic. maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 in term of organization, the students’ average pre-test was “fair to poor” too. it was shown by the fact that the students’ ideas were not clear and/or disconnected though they had followed the generic structure and logical order of hortatory exposition text. in term of vocabulary, the students’ average pre-test was considered as “fair to poor” too. it was shown by the fact that the students made frequent errors in words choice and/or usage. some of the words’ meanings were confused though they had enough range of words and used varied adjectives. in term of language use, it was also considered as “fair to poor”. the students’ made frequent errors and the meanings were often confusing. though their language was effective but the construction was still simple. in term of mechanics, the average pre-test score was considered as “fair to poor” since the students made numerous mistakes that make sentences choppy. for this reason, the writer analyzed the observation note of the pre-test first to find the causes of the students’ problems before conducting the action to improve students’ skill in writing hortatory exposition using blog as the medium. pre-test observation note the observation notes were analyzed to explain why students have problems in writing hortatory exposition. the notes were made in the pre-test, first cycle and second cycle to explain why the students had the problem in writing hortatory exposition. during the pre-test the writer and colleague did the observation. the result of observation in the pre-test can be seen in table 4.2 below. based on the result, it was found that the causes of the students having problem in writing hortatory exposition were the students’ lack of: 1) attention based on the item number 1, more students didn’t pay attention to the learning process than those who paid attention. they were not concentrating in the class, for example: they often looked outside of class, got sleepy and talked to his/her friends. 2) enthusiasm item number 2 also showed that most students were not enthusiastic during the research conducted, almost half of the students were not enough enthusiastic and busy with themselves. 3) activeness in asking and answering questions item number 3 and 4 showed that most of the students weren’t active in asking and answering questions. they were still shy to ask or answer questions. 4) activeness in doing the tasks given by the teacher item number 5 showed that the students’ activeness in doing the tasks given by teacher was not good enough. not enough questions they asked to the teacher that made their tasks done not satisfying. using the findings of the pre-test and observation note, the researcher then prepared the first cycle. first cycle the first cycle was conducted in two meetings, which were identified as the first and second activity. the first activity was conducted on april 26th 2012 by 37 students. since weblog or blog is an online learning method, the activity was conducted in a computer laboratory with internet connection. the writer used a computer that linked to an lcd screen so the students could see each step that the writer explained. moreover, each student sat at his/her own computer. all of the computers had direct access to the internet. the writer introduced the blog method to the students as a start. the writer asked whether they had heard of blog or familiar with blog before. most of the students only knew the basic idea of what blog is. they read blogs yet they hadn’t ever found one that is used to learn english. the writer then introduced the blog to the students. at first, the writer asked the students to connect to the internet and open a blank web page in the internet. each step was shown clearly from the lcd screen. after the maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 students were on the blank page, the writer asked them to type a web address namely “osctoenglish.blogspot.com”. students were then on the blog’s front page. afterwards, the writer told the students to explore the blog for about ten minutes in order to help them become familiar with this new medium of learning/teaching. then the writer asked the students to click on a blog thread entitled “learning hortatory exposition: cycle 1”. following the introduction, the writer then asked them to scroll down the page, which led them to the link of the pre-activity. in the pre-activity, the students were recalled to the basic definition of hortatory exposition, still using the one-on-one communication-like method so the students would feel closed to the blogger. the writer gave the students about 25 minutes to read and understand the explanation of hortatory exposition that could be found in pre-activity. the writer then walked around the class and observed what the students were doing. while observing the class, the writer noticed that some students were reading the explanation very carefully but some others were trying to open twitter, facebook and games online. then the writer reminded every student not to play on facebook or any other site during the class. it was continued to part two or the whilst activity which consists of two parts. the first one was whilst activity part 1. in this part, students were asked to understand a hortatory exposition text although to answer the questions following the text, the writer needed to guide them to the expected answers. students also found it hard to understand the meaning of some words or phrases so the teacher suggested them to open “www.translate.google.com” to help them figure out the meaning of the words or phrases. after given the example of hortatory exposition text, in the whilst activity part 1, the students were asked to read a short dialogue as an implementation of simple present tense and present perfect tense. then, they were asked to understand the explanation about simple present tense and present perfect tense following the dialogue independently. afterwards, the students were asked to analyze the dialogue about which of sentences use simple present tense and present perfect tense. the activity then continued to the second activity. in this activity, the writer continued giving the treatment. the writer asked the students to open the blog the same way that they did in the previous meeting. afterwards, the writer asked them to continue to the last activity that they did in the previous meeting. the students gave positive responses and showed that they have understood well what they should do. it was the whilst activity 2 of the treatment. in this activity, the students were showed a persuasive text and the analysis of it. to emphasize the understanding, students were given another example of persuasive text that is created based on an article in some newspaper. the last activity was the post-activity in which the students were asked to make a group of 6 to 7 so there would be 6 groups in the class. then each group was given a case based on a newspaper’s article. after reading the article, the members of group discussed about it and shared their arguments about the topic/case. since there were 6 groups, there would be 6 different topics/cases to for each group. for the group number one, the case is an article entitled “ipads replacing textbooks and notebooks in local school”. the members should share their opinions whether they support the idea of replacing textbooks and notebooks to ipads in local school or not. group two got an article from chicagotribune.com entitled “city plans free wi-fi in all parks, public spaces”. the members should discuss their arguments whether they agree or disagree with the plan of providing free wifi in public parks. close to the students’ life, the group number three got a case entitled “philadelphia's juvenile curfew is extended through labor day”. thus they could share their opinion about teenager curfew policy. an article entitled “britain's fattest woman dies of heart attack after junk food binge in hospital bed” was given to group number four. therefore they could think whether they would make persuasive speeches supporting or maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 opposing the consuming of junk food. the group number five got an article entitled “a child expelled from school because parents are gay”. by understanding this article, students should make persuasive speeches about the gay and lesbian discrimination among public, whether they against the discrimination or else they agree with the discrimination. the last but not the least, group number six got an article from abcnews.go.com entitled “new jersey woman sues, can't fully blink after eyelid surgery”. the students needed to give their opinion and arguments about plastic surgery that is being more popular in society lately. in this activity, the students were allowed to open other supporting websites such as google translate, wikipedia and any other sites. students were trying hard to make their best work since they said it was their first time working on the internet. those who finished writing their persuasive speech were asked to do the peer editing. they were asked to do peer editing their friend’s first cycle test. in peer editing, the students needed to answer these questions. 1) is there any thesis paragraph? 2) what information does your friend need to add in his/her thesis? 3) is there any argument paragraph? 4) what information does your friend need to add in his/her argument paragraph? 5) pay attention to the vocabulary. does the vocabulary vary enough? 6) give some suggestions to make it better. 7) is there any sentence that confuses you? 8) write down the confusing sentence. 9) is the content clear enough for you? any suggestions? 10) is there any grammatical error? mention! 11) what is your general impression of his/her persuasive speech? 12) a. strength (what do you like most about the speech?) 13) b. weaknesses (give some suggestion for your friend’s improvement!) the students had to submit their peer editing worksheet in the comment box below the instruction post. following the peer editing worksheet, the writer graded the students’ hortatory exposition text and analyzed their errors. afterwards, the writer cumulated the students’ errors and analyzes their errors. the result of the students’ achievement during the first cycle-test can be seen in table 4.3. from the first cycle result, it was found that the students’ problems were getting better. in term of content, the students’ average score was “good to average”. it was shown by the fact that most of the students’ works showed some knowledge of the subject although they still had limited development of the topic and lacks depth of detail contents. in term of organization, the students’ work was “good to average”. the finding showed that they students had followed the generic structure of hortatory exposition text; though their works were still loosely organized but the main ideas were clear. the students had followed the logical order but it was not completed. in term of vocabulary, the students’ average score was considered as “good to average”. the students had had enough range of words, used some adjectives and verbs; made occasional errors in word usage; but the meaning is clear. in term of language use, it was also considered as “good to average”. it was shown that the students’ use of language had been effective although the construction was still simple. the errors in agreement and tense were seldom too. in term of mechanics, the average score was considered as “good to average” too. it was shown by the finding that the students made minor mistakes in mechanic. for the findings in pre-test result, the researcher the design a better plan for the second cycle. second cycle in the second cycle, the writer considered the weaknesses that the writer did in the first cycle. then, the writer did some maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 7 reflections and evaluations to improve the teaching learning performance; especially to manage the students’ behavior in order to make them pay more attention to the lesson’s instructions. the writer’s evaluations that had been practiced in the second cycle included: spoke more clearly and slowly in order to make the students understand the instructions. after that was the shut down access to the online social networks such as facebook, twitter and yahoo messenger. so, the second cycle was conducted based on those evaluations. furthermore, the writer gave deeper explanation of some materials regarding students’ error and mistakes in writing the hortatory exposition texts. the second cycle also was conducted in two meetings, which was the third activity and fourth activity. the third activity was conducted on thursday may 3rd 2012. the writer prepared some materials to be discussed. following the peer editing worksheet, the writer graded the students’ hortatory exposition text and analyzed their errors. moreover, the writer created materials related to the students’ common mistakes in order to minimalist their mistakes. the material was posted in the blog. the writer explained the students’ common mistakes and gave some advice in order to make their work better. the students were then given a chance to ask questions. after the question-answer session was finished, the writer asked the students to repair their persuasive text based on that day’s explanation and peer editing. the writer told the students to finish their work today. unfortunately some of the students could not finish their work on the day. then the teacher held the fourth activity to give the students additional time to finish their works. the fourth activity was an extended activity for the students who had not posted their persuasive speech. the result of students’ achievement in the second cycle can be seen in the table 4.5. from the second cycle result, it was found that the students’ problems got significant improvement. in term of content, the students’ average score was “good to average”. it was shown by the fact that most of the students’ works showed some knowledge of the subject although they still had limited development of the topic and lack depth of detail contents. in term of organization, the students’ work was “good to average”. the finding showed that they students had followed the generic structure of hortatory exposition text; though their works were still loosely organized but the main ideas were clear. the students had followed the logical order and it was completed. in term of vocabulary, the students’ average score was considered as “good to average”. the students had had enough range of words, used a lot of adjectives and verbs, the meaning is clear but made occasional errors in word usage. in term of language use, it was also considered as “good to average”. it was shown that the students’ use of language had been effective and some of them used complex sentence construction. the errors in agreement and tense were seldom too. in term of mechanics, the average score was considered as “good to average” too. it was shown by the finding that only the students made minor mistakes in mechanic. considering the finding on cycle two, the researcher then decided to end the research. questionnaire the questionnaire which consisted of 10 questions was analyzed to find out how well blog had contributed to improve students writing skill in hortatory exposition. it had to be answered by choosing “yes” or “no” answer. the percentage result of the questionnaire can be seen in the table 4.7. the questionnaire number one showed that most of the students (29) had difficulty in learning hortatory exposition text before the treatment given. based on the questionnaire number two, there were 28 students also had the difficulty in determining the elements of hortatory exposition text. the questionnaire number three showed that there were 32 students thought that writing hortatory maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 8 exposition was hard. questionnaire number four showed that before the treatments given, most of the students (22) hadn’t known blog. questionnaire number five showed that 32 students thought that there was a difference in mastering hortatory exposition text writing. based on questionnaire number six, there were 36 students liked to learn hortatory exposition through blog. also in questionnaire number seven, 36 students thought that blog was more attractive than the conventional teaching. questionnaire number eight showed that there were 30 students were more motivated learning hortatory exposition text using blog as the medium. questionnaire number 9 showed that the teacher had never used any special techniques to teach hortatory exposition text. in addition, questionnaire number ten showed that 34 students wanted this kind of activity to be continued. table 4.1 the students’ pre-test result no. students' code component of writing score score c o v lu m 1 a – 01 22 10 11 17 1 61 2 a – 02 22 14 12 18 2 68 3 a – 03 22 10 11 17 1 61 4 a – 04 22 13 11 12 1 59 5 a – 05 22 14 11 17 1 65 6 a 06 15 14 11 12 1 53 7 a 07 22 15 12 19 2 70 8 a 08 15 14 11 18 2 60 9 a 09 16 10 17 18 1 62 10 a 10 22 15 12 18 2 69 11 a 11 22 15 11 17 2 67 12 a 12 16 10 11 17 1 55 13 a 13 22 13 17 16 2 70 14 a 14 17 11 9 16 1 54 15 a 15 22 15 15 19 2 73 16 a 16 21 14 12 20 1 68 17 a 17 22 15 12 18 2 69 18 a 18 22 15 11 17 2 67 19 a 19 22 16 16 18 2 74 20 a 20 22 14 12 15 2 65 21 a 21 16 9 11 17 1 54 22 a 22 22 15 11 17 2 67 23 a 23 22 15 12 18 2 69 24 a 24 21 14 12 15 2 64 25 a 25 22 15 11 17 2 67 26 a 26 22 14 17 17 2 72 27 a 27 22 14 12 21 2 71 28 a 28 22 10 11 21 2 66 29 a – 29 16 9 11 17 1 54 30 a – 30 16 13 7 12 1 49 31 a – 31 22 14 12 18 2 68 32 a – 32 22 15 12 18 2 69 33 a – 33 16 14 7 15 1 53 34 a – 34 22 15 11 17 2 67 35 a – 35 22 15 11 17 2 67 36 a – 36 22 15 11 17 2 67 37 a – 37 17 14 11 18 2 62 ∑ 752 497 435 631 61 2376 mean 20.32 13.43 11.76 17.05 1.65 64.22 maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 9 where : c = content o = organization v = vocabulary lu = language use m = mechanics table 4.2 the pre-test observation note no . students’ activities scale (number of student) total good fair poor 1. students’ attention to the teacher 10 (27%) 12 (32%) 15 (40%) 37 (100%) 2. students’ enthusiasm 10 (27%) 10 (27%) 17 (46%) 37 (100%) 3. students’ activeness in asking questions 2 (1%) 10 (27%) 25 (68%) 37 (100%) 4. students’ activeness in answering teacher’s questions 2 (1%) 10 (27%) 25 (68%) 37 (100%) 5. students’ activeness in doing the tasks given by teacher 10 (27%) 10 (27%) 17 (46%) 37 (100%) table 4.3 the first cycle test result no. students' code component of writing score score c o v lu m 1 a – 01 22 14 12 22 4 74 2 a – 02 22 18 18 22 4 84 3 a – 03 26 18 18 23 4 89 4 a – 04 17 14 12 18 3 64 5 a – 05 22 14 14 22 2 74 6 a – 06 22 20 17 22 4 85 7 a – 07 26 18 18 23 4 89 8 a – 08 22 17 15 18 3 75 9 a – 09 22 17 12 20 1 72 10 a – 10 26 18 17 23 4 88 11 a – 11 22 17 12 20 4 75 12 a – 12 20 13 21 14 3 71 13 a – 13 21 17 15 21 3 77 14 a – 14 22 16 17 18 1 74 15 a – 15 26 18 18 23 3 88 16 a – 16 22 15 18 18 2 75 17 a – 17 25 13 11 17 1 67 18 a – 18 19 16 17 18 2 72 19 a – 19 26 18 18 23 3 88 20 a – 20 24 17 15 17 3 76 21 a – 21 22 17 17 21 1 78 maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 10 22 a – 22 22 18 17 21 1 79 23 a – 23 22 17 17 18 1 75 24 a – 24 24 18 15 17 1 75 25 a – 25 24 17 17 17 2 77 26 a – 26 27 18 18 23 5 91 27 a – 27 24 19 17 22 4 86 28 a – 28 26 17 17 18 3 81 29 a – 29 24 17 19 17 3 80 30 a – 30 23 17 11 17 3 71 31 a – 31 24 18 17 23 4 86 32 a – 32 24 18 18 23 4 87 33 a – 33 24 17 15 17 3 76 34 a – 34 24 17 17 17 2 77 35 a – 35 24 17 17 17 3 78 36 a – 36 24 17 15 17 3 76 37 a – 37 26 18 18 23 3 88 ∑ 862 625 597 730 104 2918 mean 23.29 16.89 16.13 19.72 2.81 78.86 table 4.5 the second cycle result no. students' code component of writing score score c o v lu m 1 a – 01 24 18 12 22 4 80 2 a – 02 26 18 18 23 4 89 3 a 03 27 18 18 23 5 91 4 a 04 22 17 15 18 3 75 5 a 05 21 17 15 21 3 77 6 a 06 26 18 18 23 4 89 7 a 07 27 18 19 22 5 91 8 a 08 21 17 15 21 3 77 9 a 09 22 17 15 18 3 75 10 a 10 27 18 18 23 4 90 11 a 11 21 17 15 22 4 79 12 a 12 24 17 15 17 3 76 13 a 13 24 18 12 22 4 80 14 a 14 24 18 12 22 4 80 15 a 15 27 18 18 23 4 90 16 a 16 21 17 15 22 4 79 17 a 17 22 15 18 18 2 75 18 a 18 24 17 15 17 3 76 19 a 19 27 18 18 23 5 91 20 a 20 24 18 12 22 4 80 21 a 21 22 20 17 22 4 85 22 a 22 24 20 17 22 4 87 23 a 23 22 17 15 22 4 80 24 a 24 24 17 15 22 4 82 maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 11 25 a 25 22 18 17 22 4 83 26 a 26 27 20 18 23 5 93 27 a 27 27 18 18 23 5 91 28 a 28 24 19 17 22 4 86 29 a 29 22 20 17 22 4 85 30 a 30 24 17 14 17 3 75 31 a 31 27 18 18 23 4 90 32 a 32 25 18 18 23 4 88 33 a 33 22 18 17 22 4 83 34 a – 34 22 18 17 22 4 83 35 a – 35 24 19 17 22 4 86 36 a – 36 22 18 18 22 4 84 37 a – 37 27 18 18 23 5 91 ∑ 888 662 601 796 145 3092 mean 24 17.89 16.24 21.51 3.91 83.56 where : c = content o = organization v = vocabulary lu = language use m = mechanics table 4.7 the questionnaire result pertanyaan ya tidak total 1. apakah anda mengalami kesulitan dalam mempelajari teks yang berbentuk hortatory exposition? 29 (78%) 8 (22%) 37 (100%) 2. apakah anda mengalami kesulitan dalam menentukan elemenelemen dalam teks hortatory exposition? 28 (76%) 9 (24%) 37 (100%) 3. apakah menulis teks hortatory exposition itu sulit? 32 (86%) 5 (14%) 37 (100%) 4. apakah sebelum diadakan kegiatan ini anda telah mengenal blog? 22 (59%) 15 (41%) 37 (100%) 5. apakah ada perbedaan penguasaan penulisan teks hortatory exposition sebelum dan sesudah penggunaan medium blog? 34 (92%) 3 (8%) 37 (100%) 6. apakah anda senang mempelajari hortatory exposition menggunakan blog? 36 (97%) 1 (3%) 37 (100%) 7. apakah penggunaan blog dalam mempelajari hortatory exposition lebih menarik dibanding pengajaran konvensional (menggunakan buku pelajaran)? 36 (97%) 1 (3%) 37 (100%) 8. apakah pengajaran dengan medium blog membantu anda untuk lebih termotivasi mempelajari hortatory exposition? 30 (81%) 7 (19%) 37 (100%) 9. apakah guru anda pernah menggunakan teknik khusus dalam pengajaran teks hortatory exposition? 0 (0%) 37 (100%) 37 (100%) 10. menurut pendapat anda, apakah kegiatan semacam ini perlu dilanjutkan atau tidak? 34 (92%) 3 (8%) 37 (100%) maulina nur chikmahwati / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 12 references arikunto, s., 1996, prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktek, jakarta: rineka cipta. best, j. w. 1981. research and education. new jersey: prentice hall. inc. brown, h. d. 2004. language assessment principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education limited. brown, w. j. 1977. educational media yearbook. new york: rr browker. brooks, k., c. nichols, and s. priebe. 2004. remediation, genre, and motivation: key concepts for teaching with weblogs. gurak, l. et al. 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through blogs in an efl class. spain: white rose language school. white, r. and a. maley. 1987. writing: advanced. new york: oxford university press. ika oktavianti / journal of economic education 1 (2) (2012) elt forum 7 (1) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt learners’ ability to negotiate meaning in interactional conversation nuki nurazizah, helena i. r. agustien, djoko sutopo  putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) n. nurazizah, h. i. r. agustien, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (1) (2018) english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia 15 22 article info ________________ article history: received in april 2017 approved in may 2017 published in july 2017 ________________ keywords: negotiation, negotiate meaning, conversation, interactional conversation. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ negotiation is one kind of ways in order to interact with other people. doing negotiation means that participants are able to reveal what they feel and think. for this study, observation was done before recording. audio recording is the primary data besides there was also note. the note is about the class’ situations that were not included in the recording. then, the data is transformed into transcription. after the transcript is made, the data is able to be analyzed. results indicate that the learners mostly negotiate well. they produce statements in compliance with mood elements. they also have various kinds of mood types in the conversation. the ways that the students negotiate meaning in order to get the meaning across are countering the interlocutors’ responds, responding the teacher by giving statement that exactly suit to the teacher’s questions, and having equal turns reciprocally to convey their ideas in a conversation. in order to compensate their language problems, the students use some strategies such using minor clause, speaking in their native language, and doing non-verbal communication. in addition, there are also some grammatical problems hinder the negotiation of meaning. they ellipse a certain element of the clause. another grammatical problem is that the students do not use fit correspondence between finite and other elements. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: nukki.nurazizah.nn @gmail.com introduction english is one of the foreign language subjects in indonesia. according to my experiences, when i got my first english lesson in elementary school, i had difficulties in both making meaning of words and pronouncing words. in junior high school, i had my first english course in which i started to learn about using english in daily class conversation. unfortunately, it did not work well because not only me but also some of my friends sometimes stopped talking. the teacher should give clues in order to guide students to continue their talks. when i joined practice field experience program, it also showed that some students find it difficult to understand english as their foreign language. students who do not understand yet about what people say in english will not be able to get people’s intention. when it comes to students to take their turn in a conversation, they are just quiet because they run out of words or use their mother tongue to respond their counterpart. eggins and slade (1997: 6) argue that negotiation is very helpful in delivering our thoughts and opinions about our feelings. negotiation also helps us in taking turns when we are in a conversation. why the researcher uses this definition? goal of conversation is not always to get something. conversation has aims both to build a connection between people and to keep conversation going. so, negotiation is a capability in responding to any statements to get the conversation going. brown & yule (1983) suggest that conversation has two different objectives. it is about exchanging information and focusing on the things being exchanged. on the other hand, the conversation has a purpose in maintaining social relationships and personal attitudes. it relates to speakers’ interaction. the first is called transactional, whereas the second is referred to as interactional. this study is going to investigate the students’ ability in negotiating meaning in casual conversation. process of negotiation refers to a role among students in which they take turns and exchange turns in a conversation to convey their ideas so that the conversation keeps going. the conversation is followed by question and answer, giving opinion, or adding arguments in order to make the conversation alive. methodology of the research this study is going to have an audio recording for the primary data. then, the data is transformed into transcription so that the analysis can be done. 1. observation the researcher should observe the class before recording. the observation is about the condition of the class such as the amount of students, the class’s rules and the class activity. the students are divided into a small group or in pairs. the teacher gives assignments to them based on the instruction in the book. then, each groups or pairs have to make a conversation or dialog. after that, they practice their dialog in front of others. in order to have a good object for the study, the researcher needs to let the class’s situation as natural as possible. the students are free to talk so that the interaction happens naturally. marshall and rossman (2006) stated that observation is a fundamental and highly important method in a qualitative inquiry. it is used to discover complex interactions in natural social settings. observation entails the systemic noting and recording of events, behaviors, and artifacts (objects) in the social setting chosen for study. for studies relying exclusively on observation, the researcher makes no specific effort to have a particular role in the setting. the researcher has classroom observation that is often found in education. it is going to have documents and describe actions and interactions that are complex: what they mean can only be offered without other sources of information. 2. recording the teacher permits the researcher to record in parts, only on students’ activities. the recording is an audio. 3. taking notes the note is about the class’s situations that are not included in the recording. the researcher has to make such kind of notes for supporting data. 4. making transcripts the researcher makes transcription based on the data recording. after the transcript is made, the researcher might move to discourse analysis. after collecting the data, the data are ready to be analyzed. there are some steps in analyzing data. 1. define the interpersonal meaning elements (mood elements, residue, polarity, and modality) in each sentence. 2. identify the mood types in each sentence (declarative, interrogative, and imperative). 3. describe its text and context (context of situation and context of culture). result and discussion this analysis deals with a conversation between students and teacher in a conversational classroom to investigate learners’ ability in the negotiation of meaning. negotiation refers to a role of students and teacher in which they take turns and exchange meaning in a conversation to convey their ideas so that the conversation keeps going. class interaction usually makes the teacher more dominant than students. it is because the teacher is the one who only does talking and gets to be the speaker for most of the time. yet, class conversation makes students freer to access the speaker role. the teacher only gives clues and hints. he/ she let students talk more frequently than teacher so that there is a greater sharing of ideas from each student. 1. the way that the students negotiate meaning in order to get the meaning across: 3.1 the students counter their interlocutors’ responses. example: 559 vaniani (i) umm how about umm going to stadion to watch umm soccer match with main persib and persija? nv35 all [laughing] 560 arvi (i) that sounds great. (ii) i bet persija will win the competition. nv36 all [laughing] 561 arvi (i) why not? 562 aulia (i) but i think umm persib win it. 563 arvi (i) oh, no … nv37 all [laughing] 564 arvi (i) persija will win this competition. 565 aulia (i) i’m afraid. nv38 all [laughing] 566 vaniani (i) equal. (ii) i think it would be equal. nv39 all [laughing] 567 aulia (i) no no i think persib will win. 568 vaniani (i) okay, see you this evening guys. 569 aulia (i) see you. 570 arvi (i) bye. the data provides powerful evidence that language being used as a resource to negotiate meaning. it involves participants who are the teacher and the students in exchanging meanings and ideas. the evidence reveals an interesting correlation between the reciprocity in the interaction and the choice of clause types. although the overall clauses produced by both parties are almost the same amount, the students are sometimes countering other interactants’ statements. čulo & skendrović (2012) mention about three characteristics used to negotiate as an infinite variety of negotiation.. they define in a conflict of interest between two or more parties, an established set of rules to develop their own solution, and a search for an agreement. negotiation in such a common problem solving process is in everyone’s interest. it becomes familiar with negotiation dynamics and skills. 3.2 the students respond the teacher by giving statements that exactly suit to the teacher’s questions. example: 313 teacher (i) what does he do? 318 dimas (i) he is umm the chairman of petronas project. 321 teacher (i) what is spe? 322 dimas (i) umm like organization pembuatan, something like that. the teacher always gives the students chances to speak in english by asking questions. the questions are in the complete form of interrogative. the students answer them elliptically or only in one-two words. the answer corresponds to the teacher’s questions. this is in line with rahnimian (2013). he says when the english foreign language learners use their second language knowledge to communicate with their interlocutors, they tend to modify their interlanguage and make it more target-like. the learners produce modified output without interlocutors’ request and appeal for clarification. the output effect and its subsequent potential modification might be a learners’ attempt to automize and gain mastery second language forms. 3.3 the students have the equal turns reciprocally to convey their ideas in a conversation. example: 536 lady (i) hai, hanny. (ii) do you have any plans tonight? 537 hanny (i) yaa, i’m free. (iii) why? 538 lady (i) wait umm let’s go get some coffee together. 539 hanny (i) wah! that sounds good. … 552 vaniani (i) hallo, guys. 553 arvi == (i) hai. 554 aulia == (i) hai. 555 dimas == (i) hai. besides, when the teacher gives them time to make a dialogue or to answer the question given from the book, the students will have good sentences. they are listening to the teacher’s instruction and their counterparts’ statements. the following excerpts are the evidence from the data. there are two groups of students. they are taking in turns so they will get the meaning across. according to maksimović, et all (2013), listening facilitates receiving and understanding the message and determining its meaning. listening can be internal which refers to our own voices (i.e. thoughts) and external which involve the world around us. when interactants listen carefully, they show understanding for their interlocutors, care, and compassion. when the interlocutors listen actively in any kind of communication, they gain mutual trust. it will be easier to communicate and solve a problem than speech without listening 2. the strategies used by students include: 2.1 the students use minor clauses such as umm, ooh, and yeah. example: 174 albert (i) would you like to see our factory? 175 rivaldi (i) umm sounds interesting. … 540 lady (i) okay umm do you have any favorite place like coffee shop? 541 hanny (i) yeah of course, let’s go to starbucks. 542 lady (i) yaa, that’s a great idea. (ii) i’d love that, too. … 590 aulia (i) ooh, actually i want umm to (ii) i want you to accompany me go dinner in italian restaurant. 591 arvi (i) oh, i’m sorry. (iii) i have to accompany my mom to to go to an affair. 592 aulia (i) oh, okay. 593 vaniani (i) umm, and me umm, (iii) i have umm (iv) i have plan with my boyfriend now. the significant example of the strategy of the language problems is found in the minor clauses produced by the students. they often use minor clauses such as umm, ooh and yeah in order to give additional time to them to respond their counterparts. somehow, minor clauses occur in reciprocated pairs as responding contribution in the conversation. 2.2 the students sometimes speak in their native language. example: 347 teacher (i) yes okay, i will play it. 348 aulia (i) ini gimana? 349 lady (i) tulis aja disini. 350 aulia (i) lha ini bener? … 429 teacher (i) is that right? 430 aulia (i) kayanya sih .. 431 arvi (i) yaa miss. 432 adit (i) itu kayae cara. 433 lady (i) banquet. 436 dimas (i) apa sih? another strategy used by the learner is that they are sometimes speaking in their native language. it is around 61 turns in which the learners use their native language. even though they are not accustomed to speaking in english, they are trying to do it. the learners might have difficulties in translating some terms in their native language to english. but, the teacher keeps speaking english in order to wheedle and to stimulate the learners in using their english. cook (2015) states that some learners are struggling with input, though it is unclear why. they might have difficulties in understanding the sentence meaning or are enable to comprehend its structure in english. negotiation leads the learners to modify their output. in these cases, negotiation of meaning aim to resolve problems related to these aspects of language. the students’ uses of their native language are followed by feedback in order to affect the success of comprehension. 2.3 the students are doing non-verbal communication. example: 74 adit (i) let’s go to date. nv11 all [laughing] 75 teacher (i) i’m sorry. (ii) i’m busy. nv12 all [laughing] … 86 indira (i) yes. nv13 all [laughing] 87 teacher (i) just “yes”? 88 indira (i) apalagi? (ii) yes, i’m good. nv14 all [laughing] in addition, there are some non-verbal behaviors. the excerpt above is not a group university students chatting together. the students come from different confidence and gender. clues to different social roles can be found in the linguistic choices interactants make. one indication of gender differences between interactants is the non-verbal behaviors displayed by adit and albert (starting to joke and laugh), and it might be not matched by the girls. also, there are lots of jokes not only made by adit and albert, the other do also. it is because joking gives them time to think for a second to arrange sentence in speaking english. maksimović et all (2013) have stated that non-verbal signals show thoughts and emotions, attitudes and traits. they also support verbal communication or they are substitute for it. their essay explains the three types of non-verbal communication which are conscious, unconscious, and manipulative non-verbal communication. laughing is kinds of manipulative non-verbal communication because it is used in order to present a certain pattern of behavior that needs to seem natural and relaxed. also, expressive gestures, like laughter or smile, make communication casual, pleasant and natural. 3. the grammatical problems hindering the negotiations of meaning include: 3.1 the students ellipse a certain element of the clause. example: 285 arvi (i) miss umm when the promotion test? the learners are able to negotiate meaning and the conversation is going well. but, there are still some grammatical problems in it. for example, there is a student who has an ungrammatical sentence. she ellipses one element to make a good interrogative. the sentence should have been: miss, umm when is the promotion test? 3.2 the students’ utterances do not correspond to the finite. example: next, there is a grammatical problem that appears in the following dialogue. the teacher talks about one student’s presence last week so she has a sentence in the past form. the student responds it with the sentence in the present form. it makes that the student’s statement is not in line with the teacher’s. 264 teacher (i) but anyway, you didn’t come last week. 265 aulia (i) yeah because i umm (ii) i have umm tight schedule. another grammatical problem made by the student mentions below. 533 gina (i) umm i don’t know about car (ii) and i don’t interested about it, sorry. 535 teacher (i) not ‘i don’t interested’ but ‘i’m not interested’, yeah, okay. although the students have some grammatical problems, they negotiate well. they produce statements in compliance with elements of interpersonal meanings. conclusions this study investigates learners’ ability to negotiate meaning in interactional conversation by analyzing the students’ utterance in a class conversation both with their friends and the teacher as their counterpart. in order to answer the research problems, the conclusions are presented based on the data analysis from the previous chapter as follow. the first research problem is how students negotiate meaning. the way that the students negotiate meaning in order to get the meaning across is countering their interlocutors’’ responds. at first, the students do not make their own statement. they are just waiting for the others responds and adding them. besides, the students respond the teacher by giving statements that exactly suit to the teacher’s questions. the ideas and information that the students stated are the same direction as the teacher’s questions. in addition, the students have the equal turns reciprocally to convey their ideas in a conversation. the teacher always helps learners to speak in english. she gives chance to all students to say the words about what they are thinking and feeling so that the class is alive. although the students might have such kind of difficulties in conveying their ideas in english, they still keep practicing. it makes the conversation does not stop. the second research problem is that strategies used by students to compensate communication problems. the students use minor clause such as “umm”, “ooh”, and “yeah”. those expressions are used by the learners in order to give additional time to them to respond their counterpart. also, the students sometimes speak in their native language. when it is difficult to find terms in english, the students prefer speaking in their native language to saying nothing. furthermore, the students are doing non-verbal communication. they are making jokes and laughing the most often. even they doing so, it has a communication purpose which gives the students time to think to make a sentence in speaking english. those strategies are used by students in order to help them in negotiation. last but not the least is about the grammatical problems hindering the negotiation of meanings. in some cases, the students ellipse a certain element of the clause. they do not put the auxiliary because they are not accustomed to using such term in their native language. another grammatical problem is that the students do not use fit correspondence between finite and other elements. when they are talking about something happened in the past, they do not realize that they are still using finite that indicates present time. despite the fact that the students have some grammatical problems, they negotiate meaning well. they produce statements in compliance with elements of interpersonal meaning. references brown, g. and g. yule. 1983. discourse analysis. cambridge: university press. čulo, k. and v. skendrović. 2012. communication in the process of negotiation. communication in negotiation 11/2, 323-327. cook, jiyon. 2015. negotiation for meaning and feedback among language learners. journal of language teaching and research, vol.6 no.2, march 2015 250-257. eggins, s. and d. slade. 1997. analyzing casual conversation. london: creative print and design wales. maksimović, mlađan. et al. 2013. negotiation skills and non-verbal communication. economics management information technology, vol.2 no.1 33-40. marshall, c. and g. b. roosman. 2006. designing qualitative research (4th edition). california: sage publications, inc. nuki nurazizah, et. al. / journal of english language teaching 7 (1) (2018) rahimian, mehdi. 2013. negotiation of meaning and modified output elicitation across two task. english language teaching, vol.6 no.12, 5th november 2013 114-126. 23 1 elt forum 5 (2) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of send a problem technique for teaching writing an analytical exposition text (a quasi-experimental study of the eleventh grade students of sma n 8 semarang in the academic year 2015/2016) intan kris amilia drs. amir sisbiyanto, m.hum. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in april 2016 approved in april 2016 published in may 2016 ________________ keywords: send a problem, analytical exposition text, quasiexperimental.. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the aim of the study is to find out whether teaching writing analytical exposition text by using send a problem technique is effective or not for senior high school students. in the working hypothesis (h1), “there is significant difference in students’ writing achievement between those who are taught using send a problem and those who are taught using conventional way.” meanwhile, in the null hypothesis (ho), “there is no significant difference in the students’ writing achievement between those who are taught using send a problem and those who are taught using conventional way.”the population of this study was the eleventh grade students of sma negeri 8 semarang in the academic year 2015/2016. the total number of the sample was 60 students that consisted of 30 students of class xi is 4 as the experiment group who were taught using send a problem technique and 30 students of class xi is 5 as the control group who were taught using conventional way. the design of this study was a quasi-experimental study. the data were collected through the writing test. in the pre-test, the mean score of the experimental group was 62.80 and the control group was 62.77. after the treatment, the result of post-test of the experimental group was 75.57 while the control group was 68.57. the independent sample t-test used by the writer showed that there was a significant difference between post-test of control group and experimental group. lastly, teaching writing analytical exposition text using send a problem technique is effective than conventional way. english teachers are suggested to concern better in their technique variety in teaching writing any kind of texts especially analytical exposition text. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: amiliaintankris@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study nowadays, english is taught in any education level as foreign language in indonesia. it is line with globalization era on which english is mostly used in entire world as international language. students should be accustomed to take english in order to convey their ideas including information or messages especially in writing. so, the teachers have responsibilities to teach how to write in a good and appropriate ways to the students. teaching is actually not an easy task for teachers. teachers have to make their students understand what is taught in order to achieve the learning objectives. teaching comes from basic word “teach”, it is an activity to show somebody to do something so that they will able to do it themselves (oxford advance learner dictionary, 2010: 1531). teaching activities can cover many things, not only lesson in school but also everything around human beings. teachinglearning process itself is a means whereby society trains its young ones in selected environment (usually the school) as quickly a possible to adjust them to the world in which they live (al rahman : 2004). he says that there are four aspec influence teaching and learning, they are teacher, students, learning process and learning situation. the process is the interaction between the students and the teacher. teaching-learning process means through which the teacher, the learner, the curriculum and other variables are organized in a systematic manner to attain predetermined goals and objectives. the teachinglearning situations have to be brought into an intelligible whole. the teaching-learner activities are varied and complex have to be harmonized. for example the individual differences, the methods of teaching, the material tobe taught, classroom conditions, teaching devices,questioning and answering, assignments, thinking, creating, practical skills, discussion and many others. teaching-learning process is influenced by the totality of the situation. so, the teacher can play an important role in facilitating learning when they take account the needs of the learners. beside that the creativity of the teacher in conducting the teaching learning process also influences the student in acquiring the target language. for that reasons, the teacher must choose the best method in their teaching learning process. the system of teaching english in indonesia as a foreign language has changed from time to time based on the curriculum. the school used curriculum 2013 and now some schools go back to school based curriculum (ktsp). in senior high school, the students are required to master the four language skill: speaking, writing, reading, listening and they have to know the language components grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation. most of all, writing is the difficult one. writing is a process of thinking from planning or drafting to revising. according to nunan (1989:35), learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macroskills for all language users. he also added, writing is an extremely complex cognitive activity in which the writer is required to demonstrate control of a number of variables simultaneously. tessema (2005:26) states that writing courses must focus on the specific writing purposes that are most relevant to students’ needs. the importance of writing can be seen in people daily activities when they need to write short text such as memos, invitation letters, sympathy notes, brochures, articles, business letters, application letters. it also goes to the genre text like recount text, narrative text, report text,analytical exposition and many others. most of them always feel difficult when students are asked to write them. they know the concept but less knowledge of good structure and the use of appropriate sentence. there are so many approaches of teaching. one of them which is effective according to some teachers is cooperative learning or called collaborative learning, is a teaching strategy in which the students work in small teams using a variety of learning activities to enhance their understanding of a lesson. by doing such activities, each student is expected to be responsible not only for his/her understanding but also for helping teammates. intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 3 there are some techniques which are developed based on the principles of cooperative learning. according to kagan (1989), one of techniques in cooperative language learning is to send a problem. he notes that “ this structure is particularly effective for problem solving”. it can also increase students’ creativity and get multi answer from the topic. here the rules of this technique. the students place in small group. there are several list of problem that attached in the envelope. then the students brainstorm the effective solutions/give the responses about the problem. the envelope is passed to the next group and this process is repeated. last, it gives back to the first group, they review all suggested and choose the best responses. therefore, send a problem may be a good technique to improve students’ writing skill. one of text types which is taught in the eleventh grade of senior high school is analytical exposition. in learning this material, students sometimes find difficulties in understanding the requirements of analytical exposition. they also sometimes find difficulty in writing their idea on the topic given, and choosing vocabulary they want to use to develop the text. therefore, the teacher needs to find a good method to teach analytical exposition. in this case, send a problem technique will be good to help students in creating an analytical exposition text. by designing this research, the writer hopes that by using send a problem technique, the teacher can teach collaboratively and it will improve the students’ achievement in writing an analytical exposition text. literature review writing hyland (2003: 3) said that writing is seen as a product constructed from the writer’s command of grammatical and lexical knowledge,and writing development is considered to be the result of imitating and manipulating models provided by the teacher. as we know that grammatical and lexical knowledge include to the language structure, as a basis for teaching writing. writing is not only arranging words into sentences but it is also arranging sentences or paragraphs. then, itis neither an easy nor spontaneous activity. in writing, students do not only have to keep the idea in mind and then write it, they need to have creativity to express and develop their idea as well. analytical exposition there are some experts that gave similar description of analytical exposition. djuharia (2007:13) defined analytical exposition as argumentative text because writer providing readers or listeners with point of view,ideas, or thoughts of topic or issue or problem needs to get attention or explanation with no appeared efforts to persuade readers. in addittion, priyana (2008:59) adds that “analytical exposition proposes or suggests a certain topic which may only be pro or contra, not both.” gerot and wignell (1994:197) also explain that the generic structure of analytical exposition is organized in three stages: a) thesis thesis consists of position and preview. position introduces topic and indicates writer’s position. on the other hand, preview is the outlines the main arguments to be presented. b) arguments this stage consists of point and elaboration. point restates main argument outlined in preview and elaboration develops and supports each point. c) reiteration reiteration is to restate writer’s position. according to gerot and wignell (1994:198), the lexicogrammatical features of analytical exposition are: (1) focus on generic human and non-human participants (car, pollution) (2) use of simple present tense (do, say, think) (3) use of relational processes (it is important) (4) use of internal conjunction to stage argument(firstly., secondly.., next.., finally...) intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 4 (5) use the causal and contrastive conjunction( the cause of an event.., because.., but.., nevertheless) cooperative learning cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. according to brown (2001:47) cooperative learning is defined as students work together in pairs and groups, they share information and come to each others’ get helps. each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. send a problem technique this structure is particularly effective for problem solving. its exact source is unknown. the howard county maryland staff development centre developed a version of it inspired by kagan’s work (1989). the starting point is a list of problems/issues, or case studies, which can be generated by students or can be teacher-selected. the teams then brainstorm effective solutions or responses for these problems, issues,or case studies, recording them on a piece of paper. at a predetermined time, the ideas are placed in the folder or envelope and forwarded to another team. the members of the second team, without looking at the ideas already generated, compile their own list of solutions or responses. the folder with the two sets of ideas is forwarded to a third team which now looks at the suggestions or conclusion provided from the other teams, adds its own, and then synthesizes the ideas from all three teams. alternatively, if the problems generate a list of ideas, then the teams can select the best two or more responses or solutions. during this activity, students are engaged in thehighest levels of bloom’s taxonomy (1956)-evaluation and synthesis. procedures/steps: (1) place students in small groups. (2) ask each group to think of topic related situation and write this on a card or piece of paper (it can be from students or teacher will selected). the problem is attached to the outsideof a folder and swapped with another group. (3) give groups three to five minutes to consider the problem and brainstorm a range of solutions or give the responses to the problem. the solutions or responses are listed and enclosed inside the folder. (4) the folder is then passed to the next group and the process repeated. remind groups not to look in the folders or read the solutions or responses identified by previous groups. (5) repeat this process until groups have completed several problems. (6) groups should be given their original problem to review all the suggested ideas and develop a prioritized list of possible solutions or responses. this list is then presented to the class to discuss and decide which responses that they would feel confident to use. methods of investigation in this research, the writer used quasiexperimental research design in the form of nonequivalent control group design. this study involved two groups: an experimental group and a control group. this research used pre-test and post-test to obtain the data. pre-test treatment post-test experimental group o1 x o2 control group o3 o4 the population in this study was the eleventh grade students of sma n 8 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. the number of the students was 300, which were divided into 10 classes. the sample was xi-is-4 class as experimental group who are taught using cooperative learning send a problem and xi-is-5 as control group who are taught using intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 5 conventional way. each class consists of 30 students, so the sample in this study are 60 students. the instrument of this research was written test and questionnaire. before the test is used to collect the data, the try-out test was conducted to measure the validity and reliability of the test. to measure the significance of the post-test of the both groups, the researcher used independent sample t-test. research findings tryout to find out whether the instrument was good or not to be used in the real test, the writer held the try out test first . the writer held try out on 20 of october 2015. it was administered to the students of class xi is 2 of sma n 8 semarang in which there were 30 students took the try-out test. validity of the test the writer used content validity to find out whether the test valid or not, it can be checked by comparing the test with the materials dealing with the curriculum requirement. the school based curriculum states that the eleventh grade students are supposed to make an analytical exposition texts. so, the content of the test offered in this research is valid enough. reliability of test a test cannot measure anything well unless it measures consistently. the result of interrater reliability of the try out test was 0,74, for α = 5% with n = 30. the r-table = 0.361. since the result values (0,74) were higher than critical value (0.361), the instruments were reliable. pre-test a pre-test was given before doing the experiment. the pre-test for both group (xi-is-4 as experimental group and xi-is-5 as control group) was held on october, 29th 2015. there were 60 students in both group. from the pre-test results, the average pre-test’s score of control group was 62.77 and the average pretest’s score of experimental group was 62.80. it can be concluded that there is no significant difference between each aspect in both groups. in other words, the experimental group and the control group have the same quality in english subject, especially in writing analytical exposition text. treatments the study was conducted from november 4th to november 11th 2015 in sma negeri 8 semarang. there were two groups in this research, they were class xi is 4 as the experimental group and class xi is 5 as the control group. each group consisted of 30 students. in the implementation of this study, first, the writer gave pre-test to the students in the control and the experimental groups. then they were given treatments. the special treatments were given to the experimental group in form of applying send a problem technique in teaching writing analytical exposition texts. furthermore, the control group was given treatments without send a problem technique. the treatment was given 3 times, 6 x 45 minutes which consisted of three meeting. post-test a post-test was given after doing the experiment. the pre-test for both group (xi-is-4 as experimental group and xi-is-5 as control group) was held on november, 12th 2015. there were 60 students in both group. . after the experimental group and control group received different treatments, the average of the experimental group was higher than the control group’s. the average post-test’s score of control group was 68.9, and the average post-test’s score of experimental group was 75.57. significant differences of post-test between control and experimental group the writer calculated the normality and homogeneity of the test before conducting independent sample t-test to find the significant difference. intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 6 normality of the test post-test normality is presented in table below: tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. stati stic df s ig. post_test_cont rol_group .140 29 .153 .947 29 . 157 based on the table of spss result above, the sig shapiro-wilk value was 0.157. it meant that pvalue was higher than 0.05. the post-test in this study was normally distributed in this group. post-test normality is presented in table below. tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk stati stic df sig. stati stic df sig. post_test_experime nt_group .132 29 .200 * .938 29 .088 based on the table of spss result above, the sig shapiro-wilk value was 0.088. it meant that pvalue was higher than 0.05. the post-test in this study was normally distributed. homogeneity of the test homogeneity tests were used to decide whether a test was homogeneous or not. it was important because the similarity of both groups would influence the result of test. moreover, homogeneity of a test was used as a requirement to calculate t-test. the following is the result of homogeneity test for both experimental and control group post-test: test of homogeneity of variances variance _001 levene statistic df1 df2 sig. 2.198 7 14 .099 according the table above, sig value was 0.099 which was higher than the level of significant (0.05). it could be concluded that the population between experimental and control intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 7 group were homogenous. by knowing the result of post-test homogeneity, the writer concluded that the population of the two groups was homogenous so the t-test could be counted. independent sample t-test analysis of posttest between experimental group and control group the writer calculated t-test by using spss program to find out if there was a significant difference or not. before calculating independent sample t-test, the data should have normal distribution and homogeneity. post-test of control group and experimental group were normally distributed and homogeneous. the writer conducted independent sample t-test calculation by using spss program. the result of the calculation is as follows: group statistics group n mea n std. deviation std. error mean s core experimental_ group 30 75.5 7 8.353 1.525 control_group 30 68.5 7 6.218 1.135 independent samples test levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f s ig. t df si g. (2tailed) m ean differe nce s td. error differe nce 95% confidence interval of the difference l ower u pper sc ore equ al variances assumed 3. 547 . 065 3. 682 58 .0 01 7 .000 1 .901 3 .194 1 0.806 equ al variances not assumed 3. 682 53 .591 .0 01 7 .000 1 .901 3 .188 1 0.812 to prove that there were significant differences between the result in control and experimental group, it was important to analyze independent sample t-test based on the calculation of spss program conducted by the writer. if sig. (2-tailed) was lower than 0.05 then intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 8 there were significant differences between the result of control and the experimental group. furthermore, the writer also calculate an effect size to determine the magnitude of this significant effect. based on the independent sample test result above, the test was significant, t(58)= 3.68 , p< .05 , d= .95. it means the tvalue from 58 degree of freedom was 3.68 . the probabilty of obtaining tvalue was 0.05 and the effect size was 0.95. the 95% confidence interval for the average precentage of post-test’ score ranged from 3.19 to 10.8. an examination of the group means indicate that post-test’ score of experimental group (m= 75.57, sd= 8.35) is significantly higher than post-test’ score of control group (m= 68.57, sd=6.22). null hypothesis (ho) was rejected and alternative hypothesis (h1) was accepted because the mean of experimental group is differ with the mean of control group. in conclusion, send a problem technique is effective for teaching writing analytical exposition because there was a significant difference in the students’ score after being taught using this technique. conclusions based on the result of the data analyses in the previous chapter in this study, there are several conclusions that can be drawn as following: firstly, teaching writing using send a problem technique is more effective than using a conventional way. the effectiveness of send a problem technique is supported by the average of the experimental group is improving higher (from 62.80 to 75.57) than the control group (from 62.77 to 68.57). furthermore, the test is significant, it can be seen from result of the independent sample t-test is t(58)= 3.68 , p< .05 , d= .95. it means the tvalue from 58 degree of freedom was 3.68 . the probabilty of obtaining tvalue was 0.05 and the effect size was 0.95. the 95% confidence interval for the average precentage of post-test’ score ranged from 3.19 to 10.8. secondly, the students are more motivated when they are taught using send a problem technique , they can shares new ideas and concepts through this technique. moreover, it helps the students solve the problems/issues through team work. with writing, directly the students find some vocabulary which never they heard before. in addition, they can construct a sentence with well – arrange and good grammar. finally, send a problem technique improves the students’ writing skills especially in writing analytical exposition text, it can be proven from the whole aspects (organization, content, grammar, punctuation, and style) of experimental group which has the higher improvement than control group. references al-rahman, zikr-ur. 2004. modern teaching methods and technic. new delhi: anmol publication pvt. ltd. anderson, m. and anderson, k.1997. text types in english. south yarra: macmillaneducation australia pty ltd. arikunto, s. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik (edisi revisi). jakarta: rineka cipta. ________. 2010. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: pt. rineka cipta. brown, h. d. 1981. affective factors in second language learning. new york: oxford university press. ________. 1988. understanding research in second language learning. cambrige: cambrige university press. ________. 2001. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedogogy. second edition. new york: longman. ________.. 2004. language assesment principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education. brown, j.d. and bailey, k.m. 1984. a categorical instrument fo scoring second language writing skills. budi, wahyu setia.2010. the use of “indonesia now” video as a medium to improve students’ mastery in writing analytical intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 9 exposition text (an experimental study at sma n 1 tegal).unpublishedfinal project of the degree of sarjana pendidikan semarang stateuniversity. christensen, thoger lars. 2001. the new handbook of organizational communication: advances in theory, research, and methods. calif: sage publications,incorporated. depdiknas. 2006. kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (ktsp). jakarta: depdiknas. djuhari, o. s. 2007. genre. bandung: yrama widya. gerot, l and wignell, p. 1994. making sense of functional grammar. new southwales: antipodeon educational enterprises. graham, steve and dolores perin. 2007. writing next: effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools. new york: alliance for excellent education. harris, d. p. 1969. testing english as a second language. new york: mcgrawhill book company. himawati, ivone. 2011. the use of round robin technique in teaching writing hortatory expositon text (an experimental study at the grade xi of sma negeri 1 pekalongan in the academic year 2010/2011). unpublishedfinal project of the degree of sarjana pendidikan semarang stateuniversity. hyland, k. 2003. second language writing. cambridge language education.edited by jack c. richard. isaac, s. and michael, w. b. 1971. handbook and research and evaluation: for education and the behavioral sciences. san diego, california: edits publishers. kagan, s. (1989, 1992). cooperative learning resources for teachers. san capistrano, ca: resources for teachers, inc. ________. 2004. cooperative learning: building communicative class. sanclemete. kerlinger, f.n. 1965. foundation of behavioural research. new york: holt rinehart and winsron inc. milis, barba, j. active learning strategies in face to face courses. the university of texas at san antonio. nirmala, nirna. 2011. the effectiveness of pairs check activity to improve the students’s skill in writing analytical exposition (an experimental study of the eleventh grade students of sma negeri 1 pemalang in the academic year of 2010/2011). unpublishedfinal project of the degree of sarjana pendidikan semarang stateuniversity. nunan, d. 1989. designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. oshima, alice and ana hogue. 1999. writing academic english. longman: pearson education. peha, steve. 2002 a. the writing process notebook. online. [accessed 01/16/12]available at http://zzwriter.com/2010/10/19/the-writingprocess-notebook-by-steve-peha/. priyana, et.al. 2008. interlanguage: english for senior high school-studi dan pengajaran. jakarta: departemen pendidikan nasional. saleh, m. 2001. pengantar praktik penelitian pengajaran bahasa. semarang: ikip semarang press. ________. 2012. research in english language teaching. semarang: widya karya. siahaan, s. and shinoda, k. 2008. generic text structure. graha ilmu. slavin, r. 1995. cooperative learning. boston: allyn and bacon. suci, reni anggia. 2010. the senior high school students’ ability in writing hortatory exposition text (a case study of eleventh grade students of sma muhammadiyah 1 pekajagan pekalongan in the academic year of 2009/2010). unpublishedfinal project of the http://zzwriter.com/2010/10/19/the-writing-process-notebook-by-steve-peha/ http://zzwriter.com/2010/10/19/the-writing-process-notebook-by-steve-peha/ intan kris amilia / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 10 degree of sarjana pendidikan semarang stateuniversity. sudjana. 2005. metoda statistika. bandung: tarsito. tessema, kedir assefa. 2005. stimulating writing trough project-based tasks.english teaching forum, 43/4. page 22-28. tinambunan, wilmar.1988. evaluation of student achievement. jakarta: p2lptk. winer, b.j, 1962. statistical principles in experimental design. new york: mcgraw-hill book company. wright, a. 1976. visual materials for the language teacher. london: longman group, ltd. zamel, v. 1982. writing: the process of discovering meaning. tesol quarterly, 16, 195-209. 1 elt forum 5 (2) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt syntactic shifts in english-indonesian translation (a case study of the fifth semester students of the english department of state university of semarang) eman risqi noviyanti drs. laurentius elyas nugraha, ma. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in april 2016 approved in april 2016 published in may 2016 ________________ keywords: syntactic shift, englishindonesian translation, case study. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is about syntactic shift used in english-indonesian translation by the fifth semester students of the english department of state university of semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014. the objectives of the study are to describe what types of syntactic shifts are commonly used and less used by the fifth semester students, and to explain how the fifth semester students do syntactic shift in english-indonesian translation. the study uses descriptive qualitative approach and it belongs to a case study. the subject of the study is the fifth semester students of the english department of state university of semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014. the source of data is the students’ translation tests which have been done in the fifth semester entitled advantages of translation. it was a task given by dr. rudi hartono, s.s. m.pd. as the lecturer in english-indonesian translation class in fifth semester. from five sub-categories of syntactic shift, there are three sub-categories of them which were used by the fifth semester students. translation by using word-into-phrase shift reaches a total of 86.4%. about 10.2% is the translation by using phrase-into-clause shift. the other 3.4% is the translation by using clause-into-sentence shift. both phrase-into-sentence and sentence-into-paragraph shifts are not found in the students’ assignments of english-indonesian translation. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: risqibluefresh@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 eman risqi noviyanti / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study basically, difficulties in communication will infrequently be found if all of the people in the world use the same language, like english as the global one. in fact, not all nations use english as the first or second language. even most of development countries regard english as a foreign language. in this case, translation will be a very useful branch of linguistics. back to the importance of translation in development countries such as indonesia and based on the position of english as a global language, english will be the source language of the study and indonesian as the target language. each language in the world has its own rules or structure in expressing meaning. the rules of one language cannot be applied into another. the same as the rules of english cannot be thoroughly applied in indonesian. therefore, in translation, there will be what so called shifting. syntactic shifts are needed to improve the quality in english-indonesian translation so that the students can achieve the goal as good translators who can deliver translated version which is authentically understood and enjoyed by the receptor without deviating the meaning and style or tone of the source language. in this study, i would like to describe what types syntactic shifts are commonly used and less used by the fifth semester students of the english department of state university of semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014 in englishindonesian translation, and to explain how the fifth semester students of the english department of state university of semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014 do syntactic shifts in englishindonesian translation. review of related literature the notion of translation catford has defined the meaning of translation in general as cited by eppert (1982:193) that “translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent material in another language,” but does it mean translation is an activity in which the translator literally changes the word by word and then arrange them? in a very broad sense the answer is yes. however, it cannot be the answer in a narrow sense. according to the significance of translation as stated by engle in gentzler (1993:9) in khasanah (2010), that “the lives of every creature on earth may one depend on the instant and accurate translation of one word.” the statement really makes translation be a very important activity that can be the key of human life. it declares that translation is not only an activity in which the subject literally changes the word by word and then arranges them. the subject must have more than dictionary and skill to arrange the words. bassnett (2005:52) awares of the importance of translation as translation is not an easy thing so that she stated that translation needs a great deal of skill, preparation, knowledge, and intuitive feeling for the texts more than just dictionary. “the good translator, therefore, presupposed the reader’s acquintance with the sl text and was bound by that knowledge, for any assessment of his skill as translator would be based on the creative use he was able to make of his model.” otherwise, translation needs to deliver the intended meaning of the sl as stated by larson (1984:3) in hartono (2013:5) “translation is transferring the meaning of the source language into the receptor language. this is done by going from the form of the first language to the form of the second language by way of semantic structure. it is the meaning which is being transferred and must be held constantly.” from the definitions above, translation is not a merely the replacement of word by word from source language to target language, but it is rather an important activity in which every creature depends on it to transfer meaning and it needs skill to synchronize both source language and target language. syntactic shifts syntactic shift is divided into five types; they are categorized in the following table: eman risqi noviyanti / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 3 table 2.1 types of syntactic shifts no. type english indonesian 1. word into phrase stallion kuda jantan puppy anak anjing 2. phrase into clause not knowing what to say, (he just kept quiet) (karena) dia tidak tahu apa yang hendak dikatakannya, (...) after reading the letter, (...) setelah dia membaca surat itu, (...) 3. phrase into sentence his misinterpretation of the situation (caused his downfall.) dia salah menafsirkan situasi (dan itulah yang menyebabkan kejatuhannya.) 4. clause into sentence her unusual voice and singing style thrilled her fans, who reacted by screaming, crying, and clapping suaranya yang luar biasa dan gayanya bernyanyi memikat para penggemarnya. mereka memberikan reaksi dengan berteriak-teriak dan bertepuk tangan. 5. sentence into paragraph standing in a muddy jungle clearing strewn with recently felled trees, the baliness village headmaster looked at his tiny house at the end of a line of identical buildings and said he felt strange. kepala kampung orang bali itu berdiri di sebuah lahan yang baru dibuka di tengah hutan. batang-batang pohon yang baru ditebang masih berserakan di sana-sini. dia memandang rumahnya yang kecil yang berdiri di ujung deretan rumah yang sama bentuknya dan berkata bahwa dia merasa aneh. methods the study uses descriptive qualitative approach since the objectives of the study are to gain and explain the description of how the students in the fifth semester do syntactic shifts and the description of syntactic shift that are commonly used and less used by the subject of the study. the study belongs to a case study. case study research is a qualitative approach in which the researcher explores a bounded system (a case) and in the data collection may involve many sources of information (creswell, 2007). therefore, creswell bravely states that an issue to study may involve one or more cases, yet stake (2005) in creswell states what to study, one or more cases, is a choice of the researcher. in this research, the case to study is the students’ syntactic shift in translation. there are some steps in conducting the study. the first step is collecting one of each subject’s assignments which they do in english-indonesian translation class. next, i analyse the syntactic shift that the subject use in their translation. eman risqi noviyanti / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 4 result the table below shows each sub-category used: table 4.1 results of the study no. the syntactic shift and its subcategories number of data (%) 1. word into phrase 51 86.4% 2. phrase into clause 6 10.2% 3. phrase into sentence 0% 4. clause into sentence 2 3.4% 5. sentence into paragraph 0% total 59 100.0% as shown in the table above, the syntactic shift sub-category which has the highest frequency is word-into-phrase shift. it reaches 86.4% out of 100%, while phrase-into-sentence and sentence-into-paragraph shifts are definitely unused. discussion word-into-phrase shift is the most frequently syntactic shift that occurs in this study. it happens because most of the students as the subject of the study translate the assignment in literal. therefore, not so many paraphrasing occur in their translation products. there are some word-into-phrase shifts happen because of the influence of additional morpheme. in other words, some of word-into-phrase shifts also belong to a morphemic shift. however, there are also some words which are shifted in purpose. a phrase is a small group of words that forms a meaningful unit within a clause. however, according geoffrey leech on his book english grammar for today, phrase consists of one or more words. in other words, a phrase may consist of only one word, while clause is a group of words that contains a verb (and usually other components too). samples to explain below will show how a word can be a phrase and how they are shifted into clauses. basically, there is no limitation what kind of clauses is produced by the phrase-into-clause shift. as long as a phrase is shifted into a clause and has a verb phrase in it, it is categorized as phrase-into-clause shift. in phrase-into-sentence shift, a phrase is translated into a sentence in the tl. a sentence is a group of words that makes a complete sense, contains a main verb, begins with a capital letter and ends with full stop. however, in this study is not found this sub-category of syntactic shift. according to oxford dictionary, clause may form part of a sentence or it may be a complete sentence in itself. there are two building blocks of a sentence. they are independent and dependent clause. the one which can be a sentence by itself is the independent clause. a sentence contains of main verb which begins with capital letter and ends with full stop. a paragraph usually deals with one subject which begins on a new line and is made up of one or more sentences. a sentence which is shifted into a paragraph means it splits into many sentences with the same topic. however, in this study, a sentence-into-paragraph shift is not found. conclusion in conclusion, the syntactic shift subcategory which has the highest frequency was word-into-phrase shift. it reaches a total of 86.4%, while phrase-into-sentence and sentence-intoparagraph shifts are not used by the students in the fifth semester of english department of state university of semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014. although syntactic shift is not presented theoretically in english-indonesian translation class, yet all students in the fifth semester as the subject of the study do syntactic shift in their translation of advantages of translation. references baker, m. 1992. in other words: a coursebook on translation. new york: routledge. bassnett, s. 2005. translation studies. london: routledge. eman risqi noviyanti / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 5 catford, j.c. 1965. a linguistic theory of translation. oxford: oxford university press. creswell, j.w. 2007. qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches. london: sage publications ltd. ___________. 2012. educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. boston: pearson education, inc. leech, g., deuchar, m. and hoogenraad, r. 1982. english grammar for today. london: macmillan education ltd. mildred, l.l. 1984. summary of meaning based translation: a guide to cross language equivalence. lanham: university press of america. newmark, p. 1988. a textbook of translation. shanghai: shanghai foreign language education press. simatupang, m.d.s. 2000. pengantar teori terjemahan. jakarta: direktorat jenderal pendididkan tinggi departemen pendidikan nasional. suryawinata, z. 1989. terjemahan: pengantar teori dan praktek. jakarta: departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan direktorat jenderal pendidikan tinggi proyek pengembangan lembaga pendidikan tenaga kependidikan. widyamartaya, a. 1989. seni menerjemahkan. yogyakarta: kanisius. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 176 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt group grid and roundtable for teaching writing of descriptive text silvia urunami, dwi anggani linggar bharati, abdurrachman faridi  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: writing, quasiexperimental research, group grid and round table. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is based on a research aiming to describe the effectiveness of group grid and round table technique in teaching writing descriptive text. by using a quasi-experimental design, the research involves the tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year of 2016/2017. in this case, the experimental group is x ia 12 and the control group is x ia 10. the result shows that the mean score of the experimental group increases from 69.15 to 79.34 after several treatments applying the strategy. the t-test computation reveals that there is a significant difference between the two groups. it is proven by the tvalue (2.844) which is higher than the ttable (1.998). in addition, a questionnaire is administered to know the effect of implementing the technique to the students. the analysis shows that 59.37% of the students agree that the implementation of the strategy assists their comprehension and 31.25% of them even strongly agree towards the statement. therefore, group grid and round table technique is proven an effective strategy in teaching writing descriptive text. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 177 introduction writing is one of the ways of people to communicate to each other for expressing their thinking and feeling. writing is unnatural act like speaking. writing needs more efforts than speaking does. writing needs hard effort to dig and manage the ideas which are from the writer’s mind and pour it into written form effectively so it will be readable. so, writing is one of the four skills which is considered difficult to be mastered. according to paul (2003:96), “writing is generally as the most difficult of the four skills”. besides, richard and renandya (2010: 303) stated, writing can be said as the most difficult skill among the four skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. seow (in richards and renandya 2010:304) states that “writing consists of four basic stages; planning, drafting, revising, and editing. three other stages could be inserted after the drafting stage; these are responding, evaluating and post-writing.” it means that writing is not an instant activity, it cannot be acquired easily. hence, it needs hard effort to master it. to improve this skill students need to do a lot of practices by using some steps/ stages. furthermore, teacher needs hard effort to teach writing because it requires many aspects in order to make students master the writing skill. therefore, teaching writing is not an easy job to do. in indonesia, english is used as a foreign language. english is taught as a compulsory subject in junior and senior high schools which becomes one of the requirement subjects that stated in the national examination. the objective of teaching english is to enable students to communicate both orally and in written form. meanwhile teaching and learning english as a foreign language is not an easy thing to do. as a matter of fact, the process of teaching and learning are commonly still using traditional method such as lecturing so that the achievement of the students are still low. moreover, by applying the new curriculum of 2013 students have to think deeply to succeed in doing scientific approach. of course, in doing so they face a lot of problems. among the four skills, one of the problems is in writing problem. students are not able to produce the correct written product in every genre of text because they have to consider many aspects. the aspects are grammar, generic structure, and lexicogrammatical order. sometimes students also find difficulties with the sentence structure and how the sentences are linked together and sequences. based on my observation at sma taruna nusantara mangelang, i found out that the students are still confused to write many kinds of genre which they have to master. as we know each genre has different grammar, generic structure, and lexicogrammatical order. the students have to write according the type of genre, so it goes without saying that they have to memorize all of them. especially, in writing descriptive text, some students said it was one of the easiest texts, however they could not write it well and differentiate it from report text. they were confused to find a key word in each sentence. in addition, they were lack of vocabulary in a certain register. i can say that they felt difficult even to write descriptive text which they have got in junior high school. as the mastery of descriptive text is one of the final exam’s requirements, the problem of understanding this text needs to get extra attention. furthermore, it is clearly stated in the 2013 curriculum the students have to master writing skill of descrptive text. considering the importance of mastering writing skill to produce descriptive text, the teacher should improve the teaching of writing especially in teaching descriptive text. one of the ways to improve it is that the teacher can use an interesting and succesful method. the method is called cooperative learning method. cooperative learning is a teaching method that offers “principles and techniques for helping students work together more effectively” (jacobs, power, & loh, 2002, p. ix). in other words, cooperative learning is much more than just putting students together in groups and asking them to work together. instead, cooperative learning principles help us understand what is involved in helping groups succeed, and cooperative learning techniques embody those principles in an attempt to provide structure for student interaction (baloche, 1998, johnson & johnson, 1999). i s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 178 also find many benefits based on the reasearch done by the experts, they promote student learning and academic achievement, increase student retention, enhance student satisfaction with their learning experience, help students develop skills in oral communication, develop student’s social skills, promote student self-esteem, and help to promote positive race relations. as kagan states in his book, there are so many techniques that can be used by teachers in teaching and learning process, especially in writing. two of them are group grid and round table techniques. in the study, i used the combination of those two techniques. first group grid, in applying this technique, students are divided into some groups. each group consists of four-five students. the teacher gives each group an envelope which consists of many pictures. the students are asked to clasify each picture into some categories in a limited time. then, both teacher and students discuss it together. the group that get many correct items will be given a reward from the teacher. second, round table tecnique, the students are divided into some groups. each group consists of four-five students. each person writes one idea for an issue or task and then passes their paper to the person on the right. the paper circulates around the entire group at least once. each time a person receives the paper, they should write a different task. then, whole class discussion should follow. therefore, all students will participate in teaching learning process. in teaching writing, based on harmer (2004:41) teachers have a number of important tasks to do when helping students to become better writer. the tasks which teachers have to do before, during, and after student writing are the following: 1. demonstrating teachers have to be able to explain the text specifically. teachers have to make the students know the layout of the text and language used in a certain text. 2. motivating and provoking the teachers help students to get the ideas when the students get stuck in writing. it is better if the teachers prepare amusing and engaging ways in teaching and learning process so can get the students’ involvement in writing task. for example, students can be asked to do the reassemble jumbled texts on the board. sometimes, teachers can give them the words to start writing. 3. supporting students need a lot of help and reassurance when they are writing, both with ideas and how to carry them out. teachers need to support the students when they are writing in class, always available for them, and prepare to help students overcome difficulties. 4. responding in order to respond students’ writing, the teachers may give comments or suggestion for its improvement. it is better to react to what they have said rather than filling their work full of correction symbols. 5. evaluating teachers indicate where students work well and where they made mistakes, and of course give award for them who work well. teachers should highlight the students’ error and try to put them right before handing back the marked scripts to the students. according to anderson and anderson (1997: 86), descriptive text is included in information reports, an information report usually contains facts about the subject, a description and information on its parts, behaviour, and qualities. “this kind of paragraph is used to describe a particular person, place, or thing.” (gerot and wignell, 1994: 208). they added the generic structure of descriptive text can be defined as identification and description. (a) identification: identifies phenomenon to be described. (b) description: describes parts, qualities, characteristics, etc. group grid and round table techniques used in this research were designed for teaching writing descriptive text. therefore, it is expected that group grid and roundtable are effective and s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 179 efficient to learn the material, yet it has not been proved by any preliminary study. therefore, this research is aimed to describe the effectiveness of implementing the technique in teaching writing descriptive text through an experimental research entitled “the effectiveness of using group grid and roundtable for teaching students’ writing skill of descriptive text”. methodology of the research applying creswell preand post-test design, below is the design of this research. preand post-test design time select cg pre-test no treatment post-test select eg pre-test experimental treatment post-test this research was conducted at sma taruna nusantara magelang in academic year of 2016/2017. the population of this research was 392 tenth grade students of the school in the academic year. because there were some reasons, the researcher took purposive random sampling of two group. the two groups were x ia 9 and x ips 7. the experimental group was x ips 9; while, the control group was x ipa 7. there were two kinds of instruments used in this research. those are test and questionnaire. the test used was written test method. the researcher analyzed the data collected from both of the groups’ pre-test and post-test scores. before the test, the researcher checked the validity and reliability condition of the test. below was the procedure of analyzing the data; 1. analyzing try-out test; 2. analyzing pre-test and post test scores of both groups; 3. analyzing questionnaire. by calculating the validity and the reliability of the test instrument, the researcher analyzed the condition of the test. after analyzing the try-out test, the pre-test and post-test scores were analyzed, independently. the following were the procedures of analyzing the test scores; 1. scoring students’ works; 2. analyzing the normality of the test scores; 3. analyzing the homogeneity of the test scores; 4. analyzing the t-test of the test scores; 5. analyzing the paired-samples t-test of each group scores. nonetheless, in order to analyze the pre-test and post-test scores, the researcher used the spss 18.0. through the program, the normality, homogeneity, and t-test were analyzed. the significant difference between the two groups’ scores is accepted if the value of sig.(2-tailed) on the t-test is less than 0.05. in addition, the effectiveness is proven if the t value is more than the t table. thus, if the prerequisites are fulfilled, it is concluded that there is a significant difference between students who were taught by using group grid and round table and those who were taught by using group work brainstorming. in order to support the result of tests, students were given questionnaire in the end of the posttest. it was used to further describe the effect of group grid and round table for the experimental group. through the questionnaire, the researcher intended to analyze the responses of students towards the implementation of group grid and round table. the format of the questionnaire was likert-type items. they were ten question written in indonesian, it was supposed to gain students’ s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 180 better understanding in fulfilling the questionnaire. thus, they could easily share their opinions. the likert-type items were completed with four likert scales. the four scales were strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree and strongly agree. each of the scales represented different scores; strongly disagree = 1, disagree = 2, agree = 3, and strongly agree = 4. next, the questionnaire was administered to describe the effect of implementing the technique towards the students. it supports the result of the test. in this case, the questionnaire was analyzed by calculating the mean scores of each test-item. result and discussion results of the test based on the try-out analysis, the test instrument was reliable and valid to be used. since the test given was based on the syllabus and the result of the try out test showed 0,81, for α = 5% with n = 32. the r-table = 0.344. since the result values (0,81) were higher than critical value (0.344), the instruments were reliable because it was supported with a clear rubric of scoring scale that used to guide assessors in marking the essay. due to the try-out analysis, the researcher was confident to use the written test for pre-test and post-test. the achievement of pre-test in the control group was 69.71 and the experimental group was 69.15. the test was aimed to investigate students’ initial level of ability to write descriptive texts. the distribution of test in both group was normal, because the value of asymp. sig.(2-tailed) of experimental group was 0.999 and control group was 0.300. those were higher than 0.05. meanwhile, the significance value was 0.295. the hypothesis was accepted if the significance value was more than 0.05. the pre-test scores of both groups were homogeneous; since the significance value was higher than 0.05. by using independent sample t-test in spss 18.0 program, the result showed that the students of both groups were initially in the same level of ability. it was proven by the value of sig.(2-tailed) which was 0.681. based on the results; hence, ha was accepted. therefore, the initial levels of both groups were equivalent. a satisfying result was achieved on post-test. the post-test was conducted to investigate students’ achievement after treatments were given. on one hand, the mean score of the experimental group was 79.34. on the other hand, the mean score of control groups was 77.40. both of the mean scores showed that both of the groups were enhanced after the treatments. the distribution test of both group was also normal. it was proven by the value of asymp. sig.(2-tailed) of experimental group was 0.688and control group was 0.522. in addition, the significance value showed 0.082 so that the homogeneity for both group was homogeneous. the independent sample t-test on the table also showed that there was a significant different between the post-test scores of both groups. it was proven by the result of sig.(2-tailed) which was 0.003 and 0.004. those were below than 0.05. thus, it could be concluded that there was a significant difference on both groups after the treatments. hence, the implementation of group grid and roundtable technique in teaching writing descriptive text resulted satisfying result to students’ achievements. in addition, the analysis of paired-sample t test showed that both of the groups were improved after the treatments. for control group improvements from pre-test up to post-test, the result showed that the mean scores difference was 7.68. in addition, the t-value was 5.873 and the sig.(2-tailed) was 0.000. ha was accepted since the value of sig.(2-tailed) was lower than. 0.05. thus, the scores of post-test was higher than the pre-test. for experimental group improvements from pre-test up to post-test, the result showed that the mean scores difference of the experimental group was 10.18. moreover, the t-value was 8.042 and the sig.(2-tailed) was 0.00. ha was accepted since the value of sig.(2-tailed) was lower than. 0.05. thus, there was improvement on the post-test after the treatment. finally, after completing the procedures of analyzing the result of test, it showed that there was a significant difference on tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 181 69.15 79.34 69.71 77.4 60 65 70 75 80 85 pre-testpost-test experimental group academic year 2016/2017 who were taught by using group grid and roundtable technique compared to those who were taught by using group work brainstorming. thus, the working hypothesis (ha) was accepted. in order to make the analysis to be more comprehensible, the comparison result of pre-test and post-test scores would be presented on this chart below: according to the chart, group grid and roundtable technique was proven to be an effective technique for teaching writing descriptive texts. by using the technique, tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year 2016/2017 gained significant achievement in writing descriptive text. results of the questionnaire in order to investigate the effect of implementing the technique, several statements were provided in the questionnaire. the students had to give check mark () based on their degree of agreements. the test-items of the questionnaire were about: 1. interest in learning english; 2. interest in writing; 3. difficulty of writing descriptive text; 4. initial interest towards group grid and roundtable technique; 5. feeling easier after applying group grid and roundtable technique for writing descriptive texts; 6. interest towards group grid and roundtable techniques for writing descriptive texts; 7. feeling bored after applying group grid and roundtable techniques for writing descriptive texts; 8. effectiveness of applying group grid and roundtable techniques for writing descriptive texts; 9. motivation to write descriptive text after applying group grid and roundtable techniques; and 10. consideration of applying the technique for teaching writing other kinds of text in english. the following is the results of the questionnaire. t e st i te m st ro n g ly d is a g re e d is a g re e a g re e st ro n g ly a g re e m e a n s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 182 1 0 2 16 14 3.37 2 0 5 23 4 2.96 3 7 14 6 5 2.21 4 0 2 20 10 3.25 5 1 2 19 10 3.37 6 0 2 18 12 3.18 7 10 21 1 8 1.71 8 0 1 27 4 3.09 9 0 7 21 4 2.90 10 0 4 18 10 3.18 the result of the questionnaire showed that more than a half number to the total respondents like english (mean: 3.375), there were thirty of the respondents who like learning english. furthermore, twenty-three students of the total respondents also like to write in english. even so, many of them twenty-two (68.75%) students found difficulty in writing especially writing descriptive text in this case. at the beginning of the treatment, students were interested towards group grid and roundtable techniques for writing descriptive text (mean: 3.25). they recognized that the implementation of the technique for writing descriptive texts made them so happy and interesting (agree: 56.25% and strongly agree: 37.5%). after the treatments, twenty-five students were motivated to apply the technique. they argued that the strategy assisted them to write descriptive texts (mean: ). moreover, twenty-seven or 84.37% students of the total respondents agreed that it was effective to write descriptive text after applying group grid and roundtable technique. the last item, eighteen students agreed to apply group grid and roundtable technique in writing other kinds of text in english material (56.25%) and ten students were strongly agree to apply it (31.25%). finally, the result of questionnaire above further elaborated how group grid and roundtable technique gave effects on tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year 2016/2017 in teaching writing descriptive such as students get more happy and interested in following the material, they also feel easier in writing descriptive text, and they thought the techniques can be applied in other material, especially in writing a text. conclusions the first objective of conducting the research was to describe the significant difference between tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year 2016/2017 who were taught by using group grid and roundtable technique and those who were taught by using group work brainstorming. by determining the significant difference, the effectiveness of group grid and roundtable technique could be proven. the research findings from pre-test and post-test mean scores of experimental group showed that it statistically increased from 75.81 to 82.68. meanwhile, the scores of control group only increased from 76.34 to 79.18. the data were analyzed by using independent sample t-test. the mean scores comparison of both groups in posttest proved that the working hypothesis (ha) was accepted. the analysis showed that the value of s. urunami & d. anggani linggar bharati & a. faridi/ journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 183 sig.(2-tailed) (0.03) was less than the value of α = 5% = 0.05. in addition, the data were also investigated by using paired-sample t-test. the analysis showed that both of the groups improved after the treatments. however, the mean scores differences indicated that the experimental group (6.87) improved better than the control group (2.84). through the mean scores differences, the tvalue of the experimental group was 4.785. meanwhile, the t-value of the control group was 1.858. based on the results, it can be concluded that there was a significant difference between the two groups, after being given several treatments. thus, the analysis of significant difference revealed that group grid and round table technique was effective in teaching writing descriptive texts for the subjects of this research. the second objective, in order to describe further about how the strategy effects on the objects, the researcher gave a questionnaire. the questionnaire was used to recognize the responses of students towards the implementation of group grid and round table technique. the questionnaire with likert-type items was delivered to fill in. the analysis showed that 59.37% of the students agreed that the implementation of the strategy assisted them to write descriptive texts. in addition, 31.25% of them even strongly agreed towards the statement. references anderson, m. and anderson, k. 1997. text types in english. south yarra: macmillan education australia pty ltd. baloche, l. (1998). the cooperative classroom: empowering learning. upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall. creswell, john w. 2012. educational research: planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. boston: pearson. harmer, j. 2004.how to teach writing. new york: longman group. ltd. jacobs, g. m., power, m. a., & loh, w. i. (2002). the teacher's sourcebook for cooperative learning: practical techniques, basic principles, and frequently asked questions. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. johnson, d. w., & johnson, r. t. (1999). learning together and alone: cooperative, competitive and individualistic learning (5th ed.). boston: allyn & bacon kagan, s. 1994. cooperative learning. san clemente, ca: kagan publishing. online. available at www.kaganonline.com. [accessed on 12/03/2016] paul, david. 2003. teaching english to children in asia. hong kong: longman asia elt. richard, jack c and renandya, willy a. 2010. methodology in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 83 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) to improve writing in descriptive texts kamila nurul ibriza  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: circ, technique, writing, descriptive. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is based on a study which investigated the eighth grade students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. the study aimed to find out the effectiveness of cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) technique to teach writing of descriptive and to investigate the significant difference of students’ writing achievement between the students who were taught using that technique and those who were not. the study employed quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design. the data were pretest, and post-test scores. the result of the study shows that the mean score of the pre-test in the experimental group is 63.97, while in the control group is 64.46. therefore, the result of post-test increased. in the post-test, the mean score of the experimental group is 76.26, and the control group gets 71.13. moreover, the t-test result is 2.847 and ttable is 2.024. it can be clearly seen that tvalue is higher than ttable. it means that the hypothesis of h1 is accepted and h0 is rejected. based on the proven hypothesis, it could be proven that cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) is effective to teach writing of descriptive text for the eighth grade students of junior high school students. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 84 introduction students should learn all of the language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) particularly in order to guide them to be able to communicate with other people who also speak english. communicating in language learning not only happens in a spoken way by using spoken language, but also in the form of written language. spoken and written languages are two different aspects of language in the language skills. spoken deals with speaking and listening, whereas written language deals with reading and writing. according to boardman and frydenberg (2002: 31-47), to create a good writing, there are some components that we need to consider; coherence, cohesion, unity, and completeness. a product of writing is considered as good if there are coherence, cohesion, unity, and completeness in it. those are difficult components to master for the students in junior high schools even in universities. moreover, teachers play important roles in teaching and learning process such as designing lesson plan, preparing learning materials and media, and evolving teaching techniques. relating to teaching writing, a teacher should find appropriate and interesting technique to make the students easy in writing. furthermore, not only considering the technique, but also the teacher should consider the process of writing in resulting a good writing product. it is in line with brown‟s statement. brown (2001: 335), “writing needs a process of thinking, drafting, and revising that requires specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develop naturally”. it means that students need a lot of practices to master writing skill in order to produce a good text. writing cannot be done in short times, it needs some stages in the process of writing. it is different from other skills which can be done in short times. in the process of planning, drafting, revising and editing, we will often re-plan, re-draft, and re-edit before we get the product of writing. according to curriculum 2013, students of junior high school are demanded to comprehend descriptive text. there are standard and basic competencies in teaching writing of junior high school in line with curriculum 2013. its standard competence is revealing the meaning of short functional text and simple short essay in the form of descriptive to interact with surrounding. meanwhile, its basic competencies is revealing the meaning and simple rhetorical step in the simple short essay using written language accurately, fluently, and appropriately to interact with the closer surrounding in the form of descriptive. for the students of junior high school, those competencies are difficult to be achieved especially in writing descriptive text. descriptive text is one of the text types or genres given to junior high school. according to gerot and wignell (1995: 208), descriptive text has social function to describe a particular person, place, or thing. it has two generic structures. they are: 1) identification: identifies phenomenon to be described and 2) description: describe parts, qualities, and characteristics. furthermore, gerot and wignell mentions the lexicogrammatical features of descriptive text. they focus on specific participants, use of attributive and identifying process, frequent use of epithets and classifiers in nominal group, and use of simple present tense. descriptive text belongs to one of the difficult genres of writing for junior high school students. it is difficult for them because there are many aspects to consider such as generic structures and lexicogrammatical features. beside those aspects, they always get stuck when they are asked to describe someone or something. this matter is caused by some cases not only because of their lack of vocabularies, grammar, or lexicogrammatical features, but also k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 85 the teaching method or teaching method of teaching and learning source that are not appropriate for them. the teacher tend to use monotonous teaching techniques. they use lecturing technique by explaining the materials using power point. they explain the material while the students are looking it at the projector screen. after that, the students are asked to describe directly after they got the topic whereas they do not understand the materials. hence, the teaching and learning process become monotonous and so it influences the atmosphere of the class automatically. the students get bored quickly and do not comprehend the materials well. moreover, the teacher directed the students to work individually in writing. as a result they merely did their work inactively without participating in the learning process. the teacher seldom gave a feedback to the students‟ writing. she usually gave the students a topic to write about, asked them to submit it, and then just returned the marked sheets without discussing them with the students. besides, the students had difficulties in developing their ideas, using sentence patterns, choosing appropriate words and they were confused deciding what to write about. it was shown from the duration they need to compose a text in fact, the number of students left their papers blank. in this study, i consider that cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) can solve the problems above. cooperative integrated reading and composition is one of the cooperative learning techniques which can be an effective way in teaching writing. richard and rodgers (2001: 192) state that cooperative learning is an approach to teaching that makes maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the classroom. in cooperative learning, teachers teach students collaborative or social skills so that they can work together more effectively. cooperative learning provides and facilitates students to work together in group (pair of team) in order to accomplish their work at the end of the learning process, every individual is responsible for learning something by using his or her own way. circ technique is categorized as cooperative learning which mainly involves students learning from each other in groups. in this technique, teacher prepares instruction as the focus of the lesson. students practice the points taught by the teacher in preparation for quiz (faridi, 2012:80). moreover, durukan (2011: 103) states that circ technique is developed to support traditionally used “skill-based reading groups” approach. firstly, reading groups are established in the classroom. next, students are paired off within the groups. when the teacher works with a reading group, couples try to teach each other meaningful reading and writing skills by using reciprocal learning technique. they help each other in performing basic skill-building activities (such as oral reading, contextual guessing, asking questions, summarizing, writing a composition based on the story, revising-correcting composition). in circ, students work in pairs on a series of cognitively engaging activities, including reading to each other, predicting how stories will end, summarizing stories, and practicing spelling, decoding, and vocabulary. the students will be asked to create a descriptive text with the model of one of their group members. it makes the students will be easy to describe the object because they will observe it directly, not just imagine that. therefore, based on the explanation above, hopefully cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) can be a successful way to solve those problems above. it is in line with my objectives in conducting this study that by using circ technique, it can be an appropriate technique to teach writing of descriptive text and can be an effective way to improve the students‟ writing skill mastery especially in writing descriptive text. k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 86 methodology of the research this study employed a quasi-experimental which used non-equivalent control group design i used this design, because firstly, this design required two classes, one was as experimental group and the other was a control group; and secondly, selecting the subject randomly was impossible to me. this study was conducted in one of the state junior high school in kudus. population of this study was eighth grade students of one of junior high school in kudus in the academic year 2016/2017. there were seven classes of the eighth grade students of that school. on the average, each class consisted of 39 students. the sample of this study were two classes of eighth grade students in that school. the first class as the control group and the second class as the experimental group. i chose the sample based on some consideration; these classes are taught by the same teacher, these classes have given the same facilities from school, these classes are never taught by using circ technique, these classes are taught the same material that is descriptive text. in this study, i used written test as instrument, then analyzed the result of the test (pretest and post-test) using t-test formula. it is used to know whether there is any significant difference between the students who were taught by using circ technique and those who were not. if the tvalue is higher than ttable, it means that there is significant difference between two means. on the other hand, if tvalue is lower than ttable, it means that there is no significant difference between two means. before computing the t-test value, i had to find the normality and homogeneity of experimental and control groups‟ pre-test to find out that the data was normally distributed and homogeneous. k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 87 result and discussion the data were obtained from the students‟ achievement in writing of descriptive text. i used analytic scale for rating composition task by brown and bailey as cited by brown (2004: 244-245) to analyze the pre-test and post-test writing product of the students. the analytic scale covers five components of writing; organization, content, grammar, punctuation and spelling, and style. the following tables show the average of each component both in pre-test and post-test of the control and experimental group. aspects pre-test post-test average of organization 15.1 15.6 average of content 12.8 14.9 average of grammar 9.9 12.2 average of punctuation and spelling 11.6 13.6 average of style 15.0 15.0 table 3.1 average of each component both in pre-test and post-test of the control group aspects pre-test post-test average of organization 12.3 16.1 average of content 13.4 16.5 average of grammar 9.8 12.8 average of punctuation and spelling 14.2 14.9 average of style 14.2 15.7 table 3.2 average of each component both in pre-test and post-test of the experimental group from the table above, it can be seen that the average scores of each component of writing on the two groups were improved on the post-test. after analyzing the students‟ writing product of pre-test and post-test, then i calculated the scores. the following table shows the mean scores for pre-test and post-test for all aspects of students‟ mastery. group mean of pre-test mean of posttest the difference between pretest and post-test experimental 63.97 76.26 12.29 control 64.46 71.13 6.67 table 3.3 the result of pre-test and post-test mean scores of the experimental and control groups table 3 gives the information about the mean of pre-test of the experimental group is 63.97 and their mean of post-test is 76.26. meanwhile, in the control group, the mean of pre-test is 64.46 and the mean of post-test is 71.13. the difference between pre-test and post-test of the experimental group is 12.29 and the difference between pre-test and post-test of control group is 6.67. to make the difference easier to be understood, i applied the mean score between the control and the experimental groups into the chart as follows: k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 88 diagram 3.1 the mean score between the control and experimental groups the chart 1 describes about the pre-test and post-test result of experimental and control groups. the chart 1 shows the result of post-test of both groups increased. meanwhile, in the control group, there was less improvement than the experimental group. it meant that the difference of mean score in the experimental group was higher than in the control group. after getting the data of the experimental and control groups, the normality of those data were analyzed to make sure the data were normally distributed or not. based on the data of pre-test normality computation in the experimental group, the value was 2.398 and table was 7.815. since value was lower than table (2.398<7.815), then it could be concluded that the pre-test of experimental group was said to be normally distributed. beside that, according to the data computation of pre-test in the control group, the value was 5.160 and table was 7.815. since value was less than table (5.160<7.815), it could be inferred that the pre-test of control group was said to be normally distributed. moreover, i computed the normality of post-test of both groups. the post-test normality computation of the experimental group showed value was 1.974 and table was 7.815. since value was less than table (1.974<7.815) so the post-test of experimental group was considered to be normally distributed. for the control group, the normality computation resulted value was less than table (5.517<7.815) so the post-test of control group was considered to be normally distributed too. beside calculating the normality of pre-test and post-test, i computed the homogeneity of both tests. the objective of homogeneity (f-test) is to test the hypothesis whether the two samples are from the same normal population with equal variance or from two normal populations with equal variances or not. therefore, homogeneity is important to be checked. if ≤ it means that the data had the same variance and they were homogeneous. from the pre-test homogeneity computation of both groups, i found that (1.061) < (4.10). it could be concluded that the experimental and control group had the same variance. it meant that the population of the two groups were homogeneous. meanwhile, from the post-test homogeneity computation of both groups, it resulted was 1.829 and was 4.10. since was less than (1.829<4.10) so i concluded that the population of the two groups was homogeneous. after the data were considered as normal and homogeneous, i applied the t-test. in order to know the t-test result, it is needed to find the mean score and score deviation of the post-test of the two groups. the score deviation of the post-test of experimental group was 1699.436 and the control group was 3108.389. after computing the score deviation, the result can be put into the t-test formula. based on the calculation, it resulted = 2.847. for , with df = 39-1= 38, so 55 60 65 70 75 80 pretest posttest experimental group control group k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 89 = 2.024. since exceeded (2.847>2.024), the null hypothesis (h0) was rejected and the working hypothesis (h1) that there were significant difference in writing achievement between the students who were taught by using circ technique and those who were not, was accepted. the objective of this study were to find out whether circ was effective to teach writing of descriptive text or not and to find out how much the significance difference between control group‟s achievement after taught by using regular technique (lecturing) and experimental group„s achievement in writing of descriptive text after taught by using circ as the technique to teach writing of descriptive text at the eighth grade students of one of the state junior high school in kudus in the academic year of 2016/2017. the mean scores difference between pre-test and post-test of the experimental and the control group were calculated to know the improvement of the students‟ writing skill before and after getting the treatment. in the pre-test, the mean score of the control group and the experimental group were 64.46 and 63.97. according to the pre-test result, it could be concluded that the ability of two group was relatively same. the mean score of pre-test of the experimental and control group also had slight difference, so it was said to be normally distributed and homogeneous. after the students received the treatment, the mean scores of the two group increased. however, the mean score of the post-test of experimental group was higher than control group. the experimental group‟s mean score was 76.26 and the control group‟s mean score was 71.13. the score indicated that after getting the treatment, the experimental group achieve a better result than the control group. teaching writing of descriptive text by using circ technique made an upgrading of the students‟ writing ability more than teaching them by lecturing technique. it could be seen in the average of each aspect of writing components both in the pre-test and post-test. (see table 1 and 2) based on the average of each aspect of writing components both in the pre-test and post-test, it could be seen that the students‟ writing ability of descriptive text increased. increasing ability involved the whole aspects of the components of writing; organization, content, grammar, punctuation and spelling, and style. the students‟ ability in organizing their ideas was so bad before getting the treatment. they lacked of understanding of how to give an appropriate title, to make effective introductory paragraph or give supporting sentences for generalizations. some of them, even, did not give the title for their texts. after teaching the students by using circ technique with the help of explanation from the teacher the students of the experimental group were better in organizing their ideas compared to the control group. relating to the content, there is a significance difference between the content of students‟ writing in the pre-test and post-test for both groups. in the pre-test, the students did not know about what they had to write in their descriptive text. therefore, they only produced very simple sentences. after getting the treatment, the content of the students‟ writing improved, especially in the experimental group. they chose one of their group members to be the subject description. the improvement of the content of the experimental group‟s writing was higher than the control group. talking about the grammar, generally, the students‟ grammar was still weak. most of the students in both of the groups lack of understanding of how to produce some sentences into a good structure in terms of simple present tense and adjective order. however, after the experimental group and control group received the treatment, they showed improvement in their grammar. the treatments given to both the experimental group which was circ technique and control group which was lecturing technique gave significant contribution to the students‟ punctuation and spelling. before the treatment was given, the students did not know how to use the appropriate words and had problems in vocabularies. in the pre-test, the students could not find appropriate words for showing their ideas. after the students of the experimental k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 90 group were treated by using circ activities in which there were revising and editing, they had known what register should be used according to particular topics appropriately. whereas, the control group which was taught by using lecturing technique still got the problems in the case of register. it was proven by their average score of style of post-test which was same as their average score of style in pre-test. both of treatments in the experimental group which was circ technique and control group which was lecturing technique did not give significant contribution to the students‟ punctuation and spelling. the gain of these aspects depended more on the teacher‟s explanation and correction during the treatments. based on the average of each aspect of writing components, both in the pre-test and post-test between the experimental and control groups, i inferred that there was a significant effect in teaching writing of descriptive text by using circ technique. moreover, the was higher than obtained 2.847 and was 2.024. it proved that the difference is statistically significant. from that data, it can be concluded that there was significant difference between the group which was taught by using circ technique and the group which was by using the lecturing technique as the english teacher‟s regular technique. the data also indicated that the use of circ technique to teach writing of descriptive text was effective. conclusions based on the result of the data analyzes and research findings, i concluded that firstly the student of experimental and control group relatively have equal level in writing of descriptive text before getting the treatment by using circ technique. it could be seen by the result of pre-test in the control group that was slightly different from the experimental group. since there was only slightly difference in the pre-test result between two groups, it could be concluded that the two groups were homogeneous before getting the treatment. secondly, after calculating the t-test, i concluded that there was significance difference of achievement in writing of descriptive text of the students who were taught by using circ technique and those who were taught by using the lecturing technique since the t_valuewhich was higher than t_(table.). in other words, this t-test result revealed that the working hypothesis of this study was accepted that the null hypothesis was rejected. lastly, i inferred that circ technique gave contribution to improve students‟ achievement in writing of descriptive text. it could be seen from the mean scores differences between pre-test and post-test of experimental and control groups. the mean scores difference between pre-test and posttest of control group was lower than experimental group. by comparing the mean scores difference of both groups and this scores achieved by each group in two tests (pre-test and post-test), i come to conclusion that circ technique was effective to be used in teaching writing of descriptive text and it gave higher significant difference of the experimental groups‟ achievement in writing of descriptive text than the control group. references boardman, c. a., and frydenberg, j. 2002. writing to communicate paragraph and essays. new york: pearson education, inc. brown, h. douglas. 2001. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy, second edition. new york: pearson education, inc. brown, h. douglas. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education, inc. k. nurul ibriza / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 91 durukan, erhan. 2011. effects of cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ) technique on reading-writing skills. educational research and reviews, 6/1. pp. 102-109. faridi, abdurrahman. 2012. language teaching theories. semarang state university: unnes press. gerot, linda, and peter wignell. 1995. making sense of functional grammar. sydney: gerd stabler. richards, j. c. &theodore s. rodgers. 2001. approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt digital storytelling to improve students’ mastery in writing narrative dillyan anugrah joko saputro department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: digital storytelling, writing narrative text, experimental study ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study is an experimental study. it aims to find out whether teaching narrative text using digital storytelling is effective to enhance students’ mastery in writing. this research also reveal the significant difference in the achievement between students who are taught using digital storytelling and those who are taught using conventional technique. in order to achieve those objectives, i conducted an experimental study. the population of this study was the eighth graders of smpn 1 grobogan. the experimental group was viii-1 and the control group was viii-2. the experimental group was taught using digital storytelling and the control group was taught using conventional technique. the result after a treatment was given shows that the mean of experimental group was higher than the control group. therefore, there is a significant difference in students’ achievement that was taught using digital storytelling and using conventional technique. it is concluded the use of digital storytelling as visual aid can improve students’ mastery in writing narrative. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: dillyananugrah@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:dillyananugrah@gmail.com dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction the achievement of students in english is still insufficient even though they have been learning english since they were in elementary school. students are still poor in mastering the four language skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). they find it is very difficult to improve their language skill. in this final project, i focus on students‟ writing achievement. writing skill is needed in written communication. in writing, students have to convey their ideas, put them into paper, and also revise them. however, writing is not an easy skill to master. brown (2000:335) states “writing needs a process of thinking, drafting, and revising that requires specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develop naturally”. it means that students need a lot of practices in mastering writing skill in order to produce a good text. there are some difficulties which are faced by the students in mastering writing skill. the most common difficulty which is faced by students is to build an idea. building an idea is an essential thing to start writing. if the students have found an idea, they will know what they are going to write. the other difficulties students face is the lack of vocabulary. the lack of vocabulary limits them in creating a good writing composition. if they have lack of vocabulary, they will use the same terms in their writing frequently. it will make their writing monotonoues. besides the lack of vocabulary and difficulties in building ideas, the problem which students face is that they do not understand the organization of the text they are going to write. therefore, one of the solutions is to introducing text types or genre to the students. anderson and anderson (1997:17) say that “a genre can be defined as a culturally specific texttype which results from using language (written or spoken) to (help) accomplish something”. thus, the teaching learning material should be centered on genre. in the 1994 curriculum of english for junior high school, reading skill should be given more attention from both teachers and students. it means that reading is a more important skill than the other skills. now we use 2004 curriculum of english for junior high school which is stressed on the ability to communicate both in the spoken and written ways. english is taught as a compulsory subject from junior high school up to senior high school and for some semesters at university level. in addition, many english courses have been run in almost every town in our country to facilitate those who want to learn english. it becomes the teacher‟s job to help the students to solve their problem in improving their writing abilities. harmer (2001:257) explains “in teaching of writing we can focus on the product of that writing or on the writing process itself”. it means that teacher has a choice on how he/she will improve the students‟ ability in writing. if teacher chooses to concentrate in the process of writing, it means that the teacher needs to provide clear guideline on how to construct different kinds of text they have to write. hyland (2003:10) states that “…the process approach to writing teaching to address the issue of what teachers should do to help learners perform a writing task”. in this case, the existence of learning media is important. it helps both of teacher and students. media support teacher to provide an interesting learning material. on the other hand, through the use of media the students can learn the material easily. games, song, film, pictures, and photos can be a good medium because they are easy to find and also to use. digital storytelling is one of the media that can be used in teaching activities. it can be a motivating medium in teaching writing especially in teaching narrative text. anderson and anderson (1997, p. 6) explain that “the narrative text type is a text that tells a story whose purpose is to present a view of the world that entertains or informs the reader or listener”. in teaching narrative text, digital storytelling helps teacher to gain students‟ interest and involve them in the learning process because of its moving and interesting animations. it also contains subtitle of the story which can make the students understand about the story it self. the students‟ interest will make them feel dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 comfortable in joining the learning process. it is expected that the use of digital story as teaching media can help the students‟ mastery in writing narrative text. discussion digital storytelling bull and kajder (2004: 47) states that “a digital story consists of a series of still images combined with a narrated soundtrack to tell a story”. the another definition comes from porter (2009: 7). he explains “the digital storytelling process helps to transform isolated facts into illuminated, enduring understandings. by „living in the story‟, we makes the information come emotionally alive. by exploring „lessons learned‟, we go beyond telling about content to find its deeper meaning”. from the definitions above, the writer can conclude that digital story combines the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia such as images, audio, and video. using digital story can help teachers to build the students‟ understanding about the delivered material; in this case is narrative text. as stated above, narrative is a text which retell past events in a chronological order. it means that using digital story can help students to understand the story of narrative text. writing is one way to deliver what it is on our mind. writing is one of four skills of language. writing is not an easy skill to master. before writing, we must have something in mind about what we are going to write. writing means that we convey our ideas put them into a paper and also revise them. we need to consider several things when we are writing so that people can understand our writing. it means that before writing something we have to know and decide what kinds of text or genre we are going to write. writing writing requires some skills. in producing a good piece of writing someone must have a good skill in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. harris (2003: 22) states “… that writing is a tool for communication that comprises a series of predetermined skills in spelling, punctuation, and grammar”. in general, writing is a complex process that involves many skills. students also have to master some learning concepts such as the rule of constructing paragraph. in teaching writing, teacher should clearly explain what kinds of text he or she is going to develop. teacher also needs to develop what material and/or media he/she uses to facilitate teaching learning activities. one of the independence of teaching english is to facilitate students with writing ability. unfortunately, many students find that writing is the most difficult skill to master. they get difficulty to produce an english text. to solve the problem, i try to use pictures in chronological order in teaching writing, especially in teaching narrative text. narrative narrative text is used to amuse, entertains and to deal with an actual or vicarious experience in different ways; narratives deal with problematic events which lead to a crisis or turning point of some kind, which in turn finds a resolution. anderson, m and anderson, k explain that narrative text used to tells a story and, in doing so, entertains or informs the readers or listeners. in writing a narrative text we use past tense and it also uses specific participant. method this study uses quasi experimental design designed by collecting data with a treatment using pre-test and post-test. the design of the experiment can be described as the following: table 3.1 design of the experiment e 01 x1 02 c 03 x2 04 dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 source: (arikunto, 2006:86) in which: e : experimental group c : control group 01 : pre-test for the experimental group 02 : post-test for the experimental group 03 : pre-test for the control group 04 : post-test for the control group x1 : treatment using digital storytelling x2 : treatment using conventional method there are two groups in this study. the first group is the experimental group which is given a new treatment or in this case is taught by digital storytelling, while the second group is the control group which is taught by conventional method. in conducting this research, the writer used several appropriate techniques and methods to gather the information. in order to collect the data in this study, the writer used pre-test, and posttest. the pretest is used to check the quality of the subject of the study before they get the treatment. the post-test is employed to know whether there is an improvement on their writing ability after they get the treatment. the result of the test will be computed statistically. subject of the study population the population of this study is the eight grade students of smp negeri 1 grobogan in the academic year 2012/2013. sample based on the random sampling i took the eight grade students of smp negeri 1 grobogan as subject of the study. the writer took class viii-1 and viii-2 as the samples of the study. instrument for collecting the data in a research program, instrument is an important device to collect data. the instrument used in this experiment is to measure the students‟ ability in constructing narrative text. therefore, the writer used a test as the instrument in collecting data. in this study, the writer used written test as the instrument for collecting data. since writing is a productive skill which means this activity shows someone ability to produce (write) something on a paper. so, the written test is the most suitable instrument to use. pretest a pretest is a test given before the treatment. the function of pre-test is to find out the prior knowledge or ability of the test takers before the treatment given. treatment i use digital storytelling to teach narrative text. the treatment was given to the students before the posttest conducted. digital storytelling was used as the media in teaching writing narrative text in this study. post-test after the treatment, a post-test was given. the function of the posttest was to measure students‟ ability after they got the treatment. the posttest was the same with the pretest. scoring technique i use an analytical method to give the score to the paper test. i use the analytical scale for rating composition tasks suggested by brown & bailey as cited by h. douglas brown. this formula adapted by brown‟s scoring rubric. the adaptation was based on the need of the study with the criterion in every component. it covered content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanism. the score 3xc+2xo+2xg+1.5xv+1.5xm x 10 4 dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 of every aspect was different. the maximum content aspect was 12; the organization was 8; the grammar was 8; the vocabulary was 6; and the mechanism was 6. the total score would be divided by 4 and equal by 10. therefore, the maximum score of student‟s writing was 100 and minimum score was 25. method of data analysis in analyzing the research data, i took the following step as below: 1. tabulation of the data it includes scoring the test items of each students and arranging the scores into the rank order. 2. applying the appropriate formula for analyzing the data. the obtained data were analyzed to get the final result. ttest formula was used in this research to analyze the data. it showed the final result from both experimental and control groups given different treatments. figure 3.1 t-test formula source: (arikunto, 2006:311) where: mx : the mean score of the experimental group my :the mean score of the controlled group nx :the number of students of the experimental group ny :the number of students of the controlled group x2 :the total of the square deviation of the experimental group y2 :the total of square deviation of the controlled group result computation between two means after getting all the test scores, the computation was made. the first way to know the significant difference of the experimental and control group‟s score could be seen through the difference of the means. the following formula was used to get the means: mean = the mean score of pretest a pretest was conducted at the beginning of the research. the purpose of this test was to check the students‟ ability inwriting a narrative text. there were 26 students took the test. they had to re-write the story given. in order to know further on the students‟ achievement in detail, i used the following formula to find out the average of the students‟ achievement. the formula was: mean score of experimental group: m = =860 26 = 33.08 mean score of control group: m= n = 771 26 = 29.65 from the analysis above, we can see that the mean score of the students of experimental group was 33.08 and the students of control group was 29.65. thus, based on the scoring categories the means score of both groups were categorized as very poor. iconcluded that the students had difficulties in constructing the sentences and they were confused in choosing the right vocabulary based on the result of pretest. therefore, teaching narrative with a new technique in each activity was important to improve the students‟ achievement. the mean score of posttest the students were given posttest after they got the treatment. in this activity, the                     nynxnynx yx mymx t 11 2 22 dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 students had to do the same test as the pre-test given. then, i calculated the means score of the posttest of experimental and control group. it can be computed as follows: mean score of experimental group: m = =1696 26 = 65.23 mean score of control group: m= n = 1320 26 = 50.77 the achievement of the posttest of experimental group students was 65.23, and control group students was 50.77. based on the result of the final test, it could be concluded that there was an improvement of the students‟ achievement inimproving their mastery in writing narrative text for both group. after computing the mean score, i calculated the sum for both group‟s score. the sum of experimental group‟s score is: σx= ∑ = 28898 = 28898 – 26880.62 = 2017.38 the sum of control group‟s score is: σy= ∑ = 14335 – = 14335 – 11529.35 = 2742.65 test of significance as stated earlier, the mean of control group was lower than the mean of the experimental group. however, we still cannot conclude that the difference between the both means was significant. therefore, in this analysis t-test was applied. this formula was used to check whether the two means were statistically significant. as i mentioned before, in analyzing the data, i used t-test formula in order to strengthen the result of analysis. here is the formula: √* + * + where: σx= ∑ = 28898 = 28898 – 26880.62 = 2017.38 and: σy= ∑ = 14335 – = 14335 – 11529.35 = 2742.65 so the t value could be computed as follow: √( ) ( ) √( ) ( ) = √ = 4.08 after i got t-test result, the critical value of the t-table was consulted to check whether the dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 7 difference was significant or not. for = 5%, and the number of the students, 26 + 26 – 2 = 50, from the formula: i found that t-table = 1.68. based on the computation i found that t-value (4.08) was higher than the critical value on the t-table (1.68). it could be inferred that there was significant difference between experimental group and control group. as i conducted my experimental research in smpn 1 grobogan, i noticed that the students who were taught using digital storytelling were so interested and enthusiastic during the lesson. in constructing the sentences in writing narrative text, the students need imagination to understand what the story about. they need an illustration to illustrate the plot in the story; they need to have a visual illustration to make their understanding clearer than only by reading the story in their books. during my experimental research, the experimental group showed their improvement in understanding it, while the control group students had difficulties in constructing their sentences in writing narrative text and did not show improvement. although using digital storytelling, was proven effective enough in improving their understanding in writing narrative text, it does not mean that teaching and learning process without using digital storytelling was not effective. the use of digital storytelling also faced some obstacles. first, the blank out electricity might happen during the lesson. therefore, teachers who are using technology and electricity in teaching should anticipate this condition. second, the hysteria of students knowing that they will be taught using digital storytelling was another obstacle in applying this method. students sometimes got too excited in the classroom so that they could not hear the explanation well. however, those obstacles were not serious problems, so that the teaching and learning process could still be done well until the experiment was completed. conclusion digital storytelling is one of the media that can be used in teaching activities. it can be a motivating medium in teaching writing especially in teaching narrative text. digital storytelling helps teacher to gain students‟ interest and involve them in the learning process because of its moving and interesting animations. it also contains subtitle of the story which can make the students understand about the story it self. the students‟ interest will make them feel comfortable in joining the learning process. it is expected that the use of digital story as teaching media can help the students‟ mastery in writing narrative text. after doing an analysis and discussion, i have several conclusions. the study aimed to find out whether teaching narrative text using digital storytelling is effective to enhance students‟ mastery in writing. this research also reveal the significant difference in the achievement between students who are taught using digital storytelling and those who are taught using conventional technique. the result of the study showed that the differences between the two means (of experimental and control group) was significant. this can be proved with the test of significant (t-test). the t-test result was 4.08. when the result of t-value is compared to ttable on the level significance of 5% and the number of degree freedom was 50, which the result was 1.68, the comparison shows that the result of t-value was higher than the critical value on the t-table. based on the result of the study, i would like to offer some suggestions to be considered to improve the teaching of writing. the students should practice their english especially writing ability in their daily lives because it will make them get used to writing in english and it will improve their writing ability. teachers should be able to use the appropriate teaching media. it is very important for them to use various methods in teaching writing to the students. through various methods, the teaching and learning process can be more enjoyable, so that the students will not  2 yx nn dillyan anugrah joko saputro / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 8 get bored in learning. therefore, digital storytelling can be an appropriate method in teaching since it is an interesting medium which gives students illustration through audio and animated picture. i hope other researchers can use it as one of the references in conducting their researches on the same field of study. besides, it could be applied for teaching writing to solve students‟ difficulties in constructing narrative text. there is also a possibility to find another more effective way in teaching writing narrative text. references anderson, m. and anderson, k. 1997. text type in english 1. south yarra: macmillan. ______________________________. 1997. text type in english 2. south yarra: macmillan. arikunto, s. 2002. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: pt rineka cipta. brown, h. d. 2000. principles of language learning and teaching (4 th ed). london: longman. _____, ____. 2004. language assessment principle and classroom practice. new york: pearson education, inc. bull, g. and kadjer, s. 2004. digital storytelling in the language arts classroom. retrieved december 29, 2010, from http://www.digitalstoryteller.org/docs/digitalstoryt elling.pdf. harmer, j. 2001. the practice of english language teaching. cambridge: longman. harris, p. 2003. writing in the primary school years. south melbourne: social science press. hyland, k. 2002. teaching and researching writing. london: longman. tendero, a. 2006. facing versions of the self: the effects of digital storytelling on english education. contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, 6(2), 174-194. retrieved february, 13, 2013, from http://www.citejournal.org/articles/v6i2languagearts 2.pdf. http://www.digitalstoryteller.org/docs/digitalstorytelling.pdf http://www.digitalstoryteller.org/docs/digitalstorytelling.pdf oktober september 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures combination to improve students’ vocabulary mastery dilla silviana anggi putri department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima 2013 disetujui 2013 dipublikasikan november 2013 ________________ keywords: vocabulary, jigsaw ii technique, still pictures, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this article is about the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures combination to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. in order to achieve the objectives of this research, the writer adopted an action research design. the subject of this research was class 7b of smp n 12 magelang, in the academic year of 2012/2013 which consisted of 32 students. there were two cycles in this research, and there were four phases in each cycle. they were planning, action, observation, and reflection. in order to collect data about students’ vocabulary mastery improvement and responses toward the use of this technique and media, the writer used observation sheet, questionnaire, interview, and test. the result of this study showed that the combination of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures can improve students’ vocabulary mastery. besides, the result of the observation sheet, questionnaire and interview revealed that the students gave very positive responses toward the use of this technique and media. based on the result of this research, the writer concluded that the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures gave a good contribution in english teaching and learning, especially in the area of vocabulary learning. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: silvianaanggiputri92@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:silvianaanggiputri92@yahoo.com dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction learning english means learning four language skills and its components. the language skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and the language components are grammar, vocabulary, and sound system. in learning all language skills and other language components, vocabulary takes important roles since it always takes part. mehta (2009) states that “vocabulary is the first and foremost important step in language acquisition.” it means that in learning foreign languages, students usually learn vocabulary first before they master more complex structure. the next roles of vocabulary are it brings meanings of what we think and want to say, and it is important for students to build academic journey. by using series of vocabulary, we can communicate with others and convey our meaning. john dewey (1910) in bintz (2011) states that “vocabulary is critically important because a word is an instrument for thinking about the meanings which it expresses.” in addition, bowman (2006) in ababneh (2013) suggests that “vocabulary is integrated into every content area and is addressed as part of the curriculum which means that the use of vocabulary is part of reading, writing as well as establishing the foundation of effective communication.” besides important for communicating, having high vocabulary mastery is also very important for people to obtain academic achievement. according to coles (2010), learning vocabulary builds children's literacy skills and prepares them for their academic journey. a child with high vocabulary mastery will be better able to follow instructions from an adult or teacher, be more confident in expressing themselves, and will possess the ability to communicate more effectively in a conversational setting. in fact, there are a lot of students who have low vocabulary mastery as proven from the following evidences. first, according to tschirner (2004), a study conducted by nurweni and read in 1999 with a large sample of first year students at one indonesian university found that their average english vocabulary knowledge consisted of 1126 words and that very few students came close to the threshold of 30005000 words. in addition to the evidence of the problem mentioned above, the writer also met this condition herself. during her observation and teaching training in one junior high school in magelang, the writer found that many students possessed low vocabulary mastery and memorization. although the students had been taught particular vocabulary many times, they were likely to forget it and failed to perform the vocabulary they were expected to know. the phenomena of students’ low vocabulary mastery and memorization might be caused by several factors. first, a lot of teachers use poor or monotonous teaching method which cannot challenge students to learn vocabulary. as a result, students will not be interested in learning vocabulary and will easily get bored in teaching and learning process. second, the absence of media used in teaching vocabulary makes students’ consciousness and motivation to learn vocabulary low. third, unsupportive classroom atmosphere makes vocabulary teaching and learning process cannot run optimally. it may be caused by teachers’ failure to manage his or her students. naturally, every student has his or her own characteristic which is different from others. there are students with high or low intelligence and ability, students with high or low learning motivation, students who are active or passive, etc. a teacher should not generalize his or her students’ characteristics. if a teacher fails to manage these diversities during his or her teaching, supportive classroom atmosphere cannot be reached. in order to solve the problems mentioned above, we need to find strategy which can manage students’ characteristics diversity and which is interesting to motivate students to learn vocabulary all at once. one strategy that can be used to solve this problem is by applying cooperative learning method and using media. there are many researches and theories prove that teaching using cooperative learning method dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 and media is very beneficial. according to slavin (1995:3), “cooperative learning can help make diversity a resource rather than a problem.” it means that cooperative learning method helps teachers and students build supportive classroom atmosphere although there are many differences in students’ ability and characters. it is because cooperative learning method facilitates students not only to pay attention to teacher’s explanation as in classical learning, but also encourages them to learn more actively by keeping their attention to work cooperatively in teams, so there will not be any students who are busy with their own business and disturb other. besides, “in cooperative classrooms students are expected to help each other, to discuss and argue with each other, to assess each other’s current knowledge and fill in gaps in each other’s understanding” (slavin 1995:2). meanwhile, murcia (2001:461) states that “media are tools or physical things used by the teacher to motivate the students by bringing a slice of real life into the classroom and by presenting language in its more complete communication complex.” thus, combining cooperative learning and media would be very a good strategy to teach vocabulary to students. learning vocabulary through cooperative learning and media is interesting and learning vocabulary in an interesting way will be very effective because students will learn happily and enthusiastically. as a result, they will remember the vocabulary better. there are many cooperative learning techniques and media to teach vocabulary. among them, the writer chose to use jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. learning vocabulary using jigsaw ii technique helps students learn vocabulary better since they need to understand particular vocabulary well in order to be able to explain or describe it to their groups. in addition, still pictures can catch students’ attention and increase their motivation to learn vocabulary. moreover, they help students to understand difficult vocabulary in english because by seeing the picture of a particular word, they will easily discover its meaning in their native language and memorize it better than without any illustration at all. review of related literature teaching and learning vocabulary according to neuman and dawyer (2009) in bintz (2011), vocabulary can be defined as “the words we must know to communicate effectively: words in speaking (expressive vocabulary) and words in listening (receptive vocabulary).” while according to linse (2006:121), “vocabulary is the collection of words that an individual knows.” learning vocabulary is important as a part of learning english or other foreign languages since learners learn vocabulary first before they master more complex structure. richard and renandya (2002:255) suggest that “vocabulary is a core component of language proficiency and provides much of the basis for how well learners speak, listen, read and write.” in teaching vocabulary, a teacher needs to use proper technique in order to help his students have good understanding on new words being learned. nation (1990) in cameron (2001:85) lists some basic techniques by which teachers can explain the meanings of new words. they are by using demonstration or pictures (using object, a cut-out figure, gesture, performing an action, photographs, drawings or diagrams on the board, and pictures from books) and by using verbal explanation (using analytical definition, putting the new word in a defining context, and translating into another language). teaching vocabulary using still pictures media have important roles in teaching and learning process. the use of media can facilitate teachers and students to reach the objectives of the teaching and learning process since they can support teachers’ explanation and help students to have better understanding on the lesson being learned. besides, by using media, teachers can make their teaching more attractive and enjoyable. as a result, students’ motivation and interest in joining the lesson increase. therefore, it is hoped that teachers use dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 variation of media to support their teaching as suggested by harmer (2001: 134) that “as a language teacher, we use variety of teaching aids to explain language meaning and construction, engage students in a topic or as the basis of a whole activity.” pictures can be used as media in vocabulary teaching and learning process. werf (2003) defines pictures as “illustrations that are cut from a magazine, newspapers or other sources. they are mostly photographs, but drawings, collages, maps or other illustrations can be used for certain activities.” he adds that pictures have many functions. with pictures we can : (1) teach, practice, or review new vocabulary; (2) do guided practice (drills); (3) practice grammatical structures; (4) practice listening comprehension; (5) do writing activities; (6) do semi-guided or free speaking practice such as problem solving activities, role plays, discussions, etc. based on the definitions above, the writer defines still pictures as static images or illustrations which describe or explain something and can be taken from many sources such as magazine, newspaper, textbooks, photographs, drawings, etc. cooperative learning method there are many methods in teaching. one of them is cooperative learning method. mccafferty, jacobs and dasilva iddings (2006:4) suggest that “cooperative learning represents the product of ongoing investigation based on theory, research, and practice as to how to maximize the benefits of student-student interaction.” in addition, gunter, estes and mintz (2007:263) state that “cooperative learning models are instructional sequences, a series of processes that structure pupil interactions in order to accomplish a specific, usually teacher-assigned goal.” based on the definitions about cooperative learning above, the writer comes up with the definition that cooperative learning is a method in teaching and learning process which allows students to learn, work, and help each other in small groups. in other words, cooperative learning is a method which maximizes the benefits of student-student interaction. thus, students can be more active in the learning process. teaching using jigsaw ii technique teaching using cooperative learning methods is very beneficial. slavin (1995:2) suggests that there are many reasons that cooperative learning is entering the mainstream of educational practice. one is the extraordinary research base supporting the use of cooperative learning to increase student achievement, as well as such other outcomes as improved intergroup relations, acceptance of academically handicapped classmates, and increased selfesteem. another reason is the growing realization that students need to learn to think, to solve problems, and to integrate and apply knowledge and skills, and that cooperative learning is an excellent means to that end. while cooperative learning works well in classes that are homogeneous, including classes for the gifted, special education classes, and even classes for the severely and profoundly average, it is especially needed in classes with a wide range of performance levels. in addition, slavin (1995:15) states that “the most important goal of cooperative learning is to provide students with the knowledge, concepts, skills, and understanding they need to become happy and contributing members of our society.” looking at the benefits and the goal of cooperative learning above, it is hoped that teachers can implement cooperative learning method in their teaching in order to make improvement in education. in this study, the writer used jigsaw ii technique. in this technique, students are divided into learning groups and expert groups. gunter, estes and mintz (2007:271) state: jigsaw lesson divides the class up into two different kinds of groups, expert groups and learning groups. the expert groups all read and study the same material-they become expert on the topic and prepare an outline and/or graphic that summarizes the critical information of their unit. as a group, they determine how this information will be shared with their peers. after the expert groups have completed their study, dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 they meet with their learning group composed of a member of each expert group. each expert teaches his or her topic to the members of the learning group. according to gunter, estes and mintz (2007:271-274), the steps of jigsaw technique are: (1) introduce the jigsaw, (2) assign heterogeneously grouped students to expert and learning groups, (3) explain the task ad assemble expert group, (4) allow expert group to process information, (5) experts teach in their learning group, (6) hold individuals accountable, (7) evaluate the jigsaw process. jigsaw technique and jigsaw ii technique are similar, but there is a difference between them. according to mccafferty, jacobs and dasilva iddings (2006:186), basically the steps in jigsaw and jigsaw ii technique are the same, but in jigsaw ii technique students receive not only the material relevant to their part of the topic, but also the whole material of the topic being discussed. thus, the learning teams in jigsaw ii technique are more independent rather than the ones in jigsaw technique. methods this study was a classroom action research with class 7b of smp n 12 magelang as the subject of this study. in order to collect data about students’ vocabulary mastery improvement and responses toward the use of this technique and media, the writer used observation sheet, questionnaire, interview, and test. in this study, there were two cycles in which each cycle consisted four phases. they were planning, action, observation, and reflection. before beginning the cycle one, the writer conducted a preliminary observation to the students and gave them a pre test to measure their early vocabulary mastery. at the end of each action phase, the writer gave formative test to students, while the post test was given after all the meetings were done. in planning phase, the writer prepared everything needed in her research. in action phase, the writer taught vocabulary to students. since the lesson was about procedure text, in this research the writer focused on teaching noun and action verb related to recipe and other type of procedure text. during her teaching, the writer used jigsaw ii technique and still pictures to teach vocabulary to students. she facilitated the students to learn actively in their learning groups and expert groups by using still pictures related to the material. in observation phase the writer was helped by three observers to observe the vocabulary learning process using jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. the observers were asked to fill the observation sheets about students’ responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. the responses being observed were: positive responses: a = the student acts actively during the learning process b = the student is able to work cooperatively in his or her group c = the student has bravery to convey his or her opinion to his or her group d = the student is able to explain the material he or she has mastered to his or her group e = the student is enthusiastic in interacting with his or her group negative responses: f = the student performs reluctance in his or her group g = the student is not able to work cooperatively with his or her group h = the student causes any chaos and disturbance i = the student does not pay attention to the lesson j = the student is careless to his or her group besides, the observers were also asked to observe the implementation of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures during the teaching and learning process, and the writer’s class management. in reflection phase, the writer analyzed all data collected. if in cycle one there was a weakness or problem in implementing the technique and media, the writer would make revision and improvement by conducting the dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 next cycle until the problem was solved and the improvement of students’ vocabulary mastery was reached. result this study was conducted to investigate the improvement of the students’ vocabulary mastery after learning using jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. below re the research findings. looking at the data found in cycle one, it could be concluded that the implementation of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures to teach vocabulary in the first and second meeting of cycle one run well. the strengths of the first cycle were the students were very enthusiastic and active in learning vocabulary using this technique and media. besides, there was a significant improvement on the students’ vocabulary achievement. however, there were some points that should be revised and improved by the writer. first, there were some students who performed negative responses f (the student performs reluctance in his or her group) and h (the student causes any chaos and disturbance) toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. the students might perform reluctance because he or she could not get along with his or her partners or did not understand the instruction given well. besides, the students might cause any chaos and disturbance because he or she was too enthusiastic in doing discussion, so he or she produced very loudly voiced. second, based on the discussion result conducted between the writer and the observers, the expert groups’ discussion time was too long. third, according to the first and second observer, the writer was not able to catch the students’ attention in the first meeting of cycle one. because there were found some weaknesses in the cycle one, the writer conducted cycle two to correct those weaknesses. the writer should give more attention and helps to the students who performed negative responses, limit the discussion time, and increase her classroom management strategy. after cycle two was conducted, it could be concluded that the implementation of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures to teach vocabulary in the first and second meeting of cycle two run better than in the cycle one. in this cycle the writer successfully solved the problems found in cycle one. first, the implementation of jigsaw ii technique was more effective because she gave time limitation in each activity during the teaching and learning process, so the learning time became more effective. second, by giving more attention and helps to the students who performed negative responses, the number of student who performed negative responses f (the student performs reluctance in his or her group) and h (the student causes any chaos and disturbance) decreased. third, by improving her teaching strategy, the writer could catch the students’ attention during the teaching and learning process. in addition, according to the observers, in this cycle the students’ and the writer’s performances during teaching and learning process improved. looking at the facts above, the writer concluded that this classroom action research successfully solved the problem of students’ vocabulary mastery, so the next cycle was not necessary to be conducted. the the improvement of students’ average score from pre test until post test can be seen on the graphic below: dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 graphic 1 the improvement of students’ average score the graphic above shows that the students’ score on vocabulary test improved. at first, the students’ average score of the pre test was 72.4. it was lower than the passing assessment (kkm) of smp negeri 12 magelang, that was 73. after learning vocabulary using jigsaw ii technique and still pictures in cycle one, the students’ vocabulary improved. it was proved by the significant improvement on their score in the quiz one. the students’ average score of quiz one increased at 11.85 point (from 72.4 to 84.25). the improvement also happened in the quiz two and in the post test. in the quiz two, the students’ average score increased became 88.25 and in the post test their average score increased at 92.3. based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that after the students were taught using jigsaw ii technique and still pictures, their score improved significantly. besides showing the improvement in students’ vocabulary achievement, the writer would like to show the improvement in students’ responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. the improvement can be seen in on the table and figure below: 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 pre test quiz one quiz two post test s tu d e n ts ' a v e ra g e s co re dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 graphic 2 students’ positive responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures graphic 3 students’ negative responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures based on the data above, the students’ responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures were good and improved. however, in the first meeting of cycle two, the students’ response toward aspect d (the student is able to explain the material he or she has mastered to his or her group) decreased from the second meeting of cycle one, but it increased again in the second meeting of cycle two. while the negative responses were relatively low. the students did not perform negative responses g (the student is not able to work cooperatively with his or her group), (the student does not pay attention to the lesson i), and j (the student is careless to his or her group). while the negative responses f (the student performs reluctance in his or her group) and h (the student causes any chaos and disturbance) decreased from meeting to meeting. discussion in this research, the writer implemented one of cooperative learning techniques, that was 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 a b c d e cycle one meeting 1 cycle one meeting 2 cycle two meeting 1 cycle two meeting 2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 f g h i j cycle one meeting 1 cycle one meeting 2 cycle two meeting 1 cycle two meeting 2 dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 jigsaw ii technique. there have been many previous researches and theories suggest that cooperative learning method has many advantages in teaching and learning process. a research conducted by kaptiningrum (2011) proved that cooperative learning method can improve students’ achievement. based on the result of her research, jigsaw technique could improve students’ show presenting skill. in addition, mccafferty, jacobs and dasilva iddings (2006:6) state that: cooperative learning has a strong foundation in research. many hundreds of studies across a wide range of subject areas and age group have been conducted. these studies suggest that when compared to other instructional approaches, cooperative learning activities are associated with gains in achievement, higher-level thinking, self-esteem, and interethnic relations. students in cooperative settings tend to like the subject matter and their school more. indeed, johnson (1997) claims that cooperative learning is one of the best-researched approaches in education, and that when the public ask educators what we know that works in education, cooperative learning is one of our surest answer. in fact, during her research, the writer also found that cooperative learning gives many benefits and can improve students’ achievement. based on her research, when students were taught using jigsaw ii technique, they could participate actively in the teaching and learning process and learned the given material independently and enthusiastically. besides, the result of questionnaire showed that most of the students were very happy and interested in learning using this technique, could improve their self esteem in speaking in front of their friends, and could build better solidarity with their classmates. moreover, the result of the students’ test score showed that their achievement in vocabulary improved significantly. on the other hand, besides having many advantages, cooperative learning also has some weaknesses. mccafferty, jacobs and dasilva iddings (2006:3) suggest that “however, despite the many advantages of group activities, problems also arise, problems that have led some teachers to give up on using group work. these problems include members not participating, groups not getting along, or learners unable to do the task.” different teachers might find different weaknesses and difficulties in implementing cooperative learning. thus, every teacher should have his or her own strategy to overcome the weaknesses or difficulties found. the writer herself also met some disadvantages of cooperative learning. in her research, the writer found that jigsaw ii technique was very time consuming and sometimes made the class became noisy. in order to overcome these weaknesses of this cooperative learning technique, the writer gave time limitation in every activity. besides, she improved her classroom management by increasing the discipline in the classroom. thus, the learning time became effective and the students became easier to be handled. besides using cooperative learning technique in teaching vocabulary, the writer also used still pictures as the media. there also have been many previous researches and theories suggest that pictures give many benefits in teaching and learning process. rohmah (2011) proved that pictures can enhance students’ achievement. the result of her study showed that the achievement of the students in learning vocabulary through internet picture dictionary improved. moreover, gerlach and donald (1980) in kalisa (2011:15) suggest that the advantages of using pictures are that they are inexpensive and widely available; they provide common experiences for an entire group; the visual detail make it possible to study subject, which would turn back to be impossible; they can help you to prevent and correct disconcertion; they offer a stimulus to further study, reading and research visual evidence is power tool; they help to focus attention and to develop critical judgment. during her teaching, the writer found that still pictures helped the students much in learning vocabulary. by having a discussion with their friends about the still dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 10 pictures given, the students could discover the meaning of new words easily and independently. besides, pictures could improve their motivation and enthusiasm in learning vocabulary. fortunately, during her research, the writer did not found any difficulties in teaching vocabulary using this media. in order to collect data during this research, the writer used four instruments. they were observation sheets, questionnaire, interview, and test. the main instrument of the research was observation sheets, and supported by the other three instruments. the result of observation sheets, questionnaire and interview showed that the students and the teacher gave positive responses toward the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures. besides, the students’ ability in speaking in front of their classmates, their class solidarity and their vocabulary mastery improved. the result of the test proved the improvement in students’ vocabulary achievement. the average of the pre test score before the students were taught using this technique and media was 72.4. it was lower the than the passing assessment (kkm) of smp negeri 12 magelang, that was 73. then, after learning using this technique and media, the students’ average score increased become 84.25 in quiz one, 88.25 in quiz two, and 92.3 in the post test. based on the analysis of the overall activity in the action research cycles and result of each instrument, it could be concluded that the implementation of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures in class 7b of smp n 12 magelang run well and it could improve students’ vocabulary mastery. besides, the students’ and english teacher’s responses and attitude toward the use of this technique and media were good. conclusion looking at the result of this study, and the discussion above, it could be concluded that the use of jigsaw ii technique and still pictures combination can improve students’ vocabulary mastery. however, considering that cooperative learning also has weaknesses such as members not participating, groups not getting along, learners unable to do the task, time consuming, etc, so the writer suggest that cooperative learning is better not to be used in all learning activities or to teach all school material. it is better for teacher to combine cooperative learning with other teaching and learning technique. besides, in implementing particular cooperative learning technique, teachers also should implement good classroom management to handle the effect of cooperative learning such as the class becomes noisy and so on. references ababneh, s. 2013. strategies used by jordanian university students’ in dealing with new vocabulary in english. journal of education and practice. vol.4, no.4, 2013. available at http://www.iiste.org/journals/index.p hp/jep/article/view/4509 [accessed 19/5/13]. bintz, w.p. 2011. teaching vocabulary across the curriculum. middle school journal. available at http://littoolkit.pbworks.com/f/middle %2520school%2520vocabulary%2520s trategies. pdf [accessed 19/5/2013] cameron, lyne. 2001. teaching language to young learners. cambridge : cambridge university press. coles, bobby. 2010. writing level star. available at: http://www.helium.com/items/ 1927657-vocabulary-learningvocabulary [accessed 05/02/13] gunter, m.a., estes, t.h., and mintz, s.l. 2007. instruction : a model approach. boston: pearson education, inc. harmer, j. 2001. the practice of english language teaching. england: pearson education limited. kalisa, p. 2011. the improvement of students’ ability in comprehending recount text through pictorial illustration. http://www.helium.com/items/%201927657-vocabulary-learning-vocabulary%20%5baccessed%2005/02/13 http://www.helium.com/items/%201927657-vocabulary-learning-vocabulary%20%5baccessed%2005/02/13 http://www.helium.com/items/%201927657-vocabulary-learning-vocabulary%20%5baccessed%2005/02/13 rohmah, nur. 2011. the use of internet picture dilla silviana anggi putri / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 11 final project english department fbs unnes. kaptiningrum, pindha. 2011. the effectiveness of jigsaw method to improve the students’ show presenting skil. final project english department fbs unnes. linse, caroline t. 2006. practical english language teaching : young learners. new york: mcgraw hill. mc.cafferty, s. g., jacobs, g. m., iddings, a. c. d. 2006. cooperative learning and second language teaching. cambridge : cambridge university press. mehta, k.m. 2009. vocabulary teaching:effective methodologies. the internet tesl journal, vol. xv, no. 3, 2009. available at http://iteslj.org/techniques/mehtavocabulary.html. [accessed 19/5/13]. murcia, m.c. 2001. teaching english as a second or foreign language. usa: heinle and heinle. richards, j.c. and renandya, w.a. 2002. methodology in language teaching :an anthology of current practice. new york: cambridge university press. dictionary as media in teaching vocabulary. final project english department fbs unnes. slavin, r.e. 1995. cooperative learning. boston: allyn and bacon. tschirner, erwin. 2004. breadth of vocabulary and advanced english study: an empirical investigation. electronic journal of foreign language teaching. vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 27-39. available at http://eflt.nus.edu.sg/v1n12004/tschirner.pdf [accessed 19/02/13]. werff, j. 2003. using pictures from magazines. the internet tesl journal, vol. ix, no.7. available at http://iteslj.org/techniques/werffpictures.html. [accessed 19/5/13] http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v1n12004/tschirner.pdf http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/v1n12004/tschirner.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 49 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension a case study of the english teachers in smkn 1 randudongkal in the academic year of 2016/2017 faiza maulida  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: think-pairshare, cooperative learning, reading comprehension ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was conducted to explore the english teachers’ attitude toward the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension. the aim was to describe the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension by english teachers, reveal the difficulties faced by english teachers in teaching reading comprehension using think-pair-share technique, and explain how the english teachers solve their problem in teaching reading comprehension using think-pair-share technique. in this study, i used qualitative method. the participants of this research were all of the english teachers in smk n 1 randudongkal in the academic year of 2016/2017. in this research, i used questionnaire, interview, classroom observation and document analysis as data collection methods. the result revealed that the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension was quiet different for each teacher such as including all language skills, using game as variation, or implementing think-pairshare with no variation. this study showed that there were two main problems faced by the english teachers: the lack of preparation and students’ limited vocabulary. in conclusion, think-pair-share was an interesting and helpful technique that helped english teachers in the teaching and learning process. besides, it helped students to be actively engaged in the classroom activity. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 50 introduction reading skill is considered as an essential skill as well as other three language skills. according to alyousef (2006), reading can be seen as an “interactive” process between a reader and a text which leads to automaticity or (reading fluency). in this process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he/she tries to elicit the meaning and where various kinds of knowledge are being used: linguistic or systemic knowledge as well as schematic knowledge. in conclusion, the reader communicates with the text and tries to elicit the meaning of information that they got from it. we are not only reading the text, but also trying to understand what we are reading. ability or skill of comprehending a message in the text is the goal of reading in a language instruction. reading comprehension is the process of reconstructing meaning from text. process of reconstructing meaning is the process of transform the information that is presented and illustrated how the readers can show they understand what they read (sormin, 2011). reading is essential because through reading activity, the students can improve knowledge, information, news, attitudes, and wise in thinking (listiani, 2014). although reading is a familiar activity for students, this skill is still not easy to be mastered. in 2015, programme for international student assessment (pisa) revealed that the reading skill level of indonesian students is 69 from 76 countries which has been surveyed. this result was lower than vietnam which has the level of 12 of all the surveyed countries (natalia, 2016). it indicates that indonesian students have very low average in reading comprehension. comprehending the texts is not easy for students especially in english since they have to give all of their attention to the text. there may be some distractions that they face along the reading process. discovering the correct methods is an essential to help teachers in teaching reading comprehension to their students in order to make them interest in learning english with the result that the goal of teaching reading can be achieved and it will give impact on the improvement of students‟ reading comprehension ability. in this study, i chose cooperative learning as an alternative in teaching reading comprehension. cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it (kagan, 1994). think-pair-share technique has many beneficial aspects for students. this kind of model could help students to improve their communicative skill by discussing with their classmates (sugiarto, 2014). this study is drawing from the theory of bojovic (2010) as a reference about reading skill. bojovic (2010) stated that “a reading skill is a cognitive ability a person is able to use when interacting with the written text”. some students still find it difficult to master reading comprehension as suparman (2012) explained that “the difficulties in comprehending the texts have been the main focused to find the solution” (as cited in palupi, 2013). shehu (2015) explained that “this difficulty in reading comprehension occurs for many reasons, the three most important ones are listed as follows: (1) vocabulary. new words are seen by students as a great obstacle to comprehend a text. it is necessary for students to properly comprehend the words or the vocabulary of a written passage in order to be able to decode the message, thus comprehend a written text; (2) working memory. the students often complain of the fact that they cannot recall the information they just read. they need to hold the information in working memory long enough for the information to be more extensively processed, and often some of them lack it; (3) type of text. the type of text is another factor that influences a lot reading comprehension. it is considered to be one f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 51 major barrier. some texts are easy to be perceived some others are very difficult.” to solve the problem, teachers need to provide appropriate method to help students. this study also used a theory from kagan and high (2002). “in classrooms in which the kagan structures are used regularly, students for whom english is a second language learn both english and academic content far more quickly and far more thoroughly than when traditional instructional strategies are used. with the kagan approach, rather than planning cooperative lessons, we make cooperative learning part of any lesson by including structures”. cooperative learning is a well known method as a successful teaching strategy. think-pair-share, one of the structures developed by frank lyman and his colleagues at the university of maryland, can be one of the solutions for reading comprehension problem. this structure will be beneficial for students since it is one way to incorporate cooperative learning into a classroom in order to give students the opportunity to actively process and develop a meaningful understanding of class material (sampsel, 2015). reading is a tool for human to be able to communicate with others in the way of written form. unfortunately, since many students still find it difficult to master reading comprehension, perhaps the implementation of cooperative learning method will help to solve the problem. the use of think-pair-share is expecting that the students will be motivated to improve their ability to read well in english. the success of this implementation will be reached if the teachers play their role as effective as it should be. various techniques are provided in cooperative learning to help teachers in teaching process. one of them is think-pair-share. this technique can be one of the solutions not only to solve students‟ difficulties in reading comprehension but also to help teachers by providing appropriate technique to teach reading comprehension. there are many previous studies that discussed thinkpair-share in helping students improving their skills. for instance, narzoles (2012) conducted his study on the academic performance of esl students and the results revealed that the experimental group exposed to the think-pair-share strategy had enhanced academic performance after the treatment with 15.59 mean over the 11.10 of the control group.and.bataineh (2015) found that students taught using cooperative learning strategies (co op-co op and think-pair-share) had mean gain scores significantly different from those students taught using traditional strategy in the delayed posttest which lead to the fact that using such strategies in teaching undergraduate students at university enhanced the memorization of the students. then, raba (2017) for his research focused on improving students‟ oral communication skills in efl classrooms and he also found that tps made teachers became more aware of the importance of tps strategy in improving students‟ oral skills. next, some researchers tried to find out the effectiveness of think-pair-share in improving students‟ ability in reading comprehension such as asl et al. (2010) and khaghaninejad (2015). they focused on the achievement of the students in reading comprehension. their study showed that the treatment meaningfully influenced learner‟s reading ability and helped them get higher scores. those examples above showed that think-pair-share used by many researchers in various of skills improvement. however, few studies have been done focusing only on the improvement of students‟ skills. it means, the research only focused on the result of the implementation of thinkpair-share technique whether or not the technique gave impact on students‟ ability such as in reading or speaking. many previous studies such as i have mentioned before only focused on the improvement of students‟ score to indicate the success of think-pair-share technique implementation in a certain skill. only a few revealed the process of cooperative learning implementation. therefore, i conducted a research that focused on the english teachers‟ attitude toward the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension. i emphasized on the process of the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension by the english teachers. the process of implementing think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 52 included how teachers implemented think-pair-share technique in the classroom, what difficulties that they might face and how they solved the problems. methodology of the research this research was a case study since the main purpose of this study is to describe the implementation of think-pair-share strategy for teaching reading comprehension by english teachers. according to bogdan and taylor, qualitative method is a research method that produces a descriptive data, for example written words or spoken words from the respondents and their attitudes (as cited in widiastuti, 2010). case study is essentially heuristic; it reflects in the events portrayed features which may be construed as a manifestation of some general, abstract theoretical principle (hammersley, 2000). the study was conducted in smkn 1 randudongkal. the participants of this study were all of the english teachers in smkn 1 randudongkal. there were three english teachers; mr. budi, mrs. ida, and mr. toni (all are pseudonyms). the english teachers were practitioners of cooperative learning since they usually use the method in their teaching and learning process. the data in this study were taken from the questionnaire, the interviews, the classroom observations, and document analysis. the procedures of collecting data were as follows: (1) i gave the questionnaire as soon as i met the english teachers and asked them to write down their answer in the blank space; (2) after the questionnaires were done, i conducted the classroom observation. i asked the english teachers to use think-pair-share in their class activity; (3) i did the interview after the classroom observation was done. the questions were the same as in the questionnaire (essay questions) but in addition to the prepared questions that i already had, i made other questions that i generated from classroom observations; (4) the document analysis was done throughout the study. the document that i analyzed was the lesson plan of the english teachers. then, the procedures of analyzing data in this study were in three steps: (1) data reduction, i collected all the data from questionnaire, interview, classroom observation, and document analysis. then, i selected and simplified the data until it transformed into important data that i used for presenting the result; (2) data display, the data display of this research was provided in the descriptive form. the findings were descriptively explained according to what had happened in the field. in this step, i organized all the data and described the answer of the problem statement, such as describing the implementation of think-pair-share in teaching reading comprehension in smk n 1 randudongkal and describing the problem faced by the english teachers and how they solved them; (3) conclusion drawing and verification, the conclusion was gained based on the data obtained. result and analysis the use of think-pair-share technique in teaching reading comprehension the data were gathered from the questionnaires, the interviews, the classroom observations, and document analysis. in this research, there were three english teachers as research participants: mr. budi, mrs. ida, and mr. toni (all are pseudonyms). all of the english teachers implemented k13 in their teaching and learning process. k-13 or the curriculum 2013 is a recent policy of the ministry of education in its efforts to continuously improve the quality of education in indonesia. every class in smkn 1 randudongkal used this curriculum according to the policy of the school. in this research, i observed all of the three english teachers. since they had more than one classes, i decided to observe two classes for each teacher so i observed six classes in total. the classes were chosen randomly based on the schedule and the agreement of the english teachers and the f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 53 researcher. since this research was a qualitative case study, the findings were presented in the form of descriptive explanation. based on the data, i present the findings as follows: the implementation of think-pair-share technique in teaching reading comprehension i observed two classes of xii tkr (teknik kendaraan ringan) they were xii tkr 2 and xii tkr 3. all of the students of xii tkr 2 are male while xii tkr 3 there are only three female students. from the document analysis, mr. budi did not make lesson plan for this meeting because both classes would only discuss the questions from examination sheet since they were preparing for their examination school. the lesson plan i got from mr. budi was the one which he used in the previous meeting when he taught the material for semester one such as factual report, offering services, giving news, and etc. instead of english, the lesson plan still used indonesian language. cooperative learning method was not stated in the lesson plan. mr. budi used some tools for supporting his teaching and learning process such as laptop, lcd, and speaker. he implemented the technique in both classes with the right steps during the teaching and learning process. mr. budi and the students were discussing the reading section. first, students read the text by their own. next, they were asked to answer the questions with their friends next to them. and then, they came in front of the class in pair to explain their answer. in the beginning of the lesson, mr. budi did not explain the procedure of think-pair-share. he only told the definition to the students briefly. when he used think-pair-share technique in his classes, the students were active and enthusiastic. the students were not afraid to ask question if there was something that they did not understand. many students have to be chosen by the teacher in order to answer the question, yet there were some students who were brave enough rising their hand and coming forward to give their ideas about their answer. all language skills were included in mr. budi‟s class activities. for instance, writing skill when the students wrote some difficult words in the whiteboard and then speaking skill when the students came in front of class to present their answer with the reason. during the lesson, the teacher often used indonesian even javanese instead of english. he thought that the comprehension of the students were the first thing to be concerned in order to understand the material. mr. budi also gave variation in his teaching and learning process like involving the listening activity. for example, if there was a word which the students did not know the meaning, he would open the cambridge dictionary in his laptop and together with the students looked for the word. in terms of giving compliment, mr. budi always did so to those who could answer the question correctly but he did not blame those who could not. during the interview, mr. budi explained that there were some differences among classes he taught such as character and gender of the students. he explained that female students were more sensitive than male students so that he had to be careful of what he said. for instance, mr. budi sometimes used sarcasm as a joke to his male students, but he would not do so in a class full of female students. he was afraid if he would hurt their feelings (female students) and it would affect their interest in learning in his class. based on all of the data i obtained and analyzed, it was found that mr. budi implemented think-pair-share technique in the same way in all classes that i have observed. he used the technique step by step appropriately. there was not so much variation, yet mr. budi was concerned more about including all language skills in the teaching and learning process such as reading, writing, listening and speaking skill as i have explained above. the use of aids for instance lcd and speaker also implemented during class activities. the implementation of think-pair-share technique in teaching reading comprehension exactly as its procedure with no variation f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 54 two classes that i observed in mrs. ida‟s classes were x tphp (teknologi pengolahan hasil pertanian) and x ak 2 (akuntansi). these classes were the opposite of mr. budi‟s classes. both classes were dominated by female students. mrs. ida did not make a lesson plan for her teaching and learning process. instead, she used the lesson plan from the last year academic. in the lesson plan, cooperative learning method was not stated. the methods used were scientific learning, discussion and assignments. there was no specific technique that she would use in her classes. the same as mr. budi, mrs. ida used indonesian for her lesson plan. during the observation, she did not use aids such as power point, video, lcd, laptop, etc while in the lesson plan it was written that she would use aids. mrs. ida did not explain the procedure of think-pair-share to the students. in mrs. ida‟s class activities, there were included reading-speaking skill and reading-writing skill. there was no significant listening skill. there were no any variations in the used of think-pair-share technique by mrs. ida. she implemented the technique as appropriate as its procedure. in the teaching and learning process, the teacher rarely gave compliment to the students. the students were less active and seldom spoke their mind. the teacher often should choose and enforce the students to answer the questions. mrs. ida also infrequently motivated the students to be brave to give their opinion. related to all of the data i had got, i found that the implementation of think-pair-share technique in mrs. ida‟s classes aligned with its procedure. in the questionnaire, mrs. ida also wrote that she always followed the steps orderly. each class received the same instructions. there was no variation when mrs. ida implemented the technique. students stick to the text and then answered the questions which given by the teacher. mrs. ida also did not use any aids such as lcd, laptop or speaker to help her in the teaching and learning activities. she only relied on the handout (lks) that she brought. the implementation of think-pair-share technique in teaching reading comprehension combined with game the last observation that i did was in mr. toni‟s classes. two classes which i observed were xi ak 2 and xi ak 3. for both classes, mr. toni did not make a lesson plan to help him in the teaching process. the first class that i observed was xi ak 3. this class was dominated by female students. the procedure of think-pare-share was not mentioned by mr. toni. he asked the students to read the text entitled “cow” and then answer the questions with their seatmate. the students presented their answer in the written form. the second class was xi ak 2 and it was also dominated by female students. the material discussed was also report text but the teacher used variation in the teaching and learning process. for this class, mr. toni used a game which it is developed by himself. during the teaching and learning process, the students seemed active and enthusiastic to ask the group which came in front of class. yet, the game took a lot of time because all students must find the paper; as a result, not all of the group could come forward in front of class to share their ideas. from all of the data that i had got, i found that mr. toni implemented think-pair-share technique differently in each class. mr. toni used a game as a variation in the teaching reading using think-pair-share technique only in one class while the other class used the technique in the usual steps. also, in the end of the game, the students presented their topic in group not in pairs which was contradictive with the procedure of think-pair-share technique. the reason was to make it fast and encouraging students so that they brave enough to come forward in front of class and answered their friend‟s questions directly. in addition, mr. toni used aids in his teaching and learning process such as his laptop to input which group that already had come forward. problems faced by english teachers and how they solved them f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 55 from the implementation of think-pair-share in reading comprehension, english teachers found some problems. it was based on the questionnaire, the interviews and the classroom observations two main problems were identified. lack of teacher’s preparation two of the english teachers agreed that think-pair-share technique was easy to be implemented. yet, one of them said that this technique rather difficult to be used because the teacher was lack of preparation. this problem seemed unpretentious yet it could obstruct the process of teaching and learning in class. this was the first main problem that i taught it could give impact in the teaching and learning activities. it was found by mrs. ida when she taught x tphp class. when i did the interview, mrs. ida admitted that she was lack of preparation because she was too busy. at that time, mrs. ida should have provided some questions for students to be answered. since mrs. ida had not make it yet, she had to make several questions right away in the class and it took time. it would be better if mrs. ida had already prepared the questions before the class began so that she would not be confused to think what question should be mentioned. based on that problem, the solution for the lack of teacher‟s preparation was made a good preparation. teachers had to make sure that it was well-prepared for the teaching and learning process. english teachers could start to make a good preparation by making a good lesson plan. moreover, as far as i know, teachers were obligated to make lesson plans to help them in teaching students. lesson planning is an important process in teacher trainees‟ gaining experience since it forces them to reflect on what to teach, how to teach, and how to evaluate (quoted from nesari & mina, 2014). in the case of mrs. ida, for the next class she used the questions that she made in the previous class so that she did not have to think again what questions should be mentioned. students’ limited vocabulary the main problem that mr. budi, mrs. ida, and mr. toni mentioned was the lack of students‟ vocabulary. not only from the interviews but also from the classroom observations that i did in six classes, it was true that many students had problem with their vocabulary. for instance, in one short passage which contained five to six lines students could find more than ten difficult words. to help students gained more vocabulary, there were some efforts from the english teachers to solve this problem. mr. budi used an electric dictionary in his laptop to help students understood the difficult words that they found in any text. mr. budi would ask the students to write all the difficult words in the whiteboard so that all of students could see the word list and even could take a note in their book. then, with the help of mr. budi, students looked for the meaning of the words together using an electric dictionary. the students would read the meaning of the difficult word in english sentence and they try to interpret it by them self with the directive of the teacher. since it was explained in english, they would also know more words or phrases. mrs. ida also used dictionary to solve the problem of students‟ vocabulary. through the interview mrs. ida explained that she would ask the students to open their dictionary to help them in understanding the meaning of the difficult words. students relied on their own dictionary to look for the meaning of the difficult word. mrs. ida would explain what the text was about after the students have done understanding the text by them self and then correct them if there any mistakes in interpreting the meaning. mr. toni had another way to help the students to improve their vocabulary mastery. he said that he would ask the students to memorize some vocabulary and then test them. however, this kind of method was infrequently used by mr. toni, so that the result was insignificant. another problem that faced by mr. toni was pronunciation of the students. he said that many students still did not f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 56 speak english correctly. to overcome that problem, mr. toni asked the students to often speak in english. if they were miss pronouncing, mr. toni would correct them. discussion this study revealed that vocabulary was one of the reasons of difficulties in reading comprehension. specifically, the findings of this research showed that from six classes i have observed, there were many students that still have problem in understanding new words they found in text. it was also revealed by shehu (2015) that the reasons of difficulties in reading comprehension was vocabulary, working memory, and type of text. based on the research, we could see that the use of think-pair-share technique could help english teachers in teaching reading comprehension. they stated that this technique was easy enough to be implemented on students. english teachers made think-pair-share as a part of lesson activity in their class. this is related to the theory i used from kagan and high (2002) about including structures to make cooperative learning as part of any lesson in english classes in order to improve students‟ achievement. still, the success of teaching and learning process depends on how english teachers deliver the material to the students. it is related to the way english teachers communicate with their students. a good relationship between teachers and students is needed as it would be a key of successful learning. astuti and lammers (2017) also explained that teachers become one of the factors that influences the teaching and learning process especially in the implementation of cooperative learning. teachers‟ understanding of cooperative learning, which is part of the rules component, may create systemic tensions in an activity system. therefore, an effective implementation of cooperative learning (i.e., one that enhances learning) through the enactment of individual accountability requires support from its social environment, especially from the teachers and their understanding of cooperative learning (astuti & lammers, 2017). the quality of the relationship that the students and teachers have with each other would influence some factors such as academic achievement and student motivation. positive relationship improves student behavior and motivation to learn as well as their academic achievement (yunus et al, 2011). however, enthusiasm and motivation of the students were somehow changeable. it could be seen from the classroom observations such as found in mr. budi‟s classes when students started to get bored. english teachers have to be clever enough in order to keep students involve in the lesson activity and reduce the gap between the high-motivated students and low-motivated students in the teaching and learning process. this problem was also proved by widyaningsih (2014) in her study that the english teacher should also be creative in using interesting activities in order to attract the students‟ involvement in the teaching and learning process. during the classroom observations, with the use of think-pair-share technique, students‟ confident leveled up to some degree. for instance, students would rather come forward with their partner than stand alone in front of the class to speak their mind. in every class i have observed, the students hesitated to come forward voluntarily if they were alone. yet, with partner, students would be brave enough to show their ideas to others. related to the previous studies that i have reviewed before, palupi (2013) also revealed that think-pair-share technique made the students feel more confident in telling their ideas with their friends. from the interview that i had done, it showed that think-pair-share helped students to be active and creative. in this case, especially when students were given some questions, they would actively participate in the class activity. with their partner, students would seek the answers of the questions. then, they would deliver their answer with their creativity to arrange sentences by their own interpretation. the same finding was mentioned by raba (2017) and darsana (2010) from their study where they found that think-pair-share could make active and creative participation since think-pair-share gave students opportunities to show their creativity. f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 57 since the students actively involved in the learning process, the class become alive and fun. students freely spoke their mind whether they wanted to ask something or answer the question or maybe gave their opinion about the topic being discussed. those kind of situation was also found by andik (2013), he explained that during the process of teaching learning using think-pair-share, the students were active and enthusiastic. the class was enjoyable and interesting during the teaching and learning process. from the explanation above, it could be stated that students prefer to work in groups rather than individually. students like to share and discuss their idea with their partner. as the previous study done by lange et al. (2016) explained that the participants of their research were more satisfied with think-pair-share technique as they prefer group work that promotes equal participants. this „share and discuss‟ activity could give many benefits for students in enhancing their ability. this task sharing allows students to be responsible for presenting what they learned (production of the target language) and paying attention to their peers‟ presentations. during peer interaction, which usually took place between two performances of individual accountability, learners provided vocabulary feedback to each other, which also means production of the target language (astuti & lammers, 2017). the alternation of information between students during peer interaction is essential for learners‟ language acquisition and development. conclusions from this study, i can conclude that the use of think-pair-share in reading comprehension was relatively easy to be implemented in the classroom activity. it showed that this technique was appropriate to teach students in reading comprehension. think-pair-share was an interesting and helpful techniques as all the english teachers mentioned in the questionnaire and also in the interview. through this research some problems were revealed. the first problem was the lack of teacher‟s preparation. this problem was mentioned by mrs. ida through the interview. secondly, one problem which all of the three english teachers mentioned in the interview was students‟ vocabulary mastery. from the classroom observations, it revealed that all of students did not have good mastery of english vocabulary. the first problem was the lack of teacher‟s preparation. this problem was mentioned by mrs. ida. for this difficulty, mrs. ida tried to solve it by paying attention more about preparing the materials before she started the next class. then, for students‟ vocabulary mastery problem, even though all of the three english teachers used dictionary to solve it, they had different version in their implementation. mr. budi used an electric dictionary in his laptop, mrs. ida let her students used their own dictionary, and mr. toni sometimes asked his students to memorize the vocabulary. references alyousef, h. s. (2006). teaching reading comprehension to esl/efl learners. journal of language and learning, 5(1), 63-73. andik. (2013). improving reading comprehension by using think, pair, and share technique. universitas islam malang, malang. asl, z.g., davarlbina, m., & abdi, r. (2015). the effect of cooperative learning on improving reading comprehension of efl learners. the iranian efl journal. 11(2), 30-40. astuti, p. & lammers, j.c. (2017). individual accountability in cooperative learning: more opportunities to produce spoken english. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 7(1), 215-228. f. maulida / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 58 bataineh, m.z. (2015). think-pair-share, co op-co op and traditional learning strategies on undergraduate academic performance. journal of educational and social research, 5 (1), 217-226. bojovic, m. p. (2010). reading skills and reading comprehension in english for specific purposes. serbia: university of kragujevac. darsana, g. n. (2014). improving reading comprehension through think pair share technique of the tenth grade students' of smk pgri 4 denpasar in academic year 2013/2014. unpublished master‟s thesis, mahasaraswati denpasar university, denpasar, bali. hammersley, m. (2000). case study method: key issues, key texts. london: sage. kagan, s. (1994). cooperative learning. retrieved january 24, 2017, from http://www.kaganonline.com/ kagan, s. & julie high. (2002). kagan structures for english language learners. esl magazine. khaghaninejad, et al.. (2015). examining the effects of strategy-based instruction of reading passages to iranian undergraduate efl learners. international journal of english language an literature studies, 4, 96-110. lange, et al.. (2016). informal cooperative learning in small groups of scaffolding on participation. issues in educational research, 26. listiani, n. k. (2014). improving reading comprehension through think pair share at the eight grade students of smpn 2 abiansemal in academic 2013/2014. unpublished master‟s thesis, mahasaraswati dennpasar university, denpasar, bali. narzoles, d. t. g. (2012). think-pair-share: its effect on the academic performance of esl students. international journal of literature, linguistic & interdisciplinary studies, 1(3&4), 22-26). natalia, m. d. (2016, march 22). retrieved january 24, 2017, from harianjogja.com: http://www.harianjogja.com palupi, a. a., suparman, u., & suka, r.g. (2013). teaching reading comprehension through thinkpair-share (tps) technique. lampung university, bandar lampung. raba, a.a.a. (2017). the influence of think-pair-share (tps) on improving students‟ oral communication skills in efl classrooms. creative education, 8, 12-23. sampsel, a. (2013). finding the effects of think-pair-share on student confidence and participation. honors projects. paper 28. shehu, i. (2015). reading comprehension problems encountered by foreign language students, case study: albania, croatia. rome: mcser publishing. sormin, f. f. (2011). improving students' achievement in reading comprehension through thin pair share technique. medan. sugiarto, d. (2014). the implementation of think-pair-share model to improve students' ability in reading narrrative texts. international journal of english and education, 209. widiastuti, d. (2010). teachers’ difficulties in teaching their subjects in an immersion class. skripsi unpublished. semarang state university, semarang. widyaningsih, n. (2014). improving the eight grade students' reading skill through the think-pairshare technique at smp n 3 wonosari gunungkidul. unpublished master‟s thesis. state university of yogyakarta, yogyakarta. yunus, m.md, osman w.s.w, & ishak, n.m. 2011. teacher-student relationship factor affecting motivation and acadmeic achievement in esl classroom. procedia social and behavioral science, 15, 2637-2641. september 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt translation techniques of the complex sentences in bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira ikma qurrota a’yun  department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima 2013 disetujui oktober 2013 dipublikasikan november 2013 ________________ keywords: translation techniques, bilingual textbook, biology ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project was a study which analyzed the use of translation techniques in the bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira. the study was done qualitatively. the data were collected by selecting the complex sentences found in chapter five and six. after that, i analyzed and classified the translation techniques used based on molina and albir’s classification (2002). next, the data were counted in order to find the dominant translation techniques. at last, based on the experts, the rendering of meaning from each complex sentence were counted. the result of the study showed that there were 113 complex sentences found in chapter five and six. there were only nine translation techniques, they were literal translation, borrowing, adaptation, reduction, particularization, amplification, generalization, transposition, and description. the rendering of meaning of the 113 sentences was mostly good. 90 sentences (79.64 %) were categorized as good by both experts. from the result, it can be concluded that literal translation dominated the translation techniques used by the translator. although only 90 sentences (79.64 %) were categorized as good by both experts, the whole sentences can be understood easily because there were no deviated meaning. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: yuna_rief@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:yuna_rief@yahoo.com ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction in this era, the role of international language becomes very important, especially english. people’s need of english ability is growing bigger since english is used to access knowledge and information which are more easily accessible now through the internet. indonesia, which in fact is a developing country, in this case, does not want to miss any chance to go forward and actively participate in this era. therefore, the government has done several things to improve our educational quality. one of them is by establishing the bilingual program for a number of educational institutions in indonesia. due to facilitate the bilingual program, the learning resources which can support bilingual instruction programs must be provided. establishing textbooks which use two languages in delivering the materials is necessary. thus, the bilingual textbooks have been made. the books are designed in two languages, indonesian-english. those books are supposed to make the students easier to understand the materials and master the english at the same time. those books are biology, geography, history, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. it is interesting to discover whether the book which is written in two language versions is translated properly or not. in this study i focus on analyzing a book entitled biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhishtira. i limit my focus on the use of translation techniques used in the book. to assess the translation technique, i use the translation techniques classification introduced by molina and albir. bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira used english and indonesian language to deliver the materials. explanation in the book present description of a certain object which is contains many words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. moreover, biology deals with many specialized terminologies which relatively much more difficult to be translated because the target language sometimes does not have the equivalence of those terminologies. the appearance of the complex sentences also make biology text more complicated to be translated. thus, the editor of this bilingual textbook should use certain techniques in their translating process. bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira was chosen because it is relevant and has been used in some senior high schools in magelang. this research is concerned with the translation techniques which are used in bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira. the analysis of translation techniques is based on molina and albir’s classification. not all of the materials or components in the book become the object of analysis. this study is aimed:to discuss the translation techniques used in bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira in delivering the materials and to analyze how the complex sentences render the meaning. the analysis in this research only focuses on the complex sentences found in core materials in the book, especially in chapter five and six. while definition of a complex sentence is sentence that contains an independent clause and at least one dependent clause (http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/complexse ntence.htm). therefore, other components of the material such as introduction picture and its note, learning objectives, concept map, keywords, info, task, investigation, summary, and competence test are not analyzed . translation there are many definitions of translation that are proposed by linguists, ranging from the simplest and growing in complexity by widening their focus. larson (1984: 3) states that “translation is basically a change of form”. in translation, the form of the source language is replaced by the form of the target language. larson (1984:3) also defines “translation consists of transferring meaning of the source language into the target language. this is done http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/complexsentence.htm http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/complexsentence.htm ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 by going from the form of the first language to the form of second language by way of semantic structure. it is meaning which is being transferred and must be held constant.” newmark (1988:5) explains “it is rendering the meaning of a text into other language in the way that author intended the text”. the temptation is to transfer as many sl (source language) words to the tl (target language) as possible. hartono (2009:6), otherwise, defines “translation is reading the author’s will and purpose in the form of message which contains both denotative and connotative meanings that exists in the source text that must be reproduced by translators into the target’s language. this process runs in a simultaneous cycle. the basic purpose of translation is to reproduce various types of texts, comprising literary, religious, scientific, philosophical texts etc. in another language. thus, it makes them available to wider readers to a greater number of target audiences and to bring the world closer. from those definitions of translation, it can be concluded that translation is an activity of finding out the equivalent words of sl in tl so that the tl text contains the closest natural and accurate message to the sl text. from the definitions of translation above, it is obvious that every translator should be able to convey the message of source text accurately in the target text. translation method translation method refers to the way a particular translation process is carried out in terms of the translator’s objective, i.e., a global option that affects the whole text (molina and albir, 2002: 507). each solution the translator chooses when translating a text responds to the global option that affects the whole text (the translation method) and depends on the aim of the translation. thus, translation method influences the translation product. it means that the translation product depends on the translation method chosen by the translator because his purposes and/or desires will have an effect on the whole translation product. translation techniques the difference between translation method and translation technique is that translation method affects the whole text; meanwhile translation technique affects microunits of the text. molina and albir (2002: 509) define translation techniques as procedures to analyze and classify how translation equivalence works. they have five basic characteristics: 1) they affect the result of the translation 2) they are classified by comparison with the original 3) they affect micro-units of text 4) they are by nature discursive and contextual 5) they are functional obviously, translation techniques are not the only categories available to analyze a translated text. coherence, cohesion, thematic progression and contextual dimensions also intervene in the analysis. according to them, there are eighteen translation techniques as follows: 1. adaptation. to replace a st cultural element with one from the target culture, e.g., to change baseball, for fútbol in a translation into spanish. 2. amplification. to introduce details that are not formulated in the st: information, explicative paraphrasing, e.g., when translating from arabic (to spanish) to add the muslim month of fasting to the noun ramadan. footnotes are a type of amplification. amplification is in opposition to reduction. 3. borrowing. to take a word or expression straight from another language. it can be pure(without any change), e.g., to use the english word lobby in a spanish text, or it can be naturalized (to fit the spelling rules in the tl), e.g., gol, fútbol, líder, mitin. 4. calque. literal translation of a foreign word or phrase; it can be lexical or structural, e.g., the english translation normal school for the french écolenormale. 5. compensation. to introduce a st element of information or stylistic effect in another ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 place in the tt because it cannot be reflected in the same place as in the st. 6. description. to replace a term or expression with a description of its form or/and function, e.g., to translate the italian panettone as traditional italian cake eaten on new year’s eve. 7. discursive creation. to establish a temporary equivalence that is totally unpredictable out of context, e.g., the spanish translation of the film rumble fish as la ley de la calle. 8. established equivalent. to use a term or expression recognized (by dictionaries or language in use) as an equivalent in the tl, e.g., to translate the english expression they are as like as two peas as se parecencomo dos gotas de aguain spanish. 9. generalization. to use a more general or neutral term, e.g., to translate the french guichet, fenêtreor devanture, as window in english. it is in opposition to particularization. 10. linguistic amplification. to add linguistic elements. this is often used in consecutive interpreting and dubbing, e.g., to translate the english expression no way into spanish as de ninguna de lasmaneras instead of using an expression with the same number of words, en absoluto. it is in opposition to linguistic compression. 11. linguistic compression. to synthesize linguistic elements in the tt. this is often used in simultaneous interpreting and in sub-titling, e.g., to translate the english question yes, so what? with ¿y?, in spanish, instead of using a phrase with the same number of words, ¿sí, y qué?. it is in opposition to linguistic amplification. 12. literal translation. to translate a word or an expression word for word, e.g., they are as like as two peas as se parecencomo dos guisante, or, she is reading as ella estáleyendo. 13. modulation. to change the point of view, focus or cognitive category in relation to the st; it can be lexical or structural, e.g., to translate as you are going to have a child, instead of, you are going to be a father. 14. particularization. to use a more precise or concrete term, e.g., to translate window in english as guichet in french. it is in opposition to generalization. 15. reduction. to suppress a st information item in the tt, e.g., the month of fasting in opposition to ramadan when translating into arabic. it is in opposition to amplification. 16. substitution (linguistic, paralinguistic). to change linguistic elements for paralinguistic elements (intonation, gestures) or vice versa, e.g., to translate the arab gesture of putting your hand on your heart as thank you. it is used above all in interpreting. 17. transposition. to change a grammatical category, e.g., he will soon be back translated into spanish as no tardará en venir, changing the adverb soon for the verb tardar, instead of keeping the adverb and writing: estará de vuelta pronto. 18. variation. to change linguistic or paralinguistic elements (intonation, gestures) that affect aspects of linguistic variation: changes of textual tone, style, social dialect, geographical dialect, etc., e.g., to introduce or change dialectal indicators for characters when translating for the theater, changes in tone when adapting novels for children, etc. the analysis on this study was focused on the complex sentences found in the core materials. there were 113 complex sentences found in this study. they became the object of the study and had been analyzed qualitatively based on molina and albir classification (2002). the theory suggested by molina and albir (2002) comprises the eighten translation techniques which are usually used by the translator/s. those are adaptation, amplification, borrowing, calque, compensation, description, discursive creation, established equivalent, generalization, linguistic amplification, linguistic compression, literal translation, modulation, particularization, reduction, substitution (linguistic, paralinguistic), transposition, and variation. the study found that the translators of the book used ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 some of those translation techniques in delivering the materials. from those translation techniques, there were nine translation techniques found in the analysis. the findings were summed up in the following table. the table was formulated to make the readers easier to get information about the results of the study. table 4.1 data tabulation no translation techniques frequency percentage 1. literal translation 109 42.25 % 2. borrowing 94 36.43 % 3. adaptation 22 8.53 % 4. reduction 10 3.87 % 5. particularization 9 3.49 % 6. amplification 8 3.10 % 7. generalization 3 1.16 % 8. transposition 2 0.78 % 9. description 1 0.39 % total 258 100.00 % there were 113 sentences analyzed and based on the table 4.1, there were nine translation techniques were found with the total frequency is 258 times because most of the sentences used not only one translation technique, but the combination between two until four techniques. from those data tabulation table, the most occurrence was literal translation with the frequency 109 times (42.25 %). another translation techniques occurred; those were borrowing as the second with the frequency 94 times (36.43 %), the third was adaptation with the frequency 22 times (8.53 %), the fourth was reduction with the frequency 10 times (3.87 %), the fifth was particularization with the frequency 9 times (3.49 %), the sixth was amplification with the frequency 8 times (3.10 %), the seventh was generalization with the frequency 3 times (1.16 %), the next was transposition with the frequency 2 times (0.78 %), and the smallest number was description with the frequency 1 times (0.39 %). literal translation literal translation were the most used translation technique in bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira. the frequency of this technique was 109 times (42.25 %). literal translation is a technique where translate a word or an expression word for word based on the function and meaning in the sentence. it does not mean translating one word for another. some examples of this translation technique are presented as follows: (1) no. 34 page 164 st: di daerah beriklim sedang, batang biasanya berada di dalam tanah sehingga yang tampak dominan adalah daunnya yang tipis dan lebar. tt: in the temperate zone, stem is usually underground, so that its dominant appearance is a thin and large leaf. (2) no. 40 page 168 st: bentuk daunnya bermacammacam, biasanya kaku dan selalu berwarna hijau sepanjang tahun. tt: the shape of its leaf is various, usually stiff and evergreen throughout the year. borrowing from the data analyzed, borrowing occurred for 94 times (36.43 %). borrowing is a technique where take a word or expression straight from another language. it can be pure (without any change), or it can be naturalized (to fit the spelling rules in the tl). usually, this ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 technique used when translating word or phrase. here the examples of this technique: (3) no. 1 page 154 st: tumbuhan (kingdom plantae) merupakan eukariota multiseluler yang memiliki kemampuan untuk membuat makanan sendiri (autotrof). bt: the kingdom plantae is a multicelluler eukaryote which has the ability to produce their own food (autotrophic). tt: the kingdom plantae is a multicelluler eukaryote which are able to produce their own food (autotrophic). beside used borrowing technique on the words which were typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used another two translation techniques, they were reduction and transposition. (4) no. 2 page 154 st: tumbuhan memiliki kloroplas yang mengandung pigmen klorofil. bt: plant has chloroplast which contains chlorophyll pigment. tt: plant has chloroplast, which contains chlorophyll pigment. the translator/s also used literal translation beside borrowing technique on the words which were typed in bold font in those sentence,. adaptation among 113 data (sentences), this kind of technique occurred for 22 times (8.53 %). this technique replace a st cultural element with one from the target culture. here are some examples for this technique: (5) no. 19 page 160 st: tumbuhan paku juga disebut tumbuhan berkomus, yaitu tumbuhan yang memiliki akar, batang, dan daun sebenarnya. bt: ferns are also called as cormophyta, the plant which have true root, stem, and leaf. tt: ferns are also called as cormophyta, the plant which have true root, stem, and leaf. beside used adaptation technique on the words which were typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used particularization, and literal translation. (6) no. 20 page 160 st: berbeda dengan tumbuhan lumut, tumbuhan paku dikenali melalui generasi sporofit. bt: different from moss, fern is recognized through the sporophyte generation. tt: different from moss, fern is recognized as sporophyte generation. the translator/s also used borrowing and literal translation beside used adaptation technique on the words which were typed in bold font. reduction reduction is a technique which suppress a st information item in tt. in a simple way, this technique omit the unimportant words. this technique occurred for 10 times (3.87 %). the examples of this technique are elaborated as follows: (7) no. 1 page 154 st: tumbuhan (kingdom plantae) merupakan eukariota multiseluler yang memiliki kemampuan untuk membuat makanan sendiri (autotrof). bt: plant (the kingdom plantae) is a multicelluler eukaryote which has the ability to produce their own food (autotrophic). tt: the kingdom plantae is a multicelluler eukaryote which are able to produce their own food (autotrophic). instead of translated into the word plant, the word tumbuhan was omitted; thus, the translation technique used in those sentence was reduction. beside used reduction technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used another two translation techniques, they were borrowing and transposition. (8) no. 6 page 156 st: reproduksi secara seksual dapat terjadi melalui peleburan gamet jantan dan betina, ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 sedangkan aseksualnya antara lain melalui fragmentasi dan pembentukan gema (kuncup tunas). bt: sexual reproduction occurs by fertilization of male and female gametes, whereas asexual reproduction occurs by fragmentation and gemmae (sprout bud) formation. tt: sexual reproduction occurs by fertilization of male and female gametes, whereas asexual reproduction occurs by fragmentation and gemmae formation. the phrase kuncup tunas was omitted; this was the evidence that reduction was applied in those sentence. the translator/s also used borrowing and literal translation. particularization this translation technique was found in the data analysis with the frequency 9 of 258 times (3.49 %). this technique try to use a more precise or concrete term. there were some examples of sentences using this kind of technique. those examples are provided as follow: (9) no. 7 page 156 st: pada beberapa spesies lainnya, anteridium dan arkegonium ditemukan pada tumbuhan yang terpisah, disebut lumut berumah dua atau heterotalus. bt: in some other species, the antheridium and archegonium are found at different plants, they are called dioecious or heterothallus. tt: in some other species, the antheridium and archegonium are found at different plants, they are called dioecious or heterothallus. the phrase berumah dua was translated into the word dioecious; so this sentenced used particularization since dioecious was the precise term for berumah dua. beside used particularization technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing technique. (10) no. 15 page 158 st: jika spora jatuh di tempat yang sesuai, maka akan tumbuh menjadi protonema. bt: if the spore falls into an appropriate place, it will grow into a protonema. tt: if the spore falls into an appropriate place, it will germinate into a protonema. the word tumbuh was translated into the germinate; thus this sentenced used particularization since germinate was more precise term for tumbuh. in those sentence, the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing technique. amplification occurred for 8 times (3.10 %), amplification is a technique which introduces details that are not formulated in st: information, explicative paraphrasing. this is the opposite of reduction technique. the examples can be seen clearly as follows: (11) no. 16 page 158 st: jika anteridium telah matang, maka sel sperma akan berenang menuju ke arkegonium sehingga terjadi fertilisasi, menyebabkan pembentukan zigot. bt: if antheridium has matured, sperm cell will swim to the archegonium so that fertilization occurs, leading to the production of zygote. tt: if antheridium has matured, in the presence of water or dew, sperm cell will swim to the archegonium so that fertilization occurs, leading to the production of zygote. there is an additional information in the target text about the condition that is in the presence of water or dew; it indicate that this sentence used amplification technique. beside used amplification technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing technique. (12) no. 24 page 162 st: jika sporangium sudah matang, maka annulus akan mengering dan mengerut sehingga menyebabkan sporangium pecah. ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 bt: if sporangium has already matured, annulus will dry and shrink, so that causes sporangium to brake. tt: if sporangium has already matured, annulus or a row of specific cells at the side of sporangium will dry and shrink, so that causes sporangium to brake. there is an additional information in the target text about annulus, that is a row of specific cells at the side of sporangium; this was the evidence that this sentence applied amplification technique. the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing technique beside used amplification technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence. generalization from 113 sentences, this technique only occurred for 3 times (1,15%). this technique uses a more general or neutral term. it is the opposite of particularization. the following sentences are the examples of this technique. (13) no. 21 page 160 st: pada umumnya, daun yang telah tua akan membentuk alat reproduksi berupa sorus yang biasanya terletak pada sisi bagian bawah daun. bt: generally, old leaf will form reproduction organ, sorus which are usually located on the underside of the fronds. tt: generally, mature leaf will form reproduction organ, sorus which are usually located on the underside of the fronds. the word tua was translated into mature; not old; this is a generalization technique. the word mature here is more general than the world old. beside used generalization technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used literal translation, borrowing, and particularization technique. (14) no. 73 page 196 st: pada tentakel terdapat knidoblas dan mengandung nematosista yang dapat dijulurkan dan mengeluarkan racun. bt: in the tentacle, there is cnidoblast and it contains nematocyst, which can be sticked out and released toxin. tt: in the tentacle, there is cnidoblast and it contains nematocyst, which can be moved and released toxin. the word dijulurkan was translated into be moved, it used generalization technique. the phrase be moved here is more general than the word sticked out; this was the evidence that generalization technique was applied in those sentence. the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing beside generalization technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, transposition this technique changes a grammatical category. noun into verb, adverb to noun, etc. occurred for 2 times (0.78%), here the three examples of this technique: (15) no. 1 page 154 st: tumbuhan (kingdom plantae) merupakan eukariota multiseluler yang memiliki kemampuan untuk membuat makanan sendiri (autotrof). bt: the kingdom plantae is a multicelluler eukaryote which has the ability to produce their own food (autotrophic). tt: the kingdom plantae is a multicelluler eukaryote which are able to produce their own food (autotrophic). the phrase yang memiliki kemampuan untuk membuat makanan sendiri was translated into which are able to produce their own food; it indicated that this sentence used transposition technique since there is a change of grammatical category that is noun (kemampuan) was translated into adjective (able). beside used transposition technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used reduction and borrowing technique. (16) no. 28 page 162 st: generasi sporofit umumnya memiliki ukuran tubuh yang besar dan dapat hidup ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 menahun, sedangkan, generasi gametofitnya berukuran kecil dan berumur pendek. bt: the sporophyte generation, in general, usually has larger body size and perennial, whereas the gametophyte generation has smaller size and short-lived. tt: in general, the sporophyte generation is usually larger in body size and perennial, whereas the gametophyte generation is smaller in size and short-lived. the word memiliki was translated into is; it indicated that this sentence used transposition technique since there is a change of grammatical category that is verb (memiliki) was translated into to be (is). the translator/s also used literal translation and borrowing beside transposition technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence. description from the 113 sentences analyzed, this technique only occurred for one time (0.39 %). it means the technique which replace a term or expression with a description of its form or/and function, has the smallest number after all. based on the analysis, i found one sentence used description technique. it can be seen as follow: (17) no. 64 page 192 st: porosit, yaitu sel berlubang yang di dalamnya terdapat ostia. bt: porocytes, cells which make up the pores of ostia tt: porocytes, tubular cells which make up the pores of ostia. the word sel was translated into tubular cells; it is used description technique since the word tubular is used to describe the shape of the cell itself. beside used description technique on the phrase which was typed in bold font in those sentence, the translator/s also used borrowing technique. rendering of meaning based on the two experts, dr. ahmad sofwan, ph.d. and bambang purwanto, s.s., m.hum. the rendering of meaning from 113 complex sentences found in bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira were good. the disagreement between the two experts showed that the weakness from the rest of the complex sentences (20.36 %) was located on the translation techniques chosen by the translator/s. they should find the proper translation techniques and the most equivalence words for some special technical terms. however, the rendering of meaning of the bilingual textbook entitled biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira was categorized as good since there was no distorted meaning at all. both experts were agreed that 90 sentences (79.64 %) got rate 3, which indicated that the rendering of meaning from each sentence was good. although the translator/s used a lot of translation techniques in each sentence, the whole meaning of the st was rendered in the tt. conclusion the analysis towards the bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira showed that from 113 data, there were nine translation techniques were used to translate the materials from indonesian (sl) into english (tl). those were adaptation, amplification, borrowing, description, generalization, literal translation, particularization, reduction, and transposition. from the data result, literal translation occurred in a great number with the frequency 109 times (42.25 %). the second was borrowing with the frequency 94 times (36.43 %), the third was adaptation with the frequency 22 times (8.53 %), the fourth was reduction with the frequency 10 times (3.87 %), the fifth was particularization with the frequency 9 times (3.49 %), the sixth was amplification with the frequency 8 times (3.10 %), the seventh was generalization with ikma qurrota a’yun / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 10 the frequency 3 times (1.16 %), the next was transposition with the frequency 2 times (0.78 %), and the smallest number was description with the frequency 1 times (0.39 %). based on the two experts, the rendering of meaning of the 113 sentences was mostly good. 90 sentences (79.64 %) were categorized as good by both experts. the two experts disagreed about the rendering of meaning of the 23 sentences left. the first expert rated 10 sentences (8.85 %) as sufficient meanwhile the second expert rated them as good. the second expert rated 13 sentences (11.50 %) as sufficient, whereas the first expert rated them as good. however, the whole sentences can be understood by the readers easily because there were no deviated meaning. references baker, mona. 1991. in other words: a course book on translation. london and new york: routledge. bielsa, esperanca. 2005. a paper: globalisation as translation: an approximation to the key but invisible role of translation in globalisation. available at http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1956/1/wr ap_bielsa_wp16305.pdf [accessed 01/16/13] burns, anne.1999. collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. hartono, r. 2009. teori penerjemahan (a handbook for translators). semarang: cipta prima nusantara. hurtado albir, a. and molina l. 2002. translation techniques revisited: a dynamic and functionalist approach. meta, xlvii, 4. spain, barcelona: universitat autònoma de barcelona. houbert, frederic. 1998. translation as a communication process. retrieved from http://translationjournal.net/journal/05t heory.htm on july 2, 2013. larson, mildred l. 1984. meaning-based translation: a guide to cross-language equivalence. london: university press of america. munday, jeremy (ed). 2009. the routledge companion to translation studies. london and new york: routledge. newmark, peter. 1988. a textbook of translation. oxford: longman venuti, lawrence. 1998. the scandals of translation (towards an ethics of difference). london and new york: routledge. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1956/1/wrap_bielsa_wp16305.pdf http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1956/1/wrap_bielsa_wp16305.pdf http://translationjournal.net/journal/05theory.htm%20on%20july%202 http://translationjournal.net/journal/05theory.htm%20on%20july%202 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt using sequenced pictures on the flickr social network in teaching writing news item for the tenth grade students of sma 3 purwokerto rufiah ning asrianti department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: flickr social network, written news item text, writing ability ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study mainly aims at determining the effectiveness of using flickr social network in teaching written news item text to improve students’ writing ability and also to find out the significant difference between the students who are taught using flickr social network and the students who are taught using conventional method (a sequence of pictures). the subject of my research was 64 students of x7 and x8 class of sma n 3 purwokerto. the research applied was experimental research. by using purposive sampling, the students of x8 were taken as the samples of the experimental group and the samples of control group were students of x7. in this research, the students were taught using flickr social network. the result of this research was found by comparing the result of pretest and posttest. i used t-test to find out the significance enhancement. based on the result of the research, the result of the observed t-value is higher than the critical tvalue; observed t-value 3.24 and the critical t-value is 2.04, the result of the writing aspects in the posttest is higher than the pretest, and the percentage of the students who got the score more than 60 in the posttest was 53% while in the pretest was only 16%. therefore, it can conclude that using flickr social network can effectively enhance students’ writing ability. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: hanien1423@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:arumsani666@yahoo.com rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction in this global era, we learn language in many ways. as we can see english is taught in all levels of school, including elemantary school, junior high school, senior high school and vocational school as an optional subject or usually called local content. based on the present curriculum, namely ktsp (kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan), one of the competence standards for the ten grade students of senior high school is that they are demanded to be able to write the news items test by using sequence picture in flickr social network. from the statement above, we know that news item text is one of the essay forms that must be taught in senior high school. for the students, it is one of the difficult texts to understand and create orally. therefore, the teacher should provide interesting media so that students can create written news item text. one of the way that can be used to teach written news item text is sequenced pictures on flickr social network. it can make the process of teaching written news item text easier and more exciting than teaching without any media. news item text is infact rather similar with the reported of sequenches pictures. in writing news item text using sequenced pictures on flickr social network, the students are expected to give an analysis about the pictures. they can give their report analysis based on the picture they uploaded before in flickr social network. therefore, i want to know whether flickr social network is effective to be used as a media in teaching writing the news items text. method the study was carried out through three activities. in this research, sequenced picture and flickr social network are used in the teaching and learning process. its objectives were to prove that the use of sequenced pictures on the flickr social network to improve students' ability to master the technique of writing news item text is more effective than conventional technique; and discuss the reason of why using sequenced pictures on flickr social network is effective to improve students’ ability in producing writing news item text for ten grade students. the result of this research will show that the post test is better than the pretest; the statement “using sequenced pictures on the flickr social network in teaching writing news item for the tenth grade students of sma 3 purwokerto” was accurate. pretest was given before the treatment. pretest was an observation that was done before an experiment or treatment. i had the same pretest between experimental group and control group. first, the writer came to the class and explained what they were going to do. then, the answer sheets of pretest were distributed to the students and they were asked to do the pretest. in this research, the experimental group and the control group was asked to make a news item text to know the students ability in writing news item text. for the treatment in the experimental group, the students were introducing to used sequenced picture on the flickr social network to make news item text. they were introduced to the news item, started from its structures, function, and also its features. in this section, researcher also introduces about flickr social network in the experimental group and makes the students understand how to use it as a fun media to write news item text. but for control group, i used the conventional method to teach news item text. then, it was continue with the session of question-answer to make sure that they had understood about the material. in the control group, pictures were provided to teach news item. post test was given after conducting the pretest and the treatments. posttest was an observation that was done after an experiment of treatment. posttest in this study had a purpose to measure the students writing ability improvement getting treatments. before the students had their posttest, they were asked to understand how to used sequenced picture on the flickr social network in writing news item text and pictures for the control group. then, they were asked to submit the post test. then, rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 the data were collected and analyzed. the score of the test is based on four categories; coherence, grammar, vocabulary, and content. the total sore of each category is 20. here is the formula about how to make the sample of the oral english rating based on j.b heaton (1975: 109-111). in this study, scoring guidance taken from heaton’s grid and categories was chosen to analyze the students’ test in writing news item text. according to heaton (1975:109) “there are five areas on a marking composition suggested by heaton’s grid and categories: coherence, grammar, vocabulary, and content.” some procedures were used to analyze the data. for the first step, the writer adds the scores of writing components to get the total number. here is the formula: total number = c+g+v+ct in which: c : coherence g : grammar v : vocabulary ct : content (j.b heaton) after conducting the research, the students’ works were analyzed and given score based on the quality of their works and the next step was analyzed the data using spss 16.0 (statistical package for the social science). to ensure the calculation, the researcher analyzes deeper using the descriptive statistics analysis and the inferential statistics analysis. result and discussion before doing the research, the the activities that would be done were arranged. the topic which was going to be used in the research was determined. the research instruments, including the questions for the pretest and posttest, lesson plan, and research assessment, were also arranged. based on the arrangement, it was decided that there were four meetings in this research; the first meeting was pretest, the second and the third meetings were treatments, and the fourth meeting was posttest. the total time allotment was 8x35 minutes. in analyzing the data, i used statistical analysis and interpretation analysis. in collecting the data, firstly i conducted a pre-test in writing of news item text from the newspaper to both experimental and control group of the tenth grade students of sma negeri 3 purwokerto, kabupaten banyumas in the academic year 2011/2012. for the post-test i used a little bit more difficult test to see whether any significance difference between experimental and control group or not. since the research had been conducted, data gathered could be processed. before calculating the ttest, i calculated the pre-test and post-test. and this is the result of the comparison between experimental group and control group. from the tables 4.1, it can be seen that there is no far difference between the experimental group and the control group. the similarity of the two test results obtained average yield of 0,986 from sig. (2-tailed) equal variances assumed. the value was greater than the significance level of 0,05. it means that there was no significance difference. having the result of the pre-test, i then applied the next step of the collecting data procedure. it was administering a teaching learning process on writing news item text using sequences of pictures in flickr social network to the experimental group and using the sequences of pictures in text book to the control group. the process took four meetings or eight lesson-hours. it was hoped that by using flickr social network, the students of the experimental group were able to understand and to improve their writing ability better than the students of the control group who were taught using text book. after giving treatments, the next step was giving post-test to both the experimental and the control group. the test was the same for both of the groups. it was almost the same as pre-test, but a little bit more difficult. the result of the post-test would be analyzed to answer the research question. here is the result of the posttest (table 4.2). rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 based on the table, sig (2-tailed) equal variances assumed = 0,002 less than significance level = 0,05 then h0 is rejected. the result of the test showed that the average score of post-test score of the students who were taught using flickr social network was higher than those who were taught using a sequence of pictures. the average of the experimental group before treatment was 44.22, and after treatment were 78.12. it means that there was a significance difference after doing treatment. so, it can be concluded that in this study, the use of flickr social network was more effective than a sequence of pictures in teaching writing news item text. we can see that the experimental group had higher values than control group. the media was one of the factors which made the students understand about the material. the media that i used was sequenced picture of flickr social network. besides, the computer labs and internet network in the school was quite adequate. due to the fact that there was significant difference in writing skill in the news item text achievement between two groups, the null hypothesis saying that “there is no significant difference in achievement between students who are taught written news item text by using flickr social network and those who are taught without flickr social network” is rejected. on the contrary, the working hypothesis is accepted. therefore, it can be concluded that using flickr social network in teaching written news item text to the tenth grade students of sma n 3 purwokerto in the academic year 2011/2012 is effective. table.1 the scoring guidance taken from heaton grid and categories with some modifications (1975: 109-111) components score characteristics coherence 5 4 3 2 1 the writing style is very easy to understand; both complex and simple sentences very used effectively. the writing style is quite easy to understand; a few complex sentences very used effectively. the writing style is reasonably smooth; not too hard to understand mostly (but not all); simple sentences used are fairly effective. rough writing style; an effort is needed to understand; some complex sentences are confusing; although most simple sentences are used fairly effective. very rough writing; hard to understand; almost all sentences used are simple sentences and redundant. grammar 5 4 3 2 1 use present tense, other grammars are used well and everything uses present tense; only 1-2 minor mistakes. use mostly present tense, only a few minor mistakes found (preposition, articles, etc.) use present tense in some parts, only 1 or 2 major mistakes with a few minor ones. use present tense in some parts; major mistakes lead to difficulty in understanding lack of mastery of sentence construction. numerous serious mistake; including not using present tense properly and horrible sentence construction; almost illegible. vocabulary 5 use of wide range of vocabulary. rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 4 3 2 1 good use of new words acquired; fairly appropriate words used in context, less redundancy. attempts to use broad range of words; fairly appropriate vocabulary in context still found redundancy. narrow range of vocabulary; uses some inappropriate words for some context. very narrow range of vocabulary, inappropriate use of words such as slang for indirect sentences, etc. content 5 4 3 2 1 all sentences support the main story; highly organized and clear progression of ideas. ideas are well organized and quite organized with some minor errors. ideas seem to be well thought but not organized quite well. little or no attempt to give new ideas or organizing the sentences to look interesting. lack of ideas and do not relate to the main story at all. independent samples test nilai equal variances assumed equal variances not assumed levene's test for equality of variances f .049 sig. .826 t-test for equality of means t .131 .131 df 62 61.998 sig. (2-tailed) .896 .896 mean difference .312 .312 std. error difference 2.385 2.385 95% confidence interval of the difference lower -4.455 -4.455 upper 5.080 5.080 table 4.1 the distribution of pre-test rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 table 4.2 the distribution of post-test nilai equal variances assumed equal variances not assumed levene's test for equality of variances f .476 sig. .493 t-test for equality of means t 3.240 3.240 df 62 61.952 sig. (2-tailed) .002 .002 mean difference 9.062 9.062 std. error difference 2.797 2.797 95% confidence interval of the difference lower 3.472 3.472 upper 14.653 14.653 rufiah ning asrianti / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 7 references anderson, m. and anderson, k. 1997. text types in english. south yarra: macmillan education australia pty ltd. arikunto, s. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: pt asdi mahasatya. astuti, puji. 2011. kurikulum bahasa inggris sma 2006. available: http://pujiastutiunnesfiles.wordpress.com/20 11/04/sajian-kurikulum-sma.ppt. (may 11, 2011). brown, h. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: longman.com websites: http://flickr.com (accessed on january 21, 2011) http://pujiastutiunnesfiles.wordpress.com/2011/04/sajian-kurikulum-sma.ppt http://pujiastutiunnesfiles.wordpress.com/2011/04/sajian-kurikulum-sma.ppt http://flickr.com/ 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt analysis of character education aspects in narrative texts of the electronic textbook “developing english competencies” ratna widya iswara  department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima september 2013 disetujui oktober 2013 dipublikasikan november 2013 ________________ keywords: character education aspects, narrative texts, electronic textbook ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the issue of character education has mushroomed recently as many as social problems in indonesia. thus, character education should be taken into consideration in teaching and learning activity. the aim of this study is to identify the character education aspects in narrative texts found in the electronic textbook used for senior high school students grade xi entitled developing english competencies based on the eighteen character education aspects mandated by the ministry of national education. this research applies descriptive qualitative method. in collecting the data, the writer used documentary method. the research instrument used in this study was documentation protocol and check list. the result of this research shows that there are 301 sentences from 605 sentences found in all the narrative texts which contain the character education aspects. so the percentage is 49,75 %. the sentences in the 17 narrative texts are relevant to the eighteen character education aspects. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: ratnawidyaiswara@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction down through history, in countries all over the world, education has had two great goals: to help young people become smart and to help them become good (lickona, 2007:1). the issues of character education has mushroomed recently as many as social problems in indonesia. character development in teaching is particularly important in today‟s society since globalization has globbed the whole world. students are bombarded with many more negative influences through the media and other external sources prevalent in today‟s culture. however, learning system is currently considered not effective in building morals and noble character of the nation for the students. this is shown by the occurring cases of moral degradation, such as drug abuse, student radicalism, criminal activities, pornography and porno-action, plagiarism, and the declining pride toward nation and state. even, junior and senior high school students have greater risk in character problems. it is proved by what the writer experienced while doing praktik pengalaman lapangan (ppl). at the school where doing the training to be a teacher, the writer found out that some of the students engaged in a gang fight. even, some of them from seventh graders until ninth graders used drugs. in order to tackle these problems, the 2010 2014 mone strategic plan (renstra) took policies to develop educational curriculum that provides soft skills to enhance noble moral and foster national character. one of the ways is by teaching character education at schools. as stated by battistich (n.d.), schools today face enormous challenges in educating all of the young people in their charge. in addition to provide youth with basic academic knowledge and skills, and promoting their character development, schools have increasingly been called upon to play a primary role in helping to solve a variety of social problems among youth. comprehensive and high quality character education is not only effective at promoting the development of good character, but is a promising approach to the prevention of a wide range of contemporary social problems. lickona (1991) stated that moral education is not a new idea. it is, in fact, as old as education itself. supporting this statement, berkowitz (2011) also added that the term character education is simply the current term for a millennia-old issue. in indonesia, it is not a new concept either. the pretension to becoming a country with noble character has been manifested since the country‟s independence. pancasila and 1945 national constitutions of the republic of indonesia (uud 1945) provide a philosophical foundation also various basic principles for building education. the latest one, as mandated in regulation of the president of the republic of indonesia number 5 of 2010 regarding the national medium-term development plan (rpjmn) 2010-2014 that applying education methodology is no longer in the form of education for the sake of passing „teaching to the test‟, but is oriented to a comprehensive education that takes into account social capability, character, morals, and appreciation for indonesia‟s culture and language. thus, character education is mentioned as a value and moral education that aims to develop students with good personality to be better. character education is not a quick process. good character is not formed automatically. it is developed over time through a sustained process of teaching, modelling, learning and practice. to be effective, character education must include the entire school community and must be infused throughout the entire school curriculum and culture. thus, inserting character values and traits in textbooks becomes a very effective way since books are used in every teaching and learning process. being interested in the phenomenon above, the writer decided to have research on the values contained in textbook. thus, it is the aim of this study to analyze and identify the materials of the electronic textbook developing english competencies for second grade students of ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 senior high school, especially the narrative texts based on the eighteen essential character education aspects mandated by the ministry of national education in 2010. review of related literature definition of character education character is a psychological construct (berkowitz and bier, 2005:4). the outcome of effective character education is the psychological development of students. the complex set of psychological characteristics that enable an individual to act as a moral agent. character is the composite of those psychological characteristics that impact the child‟s capacity and tendency to be an effective moral agent, to be socially and personally responsible, ethical, and self-managed. abourjilie (2012:2) defined character education as a national movement creating schools that foster ethical, responsible, and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character through an emphasis on universal values that we all share. it is the intentional, proactive effort by schools, districts, and states to instill in their students important core, ethical values such as respect for self and others, responsibility, integrity, and selfdiscipline. berkowitz and bier (2005:4) highlighted the importance of school in character education, they viewed character education as “a multifaceted approach that is best accomplished through comprehensive school reform”. character education in indonesia based on pancasila and 1945 national constitutions of the republic of indonesia (uud 1945), the national education system put the students as the highest form of creation made by almighty god with a task to lead a noble and dignified life also become well mannered, good hearted and kind human being. in 2010, the centre board of curriculum research and development under the supervision of ministry of education has conducted an empirical study on character education. the study revealed the development of character education by means of operational unit from every educational institution. thus, since year of education 2011, all educational units and institutions in indonesia should insert and apply the character education in each teaching and learning process. eighteen aspects have been identified based on master plan of character education by ministry of education as follows: no aspect description 1. religiousness having attitudes and behaviors reflecting religious practices that one believes in, showing tolerance towards the practice of others and living harmoniously in a society. 2. honesty being truthful in words and actions and able to be trusted. 3. tolerance having respect and appreciation for different opinions, beliefs, ethinicities, attitudes and actions of others. 4. discipline demonstrating self-control, even in difficult situations and obeying rules. 5. perseverance continuing to work towards a goal, no matter what the obstacles and challenges are. 6. creativity involving and using imagination to develop new ideas. 7. independence capable of acting for oneself or on one's own without being influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion and conduct. 8. democracy belief in political freedom and equality. ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 9. curiosity showing a marked desire and eagerness to learn more about knowledge or information. 10. citizenship prioritizing the country‟s interest above personal interest. 11. patriotism attempting to profess loyalty and care about the social, economic and political condition of a country. 12. achievement respect obtaining thing successfully by exertion, effort, courage and skill, and being happy for other‟s success. 13. friendship being gentle and generous towards others; having a relationship between two or more people who enjoy being together. 14. peacefulness helping maintain peace and preventing violence. 15. reading interest highly educated; knowledgeable through having read extensively. 16. environmental care protecting natural environment from loss and pollution; saving the earth's resources for the future. 17. compassion show kindness and concern for others in distress by offering help whenever possible. 18. responsibility taking care of duties, being dependable and accountable when having things to do to god, self, and society. (source: ministry of national education, 2010) definition of textbook there are some definitions of textbooks. one of those definitions given by goslin (2012) in permatasari (2012:30) who viewed a textbook as a printed and bound artifact for each year or course of study. textbooks contain facts and ideas around a certain subject. from this definition we know that textbook is commonly used in schools. textbooks are not only published in printed format, many are now available as electronic books. the institution of the development of educational materials (2011) in permatasari (2012:31) stated that textbook is a teaching tool (material) which presents the subject matter defined by the curriculum”. this definition shows a comprehensive understanding of textbook that textbooks are written based on the curriculum. it‟s quite challenging in today‟s world to choose a good textbook, where there are numbers of textbooks. good teacher has to know how to choose a good textbook. a good textbook is a book that is appropriate with the curriculum and students‟ level. function of textbook textbook is very important to teachers and students. it is hard to do teaching learning without textbook. the function of textbook stated by lier (1996:208) that textbooks tend to severely hamper the ability to engage in innovative and exploratory teaching. for teachers, textbook is an objective sequencing device which provides support and shows the way. in such textbooks, all the material that is supposed to be covered during a specific period of time is included. modern textbooks aim to be not just comprehensive but also interesting, varied, inviting, and so on. they are full of photographs and drawings, and allusions to the types of things the authors imagine the target audience is interested in. at the same time, to be commercially viable, they must appeal to as broad a population as possible, and this requirement tends to lead to a certain blandness, and, in certain cases, to the uncritical presentation of an official point of view. (lier, 1996:208) ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 general concept of narrative texts a narrative is a piece of text which tells a story and, in doing so, entertains or informs the reader or listener (anderson and anderson, 1997:8). it can also be stated to stimulate the readers‟ emotion or to teach the readers. thus, the purpose of a narrative text is to construct a view of the world that entertains or informs the reader or listener. the following are types of narrative text: humor, romance, crime, real-life action, adventure, historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and diary-novels. generic structure of narrative texts anderson and anderson (1997:8) stated that the generic structures of a narrative text are an orientation, a complication, a sequence of events, a resolution, and a coda. an orientation can be in the form a paragraph, a picture, or opening chapter in which the narrator tells the audience about who is in the story, when the story is taking place, and where the action is happening. a complication sets off a chain of events that influences what will happen in the story. these events will affect one or more characters. while a sequence of events is where the characters react to the complication. then, a resolution is in which the characters finally sort out the complication. in this part, the crises are solved, for better or worse. the last part constructing a narrative text is a coda. it is an optional step that provides a comment or moral based on what has been learned from the story. language features of narrative texts there are some required elements dealing with the language features of narrative text. in the book text types in english 2, anderson and anderson (1997:8) defined the language features which usually found in a narrative text: specific characters, time words that connect events to tell when they occur, verbs to show the actions that occur in the story, and descriptive words to portray the characters and settings. research design many traditional researchers speak of the design of a study as the product of the planning stage of research. the design is then implemented, the data collected and analyzed, and then the writing is done. in this study, the writer is going to use a qualitative research since the main purpose of the study is to analyze the character education aspects in narrative texts of the electronic textbook developing english competencies. qualitative research expresses something comprehensively about the context through data collection taken by the researcher as the key instrument (mujiyanto, 2007:19). in a qualitative research, the data and the results of the study are presented in the form of description. the writer is going to analyze the data and interpret the findings obtained by means of words. source of data arikunto (2010:172) defined source of data as subject in which the research data obtained. if the researcher uses documentation, so the document and note are the source of data, while content of the document or note is the subject of study or research variable. in order to make light of identifying the source of data, he classified into three levels of p: person, place and paper. person is the source of data who can give data in the form of spoken interview or written questionnaire. place is the source of data which provide the persence of stationary or moving situation. while paper is the source of data which provides signs in the forms of letters, numbers, pictures or other symbols. the source of this study is paper, particularly document, electronic textbook entitled developing english competencies. it is an english eldectronic textbook for senior high school (sma/ma) grade xi. it was written by achmad doddy, ahmad sugeng, and effendi and published by the book centre of the ministry of national education. ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 research findings as it has been stated before, this study was a qualitative reserach since the main purpose of the study is to analyze the character education aspects in narrative texts of the electronic textbook developing english competencies. qualitative research expresses something comprehensively about the context through data collection taken by the researcher as the key instrument (mujiyanto, 2007:19). there are 17 narrative texts which were analyzed and presented in the table below. no title page number of sentences 1 liu-always-in-a-hurry 232 30 2 cookie dolls 232 13 3 ali baba and the forty thieves 33 32 4 why does the cock eat the millipede 35 16 5 miss mole catches a ghost 38 25 6 teddy bear time 40 17 7 little peachling 42 28 8 the wolf and the lamb 235 19 9 tom thumb 236 10 10 the mystery of the sphinx 236 4 11 money isn‟t everything 118 25 12 the jealous crow 121 37 13 the golden reed pipe 125 88 14 the magic moneybag 129 61 15 the necklace 209 170 16 the kind duck and the poor frog 216 13 17 nai manggale 218 17 total 605 after selecting, numbering and presenting the data, the researcher came to the next step, analyzing the data. this subchapter analyzed the calculation finding of character education aspects and related it to eighteen character education aspects mandated by the ministry of national education. the number of eighteen character education aspects in each narrative text is shown in the following table. no text character education aspect 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1. 1 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 0 2. 2 0 2 0 0 3 2 1 0 1 0 0 2 4 3 0 0 0 0 3. 3 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 4. 4 1 0 2 0 4 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 5. 5 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 3 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 4 1 6. 6 0 3 0 1 0 3 0 0 2 0 0 1 4 0 0 0 2 4 7. 7 1 5 0 0 7 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 5 6 8. 8 0 3 1 0 1 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 9. 9 0 0 1 0 3 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 10. 10 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 11. 11 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 0 ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 12. 12 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 4 2 0 1 1 0 13. 13 0 3 1 1 9 2 1 0 3 0 0 4 3 1 0 2 1 5 14. 14 0 1 4 5 7 1 3 0 2 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 1 15. 15 0 7 1 1 20 3 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 3 9 16. 16 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 17. 17 2 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 2 total 4 29 13 9 62 25 1 0 2 19 1 1 14 29 9 0 5 31 38 note: character education aspect 1 = religiousness; 2 = honesty; 3 = tolerance; 4 = discipline; 5 = perseverance; 6 = creativity; 7 = independence; 8 = democracy; 9 = curiosity; 10 = citizenship; 11 = patriotism; 12 = achievement respect; 13 = friendship; 14 = peacefulness; 15 = reading interest; 16 = environmental care; 17 = compassion; 18 = responsibility. from the previous table of the number of each character education aspect in the narrative texts, it could be classified into the amount of each character education aspect from all the narratives and make the percentage of them. here, the data were classified into each character education aspect in the narrative texts. the table below shows the number of sentence which contains each character education aspect and the percentage against the total number of sentences found in the texts. no character education aspect number of sentence percentage 1. religiousness 4 0,66 % 2. honesty 29 4,79 % 3. tolerance 13 2,15 % 4. discipline 9 1,49 % 5. perseverance 62 10,25 % 6. creativity 25 4,13 % 7. independence 10 1,65 % 8. democracy 2 0,33 % 9. curiosity 19 3,14 % 10. citizenship 1 0,17 % 11. patriotism 1 0,17 % 12. achievement respect 14 2,31 % 13. friendship 29 4,79 % 14. peacefulness 9 1,49 % 15. reading interest 0 0,00 % 16. environmental care 5 0,83 % 17. compassion 31 5,12 % 18. responsibility 38 6,28 % total 301 49,75 % perseverance became the most appeared value because student from very early age should be taught and prepared to be a tough, diligent and keen person. it reached 10,25% of the total sentences and appeared most, 20 times in the text 15, the necklace. ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 besides perseverance, responsibility also had high rank among all. it took 38 sentences or 6,28% which also appeared most also in text 15. this short story by guy de maupassant told a story of madame loisel and her husband who lived simply. however, their lives became worse when she borrowed a magnificent diamond necklace from her bestfriend, madame forestier, and lost it. then, she had to borrow much money, got the new necklace and began the long path of her financial struggles. it showed a great responsibility of madame loisel to take risk of thing she had done. even it meant that she had to work very hard. compassion, like responsibility, was also considered important. there was 5,12% calculation of sentences which contained this value of showing kindness and concerning for others in distress. character value of honesty and friendship had similar total number, which was 29 sentences. both of them had percentage of 4,79%. other aspects of character education like tolerance, independence, curiosity and achievement respect reached the number of 1020 sentences. while religiousness, discipline, democracy, citizenship, patriotism, peacefulness, and environmental care was less than 1,65% or less than 10 sentences in all the narrative texts. furthermore, there was one value of the aspects, reading interest, which did not appear at all in those narrative texts. reading interest itself means being knowledgeable through having read extensively. considering the importance of this aspect, it was very regrettable that it did not exist in the narrative texts. from the above explanation, it is clear that the 17 narrative texts of the electronic textbook contain the character education aspects mandated by the ministry of national education, but there was still one character education aspect which did not appear in all the narrative texts. conclusion first, all the 17 narrative texts found in the electronic textbook contain at least three aspects of character education which were compatible and relevant to the eighteen character education aspects identified as the core values of cultural and character education in indonesia. they are including religiousness, honesty, tolerance, discipline, perseverance, creativity, independence, democracy, curiosity, citizenship, patriotism, achievement respect, friendship, peacefulness, environmental care, compassion and responsibility. second, the percentage of sentences which contain the character building aspects by the ministry of national education was adequate. there were 301 sentences from all 605 sentences appeared in 17 narrative texts. thus, there was 49,75 % sentences which contain the character building aspects mandated by the government. the most character education aspect was found in perseverance, which reached 10,25%. besides, responsibility and compassion were also highly ranked and mostly found. in contrast, there was one aspect of character education, reading interest, which did not appear in the narrative texts at all. ratna widya iswara / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 references abourjilie, charlie. 2002. character education informational handbook and guide. public schools of north carolina. available at: www.ncpublicschools.org [accessed 06/01/13] anderson, mark and kathy anderson. 1997. text types in english 2. south yarra: macmillan education australia pty ltd. arikunto, suharsimi. 2010. prosedur penelitian : suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: pt. rineka cipta. battistich, victor. (n.d.) character education, prevention, and positive youth development. st. louis: university of missouri. available at: www.character.org [accessed 06/01/13] berkowitz, marvin w. 2011. understanding effective character education. st. louis: csee connections the center for spiritual and ethical education. berkowitz, marvin w. and melinda c. bier. 2005. what works in character education: a researchdriven guide for educators. missouri: character education partnership. lier, leo van. 1996. interaction in the language curriculum; awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. england: longman. lickona, thomas. 1991. educating for character: how our schools can teach respect and responsibility. new york: bantam books. lickona, thomas. 2007. smart and good schools. in education week volume 27 issue 12 pages 3140. new york: lawrence erlbaum associates. ministry of national development planning. 2010. the national medium-term development plan (rpjmn) 2010-2014. jakarta: ministry of national development planning. mujiyanto, yanuarius. 2007. petunjuk penulisan skripsi. semarang: unnes press. permatasari, riana. 2012. the critical thinking tasks displayed in the textbooks for eleventh grade students of senior high school. final project. english department fbs unnes. http://www.ncpublicschools.org/ http://www.character.org/uploads/pdfs/white_papers/white_paper_battistich.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 18 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt an analysis of english phrasal verb translation in totto-chan novel: the little girl at the window dwi indah mutiara s., ahmad sofwan, pasca kalisa  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: phrasal verbs, translation strategy, translation quality ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study is attempted to focus on phrasal verb translation of an english novel totto-chan: the little girl at the window to its indonesia version entitled totto-chan: gadis cilik di jendela. the objectives of the study are: (1) to describe the strategies used in translating phrasal verb in the totto-chan novel (2) to describe the quality of phrasal verb translation in the totto-chan novel. in conducting this research, descriptive qualitative approach is used. the presentation of discussion is presented in a descriptive way. the data are analyzed by finding the phrasal verbs in the source language and in the target language. the translation strategies are analyzed based on mona baker’s theory. meanwhile, the researcher uses nababan’s theory to identify the translation quality of the phrasal verbs. the result of the study shows that (1) there are 35 data translated using idiom of similar meaning and form, 155 phrasal verbs translated using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, 5 phrasal verbs translated by paraphrase and 5 phrasal verbs are translated by omission; it shows that the most strategy used is using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form (2) the accuracy level of this novel’s phrasal verb translation is 80,67 % which indicates that the translation is accurate, the acceptability level is 83,17 % which shows us the translation is acceptable and the readability level which is 92,33 % which proves that the translation of this novel is highly readable. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 19 introduction based on oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, hornby (2000) states that translation is the process of changing something that is written or spoken into another language. one of the most prominent definitions of translation is stated by newmark (1988). he defines that translation is a process of rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. on the other hand, nida and taber (1974) state that translating consists of reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. from the definition mentioned, it is found that translation is a process which is intended to find meaning equivalence in the target language. courtney (1989) defines that idiomatic expression of phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition or adverb that creates a meaning different from its original. for example, the phrase look after that has meaning take care of someone or something the total meaning of look after is different from the meaning of the look and after. from many perspectives above, we know that translation is the transfer of the message or language from the source language into the target language and acceptable in its meaning with regard equivalence. idiomatic phrasal verb is one of the problematic factors in translating a novel. nevertheless, few studies conducted to discuss these problems. some of them discussed the content of the novel such as cultural terms (aziz, 2014), review of the story (hartanto, 2012) etc. however, research on other issues also developed. for instance, the research about translation has been conducted by several researchers but they only focus on what the translation method used in translating a novel (candra, 2016). since few studies have been done in dealing with translation problem especially for phrasal verb, this research is conducted to discuss translation of phrasal verb briefly. dealing with the problems above, the objectives of the study is to find out the strategy used to translate phrasal verbs as well as identify the quality of phrasal verbs translation. to support this study, the researcher finds some previous studies dealing with translation strategy and quality. straksiene (2009) has conducted an analysis of idiom translation strategies. in this article the translation of english idioms into lithuanian and difficulties that translator meets were analyzed. the analysis has showed that kirvaityt’s translation of idioms involved four basic translation strategies: paraphrasing, which involves explanatory and stylistic paraphrase, idiom to idiom translation, which involves using idiom of similar meaning and form and using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, literal translation and omission. another is a research about accuracy, clarity, and naturalness in the translation of phrasal verbs by susilawati (2011). the results of susilawati’s research shows that the accuracy and the clarity of the phrasal verbs is above average or good while the naturalness is below average or poor. in her research described the accuracy, clarity and naturalness are the important features that should be possessed by the translation in order to be a good translation. the difference between this research and ratna susilawati’s research is the theory, corpus and focused of the research. methodology of the research the research design is meant to set up an effective direction in conducting the research. this research uses descriptive method in which the researcher collects and analyzes the data, then draws conclusion based on the data analysis. the data are in the form of phrasal verbs and its drawing analysis. after all data collected, they will be analyzed by finding the use of phrasal verbs on the source text. in addition, the researcher asks three raters to give score for each aspect of translation quality and measures the given score based on nababan’s theory. d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 20 the sources of the data are totto-chan: the little girl at the window by dorothy britton published in 1984 and totto-chan: gadis cilik di jendela by widya kirana in 2003 (third edition). the book begins with totto-chan’s mother coming to know of her daughter’s expulsion from public school. her mother realizes that what totto-chan needs is a school where more freedom of expression is permitted. thus, she takes totto-chan to meet the headmaster of the new school, mr. kobayashi. from that moment a friendship is formed between master and pupil. the book goes on to describe the times that totto-chan has, the friends she makes, the lessons she learns, and the vibrant atmosphere that she imbibes. all of these are presented to the reader through the eyes of a child. thus the reader sees how the normal world is transformed into a beautiful, exciting place full of joy and enthusiasm. the reader also sees in their role as adults, how mr. kobayashi introduces new activities to interest the pupils. one sees in mr. kobayashi a man who understands children and strives to develop their qualities of mind, body and his concern for the physically handicapped and his emphasis on the equality of all children are remarkable. in order to collect the data, the writer did some steps. first, the researcher found both novels; english and indonesian and read both of the data, the source and the target language. after getting the data, the writer chose the pages containing the phrasal verbs that would be used as data and arrange the data in a table. the next step is identify the data which were found in the book. then, for determining the quality of the translation, the researcher found three raters and asked them to give scores for each aspect of translation quality. the last is measuring the given scores using nababan’s theory. this research used descriptive method in which the researcher collected and analyzed the data, then drew conclusion based on the data analysis. qualitative data are just not those that cannot be quantified, qualitative data can and should sometimes be quantified. qualitative data can be gathered in many ways, including observations, journals, logs, retrospective narratives, document analysis, interviews and questionnaires. the data finding were analyzed descriptively in a form of explanation and its interpretation using theory of translation strategy and translation quality. the researcher used types of phrasal verb from quirk et.al (1984) in corpus linguistics (2014) to analyze the data. lexical verb direct object particles (adverb) particles (preposition) prepositional object phrasalverb (intransitive) show up phrasal verb (transitive) separable inseparable write call the note down on a friend phrasal prepositional verb (intransitive) get along with tony prepositional verb (transitive) put their success down to team spirit table 2.1 types of phrasal verb by quirk et.al adopted from corpus linguistics (2014) from the data of phrasal verb above, the writer examines the strategy used by the translator in translating the phrasal verbs. d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 21 translation strategies using an idiom of similar meaning and form using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form translation by paraphrase translation by omission table 2.2 translation strategies by baker (1992) in addition, the quality of translation was also analyzed in this research. the data were examined whether it is accurate, acceptable and readable or not. the basis analysis data is taken from nababan (2012). source language target language accuracy (1-3) acceptability (1-3) readability (1-3) they got off the oimachi train at jiyugaoka station. mereka turun dari kereta oimachi di stasiun jiyugaoka. 3 3 3 she had hardly ever been on a train before and was reluctant to give up the precious ticket she was clutching. totto-chan yang jarang sekali naik kereta enggan mengulurkan karcisnya yang berharga. ia memegangi karcisnyaerat-erat. 3 2 2 total 6 5 5 average 3,0 2,5 2,5 table 2.3 quality of translation by nababan (2012) result and analysis the first aim of this study is to find out the strategies applied to translate phrasal verbs in totto-chan novel. this study is conducted based on a set of strategies to translate phrasal verb or idiom provided by mona baker. the second purpose of this study is to discover the quality of translation in the novel based on nababan’s theory. the first purpose of the study is to determine the strategy used by the translator to translate the phrasal verbs in the totto-chan novel. the researcher has analyzed the collected data as in table 4. strategy frequency percentage 1 35 17,5 % 2 155 77,5 % 3 5 2,5 % 4 5 2,5 % total 200 100 % table 3.1 strategy of phrasal verb translation d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 22 the table 4 shows the distribution of translation strategy used in translating phrasal verbs. there are 35 phrasal verbs translated using an idiom of similar meaning and form, 155 phrasal verbs translated using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, 5 phrasal verbs translated by paraphrasing and 5 phrasal verbs are translated by omission. there are 35 data of phrasal verbs which are translated using idiom of similar meaning and form strategy. it can be shown in the following example. example 1 (page 12, line 33) sl: mother flinched as the teacher leaned forward. tl: mama jadi salah tingkah ketika guru itu mencondongkan badannya kedepan. in this example, “leaned forward” is translated into “mencondongkan badan kebadan”. based on free dictionary, “lean forward” means to bend forward. here, the translator renders its meaning into “mencondongkan badan kedepan” in indonesian. it shows that both have the similar meaning. moreover, “leaned forward” is a phrasal verb or verb phrase as well as “mencondongkan badan kedepan” which is a verb phrase too. therefore, this data uses idiom of similar meaning and form strategy. from the examples above, we know that idiom of similar meaning and form strategy is quite common used in translating phrasal verbs. this finding reveals a study done by pratama (2016) that the use of idiom of similar meaning and form strategy is quite common in translating phrasal verbs or idiomatic expressions in a novel or other literary works. it can be seen from the presented table that shows the counted data using this strategy. the translator used this strategy in delivering the meaning of phrasal verbs in the novel because they have the equivalence expressions in indonesian. from the examples above, most of the phrasal verbs are translated word by word. it happens because the translator must find the similar form of the phrasal verbs. if it is a phrasal verb, she has to find the similar meaning in phrasal verb form. there are 155 data of phrasal verbs which translated using this strategy. it can be shown in the following example. example 1 (page 9, line 1) sl: they got off the oimachi train at jiyugaoka station. tl: mereka turun dari kereta oimachi di stasiun jiyugaoka. in this example, “got off” is translated into “turun”. based on cambridge dictionary, “got off” means to leave a train or bus. here, the translator renders its meaning into “turun” in indonesian. it shows that both have the similar meaning. however, “got off” is a phrasal verb or verb phrase while “turun” which is a verb not a phrase. therefore, this data uses idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form strategy. from the examples above, we know that most of phrasal verbs are translated using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form. this finding reveals a study done by akbari (2013) that it is possible to find an idiom or fixed expression in the target language which has a similar meaning to that source language, but which consists of different lexical items. for example, the english expression one good turn deserves another and the french expression a beau jeu, beau retour (a handsome action deserves a handsome return) use different lexical items to express more or less the same idea. the translator uses this strategy in delivering the meaning of phrasal verbs in the novel because they do not have the equivalence expressions in indonesian. from the examples above, most of the phrasal verbs are not translated word by word like the strategy before. it happens because the translator cannot be able to find the similar form of the phrasal verbs. if they are translated word by word, the delivered meaning would be awkward. consequently, she uses the strategy of similar meaning but dissimilar form. there are 155 data of phrasal verbs which translated using this strategy. it can be shown in the following example. d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 23 example 1 (page 9, line 1) sl: they got off the oimachi train at jiyugaoka station. tl: merekaturundarikeretaoimachi di stasiunjiyugaoka. in this example, “got off” is translated into “turun”. based on cambridge dictionary, “got off” means to leave a train or bus. here, the translator renders its meaning into “turun” in indonesian. it shows that both have the similar meaning. however, “got off” is a phrasal verb or verb phrase while “turun” which is a verb not a phrase. therefore, this data uses idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form strategy. from the examples above, we know that most of phrasal verbs are translated using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form. this finding reveals a study done by akbari (2013) that it is possible to find an idiom or fixed expression in the target language which has a similar meaning to that source language, but which consists of different lexical items. for example, the english expression one good turn deserves another and the french expression a beau jeu, beau retour (a handsome action deserves a handsome return) use different lexical items to express more or less the same idea. the translator uses this strategy in delivering the meaning of phrasal verbs in the novel because they do not have the equivalence expressions in indonesian. from the examples above, most of the phrasal verbs are not translated word by word like the strategy before. it happens because the translator cannot find the similar form of the phrasal verbs. if they are translated word by word, the delivered meaning would be awkward. consequently, she uses the strategy of similar meaning but dissimilar form. there are only 5 data of phrasal verbs which translated using this strategy. it can be shown in the following example. example 1 (page 16, line 2) sl: you see, her flag took up most of the paper, so there wasn’t enough room for the fringe. tl: anda tahu, benderanya dia gambar hampir sehalaman penuh, jadi tak ada tempat cukup untuk rumbai-rumbainya. in this example, “took up” is translated into “dia gambar”. based on cambridge dictionary, “took up” means to fill an amount of space. here, the translator paraphrases its meaning into “diagambar” in indonesian. it shows that the translator found the difficulties in translating this phrasal verb because there is no similar meaning word in indonesian. as a result, this data uses translation by paraphrase strategy to convey the meaning. this finding reveals a study by sari (2013) that such strategy is a common way of translating idioms when a match cannot be found in the target language or when it seems inappropriate to use idiomatic language in the target text because of differences in stylistic preferences of the source and target languages. the translator delivers the meaning of phrasal verbs in the novel by paraphrasing because the translator cannot find the similar meaning and form of the phrasal verbs in indonesian. if they are translated word by word or using the previous strategies, the delivered meaning would be awkward and hardly readable. as a result, she uses translation by paraphrasing to make the readers more understand with the meaning. there are only 5 data of phrasal verbs translated using this strategy. it can be shown in the following example. example 1 (page 38, line 2) sl: they filed out to return to their classroom. tl: lalumerekakembalikekelasmereka. in this example, “filed out” is not translated into indonesian. based on cambridge dictionary, “file out” means to get out. here, the translator omits the phrasal verb because it does not change the meaning of the sentence in the tl. it shows that the translator is able to translate the d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 24 sentence without translating the phrasal verb there. as a result, this data uses translation by omission strategy to convey the meaning.this finding reveals a study done by sari (2013) that an idiom may sometimes be omitted altogether in the target text. this may be because it has no match in the target language, its meaning cannot be easily be paraphrased, or for stylistic reason. the translator uses this strategy in delivering the meaning of phrasal verbs in the novel because the phrasal verbs do not contribute the meaning of a sentence or text. from the examples above, the phrasal verbs are not translated like the strategies before. it might happen because the translator cannot find the similar meaning and form of the phrasal verbs. moreover, it is difficult to translate by paraphrasing. if they are omitted, the meaning of the whole text would not be changed or influenced. therefore, she uses the omission strategy to deliver the meaning. the second aim of this study is to determine the quality of translation. the first category of the translation quality is accuracy. after asking three raters to give score for each category, the accuracy level has been analyzed as in table 5. category frequency percentage accurate 484 80,67 % less accurate 102 17 % inaccurate 14 2,33 % total 600 100 % table 3.2 accuracy level of phrasal verb translation from 600 collected data, we know that there are 484 data translated accurately. meanwhile, 102 data are translated less accurately. the rest are 14 data translated inaccurately. in this study, the writer asks three raters to rate the accuracy level of all phrasal verbs found in the novel. they determined the accuracy level based on the scale and definition by nababan. below are the detailed explanations of each accuracy level. example 1 (page 9, line 1) sl: they got off the oimachi train at jiyugaoka station. tl: mereka turun dari kereta oimachi di stasiun jiyugaoka. in this example, “got off” is translated into “turun” which is accurate according to the three raters. it is because the meaning of phrase in a source text is accurately delivered without any distortions. this finding reveals a study (siregar, 2016) that the accurate criteria are most identified as literal technique. the literal technique is high enough to produce an accurate translation, although some of them need the improvement. in this study, most of phrasal verbs in the novel are translated accurately by the translator. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 3 or maximum score for each phrasal verbs. it might be happened because the phrasal verbs are categorized as common word or verb so the readers are familiar with them. example 2 (page 9, line 14) sl: totto-chan gazed longingly into the box and went on,“when i growup i’m going to sell railroad tickets!” tl: totto-chan memandang kotak itu dengan penuh minat lalu melanjutkan, “kalau sudah besar, aku mau jadi penjual karcis kereta!” in this example, “went on” is translated into “melanjutkan” which is less accurate according to the three raters. it is because the meaning of phrase in a source text is accurately delivered. however, there are still some distortions because of several techniques which may change the d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 25 meaning of the texts as a whole. this finding reveals a study done by siregar (2016) that the translation techniques which contributed to less accurate criteria are additions, modulation, and equivalence. several other techniques are also slightly contributed on these criteria, such as adaptation and deletion. these techniques can make any distortions which can change the meaning of the texts as a whole. in this study, some of phrasal verbs in the novel are categorized as less accurate translation. it is proven by the performed data given by the three raters. they give score 2 for each phrasal verbs. it might happen because the phrasal verbs are categorized as uncommon word or verb so the readers are less familiar with them. example 3 (page 24, line 30) sl: she had never looked forward to a day so much. tl: belumpernahdiabersemangatharibarusepertiitu. in this example, “looked forward” is not translated clearly in indonesian which means that it is an inaccurate translation according to the three raters. it is because the meaning of phrase in a source text is not accurately delivered or deleted. this finding reveals a study by siregar (2016) that inaccurate translations are caused by deletion/omission and inappropriate message transfer of source text into target text. therefore, the meaning in a source text is not accurately delivered because of the deletion or omission. in this study, only 14 phrasal verbs in the novel are not translated accurately by the translator. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 1 or minimum score for each phrasal verb. it might happen because the readers are not familiar with the phrasal verbs. the second category of the translation quality is acceptability. after asking three raters to give score for each category, the acceptability level has been analyzed as in table 6. category frequency percentage acceptable 499 83,17 % less acceptable 87 14,5 % not acceptable 14 2,33 % total 600 100 % table 3.3 acceptability level of phrasal verb translation from 600 collected data, we know that 499 data are acceptable. in addition, 87 data are less acceptable. the rest are 14 not acceptable data. in this study, the writer asks three raters to rate the acceptability level of all phrasal verbs found in the novel. they determined the acceptability level based on the scale and definition by nababan. below are the detailed explanations of each acceptability level. example 1 (page 25, line 1) sl: mother usually had trouble getting totto-chan out of bed in the morning. tl: biasanya mama kesulitan membangunkan totto-chan di pagi hari. in this example, “getting out” is translated into “membangunkan” which is acceptable according to the three raters. it is because the translation is natural: using the common technical terms and familiar to readers: phrase in accordance with the norms of indonesian language. in this study, most of phrasal verbs in the novel are identified as acceptable translation. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 3 or maximum score for each phrasal verbs. it might be happened because the phrasal verbs are categorized as common d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 26 word or verb so the readers are familiar with them. this finding reveals a study done by siregar (2016) that most of the phrasal verbs are categorized as acceptable translation. in this novel, there are 83 % phrasal verbs which identified as acceptable translation. the data are similar with siregar’s finding that most of the phrasal verbs are categorized as acceptable translation. example 2 (page 26, line 11) sl: rocky always used to walk with totto-chan as far as the gate of the other school and then come back home. tl: rocky biasa berjalan menemani totto-chan sampai gerbang sekolahnya yang lama, lalu pulang. in this example, “come back” is translated into “pulang” which is less acceptable according to the three raters. it is because the translation is already natural: but there is few trouble in using the technical terms or grammatical errors. this finding reveals a study by siregar (2016) that less acceptable translation characterized with less naturalness, and the technical term is not commonly used, or contains the slight grammatical errors. his findings are similar with this study that less acceptable translations are rarely occurred in the novel. in this study, some of phrasal verbs in the novel are categorized as less acceptable translation. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 2 for each phrasal verbs. it might be happened because the phrasal verbs are categorized as uncommon word or verb so the readers are less familiar with them. example 3 (page 39, line 5) sl: she started ladling out the contents of the cesspool. tl: ia mulai mencedok isi bak penampung kotoran itu. in this example, “ladling out” is translated into “mencedok” which is not acceptable according to the three raters. it is because the translation is not natural or it seems like translation work: using uncommon and unfamiliar technical terms to the readers: using phrase which is not in accordance to the norms of indonesian language. in this study, the translations of some phrasal verbs in the novel are not acceptable based on three raters. it is proven by the performed data which given by them. they give score 1 or minimum score for each phrasal verbs. it might happen because the readers are not familiar with the phrasal verbs. this finding reveals a study by siregar (2016) that the main reason for unacceptable translation is omission and deletion of importance information in target text or occurrence of unfamiliar words as in the example above. the third category of the translation quality is readability. after asking three raters to give score for each category, the readability level has been analyzed as in table 7. category frequency percentage highly readable 554 92,33 % quite readable 43 7,17 % hardly readable 3 0,5 % total 600 100 % table 3.4 readability level of phrasal verb translation from 600 collected data, we know that 554 data are highly readable. in addition, 43 data are quite readable. the rest are 3 data which are hardly readable. in this study, the writer asks three raters to rate the readability level of all phrasal verbs found in the novel. they determined the readability level based on the scale and definition by nababan. below are the detailed explanations of each readability level. example 1 (page 39, line 3) d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 27 sl: lifting it off with difficulty, she discovered an opening that was undoubtedly the one she was looking for. tl: dengan susah payah, ia membuka penutup itu dan akhirnya menemukan lubang yang dicarinya. in this example, “lifting off” is translated into “membuka” which is highly readable according to the three raters. it is because the meaning of phrase can be easily understood by the readers. in this study, most of phrasal verbs in the novel are identified as highly readable translation. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 3 or maximum score for each phrasal verbs. it might happen because the phrasal verbs are categorized as common word or verb so the readers are familiar with them. this finding reveals a study done by siregar (2016) that that most of the phrasal verbs are categorized as highly readable translation. in this novel, there are 92 % phrasal verbs identified as highly readable translation. the data are similar with siregar’s finding that most of the phrasal verbs are categorized as highly readable translation. example 2 (page 42, line 12) sl: “maybe it will come along the oimachi line tracks and then branch off this way at that level crossing.” tl: “mungkin gerbong itu akan lewat jalur kereta oimachi, lalu berbelok ke sini di persimpangan itu.” in this example, “branch off” is translated into “berbelok” which is quite readable according to the three raters. it is because the meaning of phrase can be easily understood by the readers. there are several points which should be read repeatedly to get their meanings. this finding reveals a study by siregar (2016) that quite readable translation occurred when there are several points which should be read repeatedly to get their meanings. his findings are similar with this study that quite readable translations are rarely occurred in the novel. it is less than 8 % data are categorized as quite readable translation. in this study, some of phrasal verbs in the novel are categorized as quite readable translation. it is proven by the performed data which given by the three raters. they give score 2 for each phrasal verbs. it might happen because the phrasal verbs are categorized as uncommon word or verb so the readers are less familiar with them. example 3 (page 24, line 30) sl: she had never looked forward to a day so much. tl: belum pernah dia bersemangat hari baru seperti itu. in this example, “looked forward” is not translated clearly which means that it is hardly readable according to the three raters. it is because the result of the translation can hardly be understood. this finding reveals a study by siregar (2016) that hardly readable translation is considered as difficult by readers by giving score 1 for data pairs that identified as low level of ratability. often the translation has some terms that are less understood and less coherent sentence. his findings are similar with this study that hardly readable translations are rarely occurred in the novel. it is less than 1 % data are categorized as hardly readable translation. in this study, the translations of some phrasal verbs in the novel are hardly readable based on three raters. it is proven by the performed data which given by them. they give score 1 or minimum score for each phrasal verbs. it might happen because the readers are not familiar with the phrasal verbs. conclusions conclusions are drawn to answer the research problems of this study as well as to highlight other findings. to make it easier for the readers, the conclusions of this research are presented as follows. d. indah mutiara s. & a. sofwan & p. kalisa / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 28 there are four strategies used in translating phrasal verbs found in the novel. the first one is using idiom of similar meaning and form, the second is using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form, the third is paraphrase, and the last is omission. the most used strategy to translate the phrasal verbs in the totto-chan novel is using idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form. it can be seen from the use of similar meaning but dissimilar form percentage which is 77.5%. meanwhile, the percentage of first strategy is 17.5%. besides, the percentage of paraphrase and omission are 2.5% of each. there are three categories to assess the quality of phrasal verbs translation in the tottochan novel. the first is accuracy level, the second is acceptability level, and the third is readability level. the accuracy level of this novel’s phrasal verb translation is 80.67% which indicates that the translation is accurate. in addition, the acceptability level is 83.17% which shows us the translation is acceptable. the last is readability level which is 92.3%. it can be said that the translation of this novel is highly readable. as a result, the translations of phrasal verbs in this novel are accurate, acceptable, and highly readable. references akbari, m. 2013. strategies for translating idioms.journal of academic and applied studies, 3/8. a.s. hornby. 2000. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. new york:oxford university aziz, ihsan a. 2014. translation analysis of cultural terms in negeri 5 menara.depok:universitas indonesia. baker, mona. 1992. in other words: a coursebook on translation. new york: routledge. britton, dorothy. 1984. totto-chan: the little girl at the window. kodansha publisher. candra, i made. 2016. translation method of phrasal verb in novel eat pray love by elizabeth gilbert. journal of linguistics. courtney, rosemary. 1989.dictionary of phrasal verbs. uk: longman group uk limited. hartanto, f. 2012. an analysis of educational values in tetsukokuroyanagi’s novel entitle totto chan: the little girl at the window. salatiga: stain. kirana, widya. 2003. totto-chan: gadiscilik di jendela. jakarta: gramedia. livingstone, charlotte. 2008. oxford mini dictionary & thesaurus. new york: oxford university press. nababan, m et.al.2012. pengembangan model penilaiankualitasterjemahan. kajianlinguistikdan sastra, 24/1. pratama, bayu g. 2016. translation strategies to render idiomatic expressions in dan brown’s digital fortress by ferry halim.final project.semarang state university. sari,sabrichautama.2013. strategiesintranslatingidiomaticexpressions of phrasal verbs terence blaker’s bilingual novel “ms. wiz goes live” into “ms. wiz jadibintang televisi” by malasuhendra.semarang: diannuswantoro. siregar, r. 2016. translation quality assessment of “the 8 th habit: from effectiveness to greatness by stephen r. covey” into indonesian. journal of language and literature, 4/1. pp. 228-239. 1 elt forum 5 (2) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of herringbone technique to teach reading of narrative text andi yusuf kurniawan dra. indrawati, m. hum. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in april 2016 approved in april 2016 published in may 2016 ________________ keywords: herringbone technique, teach reading, narrative text. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is based on the research which attempted to find out the effectiveness of herringbone technique to teach reading of narrative text. the design of this study was experimental study. there were two groups used in the research; the experimental group and the control group. the two groups were given different treatments. the experimental group was taught by using herringbone technique while the control group was taught using conventional technique. the population of this study was the eighth grade students of smp negeri 24 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. the number of the subjects was 64 students. the data were obtained by administering reading test to the viii a as control group and viii b as experimental group. the research was started by giving pre-test, treatments, and post-test to both experimental groups and control groups. the data of the test were analyzed by using t-test formula to know the difference of the students’ comprehension in reading narrative text between two groups. the data analysis in research ,some purpose can be drawn as follow. the first purpose of the study is to discuss the effectiveness of teaching reading using herringbone technique to improve students’ reading of narrative text. the use of herringbone technique in teaching reading makes the activity in class more interesting. the students are active and more enthusiastic following the teachers’ instruction and working in group. the second purpose of the study is to analyze the significant difference between teaching reading using herringbone technique and the one using conventional technique. the difference in score of both test can be drawn as follow. the average score of pre-test of the experimental group was 67.75 and the control group was 65.59. the average score of post-test of the experimental group was 71.31 while the control one was 69.71. the result of the t-test of mean difference was 8.94 and t-table was 2.00. it means that t-value is higher than t-table (8.94>2.00). it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between teaching reading using herringbone technique and the one using conventional technique. based on the research conducted, it proved that the use of herringbone technique is effective as a strategy to improve teaching reading comprehension of narrative text to the eighth year students of smp negeri 24 semarang. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: andiurnia@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study english as a global language is used in almost all countries in the world as a means of international communication. because of its significant role, english has been included in indonesian educational curriculum. the english curriculum stipulates that english subject should include four skills, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. harris (1980: 53) states that reading is a form of communication. information and ideas are exchanged between writer and reader in the act of communicating. this information will be a new knowledge or as an entertainment which is needed by the reader. reading activity in english as a foreign language is not the same as reading activity in the students’ mother tongue such as javanese and indonesian, therefore reading causes students to face difficulties in vocabulary, structure, pronunciation, etc. in the process of learning english, especially reading a lot of students who are having difficulty. there are several kinds of difficulties experienced by students as a lack of material books, incomplete dictionary and a boring material. the students think that reading english is not interesting and boring since they do not know the meaning of the words and do not find an interesting book. the students need many kinds of interesting materials so that they will be more enthusiastic and active to learn english. based on the background above, the writer will introduce english reading activity to the students by using a technique that is herringbone technique. this technique is addressed to optimize teaching reading. in this study, the writer will apply technique using graphic organizer in fish diagram of herringbone technique to teach reading of narrative text for the eight grade of junior high school students. the problems stated in this study are: 1. how effective is teaching reading using herringbone technique to teach students’ reading of narrative text? 2. what is the significant difference between of the students’ achievement taught by herringbone technique and those who are taught by conventional technique? deegan (2006) states that the herringbone technique develops comprehension of the main idea by plotting the who, what, when, where, how, and why questions on a visual diagram of a fish skeleton. herringbone technique consists of a short graphic organizer and it is a concrete way of helping english learners to find the comprehensive idea in a paragraph or passage. the students can use this graphic organizer when taking notes for assigned reading as a way to organize and classify new information. the students answer the questions listed in the fish skeleton graphic organizer. this leads to the synthesis of all the information in one newly created sentence, which becomes the main idea statement. graphic organizer is important and effective pedagogical tools for organizing content, ideas, and facilitating learners’ comprehension of newly acquired information (mcknight, 2010: 1). it is an effective teaching and learning tool for all types of learners. edwards (2003:32) mentioned that the procedures of herringbone technique are: 1. select reading material at the students’ level. 2. construct the herringbone technique outline with the 5w+1h (who? when? where? why? what? how?) and the main idea. (see following diagram or graphic). 3. students read, brainstorm and write important information about the story in their book. 4. after discussion, the students write answers on the herringbone technique outline. 5. students discuss answers (5w+1h+main idea). 6. the herringbone technique outline is used for the revision of the story. method of study in this research, i used experimental study. arikunto (2010:207) stated that experimental research is a research which has a purpose to investigate whether there is an effect of something that is treated to the subject of research. in other words, an experimental research tends to observe whether there is the cause and effect relation or not. the research can be conducted by comparing andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 3 one or more experimental groups which are given treatment with one or more control groups which do not get any treatment. the population in this study was the eight grade students of smp negeri 24 semarang, kota semarang in the academic year 2015/2016. the eight grade in smp negeri 24 semarang consisted of eight classes. the samples were divided into two groups. the first group is the experimental group and the second one is the control group. the sample of this research was the students of eight graders of smp negeri 24 semarang in the academic year 2015/2016. the total sample is 64 students. the first group was class viii a as the experimental group consist of 32 students, and the second one was class viii b as the control group consist of 32 students. best (1981: 93) mentioned that independent variables are the conditions or characteristics that the experimenter manipulates, control, or observes. the independent variables are the conditions or characteristics that the experimenter manipulates in her attempt to ascertain their relationship to observed phenomena. the dependent variables are the conditions or characteristics that appear, disappear, or change as the experimenter introduces, removes, or changes independent variables (best, 1981: 66). from those definitions, it can be said that the independent variable of this study is herringbone technique and the dependent variable of this study is students’ achievement score in reading narrative texts. the writer conducted the research to find out the effectiveness of herringbone technique to teach reading of narrative text. the students’ reading result of pre-test, treatments and post-test were administered to know whether the use of herringbone technique is effective or not to improve students’ reading of narrative text. at the beginning of the research, the writer determines the experimental and control group. pre-test and post-test would given to both groups. pre-test would administered before giving the treatment in order to know the students’ prior knowledge. the herringbone technique as treatment would given to the experimental group, whereas the control group would taught by using conventional technique. at the end of the research, post-test would given to get the final result. discussion analysis of the try out test the analysis was to get a good instrument for investigation. the try out test was conducted on 12 january 2015. it was given to the eight grade students of smp negeri 24 semarang consisting of 32 respondents. the viii e was chosen as the try out group. the try out test is in form of multiple choices items which consist of 35 questions. the following are the data analysis of the try out test to know whether the instrument that used in the research fulfill the requirements a good instrument or not. validity a good test has to be valid. validity refers to the precise measurements of the test. the validity computation is consulted with the r table of product moment by determining the significant level of 5% and n which is according to the data. if the rxy > r table so the instrument is valid. for α = 5% and n = 32, r table = 0.349. in order to find the validity of the test, the writer used the following formula: 𝑟𝑥𝑦 = 32(732) − (28)(814) √{(32)(28) − 282}{(32)(21604) − (736)2} 𝑟𝑥𝑦 = 0.42 the item number 2 of the try out test was valid since its rxy = 0.42. after all the item numbers were analyzed, there were 27 valid items from 35 items and the test were 8 invalid. from the distribution above, it can be concluded that the try out instrument had 27 valid items and 8 invalid items. reliability reliability of the test shows the stability or consistency of the test scores when the test is used. the following is the computation of the reliability of the instrument. the formula is: 𝑟11 = ( 35 35 − 1 ) ( − 540.89 − 6.7 − 540.89 ) 𝑟11 = 1.04 andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 4 the result of computation reliability of the try out test instruments was 1.04. for α = 5% with n = 32, and r table = 0.349. since the result of r₁₁ was higher than r table, it was concluded that the try out test instrument was reliable and could be used as the instrument to get the data. discriminating power heaton (1975: 174) said that the discriminating power measured how well the test items arranged to identify the differences in the students’ competence. after the trial test was carried out, an analysis was made to find out the discriminating power of each item. to calculate the discriminating power of each item, the writer used the following formula: 𝐷 = 𝐵𝐴 𝐽𝐴 − 𝐵𝐵 𝐽𝐵 𝐷 = 16 16 − 12 16 = 0,25 the computation of discriminating power of the try out test instruments of item number 2: upper group lower group no. code score no. code score 1 r-16 1 1 r-29 1 2 r-1 1 2 r-2 1 3 r-14 1 3 r-6 1 4 r-19 1 4 r-12 1 5 r-25 1 5 r-24 1 6 r-32 1 6 r-27 0 7 r-3 1 7 r-31 1 8 r-4 1 8 r-20 1 9 r-7 1 9 r-21 0 10 r-8 1 10 r-26 1 11 r-28 1 11 r-13 1 12 r-30 1 12 r-15 1 13 r-9 1 13 r-5 0 14 r-10 1 14 r-11 1 15 r-18 1 15 r-17 1 16 r-22 1 16 r-23 0 sum 16 sum 12 according to the criteria, the item number 2 is satisfactory so this item can be used. from the table above, it was found that 8 items were said to be poor, 19 items were said to be satisfactory, 8 items were said to be good, and no item was said to be excellent. difficulty level a good test is a test which is not too easy and difficult. the formula that was used to count the difficulty level of each item was: 𝑃 = 𝐵 𝐽𝑆 𝑃 = 16 + 12 35 = 28 35 = 0.80 the computation of the difficulty level of the try out test instruments of item number 2 is easy. it means that the item was not too easy and too difficult for the students to do. after computing the overall 35 items of try out test, it was found that 21 items were classified to be easy, 13 items were classified to be medium and 1 item were classified to be difficult. the different result between students’ score in experimental and control group from the calculation of the students’ score, it showed the significant difference between students’ score in the experimental and control group. andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 5 the pre-test and post-test score of the experimental group no experimental group student code pre test post test 1 e-01 60 72 2 e-02 62 76 3 e-03 66 82 4 e-04 56 69 5 e-05 55 68 6 e-06 62 72 7 e-07 54 72 8 e-08 67 72 9 e-09 56 76 10 e-10 65 76 11 e-11 70 80 12 e-12 64 80 13 e-13 72 76 14 e-14 76 81 15 e-15 68 76 16 e-16 64 72 17 e-17 66 72 18 e-18 74 80 19 e-19 56 72 20 e-20 52 72 21 e-21 70 80 22 e-22 66 76 23 e-23 74 80 24 e-24 66 76 25 e-25 70 76 26 e-26 74 80 27 e-27 62 76 28 e-28 61 80 29 e-29 76 80 30 e-30 60 72 31 e-31 65 75 32 e-32 65 78 total 2168 2282 n 32 32 highest score 76 82 lowest score 52 69 mean 67.75 71.3125 varian 78.823 62.5471 andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 6 the pre-test and post-test score of the control group no control group student code pretest posttest 1 c-01 64 72 2 c-02 68 76 3 c-03 64 64 4 c-04 54 64 5 c-05 64 72 6 c-06 68 72 7 c-07 72 76 8 c-08 56 72 9 c-9 64 72 10 c-10 54 68 11 c-11 56 76 12 c-12 64 80 13 c-13 54 72 14 c-14 64 68 15 c-15 56 72 16 c-16 64 72 17 c-17 54 68 18 c-18 56 64 19 c-19 54 76 20 c-20 72 72 21 c-21 56 80 22 c-22 56 76 23 c-23 64 68 24 c-24 56 70 25 c-25 68 72 26 c-26 54 72 27 c-27 68 72 28 c-28 54 68 29 c-29 68 72 30 c-30 58 72 31 c-31 55 75 32 c-32 54 75 total 2099 2231 n 32 32 highest score 72 80 lowest score 54 64 mean 65.59 69.7187 varian 64.5851 29.9264 after analyzing the two results between the pre-test and post-test, it was found that the mean of the pre-test achieved by the students in experimental group using herringbone technique was 67.75. meanwhile, the mean of the post-test of the same group was 71.31. in a rather simpler observation, it can be concluded that there was a significant improvement between the pre-test and the posttest scores achieved by the students of experimental group. the control group using conventional technique showed the andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 7 improvement. the mean score of the control group was 65.59 for the pretest and 69.71 for the posttest. the average scores of the experimental and the control group after getting all the scores, the computation was made. the first way to know the significant difference between the experimental group and control group is to see through the difference of the means of the two groups. the following formula was used to get the means: a. the mean of the pretest of the experimental group: 𝑀𝑥 = 2168 32 𝑀 𝑥 = 67.75 b. the mean of the pretest of the control group: 𝑀𝑦 = 2099 32 𝑀𝑦 = 65.59 c. the mean of the posttest of the experimental group: 𝑀𝑥 = 2282 32 𝑀𝑥 = 71.31 d. the mean of the posttest of the control group: 𝑀𝑦 = 2108 32 𝑀𝑦 = 69.71 the average scores of students in the experimental group and control group before the treatment were almost the same. after the writer gave the treatment to the experimental group, the post-test result showed that the average score of the students improved until 71.31 from the previous average of pre-test 67.75. on the other hand, the control group got 69.71 as the average of post-test. in the pre-test the control group got 65.59. from the result, it can be concluded that the treatment which was given in experimental group achieved the better result. discussion of students’ mastery level in order to show the students’ mastery level in reading comprehension, the writer classified the students’ score in five grades, namely a, b, c, d, and e. the students’ score was transformed into percentage. the students’ level of achievement can be displayed as follows: the achievement of the experimental group grade frequency percentage pre-test post test pre-test post test a 1 2 3.3% 6.6% b 4 18 13.3% 60% c 14 8 46.6% 26.6% d 8 2 26.6% 6.6% e 3 0 10% 0% the table showed that the pre-test percentage of grade a was 3.3%. the following was the example of percentage computation for grade a, and the other items would use the same formula: percentage pre-test for grade a = (pretest frequency of grade a: total frequency pretest) x 100%. = (1 : 30) x 100% = 3.3 % the achievement level of the experimental group can be shown in the form of polygon below: andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 8 graphic 1 the polygon showed that the percentage of students’ achievement in grade a and b increased significantly for the post-test. it can be concluded that the students’ mastery level of the experimental group had been improved significantly after the treatment was given. analysis of the pre-test and post-test score the writer collected the data from the students’ scores achievement of the reading comprehension test. the students’ scores of pretest and post-test from the experimental and the control group were obtained. the followings are the simple table for the mean of pre-test and posttest of students’ scores: the mean of pre-test and post-test of students’ scores group the mean score of the pre-test the mean score of the post-test the experimental group 67.75 71.31 the control group 65.59 69.71 the table shows that the average of posttest scores in experimental group were higher than the average of post-test scores in control group. from the comparison, it can be conclude that the treatment was effective. homogeneity the homogeneity test was conducted to find out whether the groups’ were similar in their english reading achievement or not. homogeneity was to know that both two classes are homogeneous. it was important because the similarity of both objects would influence the test result. if both classes are not homogenous, the treatment also cannot be conducted because both classes do not have similar ability in reading narrative text achievement. in order to calculate the homogeneity of post-test from experimental and control group, the writer used the following formula: 𝐹 = 𝑉𝑒 𝑉𝑐 𝐹 = 78.823 64.5851 𝐹 = 1.2205 = 1.22 the result was consulted with the value of f table with dk numerator ve = n₁ 1 = 32 1 = 31, the dk numerator vc = n₂ 1 = 32 -1 =31, and α=5%, squared to ve= 32 and vc = 32 was 1.85. the result of the homogeneity test showed that there was homogeny. it was concluded based on 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% a b c d e post-test pre-test andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 9 the students’ reading ability between the experimental group and the control group on the pre-test where the f value was lower than the f table that was 1.22 compared to 1.85 as the f table. by knowing the result of homogeneity test the writer concluded that the two groups were homogeneity so that the research could be continued on those two groups as the objects of the study. normality the normality of the data was analyzed as well as the homogeneity. after finishing the process of the pre-test data gathering, the normality should be checked in order to know if the data could be analyzed. normality was counted to know that all scores are normal. normality of the experimental group based on the data of pre-test of the experimental group, the normality was analyzed. the computation, x²hitung was 3.08 and x²(α)(dk)=x2(5%)(2) = 5.99. the result showed that the data was normal because x²hitung 3.08< 5.99 then pre-test score for the experimental group was said to be normally distributed. normality of the control group based on the computation, x²hitung was 2.84. then, the pre-test results of the control group were consulted with critical value of x²(α)(dk) with α = 0.05 and dk=2, whose result was 7.82. since the value of x²(α)(dk) of pre-test of the control group were lower than 7.82, the data were considered to be normally distributed. test of significance after getting the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental and control group, the results were formulated with t-test formula. the t-test formula is: the computation of t-test was: 𝑠 = √ (32 − 1)34.9655 + (32 − 1)79.8889 32 + 32 − 2 𝑠 = 7.59 and to find the t-value, i used the formula: 𝑡 = 𝑋1̅̅ ̅ − 𝑋2̅̅ ̅ √ 1 𝑛1 + 1 𝑛2 𝑠 𝑡 = 77.00 − 70.27 √ 1 32 + 1 32 7.578074 𝑡 = 3.44 the value of the t-table with dk = 32+32 2 = 62 and significant level (α) =5% was 2.00. as the value (3.44) > 2.00, it could be concluded that there was significant difference on post-test between experimental group and control group. t-t for reading achievement’s gain difference the result of the t-test became the quantitative proof whether the difference of the pretest and posttest means of both group was significant or not. from the known data, then we could calculate the gain of pretest and posttest from the experimental and control group was as follows: 𝑠 = √ [32 − 1][54.40] + [32 − 1][75.57] 32 + 32 − 2 = 8.03 𝑠 = 8.03 and to find the t-value, i used the formula t(0.95)(62) = 2 𝑡 = 24.80 − 6.27 8.03√ 1 32 + 1 32 = 8.94 the value of the t-table with dk = 32 + 32 2 = 62 and significance level (α) = 5% was 2.00. as the value (8.94) > 2.00. the result of pre-test and post test from the result of the pre-test, it can be found that the mean score of the pre-test of experimental group was 67.75 and the control group was 65.59. the result of post test of experimental group was 71.31 while the control group gained 69.71. based on the score, it can be seen that the score of experimental group was higher than the control group. the result of the t test of mean difference was 8.94 and ttable was 2.00. based on the computation above, it could be seen that tvalue > ttable. the hypothesis that “there is significant difference in the teaching andi yusuf kurniawan / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 10 reading of narrative text using herringbone technique” was accepted. based on the tests conducted, it was proved that the use of herringbone technique is effective as a strategy in teaching narrative text to the eight grade students of smp negeri 24 semarang. the use of herringbone technique made the reading and learning activity more effective. the students of experimental group who were taught using herringbone technique looked more interested and enthusiastic during the treatment given by the writer than the control group which were taught using conventional technique. the result of their post-test was higher than their pre-test. finally, herringbone technique makes the students more interested in learning. it is easier to learn the lesson. it can be concluded that in this study, the use of herringbone technique as a strategy in teaching reading of narrative text was effective for the eighth grade students of smp negeri 24 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. conclusions the first purpose of the study is to discuss the effectiveness of teaching reading using herringbone technique to teach students’ reading of narrative text. the use of herringbone technique in teaching reading makes the activity in class more interesting. the students are active and very enthusiastic following the teachers’ instruction and working in group. this strategy allows students to explore ideas while they read the passage in group. finally, the herringbone technique makes the students more enthusiastic in learning and easier to understand the lesson. the second purpose of the study is to analyze the significant difference between of the students’ achievement taught by herringbone technique and those who are taught by conventional technique. the difference in score of the post-test test can be drawn as follow. in the score average between experimental group of 71.31 and control group of 69.71. it can be concluded that the experimental group got higher score than the control group. the result of t value > t table (3.44 >2.00) which means that there is a significant difference between teaching reading using herringbone technique and the one using conventional technique. references arikunto, suharsimi. 2010. manajemen penelitian (revised edition). jakarta: rineka cipta. best, john.w. 1981. research in education (revised ed.). new jersey: prentice-hall. deegan. j. 2006. herringbone technique. available at http://www.teacherweb.com/pa/nazaretha reamiddleschool/thespecialistteam/herring bonetechnique.doc. [accessed 2/8/2014] edwards, peter. 2003. literacy techniques: for teachers and parents (3rd edition). victoria: trafford. harris, k. 1980. reading in content areas .strategies for reading to learn. semantic maps. university of virginia. heaton, j. b. 1975. english language tests. england: longman. mcknight, katherine s. 2010. the teacher’s big book of graphic organizers: 100 reproducible organizers that help kids with reading, writing, and the content areas. san francisco: jossey-bass. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 142 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt thematic development on students’ analytical exposition texts a case of the fourth semester students in the academic year 2014/2015 novita setiawati, intan permata hapsari, arif suryo priyatmojo  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: analytical exposition, textual meaning, thematic development, thematic structure. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is based on a study endeavored to examine the development of analytical exposition texts written by the fourth semester students of universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015 who took genre-based writing class . the objective of the study is to examine to what extent the students develop their analytical exposition texts, in terms of thematic development. this study is a written discourse analysis in which the data collected are in the form of written texts. to examine thematic development, thematic structure must be found first. the data were divided into clauses and analyzed to discover their thematic structure using theory suggested by gerot and wignell (1995). then the themes and rhemes were examined using thematic development theory suggested by eggins (2004). results show that unmarked topical theme and reiteration pattern are dominant on students’ texts because they are the simplest and easiest form of thematic structure and thematic development. in addition, some problems related to thematic structure and thematic development were found. in thematic structure analysis, one problem of empty theme and three problems of empty rheme were discovered, while more than half of total clauses did not have thematic development. these might indicate two points; first, the students of genre-based writing class are still novice writers. second, they might not know about thematic development theory and how to employ it to develop their analytical exposition texts. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 143 introduction among skills learnt in english, writing is considered as the most challenging skill to master for many efl learners. not only do they have to generate ideas, they also have to develop them into a coherent whole text. however, this is not something easy to do. instead of writing a coherent whole text, many efl learners tend to brainstorm ideas, write them in a piece of paper, and submit it on their teacher‟s desk without having it proofread beforehand. as a result, not only grammatical mistakes, but also ideas which jump from one message to another are commonly found by writing teachers. a text which consists of jumping messages may cause confusion for readers. they might not understand what the writer means. when a text does not make sense, it fails to perform its function. moreover, it means that the writer fails to achieve his goal in writing the text. therefore, in teaching writing it is important to teach students how to develop ideas in order to write a coherent text. teaching how to develop ideas can be done by thematic development. it is a method to develop ideas into cohesive and coherent text. nevertheless, according to gugin (2014: 24-25), the teaching of efl has historically give priority to accuracy at sentence level; this will almost inevitably, automatically, create a “grammar-first” teaching approach, which in turn leads to a “grammar is writing” and “writing is grammar” teaching philosophy. this also happens in indonesia. students are taught to make grammatically correct sentences while they do not know how to develop those sentences into a coherent whole text. consequently, jumping ideas are found in their text, which make readers difficult to understand the text. for this reason, it is important to teach students how to develop their text in writing class. based on these problems, this study intends to examine to what extent the fourth semester students of the english department of universitas negeri semarang who took genre-based writing class develop their ideas in writing analytical exposition texts, in terms of thematic development. the goal of writing this text type is to persuade readers to support the students‟ point of views on an issue. to achieve it, their texts must be clear and make sense in order to make readers understand their arguments and support their positions. hence, each idea needs to be carefully selected and developed (derewianka: 1990: 76). these can be done by means of thematic development. thematic developmnet is a method of development that contribute to cohesion and coherence of a text (eggins, 2004:324). it signifies the flow of information from one clause to the other in a text. according to eggins (2004: 324) there are three methods of thematic development: theme reiteration, zig-zag theme pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern. each pattern is explained as follows. 1. theme reiteration it is where the item in the theme of the first clause is also selected as the theme of the following clause (belmonte and mccabe-hidalgo, 1998: 18). in other words, each clause in the text shares a common theme. although this type gives a clear focus, a text using this thematic development is claimed to be boring to read or listen to and it indicates a text which is going nowhere (eggins, 2004: 324). an example of this pattern which taken from butt et. al. (2000: 142) is presented as follows. 1 a good teacher needs to be understanding to all children 2 he or she must also be fair and reasonable 3 the teacher must work at a sensible pace and not one thing after another 4 the teacher also needs to speak with a clear voice clause topical n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 144 theme rheme figure 1.1 theme reiteration 1. zig-zag theme pattern in this pattern, the rheme of the first clause becomes the theme for the second clause. according to eggins (2004: 325): the zig-zag pattern achieves cohesion in the text by building on newly introduced information. this gives the text a sense of cumulative development which may be absent in the repeated theme pattern. an example of linier theme pattern which taken from butt et. al. (2000: 143) is presented as follows. 1 phonetics and phonology are concerned with speech ‒ with the ways in which humans produce and hear speech. 2 talking and listening to each other are so much part of human life. clause topical theme rheme figure 1.2 zig-zag theme pattern 2. multiple-rheme pattern in multiple-rheme pattern, a rheme may include a number of different pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the theme in a number of subsequent clauses. an example of multiple-rheme pattern which taken from butt et. al. (2000: 144) is presented as follows. 1 it is possible to distinguish three auditory dimensions or parameters of phonation, loudness, pitch, and a quality of sound that is sometimes called „timbre‟. n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 145 2 perceived loudness is related to subglottal pressure. 3 pitch is the perceptual correlate of the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds. clause topical theme rheme figure 1.3 multiple-rheme pattern to recapitulate, developing ideas into a coherent text is important in writing, and one way to examine the development is by examining the thematic development of the text. therefore, the study aims to examine to what extent the fourth semester students of the english department of universitas negeri semarang develop their analytical exposition texts, in terms of thematic development. specifically, there were two aspects analyzed in this study: the realization of thematic structure and the most frequent pattern of thematic development used by the students in their analytical exposition texts. methodology of the research this study investigated the realization of thematic structure and discovered the most frequent patterns of thematic development used in 25 analytical exposition texts written by the fourth semester students of the english department of universitas negeri semarang in the academic year 2014/2015 who took genre-based writing class. in order to investigate the thematic structure, the data was examined using thematic structure theory suggested by gerot and wignell (1995). the result of this examination was then further analyzed using thematic development theory by eggins (2004) to discover the most frequent pattern of thematic development used by the students in their analytical exposition texts. the procedures of analyzing the data are explained as follows. 1. thematic structure analysis in analyzing thematic structure, there were several steps to be followed. (1) before analyzing the thematic structure, each text had to be broken up into clauses. these clauses were then numbered so that it would be easier to count the number of clauses in every text. an example is shown below to make this explanation clearer. being too thin is commonly known as underweight. it is simply defined as weighing less than normal, healthy, or required weight. underweight potentially leads high risk of health problem. there are three clauses in the paragraph which then would be put in sequence. 1. being too thin is commonly known as underweight. 2. it is simply defined as weighing less than normal, healthy, or required weight. 3. underweight potentially leads high risk of health problem. n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 146 (2) next, the clauses were examined for their thematic structures by splitting each clause into theme and rheme. each clause might have more than one theme. nevertheless, every clause must contain one and only one topical theme (eggins, 2004: 302). once the topical theme was identified, the rest of the clause would be rheme. 1. being too thin is commonly known as underweight. subject (embedded clause) rheme topical (unmarked) theme 2. it is simply defined as weighing less than normal, healthy, or required weight. subject (nominal group) rheme topical (unmarked) theme 3. underweight potentially leads high risk of health problem. subject (nominal group) rheme topical (unmarked) theme (3) then, the themes were categorized into topical, interpersonal, and textual themes and counted to calculate their quantity and percentage. (4) each type of theme was further analyzed in detail. a) unmarked topical theme (1) nominal group (2) nominal group complex (3) embedded clause (4) predicator b) marked topical theme (1) adverbial as adjunct (2) prepositional phrase as adjunct (3) nominal group as adjunct (4) embedded clause as adjunct c) interpersonal theme n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 147 (1) modal comment adjunct (2) vocatives (3) finite verbal operator (4) wh-element d) textual theme (1) conjunction (2) conjunctive adjunct 2. thematic development analysis to discover thematic development, the clauses that were examined for their thematic structure were used. for this analysis, the theme was named theme 1, theme 2, etc.; the numbers signified the clause numbers. the rheme was also named rheme 1, rheme 2, etc. next, they were analyzed using thematic development theory by eggins. each clause in a text was connected by an arrow to show its type of thematic development. 1 being too thin is commonly known as underweight. 2 it is simply defined as weighing less than normal, healthy, or required weight. 3 underweight potentially leads high risk of health problem. clause topical theme rheme theme 1 rheme 1 theme 2 rheme 2 theme 3 rheme 3 the last step was classifying the thematic development discovered into three types: theme reiteration, zig-zag pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern. result and discussion a. findings 1. thematic structure the first finding is about three types of theme: topical, interpersonal, and textual. there are 703 clauses in the texts. each text, according to eggins (2004: 302), must have a topical theme. however, only 702 topical themes or 99.86% were discovered. it means there is one clause which does not have topical theme. other types of theme were also found in the texts. interpersonal theme occurred 32 times or 4.55% from the overall clause. textual theme, whose function is to build relation between parts of a text, occurred more frequently compared to interpersonal theme. it was found 328 times or 46.66% in the texts. to summarize, topical theme was found mostly in the texts, then followed by textual theme and interpersonal theme. n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 148 thematic structure total number of clauses 703 theme 702 rheme 700 no theme 1 no rheme 3 table 3.1 thematic structure theme total percentage topical theme 702 99.86% interpersonal theme 32 4.55% textual theme 328 4.66% table 3.2 theme types in students‟ analytical exposition texts furthermore, this study found that there are 3 clauses which have no rheme. they are presented as follows. (1) fast responds on internet transaction no rheme subject (nominal group) topical (unmarked) theme (2) first, from the health side. no rheme conjunctive adjunct adjunct (prepositional phrase) textual topical (marked) theme (3) then, cultural awareness of others. no rheme conjunction subject (nominal group) textual topical (unmarked) theme n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 149 a. topical theme topical theme is the element which refers to a participant, a circumstance or the process of the clause (arunsirot 2013: 165). there are two types of topical theme: unmarked and marked. (1) unmarked topical theme in a declarative clause, the unmarked topical theme is the subject of the clause. the subject can be nominal group, nominal group complex, or embedded clause. in a wh-interrogative clause, wh-items have the function of unmarked topical theme because they represent participant or circumstance (halliday 2004: 85). in this study, wh-items are classified as nominal group. in imperative clause, the unmarked topical theme is the predicator. the following is the result of unmarked topical themes which were found in the students‟ texts. unmarked topical theme total percentage nominal group 591 84.07% nominal group complex 11 1.56% embedded clause 26 3.70% predicator 4 0.57% table 3.3 unmarked topical theme the result shows that nominal group gets 84.07%, followed by embedded clause, nominal group complex, and predicator. embedded clause gets 3.70%, nominal group complex gets 1.56%, and predicator gets 0.57%. (2) marked topical theme in a declarative clause, a theme which is other than the subject is referred to as marked topical theme (halliday 2004: 73). the most usual form of marked topical theme is adverbial group or prepositional phrase functioning as adjunct in the clause. the other is nominal group or embedded clause functioning as complement. marked topical theme total percentage adjunct: adverbial 16 2.28% prepositional phrase 49 6.69% complement: nominal group 2 0.28% embedded clause 3 0.43% table 3.4 marked topical theme the table shows that the highest occurrence of marked topical theme is prepositional phrase (6.97%). it is followed by adverbial group, which get 2.28%, embedded clause, which get 0.43%, and nominal group, which gets 0.28%. in short, compared to marked topical theme, unmarked theme has higher frequency. b. interpersonal theme n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 150 interpersonal theme conveys interpersonal meaning. it includes one or more of the following: (1) finite, (2) wh-elements, (3) vocative, and (4) mood and comment adjunct or modal comment adjunct. here is the result of interpersonal theme analysis which was found in the students‟ texts. interpersonal theme total percentage modal comment adjunct 25 3.56% vocatives finite verbal operator 1 0.14% wh-element 6 0.85% table 3.5 interpersonal theme the table shows that the most dominant interpersonal theme is modal comment adjunct which gets 3.56%. the second is wh-element, which gets 0.85%. the third is finite verbal operator, which gets 0.14%, and there is no vocatives occurred in the students‟ analytical exposition texts. c. textual theme textual theme connects a clause to its neighboring clauses. they can be continuatives, conjunctive adjuncts, and conjunctions. since the texts analyzed are written texts, only conjunctive adjuncts and conjunctions were analyzed. textual theme total percentage conjunction 242 34.42% conjunctive adjunct 86 12.09% table 3.6 textual theme the table shows that conjunctions outnumber conjunctive adjuncts. conjunctions occurred 242 times (34.42%), while conjunctive adjuncts occurred 86 times (12.09%). 2. thematic development the second research problem is to examine thematic development which students employed in writing analytical exposition texts. in analyzing thematic development, eggins‟ theory was used. the following is a table showing the result of thematic development of students‟ writings. thematic development total percentage theme reiteration 151 21.48% zig-zag pattern 136 19.35% multiple-rheme pattern 11 1.56% table 3.7 thematic development the table shows that the students in genre-based writing class mostly used theme reiteration to write analytical exposition texts. theme reiteration was found 151 times in the texts or 21.48%. next, zig-zag pattern was found 136 times in the texts or 19.35%. the last pattern, multiple rheme pattern was found only 11 times or 1.56%. b. discussions 1. topical theme halliday (2004: 64) defines theme as an element which serves as the point of departure of the message, the meaning each clause embodies. it can be topical, interpersonal and textual. among these themes, however, topical theme plays a prominent role to the development of a clause since it takes transitivity role such as actor, behaver, senser, or circumstance within the clause (eggins, 2004: 302). therefore, each clause must have one and only one topical theme (eggins, 2004: 302). nevertheless, this study found that there is one clause which does not have topical theme. that clause is presented as follows. n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 151 for example is the leak of answer key by the printing company that have tender to print the final exam script. conjunctive adjunct rheme textual theme as it can be seen, the clause does not have a topical theme. the clause starts with a conjunctive adjunct for example and the following element is a finite is. because its function is to connect ideas between clauses, conjunctive adjunct must be followed immediately by topical theme, which can be a subject, an adjunct or a complement. this, according to arunsirot (2013: 169), is called the problem of empty theme. it might be caused by mother tongue interference (arunsirot 2013:169) or cross-linguistic influence (ellis, 1997: 54). it might happen since giving example in bahasa indonesia usually does not use a conjunction or conjunctive adjunct, yet indonesians use contoh to give an example, which is a noun. in addition to theme, a clause also must have rheme. it is the part of the clause in which theme is developed (eggins, 2004: 300). it typically contains „unfamiliar‟ or „new‟ information about the theme. this study discovered that there are three clauses which do not have rheme. this indicates that the writers fail to develop the themes of the clauses as has been said by eggins (2004: 300) that rheme is the part of the clause in which theme is developed. a. unmarked topical theme analyzing thematic structure also enables us to discern two kinds of topical theme: unmarked and marked topical theme. the former outnumbers the latter. this might be caused by the fact that novice writers, that have difficulty in composing their texts, tend to choose the simplest way of constructing english sentences by putting either nominal group or pronoun in subject position to make sure that the sentence is grammatically correct (arunsirot, 2013: 172). furthermore, ebrahimi and ebrahimi (2012: 775) state, “the low portion of the marked themes in students‟ writings shows that the students‟ writing is less argumentative in nature.” in this study, unmarked topical theme is composed of nominal group, nominal group complex, embedded clause, and predicator. the findings indicate that among those four categories of unmarked topical theme, nominal group occurred mostly on the texts. choosing nominal group to begin a clause or a sentence lowers the possibility of performing incorrect grammar. besides, hyland (2003: 4) states that teaching writing predominantly involves developing learners‟ skills in producing fixed patterns since accuracy and clear exposition are considered the main criteria of good writing. therefore, 84.07% of clauses begin with nominal groups. while nominal group occurred often on the texts, predicator as unmarked topical theme was the other way round. it only hits 0.57% or 4 clauses. the reason might be in relation to the text type of students‟ writings, which is analytical exposition. in structuring this text type, derewianka (1990: 76) cites three obligatory elements: thesis statement, argument which should be supported by evidence and examples, and restatement of writer‟s position. these elements are usually presented in the form of declarative clause as its function is to give information, whereas imperative clause is commonly used in procedure text to give instructions. the reason of the usage of imperative clauses could be to emphasize their arguments on the texts. b. marked topical theme in this study, there are four elements of marked topical theme which were examined on the students‟ texts: adverbial and prepositional phrase function as adjunct, and nominal group and embedded clause function as complement. n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 152 among those kinds of marked topical theme, prepositional phrase is the most dominant on the students‟ texts since it may serve as circumstantial adjunct denoting time, place, and manner (quality, degree, comparison, and means) which is needed in writing analytical exposition text. this is supported by davies in ebrahimi and ebrahimi (2012: 776) who states, “looking at marked theme from functional view point, these students used this theme to put some elements that frequently indicate notion such as validation of internal evidence, location in discourse time or space, and writer viewpoints into the theme position.” in contrast, nominal group as complement only occurred twice. this might be caused by the fact that creating a clause by making nominal group functioning as complement as the theme of the clause is rather difficult for novice writers. ebrahimi and ebrahimi (2012: 776) also find that there is a systematic increase in the use of marked theme moving from sophomore to senior students, which attest that the occurrence of marked topical theme is relevant to students‟ language proficiency and competence in writing. 2. interpersonal theme the second type of theme this study examined is interpersonal theme which consists of four elements: modal comment adjunct, vocatives, finite verbal operator, and wh-element. these elements convey interpersonal meaning on a text, and thirty-two interpersonal themes have been discovered from the texts. among those elements of interpersonal theme modal comment adjunct occurred frequently because it is one of the language features of analytical exposition text, whereas vocative, the element which was not found on the students‟ texts, is not a language feature of analytical exposition text. 3. textual theme in addition to topical and interpersonal themes, textual themes were also discovered in the texts. regarding frequency analysis, the textual theme is used more than interpersonal theme, yet it is less than topical theme. this could be due to the fact that, “an exposition needs to make a point and to persuade the readers to agree with it” (arunsirot, 2013:172). in order to enhance readers‟ solidarity with his point of view, the writer must grab readers‟ attention by ensuring continuity in the text. this can be achieved by using internal conjunctions and external conjunctions (arunsirot, 2013: 172). in this study, internal conjunctions are referred to conjunctions and external conjunctions are referred to conjunctive adjuncts. according to the findings, conjunctions (internal conjunctions) were frequently found on students‟ texts. this may indicate that the students are still novice in writing since conjunctions are typically employed to chain ideas in spontaneous spoken language (schleppegrell, 1996: 272). compared to conjunctions, conjunctive adjuncts are less employed in the students‟ analytical exposition texts. this result might be due to the fact that conjunctive adjuncts are difficult to master even at advanced level (grager and tyson in mudhhi and hussein, 2014: 19). hence, it is not surprising that the students preferred conjunctions to conjunctive adjunct in constructing their ideas into analytical exposition texts. 4. thematic development all thematic development patterns were found in the texts: theme reiteration, zig-zag pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern; however, theme reiteration was mostly preferred as a method to develop students‟ ideas in composing analytical exposition texts. for the writers particularly novice ones, it is easy to organize their ideas this way since the themes chosen are coming from the same participant. for the readers, this kind of paragraph is easy to understand because “having the same participant made theme on a regular basis provides the text with a clear focus” (eggins, 2004: 324). nevertheless, eggins (2004: 324) also states, “a text in which the theme never varied would not only be boring to read or listen to, but would indicate a text which is going nowhere.” besides, according to wang (2007) and mccabe (1999) in ebrahimi n. setiawati & i. permata hapsari & a. suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 153 and ebrahimi (2014: 256), “the use of the reiteration progression pattern makes the text to be simple, repetitive, and redundant.” thus, overusing reiteration pattern may lead to the lack of deep explanation of the ideas introduced since the writer does not expand the information contained in the rheme (belmonte and mccabe-hidalgo, 1998: 22). furthermore, rakhman (2013), who examined thematic development on analytical exposition texts written by high school students, found that theme reiteration was dominant on students‟ texts. this finding is similar to this study; even though, the subjects are from different level of education. college students are expected to have higher competence in using english compared to high school students. however, in reality most of both students employed the same method to develop their ideas in writing analytical exposition texts. therefore, it might be concluded that genre-based students‟ competence in writing analytical exposition is still low. in addition, many of students‟ texts are lack of thematic development. consequently, the texts could not achieve their goal due to difficulty in understanding the writers‟ ideas. this is also supported by wang (2007: 167) who stated, “if a writer fails to control the flow of information from theme to rheme, his or her text is difficult for a reader to follow, because there is no clear signpost directing the reader, who therefore cannot easily follow the progression of an idea or argument.” this condition might be due to the fact that the students might not know about thematic development theory and how to employ it to develop their texts, particularly analytical exposition texts. conclusions based on the research‟s findings and discussions, there are two main points concluded. first, this study found that topical, interpersonal, and textual themes are discovered from the texts, in which unmarked topical theme is dominant on the students‟ analytical exposition texts. it might be caused by the fact that the students are still novice writers. therefore, to ensure that the texts were grammatically correct, they chose the subjects as the point of departure in most clauses on their texts. second, this study also discovered that most students use reiteration pattern to organize the flow of their ideas from one clause to the other. this method of development is the easiest one to apply compared to the other methods. the students simply pick theme on the first clause to be theme on the subsequent clauses. nevertheless, overusing this method might indicate that the students‟ competence in writing, particularly analytical exposition texts, is low since they failed to develop their ideas on the texts using various methods. it is important to teach students thematic development and thematic structure as they help the students organize ideas and improve texts‟ cohesion and coherence. moreover, they might help english teachers and lecturers evaluate, mark, and improve students‟ writings at discourse level. references arunsirot, s. 2013. an analysis of textual metafunction in thai efl students‟ writing. novitas-royal (research on youth and language). 7/2: 160-174. available at https://www.google.co.id/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei 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[accessed on 8/30/2016]. halliday, m.a.k. 2004. an introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed). london: arnold. hyland, k. 2003. second language writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. mudhhi, s.k. and r.f. hussein. 2014. a corpus-based study of conjunctive adjuncts in the writings of native and non-native speakers of english. in english linguistics research. vol. 3. no. 2. toronto: sciedu press. pp. 18-32. available at http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/elr/article/download/5367/3337 [accessed on 4/16/2016]. rakhman, a.n. 2013. an analysis of thematic progression in high school students‟ exposition texts. in passage. vol. 1. no. 1. pp. 65-74. available at http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/psg/article/viewfile/339/228 [accessed on 2/5/2016]. schleppegrell, m.j. 1996. conjunction in spoken english and esl writing. in applied linguistics. vol. 17. no. 3. oxford: oxford university press. pp. 271-285. available at https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.137.7591&rep=rep1&type=pdf [accessed on 2/7/2016]. wang, l. 2007. theme and rheme in the thematic organization of text: implications for teaching academic writing. in the asian efl journal quarterly. vol. 9. no. 1. tortola: asian efl journal press. pp. 164-176. available at http://asian-efl-journal.com/march_2007_ebook.pdf#page 164 [accessed on 9/10/2015]. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and 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security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421ada621fef • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt character education values in reading section of eenglish textbook for senior high school students grade xi pratama lysa hapsari department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: character education, reading section, e-book ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the main purpose of the study is to find out what character values are integrated in reading section of the english e-book of senior high school and in which part of the english e-book of senior high school the character values are realized. in order to obtain the objective of the study, i did several steps. i selected the e-book and then the reading section was selected. after selecting the reading section, the character education values integrated in the reading section were identified. then, i identified the character education values in the reading section components; whether they are integrated in reading texts or reading exercises. from the eighteen character values formulated by the indonesian ministry of national education 2010, there are only seventeen of them covered in reading section of the e-book. these seventeen values are honesty, tolerance, democracy, hard work, creativity, environmental caring, social caring, discipline, patriotism, nationalism, respect achievement, loving peace, reading habit, independence, religious, curiosity, and friendly/communicative. one character value that is not covered in reading sections is responsibility. all the character values found are covered in both components of the reading sections. after analyzing, i would like to suggest for the next researcher who attempts to do the similar research as i do. he/she should analyze the textbook which is recommended by the book centre (pusbuk) of the national education ministry (depdiknas) so that his/ her research will have a great possibility to be used as a consideration to select a good textbook for teaching and learning processes at schools. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: tamalee9@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 pratama lysa hapsari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction character development has long been one of the goals of national education. national education act, 2003, clause i states that one of the national education goals is to develop the learner’s potential, intelligence, personality, and noble character. in this case, education is intended not only to establish intelligence, but also to develop personality or character. adolescence is a transition phase that everybody has between the puberty and adulthood. in this phase, they try to find out who they truly are. it is the time for them to form their identities. with the right guide, adolescents can avoid drug use, irresponsible sexual encounters, and other psychological and behavioral disorders. it is important for teachers to help them to go through this phase which mostly happens in their school time because most of them spend more time at school and with their friends than what it takes to have a proper communication with their parents. character education can be applied in a variety of elements that exist in schools, for example in schools’ curriculum and syllabus in teachers’ lesson plans, materials, and media. in this curriculum, character building can be embodied into almost every subject. it is also can be embodied in lesson plan where there are indicators and measurement, the values of character building can be integrated and then it can be implemented into learning activities. character education can also be implemented in the learning materials so that when the teacher teaches the material to the students, it is not only the material itself that is conveyed, but also the character education values as well. in education, textbook holds important role. for students, the textbook is one of the sources of information and an effective tool to increase their experiences. for teachers, the material presented in textbooks may be used as consideration in teaching. for example, as the materials chosen and compiled with material from other sources. a few years ago, the government initiated to publish buku sekolah elektronik (bse) which is textbook in a form of electronic, hence the name e-book. this new step from the government aims at coping with the lacks of nationally standardized textbooks which are usually too expensive to afford by most schools. since then, these e-books have been widely used in schools because of the cheap price, if not free at all. the presence of e-books as a handbook of teachers and students in schools also determines the success of learning. e-book contains material as a source of learning, so that they also serve as a learning tool to support a program of learning. for that, as a medium that can be used to infuse character education to learners, e-books must also contain the values of character education. therefore, e-books are the most effective media into which we can integrate character education values. besides the materials, teachers can convey the character education values while they are teaching the students. in english textbook, there are four skills in which students are usually taught with. they are reading, listening, speaking, and writing. reading education in indonesia begins from the earliest level of education. besides getting the help from the teachers, most of the materials students get in schools come from reading their textbooks. reading is always a part of a textbook. more than a half of materials in textbooks usually even come from this reading part. in reading section of a textbook, students can find so much information. this condition makes reading an effective medium to embody character education values into. students will not only get information for their studies, but they can also learn good character values to help stirring them to the right path through their adolescence. the facts above lead my curiosity to conduct a research to observe character education integrated in reading part of english ebook for senior high school. in this case, i will pratama lysa hapsari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 concern more on the reading part of the e-book of senior high school. method in this study, i chose reading texts and reading exercises of reading sections in developing english competencies as the object of the study. i wanted to find out what character education values are found in reading sections of the analyzed textbook. i also wanted to find out in what component character education values are incorporated, whether in the reading texts or in the student exercises. i applied some steps in collecting the data. a) selecting the textbook the textbook that i chose is an e-book published by pusat perbukuan departemen pendidikan nasional or the book center of national education ministry. it can be easily downloaded from internet through www.bsedepdiknas.co.id. i choose an english textbook for senior high school students grade xi entitled developing english competencies. b) selecting the reading section the next step was selecting some reading sections from the book. c) procedure of analyzing data there are several steps in the procedure of analyzing the data in this study, they are: (1) reading the first step is reading the e-book, especially the reading sections and the exercises. (2) identifying from the reading sections and the exercises in the e-book, the identified data will be put into a data card. result and discussion this sub chapter deals with the findings of the study. in other words, it deals with the result of the data analysis. there are fifty four data that has been collected and analyzed. to strengthen the data analysis, the percentage is counted by formula as stated below. x = the percentages of each type of character values in reading section n = the number of each type of character values in reading section σ n= the total number of character values in reading section the complete findings which answer the statements of the problems are as follows: 1. the character education values which are incorporated in reading sections after analyzing the data, i found that the reading sections of “developing english competencies” for grade xi covers only seventeen of eighteen character education values which are formulated by the indonesian ministry of national education 2010. the character education values which are covered in reading sections are tolerance, discipline, hard working, creativity, independence, patriotism, friendliness and communicativeness, pleasure for reading, environmental caring, democracy, religiousness, honesty, curiosity, nationalism, respecting achievement, and social caring. the character value which is not covered in reading sections is responsibility. the analyzed data are shown in the following table. by the table below, the character values which appear in reading sections of “developing english competencies” for grade xi will be obvious. table 1. percentage of character education values no character values percentage 1 honesty 24.79% 2 tolerance 24.79% 3 democracy 21.37% 4 hard working 4.27% 5 environmental caring 4.27% 6 social caring 3.42% 7 discipline 3.42% x = n x 100% ∑n http://www.bse-depdiknas.co.id/ http://www.bse-depdiknas.co.id/ pratama lysa hapsari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 8 curiosity 1.71% 9 religiousness 1.71% 10 creativity 1.71% 11 respecting achievement 1.71% 12 loving peace 1.71% 13 pleasure for reading 1.71% 14 independence 0.85% 15 nationalism 0.85% 16 patriotism 0.85% 17 friendliness/comm unicativeness 0.85% 18 responsibility 0.00% three character values which are honesty, tolerance, and democracy dominate the chart by more than a half of the total sum of the character values found in the e-book. these three character values which are mostly found in the reading exercises are important values to learn by students while they are communicating with their friends, especially when they are doing some exercises together. in the fourth place, there is hard work which is good to prepare students to face the world where the one who works hard will survive. the early implementation of hard work in indonesian schools is currently still underestimated compared to those in developed countries. for instance, indonesian students are not used to working part time jobs during their holidays, and most students ask for money from their parents to pay their school fee. this value will teach them to respect the hard work of those around them and try to apply this value to their own lives. environmental caring which appears next is currently a currently phenomenal topic with all the global warming issues. students will learn to love nature and preserve it, which is an excellent idea considering indonesia is one of the countries who have large part of forests and seas. the next character value that appears is social caring. this value and discipline have both the same score in the chart. social caring, in relation with the way students communicate to and have the sensitivities for those around them that are not as lucky as they are, is an important value to be taught in schools where most of their social lives occur. while discipline is also so important considering the culture in our country in which discipline is undermined like that hard work value, it is not properly taught to children. most students used to the idea of being late in doing everything, from arriving at school to handing in their tasks. this value will teach them how to be disciplined in their lives. the next five values have the same score in the chart; they are curiosity, creativity, being religious, respecting achievement, and loving peace. the next values barely appear at all in the ebook. they are reading habit, independence, nationalism, patriotism, and friendliness/communicativeness. responsibility does not appear at all in the e-book which is most unfortunate considering this is a significant value. 2. the character education values’ appearance in reading sections components this sub chapter would like to answer the second problem statements, in what component of reading sections the character values are realized. the reading sections of “developing english competencies” for grade xi consist of two components. they are reading text and reading exercises. the analyzed data are shown in the following table. by the table below, the values which appear in certain component of reading section of “developing english competencies” for grade xi will be obvious. table 2. percentage of value appearance in reading section components no reading section components percentage 1 reading exercises 81.48% 2 reading texts 18.52% pratama lysa hapsari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 the character education values appear forty four times or 81.48% in the e-book; this exceeds the amount of character education values that are found in the reading texts with ten or 18.52% appearances. one of the reasons why the character education values are found mostly in reading exercises is because that the three most frequently appearing character education values which are honesty, tolerance, and democracy, have tendencies to appear in the reading exercises. with all of the massive amounts of pair works, group works, club project and reviews, these characters surpass the other values, which increase the amount of character values found in this component of the reading section. another reason of this significant difference is because while there are approximately eight to ten activities in a chapter of the e-book, there are just two or three reading texts in a chapter out of ten chapters in the ebook. reading texts in the e-book with its ten times appearances of character education values range from narrative text, hortatory exposition text, analytical text to poem. character education values can be found both in the reading texts and in reading components, although the amount may be unbalanced. references anderson, r. c., et al. (1985). becoming a nation of readers. washington, dc: national institute of education. atkinson, mary and jeanne sturges. 2003. at turning point: the young adolescent learner. hampshire: center for collaborative education. berg, bruce l. 1989. qualitative research methods for the social science. undiana university of pennsylvania: allyn and bacon. berkowitz, marvin b, and melinda c. bier. 2005. what works in character education. missouri: character education partnership. clark, r., & ivanič, r. (1997). the politics of writing. london: routledge. cortazzi, m. and jin, l. 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[accessed 03/12/13] available at: http://bse31.blogspot.com/2011/12/meningk atkan-manfaat-buku-sekolah.html langenbeach, william. 1997. textbook, the encyclopedia of american, vol 26.p.563.connecticut: grolier inc. lestari, ida puji. 2012. character building in junior high school english language textbooks: a content analysis. thesis. graduate program in english language education, state university of malang. lickona, thomas. 1993. the return of character education. character education. 51/3: 6-11 lickona, thomas. 2003. the content of our character: ten essential virtues. the fourth and fifth rs: respect and responsibility. 10/1: 13 miles, m.b., and huberdan, a.m. 1984. qualitative data analysis: a source book of new methods. newbury park, ca: sage. mujiyanto, yan. 2009. petunjuk penulisan skripsi. semarang: unnes press. pantic, natasa. 2006. moral education through literature. edinburg: university of edinburg. richard, jack c. 2001. the role of textbook in a language program. cambridge rose, a. j. f. 2012. an analysis of the values incorporated in the pratama lysa hapsari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 english samachir kalvi text book at the secondary level. dissertation. reading (process). online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reading_(proce ss). [accesed 03/25/12] ryan, kevin and thomas lickona. 1992. character development in schools and beyond. washington: library of congress. samani, muchlas and hariyanto. pendidikan karakter: model dan konsep. bandung: rosda. stedje, lauree beth. 2010. nuts and bolts of character education. oklahoma: character first. tajima, m. (2011). ideological messages embedded in an efl textbook. in a. stewart (ed.).pp.329336 textbook. online at http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/textbook. [accessed 04/23/12] utomo, erry. 2011. the development of character education and its implementation at educational unit in indonesia. journal of educational research and policy. 3/1: 26-36 weddel, kathleen santopietro. 2009. how to choose good esl textbook. colorado: northern colorado professional development center what is character education? online at http://www.character.org/key-topics/whatis-character-education/. 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[accessed 03/05/12] .2010. pengembangan pendidikan budaya dan karakter: pedoman sekolah. jakarta: kementrian pendidikan nasional. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reading_(process) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reading_(process) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/textbook http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/textbook http://www.character.org/key-topics/what-is-character-education/ http://www.character.org/key-topics/what-is-character-education/ http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/whatisreadingskills.htm http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/whatisreadingskills.htm http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/whatisreadingskills.htm http://www.k12reader.com/what-is-reading-comprehension/ http://www.k12reader.com/what-is-reading-comprehension/ attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421ddcdb20fd • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare ____________________ november oktober september 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of manual super text twist game to improve students’ english vocabulary mastery nurul saofa aulia department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima 2013 disetujui 2013 dipublikasikan 2013 ________________ keywords: super text twist game, vocabulary mastery, and action research abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study concerns about the use of manual super text twist game to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery. therefore, the objective of this study is to obtain how well the game contributes for solving vocabulary problems of junior high school students. this study was conducted by using classroom action research design. the subjects of this study were viiib students chosen by using purposive sampling technique. there were two cycles in this study. the treatment was given in each cycle. in order to get data, she used several instruments. they were tests, questionnaires, and observation checklists. she gave several pre-tests and post-tests to obtain the improvement of the subjects’ vocabulary mastery. in order to carry out the subjects’ opinion and interest toward the learning process, she used the questionnaires. she also recorded the subjects’ behavior in an observation checklist. the result of this study showed that there was a significant improvement of the subjects’ vocabulary mastery. it was proved by the high increase between the subjects’ score of initial pre-test and final post-test. the average of the initial pre-test scores was 64, while the average of the final post-test was 80. in addition, the subjects gave positive perception, opinion, and interest toward the learning process by using the game. this fact was supported by the result of the questionnaires. moreover, participation of the subjects increased after the treatment was given. the subjects were more enthusiastic in participating the learning process. this condition was based on result of the observation checklist. according to the results above, it can be concluded that game gives positive contribution to the improvement of the subjects’ vocabulary mastery. the use of the game is recommended for english teachers as an alternative technique for teaching vocabulary. through this technique, teachers are able to enhance students’ interest and motivation in the learning english. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: uness_english@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 review of related literature nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction mastering vocabulary is the most important thing in mastering english. english learning process faced many problems because students lacked vocabulary. vocabulary cases happened in english learning process in indonesian junior high school students. for instance, in the learning process in the classrooms, the meanings of common words were often asked by teacher to students, but they could not answer the questions correctly. moreover, there were still many spelling mistakes in students‟ writing. furthermore, if the students were asked about their opinions about moral value of a text, they were unable to express their ideas properly. those problems made the students unable to understand the material maximally. therefore, they still had to find out the meanings of the words in the dictionary whereas for students, it is a boring activity to always look up words in the dictionary. according to the english teacher in the school, the students were often lazy to look the words up in the dictionary so their vocabulary mastery improvement was very slow. after knowing the conditions above some possibilities of causal factors of those problems were drawn. the first is students‟ character. the students‟ laziness to find out the meanings of words in the dictionary can be a causal factor of lack of vocabulary mastery. the second is that students especially adolescents, like fun learning. they always want to learn vocabulary by doing interesting activities which are almost similar to playing games. the next is language teaching method. teachers always use traditional method. the last factor is that vocabulary teaching and learning does not have certain time allocation in learning process in the classrooms. based on the facts above, implementing one of alternative techniques for teaching vocabulary should be done. it is game technique. the application of game technique in learning process may make better learning process. many researchers said that vocabulary is very important in language learning. according to camerron (2001:73), “word is the key unit in building up skills and knowledge.” in addition, here are some quotations from several researchers about vocabulary. “no matter how well the student learn grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of second language are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an second language just cannot happen in any meaningful way” (mccarthy, 1990:viii). “vocabulary knowledge enables language use, language use enables the increase of vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of the world enables the increase of vocabulary knowledge and language use and so on” (nation, 1993). in order to make vocabulary learning process better at junior high school, the teacher also has to follow particular principles in teaching vocabulary. according to wallace (1982:27-30), they are as follows: (1). aims “the aims have to be clear for the teacher: how many of the things listed does the teacher expect the learner to be able to achieve the vocabulary? what kinds of words?” (page 27). (2). quantity “the teacher may have to decide on the number of vocabulary items to be learned” (page 28). (3). need “the students are put in a situation where they have to communicate and get the words they need, as they need them, using the teacher as an informant” (page 28). (4). frequent exposure and repetition “it is seldom, however, that we remember a new word simply by hearing at the first time. there has to be certain amount of repetition until there is evidence that students have learned the target word” (page 29). (5). meaningful presentation “the learner must have a clear and specific understanding of what it denotes or refers to. the word is presented in such a way nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 that its denotation or reference is perfectly clear and ambiguous” (page 29). (6). situation of presentation “the choice of words can be very varied according to the situation in which we are speaking and according to how well we know the person, to whom we are speaking (from informal to formal)” (page 30). in fact, those purposes of language teaching cannot be reached if the students lack vocabulary. therefore, the teacher has to find out the most suitable teaching and learning technique for her students to solve those problems. according to nation (1990), there are three strategies in teaching vocabulary. they are presentation strategies, strategy training, practice strategies. moreover, wallace (1982:38) categorized application of the techniques in some ways. one of them is group-to-group competitive playing games which are enjoyable for students. games are fun and useful. people whether are young or not like to play games. by playing game, they not only attain fun but also some benefits. according to lewis and bedson (2010:5), games ensure that players interact with each other, and this interaction is usually played out in language. they involve both of cooperation and competition, rules, and unpredictability, enjoyment, and serious commitment. by playing games, people can employ their language skills strategically in cooperative way, where a group works together to achieve certain goals. one example of language games is super text twist game. the way of playing this game is by arranging some letters which are given by the teacher in order to form as many english words as possible within a certain period of time. the game is played in groups. the group which can arrange the most letters into english words, will be the winner. by doing this game, unconsciously the students will recall, write, and discuss to find out english words. moreover, the students will be more familiar with english words. in addition, they will unconsciously be motivated to look words up in dictionary. this study used an action research. according to anne burns (2010:2), “action research involves taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring a teacher‟s own teaching contexts.” in action research, the teacher becomes an „investigator‟ or „explorer‟ of his or her personal teaching context, while at the same time she will be a participant in it. according to kemmis and mctaggart (1988:11), steps in doing action research are planning, action, observation, and reflection. methods of investigation the subjects of the study are the students were students of viiib class in academic year 2012/ 2013. this class had 39 students. in choosing the class as the subject of this study, i used purposive sampling technique. i chose the class which had the most vocabulary problems. this choice was based on the suggestion of an english teacher of the school. this fact was proved by the average of their english final test scores, low midterm test, and daily scores. based on the observation, there were several possible reasons of those conditions above. first, the schedule of english subject of the class was not in favorable time. second, most of their parents are farmers. therefore, awareness of the importance of education was very low. the third is language teaching method which was always used by their teachers. since the purpose of this study was to solve vocabulary problems, its object was the subjects‟ vocabulary improvement. in this study, i only focused on vocabulary in writing skill. vocabulary was used as data in this study. it was taken from the subjects‟ handout for one semester. there were 1424 words in the handout. since the number of the words was very big, the study only used a sample of the words. the number of the sampled words was 70 words. those sampled words were presented for two meetings. after the words as data was administered, the data began to be collected. the data would be collected in four ways. they are by using observation checklist, questionnaires, tests, and interview. the nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 questionnaires and the tests would be analyzed quantitatively. the behavior checklist and the interview would be analyzed qualitatively. there were five aspects which were observed in this study. there were (1) subjects‟ enthusiasm, (2) subjects‟ attention to teacher‟s explanation, (3) subjects‟ interest in playing the game, (4) subjects‟ participation and confidence in all learning process, and (5) subjects‟ seriousness in doing vocabulary task in group. in this study, i gave the questionnaires to the subjects in order to obtain their opinions, beliefs, and interest after giving the treatment. in addition, the interview was in the form of guided or semi-structured interview. the tests contained the words which were taken randomly from the sampled words. the tests were in the form of a gap-fill. analysis should be done after the results were caught. in this study, the analysis was done quantitatively and qualitatively. the quantitative data were taken from the tests and the questionnaires. she used descriptive statistics in analyzing the data. measuring central tendency was used to analyze the tests. meanwhile, measuring dispersion was used to analyze the questionnaires. in analyzing results of the questionnaires, she used a range of the means. the results of the questionnaires can be classified into the range of the means. in this study, the qualitative data were obtained from the observation checklist and the interview. analyzing result of the observation checklist and the interview used categorizing technique. the results of the observation checklist for each cycle were compared to those of other cycles in order to obtain the improvement of the subjects‟ attitudes toward the learning process. since this study was an action research, this study was done based on the following steps. a. giving the initial pre-test before conducting the cycles, in order to know how far the subjects had mastered vocabulary which was supposed to learn, i gave the initial pre-test (ipt). furthermore, it was followed by two cycles. b. first cycle the steps of the first cycle were stated below. 1. planning in this step, some preparations for conducting the study were done. firstly, i made scenario of teaching learning process. secondly, i constructed a lesson plan. thirdly, after preparing learning material, i constructed the instruments of this study. finally, i prepared media for teaching learning process. after all of preparations were done, i began the action. 2. action before doing the action, i gave the 1st cycle pre-test. in beginning of the action, i reviewed narrative and recount texts material. after that, i asked the subjects to identify difficult words from the texts with their partner. then, the treatment was given. the treatment was playing super text twist game technique. the steps in giving the treatment were described as follows: (1) the subjects were divided into some groups; (2) the media of the game was distributed to the groups; each group got one media; (3) they were asked to fill in empty boxes on the media by using english words. (4) they should write as many english words as possible on the boxes; the number of letters for each word must be the same as numbers of the boxes on the media; and (5) vocabulary drill was done by checking the subjects‟ answers to the game. next, i gave the 1st cycle post-test. the post-test examined the first half of the sampled words which were taught in this cycle. at the end of the first cycle, i gave first cycle questionnaire to the subjects. 3. observing during the teaching and learning process, i observed the subjects‟ responses and attitude. nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 those things were observed by using the observation checklist. 4. reflecting and assessment in this step, she assessed and analyzed results from the instruments. the results of all of the instruments were cross-check each other. this was done to know how far the goal had been achieved and what i should do in the next cycle. c. second cycle basically, the steps of the second cycle were similar to those in first cycle. although the steps were similar to those in the first cycle, there were several modified steps in the second cycle. the steps were elaborated below. 1. planning in this step, i prepared several things for conducting the second cycle. the first was teaching learning scenario. since there was a problem about time management in the first cycle, i changed the activities of teaching learning process. in order to minimize time for discussion, i applied think pair share technique. in addition, i tried to use cooperative learning technique with an award to the winner to make the learning process better. the second was a lesson plan. the lesson plan for the second cycle was constructed based on the second cycle scenario. the third was learning material and instruments. they were about narrative and recount texts which contained the second half of the sampled words. in the second cycle, she prepared two kinds of media. they were media for think pair share activity and media for super text twist game. 2. action in the beginning of the second cycle, i gave the 2nd cycle pre-test. in order to minimize time, i reviewed the previous material only for a while. after that, i .explained the role of think pair share technique. the subjects were asked to identify difficult words from the texts by using think pair share technique. then, the treatment was given. the treatment was the same as the first cycle. before giving the treatment, i said that there would be an award for the winner of the game. next, i gave the 2nd cycle post-test. the post-test examined the second half of the sampled words which were taught in this cycle. at the end of the second cycle, i gave the 2nd cycle questionnaire to the subjects. 3. observing in this step, i observed the subjects‟ responses and attitude toward the learning process of that day. 4. reflecting and assessment in this step, i assessed and analyzed results from the instruments. analysis of this cycle would be compared to the results from the first cycle. this comparison would show the result of this study, especially about the subjects‟ attitude. d. giving the final post-test at the end of this study, the fpt was given. this test obtained the improvement of the subjects‟ score in vocabulary test. the result of this test would be compared with the result of the ipt. this comparison was supposed to show significant improvement of the subjects‟ vocabulary mastery. data analysis and discussion a. result of initial pre-test in this study, the initial pre-test (ipt) was given on friday, june 7th 2013. this ipt consisted of 50 test items. the subjects had to finish this test in 40 minutes. the average of the subjects‟ score of the test was 64, whereas the criterion of mastery learning was 72. it showed that the average was lower than the criterion of mastery learning. it seems that the subjects were not familiar with the words which were frequently used in their handout. therefore, i concluded that the subjects really lacked vocabulary mastery. nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 therefore, there should be a treatment to improve the subjects‟ achievement in vocabulary mastery. then, i continued the study by conducting the first cycle of this study. b. analysis of the first cycle the 1st cycle was conducted on saturday, 8th june 2013. before starting the learning process, i gave the 1st cycle pre-test. this was done to obtain how far the subjects have mastered the first half of the sampled words. the first half of the sampled words would be learned in this cycle. the average of scores of this test was 66. next, in order to know the subjects‟ feeling, interest, and opinion about the treatment and the learning process, i gave the 1st cycle questionnaire. based on the result of matching the mean to the criterion, it can be concluded that:  the subjects‟ interest in learning vocabulary was low;  the game could help the subjects in mastering vocabulary;  the use of the game motivated the subjects to learn english;  the use of the game for learning vocabulary was effective; and  the game was beneficial so that they wanted it to be done continually. at the end of the first cycle, i gave the first cycle post-test. the average of the subjects‟ score of this test was 74. after that i observed the subjects‟ attitude. it was elaborated in an observation checklist. based on the result of it, i knew several information of the subjects‟ behavior. firstly, in this cycle, only half of the subjects came to the class on time. this might be happen because they did not know that at that day, there would be a research. since that day was the first time for learning process of this study, almost all of the subjects showed their curiosity about the learning process. this condition was contrast with their spirit in learning process. at that day, only half of the subjects learned english with high spirit. based on the fact above, i concluded that their enthusiasm toward the english learning was still needed to be improved. secondly, only half of the subjects really paid attention to teachers‟ explanation. when i explained the material, there were only several subjects who listened seriously. moreover, when the learning process was being conducted, only several subjects who really understand role of each activity. since the others still had to ask to their friends, the class was noisy. thirdly, since the game was an interesting activity, there were 28 subjects who were interested vocabulary learning by playing the game. this fact was proved by their behavior. when she explained the role of the game, they listened to the explanation seriously. they also played the game enthusiastically and seriously. there was not any subjects who did other activity when the game was played. fourthly, at that day, there were only half of the subjects who actively participated in learning process. the subjects who followed all of activities in the learning process well were only 23 subjects. the 23 subjects were attractive in the learning process, while the others were really passive. moreover, there were only half of the subjects finished all of learning steps on time. fifthly, the subjects‟ seriousness toward learning process was only showed by 20 subjects. since the beginning of the learning process at that day, only half of the subjects who did and stay on vocabulary task by themselves. there were still many subjects who disturbed their friends in finishing the task. the noise of the unserious subjects disturbed the learning process. therefore, the learning process did not run well. the last, i evaluated everything which related to the first cycle activities. firstly, she evaluated the learning process. in the 1st cycle, she found a problem related to time management. each step of the learning process was done in a rush. secondly, i evaluated the results of the instruments. based on the result of the 1st cycle observation checklist, there were some weaknesses. the subjects‟ seriousness, enthusiasm, attention, and participation were shown by half of the subjects. moreover, from nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 result of the 1st cycle questionnaire, she knew that the subjects‟ motivation and interest were very low. therefore, the subjects‟ desire in learning process still needed to be improved. in addition, from the tests, the average of result of 1st cycle pre-test was compared with the average of the 1st cycle post-test. from the comparison, i knew that there was an improvement of the subjects‟ vocabulary mastery after the treatment was given. this was due to the fact that the average of the post-test result was higher than that of the pre-test result. yet, the improvement of the subjects‟ scores was not significant because the increasing score was not too high. moreover, there were still several subjects whose scores were lower than the criterion of mastering learning. therefore, there should be a special treatment for them. consequently, for the second cycle, e made several modifications to solve those problems. c. analysis of the second cycle the second cycle of this study was conducted on monday, 17th june 2013. although the prepared things for 2nd cycle were almost similar to those 1st cycle, their content was different. this was due to the modifications for the 2nd cycle. because of the time management problem in the 1st cycle, she changed discussion technique to be think pair share technique. this was done to minimize time in teaching process. think pair share is one of cooperative learning types. the use of this cooperative learning technique was supposed to create more interesting learning process. for solving the subjects‟ lack of motivation and seriousness, i planned to give a present to the highest score and the winner of the game. after preparing the things for the 2nd cycle, i began the teaching process. the activities in these steps were to give the 2nd cycle pre-test, apply think pair share, play the game technique, and give 2nd cycle questionnaire and post-test. the average result of the 2nd cycle pre-test was 68. after conducting the learning process, i gave the 2nd cycle questionnaire (2nd cq). in 2nd cycle cq, i knew that the subjects‟ answers of all of the aspects of the questionnaires improved. there were many subjects changed their answers in the 2nd cq. in the 2nd cycle, the subjects‟ interest and motivation increased significantly. moreover, their opinion about the game also changed. in the 2nd cq, they argued that the game was very effective for learning vocabulary because the game had many advantages. therefore, they really suggested that the game would be used continually. the result of the 2nd cq was noted in the following table. at the end of the learning process, the 2nd cycle post-test was given. the average of the result of the test was 83. observation the subjects‟ attitude was reported in 2nd cycle observation checklist. improvement of the subjects‟ attitude was seen in the 2nd cycle learning process. almost all of the subjects were enthusiastic in 2nd cycle. in the 2nd cycle, they came to the class before the learning process begun. therefore, the learning process began on time. they also showed their curiosity about the learning process. their spirit for learning also improved. it was proved by their sound when they were asked by her. in addition, number of the subjects who paid attention to her explanation also increased. almost all of the subjects understood role of activities so useless noise was not heard. in the 2nd cycle, before they played the game, almost all of the subjects listened the role of the game well. they played the game enthusiastically and seriously since they knew that there was a present for the winner. moreover, the subjects‟ participation also improved. although not all of the subjects were attractive, they followed all of activities well. they also finished each activity on time. not only their participation, but also their seriousness increased. there were more than half of the subjects were serious in vocabulary learning at that day. they finished the vocabulary task by themselves. although not all of the subjects did not stay on the task, they did not disturb their task individually. since the learning process in the 2nd cycle well, i concluded that the atmosphere of the 2nd cycle was more interesting. the class was more alive. nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 in this cycle, the problems which arose in the 1st cycle did not arise anymore. in the learning process, each step was finished on time. in addition, based on the result of the 2nd cycle observation checklist and questionnaire, there were the improvement in the subjects‟ behavior, interest, participation, and enthusiasm in the learning process. moreover, the subjects‟ vocabulary scores were also higher than before. in addition, there was a significant improvement of the subjects‟ vocabulary score. there was a 15 point increase. there was not any subject whose score was lower than criterion of mastering level. since the problems were solved, i ended this study. d. final post-test and interview i ended this study by giving the final posttest (fpt) and an interview. they were done on tuesday, 18th june 2013. the number, type, and time allocation of this test were the same as those in ipt. the average of the subjects‟ fpt scores was 80. moreover, there was not any subject whose score was lower than criterion of mastery learning. in order to strengthen result of the study, i did informal interview to the subjects. from the interview, i got a lot of information. firstly, almost all of the subjects did not like english subject. according to them, english subject is a boring subject since they must learn many texts in each meeting. in addition, since learning english cannot be done without mastering vocabulary, they feel difficult to learn it. secondly, english teachers always teach english subject by using traditional method, such as grammar translation method. moreover, the teachers also did not provide interesting media and teaching technique to make the subjects happy in learning english. therefore, the subjects still feel bored and difficult in learning english. thirdly, the subjects feel happy in learning english by using the game technique. it happened because they could play the game and learn english at the same time. fourthly, if the learning process was done interestingly, they were motivated to participate in the learning process. fifthly, according to them, the game technique should be used continually for teaching vocabulary. e. discussion in this step, i evaluated the result of this study over all. 1. improvement of the subjects’ vocabulary mastery in this study, there were three comparisons of the subjects‟ score in vocabulary test. the first was the comparison between the 1st cycle pre-test and the post-test scores. there was an improvement of the subjects‟ scores of the 1st cycle tests. the improvement was not significant because the increasing score was not really high. this fact was caused by several problems in the learning process. in this case, the problems related to time management. when the subjects had the 1st cycle pre-test, they were less serious in finishing it. they did not finish it on time. consequently, time allocation for the other activities in the 1st cycle was limited more. since time for finishing the first cycle post-test was very limited, they answered the test in rush. as a result, there were many wrong answers in result of the 1st cycle post-test. those facts caused several subjects got scores lower than criterion of mastering learning. therefore, the improvement of the subjects‟ scores between the 1st cycle pre-test and post-test was not significant. the second was the comparison between the 2nd cycle pre-test and post-test scores. when i conducted the 2nd cycle, i made several modifications. firstly, before starting the learning process, she explained role of the learning process clearly. this was done to make the subjects‟ understanding of the role of learning process clearer. secondly, i really applied all of activities based on time allocation. when time allocation for finishing the test was over, i directly took all of the answer sheets from the subjects. consequently, they had to finish the tests on time. thirdly, she changed discussion technique to be cooperative learning technique. according to her opinion, cooperative learning technique was more nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 effective in minimizing time for learning process. the result of this change really affected positively toward the learning process. in the 2nd cycle, all of learning steps run on time. fourthly, in order to make the subjects more serious in finishing the tests, she told their scores of the 1st cycle tests. because of knowing their low scores, they did the 2nd cycle tests more seriously. since the modifications were used, i could make the learning process better. therefore, in the 2nd cycle, the improvement of the score was significant. in addition, there was not any subject whose score was lower than criterion of mastering learning. the last was the comparison between the ipt and the fpt scores. in the ipt, the average of the subjects‟ score was 64 while the average of the fpt score was 80. these averages showed that there was a significant improvement between the subjects‟ score. moreover, all of the subjects‟ score was higher than criterion of mastering learning. 2. improvement of the subjects’ behavior in the 1st cycle, the subjects‟ enthusiasm, attention, and interest were only shown by half of the subjects. in the first cycle, there were still subjects who did not come to the class on time. moreover, there were only half of the subjects who learned english with high spirit. their high enthusiasm toward the learning process was shown only by several subjects. those conditions contrasted to conditions in the second cycle. in the 2nd cycle, almost all of the subjects came to the class on time. therefore, learning process could be started on time. in addition, their enthusiasm also improved because there was a present for the best participant in the learning process. starting the learning process was begun by explaining the material. in the first cycle, there were only half of the subjects who listened to it seriously. as a result, when the learning process was being conducted, there were many subjects who had to ask to their friends because there were only several subjects who really understood role of each activity. therefore, the class was noisy. they also did not finish the task on time. there were only half of the subjects participated actively toward the learning process on that day. on the other hand, in the beginning of the lesson in the second cycle, i explained the material again. on that day, she did not start the explanation before all of the subjects really paid attention to her. therefore, all of the subjects listened the explanation seriously so they really understood the material and role of the learning process. consequently, in the 2nd cycle, the learning process ran better. they finished the task on time. almost all of the subjects participated actively toward the learning process. furthermore, there was not any subjects who made useless noisy. since the game was an interesting activity, the subjects played it enthusiastically. before playing the game, they listened role of the game seriously. in the 1st cycle, almost all of the subjects actively participated in playing the game. in the second cycle, participation of the subjects improved because there was a present for the winner of the game. therefore, in the 2nd cycle, all of the subjects contributed in playing the game. there was not any subjects who did another activity when the game was played. based on the facts above, she concluded that by doing several modified steps in the 2nd cycle, the learning process run better. all of the aspects in 2nd cycle observation checklist improved. c. improvement of the subjects opinion and interest the subjects‟ opinion and interest were known from result of the questionnaires and the interview. i compared results of 1st and 2nd cq. almost all of aspects in the questionnaires improved. the highest improvement was the improvement related to the subjects‟ interest toward vocabulary learning process. subjects‟ interest toward the vocabulary learning process improved in the second cycle. in the 1st cq, there was not any subject answered that they liked vocabulary learning process. according to them, learning vocabulary was difficult to be done because they had to remember thousands words. the subjects changed their mind after nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 10 they had 2nd cycle learning process. therefore, there were several subjects who changed their answer to be interested in vocabulary learning process. the other aspects also improved, such as the subjects‟ opinion about the advantages of the game, effectiveness of the game, their motivation in vocabulary learning process, and sustainability of the game. their opinion and interest changed after conducting the 2nd cycle. in the first cycle, the subjects‟ interest and motivation in learning english were low. after having the 2nd cycle which was done by several modified activities, their interest and motivation improved. this fact was also supported by result of the interview. from the result of the instruments, it showed that teaching technique had a big influence in the success of a learning process. conclusions and suggestions based on the data analysis in previous chapter, conclusions and suggestions are offered. based on the detailed data analysis in previous chapter, several conclusions can be derived as follows. firstly, the subjects of this study really lacked vocabulary mastery. it was proved by their scores of the initial pre-test (ipt). the average of their ipt scores was 64. secondly, in order to solve the problem, the manual super text twist game technique was applied in the learning process. the game used the words which were learned in the learning process. as a result, the subjects could learn vocabulary and do an interesting activity at the same time. therefore, by playing the game, their vocabulary mastery improved. thirdly, the game technique was a good solution for improving vocabulary mastery. it was proved by the significant increase of the subjects‟ scores in vocabulary tests. the average of the initial pre-test score was 64, while the final post-test was 80. in addition, after learning vocabulary by using the technique, the subjects‟ interest and motivation were better. this fact supported by the answers from the questionnaires. moreover, there was an improvement of the subjects‟ behavior in participating in all steps of the learning process. referring to conclusions above, some suggestions are offered as follows. firstly, since the students really lack vocabulary, she suggested that they should learn vocabulary intensively by learning vocabulary continually. they can do it individually or classically. secondly, english teachers of junior high school are expected to give some vocabulary drills in every teaching learning process so that the students will be more familiar with the english words. thirdly, this study should inspire teachers to develop their teaching process. they should provide some interesting activities in order to increase the students‟ motivation and participation in the learning process. one of the interesting activities is playing the game. references anggorojati, a. 2007. the use of hangman on computer game to increase the students‟ vocabulary mastery. final project english department fbs unnes. burns, a. 2010. doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york: routledge. burns, a. 1999. collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambrigde: cambridge university press. cahyono, b. y. and utami widiati. 2008. the teaching of efl vocabulary in indonesian context: the state of the art. teflin journal. 18/1. hlm. 1 – 17. cameron, l. 2001. teaching languages to young learners. united kingdom: cambridge university press. daller, h. , james m. , and jeanine t. 2007. modelling and assesing vocabulary knowledge. cambridge: cambridge university press. gass, s. m. and selinker. 1994. second language acquisition: an introductory course. amsterdam: john benjamins. nurul saofa aulia / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 11 heaton, j.b. 1979. writing english language test. london: longman. hirsh, d. and p. nation. 1992. what vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? reading in a foreign language. 8/2. hlm. 689-696. kemmis, s. & mctaggart, r. 1988. the action research planner. geelong: deakin university press. khabibah. 2006. the use of pictured-boardgame as a vocabulary teaching technique. final project english department fbs unnes. lewis, g. and gunther, b. 2010. games for children. oxford: oxford university press. mccharty, m. j. 1990. vocabulary. oxford: oxford university press. nam, j. 2010. linking research and practice: effective strategies for teaching vocabulary in the esl classroom. tesl canada journal. 28/1. hlm. 127 – 135. nation, i.s.p. 1990. teaching and learning vocabulary. boston: heinle & heinle. nation, i. s. p. 1993. using dictionaries to estimate vocabulary size: essential but rarely followed procedures. language testing 10: 37-40. nunan, d. 1992. research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. nuryati, s. 2007. the use of domino game pictures as a technique in teaching vocabulary related to simple noun phrases. final project english department fbs unnes. nurweni, a. 1997. how many words do senior high school students acquire per week. teflin journal, 8(1): 103-115. schmitt, n. and mccarthy, m. 1997. vocabulary: description, acquisition, and pedagogy. united kingdom: cambridge university press. sugiyono. 2010. metode penelitian pendidikan (pendekatan kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan r&d). bandung: alfabeta. syamsuddin and vismaia s. d. 2007. metode penelitian pendidikan bahasa. bandung: remaja rosdakarya. thornbury, s. 2004. how to teach vocabulary. london: longman. wallace, j. michael. 1982. teaching vocabulary. london: briddles. ltd putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 191 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary wahyu nugroho, suprapto  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: teaching vocabulary, picture crossword puzzle games, quasi-experimental research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this article is based on a study which attempted to examine the effectiveness of the picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary. the purposes of this study are to describe the difference in students’ vocabulary mastery between those by using picture crossword puzzle game and conventional method (translation) and to describe the effectiveness of picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary. the research design used in this study was a quasi-experimental research. the population of this research was the seventh grade students of smpn 2 patebon in the academic year of 2016/2017. the control group was the class of vii-g and the experimental group was the class of vii-h. the results show that from the pre-test, both control and experimental groups have the same mean scores, which is 68.44. after the treatment, there was an increase of mean score of both groups in post-test, which is 81.25 for the control group and 90.94 for the experimental group.the quantitative result shows that the t value is 4.182 and the t table is 1.999. based on the statistic, it is concluded that there is a sifnificant difference in achievement between both groups. however, this statistic result is not that significant regarding the condition of both control and experimental groups. in other words, the picture crossword puzzle game has no significant effect on students’ vocabulary mastery. yet, the result of the questionnaire shows that teaching vocabulary using picture crossword puzzle game is interesting for the students. there are 91.8% students who give positive response to picture crossword puzzle game. in conclusion, the picture crossword puzzle game can be used to teach vocabulary because this game is interesting. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 192 introduction vocabulary is one of the very basic things in learning english. we cannot say anything without vocabulary. what can we say without vocabulary? even a word can express our feelings. for example, when we say “amazing!!!” it’s only one word, but you can express that you feel amazed by using it. what is actually vocabulary? schmitt (2000:112) says “vocabulary is more than just individual words working separately in a discourse environment. rather, once words are placed in discourse, they establish numerous links beyond the single orthographic word level”. hatch and brown (1995:1) adds that vocabulary is a list or set of words for a particular language or a list or set of words that individual speaker might use. similarly, hornby (1995:1331) defines vocabulary as: 1. the total number of words in language 2. all the words known to a person or used in a particular book, subject, etc. 3. a list of words with their meaning, especially one that accompanies a textbook in a foreign language based on the definitions above about vocabulary, we can conclude that vocabulary is a list of words in a language that is used by the individual speaker to convey the meaning or to express what the speaker wants to say. students should master enough vocabularies in learning a language, including english. vocabulary is the key to communicate. without vocabulary, someone cannot say what he wants to say, cannot write what he wants to write, or cannot read and understand what he wants to read. vocabulary is a powerful carrier of meaning, and it forms the basis of learning a second language. it is one of the crucial conditions for a successful communication (vopálková, 2008). it is the basic things in a language and central to english language teaching because without many vocabularies, students are not able to understand others or express their own ideas. learning vocabulary is a complex process. the students’ aim to be reached in learning vocabulary is primarily their ability to recall the word at will and to recognize it in spoken and written form (shejbalová, 2006). it means that teachers have to find the right way in teaching vocabularies to make students understand and acquire them. but the problem is that sometimes students cannot follow the lesson, or they do not pay attention to the lesson, or they simply get bored. it is a big challenge to the teachers. the teachers must create a good atmosphere in the classroom, so students can follow, pay attention and do not feel bored with the lesson. a similar condition happened in smpn 2 patebon, kendal. students were not enjoy when the teacher taught vocabularies using conventional method. teaching using game is one of the many ways to make the learning process more effective and interesting. some teachers think that language games are a waste of time and prefer not to use them in a classroom since games sometimes have been considered only for its one element, that is fun (deesri, 2002). on the other hand, rizki, et al (2013) suggested that using picture games in the classroom would make the students fun that they would learn better and faster. jaramillo (2012) also states that the crossword puzzle activity may prove to be a meaningful learning experience for building, understanding, and improving the retention of terms associated with a particular knowledge area. two examples of games are using pictures and crossword puzzles. pictures not only bring images of reality, but can also function as a fun element in the class. sometimes it is surprising how the pictures may change a lesson, even if only employed in additional w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 193 exercises or just to create the atmosphere (joklová, 2009). the picture can help the students to imagine “the thing” of the word. besides, students tend to remember what they see than what they think. meanwhile, a crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white and black shaded squares. the goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers (https : / / e n . w i k i p e d i a . org/wiki/crossword). rokhuma (2011) demonstrated that crossword puzzles and quartet cards make the students have a lot of chances to speak out, memorize the spelling and also read and read again the words. consequently, students get easier in recognizing and memorizing the english vocabulary given to them. the game in teaching is one of the many ways to make the learning process more effective and interesting. games is crucially important for english language learners and teachers, not only because they provide enjoyment and relaxation, but also as they encourage students to use their language in a creative and communicative manner (yolageldili & arikan : 2011). besides, games are attention grabbing and attention holding. they are intrinsically motivated and they may be addictive. this is the first time the writer knows about the picture crossword puzzle game was when the writer had an assignment about teaching game, and had to choose one game to be presented in front of others. the lecturer gave suggestion to read a book entitled vocabulary 2 games and activities by peter watcyn-jones (2002). there are many vocabulary games in this book. the writer chose one of the games inside the book called picture crossword: parts of the body. this game is about learning vocabulary by using a crossword and pictures as a media. the terminologies are focused on “part of body”, but the writer made some adjustments in this study. the writer changed the terminologies from “part of body” vocabulary into “things to buy” vocabulary. this adjustment was made because the topic that related to the curriculum of the seventh grade students of the junior high school at that time was “thing to buy vocabulary”. the purposes of this study are to describe the difference in students’ vocabulary mastery between those by using picture crossword puzzle game and conventional method (translation) and to describe the effectiveness of picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary. based on the background above, in order to know whether the game is effective or not, the writer would like to conduct a research entitled the effectiveness of picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary (an experimental study of seventh grade students of smp n 2 patebon in the academic year of 2016/2017). methodology of the research in this research, the writer conducted a quasi-experimental design study as the research design. creswell (2009:233) states that quasi experimental is a form of experimental research in which individuals are not randomly assigned to groups”. saleh (2012) adds that “quasi experimental design is partly-but not fully-true experimental design, they control some, but not all of the sources of internal validity”. in this study, the non-equivalent control group is chosen by the writer. it has two existing groups, one is the experimental group and the other one is the control group. the classes of experimental and control groups were obtained from the teacher’s decision. the reason why the writer chose this design was because first, the writer did not break the classes w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 194 to get participants randomly from many classes, but the writer obtained 2 existing classes from 8 classes. second, the writer did not want to rearrange or reschedule the classes that the school has arranged, in order to avoid the problem of time, place, the effectiveness of research and the management of the school. there were 2 groups or classes in this study who were considered as the subject. first was the experimental group and the second was the control group. at the beginning of research, both of the 2 classes were given the same pre-test to get the first data. after that the experimental group received the picture crossword puzzle treatments four times on the other hand, the control group did not receive the treatment, but the writer taught the lesson using conventional method (translation). then, at the end of the meeting, the same post-test was given to the experimental group and the control group to get the final data, so the data collected can be analyzed and compared with the pre-test data. to get more information about the picture crossword puzzle, the writer gave a questionnaire to the experimental group only. the questionnaire was about their opinion related to the treatment. then, the effectiveness of using the picture crossword puzzle game in teaching vocabulary can be seen from the data. the subject of this study was students of smp n 2 patebon in the academic year of 2016/2017. tuckman (1978:227) says that “the population (or target group) used in a questionnaire or interview study is that group about which the researcher is interested in gaining information and drawing conclusions”. according to creswell (2012:142) “a population is a group of individuals who have the same characteristic”. the population in this study was the seventh grade of smp n 2 patebon in the academic year of 2016/2017. the total population was 256 students consisting of 130 male students and 127 female students. there were 8 classes of seventh grade: vii-a up to vii-h. each class consisted of 32 students except vii-e which consisted of 33 students. seventh grade students were chosen because based on the curriculum used in this school, “things to buy” vocabulary was one of the materials taught in this grade. saleh (2001:45) states that “a sample is a group of people, goods or objects from which the research data are obtained”. a sample is actually a part of a population deliberately selected to represent the population. creswell (2009) also explains “sample is a subgroup of the target population that the researcher plans to study for generalizing about the target population”. the classes chosen by the writer which were considered as the sample in this study were the class of vii-g and the class of vii-h. there were 32 students in each class. the class of vii-g was considered as the control group, while the class of vii-h was considered as the experimental group. the reason why those classes were chosen as the sample is because the teacher who was in charge of guiding the writer in the school gave permission to the writer to use only those two classes. there are 2 variables in this studies. independent variables and dependent variables. saleh (2012:31) states that an “independent variable is the variable that will be studied to determine its effect (or influence) on a particular variable which is central to the subject matter”. it means that an independent variable is a variable that influences the outcome. the independent variable in this study was the picture crossword puzzle game. saleh (2012:32), “the dependent variable is the variable which is of central interest to the researcher, and whose weight or value is affected by the weight or value of some other variables”. in this study, the dependent variable was students’ achievement of vocabulary mastery. w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 195 there are 2 kinds of instruments used in this study. the test instruments and the questionnaire instruments. those instruments were used for analyzing the data obtained. below was the procedure of analyzing the data: 1. the analysis of the try-out test 2. the analysis of the pre-test and post-test 3. the analysis of the questionnaire the test used was a multiple-choice test. before conducting the pre-test and post-test. the writer conducted a try-out test to make sure that the instruments for pre-test and post-test were good. there were the analyses that have been done to analyze the try-out test. they are: 1. validity of the test 2. reliability of the test 3. item facility of the test 4. discriminating power of the test after the try-out, a pre-test was conducted by the writer. then the writer gave treatments to the groups. the control group was taught using the conventional method (translations) and the experimental group was taught using the picture crossword puzzle game. after the treatment, the post-test was also conducted by the writer for the both groups. while the questionnaire was only given to the experimental group. there were the analysis that has been done in order to get the results of the pre-test and the post-test. those were: 1. mean score 2. standard deviation 3. normality 4. homogeneity 5. t-test in order to analyze the pre-test and post-test scores. the writer used the spss as a calculation tool. all those analyses were calculated using spss. the significant difference between both groups is accepted if the value of sig.(2-tailed) on the t-test is less than 0.05. then, the effectiveness of the treatments is accepted if the t value is higher than the t table. (t value t table). if those statements are accepted, it means that there is a significant difference between students who were taught by using picture crossword puzzle game and the students who were taught using conventional method (translations) the questionnaire was given to the students after they have done the post-test in the last meeting. the questionnaire was only given to the experimental group which consists of 32 students. there were five questions which related to the treatments they have experienced in the questionnaire. result and discussion result of the test based on the try-out analysis, the test is reliable with the value of reliability is 0.838. the try-out instrument is also valid. there are 20 valid items. they are item number 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14 ,17 ,18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 , 29, 30. while 10 items are invalid. they are number 2, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 25. in the item facility analysis, the result shows that there are 0 items are very difficult, 13 items are appropriate and 17 items are very easy. in discriminating power analysis, there are 0 items are very poor, 15 items are poor, 8 items are w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 196 satisfactory, 6 items are good and 1 item is excellent. so there are 20 items for the pre-test and post-test instruments. before giving the treatments to the students. a pre-test is conducted by the writer. the purpose is to know the basic knowledge of the students of “things to buy” vocabulary. from calculation, the mean scores of both groups surprisingly the same. it is 68.44. independent sample t-test is used to calculate the t-test of the pre-test of both groups. null hypothesis (ho) is accepted if there is no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. the result is both groups have equal ability in “things to buy vocabulary”. it is proven by the value of sig.(2-tailed) is 1.000. in addition, ho is accepted if t value is less than t table. the t value is 0. for α=5%, df =32+32-2 = 62, the t table is 1.999. because t value is less than the t table, it means that ho is accepted. based on the result, the students of the control and the experimental group have the equal level of ability in “things to buy” vocabulary. the post-test is conducted in both groups in order to know the improvement of the control group and the experimental group after treatments. the mean score of the post-test of the control group is 81.25 and for the experimental group is 90.94. it shows that the achievements of both groups have improved. after that, the writer compares the significant difference in the post-test scores using independent sample t-test. working hypothesis (ha) is accepted if there is a significant difference in students who are taught by using the picture crossword puzzle game compares to those who are taught using conventional method (translation). based on the calculation, ha is accepted if the value of sig.(2-tailed) is less than 0.05. the result shows that the value of sig.(2tailed) is 0.000. it means that 0.000 < 0.05. in addition, ha is accepted if the t value is more than the t table. the t value is 4.182. for α=5%, df =32+32-2 = 62, the t table is 1.999. because the t value is more than the t table (4.182 > 1.999). it means that the ha is accepted and there is a significant difference in both groups. it proves that there is a significant difference in the experimental group who has been taught using the picture crossword puzzle game. the writer also analyzes the paired-sample t-test to compare the score between the pre-test and post-test each group. the result of this comparison shows which group improves higher than the other after the treatments. the hypotheses are ho = post-test score is lower than pre-test scores (sig.(2-tailed) > 0.05) and ha = post-test score is higher than pre-test scores (sig.(2-tailed) < 0.05). the result is both of the group’s sig.(2-tailed) is 0.000. so, the sig.(2tailed) is less than 0.05 (0.000 < 0.05). it means that the students’ achievement of the control and the experimental group have improved. then, the difference mean of the control group is 12.813, while the difference mean of the experimental group is 22.500. the difference mean score of the experimental group is higher than the control group. it proves that the experimental group has a better improvement than the control group. w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 197 after finishing the procedures of the analysis of the result of the test, the result shows that there is a significant difference in the seventh grade students of smp n 2 patebon in the academic years of 2016/2017 who are taught by using the picture crossword puzzle compares to those who are taught using the conventional method. so, the working hypothesis (ha) is accepted. below is the comparison between the control and the experimental group of pre-test and post-test score. the chart above proves that the seventh grade students of smp n 2 patebon in the academic year of 2016/2017 obtain a significant achievement in vocabulary mastery and the picture crossword puzzle game is an effective way in teaching vocabulary. based on the explanation and all the calculations above, the treatments of picture crossword puzzle is effective. but, if we see the mean score of the post-test of both groups, there is something interesting here. the mean score of the post-test of the control group is 81.25 and 90.94 for the experimental group. the range of the mean score is only 9.69. in the writer’s point of view the range is not that significant. although statistically proven that the treatments of picture crossword puzzle is effective. the passing grade in smp n 2 patebon is 75. it means that both groups have reached the score. it can be inferred that the picture crossword puzzle is a good method in teaching vocabulary, but so does the conventional method (translation). the mean score of the control group is 81.25. it is not that bad. it is really good. so actually both treatments are good for teaching vocabulary. although the experimental group’s score is higher than the control group, it cannot be concluded that the conventional method (translation) is not an effective way in teaching vocabulary. so, the writer concludes that actually the both treatments are effective to teach vocabulary. result of the questionnaire the questionnaire was given to the students after they have done the post-test in the last meeting. the questionnaire was only given to the experimental group which consisted of 32 students. there were five questions which related to the treatments they have experienced pre-test post-test 0 20 40 60 80 100 pre-test post-test w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 198 in the questionnaire. the questionnaire was written in indonesia, so the students were able to understand the questions easily. the question number 1 is whether the students like the treatments, number 2 is whether the students can remember the vocabulary easily after using the treatments, number 3 is whether the students can answer the answer of the test easily after the treatment, number 4 is whether the students become more interested in studying english after the treatments, and the number 5 is about whether the students get a new experience in learning english using the treatment. the result shows that there are 91.8% students give positive effect on picture crossword puzzle game. based on the explanation in the discussion of the test result, both of the treatment actually are effective in teaching vocabulary. it means that there is no ineffective method. but if we see the results of the questionnaire, we can get other information relates to the picture crossword puzzle. the results of the questionnaire show that students like to study using picture crossword puzzle, they are able to memorize the vocabularies easier, they are able to answer the test easily, they like to learn english more after using picture crossword puzzle and they get new experience in learning english. in addition, picture crossword puzzle can make the students pay attention more and focus on the learning process. it has happened in the classroom, even though the class is a little bit noisy, but most of the students enjoy the game. the writer got a lot of questions about the materials from the students during the treatments. conclusions based on the research finding, there is an improvement of both groups in the pre-test and the post-test. in the control group, the mean score has improved from 68.44 to 81.25. the experimental group’s mean score also has improved from 68.44 to 90.94. the writer analyzed the test score using the independent sample t-test. the working hypothesis (ha) is accepted if there is a significant difference in students who are taught by using the picture crossword puzzle game compares to those who are taught using conventional method (translation). in the post-test, the mean score comparison of both groups proves that the working hypothesis (ha) is accepted. ha is accepted if the value of sig.(2-tailed) is less than 0.05 the value of sig.(2-tailed) was 0.000. it means that 0.000 < 0.05. moreover, the t value (4.182) is higher than the t table (1.999). because the t value is more than the t table (4.182 > 1.999), it means that the ha is accepted. the writer also compared the mean scores of pre-test and post-test of each group to determine how much they have improved using the paired-sample-test. the results show that both of the groups have improved after the treatments given. however, the mean scores indicate that the difference mean score of the experimental group (22.500) has improved better than the control group (12.813), while the t-value of the control group is 10.430 and the experimental group is 11.421. from the calculation, statistically the picture crossword puzzle is effective in teaching vocabulary. but if we see the mean score of the post-test, the range is not that significant. the range of the mean score is only 9.69. the passing grade in smp n 2 patebon is 75. it means that both groups have reached the score. it can be inferred that the picture crossword puzzle is a good method in teaching vocabulary, but so does the conventional method (translation). the mean score of the control group is 81.25. the score is really good. so actually both treatments are good for teaching vocabulary. w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 199 second, the results of the questionnaire show that there are 91.8% students give positive effect on picture crossword puzzle game. the students like to study using picture crossword puzzle, they are able to memorize the vocabularies easier, they are able to answer the test easily, they like to learn english more after using picture crossword puzzle and they get new experience in learning english. in addition, picture crossword puzzle can make the students pay attention more and focus on the learning process. based on the explanation above, the writer concludes that even though the results is not that significant, but the questionnaire result shows that the students give a positive response to the treatment after doing this research, the writer would like to give some suggestion related to the study. first, it is important for the teachers to know the general characteristic of the students in a class. the teachers should be more creative in teaching the material. for example, using games as a method. using games in a classroom can make the students enjoy and motivate them in the learning process, especially in teaching vocabulary, the picture crossword puzzle game can be an alternative in teaching vocabulary. second, for the students, they can use any kind of games to learn vocabulary. the students should realize that there are many fun ways in learning english, especially in learning english vocabulary. third, the writer suggests that the other researchers should find other games for teaching english, especially teaching vocabulary as a new method in teaching english in a fun way. references creswell, john w. 2009. research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed). california: sage publication, inc creswell, john w. 2012. educational research: planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed). boston: pearson education. deesri, angkana. 2002. games in the esl and efl class. the internet tesl journal, vol. vii, no. 9. available at http://iteslj.org/techniques/deesri-games.html. hatch, evelyn, and cheryl brown. 1995. vocabulary, semantic and language education. cambridge: cambridge university press hornby, albert sydney. 1995. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. new york: oxford university press jaramillo, carlos mario zapata, bell manrique losada, michaile j. mick fekula. 2012. designing and solving crossword puzzles: examining efficacy in a classroom exercise. developments in business simulation and experiential learning, volume 39, 213-222. available at h t t p s : / / j o u rnals.tdl.org/ a b s e l / i n d e x . p h p /absel/article/view/86. joklová, kateřina. 2009. using pictures in teaching vocabulary. thesis. department of english language and literature. faculty of education. masaryk university motivation in learning vocabulary .english education journal. semarang state university. available at h t t p : / / j o u r n a l . u n n e s . a c . i d / a r t i k e l sju/eej/2716 saleh, m. 2001. pengantar praktek penelitian pengajaran bahasa. semarang: ikip press schmitt, norbert. 2000. vocabulary in language teaching. new york: cambridge university press. shejbalová, dana. 2006. methods and approaches in vocabulary teaching and their influence on students’ acquisition. final work. department of english language and literature. faculty of education. masaryk university w. nugroho & suprapto / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 200 tuckman, b.w. 1978. conducting educational research. london: harcout brace jacobovitz vopalkova, sarka. 2008. teaching english vocabulary. thesis. faculty of arts and philosophy. university of pardubice watcyn-jones, peter. 2002. vocabulary games and activities 2. essex: pearson education limited yolageldi̇li̇, gülin, and arda arikan. (2011). effectiveness of using games in teaching grammar to young learners. elementary education online, 10(1), 219-229, 2011. i̇lköğretim online, 10(1), 219-229. available at h t t p s : / / a r c h i v e . o r g / d e t a i l s / e r i c _ e 527862. november oktober september 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt a correlation study between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability (a case of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013) rio luhung pribadi department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima 2013 disetujui 2013 dipublikasikan 2013 ________________ keywords: : listening skill, pronunciation ability ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is about the correlation between the students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability . the subject of the research was the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang. the basic problem the writer wanted to discuss in this final project was the importance of listening skill and pronunciation ability of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in order to develop their communication skill . the final project was aimed at finding out the level of listening skill of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013, examining their pronunciation ability, and finding out whether there is a correlation between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability. the population of this final project was the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013 and it was 43 students. twenty students were taken as the representations in this research. after conducting the research, it was found that the average score of the students’ listening skill was 80.1, that was in good level. on the contrary, their pronunciation score was poor referring to their average score, which were 48.78. moreover, the result of data analysis using spss shows that the correlation coefficient between the two variables (listening skill and pronunciation ability) is 0.379, while t he critical value for 18 students and 95% confidence is 0.468. since the correlation coefficient obtained (0.379) is lower than the table value (0.468), it means that there is no significant positive correlation between the two variables and the correlation is considered to be low . based on the research findings, it is suggested that the teachers should find an effective way to develop the students’ listening skill and their pronunciation. furthermore, since pronunciation is not explicitly specified in the curriculum, the teachers have a duty to help their students in improving their pronunciation ability. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: rio.pribadi@yahoo.co.id issn 2252-6706 mailto:rio.pribadi@yahoo.co.id rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction the fact that english is now the main international language is indisputable. in all aspect of international life – trade, science, diplomacy, travel, and education – the common language is english and it has been used for decades. in indonesia, english is taught almost in all level of study from kindergarten (tk), elementary school (sd), smp (junior high school), smu (senior high school), in university, and many courses. knowing that english is quite significant for indonesia in the future, the government keep improving the quality of teachers and other components in educational process. there are four skills in english that should be mastered and they are stated in school curriculum. one of them is listening skill. it is a receptive skill that needs to be developed to help the students to understand what they hear or when they communicate with others. moreover, listening test is now included in students’ final exam. but in fact, there are still just a few efforts from the teacher to check or even to develop students’ listening skill if it compares with other skills. pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to make meaning. the way we speak immediately conveys something about ourselves to the people around us. learners with good pronunciation in english are more likely to be understood even if they make errors in other areas, whereas learners whose pronunciation is difficult to understand will not be understood, even if their grammar is perfect. an investigation on correlation between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability of the second year students of senior high school is conducted to find out whether or not there is a significant correlation between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability. the problems that will be discussed in this study are: (1) what is the correlation between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability? (2) how significant is the correlation between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability? this study was aimed to find out the level of listening skill and pronunciation ability of the second year students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang, and also the correlation between them. the scope and the set of study were limited so that the problems do not wide. the listening skill and pronunciation ability stated in this study only focus on one syllable words. there are two meetings during the research. first, when the writer gives pre-test to examine the validity and the reliability. second, when the writer conducts listening and pronunciation test to collect the data. the procedures of collecting the data of this research involved several steps. the first step was constructing the listening test and pronunciation test. the second step was trying out the instrument to examine whether or not they needed improvement. the third one was collecting and analyzing the listening test and pronunciation test to measure their validity and reliability. the fourth one was conducting the research. the writer conducted the research for the listening test and pronunciation test. the last step was obtaining the scores of vocabulary test and translation test and then computing the data. discussion 2.1 instruments instrument is the important thing in an experiment in which the reliability of the instrument will automatically affect the reliability of the data obtained. in line with the purpose of the study, that is to find out the relationship between students’ listening skill and students’ pronunciation ability of the second year students of senior high rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 school, two instruments were used in this study. they were listening test and pronunciation test. listening test in the level of intensive task was used to test students’ perception on phonemes through minimal pairs on one syllable words. while in the pronunciation test, the students were asked to record their answers with the appropriate pronunciation. 1.1.1 the condition of the test 1.1.1.1 reliability of the instrument reliability refers to the consistency of scores, that is, an instrument’s ability to produce “approximately” the same score for an individual over repeated testing or across different raters (lodico, 2006). according to speaks (2009), reliability is defined as the probability that a device will perform its required function under stated conditions for a spesific period of time. the following is the formula which is used to compute the reliability of listening and pronunciation test: ( )( ) in which: r11 : reliability p : the subjects who answer correctly q : the subjects who answer incorrectly (q = p 1) n : total of the item test s : standard deviation of the test (arikunto 2006:100) 1.1.1.2 validity of the instrument validity is the most important criteria in measuring an instrument. validity is that quality of a data-gathering instrument or procedure that enables it to determine what it was designed to determine (best, 1981:153). a test said to be valid when it can measure what is intended to be measured. product moment formula was used to measure the validity test. the formula is as follows:               2222{ yynxx yxxyn rxy where: rxy : correlation coefficient between x and y ∑xy : the result of multiplying scores between x and y for each respondent ∑x2 : the score of squared in x ∑y2 : the score of squared in y n : the number of student taking the test 2.2 research finding the research was conducted to find out whether there was a correlation between students’ listening skill and their pronunciation ability. two kinds of test were administered for measuring the second year students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang listening skill and pronunciation ability; they are listening and pronunciation tests. rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 2.2.1 students’ listening skill there were 28 multiple-choice questions used in conducting the listening test. each question has four choices. the score of each item was 1. students’ marks are got by adding the total score by 2, dividing it by 3 and then multiplied by 100. to facilitate the measurement of student’s listening skill, the raw scores were converted into the standard score using the percentage correction formula. to judge the students’ grade and the level of the listening skill, there were seven levels of the classification of the students’ grade based on depdikbud as cited by novikasari (2011). table 4.1 the table of the grade classification score grade 96 to 100 excellent 86 to 95 very good 76 to 85 good 66 to 75 fairly good 56 to 65 very fair 36 to 55 poor 0 to 35 very poor (depdikbud as cited by novikasari, 2011) there were various scores, from high to low score. after computing the 28 items of test, 3 students got 100, 2 students got 96, 1 student got 93, 1 student got 90, 1 student got 86, 2 students got 83, 1 student got 80, 2 students got 76, and 1 student for each score of 63, 60, 56, 53, and 50. the complete data could be seen in appendix 7. the diagram below shows the percentage of the result of the test: diagram 1 percentage of students’ listening skill from the diagram above, we can see that 5 students got the excellent grade; 3 students got the very good grade; 5 students got the good grade; 3 students got the very fair grade; and 2 students got the poor grade. the complete data could be seen in appendix 8. after computing the data using spss, we could see that the average score (mean) of students’ listening test was 80,1. it can be said that the students’ vocabulary mastery of the eleventh grade students of smk 27.77% 27,77% 16.66% 16,66% listening test excellent very good good fairly good very fair poor very poor 11,11% rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013 was good. 2.2.2 students’ pronunciation ability there were 28 items used in conducting the pronunciation test , each of them consisted of one word to pronounce. the test was designed to test the learner’s ability to discriminate phonemes or groups of phonemes on one syllable words. the score of each item was 1. students’ marks are got by adding the total score by 2, dividing it by 3 and then multiplied by 100. there were less various scores in pronunciation test. after computing the test, 2 students got 66, 1 student got 60, 1 student got 56, 3 students got 53, 3 students got 50, 2 students got 46, 2 students got 43, 2 students got 40, and 1 student for each score of 33 and 30. the complete data could be seen in appendix 9. the diagram below shows the percentage of the result of the test: diagram 2 percentage of students’ pronunciation ability from the diagram above, we can see that 2 students got the fairly good grade; 2 students got the very fair grade; 12 students got the poor grade; and 2 students got very poor grade. none of the students got the excellent, very good, and good grade. the complete data could be seen in appendix 10. after computing the data using spss, we could see that the average score (mean) of students’ pronunciation score was 48.78. it can be said that the students’ pronunciation ability of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013 was poor. 2.3 results the main goal of this research was to find out what the correlation between students’ listening skill and their pronunciation ability of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang. after conducting the research to get the scores of the students’ listening test and their scores in pronunciation test, the data were statistically computed to find out the correlation between the variables using spss, where: x = the students’ listening skill (listening test test) y = the students’ pronunciation ability (pronunciation test) in correlating those two variables, a statistical analysis that was used was pearson’s product moment formula. the data, then, was calculated using spss. table 4.2 correlation coefficient result 11,11% 66,66% 11,11% pronunciation score excellent very good good fairly good very fair poor very poor 11,11% rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 descriptive statistics n minimum maximum mean std. deviation x 18 50,00 100,00 80,0556 17,08275 y 18 30,00 66,00 48,7778 9,90280 valid n (listwise) 18 correlations x y x pearson correlation 1 ,379 sig. (2-tailed) ,121 n 18 18 y pearson correlation ,379 1 sig. (2-tailed) ,121 n 18 18 the correlation coefficient of the two variables was 0.379. to know whether this correlation coefficient (0.379) was significant or not, it was necessary to find out its significance. in psychological or educational research, the 5 percent alpha of significance (5 percent level of significance) is occasionally used as standard to judge the correlation between the two variables above. the correlation coefficient gained in this investigation was 0.379, whereas the figure on the table of critical values of the r product moment with 95% confidence level and the number of subjects 18 was 0.468. it means that the correlation coefficient between the students’ listening skill and their pronunciation ability was not significant because rxy < rtable (0.379 < 0.468). then, in order to know the extent of the influence of students’ listening skill in their pronunciation ability, the determinant index was measured as follow: determinant index = (rxy) 2 x 100% = (0.379) 2 x 100% = 14.36% the result showed that the extent of the influence of students’ listening skill in their pronunciation ability was only 14.36%. it showed that students’ listening skill only gave a small contribution to the students’ pronunciation ability. discussion after conducting the research, no significant correlation between the two variables was found. the result of the data analysis showed that the correlation coefficient between the two variables was 0.379, while the critical values of the r product moment with 95% confidence level and the number of subject 18 is 0.468. it means that there is still a positive correlation between the two variables (listening skill and pronunciation ability) altough it is not significant. in order to know the level of relationship of the correlation coefficient, it could be determined by using the correlation coefficient interpretation by best (1981) as follows: rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 table 4.3 correlation coefficient interpretation coefficient relationship .00 to .20 negligible .20 to .40 low .40 to .60 moderate .60 to .80 substantial .80 to .100 high to very high (best, 1981) from the table above, the level of relationship of the correlation between the two variables was low because the correlation coefficient of the two variables was 0.379 while the determined criteria showed that the correlation coefficient between 0.20 and 0.40 considered low. in this case, the variable y (students’ pronunciation ability) was associated with the variable x (students’ listening skill) in a low value (not significant). in other words, the students’ listening skill of the eleventh years of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang was not significantly correlated to their pronunciation ability. it implies that the students’ activity in listening only gives a small contribution to enlarge their pronunciation ability. there was no significant correlation between the students’ listening skill and pronunciation ability of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2012/2013. it could be interpreted that there is no guarantee the higher students’ listening skill is, the higher their ability in pronunciation will be. based on the data obtained, some facts were found in this study. first, the result of the listening test that indicates students’ listening skill was very high (mean 80,1) if it is compared with their pronunciation test result (mean 48,78). from this fact, we can barely see that there was a huge gap between their ability in listening and pronunciation. after analyzing the results, two types of difficulties can be generalized toward students’ listening skill. they were difficulties in discriminating certain consonants and vowels. the highest frequency of error dealing with consonants occured in item number 7 (see the appendix) in discriminating between sound /d/ and /t/ in the word hat. it was proven by the finding that 50% of respondents chosed the wrong answer which was had. this phenomena followed by item number 17 (see the appendix) which was dealing with the word but. only 42% of respondents chosed the right answer while the rest chosed the wrong options (bad, bat, bed). difficulties in discriminating certain vowels also occured in students’ listening test. it can be seen in item number 16 (see the appendix) in discriminating sound /i:/ with /i/ in the word seat. 50% of the respondents chosed the wrong answers like sit, set, and sheet. second, from the data gathered, there was no evidence that showed students with the high score in listening would also get a high score in pronunciation. pronunciation plays important roles in learning english. but, there was a fact when this study was conducted, students found themselves difficult even unable to pronounce almost all sounds used in the instrument. all of the them found difficulties in pronouncing vowels like /i/(big), /ǽ/(bad, bag, van, bat), and some consonants like /v/, /d/, /t/, /g/, /k/, /ʃ/, and /tʃ/ altough they could manage such vowels and consonants very well in their listening test. phenomena of difficulties in pronouncing some sounds occur in students pronunciation results. first, students find difficulties in pronouncing sound /ʃ/ like stated in item number 3 (see appendix 5) in the word she. this difficulty happens since this fricative sound is not found in neither indonesian nor javanese. rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 they tend to substitute sound /s/ for /ʃ/ so that there is likely to be misunderstanding in their english speech for failure in making a distinction between the two sounds. it was proven by the fact that most of the students pronounce “she” and “see” in the same way. second difficulty in pronunciation occurs in item number 4 (see appendix 5) in the word van. based on the data, students find difficulty to produce sound /v/ appropriately. they tend to produce sound /f/ instead of /v/. it was proven that none of the students are able to pronounce the word van correctly, most of them pronounce this word as same as the word fan. this matter happens since both sounds /v/ and /f/ are found in english, so that the students must be aware to make the voiced-voiceless distinction between these two fricativesin order to avoid misunderstanding. third diffficulty can be seenin item number 5 (see appendix 5) in the word food. students find difficulty to produce sound /d/ as the final voice since in their language the corresponding voiced stop doesn’t occur in utterance final positions. it was proven that only 5 students who are able to pronounce it correctly. the other students pronounce this word as same as the word foot with the sound /t/ on the final position. another difficulty also appears in item number 6 (see appendix 5) in the word south. none of the students are able to pronounce the sound /ɵ/. they tend to substitute the sound /t/ instead of the sound /ɵ/. this is a mistake in manner of articulation, because the outgoing air meets with a complete closure instead of partialobstruction. difficulty in pronouncing certain sound also occurs in item number 7, 18, 19 (see appendix 5) in the words hat, bat, and bad. based on the data, it can be inferred that all of the students are unable to produce the sound /ǽ/ correctly since this type of vowel does not exist in their native language. they tend to replace it by a closer front vowel. in this case, all of the students substitute it with the sound /e/. another case of sound production difficulty appears in item number 15 (see appendix 5) in the word big. most of the students tend to replace the sound /i/ with the sound /i:/. it can be proven since there are only two students who are able to pronounce this word correctly. this matter happens because in bahasa indonesia the letter i always pronounced as the sound /i:/. the last problem occurs in item number 6 (see appendix 5) in the word front. only one student who is able to pronounce this word appropriately. the other students tend to replace the sound /ʌ/ with the sound /ͻ/. this problem appears since the letter o always pronounced as the sound /ͻ/ in bahasa indonesia. this whole facts show us that there is no guarantee for students who are able to listen a certain word correctly, will also able to pronounce the word appropriately. another finding showed that the patterns of students’ scores in both listening and pronunciation test were totally random. as said, there is no guarantee the higher students’ listening score is, the higher their pronunciation will be. it can be proven by examining the students’ scores. for example in student number 8 (see the appendix), she got the highest score in listening test, but her score in pronunciation test was as poor as the others. this fact also occured in student number 1(see the appendix). she got the lowest score in listening test, but her score in pronunciation test were not the lowest. in conclusion, mastering listening skill and pronunciation ability are very important in learning english. both of them play important roles in communication, so they have to be taught to improve students’ ability in english. a special attention should be given to their pronunciation ability since it never been taught in the class, so that the teacher should creatively integrate it with other materials or even create a special material to teach pronunciation. conclusion this research is proposed to answer whether or not there is a significant correlation rio luhung pribadi / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 between students’ listening skill and their pronunciation ability. in attempt to obtain the intended data, the researcher arranged the listening test to measure the students’ listening skill and pronunciation test to measure the students’ pronunciation ability. after conducting the research, the writer comes to some conclusions. first, the listening skill of the second year students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang is good. it can be seen from the computation in which the mean score of the students’ listening test is 80.1 when it is consulted to the table of category level scores by john w. best (1981:260); the score is categorized in good. second, the pronunciation ability of the second year students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang is poor. it can be seen from the computation in which the mean score of the students’ pronunciation ability is 48.78 when it is consulted to the table of category level scores by john w. best (1981:260); the score is categorized in poor. third, there is no significant positive correlation between the listening skill and pronunciation ability of the eleventh grade students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang in the academic year of 2010/2011. recalling the rxy observed value of the correlation between listening skill and pronunciation ability applied to the sample is 0.379, and consulting to the critical values of the r product moment with 95% confidence level and the number of subjects 18 was 0.468. it means that the result obtained from the computation is lower than its critical value. therefore, the writer concludes that there is no significant positive correlation between the listening skill (x) and pronunciation ability (y) of the second year students of smk muhammadiyah 1 semarang. references books : arikunto, s. 2002. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: pt. rinekacipta. brown, h. d. 2005. principles of language learning and teaching: fourth edition. new york: pearson education, inc. cohen, l. 2000. research methods in education: fifth edition. new york: routledge falmer. lodico, m. g. 2006. method in educational research: from theory to practice. san fransisco: john wiley & sons, inc. saleh, m. 2001. pengantar praktik penelitian pengajaran bahasa. semarang: ikip semarang press. online articles : gilbert, j. b. 2008. teaching pronunciation. available at: www.cambridge.org/other_files/.../gilbe rt-teaching-pronunciation.pdf [accessed 27/01/13] lawson, k. 2007. the importance of listening. available at: www.growinggreatness.com/gg.../the_i mportance_of_listening.pdf [accessed 27/01/13] liubiniene, v. 2009. developing listening skills in clil. available at: www.kalbos.lt/zurnalai/15_numeris/14.p df [accessed 17/05/13] simon, m. and goes, j. 2011. correlational research. available at: dissertationrecipes.com/wpcontent/…/04/correlational researchx.pdf [accessed04/02/13] speaks, s. 2009. reliability and mtbf review. available at: www.vicorpower.com/documents/qualit y/real_mtbf.pdf [accessed 27/01/13] wolvin, a. d. 2009. listening, understanding, and misunderstanding. available at: www.sagepub.com/edwards/study/mater ials/reference/77593_5.1ref.pdf [accessed 28/01/13] http://www.growinggreatness.com/gg.../the_importance_of_listening.pdf http://www.growinggreatness.com/gg.../the_importance_of_listening.pdf 1 elt forum 5 (2) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt errors made in google translate in the indonesian to english translations of news item texts adam ismail dr. rudi hartono, s.s., m.pd. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in april 2016 approved in april 2016 published in may 2016 ________________ keywords: translation errors, google translate, news item texts ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the objective of this study was to describe the errors made in the indonesian to english google translate translations of news item texts. this study employed five english translations of indonesian news item texts taken from (1) bbc.com, (2) kompas.com, (3) liputan6.com, (4) tempo.co, and (5) viva.co.id made by using google translate. those samples were taken by using purposive sampling technique. the categorization of translation errors were adapted from dewi’s indonesian-english translation error typology. the errors can occur in the words, phrases, clauses, and sentences of the texts. the data gathered were analyzed descriptively by using qualitative approach. the findings of the analysis showed that there were 13 categories of translation errors obtained from 278 data. ranking from the most common to the least common errors found in the data, they were grammatical errors (24.46%), terminology errors (15.47%), omission errors (14.03%), syntax errors (12.23%), mistranslation/misunderstanding errors (6.47%), literalness/faithfulness errors (6.47%), usage errors (6.12%), punctuation errors (3.60%), addition errors (2.88%), ambiguity errors (2.52%), word form errors (2.52%), capitalization errors (2.16%), and spelling errors (1.08%). the data findings also showed that statistical method of google translate, the inability of google translate to understand the contexts of the texts beyond sentence, and errors in the source texts that carried into translation errors in the target texts were the causes of translation errors found in the data. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: adamfrenzy@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 adam ismail / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study nowadays, english is considered as international language due to the impact of globalization. in the process of understanding english, translation is needed. according to catford (1965:20), translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent textual material in another language (tl). its uses can be found in the translation of textbooks, state documents, literary works, bilingual books, business documents, journals or scientific works, and so forth. hence, because of its vital role, translation can offer a solution to overcome language gap in communication. indonesian people often use internet in their daily life. one of the tools on the internet that can help them in the translation process is google translate service. google translate is a convenient tool that offers free instant translation service on the web. it can be utilized to translate words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and even a web page between any pairs of supported languages. moreover, it can also be utilized to minimize time and effort to do translation tasks because the translation results are instantly generated. the translator is also helped with the easiness and availability of google translate, which are online and accessible to anyone and anytime for free with internet connection. meanwhile, the use of google translate to translate has brought some issues. some translators might use google translate blatantly without any revising effort on its translation, which leads to some underwhelming translation results. google translate itself also has limitation, that when translating complex sentences, it would sometimes resulted in inaccurate translation. there is an opinion that using google translate to do the translation work is too narrow-minded and easy because anyone can copy the text to the google translate, choose the language, and press the translate button. even, anyone who does not have any proficiency in both source and target language is able to do it. despite of those issues, the use of google translate to do the translation works is indeed fast and can bring an instant overview of translation result. from those issues, there comes an idea of analyzing the errors in translation results of certain type of text by using google translate. one type of text, which is very familiar in daily life, is news item text. news item texts can be found in newspapers, magazines, blogs, news websites, etc. utilizing google translate to translate news item texts is also popular due to the need of fast information updates in the society in a form of translating foreign news into local language that can be understood by local people and vice versa. thus, this research was employed to find and explain errors in google translate’s translation results of news item texts from indonesia to english. research metodology this study was a descriptive qualitative research, and it presented the data with a content analysis method. according to moleong (2010: 6), qualitative study is a study which has the goal to understand the subject of the study in the descriptive way. according to mujiyanto (2011: 23), qualitative approach tried to reveal the phenomenon comprehensively and appropriately with the context trough the natural data collection, employing the researcher as key instrument of the study. in line with mujiyanto, according to sutopo (2002:39) qualitative study employs the inductive analysis which is not meant to support or to reject the hypothesis, unlike in quantitative study. moreover, according to arikunto (2006: 343), drawing a conclusion in qualitative study can be done by comparing data with the certain given criteria such as equal, less equal and unequal. in addition, the data of qualitative study can also be analyzed trough simple statistical analysis in the form of ratio. purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample of news item texts. purposive sampling techniques involve selecting certain unit or cases based on a specific purpose rather than randomly (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003: 713). 180-240 words was decided as the total words range for news items texts used in this study. it was decided so that the sample texts would not be adam ismail / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 3 very short or very long to analyze. a total of five texts, each with 180-240 total words, were chosen among five indonesian news websites. they were taken from (1) bbc.com, (2) kompas.com, (3) liputan6.com, (4) tempo.co, and (5) viva.co.id. the texts were labeled from text a to text e. the decision of taking five news item texts as the sample size was taken because of the limited time and resources of the study. the five news item texts were then translated into english by using google translate. i inputted the content of each text as a whole, instead of partially inputted the sentences one by one into google translate. it was done in order to make sure that google translate translated the content of the text cohesively and coherently. after google translate translation proccess was done, five indonesian news item texts and their english translations counterpart were obtained. the first step in data analysis was comparing the source and target texts to identify some translation errors based on the indonesianenglish translation error typology. translation error typology from dewi (2015) is chosen to be used in this study. dewi’s translation error typology is used in this study because it is based on her adjustment of american translation associaton (ata) framework for specific indonesia-english language pair (2002). the errors include terminology, usage, syntax, mistranslation/misunderstanding, literalness/faithfulness, ambiguity, omission, addition, capitalization, punctuation, grammatical, and word form errors. translation errors can occur in the words, phrases, clauses, or sentences of the target texts. to list the errors, translation errors tables were used. the format of the table can be seen below: table 1. format of translation errors table no. source text target text categories of errors comments 1. ... ... ... ... 2. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... the sentences from source and target texts were inputted into source text and target text columns. words, phrases, clauses, and sentences that contained the errors were bold marked for the clear presentation of the errors occurrences. each sentence from the source and target texts could be inputted more than once, because multiple errors could be occured in a single sentence. the researcher decided not to just input words/phrases/clauses into the tables because the errors could be understood clearer when they were written on their respective contexts. the categories of errors occurred were inputted on the categories of errors column. brief explanations of the errors were inputted on the comments column. as there were five source texts and their target texts counterpart, five translation errors tables were made. the whole tables were used as the means to help in the data analysis and interpretation. findings and discussion after going through data investigation process, 278 data containing translation errors based on the translation error typology were obtained from text a, b, c, d, and e. the general findings are shown in the following table below. adam ismail / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 4 table 2. general findings no. categories of errors frequency of errors total errors (%) a b c d e 1. terminology errors 7 4 18 6 8 43 15.47% 2. usage errors 2 5 4 4 2 17 6.12% 3. syntax errors 8 5 12 8 1 34 12.23% 4. mistranslation /misunderstanding errors 2 4 5 7 18 6.47% 5. literalness /faithfulness errors 5 6 7 18 6.47% 6. ambiguity errors 3 1 2 1 7 2.52% 7. omission errors 12 7 10 5 5 39 14.03% 8. addition errors 2 4 2 8 2.88% 9. capitalization errors 1 1 2 1 1 6 2.16% 10. punctuation errors 4 1 4 1 10 3.60% 11. spelling errors 3 3 1.08% 12. grammatical errors 22 5 17 15 9 68 24.46% 13. word form errors 3 1 3 7 2.52% the most notable errors from grammatical errors were singular-plural errors (35.29% of grammatical errors), incorrect tenses (35.29% of grammatical errors), and incorrect cases of pronoun (10.29% of grammatical errors). terminology errors happened frequently for 43 times, spreading in every sample of news item texts used in this study. the distribution of omission errors was spreaded almost evenly in the data. the distribution of syntax errors was skewed to unnatural word orders, which occured 26 times (76.47% of syntax errors). mistranslation/ misunderstanding and literalness/faithfulness errors resulted in a tie, with each occured 18 times. usage errors occured 17 times, spreading in every sample of news item texts. the rest of the errors only occured less than 11 times, so they rarely occured in the data. the distribution of punctuation errors was spreaded almost evenly across the data. addition errors occurred 8 times, but only occurred in three of five texts used in the study. capitalization only occured in the context of title sentence writing and first letter capitalization in the data. spelling errors were varied across the wrong spelling of number, proper noun, and date. however they only occured three times, and not spread evenly among the five samples of news item texts. talking about the subcategories of grammatical errors, singular-plural errors in the whole data occured because of google translate inability to identify the nouns in the source texts contexts, whether in the form of singular or plural. google translate also could not understand that the texts in this study were news item texts, in which past tenses were used. google translate for several times used present tenses in the target texts, that should be corrected to past tenses in order to match the tense used in news item texts. when google translate used articles in the target texts of the data, most of them were correct. on the other hand, in the data, google translate could not differentiate the word ‘namun’ which functioned as a connector to connect sentences, or as a conjunction to connect clauses in a sentence. problems with subject-verb agreement in the data occured because google translate adam ismail / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 5 translated the plural nouns from the source texts into singular nouns in the target texts. the verbs following those incorrect translations would be incorrect as well, which resulted in grammatical errors. since active-passive voice errors resulted in very different meaning of target texts compared to their source texts, this subcategory of grammatical error was important to consider. google translate also unable to identify some pronouns in accordance to the context of the target texts in the data, especially in identifying pronouns that were related to the previous sentences in the texts. moreover, the whole terminology errors in the data were caused by word-to-word translations of phrases’ elements, and the inability of google translate in translating some words which have specific meanings out of the general equivalences of those words in the target texts to match the contexts. omission errors found in the data were mostly caused by google translate, which for several times translate the source texts literally, ignoring the overall meaning of the target texts. the technical errors of google translate itself that omitted parts of the source texts were also the cause of these problems. talking about the subcategories of syntax errors, the whole sentence fragments errors in the data were caused by the inability of google translate to identify and form complete sentence from the source texts. even though the source texts had problems of sentence fragments, google translate could not correct them in the target texts just like what human who has sufficient knowledge of translating indonesia to english would do. it was because google translate used statistical method in translating the source texts, which did not involve any linguistic rule at all. it would also made several usage errors when google translate encountered new cases of texts which it had not ever translated before. when encountering complex sentences in the data, google translate for several times failed to identify the phrases properly which resulted to improper modifications and bad translation results. moreover, lack of linguistic rules employed in google translate also resulted in unnatural word orders in the target texts in the data. mistranslation/misunderstanding errors in the data were caused by the inability of machine, in this case was google translate, to understand the contexts of source texts as a whole. moreover, literalness/faithfulness errors made the arrangement of words in the translation results strange for the target language users. usage errors were caused by the inability of google translate to form correct wordings in the target texts. meanwhile, when punctuations in the source texts were correct, google translate did not make any punctuation error at all. in contrast, when the source texts had punctuation errors, google translate would also made punctuation errors in the target texts. in the data, google translate only added minor additions. meanwhile, ambiguity errors found were mostly caused by redundancy and wrong choice of words. so, addition and terminology errors indirectly affected the occurences of these errors in the data. the researcher did not encounter any difficulty in identifying the word form of each word in the source texts. therefore, it can be concluded that word form errors found in the data were caused purely by the incompetence of google translate in deciding the correct word form used in the target texts. there were only two basic cases of capitalization errors found in the data: in the title sentence writing of news item texts, and in the first letter writing of sentences. spelling errors in the data only occured in spelling of number, proper noun, and date. since these errors only happened in 3 of 278 total data, and did not alter the meanings of the source texts, these translation errors can be conluded as not significant compared to the other translation errors mentioned before. finally, there were 3 sub-categories of errors from the translation error typology that did not occur at all in the data. they were countableuncountable errors (grammatical errors), adam ismail / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 6 incorrect conjunctions (grammatical errors), and lack of parallelism (syntax errors). conclusions the findings of the analysis showed that there were 13 categories of translation errors obtained from 278 data. ranking from the most common to the least common errors found in the data, they were grammatical errors (24.46%), terminology errors (15.47%), omission errors (14.03%), syntax errors (12.23%), mistranslation/misunderstanding errors (6.47%), literalness/faithfulness errors (6.47%), usage errors (6.12%), punctuation errors (3.60%), addition errors (2.88%), ambiguity errors (2.52%), word form errors (2.52%), capitalization errors (2.16%), and spelling errors (1.08%). the data findings also showed that statistical method of google translate, the inability of google translate to understand the contexts of the texts beyond sentence, and errors in the source texts that carried into translation errors in the target texts were the causes of translation errors found in the data. references american translator association. 2002. framework for standard error marking, an explanation. web. january 21, 2016. retrieved from http://www.atanet.org/bin/view.pl/12438.ht ml arikunto, suharsimi. 2006. prosedur penelitian, suatu pendekatan praktik (edisi revisi vi). jakarta: pt. rineka cipta catford, j.c. 1965. a linguistic theory of translation: an essay in applied linguistics. london: oxford university press. dewi, h. d. 2015. comparing two translation assessment models: correlating student revisions and perspectives. ohio: kent state university. moleong, l. j. 2010. metode penelitian kualitatif. bandung: pt. remaja rosdakarya. mujianto, yan. 2011. petunjuk penulisan skripsi. semarang: unnes press. sutopo, h. b. 2002. metodologi penelitian kualitatif dasar teori dan terapannya dalam penelitian. surakarta: sebelas maret university. tashakkori, a., & teddlie, c. 2003. handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 10 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt teaching vocabulary by using word baseball graphic organizer to the eleventh graders of senior high school dian nirwana, sri wahyuni  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: word baseball graphic organizer, vocabulary, quasiexperimental study ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is based on a research which examined the eleventh graders’ achievement in vocabulary mastery. the study aimed to find out the significant difference of students’ vocabulary achievement between the students who were taught by using word baseball graphic organizer and those who were not and to investigate the effectiveness of using word baseball graphic organizer to teach vocabulary. the study adopted quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design. the data were gained through pre-test and post-test scores and participants’ responses of the questionnaire. the results of the study showed that the mean score of the pre-test in the experimental group was 74.35, while in the control group was 74.62. in the post-test, the mean score of the experimental group was 83.09, and the control group was 79.29. the result of post-test increased. in addition, the t-test result was 1.990, and t-table was 1.787. it can be clearly seen that tvalue is higher than ttable. it means that the hypothesis of h1 was accepted and h0 was refused. according to the proven hypotheses, i can conclude that teaching vocabulary using word baseball graphic organizer was proven to be effective for the eleventh grade students of senior high school. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 11 introduction this research investigated the effectiveness of using word baseball graphic organizer to teach students vocabulary to the eleventh graders in one of the state senior high schools in semarang. in our daily life we need to communicate with others in order to deliver or gain some information or just for the sake of courtesy with surrounding. in this case, language plays an important role in succeeding the communication. the communication will not run smoothly if we do not know the meaning of the words. rubin and thompson (1994: 79) points out that “one cannot speak, understand, read or write a foreign language without knowing a lot of words”. according to hatch and brown (1995: 24), “vocabulary is a list or set of words particular language or a list or set or words individual speakers of language might use”. from those definitions, it can be concluded that vocabulary is an essential aspect in learning a language. vocabulary learning is at the heart of mastering a foreign language whether it is a spoken or written language. thus, vocabulary is important to be learned in order to master english as the international language since vocabulary is the basic aspect of a language. it seems not easy for students to learn english vocabulary as a foreign language, since it is absolutely different from indonesian language. they find difficulties in enriching their vocabulary knowledge and memorizing new words because of the complexity of the words themselves. in fact, people who have low vocabulary mastery will have problem in learning english whether in gaining information or creating information. therefore, they cannot use language accurately. in addition, it is difficult for students to learn and memorize english vocabularies. i found the reason why the students have low vocabulary proficiency. it is because the teacher still uses the conventional method or grammar translation method in teaching vocabulary. the students are asked to write down some words from the textbook to their individual book. they get of learn english without any media. they just wait for the teacher to inform them about the meaning of the words they have just written. in fact, learning english can be fun if we apply attractive and appropriate techniques and media. besides, it will motivate the students in learning english. when we learn english vocabularies, we meet various words which have different part of speech, such as noun, verb, adjective and adverb. those words are not only formed by a base word but also composed with other smaller elements, such as prefixes and suffixes. a prefix is a group of letters placed before the root of a word, while suffix is a group of letters placed after the root of a word. we can discover other words by adding a base word with prefix and/or suffix. this process is called affixation. the students can memorize the meaning of those words because the words are still in one family. it means that the meaning of the words is nearly the same but they absolutely have different function in a sentence. for example, the word “beauty” is added by suffix “-ful” so that it becomes a new word “beautiful”. both of them have relatively different meaning, but they completely belong to the different part of speech. the words “beauty” and “beautiful” are related to the quality of being pleasing, “beauty” is something that gives a great pleasure and belongs to “noun”; however, “beautiful” belongs to “adjective” which means the state of being attractive or pleasant. because of that problem, i investigated whether or not the use of word baseball graphic organizer is effective in teaching vocabulary. according to bromley et. al., 1995 (as d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 12 cited in judit bauer stamper, 2006), graphic organizer is a visual and graphic representation of relationships among ideas and concepts. this instructional tool comes in a variety of formats – from loose webs to structured grids that help students in processing information they’ve gathered and organizing their ideas. to my knowledge, there has not been very much studies about it. word baseball graphic organizer can be stated as a medium to teach students vocabulary by adding prefixes and suffixes in a base word. therefore, the students learn vocabulary based on the same family. it makes them easier to memorize because the words are still in the same family. schmitt (2000: 148) argues that “we can maximize vocabulary learning by teaching word families instead of individual word forms. teachers can make it a habit when introducing a new word to mention the other members of its word family”. besides helping the students to enrich the vocabularies, word baseball graphic organizer gives more understanding about the function of the words or the words’ part of speech. this research needs to be carried out because first, vocabulary mastery is the essential aspect in learning language. according to ellis (1997) as cited in schmitt (2000:143) “the main reason for believing that vocabulary knowledge can help grammar acquisition is that knowing the words in a text or conversation permits learners to understand the meaning of the discourse, which in turn allows the grammatical patterning to become more transparent”. second, interesting technique tends to be needed for teaching vocabulary in the classroom to boost students’ interest. the last, knowing the various words in the same family which has the same root is a powerful way of building vocabulary. therefore, based on the explanation above, hopefully word baseball graphic organizer can be a successful way to solve those problems. it is in line with my objectives in conducting this study that by using word baseball graphic organizer can be an appropriate medium to teach vocabulary. methodology of the research to achieve the goal, i applied a quasi-experimental study with non-equivalent control group design. this study was conducted in one of the senior high schools in semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. the second grade students were chosen as the population. there were ten classes of eleventh grade students in that school. in determining the sample, i chose the existing class of eleventh grade by using purposive sampling or non-probability sampling. i applied this sampling technique because in the non-equivalent control group design, the experimental and control groups have not been equated by randomization. both groups were tested in pre-test and post-test. the difference of these groups was treatment given in experimental group. the experimental group used word baseball graphic organizer while the control group used grammar translation method without using word baseball graphic organizer. in selecting the sample, i was helped by the leader of english teacher organization in that school. the classes were class xi ipa 2 as the control group and class xi ipa 3 as the experimental group. those classes were chosen because of some considerations. first, both classes are given the same english materials by the same english teacher. second, according to the score’s record, the students of those classes equals in level of english achievement in that school. in this research, the independent variable was the use of word baseball graphic organizer in teaching vocabulary. while the dependent variable was the students’ d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 13 achievement of vocabulary in the test score. there were two hypotheses in this study which were alternative hypothesis and null hypothesis. the alternative (h1) was the use of word baseball graphic organizer was effective to teach vocabulary to the eleventh grade students in one of the state senior high schools in semarang; while the null hypothesis (h0) was the use of word baseball graphic organizer was not effective in teaching vocabulary. the instruments used in this study were test and questionnaire. i conducted two kinds of test. they were pre-test and post-test. pre-test and post-test were held in the beginning and the end of the research. the objective of using pre-test and post-test was to find out the students’ vocabulary mastery before and after the treatment. there were 30 items in this test. the type of items used was multiple-choice items. the test itself consisted of some sentences which allowed the students to choose the proper word in order to complete the sentences given. the options consisted of some words that belonged to the same family. they consisted of derivational prefixes and derivational suffixes. the derivational suffixes chosen in this instrument were the derivational suffixes which occurred more often or in the other words, the derivational suffixes which had relatively greater number of their usage frequency. this process of selection dealt with the students’ familiarity toward those derivational suffixes. almost all the chosen derivational suffixes occurred often in the students’ books. they had relatively a great number of their usage frequency. beside the consideration of the frequency of derivational suffixes occurred in the students’ books especially in the hortatory text, the process of selecting the derivational suffixes going to be used in this instrument was also based on the parts of speech they belonged to. after i read the hortatory texts in the student’s book, i found that the nominal suffixes occurred more often than the other suffixes. meanwhile, the adverbial suffixes occurred less frequently than the other suffixes. considering the aspects above, i decided to make the items that consist of 60% of nominal suffixes, 20% of verbal suffixes, 20% of adjectival suffixes, and 10% of adverbial suffixes. before the test was used as an instrument to collect the data, it was tried out first to the class in neither experimental nor control groups. after the data was obtained, i calculated the normality and homogeneity of the test. then, if the data was normal and homogenous, i continued to analyze the data to see whether there is a significant diferrence between the students taught by using word baseball graphic organizer and those who were not by using t-test. if the tvalue is higher than ttable, and sig (2-tailed) is lower than level of significance 0.05 then there is a significant difference between the control and the experimental groups. on the other hand, if tvalue is lower than ttable, and sig (2-tailed) is higher than level of significance 0.05, it means that there is no a significant difference between two means. besides using test as the instrument, i also used questionnaire in the form of close format question to support the data. it was the type of questionnaire which allowed the students to choose the optional answers given. the purpose of giving questionnaire in this research was to gain the description about students’ interest, the advantage of using word baseball graphic organizer, the the students’ achievement, the relevancy, and sustainability in teaching and learning vocabulary by using word baseball graphic organizer. the questionnaire was given to the experimental group after they finished doing the post-test. there were several steps in analyzing questionnaire. first, i graded the items, 3 for the answer yes, 2 for the answer doubt, and 1 for the answer no. second, i tabulated the data and calculated the mean. the formula used to calculate the mean could be seen below: d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 14 third, i matched the mean to criterion according to heaton (1975: 172). the criterion can be seen on the next page: table 2.1 mean criterion of questionnaire by heaton result and analysis results of the test i conducted try out on thursday, march 3rd, 2016. thirty four students of xi ipa 1 were asked to complete the 45 multiple-choice items of vocabulary test in 40 minutes. the test scored 1 point for each right answer and 0 for the wrong answer. then, i found out the validity, reliability, item facility, and item discrimination of the items. from the overall 45 items, 31 items were valid and reliable. in designing a test, i considered not only validity, reliability, item facility, and item discrimination, but also practicallity of the test. according to brown (2004: 19), “an effective test is practical. this means that is not excessively expensive, stays within appropriate time constraints, is relatively easy to administer, and has a scoring or evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient”. therefore, to make the test is easy to administer i took only 30 items as the pre-test and post-test from 31 items that were classified as good items. after tried out the test, i conducted pre-test for both groups. the pre-test for the control group was conducted on wednesday, march 23rd, 2016 to the students of xi ipa 2. while for the experimental group was held on thursday, march 24th, 2016 to the students of xi ipa 3. the pre-test was scored 1 point for each correct answer and 0 point for the wrong answers. the mean score of pre-test for experimental and control groups were 74.4 and 74.6. to find out if those groups were at the same level of proficiency, i calculated the independent sample t-test. i calculated the normality and homogeneity first before calculating the independent sample t-test. based on the normality test by using kolmogrov test for pre-test in the control group, the sig (2-tailed) was 0.695. since the sig value was higher than level of significance (0.069 > 0.05) it was concluded that the pre-test data in the control group was distributed normally. then, in the experimental group, it was found the sig (2-tailed) value was 0.818. for it range of mean students’ interest the advantage students; achievement the relevancy sustainability 0,00 – 1,00 low not helpful low not relevant not necessary 1,01 – 2,00 medium helpful medium relevant necessary 2,01 – 3,00 high very helpful high very relevant very necessary m = d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 15 showed that sig value was higher than level of significance (0.818 > 0.05), the pre-test of experimental group was also distributed normally. after calculating the normality of pre-test, i computed the homogeneity of pre-test. based on the homogeneity test by using spss 21.0 for windows, the sig value was 0.336. since the sig value was higher than level of significance (0.336 > 0.05), it was concluded that the experimental and control groups had the same variance or the population of both groups was homogenous. the data of pre-test were said to be normal and homogenous. then, i calculated the independent sample t-test to know if both groups were at the same level of proficiency before given the treatments. levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std.error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pretest equal variances assumed .598 .442 -.145 66 .885 -.265 1.822 -3.903 3.374 equal variances not assumed -.145 65.435 .885 -.265 1.822 -3.904 3.374 table 3.1 the independent sample t-test of the pre-test from the t-test, the sig (2-tailed) was 0.885. since it was more than the level of significance (0.05), it meant that there was no a significant difference between the students pre-test score in experimental and control groups. it can be concluded that the initial vocabulary mastery of the two groups were at the same level. the post-test for the control group was conducted on wednesday, march 13th, 2016, while for the experimental group was on thursday, march 14th, 2016. the purpose of giving post-test was to measure students’ vocabulary achievement after they were given the treatment. the test was the same as in the pre-test. the table below shows the mean scores for pre-test and post-test for both groups. d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 16 pre-test post-test the mean difference control group 74.62 79.29 4.67 experimental group 74.35 83.09 8.74 table 3.2 mean scores comparison the mean of pre-test of the control group was 74.62, and the mean of post-test was 79.29. in the experimental group, the mean of pre-test was 74.35, and the mean of post-test was 83.09. the difference between pre-test and post-test of control group was 4.67 and the difference between the pre-test and post-test of experimental group was 8.74. the result of post-test on both groups increased, but there was higher improvement in the experimental group than the control group. before calculating the independent sample of t-test by using spss, i found out the normality and homogeneity of the post-test. the post-test normality computation of the control group showed the sig (2-tailed) was 0.060. since the sig value was higher than level of significance (0.060 > 0.05) it was concluded that the post-test data in the control group was distributed normally. besides that, the sig (2-tailed) of experimental group was 0.274. since the sig value was higher than level of significance (0.274 > 0.05), it was concluded that the post-test data in the experimental group were also distributed normally. based on the homogeneity test by using spss 21.0 for windows, the sig value of post-test for experimental and control groups was 0.131. since the sig value was higher than level of significance (0.131 > 0.05), it was concluded that the population of both groups was homogenous. to know whether there is a significant difference between the two groups, i calculated the independent sample t-test by using spss 21.0 for windows. levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig.(2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper posttest equal variances assumed 3.119 .082 1.990 66 .050 3.794 1.906 -.012 7.600 equal variances not assumed 1.990 58.823 .050 3.794 1.906 -.021 7.609 table 3.3 the independent sample t-test of the post-test d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 17 from the table above, it could be seen that the sig (2-tailed) value was 0.050. since it equals to the level of significance (0.05) and the tvalue was higher than ttable with the df 66 (1.990 > 1.787), it meant that there was a significant difference between the students who were taught by using word baseball graphic organizer and those who were not. thus, the null hypothesis (h0) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (h1) that the use of word baseball graphic organizer was effective to teach vocabulary, is accepted. after analyzing the mean score and the t-test results, i also analyzed the result of questionnaire. the conclusion of the questionnaire result can be seen on the following table. number of question students’ opinion result 1,2,3,4,5,6 students’ interest high 7,8,9,10,11,12 the advantage very helpful 13,14,15 the students’ achievement high 16,17,18 the relevancy very relevant 19,20 sustainability very necessary table 3.4 result of analyzing questionnaire conclusions due to the research finding and discussion, i would give some conclusions about this study. the first conclusion, there is a significant difference between the vocabulary achievement of the eleventh grade students in one of the state senior high schools in semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 who were taught by using word baseball graphic organizer and those who were not. according to the analysis of t-test result, it was obtained that the t-value was higher than t-table. it means that there is a significant difference between the vocabulary achievement of the students who were taught by using word baseball graphic organizer and those who were not. in addition, the research findings revealed that the result of the research was in line with my alternative hypothesis (h1) that “the use of word baseball graphic organizer is effective to teach vocabulary to the eleventh grade students.” thus, this hypothesis is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected. second, by considering the different average scores on both groups, i am able to conclude that the use of word baseball graphic organizer as a medium in teaching and learning vocabulary gave contribution to improve students’ competence of vocabulary. the mean scores difference between pre-test and post-test of the control group was lower than the experimental group. moreover based on the questionnaire analysis, it showed that the students attracted with the medium that i used. this medium helped the students to enrich the vocabulary. the students’ response towards the teaching and learning was good. the students’ positive attitude toward the lesson was also good. the students were interested in the materials given during the teaching learning process. thus, i come to the conclusion that the use of word baseball graphic organizer is effective to teach vocabulary at the eleventh grade students of senior high school references d. nirwana & s. wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 18 brown, h. douglas. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education. ellis, n. c. 1997. vocabulary acquisition: word structure, collocation, wordclass,and meaning. in n. schmitt, vocabulary in language teaching (pp.143). cambridge: cambridge university press. enchanted learning. online. www.enchantedlearning.com [accessed 12/27/15]. hatch, e., & brown, c. 1995. vocabulary, semantics and language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. heaton, j.b. 1975. writing english language test. london: longman group ltd. rubin, j. & thompson, i. 1994. how to be succesful language learner. boston, massachusetts: heinle & heinle. schmitt, norbert. 2000. vocabulary in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. stamper, j.b. 2006. vocabulary-building graphic organizers and minilessons. online. available at: http://www.google.co.id/url?q=http s://michelleleba.wikispaces.com/fil e/view/graphic%2borganizers%2 bthat%2bbuild%2bvocabulary.pdf &sa=u&ei=0seqvikqkmfmuqs w3ic4da&ved=0ccqqfjad&us g=afqjc nf4vjsqu_zlms1x7tvla20po1 tg4q [accessed 12/27/15]. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 37 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt clustering technique and peer assessment in teaching writing recount text to junior high school students eka yunita widyawati, novia trisanti  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: clustering; peer assessment; recount text; writing ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was conducted under the consideration of the observation in smpn 39 semarang that many students faced problems in learning to write a text. this research is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of using clustering technique and peer assessment in teaching writing recount text compared to three-phase technique and the students’ perception of the lesson. a quasi-experimental was used as the research design in this study. the subjects were the eighth graders of smpn 39 semarang in the academic year of 2016/2017 with 60 students as the samples. the control group (viiic) was treated using three-phase technique and teacher assessment, while the experimental group (viii d) was taught using clustering technique and peer assessment. the findings revealed that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment significantly improved the students’ achievement in writing recount text. it was proven by the result of t-test in which the t-value (4.31) was higher than t-table (2.00). in addition, based on the result of the questionnaire, 90% of the students agreed that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment improved the students’ writing achievement. all in all, the use of clustering technique and peer assessment is more effective for teaching writing recount text to junior high school students than three-phase technique and teacher assessment. moreover, most of the students have a positive perception to the lesson. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 38 introduction as one of the four language skills which should be mastered by junior school students, writing is different since the writers should arrange the words and phrases into some sentences which can be clearly understood by the readers. meyers (2005) stated that writing is a way to produce language which you do naturally when you speak. a good writing needs a long process that may include planning, drafting, editing (reflecting and revising), and writing final version (harmer 2004). some elements including a topic sentence, supporting sentences, concluding sentence, unity, and coherence also should be considered in writing (oshima and hogue 2006). according to school-based curriculum, any text types in english should be mastered by junior school students; one of them is recount text. recount text is one of the text types which should be mastered by the eighth-grade students. according to anderson (2003), recount text is a text that retells past events in the order in which they happen. in constructing a recount text, a writer has to consider some steps; (1) first paragraph that gives background information including the participants, place, and time, (2) a series of paragraphs that retell the events in the order in which they happened, and (3) a concluding paragraph. in addition, the specific language features including the use of proper nouns, descriptive words, past tense, and words that show the order of events are used in writing a recount text. however, based on the observation in smpn 39 semarang, most of the students faced any problems in writing, especially in writing a recount text. the main problem was they did not know what they had to write. also, they felt difficult to organize their idea into a good text. moreover, most of the students frequently made errors in grammatical use, punctuation, conjunction, mechanics, and spelling. as the solution of these problems, any different techniques should be applied in teaching writing. clustering is one of many techniques that may be useful in writing. clustering is one of prewriting techniques that can be used by a writer to produce ideas (oshima and hogue 1997). it helps the students to generate any ideas which come to students’ thinking before they start writing. according to noel (2005), there are a number of steps of using clustering technique. first, the writer can put a word, phrase, or sentence in a circle in the center of a blank page. then, the writer can put every new idea in smaller circles around the first circle. lastly, it is ended by drawing a line to another circle to its relationship to a previous idea. another technique that may be useful in writing is peer assessment. roberts (2006) defined peer assessment as a process of having students critically reflect upon, and perhaps suggest grades or comments for, the learning of their peers. according to brown (2004), it offers some benefits, such as direct involvement of students in the learning process, the encouragement of autonomy, and the increase in motivation. however, peer assessment also gives some important drawbacks, such as subjectivity and the ability to discern their own errors. trisanti (2013) explained some general issues that should be considered in using peer assessment. first, the teacher should explain to the students by giving a copy of form used for assessment and evaluation. second, the teacher should give an opportunity to the students to practice assessing other group members in which their assessment do not affect project scores. third, the teacher should provide feedback in order to improve the students’ performance. based on the background above, this research is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text compared to threephase technique and teacher assessment and describing the students’ perception to the lesson. in order to achieve the objectives of this research, a number of theories and procedures are used. e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 39 methodology of the research the research design used in the study was matching-only pre-test-post-test control group design by fraenkel and wallen (2008: 271). the design is presented as the following: group pre-test treatment post-test experimental o1 x o2 control o3 c o4 table 2.1 pre-test post-test control group design from table 1, it can be described that the subjects are divided into the experimental and control groups. the basic quality of the subjects is first checked by giving pre-test to both groups. then, the two groups are taught the same topic, but they are treated by using different techniques of teaching. post-test is given after the treatment and the result can be computed and analyzed. the subjects of the study were the eighth-grade students of smpn 39 semarang in the academic year of 2016/2017 with 274 students. the samples were viii c, as the control group, consisted of 30 students and viii d, as the experimental group, consisted of 30 students. the control group was treated by using three-phase technique and teacher assessment, while the experimental group was treated by using clustering technique and peer assessment. in collecting the data, two kinds of instrument were used. the first instrument was writing test which was divided into try-out, pre-test, and post-test. the writing test was given to investigate the effectiveness of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text to junior high school students compared to three-phase technique and teacher assessment. another instrument, questionnaire, was distributed to describe the students’ perception of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text. questionnaire design used in the study was closed-ended questions consisting of ten statements. a number of steps were done in order to achieve the objectives of the study. before conducting the research, the try-out test was conducted to see the reliability and validity of the test. it was needed because a good instrument should be reliable and valid. after calculating and analyzing the reliability and validity of the instrument, the pre-test was given to the experimental and control groups. after scoring the pre-test of the students and analyzing them, the same material about recount text was given to both groups. however, they were taught by using the different teaching techniques. the experimental group students were taught by using clustering technique and peer assessment, whereas the control group was treated by using three-phase technique and teacher assessment. the treatments were given in four meetings. after completing the treatments, the post-test was given to both groups. in addition, the questionnaire was distributed to the students of the experimental group to see the students’ perception of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text. after calculating and analyzing the post-test of the students, the t-test was calculated to see the significant improvement of the students in writing recount text. in addition, the students’ responses to each statement were computed and interpreted to describe the students’ perception of using clustering and peer assessment techniques for teaching writing recount text. in order to find out the validity of the data, this study used methods triangulation. according to hales (2010:14), methods triangulation is the use of multiple methods to study a situation or phenomenon. some methods in collecting the data, such as observation, test, and questionnaire were used. these multiple methods were used to make the methods completed each other. e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 40 result and analysis in this part, the result and analyses of try-out, pre-test, post-test, and questionnaire are provided. moreover, the discussion of the research findings is presented clearly at the end of this part. try-out the try-out was conducted to find out the validity and reliability of the instruments. it was conducted in viii b with 29 students who took the try-out test. to find out the validity of the test, the writer used content validity. the test was compared with the materials dealing with the curriculum requirement. the school-based curriculum states that the-eighth grade students are supposed to write a simple recount text. in reveals that the test is valid since the test is compatible with the curriculum requirement. another characteristic of a good test is reliable. since the instrument was writing test, the writer used inter-rater reliability. according to nunnaly (1960) in ghozali (2006), an instrument is considered as reliable if the value of cronbach’s alpha is higher than 0.6 (>0.6). the computation of inter-rater reliability of the test using spss 21.0 program is presented as follows: reliability statistics cronbach's alpha cronbach's alpha based on standardized items n of items ,770 ,776 2 table 3.1 the reliability analysis of the test from table 2, it can be seen that the value of cronbach’s alpha is 0.77. it means that the test is reliable since the value of cronbach’s alpha (0.77) is higher than 0.6. in addition, the reliability of peer assessment rubric used as an instrument in this research was also checked. the calculation of inter-rater reliability of peer assessment rubric used as instrument is presented in the following: reliability statistics cronbach's alpha cronbach's alpha based on standardized items n of items ,830 ,835 2 table 2.2 the reliability analysis of the instrument (peer assessment rubric) table 3 shows that the value of cronbach’s alpha is 0.83. it can be concluded that peer assessment rubric used an instrument in this research is reliable since the value of cronbach’s alpha is higher than 0.6 (0.83>0.6). from the overall analysis above, the instruments can be used in the real research since they fulfill the requirements of a good instrument pre-test pre-test was given to the experimental and control groups in order to know the basic ability of the students in writing recount text. from the pre-test result, the mean scores of the students in both groups were analyzed. the mean score of the control group students was 66.73, while the experimental group students was 66.97. it could be concluded that the experimental and control group students had almost equal achievement in writing recount text before getting the treatment. e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 41 however, the homogeneity and normality of the test should be computed to support the statement. the homogeneity of the pre-test is computed in order to know whether the data of each group are homogeneous. the data are homogeneous if the significance value is higher than the significance level (0.05) (ghozali 2006). the pre-test homogeneity computation is presented as the following: test of homogeneity of variances pretest levene statistic df1 df2 sig. ,000 1 58 ,989 table 3.3 the homogeneity test of the experimental and control groups pre-test from table 4, it can be seen that the significance value (0.99) is higher than 0.05. it reveals that the pre-test data are homogeneous. in other words, the population of the control and experimental groups has the same achievement before receiving the treatment. the normality of the pre-test also should be analyzed to find out whether the data are normal or not. according to ghozali (2006), the data are considered normally distributed if the value of asym.sig.(2-tailed) of kolmogorov-sminorv test is higher than the significance level (0.05). the computation of normality test using kolmogorov-sminorv test in spss 21.0 program is presented below: one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test experimental group pretest control group pretest n 30 30 normal parametersa,b mean 66,97 66,73 std. deviation 5,881 6,209 most extreme differences absolute ,099 ,099 positive ,099 ,099 negative -,081 -,090 kolmogorov-smirnov z ,540 ,544 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) ,932 ,928 table 3.4 the normality test of the experimental and control groups pre-test from table 5, it can be seen that the result of one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test (asymp.sig.2-tailed) of experimental group pre-test is 0.93. it indicates that the data of the experimental group pre-test are normally distributed since the value of asymp.sig.(2-tailed) (0.93) is higher than 0.05. in addition, the value of asymp.sig.(2-tailed) of control group pre-test is 0.93. it reveals that the data of the control group pre-test are also normal because the asymp.sig.(2-tailed) value is higher than 0.05 (0.93>0.05). from the overall analysis above, the treatments can be given to the experimental and control groups since the data of pre-test are normally distributed and homogeneous. treatments the different treatments were given to the control and experimental groups. the treatment using clustering technique and peer assessment was given to the experimental group, while the e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 42 control group was treated by using three-phase technique and teacher assessment. the treatments were given in four meetings. at the first meeting, the material about recount text was explained to both groups, and they did the same activity and task. at the second meeting, both groups wrote a recount text in groups. at the third meeting, they did the activity in pairs and at the fourth meeting, they did it individually. post-test post-test was conducted to both groups after completing all the activities above to measure the students’ achievement after getting the treatment. based on the post-test result, the mean score of the experimental group was 80.33, while the control group was 74.17. the result indicates that the students’ improvement of the experimental group is higher than the control group. however, the t-test should be computed as a statistical evidence to prove the statement. before calculating the t-test, the homogeneity and normality of the post-test should be calculated and analyzed first to know whether the data are homogeneous and normal or not. the result of homogeneity post-test computation is presented as follows: test of homogeneity of variances levene statistic df1 df2 sig. ,000 1 58 ,989 table 3.5 the homogeneity test of post-test from table 6, it can be seen that the significance value (0.99) is higher than 0.05. it reveals that the post-test scores have the same variance. it can be concluded that the population of the control and experimental groups is homogeneous. the normality of post-test also should be computed first in order to see whether the data are normal or not. the normality test of post-test is provided below: one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test experimental group posttest control group posttest n 30 30 normal parametersa,b mean 80,33 74,17 std. deviation 5,313 5,760 most extreme differences absolute ,143 ,122 positive ,126 ,089 negative -,143 -,122 kolmogorov-smirnov z ,786 ,667 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) ,568 ,765 table 3.6 the normality test of the experimental and control groups post-test table 5 shows that the value of (asymp. sig. 2-tailed) of the experimental group post-test is 0.57. it indicates that the data of the experimental group post-test are normally distributed because the significance value (0.57) is higher than 0.05. moreover, the asymp.sig.(2-tailed) value of the control group post-test (0.77) is also higher than 0.05. it reveals that the data of the control group post-test are also normal. the mean scores difference of pre-test and post-test e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 43 the improvement of the experimental and control groups in writing recount text can be seen through the mean scores difference of pre-test and post-test which is presented in the following chart: diagram 3.1 the mean scores difference of pre-test and post-test chart 1 shows that the mean score of the experimental group pre-test is 66.97. meanwhile, the mean score of the post-test is 80.33. it reveals that there is significant improvement of the pre-test and the post-test scores achieved by the experimental group students. on the other hand, the writing achievement of the control group students also improves. it is 66.73 for the pre-test and 74.17 for the post-test. in indicates that there is less improvement than the experimental group. the difference of the experimental group mean scores (13.36) is higher than the control group (7.44). it can be concluded that there is a better improvement of the experimental group’s writing achievement after receiving the treatments by using clustering technique and peer assessment. t-test analysis the purpose of calculating the t-test is to examine the hypotheses of this study. the improvement of the experimental and control groups is crucial to be tested as a quantitative evidence to find out whether the two groups have a significant difference in writing recount text. the result of t-test is presented as the following: group statistics class n mean std. deviation std. error mean posttest experimental group 30 80,33 5,313 ,970 control group 30 74,17 5,760 1,052 levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper 66.73 66.97 74.17 80.33 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 control group experimental group the mean scores of pre-test and post-test pre-test post-test e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 44 posttest equal variances assumed ,00 ,99 4,31 58 ,00 6,17 1,43 3,30 9,03 equal variances not assumed 4,31 57,63 ,00 6,17 1,43 3,30 9,03 table 3.7 independent sample t-test of the experimental and control groups post-test independent samples test based on the independent sample t-test result above, the test is significant, t(58)=4.31, p<0.05, d=95. it means that the t-value from 58 degree of freedom is 4.31. the probability of obtaining tvalue is 0.5 and the effect size is 0.95. the 95% confidence interval for the average percentage of post-test score ranges from 3.30 to 9.03. an examination of the group mean scores indicates that the post-test score of the experimental group (m=80.33, sd=5.31) is significantly higher than the control group (m=74.17, sd=5.76). in sum, after analyzing the result of t-test calculation, the use of clustering technique and peer assessment is more effective for teaching writing recount text to the eighth-grade students of a junior high school than three-phase technique and teacher assessment. the students’ achievement in writing recount text significantly improves after getting the treatment by using clustering technique and peer assessment. questionnaire result after conducting post-test, the questionnaire was given to the experimental group. the purpose of giving the questionnaire is to see the students’ perception of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text. the result of the calculation of the students’ responses to each statement in the questionnaire can be seen in the table below: no pernyataan jawaban 1 2 3 4 5 1 saya menyukai pelajaran bahasa inggris. 0% 0% 30% 40% 30% 2 saya menyukai pelajaran menulis dalam bahasa inggris (writing). 0% 3% 30% 57% 10% 3 teknik clustering sangat mudah digunakan oleh siswa. 0% 0% 17% 63% 20% 4 teknik clustering membantu saya untuk mengembangkan ide-ide. 0% 3% 10% 70% 17% 5 dengan menggunakan teknik clustering, saya dapat mengembangkan ide-ide menjadi sebuah paragraf dengan lebih mudah. 0% 3% 10% 63% 23% 6 saya menyukai teknik peer assessment dalam pembelajaran menulis teks recount. 0% 10% 33% 53% 3% 7 suasana kelas menjadi menyenangkan setelah diberikan pembelajaran dengan menggunakan teknik peer assessment. 0% 7% 33% 60% 0% 8 penggunaan teknik peer assessment dapat meningkatkan pemahaman bagaimana cara 0% 3% 3% 80% 13% e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 45 menulis yang baik. 9 penggunaan teknik peer assessment membantu saya dalam memperbaiki penulisan teks recount menjadi lebih baik. 0% 7% 7% 67% 20% 10 penggunaan teknik clustering dan peer assessment dapat meningkatkan kemampuan menulis saya. 0% 7% 3% 57% 33% table 3.8 the result of the questionnaire from the table above, the calculation result of the students’ responses to each statement in the questionnaire can be drawn as the following chart: diagram 3.2 the result of the questionnaire based on the table 9 and chart 2, the result of the questionnaire can be interpreted. the first statement is intended to know whether the students are interested in english or not. from the result, it indicates that most of the students are interested in english. however, there are some students that do not quite agree about it. the second statement in the questionnaire is to see the students’ interest in writing. from the result, it indicates that most of the students like writing. nevertheless, there are some students that do not quite agree and few students disagree about the statement. the third statement in the questionnaire is intended to find out whether clustering technique is easy to be applied by the students or not. from the table and chart, it can be concluded that clustering technique is easy to be applied by almost all students. nonetheless, there are a few students that do not totally understand how to apply clustering technique in writing. the fourth statement in the questionnaire is to see whether clustering technique helps the students to produce and explore their ideas or not. the result shows that most of the students agree that clustering technique helps them so much to produce and explore their ideas. by using clustering technique, they can write any ideas come into their mind before writing a draft. however, there are some students that do not quite agree and disagree that the technique helps them to produce and explore their ideas. the fifth statement in the questionnaire is intended to find out whether clustering technique facilitates the students to develop their ideas into a recount text. from the result, it reveals that most of the students agree that clustering technique helps them to develop their ideas into a recount text 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% strongly disagree disagree not quite agree agree strongly agree questionnaire findings question 1 question 2 question 3 question 4 question 5 question 6 question 7 question 8 question 9 question 10 e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 46 easily. clustering technique helps them in developing words or phrases into sentences. then, it helps for developing some sentences into some paragraphs and a text. however, some students argue that clustering technique does not facilitate them to develop their ideas into a recount text easily. the sixth statement in the questionnaire is to describe the students’ opinion of using peer assessment for teaching writing recount text. the result shows that more than a half of the number of the students like using peer assessment technique for teaching writing recount text. nonetheless, almost a half of the number of the students argue that they do not quite agree and disagree with the statement. they feel that they are less interested in peer assessment technique because it is not easy to do. also, they sometimes feel reluctant when giving assessment and suggestion to their peers. the seventh statement in the questionnaire is to know the class condition when using peer assessment technique. by seeing the result of the questionnaire, more than a half of the number of the students argue that teaching writing recount text using peer assessment is enjoyable because they have time to discuss with their classmates to evaluate their peers’ work. they can read it and then give assessment and suggestions. however, almost a half of the number of the students do not quite agree and disagree with the statement. they think that using peer assessment in writing recount text is challenging because they do not have good knowledge in writing. the eighth statement in the questionnaire is intended to find out whether peer assessment improves the students’ understanding and knowledge of a good writing or not. the result reveals that more than three-quarter of the students agree that their understanding of a good writing improves after they receive the treatment by using peer assessment. they can learn from the assessment and suggestions given by their friends. nevertheless, few students are not sure that their understanding of a good writing improves after peer assessment is implemented for teaching writing recount text. the ninth statement in the questionnaire is to find out whether peer assessment technique facilitates the students to revise and edit their own writing. from the calculation result, it indicates that most of the students agree that peer assessment technique facilitates them to revise and edit their writing. they may be aware of the mistakes and errors they make so that they can revise their writing into a better result. nonetheless, some students do not quite agree and disagree with the statement. the last statement in the questionnaire is to see whether the use of clustering technique and peer assessment improves the students’ achievement in writing recount text or not. from the students’ responses to the item, it indicates that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment significantly improves the students’ ability in writing recount text. each component of writing improves after receiving the treatment by using clustering technique and peer assessment. however, there are few students argue that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment does not improve their achievement in writing recount text. discussion of research findings the first objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount to junior high school students compared to three-phase technique and teacher assessment. the research findings revealed that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment was more effective for teaching writing recount text to junior high school students than three-phase technique and teacher assessment. it was proven by the result of pre-test, post-test and t-test. the mean score of the experimental students in pre-test was 66.97, while the control group was 66.73. it indicated that both groups had almost the same achievement in writing recount text before the treatment given. after getting the treatment, the mean scores of the two groups improved. the mean score of the experimental group was 80.33, while the control group was 74.17. the data proved that the experimental group achieved a better result than the control group after receiving the treatment by using clustering technique and peer assessment for writing a recount text. e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 47 moreover, the t-test was used to prove the statement. based on independent sample t-test, the t-value was 4.31. it revealed that the t-value (4.31) was higher than t-table (2.00). in addition, the significance value was lower than 0.05. it indicated that there was a significant difference in writing recount text between the experimental and control groups. hence, the working hypothesis (ha) which stated that “the use of clustering technique and peer assessment is effective for teaching writing recount text to the eighth-grade students of smpn 39 semarang in the academic year of 2016/2017” was accepted and the null hypothesis (ho) which stated that “the use of clustering technique and peer assessment is not effective for teaching writing recount text to the eighth-grade students of smpn 39 semarang in the academic year of 2016/2017” was rejected. second, the study was aimed at describing the students’ perception of using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text. based on the result of the questionnaire, most of the students had positive perception to the use of clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing recount text to junior high school students. from the calculation, 70% of the students were interested in english and 67% of the students were interested in writing. however, there were few students that stated that they did not quite agree with these statements. in addition, most of the students had a positive response to the use of clustering technique. from the questionnaire finding, 83% of the students agreed that clustering technique was easy to be applied by the students. 87 % of the students agreed that it helped them much more to produce and explore their ideas. moreover, it facilitated 86 % of the students to develop the ideas into a recount text easily. by using this technique, the content and organization of the text improved. however, there were some students argued that the use of clustering technique did not help the students to explore ideas and develop the ideas into a recount text easily. moreover, even though some students argued that they were not interested in using peer assessment because it was difficult, 93% of the students agreed that the use of peer assessment improved their understanding and knowledge of a good writing. they could learn from the correction, assessment and suggestions given by their peers so that their understanding of correct grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling improved. it also facilitated 87% of the students to revise and edit their own writing. they could rewrite their writing based on the peer assessment rubric so that the result was better than the first writing. in overall, 90% of the students agreed that the use of clustering technique and peer assessment improved the students’ achievement in writing recount text. however, there were still some drawbacks when using clustering technique and peer assessment for teaching writing text to junior high school students. the students needed much time when using clustering technique since they started by writing some words or phrases, and then they organized them into some sentences. then, they developed the sentences into some paragraphs. besides, peer assessment could be applied successfully when the students had a good background knowledge so that it also took much time to prepare the students. subjectivity was also a problem when using peer assessment. some students felt reluctant when giving low scores to their peers’ work. triangulation result the result of the test indicated that the experimental group students, which were treated by using clustering technique and peer assessment, achieved a better improvement than the control group, which was taught by using three-phase technique and teacher assessment. it was supported by the result of questionnaire in which most students agreed that their writing achievement significantly improved after they were taught by using clustering technique and peer assessment. moreover, when the researcher observed the class activities and situation, most of the students were e. yunita widyawati & n. trisanti / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 48 enthusiastic during the lesson since the techniques were easy, helpful, and pleasing. from the overall explanation, it could be concluded that the data were valid, and they supported one another. conclusions after scrutinizing the data, the writer concludes that she found 146 errors in all derivational categories. the errors were classified based on the four types of surface structure taxonomy as proposed by dulay, burt and krashen (cited in james, 1998:106). they are omission, addition, misordering and misformation. the research findings indicated that the most frequent errors occurred in misformation with 98 (67,1%) errors. it was followed by omission ( 34 errors or 23,3%), and addition ( 14 errors or 9,6%). out of the total errors (146), it showed that the majority of errors occurred in deriving noun to noun and verb to adjective with 30 errors. it was followed by 25 errors in deriving verb to verb, 23 errors in deriving adjective to adjective, 11 errors in deriving adjective to adverb, 10 errors in deriving verb to noun, 9 errors in deriving noun to verb, 5 errors in driving noun to adjective and 3 errors in deriving adjective to noun. this is relevant to the questionnaire result which showed the highest percentage (60 % or 15 students) found most of students agreed they found difficulty in deriving noun to noun. it was followed by 12 students or 48% stated that they found difficulty in deriving verb to adjective. it proved that both the test and questionnaire result indicated the most frequent errors occurred in deriving noun to noun. references akmajian, a., demers, r.a., and harnish, r.m. (1984). linguistics : an introduction to language and communication. cambridge : the mit presss. ellis, rod. (1997). second language acquisition. oxford : oxford university press. haspelmath, m. and sims, a.d. (2010). understanding morphology. london : hodder education. [online.] available at http://morphology.xyz/pdf/haspelmathsims2010.pdf [accessed 1/10/2016]. fromkin, v., rodman, r., and hyams, n. (2011). an introduction to language. wadsworth : cengage learning. james, carl. (1998). errors in language learning and use. exploring error analysis. usa : longman. katamba, francis. (1993). morphology. new york: st. martin’s press. kothari, c. r. (2004). research methodology, methods, and techniques (second revised edition). new delhi : new age international. priyatmojo, a. s. (2011). political discourse : obama’s appraisal attitude. language circle journal of language and literature vol. vi/. available at : http://journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/lc/article/view/2043 [accessed 08/15/16] 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt using digital discussion through commenting blog to improve students’ ability in writing analytical exposition text widya arum wicaksani  department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: video, nursery rhymes, speaking, young learners, experimental ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the aim of the study is to find out whether using video-typed nursery rhymes can enhance speaking ability of young learners of grade four of elementary school. the subject of the study were 19 students of class four al-khawaritzmi of sd islam bilingual an-nissa semarang. the research applied was experimental research and the research design was one group pretest-posttest. in the research, the students were taught using video-typed nursery rhymes. the result of this research was found by comparing the result of pretest and posttest. the researcher used t-test to find out the significance enhancement. based on the result of the study, there were some enhancement in students’ speaking ability after they were given the treatment using video-typed nursery rhymes. after getting the treatment, the students were able to absorb the lesson better by being taught using video-typed nursery rhymes than using the usual way of teaching. the colorful video and the cheerful melody of the nursery rhymes gave some fun and happy atmosphere inside the classroom. the students understood easily for they enjoyed the lesson. the conclusion taken from the study is that the video-typed nursery rhymes can enhance the students’ speaking ability and suitable for teaching speaking. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: arumsani666@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:arumsani666@yahoo.com widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction speaking and listening has become a profile component of english within the national curriculum; it becomes as important as reading and writing (wray, 1994: 7). therefore, in few years, there has been an increasing interest in the spoken language of young learners. they started to learn how to communicate properly in english. the speaking ability becomes very important because it is useful for international communication. in the speaking activities, the ability to express feeling and opinion in an oral form is really needed. in indonesia, english has been taught since elementary school. in elementary school, the students should master four abilities of english. they are listening, speaking, reading and writing. among those abilities, the most essential one is speaking. it is because the students use the language mostly in spoken. bailey (2003:42) stated that speaking ability is more difficult than the other abilities. the speaking ability is different to the reading and writing abilities because speaking happens in real time. people prefer to speak right away everything they need to tell than write it down in a paper and read it to the others. besides, when people speak, they definitely cannot revise everything that they have spoken, as they can if they are writing. since people use spoken more intensely than written, they mostly convey their message to the others orally. that is why they should pay more attention to their speaking ability. teaching speaking for young learners is an uneasy task for the teachers. they need any appropriate and interesting media to deliver the materials so that the students do not get bored easily and understand the material well. there are some kinds of media which can be used in teaching. according to gerlach and elly (1980:297) the media to teach are classified in the six general categories, they are: 1. picture picture consists of photographs or any objects or events, which may be larger or smaller that the object or event represents it. 2. audio recording recording is made on magnetic tape, disc, motion picture, and soundtrack. there are reproductions of actual event or soundtrack. 3. motion picture a motion picture is a moving image in color or black and white produced from live action or from graphic representation. 4. television this category includes all types of audio video electronic distribution system, which eventually appear on tv monitor. 5. real things, simulation, and model. this category includes people, events, objects, and demonstration real things as constructed with their media, are not substituted for the actual objects or events. teaching speaking using media can help the teachers in delivering their lesson. colorful pictures can be a good option for, as we know, elementary school students are interested in colorful picture, but the colorful moving picture will be more interested for the students and will catch their attention. one of the media which has moving picture is video. video is about the display of photographic-style images, generally of realworld scenes and objects (symes, 2001: 17). even though video is generally about real-world scenes and object, there are also many videos of animation scenes and object, video-typed nursery rhymes. nursery rhymes itself are short tales, poems or songs made up of trivial or nonsensical musical verse. the origins of nursery rhymes can be traced to children‟s lullabies intended to help a child fall asleep (opie & opie taken from dunst, 2011: 1). nursery rhymes are trivial, poetical, and musical. some of them do not make sense. however, many of them have simple but meaningful lyrics, not to mention, a good moral value for children. contrary to songs, nursery rhymes have simple and easy lyrics. they can enjoy singing without having troubles in memorizing the lyric. the melody and easy lyric can build up children‟s enthusiasm. since young learners like to sing and are interested in colorful pictures, video-typed widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 nursery rhymes can be applied in teaching speaking. it goes without saying that young learners get bored easily if the teacher teaches young learners only by “teaching” and reading the material, their concentration will not be lasting long. by using video of nursery rhymes, the teachers will not only “teaching” the students, but also “playing” with them. they watch the video together, sing the nursery rhymes together, and do the activities (including performance) together. as long as the students do fun activities in learning english, they will pay attention to the activities. they will not feel burdened in learning the material. the study this study was one group pretest-posttest. it was done in sd islam bilingual an-nissa semarang from may, 3rd until may, 11th 2012 in five meetings. the subject of this study was fourth grade students of sd islam bilingual annissa in the academic year 2011/2012. the aim of this study was to determine whether videotyped nursery rhymes can enhance students‟ speaking ability. there were two video-typed nursery rhymes which were used in this study, they are “where is thumbkin” and “good morning”. in this study, the students watched the video together. then, they memorized the lyric of the nursery rhymes. by memorizing and practice the video over and over again, they will be more fluent in speaking the words in the nursery rhymes. after memorizing, they sing the nursery rhymes on the video together. some of the students are asked to sing in front of the class one by one. then, the students should make groups of pair and each pair make a simple conversation about greetings. method this study was a kind of experimental study which concerned with the use of videotyped nursery rhymes to enhance students‟ speaking ability of young learners of grade four. this study tried to solve the problems faced by the students in speaking, especially in „greetings‟ section. this experimental study used videotyped nursery rhymes in mastering „greetings‟ section. first, the students were observed to find out the problems in „greetings‟ section they faced. then the students were given the pretest to measure their mastery in speaking „greetings‟. the pretest used „question and answer‟ test design (brown, 2004: 159)they were asked five questions related to „greetings‟. then, the students were given the treatment. the treatment was done in three meetings. the video-typed nursery rhymes was applied in the treatment. after that, on the fifth meeting, the student were done the posttest. the posttest used „discussions and conversations‟ test design (brown, 2004: 175). the students were asked to pairing. each pair was asked to make a simple conversation and they should perform the conversation in front of the class. the students‟ achievements before and after getting the treatment were analyzed based on harris (1969: 84). there were five aspects which were analyzed, they are pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. every aspect had 5 maximum score, and the total of all the aspects were 25. even though harris‟ rubric assessment was used, some modifications were made in it, especially in scoring number 5 and 4 in each aspect. the modifications were made because harris‟s rubric assessment is unsuitable for indonesian young learners. the rubric is most likely made for assessing advanced students. in some of the assessments made by harris, it seems there are some possibilities that the students can speak as good as native speakers. in the scoring number 5 in pronunciation aspect, for example, it is stated that the students have few traces of foreign language. in addition, in vocabulary and fluency aspects, the students are able to use the vocabulary and speech as fluent as native speakers. in the scoring number 4 in pronunciation aspect, for example, it is stated that the students‟ pronunciation is always intelligible, and in comprehension aspect, the students understand nearly everything at normal speed. but in reality, young learners cannot widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 pronounce every english word intelligibly all the time. there are still many words which are difficult to pronounce by them. moreover, they would find some difficulties in understanding english at normal speed; the speed that the native speaker uses. through the explanation above, the rubric is difficult to achieve by indonesian young learners, especially for the 8-10 year children. there are many indonesian young learners who are able to learn how to speak english in a proper way, but it is nearly impossible for them to speak as good as native speakers. they cannot speak using native accent and speak as fast as native speakers. therefore, the rubric was modified so that it would fit to assess young learners‟ speech. here is the rubric assessment of speaking which has been modivied. table 1. rubric assessment based on david p. harris components assessments score p ro n u n c ia ti o n the pronunciation is clear and quite understandable for elementary students 5 there are some pronunciation problems, but still quite understandable 4 pronunciation problem necessitate listening and occasionally lead a misunderstanding 3 very hard to understand because of pronunciation problem. must frequently be asked to repeat 2 pronunciation problem so severe as to make speech virtually unintelligible 1 g ra m m a r errors in grammar are quite rare 5 there are few grammatical errors but still intelligible 4 makes frequent errors grammar and word order occasionally obscure meaning 3 grammar and word order errors make comprehension difficult. must often rephrase sentences or restrict him to basic patterns 2 errors in grammar and word order so severe as to make speech virtually unintelligible 1 v o c a b u la ry almost all vocabularies used are in a proper use 5 frequently use inappropriate terms or must replace ideas but still intelligible 4 frequently uses the wrong word, conversation somewhat limited because of inadequate vocabulary 3 misuse up words and very limited vocabulary make comprehension quite difficult 2 vocabulary limitation so extreme as to make conversation virtually impossible 1 f lu e n c y able to use the language fluently, rare skip, and the speed of speech are at the normal rate 5 speed of speech seem to be slightly affected by language problem 4 speed and fluency are rather strongly affected by language problem 3 usually hesitant often forced into silent by language limitation 2 speech is so halting and fragmentary as to make conversation 1 widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 virtually impossible c o m p re h e n si o n understand most of what is said at average speed 5 understand what is said at average speed, but occasional repetition may be necessary 4 understand what is said is at slower than average speed repetition 3 has great difficulty following what is said. can comprehend only, “social conversation” spoken slowly and with frequent repetition. 2 cannot be said to understand even simple conversational english 1 then, the percentage analysis was used to find the percentage of students‟ mastery. here is the formula of the percentage analysis: (arikunto, 2009: 236) in which: p : percentage of student‟s mastery n : number of scores obtained by the student n : total score to find out the significance of students‟ enhancement in speaking, the t-test was used. here is the formula of the t-test: √ ∑ (arikunto, 2010: 349) in which: md : mean of the difference between pretest and posttest (posttest – pretest) xd : deviation of each subject (d – md) ∑ : total number of quadrate deviation n : number of students this study succeeded if there is significance enhancement. students‟ enhancement in speaking is significant if t-value is bigger than t-table (t-count < t-table). the ttable is determined by looking at t distribution table based on the d.b. (n – 1) and α = 5%. findings and disscussions before doing the research, the the activities that would be done were arranged. the topic which was going to be used in the research was determined. the research instruments, including the questions for the pretest and posttest, lesson plan, and research assessment, were also arranged. based on the arrangement, it was decided that there were five meetings in this research; the first meeting was pretest, the second, third, and fourth meetings were treatments, and the fifth meeting was posttest. the total time allotment was 10x35 minutes. the first meeting, the pretest, was conducted on may, 3rd 2012. there were 19 students who followed the pretest. the students were asked to come to the teacher‟s desk one by one. there they were asked five questions related to the topic. the score was made based on the students‟ answers. the result of the pretest can be seen in the table below: widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 table 2. pretest score no code score 1 r-01 36 2 r-02 32 3 r-03 20 4 r-04 72 5 r-05 20 6 r-06 28 7 r-07 40 8 r-08 52 9 r-09 72 10 r-10 36 11 r-11 32 12 r-12 56 13 r-13 60 14 r-14 60 15 r-15 36 16 r-16 36 17 r-17 20 18 r-18 28 19 r-19 44 based on the table, there were 5 students who got 20-30, 7 students who got 31-40, 1 student who got 41-50, 4 students who got 5160, and 2 students who got 71-80. the lowest score was 20 and the highest score was 72. there were only 2 students (10.5%) who could achieve score more than 60. the result showed that the students‟ speaking ability still low. the second meeting was the first day of the treatment. it was conducted on may, 4th 2012. in this meeting, the video-typed nursery rhyme entitled “where is thumbkin” was showed. then the students were given a sheet of lyric. the students were asked to memorize the lyric in 10 minutes. after the students finished memorizing, the video was showed again. this time, the students were asked to sing together. then they were told that there were some expressions of greetings in the lyric of “where is thumbkin” and they were asked to mention the expressions if they found them. the third meeting was the second day of the treatment. it was conducted on may, 7th 2012. in this meeting, the expressions of greetings were shown through a powerpoint presentation. the students were asked to take a note and memorize the expressions. after they finished taking a note and memorizing the expressions, the powerpoint presentation was closed and the students were also asked to close their book. the students should mention the expressions and they answered one by one. then, they were shown one more video-typed nursery rhyme entitled “good morning song”. “good morning song” has more greetings‟ vocabularies but also more difficulties than “where is thumbkin”. the students were given a sheet of lyric. the students were asked to memorize the lyric in 15 minutes. after the students finished memorizing, the video was shown again. the fourth meeting was the third day of the treatment. it was conducted on may, 10th 2012. in this meeting, some students were asked to come forward and sing “good morning song” together; the other students pay attention. there were some expressions of greetings in the lyric of “good morning song”, they were asked to mention the expressions. after that, another powerpoint presentation about conversations of widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 7 greetings was shown. there were some examples of conversation in the powerpoint presentation. then, the student ahould make groups of pair. after given the example how to do the conversation, the students tried to practice with their pairs. after that, each pair should make a simple conversation of greeting, but they were not allowed to use words “good morning”, “how are you”, and “i am fine, thank you”. the fourth meeting, the posttest, was conducted on may, 11th 2012. in this meeting, the students came forward with their pair and do the conversation in front of the class. the score was made based on the students‟ conversation. the result of the posttest can be seen in the table below: table 3. posttest score no code score 1 r-01 68 2 r-02 52 3 r-03 44 4 r-04 72 5 r-05 44 6 r-06 64 7 r-07 68 8 r-08 56 9 r-09 84 10 r-10 68 11 r-11 48 12 r-12 76 13 r-13 72 14 r-14 72 15 r-15 60 16 r-16 52 17 r-17 36 18 r-18 44 19 r-19 52 based on the table, there were 1 student who got 31-40, 4 students who got 41-50, 5 students who got 51-60, 4 students who got 6170, 4 students who got 71-80, and 1 student who got 81-90. the lowest score was 36 and the highest score was 84. there were 9 students (47.4%) who could achieve score more than 60. the result showed that there were some enhancements in students‟ speaking ability. the comparison between the students‟ pretest and posttest score can be seen in the diagram below: widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 8 image 1. comparison between the students‟ pretest and posttest score the diagram showed how much the students enhanced their speaking ability after they were taught using video-typed nursery rhymes. because there were five aspects which were assessed, the enhancements of those aspects were also being analyzed. the enhancement of speaking aspects can be seen in the comparison between the pretest and posttest aspects‟ result below. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 r -0 1 r -0 2 r -0 3 r -0 4 r -0 5 r -0 6 r -0 7 r -0 8 r -0 9 r -1 0 r -1 1 r -1 2 r -1 3 r -1 4 r -1 5 r -1 6 r -1 7 r -1 8 r -1 9 pretest posttest widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 9 table 4. pretest aspects‟ result no code aspect (%) p g f c v 1 r-01 40 40 20 40 40 2 r-02 20 40 20 40 40 3 r-03 20 20 20 20 20 4 r-04 60 80 60 80 80 5 r-05 20 20 20 20 20 6 r-06 20 20 20 40 40 7 r-07 40 40 20 40 60 8 r-08 40 40 60 60 60 9 r-09 80 60 60 80 80 10 r-10 20 40 20 40 60 11 r-11 20 40 20 40 40 12 r-12 60 60 40 60 60 13 r-13 40 80 40 80 60 14 r-14 60 40 60 80 60 15 r-15 20 40 40 40 40 16 r-16 40 20 20 40 60 17 r-17 20 20 20 20 20 18 r-18 20 40 20 20 40 19 r-19 40 40 40 40 60 mean 35.79 41.05 32.63 46.3 2 49.4 7 table 5. posttest aspects‟ result no code aspect (%) p g f c v 1 r-01 60 60 60 80 80 2 r-02 40 40 40 60 80 3 r-03 40 40 40 40 60 4 r-04 80 60 80 60 80 5 r-05 40 40 40 40 60 6 r-06 80 60 60 40 80 7 r-07 60 60 60 80 80 8 r-08 60 60 40 60 60 9 r-09 80 80 80 80 100 10 r-10 60 60 60 80 80 11 r-11 60 40 40 40 60 12 r-12 80 80 80 80 60 13 r-13 80 60 100 40 80 14 r-14 60 80 60 80 80 15 r-15 60 60 40 60 80 16 r-16 60 40 40 40 80 17 r-17 40 40 40 20 40 widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 10 18 r-18 40 40 40 40 60 19 r-19 40 60 40 60 60 mean 58.95 55.79 54.74 56.84 71.58 based on the mean of the pretest and posttest aspects‟ result, the mean of the posttest aspects‟ result was higher that the pretest. the pronunciation aspect enhanced 23.16%, the grammar aspect enhanced 14.74%, the fluency aspect enhanced 22.11%, the comprehension aspect enhanced 10.52%, and the vocabulary aspect enhanced 22.11%. the comparison between the mean of the pretest and posttest can be seen clearly in the diagram below. image 4.2 comparison between the mean of the pretest and posttest the diagram showed that there were any enhancements in every aspect. it is proven that using video-typed nursery rhymes can enhance students‟ speaking aspects. after analyzing the pretest and the posttest, the significance of students‟ enhancement in speaking was analyzed using the t-test. the purpose of the t-test was to find out whether the enhancement of students‟ speaking ability was significant. the formula of t-test is as follows: √ ∑ in which: md : 18.53 ∑x2d : 1670.74 n (n – 1) : 342 the result of the t-test (t-value) was 8.38. based on the t distribution table, the t-table of 19 students is 1.73. the condition to state that the research is significant is by comparing the tvalue and the t-table. the t-value must be higher than t-table. from the definition above, it was concluded that the enhancement of the study was significant; the t-value (8.38) was higher than the t-table (1.73). mastering the speaking ability is not an easy task for the teachers and students. the teachers should use proper media in teaching speaking so that the students understand easily. this research used video-typed nursery rhymes as the media to teach speaking. the purpose of using this media was to find out whether the media could enhance students‟ speaking ability. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 pretest posttest widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 11 when the fourth grader students of an-nissa islamic bilingual school were taught by using this media, they found it was enjoyable. they felt a new atmosphere in learning speaking. they did not only sit and take notes, but they could express themselves by singing the nursery rhymes freely. the colorful appearance of the video also made the students interested in learning the lesson. the happy and cheerful atmosphere stimulated the students to increase their curiosity to participate in the activities. moreover, there were also group work and performance. the function of group work was to habituate the students to work together in solving the problem. they could discuss and decide how to make a good conversation together. beside the group work, the students also performed by singing together in front of the class. the performance could increase their confidence before doing the real performance in the posttest activity. the use of video-typed nursery rhymes were also enhance the five aspects which are assessed. the students‟ pronunciation aspect enhanced because they imitated the speaker when they were singing the nursery rhymes. they could remember how to pronounce the words because they had sung the nursery rhymes many times. the grammar aspect enhanced because there were utterances that they have learnt in the video. the utterances found in the nursery rhymes became examples for the students to make utterances on their own. the fluency aspect was assessed through the way the students speak. they were called fluent if they could speak in english without any meaningful skip. the fluency aspect enhanced because the students have listened to the nursery rhymes many times and they already knew how to speak fluently. the comprehension aspect enhanced after the students understand the meaning of the nursery rhymes. through the video-typed nursery rhymes, they understand how to greet people, how to answer the greeting, and how to make the conversation of greetings. the vocabulary aspect enhanced because the students memorized the nursery rhymes‟ lyrics. by memorizing the lyrics, they have memorized the vocabulary as well. the students could create the conversation because they have known the vocabularies of greetings. the enhancement of each aspect is a proven that using video-typed nursery rhymes as the media in teaching speaking can enhance the students‟ speaking ability. conclusion based on the discussions before, there are some conclusions of this study, they are as follow: first, video-typed nursery rhymes were implemented well in the treatment. the students were able to absorb the lesson better by being taught using video-typed nursery rhymes than using the usual way of teaching. video-typed nursery rhymes helped the students to speak up; even the shy students could speak. the colorful video and the cheerful melody of the nursery rhymes gave some fun and happy atmosphere inside the classroom. the students understood easily for they enjoyed the lesson; they did not feel they are forced to learn. second, video-typed nursery rhymes was successfully enhance the students‟ speaking ability, especially in „greetings‟ section. the enhancement was significant since the t-value (8.38) was higher than the t-table (1.73). the pronunciation aspect enhanced 23.16%, the grammar aspect enhanced 14.74%, the fluency aspect enhanced 22.11%, the comprehension aspect enhanced 10.52%, and the vocabulary aspect enhanced 22.11%. it can be concluded that vide-typed nursery rhymes can be a proper media in teaching speaking. references bailey, kathleen m. 2003. practical english language teaching. new york: mc graw hill. brown, h. d. 2004. language assessment (principles and classroom practices). new york: pearson education, inc. widya arum wicaksani / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 12 dunst, carl j. 2011. development of nursery rhymes knowledge in preschool children. cellpapers. 6/1: 1-7. gerlach, v.s and elly d.p. 1980. teaching media, a systematic approach. new jersey: prentice hall, inc. harris, david p. 1969. testing english as a second language. new york: mcgraw-hill. symes, peter. 2001. video compression demystified. singapore: mcgraw-hill book co. wray, david. and medwell, jane. 1994. teaching primary english: the state of the art. new york: routledge. 1 elt forum 5 (2) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of using computer game “fast hands” to improve students’ vocabulary mastery for junior high school (a quasi experimental research at the eighth grade students of smp negeri 1 muntilan in the academic year of 2014/2015) retno trihandayani drs. ahmad sofwan m.a., ph.d. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in april 2016 approved in april 2016 published in may 2016 ________________ keywords: computer game, fast hands, vocabulary. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was a quasi-experimental research aimed at finding out whether computer game “fast hands” effectively improve students’ vocabulary or not. the population of this study were 192 students from the eighth grade of smp negeri 1 muntilan in the academic year 2014/2015. of this population, two classes were chosen as the experimental group (viii-b) and the control group (viii-f) consisting of 24 students for each group. thus, there were 48 students as the samples. based on the result of the analysis, it is shown that the students’ progress in mastering vocabulary for both groups is good after they were given the treatment. it is shown from the different means result in the experimental group, that is from 66.46 in the pre-test to 84.79 in the posttest. thus, it has 18.33 in difference. in the control group the difference between the two means is 13.54. 65.83 in the pre-test and 79.37 in the posttest. to check whether the treatment significantly influenced students’ vocabulary, the t-test formula was used. based on the result of the computation, the t-value is 2.237. this result was consulted with the critical value on the ttable with 5% alpha level of significance and 40 degrees of freedom by using interpolation. based on the result of interpolation, the critical value is 2.015. since t-value is higher than t-table (2.237 > 2.015) it can be concluded that computer game “fast hands” effectively improve students’ vocabulary compared to the word lists strategy. thus, it is suggested that the teachers may use computer game “fast hands” in their teaching practice especially in improving students’ vocabulary. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: retnootrihandayani@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 retno trihandayani / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study english as one of the most influential languages in the world is very important to learn because it can be used to give and receive information and to develop education, technology and art. english is also useful for young students. preparing students to learn english as early as possible is a very good thing because their brains are ready to learn and will be very easy for them to master. english is the most widely used language in the world. in addition, indonesia is one of the countries that many of its citizen use english as their daily language. even many schools have implemented english as their primary language. it shows that english is a language that has a very large influence in life, especially in education, technology, science, art and in making the relationship of cooperation with other countries. the current era of globalization requires human resources to compete in accordance with current development. therefore, english should be given or be introduced to students since they are children. in english, there are four skills that should be mastered namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. in order to master english, we should also master the grammatical rule and vocabulary. more and more we master vocabulary, then it will be easier for us in mastering english. laufer (1997:140) in indriarti (2014) states that learning vocabulary is one of the most important elements without which neither comprehension nor production of language is possible. on the other word, vocabulary cannot be separated from other language skills. the more words the learners know, they will be more better to understand what they hear or read. in addition, the more words they have, they will be more accurate to express their ideas in spoken or written form. in school-based curriculum, teachers are given the freedom to utilize a variety of methods and media that can improve the interest, attention, and creativity of learners. this is important because in school based curriculum the teacher serves as a facilitator who is expected to select the media used in learning. medium as one of learning sources is an alternative way to optimize the learning process. the media used should be interesting and they match to the characteristics of the learners. this aspect can be done by applying learning and playing technique, such as the use of computer games. learning through computer games is able to provide several advantages. first, lessons given can be accepted with delight, as related with the nature of the game that is entertaining and exciting. second, because game is fun, playing at once arouse great interest for learners in a particular subject. computer game has spread rapidly in youth people life; they get accustomed to the computer game rather than the other technology. by the development of the technology, computer game comes in various types. it is possible that we consider about the use of computer game as a medium in teaching and learning. here the writer tries to use “fast hands” as one of computer games to teach vocabulary. this is a game for learning english focusing on vocabulary items where the player will listen to the sound or read the word and then click on the matching pictures. it is really easy, fun and interesting to learn and review words. the players can choose the content that they want to play with and there are more than 500 vocabulary items in total. by using computer game “fast hands” as a medium for teaching, learners are expected to be more interested in learning vocabulary and they get motivated in teaching learning process. literature review there have been a number of researchers conducted some studies related to the use of computer game in improving students’ vocabulary mastery such as zahro’ (2010), sulistiyani (2010), kirti (2013), astuti (2014), etikasari (2014), sanchez (2006), and d’alesio, scalia, and zabel (2007). from the related of previous studies, i am inspired to do an experimental research on teaching vocabulary by using computer game “fast hands”. however, there are differences retno trihandayani / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 3 between these researches above and this research. this research is about applying computer game “fast hands” to improve students’ vocabulary mastery, whereas, most researches above were about applying song lyrics, computer media (atm 5 programme), cartoon pictures, puppet, virtual field trips, and multisensory instruction. the writer uses computer game “fast hands” to improve students' vocabulary mastery because this game is very interesting and many categories of vocabulary are contained in this game. finally, the researcher decides to use computer game “fast hands” in this research because so far there are not many researchers using this medium in improving vocabulary mastery. general concept of vocabulary vocabulary is a collection of the words with their meaning that it used to communicate. kammeenui (1991) in bintz (2011) states that learning vocabulary is fundamentally about learning definition of words. many teachers believe that defining words before reading a text is an effective instructional technique to support vocabulary growth and enhance reading comprehension; however, research indicates otherwise. for example, the popular practice of requiring students to find definitions of words and write those words in sentences before reading appears to have little apparent impact on their word knowledge and language use, and has not improved student comprehension of texts that contain those words. computer game “fast hands” game can be classified as one of the media that is familiar with youth people and can be used for teaching and learning process. in this study i used computer game “fast hands”. computer game “fast hands” is a medium to teach vocabulary adopted by owen. this is a game for learning english focusing on vocabulary items. the player listen to the sound or read the word and then click on the matching pictures. it is really easy, fun and hopefully a great way to learn and review words. the player can choose the content their want to play with and there are more than 500 vocabulary items in total. research methodologies in this research, i used quasi-experimental research design with the use of non-equivalent control group design. this study involved two groups: an experimental group and a control group. this research used pre-test and post-test to obtain the data. table 1 research design pretest treatment posttest experimental group o1 x o2 control group o3 o4 the population in this study was the eighth grade students of smp negeri 1 muntilan in the academic year of 2014/2015. the number of the students was 192, which were divided into 8 classes. the sample was viii-b as the experimental group and viii-f as the control group. the instrument of this research was test. before the test is used to collect the data, the tryout test was conducted to measure the validity, reliability, discriminating power, and the difficulty level of the test. to measure the significance of the pre-test and post-test of the both groups, the researcher used t-test based on arikunto (2006). result and discussion result of try out test the try-out test was conducted on april 27th, 2015. it was held in another class beside the experimental group and control group. the viii c was chosen as the try out group. there were 24 students and they had to choose the correct answer in the multiple-choice task format, complete the vocabulary matching task format, and select response fill-in vocabulary format items test which consisted of 40 items in 60 minutes. the total scores of try out test were 1517.5 and the mean scores were 63.23. the result showed that the items were valid and reliable. retno trihandayani / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 4 result of pre-test this research was followed by 24 students of class viii-b as the experimental group and 24 students of class viii-f as the control group. there were 20 questions in multiple-choice, matching, and fill-in tasks format in 30 minutes. from the pre-test result, the experimental group got total scores 1595 in doing pre-test. next, the maximum score was 85.0, the minimum score was 50.0, and the mean score of this group was 66.46. in addition, the total scores of pre-test in control group was 1580. furthermore, the maximum score was 80.0, the minimum score was 50.0 and the mean score of the students’ result in this group was 65.83. the result of pre-test in control group was slightly different from the experimental group. as a result, the writer concluded that two groups had equal level vocabulary mastery before getting the treatment; therefore, the experiment could be continued. treatments the treatment was conducted two times for the experimental and control groups. both groups received the same materials with different teaching media and method. the experimental group was taught by using computer game “fast hands” as media, while the control group was taught using the word lists strategy. result of post test the post-test was followed by 24 students of class viii-b as the experimental group and 24 students of class viii-f as the control group. it was conducted as the same way as the pre-test. based on the post test result, the total score of experimental group was 2035. this group got mean score 84.79. furthermore, the control group got total score 1905. the mean score of this group also increased, that was 79.37. as a result, the result showed that there was an improvement in post test result than pre-test. it can be concluded that computer game “fast hands” have more effective to improve students` vocabulary mastery than word lists strategy. the significance difference of two tests to know the significant difference of the experiment, t-test formula was used in this research. it was done by comparing the t-value and t-table. the t-value was found from the score differences between pre-test and post-test both in experimental and control groups, while the t-table was found by consulting to the critical value on the table column. the difference of the means of the experimental and control groups was classified to be significant if the t-test was higher than the ttable. to measure the significance of the two groups, this formula was used: t = 𝑀1−𝑀2 √𝑆1 2 𝑁1 + 𝑆22 𝑁2 = 84.79 − 79.37 √ 66.26 24 + 74.59 24 = 5.42 √2.761 + 3.108 = 5.42 √5.869 = 5.42 2.423 = 2.237 the critical value on the t-table for 46 degrees of freedom and 5% alpha level of significance was 2.015. because t-value is higher than t-table (2.237>2.015). it can be concluded that there is significant difference between the post-test of the experimental group and the control group. it means that there is difference in the experimental group and the control group on vocabulary mastery after they received the treatment. in can be concluded, teaching vocabulary by using computer game “fast hands” are more effective to improve the vocabulary mastery of the eighth grade of smp negeri 1 muntilan in the academic year 2014/2015 than word lists strategy. conclusions this research was conducted on the purpose to find out whether computer game “fast hands” effectively improves students’ vocabulary. in other words, it was conducted to find out whether or not computer game “fast retno trihandayani / journal of english language teaching 5 (2) (2016) 5 hands” gives improvement of students’ vocabulary mastery compared to the word lists strategy. based on the result of the experiment, there are some conclusions. firstly, there is a significant difference in students’ improvement of vocabulary mastery between those who were taught by using computer game “fast hands” and those who were taught by using word lists strategy for the eighth grade students of smp negeri 1 muntilan in the academic year 2014/2015. secondly, the use of computer game “fast hands” is more effective in enhancing students’ vocabulary compared to word lists strategy. it can be seen from the computation on the previous chapter which showed that the t-value is higher than the t-table on the 5% alpha of education and 40 degrees of freedom (2.237>2.015). it means that the students’ vocabulary mastery on the experimental group is better than the control group which shows the effectiveness of the treatment given to the experimental group compared to the treatment given to the control group. references arikunto, suharsimi. 2006. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik (edisi revisi vi). jakarta: pt asdi mahasatya. astuti, jatmiko p. 2014. the use of cooking academy game to enrich vocational students’ english vocabulary (a classroom action research at the tenth grade students of smk n mojosongo in the academic year of 2012/2013). final project of english department, semarang state university. bintz, w.p. 2011. teaching vocabulary across the curriculum. middle school journal. available at http://littoolkit.pbworks.com/f/middle%252 0school%2520vocabulary%2520strategies.pdf [accessed 25/1/2015]. d’alesio, rosemary; scalia, maureen; and zabel, renee. 2007. improving vocabulary acquisition with multisensory instruction. an action research project submitted to the graduate faculty of the school of education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in teaching and leadership. etikasari, anis. 2014. group guessing as a vocabulary learning technique to enrich students’ vocabulary (a classroom action research to students of xi ipa 3 of sma n 1 wonosobo in the academic year of 2012/2013). final project of english department, semarang state university. indriarti. 2014. the effectiveness of semantic mapping strategy to improve students’ vocabulary mastery (a quasi experimental study of the eighth grade students of smp negeri 4 batang in the academic year of 2013/2014). final project of english department, semarang state university. sanchez, alicia d. 2006. enhancing vocabulary acquisition through synthetic learning experiences: implementing virtual field trips into classroom. a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in modeling and simulation in the college of sciences at the university of central florida orlando, florida sulistiyani. 2010. improving students’ vocabulary through computer media (atm 5 programme) (study case: smun 6 tangerang of the 2009/2010 academic year). final project of stba budhi tangerang. zahro’, masning. 2010. the use of song lyrics to improve students’ vocabulary of verb (an experimental research at the eighth grade students of mts uswatun hasanah mangkang semarang in the academic year of 2009/2010). english department of tarbiyah faculty walisongo state institute for islamic studies semarang. november oktober september 1 elt forum 2 (2) (2013) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the ideational meaning in the u.s. presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney concerning china’s threat ghea kyat priyanka department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarah artikel: diterima 2013 disetujui 2013 dipublikasikan 2013 ________________ keywords: ideational meaning, transitivity, speech function, debate, context of situation ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this article deals with ideational meaning realized in transcript of the u.s. presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney concerning china’s threat. ideational meaning talks about subject matter. it relates to information about objects or to what the utterances are about. in realizing the subject matter of the debate transcript, three analyses are conducted; transitivity, speech function, and also analysis on context of situation. the result based on those analyses shows two points of conclusion. firstly, obama through material and relational processes stated his past actions and recent u.s. condition to show his success and through mental process he certainly stated his hopes for the future. meanwhile, romney through material and relational processes certainly stated the unfortunate condition experienced by the u.s. as a result of obama’s policies and through mental process stated his wish to the u.s economy. both speakers invited the audiences to accept the information concerning those solutions. secondly, context of situation influences the debate transcript in its language use. some terminologies in the area of economy and trade emerge as the influence of field. those terminologies make the conversation focuses on the subject matter being analyzed, that is china as a threat to the u.s. © 2013 universitas negeri semarang  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 lantai 3 fbs unnes kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: ghekapekape@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 mailto:ghekapekape@yahoo.com ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 2 introduction human beings are social creature that cannot live alone without doing any communication with their surroundings. by communicating, human beings deliver their ideas and wishes to others. the communication among them can be realized through a tool called language. ramelan (1999:1) states that “man speaks language; he uses language as means of communication with other people, as tool to express his ideas and wishes”. thus, language is a tool for human beings to do the communication in achieving their needs as social creature. debate is an example of communication. “it is the process by which opinions are advanced, supported, disputed, and defended” (branham, 1991:1). it is a kind of public speaking where people communicate their ideas and hold on to it by giving supporting logically reasons. in a debate, there will be two sides or persons who interact with contrary arguments concerning issues that are floored by the neutral side, the host of the debate. these two sides propose their arguments based on their own ideology or the way they put their point of view towards the issues. they give feedback to each other‟s arguments. presidential debate is a debate between president‟s candidates from different parties. it is led by a moderator as the neutral side. the moderator floors the issue of the debate which will be responded by the speakers of the debate based on their point of view towards it. there is no direct scoring system in this kind of debate for the judges in presidential debate are the audience. the audience will regard the candidates‟ arguments towards the issue as their consideration in choosing their future leader. in every ideology that lies behind their arguments, there is message in it. the intention of the message is what could be called meaning of the message. as presidential debate is one of the ways to generate public‟s opinion, the arguments are delivered in order to make the audience agree with them. thus, the candidates are to keep their end up in delivering the intended meaning in order to be accepted well by the audience. understanding meaning cannot be taken for granted, otherwise it will lead to misinterpretation. a study which deals with it is called systemic functional linguistics. this study reveals how meaning is constructed by analyzing not only the sentence but also the whole texts. according to gerot and wignell (1994:10) “all meaning is situated in a context of culture and situation.” context of culture is the total cultural background, while context of situation is the environment of the text. halliday in jenny hammond et al. (1992:2) suggests that “there are three variables within any context of situation that largely determine the language choices that are made in the construction of any language text.” those are field, mode, and tenor. field is the social activity taking place; mode is the channel of linguistic communication, while tenor is the relationship between participants. in this study, the writer will choose one of the variables of context of situation, that is field. field exists in all language. there will always be certain focus of a topic that is discussed in a language, including in a debate. as debate is a discussion where each side holds on to their ideologies and arguments towards issue, thus, the issue must be something debatable, something interesting that challenges both critical point of view of the speakers towards it. in short, the issue in a debate, moreover in a presidential debate, must be something crucial for the life of people in general and for those taking part in the debate in particular. thus, the writer finds it interesting to analyze one of the variables of context of situation, that is field. the writer will analyze the ideational meaning which shows the subject matter through transitivity used in the transcript of the u.s. presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney, particularly in the issue concerning china‟s threat. the u.s.‟ involvement in cold war had made the relation, in whatever aspects of life, between the u.s. and ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 3 communist countries such as china were impossible to come true. the first u.s. and china relationship was started soon after richard nixon began to implement a new approach to international relations. he encouraged the united nations to recognize the communist chinese government. formal diplomatic relations between these two countries keep on going despite some interpositions that happened many times. in 2000, bill clinton granted china permanent normal trade relations with the u.s. and paved the way for china to join the world trade organization in 2001. by 2010, china has become world‟s second largest economy after the u.s. china‟s track record in doing international trade is seen by the u.s. as not playing by the rules. china‟s economic policy which is labor-intensive causes its ability in producing low-cost goods yet it has not met the international quality standard. it is regarded as a threat, particularly economic threat, to the u.s. take a look from their long history, the u.s. and china relations are very dynamic. thus, the writer finds it interesting to find out the content in the sense of what is going on at the time (the ideational meaning) that lies in the issue of the debate. text halliday and hasan (1985:10) state that “text in the simplest way is language that is functional. by functional, we simply mean language that is doing some job in some context.” furthermore, it is stated that text may be either spoken or written, or indeed in any other medium of expression that we like to think of. text is functional in the sense that it represents meaning in a context. a text can be spoken or written. so, when we speak or write, we are actually constructing a text and trying to construct meaning through it. in reverse, when we read a book or listen to a song, we are trying to catch the meaning that the text represents. however, according to hammond et al. (1994:5), “there‟s no clear dividing line between spoken and written language. some spoken texts have features typically associated with written language, such as spoken argument in defense of a point of view…” hence, debate then could be defined as an example of spoken text. context according to halliday and hasan (1985:5), “there is text and there is other text that accompanies it; text that is „with‟, namely the con-text. this notion of what is „with the text‟, however, goes beyond what is said and written; it includes other non-verbal goings-on the total environment in which a text unfolds.” in interpreting the meaning in a text, there are some aspects that are to be considered. those aspects are what could be called as context. gerot and wignell (1994:10) claim that “all meaning is situated in a context of situation and culture.” context of culture “context of culture determines what we can mean through being „who we are‟, doing „what we do‟, and saying „what we say‟” (gerot and wignell, 1994:10). furthermore, gerot and wignell give an example of context of culture as follow: suppose, like one of us, you grew up in mid-western united states, the eldest daughter in a large farming family. being the eldest daughter in this circumstances automatically casts one in the role of „momma‟s little helper‟. that‟s who you are in the family. this in turn determines what you do within the family and what you say. it could be inferred, then, that context of culture controls and limits the utterances and sentences of the speakers and the writers in order not to swerve from the appropriate path of the existing culture surrounds them. in relation to context of culture and text, context of culture gives value to the text and constrain its interpretation. context of situation “take the utterance: „just put it beside those other ones‟. the meaning remains obscure until we know that it was said to a removalist ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 4 who had just lugged in another carton of household goods during moving one of us to brisbane. knowing the context of situation makes the utterances” (gerot and wignell, 1994:10). the above example shows that it would be hard to interpret the sentence if we do not know exactly who actually the speaker is and to whom the sentence is delivered. without knowing what actually the words „it‟ and „those‟ in the example above refer to, we cannot either precisely interpret the intention of the speaker. there are three aspects of context in any situation that have linguistic consequences. these are called the register variables. gerot and wignell (1994:11) state that: field refers to what is going on, including activity focus (nature of social activity) and object focus (subject matter); mode refers to how language is being used, whether the channel of communication is spoken or written or language is being used as a model of action or reflection; tenor refers to the social relationships between those taking parts. these are specifiable in terms of status of power, affect, and contact. metafunction meaning which is carried out by language is not limited into only one meaning. based on halliday‟s systemic functional linguistic, there are three types of meanings: a meaning about the interaction (an interpersonal meaning); a meaning about reality (an ideational meaning), and a meaning about the message (a textual meaning). these three types of meaning are known as the metafunctions (eggins, 1994:225). the three functions or constituents of interpersonal, ideational, and textual are also differentiated into three roles of subject, actor, and theme. each of those roles makes up a separate strand in the overall meaning of the clause. halliday (2004:58-59) states that: a clause has meaning as an exchange, a transaction between speaker and listener. the subject is the warranty of the exchange; a clause has meaning as a representation of some process in ongoing human experience. the actor is the active participant in that process. meanwhile, theme is the point of departure for the message. it is the element the speaker selects for „grounding‟ what he is going on to say. despite having different roles in realizing meaning, those three functions can exist at the same time in one clause. therefore, the three strands of meaning can be analyzed in a clause only. for the sake of a clearer explanation, below is the example. kate, i read your new book yesterday. kate i read your new book yesterday interpersonal adjunct: vocative subject finite predicate complement adjunct: adverbial residue mood residue ideational actor process: material goal circ.: time textual theme rheme constituent of interpersonal will be discussed first. in analyzing the clause, it uses mood system which consists of subject and finite. finite functions in negotiating meanings. based on the analysis above, the subject is placed by „i‟, while the finite lies in the word „read‟ in which it is fused with predicate. in this case, the word „read‟ negotiates that the speaker did something to kate‟s new book; that is reading it. thus, an interaction happens in this scope. it could be described that the speaker told kate that he had read her new book the day before. later, it opened chance for kate to give responses to what the speaker had told her. thus, it is clear that interpersonal constituent reveals a meaning of interaction. the second is constituent of ideational. it is about encoding people experiences of the world around them. from the analysis above, it is clear that the process attempts to represent an experience of the actor. in this case, the speaker gave information to kate that he had read her ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 5 new book the day before. then, the content of what the speaker delivered which is expressed from what the actor represents is what can be called as the ideational meaning of the clause. the last is constituent of textual. it reveals meaning about message. in constituents of textual, the system of theme are broken down into two functional components; theme as given information and rheme as new information. the term given here means that the information has existed before the new one appears. in this case, it could be informed that „kate‟ and „i‟ already existed before the conversation happened. meanwhile, „read your new book yesterday‟ has just created because of the existence of kate and i. thus, there is a causal relationship between theme and rheme in the sense that theme as given information produces rheme as new information. ideational meaning according to derewianka (2011:13), “one important function of language is to enable us to represent what is going on in the world; to talk about our experience, to reflect on our observations, to share knowledge and ideas.” it concerns with how language functions to represent different kinds of experience. halliday refers to this as the „experiential‟ or „ideational‟ function of language. it is centrally influenced by field of discourse. as ideational meaning talks about experience, then it relates to information about objects or to what the utterances are about. ideational meaning provides answers to questions such as „what is happening?‟, „who or what is taking part?‟, and „what gives us more information about the activity? when? where? how?‟ the system of transitivity “when we look at the ideational metafunction, we are looking at the grammar of the clause as representation. as with the clause as exchange, we find there is one major system of grammatical choice involved in this kind of meaning. this is the system of transitivity, or process type” (eggins, 1994:228). transitivity is a tool by which we can achieve ideational meaning of discourse. processes, participants, and circumstances are included in it. each plays its own role in realizing the ideational meaning. processes are the central one in transitivity for it determines the order of meaning in a clause. different processes make different order of meaning in the clause, for instance the words „she listens to a song‟, „she writes a song‟, and „she sings a song‟. the processes in those three clauses determine different order of meaning. however, participants and circumstances also plays great role in creating a precise interpretation of ideational meaning. processes a process is realized in grammar by means of a verbal group. according to halliday (2004:170-171), there are six types of processes in the english transitivity system. those are material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential process. butt et al. (1996:47) explain that material process is about doing. it could answer the question „what did x do?‟ or „what happened to x?‟ the participants of this process could be actor, goal, range or beneficiary. meanwhile, mental process provides answer to question „what do you think/ feel/ know about x?‟ furthermore, there are four types of mental process; affective or perceptive (perceiving through the five senses), cognitive (thinking), desiderative, and emotive (feeling). the participants in mental process are senser and phenomenon. other process type is relational process. it is often described as process of being. there are two types of relational processes. those are one that identifies which is called identifying and one that describes something in clause which is named attributive. as these two types are different since the beginning, the participants in both types are also different from one another. participants in identifying are token and value, while in attributive are carrier and attribute. in relation to behavioral process, halliday (2004:248-249) explains that ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 6 “behavioral processes are processes of (typically human) physiological and psychological behavior, like breathing, coughing, smiling, dreaming, and staring. the participant who is „behaving‟ labeled behaver. the process is grammatically more like one of „doing‟.” meanwhile, concerning verbal process contains of verbal action, saying and all its many synonyms, including symbolic exchanges of meaning. it contains three participants: sayer, receiver, and verbiage. the last type is existential process. it is process of existence. gerot and wignell (1994:72) state that "existential processes are expressed by verbs of existing: „be‟, „exist‟, „arise‟, and the existent can be a phenomenon of any kind.” participants butt et al. (1996:52) claim that “a participant can be a person, a place, or an object, and in the grammar of a clause the participant is realized by a nominal group, typically a noun or pronoun.” there are many different kinds of process. hence, there are also many different kinds of participant, following the kinds of process. circumstances derewianka (2011:66) states that “the circumstances tell us about such matters as time, place, manner, accompaniment, matter, cause, contingency, role, and angle. these details are obviously important in comprehending and expressing aspects of their experience.” it functions to illuminate the clause. speech function “making an utterance is an interactive event inherently involving a speaker or a writer and an addressee. a speaker, in uttering, selects a speech role (giving or demanding) for her or himself, and, simultaneously and thereby, allocates a speech role to the addressee” (gerot and wignell, 1994:22). speech role and speech function (gerot and wignell, 1994:23) by analyzing the speech function (offer, statement, command, and question) in a text, every speech role produced by the speakers will be able to be revealed. furthermore, the speakers‟ purposes will also be able to be described. their purposes in uttering their sentences will help in completing the analysis of ideational meaning of the debate transcript. descriptive qualitative approach denzin and lincoln (1994:2) contend that: qualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. this means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. combinations of options: give: goods and services = offer give: information = statement demand: goods and services = command demand: information = question of course, the addressee has some discretion: + offer accept reject statement acknowledge contradict command undertake refuse question answer disclaim ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 7 it can be inferred that a qualitative researcher is to interpret the meanings in the data which is carried out descriptively to draw a conclusion. in this research, the descriptions about the ideational meaning are elaborated through the knife of the analysis, the system of transitivity. the research report is written descriptively in accordance with the research findings of the ideational meaning in the debate transcript of concerning china‟s threat. findings on process types analysis from the identification of the process types found in each clause of the debate transcript, the result produced is presented in the table below. text process types sum of analyzed items percentage (%) transcript of the u.s. presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney concerning china‟s threat material 170 36.6 mental 63 13.5 relational: identifying 46 9.9 attributive 147 31.6 behavioral 14 3.0 verbal 21 4.5 existential 4 0.9 total 465 100 both speakers, through material process, stated the actions of the past, present, and future. their past actions were aimed at showing their success or disapproving other, while the actions of present and future showed their visions coping with the issue. obama was describing his actions of setting up a trade task force to go after cheaters and determining the policy of auto industry and tax code. meanwhile romney explained unemployment condition experienced by the u.s. citizen. in other case, by using mental process, obama certainly stated his wish of having a relationship with china, while romney, with a high certainty, described his wants as making the u.s. as the most attractive place in the world to grow businesses. compared to relational and material process as the top-two most frequent process, this one has a wide discrepancy in number and percentage with them by occupying only 13.5% of the whole clauses. it indicates that the speakers were indeed using personal feelings or inner experience in supporting their solutions, yet they put their focus more in the factual evidences than in personal feelings. furthermore, from the result of relational process analysis, two points of conclusion could be drawn. firstly, the speakers attempted to describe the u.s. trade and economic condition. obama stated the u.s. condition in the past and present to show his success, while romney aimed at showing obama‟s failure in his leadership. secondly, obama and romney stated and emphasized their internal and external solutions coping with the issue. obama stated that his internal solution was making investments in education and research, and his external one was insisting china to play by the rules. meanwhile, romney stated that his internal and external solutions were making the u.s. as the most attractive place to grow businesses and labeling china as currency manipulator. in addition, through behavioral process, romney stated china‟s and someone reactions to the u.s. unfortunate condition. romney dominated the usage of behavioral process. however, occupying 3.0% of 465 clauses, it indicates that both speakers were rarely showed someone‟s reaction coping with the issue of the debate compared to showing relations, actions, inner experience, and also someone‟s saying. ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 8 both speakers, through verbal process, restated their interlocutor‟s and also their own statements. it is aimed at refusing other‟s disapproval. verbal process indeed has a quite wide discrepancy with top three most frequent process types; however, it shows another side of delivering speaker‟s statements and solution towards the issue of the debate. existential process represents romney‟s descriptions regarding the u.s. trade condition related to china. having the smallest percentage, it indicates that he did not put his top priority in giving information concerning it explicitly. he indeed stated the u.s.-china trade condition, yet he mostly inserted it within his statements. findings on speech function analysis from the identification of each clause in the debate transcript, the result of speech function analysis gained is presented in the table below. text initiating speech function sum % responding speech function sum % transcript of the u.s. presidential debate between barack obama and mitt romney concerning china‟s threat give offer 5 2.4 accept 1 0.5 reject 1 0.5 statement 108 50.9 acknowledge 47 22.2 contradict 25 11.8 demand command 13 6.1 undertake 0 0 refuse 0 0 question 6 2.8 answer 6 2.8 disclaim 0 0 total 132 62.2 80 37.8 offer being in the sixth place indicates that the participants very rarely directed the topic of the debate. they tended to let it flowed flexibly according to the speakers‟ responses. the fact that the limitation of time to explore solutions existed more than the limitation of the topic indicates that the moderator put his priority in giving equal chance for the speakers to speak than to keep the topic of the debate focus. furthermore, the percentage of only 0.5% of accept and reject proves that most of the offer did not need any verbal responses. through speech function of statement, the participants gave information regarding the topic, the speakers‟ solution, the u.s. economic and trade condition, and the action that was taken by china in doing trade. particularly, having the highest percentage, it indicates that the speakers were focusing their attention in letting the audiences realized their solutions. they were also letting the audiences aware of trading condition between the u.s. and china. related to its responding speech function, the higher percentage of acknowledge than ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 9 contradict shows that the speakers tended to give positive responses to their statements more than to their interlocutor‟s, remembering the occasion is a debate. hence, those positive responses were used for their own benefit. in relation to command, its percentage of 6.1% of all clauses indicates that the participants aimed to give limitation to the speaker who overtime exploring his solutions. this result shows that even though the speakers were given chances to maximally explore their solutions and opinions, there was still limitation of time to keep the debate flowing fairly and well. the responding speech function of command, undertake and refuse, did not contribute any percentage in the transcript. this result proves that the commands did not need any verbal responses in responding the goods and services demanded by the initiator. speech function of question was only initiated by romney and schieffer. the questions which were answered were only those coming from schieffer. meanwhile, romney‟s questions did not need any answer for it was stated for the purpose of emphasizing. being in the fifth place, it indicates that the moderator rarely initiated questions to be discussed. he rather let the flow of the debate be filled with speakers‟ solutions. meanwhile, disclaim was not contributing at all in the debate transcript. this result shows that none of the question was responded negatively. even though not all of the questions were answered, none of them were contradicted by the addressees either. it indicates whether the questions were feasible to be answered or aimed at supporting the speakers‟ statements. context of situation related to ideational meaning of the debate transcript field influences the language use in the debate transcript. some everyday terminologies in the area of economy and trade emerge in the debate process remembering the purpose of the debate is to give information concerning the speakers‟ solution towards the issue to all of the u.s. citizens. those terminologies make the conversation focuses on the subject matter being analyzed, that is china as a threat to the u.s. concerning tenor of the text, the participants in the u.s. presidential debate have equal power, infrequent contact, and low affective involvement. it leads the language use to the using of vocatives. however, there exists politeness formula among all participants in this debate. furthermore, mode of the debate transcript related to its ideational meaning shows that the channel of communication of the text is spoken. this fact influences the language use in the debate in the case that the speakers used complicated grammar and spontaneous phenomena in delivering their statements. moreover, their conversation is also context dependent which caused them to use pronoun to refer to something which supported their opinions. conclusion first, the writer concludes that obama, through material process, was describing his actions of setting up a trade task force to go after cheaters and determining the policy of auto industry and tax code, and through 41.5% of relational processes, was showing recent u.s. condition as his success in which jobs were saved and exports have doubled. furthermore, through mental process, in a high certainty, he stated his hopes of having a relationship with china. in doing so, he prepared the u.s. by making investment in education and research so they would not lose the lead in things. while through verbal process, he disapproved romney‟s idea in the liquidity of auto industry. meanwhile, through material, relational, and existential processes, romney, by using high modality, certainly stated the unfortunate conditions during obama‟s leadership such as unemployment, companies‟ bankruptcy, and the increase of debt. furthermore, through 3.0% of behavioral process, he described china‟s doubt in having relation with the u.s. as their reaction to u.s. condition. for that reason, through 13.5% of mental process, he stated his wish of ghea kyat priyanka / journal of english language teaching 2 (2) (2013) 10 making the u.s. as the most attractive place in the world to grow businesses. meanwhile, in refusing obama‟s disapproval of auto industry‟s liquidation, romney used verbal process. as 50.9% of the whole clauses of speech function belong to statement, it shows that both speakers were inviting the audiences to accept that information. second, context of situation influences the debate transcript in its language use. some terminologies in the area of economy and trade emerge as the influences of field. those terminologies make the conversation focuses on the subject matter being analyzed, that is china as a threat to the u.s. references branham, j.r. 1991. debate and critical analysis: the harmony of conflict. retrieved from http://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/branham_de bate&criticalanalysis.pdf on february 12, 2013. butt, david. et al. 1996. using functional grammar: an explorer’s guide. sydney: macquarie university denzin, n.k and yvonna s. lincoln. 1994. introduction: entering the field of qualitative research. california: sage publications, inc. derewianka, beverly. 2011. a new grammar companion. sydney: primary english teaching association eggins, suzzane. 1994. an introduction to systemic functional linguistics. london: pinter publishers gerot, l. and p. wignell. 1994. making sense of functional grammar. sydney: gerd stabler halliday, m.a.k. and christian m.i.m matthiessen (ed). 2004. an introduction to functional grammar (3 rd ed). london: oxford university press inc. halliday, m.a.k. and ruqaiya hasan. 1985. language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. melbourne: deakin university press hammond, jenny. et al. 1992. english for social purposes. sydney: macquarie university parla. kristen. 2010. democratic versus republican perspectives. retrieved from http://usa5.org/d/democratic-versusrepublican-perspectives-by-kristen-parlae3777 on february 20, 2013. ramelan. 1999. english phonetics. semarang: ikip semarang press wattles, isidora and b. radic-bojanic. 2007. the analysis of an online debate. facta universitatis series: linguistics and literature. vol. 5, pp. 47-58. retrieved from http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/lal/lal2007/lal20 07-05.pdf on february 19, 2013 http://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/branham_debate&criticalanalysis.pdf http://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/branham_debate&criticalanalysis.pdf http://usa5.org/d/democratic-versus-republican-perspectives-by-kristen-parla-e3777 http://usa5.org/d/democratic-versus-republican-perspectives-by-kristen-parla-e3777 http://usa5.org/d/democratic-versus-republican-perspectives-by-kristen-parla-e3777 http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/lal/lal2007/lal2007-05.pdf http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/lal/lal2007/lal2007-05.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 69 elt forum 6 (1) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt thematic progression on students’ recount texts irfina safitri, seful bahri  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in june 2017 approved in july 2017 published in august 2017 ________________ keywords: students’ recount texts, coherence, theme and rheme, thematic progression ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is based on a study aimed to find out the types of thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ in their recount texts and to examine the coherence of fourth semester students’ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression of the english department, universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 who took genre-based writing (gbw) class in rombel 1. this study was a written discourse analysis which was used to figure out the realization of meanings. the findings showed that all of the students employed more than one pattern in their recount texts. they tended to use combination between reiteration (constant), zig-zag (linear), and multiple theme patterns. however, reiteration was the most dominant one. the second dominant pattern was zig-zag pattern. the third pattern found in the students’ recount texts was multiple theme. the analysis also showed that the number of clauses and the thematic progression patterns produced by the students are not equivalent. it means that there are many clauses which are not related to one another. the students often introduced some new themes at the beginning of the clause without any relation with other clauses and they break the well signposted progression of the text. it can be concluded that most of the recount texts produced by the students are not coherent. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 70 introduction writing is one of the four skills in english from which students are supposed to master besides listening, speaking and reading. those skills are classified into two main skills – receptive and productive skills (priyatmojo, 2012 ).writing is one of the four major language skills that is considered as the most difficult skill. it is because writing conveys a meaning from the thinking process to the readers. by writing, people can share ideas, feeling, and thought as well as persuade other people. moreover, writing can be good reflection of the students‘ understanding of learning english. since writing is an important skill in teaching and learning english, it needs a lot of practice, guidance and feedback to improve the students‘ writing ability. writing ability is not acquired naturally, it requires the learners to be taught and practiced. there are some factors that cause an ineffective teaching and learning of writing. first, it comes from the students themselves. they are lack of basic writing skill and also less confident in writing. in addition, they need a lot of practice as they do not have enough chance to practice writing. most of the students do not know how to start their writing and do not have enough ideas to write. they cannot generate their ideas and cannot choose the right words. they also tend to write a paragraph without knowing about theme and rheme. this condition will make their writing not in a good order. that is why it needs a new strategy in teaching writing. from the teacher‘s point of view, learning writing is training the students to write as many paragraphs as possible. the teacher just gives a few topics and then the students are asked to write a text that is appropriate to the topic. they do not have enough materials on how to develop their ideas into a written text. as the result, the students‘ orientations are on the products of writing, not from the process of writing, so their writing is not well organized. the way of teaching writing above does not use the appropriate method. a teacher only knows the result of writing, not from the process. the definition of theme by halliday as cited in eggins (2004:299) is the element which serves as starting point for the message, so it talks about a clause is going to be about. the theme here typically contains familiar or ―given‖ information. meanwhile the definition of rheme by eggins (2004:300) is the part of the clause in which the theme is developed. therefore, the rheme typically contains unfamiliar or ―new‖ information. in writing skill, students have to be able to compose a text based on genre. genre is a kind of text-type, as gerot and wignell (1994:17) stated ―a genre can be defined as a culturally specific text-type which results from using language (written and spoken) to (help) accomplish something.‖ they also stated that genre is culture specific, and has associated with them: particular purposes, particular stages, and particular linguistic features. knowledge of genre is important for language teachers in order to help the students compose texts. there are some types of genre that are taught in school such as narrative, recount, report, procedure, discussion, explanation, exposition, spoof, anecdote, news item, description, and etc. a recount text is a text that retells someone‘s experience in the past. students have to be able to compose recount texts, and they also have to be able to convey the meaning of the text based on social function, generic structure, and lexicogrammatical features of recount text. gerot and wignell (1994:194) stated that the social function of recount text is to retell events for the purpose of informing or entertaining. the generic structures of recount text are i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 71 orientation that provides the setting and introduces participants; events which tell what happened, in what sequence; and re-orientation (optional—closure of events). the significant lexicogrammatical features focus on using specific participants, material processes, circumstances of time and place, past tense, and temporal sequence. to make a coherent paragraph, the students should employ thematic progression patterns in their writing. according to paltridge (2002:140), ―thematic progression refers to the way in which the theme of a clause may pick up, or repeat, a meaning from a preceding theme or rheme.‖ there are three kinds of thematic progression patterns, reiteration or constant theme pattern, zig zag or linear theme pattern, and multiple theme or split theme pattern. in this study, the researcher intends to find out the types of thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ in their recount texts and to examine the coherence of the students‘ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression. methodology of the research this study was a written discourse analysis which was used to figure out the realization of the meaning. according to creswell (2009:173), ―qualitative procedures demonstrates a different approach to scholarly inquiry than methods of quantitative research‖. qualitative inquiry employs different philosophical assumptions; strategies of inquiry; and methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. although the processes are similar, qualitative procedures rely on text and image data, have unique steps in data analysis, and draw on diverse strategies of inquiry. the object of the study was the recount texts of the fourth semester students of the english department, universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 who took genre-based writing (gbw) class in rombel 1. in this study, the types of data were written discourse analysis data that were described in the form of clauses. in collecting the data, the researcher took several steps. the first one was documentation. in this step, the researcher took the data from the recount texts of the fourth semester students of the english department, universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 who took genre-based writing (gbw) class in rombel 1. the second one was listing. this step, the researcher listed all the clauses of the students‘ recount texts. the third one was identifying. the researcher analyzed the students‘ recount texts using thematic progression patterns. in analysing the data, the researcher read all the students‘ recount texts. the researcher should understand each of the students‘ recount texts. next, the researcher divided the students‘ recount texts into clauses. then, the researcher analyzed the students‘ recount texts. firstly, the clauses were analysed in terms of thematic structures in order to figure out the point of departure of each clause. secondly, the researcher analyzed the students‘ recount texts using thematic progression patterns to see the types of thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ in their recount texts and to examine the coherence of the students‘ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression. after analysing the students‘ recount texts, the researcher calculated the thematic progression patterns of each of the students‘ recount texts, and categorized them in the table below: i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 72 thematic patterns the students‘ writings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 reiteration zig-zag multiple total of clauses table 2.1 thematic progression patterns of the students‘ recount texts in reporting the data, the researcher presented two kinds of reporting data. the first one is presenting table and figure. in reporting the data, the researcher showed the tables and figures that were used to present the percentage of each item analysis which supported the thematic progressions analysis. the second one is discussion. the researcher interpreted the data descriptively. result and discussion there are 20 students‘ recount texts as the data of this research. the writings are in the form of paragraphs with different topics. the students chose their own topic such as unforgettable experience, impressive moment, unforgettable holiday, and etc. in this part, the writer presents the thematic progression patterns of every students‘ writing to know the types of the thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ in their recount texts and the coherence of the students‘ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression. the table below illustrates the numbers and the writings flow produced by the students in their writings. 1. thematic progression patterns in the students’ recount texts students‘ writing thematic progression pattern reiteration zig-zag multiple total of clauses 1 13 5 2 34 2 13 3 2 32 3 13 2 2 29 4 9 4 2 33 5 9 6 30 6 6 12 28 7 17 3 37 8 8 7 23 9 18 7 2 46 10 10 12 40 11 6 10 4 36 12 15 9 5 33 13 13 9 2 35 14 15 15 6 52 15 9 7 9 34 i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 73 16 18 5 3 37 17 9 6 29 18 11 6 6 28 19 12 5 2 26 20 20 10 11 51 total 245 143 67 693 percentage 35.35% 20.63% 9.67% 100% table 2.2 : the thematic progression pattern of the students‘ recount texts the table shows that there are three types of the thematic progression patterns found in the students‘ recount texts. they are reiteration/constant theme pattern, zig-zag/linear theme pattern, and multiple theme. it can be seen from the table that the most dominant thematic progression pattern found in the students‘ writings is reiteration/constant theme pattern with 35.35%. the second dominant is zig-zag pattern with 20.63%. the third pattern found in the students‘ writing is multiple theme with 9.67%. 1.1 reiteration/constant theme pattern as shown in the table 2, the most dominant thematic progression pattern found in the students‘ writings is reiteration/constant theme pattern. in this case, the students tend to use personal pronouns such as i, you, we, they, she, he, and it in their writings. the students think that it is easier for them by repeating theme of one clause to another at the beginning of a clause. it can be seen from the example taken from the student‘s text. text 7 theme 1 rheme 1 theme 2 rheme 2 theme 3 rheme 3 theme 4 rheme 4 theme 5 rheme 5 theme 8 rheme 8 i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 74 theme 9 rheme 9 theme 11 rheme 11 theme 12 rheme 12 theme 16 rheme 16 theme 17 rheme 17 theme 18 rheme 18 theme 19 rheme 19 theme 20 rheme 20 theme 21 rheme 21 theme 22 rheme 22 theme 23 rheme 23 theme 24 rheme 24 i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 75 theme 25 rheme 25 theme 26 rheme 26 theme 27 rheme 27 theme 29 rheme 29 theme 30 rheme 30 theme 34 rheme 34 theme 35 rheme 35 theme 36 rheme 36 theme 37 rheme 37 it can be seen from the figure above that the theme of the first clause ‘one of my unforgettable experiences‘ becomes the theme in the second clause. then, the theme in the third clause ‗when i‘ is repeated in the theme of the fourth and the fifth clauses. also, the theme in the eighth clause ‗where we‘ becomes the theme in the ninth clause ‗then we‘. the theme in the eleventh clause ‗i‘ becomes the theme in the twelfth clause ‗because finally i‘, too. next, the theme in sixteenth clause ‗many kinds of animals‘ becomes the theme in the seventeenth clause ‗there‘. then, the theme in the twentieth clause ‗my mom‘ becomes the theme in the twenty first clause ‗that she‘. besides, the theme in the twenty second clause ‗then we‘ is picked up and repeated in the theme of the twenty third, twenty fourth, twenty fifth, twenty sixth, and twenty seventh clauses. the theme in the twenty ninth clause ‗we‘ also becomes the theme in the thirtieth clause ‗then we‘. the last, the theme in the thirty fourth clause ‗that i‘ is also repeated in the theme of the thirty fifth, thirty sixth, and thirty seventh clauses. i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 76 1.2 zig-zag/linear theme pattern based on table 2, it can be seen that the second dominant pattern found in the students‘ writings is zig-zag/linear theme pattern. in this pattern, the rheme of one clause is taken up in the theme of a following clause. the examples are taken from the students‘ writing and can be seen in the figure below. text 6 theme 1 rheme 1 theme 2 rheme 2 theme 4 rheme 4 theme 5 rheme 5 theme 7 rheme 7 theme 8 rheme 8 theme 9 rheme 9 theme 11 rheme 11 theme 12 rheme 12 theme 13 rheme 13 theme 14 rheme 14 i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 77 theme 15 rheme 15 theme 16 rheme 16 theme 17 rheme 17 theme 18 rheme 18 theme 20 rheme 20 theme 21 rheme 21 theme 25 rheme 25 theme 26 rheme 26 it can be seen in the figure above that the rheme in the first clause ‗my grandmother said to my mother‘ changes to ‗that she‘ and becomes the theme in the second clause. then, the rheme in the fifth clause ‗prepared a lot of thing‘ also becomes the theme in the seventh clause ‗after all the preparation‘. the rheme of the eighth clause ‗went to purbalingga at 6 a.m.‘ also changes to ‗it‘ and becomes the theme in the ninth clause. next, the rheme in the eleventh clause ‗decided to visit purbayasa, one of the favorite tourism places‘ becomes the theme in the twelfth clause ‗in purbayasa‘. the rheme of the twelfth clause ‗there is a giant aquarium‘ becomes the theme in the thirteenth clause ‗this giant aquarium‘, too. also, the theme of the thirteenth clause ‗has a wide variety of fish and sea animals from asia, australia, europe, america and africa‘ becomes the theme in the sixteenth clause ‗in addition to a wide variety of fish, in this purbayasa‘. besides, the rheme of the sixteenth clause ‗there are also many kinds of birds and various species of flora‘ becomes the theme in the seventeenth clause ‗my most favorite bird‘. then, the rheme of the seventeenth clause ‗is peacock‘ becomes the theme in the eighteenth clause ‗the wings of peacock‘. the other is the rheme of the twentieth clause ‗we decided to take a rest‘ becomes the theme in the twenty first i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 78 clause ‗and (we)‘. the last, the rheme of the twenty fifth clause ‗all of us felt tired‘ changes to ‗so we‘ and becomes the theme in the twenty sixth clause. 1.3 multiple theme it can be seen from table 2 that the third theme pattern found in the students‘ writings is multiple theme. in this pattern, the students try to develop their paragraphs by picking the rheme which may include a number of different pieces of information. each of which may be taken up as the theme in a number of subsequent clauses. the examples below are taken from the students‘ writings on and can be seen in the following figure. text 15 theme 6 rheme 6 theme 7 rheme 7 theme 12 rheme 12 theme 14 rheme 14 theme 16 rheme 16 theme 17 rheme 17 theme 18 rheme 18 theme 19 rheme 19 theme 20 rheme 20 i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 79 theme 21 rheme 21 theme 22 rheme 22 theme 24 rheme 24 theme 28 rheme 28 it can be seen from the figure above that the rheme of the sixth clause ‗we went to kuta beach‘ is taken up as the theme in the seventh and the twelfth clauses. the rheme of the fourteenth clause ‗passed the night at the backyard of my cousins‘ house‘ is also taken up as the theme in the sixteenth and the nineteenth clauses. besides, the rheme of the sixteenth clause ‗i really felt‘ is taken up as the theme in the eighteenth, twenty second, and twenty fourth clauses. the last, the rheme of the twentieth clause ‗we went to tanjung benoa‘ is taken up as the theme in the twenty first and the twenty eighth clauses. 2. coherence of the students’ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression the ability to make a coherent paragraph in writing is a very important skill the students need to master. this skill is considered very helpful in their studies, when writing in their native language as well as in foreign language. coherence means to hold together. it means that the texts have the right order with the clear process. coherence plays an important role in writing activities. coherence, that is usually used in many reading texts should have well-organized paragraphs, where in the text, they have clear main ideas which are supported by relevant sentences. to organise any text into a coherent whole, the writers need to keep their readers well informed about where they are and where they are going (butt et al, 2000:134). based on using functional grammar, there are grammatical resources to signpost the way through clauses, clause complexes and paragraphs, from the beginning to the end of a text. according to butt et al. (2000:134), the first signpost must be at the beginning of a text, paragraph or clause. it tells the readers what the writer has in mind as a starting point. the signposts realise the textual meanings. the writers use the first position in the clause to signal to their readers what the message is about. the first position in a clause contains textual meanings because it signposts the development of a text. to analyse textual meanings, we need a simple and distinct metalanguage. we call the first element theme and the rest of the clause rheme. based on the finding in table 2, the number of clauses and the thematic progression patterns produced by the students is not balanced. it means that there are many clauses which are not related to one another. the students often introduced some new themes at the beginning of the clause without any relation with other clauses and they break the well signposted progression of the text. for brief explanation, it can be seen in the example below. i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 80 text 1 text 1 is talking about impressive moment and it is found that the theme of the first clause ‗i‘ becomes the theme in the second clause ‗when i‘. then, the rheme of the first clause ‗would like to share you about my impressive experience‘ changes to ‗it‘ and becomes the theme of the third clause. however, the theme of the third clause has no relation with the theme of the fourth clause, which breaks the well signposted progression of the text. the student introduces the new theme in the third clause. it talks about when the impressive experience happened, meanwhile the theme of the fourth clause refers to the previous theme of clause 1 ‗i‘, so the theme of the third clause is not related to the theme of the fourth clause because there is no logical connection between them. next, the theme of the fourth clause ‗i‘ becomes the theme in the fifth clause ‗because i‘. the other is the rheme of the fifth clause ‗joined an extracurricular ―pecinta alam‖‘ changes to ‗well, in that moment‘ and becomes the theme of the sixth clause. then, the rheme of the sixth clause ‗my friends and i had to take a long march‘ is taken up in the theme of the seventh and the tenth clauses. besides, the theme of the seventh clause ‗it‘ is repeated in the theme of the eighth and the ninth clauses. it is the same with the theme of the third and the fourth clauses, the theme of the tenth clause has no relation with the theme of the eleventh clause. the theme of the tenth clause refers to the previous theme of clause 6, but in the theme of the eleventh clause the student introduces the new theme. the student used an adverb of time ‗on the next day‘ which breaks the well signposted progression of the text, so the theme of the tenth clause is not related to the theme of the eleventh clause because the logical connection between them is weak. next, the rheme in the eleventh clause ‗we had to continue our activity‘ becomes the theme in the twelfth clause ‗survival, getting closer with a snake, sar, rappelling and other activity‘. then, the rheme of the twelfth clause ‗we spent in serang‘ becomes the theme of the fourteenth clause ‗when we‘. also, the theme of the fourteenth clause ‗when we‘ becomes the theme in the fifteenth clause ‗we‘. however, the theme of the fifteenth clause is not related to the theme of the sixteenth clause. the student used the different theme in the eleventh clause, which breaks the well signposted progression of the text. the theme of the fifteenth clause refers to the previous theme of clause 14, which talks about the student‘s friends and herself, but the theme of the sixteenth clause talks about herself only, so the theme of the fifteenth clause has no relation with the theme of the sixteenth clause because the logical connection between them is weak. the other is the theme of the sixteenth clause ‗i‘ is repeated in the theme of the seventeenth, the eighteenth, the nineteenth, the twentieth, and the twenty first clauses. then, the theme of the twenty first clause is not related to the theme of the twenty second and the twenty third clauses. the theme of the twenty first clause refers to the previous themes, but unexpectedly the student introduces the new themes in the twenty second and the twenty third clauses. the theme of twenty second and the twenty third clauses talk about the activity that the student did when joining an extracurricular ‗pecinta alam‘, which has no relation with the theme in the twenty first clause that talks about herself, so it breaks the well signposted progression of the text. next, the theme in the twenty third clause ‗in which we‘ becomes the theme of the twenty fourth clause ‗and(we)‘. besides, the rheme of the twenty fourth clause ‗catch a snake‘ changes to ‗it‘ and becomes the theme in the twenty fifth clause. however, the theme of the twenty fifth clause has no relation with the theme of the twenty sixth clause because the student introduces the new theme in the twenty sixth clause. the twenty fifth clause talks about catching a snake meanwhile the twenty sixth clause talks about the student‘s friends, so it breaks the well signposted progression of the text because there is no logical i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 81 connection between them. the logical connection between the theme of the twenty fifth and the twenty sixth clauses is weak. then, the theme of the twenty sixth clause ‗because almost all of my friends‘ changes to ‗and they‘ in the theme of the twenty seventh clause. the logical connection between the theme of the twenty seventh and the twenty eighth clause is also weak because they have no relation. the theme of the twenty seventh clause refers to the previous theme of clause 26, but the theme of the twenty eighth clause is a new theme. it talks about the survival stage which has no relation with the theme of the twenty seventh clause that talks about the student‘s friends, so it breaks the well signposted progression of the text. next, the theme of the twenty ninth clause ‗all of us‘ also changes to ‗because we‘ and becomes the theme of the thirtieth clause. there are still five clauses that do not employ any pattern. the theme of the thirtieth clause is not related to the theme of the thirty first, thirty second, thirty third, and thirty fourth clauses because they are new themes. they used different themes in each clause. in the theme of the thirty first clause, the student used an adverb of time, which has no relation with the theme of the thirtieth clause. in the theme of the thirty second clause, it talks about the student‘s senior, which has no relation with the theme of the thirty first clause. in the theme of the thirty third clause, the student introduces a new theme ‗i‘, which has no relation with the theme of the thirty second clause. the last, the theme of the thirty third clause talks about the most impressive moment of her life, which has no relation with the theme of the thirty third clause, so the theme of the thirty first, thirty second, thirty third, and thirty fourth break the well signposted progression of the text. based on the analysis above, it can be concluded that text 1 is not coherent because there are many clauses which are not related to one another. the student often introduces some new themes at the beginning of the clause without any relation with other clauses and they break the well signposted progression of the text conclusions the objectives of this study are to find out the types of thematic progression patterns the students mostly employ in their recount texts and to examine the coherence of the fourth semester students‘ recount texts viewed from their thematic progression of the english department, universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 who took genre-based writing class in rombel 1. based on the data analysis and the results of the study in the previous chapter, the conclusions can be drawn as follows. the findings showed that all of the students employed more than one pattern in their recount texts. they tended to use combination between reiteration (constant), zig-zag (linear), and multiple theme patterns. however, reiteration was the most dominant one. it can be said that it is easier for the students by repeating theme of one clause to another at the beginning of the clause. this pattern allowed the readers to easily find the information in the text. the second dominant pattern was zigzag pattern. most of zig-zag patterns occured in the relative clauses which functioned to replace the subject. this pattern indicated that the students tried to introduce newly information by promoting the rheme in the previous clause as the theme in the following clause. the third pattern found in the students‘ recount texts was multiple theme. in this pattern, the students tried to develop their writings by picking the rheme which may include a number of different pieces of information, each of which may be taken up as the theme in a number of subsequent clauses. the ability to make a coherent paragraph in writing is very important skill the students need to master. this skill is considered very helpful in their studies, when writing in their native language as well as in foreign language. coherence plays an important role in writing activities. coherence, i. safitri & s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 82 that is usually used in many reading texts should have well-organized paragraphs, where in the text, they have clear main ideas which are supported by relevant sentences. the analysis also showed that the numbers of clauses and the thematic progression patterns produced by the students are not equivalent. it means that there are many clauses which are not related to one another. the students often introduced some new themes at the beginning of the clause without any relation with other clauses and they break the well signposted progression of the text. it can be concluded that most of the recount texts produced by the students are not coherent. references butt, david et al. 2001. using functional grammar: an explorer’s guide. second edition. sydney: national centre for english language and research. creswell, john. w. 2009. research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches 3rd edition. california: sage publications. eggins, suzanne. 2004. an introduction to systemic functional linguistoics 2nd edition. london: continuum. gerot, l. and p. wignell. 1994. making sense of functional grammar. sydney: gerd stabler. paltridge, brian. 2000. making sense of discourse analysis. queensland: merino lithographics. priyatmojo, arif suryo. 2012. improving coherence of the students’ sentences by applying thematic progression and personal blog in the sentence-based writing class. register journal language and language teaching journals vol 5, no 2. available at: http://journalregister.iainsalatiga.ac.id./ index.php/register/article/view/244 [accessed 08/14/16] putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 133 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of photographs on instagram in teaching descriptive text to improve students’ writing skill mustika purwandari  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: photograph, instagram, writing descriptive, experimental study. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research was an experimental study to find out whether there is any learning achievement of students who are taught writing descriptive text using photographs as media which is significantly different from those who are taught without photographs. the subjects of the study were the 8th year students of smp negeri 1 ungaran. in order to achieve the objective, the researcher conducted an experimental research. there were two groups involved in this research, the experimental and the control group. the experimental group was taught using photographs in instagram and the control group was taught without using photographs in instagram. after both groups were given the treatment, the result of the study shows that the mean score of experimental group was 74.80 and the control group was 72.63. it means that the score of the experimental group was higher than the score of the control group. the t-test result showed that tvalue was 2.056 and t-table was 2.002, which means that the t-value is higher than the t-table. it proves that there is a significant different achievement between the groups which taught using photographs in instagram and using conventional teaching. based on the result of this study, it is concluded the application of photographs in instagram can improve students’ writing skill in writing descriptive text. it was effective and recommended for the english teacher as one of references in teaching and learning process. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 134 introduction english in a language of globalization is used in almost all of countries in the world as a means of international communication. because of its significance role, english has been included to indonesian educational system curriculum. it is a compulsory subject in elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, and at the university level. the english curriculum stipulates that english subject should include four skills, there are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. one of the skills in english subject is writing. writing is one of the important skills which has to be mastered by the students of junior high school in learning english. writing has always taken part of the syllabus in teaching english, (harmer 2004: 31). writing is a combination of a process and product so it is assumed as the most difficult skill. the process is a stage in which the students are about to make a product (text) and when they start to write. the product is the text as a result of the process of writing. before producing a text, students need a long process starting from planning until producing. it is important to master language components such as grammar, vocabulary, and etc. in the process of writing. in the reality, there are many problems in writing especially in writing descriptive text. the students face difficulty in figuring out the objects that will be described. djuharie (2007: 24) explained “descriptive text aims to describe someone or something specifically both visible things that can be seen and invisible things for example characteristics and attitudes.” however, there are many students write descriptive texts only the visible things, they forget to write the invisible things, one of them is characteristic of the objects even they are important to be described. instead of it, the students either think or say that they cannot, or do not want to write. their perceptions occur because they lack of confidence in making writing based on the processes and the theories that are exist. they also think that writing is boring and they have „nothing to say‟. the boring of the subjects will lead the students become lazy and ignore to have the important knowledge and experience around the world (harmer 2007: 113). for overviewing the problems, the teachers have to be more creative. they should use some media, methods, and techniques in order to the effectiveness of teaching writing a descriptive text. in this study, the researcher conducts research in utilising photograph in instagram as media. the research aimed to investigate whether there is positive significant difference achievement of writing descriptive text gained by experimental group taught using photograph in instagram and comparison group taught without using photograph in instagram at smp negeri 1 ungaran in the academic year of 2016/2017 or not. it was hoped that the photograph in instagram could develop students' skill in writing descrptive texts. literature review writing boardman and frydenberg (2001) say that writing is a continuous process of thinking and organizing, rethinking and reorganizing. so, writing can be said clearly as the representative of thoughts and ideas of someone in written way. the goal of all writing, as stated by palmer et. al. (1994), is to construct meaning for ourselves and to communicate that meaning to others. it means to write we should generate the ideas then deliver to the reader. descriptive text descriptive is one genre which must be learned by students of a junior high school. according to anderson and anderson (1997:48), “descriptive text is a text which says what a person or thing is like”. descriptive text is like painting pictures with words. by reading a descriptive text, readers feel that they see the description just like they see pictures. another definition of descriptive text comes from broadman (2002:6), he states that descriptive text is kind of paragraph which is used to m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 135 describe what something looks like. it means descriptive text can be formed into two types; they are speaking and writing description. thus, descriptive text is a kind of genre which is used to describe a particular person, place, activity, idea or thing which is drawn in word form both speaking and writing. in line with broadman, oshima and hogue (1997: 50) state that “descriptive writing appeals to the sense, so it tells how something looks, feels, smells, tastes, and/ or sounds”. in other words it can be said that descriptive text captures one experience of a person, place or thing into words by appealing to the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. photograph photograph is one of the visual aids that can be used in writing. it makes something clearer. it also can be used to create situation for writing classes more clearly. one kind is that it tells us a simple and obvious story. sudjana and rivai (2007:71) state that “photograph is a kind of flat opaque picture including picture and printed painting”. the photograph belongs to graphical media or two-dimensional media, which can also be transferred into a transparent picture by using an opaque projector. minor as quoted by hikmah (2007:6) states that photograph is a two-dimensional visual representation of person, place, and things. photograph may not only be worth a thousand words but it may also be worth a thousand years and a thousand miles. a photograph is also simple in that it can be drawn, printed, or photographically processed and it can also be mounted for preservation for the use in future. instagram instagram is a mobile, desktop, and internet-based photo-sharing application and service that allows users to share pictures and videos either publicly or privately. instagram allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. users can add a caption to each of their posts and use hashtags and location-based geotags to index these posts and make them searchable by other users within the app. each post by a user appears on their followers' instagram feeds and can also be viewed by the public when tagged using hashtags or geotags. users also have the option of making their profile private so that only their followers can view their posts. methodology of the research this study was conducted in smp n 1 ungaran with the eighth grade students in the academic year of 2016/2017 as the population. the entire number of the students in this grade is 240 students in eight classes. the sample of the research were the viii f and viii h students of smp n 1 ungaran in the academic year of 2016/2017.the total number of subjects involved in this research were 60 students. the viii f was given a treatment by using photograph in instagram as a medium and the viii h was taught by conventional method. the classes were given same materials and assignments each other with different tools. there were four meeting for both classes consisted of pre-test, treatments, and post-test. first, conducting a pre-test with the same test to know normality and homogeneity scores of experimental group (class viii h) and control group (class viii f). second, treating experimental group with photograph in instagram and control group with conventional media (text book). third, conducting a post-test for both groups with similar test to know the significant difference achievement between two groups. the design of the experiment can be described as follows: m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 136 e 01 x 02 c 03 04 where: e : experimental group (eg) c : control group (cg) 01 : pre-test for the experimental group 02 : posttest for the experimental group 03 : pre-test for the control group 04 : posttest for the control group x : treatment with photographs in instagram (arikunto, 2006) the pre-test were aimed to measure students' basic writing ability. moreover, students were asked to write a descriptive text in 10-15 sentences for 80 minutes. the post-test purpose was to measure students' improvement of descriptive text writing which method was similar with the pre test. the obtained data were analyzed to get the normality, homogenity, and t-test result. the use of statistical package for the social science (spss) application, microsoft excel, and manual were combined to compute the data. result and discussion pre-test the pre-test was conducted on saturday, march 4th, 2017 for both control group and experimental group. it was held in the first meeting. there were 30 students of experimental group and control group joined this test. diagram 3.1 the pre-test result of experimental and control group from the pre-test result, the average scores of the students were analyzed. the average score of experimental group was 62.90, while the average score of control group was 60.23. although the result of pre-test showed the difference between the score average of control and experimental groups, but it was not very significant. it means that the prior ability between experimental and control groups was relatively the same before the treatment was given. homogeneity 58.5 59 59.5 60 60.5 61 61.5 62 62.5 63 63.5 control group experimental group the pre-test result of experimental and control group control group experimental group m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 137 if both classes are not homogenous, the treatment also cannot be conducted because both classes do not have same ability in narrative text achievement. the homogeneity of pre-test of both the experimental and the control groups was computed as follows: (sudjana, 2005) which the statistics hypothesis and research hypothesis are: : (both of samples have the similar varians) : (both of samples have difference variance) the criteria h0 accepted if with the real degree 5%, dknumerator = and dkdenumerator = . so it can be computed: = 1.22 since fvalue(1.22) < ftable (1.860), it could be concluded that the population between the experimental and control group were homogenous. it means that the study could be continued because the two groups were homogenous. 2. normality of the pre-test in experimental and control group i could implement the treatment when the data of the study was normally distributed. normality test was used to check whether both groups was proper to be tested. the normality test result of pre-test could be seen in the following table: tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. pretest_experimental control .099 .097 30 30 .200* .200* .969 .959 30 30 .514 .293 a. lilliefors significance correction *. this is a lower bound of the true significance. table 3.1 normality test result of experimental and control pre-test the data were stated in normal distribution if p-value (sig.) was higher than 0.05. from the calculation of kolmogorov-smirnov, the p-value of control group (0.200) was higher than 0.05. it showed that the pretest data of control group was normally distributed. and the p-value of experimental group (0.200) was also higher than 0.05. it could be stated that the pretest data of experimental group was normally distributed. moreover, from the calculation of shapiro-wilk the pvalue of control group also 0.293 was higher than 0.05. it showed that the pre-test data of control group was normally distributed. the p-value of experimental group was 0.514 also higher than 0.05. it could be concluded that the pre-test data of experimental group was also normally distributed. as a result, it could be concluded that the pre-test data of experimental group and control group was normally distributed, so that the experiment could be continued. post-test m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 138 the post-tests for viii h as the experimental group was held on march 25th 2017 and viii f as the control group was held on march 18th, 2017. there were 30 students in both experimental and control classes who did the post-test. the result of the post-test can be seen as the chart below. diagram 3.2 the post-test result of experimental and control group from the post-test result, the average scores of the students were analyzed. the average score of experimental group was 74.80, while the average score of control group was 72.63. it can be concluded that the achievement of the experimental group who were taught using photographs in instagram was higher than the control group who were taught using the existing technique that used in that school. normality of control group and experimental group to compute the normality of the post test, the researcher using statistical package for the social science (spss) method. below was the table of the students‟ distribution score on the post test: tests of normality kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. posttest_experimental control .089 .126 30 30 .200* .200* .979 .973 30 30 .811 .624 a. lilliefors significance correction *. this is a lower bound of the true significance. table 3.2 the normality of control and experimental group the data were stated in normal distribution if p-value (sig.) was higher than 0.05. from the calculation of kolmogorov-smirnov, the p-value both of experimental and control group (0.200) was higher than 0.05. in addition, the calculation of shapiro-wilk, the p-value of control group (0.624) was higher than 0.05. and the p-value of experimental group (0.811) was also higher than 0.05. as a result, i concluded that the post-test data of both groups were normally distributed, so the t-test could be counted. t-test statistical analysis 71.5 72 72.5 73 73.5 74 74.5 75 control group experimental group the post-test result of experimental and control group control group experimental group m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 139 the researcher used the following formula to calculate the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the experimental group: where: ∑ : the sum of the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the experimental group. : the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the experimental group. : the number of the experimental group students ∑ = = 12.1 so, the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of experimental group was 12.1. and the researcher used the following formula to calculate the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the control group: where: ∑ : the sum of the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the control group. : the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of the control group. : the number of the control group students ∑ = = 12.4 so, the difference gain of the pretest and posttest of control group was 12.4. group average of pretest average of posttest the difference between pretest and posttest experimental 62.90 74.80 11.9 control 60.23 72.63 12.4 the difference between experimental and control group 2.67 2.17 table 3.3 the result of pre-test and post-test average scores of both groups ∑ ∑ m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 140 after finding the different gain of the pre-test and post-test, i calculated the t-test to know the significant difference between the post-test of the experimental and control groups. it was done by comparing the t-value and t-table. the t-value was found from the score differences between the post-test of experimental and control groups, while the t-table was found by consulting to the critical value on the table column. the result of t-test can be seen in the table as follow, independent samples test score equal variances assumed equal variances not assumed levene's test for equality of variances f .470 sig. .496 t-test for equality of means t 2.056 2.056 df 58 57.563 sig. (2-tailed) .044 .044 mean difference 2.167 2.167 std. error difference 1.054 1.054 95% confidence interval of the difference lower .058 .057 upper 4.276 4.276 table 3.4 the t-test post-test of experimental and control group from the calculation above, the result showed that the t-value was 2.056. for = 5% and df = 30 + 30 2 = 58, t(0.05)(58) = 2.002. the t-table was 2.018, so the t-value was higher than the ttable. based on the computation above, it showed that there was a significant difference on post test result between experimental and control groups because t-value exceeds ttable (2.056 > 2.002). the use of calculating t-test in post-test was to prove that there were significant differences between the result in control and experimental group. in this part, if sig. (-2 tailed) was lower than 0.05 then there were significant differences between control and experimental group in achieving the result of post-test. from the result in tables of post-test t-test was shown that sig. (2-tailed) was 0.01 and t-test was 2.056. if the result of t-test in post-test was positive, and sig. (2-tailed) was lower than 0.05. it indicated that there were significant difference between control and experimental group in achieving the result of post-test. null hypothesis (ho) was rejected and alternative hypothesis ha) was accepted because t-value was higher than t-table (t value > t table). in conclusion, teaching writing descriptive text by using photographs in instagram was more effective to improve students` speaking skill of the eighth grade students of smp n 1 ungaran in academic year of 2016/2017 than the existing technique that used in that school. conclusions there was significant difference in the achievement in understanding in writing descriptive text for both experimental and control group. it can be seen from the final score of the each group. at the first, the average of pretest between the experimental and control groups were 62.90 and 60.23. then after the students got the treatments, the score for experimental group became 74.80 and m. purwandari / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 141 72.63 for the control group. and another result can be seen from the t-test result. the t-test result showed that t-value was 2.056 and t-table for α = 5% was 2.002. it means that t-value is higher than the critical value. from the result, finally, the researcher concluded that there was a significant difference between experimental and control group. by applying photograph, the students were encouraged to be active and creative. it gave them more motivation during the learning process. photograph in instagram helps the students in learning english independently, especially writing skill. furthermore, most of the students said that they were interested using photograph in instagram during learning writing descriptive text. they stated that photograph in instagram was effective to help them to improve their writing skill. references anderson, m. and k. anderson. 1997. text type in english. south yarra: macmillan education australia pty lid. arikunto, s. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: pt rineka cipta. boardman, c. a., frydenberg, j. 2001. writing to communicate: paragraph and essays, second edition. new york: pearson education. djuharie ,otong s. 2007. genre. bandung: cv. yrama widya. page 24. harmer, jeremy. 2007. how to teach english. england: longman. harmer, j. 2004. how to teach writing. essex: longman. hikmah. 2007. pictures as a means of teaching writing to the second year students of sma n 1 weleri kabupaten kendal in the academic year of 2006/2007. a final project: english depatment of unnes: unpublished. oshima, a, and hogue, a.1997. introduction to academic writing, second edition. new york: addison wesley longman. palmer, b.c. et. al. 1994. developing cultural literacy through the writing process. usa: allyn and bacon. sudjana, nana and ahmad rivai. 2007. media pengajaran. bandung: sinar baru algesindo. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421f894e1fef • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 165 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the analysis of unit-shifts in a subtitle of the hobbit third sequel rita zoraya, djoko sutopo, yuliati  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: translation, unit-shift, subtitle english to indonesian. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is about the analysis of unit-shifts that occur in the translation of subtitle a film entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. various subtitles were already created to make it easier for audience to understand this film. the result of this study shows that there are 14 unit-shifts that occur with various frequencies. with 144 of total unit-shifts that occur in this study, the detail of each unit-shift type as follow: 2 unit-shifts for morpheme into phrase type; 8 unit-shifts for morpheme into word type; 5 unitshifts for phrase into sentence type; 9 unit-shifts for sentence into phrase type; 12 unit-shifts for clause into sentence type; 14 unit-shifts for sentence into clause type; 23 unit-shifts for clause into word type; 1 unit-shift for word into clause type; 35 unit-shifts for phrase into word type; 5 unit-shifts for word into phrase type; 22 unit-shifts for sentence into word type; 6 unit-shifts for word into sentence type; 1 unitshift for phrase into clause type; and 1 unit-shift for clause into phrase type. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 166 introduction language as a means of communication has been used by human for thousands of years. it will be very hard to imagine if we do not have language as a means of communication since the role of language is very important for human being in order to help them in conveying thoughts, ideas, and even to do transactions, commerce and international cooperation. to get the idea about what actually a language is, we need to take a look at some definitions which are offered by language experts. the first definition is as said by chomsky (1957) that “language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length, and constructed out of a finite set of elements”, then we can conclude that each languages in the world will have their own length and constructed out of a finite set of different elements. we can agree that there is a vast diversity between these languages which takes form of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary etc. the diversity as mentioned before are only if we take a look at diversity in language from oral languang point of view. we do not yet talk about diversity in language from written point of view. however, to simplify the problem, this study only take a look at the oral language. nevertheless, this diversity can be a barrier to maintain a good communications between 2 or more different languages. the most common technique to overcome this barrier is by using translation. munday (2001: 4) stated that the term translation itself has several meanings: it can refer to the general subject field, the product (the text which has been translated) or the process (the act of producing the translation), otherwise known as translating. scholars have many opinions about the translation meaning. however they can agree that the purpose of translation remains the same, which is to transfer equivalent message from one language to another language. similar with the other things that happen around the human evolution, languages will also change and improve throughout human development. new words are invented, or even sometimes they are forgotten. this fact creates a challenge for the study of translation to keep developing also, in order to maintain its purpose as a bridge to connect one language to another. another challenge, which occurs in translation, is the realization that even the best translator will not able to provide the perfect translation. as explained by nida (1964) in venuti (2000: 126) that there can be no absolute correspondence between languages since no two languages are identical. as the result, since there are no two identical languages, then the shifts in translation cannot be avoided. catford (1965) in venuti (2000: 141) stated that shifts mean the departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from source language (sl) to target language (tl). catford said that there are two major types of shifts that occur, namely level shifts and category shifts. level shift is a shift from grammar to lexis. it means that a grammatical unit in english, such as noun, affix, etc, has a lexical unit in indonesian as its translation equivalent (machali, 1998: 14). for example, “jakarta is the biggest city in indonesia” which is translated as “jakarta merupakan kota terbesar di indonesia”. the form “is” as a unit in english grammar is translated into indonesian by the lexis “merupakan”. this final project focuses on category shifts. however, we should know that there are four kinds of category shifts: structure shifts; class shifts; unit shifts; and intra-system shifts. structure shifts grammatically occur at any ranks of language where words, phrase, clauses, or sentences in sl has its translation equivalent with the same rank in tl so only their structures are different. catford (1965:77) gave an example of structure shifts in phrase rank from 'a beautiful woman' with adjective + noun in english to 'wanita yang cantik' with noun + adjective in indonesian. class shifts occur when the translation equivalent of a sl item is a member of a different class from the original item. an example given by catford (1965:79) clearly showed a change of class r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 167 english clause 'they insist on higher wages' is translated into an indonesian clause 'mereka menuntut kenaikan gaji'. the example shows that the english adjective of comparative 'higher' changes to indonesian noun 'kenaikan'. unit shifts occur when the translation equivalent of a unit at one rank in the sl is a unit at different rank in the tl. an example comes from the translation of english clause 'my father is very nice' to indonesian clause 'ayahku sangat baik' where a phrase in sl 'my father' has a word 'ayahku' in tl as its equivalence. based on the combination between rank in english, there will be 14 kinds of unit-shifts that are possible to occur during translation. they are morpheme into phrase type;morpheme into word type; phrase into sentence type; sentence into phrase type; clause into sentence type; sentence into clause type; clause into word type; word into clause type; phrase into word type; word into phrase type; sentence into word type; word into sentence type; phrase into clause type;and clause into phrase type. the last shifts, intra-system-shifts, are the shifts occurring internally within the system of the language concerned. the system involves a selection of a non-corresponding word in the system of tl. an example of this is: sl: they need a pair of weapons. tl: mereka membutuhkan sebuah senjata. it is obviously seen from the example above that though we have a corresponding plural form of „weapons‟ (e.g. through repetition of the word „senjata‟ in bahasa indonesia), system in bahasa indonesia needs the use of the singular form of „a pair‟. catford (1965: 79) said that unit shift is simply defined as changes of rank. it is about departures from formal correspondence where in the translation equivalent of a unit at one rank in the source language (sl) is a unit at a dissimilar rank in the target language (tl). for instance, adjective in the source language (sl) is translated into a clause in the target language (tl). some examples of unit shifts are: 1. sl (english) we watched some unsportmanlike decisions from the referee. tl (bahasa indonesia) kita menyaksikan beberapa keputusan-keputusan yang tidak adil oleh sang wasit. from the examples above, it is clearly seen that there is a change of rank in unit shifts, namely the morpheme “un” turning into a word “tidak”. 2. sl (english) last night, the storm was really terrible. tl (bahasa indonesia) semalam, badainya benar-benar buruk. from the examples above, it is clearly seen that there is a change of rank in unit shifts, namely the phrase “last night” turning into a word “semalam”. according to larson (1984: 15) translation is classified into two main types, namely form-based and meaning-based (idiomatic) translation. form-based translation attempts to follow the form of the source language (sl) and it is known as literal translation, while meaning-based translation makes every effort to communicate the meaning of the sl text in the natural forms of the receptor language. such translation is called idiomatic translation. a literal translation sounds like nonsense and has little communication value (larson, 1984: 15). the literal translation can be understood if the general grammatical form of the two languages is similar. larson (1984: 16) said that idiomatic translations use the natural forms of the receptor language both in the grammatical constructions and in the choices of lexical items. a truly idiomatic translation does not sound like translation. the example of form-based translation and meaning-based translation as below: r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 168 no sl (english) tl (bahasa indonesia) form based translation meaning-based translation 1. who has he been living with? (margono, 1999: 4) siapa telah dia tinggal dengan? (margono, 1999: 4) dengan siapa dia tinggal? (margono, 1999: 4) 2. they've brought an apocalypse upon our heads! mereka telah membawa kehancuran di atas kepala kita! mereka telah membawa kehancuran pada kita! table 1.1 example of form-based and meaning-based translation based on the purposes of translation, brislin in choliludin (2007: 26-30) categorized translation into four types, namely: 1) pragmatic translation: it refers to the translation of a message with an interest in accuracy of the information that was meant to be conveyed in the sl form and it is not conveyed with other aspects of the original language version. example: the translation of the information about repairing a machine. 2) aesthetic-poetic translation: it refers to translation in which the translator takes into account the affect, emotion, and feeling of an original version, the aesthetic form used by the original author, as well as any information in the message. example: the translation of sonnet, rhyme, heroic couplet, dramatic dialogue, and novel. 3) ethnographic translation: its purpose is to explicate the cultural context of the sl and tl versions. translators have to be sensitive to the way words are used and must know how the word fits into cultures. example: the use of the word „yes‟ versus „yeah‟ in america. 4) linguistic translation: is concerned with equivalent meanings of the constituent morphemes of the sl and grammatical form. example: language in a computer program and translation machine. meanwhile, the other language expert, catford (1978: 21) had different preference for a more linguistic-based approach to translation and this approach was based on the linguistic work of firth and halliday. his main contribution in the field of translation theory was the introduction of the concepts of types and shifts of translation. catford proposed very broad types of translation in terms of three criteria: the extent of translation (full translation vs partial translation); the grammatical rank at which the translation equivalence is established (rank-bound translation vs. unbounded translation); the levels of language involved in translation (total translation vs. restricted translation). in this study, i analyze deeper about the second type as explained by catford. rank-bound translation, it means that the selection of tl text equivalent is limited at only one rank, such as wordfor-word equivalence, morpheme-for-morpheme equivalence, etc. unbounded translation, it can move freely up and down the rank-scale. here is some example for the rank-bound translation and unbounded translation: r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 169 no sl (english) tl (bahasa indonesia) bound translation unbounded translation 1. never mind the books. jangan pikirkan bukubukunya lupakan buku – bukunya. 2. open this door! buka pintu ini! buka pintunya! 3. i can see him! aku bisa melihat dia! aku bisa melihatnya! table 1.2 example of bound and unbounded translation the source of data in this final project is the subtitles of a movie entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. the source language (sl) of the movie subtitles is english and the target language (tl) is bahasa indonesia. the unit shifts which occur in the movie will be analyzed in this final project. as stated by christina (2002: 7), subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. they can either be a form of written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added information to help viewers who are deaf and hard-of-hearing to follow the dialog, or people who cannot understand the spoken dialogue or who have accent recognition problems. it is common to find some subtitle which the meaning is not equivalence, because as explained before that there are no two identical languages, so if the source language is bluntly translated into the target language then the result will be not quite communicative. however, a good subtitle will provide the equivalence meaning which minimize the wrong impression from the audience about what is truly happening in the movie. this study has a purpose to analyze the types of shifts which exist in the translation of indonesian subtitle of the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. it will also find out the translation level in indonesian subtitle of the hobbit: the battle of the five armies is good enough or not, since the occurrence of the shifts found in translations will also indicate the smoothness of the translations themselves. methodology of the research this study used descriptive qualitative method. it means that an analysis explanation in a form of descriptive text will be used to explain the result of this study. however , there is also a simple formula which is going to be used in this study either. even though the formula will only be used to support the analysis the data. the formula is not going to be the main focus on the research. according to huberman and miles (1994: 45), “qualitative data is usually in the form of words rather than numbers. the qualitative data were the sources of well-grounded, rich descriptions and explanations of processes in identifiable context of words, sentences, utterances and dialogues”. the definition clarifies that qualitative research does not use enumeration or counting. it deals to describe, analyze, and interpret an object that is observed. creswell, as cited by sugiono (2011:31), states that qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. the process of research involves emerging questions and procedures; collecting data in participants‟ setting; analyzing the data inductively, building from particulars to general themes; and making interpretation of the meaning of data. the final written report has a flexible writing structure.” r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 170 bogdan and biklen, as quoted by sugiono (2011), formulate the characteristics of qualitative research as follows:  qualitative research has the natural setting as the direct source of data and the key of instrument.  qualitative research is descriptive. the data collected is in the form of words of pictures rather than number.  qualitative research is concerned with process rather than simply with outcomes or products. qualitative research tends to analyze their data inductively. in conducting this study, i used some observation sheets to get the data. first of all, i created comparison sheet between the subtitle in source language (english) and target language (indonesian). all the translation in each subtitle will be listed in this sheet, including them which do not have unit shifts. the example of the comparison sheet as below: the example of comparison sheet english subtitle indonesian subtitle 00:01:13,490 --> 00:01:14,573 i warned you. 00:01:14,824 --> 00:01:17,701 did i not warn you what would comeof dealing with dwarves? 00:01:17,952 --> 00:01:19,036 now they've done it. 00:01:19,287 --> 00:01:20,454 they've woken the dragon! 00:01:20,705 --> 00:01:22,748 they've brought an apocalypse upon our heads! 00:01:12,391 --> 00:01:13,725 sudah kuperingatkan kau ! 00:01:13,726 --> 00:01:16,604 bukankah sudah kuberitahu akibat berurusan dengan kurcaci ? 00:01:16,854 --> 00:01:18,188 sekarang merekatelah melakukannya ! 00:01:18,189 --> 00:01:19,606 mereka membangunkan sang naga ! 00:01:19,607 --> 00:01:21,650 membawa kehancuran pada kita. as we can see in the table 3.1, each sentence in english subtitle will have its pair in indonesian. i also put the time marker on each sentence to ease the analyzing process. the time markers are slightly different, because the creator of those subtitles are not the same person. r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 171 there is another observation sheet that i use in conducting this study, which is the analyzing sheet. in this sheet, the unit shifts between st and tt will be elaborated thoroughly. we can see the example of analyzing sheet as below: the example of analyzing sheet u n it s h if ts m o rp h e m e in to w o rd t im e 0 0 :0 1 :1 3 ,4 9 0 > 0 0 :0 1 :1 4 ,5 7 3 e x p la n a ti o n t h e e n g li sh m o rp h e m e e d i s tr a n sl a te d i n to t h e w o rd s u d a h i n b a h a sa i n d o n e si a . t h e re i s a c h a n g e fr o m m o rp h e m e i n to w o rd . b a c k t ra n sl a ti o n i d id w a rn y o u ! t a rg e t t e x t s u d a h k u p e ri n g a tk a n k a u ! s o u rc e t e x t i w a rn e d y o u ! n o . 1 below is the sequence of methods that i use in this study. 1) observing. first of all, i observed my data by watching carefully the film several times both with indonesian and english subtitles. this step is crucial since we know that the translations sometimes depend on the situtation like how the source language is spoken, who is the speaker, who is the listener etc. 2) collecting. r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 172 second step was to collect the data by downloading the subtitles and then turned them into the comparison sheet as explained before. this step must be done carefully. for subtitle in source language, i think there is not so much different between one subtitle and others. in other hand, it is better if we choose a subtitle with good translation quality for target language. since it willbe easier to detect the unit-shifts that may occur if compared with bad translation in a subtitle which uses literal translation. 3) identifying. i identified the data in the comparison sheet carefully and then deleted all the sentences in the sheet except for those which had the unit shifts. 4) analyzing. i analyzed the simplified data to know which unit shifts occur in each pair of sentences and then rewrite them into the analyzing sheet. result and discussion as we know, there are no 2 same languages in this world. as the result, there must be shifts which would occur in the translation process from source language into target language. it is been clear that translation deals about meaning. as long as the core meaning is maintained, it is acceptable to involve any shifts in the translation. the shifts themselves are various. there are level shifts, category shifts, and meaning shifts. this study is concerned with one aspect of category shifts, which is unit-shifts. unit-shifts occur when the translation equivalent of a unit at one rank in the sl is a unit at different rank in the tl. we know already that there are 5 rank in language. they are morpheme, word, phrase, clause and sentence. in this study, i analyze the unit-shifts that occur in the translation of subtitles from english (source language) into indonesian (target language) of a hollywood film entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. this film is the last chapter of the hobbit trilogy. i found all types of unit-shifts occur in the translation of this film‟s subtitle. it is understandable, since english and indonesian are so different in their unit ranks. in order to make it clearer, i make a summary for the result of this study. the table which shows the summary can be seen as below. type of the unit shifts findings number total 1 morpheme into phrase 113, 134 2 2 morpheme into word 28, 44, 46, 66, 70, 99, 112, 118 8 3 phrase into sentence 12, 77, 95, 98, 124 5 4 sentence into phrase 5, 24, 36, 63, 82, 106, 136, 142, 143 9 5 clause into sentence 79, 92, 94, 96, 102, 115, 119, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141 12 6 sentence into clause 3, 7, 38, 87, 89, 91, 103, 104, 108, 116, 117, 120, 125, 130 14 r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 173 7 clause into word 11, 33, 37, 51, 52, 59, 60, 72, 73, 74, 76, 78, 81, 86, 88, 90, 97, 101, 123, 126, 128, 132, 133 23 8 word into clause 114 1 9 phrase into word 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, 35, 39, 41, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 57, 61, 67, 69, 75, 80, 83, 84, 85, 109, 122, 129 35 10 word into phrase 53, 54, 68, 71, 100 5 11 sentence into word 9, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 25, 31, 34, 40, 42, 43, 55, 56, 58, 64, 65, 105, 111, 121, 137, 144 22 12 word into sentence 1, 30, 93, 107, 127, 131 6 13 phrase into clause 110 1 14 clause into phrase 62 1 total 144 there are 144 unit-shifts findings in the translation of subtitle of the film entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies from sl english to tl indonesian. each findings have been analyzed thoroughly and carefully to avoid any mistake in identifying the unit-shifts which occur in it. the „number‟ indicates the number of order which is also shown in the appendix. i have made the list of findings in the appendix in order of its appearance in the film itself. furthermore, below is the result of bungin‟s formula for the findings of unit-shifts in the translation of subtitle of the film entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. bungin‟s formula: with: p = number of percentages f = frequency of a certain unit shifts occurance n = total number of unit shifts found type of the unit shifts total findings percentage 1 morpheme into phrase 2 2% 2 morpheme into word 8 5% 3 phrase into sentence 5 4% r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 174 4 sentence into phrase 9 6% 5 clause into sentence 12 8% 6 sentence into clause 14 10% 7 clause into word 23 16% 8 word into clause 1 1% 9 phrase into word 35 24% 10 word into phrase 5 3% 11 sentence into word 22 15% 12 word into sentence 6 4% 13 phrase into clause 1 1% 14 clause into phrase 1 1% total 144 100% i can conclude that the unit-shifts from bigger rank unit to smaller one are more commonly found in the translation from english to indonesian subtitle of a film entitled the hobbit: the battle of the five armies. as example there are 35 unit-shifts from phrase into word, meanwhile only 5 unit-shifts from word into phrase. the reason is probably because the language in the sl is actually an “old” english like in the elizabethan era. we know that british english is different if compared to american or australian english which are simpler. the complexity in the sl make it harder to translator to find the equal translation in tl. thus, he/she simplified the translation into smaller rank unit. as example is the finding number 2. in the sl, it said “never mind the books.”, and it is translated as “lupakan buku bukunya!”. the literal translation would be “jangan pernah pikirkan buku-bukunya!”, however it will be rather odd to use it in indonesian conversation. the closest translation will be “jangan pikirkan buku-bukunya”, and even though it is acceptable to say it in indonesian, i agree that it will be more suitable to say “lupakan buku-bukunya” instead since it has the same meaning and it is proper to use in such a hurry situation. conclusions based on the result of this study, and my experience in conducting this study, i would like to recommend some suggestions as below: 1) for similar studies in the future, it is better to analyze the subtitle a film from british english than american/australian english. since the british english is commonly r. zoraya & d. sutopo & yuliati / journal of english language teaching 6 (2) (2017) 175 more complicated compared to american/australian ones. this way, it is more likely that the study will find more unit-shifts in the translation from sl to tl. 2) for the translators, we must realize and accept that there are no 2 same languages in the worlds. when i was searching for the subtitle of the film the hobbit: the battle of the five armies, i find there are a lot of bad subtitles created by other translators. almost all of them are due to the translators tried to use literal translation from sl to tl which make the core meaning is slightly or sometimes badly damaged. references catford, john c. 1965. a linguistic theory of translation: an essay on applied linguistics. london: oxford university press. indrawan, rully and yaniawati, poppy. 2014. metode penelitian kuantitatif kualitatif & campuran. bandung: refika aditama. mason, jennifer.2002. qualitative researching. london: sage publication ltd. sugiyono. 2015. metode penelitian pendidikan pendekatan kuantitatif, kualitatif, & r&d. bandung: alfabeta central institute of indian languages. anukriti net available at http://www.anukriti.net/pgdts/course411/index.html accessed on june 12, 2017 ordudari, mahmoud. translation procedures, strategies and methods available at http://translationjournal.net/journal/41culture.htm accessed on june 15, 2017 vanilla. translation shifts available at http://transvanilla.blogspot.co.id/2010/04/translation-shifts.html accessed on june 13, 2017 alzuhdy, yosa abduh. 2014. analisis translation shift dalam penerjemahan bilingual bahasa inggris – bahasa indonesia available at: http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/default/files/penelitian/yosa-abduh-alzuhdy-ss-mhum/artikel-diksiyosa-catford.pdf accessed on june 13, 2017 herman. 2014. category shifts in the english translation of harry potter and the philosopher‟s stone movie subtitle into indonesia (an applied linguistics study) available at: http://iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/vol19-issue12/version-5/f0191253138.pdf accessed on june 14, 2017 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 102 elt forum 6 (2) (2017) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt translation procedures of physics terms in the physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi mareta permata sari, issy yuliasri  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2017 approved in november 2017 published in december 2017 ________________ keywords: translation procedures, accuracy, physics terms, bilingual book ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study attempted to analyze the use of translation procedures and their accuracy. the objectives of the study were to describe the translation procedures used to translate the physics terms and to identify their accuracy in physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi. this research was conducted qualitatively. this study applied the theory proposed by vinay and darbelnet (in hatim and munday 2004:30) about translation procedures and the accuracy criteria of translation assessment by nababan (2012:50). the results of the study showed that there were 119 data of physics terms and three translation procedures found in this study. the three translation procedures were equivalence, calque and transposition. the translation procedure mostly used was equivalence, followed by calque and transposition. in terms of accuracy, three raters found that around 99.15% of the data were translated accurately, whereas the rest 0.84% of the data were inaccurately translated. the translation procedure with the highest accuracy was equivalence, followed by calque and transposition. thus, the equivalence procedure was mostly used and had the highest accuracy rating in this research, followed by calque and transposition. © 2017 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 103 introduction to begin with, the existence of rsbi (the pioneering of international standard school) in secondary education has piled up in indonesia. the use of english in rsbi schools is to make students and teachers get used to english. the use of english is in line with the purpose of rsbi schools that is to be the international standard school. rsbi schools use english in teaching learning activities. teachers in rsbi schools are also taught english in order to enable them to teach. in order to make the teachers and students acquainted with english, they are equipped with supportive textbooks in teaching learning activities. the supportive textbooks mentioned above are bilingual books. the bilingual books are provided with two languages indonesian and english. regarding the use of bilingual textbooks in rsbi schools, i am interested in using physics bilingual book for this research. according to oxford advanced learners’s dictionary, term is a word or phrase used as the name of something, especially one connected with a particular type of language. however, physics is the scientific study of matter and energy and the relationships between them, including the study of forces, heat, light, sound, electricity and the structure of atoms. in addition, physics is one of the lessons which is full of scientific terms and complicated formulas. besides, the studies about physics terms are just few. those things make physics more interesting to be studied. in this case, in indonesia the use of bilingual textbook is in line with the need to acknowledge english as an international language. automatically, the secondary education students who are acquainted with english in their bilingual textbooks will be at some advantages. first, students can obtain the knowledge from the subjects. second, students will be familiar with the english terms related to the subjects. the last, students will be having less difficulty in learning from international journals which indeed use english as the language. the publishers of bilingual textbooks need translators who are acquainted well with english to translate foreign languages into indonesian language. the translators, at least, should have high proficiency in english. they are demanded to have a good ability in translating english textbooks as the source of information in education into the target text in indonesian. besides, translation work needs translation procedures in which it is not an easy task to do. the translation procedure is needed to obtain a high quality of translation in target language or at least equal with the source language. there are some procedures of translation as the way to gain at least adequate results of translation. vinay and darbelnet’s in hatim and munday (2004:30) categorization of translation procedures is very detailed. they name two ‘methods’ covering seven procedures including 1) direct translation, which covers borrowing, calque and literal translation, and 2) oblique translation, which is transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation. in this case, translators need to be careful to translate such difficult source texts, for example, the one which has physics terms. translators should make the translation work accurate as the intended meaning in the source text. in order to know whether a translation is good or not, it would be better if a translation is evaluated by experts. the experts can evaluate the accuracy of a translation. according to nababan (2008:86), an assessment toward the quality of a translation mainly focuses on the accuracy. newmark (1988:173) suggested that that some kind of accuracy must be the only criterion of a good translation in the future what kind of accuracy depending first on the type and then the particular text that has been translated and that the word 'sub-text’ with its gricean implications and implicatures can be made to cover a multitude of inaccuracies. moreover, to translate such scientific terms, it must be appropriate with the scientist’s intention. after confirming to the editor of yudhistira, i acknowledge that the editor of the book which is used in this research uses the direction of translation from indonesian into english. the materials in the book were extracted from the bibliography. the materials were synchronized with the curriculum for the time being. the editor uses the books reference for reference only. hence, i intend to analyze the translation m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 104 procedure and accuracy of the translated physics terms in physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi published by yudhistira. the selection of translation procedure in translating technical terms was very essential because it affected the validity and accuracy of the data. therefore, this research will contribute to determine whether the physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi is good enough to be studied as a guide for physics lesson for secondary education students. methodology of the research this research includes in qualitative research method. patton (1990) states qualitative research methodologies are designed to provide the researcher with the perspective of participants through immersion in a culture or situation and direct interaction with those under study. the object of the study is the physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi. this book contains many physics terms. the object of the study focused on the physics terms in the form of indonesian language as source language and the translation product in the form of english language terms as the target language. there were two aspects analyzed in this study. they were the translation procedure of the physics terms and the accuracy of the translated physics terms. the accuracy of the translated physics terms was evaluated by raters who are expert in indonesian-english language. in conducting this study, there were some stages which should be done in order to obtain the data. the stages were collecting all the data from the book, writing down all the data derived from the book in a table, identifying and classifying the data based on translation procedures proposed by vinay and darbelnet, calculating the frequency and percentage of translation procedures in the data in order to obtain the information related to the frequent used of translation procedure happen in the data, interpreting the result of the assessment of raters in term of accuracy of the translated physics terms, and drawing conclusion from the outcome of the whole analysis. this research took the data from physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi which was published by yudhistira in 2009. the data are physics terms which first being checked in some dictionaries including oxford advanced learner’s dictionary and dictionary of physics. the translated physics terms are identified and classified based on translation procedures proposed by vinay and darbelnet in tables. i calculated the frequency and percentage of translation procedures in the data. then, i gave questionnaires to the raters. the questionnaires given contain accuracy criterion to analyze whether the translated physics terms is good or not. result and discussion in this study, there were 119 data of physics terms contained in the book of physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi. the physics terms were translated from indonesian into english. there were three translation procedures found in the book. the translation procedures found in the book were equivalence, calque, and transposition. the percentages of translation procedures in the data were resumed in a table as follows: no. translation procedure frequency percentage 1. equivalence 100 84% 2. calque 17 14.28% 3. transposition 2 1.68% table 3.1 table of data tabulation from the data tabulation table, it could be concluded that there were three translation procedures from seven translation procedures proposed by vinay and darbelnet used in translating m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 105 the physics terms in the physics bilingual book. there were 119 data analyzed in the book. the analysis was as follows: the first translation procedure mostly used was equivalence with the frequency of 100 times (84%), followed by calque with the frequency of 17 times (14.28%), and the last translation procedure was transposition with the frequency of 2 times (1.68%). 1. translation procedures 1.1 equivalence equivalence is where one and the same situation can be rendered by two texts using completely different stylistic and structural methods. the classical example of equivalence is given by the reaction of an amateur who accidentally hits his finger with a hammer: if he were french his cry of pain would be transcribed as ‘aïe!’, but if he were english this would be interpreted as ‘ouch!’. the method of creating equivalences is also frequently applied to idioms. the equivalence procedure occurred 100 times with the percentage of 84%. the data of equivalence procedure can be seen from the following datum: a. datum no. 1 source text : sebuah pesawat dari semarang menuju jakarta terbang dengan kecepatan rata-rata 800 km/jam. target text : an airplane flies semarang to jakarta with the average speed of 800 km/hour. the translator translated the term ‘kecepatan’ in indonesian into ‘speed’ in english. in the source text, the technical term ‘kecepatan’ was translated by using equivalence procedure. the context of the text described an airplane flies semarang to jakarta with the average speed of 800 km/hour. the rate of an airplane movement is best described by the term ‘speed’. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘speed’ according to pitt (1977:358) is defined as the rate of increase of distance travelled with time. 1.2 calque a calque is a special kind of borrowing whereby a language borrows an expression form of another, and each of its elements is translated literally. calque is literal translation of a foreign word or phrase lexically as well as structurally. the calque technique occurred 4 times with the frequency of 3%. the calque procedure can be seen from the following datum: a. datum no. 4 st : vektor satuan adalah suatu vektor yang besarnya satu, tanpa satuan, serta arahnya sepanjang sumbu koordinat. tt : a unit vector is a vector, which magnitude is one. it has no unit and its direction is along the axes of the coordinate. the translator translated the term ‘vektor satuan’ in indonesian into ‘unit vector’ in english. in the source text, the technical term ‘vektor satuan’ was translated by using calque procedure. in the source language, the first term ‘vektor’ became the second term in the target language and the second term became the first term. the term ‘vektor’ was translated into ‘vector’ in the target language. the consonant ‘k’ was substituted with the consonant ‘c’ in the target language. the term ‘satuan’ in the source language was translated into ‘unit’ in the target language. 1.3 transposition m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 106 the method called transposition involves replacing one word class with another without changing the meaning of the message. besides, being a special translation procedure, transposition can also be applied within a language. the transposition technique occurred 51 times with the frequency of 43%. the data of transposition procedure was shown by the following examples: a. datum no. 44 st : sebuah partikel bergerak harmonik sederhana. persamaan simpangannya dinyatakan dengan y = 10 sin 0,5t dengan t dalam sekon dan y dalam cm. tentukan percepatan partikel pada t = 2,5 sekon! tt : a particle undergoes simple harmonic motion. its vertical displacement is stated as y = 10 sin 0.5t, where t is in second and y in cm. calculate the particle’s acceleration at t = 2,5 seconds. the translator translated the term ‘bergerak harmonik sederhana’ in indonesian into ‘simple harmonic motion’ in english. in the source text, the technical term ‘bergerak harmonik sederhana’ was translated by using transposition procedure. the words ‘bergerak harmonik sederhana’ in the source language which was a verb turned into ‘simple harmonic motion’ in the target language which was a noun. 2. accuracy score of the translated physics terms no rate of accuracy criteria of accuracy score data number total percentage 1 unanimously rated 1.accurate 3,3,3 005, 006, 011, 012, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019, 020, 021, 023, 026, 028, 029, 031, 032, 034, 037, 038, 039, 040, 041, 042, 044, 049, 050, 051, 052, 053, 055, 056, 057, 058, 061, 063, 065, 068, 069, 070, 073, 074, 075, 076, 077, 078, 079, 081, 082, 083, 084, 085, 086, 089, 090, 091, 092, 093, 094, 095, 099, 102, 104, 105, 106, 108, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119 73 61% 2. not quite accurate 2,2,2 3.inaccurate 1,1,1 2. not unanimously rated 1.accurate 3,3,2 59 1 0.84% 3,2,3 07, 33, 46, 67, 100 5 4.2% 2,3,3 02, 03, 04,08, 09, 10, 13, 24, 25, 30, 35, 43, 60, 64, 66, 80, 87, 88, 96, 97, 98, 101, 109, 111, 116, 117 26 21.8% 2,2,3 01, 22, 47, 48, 71, 107 6 5% 2,3,2 54, 72 2 1.68% 1,3,3 14, 45, 62, 103 4 3.36% 2,3,1 36 1 0.84% 2.inaccurate 1,2,2 27 1 0.84% m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 107 table 3.2 table of data tabulation from the data tabulation table, it could be concluded that there were two rate of accuracy. the first rate of accuracy was unanimously rated and not unanimously rated. based on the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, unanimously rated is defined as ‘if a decision or an opinion is unanimous, it is agreed or shared by everyone in a group. in unanimously rated data, the raters rated the data similarly. the raters rated the data by giving similar score. in unanimously rated data, there were three criteria of accuracy. they are accurate, not quite accurate and inaccurate. the accurate data were given score 3 by the three raters. the not quite accurate data were given score 2 by the three raters. then, inaccurate data were given score 1 by the three raters. however, in this research, i only found the accurate data for unanimously rated data. there were 73 data were found ‘accurate’ from 119 data with the percentage of 61.34%. the 73 data were accurate because the three raters gave the score 3. the 73 data included in ‘unanimously rated’ data. the second rate of accuracy was not unanimously rated. it was the reverse of unanimously rated. the data became not unanimously rated because the raters were not unanimous in giving score for the data. it means that there were differences on assessment of raters who rated the accuracy of the data. there were data which assessed differently. in not unanimously rated data, there were also three criteria of accuracy. they are accurate, not quite accurate and inaccurate. the accurate data was suitable based on the dictionary of physics and the raters’s perspectives on their assessment. the not quite accurate data was suitable based on the dictionary of physics, but they were rather differently with the raters’ assessment. then, the inaccurate data was not suitable based on the dictionary of physics. however, in this research, i found the various score forms included in ‘not unanimously rated’ data. the difference score forms happened because the three raters gave different score for each physics term. the data which included in accurate data was the first score variant 3,3,2 with the frequency of 1 time (0.84%). the second score variant was 3,2,3 with the frequency of 5 times (4.2%). the third score variant was 2,3,3 with the frequency of 26 times (21.8%). the fourth score variant was 2,2,3 with the frequency of 6 times (5%). the fifth score variant was 2,3,2 with the frequency of 2 times (1.68%). the sixth score variant was 1,3,3 with the frequency of 4 times (3.36%). the seventh score variant was 2,3,1 with the frequency of 1 time (0.84%). ‘then, the last data was ‘inaccurate’ data with the frequency of 1 time (0.84%). there were 45 data were found ‘accurate’ from 119 data with the percentage of 37.81%. the 45 data included in ‘not unanimously rated’ data. the inaccurate datum score was 1,2,2 given by the three raters. based on the analysis above, there were two criteria of accuracy found in this study. they were accurate and inaccurate criteria. the accurate data was gained by calculating the accurate data from ‘unanimously rated’ data and ‘not unanimously rated’ data. the accurate data from ‘unanimously rated’ data was 73 data with the percentage of 61.34%. the accurate data from ‘not unanimously rated’ data was 45 data with the percentage of 37.81%. thus, the total of accurate data was 118 data with the percentage of 99.15%. however, the ‘inaccurate’ data was 1 datum with the percentage of 0.84%. the analysis showed that around 99.15% of the data were translated accurately, whereas the rest 0.84% of the data was inaccurately translated. 2.1 unanimously rated 2.1.1 accurate criteria the data became unanimously rated because the raters were unanimous in giving score for the data. it means that there was similarity on assessment of raters who rated the accuracy of the data. there were data which assessed similarly. the accurate data was suitable based on the dictionary of physics and the raters’s perspectives on their assessment. the criteria of accurate translation were given the score of 3 by the three raters. there were 73 data from 119 data or 61% in this research. the data of accurate data can be seen from the following datum: m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 108 a. datum no. 6 st : perubahan kecepatan tiap satuan waktu disebut sebagai percepatan. tt : the change of velocity per unit of time is called acceleration. the score given by each rater was 3. each rater gave score 3 toward the translated physics term above. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘acceleration’ according to pitt (1977:12) is defined as the rate of increase of velocity with time expressed in metres per second (m s-2) or other similar units. thus, the meaning of ‘acceleration’ described the same situation as ‘percepatan’. it indicated that the translated physics term of ‘percepatan’ from indonesian (source language) into ‘acceleration’ in english (target language) was accurate without distortion of meaning. the three raters also thought that the term ‘percepatan’ should be translated into term ‘acceleration’ in the target text. 2.2 not unanimously rated 2.2.1 accurate criteria 2.2.1.1 accurate data (score 3, 3, and 2 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 3 by the first rater, score 3 by the second rater, and score 2 by the third rater can be seen from the following datum: a. datum no. 59 st : hukum kekekalan momentum menyatakan bahwa jumlah momentum sebelum tumbukan sama dengan jumlah momentum setelah tumbukan. tt : the law of momentum conservation states that the sum of momentum before collision equals to the sum of momentum after collision. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘the law of momentum conservation’ according to pitt (1977:80) is defined as ‘in any system of mutually interacting or impinging particles, the linear momentum in any fixed direction remains unaltered unless there is an external force acting in that direction. besides, i also confirmed to the first, second and the third rater about their perspectives on the ‘the law of momentum conservation’ term. the first rater thought that ‘the law of momentum conservation’ term was accurate without distortion of meaning. the second rater also thought that ‘the law of momentum conservation’ term was accurate without distortion of meaning. the third rater which gave score 2 in the first time changed her perspective on the technical term after realizing her mistake in giving assessment. the third rater then said that the term of ‘the law of momentum conservation’ was accurate. 2.2.1.2 accurate data (score 3, 2, and 3 by three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 3 by the first rater, score 2 by the second rater, and score 3 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a. datum no. 33 st : energi potensial pegas (ep) dapat diperoleh dengan menghitung luas daerah di bawah kurva. tt : the area in the graph indicates the potential energy of the spring (ep). in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘potential energy’ according to pitt (1977:171) is defined as ‘the energy possessed by a body or system by virtue of position, m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 109 equal to the work done in changing the system from some standard configuration to its existing state’. the first and third rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means they agreed that the term of ‘potential energy’ was accurate. meanwhile, the second rater gave score 2 to the technical term. then, i confirmed to the second rater about her perspective on the ‘potential energy’ term. the second rater had doubts about the technical term. the second rater thought that the term ‘potential energy’ was a little less accurate but did not change the original meaning. however, in the dictionary of physics, the term of ‘potential energy’ existed. thus, the term of ‘potential energy’ included in accurate data. 2.2.1.3 accurate data (score 2, 3, and 3 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 2 by the first rater, score 3 by the second rater, and score 3 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a. datum no. 4 st : vektor satuan adalah suatu vektor yang besarnya satu, tanpa satuan, serta arahnya sepanjang sumbu koordinat. tt : a unit vector is a vector, which magnitude is one. it has no unit and its direction is along the axes of the coordinate. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘unit vector’ according to pitt (1977:402) is defined as ‘vectors, usually written i, j, and k, that have unit length and lie along the x-, y-, and z axes respectively’. the second and third rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means they agreed that the term of ‘unit vector’ was accurate. meanwhile, the first rater gave score 2 to the technical term. the first rater which gave score 2 in the first time changed his perspective on the technical term after realizing his mistake in giving assessment. the first rater then said that the term of ‘unit vector’ was accurate. meanwhile, in the dictionary of physics, the term of ‘unit vector’ existed. i also thought that the term of ‘unit vector’ was accurate based on the dictionary of physics and the dominant score by the second and third rater. 2.2.1.4 accurate data (score 2, 2, and 3 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 2 by the first rater, score 2 by the second rater, and score 3 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a. datum no. 22 st : medan gravitasi didefinisikan sebagai daerah yang masih mendapat pengaruh gaya gravitasi. tt : gravitational field is defined as the region that is still affected by gravity. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘gravitational field’ according to pitt (1977:171) is defined as ‘the space surrounding a massive body in which another massive body experiences a force of attraction’. the third rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means the third rater agreed that the term of ‘gravitational field’ was accurate. meanwhile, the first and second rater gave score 2 to the technical term. the first and second rater had doubts about the technical term. the first rater thought that the term was not far from the translation target. the second rater thought that the technical term was a little less accurate. meanwhile, in the dictionary of physics, the term of ‘gravitational field’ existed. then, i confirmed to a physics lecturer in semarang state university m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 110 about the ‘gravitational field’ term. she thought that the term of ‘gravitational field’ was accurate. thus, the term of ‘gravitational field’ included in accurate data. 2.2.1.5 accurate data (score 2, 3, and 2 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 2 by the first rater, score 3 by the second rater, and score 2 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a. datum no. 72 st : resultan semua gaya gravitasi (gaya berat) partikel-partikel penyusun benda berada pada titik tertentu. titik itu merupakan titik tangkap gaya berat atau sering disebut sebagai titik berat atau titik pusat massa. tt : the resultant of all gravitational forces (weight forces) of the particles that make up an object is located at a certain point. the capture point of the gravitational force is called the center of gravity or the center of mass of an object. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘center of mass’ according to pitt (1977:62) is defined as ‘a point such that if any plane passes through it, the sum of the products of the masses of the constituent particles by their perpendicular distances from the plane (the sum of the mass moments) is zero’. the second rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means the second rater agreed that the term of ‘center of mass’ was accurate. meanwhile, the first and third rater gave score 2 to the technical term. the first and third rater had doubts about the technical term. the first rater thought that the term was not far from the translation target. the third rater which gave score 2 in the first time changed her perspective on the technical term after realizing her mistake in giving assessment. the third rater then said that the term of ‘center of mass’ was accurate. meanwhile, in the dictionary of physics, the term of ‘center of mass’ existed. then, i confirmed to a physics lecturer in semarang state university about the ‘center of mass’ term. she thought that the term of ‘center of mass’ was accurate. 2.2.1.6 accurate data (score 1, 3, and 3 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 1 by the first rater, score 3 by the second rater, and score 3 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a datum no. 45 st : dua buah partikel melakukan gerakan harmonik pada saat garis lurus. keduanya berangkat dari titik kesetimbangan pada saat dan arah yang sama. periodenya masing-masing 1/4 s dan 1/7 s. berapa beda fasenya setelah kedua partikel itu bergerak selama 0,1 s? tt : two particles are undergoing harmonic motion in the same straight line. both of them start from the equilibrium at the same time and direction. the periods are 1/4 s and 1/7 s respectively. what much is the phase difference between the two particles after 0.1 s? in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘phase difference’ according to pitt (1977:278) is defined as ‘the difference of phrase between two sinusoidal quantities that have the same frequency’. the second and third rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means they agreed that the term of ‘phase difference’ was accurate. meanwhile, the first rater gave score 1 to the technical term. the first rater had doubts about the technical term. the first rater then changed his perspective and said that the term of ‘phase difference’ was a little less accurate but did not change the original meaning. the technical term still delivered the meaning well. meanwhile, in the dictionary of physics, the term of m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 111 ‘phase difference’ existed. then, i confirmed to a physics lecturer in semarang state university about the ‘phase difference’ term. she thought that the term of ‘phase difference’ was accurate. thus, the term of ‘phase difference’ included in accurate data. 2.2.1.7 accurate data (score 2, 3, and 1 by the three raters) the example data for ‘accurate’ data with the score 2 by the first rater, score 3 by the second rater, and score 1 by the third rater can be seen from the following data: a. datum no. 36 st : simpangan adalah jarak antara posisi beban terhadap titik kesetimbangan. tt : displacement is the distance between the position of the weight and the equilibrium point. in the dictionary of physics, the technical term ‘displacement’ according to pitt (1977:110) is defined as ‘a change in position; the distance moved by a given particle of a system from its position of rest when acted upon by a disturbing force’. the second rater gave score 3 to the technical term. it means the second rater agreed that the term of ‘displacement’ was accurate. meanwhile, the first rater gave score 2 to the technical term and the third rater gave score 1 to the technical term. the first rater thought that the technical term was not quite accurate. however, the first rater also thought that the technical term still delivered the meaning well. the third rater thought that the term of ‘displacement’ was not too good translation of ‘simpangan’. the third rater thought that the translation of ‘simpangan’ was ‘deviation’. however, based on the dictionary of physics, the term ‘deviation’ according to pitt (1977:100) is defined as ‘the difference between an observation and its true value’. the meaning of the ‘deviation’ term was not suitable with the term referred in the target text. the third rater suggested me to ask the physics lecturer. then, i confirmed to a physics lecturer in semarang state university about the ‘displacement’ term. she thought that the term of ‘displacement’ was accurate. then, in the dictionary of physics, the term of ‘displacement’ existed. thus, the term of ‘displacement’ included in accurate data. 2.2.2 inaccurate criteria the inaccurate data was not suitable based on the dictionary of physics. the term which i found in the data was different from the term in the dictionary of physics. the datum of ‘inaccurate’ data was given the score 1 by the first rater, score 2 by the second rater, and score 2 by the third rater. the datum of inaccurate data can be seen from the following datum: a. datum no. 27 st : hukum kekekalan energi mekanik dapat digunakan untuk menentukan kecepatan lepas (escape velocity) suatu benda. tt : the law of mechanical energy conservation can be used to determine the escape velocity of an object. in the target text i found the term ‘energy conservation’. however, in the dictionary of physics, the technical term should be ‘conservation of energy’. the term ‘conservation of energy’ according to pitt (1977:80) is defined as ‘the principle of the total energy in any system is constant’. besides, i also confirmed to the first, second and the third rater about their perspectives on the ‘energy conservation’ term. the first rater thought that the term of ‘energy conservation’ was inaccurate or the translation of technical term is inaccurate (or deleted). the second rater thought that the ‘energy conservation’ term changed the original meaning of the technical term. then, the second rater thought m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 112 that the term should not be ‘energy conservation’ but ‘conservation of energy’ because there were differences on cultural background between people who are mastering in physics and english lecturers. the second rater thought that sometimes the use of ‘energy conservation’ term was not a problem for english lecturers or english students. however, it might cost difference for people who are studying physics. the third rater had the same perspective as the second rater. the third rater also thought that the term ‘energy conservation’ should be ‘conservation of energy’. the third rater thought that the term ‘conservation of energy’ was the term which usually being used by people who are studying physics. i also thought that the term ‘conservation of energy’ was the most suitable term to replace the ‘energy conservation’ term. thus, the term of ‘displacement’ in the target text included in inaccurate data. 3. the relation between accuracy rating and translation procedures no translation procedure level of accuracy rating rater 1 rater 2 rater 3 frequency data number frequency data number frequency data number 1. equivalence a.accurate (score 3) 66 6, 7, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 46, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 100, 104, 105, 106, 108, 112, 113, 114, 115 91 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 ,85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119 96 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 b.not quite 31 1, 2, 3, 11 1, 7, 22, 33, 3 54, 59, 72 m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 113 accurate (score 2) 8, 9, 10, 13, 22, 24, 35, 36, 43, 47, 48, 54, 60, 64, 66, 71, 72, 80, 87, 88, 96, 97, 98, 101, 107, 109, 111, 117 46, 47, 48, 67, 71, 100, 107 c.inaccurate (score 1) 3 14, 62, 103 1 36 2. calque a.accurate (score 3) 13 5, 41, 42, 52, 53, 58, 63, 95, 99, 102, 110, 118, 119 14 4, 5, 25, 30, 41, 42, 52, 53, 58, 63, 95, 99, 102, 110 16 4, 5, 25, 30, 41, 42, 52, 53, 58, 63, 95, 99, 102, 110, 118, 119 b.not quite accurate (score 2) 3 4, 25, 30 1 27 1 27 c.inaccurate (score 1) 1 27 3. transpo sition a.accurate (score 3) 1 44 2 44, 45 2 44, 45 b.not quite accurate (score 2) c.inaccurate (score 1) 1 45 total 119 119 119 table 3.3 recapitulation of accuracy rating based on the table above, there were three translation procedures applied in the data by the translator. the three translation procedures were equivalence procedure, calque procedure and transposition procedure. the table showed that the number of accurate data was dominated by equivalence procedure, followed by calque procedure and transposition procedure. even though some of the accuracy data of each rater were different, but mostly the accurate data were dominated by equivalence procedure in each rater’s assessment as shown in the table. m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 114 conclusions based on the thorough analysis, i found that in translating physics term from indonesian into english need to apply equivalence procedure. the reason was because in translating technical terms such as physics terms, the translator found the equivalence in the source language and in the target language. the data in this research showed the physics terms in indonesian as the source language were translated into english as the target language. even though in this research indonesian as the source language, but many physics terms in indonesian borrowed the physics terms from foreign language especially english and not the reverse. the importance in using equivalence in this research was to respect the origin of the physics terms. based on the reason mentioned beforehand, the equivalence procedure was the most accurate procedure to be applied in this research. the other translation procedures which were found in translating physics terms in this research were calque procedure and transposition procedure. each technical term was translated differently based on translation procedures proposed by vinay and darbelnet. there were 119 data were analyzed in the book. the translation procedure mostly used was equivalence procedure with the frequency of 100 times (84%), followed by calque procedure with the frequency of 17 times (14.28%) and transposition procedure with the frequency of 2 times (1.68%). the application of equivalence procedure in the data was appropriate. it made the translation of physics terms was accurate without distortion of meaning. beside the translation procedures, the technical term was assessed for its accuracy. the assessment of accuracy itself was done by three raters. the three raters found that around 99.15% of the data were translated accurately, whereas the rest 0.84% of the data were inaccurately translated. the data was gained by the following description; the accuracy of the equivalence procedure was 84.03%, followed by calque procedure with the accuracy 13.44%, and transposition procedure with the accuracy 1.68%. thus, the equivalence procedure was mostly used and had the highest accuracy rating in this research. as overall, the physics terms were translated accurately. the accuracy of the translation was 99.15% from 118 data. it means that almost all the data was accurate. in this case, the translator applied the proper translation procedures in the data so the translation of physics term in physics bilingual book for senior high school year xi was accurate without distortion of meaning. the application of translation procedures was very important because it affected the result of the translation. the selection of translation procedure in translating technical terms was very essential because it affected the validity of the data. therefore, translator’s competence and cautious work were really needed. besides, the outcome of the data in this research was considered good enough. references agung, i gusti ayu mahatma. 2016. translations procedures in translating religious terms. vol. 23, no. 45. available at: https://ojs.unud.ac.id/index.php/linguistika/article /download/23711/15528 [accessed 11 october 2016] bassnett, s. 2002. translation studies. usa and canada: routledge. available at http://www.translationindustry.ir/uploads/pdf/translation_studies,_3rd_ed_-_bassnett, _susan_(routledge).pdf [accessed 11 october 2014] collins, allan. et al. 2004. design research: theoretical and methodological issues. lawrence erlbaum associates. inc.: the journal of the learning sciences. available at http://portal.ou.nl/nl/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=dfa37571-afd9-46f2-83f085ef5d4ecf9b&groupld=83361 [accessed 16 january 2016]. m. permata sari & i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 115 haditya, ozi. 2014. translation procedures used in translating computer terms from english into bahasa indonesia. available at: http://jurnalvivid.fib. unand.ac.id /index.php/vivid /article/download /15/24 [accessed 26 december 2015] hartono, r. 2009. teori penerjemahan (a handbook for translators). semarang: cipta prima nusantara. hatim, b. & munday, j. 2004. translation: an advanced resource book. new york: routledge maskun, ali. 2014. translation methods of 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(2009). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. california: sage publications. green, a. (2013). washback in langauge testing. international journal of english studies, 39-51. hughes, a. (1989). testing for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. pan, y. c. (2009). a review of washback and its pedagogical implications. vnu journal of science, foreign language, 215-228. pizarro, m. a. (2010). exploring the washback effect of a high-stakes english test on the teaching english in spanish upper secondary schools. revista alicantina de estudio ingleses, 149-170. polesel, j., duffer, n., & turnbull, m. (2012). the experience of education: the impact of high stakes testing on school students and their families. sydney: the whitlam institute within the university of western sydney. tayeb, y. a., aziz, m. s., ismail, k., & khan, a. b. (2014). the washback effect of the general secondary english examination (gsee) on teaching and learning. gema online, 83-103. trisanti, n. (2016). integrating extensive reading into content subject course teaching in tertiary level. the 5th eltlt international conference proceedings, 466-470. 1 elt forum 2 (1) (2013) english language teaching forum http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of video as a medium to improve students’ ability in writing narrative texts dewi permatasari department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia info artikel ________________ sejarahartikel: diterimajanuari 2013 disetujuifebruari 2013 dipublikasikanjuni 2013 ________________ keywords: video, writing, narrative texts, action research ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the aims of this study were to explain and describe how video was used in teaching writing narrative texts and to find out the result of the teaching writing and learning process after the students were taught by using video. the subject of this study was viiia students of smp n 24 semarang. in this research, i used tests and questionnaires to collect the data. i designed an action research that consisted of pretest and two cycles of the treatment. the first meeting was for pretest, the second until the fourth meeting were for treatments using video in teaching writing in narrative texts and the fifth meeting was for posttest. the result of the study showed that there was an improvement of the students’ writing after the students were taught by using video. it could be seen from the average of the pretest was 59.8, the first cycle was 68.55, the second cycle was 79.03, and the posttest was 84.82. in conclusion, the use of fairy tail video as a medium worked well in writing class, especially for the viiia of smp n 24 semarang. the students also said that they were not bored during the teaching and learning process. they felt fun and their motivation to write the narrative texts increased after using video. based on the results above, video can be an interesting and appropriate medium to teach writing. © 2013universitasnegeri semarang alamatkorespondensi: gedungb3lantai3 fbsunnes kampussekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: dewi88niez@yahoo.co.id issn 2252-6706 dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 2 introduction in teaching english, teachers must have four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. those skills are very useful in communication process. it has to be supported by language components, namely grammar, vocabulary, spelling, cohesion and coherent. among those skills, writing is considered as the most difficult skill for mastering a language. based on ktsp curriculum for junior high school students, they are demanded to make a simple text in the spoken and written form. furthermore, the objective of teaching english at junior high school does not only teach vocabulary, grammar or introduce a new dialog with a certain topic but also impresses on the discourse level. for this level education, the students should learn writing based on the certain texts. furthermore ktsp mentions the students of junior high school are demanded to master written five text types. they are descriptive, narrative, recount, procedure, and report. teaching the students of junior high school is not the same as teaching adults. those students can be categorized as young learners who are not concerned with jobs or university degrees that require knowledge of language. their world is not as serious as adults’. therefore, it is possible that the young learners’ motivation is lower than adults’. brown (2001:160-166) states that, “a cognitive view of motivation includes factors such as the need for exploration, activity, stimulation, new knowledge, and ego enhancement. the motivation can be built from many ways. besides introducing the interesting text type, the motivation can be increased by using media in teaching”. brown adds that using a variety of media will increase the probability that the students will learn more and retain better what they learn in improving the performance of the skills they are expected to develop. a video is one of the visual aids that can be used in a writing class. it makes lesson more fun. “video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion” (harmer, 2001:283). “when a class is working on an area of language, whether grammatical, functional, or lexical – or a mixture of all three – the lesson can be greatly enhanced by a video extract which shows that language in operation. short video sequences of between one and four minutes can yield a number of exercises, demonstrate a satisfying range of language, are easier to manipulate, and can be highly motivating” (harmer, 2001:283). stempleski in richards and renandya (2002:362) also adds that “television and video are so closely associated with leisure and entertainment that many, if not most, students watching video in the classroom expect only to be entertained”. teachers need to led students to an appreciation of video as a valuable tool for language learning and help them to develop viewing skills which they can apply to their video and television viewing experiences outside the classroom. the video will still remain entertaining, but the students will also come to recognition of how the medium can be used for learning. since writing still becomes a difficult skill for students, teachers should know the suitable method to teach writing. using insufficient media and method makes the students not interested in learning writing. for example when teachers are teaching writing, they often use monotonous media. the monotonous teaching style such as explaining orally or writing down all the materials is a boring learning. a narrative text is the most interesting genre because it tells something imaginative. in addition, it involves imaginative thoughts and fictive stories to present an amusing and fascinating story. it tells a story to entertain or inform the reader or listener. in order to make students interested in narrative, i use video as the teaching media. i use video as a medium because it is easy to find, it is also sophisticated technology and easy to be understood. those dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 3 videos can motivate and attract them in learning the lesson. data and method of analysis this study is an action research which is concerned with the use of video in teaching narrative texts in improving students’ writing ability. an action research is a form of educational inquiry that uses real action of the teachers in response to a certain problem encountered during the teaching and learning process through cycles of action. a research method used in this study is an action research. according to kurt in “pedoman teknis pelaksanaan classroom action research” depdiknas (2003:4), there are four components in one cycle for doing classroom action research: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. in planning activity, i began with arranging the lesson plan, the students’ attendance list, the teaching media (the teacher’s video), classroom observation, questionnaires, and the pretest. acting is the implementation of the planning, which is already made. the acting was done with the teaching narrative texts and learning process using video. this third step was about trying to get the information of the students’ achievement after given the treatment. it was done by the teacher and me. the teacher observed the implementation of the teaching writing narrative texts and learning process using video. reflecting was about trying to analyze the students’ study result whether or not the teaching and learning process was successful. the result of the discussion, here, would be a foundation to determine the next plan. subject of study the subject of this study was the the viii year students 24 junior high school semarang of class viiia with mrs. siti zulaekah s.pd as the english teacher. instruments of the study saleh (2001:31) states that “the word instrument refers to research tools for data collecting”. it’s therefore, a fundamental thing to be well through out by a researcher before she conducts an experiment. an instrument could be in the form of questionnaire, observation list, interview and test. i used writing test and questionnaire as instruments to collect the data for my research. here i applied an achievement test to measure the students’ mastery of writing after they were given process approach in their english learning process. related to the achievement test, there are many types of achievement test such as essay test, completion test, multiple choice tests, cloze test, and so on. in this research, i used essay test. in this research, the tests that i would conduct were pretest, test in each cycle, and posttest. the pretest was conducted for checking whether or not the students could produce the narrative text well. the assessment tests were used for knowing whether there was achievement of the students in producing a narrative text. the posttest was used for knowing whether or not students could really produce a good narrative text. first questionnaire was delivered in the end of pretest. it was used to know the students’ attitude toward the teaching learning process before the treatment by using video as a medium in writing class. after conducting the posttest, the second questionnaires were given to the students to know their interests in video which was used during the treatment. brown and paul (1998:66) state that “questionnaire is a number of question for the researcher who wishes to collect information from a large number of people but has limited time and resources”. considering the statements above, i conclude that questionnaire is a number of questions to get information from the respondents. the purpose of giving questionnaire in this research was to gather information from the students about the factors that may affect their improvement in writing. a questionnaire was given to gather information from the students based on their needs, interest, like and dislike, about teaching and learning process and about the students’ dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 4 opinion on the writing class using process approach. the questionnaires were used to find out:  the ability and problem faced by the students in writing activities.  the sustainability of the program conducted during the action research.  the advantages gained through the action research. scoring criteria i used rating scale to score or evaluate the students’ achievement in writing. in giving the score to the students’ writing, i used the analytical scoring guidance taken from heaton’s grid and categories (1974:137). there were five aspects which were used as the consideration in giving scores. those are: grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, relevance and fluency. in classifying the score, i used the measurement of students’ achievement suggested by harris (1969:134) as interpreted in table 3.3 below: table 3.3 scoring criteria by harris grade criteria of mastery level a b c d 80 – 100 60 – 79 50 – 59 0 – 49 good to excellent average to good good fair pretest a pretest was conducted on 12 march 2012. this activity was done to measure the students’ achievement in writing narrative texts. by conducting this activity, i knew whether the students understood narrative texts or not. table 4.1 the result of pretest no students’ code writing assessment components score total score g v m r f 1. s-01 2 3 3 4 3 15 60 2. s-02 2 3 3 3 2 13 52 3. s-03 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 4. s-04 3 2 3 4 3 15 60 5. s-05 2 2 3 3 2 12 48 6. s-06 2 3 4 3 3 15 60 7. s-07 2 2 3 3 2 12 48 8. s-08 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 9. s-09 4 3 4 4 3 18 72 10. s-10 2 2 3 3 3 13 52 11. s-11 2 3 3 3 2 13 52 12. s-12 3 2 3 4 2 14 56 13. s-13 2 2 3 3 3 13 52 14. s-14 2 3 4 4 3 16 64 15. s-15 2 2 3 3 3 13 52 16. s-16 2 4 4 3 3 16 64 17. s-17 2 3 3 3 3 14 56 18. s-18 4 4 3 4 3 18 72 19. s-19 2 2 4 4 3 15 60 20. s-20 2 3 3 3 3 14 56 dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 5 21. s-21 2 3 4 3 3 15 60 22. s-22 3 2 4 4 3 16 64 23. s-23 2 3 3 3 3 14 56 24. s-24 2 3 3 3 4 15 60 25. s-25 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 26. s-26 2 2 3 4 3 14 56 27. s-27 2 3 3 3 3 14 56 28. s-28 3 3 4 3 3 16 64 29. s-29 2 3 3 4 3 15 60 ∑ 29 71 79 98 100 86 434 1736 based on the table and the chart above, there were 16 students or 55.1% who were good in writing narrative texts. however, there were 11 students or 38% who were in the average category and 2 students or 6.9% in the poor category. furthermore, the average of students’ pretest was 59.86%. in this pretest, i found that the students were poor on the content of their writing. it was because i had not explained in detail about narrative texts yet, so they had not known narrative text was. based on the result above, i prepared some treatments. the treatments were hoped to improve the students’ ability in writing, especially in writing narrative text. result of cycle 1 in this activity i had two meetings; one meeting was used to treat the students with video for teaching them about narrative texts. it was conducted on march 19th 2012. the first meeting was aimed for improving the students’ writing ability and also solving their difficulties that were found in the previous activity. in the first meeting, i explained the general knowledge of narrative texts such as the social functions and generic structure of narrative text by using video “cinderella” in teaching writing narrative text. the students paid attention to the explanation. i opened question and answer sessions after explaining the material. then, i showed them another story and asked them to identify the social functions and generic structure of the text. in this stage i started by asking them whether they had ever watched fairy tail video or not. many of the students said they had ever watched the fairy tail video from the cd. giving the direction before the students watched the video actually would become the direction what they had to do during i played the video “cinderella”. then i played the video once in the class. i saw that the students were still confused what the cinderella said. the students of my subjects had difficulties in catching the ideas of the video by using their listening ability. after playing the video once, i explained them about what exactly narrative text is, the social function and the generic structure of narrative text are. after implementing video in cycle 1, i conducted cycle 1 test to know the improvement of the students’ writing narrative text. the students made a paragraph of narrative text based on the video shown the screen individually. they had to write the story of “cinderella“. the length of the story is not more than 250 words and the time allotment was 40 minutes. dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 6 table 4.3 the result of cycle 1 no students’ code writing assessment components score total score g v m r f 1. s-01 3 3 4 4 3 17 68 2. s-02 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 3. s-03 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 4. s-04 3 3 3 4 3 16 64 5. s-05 2 3 3 4 3 15 60 6. s-06 3 4 4 4 4 19 76 7. s-07 3 3 3 4 3 16 64 8. s-08 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 9. s-09 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 10. s-10 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 11. s-11 3 3 4 4 3 17 68 12. s-12 3 4 3 3 4 17 68 13. s-13 3 3 4 3 3 16 64 14. s-14 3 3 4 3 3 16 64 15. s-15 3 4 4 4 3 18 72 16. s-16 4 3 3 4 4 18 72 17. s-17 4 4 3 4 3 18 72 18. s-18 3 4 3 4 4 18 72 19. s-19 3 4 4 4 3 18 72 20. s-20 3 3 4 3 3 16 64 21. s-21 3 3 4 4 3 17 68 22. s-22 3 4 3 4 3 17 68 23. s-23 3 3 3 3 3 15 60 24. s-24 4 4 4 3 4 19 76 25. s-25 4 3 3 4 3 17 68 26. s-26 3 3 3 3 4 16 64 27. s-27 3 3 4 4 4 18 72 28. s-28 3 3 3 3 3 15 60 29. s-29 3 4 3 3 3 16 64 ∑ 29 91 97 103 107 99 497 1988 the students’ achievement after doing the first cycle seemed improved. it could be seen from the average score of cycle 1 was 68.55%. it increased than the pretest result with the margin 8.7. after being treated with video, 28 students or 96.5% got the good score and one student or 3.4% got the excellent score. result of cycle 2 this cycle was conducted because the first cycle of this research had not been able to reach the research target yet. therefore in this cycle, i had prepared some teaching improvement in order to help the students reach the target. first, before i played the video i gave the instructions as the guide during the students watched the video. then i asked the students to list as much as information that found in “mount tangkuban perahu“. dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 7 after watching the video, i asked the students how much information they could list from the video they watched. some students were still confused with the vocabulary in video. therefore, i played the video again in order to give more information to the students. after i played the video twice, i asked about the information they gained from the video. i asked the students to write a narrative text individually with the theme “mount tangkuban perahu“. in this stage they were to use their own sentences and arranged the information they got from the video. they should use the information that had been listed in the previous meeting to compose their own narrative text. after giving the instruction to the students about this writing activity, i distributed the paper and asked them to write their name, student number, and their class in the place existed on the paper. during the writing activity for about 40 minutes, i helped them as i could and also observed the students’ activity. after waiting for about 40 minutes, the students submitted their work and arranged their writing based on their student number. this arrangement had a purpose to make the scoring process easier. table 4.5 the result of cycle 2 no students’ code writing assessment components score total score g v m r f 1. s-01 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 2. s-02 4 5 4 4 4 21 84 3. s-03 3 4 4 4 4 19 76 4. s-04 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 5. s-05 3 3 4 4 3 17 68 6. s-06 3 4 4 5 4 20 80 7. s-07 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 8. s-08 3 4 4 4 4 19 76 9. s-09 4 5 5 5 4 23 92 10. s-10 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 11. s-11 4 4 3 4 4 19 76 12. s-12 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 13. s-13 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 14. s-14 4 5 4 5 4 22 88 15. s-15 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 16. s-16 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 17. s-17 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 18. s-18 4 4 4 5 4 21 84 19. s-19 3 4 4 4 3 18 72 20. s-20 4 4 5 4 4 21 84 21. s-21 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 22. s-22 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 23. s-23 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 24. s-24 4 4 4 4 5 21 84 25. s-25 4 4 5 4 4 21 84 dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 8 26. s-26 4 3 4 4 4 19 76 27. s-27 4 4 4 4 3 19 76 28. s-28 3 4 3 4 4 18 72 29. s-29 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 ∑ 29 110 112 117 120 114 573 2292 the average of students’ score percentage was then calculated by using this formula; the average of the student result = x 100% = x 100% = 79.03 % result of posttest after giving the treatment for each group, i conducted a posttest. the posttest which was conducted on 2 april 2012 was aimed to measure whether there were differences on students’ score before and after getting the treatment. in this stage, i reviewed briefly about the lesson which had been given. the procedure of the posttest was the same as the pretest. the students had to write the story based on the components of writing and the generic structure of a narrative text. in this stage, i reviewed briefly about the lesson which had been given. the procedure of the posttest was the same as the pretest. the students had to write the story based on the components of writing and the generic structure of a narrative text. in pretest, the score of grammar was 71, it improved 91 in formative test 1, the formative test 2 was 110, and finally, it became 115 in the last test which was posttest. it was a good progress, gradually the students improved their grammar. narrative text uses simple past tense, so it was not a big problem for them to learn that genre, it was very simple. most of the students knew and mastered the tense. table 4.7 the result of posttest no students’ code writing assessment components score total score g v m r f 1. s-01 4 4 5 5 4 22 88 2. s-02 4 4 5 4 5 22 88 3. s-03 4 5 4 4 4 21 84 4. s-04 4 4 4 4 3 19 76 5. s-05 4 3 4 5 4 20 80 6. s-06 4 4 5 5 4 22 88 7. s-07 4 4 4 5 5 22 88 8. s-08 4 4 4 5 4 21 84 9. s-09 4 4 5 5 5 23 92 10. s-10 4 5 4 4 4 21 84 11. s-11 4 4 5 4 5 22 88 12. s-12 4 4 4 5 4 21 84 13. s-13 4 4 4 4 4 20 80 14. s-14 4 4 4 5 5 22 88 15. s-15 4 5 4 4 4 21 84 16. s-16 4 4 5 5 4 22 88 17. s-17 4 3 4 5 4 20 80 dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 9 18. s-18 4 4 4 5 5 22 88 19. s-19 5 4 4 5 4 22 88 20. s-20 4 4 5 4 4 21 84 21. s-21 3 4 5 4 3 19 76 22. s-22 4 4 4 5 5 22 88 23. s-23 4 5 4 4 4 21 84 24. s-24 4 4 4 5 5 22 88 25. s-25 4 4 5 4 4 21 84 26. s-26 4 4 5 4 5 22 88 27. s-27 4 4 5 5 4 22 88 28. s-28 3 4 4 5 3 19 76 29. s-29 4 4 5 4 4 21 84 ∑ 29 115 118 128 132 122 615 2460 the improvement of students’ test result the result was shown in the chart as follows: chart 4.9 the improvement of students test result the average score of pretest was 59.86. the average of students’ score percentage in cycle 1 test was 68.55. the average score of cycle 2 was 79.03. the average score of posttest was 84.82. analysis of first questionnaire first questionnaire was delivered in the end of pretest. it was used to know the students’ attitude toward the teaching learning process before the treatment by using video as a medium in writing class. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 pretest cycle 1 cycle 2 post test dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 10 table 4.9 the result of the first questionnaires no. questions answers yes no 1. do you like english lesson? 83% 17% 2. do you like writing in english? 69% 31% 3. do you think that writing a narrative is difficult? 72% 28% 4. do you feel bored with your teacher’s method in teaching writing? 93% 7% 5. do you like watching fairy tail video? 76% 24% 6. do you agree if video is used as one of teaching methods? 93% 7% 7. do you think that the teacher had used the media? 0% 100% 8. are you willing to learn writing narrative by using video? 96% 4% 4.2.6 analysis of second questionnaire after conducting the posttest, the questionnaires were given to the students to know their interests in video which was used during the treatment. there were eight questions in the questionnaires. then the students should answer them with “yes” or “no”. the questions were written in english. in order to make the students understand my questionnaires, i translated the questions to indonesian. table 4.10 the result of the second questionnaires no. questions answers yes no 1. do you think that writing english is difficult to learn? 79% 21% 2. do you like learning english with video? 90% 10% 3. do you think that the use of video as a medium to teach writing narrative is necessary? 93% 7% 4. video is available everywhere, so i can get it easily and use it anytime. 96% 4% 5. does this treatment help you in answering the questions related to the texts? 76% 24% 6. does this treatment help you in mastering vocabularies and grammar? 83% 17% 7. can this medium improve your motivation in learning english? 93% 7% 8. does the situation of the class become enjoyable after using media? 96% 4% the advantages of using video in teaching writing narrative texts using video in teaching writing narrative texts has some advantages as follows: (1) teaching using video can increase the students’ motivation in writing the texts because the writing activities are not monotonous and more alive. (2) using video makes the students enjoy and interested in english teaching and learning activities. therefore, they are not bored with the classroom activity. the disadvantages of using video in teaching writing narrative texts dewi permatasari / journal of english language teaching 2 (1) (2013) 11 the first was when the students were asked to write the text; some students did not understand the vocabulary. to overcome this problem, the teacher asked the students to open their dictionary. the second was when the teacher was using video. i need some well preparations in order not to spend a lot of time to use this medium in the class. conclusion based on the data analysis and the discussion about the use of video in teaching narrative texts for junior high school students especially for the eighth-year students of smp n 24 semarang, the most difficulty that the students had in writing narrative texts was grammar, because they had difficulty in using verb past. most of them had the same mistake. the students got difficulty in writing narrative texts because they had less motivation. the reason was the teacher did not use any media that could make the students enjoy and relaxed in teaching and learning process.the action research on developing the students’ writing ability especially in writing a narrative text by using videos was successful. the computation result on pretest was 59.86%; 68.55% on formative test 1, 79.03% on formative test 2, and on posttest was 84.82%. it shows that the students’ ability in writing is influenced by a teacher’s way of teaching method. teaching narrative writing by using video can give contribution to the success of teaching writing. based on the research, the students showed the improvement in writing narrative texts by using video as a medium. it is because video has many advantages. teaching using video can increase the students’ motivation in writing narrative texts because the writing activities are not monotonous and more alive. using video as a medium makes the students fun and interested in english teaching and learning activities. therefore, they are not bored with the classroom activity. based on the research, the students showed the improvement in writing narrative texts by using video as a medium. it is because video has many advantages. teaching using video can increase the students’ motivation in writing narrative texts because the writing activities are not monotonous and more alive. using video as a medium makes the students fun and interested in english teaching and learning activities. therefore, they are not bored with the classroom activity. references brown, d. 2001. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. san fransisco: longman. depdiknas 2003. pedoman teknis pelaksanaan classroom action research (car). jakarta : departemen pendidikan nasional. harmer.j. 2001. the practice of english language teaching. essex: longman. heaton, j.b.1974. writing english language test. essex: longman. harris, d. 1969. testing english as a second language. new york: mc. graw hill book company richards, j. and w. renandya. 2002. methodology in language teaching. new york. cambridge university press. robinson, a. 2003. the origins of writing. in david crowley and paul heyer (eds). pp.3536 saleh, m. 2001. pengantar praktek penelitian pengajaran bahasa. semarang: ikip semarang press. . ika oktavianti / journal of economic education 1 (2) (2012) elt forum 7 (1) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt analysis of google translate’s quality in employing translation techniques dewi kartika, arif suryo priyatmojo  putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) dewi kartika, arif suryo priyatmojo / journal of english language teaching 7 (1) (2018) english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia 40 49 article info ________________ article history: received in april 2017 approved in may 2017 published in july 2017 ________________ keywords : translation, google translate, jakarta post, translation techniques, accuracy, acceptability, readability. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research focused on the analysis of translation techniques and translation quality of jakarta post’s articles in terms of accuracy, acceptability, and readability. the objectives of this research were to find out the translation techniques applied by google translate in translating the articles of jakarta post and to know the quality of translation by google translate. this research applied a descriptive qualitative method. the data were obtained by using content analysis and questionnaire. the data in this research were ten articles of jakarta post from opinion section. the other data were the results of the translation quality assessments done by the respondents. the research findings showed that google translate applied 9 translation techniques. they were reduction, established equivalent, literal, calque, amplification, transposition, linguistic amplification, linguistic compression, and borrowing technique. the results of the questionnaires showed that the percentage of accuracy was 57.1% with average score 2.5, the percentage of acceptability was 58.6% with the average score 2.5, and the percentage of readability was 63.7% with the average score 2.5. based on the results obtained, the quality of translation results by google translate was less accurate, less acceptable, and less readable. according to the analysis, it can be concluded that calque technique had the best translation quality considering this technique got the highest score in every aspect. while reduction technique was the least because this technique got the lowest score in every aspect. the researcher suggested the users to translate simple sentence instead of a complex one to gain a better quality of translation using google translate. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: dewikadewi19@gmail.com introduction the analysis of translation processes become the focus of recent psycholinguist interest. each culture has its own way to translate the language. when translating a source language to the target language, a translator has to understand the background knowledge of both source language and target language so that the cultural traditions can be transferred into the existing culture of target language. as an intermediary of two different languages, a translator has to know the differences between these two languages, so the translator could deliver the meaning and messages from the source language to the target language correctly. almost all translators will find difficulties when translating a language to another language. based on oxford english dictionary, “translation is written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in another language.” there are many definition given by linguists. newmark (1998:5) explains that it is rendering the meaning of a text into other language in the way that author intended the text. the temptation on is to transfer as many sl (source language) words to the tl (target language) as possible. translation is a phenomenon that has a huge effect on everyday life. this can range from the translation of a key international treaty to the following multilingual poster that welcomes costumers to a small restaurant near to the home of one of the authors (hatim and munday, 2004:3) according to catford (1965: 20), translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent textual material in another language (tl). it means that translator should be able to replace the information in source text (sl) correspond with target text (tl). catford (1965: 21) stated that the central problem of translation practice is that to find the target language tranlsation equivalence. brislin in suryawinata (1989: 1-2) stated that translation is the general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language (source) to another (target), whether the languages are written or oral form; whether the languages have established orthographics or do not have such standarization or whether one or both languages are based on signs, as with sign of the deaf. so the translation not only in the form of written text, but also can be oral form. newmark (1988:5) stated that translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. the second meaning concerns on the author intended the text that source language (sl). from here, we can know that the translator can use what language or style they want. steiner and meschonnic in hewson (1991:9) consider that translation as a particulary consistent example of human consciousness in the process of understanding through hermeneutic exploration. hermeneutic translation is the experience of the contradiction between two cultural words which at the same time cause the translator to question his own perceptions and to assimilate those which he finds to be foreign to himself. hartono (2011:6), otherwise, defines “translation is reading the author’s will and purpose in the form of message which contains both denotative and connotative meanings that exist in the source text that must be reproduced by translators into the target’s language. this process runs in a simultaneous cycle. in this globalization era where most people use social media to communicate, it is no longer difficult to communicate with people from different countries even if we do not understand their language because there is google translate which can help us translate. google translate is a free multilingual machine translation service developed by google, to translate text, speech, images, sites, or real-time video from one language into another. there are 103 supported languages in google translate. in november 2016, google announced that google translate would switch to a neural machine translation engine google neural machine translation (gnmt) which translates whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. it uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar. it means that google translate’s quality is improved. the writer observed when doing teaching internship in smp n 24 semarang last year, where english teachers there let students use google translate. it makes the writer wonder whether google translate is appropriate for students to use or not. however, google translate is a machine translation service and of course it has weaknesses. in this study, the writer tried to find out the quality of google translate in employing translation techniques. in translation proccess there are so many translation techniques we can use. the discrepancies in grammar and vocabulary between languages makes it difficult to literally translate every text word for word. in order to account for this, translators use a wide variety of translation techniques in order to accurately translate any given text. molina and albir (2002:507) propose a definition of technique of translation which is based on two premises: 1) the need to distinguish between method, strategy and technique; 2) the need for an dynamic and functional concept of translation techniques. albir in molina and albir (2002:507) states that translation method, strategies, and techniques are essentially different categories. each expert has a separate term in determining a translation technique, so it tends to overlap between the techniques of an expert from one another. the technique is the same but has a different term. in terms of diversity of course this is a good thing, but on the other hand, related research will lead to difficulties in determining the terms of a particular technique. therefore, in this research, the writer uses 18 translation techniques proposed by molina and albir to identify translation techniques used in translation by google translate. the techniques presented by molina and albir has gone through a complex study with reference and compared with translation techniques from the previous translation experts. in establishing the acceptable results, firstly the source text should be well written. in this case, ten articles of jakarta post are taken as samples of well written text. the articles are opinion piece written by the readers or the experts that are sent to the newspaper for the editorial staff to sort and publish as an opinion article. it is a well edited text which is ensured the content is appropriate to publish. the jakarta post itself is a daily english language newspaper in indonesia which has been published since april 25, 1983. accordingly, articles of jakarta post newspaper can be an appropriate source text to get analyzed the accuracy of google translate. the objectives of this study are to find out what translation techniques applied in translation of jakarta post’s articles by google translate and to find out the quality of translation by google translate. in analyzing the quality of google translate, a translator needs to know criteria of good quality of the translation. according to nababan (2003:86), there are three reasons to evaluate the translation products which are to see accuracy, acceptability, and readibility of a translation. the accuracy, acceptability, and readability rating instrument in the form of questionnaires will be used. methodology of the research this final project concerned with texts as the data analysis. therefore, the investigation approach employed this study was descriptive qualitative method. according to flick (2009:45) qualitative research is centrally concerned with the production and analysis of texts, such as transcripts of interviews or field notes and other analytic materials. meanwhile, according to best (1981:156), qualitative studies are those in which the description of observation is not ordinarily expressed by quantitative terms. it is not suggested that numerical measures are never used, but that other means of description are emphasized. in this research, the qualitative method was used in identifying and analysing the accuracy of google translate in employing translation techniques. there are three roles of the researcher in conducting this research. those roles are: first, as data collector; second, as data analyser; and third, as data reporter. as a data collector, the researcher used ten articles directly taken from indonesian daily english language newspaper “jakarta post” from “opinion” section. then, as a data analyser, the researcher analyzed the data that have been collected, identified translation techniques used in the translation results and analysing the quality of translation by google translate using nababan’s quality rating instrument. the last, as a data reporter. the researcher reported the results of the research after identifying and analysing the data. in this study, the writer collected the data from “opinion” section of the jakarta post newspaper which is available at http://thejakartapost.com/academia/opinion. those texts were then translated into indonesian using google translate. next, the output texts of the google translate were analyzed. in analyzing the data in this study, the writer conducted some steps. first step was reading the articles of jakarta post newspaper. second, the writer translating the articles into indonesian using google translate. third, the writer identifying translation techniques used in the texts. forth, the writer counting translation techniques used to know the frequency and percentage of each translation technique. sixth, the writer made and distributed nababan’s translation quality rating instrument including accuracy, acceptability, and readability in the form of questionnaires to measure the quality of translation techniques used in translation by google translate to respondents. seventh, the writer counting the data from the respondents and then those data were classified based on the level of accuracy, acceptability, and readibility. next, the writer counting which techniques had the best accuracy, acceptability, and readability score. the last step was drawing conclusion from the findings. result and discussion among eighteen translation techniques provided by molina and albir, there were nine techniques used in translation of ten articles by jakarta post using google translate. table 3.1. translation techniques used in translation of jakarta post’s articles using google translate no. technique frequency % 1 borrowing 145 41% 2 established equivalent 65 18% 3 literal 46 13% 4 linguistic compression 27 7% 5 reduction 25 7% 6 amplification 20 6% 7 calque 18 5% 8 transposition 8 2% 9 linguistic amplification 3 1% total 357 100% the highest frequency of technique used by google translate was borrowing with the percentage of 41%. the others techniques were established equivalent (18%), literal translation (13%), reduction (7%), linguistic compression (7%), amplification (6%), calque (5%), transposition (2%), and linguistic amplification (1%). table 4.1 showed the frequency of translation techniques in this study. table 3.2. accuracy of jakarta post’s articles translation by google translation indicator number of data frequency accurate 463 57.1% less accurate 284 35.1% not accurate 63 7.8% total 810 100% in table 2, it was shown that the accuracy level of the translation is divided into three level of accuracy. those are accurate, less accurate and inaccurate. the writer found that 57.1% of the translation was translated accurately. meanwhile, 35.1% was translated less accurately and 7.8% was translated inaccurately. table 3.3. acceptability of jakarta post’s articles translation by google translation indicator number of data frequency acceptable 475 58.6% less acceptable 283 35% not acceptable 52 6.4% total 810 100% in table 3, it was shown that the acceptability level of the translation is divided into three level of acceptability. those are acceptable, less acceptable and not acceptable. the writer found that 58.6% of the translation was translated accurately. meanwhile, 35% was translated less accurately and 6.4% was translated inaccurately. table 3.4. readability of jakarta post’s articles translation by google translation indicator number of data frequency readable 516 63.7% less readable 232 28.6% not readable 62 7.7% total 810 100% in table 4, it was shown that the readability level of the translation is divided into three level of readability. those are readable, less readable and not readable. the writer found that 63.7% of the translation was translated readable. meanwhile, 28.6% was translated less readay and 7.7% was translated inaccurately. 1. borrowing technique borrowing technique was the most translation technique applied in translation results of jakarta post’s articles by google translate. there were 145 (41%) items found to be translated using borrowing technique. there were two types of borrowing techniques; pure borrowing and naturalized borrowing. sample 1 st : the plan to withdraw the free-visa facility for citizens of dozens of countries is the latest display of not only inconsistency but also lack of prior study on the government’s part when it comes to policy-making. tt : rencana untuk menarik fasilitas visa gratis bagi warga negara dari puluhan negara adalah tampilan terbaru tidak hanya inkonsistensi namun juga kurangnya kajian sebelumnya mengenai pemerintah saat membuat kebijakan. in sample 1 (data 87) the word “inconsistency”is the fact of being inconsistent or things are not same. it is not translated into “tidak konsekuen”, but it is translated “inkonsistensi”. this is naturalized borrowing technique. sample 3 st : now, 2030 sdgs is a new opportunity to start it over by prioritizing and incorporating tobacco control in every development agenda. tt : sekarang, 2030 sdg adalah kesempatan baru untuk memulai dengan memprioritaskan dan menggabungkan pengendalian tembakau di setiap agenda pembangunan. in sample 3 (data 229) the word “agenda” is a plan of things to be done. it is not translated into “rencana yang harus dilaksanakan”, but google translate borrows it from english instead. this is pure borrowing technique. 2. established equivalent technique there were 65 (18%) items found to be translated using established equivalent technique. established equivalent technique used a term or expression recognized (by dictionaries or language in use) as an equivalent in the tl. sample 5 st : so be brave like my son-in-law: despite his wife’s occasional criticism. tt : jadi berani seperti menantu laki-laki saya. meskipun kadang kadang kritik istrinya. in sample 5 (data 22) the term son-in-law was translated into menantu in indonesian. the term menantu was an expression recognized by indonesian dictionaries or language in use as an equivalent in the english term which meant that the technique used in this translation was established equivalent. 3. literal translation technique there were 46 (13%) items found to be translated using literal translation technique. this technique translates a word or an expression word for word. sample 8 st : just ask your spouse. tt : tanya saja pasangan anda. in sample 8 (data 44), the sentence just ask your spouse was translated into indonesian as tanya saja pasangan anda. ask in indonesian was translated literally into tanya, just into saja, and your spouse into pasangan anda. the translation technique used in this translation was literal translation because every word in the sl was translated literally into the tl. 4. linguistic compression technique there were 27 (7%) items found to be translated using linguistic compression technique. this technique synthesized linguistic elements in the tt. sample 11 st : “so what’s your name?” i said. tt : "jadi siapa namamu?" kataku. in sample 11 (data 34) the clause i said was translated into kataku instead of translating the st into tt with the same number of words like aku bilang, which indicated that the linguistic elements in the st was synthesized. that was why the translation technique used in this translation was linguistic compression. 5. reduction technique there were 25 (7%) items found to be translated using reduction technique. reduction technique suppressed a st information item in the tt. sample 14 st : actually you hunks can really help boost the economy; if you handle the kias and more house chores, millions more women could join the workforce and earn income, inside or outside the home. tt : sebenarnya anda benar-benar dapat membantu meningkatkan ekonomi; jika anda menangani anak-anak dan lebih banyak pekerjaan rumah, jutaan lebih wanita bisa bergabung dengan angkatan kerja dan mendapatkan penghasilan, di dalam atau di luar rumah. in sample 14 (data 4), the word hunks which meant pria menarik was ommited. the translation technique used in translating the sl into tl was reduction since the term hunks was omitted. 6. amplification technique there were 20 (6%) items found to be translated using amplification technique. amplification technique is the opposite of reduction technique. it added details that were not formulated in the st: information, explicative paraphrasing. sample 17 st : but many overlook what men can do and what it takes to get males to contribute to a more prosperous society. tt : tetapi, banyak orang mengabaikan apa yang dapat dilakukan pria dan apa yang diperlukan untuk membuat laki-laki berkontribusi pada masyarakat yang lebih sejahtera. in sample 17 (data 3), the term many found in the sentence but many overlook what men can do and what it takes to get males to contribute to a more prosperous society was translated into indonesian as banyak orang. the term orang was added to make it clear that the term in the st was the people. because of that reason, this translation was called amplification technique. 7. calque technique there were 18 (5%) items found to be translated using calque technique. calque translated foreign word or phrase literally into indonesian. sample 20 st : however, the policy raises a serius question over the directorate general of taxation’s ability to ensure there is no opportunity for corrupt tax officials to abuse their power amid a slew of graft cases implicating the tax office. tt : namun, kebijakan tersebut menimbulkan pertanyaan serius mengenai kemampuan direktorat jenderal pajak untuk memastikan tidak ada kesempatan bagi petugas pajak korup untuk menyalahgunakan kekuasaan mereka di tengah serangkaian kasus korupsi yang melibatkan kantor pajak. in sample 20 (data 111), the phrase directorate general of taxation in the sentence however, the policy raises a serious question over the directorate general of taxation’s ability to ensure there is no opportunity for corrupt tax officials to abuse their power amid a slew of graft cases implicating the tax office was translated into direktorat jenderal pajak which belonged to calque translation technique. it was because the foreign phrase was translated literally into indonesian. 8. transposition technique there were 8 (2%) items found to be translated using transposition technique. this technique changed a grammatical category. sample 23 st : to the delight of many we have yet another holiday — pancasila day, affirming june 1 as the birthday of the state ideology. tt : untuk menyenangkan banyak kita memiliki liburan lain – hari pancasila, yang menegaskan 1 juni sebagai hari lahir ideologi negara. in sample 23 (data 46), the term the delight in the st was translated into menyenangkan in the tt. the delight is a noun whereas menyenangkan is a verb which made it clear that the grammatical category in the st changed. this type of translation technique was called transposition. 9. linguistic amplification there were 3 (1%) items found to be translated using linguistic amplification technique. linguistic amplification added linguistic elements. sample 26 st : it would be truly cynical if jokowi, elected to office on a human rights campaign, reverted to new order-style brutal reaction to claimed attacks on state symbols, including pancasila. tt : akan benar-benar sinis jika jokowi, yang terpilih untuk memimpin kampanye hak asasi manusia, beralih ke reaksi brutal bergaya orde baru terhadap serangan yang diklaim terhadap simbol negara, termasuk pancasila. in sample 26 (data 62), the sentence it would be truly cynical if jokowi, elected to office on a human rights campaign, reverted to new order-style brutal reaction to claimed attacks on state symbols, including pancasila was translated into akan benar-benar sinis jika jokowi, yang terpilih untuk memimpin kampanye hak asasi manusia, beralih ke reaksi brutal bergaya orde baru terhadap serangan yang diklaim terhadap simbol negara, termasuk pancasila. in the tt, the linguistic element made the back translation become it would be truly cynical if jokowi, who is elected to office on a human rights campaign, reverted to new order-style brutal reaction to claimed attacks on state symbols, including pancasila. that was why the technique employed in this translation was called linguistic amplification. conclusions finding and describing the translation techniques applied in ten articles of jakarta post is the purpose of this research. this research also had a purpose in explaining the quality of translation results by google translate which included accuracy, acceptability, and readability. based on the data analysis in the previous chapter, it can be concluded that there are 9 techniques found in the data. they are reduction, established equivalent, literal, calque, transposition, linguistic amplification, amplification, linguistic compression, and borrowing. the total data are 257 sentences from ten articles of jakarta post. the total techniques of the data found are 357. the percentage of each techniques as follows: (1) borrowing technique used 145 times and represents 41%, (2) established equivalent technique used 65 times and represents 18%, (3) literal technique used 46 times and represents 13%, (4) linguistic compression used 27 times and represents 7%, (5) reduction technique used 25 times and represents 7%, (6) amplification technique used 20 times and represents 6%, (7) calque technique used 18 times and represents 5%, (8) transposition technique used 8 times and represents 2%, (9) linguistic amplification technique used 3 times and represents 1%. the most dominant translation technique found is borrowing technique, it means that google translate uses more familiar terms in target language to make the readers easy to understand the translation. the application of translation techniques in terms translation has some influences to the translation quality. based on the translation accuracy assessment, the result shows that the average score of accuracy is 2,5 with 57.1% of all data are translated accurately, 35.1% are less accurate, and 7.8% are inaccurate. the result of translation acceptability assessment shows that the result shows that the average score of acceptability is 2,5 with 58.6% are acceptable, 35% are less acceptable, and 6.4% are unacceptable. while the results of translation readability shows that the result shows that the average score of readability is 2,5 with 63.7% of all data translated readable, 28.6% are less readable, and 7.7% are unreadable. it can be inferred that most of terms translation are accurate, acceptable and readable. in accuracy, calque and borrowing technique got the highest level of accuracy with the percentage of accurate translation of 73%. the other translation techniques that got quite high level of accuracy with the percentage of accurate translation above 50 were linguistic amplification technique (66.7%), literal technique (65%), linguistic compression technique (65%), and amplification technique (60%). there were three translation techniques which got the level of accuracy below 50%. those techniques were established equivalent technique (45%), transposition technique (42.5%), and reduction technique (29%). in acceptability, calque technique got the highest level of acceptability with the percentage of acceptable translation of 75%. the other translation techniques that got quite high level of accuracy with the percentage of accurate translation above 50 were borrowing technique (73%), linguistic amplification technique (70%), literal technique (64%), linguistic compression technique (62%), amplification technique (60%), and established equivalent technique (52%). there were two translation techniques which got the level of accuracy below 50%. those techniques were transposition technique (47,5%) and reduction technique (30%). in readability, calque technique got the highest level of acceptability with the percentage of readable translation of 80%. the other translation techniques that got quite high level of accuracy with the percentage of accurate translation above 50 were literal technique (75%), linguistic amplification technique (73.3%), borrowing technique (72%), amplification technique (69%), linguistic compression technique (65%), transposition technique (55%), and established equivalent technique (52%). there was only one translation technique which got level of readability below 50%, it was reduction technique (37%). based on data above, it can be concluded that calque technique had the best translation quality considering this technique got the highest score in every aspect. while reduction technique was the least because this technique got the lowest score in every aspect. considering the result and significance of the study, there are several suggestions derived from those aspects. the researcher comes with some suggestions for the google translate users and other researchers who are interested in translation analysis. first for google translate users, google translate is a machine translation and it has limitations. while it can help a user to understand the general content of a foreign language text, it does not, consistently, deliver accurate translation. google translate has difficulties in translating complex sentences. it will be better if users translate simple sentence to gain a better quality of translation. second suggestion is addressed to researchers especially english department students, i suggest this research is expected to give more reference for those who studying translation field or translation machine for example google translate. references best, john w.(1981). research in education. new jersey: prentice-hall. catford, j.c. 1965. a linguistic theory of translation. london: oxford university press. flick, uwe. 2009. an introduction to qualitative research forth edition sage. london: sage publications ltd. hatim, b. and munday, j. 2004. translation – an advanced resource book. new york: routledge.latif, muhammad abdul (2017). “translation techniques and accuracy of the indonesian subtitle of the movie philomena”. skripsi. fbs. pend. bahasa inggris, universitas negeri semarang.nababan, m.r. 2003. teori menerjemah bahasa inggris. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. hartono, rudi. 2011. teori penerjemahan (a handbook for translators). semarang: cipta prima nusantara semarang. hewson, l. and jacky, m. 1991. redefining translation: the variational approach. great britain: biddles of guildford. molina, l. and albir a.h. 2002. translation technique revisited: a dynamic and functional approach. meta, 47 (4). spain, barcelona: universitat autònoma de barcelona. newmark, peter. a textbook of translation. 1988. united kingdom: prentice hall international (uk) ltd. suryawinata, zuchridin. 1989. terjemahan: pengantar teori dan praktek. malang: publisher ikip malang. ika oktavianti / journal of economic education 1 (2) (2012) elt forum 7 (1) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media in teaching writing of descriptive text an experimental research of eighth grade of junior high school 3 semarang eka yulianti fajlin, hendi pratama  putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) eka yulianti fajlin, hendi pratama / journal of english language teaching 7 (1) (2018) english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia 69 79 article info ________________ article history: received in april 2017 approved in may 2017 published in july 2017 ________________ keywords : roundtable, think pair share, writing ability, descriptive text. abstract ___________________________________________________________________ writing is one of the skills which is difficult to be mastered by students since it requires a higher level of productive language control than other skills. therefore, in teaching writing teachers should have a creative way to make students learn writing easily. this study was concerned with the implementation of roundtable and think pair share combined with picture in teaching writing of descriptive text. the aims of this study: (1) to find out the effective techniques between roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media, (2) to know students’ perception about those techniques. the data collection techniques used tests and questionnaire. the pre-test result in experimental group 1 and 2 were 60.86 and 60.69. the post-test result in experimental group 1 and 2 were 84.89 and 75.51. t-test post-test showed that sig. (2-tailed) was 0.001 and t-test was 7.932. the test result showed significant improvement of students’ writing achievement in both group.therefore, both techniques combined with picture were effective to teach writing of descriptive text. however, there was a significant difference between post-test scores in both group. it could be concluded that roundtable combined with picture was more effective than think pair share combined with picture in teaching writing of descriptive text. the questionnaire results showed both techniques combined with picture were interesting, some students in experimental group 1 got difficulty whereas many students in experimental group 2 got difficulty in writing, the learning process using both techniques were effective, and both techniques could be used in another meeting. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: fajlineka@gmail.com introduction in the process of teaching learning, students need to master not only knowledge but also are able to communicate with others. as stated by pratama and yuliati (2016) that students need to master of communication, critical and logical thinking, creativity, and problem solving. one form of communication is writing. writing is one opf the skills that students need to master either at primary, secondary or tertiary level (keshavarz, shahrokhi, & nejad, 2014). in reality, writing is a difficult skill to be mastered by students in those levels. as stated by handayani (2012) writing is often perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than other skills. writing is much more than the simple mechanics of getting the words down, it also involves being creative, spelling, grammar, punctuation, choice of appropriate words, sentence linking, and text construction (phillip, 2003). the reason that students cannot make a good writing is poor grammar knowledge, poor vocabularies, and other important aspects in writing. meanwhile, those aspects are not taught explicitly in the process of teaching learning. they also have low motivation including in mastering writing skill so they look reluctant and do not work seriously in doing writing task (astarina, 2011). that is what makes writing is a difficult thing for junior high school student. moreover, teachers also have important role in the process of teaching writing. methods and media that used by teachers in teaching writing also influence the result of writing. based on the observation during teaching interinship in smpn 3 semarang, the development of learning media sometimes make teachers tend to use the easiest way to explain the materials. they still tend to use lecturing technique by explaining the material using media such as only showing materials using power point or other media. moreover, most indoesian efl teachers tend to faithfully follow textbooks and student work sheets; they barely provide opportunities for students to use the target language to interact with their peers (alwasilah, 2012; lie 2007; musthafa, 2009 cited in astuti, 2016). with such kind of teaching technique, many students feel difficult to understand the materials because they do not have chance to discuss with their friend about the materials. learning process in education unit is organized interactive, inspiring, pleasant, challenging, motivating learners to participate actively and provide enough space for innovation, creativity, and independence in accordance with their talents, interests, and learners’ physical and psychological development (ministry of education and culture, 2016). in curriculum 2013, teaching learning process has to use students centered learning approach, it is no longer using teacher centered learning approach. students are required to be active in learning process. in the curriculum 2013, junior high school students are required to communicate both orally and written thorugh some of the genre texts, such as descriptive, recount, narrative, procedures, and report information. all those text are difficult for them if teachers only use conventional techniques in teaching. considering the problems above, teachers should find various teaching techniques and should be able to use media as much as possible. in this study, i offer teachers to use cooperative learning as an alternative in teaching writing because as stated by astuti (2016) that cooperative learning hardly takes place in classrooms in indonesia. according to mandal (2009) cooperative learning is is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. the spirit of competitiveness and the domination of individualism may be reduced and lessened through adopting the approach of cooperative learning that provides a supportive learning environment for students in which they can acquire and exchange ideas, information and knowledge (mahmoud, 2014). therefore, i choose cooperative learning as an alternative in teaching writing. there have been many researches exploring about cooperative learning technique in the various form such as keshavarz, shahrokhi, and nejad (2014), sari (2014) and sumarsih and sumanjaya (2013) conducted about think pair share, hapsari (2011) and handayani (2012) conducted about roundtable technique. whereas, some researcher did not mention the form of cooperative leaning they used. they applied cooperative learning techniques mostly for university students and senior high school students. the area that has not been explored is comparing two cooperative learning techniques to teach students of junior high school. in the study, i chose roundtable and think pair share to teach writing of descriptive text. it was be combined with picture as media in order to make process of learning are interesting. the reason i chose those techniques is they are rarely used in teaching learning process. by applying those techniques there will be renewal in teaching learning process. those techniques also can be used in teaching writing. as stated by barkley (2003) cited in handayani (2012) one of the best techniques for stimulating ideas and finding a direction for a piece of writing is roundtable. in roundtable, each student takes turn responding to a prompt by writing one or two word or phrases. meanwhile, in think pair share (tps) technique, students have opportunity to share their idea for writing and discuss their mistakes in writing into group. tps technique creates a good environment in teaching learning writing in which students became active in the process of writing (sumarsih & sanjaya, 2013). in this study, i conducted which was more effective between roundtable and think pair share to teach writing especially teaching writing of descriptive text, so the results of this study could be used by teachers as an alternative way to teach writing of descriptive text. moreover, i conducted the study to know students’ perception about those techniques. methodology of the research this study employed a true-experimental study. i chose true-experimental research design because in this design the subjects were chosen randomly so that it gave equal opportunity to each subject to be selected. the randomization could neutralize differences that exist among the subjects so that the group or the class selected as the sample could be equalized in every way. the randomization could select two groups with same characteristics. pre-test also assured that they had same prior knowledge or not. therefore, this design had internal and external validity. this study was conducted in smp n 3 semarang. the school was chosen because of the following considerations. first, smp n 3 semarang is located on major jend. panjaitan street 58, brumbungan, semarang, central java. the location is strategic because it is in the center of city. even though it is in the center of the city the school’s atmosphere is good and the noisy sound do not disturb the students’ concentration in the learning process. furthermore, the location is not too far from where i live, so it makes me easily to conduct research. second, smp n 3 semarang is one of the popular schools in semarang which is famous with many achievements and the students are very active. the population of the study was seventh grade students of smp n 3 semarang in academic year 2016/2017. the polupation was 280 students. i chose the seventh grade students because of some reasons. first, the seventh grade students is the transition from elementary school to junior high school. meanwhile in elementary school, they have not got english subject. thus, they do not have a deep knowledge of english. second, based on curriculum that is used today, the seventh grade students are required to be able to master the material about descriptive text and write good descriptive text. in selecting the sample of the study, i used probability samping in the form of simple random sampling technique. there were eight classes of the seventh grade students in smp n 3 semarang. i chose two classes randomly, they were vii c class and vii e class. vii c class was experimental group 1 and vii e class was experimental group 2 those two classes consisted of 35 students. the research instruments used in this research were tests and questionnaire. during the study, i conducted the tests twice; pre-test and post-test and gave questionnaire sheet for both groups. the tests were used to know whether any significant difference between students who taught using roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media. if the tvalue is higher than ttable, it means that there is a significant difference between students who taught using roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media. on the other hand, if the tvalue is lower than ttable, it means that there is no significant difference between students who taught using roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media. before computing the t-test value, i computed the homogenity and normality of experimental group 1 and 2 to find out the data was homogenous and normally distributed. in addition, i also used questionnaire to know students’ perception about those techiques. i used likert scale in questionnaire. i determined score for students’ answer, calculated each students’ answer, and calculated the presentage of each item. from the presentage, i interpreted the students’ perception. result and discussion the results of this study were organized based on the technique of collecting the data. there were two categories of results. the first result was obtained from the test data and the second result was obtained from questionnaire sheet. results of the tests the tests were held twice. the first test was pre-test and the second test was post-test. they were given to experimenta1 group 1 and experimental group 2. in measuring students’ achievement in writing descriptive text, i used analytical scoring design by brown (2004). there were five aspects including (1) organization, (2) content, (3) grammar, (4) punctuation, and (5) vocabulary. the pre-test was held to know students’ writing ability before they were given treatment. there was no building knowledge before the pre-test to know how far students’ understanding of writing descriptive text. almost all of students had superficial knowledge about writing descriptive text. they still had difficulty in expressing their idea. some of them did not know what they should write because they had less vocabularies. some of them also had low knowledge about the grammar that used in writing descriptive text. therefore, from the five aspects of assessing writing, the low score was in content, grammar, and vocabularies. the table below was the pre-test result of experimental group 1 and experimental group 2. table 3.1. the pre-test result descriptive statistics n minimum maximum mean std. deviation variance experimental 1 35 54 69 60,86 3,549 12,597 experimental 2 35 53 69 60,69 3,306 10,928 valid n (listwise) 35 the lowest pre-test score in experimental group 1 was 54.00 and in experimental group 2 was 53.00 furthermore, the highest pre-test score in both groups was the same (69.00) the mean of pre-test score in experimental group 1 was 60.86 and the mean of pre-test score in experimental group 2 was 60.69. from the result of pre-test, there was difference between the score of experimental group 1 and 2. however, it was not very significant because the difference was not to far. it could be seen in the figure below. diagram 3.1. the pre-test result from the figure above, the difference score between experimental group 1 and experimental group 2 was 0.17. it meant that the prior of writing ability between experimental group 1and 2 was relatively the same. after calculating the pre-test, i calculated the homogenity and the normality of the pre-test between experimental group 1 and experimental group 2. homogenity value (fvalue) was 1.152. meanwhile, ftable was 1.494. since fvalue (1.1.152) < ftable (1.494), it could be concluded that the population between experimental group1 and 2 were homogenous. moreover, the normality pre-test could be seen in the table below. table 3.2. the normality pre-test tests of normality group kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. score experimental 1 ,138 35 ,088 ,965 35 ,324 experimental 2 ,138 35 ,090 ,965 35 ,330 a. lilliefors significance correction the data could be stated in normal distribution if p-value (sig.) was higher than 0.05. from the calculation of kolmogorov-smirnov, the p-value of experimental group 1 (0.088) was higher than 0.05. the p-value of experimental group 2 (0.090) was also higher than 0.05. it meant that the pre-test data of both groups was normally distributed. moreover, from the calculation of shapiro-wilk the p-value of experimental group 1 (0.324) was higher than 0.05. the p-value of experimental group 2 (0.330) was also higher than 0.05. it could be concluded that the pre-test data of both groups was also distributed normally. after calculating the homogenity and the normality, i calculated the t-test. the result of t-test pre-test could be seen in the table below. table 3.3. the t-test pre-test independent samples test levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper score equal variances assumed ,552 ,460 ,209 68 ,835 ,171 ,820 -1,465 1,807 equal variances not assumed ,209 68 ,835 ,171 ,820 -1,465 1,808 based on the table, the results showed that sig. (2-tailed) was 0.835, and t-test was 0.209. in this part, if sig. (2-tailed) was higher than 0.05 then there was no significant difference between experimental group 1 and experimental group 2. the treatment was held after the pretest. there were five meeting of treatment. in the treatment, experimental group 1 was taught using roundtable combined with picture as media, meanwhile experimental group 2 was taught using think pair share combined with picture as media. after the treatment, the pre-test was held. the post-test was held to know the students’ writing ability after getting treatment. the table below was the result of post-test. table 3.4 the post-test result descriptive statistics n minimum maximum mean std. deviation variance experimental 1 35 77 91 84,89 3,932 15,457 experimental 2 35 65 88 75,51 5,777 33,375 valid n (listwise) 35 the lowest post-test score in experimental group 1 was 77.00 and in experimental group 2 was 65.00 furthermore, the highest pre-test score in experimental group 1 was 91 and in experimental group 2 was 88.00. the mean of post-test score in experimental group 1 was 84.89 and the mean of post-test score in experimental group 2 was 75.51. from the result of pre-test, there was a significant different between the result of both groups. the difference could be seen in the following figure. diagram 3.2 the post-test result from the figure above, the difference score between experimental group 1 and experimental group 2 was 9.35. it meant that the achievement of experimental group 1 that was taught using roundtable was higher than the achievement of experimental group 2 that was taught using think pair share. after calculating the post-test, i calculated the homogenity and the normality of the post-test between experimental group 1 and 2. homogenity value (fvalue) was 0.463. meanwhile, ftable was 1.494. since fvalue (0.463) < ftable (2.494), it could be concluded that the population between experimental group 1 and 2 were homogenous. moreover, the normality pre-test could be seen in the table below. table 3.5. the normality pre-test tests of normality group kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. score experimental 1 ,133 35 ,120 ,939 35 ,051 experimental 2 ,126 35 ,174 ,964 35 ,304 a. lilliefors significance correction the data could be stated in normal distribution if p-value (sig.) was higher than 0.05. from the calculation of kolmogorov-smirnov, the p-value of experimental group 1 (0.120) was higher than 0.05. the p-value of experimental group 2 (0.174) was also higher than 0.05. moreover, from the calculation of shapiro-wilk the p-value of experimental group 1 (0.051) was also higher than 0.05. the p-value of experimental group 2 (0.304) was also higher than 0.05. from those calculations, it meant that the pre-test data of experimental and 1 and experimental group 2 was distributed normally. after calculating the homogenity and the normality, i calculated the t-test. the result of t-test pos-test could be seen in the table below. table 3.6. the t-test post-test independent samples test levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper score equal variances assumed 5,884 ,018 7,932 68 ,001 9,536 1,202 7,136 11,936 equal variances not assumed 7,932 68 ,001 9,536 1,196 7,144 11,928 from the table above sig. (2-tailed) was 0.001 and t-test was 7.932. if the result of t-test in post-test was positive, and sig. (2-tailed) was lower than 0.05, it indicated that there was significant differences between experimental group 1 and experimental group 2 in achieving the result of post-test. null hypothesis (ho) was rejected and alternative hypothesis (ha) was accepted because t-value was higher than t-table (t value > t table). results of the questionnaire i used questionnaire to know students’ perception about roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media. the questionnaire was given for both groups. there were ten questions. q1 and q2 was about students’ interest toward writing in english and the technique that is used. q3 and q4 was about difficulties of students’ writing and techniques’ applying. q5 and q6 was about advantage of applying the roundtable and think pair share techniques. q7 and q8 was about the effectiveness of applying roundtable and think pair share technique for teaching writing of descriptive text. q9 and q10 was about relevancy of roundtable and think pair share technique to be applied in teaching writing. the following table was the result of the questionnaire in experimental group 1. table 3.7. the result of questionnaire in experimental group 1 item number students' answers strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 1 31% 69% 0% 0% 2 66% 26% 6% 3% 3 69% 17% 14% 0% 4 29% 63% 9% 0% 5 26% 74% 0% 0% 6 40% 60% 0% 0% 7 40% 60% 0% 0% 8 34% 66% 0% 0% 9 34% 66% 0% 0% 10 29% 71% 0% 0% the table above showed the percentage of each question. almost students answered strongly agree and agree in all question. however, there were some students who answered disagree and strongly disagree in q2, q3, and q4. the following table was the result of the questionnaire in experimental group 2. table 3.8. the result of questionnaire in experimental group 2 item number students' answers strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 1 31% 69% 0% 0% 2 66% 26% 6% 3% 3 69% 17% 14% 0% 4 29% 63% 9% 0% 5 26% 74% 0% 0% 6 40% 60% 0% 0% 7 40% 60% 0% 0% 8 34% 66% 0% 0% 9 34% 66% 0% 0% 10 29% 71% 0% 0% the table above showed the percentage of each question. almost students answered strongly agree and agree in all question. however, there were some students who answered disagree and strongly disagree in q2, q3, and q4. disscussion based on pre-test statistical calculation, experimental group 1 and experimental group 2 relatively had same writing ability since the pre-test score of both group were relatively same and those groups were homogenous since there was only slight difference in the pre-test score. statistical calculation of post-test showed that roundtable and think pair share combined with picture as media are effective to teach writing of descripitve text since the post-test scores of both group were increased. from the statistical calculation of pre-test and post-test, it could be said that both roundtable and think pair share combined with picture were effective to teach writing of descriptive text. this result is in line with a study conducted by handayani (2011) that the use of roundtable technique in teaching writing gives students good way how they explore their writing well. this result was also the same with sumarsih and sumanjaya (2013) that the application of think pair share technique have helped students in writing descriptive text and the students’ achievement was improved when they were taught by think pair share technique. it was also in line with sari’s (2014) research that stated think pair share technique gave positive influence to the students’ achievement. it means that cooperative learning can improve students’ writing ability as stated by astarina (2011) that cooperative learning technique showed that the students’ writing skills improved. keshavarz, shahrokhi, and nejad (2014) stated that cooperative learning enhanced students writing performance. it was in line with the result of this study that cooperative learning could enhance students’ writing ability. it could be seen from the result of post-test. the result of the study was also in line with mahmoed (2014) that by using cooperative learning students’ writing scores was higher. it could be said that cooperative learning could support students in learning as stated by jolliffe (2007) that cooperative learning requires pupils to work together in small groups to support each other to improve their own learning and that of others. another statistical calculation was t-test of pre-test and post-test. from the t-test of pre-test result, there was no significant different between experimental group 1and experimental group 2 since the t-value was lower than t-table. it meant that those group were homogenous. however, from t-test of post-test result, there was a significant difference of the students’ writing achievement between two groups since the t-value was higher than t-table. therefore, the hyphothesis that stated “there is a significant difference between the result of roundtable and think-pair-share combined with picture as media to teach descriptive text for seventh grade students of smp n 3 semarang in the academic year 2016/2017” was accepted. it could be said that roundtable technique combined with picture as media was more effective than think pair share combined with picture as media to improve the students’ writing ability in writing descriptive text since there was a significant different between the scores of students who were taught using roundtable and think pair share technique. the post-test score of students who were taught using roundtable were higher than post-test score of students who were taught using think pair share. based on the result of questionnaire in experimental group 1, most of students liked writing descriptive text using roundtable technique combined with picture as media and the technique was interesting in writing descriptive text. it was in line with hapsari’s (2011) research. she stated that most students were interested in the teaching activities using roundtable technique. moreover, most of students did not got difficulty in writing descriptive text in the learning process. however, there were few students still got difficulty. the learning process using roundtable technique combined with picture as media was interesting and effective enough and it could help students to overcome the difficulty in writing descriptive text. this technique was more exciting than the usual learning process and it could be used in another meeting. the result of the questionnaire in experimental group 2 was slightly different with the result of the questionnaire in experimental group 1. based on the questionnaire in experimental group 2, most of students liked writing descriptive text using think pair share technique combined with picture as media and the techniquewas interesting in writing descriptive text. the learning process using think pair share technique combined with picture as media was interesting, effective enough and more exciting than the usual learning process. this result was in line with sari (2014) that stated think pair share created a good environment in teaching learning writing. although there was an increase score in the post-test score, mostly students still got difficulty in writing of descriptive text. it could be caused by the participation of the students when they practice writing of the descriptive text. they are less active in sharing their ideas with their partner and their groups so that they still got difficulty in writing descriptive text. this result was contradict with sari’s (2014) that stated students become active in the process of writing using think pair share. the implementation of roundtable and think pair share technique combined with picture as media in the treatment of writing of descriptive text involved some stages of writing. it was same with the learning process of writing as usual. it was in line with a theory from linse (2006) there were five stages in writing: prewriting, writing, revising, editing, and publishing. in roundtable technique, the students did those five stages with their group so roundtable is a cooperative learning structure useful for brainstorming, reviewing, predicting, or practicing a skill, use a single sheet of paper and pen for each cooperative learning group (millis, 2008). while in think pair share, the students did those five techniques with their partner or their group. they discussed about the topic with their partner so that they could wrote their ideas well and they shared their ideas with their group. by sharing with the group they got suggestion and critical from their friends in group so that they could revise and edit their writing well. however, he students’ participation in experimental group 2 who were taught using think pair share were less active so that some students could not improve their writing. however, think pair could encourages students’ participation as stated by a website about cooperative learning strategy that think pair share is a cooperative learning technique that encourages individual participation and is applicable across all grade levels and class sizes (teacher vision, 2017). in writing of descriptive text, the students considered about some writing components as stated by brown (2004) there are five writing components in scoring writing that should be considered by students. they are organization including introduction, body, and conclusion; logical development of ideas: content; grammar; punctuation, spelling and mechanics; style and quality of expression. from the result of pre-test, the students both groups still had low knowledge in grammar. there are a lot of grammar mistaken in writing descriptive text. many students neither wrote the introduction nor conclusion. they were also low in vocabulary so the style and quality expression was still low and they could not developed their ideas. however, they had good knowledge in punctuation, spelling and mechanics. both groups got improvement in writing. their grammar knowledge was improved. they also could developed their ideas well. their vocabulary was also improved so that their expression in writing was better and they could develop their idea well. the role of picture as media of teaching and learning process indirectly gave a positive influence so that the teaching and learning process was interesting and effective. students liked writing of descriptive text by the exixtance of picture since they could describe an object easily as stated by from hill as cited in joklová (2009) that pictures bring not only images of reality, but can also function as a fun element in the class. therefore, the students felt interested in the learning process and the their ideas could emerge from the picture. it could be said that picture was a good media in teaching as stated by ryan (1993) that pictures, paintings, and other visuals constitute the most effective, most plentiful, and least expensive teaching medium. conclusions based on the result and discussion, i conclude that the alternative hypothesis of this study is accepted and the null hypothes is rejected. there was a significant difference between the result of roundtable and think-pair-share combined with picture as media to teach descriptive text for seventh grade students of smp n 3 semarang in the academic year 2016/2017. roundtable and think pair share can improve students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. however, roundtable was more effective than think pair share since it gave higher significant difference of the experimental group 1’s achievement than the experimental group 2’s achievement in writing descriptive text. moreover, only few students who taught using roundtable technique who got difficulty in writing descriptive text and most students were interested in learning process using this technique. meanwhile, many students who taught using think pair share technique got difficulty in writing descriptive text. it meant that rountable technique can overcome students’ difficulty effectively. references astarina, a.s. (2011). improving writing skills through cooperative learning of science program students class xi of sma kolombo yogyakarta in academic year 2010/2011. thesis, state university of yogyakarta. astuti, puji. (2016). practicioner of cooperative learning as part of novice teachers’ professional identity. teflin journal. retrieved from http://journal.teflin.org/index.php/journal/article/view/328 brown, h.d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: longman. ministry of education and culture. (2016). peraturan menteri pendidikan dan kebudayaan ri nomor 22 tahun 2016 tentang standar proses pendidikan dasar dan menengah. retrivied from bsnp-indonesia.org/wp.../06/permendikbud_tahun2016_nomor022_lampiran.pdf handayani, s. (2012). the influence of roundtable technique and students’ intelligence on students writing skill. thesis sebelas maret university. hapsari, a.s. the use of roundtable technique to improve students’ achievement in writing hortatory exposition text. final project semarang state university. jolliffe, w. (2007). cooperative learning in the classroom. london: paul chapman publishing. linse, c.t. (2006). practical english language teaching: young learner. new york: mc graw hill. mahmoed, m.m.a.w, (2014). the effectiveness of using the cooperative leanguage learning approach to enhance efl writing skills among saudy univeristy students. journal of language teaching and research, doi: 10.4304/jltr.5.3.616.625 mandal, r.r. (2009). cooperative learning strategy to enhance writing skill. the modern journal of applied linguistics. millis, b.j. (2008). cooperative learning structures. teaching and learnign center, the university of texas. retrieved on july 2nd 2017 in http://www2.humboldt.edu phillips, s. (2003). young learner. new york: oxford university press. pratama, h & yuliati. global education in english classroom: intregating global issues into english language teaching. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/. ryan, a.g. (1992). vost: a way of expanding classroom assessment to meet the agenda in secondary school science in yager, r.e. (ed.). the status of science-technology-socsheety reform effort around the world. icase yearbook 1992. sari, r. (2014). the influence of cooperative learning (think pair share technique) in teaching descriptive writing. final project syarif hidayatullah state islamic university. sumarsih & sanjaya, d. (2013). tps as an effective technique to enhance the students’ achievement on writing descriptive text. canadian center of science and education journal, http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n12p106 teacher vision, 2017. think pair share cooperative learning strategy. retrieved on january, 22 2017, from https://www.teachervision.com/group-work/think-pair-share-cooperative-learning-strategy. the pre-test result series 1 e 1 e2 60.86 60.69 column2 e 1 e2 col umn1 e 1 e2 groups scores post-test result series 1 e 1 e 2 84.89 75.510000000000005 column1 e 1 e 2 column2 e 1 e 2 groups scores microsoft word 9. tri widi kurniawan 101 the effectiveness of split dictation as a teaching strategy to improve students’ listening skill tri widi kurniawan, c. murni wahyanti  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 27 november 2018 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: split dictation technique; listening skill ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the objectives of this study are to find out whether or not split dictation technique is an effective technique to improve students’ listening skill and to find out whether or not there is a significant difference between students who were taught by using split dictation and those who were taught by using a conventional method. this study is a quantitative research using quasy experimental as the method of collecting data. the subject of this research was 72 students of the tenth-grade students of sma n 1 sukorejo. in obtaining the data, the researcher conducted the pre-test, treatments, and the post-test. the results of this research showed that the mean score of the experimental group is 82,7 and the control group is 77,638. by using ibm spss 23th version program, the computation of t-test which the score of the sig (2 tailed) is (0.000) lower than (0.05), and the result of t-value (4.189) is higher than the t-table (1.994). in conclusion, there is a significant difference between the students’ listening test achievement. the students who were taught by using split dictation has higher achievement, this indicated that split dictation is effective enough to improve students’ listening achievement. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: kurniawanw1813@gmail.com@gmail.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 102 introduction listening is one of the most important areas to teach english learners. every learner has to focus on their listening skill because listening is a process how to understand others. according to nunan (2001, p.23) listening is the process of understanding, learners have to analyze the meaning of what they have heard and understand symbols they have seen and heard. how to understand language is through sound, that is why the listening should come first. the listening processes actually should come through, first they hear the sounds, second, they try to recognize the words they are listening as the input, and the third they can process the word in their brain to realize the meaning and understand the speaker means. based on the writer’s observation in teaching practice last year, the writer found that so many students have difficulties in understanding the english language as their foreign language. when listening comprehension was taught in the class, students seemed still face difficulties in listening to auto media. it could be seen from the students’ score in listening comprehension was still low than the teacher expected. as a result of this activity, some of the students seem difficult to answer the questions because the rate of conversation is fast enough, the speaker speaks unclearly. they accustom by their teachers’ method, listening on recording and answering the question. students seem to be bored because the recording material was given since they were at elementary school and they want something new and different. based on the statement above, the writer wants to use a different technique to improve the students’ listening ability. using dictation technique could be one of the ways to improve their listening skills in understanding english content. dictation is a technique to decode or to translate sounds into written form. davis and rinvolucri (1998) claim that dictation contains a wealth of new techniques to extend the traditional language-learning activity. kidd (1992) stated in his book entitled teaching esl students through dictation, dictation is interesting, motivating, communicative, and specifically designed for the teaching listening. students performing split dictation exercises are generally required to transcribe the text as accurately as possible. in the previous studies (sari, 2014), found that dictation can stimulate students’ active participation and enhance students’ listening ability. it proven by previous researchers such as (kiany, 2012; aini, 2015; dwinalida, 2012), found that there is a significant improvement of the students’ score after they are being treated by using dictation techniques. in line with the explanation above the researcher chooses a dictation technique called split dictation technique. kidd (1992) stated that one of the dictation techniques, split dictation can help students to diagnose and correct these kinds of errors as well as others, and the purpose of split dictation for the students is to practice listening skills and spelling skills. according to kidd (1992, p.53) split dictation is often acts as a memorization exercise or a spelling-checking activity where teacher dictates a particular passage by splitting the students into two groups in the classroom. it is an activity where students reconstruct the text, combining the two "half-texts" they have written down to produce a complete version, it can increase their ability to notice aspects of the language while they are listening, and realize some mistakes which they commonly make. therefore, the objectives of this study are to find out whether or not split dictation technique is an effective technique to improve students’ listening skill and to find out whether or not there is a significant difference between students who were taught by using split dictation and those who were taught by using a conventional method. methods the type of this study belonged to a quasi-experimental design. based on montgomery and douglas (1997, p.1), experimental design is the process of planning a study to meet specified objectives and to answer the research question as clearly and as efficient as possible. as stated by bhat (2013, p.5) a tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 103 quasi-experimental research design is similar to experimental research but is not exactly that. in this research design, an independent variable is manipulated but the participants of a group are not randomly assigned as per conditions. the independent variable is manipulated before calculating the dependent variable and so, the directionality problem is eliminated. the subject of this study was the tenth-grade students of sma n 1 sukorejo in the academic year 2017/2018. class x mia 1 was chosen as the experimental group taught by using split dictation technique, while x mia 2 was chosen as the control group taught by using conventional method. each group consisted of 36 students. the type of data used in this research was quantitative data. as stated by mertler ( 2015, p.215) the quantitative data is related to numeral form. the quantitative data of this study were the students’ results in a listening test using split dictation technique. it was obtained by giving a pre-test and a posttest to measure students’ ability before and after the treatments. before the tests were conducted, the tryout test must be done in order to find out the validity, reliability, difficulty level, and discriminating power of the test items. the primary instrument used in this study was a test. as stated by brown (2004) a test is a method of measuring a person’s ability, knowledge, or performance in a given domain. in this study, the writer used an achievement test. achievement test was a test which had a role to determine whether course objectives had been met and appropriate knowledge and skills acquiredby the end of a period of instruction ( brown 2004, p.48). after collecting the data, the researcher analyzed the data by using some method. first, the researcher analyzed the result of pre-test and post-test to get the measure of central tendency (mean). second, the researcher was calculating the normality of the test. normality test was used to measure whether the obtained data was normal or not ( basrowi and soeyono, 2007, p.85). the data were classified into normal when the p-output was higher than 0.05. in measuring normality test, shapirowilk in ibm spss 23th version was used. third, the researcher was calculating the homogeneity of the tests. homogeneity test was used to measure the obtained data whether it was homogeneous or not. according to basrowi and soeyono (2013, p.106), the score is categorized homogeneous when the p-output was higher than the significant difference at 0.05 levels. in measuring homogeneity test, levine formula in ibm spss 23th version was used. after analyzing the normality and homogeneity, the researcher calculated paired samples ttest and independent samples t-test by using ibm spss 23rd version in order to find out whether or not the means between the experimental and the control group was statistically significant. this t-test measures the significant difference between the two set of data that gathered. statistically, the result compares between t-value and the t-table and the significant difference level (2-tailed). when the tvalue higher than t-table, and significant difference level (2-tailed) was lower than 0.05, it could be concluded that h1 is accepted and h0 is denied. it also meant that there was a significant difference between the two data. findings and discussion the result of this research was organized based on the technique of gathering the data the test result after observing the whole test results from the pre-test, post-test, and the result of the questionnaire the writer could make a conclusion that students’ achievement increased after received the treatment. the result of the whole test can be seen in the table below: tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 104 table 1 test result control group experimental group pretest posttest pretest posttest n 36 35 36 36 total score 2395 2795 2425 2980 mean 66,527 77,638 67,361 82,7 in the pre-test, the table shows that mean score of the experimental group is 67,361, while the mean score of the control group is 66,527. it could be concluded that there was only a slight difference both experimental and control group before getting treatments. after getting the treatments, the students’ listening achievement of the experimental and control group was increased. it could be seen from the mean score of the two groups. the average score of the experimental group was 82,7, while the control group average score was 77.638. the conclusion drawn from the table above was after getting the treatments, the students’ listening achievement of the experimental and control group was increased. it could be seen from the mean score of the two groups. before calculating the t-test, the researcher used ibm spss 23rd version to find out the normality test. this test used the shapiro-wilk test with significance level 0,05. the normality test result of the pre-test and post-test between the experimental and the control group could be seen in the following table: table 2 pre-test normality of experimental and control group shapiro-wilk statisti c df sig. pretestcontrol .924 36 .016 pretestexperi mental .923 36 .015 a. lilliefors significance correction from the calculation of the table above, it could be concluded that the pre-test in this research was normally distributed since the sig value of the two groups were higher than 0.05. the sapphirowilk sig (significance) value of the experimental group in the pre-test was 0.015, while, the sapphirowilk sig value of the control group in the pre-test was 0.016. table 3 post-test normality of experimental and control group shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. posttestcontrol .870 36 .013 posttestexperime ntal .935 36 .056 a. lilliefors significance correction tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 105 from the calculation of table 3, it could be concluded that the post-test in this research was normally distributed since the sig value of the two groups were higher than 0.05. the sapphiro-wilk sig (significance) value of the experimental group in the post-test was 0.056, while, the sapphiro-wilk sig value of the control group in the post-test was 0.013. after calculated the normality of the test, the researcher used ibm spss 23th version to find out the homogeneity of the pre-test and post-test for both experimental and control group. the homogeneity of the pre-test and post-test of both groups could be seen in the table below table 4 pre-test homogeneity of experimental and control group based on the calculation of the data above, the sig value of levene statistics was 0.831 higher than the level of significant (0.05). thus, it could be concluded that the population between the experimental and control group were homogenous. table 5 post-test homogeneity of experimental and control group based on the calculation of the data above, the sig value of levene statistics was 0.680 higher than the level of significant (0.05). since the pre-test and post-test data that have been collected higher than the level of significant (0.05), thus it could be said as the homogeny data. then, the t-test could be counted. then, the researcher calculated t-test in independent samples t-test, the researcher used the ibm spss 23rd version to find out whether or not the post-test result between both groups was statistically significant. results of the computation could be seen in the table below: table 6 post-test independent samples test levene’s test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig t df sig (2tailed) result of equality post-test variances assumed equality post-test variances not assumed .172 .680 4.189 4.189 70 67.668 .000 .000 levene statistic df1 df2 sig. .046 1 70 .831 levene statistic df1 df2 sig. .172 1 70 .680 tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 106 since the tvalue (4.189) was higher than ttable (1.994) for α = 5% and df = 70, and the score of the sig (2 tailed) was 0.000 lower than 0.05, it could be concluded that h1 is accepted and h0 is denied. in this research, h1 means that the use of split dictation technique was effective to improve students’ listening skill, while h0 means the use of split dictation technique was not effective to improve students’ listening skill. discussion after observing the whole test results from the pre-test, post-test, and the result of the questionnaire the writer could make a conclusion that students’ achievement increased after received the treatment. the result of the whole test can be seen in the figure below: figure 1 pre-test and post-test results based on the chart above, the average score of the experimental group was 67.3 and the control group was 66,5. after both of groups received different treatments, the average score of the experimental group increased 15.4 points to be 82.7 whereas the control group increases only 10.8 points to be 77.3. this indicated that after getting the treatments, the experimental group got greater improvement than the control group. from the calculation above, it could be concluded that after received treatments by using split dictation technique, the students’ achievement on the listening test was increased. as a result, the use of split dictation successfully improved the students’ achievement in the listening test. the result was also proved by the computation of t-test which the score of the sig (2 tailed) was 0.000 lower than 0.05. it was also supported by the result of the t-test. the result showed that tvalue was 4.189 while the ttable was 1.994. it showed that the t-value > the t-table. in conclusion, there was a significant difference between the students’ listening test achievement. this finding revealed the previous studies done by (kiany, 2012; aini, 2015; dwinalida, 2012) that the use of dictation technique is effective to improve the students’ listening skill. in conclusion, the writer concluded that split dictation technique really gave a good contribution to improve students’ listening skill, besides it also changed the students’ learning behavior to be better. the students have gained both confidence and skills in the listening activity. another valuable thing that the students learn from split dictation was that the technique helped them sharpen their handwriting and spelling. conclusion the objectives of this study are to find out whether or not split dictation technique is an effective technique to improve students’ listening skill and to find out whether or not there is a significant difference between students who were taught by using split dictation and those who were taught by 66,527 67,361 77,368 82,7 control experimental pre-test post-test tri widi kurniawan & c. murni wahyanti / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 107 using a conventional method. from the data obtained in this research, there are some points which could be taken as a conclusion. firstly, the use of split dictation technique is effective to improve students’ listening skill. it is proven by the improvement of the students’ score in the pre-test and the post-test. the result showed that the implementation of split dictation technique could improve students’ listening skill. the mean of students’ score in experimental class improved from pre-test to post-test, from 67,361 to 82,7 while the control group improved from 66,527 to 77,638. after both of groups received different treatments, the average score of the experimental group increased 15.4 points to be 82.7 while the control group increased only 10.8 points to be 77.6. this indicated that after getting the treatments, the experimental group got higher improvement than the control group. secondly, there is a significant improvement of the students’ achievement after they had received the treatments by using split dictation. it is showed in the calculation of the t-test by using spss program. the result showed that the score of the t-value (4.189) was higher than the t-table (1.994) for α = 5% and df = 70; sig (2 tailed) value 0.000 was lower than 0.05. since the t-value was higher than the t-table, and sig (2 tailed) value was lower than 0.05, it could be stated that there was a significant difference between the students’ who were taught by using split dictation and those who were taught by using a conventional method. suggestion based on the conclusion of the research, there are some suggestions that could be taken to enhance students’ listening skill. theoretically, the finding of this study is expected to develop further research. for next researchers who are interested in the same field are recommended to implement the actions in a longer period of time to get more maximum results so that the improvement will be more significantly seen as a literature when they have similar research. the researcher also hopes that the next researcher can explore other kinds of dictation technique as a new teaching strategy to improve students’ listening skill. practically, the result of the study is expected to help students to be more active in the learning process. they should improve their understanding and achievement in learning english especially in listening. they can use audio passage, music, article, or video as a medium to help them understand the english language. they also should study harder and practice english they have learnt. pedagogically, it is hoped that the result of this study will be useful for english teacher. the english teacher should prepare various and different media for teaching and learning process to avoid students’ boredom. it is important for the teacher to maintain students’ focuses which play important role in the teaching learning process. once students keep their focus they will be interested, and after they get interested in the teaching and learning process they will be better at the class in every classroom activities. references arikunto. 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(2001). listening in language learning. teaching english as a second or foreign language, 23. microsoft word 4. rudi wibowo aji 37 the use of flashcards with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge rudi wibowo aji, alief noor farida  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 27 december 2018 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: flashcards; numbered heads together; vocabulary knowledge; quasi experimental research ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this quasi experimental study aims to find out the effectiveness of the use of flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together compared to the use of only flashcards to improve seventh grade students’ vocabulary knowledge in one junior high school in batang. the data was obtained through pre-test and post-test. conventional change score data analysis showed that the control group achieved better vocabulary knowledge improvement result with 3.42 compare to 2.66 improvement result of experimental group. likewise, the data analysis using process-oriented change score by frost (2014) also favour the control group with 22% improvement than the experimental group with 19% improvement. thus, flashcards is more effective than flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: wiboworu@gmail.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 38 introduction vocabulary knowledge is considered as a very important knowledge required for students who wish to learn a foreign language. consequently, learning vocabulary has become a major concern in learning a foreign language (barkat & aminafshar, 2015). hamzehbagi and bonyadi (2015) reffered learning vocabularies of a foreign language, in addition to reading skill, as a fundamental skill in the course of learning a language. furthermore, başoğlu and akdemır (2010) assumed that learning vocabulary is a crucial part of learning a foreign language. learning vocabulary is essential in learning a foreign language, yet many students still find it difficult to be comprehended. as the result, lack of vocabulary knowledge has become one of the difficulties faced by students in learning a foreign language such as english (barkat & aminafshar, 2015). in addition, aslan (2011) believed that meaningful communication couldn’t be able to achieve due to the students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge. many ways are available to overcome students’ lack of vocabulary knowledge as well as to improve it in learning english as a foreign language (aslan, 2011; barkat & aminafshar, 2015; başoğlu & akdemır, 2010; erbey, mclaughlin, derby, & everson, 2011; hamzehbagi & bonyadi, 2015; mechling, gast, & thompson, 2008; orawiwatnakul, 2013; yousefi & bonyadi, 2014). the use of flashcards is among those taken into consideration as an effective approach in learning vocabularies (aslan, 2011; hamzehbagi & bonyadi, 2015). the use of flashcards is effective to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge (aslan, 2011). flashcards are also effective in improving students’ vocabulary knowledge in collaboration such as with reading racetrack (erbey, mclaughlin, derby, & everson, 2011). however, flashcards is considered as less effective when compared to technological based media such as smart board technology and computer assisted language learning (barkat & aminafshar, 2015; mechling, gast, & thompson, 2008). the use of flashcards is effective to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. aslan (2011) indicated that using flashcards could be very useful as well as effective for the students in learning english vocabulary especially for young learners. in addition, hamzehbagi and bonyadi (2015) confirmed that flashcards can improve students’ english vocabulary knowledge significantly of iranian first grade high school female students. furthermore, the effectiveness of flashcards in improving students’ vocabulary knowledge has been shown in study conducted by savaiano, lloyd, and hatton (2017) in which they found that flashcards instruction was effective for teaching the meanings of words studied in braille. on the other hand, flashcards is considered as less efffective when compared to technological based media. mechling, gast, and thompson (2008) confirmed that both flashcards instruction and smart board technology were effective in teaching target sight words in a small-group instructional arrangement; nonetheless, students read a greater percentage of observational words when words were presented using smart board. in the same way, barkat and aminafshar (2015) found that computer assisted program (cap) was more effective as well as useful for learning new vocabularied at the elemenentary level students compared to flashcards. flashcards was still considered effective when in collaboration. erbey, mclaughlin, derby, and everson (2011) confirmed that flashcards intervention combined with reading racetracks to teach phonics, sight words, and math facts improved the students’ number of corrects for each subject-matter area. meanwhile, cooperative learning, which is a teaching method recommended by the 2013 curriculum, is an effective method for english learning for english as a foreign language students. zarei and keshavarz (2011) demonstrated that vocabulary post-test of iranian english learners of elementary students receiving cooperative integrated reading and composition (cirs) performed significantly better than the non-cooperative learning students. rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 39 moreover, cooperative learning is more effective compare to another teaching method such as competitive learning. for example, seifoori and haradashi (2015) indicated that cooperative learning had a significantly more effective impact on the vocabulary retention of the 60 efl students from vip language schools in iran compared to competitive learning. in addition, numbered heads together, which is a teaching method commonly used in accordance with 2013 curriculum, is effective in improving students’ vocabulary. iwai (2014) confirmed that although the analysis of the overall quiz scores revealed no statistical differences between the numbered heads together and teacher-fronted approach used to teach vocabulary in a beginning jfl class, student opinion questionnaires revealed that most students felt that group work helped to create a favourable social and affective environment for learning. however, numbered heads together is produce less equality of participation and participation levels of group members per turn taken. lange, costley and han (2016) demonstrated that numbered heads together is produce less equality of participation and participation levels of group members per turn taken than think-pair-share. in terms of combination, cooperative learning is able to enliven vocabulary lessons. wilkinson (1994) stated some benefits of combining cooperative learning with story development such as stimulates brainstorming, reinforces the vocabulary words, encourages a feel of narrative writing, and helps shyer students to develop confidence in classroom participation. based on previous studies mentioned above, it can be concluded that the areas that have been explored by other researchers are the effectiveness of flashcards and cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary. flashcards was studied and compared to other modern media such as the use of computer assisted language learning (call), and smart board technology. similarly, cooperative learning structures such as cooperative integrated reading and composition (circ), numbered heads together, and think-pair-share were investigated of their effectiveness for teaching vocabulary. cooperative learning structures were studied and compared to competitive learning, traditional methods, and another cooperative learning structure. another conclusion of previous studies above is that both flashcards and cooperative learning are improved when they are in combination such as with reading racetrack with flashcards and story development with cooperative learning. the area that has not been explored is the effectiveness of combining flashcards with cooperative learning structure, numbered heads together, for teaching vocabulary in junior high school classes. this present study is conducted based on theory of dual coding theory (jared, poh, & paivio, 2013) which strongly related to picture superiority effect (crutcher & beer, 2011), and behaviourist learning theory (ellise, 1997) for the flashcards related activities. meanwhile, for activities related to cooperative learning, theory of sociocultural learning (stevens, 2008) and kagan’s structure named numbered heads together (kagan, 1989) is used. in activities that involved both flashcards and cooperative learning, all of the theories are used together as they complement each other. additionally, in relation to vocabulary knowledge, theories that related to the definition of vocabulary (lehr, osborn, & hiebert, 2004; steffani & huang, 2017), vocabulary knowledge (chapelle, 1999; lehr, osborn, & hiebert, 2004; richards, 1976; schmitt, 2014; shen, 2008), and part of speech (linse, 2006) are used in this study. in terms of flashcards, dual coding theory (jared, poh, & paivio, 2013) is used as a core theory for this present study as it is highly related to picture superiority effect (crutcher & beer, 2011). dual coding theory supported the use of flashcards in retrieving memory as a certain word shown in a card can evoke the memory of its picture and vice versa. additionally, picture superiority effect support the use of pictures in flashcards as this theory considered pictures to be better remembered than words. furthermore, both pictures and words are used in the flashcards for this study; one side rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 40 has picture and the other side has word, as this is following the argument of haynes and zacarian (2010). moreover, related to flashcards activities, theory of behaviourist leaning (ellise, 1997) is used in conducting this study as it explain the nature of stimulus and reinforcement for learning activities. the implication of this study towards this present study then that in activities related to flashcards, students are given reinforcement based on the stimulus given which is the flashcards themselves. in terms of cooperative learning, this present study is conducted by arranging the composition of students in each groups of numbered heads together activities so that they consist of not only less competent students but also more competent students. these approach of students grouping in numbered heads together activities is based on the theory of sociocultural learning as stated by stevens (2008) that “for complex cognitive tasks, learners benefit from interaction with more competent peers, like those interactions in cooperative learning” (p. 189-190). this composition of students is determined by the results of the pre-test that they took before following numbered heads together activities. the results of the pre-test were analysed and scored, then the students are ranked based on the results of their pre-test scores. this rank then determined which group they belong to. furthermore, stevens (2008) also added that “sociocultural theory revolves around the ability of peers to provide guidance and feedback to one another during the collaborative dialogue” (p. 190). therefore, students’ interactions during such activities are monitored as well as guided so that they could engage in the collaborative dialogue. in addition, kagan’s structure named numbered heads together (kagan, 1989) is used as an assistance of performing activities related to numbered heads together in cooperative learning during the interventions of experimental group for this present study. the students were divided into eight groups consist of four students in each groups. each member of the groups was assigned with number which range from 1 to 4. they were given a simple badge with a number on it which each of them hold to show their number. in terms of vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary, defined for the purpose of this present study as gathered from statements of several experts (lehr, osborn, & hiebert, 2004; steffani & huang, 2017), is a collection of words that the students know and understand at the very least as a receptive and print vocabulary. furthermore, as this study is specifically focuses on vocabulary knowledge, it is worth mentioning that only one aspect of vocabulary knowledge (chapelle, 1999; lehr, osborn, & hiebert, 2004; richards, 1976; schmitt, 2014; shen, 2008) is used here that is only vocabulary size. this aspect of vocabulary knowledge is defined as the number of words that the students know and understand. additionally, in relation to vocabulary, part of speech (linse, 2006) is also taken into consideration in this present study. following the aspect of part of speech, words as used in this study are consisted of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. flashcards and the combination of flashcards and numbered heads together are studied and compared in regards with their effectiveness in improving students’ vocabulary knowledge in this present study. both flashcards and numbered heads together are demonstrated to be effective in improving students’ vocabulary knowledge. however, both are also considered as less effective when compared to certain media. on the other hand, the effectiveness of both are verified not only as individual but also when in collaboration. this collaboration might be the answer of improving both flashcards and numbered heads together which eventually are able to be used as an approach of improving students’ vocabulary knowledge. thus, this present study seeks further evidences of the effectiveness of flashcards to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge by collaborating it with cooperative learning which is a teaching method commonly used in accordance with 2013 curriculum, specifically numbered heads together. rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 41 methods a quasi-experimental research design is used as a research design for this study as the objects are already in groups of classrooms. the object of the study is the seventh grade students of smpn 1 tulis in academic year 2017/2018. the population of this study is the seventh grade students of smpn 1 tulis in academic year 2017/2018. there are 192 students which divided into 6 classes so that each class consists of 32 students. the samples of this study are two classes, vii b as the experimental group and vii f as the control group. the study begins by giving pre-test for both control and experimental groups. after that, three interventions are given to each of the groups; 1st, 2nd, and 3rd intervention. the interventions for experimental group are conducted by using flashcards with numbered heads together, while the control group by using flashcards. next, post-test is given to both groups. finally, the results of both pre-test and post-test are analysed using a conventional change score and using a process-oriented change score by frost for defining students’ improvement in vocabulary knowledge. two tests are used as instruments for collecting data, namely test a and test b. both tests are in the form of multiple choice consisting of 28 items with 4 options in each items; 1 correct answer and 3 distractors. the quality of a test is assessed by several aspects such as validity, reliability, and practicality. analyses of the instruments used in this present study is conducted by examining the tests in terms of item facility, item discrimination, & distractor efficiency (brown, 2004). item facility or if in short is the formula to determine whether certain test is easy or difficult for those who taken the test. item discrimination or id is the formula to determine whether the item is able to distinguish or separate between the high-ability test-takers and low-ability test-takers (brown, 2004). distractor efficiency, according to brown (2004, p. 60) “is the extent to which (a) the distractor ‘lure’ a sufficient number of test-takers, especially lower ability ones, and (b) those responses are somewhat evenly distributed across all distractors.” the data is analysed in two methods of measuring students’ change score; a conventional change score and a process-oriented change score by frost. conventional change score calculated the students’ improvement of vocabulary knowledge by calculating the difference between students’ mean score of pre-test score and post-test score. the mean score of both pre-test and post-test of experimental and control groups are subtracted in order to find out the students’ improvement of vocabulary knowledge. process-oriented change score proposed by frost, et al. (2014) divided the analysis of each items into one of the four categories based on the students results of pre-test and post-test. the categories are “consistently understood” in which students are able to respond correctly at the pre-test and post-test; “learned” in which students are respond incorrectly at the pre-test and then they are able to respond correctly at the post-test; “consistently not understood” in which students are respond incorrectly at both pre-test and post-test; and “inconsistent” in which students respond correctly at pre-test but respond incorrectly at post-test. detail information of each items tested can be obtained by this process-oriented change score approach. see table 1 of example of process-oriented change score analysis. table 1 process-oriented change score analysis item pre-test respond post-test respond category park correct correct consistently understood incorrect correct learned incorrect incorrect consistently not understood correct incorrect inconsistent rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 42 table 1 presented the example of process-oriented change score analysis as proposed by frost, et al. (2014). it divided the analysis of item “park” into one of the four categories based on the students’ results of pre-test and post-test. if the students are able to respond correctly at the pre-test and posttest, then they fall into “consistently understood” category. if the students are respond incorrectly at the pre-test and able to respond correctly at the post-test, then they fall into “learned” category. if the students are respond incorrectly at both pre-test and post-test, then they fall into “consistently not understood” category. if the students are able to respond correctly at the pre-test but respond incorrectly at the post-test, then they fall into “inconsistent” category. findings and discussion result of pre-test the pre-test was conducted at both experimental and control group. it was performed on january 11th 2018 for both groups. this test was carried out in order to find out the students’ initial vocabulary knowledge prior to interventions. moreover, the results of pre-test in also used as a guidance for students’ grouping for numbered heads together activities at experimental group. pre-test for the experimental group was carried out with 31 out of 32 students with the absence of student e-04. while the pre-test for the control group was carried out with all 32 students. however, the results of some students are not valid due to their absence of pre-test, treatment 1, 2, 3, and posttest as well as the students’ failure of submitting the test code in which happened to student e-22 and c-22. table 2 result of pre-test  score n mean experimental 378 23 16.43 control 395 27 14.62 table 2 displayed the mean scores of pre-test of both experimental and control groups. the total pre-test score of experimental group was 378, so the mean score of pre-test for the experimental group with 23 students was 16.43. meanwhile, the total pre-test score of control group was 395, so the mean score of pre-test for the control group with 27 students was 14.62. result of post-test the post-test was conducted at both experimental and control group. it was performed on january 20th 2018 for both groups. this test was carried out in order to find out the students’ vocabulary knowledge improvement after the interventions. post-test for the experimental group was carried out with 28 out of 32 students with the absence of student e-04, e-18, e-19, and e-20. while the post-test for the control group was carried out with 31 out of 32 students with the absence of student c-16. however, the results of some students are not valid due to their absence of pre-test, treatment 1, 2, 3, and post-test as well as the students’ failure of submitting the test code in which happened to student c-06. table 3 result of post-test  score n mean experimental 439 23 19.09 control 487 27 18.04 table 3 displayed the mean scores of post-test of both experimental and control groups. the total post-test score of experimental group was 439, so the mean score of post-test for the experimental rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 43 group with 23 students was 19.09. meanwhile, the total post-test score of control group was 487, so the mean score of post-test for the control group with 27 students was 18.04. students’ vocabulary knowledge improvement the improvement of students’ vocabulary knowledge is analysed in two methods; a conventional change score which is the difference of mean of students’ score of pre-test and post-test, and a processoriented change score which is a detailed way of measuring students’ change score of the tests by categorizing students’ responses into four category; “learned words”, “words inconsistently understood”, “words consistently understood”, and “words consistently not understood” (frost, et al., 2014). conventional change score which is the difference of mean of students’ score of pre-test and post-test is used to calculate the improvement of students’ vocabulary knowledge. the following table 4 presented the mean score of both pre-test and post-test of experimental and control groups along with their improvement which is calculated by subtraction of post-test with pre-test mean score. table 4 students’ improvement based on conventional change score analysis pretest posttest improvement experimental 16.43 19.09 2.66 control 14.62 18.04 3.42 table 4 showed that the mean score of the pre-test for the experimental group was 16.43. meanwhile, the mean score of the post-test of the experimental group was 19.09. therefore, there was an improvement of 2.66 between the pre-test and the post-test scores achieved by the students of the experimental group. likewise, table 4 displayed that the mean score of the pre-test for the control group was 14.62. meanwhile, the mean score of the post-test of the control group was 18.09. therefore, there was an improvement of 3.42 between the pre-test and the post-test scores achieved by the students of the control group. thus, it can be concluded from the comparison of pre-test and post-test mean score that the control group improvement which interventions was using only flashcards method was higher than that of the experimental group. figure 1 showed the comparison of pre-test and post-test mean score from table 4. figure 1 comparison of students' improvement based on conventional change score analysis 3,42 2,66 14,62 16,43 18,04 19,09 control experimental post-test pre-test improvement rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 44 figure 1 displayed the comparison of students’ improvement based on conventional change score analysis. it presented that the mean score of the pre-test for the experimental group was 16.43. meanwhile, the mean score of the post-test of the experimental group was 19.09. therefore, there was an improvement of 2.66 between the pre-test and the post-test scores achieved by the students of the experimental group. likewise, figure 1 displayed that the mean score of the pre-test for the control group was 14.62. meanwhile, the mean score of the post-test of the control group was 18.09. therefore, there was an improvement of 3.42 between the pre-test and the post-test scores achieved by the students of the control group. process-oriented change score by frost which divided the items tested into four categories namely “words consistently understood”, “learned words”, “words inconsistently understood”, and “words consistently not understood” is also used to analyse the improvement of students’ vocabulary knowledge in this present study. the following table 5 displayed the four category of process-oriented change score of experimental and control groups. table 5 students' improvement based on process-oriented change score by frost analysis experimental control consistently understood 58% 53% learned 19% 22% consistently not understood 15% 19% inconsistent 8% 6% improvement 19% 22% table 5 displayed that the experimental group has 58% of its total words tested falls into consistently understood category, 19% falls into learned category, 15% falls into consistently not understood category, and 8% falls into inconsistent category. meanwhile, the control group has 53% of its total words tested falls into consistently understood category, 22% falls into learned category, 19% falls into consistently not understood category, and 6% falls into inconsistent category. the improvement of vocabulary knowledge of experimental and control groups can be seen in learned category as it represents the words tested that the students failed to respond correctly during the pre-test but successfully able to respond correctly during the post-test. according to table 5, the experimental group was able to improve 19% while the control group was able to improve 22% of vocabulary knowledge. thus, it can be concluded that the vocabulary knowledge improvement was better achieved by the control group which interventions was using only flashcards method. figure 2 showed the comparison of the four category of process-oriented change score by frost of the experimental and control group from table 5. figure 2 displayed the comparison of students’ improvement based on process-oriented change score analysis. it presented that the experimental group has 58% of its total words tested falls into consistently understood category, 19% falls into learned category, 15% falls into consistently not understood category, and 8% falls into inconsistent category. meanwhile, the control group has 53% of its total words tested falls into consistently understood category, 22% falls into learned category, 19% falls into consistently not understood category, and 6% falls into inconsistent category. discussion this present study is meant to answer the research question. it was to find out the effectiveness of flashcards collaborated with number heads together compared to the use of only flashcards to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge of the seventh graders of smp negeri 1 tulis, batang in the academic year of 2017/2018. rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 45 the analysis of the pre-test data from both experimental and control group shown that the average score of experimental group was 16.43 while the control group was 14.62. this indicates their vocabulary knowledge prior to the interventions given to them. figure 2 comparison of students’ improvement based on process-oriented change score by frost analysis after conducting the pre-test, three interventions are given to both groups. the experimental group was given interventions with flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together while the control group was given only flashcards. both groups were given exactly the same material from english book provided by the government. after the interventions, the post-test was conducted to both groups. the analysis of the posttest results shows that the average score of experimental group was 19.09 while the control group was 18.04. this indicates some improvement of their vocabulary knowledge after given the interventions. further analysis of the pre-test and post-test results of both experimental and control groups shown that the control group which was given interventions of only flashcards has achieved higher improvement score than the experimental group which was given intervention of flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together. the control group accomplished 3.42 improvement score compare to 2.66 improvement score of the experimental group. thus, this is demonstrated that flashcards is more effective than flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. this finding is in line with research findings of aslan (2011) which proved that flashcards could be useful and effective for the students in learning english vocabulary. this finding is then further supported by research findings of hamzehbagi and bonyadi (2015) which demonstrated that flashcards can significantly improve students’ english vocabulary knowledge. additionally, the analysis of pre-test and post-test results of both experimental and control groups using process-oriented change score by frost also implies the same results. it confirms that flashcards is more effective than flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. the process-oriented change score by frost analysis shows that the experimental group achieved only 19% improvement compare to the control group improvement of 22%. this finding is consistent with research findings of savaiano, lloyd, and hatton (2017) which verified that flashcards instruction was effective for teaching the meaning of words. this finding is then further strengthened by research findings of sage, rausch, quirk, and halladay (2016) which validated that flashcards was a viable option for the students in learning english words. in conclusion, the analysis of pre-test and post-test results from both experimental and control groups using both conventional change score and process-oriented change score by frost confirms 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% consistently understood learned inconsistent consistently not understood control experimental rudi wibowo aji & alief noor farida / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 46 that flashcards is more effective than flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. conclusion this present study was conducted on the purpose to find out the effectiveness of the use of flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together compared to the use of only flashcards to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge for the seventh grade students of smp negeri 1 tulis, batang in the academic year 2017/2018. based on the results and the analysis of the data, it can be concluded that flashcards is more effective than flashcards collaborated with numbered heads together to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. suggestions the suggestions are categorized into three aspects such as theoretical, practical, and pedagogical. theoretically, the results of this study is expected to be able to be used as a reference for further research in the future related to english vocabulary learning, teaching process and cooperative learning. practically, the results of this study is expected to be able to help students in learning english vocabulary as well as motivating them to improve their interest in learning english by implementing flashcards in their study. pedagogically, the result of this study hopefully will enrich the way in teaching vocabulary for english teachers as teachers who was unwilling to use flashcards for their teaching method may now implement flashcards in teaching english vocabulary since the results of this present study verified that flashcards is effective to improve students’ vocabulary knowledge. as for the students, the result of this study is expected to encourage them in learning english vocabulary as well as open their mind of english learning activity. acknowledgement i thank to the headmaster of smpn 1 tulis, batang, sugiyanto, s.pd., m.si., who has given me a permission to conduct this research in smpn 1 tulis, batang and the teachers especially for the english teacher, nurul mufidah, s.pd., who have given me the opportunity to conduct this study and suggestions for this study. i also thank for the seventh grade students of smpn 1 tulis, batang for their participation as the sample of this study. references aslan, y. 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(2011). on the effects of two models of cooperative learning on efl reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. modern journal of language teaching methods, 1(2), 39-54. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 18 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt modulation in indonesian translation of national geographic articles (a descriptive qualitative study) hanif pandu setiawan, issy yuliasri  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: articles; magazine; modulation; national geographic; strategy; translation ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study investigates the types of modulation which were used on the translation process of national geographic magazine of june 2014 both on usa and indonesian issue. the purposes of this study areto describe the use of modulation in translating “national geographic” from english to indonesian and to describe the maintenance of the source target meaning in the target text. the qualitative approach was used to describe the quantitative data which was got from the analysis. the data of this study was collected using reading and inventorying stages and analyzed using comparing, identifying, and evaluating process. the collected data then was analyzed to investigate the modulation‟s impact on message maintenance. based on those analyses, substitution has the highest rank of modulation type used on the magazine‟s articles (37.8% of total 111 data) followed by reversal (34.2%), deviation (14.4%), specification (8.1%), and generalization (5.4%) sequentially. this result is linear to the maintenance of message rating which was taken from five english department lecturer raters. it shows that the highest number of score 3 (well delivered) percentage ratio is obtained by specification (75.5%) followed by reversal (72.6%), deviation (72.5%), substitution (71.2%) and generalization (60%). from the result above it can be seen that the more frequent occurrence does not always mean to be so effective compared to the less frequent one. the highest percentage of successful maintenance was obtained by specification, which is on 4th rank on the frequency of occurrence table. the most frequent type of modulation, substitution, only settles on 4th rank on the table of score 3. on the other hand, the most distorted type of modulation is gotten by reversal with 9.5% on score 1, while the least distorted one is gotten by generalization. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: hanif.pandu@gmail.com h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 19 introduction in the globalization era, english plays an important role in international communication both in thefield of development, technology, economy, and the education. english is also a lingua franca. it is the most widely used language around the world. supporting this role, each country does many ways to improve their citizens‟ need in english. one of simple ways is providing bilingual books. it is translated from source language into target language. when people read books, they might have never been fully aware of a long and complicated process in translating a foreign language. it is based on the reality that many indonesian people do not possess the knowledge of foreign language well in order to absorb information that is written in a foreign language. nida and taber (1969:11) states that translating is not a separate science, but it often does represent specialized skills and can also require aesthetic sensitivity.skilled translators must have a special capacity for sensing the closest natural equivalent of a text, whether it is oral or written. however, translating is essentially a skill andlargely depends on a series of disciplines, for example linguistics, cultural, anthropology, philology, psychology, and theories of communication. skilled professional translators should have several essential competences to support their translating process. pacte group (2003:58) compromises several interacting sub competences and physiological mechanism. they are: bilingual sub competence; extra-linguistic sub competence; translation knowledge sub competence; instrumental sub competence; strategic sub competence; psycho-physiological components. pacte considers the strategic sub competence as the most important as component, given its role of guaranteeing the control and efficiency of the translation process. tyler as quoted by bell (1991:6) also writes three principles of translating. firstly, a translator should give a complete transcript of the idea of the original work. then, the style and manner of writing should be of the same character of the original. the last, the translation should have all the essay of the original composition. on the contrary, lack of knowledge of those three cases means that translators could not translate well. in order to produce a good translation, a translator has to utilize several kinds of techniques and procedures. newmark (1988:19) states that a translator translates with four levels more or less consciously in mind, i.e.: the textual level; the referential level; the cohesive level; the level of naturalness. those levels are required for producing a good quality translation. among some of translation procedures, modulation is one of essential procedures in the process of translating. modulation, in term of newmark (1988:88) is a variation through a change of viewpoint, of perspective and very often of category of thought. it has 11 categories, namely: negated contrary; part of the whole; cause of effect; space and time; abstract for concrete; intervals and limits; change of symbols; and change of focus. referring to the modulation procedure, national geographic is one of multilingual magazines which utilize translation procedures so well. therefore, the procedure that national geographic uses is worth investigating, to be specific in the modulation stage (in this case meaning shift) based on newmark term, especially for those who choose english for their major. methods the data analysed were in the form of clauses. therefore a descriptive qualitative analysis was employed to analyze the translation. as stated by neill (2007), qualitative research involves analysis of data such as words (e.g., from interviews), pictures (e.g., video), or objects (e.g., an artefact). h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 20 furthermore, bryman in devetak (2010) states that qualitative research is an exploratory approach emphasizing words rather than quantification in gathering and analysing the data. according to mujiyanto (2011: 23), qualitative approach tries to reveal the phenomenon comprehensively and appropriate with the context trough the natural data collection employing the researcher as key instrument of the study. in addition, this descriptive study tends to use inductive approach for the data analysis. the data analysed were in the form of clauses. therefore a descriptive qualitative analysis was employed to analyze the translation. as stated by neill (2007), qualitative research involves analysis of data such as words (e.g., from interviews), pictures (e.g., video), or objects (e.g., an artefact). furthermore, bryman in devetak (2010) states that qualitative research is an exploratory approach emphasizing words rather than quantification in gathering and analysing the data. according to mujiyanto (2011: 23), qualitative approach tries to reveal the phenomenon comprehensively and appropriate with the context trough the natural data collection employing the researcher as key instrument of the study. in addition, this descriptive study tends to use inductive approach for the data analysis. results and discussions after the data were analyzed and classified, the dominant rising variation order of modulation in national geographic articles were substitution, reversal, deviation, specification, and generalization. the finding consisted of some examples of each variation with descriptions. to see the whole data, see appendixes. the use of modulation in translating “national geographic” from english to indonesian as it has been stated above that the grammar analysis is divided into some main constituents which are based on the theory of interpersonal meanings. the following is the result of the grammar analyis foe this study. the result shows that from the five variations of modulation of total 103 clauses (a clause may contain more than one type of modulation), substitution has the highest rank of modulation types used on the magazine‟s articles (37.8% out of total 111 modulation data) followed by reversal (34.2%), deviation (14.4%), specification (8.1%), and generalization (5.4%) sequentially. no. type of modulation frequency percentage (%) 1 generalization 6 5.4 2 specification 9 8.1 3 reversal 38 34.2 4 substitution 42 37.8 5 deviation 16 14.4 111 100 h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 21 generalization generalization occurs when a text is translated from source language into target language‟s more general meaning. from the magazines‟s articles, there were six words/phrases/sentences with generalization found on the articles. the percentage is 5.4% of total data. it was the least used type of modulation used on the magazine. st along the summit of el castillo the builders first carved out a subterranean chamber that became the imperial tomb. tt di sepanjang puncak el castillo, para pembangun mula-mula membuat ruang bawah tanah yang kemudian menjadi makam kerajaan. bt along the summit of el castillo, the builders firstly made the basement which became all the royal tombs. specification specification happens when the target text is specified from the original source text. there were nine words/phrases/sentences found with specification found on the articles. resulting percentage of 8.1% of the whole data. the samples taken from magazine‟s articles are as follows: st when they exhausted all the available spacethere, they engineered more, building stepped terraces all the way down the slopes of el castillo and filling them with funerary towers and graves. tt setelah semua tempat di sana habis, mereka memperluas lahan permakaman, dengan membangun teras bertingkat di lereng el castillo hingga ke kaki bukit, lalu memenuhinya dengan menara dan makam. bt after all where there exhausted, they expand the cemetery land, building terraced on the slopes of el castillo to the foot of the hill, then fill it with towers and tombs. the word „engineered‟ (merencanakan; mengatur; membangun) was translated into „memperluas‟ (expand; broaden; widen), which specifically explains the explanation of the funeral area based on the context. „expand‟ itself is a part of „engineereing. the term „engineered‟ is something related to physical development. in this context were towers and graves. it would be too generalised if the word „engineered‟ was not specified into „expand‟ (memperluas). thye translator used „memperluas‟ here to explain the readers what kind of engineering it was on the el castillo. thus, the „memperluas‟ was used as a part of explaining the word „engineering‟ and as substitution to make the actual meaning clearer for the common target readers. related to message maintainance, of total five raters, four raters put this text into score 3 and only one raters put it into score 2. this implies that the text is fairly well delivered. there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers. it can be concluded that the change above was made to maintain the message of the text in order to give clearer description of „expand‟. thus, the specification has occured on this text. h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 22 reversal reversal occurs when translator changes from active for passive, negative to positive. moreover, it is supported by oxford dictionary that reversal is an exchange of position, function and else between two languages. there were 38 words/phrases/sentences with reversal found on the articles. from the magazines‟s articles, there were 38 words/phrases/sentences with generalization found on the articles or had 34.2% of total data.the samples taken from magazine‟s articles are as follows: st concern, however, is starting to shadow the faces of those who study puffins. tt namun, para peneliti puffin mulai dilanda kekhawatiran. bt however, puffin researchers began to be hit by concerns. on the text above, active sentence was used on the source text. when it was translated into indonesia, the sentence turned into passive. if the text was not reversed, it would be „kekhawatiran, bagaimanapun, mulai membayangi wajah-wajah dari mereka yang meneliti puffin.‟ there‟s nothing wrong or confusing with that. however, it is more common to make use of passive sentence when it comes to an abstract thing, in this case „concern‟. thus, it‟s a good decision for the translator to make it passive in order to make the readers feel like they reading from directly from the source text. related to message maintainance, of total five raters, two raters put this text into score 3, two raters put it into score 2, and one rater put it into score 1, and one rater put it into score 1. this implies that the text is fairly well delivered. there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers. the change from active sentence to passive sentence above above implied that the translator had used reversal, in this case the active-passive one procedure to give the readers clearer and more relevant message about the context of the text above. therefore, reversal had occured on this text. substitution substitution involves replacing a specific sl item or expression with a tl item, which does not have the same proportional meaning, but it is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader. there were 42 words/phrases/sentences with reversal found on the articles. from the magazines‟s articles, there were 42 words/phrases/sentences with generalization found on the articles or had 37.8% of total data. it had the most frequency of occurence among other four types of modulation. st after a week on the matvei mudrov, life settles into a rhythm that is soothing in its repetition: the green pines of the surrounding forest, the guttural rumble of the train‟s engine, the hypnotic clop clop clop of the tracks below. tt setelah seminggu naik matvei mudrov, kehidupan kini mengikuti irama berulang yang menenangkan: pinus hijau dari hutan di sekitarnya, deru parau mesin kereta api, suara jess jess jess rel di bawah yang menghipnotis. bt after a week rose matvey mudrov, now life follows the rhythm of recurring soothing: pine green of the surrounding forest, the raucous roar of the train engine, sound jess jess jess hypnotic tracks below. h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 23 there are two substitutions made on the text above. the first, the phrase „settles into‟, which roughly translated as „menetap ke dalam’, was subtituted by the word ‘mengikuti’ which more relevent to the context in bahasa. the second one is the word „clop clop cloop‟ that was subtituted by the word ‘suara jess jess jess’. the readers might not understand if the translator keep that sound of train due tue cultural difference in expressing something. the word „settles into‟ here means stick and follow something. the change was made to clearly tell the readers what the writer actually want to tell without using any kinds of metaphor. the seconfd one, sound „clop cloop clop‟ was made due to culture difference in expressing sounds, just like how they express sound of cat by using „miaow‟ while in indonesia, we express it by saying „meong‟ for example. related to message maintainance, of total five raters, four raters put this text into score 3, and one raters put it into score 2. this implies that the text is fairly well delivered. there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers. it can be concluded that the change between two words above was a result of substitution that the translator used to maintain the text‟s message. thus, substitution has occured on this text. deviation deviation involves shift in meaning that entail different aspects between sl and tl.there were 16 words/phrases/sentences with reversal found on the articles. from the magazines‟s articles, there were 16 words/phrases/sentences with generalization found on the articles or had 14.4% of total data st trying to come to terms with his new life. tt berusaha berdamai dengan kehidupan barunya. bt trying to make peace with her new life. the verb „come to terms‟ above has little equivalence to the word ‘berdamai’ though the meaning is same. „come to terms‟ has a meaning „datang dengan ketentuan-ketentuan‟ or „mencapai kata sepakat‟ to be more specific, which is different to ‘berdamai’, that has a meaning „make peace‟ in english. that deviation was made for the sake of making it easy for common readers to understand the message. it would be unusual for the target readers to use term „datang dengan ketentuan-ketentuan‟ even though it‟s logically not wrong. however, the text would be not smooth as the original article and the readers would feel they read a forcibly-translated article. despite of finding equivalence, the use of modulation here was to make the readers feel like they are reading from the original source. related to message maintainance, of total five raters, four raters put this text into score 3, one rater put it into score 2, and one rater put it into score 1. this implies that the text is fairly well delivered. there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers. it can be concluded that the change between two idioms above was a result of deviation that the translator used to maintain the text‟s message. thus, substitution has occured on this text. h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 24 maintenance of message the result shows that the translator translated the articles by using modulation as the procedure to maintain the message of the source text. the rating, taking from five english department lecturer raters, shows that the highest number of score 3 (well delivered) is obtained by substitution (150 data), followed by reversal (138), deviation (58), specification (34) and generalization (18). no. types of modulation freq. of occurence maintenance of message score.3 score 2 score 1 f % f % f % 1 generalization 30 18 60 10 33.3 2 6.6 2 specification 45 34 75.5 7 15.5 4 8.8 3 reversal 190 138 72.6 34 17.8 16 9.5 4 substitution 210 150 71.42 41 19.5 19 9.04 5 deviation 80 58 72.5 16 20 6 7.5 total 555 398 117 47 generalization from the table above, generalization technique has the biggest percentage, 60% on score 3 (well delivered). score 2 and score 3 has 33.3% and 6.6% consequently. moreover, it had the biggest percentage among other types on score 2, making it the most fairly well-delivered type of modulation used on this magazine. it can be concluded that the texts using this kind of modulation are significantly well-maintained when it comes to target readers. the samples can be seen as follows: no. 47 (2) st in different ways, it seemed, they were both itemized gear, tt dengan kata lain, sepertinya, mereka berdua merupakan alat, bt in other words, it seems, they both are tools, the raters put this text into score 2, which was fairly maintained. however, the generalization here ditched the word „itemized‟ and it could lead to readers‟ confusion of what kind of gear was that. specification specification is not so different from generalization related to maintenance of message. the path of percentage distribution is 75.5% on score 3, 15.5% on score 2, and 8.8% on score 1. its h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 25 successfful maintenance occured because most of the replacement words or phrases were contextualized with specifified adjustment that made the articles easily comprehend by common target readers. it had the highest amount of percentage of score 3 (well-delivered) among other types. therefore, this kind of modulation has significant effect in maintaining the message of the texts. the samples can be seen as follows: no. 66 (3) st when they exhausted all the available space there, they engineered more, building stepped terraces all the way down the slopes of el castillo and filling them with funerary towers and graves. tt setelah semua tempat di sana habis, mereka memperluas lahan permakaman, dengan membangun teras bertingkat di lereng el castillo hingga ke kaki bukit, lalu memenuhinya dengan menara dan makam. bt after all where there exhausted, they expand the cemetery land, building terraced on the slopes of el castillo to the foot of the hill, then fill it with towers and tombs. the term „engineered‟ is something related to physical development. in this context were towers and graves. it would be too generalised if the word „engineered‟ was not specified into „expand‟ (memperluas). thye translator used „memperluas‟ here to explain the readers what kind of engineering it was on the el castillo. thus, the „memperluas‟ was used as a part of explaining the word „engineering‟ and as substitution to make the actual meaning clearer for the common target readers. related to message maintainance, of total five raters, four raters put this text into score 3 and only one raters put it into score 2. this implies that the text is well delivered. there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers. reversal reversal has the same path of percentage distribution with the previous two types of modulation. it has 72.6% on score 3, 17.8% on score 2, and 9.5% on score 1. however, despite having high amount of occurance, this type of modulation was the first rank on score 1 percentage (9.5%), highest among other types. meanwhile, looking from score 3 percentage rank, it reached fourth place among other types. it proved that the frequency of occurence didn‟t always go with maintenance of message. the difference of language structure system, culture, and social were the main reason of this high percentage of distorted message.the samples can be seen as follows: no. 18 (2) st “every day something was getting blown up. tt “ledakan terjadi setiap hari. bt “explosion happened every day. on the text above, passive sentence was used on the source text. when it was translated into indonesia, the sentence turned into active. the text is fairly well delivered. however, there were still some distortion remaining on this text that could leave the message misunderstood by the target readers, like what was the specific meaning of „something‟ on the source text. h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 26 substitution the most used type of modulation in this magazine with 42 occurences, substitution, has 71.42%, 19.5%, and 9.04% on score 3, score 2, and score 1 consequently. this type has the highest amount the occurence among other types of modulation. it happened due to differenct culture aspect that require many adjustment of vocabulary to find the required equivalence. thus, it can be concluded that substitution is the most significant type of modulation among all five types. the samples can be seen as follows: st feet scrambling, excited too. tt mengais-ngais tanah, turut gelisah. bt pawing the ground, nervous as well. on the text above, the word „excited‟ when traslated to bahasa would become „bergembira‟ (happy or glad). however, based on the context of the text, it did not refer to happy. instead, it was something that make someone worry about. thus, the translator substitute the word „excited‟ with „turut gelisah‟ (nervous). the message on this text had a probability to be misunderstood or biased by common readers. deviation deviation, the third most used type of modulation is only slightly different from reversal related to the percentage of maintaining the message with 72.5% on score 3, 20% on score 2, and 7.5% on score 1. the conclusion that can be pulled is no different from previous types of modulation. the messages are not poorly distorted from the source language texts. they are delivered really well. the samples can be seen as follows: no. 62 (3) st but the rich finds at el castillo, a journey of some 500 miles from the wari capital, are filling in many blanks. tt tetapi, temuan melimpah di el castillo, yang terletak sekitar 850 kilometer dari ibu kota bangsa wari, menjelaskan banyak hal. bt however, finding abundant in el castillo, located approximately 850 kilometers from the capital city of the nation wari, are explaining a lot. the clause „filling many blanks‟ on the text above was actually a metaphore of „explaining many things‟ (menjalaskan banyak hal). the translator did not translate that clause roughly. instead, it was the real meaning, which deviates a lot from the source text (filling and explaining), that was put into the translation because there are cultural differences between the two language, which leads to different use of metaphore, idiom, and other analogies. related to maintenance of message, the raters rated this text as well-delivered, meaning common readers would eaasily understand the message of the text. conclusions the topic of this research is about the translator‟s strategy on how the translation of bilingual (or multilingual) magazine done without sacarficing the core message of the texts due to some different aspects, whether it is linguistics or cultural. the research focuses only from procedure aspect of translating, to be specific in the frame of modulation on what kinds of modulation mostly h. p. setiawan, i. yuliasri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 27 used on the articles and how they maintain the message from source language to target language. after the magazine was analyzed, there were modulations occurred on the articles in the variation of generalization, specification, reversal, substitution, and deviation. from the five types of modulation, substitution has the highest rank of modulation type used on the magazine‟s articles (37.8% of total 111 data) followed by reversal (34.2%), deviation (14.4%), specification (8.1%), and generalization (5.4%) sequentially. this result is linear to the maintenance of message rating. the result, taken from five english department lecturer raters, shows that the highest number of category 3 (well delivered) percentage ratio is obtained by specification (75.5%) followed by reversal (72.6%), deviation (72.5%), substitution (71.2%) and generalization (60%). from the result above it can be seen that the more frequent occurence does not always mean to be so effective compared to the less frequent one. the highest percentage of successful maintainance is obtained by specification, which is on 4th rank on the frequency of ocuurence table. the most frequent type of modulation, substitution, only settles on 4th rank on the category 3 table. on the other hand, the most distorted type of modulation is gotten by reversal with 9.5% on category 1, while the least distorted one is gotten by generalization. this type has the highest frequency of the occurence among other types of modulation. generally, modulation technique is required in translating due to differenct culture aspect that require many adjustment of vocabulary to find the equivalence. thus, the translated texts would flow smoothly and the target readers would not feel like they read translated texts and easily comprehend the information and message of the texts. references aini, noer. 2002. modulation in translating english idiomatic expression into indonesian: an analysis of sydney sheldons bloodline. final project of english department fbs unnes. ari kunto, s. 2002. prosedurpenelitian. jakarta: bumiaksara baker, mona. 1992. in other words: a course book on translation. newyork: routledge. bassnet. 1991. 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http://press.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/01/ngm-overview-1-15.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 47 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique to teach reading comprehension of descriptive text akhmad maemun, sri wuli fitriati, alief noor farida  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: combination technique, listen-readdiscuss, graphic organizer reading comprehension, quasi-experimental research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of the combination technique of lrd (listen-read-discuss) and graphic organizer in teaching reading comprehension. i used quasi-experimental design in this research. the population of this study was the eighth year students of smp negeri 1 dukuhwaru,tegal in the academic year of 2016/2017. meanwhile, the sample consisted of 70 students from two classes. the study was started by giving pre-test, treatments, and post-test to both groups. the experimental group (viii d) was taught by lrd and graphic organizer combination technique, while the control group (viii f) was taught by using conventional method. the data were obtained by giving a reading test to both groups. in addition, the questionnaire and observation were also conducted for the experimental group to obtain more data. the result of the study indicated that the group taught by lrd and graphic organizer combination technique has better score in the test than the group taught by conventional method. in the pretest, the mean score of the control group was 56.65 and the experimental group was 58.11. the mean of posttest of experimental group (82.05) was higher than control groups (70.11). then, the t-test showed that the tvalue (5.756) was higher than ttable (1.998). it can be concluded that the working hypothesis is accepted. it means that there is a significant difference of effectiveness and reading comprehension achievement in reading descriptive text of students who are taught by lrd and graphic organizer combination technique and those who are not taught by using that technique. therefore, that combination technique is effective and convenient for students to improve their achievement reading comprehension of descriptive text. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: amanzsyoi@gmail.com a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 48 introduction english is international language. in this globalization era, english has been scattered all over the world. it plays an important role in the global communication. in learning english, we need to have at least ability in writing, speaking, listening and reading. people learn english because they have their own motivation that depends on their needs, interest and sense values. in order to master english, people should sharpen those four basic skills. one of those skills which is primary to master is reading skill. it is not simply identifying and translating written words but also understanding and acquiring. according to finnochiaro (1984:10), „„for many students around the world, reading is the most important of four skills in a second language, particularly in english as a second or foreign language‟‟. as one of language skills, reading skill plays a central role in the teaching and learning process at all educational stages. moreover, trelease (2010:30) states reading is the key of the world and key of the success. he claims “the more we read, the better we get at it, the better we get at it, the more we like it, and the more we like it, the more we do it”. the reading skill becomes very important in educational field. the reading focused in this study is that reading descriptive text. descriptive text is one of the reading materials taught at eighth grade of junior high school. it becomes the focus of this research because the comprehension of students in reading is low. based on my observation in smpn 1 dukuhwaru kab.tegal, i interviewed the english teacher and some eighth year-student. in smpn 1 dukuhwaru, a teacher especially who teaches eighth grade use conventional methods (lecturing and reading aloud) to teach reading. the students said that the teacher just asked the students to read the text and pointed several students to read aloud. in addition, the classroom situation was not alive during the teaching and learning process. most of the students did not actively participate in class discussion and they were not active to respond to the teacher‟s questions. they are not used to facing new vocabulary and structures that are different from their mother tongue. moreover, they were afraid to ask the teacher about the difficulties in reading. based on this preliminary finding, they frustrated and lose their motivation to learn reading. from this situation, the teachers should try to motivate the students to read and to develop skills aimed at improving their reading ability. i assume that by providing an appropriate reading technique to teach reading, it would be very useful to improve students reading comprehension. as a medium for teaching and learning process, appropriate techniques also make teachers have new experience in their career as a teacher. based on the background above, i am interested in introducing lrd (listen-read-discuss) and graphic organizer combination technique to the teachers to teach reading comprehension. lrd is a method developed by manzo and casale in 1985. listen-read-discuss (lrd) is a comprehension strategy that builds students‟ prior knowledge before they read a text. during the first stage, students listen as we present the content of their reading through a lecture, often paired with a graphic organizer. graphic organizers are visual representation of knowledge that structures information by arranging important aspects of a concept or topic into a pattern using labels bromley, devitis & modlo (1999). their main function is to help presenting information in concise ways that highlight the organization and relationships of concepts. next, students read the text and compare what they learned during the lecture to their understanding of reading the text on their own. finally, students discuss their understanding of the text with other students in their small group or large group. in this study i used combination between lrd and graphic organizer technique for teaching english especially for teaching reading descriptive text. from the finding of some previous studies, l-r-d helped students to better recall and develop relevant background information and appropriate anticipation, both of which are of great value in effective comprehension. those students lacking prior knowledge about the content gaining. during a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 49 the listening stage, allowing them to more easily comprehend the text during the reading stage. it helped students comprehend material presented orally. it built students' prior knowledge before they read a text. it engaged struggling readers in classroom discussions. therefore, using graphic organizers is effective in reading questions like (1) identifying the main idea, (2) finding the supporting details, (3) dealing with vocabulary and (4) fact and opinion and (5) making inferences. this simple, flexible strategy can be used across all curriculum areas with almost any text. graphic organizer improves students‟ reading comprehension a content learning in both weak and proficient. by designing this study, i hope that by using the lrd (listen-readdiscuss) and graphic organizer combination technique, students‟ reading comprehension can be achieved and the result of this investigation will give the answer to the problem above. by designing this study, i hope that by using combination technique of listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer, the students enjoy teaching and learning process and through the technique they improve their achievement in reading comprehension of descriptive text. methods in this study i used the form of quasi-experimental research. in this method i divided one group as the experimental group and another as the control group. both of the groups received pretest to obtain first data. then, twice treatments were given to both groups. the experimental group received treatment while the control group received another treatment. the experimental group used combination of lrd (listen-read-discuss) and graphic organizer technique and the control group used conventional method to improve students’ reading comprehension. finally, both of the groups were given a post-test to obtain the second data and the results were computed statistically. the subjects in this study were the students of smp negeri 1 dukuhwaru, tegal in the academic year of 2016/2017. in this study, i used cluster random sampling. this technique needs groups or clusters in choosing the sample based on the groups that have already existed in the population. the sample was chosen based on some considerations: (1) the students were taught by the same english teacher, (2) there was no superior class, the placement of the students in each class were set randomly without considering the level, gender, or strata. i took two classes of eighth year students as experimental group and control group. the first group as the experimental group (eg) and the second one as the control group (cg). the sample of this research was the students of viii d and viii f of smp n 1 dukuhwaru. the total sample is 70 students. they were divided into two groups. the first group was viii d as the experimental group (eg) which consisted of 35 students, and the second one was viii f as the control group (cg)) consisted of 35 students. in this study, i used some research instruments to collect the data. the instruments are: 1.1 test based on the research problems, i used reading test as an instrument. in this study, the students‟ achievement in reading descriptive text was measured by using tests, namely pretest and posttest. the pretest was used to find out the students‟ reading achievement before the treatment and posttest was used to find out the students‟ reading achievement after the treatment. the instrument used in this research is a multiple choice test type. it was chosen because it made scorer reliability is nearly perfect. moreover, it was easy to administer and could be scored quickly. i used the multiple choice test type in chosen forms of “a, b, c, d” and the total number were 25 questions. 1.2 questionnaire this present study used two checklist questionnaires in which respondents just directly put check mark (√) on the given statement whether they agreed or disagreed. the questionnaire was given to the students after they finished doing the post test. there are some questions used to a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 50 analyze the students‟ interest and achievement in teaching and learning process by using lrd (listen-read-discuss) and graphic organizer technique. this questionnaire was given to the experimental group. 1.3 observation sheet i used observation sheets in order to get the detail description of the study. i used three observation sheets which were filled by the english teacher. the observation sheets were used to find out the students‟ performance in the classroom, students‟ behaviors during the teaching and learning process, and the students‟ response in the teaching and learning process through listen-readdiscuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique. results and discussions the course of this study is to answer the research problems. generally, this study explains how effective the combination of listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer technique to teach reading comprehension, and the second is the description of the students‟ responses towards the listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique. in this study, after giving the treatment by using listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique for experimental group, i analyzed the data of the post-test result. the post-test was administered to measure the students‟ reading comprehension after getting the treatment. the post test was similar to pre-test in the present study. there were 25 questions that related to descriptive text in this post-test. the students did the post-test in 40 minutes. the results showed that the total mean score of experimental group posttest (82.05) was higher than that control group (70.11). through a brief observation, there was a significant difference in students‟ reading comprehension between the experimental group and control group after getting the treatment by using listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique. based on the result of post-test score between experimental and control group, it can be seen that lrd and graphic organizer combination technique was more effective than lecturing and reading aloud technique (conventional method). besides, to give the additional proof of the significant difference in the experimental and control group post-test score, if tvalue was higher than ttable, it indicated that there were significant differences between the result of treatment in control and experimental group. before that, i determined the score of df (degree of freedom). the number of participants in each group were 35, so df = 35 + 35 – 2 = 68, with the level of significance (α) = 5%. then, i got the ttable 1.996. based on the paired sample test result, tvalue was 5.756, it showed that there was a significant difference on post-test result between experimental and control group because tvalue was higher than ttable (5.756 > 1.996). since tvalue > ttable, the null hypothesis (ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (ha) that stated, there is significant difference of reading comprehension in descriptive text of students who are taught by using listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique and those who are not taught by using that technique was accepted. finally after analyzing all of the results of t-test calculation, it can be concluded that teaching reading descriptive by using listen-read-discus (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique is more effective to improve reading comprehension of the eighth grade students of smpn 1 dukuhwaru, tegal in the academic year of 2016/2017. the questionnaire was given to the students of the experimental group after giving treatments. it was given after the students had the post-test. there were nine questions related to english and the treatments which they had got. the questionnaire was written in bahasa indonesia in order to help the students understand in responding to the questions. furthermore, the observation was undertaken for the purpose of getting supporting data for the primary data of the study. observation in this study was held on each treatment in the experimental group. then, the english teacher played role as an observer, the job of the observer was to observe the students‟ performance in the a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 51 classroom, students‟ behaviors during the teaching and learning process, and their responses in the teaching and learning process through listen-read-discuss (lrd) technique. the observer only gave checkmark in the observation sheet. the result of the questionnaire and observation were described and analyzed. i divided into four aspects to describe the result of questionnaire and observation. the aspects are suitability, enjoyment, responsibility, and improvement. those aspects are representative of the students‟ response towards the teaching and learning process using combination of listen-read-discuss and graphic organizer technique to teach reading comprehension of descriptive text for the eighth year students of smp n 1 dukuhwaru, tegal in the academic year of 2016/2017. the analyses of the result could be shown as follows: 1) suitability all the students of experimental group agreed that listen-read-discuss and graphic organizer are suitable for teaching reading. (questionnaire, 14 november 2016). the students seemed enthusiastic about the researcher‟s instruction. the result showed that from two meeting were high see appendix 18. almost all students paid attention when i gave instructions. i guided the students to follow the steps of lrd technique in reading descriptive comprehension, they obeyed the instruction carefully. (observation sheets, 7 and 9 november 2016) 2) enjoyment 33 from 35 students chose yes which meant almost all the students enjoyed learning process about descriptive text material using listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique and they agreed by using listen-read-discuss (lrd) technique learning process about descriptive text became more fun. (questionnaire, 14 november 2016). most the students showed initiative during the teaching learning process when i was treating them using lrd technique. for example when the students found a new word in reading, they immediately tried to find the meaning on the dictionary without the researcher asked. they showed good response towards the learning reading descriptive text that i did. (observation sheets, 7 and 9 november 2016). 3) responsibility almost all the students did not experience difficulties in learning reading descriptive text using lrd and graphic organizer combination technique. they followed the steps of lrd technique carefully. (questionnaire, 14 november 2016). based on observation which done by the english teacher, they followed my instruction. i asked the students to write down what they got in graphic organizer while i was reading the descriptive text. then, the students were asked to compare their work with the descriptive text that i gave after listening step. in doing those activities, almost all students did their work appropriate with the instruction. (observation sheets, 7 and 9 november 2016). 4) reading comprehension improvement 34 from 35 students chose yes column which meant there was any improvement about their reading comprehension in descriptive text after listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique being applied in their class. (questionnaire, 14 november 2016). the objective of this study was to find out whether the listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique was effective to improve the students‟ reading comprehension of descriptive text or not and to identify and explain what the student‟ responses towards listen-read-discuss and graphic organizer combination technique at the eighth yearstudents of smp n 1 dukuhwaru,tegal to master reading comprehension. a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 52 first, i would like to see the quantitative data analysis. the quantitative data analysis showed the score of students‟ reading comprehension improved after they got the treatment. in the pre-test both of groups got average scores which were not quite different. it was 58.11 for experimental group and 56.65 for control group. the average score of both groups score was slightly different and not too significant. it could be said that both of the groups had almost same ability in reading comprehension of descriptive text before the treatment. then, after the students received treatments, the average scores of the two groups were increased. nonetheless, the mean score of experimental group post-test was higher than the control group. the experimental group post-test score was 82.05 meanwhile the control group was 70.11. the percentage of students‟ improvement in experimental group was 41.30% and in control group was 23.86%. the score showed that after getting a treatment by using listen-readdiscuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique, the experimental group achieved a better score than the control group. then, to determine the significant score between the two groups, i calculated the scores using t-test. the result showed that the score of tvalue 5.756 was higher than ttable 1.996 and sig. (2 tailed) value 0.000 was lower than 0.05. it was proven by using spss. in line with the computation above, it can be concluded that there is a significance improvement of the students‟ achievement dealing with reading comprehension mastery after receiving the treatments by using listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique. the next was the result of qualitative data analysis which was the result of observation sheet and questionnaire. while teaching reading comprehension of descriptive text using listen readdiscuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique, the students showed positive behaviors. their motivation in the first meeting and the second meeting showed the improvements on every indicator. the students also enjoyed the activities that made them love the reading learning. it can be proved by the positive responses that they had given along the study. from the questionnaire given, the data showed that most of the students in experimental group enjoyed the process of the study. they were really enthusiastic with the listen-read-discuss and graphic organizer combination technique and expecting to get the similar technique for the other subject. overall, there were improvements on student‟s motivation using listen-read-discuss and graphic organizer combination technique as an appropriate technique to teach reading comprehension of descriptive text. listen-read-discuss is a strategy that helps students comprehend text by building their prior knowledge of the topic in advance to reading the text, moreover listenread-discuss and graphic organizer technique is good alternative technique for teaching reading. conclusions based on the analysis, i make some conclusions. first, the prominent objective of this study was to find out whether or not the listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique was significantly effective to improve the eighth year students‟ reading comprehension of descriptive text . the result showed that the mean scores of the experimental group pre-test and post-test increased significantly from 58.11 to 82.05. it increased 41.30%, while the control group which was taught by conventional method increased only from 56.65 to be 70.11. it increased 23.86%. second, there is a significance improvement of the students‟ achievement dealing with reading comprehension mastery after they received the treatments by using the listen-read-discuss (lrd) technique. it is showed in the calculation by using t-test in spss 16.0 program. the result indicated that the score of tvalue (5.756) was higher than ttable (1.996). then, the result from independent t-test showed that sig. (2 tailed) value 0.000 was lower than 0.05. therefore, the use of a. maemun, s. w. fitriati, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 53 listen-read-discuss (lrd) technique is effective for teaching reading and improving students‟ reading comprehension of descriptive text. the findings of questionnaire and observation also indicated the listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique can be applied in teaching reading comprehension of descriptive text to the eighth grade of junior high school students. listen-read-discuss (lrd) and graphic organizer combination technique made students interested in learning reading descriptive text. in addition, using this technique to teach reading comprehension made the students enjoyed more and facilitated their tasks associated with the reading materials because they learned not only individually but also in group. from the analysis result in the previous chapter that the students‟ motivation on reading comprehension was excellent. it is shown by the students‟ behavior while learning. according to the questionnaire, most of the students in the experimental group felt that the listen-readdiscuss technique were interesting, so it can be conclude that lrd technique improves their motivation to learn reading comprehension of descriptive text. references bromley, k., devitis, l. i. and modlo, m. (1995). graphic organizers: visual strategies for active learning. new york: scholastic professional books. finnochiaro, m. (1984). english as a second language from theory to practice. new york: regent publishing company. manzo, a. v., & casale, u. p. (1985). listen-read-discuss. a content reading heuristic. journal of reading, 28: 372-734. trelease, j. (2013). the read-aloud handbook : seventh edition . new york: penguin books. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421d2df61fef • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 73 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt analysis of the generic structure of news item on the most viewed voice of america (voa) learning english videos in february 2016 ayun bekti saparena, galuh kirana dwi areni, seful bahri  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: generic structure, news item, voice of america learning english ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project focuses on the analysis of the generic structure and lexicogrammatical features of news item text found in the most viewed voice of america learning english videos in february 2016. the main purposes of this study are to identify how the construction of generic structure and significant lexico— grammatical features of news item are applied in voice of america (voa) learning english videos based on news item text structure analysis. this study is descriptive qualitative research. the research data are the transcripts of ten most viewed videos sorted during february 2016. the result of analysis of the generic structure shows that all texts implemented the generic structure of news item text. all of them used the appropriate standard of generic structure of news item text stated by gerot and wignell. the result of analysis of the lexico-grammatical feature shows that all of the elements realized in the texts are well structured. all the texts have been arranged and written based on the complete requirements of lexico-grammatical feature of news item text stated by experts. however, the researcher found some deviations in the text related the use of generic structure and lexico-grammatical features of news item. based on the explanation above, the researcher concludes that news item text found in voice of america learning english videos generally have completed standard generic structure and language features of news item text. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: rasaparena@gmail.com a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 74 introduction video is an easy-to-use digital technology that features in many people’s daily lives. according to hornby (1995), video is a copy of film or movie, program, etc. that is recorded on videotape. in this modern era, video is not only recorded on videotape or in the form of compact disc. people of all ages can easily enjoy it by streaming via internet, downloading from youtube, or even by watching from a video compact disc. only by clicking play icon on screen, or play button on our remote control, people can directly enjoy the video. video is one of the products of technology development. the existence of video takes in charge in the progress of development of modern era. videos contain many kinds of meaningful science and information that can make people have a wider conception about many things in their surroundings. video has some strengths which can be used for learning-teaching process, they are: first, demonstrating procedures, changes, and process. learning can be especially effective when the learner can control the video with features, including playing or replaying as needed. second, teaching attitudes and values. emotional materials and / or real life examples can be shown. text may be needed to help explain the attitudes or values. third, making abstract concept concrete. fourth, classifying and comparing information. for classifying and comparing information, video is particularly valuable when the information can be instantly accessed (peter fenrich, 2005). talking about video, it is not only about something appeared on screen but also the content it has. most of video makers do not make video for no reason. they absolutely make them for something meaningful, even though in a short-length duration. each video has something which is important for the viewer. video consists of motion pictures and the content related to the topic spoken by the speaker. so, a video can be classified as a spoken text. as we know, every text has its own structure, which is usually called text structure. in this study, the writer focuses on analyzing the text structure of news item in some videos published by voice of america (voa). learning english is voa’s multimedia source of news and information for millions of english learners worldwide. its audio programs and captioned videos are written using vocabulary at the intermediate and upper-beginner level. the programs are read one-third slower than normal english speed. learning english began as special english, which voice of america launched in 1959. special english newscasts and features were a primary fixture of voa’s international shortwave broadcasts for more than half a century. in 2014, its line of products was expanded to include more english teaching materials, and the service became known as learning english. as the source of news and information, voa learning english can be mentioned as spoken news item text. gerot & wignell develop a simple explanation about the term news item. news item is factual text which informs readers about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important. in this era, there are still many people who do not know about the generic structure of the text including the social function of the text, the schematic structure of the text, and its significant lexico—grammatical features of the text especially for news item. news item text is one of text genres which has certain social purpose. its social function is to provide information to the readers, listeners or viewers about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important (gerot and wignell, 1994). in line with it, hammond, burn, joice, brosnan, and gerot (1992) explain that news item text has function to inform readers or listeners about events of the day which are considered newsworthy or important. a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 75 the schematic structures to construct news item text are divided into three stages as follows: first, newsworthy event which recounts the event in summary form. this is like the summary of the news in few clauses. second, background event which elaborate what happened to whom in what circumstances. in this structure, the events in the news are explained, what the event is, how it happens, why it happens, when it happens and who gets involved. the third is sources. it consists of comments by participants in, witnesses to and authorities expert on the event. according to gerot and wignell, the language features of news item text are short telegraphic information about story captured in headline, the existence of material process to retell the event, the use of projecting verbal processes in sources stage and focusing on circumstances. studying the content of the video is important since it can build up our ability to comprehend what is delivered and presented on screen, especially for news item. we will be able to understand more deeply about what we watch and listen. a group of people perhaps do not watch videos only for a pleasure, they must be able to get meaningful information inside. generally, news item is varied in case of its field. it can be about technology, economics, education, health, science, entertainment, politics, world news, business, etc. in our daily lives, news item is considered as a significant thing. for instance, to be able to adapt to this modern era, people need to update and enrich their knowledge and understanding about some information concerned with new events of the day. so, it is important to learn more and analyze what the core of news item is. it is in line with the objectives of this study that are to identify how the construction of generic structure and lexico-grammatical feature of news item which are applied in voice of america (voa) learning english. methods the study employs qualitative approach to analyze the data. all of the data in this study are in the form of words. miles and huberman (1992:15) stated that the qualitative data are usually in the form of words, and not in the form of numbers. quantitative data is numerically while qualitative data cannot be put into a context that can be graphed or displayed as a mathematical term. creswell (1994:1) stated that this study is defined as an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problem, formed with words, reporting detailed views of information, and conducted in a natural setting there are two units of analysis in this study. those are generic structure analysis and language features analysis. in news item, the generic structure consists of three components; newsworthy event, background event and sources. according to gerot and wignell, language features or significant lexico-grammatical features analysis consists of short information about story captured in headline, use material process to retell the event, use of projecting verbal processes in sources stage, and focus on circumstances. there are several steps taken to collect the data in this study. the first thing the writer to do is sorting and listing the videos according their interests. the writer monitors and makes sure how many videos published and how many viewers for each published video during the beginning of the year until the end of february 2016. in the end of february 2016, the writer finds the final results of which videos that have most viewers for each interest. the writer makes a list of chosen videos that then will be used as objects of analysis. the chosen videos are listed in a table like below. since the writer uses the qualitative approach in analyzing the data, all the data will be in the form of words. additionally, the results of the investigation will be presented in a narrative form. a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 76 text number name of the video total viewers interest date of publication duration of the video the name of video announcer table 2.1 lists of videos in collecting the data, the next step to do is to download the videos. the videos of voa learning english are not only broadcasted on radio and tv satellite, but also posted in the internet. it makes easier for the writer to download the videos since voa posted the whole broadcasted videos on both radio and tv satellite in its official youtube channel. after downloading the videos, the writer watches the videos frequently. to make the process of analysis easier, the writer carefully transcribes all chosen videos into paragraphs. the writer also rechecks the accuracy of the transcripts. to answer the statement of the problem, the researcher used descriptive qualitative method in analysing the data. in the process of analyzing data, the writer did several steps. the very first thing that the writer do is reading and re-reading the transcripts to make deeply understand about the texts. after that, the writer underlined some important words and broke down the transcripts into smaller parts, sentence by sentence, and clause by clause. the next is analyzing the generic structure of news item text the table below is the table analysis of generic structure of news item texts found in voa learning english videos. the data that had been identified were then classified based on their elements. position of the sentence element text tx, sx newsworthy event tx, sx background event tx, sx sources table 2.2 table analysis of generic structure of news item there are three columns in the table above. the first column is used to the position of data. t is for text, while s means the position of sentences in the text. the second column is used for the element of news item text. there are three elements in news item text, newsworthy event, background event, and sources. the next column is used to place the part of the text which is included into the elements. the data that had been analyzed in the table were then reported into words. in explaining the generic structure tables, the writer also referred to the theoretical review stated by gerot and wignell. the analysis of the language features of news item texts found in voa learning english videos was presented in the table 3.3. the texts were broken down into clauses as the broader elements to be classified. a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 77 position of the clause clause short information about story captured in headline material processes verbal processes circumstances tx, cx table 3.3 table analysis of lexico-grammatical features of news item the first column is for the position of the clause in the text. the second column is for placing the clause that is analyzed. the next four columns are used for the analysis of lexico-grammatical features realized in news item texts. all data in the tables become the findings of this study. results and discussions there are two components that need to be analyzed by the researcher to reveal how the constructions of the generic structure and lexico-grammatical features of news item text are. there are 10 video transcripts to be analysed. the result of analysis about the generic structure of news item text found in voa learning english is that all the texts implemented the generic structure of news item text. all of them shows the appropriate standard of generic structure of news item text. there are newsworthy event, background event, and sources in each text. almost all the newsworthy events of the texts are in the first sentence or in the beginning of the text since it tells us what the texts are about. however, the writer found that there are two texts which newsworthy events are not in the very first sentence or in the very beginning of the text. the newsworthy event is in the fourth and fifth sentence of the text. the first sentence until the third sentence do not summarize the event of the day. they do not give the summary of the event. so, they cannot be called as newsworthy event of the text even though they are in the beginning of the text. since newsworthy event recounts the event in summary form, it is like the summary of the news in few clauses. all the texts shows that the newsworthy events are only in few clauses. however, the writer found that there is one newsworthy event that seems to have many clauses. it consists of three sentences and has seven clauses. they are connected each other in terms of meaning so they cannot be separated. those clauses refers to the summary of the event about the study. in background event, the researcher can also find some information about how the events of the texts happened. the second element of the generic structure of news item text tells the reader the elaboration of what happened, to whom, in what circumstances. in this structure, the events in the news are explained, what the event is, how it happens, why it happens, when it happens and who gets involved. the positions of the background events telling about what happened in the text are varied. generally, all texts tell what the event is about and what happened in the event. in the background event of generic structure of news item text, there are some sentences that mention who get involved in the event. they tell whoever are in charge of occurring to something or event. the results show that the people, company or organisation, or group of people who get involved in the event are mentioned in the element of generic structure called background event. who get involved in the events for each text are varied. there are names of company like the new ford escape, the heedful audio alert system, sober steering, and alibaba group, names of a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 78 people like reed hastings, sunny jung, walter willett, frank hu, lamar alexander, patty murray and joe tsai, and a name of group of people like the engineering students. nonetheless, the findings shows that background event in text 6 does not tell who is involved in the event of text. it has been mentioned in newsworthy event element of the text. the newsworthy event of text 6 has completely mentioned that the subject the u.s. department of agriculture and the department of health and human services is determined as an organisation who get involved in the event. generally, the background event element exists in each text. background event in each text tells the elaboration of what happened in the event. the third element of the generic structure of news item text is sources element. sources element contains the comments by participants in, witnesses to and authorities expert on the event. the sources stage of the text can be easily recognized by looking at the existence of verbal processes. some examples of the texts show some comments and opinions saying by participants, experts or the witnesses who are related to the event. based on the findings, we can found the sources element in each text. generally, all the text implemented the elements of generic structure of news item text stated by gerot and wignell. the writer found that all texts have newsworthy event, background event, and sources. as a general rule, the construction of the generic structure of news item text is started from newsworthy event as the first element, background event as the second element, and the sources as the third element. surprisingly, the findings show that the constructions of the generic structure found in the texts are varied. not all texts are arranged based on the chronological order of the generic structure of news item text which is started with newsworthy event then followed with its background event, and closed with sources element. the results of analysis show that the constructions of the generic structure found in ten texts are varied. the analysis of generic structure of news item in text 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 shows that those texts are arranged based on the chronological order of the generic structure of news item text. nonetheless, the generic structures found in all those texts have some repetition of the elements. for instance, the construction of generic structure in text 1 is started with newsworthy event. it is then followed with background event and the sources. after the sources, there are some background events again followed the sources. the diagrams of the constructions of the generic structure element in text 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are as follows: (1) ne → be → s → be (4) ne → be → s → be (5) ne → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s (7) ne → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s (8) ne → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s (9) ne → be → s → be → s → be → s (10) ne → be → s → be → s → be → s → be → s → be ne is for newsworthy event. be means background event. s is for sources. another three texts show the different chronological orders of the generic structure of news item text. as we know that commonly the generic structure of news item is started with newsworthy event, then followed with background event and ended with the sources. the analysis of generic structure of news item in text 2, 3, and 6 are not like that. the text 2 is started with background event in the very beginning of the text. it is followed with newsworthy event. it is then followed with sources. after the sources, there is a background event. it is followed with sources, background event, sources, background event, and sources again and finally ended with background event. the diagram of the construction of the generic structure element found in text 2 is as follows: a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 79 be → ne → s → be → s → be → s → be → s → be based on the analysis, the construction of the generic structure element in text 3 is started with newsworthy event. it is then followed with sources. after the sources, there is background event. it is then followed with sources, background event, sources, and ended with background event. the diagram of the construction of the generic structure element found in text 3 is as follows: ne → s → be → s → be → s → be the construction of the generic structure found in text 6 is started with background event then followed with newsworthy event. it is then followed with background event again. after background event, it is followed with sources, background event again, sources again, background event again, and finally closed with sources stage. the diagram of the construction of the generic structure element found in text 6 is as follows: be → ne → be → s → be → s → be → s generally, all the text implemented the elements of generic structure of news item text stated by gerot and wignell even though each text has the different chronological order of the generic structure. the writer found that all texts have newsworthy event, background event, and sources. all elements of generic structure are available in the text. nonetheless, the researcher found a deviation of element in text 7 which shows an ambiguity. it is in the first sentence of the text. it brings an ambiguity for the element of generic structure of news item text. since it is in the very beginning of the text, it can be called as newsworthy event. however, it is difficult to be called as a newsworthy event since it does not recount the event in summary form. the writer cannot find the summary of the event in that sentence. the newsworthy event should give simple and short summary of the event in the text. however, we can call it as sources element, since it used the word ‘says’ which indicates the process of saying and gives information source for the topic of the text. the second finding of this study is about how the lexico-grammatical features of news item realized in the texts. the elements of lexico-grammatical feature of news item text are divided into four elements. they are short information about story captured in headline, the use of material processes and verbal processes, and focusing on circumstances. generally, the headlines of the texts captured short information about the event. there are some headlines that are written in the form of sentence. there are also found some simple headlines which are only in few words. it does not matter if the headlines are written in the form of sentence, in the form of simple clause or even in the form of noun. the most significant thing is that the headline of the text captures short and telegraphic information about the event or story in the text. the words such as changes, streams, plays, curl, bring, developed, studies, makes, leads, signed, bought, and set up are the examples of process of doing realized in the texts. material processes take both the active and passive voice. the words such as are designed, were sent, were published, is exposed, is linked, are updated, was approved, was sold, and is created presented material processes realized in the texts in passive form. both material processes in active and passive voice found in the texts actually have the same function that are to tell or retell the event in the text. verbal processes are process of saying, or more accurately, of symbolically signaling. verbal processes in news item text can be easily found in the sources element of generic structure of the text. the existence of verbal processes is also used to indicate which part of the text belongs to sources element. in verbal processes, there are two kinds of function, verbal processes used for quoting and verbal processes used for reporting. for instance, the word ‘says’ in sample (68) and in sample (69) are quite different. in sample (68), the word ‘says’ is for quoting since there is a quote saying by someone in double quotations. while in sample (69), the word ‘says’ is for reporting, since it is used to report someone saying. the fourth part of the lexico-grammatical features of news item text is circumstances. circumstances answer such question as when, where, why, how, how many, and as what. they a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 80 realize meaning about time, place, manner, cause, accompaniment, matter and role of the text. the researcher found some samples which are considered the statements about when something is started and created. the existence of the year indicates that the sentence contains time circumstances. there is also found an adverb of time answering how often. it tells the reader how often something is updated. according to the findings, there are also found some circumstances answering question where. there are found some adverbs of place telling where the event happened. the existence of the name of cities around the world indicated the adverbs of place of an event. in addition, meaning about manner answering question how, in the form of comparison is also realised in the text. the researcher found the word ‘like’ which tells like what and is probed by what like. here, subject x is compared to something else or subject y in terms of particular behaviour. the result of analysis found that there are some circumstances answering question why implemented in some texts. the writer found two kinds of cause circumstances, the first is purpose and the second is reason. purpose tells the reason why something is done or used and is probed by what for. the existence of the word ‘for’ can be used to indicate the purpose of why something is done. different with purpose, reason contains a statement or fact that explains why something is the way it is, why someone does, thinks, or says something, or why someone behaves a certain way. the researcher found a sentence with conjunction ‘because’, and it shows the reason answering why something is the way it is. because is one of the conjunction which is usually used to tell a reason. in the circumstances, there is an element called accompaniment. it tells with(out) who or what and is probed by who or what else. the researcher found the sentence which tells the construction of something ‘with’ something. it show that the text implemented the circumstances of accompaniment. another circumstances found in the texts are matter and role. matter tells about what or with reference to what and is probed by what about. the examples of matter are presented in some sentences of the text. the researcher found that the word ‘about’ is used as the sign of the existence of matter. role in circumstances tells what as and is probed by as what. role is a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation. the existence of the word ‘as’ can be used to see that there is role in circumstances in the text. the conjunction ‘as’ indicates the existence of role in the sentence. generally, four elements of lexico-grammatical features of news item text mentioned above are realized in the texts. for the construction of the lexico-grammatical features, the researcher found some deviations. the example of deviations is presented in the headline of text 3. the headline of the text does not give short information about the event. it is not a simple sentence that captures what happened related to the story. since it is a question sentence, it actually does not tell a certain information about something. it seems to ask for the audience’s opinion about something. the headline has not completed the element of lexico-grammatical features of news item text in which the headline captures the short information about the story. in short, based on the results of analysis, the findings of this study show that all of the elements of lexico-grammatical feature used in the text are well structured. generally, all the elements are realized in each text. it can be said that all the texts has been arranged and written based on the complete requirements of lexico-grammatical feature of report text stated by gerot and wignell. a. b. saparena, g. k. d. areni, s. bahri / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 81 conclusions based on the results and discussions in this study, the researcher can conclude that all the elements of generic structure are implemented in the texts. generally, all the texts completed the requirement of the generic structure as stated by gerot and wignell. the deviation of the generic structure element is also found in the text. there is one element which considered bring an ambiguity whether it is called newsworthy element or sources element of the text. overall, all the texts are well-structured in terms of generic structure. the results of analysis show that the constructions of the generic structure found in the texts are varied. not all texts are arranged based on the standard chronological order of the generic structure of news item text which is started with newsworthy event then followed with its background event, and ended with sources element. seven texts show that they are arranged based on the standard chronological order of the generic structure of news item text. the other three texts shows the unusual chronological order of the generic structure of news item text. however, all elements of the generic structure are realized in each text. the result of data analysis on how the construction of significant lexico—grammatical features of news item text shows that all the elements are implemented in the texts. they are mostly well-structured. in contrast, there is a text which headline does not give short and telegraphic information about the story. this deviation makes the text does not complete the requirements of language features found in news item text. references cresswell, j. w. 1994. research design qualitative and quantitative approaches. california: sage publication, inc fenrich, peter. 2005. creating instructional multimedia solutions: practical guidelines for the real world. canada: informing science press. gerot, l. and p. wignell. 1994. making sense of functional grammar. australia: macquire university. hammonds, j, burns, a, joice, h, brosnan, d, and gerot l. 1992. english for social purpose. sidney: marquarie university. hornby, a.s. 1995. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. miles, b and huberman, m. qualitative data analysis. sage publication, inc, dan terjemahannya oleh rohidi rohendi, t. 1992. analisis data kualitatif. jakarta: universitas indonesia. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 79 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt group work activity to enhance students’ courage in delivering questions during online learning: a classroom action research retnaningsih sma negeri 9 semarang article info ________________ article history: received in 10 july 2019 approved in 30 march 2021 published in 31 march 2021 ________________ keywords: group work; delivering question; online learning ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the objective of this study is to find out the effectiveness of group work strategy in maximizing the students’ courage in delivering questions during the online classes. in particular, this study will examine theories on learning, online learning, group work, and courage in delivering questions as part of character building. the approach to be applied in this research is quantitative methods. the research design implemented in this study is classroom action research for 36 students of class xii ips 1 at sman 9 semarang. the technique of collecting data uses observation techniques, interviews, and documentation studies. the results show that learning with the group work can increase the courage of students to ask questions up to more than 75% which shows the effectivity of the strategy and the teacher’s strategy in determining the persons involving in a group work plays a significant role in the success of group work and the motivation to deliver questions during the online classes. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 sma negeri 9 semarang banyumanik, semarang, 50267 e-mail: retnaningsihsma9@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 80 introduction one of the ways to improve education in indonesia is by making changes and improvements in the learning process. it is necessary to make efforts to improve learning. the main objective of learning is that students can master the subject matter according to the set of objectives. to achieve this goal, an educator has to make efforts in preparing a lesson plan, and selecting the learning methods to the implementation of evaluation. but in reality, after learning activities are completed, there are still students who do not master the learning subjects or topics. in an effort to prevent the covid-19 pandemic to spread wider, the government issued a policy for students to study at home. starting march 16, 2020, schools conduct the teaching and learning online. online learning is a learning system without face to face meeting between teachers and students but is carried out online using the internet network. teachers must ensure teaching and learning activities continue, even though students are at home. teachers are required to be able to do innovation and to design the learning media by utilizing online media. the success of teachers in conducting online learning in the covid-19 pandemic situation is the ability of teachers to make some innovations in designing materials, learning methods, and what applications which are suitable with the materials and methods. creativity is the key to success for a teacher to be able to motivate students to stay enthusiastic about learning online and not take the learning as a psychological burden. to increase students' courage to deliver questions on online teaching for english class of class xii ips1 at sma n 9 semarang, researchers formed group work. according to suprijono (2011) stated that the advantages of group work include: enhancing student motivation to actively learn, creating a sense of togetherness and cooperation, instilling solidarity between friends in groups, and problem solving in doing assignments and projects. in addition to suprijono (2011) said that the learning model of "group work" can increase enthusiasm and motivation to learn, especially for those who lack of ability and skills to deliver questions. sutikno (2013), moreover, stated that group work may increase the students’ courage in delivering questions and at the same time as increasing courage, group work also able to increase learning outcomes. the main reason for this is that students who work in groups can get additional information from the group. then, there will be an exchange of knowledge between group members, so that in solving a problem, the results can be more perfect when compared to independent work. regarding to this, piaget (in slavin, 2011) emphasizes that children at a young age will judge a bad behavior as something that produces negative consequences or impacts even though the purpose of the action is good. according to piaget, the second stage of morality is the stage of autonomous morality. autonomous morality stage occurs in children over 6 years of age or in the middle and late childhood. by the ages of 10 to 12, children stop using and obeying the rules based on conscience. thus, with this autonomous morality is also called the morality of cooperation. this morality arises when the child's social world begins to expand so that he has more peers in his environment. the interaction and cooperation with other children create new ideas for the child about the rules and because of that, their morality changes. asking students to deliver questions in class requires the students’ courage, because without their courage, the activity of asking and answering questions in class will experience obstacles. the meaning of asking or delivering questions we define here is asking for information (explanation), asking to be told (about something), and asking for misunderstanding (abdullah, 2000). thus, it can be interpreted that asking is an activity to carry out questions for obtaining information and to get a clearer answer to a matter that has not been understood or not yet understood. pradoto (2001) in his research results said that the use of questioning techniques accompanied by worksheets and teaching aids in the teaching and learning process can improve learning outcomes. courage to ask or delivering questions is a condition that exists in each individual which is indicated by the ability to show up with confidence and be able to overcome fear when asking for information and get clear answers to something that is not yet understood. in addition, asking questions in learning is seen as a teacher activity to encourage, guide and assess students' thinking abilities. there are several factors that make students reluctant or are afraid of asking or raising questions in the classroom during the teaching and learning process, including afraid of being considered stupid or being laughed at by friends; b) afraid of being asked to come forward to solve the questions or problem by the teacher; c) afraid of being asked to explain the material that has retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 81 just been delivered by the teacher; d) afraid of considered unprepared as they were not reading the teaching materials or paying less attention to the teacher during lessons which make them less understand; e) afraid of expressing opinions because they are confused about how to convey them (cannot speak properly). based on its functions, the objectives of teaching english subjects in the current curriculum include: (1) developing the ability to communicate in english both orally and in writing. these abilities include listening (listening), speaking (speaking), reading (reading), and writing (writing); (2) raising awareness of the nature and importance of english as a foreign language to become main language learning tool; (3) developing an understanding of the relationship between language and culture and expanding cultural horizons. thus, students have cross-cultural insight and involve themselves in cultural diversity. based on the researchers 'observations, the students' lack of courage to ask questions was caused by several factors, including, the number of students who are willing to ask questions were limited, if anyone was willing to ask questions, it was limited to students who were considered having higher abilities than other students, the limited number of students interested in asking questions were limited because they are ashamed to be considered not capable of mastering the lesson and the students' interest in reading textbooks is lacking, so that they do not master the learning material being discussed. learning itself, in article 1 point 20 of law no. 20 of 2003 concerning the national education system is a process of interaction between students and educators, and learning resources in a learning environment. meanwhile, according to wingkel in siregar and nara (2010), learning is a set of actions designed to support the student learning process, by considering the extreme events that play a role in a series of internal events that occur and are experienced by students. to support this, learning according to gagne in siregar and nara (2010) is instruction which is intended to promote education, an external situation needs to be arranged to activate, support and maintain the internal processing that constitutes each learning event. meanwhile, according to dimyati and mudjiono (2009) learning is a process organized by the teacher to teach students how to learn, how to acquire and the process to obtain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. from the explanation above, it can be concluded that learning is a conscious effort made by educators, students and learning resources in the environment. learning is an activity carried out by the teacher in such a way that student behavior changes for the better. learning aims to help students gaining various experiences and with that experience, the behavior of students which includes knowledge, skills, and values or norms that function as controllers of students' attitudes and behavior increases, both in quantity and quality. with the covid-19 virus outbreak, the government obliges all schools to conduct online learning. the online learning system is a learning system without face-to-face learning between teachers and students but is done online using the internet network. teachers must ensure learning activities continue, even though students are at home. here, teachers are required to be able to design learning media as an innovation by utilizing online media. this is in accordance with the minister of education and culture of the republic of indonesia’s regulation number 4 of 2020 concerning implementation of education policies in the emergency of the spread of corona virus disease (covid-19). online learning is conducted through a personal computer (pc) or laptop connected to an internet network connection. teachers can maximize learning at the same time using groups on social media such as whatsapp (wa), telegram, instagram, zoom applications or other media as learning media. thus, the teacher can ensure students take part in learning at the same time, even in different places. in the online learning process, it is important to add educational messages to parents and students about the covid-19 pandemic outbreak. thus, the schools want to make sure that students find the online learning is doable and able to replace face to face learning. to overcome the risk during covid-19 virus outbreak, the implementation of online learning is considered the best way, the program is right on target, and the learning outcomes are achieved. however, there is a lesson learned from the world of education in the midst of the covid19 pandemic which says that face-to-face learning activities with teachers in a classroom have proven to be more effective than online. this was explained by an education expert of universitas brawijaya (ub), aulia luqman aziz in accordance with national education day 2020. he mentioned, "forever, the teaching profession will not be replaced by technology," said luqman in retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 82 his statement on ub's official website, saturday (2/5/2020). according to him, full online learning has recently caused a lot of complaints from students and parents. furthermore, in accordance with learning, teachers are also obliged to take care of students’ character building. one of the way in supporting the students’ character building is to motivate students to engage in the process of teaching and learning and to think critically by the activity of delivering questions. here, to refer to the activity of delivering questions, we label the activity as asking. asking is an activity to get some information from someone you know or person in charge. the response given can be in the form of knowledge to matters which requires consideration. so, asking is an effective stimulus that encourages thinking skills. questioning skills, for a student is a very important skill to master, because through these skills students can create a more meaningful learning atmosphere. learning will become very boring, when the teacher explains the subject matter for hours without being punctuated by questions, either just provoking questions, or questions to get students to think. therefore, in every learning process, whatever learning model is used, asking questions is an activity that always acts as an inseparable part. experts believe that good questions have a positive impact on students, including increasing the full participation of students in the learning process, improving students' thinking skills, because thinking itself is asking questions, arising students' curiosity, and guiding students to determine answers, and helping students to focus on the problems discussed. the habit of asking questions of seeking for information and finding a better understanding will make us open-minded. to ask questions requires courage to lead students to the right path, avoiding things that are misleading. courage to ask questions will not be born just like that but needs to be nurtured or trained by parents, teachers, or older siblings (hasibuan and moedjiono, 2012). in the process of teaching and learning activities, teaching cannot be separated from the problem of "asking" because the questions posed by students can be used to determine the extent of student involvement in teaching and learning activities. students in asking questions need to pay attention to the objectives and level of questions, to know, recall and evaluate the level of experience of the concepts that have been studied. to provoke student questions, the teacher displays contradictory problems by providing student activity sheets (lks) which contain a varied sequence of activities and questions and dividing groups of students heterogeneously. based on the development of psychology (piaget in slavin, 2011), it can be briefly stated that from the age of twelve to adulthood, children begin to be able to consider several simultaneous views regarding their own objective actions. they can formulate theories and test hypotheses, filtered that they can think inductively and deductively, and can provide arguments with implications. thus, the courage of students will be more visible in asking questions both with their own friends in one group and with another group. the level of questions itself can be grouped into three, namely low-level questions are questions that require a short answer and usually these questions begin with the words "what, where, who, and when". medium level questions are questions that require a short answer but are not complex problems, they usually begin with the word "how". meanwhile, high-level questions are questions that require a short answer and are complex problems, usually beginning with the word "why" (bolla and pah, 1983). in instilling the courage to deliver questions, researcher believes in strengthening the quality of the students’ group work to ensure cooperative learning. according to suprijono (2009), cooperative learning is a broader concept covering all types of group work including forms that are more teacher-led or teacher-directed. the support of vygotsky's social constructivism theory (in suprijono, 2009) has placed the importance of the cooperative model. vygotsky's social constructivism emphasizes that knowledge is built and constructed mutually. vygotsky emphasized that students construct knowledge through social interactions with other people. based on some of the definitions above, it can be concluded that cooperative learning is a learning strategy based on group collaboration carried out to achieve specific goals. according to rusman (2013), cooperative learning is different from other learning strategies. the difference can be seen from the learning process which emphasizes the process of teamwork in groups. the goals to be achieved are not only academic ability in terms of mastery of subject matter, but also there is an element of cooperation for mastery of the material. this cooperation is the hallmark of cooperative learning. group study between more accomplished and underachieving friends is useful for teaching knowledge, skills, and strengths to peers. this is in accordance with the theory of phenomenology that every lesson must be "meaningful" for retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 83 humans and humanity, because humans are social beings as well as individual beings. thus, the objective of this study is to find out the effectiveness of group work strategy in maximizing the students’ courage in delivering questions during the online classes. in particular, this study will examine theories on learning, online learning, group work, and courage in delivering questions as part of character building. methods this article employed a classroom action research to the 36 students of xii ips 1 at sman 9 semarang in the academic year 2020/2021 which was conducted through online learning. besides classroom observation, data were also collected through literature review and theoretical studies from various library sources. the data used in the study were collected through observation by researchers and observers. the method used is that researchers and observers enter virtual discussion groups. the tool used is the observation sheet. the population of this study was students of class xii ipa1 sma n 9 semarang year 2020/2021. in total, there were 36 students. students consist of 23 boys and 13 girls. whereas, the research cycles consisted three cycles. the first cycle of meeting 1 was held for 3 days: monday, november 2, 2020 at 08.30 up to 09.00; tuesday, november 3, 2020 at 08.30 up to 09.00, wednesday, november 4, 2020 at 11:15 a.m. up to 11.35 a.m. the first cycle of meeting 2 was held on tuesday, november 10, 2020, at 07.30 up to 08.50. cycle ii meeting 1 was held on saturday, november 14 2020 at 07.30 up to 08.30. the second cycle of meeting 2 was held on wednesday, 18 november 2020 at 07.30 up to 08.30. cycle iii meeting 1 was held on saturday, november 21, 2020 at 07.30 up to 08.10. cycle iii meeting 2 was held on monday, november 23, 2020 at 08.30 up to 09.00. the research procedure consisted of three cycles. each cycle was divided into 4 parts, namely: planning, implementation, observation and reflection. in addition, the analysis of research data applied qualitative descriptive analysis with percentage techniques. findings and discussion inter-cycle discussion after carrying out a series of actions in each cycle and based on the results of observations, there were several results that the researcher can convey. the first result was related to the level of courage of the students to ask questions in a discussion with a small number of members. the courage of students to ask questions was low, and vice versa, the more the number of members of the group, the higher the students' courage to ask questions in the discussion. with a group discussion, students who were not brave enough to ask questions were motivated by their friends in their group so that they had the courage to ask questions. merging discussion groups between groups that were motivated to ask questions and groups that were less motivated to ask questions can be helpful to motivate other groups (those who are less motivated to ask questions). they started to be motivated to ask questions in group discussions. overall results after the researcher conducted the research accompanied by the observer in 3 cycles the results obtained were, there were 36 students of class xii ips 1, consisting of 23 boys and 13 girls. in the online learning process, the students find difficulties throughout the learning process because the meeting is without a face to face meeting. in addition to providing learning material, researchers always provide motivation and inserting character education to shape students' personalities. there are various student responses, some are loyal to take part in learning, but there are also students who are less sensitive and are lazy to take part in learning. even in the learning process, there was no response from the students. researchers are concerned with the conditions of the learning process like this. the researcher then tries to create different learning methods by empowering students in the learning process, namely the group discussion method. researchers think back to the current situation because students cannot meet each other, what can be done is a virtual discussion. finally, the researcher conveyed the idea to the students and they could accept and understand. the facilities used are cellphones/ laptops devices with google classroom, google meet, and whatsapp (video call) applications. researchers also convey these ideas to fellow teachers, fellow science teachers integrated to help the process of carrying out the discussion. retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 84 the researcher then divided the students into 18 groups, each of which consisted of 2 students, by means of the students looking for their own discussion pairs. the time used for discussion uses learning hours, with a duration of time between 10 to 20 minutes. next, the researcher made a schedule for group discussions with each one accompanied by a researcher or observer. in the first cycle, on average, 14% (5 students) asked questions from 36 students. the courage to ask occurred during the meeting 1, there were 1 student, and meeting 2 were 4 students, after students were given actions in the form of motivation in the form of motivation the importance of asking both individually and classically. the observation result in cycle ii showed that the students' courage to ask an average of 45% (16 students) who were motivated to ask from 36 students, the courage to ask more questions was found at the second meeting, namely 10 students and 6 students at the first meeting. so that there was an increase of 4 students. in cycle ii, the number of questions that arose was an increase of 31% from cycle i. this tendency if the increasing number of students delivering questions indicates the success of the teacher in cycle ii, namely dividing the class into 9 groups with more group members. researchers provide motivation and praise for students who dare to ask questions, with the hope that students' courage will increase. in the third cycle after the observation, the results obtained from students who asked there were an increase of 35% to 80% (30 students out of 36 students). at meeting 1 there were 12 students and at meeting 2 there were 18 students who asked questions. the teacher's actions by adding value, make students motivated and take the initiative to ask questions. from the results of observations made by the observer, it shows that there is a good change in students to take advantage of the opportunity to ask, which is 35% higher than in cycle ii, so that it will affect the understanding of the concept just discussed. the level of active response of male students was higher than that of female students. thus, from the researchers' observations from cycle i to cycle iii, the group discussion learning model was able to encourage students to ask questions in completing assignments. in addition, the learning atmosphere can be fun, cheerful, not tense and feelings of shame, fear and lack of confidence can gradually disappear so that psychologically it can arouse individual interest in understanding the material presented and the burden they feel becomes relatively light, because all material is done in groups. likewise, for teachers, the task load becomes relatively lighter in carrying out the learning process, because the learning process is more studentcentered. discussion from the study, it can be concluded that the study was succeed. the achievement of students was increased and it was shown by the confident that the students show while delivering questions in group. it is in line with the statement delivered by suprijono (2011) stated that the advantages of group work including enhancing student motivation to actively learn, creating a sense of togetherness and cooperation, instilling solidarity between friends in groups, and problem solving in doing assignments and projects. from the classroom action research that has been done, it shows that the existence of students in one group can help to push students to show their ability in delivering questions. although the activity is student-centered, it does not mean that the teacher has no responsibility to teach the students. the teacher here acts as facilitator which can intrigue the process of asking and answering to happen. moreover, the ability of the teacher in designing the group task also play a significant role to ensure the group work happens. as mentioned by hasibuan & moedjiono (2012) courage to ask questions will not be born without a reason but needs to be trained by parents, teachers, or older siblings (hasibuan & moedjiono, 2012). in other words, it is a habit that needs to be cultivated. teacher plays his own role by providing a task which requires group work so the process of discussion involving group question and answer can happen. besides, teacher also has the role to choose a correct partner for each student in one group. the choice of member of each group will take part in the process of asking and answering questions. to underline all of this, teacher takes part in choosing task and team partner to invite student’s participation to ask questions. the ability of making question itself will ignite students’ critical thinking and confidence. students’ performance, especially their performance in questions production during group works was mostly influenced by their own motivation. students who had positive attitude toward class activities spoke more and performed better than students who had negative attitude toward retnaningsih/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 85 teaching and learning process (szpotowicz, 2012). motivation also played roles in creating an effective learning. besides, the amount of experience, the students took for doing group works affect how they performed during the process, the more experience they had, the better they did the group works as well as questions production (szpotowicz, 2012). moreover, performing group work during speaking class could give the students more opportunity to use subject language communicatively. it also meant, they could improve their speaking ability, and indeed their questions production. in addition, such kind of environment reduced stress and provided students with more intakes related to their performance (hung & mai, 2020). yet, the teachers needed to keep encouraging students to actively use the subject language while discussing their works in group (hung & mai, 2020). thus, it is hoped that the students could develop their speaking skills, critical skills and their questions production. group work and questions production could not be separated from the notion of social interaction (nipp & palengue, 2017). the ability to communicate well, particularly being able to excel the skills of question production, needed intensive social interaction. interaction between students and students was the core element of effective cooperative group work. however, every group works certainly triggered some challenges. the challenges that occurred during group works were related to the contribution of group participants, group management and how to embrace diverse opinions and ideas. to ensure successful group works during teaching and learning process, the teachers could apply some policies to reduce problems that might occurred (nipp & palengue, 2017). the policies should accommodate the nature of group work, especially for questions production. communication and transparency were also required to promote effective learning experience during group as well as during questions production. this study suggested that teachers needed to make careful consideration regarding the implementation of group work. the teacher must be careful in determining the members of each study group, before implementing the learning using the "group work" strategy. the teacher must make detailed plans, compile brief work instructions, which contain the substance of the material, and work steps. the teacher must consider the situation and conditions of the classroom environment and its composition, because to implement the group work strategy requires adequate preparation, especially the readiness of students in receiving lessons. moreover, the teacher must always monitor and provide motivation in the implementation of group work activities. by considering those elements, the teaching learning process, especially for group work activities, in fostering question production can be done successfully. conclusion the conclusion is not only about restating the data or findings, but also synthesizing the purpose of the study which at the end yields the findings and discussion which should be compatible with the objectives of the research. moreover, based on the results of the research and discussion above, it can be concluded that learning with the group work method, can increase the courage of students to ask questions up to more than 75%. teachers can gradually come up with various learning strategies and techniques, and empower students to overcome their own learning difficulties. the determination of the number of study group members and the selection of members of each group greatly determines the activeness/ courage of students to ask questions. the readiness of the teacher in preparing learning material, the readiness of students in learning and the monitoring of the teacher in the group work process affect their success. the future research related to group works and question production can investigate the opportunity to study the group work as well as question production for higher education students. the study can explore in what extent question production and critical thinking skills can be promoted thoroughly. references aji, a.l. 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(2012). researching oral production skills of young learners. c.e.p.s journal, vol. 2(3), 141-166. microsoft word 1. 120 language learning strategies used by students with different listening achievement lilik alfuatin  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 3 september 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: language learning strategies; listening achievement; high achievement group; intermediate achievement group; low achievement group. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the objective of this study was to describe the language learning strategies used by students with different listening achievement. seventy students from two classes were chosen to participate in this study by using a convenience sampling technique. they were divided into three achievement groups based on the achievement group’s technique by arikunto (2006). listening achievement test and modified strategy inventory of language learning (sill) questionnaire were used to collect data. the design of this research was descriptive quantitative. the study found that high, intermediate, and low achievement group used all six kinds of strategy. high achievement group used strategies more often than intermediate, and low achievement group. metacognitive strategies were the most used strategies for high, intermediate, and low achievement group. in contrast, affective strategies were the least used strategies for high, and intermediate achievement group. meanwhile, compensation was the least used strategy for low achievement group. it is suggested that the teacher should record their students’ choice of using strategies and teach them how to use strategies in learning listening properly. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 121 introduction listening is one of four skills that taught in english classroom. burleson cited by caspersz and stasinska (2015) says that listening is a process involves the interpretation of messages that people intentionally transmitted to understand the messages and respond to them appropriately. duzer (1997) as citied in long (2016) states that listening has important role. the first critical role of listening is to acquisition the language. it can be said like that because we can learn a language, if only we have already listened how the language sounds like. beside that, it is also important for communication. outside the classroom, in order to practice the target language, listening skill plays a role in communication. if the learner wants to reply the message of the conversation, the learner should be able to listen into what the other speakers said. they can not do a conversation smoothly unless they can comprehend what the other speakers tell about. despite of its important charges that has been seen nowadays, back then, listening did not receive many acknowledge. even for skill that called as the key of knowing language, listening is possibly the least understood, the least researched, and, historically, the least valued (wilson, 2011). however, listening is considered as a difficult skill to develop and learned. in indonesia, it is usually being difficult to be learned because it is considered as a foreign language. it limits the students’ knowledge of language and its systems which is accompanied by weak opportunities to hear natural speech in the target language (michaleková, 2017). it is also happened because it needs many requirements, as austin (1970) said in long (2016) that “listening is difficult because it well requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination”. in order to overcome the problem of listening, learning listening needs to use strategies to make the students become more fluent. oxford (1990) defines learning strategies as specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques used by students to improve their own learning. there are some strategies that has been used to increase students’ fluently in listening; such as listening to english music, listening to the podcast, watching english movies, watching english news, practicing with friends, etc. however, teaching listening with various strategies is not enough. the teacher should know what strategies are effective for students. chamot quoted by hanna (2012) explains that the teacher have to find out what strategies students are using by asking and recording their responses. this is the first step of acknowledging their learning strategies in order to raise their awareness of using strategies. by raising the students’ awareness of using strategies, it helps students to develop autonomy, which should be the goal of a strategy based approach model (anna, 2012). for decades, there were lots of studies about language learning strategies. some of the popular taxonomies about language learning strategies that used for the researches were presented by rubin (1987), oxford (1990), o’malley (1985), and stern (1992). among them, oxford’s taxonomy is the most applied nowadays. ellis (1994) quoted by kato (2005) said that oxford’s questionnaire was the most comprehensive classification of learning strategies for these days. yet, language learning strategies do not always been studied alone. there are other aspects which related to language learning strategies. oxford (2003) mentions that the others aspects related to the application of language learning strategies are motivation, gender, age, culture, brain hemisphere dominance, career orientation, academic major, beliefs, and the nature of the second learner language task. besides those aspects, achievement is also another aspect that related to strategies use. long (2017) states achievement is found to be more related to the students’ strategy use. it is because the purpose of strategy use is to overcome students’ difficulties in learning language which also improve their achievements. also, one of the methods to know whether the strategy affects to the students or not is by looking at their achievement. oxford invented a taxonomy that is well-known as language learning strategy. this strategy divides six strategies which the students use in language classroom into two kinds; direct and indirect strategies. direct strategies are for dealing with the target language, working with the language itself in a variety of specific task and situations. it is composed of memory strategies for remembering and retrieving new information, cognitive strategies for understanding and producing the language, and also compensation strategies for using the language despite knowledge gaps. meanwhile the indirect strategies are for general management of learning the target language. it is made up of metacognitive strategies for coordinating the learning process, affective strategies for regulating emotions, and social strategies for learning with the others. all these strategies are called “indirect” because they support and manage language learning without directly involving the target language.. lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 122 oxford’s taxonomy also comes with a questionnaire called strategy inventory for language learning (sill). this questionnaire has been used all around the world, such as iran (tamjid & babazadeh, 2012), thailand (piamsai, 2007), arab (aljuaid, 2015), indonesia (alfian, 2016), taiwan (chang, liu, & lee, 2007), china (jia & wang, 2017), japan (kato, 2005), greek (kazamia, 2010), pakistan (kazi & iqbal, 2011), hong kong (tam, 2013), etc. yet, language learning strategies do not always been studied alone. there are other aspects which related to language learning strategies. oxford (2003) mentions that the others aspects related to the application of language learning strategies are motivation, gender, age, culture, brain hemisphere dominance, career orientation, academic major, beliefs, and the nature of the second learner language task. besides those aspects, achievement is also another aspect that related to strategies use. long (2017) states achievement is found to be more related to the students’ strategy use. it is because the purpose of strategy use is to overcome students’ difficulties in learning language which also improve their achievements. also, one of the methods to know whether the strategy affects to the students or not is by looking at their achievement. based on the statements above, in this present study the researcher wanted to study what language learning strategies used by students with different listening achievement. methods this study purposed at describing what kind of language learning strategies the students who had different listening achievement used. to reach its objective, the writer chose descriptive quantitative as the research design. the reason for choosing this research design was because the focus of the research was to explain what kind of language learning strategies that the student used in listening based from the quantitative data. the data were explained in the form of numbers that had been collected through students listening achievement test and questionnaire. the populations of this research were the eleventh grade of social students of sma negeri 2 pati. there were two classes that became the sample of this research. those classes were xi ips 1 and xi ips 2. both classes had 35 students in each class that participated in this study. the researcher chose 70 students of eleventh grade of social by using convenience sampling technique. in this study, in order to collect data there were two instruments that were used; listening achievement test, and questionnaire. the listening achievement test was chosen to determine the students’ listening skill. it was consisted of 50 questions. this test was taken from national examination from year 2014-2017, and also the preparation for national examination 2019. the items were picked and modified in order to adjust with students’ ability. the next instrument was questionnaire. it was used to identify the strategies that the students use in listening. this questionnaire was adapted from strategy inventory for language learning (sill) that invented by oxford (1990). originally there were 50 items in the questionnaire, but the researcher decided to pick 38 items only. in this research the process of analyzing data used two steps. the first step was grouping the students in to three achievement categories. the final step was to find what strategies the students of different listening achievement used. in order to grouping the students listening achievement, there were several steps to do based on arikunto (2006). they were finding the mean, and standard deviation. the results of finding the mean and also standard deviation was used to find the group limit. the criteria of grouping were mentioned in table 1. table 1 group category group score ≥ mean + sd high mean – sd ≤ score < mean + sd intermediate score < mean sd low the second step of this method of analyzing data was focusing on finding what strategies that the students with different listening achievement used in the class based on oxford (1990). it is shown in table 2. lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 123 table 2 key to understanding your averages high always or almost always used 4.5 to 5.0 usually used 3.5 to 4.4 medium sometimes used 2.5 to 3.4 low generally not used 1.5 to 2.4 never or almost never used 1.0 to 1.4 from the table above, it showed that there were three level of strategy used. they were high used level, intermediate used level, and low used level. meanwhile, there were five stages of frequencies of used. they were always or almost always used, usually used, sometimes used, generally used, and never or almost never used. each of them was given by its mean. so, in order to know what strategies they used, what level of strategy used, and how frequent they used it, the researcher needed to find its mean. findings and discussion the findings of the study are presented what strategies the students from high, intermediate, and low achievement use in listening. meanwhile the discussion deals with further discussion. findings strategies used by high achievement group table 3 shows that number of average is 3.05 which mean that these students sometimes used strategy in dealing with listening. among six kinds of strategies, metacognitive is rank first as the most used strategy with 3.5as the average. it means that these students usually use metacognitive strategy. this strategy is on high level. meanwhile, affective strategies have 2.44 as the average is ranked as the least strategy used by them. it is on low level, which means that it is generally not used by the students with high achievement. furthermore, among thirty five items, the most used one is item [21] says “saya memperhatikan ketika seseorang berbicara dalam bahasa inggris.” with 4.3 as the average number, it means that this item is on high level and usually used by them. this item belongs to metacognitive strategies. the least used item is item [29] states “saya menuliskan perasaan saya dalam catatan harian pembelajaran bahasa inggris.” which belongs to affective strategy. the average of this item is 1.4 which means it is in low level and never or almost never used by them. in short, high achievement group used all kinds of strategy, from memory strategy to social strategy. the different is on the different level of use. there are strategies that usually used, sometimes used, and generally not used by this group. table 3 no. nama strategi mean rank average of usage 1. memory strategy 2.91 5 medium, sometimes used 2. cognitive strategy 3.01 4 medium, sometimes used 3. compen-sation strategy 3.17 2 medium, sometimes used 4. metacog-nitive strategy 3.50 1 high, usually used 5. affective strategy 2.44 6 low, generally not used 6. social strategy 3.13 3 medium, sometimes used mean 3.05 medium, some-times used lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 124 strategies used by intermediate achievement group table 4 shows that intermediate achievement group sometimes uses strategies in order to deal with listening. the average use is 2.89. it is on medium level. to be exact, all of strategies that used by the intermediate achievement group are on medium level. among six strategies, metacognitive strategy is the most used strategy. the average is 3.28. meanwhile, affective strategy is the least used strategy among them. item [21] is the most used item. the item says “saya memperhatikan ketika seseorang berbicara dalam bahasa inggris.” and belongs to metacognitive strategy. this item is usually used by the students with intermediate achievement and on high level. the average of this item is 3.94. on the contrary, the least item says “saya menuliskan perasaan saya dalam catatan harian pembelajaran bahasa inggris.” only has 1.54 as the average. it is item [29] and belongs to affective strategy. this item is generally not used and on low level. table 4 no. strategi mean rank average of usage 1. memory strategy 2.73 5 medium, sometimes used 2. cognitive strategy 2.75 4 medium, sometimes used 3. compensation strategy 2.85 3 medium, sometimes used 4. metacognitive strategy 3.28 1 medium, sometimes used 5. affective strategy 2.64 6 medium, sometimes used 6. social strategy 3.01 2 medium, sometimes used mean 2.89 medium, sometimes used strategies used by low achievement group table 5 shows that the low achievement group sometimes used strategies for dealing with listening. it is on medium level with 2.89 as the average number. among six kinds of strategies, five of them are on medium level meanwhile the rest is on low level of usage. it means that the five strategies named memory strategy, cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, affective strategy, and social strategy are sometimes used by this group. on the other hand, compensation strategy is the only one that generally not used by the group. compensation strategy is also the least used strategy among six strategies with 2.36 as the average number. on the contrary, metacognitive strategy is the most used strategy with 3.33 as the average number. from six strategies, there are thirty five items. among them, the most used item for the low achievement group is item [3] and [21] which average are 3.91. both of them were on high level and usually used by the students with low achievement. item [3] which says “saya menghubungkan bunyi dari kata-kata bahasa inggris yang baru dan gambar dari kota kata tersebut untuk membantu saya mengingat kosa kata tersebut.” belongs to memory strategy. meanwhile, item [21] which says “saya memperhatikan ketika seseorang berbicara dalam bahasa inggris.” belongs to metacognitive strategy. on the other hand, item [29] which says “saya menuliskan perasaan saya dalam catatan harian pembelajaran bahasa inggris.” is the least used item among thirty five items. it belongs to affective strategy. this item is on low level. the average is only 1.64. it also generally not used by the students with low achievement. table 5 no. strategy mea n rank average of usage 1. memory strategy 3.00 3 medium, sometimes used 2. cognitive strategy 2.59 4 medium, sometimes used 3. compensation strategy 2.36 6 low, generally not used 4. metacognitive strategy 3.33 1 medium, sometimes used 5. affective strategy 2.58 5 medium, sometimes used 6. social strategy 3.14 2 medium, sometimes used mean 2.89 medium, sometimes used lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 125 discussion students with different listening achievement actually used all six strategies named memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. the exact different was on its frequency that was shown on figure 1. the overall average strategies use of high achievement group was higher compared to intermediate achievement group and low achievement group. the overall average strategies use of high achievement group was 3.05 which included in medium level. whereas the average of intermediate achievement group and low achievement group was lower than that. both of the groups had same number. it was 2.89 which included in medium level. to make it short, all groups were on medium level. this was similar with chang, liu & lee (2007), emanto (2013), and fresiska (2013) who also found that the students were on all medium use level. but to be precise, high achievement group use strategies more often than two other groups. it was also similar with pannak & chiramanee (2011), aljuaid (2015) and alfian (2016) who found that the higher proficiency students used learning strategies more often than the lower proficiency students. figure 1 the most used strategies of high achievement group, intermediate achievement group, and low achievement group was the same kind of strategies. it was metacognitive strategies. the different was on the average. the metacognitive strategies average of high achievement group was 3.5 which included in high level and usually used by the students with high achievement. in the other hand, intermediate achievement group’s was 3.28 while low achievement group’s was 3.33. this result also supported the previous studies which also found metacognitive as the most used strategies. (tamjid & babazadeh, 2012; aljuaid, 2015; emanto, 2013; fresiska, 2013). it indicates that students in grade xi social sma negeri 2 pati prefer to learn listening by paying attentions, finding out about language learning, self evaluating, self monitoring, setting goals, seeking practice opportunities, identifying the purpose of listening task, and organizing. students use metacognitive strategies in their study usually centering, arranging and planning, and also evaluating their learning activities. on the other side, the least used strategies for high achievement group and intermediate achievement group was the same. it was affective strategies. the different was also on the average. the average use of affective strategies for high achievement group was 2.44 or on low level and generally not used whereas the average use of affective strategies for intermediate achievement group was 2.64 or on medium level and sometimes used. on the contrast, the least used strategy for low achievement group was compensation strategies. the average was 2.36 or in low level and generally not used. the result for high and intermediate achievement group was supported by tamjid & babazadeh (2012) who found that affective strategy was the last used strategy. on the other hand, the results was different with zuhairi & hidayanti (2016) who found that social strategies were used at the least frequent one, and aljuaid (2015) who found that memory strategies was the least used. based on the results, it seems that students in grade xi social sma negeri 2 pati who has high and intermediate achievement would rather not try to calm themselves, give reward to themselves, listen to their body, discussing their feeling with other, and writing a language learning diary. both groups choose not to lower their anxiety, encourage themselves, and take their emotional temperature often. meanwhile, low achievement group tends to not use compensation strategies often. they choose to least guessing intelligently by using linguistic and other clues. 0 1 2 3 4 m em o ry s tg c o g n it iv e s tg c o m p en sa t… m et ac o g n i… a ff ec ti v e s tg s o ci al s tg o v e ra ll high achievement group intermediate achievement group low achievement group lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 126 conclusion according to the findings and discussion in the previous chapter, it was found that high achievement group used strategies more often than intermediate and low achievement group. the overall average strategies used of high achievement group was 3.05 which included medium level. whereas the average of intermediate achievement group and low achievement group was 2.89 which also included in medium level. moreover, the most used strategies for all group was the same, it was metacognitive strategies. although it was the same strategies, the average use of each group was different. the average use of metacognitive strategies for high achievement group was 3.5 which included in high level and usually used by them. in the other hand, intermediate achievement group’s was 3.28 while low achievement group’s was 3.33. both groups were on medium use level and sometimes used by the students. based on the conclusion, the writer would like to give some suggestions for the teacher, the students, and also further researcher. firstly, the english teacher especially who teach listening in classroom should record their students’ already used strategy and those who have not been used. by knowing it, the teacher hopefully would be able to develop the classroom activity with considering kinds of suitable strategy for students. although not all of students might be able to use same strategies, but teacher still should be able to pick and teach how to use exact strategies to exact problems and task. still, the teacher should consider students’ preference on choosing the strategies. secondly, the students should use language learning strategies consciously by increasing their awareness by increasing their awareness, they should be able to use strategies in dealing with listening by using appropriate strategies for different task. also, they would be able to choose proper strategies for different problem and task. lastly, further researcher who has any interest in language learning strategies should conduct a study about language learning and other skills such as writing, speaking, and reading. also, it would be better if the further researcher use other instruments such as classroom observation sheets, or interview for more precise data. it would also be much better if further researcher who would like to research about the relation of language learning strategy use and achievement conducts more than one achievement test. references alfian. (2016). the application of language learning strategies of high school students in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 140-157 retrieved from http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee aljuaid, h. t. k. (2015). language learning strategies used by a group of saudi arabian efl learners. a thesis, school of education and professional studies, griffith university. arikunto, s. (2006). prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: pt rineka cipta. caspersz, d. & stasinska, a. (2015). can we teach effective listening? an exploratory study. journal of university teaching & learning practice, 12(4). retrieved from http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol12/iss4/2 chang, c. y., liu, s. c., & lee, y. n. (2007). a study of language learning strategies used by college efl learners in taiwan. 第二期（2007年3月） emanto, y. (2013). language learning strategies used by different english proficiency students of state senior high school 3 malang. skripsi. study program of english, under graduate program, universitas brawijaya. retrieved from http://jimbastrafib.studentjournal.ub.ac.id/index.php/jimbastrafib/article/view/155 fresiska, f. (2013). the application of language learning strategies and their relationship with english proficiency of the islamic junior high school students of pondok pesantren modern raden paku trenggalek. skripsi. study program of english, under graduate program, universitas brawijaya. retrieved from http://jimbastrafib.studentjournal.ub.ac.id/index.php/jimbastrafib/article/view/154 lilik alfuatin / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 127 hanna, cecilia. (2012). listening strategies in the l2 classroom: more practice, less testing. college quarterly, 15(1). retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej976453.pdf jia, l. p., & wang, z. h. 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(2016). efl teachers’ perception and instruction in listening classes. asian journal of educational research, 4(3). retrieved from http://www.multidisciplinaryjournals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/full-paperefl-teachers%e2%80%99-perception-and-instruction-in-listeningclasses.pdf michaleková, lucia. (2017). language learning strategies and their impact on listening comprehension of esp learners. retrieved from https://www.pulib.sk/web/kniznica/elpub/dokument/strakova4/subor/michalekova.pdf oxford, r. l. (1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. new york: heinle & heinle publishers. oxford, r. l. (2003). language learning styles and strategies: an overview. pannak, o & chiramanee, t. (2011). language learning strategies used by first year students at thaksin university, songkhla campus, thailand. faculty of liberal arts, prince of songkla university. retrieved from http://tar.thailis.or.th/handle/123456789/668 piamsai, c. (2007). an investigation of the use of listening strategies and listening performance of proficient and non-proficient language learners. chulalongkorn university language institute. chulalongkorn university. retrieved from http://www.culi.chula.ac.th/research/ejournal/2011/chatraporn.pdf tam, k. c. (2013). a study on language learning strategies (llss) of university students in hong kong. taiwan journal of linguistics, 11(2), 1-42. tamjid, n. h., & babazadeh , n.( 2012). comparing intermediate efl students’ and teachers’ perceptions of listening comprehension strategy use. world applied sciences journal, 16(9), 1308-1313. retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2764/708d017910500aff5bc872fe64c8e46c6d16.pdf wilson, jj. (2011). how to teach listening. england: pearson education limited. zuhairi, a., & hidayanti, i. (2016). the strategies of indonesian junior high school students in learning listening skill. arab world english journal (awej), 7(4), 117 – 124. retrieved from https://osf.io/26dxa/download microsoft word 3. 136 the use of puppet and flashcard as media in teaching vocabulary for children with special needs nining candra wahyuni  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 21 july 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: puppet; flashcard; teaching vocabulary; quasi experimental research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ teaching vocabulary to children with special needs is not easy. there are some problems faced by teachers when they taught english vocabulary to the children with special needs, they did not pay attention to the teacher, and they lost their interest in english subject. this quasi experimental research attempted to describe what extent puppet and flashcard lead the children with special needs to the vocabulary development and to discuss students’ attitude towards puppet and flashcard media in learning vocabulary. the participants were students of eighthgrade of slb negeri ungaran and slb widya bhakti semarang. there were two instruments; test and questionnaire. the results showed that the significance between post-test score of puppet group and flashcard group was 0.000 with significance 0.000 < 0.05. furthermore, according to result of the questionnaire, students perception towards both media were positive, yet their interests in flashcard was higher than those in puppet media. it is suggested that flashcard media was more effective to be used in teaching vocabulary for children with special needs. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt nining candra wahyuni / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 137 introduction teaching vocabulary to children with special needs is not easy. there are many problems faced by teachers when they taught english vocabulary to the students with special needs, especially in special junior high school, for example the students never been taught english in elementary school, they are not pay attention to the teacher, and they lost their interest in english subject. based on the interview by asking some questions to three teachers of special junior high school, there are some problems in teaching english especially vocabulary. the first problem is the students did not pay attention when teacher gives explanation about vocabulary, they did not focus on the lesson. the second problem is the students felt bored when learning english because they think english is hard to learn. the writer tried to use puppet and flashcard as media in teaching vocabulary to overcome students’ problem in learning vocabulary. some previous studies have been conducted dealing with teaching to children with special needs. such as, lin and nzai (2014) about using ipad apps to teach vocabulary. some findings of the study are ipad can enhance literacy skills, not only that it can motivate students using technology. to do this, teacher would gain information how to incorporate ipad apps into their daily teaching practice and curriculum design. kokkalia and drigas (2016) studied about teaching strategy in english. the findings of the study are mobile learning support children with special needs to be familiar with common nouns and verbs signs. applications can help children with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) and also children who face mental and physical disorder. yahya, yunus and toran (2013) also conducted a research about a technique to learn vocabulary. in their research, they used teachers’ practice and voice to teach vocabulary for students with special needs. in other words, teacher teaches vocabulary to his students with giving clear explanation or object and also uses his voice to make the explanation clearly. moran (2012) in her thesis stated that using vak learning styles to teach english vocabulary is affective. he found that the use of vak learning help the students to mastering english vocabularies. meanwhile, the learning style were a complete contribution focused on the improvement and development of a pedagogical methodology used for the acquisition of english vocabulary related to the learning process and learning context of a learner with mental retardation. in addition, there is a study conducted by surujlal (2013). in this study, using music and dance as learning interventions for children with special needs is effective enough. he found that the use of music and dance not only help the students be active and enjoyable in learning process but also improve vocabulary quite a lot. moreover, children are acting the song so their vocabulary improves a lot. similar with the study above, a study relating to vocabulary is also carried by noori and farvadin (2016). their study has an objective to examine the effect of using audio-visual and pictures in teaching vocabulary. the result of the study shows that students give positive responses toward the media used by researcher. the students are motivated, so they can learn vocabulary easily. however, the use audio-visual aids can be more effective than pictures in learning vocabulary. evi, zainal and dewi (2016) on their research about “teaching vocabulary by using picture for autism students” it revealed that the picture is effective to be used as an alternative media in teaching vocabulary. the use of picture can minimize the students’ difficulties in vocabulary. rismanti (2017) on her research found it was positive effect of using flashcard in teaching english vocabulary for dyslexia students. other finding showed that there was increasing on the average of post test. in pre test the average score was 58.64 and in post test was 77.95. in other words the use of flashcard was effective to teach english for dyslexia students. bennett (2002) on his research it was found that the benefits of the use of puppets in the classroom are many and varied. such as provides an opportunity for student expression through the social aspects of communication. students who are working in a group to prepare and present a puppet show are learning to work cooperatively with others, where there is give and take and sharing of ideas. this offers the students the advantage of making group cohesion. all of the studies above concern with teaching english for children with special needs which is similar with the topic brought by the writer. some of those studies discuss about media or techniques used to teach english. a few studies analyze learning media used by teacher in teaching vocabulary. therefore, this study aimed to to describe what extent puppet and flashcard lead the children with special needs to the vocabulary development and to discuss students’ attitude towards puppet and flashcard media in learning vocabulary. it was expected that the findings of this study would help teacher to teach vocabulary for children with special needs. nining candra wahyuni / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 138 methods research design and participants this research was a quantitative research especially quasi experimental. six students participated in this research. the sampling technique was used in this study is purposive sampling that is a nonprobability sample that is selected based on characteristics of a population and the objective of the study they were students of eighth grade of slb negeri ungaran and slb widya bhakti in academic year 2018/2019. instruments in this research, the writer used tests and questionnaire. the writer used them to obtain data of students’ development in learning vocabulary and students’ perception towards the media. the type of test used was pre-test and post-test. in this test, students were asked to do 20 questions. the test was conducted twice that was pre-test and post-test. regarding with the questionnaire, it was used to know what students’ perception about the use of puppet and flashcard in teaching vocabulary. the writer gave a set of statements related about students’ perception toward the media. they included: 1) students’ interest, 2) students’ relevant, 3) the advantages of using puppet and flashcard media, 4) students’ sustainability. questionnaire was given after doing post-test. it was to support the primary data in this research and to know how far the results effected on the students. treatment the writer conducted this research at slb negeri ungaran and slb widya bhakti semarang. this research was started from november 19th 2018 until november 28th. the treatment for both puppet and flashcard media was done at the same time. each treatment needs five meetings. in the first meeting, the writer came to the class and got acquainted with the students. second meeting, the writer gave a lesson using the media with material that have made. in this meeting the writer taught eight vocabularies. in third meeting, the writer did the same thing as in the second meeting with taught 8 vocabularies. in the fourth meeting, the writer taught the students with 5 vocabularies. in the fifth meeting, the writer gave post test to the students and questionnaire. data analysis in order to check whether or not the difference between the means of the control group and the experimental group was statically significant, the writer used a t-test in spss 16.0. a t-test is a statistical test used to compare two means to determine the probability that difference between the means is a real difference rather than a chance difference. in this study, it was used to see the difference in students’ achievement between those were taught using puppet and those were taught using flashcard was significant or not. from the result of calculation above, if obtained t value is higher than the critical r value, it could be inferred that there is significant difference in vocabulary achievement between experimental group, control group and vice versa. before administering pre-test and post-test, test reliability and test validity for each item of the tests were also included. in testing the validity and reliability with 4 samples and the level of significance 0.05, the rtable was 0.632. in order to be valid and reliable, each item should have rxy>0.632. meanwhile, the questionnaire was analyzed using likert scale response anchors then reported in the form of descriptive statics. findings and discussion vocabulary was defined as the collection of words that an individual know. it means that students should have a lot of vocabularies to make easier the communication with others (linse, 2006). hornby (2006) argued that vocabulary as the words that people use when they are talking about particular object. in addition, farqi (2014, p. 27) every word that is learnt in the foreign language belongs to vocabulary. teaching english vocabulary is not easy. berne and blachowics (2008) implied that few research indicate that teaching vocabulary can be considered as problematic, as some teachers are not really sure about the best practice in the teaching and sometimes not really aware how to start forming an instructional emphasis on vocabulary learning. however, teachers have to know the students’ character and style they learn. besides that, teachers have to know the right way to teach english vocabulary. in line with thornbury (2002) the development of vocabulary teaching depend how the teacher present of new word in vocabulary learning, so the teaching and nining candra wahyuni / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 139 learning vocabulary can improve students’ knowledge but it should be assisted through media to make students more understand. many teachers use interactive media to enhance students’ understanding. so, the students understanding well. in teaching vocabulary for students with special needs, teacher starting with simple vocabulary such as animals, colors, objects, and activities that surround them. it is needed a media to encourage student to learn vocabulary. in line with wallace (1982) that teaching vocabulary should consider with some factors. they are aims, quantity, need, frequent exposure and repetition, meaningful presentation, situation and presentation. the purpose of teaching english vocabulary for students with special needs is to introduce simple vocabulary which they use in their life. one of the research findings showed that the use of puppet and flashcard media in teaching vocabulary for students with special needs. flashcard media was effective to be used in teaching vocabulary for students with special needs. it was very useful for students to remember english vocabulary. the students pay attention when the writer taught them using flashcard media. they saw the flashcard media, and said the word enthusiastically. it was in lines with evi, zainal and dewi (2016) it revealed that the picture as visual media is effective to be used as an alternative media in teaching vocabulary, the use of picture can minimize the students’ difficulties in vocabulary. flashcard media could improve students’ vocabularies mastery in two aspects. first, flashcard gave an impact to students in remembering vocabularies. when teaching using flashcard, students see the picture and the name of noun. so, they became more familiar with english vocabulary. second, this media helped students to communicate with their friends even though in simple sentence, for example my book, your pencil, my shoes. it was in line with bennett (2002) stated that the benefits of the use of puppets in the classroom are many and varied. such as provides an opportunity for student expression through the social aspects of communication. students who are working in a group to prepare and present a puppet show are learning to work cooperatively with others, where there is give and take and sharing of ideas. this offers the students the advantage of making group cohesion. table 1 the independent sample t-test of post-test independent samples test levene's test for ev t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2-tailed) mean dif. sed 95% cid lower upper post-test ev1 .500 .506 2.178 6 .000 8.750 4.018 18.582 1.082 ev2 2.178 5.534 .000 8.750 4.018 18.786 1.286 note 1: ev1 = equal variances asssumed note 2: ev2 = equal variances not assumed note 3: mean dif. = mean difference note 4: sed = std. error difference note 5: cid = confidence interval of the difference in addition, puppet media was effective to be used in teaching english vocabulary. after the treatment, the students from puppet group were practice with their pair. they play puppet with dialogue that made by them. not only that, they also pointed thing and said the english vocabulary. both puppet and flashcard media were effective to improve students’ mastery english vocabulary. while puppet media focused on the use of sentence in dialogue, flashcard focused on the common vocabulary. however, these two media had different influence on students’ achievement. in independent t-test, it was showed that the sig (2-tailed) score was 0.000, which was less than 0.05. it meant that the hw was accepted. there was a significant difference between students who were taught by puppet and those who were taught by flashcard. moreover, the mean difference was 8.75. it resulted in positive meaning that flashcard was more effective to improve nining candra wahyuni / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 140 students’ vocabulary mastery than puppet media. the result in line with rismanti (2017) stated that it was positive effect of using flashcard in teaching english vocabulary for students with special needs, in her case dyslexia students. other finding showed that there was increasing on the average of post test. in pre test the average score was 58.64 and in post test was 77.95. in other words the use of flashcard was effective to teach english for students with special needs. figure 1 comparison of puppet and flashcard group score regarding with students’ attitude, both of the media had a lot of positive responses. they were more than 80%. however, flashcard media had more positive responses. flashcard media was more applicable and effective in teaching english vocabulary for students with special needs. this result could be seen between the post-test and the questionnaire responses. figure 2 students’ attitude towards puppet and flashcard media conclusion teaching english for students with special need is not easy. it is need a media to encourage them to learn english. a media that can help students to remember common vocabularies easily. the writer tried to use puppet and flashcard as media in learning english. using puppet and flashcard in learning english can help students to remember common vocabulary that they have found in their live. based on the computation using spss, both puppet and flashcard can use in learning vocabulary. however, flashcard is considered more effective since the improvement of students’ achievement of flashcard group is higher than puppet group. nining candra wahyuni / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 141 on the other hand, students’ attitude towards the media shows a different result. students are more interested in flashcard media than puppet. one possible explanation is flashcard is more applicable to learn vocabulary than puppet media. a further investigation about media in learning english for students with special needs should be done. because of the time limitation, a huge amount of time to conduct a research is needed to measure the improvement of students’ achievement in learning english vocabulary. it is because students should learn more vocabularies that related with their school material. in addition, it would be better if the number samples is bigger so the finding of the research is more valid. thus, learning english for students with special need can be done with suitable media with their ages and their school materials. this study is limited to media and instruments. in which the media that used were puppet and flashcard, while the instruments made by the writer. for the next researcher can be more explore media in learning vocabulary for students with special needs. it is also hoped that the further research can investigate this topic with different students in different ages and grades. bibliography alqahtani, mofareh. 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(2013). facilitating esl students with autism learn sight vocabulary: teachers’ practices and voices. international journal of sciences: basic and applied research (ijsbar), 11 (1), 90-98. microsoft word 7. 47 the analysis of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction in english for young learner nurul khusnaini  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 13 august 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: teacher talk; classroom interaction; flanders interaction analysis categories ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was aimed to find out the type of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction take place in the english language classroom of semarang multinational school.this study applied descriptive qualitative research. there were two activities in gathering the data of this study: observation and audio recording. in analyzing this study, the researcher used interactive theory proposed by flander (1989). the findings showed that based on flanders interaction analisys categories (fiav), the teacher indirectly influenced the students in teaching and learning process by relying hard on asking questions. besides asking questions to students, teacher also used (1) accepting students’ feeling, (2) praising or encouraging students, and (3) accepting or even using students’ ideas. in addition the pattern of content cross interaction tended to be more on asking questions than lecturing behavior. it indicated that teacher often relied on asking questions to students in the teaching and learning process rather than to introduce new learning material and help conveying information to students. in conclusion, the teacher indirectly influenced the students in the teaching and learning process. this kind of interaction indicated that teacher often relied on asking rather than lecturing the students. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 48 introduction there is no learning without teaching. so as a tool of implementing teaching plans and achieving teaching goals, teacher talk plays an important role in classroom activities. some researchers have discussed the relationship between teacher talk and language learning. nunan (1991) stated: "teacher talk is one of important aspect not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of the acquisition." teacher talk is undeniably essential feature in relation to classroom interaction. gebhard (2006, p.81) stated that in english as a foreign language classroom, teacher talk is an important input for the students there has been a growing number of attention in regards to classroom interaction which involve teacher and students. brown (2006) notes that, “interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people, resulting in reciprocal effect on each other” (p.165). rivers (brown, 2000, p.65) previously states that through classroom interaction, students could enhance their language ability since they are exposed to teacher’s explanation or authentic materials teacher provides, group discussion, etc and students also has chances to practice the language that they possess. some studies about teacher talk and classroom interaction have conducted to overcome the problem. yanfen and yuqin (2010, p.77) denotes that appropriate teacher talk could create positive atmosphere in the classroom and make friendly relationship between teacher and student. many interactive strategies also appear in teacher talk to make more interaction with the students. they include repetition, prompting, prodding, and expansions, according to yanfen and yuqin (2010). inamullah (2005) wanted to explore patterns of classroom interaction at secondary and tertiary levels in the northwest frontier province of pakistan using flanders interaction analysis system. she found that it would be better to stimulate teachers to improve their teaching behavior to maximize students learning. in addition, by using flanders interaction analysis categories, li, shouhui, & xinyin (2011) found that the management of the english classroom and atmosphere during the teaching-learning process depended on the activities which are done by the teachers so that the students who were getting bored would become interested in participating in the class. dagarin (2015) based on fiac she stated that teachers could do a lot of things to make the students more interest in classroom activities. the classroom interaction could be more effective if a variety of teacher and student talk was applied in the classroom. all of the researchers above discussed the teacher talk and classroom interaction. almost all studies conducted their research at junior high school, few of those studies conducted a study at elementary school, there is a study from li, shouhui, & xinyin (2011), however, they focused in the implementation of fiac during classroom activities. therefore, the writer will try to analyze the teacher talk type and the characteristics of classroom interaction take place during classroom activities. problems investigated in this research are (1) what type of teacher talk take place in the english language classroom? (2) what is the characteristic of classroom interaction that occurs in classroom activities? objectives of this study are (1) to find out the type of teacher talk take that goes on english language classroom of semarang multinational school, (2) to find out the characteristic of classroom interaction that occurs in classroom activities. methods this study focuses on the teacher talk and classroom interaction during teaching and learning activities in the classroom. thus, the object of this study was teacher talk and classroom interaction during teaching and learning activitiess. especially all teachers from grade 1 until grade 6 in elementary school level of semarang multinational school. this research used qualitative method with descriptive research type. the rresearcher wants to describe the phenomenon in accordance with actual circumstances, the object of this research is an object that is natural and does not change either before the researchers enter the object or when the researcher is in the object or after the researcher is out of the object. “qualitative method is a research method used to examine the condition of natural objects, where researcher as a key instrument, techniques data analysis in qualitative research conducted in triangulation (joint), inductive analysis, and qualitative research results more emphasis on the meaning of the generalization” (sugiyono, 2013, p. 1). descriptive research describes what it is which involves description, recording, analysis, and interpretation of conditions that exist. it involves some types of comparison or contrast and attempts nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 49 to discover relationships between exiting non manipulated variables (best, 1981, p. 25). the purpose of descriptive research is to describe the facts and characteristics of the object or subject studied systematically the data used in this study are qualitative data. this research requires some data to be analyzed. there are observation and audio recording. observation is a person's ability to observe using the five senses of the eye and assisted with other senses (bungin, 2011). according to nurkancana (1986), observation is a method used to do direct and systematic research in which the data obtained in the study are recorded in the observational note. recording activity is an observation activity. sanafi faisal (1990) as cited by sugiyono (2008, p. 227), classify the observations into three that are participant observation, overt or covert observation, and unstructured observation. in collected the data, the researcher used overt observation. researcher said honestly to the data source that she would conduct the research, but the researcher did not involve with the activities carried out by the data sources (only as observers). the researcher observed how the ability of teacher talk in classroom activities. before doing an observation, the researcher would use guideline which is made by the researcher based on ‘flanders' interaction analysis category'. another tool for collecting the data in this research was an audio recording. according to etsu human research protection program (2017, p. 1) audio recording, video video recording, and digital recordings (avd) of research participants are considered identifiable data as they include images and/or voices of research participants. in addition to analyze the recording for this research study, the researcher needed to ask permission to the participants whether they willing to be recorded or not. after the researcher asks their permission, the participants agreed to be recorded. this method was used to investigate the characteristic of classroom interaction which happens in class. a cell phone would place during the class. it would record how the class takes place, the teacher and students interaction, and the teacher talk itself, this audio which would be analyzed by coding, pairing and put the data code in the calculation matrix. findings and discussion this phase explains the result of the study. it consists of two sub-chapters. they are findings and discussion of the findings. findings present the result of the observation and audio coding from elementary teachers and their students at semarang multinational school in the chapter of the detail explanation regarding the types of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction take place during the class and the perception of the students about their teacher talk in teaching english for young learners. moreover, the findings will discuss in the discussion of the findings. the type of teacher talk teacher talk was considered one of the essential features in classroom interaction. in this section, the result of the observations is elaborated. indirect influence in the type of indirect influence, there were four categories of teacher talk. they were accepting the feeling, praising or encouraging students, accepting and using students ideas, and the last asking questions. table 1. accepting feeling observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 2 r accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 3 p accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 4 l accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 5 y accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 6 j accepting/deals with feeling yes yes table 1 presents accepting or deals with feeling result. from the observation for two meetings of teaching and learning process in every class with the same teacher, it was found that almost all of teacher use their influence in accepting the students. this behavior was reflected from the teacher's action when they trid to make sure the condition of the students and also when they helped the nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 50 students in remembering the previous material before the lesson begins. in that situation, the teacher tried to build an interaction with students first. table 2. praises and encouragement observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 2 r praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 3 p praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 4 l praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 5 y praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 6 j praises and uses ideas of students yes yes table 2 presents praises and encouragement result. praises and encouragement appeared almost in every activity, almost 100% all of the teacher used this influence to make the students feel happy or proud of their work. the teacher praised or encouraged students often by repeating students' answers and giving words of praises, for example, "well done", "good job", "nice", and so on. besides giving praises and encouragement, the teacher sometimes accepted students' ideas or even used their ideas or their answer. some teachers used the student's ideas to build a new material like making a new sentence, phrase, and more. this kind of behavior was reflected by the teacher's elaboration, clarification, modification, and summary of students' responses (answers or ideas) to the teacher talk. table 3. asking question observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k asking question yes yes 2 r asking question yes yes 3 p asking question yes yes 4 l asking question yes yes 5 y asking question yes yes 6 j asking question yes yes table 3 presents asking question result. it showed the category of teacher's talk which dominated the indirect influence type was asking questions. the teacher often asked questions when they wanted to begin the lesson, introduced new learning material, starting a new topic, and stimulated student's knowledge about the lesson. direct influence direct influence included the behavior of lecturing or giving information, giving direction, criticizing student's behavior and also criticizing student's responses. table 4. lecturing observation result no name direct influence yes/no yes/no 1 k lecturing/gives information yes yes 2 r lecturing/gives information yes yes 3 p lecturing/gives information yes yes 4 l lecturing/gives information yes yes 5 y lecturing/gives information yes yes 6 j lecturing/gives information yes yes table 4 presents lecturing and giving information result. based on the result above from two meetings for each class, we could see that all the teacher use this point of direct influence in guiding the students during class activities. some of the teacher's lectures were follow-ups to the teacher's response to students' answers. besides, the teachers also used their explanation before they get down to the material. in other words, when students gave the right answers to the teacher's question, the nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 51 teacher often gave praises to the student's answer. after praising the students, the teacher continues to explain the material, by giving questions when explaining the material it wa expected that students would find it easier to understand the material given. table 5. giving directions observation result no name direct influence yes/no yes/no 1 k gives directions yes yes 2 r gives directions yes yes 3 p gives directions yes yes 4 l gives directions yes yes 5 y gives directions yes yes 6 j gives directions yes yes table 5 presents the result of giving direction. after the observation results were obtained, it could be seen that all of the teachers used this point in the category of teacher talk. the direction was often given if the teacher wanted students to make a project, work in a group, come to the front of the class, exercise individually, etc. table 6. criticizes student's behavior observation result no name direct influence first meeting second meeting 1 k critizes student’s behavior yes yes 2 r critizes student’s behavior yes yes 3 p critizes student’s behavior yes yes 4 l critizes student’s behavior yes yes 5 y critizes student’s behavior yes yes 6 j critizes student’s behavior yes yes table 6 presents criticizes student's behavior result. after the observation was done, the researcher finds the result above. it could be seen that all of the teachers of the elementary level of semarang multinational school use the influence in criticizes student's behavior. the teacher would like to comment on students' behavior and then acknowledge them what was right to be done so that students did not make any more mistakes. this was done to control the behavior of students in the class and also to maintain the classroom condition so that it stayed quiet during the learning process. table 7. critizes student's responses observation result table 7 presents the result of criticizes student's behavior. after the observation result was obtained, based on the table above, it can be seen that there is some teacher criticizes their student's responses, but some of them did not do that. some of the teacher criticized their student's responses like reminding the students if their responses were not appropriate, and also when the student wanted to interrupt his or her teacher in the middle of the teacher's explanation. however, some teachers just gave a sign to the students for silent than gave an unnecessary response. the teachers have done all of the indirect influence to gain student's attention and also to make the students more active during the class activities. in addition, the category of teacher's talk, which dominated the indirect influence was asking questions. the teacher often asked questions when they wanted to began the lesson, introduced new learning material, starting a new topic, and stimulated student's knowledge about the teaching. in line with research by li, shouhui, and xinyin no name direct influence first meeting second meeting 1 k critizes student’s responses yes yes 2 r critizes student’s responses no yes 3 p critizes student’s responses yes no 4 l critizes student’s responses yes yes 5 y critizes student’s responses yes yes 6 j critizes student’s responses no no nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 52 (2011), the teachers of english could determine how english is to be taught to young learners– learning english through activities in social contexts. meanwhile, the management and the atmosphere of the english classroom depend on the activities done by the teachers, so that the students who were especially getting bored, will become interested and pay attention to the learning activities. asking questions seemed to be the essential features in the teaching and learning process. by asking questions, teachers were considered successful in getting students' attention, involved students' interaction, conveyed the learning material, and introduced new content without direct explanation. this finding was consistent with the results of yanfen and yuqin (2010). yanfen and yuqin (2010) found that asking questions was the most common way used by the teacher to invite pupils to talk and it found a valid invitation. by giving questions, it is hoped that it would encourage students to participate more in class, expressing their ideas or opinions on the material, rather than just listening to the teacher explanation. besides, the implementation of direct influence, including the behavior of lecturing, giving direction, and criticizing and justifying authorities, most of the lecturing process were follow-ups the teacher's response to students' answers. in other words, when students give answers to the teacher's questions, the teacher tended to give praises to the right answers. after praising students, the teacher managed to start giving some explanations to students, so students can more easily understand the material provided. this finding is in line with jones (2000), he found that increasing student participation with teacher support made teaching activities more effective. by giving questions, the teacher can trigger students to speak and simultaneously reduce the delivery of material directly. another teacher's talk category is giving direction or instruction. the direction often given when the teacher wanted students to work in a group, come to the front of the class, exercise individually, etc. the teacher was also likely to criticize her students when students answered her question incorrectly. they also criticized students' unacceptable behavior, and also acknowledged them what was right, so that students did not make any more mistakes. this finding is in line with amatari (2015, p.47) he stated that teacher needs to experiment with one's behavior, obtaining objective information about one's behavior, evaluating the data in terms of the teacher's role, in other words, attaining self-insight while acting as a teacher. the characteristics of classroom interaction classroom interaction characteristic was defined by making use of the audio recording. the audio recording that had been transcribed was then coded based on the coding procedure of fiac. the coding procedure was followed by pairing the code and then put into the interaction matrix. from the interaction matrix, the researcher was able to define the character of the interaction in the classroom. from all two meetings, it was discovered that the interaction pattern was content cross according to flanders’ interaction analysis categories.the content cross pattern marked by many appearances in the columns 4-5 and rows 4-5. code four represents asking questions categories, while code 5 shows the lecturing behavior of the teacher. table 8. audio coding result 1st meeting grade categories teacher talk pupils talk 1 42,1% 21,05% 2 36,8% 31,6% 3 31,6% 21,05% 4 31,6% 26,3% 5 36,8% 26,3% 6 36,8% 26,3% table 8 shows the result of audio recording from meeting one including the audio recording result from grade one until grade six. the audio recording was coded based on flanders interaction analysis categories (fiac). it showed the result between the content cross and the students' participation percentage. it could be seen that the teacher talk was more dominant than the student's participation in the action of the teacher often asked questions before they explained or introduced the material to the student. nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 53 table 9. the result of audio coding 2nd meeting grade categories teacher talk pupils talk 1 47,3% 26,3% 2 36,8% 26,3% 3 42,1% 36,8% 4 42,1% 26,3% 5 36,8% 31,6% 6 36,8% 26,3% as shown in table 9, after the audio recording result of the second meeting was obtained, it shows some differences with the previous meeting result. it culd be seen that both teachers talk either student's participation increased during the second meeting, it had occurred when the teacher introduced new material, the teacher often gave questions and explanations which triggered students to respond to questions and explanations given. based on the result above, in the first meeting, the percentage of content cross reached the total number of 35,9% while it turned to be 40,31% in the second meeting for the hole class. this characteristic of interaction was affected by the context of language teacher use in the teaching and learning process. here there is an increase in the second meeting since the teachers tried to introduce new learning material to students. the second pattern that dominated the classroom interaction was students' participation, which was in the number of 25,4%. in the second meeting, the students' involvement in the classroom was increased by 28,9%. students' participation characteristic identified since students were encouraged by the teacher to participate in the class by answering the teacher's questions, presenting the material, and giving their ideas to the class. the finding of classroom interaction pattern was consistent with the previous studies conducted by dagarin (2015) and sharma (2016). dagarin (2015) and sharma (2016) uncovered that the content cross pattern in their research tended to be more on asking questions rather than lecturing. in this research, the researcher also found that the discovered of the content cross pattern fell more on asking questions rather than teaching. it showed that teacher often relied on asking questions to students in the teaching and learning process either to introduce new learning material and help convey information to students. yanfen and yuqin (2010) support that most teachers make more use of asking questions to student to attract students' attention and make students talk. conclusion based on the data analysis in the previous chapter, the researcher found out that the result of the research denotes that teacher talk type in the classroom interaction is indirect influence based on flanders' interaction analysis categories (fiac). data from observation result highly show that the teacher indirectly influences the students in teaching and learning process by relying hard on asking questions. besides asking questions to students, the teacher also made use of accepting students' feeling, praising or encouraging students, and accepting or even using students' ideas based on the observation done by the researcher. the type of teacher talk also leads to classroom interaction pattern. by making use both of the audio recordings either the interaction matrix, the researcher can identify the interaction pattern in the classroom. it found that the interaction pattern that occurred in the classroom was content cross, which was marked by the emergence of code 4 (asking question) and code 5 (lecturing). however, the content cross characteristic could be more on to one of the categories. in this research, it discovered that the pattern of content cross tended to be more on asking questions than lecturing behavior. it indicates that teacher exceptionally depends on asking questions. this result is consistent with the observation result that the teacher often asking questions either to familiarize the students with a new chapter of the lesson and also attract students' attention either make 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(2007). case study as research method. jurnal kemanusiaan, 9, 16. microsoft word 8. 175 enhancing efl learners’ talk through cooperative learning-facilitated task-based learning: process siti asriyah  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 16 august 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: task-based learning; cooperative learning; enhance; efl learners’ talk. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aimed to explain how cooperative learning facilitates task-based learning in enhancing efl learners’ talk for eighth-grade students of smpn 1 magelang in the academic year 2018/2019. the researcher conducted the study based on ellis (2003) and kagan (1994) theories for explaining the process of teaching and learning activities using task-based learning (tbl) and cooperative learning (cl) methods for enhancing efl learners’ talk. this study used a qualitative case study methodology. the instruments used were observation sheet, interview guidelines, and document analysis. based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that cooperative learning techniques that facilitated the task-based learning in learning activities can enhance the efl learners’ self-confidence to talk in front of the class. besides, task-based learning facilitated with cooperative learning techniques enhances students’ courage and creativity, it also makes them more active. the practice also made them more understand the materials. there are some suggestions. first, it will become a good alternative for the teacher to look up some interesting materials for the students as their guidance to enhance their speaking habits. the students are suggested to be accustomed to learning to speak using group and pair techniques because the technique can motivate them to have a speaking habit. lastly, the next researcher needs to conduct further research related to other techniques in helping the students to improve their talk. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt siti asriyah / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 176 introduction a human being is a social creature by nature. people need communication to develop their social relationships. children are getting used to working in groups, starting from school. while teaching english to the students, teacher always tries hard to help students to improve their skills in mastery english. teachers want their students to be able to use english as a means communication, at least in the classroom. many language teachers face many difficulties in making students speak in the target language together with their friends. it means that communicative skill does not increase using group work. indonesia is currently implementing the 2013 curriculum (k-13). student-centered learning is a compulsory approach to learning the 2013 curriculum that prioritizes students' interests and abilities (in learning). student centered learning, which is a feature of the 2013 curriculum learning that realized through scientific approach, also involves students in the learning process and needs to follow the principles of group work or cooperative learning. because of that, recently in indonesia a learning method called cooperative learning is strengthened. cooperative learning is a teaching arrangement that refers to small, heterogeneous groups of students working together to achieve a common goal (kagan, 1994). cooperative learning has become popular and often used by many teachers and lecturers. when the teacher has formed a group on cooperative learning, the teacher must give a task. a task is an activity that requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective defined by bygate, skehan, and swain (in ellis, 2003). tasks hold a central place both in the second language acquisition research and in language pedagogy (ellis, 2003). task is an assignment given by the teacher to be done in students' cooperative learning group. based on my observation during having teaching practiced in junior high school, the school was already a school that uses k13. however, only a few prominent students that braved to speak in front of the class, only about 20 until 25% of the students in the class, the rest of them just listened and embarrassed to speak in front of the class. some studies about students’ talk have been conducted to overcome that problem. one of them is by using task based language (huajing, 2011; sanchez, 2011; ruso, 2007; fitri, 2013; munirah & muhsin, 2015) and using some techniques of cooperative learning (wang, 2017). unfortunately, they just demonstrate the task-based language or cooperative learning in classroom. therefore, this study attempts to address this gap in literature by exploring how cooperative learning facilitates task based learning in enhancing students’ talk. i concentrate on the following research question “how does cooperative learning facilitate task-based learning work in enhancing efl learners’ talk?” methods the research method that the writer used in this final project is qualitative method. based on creswell (2014), qualitative research method is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. what constitutes qualitative research involves purposeful use for describing, explaining, and interpreting collected data (williams, 2007). this research used qualitative case study precisely. this qualitative case study is an approach to research that facilitates exploration of a phenomenon within its context using a variety of data sources. this ensures that the issue is not explored through one lens, but rather a variety of lenses which allows for multiple facets of the phenomenon to be revealed and understood (baxter & jack, 2008). this research uses qualitative case study because this research does not only focus on description and explanation, but also explores the phenomenon of classroom activities based on the data collected from the result of observation and interview about how the cooperative learning techniques facilitated task-based learning can enhance the students’ talk. i collected the data in various ways. beside the observation and interview, i also did documentation and document analysis. it made the data more valid. therefore, i did not just describe the result of the research, but also represented the real activities they did in the classroom. the subjects of the study were the second year students of smpn 1 magelang in the academic year 2018/2019 and the teacher who teaches there. the students had studied english as a foreign language for about two years. i used one class; it is one of viii class as the sample of the research in order to save the observation time. the eight-grades students had learnt english for one year, so they had more knowledge about english than seven-grades students. i was interested to siti asriyah / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 177 know about the task that was given by the teacher in cooperative learning group in indonesia especially in smpn 1 magelang. in this research, i chose smpn 1 magelang because this school is a favourite school. this school uses k-13. the goal of using k-13 is to make the students more active and the teacher is just a facilitator. because of using k-13, some teachers use cooperative learning technique in their teaching learning process. when the teachers apply a cooperative learning technique, they will give a task to be done by the students in their group. in this study, the unit of analysis was the learning activities done by the teacher and the students in the classroom. the focus of this research was the teaching learning process in the classroom. to generate findings in a systematic way, the researcher needs some instruments in this research. the instruments used to collect the data from the research were observation sheet, interview guidelines, and document analysis guidelines. the observation was needed for monitoring class performance of the students. it was used to identify students’ activity in the classroom during the learning process using cooperative learning technique that facilitates task based learning. according to mills (2000:50) the research observed as a normal component of the teaching, monitoring and adjusting instruction based on the verbal and nonverbal interactions in the classroom. therefore, i used direct observation as one of data collection strategies because of the not overly time-consuming. i used field notes in doing observation. here are some instruments that i used. figure 1 in this study, i used structured interview. in structured interview, questions are planned and created in advance, which means that all candidates are asked the same questions in the same order. i used indonesian in the interview because the participants were students. it made them easier to understand her questions. i asked some questions to her participants below. there were two kinds of participants in this research. they were teacher and students. siti asriyah / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 178 in this study, i analysed the lesson plan from the teacher. lesson plan is the guide of the teaching learning process had been done in the classroom. every teacher has to make it before he/she teach in the classroom. in the lesson plan, has been set all aspects of the learning from basic competence up on the instruments of assessment. these are some guidelines in doing document analysis. (1) learning method (metode pembelajaran) the learning method that used in the classroom must be suitable with the learning method that written in lesson plan. the method used by the teacher should be cooperative learning and taskbased learning. the cooperative learning technique facilitates task-based learning. (2) learning activities (langkah-langkah pembelajaran) this part is the most important part to be analysed. it is because the researcher can see whether the teacher doing the learning activities appropriate with lesson plan or not. the activities have to represent the aspect of cl and tbl. the learning activities must show that cl technique has to facilitate tbl. findings and discussion findings on july 27th – august 10th, 2018, i did some class observations to know the technique used in english teaching and learning process of class viii a of smp negeri 1 magelang. i observed five meetings. figure 2 from the table above, it can be seen that every meeting consists of tbl’s phases with its activity. the students pass the tbl’s phases gradually. because of the pre-task is just the explanation, so there is no cl technique used to support the activity. however, when doing main activity, like task cycle, cl technique used to facilitate the phase to make the students easier in understanding the material. cl technique that is used must be suitable with the phase that is past. positive responses from the students about the teaching technique mrs. ayu as the english teacher of viii a gave the students a quiz in every meeting to remind the materials that had been discussed before. that technique got a positive response from the most of the students. they were enthusiastic in answering the question because they will get the additional score from mrs. ayu. most of them were interested with the learning activities because she gave them time to discussion in answering the question. it made them more interactive and easy to understand the materials. siti asriyah / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 179 use of cl and tbl in classroom for enhancing efl learners’ talk cooperative learning is an educational approach which aims to organize classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. in this research, the students did some cooperative learning techniques like nht and dramas. the teacher planned it in the lesson plan. those techniques were combined with tbl. that combination makes the students more active and creative. they enjoyed the lesson. the group work task made them easier in understanding the material and more confident in speaking english. in this research, i used informal assessment using a self-evaluation format. the selfassessment form will provide students' feedback and attitudes towards the given task. this evaluation was done individually, even if students worked in pairs or groups. however, in this research, i assessed it by myself by using observation sheet in every meeting. therefore, the assessment in this research is without score. i knew the enhancement of the students’ talk by observing their activities, analyzing the students’ explanation in their answers of interview, and analyzing the answers of the teacher too. discussion cooperative learning enhances social interaction, which is essential to meet the needs of at-risk students (johnson, 1998; slavin, karweit, & madden, 1989). based on the findings, cooperative learning techniques used by the teacher make them easier in understanding the material and minimize the pronunciation error. this finding is in line with research findings of ilmi (2012) which showed that the students’ speaking skills improved using cooperative learning. the students made a good improvement in some aspects of speaking skills such as pronunciation, fluency, and interactive communication. they were more confident to speak english. they had more chances to speak up. they easily learnt the materials with a group. the group work activities applied improved the students’ understanding towards the materials and the teacher’s classroom management. all of the tasks given were containing those expressions. when the students had to make a dialog, they had to use the expressions. it made the students more creative. in addition, those cl techniques that used to facilitate tbl method with three phases of it could enhance their selfconfidence to speak english. those findings are consistent with the research findings of sanchez (2016), which showed that the use of task-based learning was interrelated with the enhancement of speaking performance and with participation because children executed tasks for learning english as means of communication. that study used action research. he asked the students to do some speaking tests, describe pictures and transcribe video recordings. then he analyzed the result of their performance. those findings are strengthened by the research findings of marsakawati (2016) that demonstrated that tbl can influence the students’ speaking achievement and increase their selfconfidence. the results of the interview were appropriate with the results of the observation. the activities that i observed reflected the information given by the interviewees. then, the result of document analysis shows that the learning activities in the classroom are in line with the lesson plan. it was a real condition. therefore, it can be concluded that cooperative learning techniques that facilitated the task-based learning in learning activities can enhance the students’ talk, confidence, courage, and creativity; it also can make them more active. conclusion based on the result of the research on the speaking techniques used by english teacher of class viii a of smpn 1 magelang, the conclusions can be drawn as follows. as stated before, the research aimed at explaining how the cooperative learning facilitates task-based learning in improving efl learners’ talk to students of grade viii a of smpn 1 magelang. hence, the findings of the research involved the process of learning that had been done in classroom reached that goal. in meeting 1 and meeting 2, the teacher still used traditional method. it means that the learning is teacher-centered methods focused on rote learning and memorization. the teacher just explained the material in two meetings first because those two meetings still discussed the introduction of it. then in meeting 3 until meeting 5, she asked the students to practice the expression. in those three meetings, she used cl and tbl in teaching learning process. siti asriyah / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 180 the implementation of cooperative learning and task-based learning was successful to enhance students’ talk ability and involvement. those two methods gave students situation that could make them active in the process of teaching and learning of speaking. they were trained to perform mutual interaction with the students and the teacher in discussion of doing a task. they were given opportunities to share ideas and knowledge about the materials to the other students. they also had to share their discussion result in front of the class in drama form. besides, the use of interesting activities also supported the success of meeting 3 and 4. however, some students still less active in the teaching learning process. therefore, she tried to solve it so that in meeting 5 the students’ talk ability could be enhanced successfully. giving reward to the best group in form of dictionary improved the students’ motivation to speak english and participation during the teaching and learning process. from the three methods of collecting the data (observation, interview, and document analysis), it can be concluded that cooperative learning techniques that facilitated the task-based learning in learning activities can enhance the students’ talk, confidence, courage, and creativity of the students, also can make them more active. practice also made them more understand the material. references abdurrahman, eko, endang susilawati and zainal arifin. 2013.“improving students’ ability in reading comprehension through cooperative learning (think pair share)”. unpublished thesis: tanjungpura university of pontianak. amstrong, steve. 2013. the 10 powerful teaching strategies. http://www.innovatemyschool.com/ideas/the-10-most-powerful-teaching-strategies (16/10/2018) angus, kelly. 2013. how to: create your qualitative interview guide. available on http://www.askingsmarterquestions.com/how-to-creating-your-qualitative-interview-guide/ (accessed on 18/06/2017) arikunto, suharsimi. prof. dr. 2002. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktek. 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of smp negeri 3 baturiti in academic year 2012/2013”. jurnal santiaji pendidikan vol.4, no.1 yin, r. k. 2003. case study research: design and methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. yuliana and atni prawati. 2013. entitled “using task based learning to improve the ability of the second year students of sma negeri 1 bangkinang in reading narrative texts” unpublished thesis: riau university zohra, benfatah fatma. 2013. “implementing cooperative learning technique in teaching speaking skill the case of second year lmd students of english at biskra university”. unpublished thesis: biskra university. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421f5afb206d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word edit 30 juli 2020 [article 2]_34614-article text-9 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 16 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the design of multimedia storytelling sarah bibi1, dian shinta sari2, muhammad iqbal ripo putra3 1faculty of science and technology, ikip pgri pontianak 2&3faculty of languages and arts, ikip pgri pontianak article info ________________ article history: received in 8 october 2019 approved in 18 march 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: design, digital storytelling, research and development. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ in teaching english, the use of media is essential to underpin and facilitate the process. with the recent waves of technology, some teachers also make an exercise of a digital platform to develop new media. it is easier to attract students to follow the lesson and also increase their pursuit of learning. this research directed to how the design of digital storytelling to teach narrative for students. the researcher used educational research and development cycle from borg and gall (2007) which adjusted into five steps, namely (1) research and information gathering, (2) planning, (3) preliminary product developing, (4) preliminary field testing, and (5) primary product revision. the result of the research shows that digital storytelling can be utilised as a medium to teach narrative. the purpose of the medium must be communicative and attractive for the students. equally, for the students, they are interested in using digital storytelling medium to learn about narrative. hence, digital storytelling is designed to occupy those needs and is expected to be useful to teach narrative. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 jalan ampera no. 88 pontianak 78116 indonesia e-mail: s.bibbib@gmail.com sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 17 introduction teaching media has commonly used by teachers in the classroom. it helps the students understand the lesson as well as engage students’ motivation. certain media can also provide learning stimuli for them. media are used in classrooms because they can facilitate students’ learning and make it more attractive. (rowntree, 1974; tucker, 1983) say that there are six functions of media in teaching. many various kinds of media that can be used to support the lesson. some teachers like to use conventional media like board games and pictures for teaching. however, with the recent waves of technology, some of the teachers also make use of a digital platform to develop new media. a growing body of literature on the impacts of technology in learning and education suggest a dramatic shift taking place among the younger generation (barrett, 2006; dreon, kerper, & landis, 2011; meadows, 2003). referring to other works related to this issue, moeller & reitzes (2011) say that students of the 21st century change their way of learning. student-centred learning implies significantly changed roles for students and teachers. in student-centred learning environments, students are more engaged, responsible learners. they work to develop and explore their unique academic and career interests and produce authentic, professional quality work to demonstrate their learning. to support students in their new roles, teachers act as coaches, advisors, and facilitators of student learning. instead of lecturing the whole class, teachers provide opportunities for students to take charge of their learning. students of the 21st century are also tech-savvy. they are very familiar with technology and fluent in using them. this new generation of students is often called digital natives. growing up with unprecedented access to technology has changed the way young people, "digital natives”, communicate, interact, process information, and learn (kahn & agnew, 2017; reese, 2015). based on those gaps, the researchers provided a medium as an aid to deliver the narrative lesson in a technology-based media in the form of digital storytelling. digital storytelling is the art of combining narrative with digital media such as images, sound, and video to create a short story (barrett, 2006 robin, 2019; robin & mcneil, 2019). the combination of robust, yet affordable, technology hardware and software mesh perfectly with the needs of many of today’s classrooms, where the focus is on providing students with the skills they will need to “thrive in increasingly varied media environments” (robin as cited in sadik, 2008). researchers had found that integrating visual images with written text both enhances and accelerates student comprehension, and digital storytelling is an especially useful technology tool for collecting, creating, analysing and combining visual images with written text (chun, smith, & kern, 2016; lupshenyuk, hocutt, & owston, 2011). several scholars have long stressed the importance of visual experience in teaching and learning languages (gregori-signes, 2008; robin, 2006; rodríguez illera & londoño, 2009). as well as the need to further examine the learning effects of its use in the education context (barrett, 2005; yuksel, robin, mcneil, 2010). digital storytelling, for one, gives students not only the chance to work with all four language skills from the outset but also blends the art of storytelling with a range of digital formats, including images, captured voice, video, and music. (robin, 2006). this helps teachers to teach any subject, so that excitement and attention can be created. virtual storytelling is used in this particular study to focus on language patterns as a foreign language of daily life in english. although tales typically consist mostly of events, we have added a set of dialogs to highlight the diverse communicative interactions that use some language pieces. the digital storytelling technique can effectively assist the learning process in efl classrooms. it can assist efl learners to develop multimodal communicative competence by promoting a learnercentered environment. in this way “learners have numerous opportunities to interact and use language in authentic and personally meaningful ways” (rance-roney, 2008, p. 30). students narrate the scripts of their stories and record themselves. this material is next mixed with different types of multimedia, including computer-based graphics, computer-generated text, images, video clips, and music so that it can be played on a computer. accordingly, students become the “storytellers” who present the stories they have created to audiences (kajder, 2006). the researcher intends to create digital storytelling (with a complimentary lesson plan and worksheet) that suits junior high school students, particularly the 8th grade. the reason why digital storytelling has chosen as the medium is that it is more economical to use in the classroom, especially for teaching narrative. other media such as video and movie consume more time to be used. digital storytelling could help students understand the story better and bring a real atmosphere into the classroom. the material is designed based on the curriculum of 2013 (pendidikan & indonesia, 2013). sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 18 methods this study made use of the qualitative method. the researcher adapted the educational research and development cycle (gall, gall, & borg, 2007) and also an instructional design model by kemp (i̇şman, 2011). to do the proper r&d, the researcher must follow several steps which called the r&d cycle. the research took place at one of the public schools in pontianak. there are three different research participants. the first participants were several students from the ninth-grader as the respondents of the questionnaire, an english teacher as the participant for an interview, and two lecturers as the participants for the evaluation process. the data gathered by the interview and questionnaire were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative data analysis. the data obtained in the research and information gathering step were interpreted using qualitative data analysis, and the data obtained in preliminary field testing were analyzed using quantitative data analysis. the result obtained by the library study were interpreted and put into a robust framework for the research — the framework used as the underlying theory and basis for developing the design. the questionnaire is used to obtain the data from the students related to their needs and interest. since the participants were 30 students, the questionnaire was considered as the most effective data collector. the questions were in the form of 7 close-ended questions and 3 open-ended questions. from the questionnaires, results are classified based on their answer and turned into a percentage. however, the researchers could express the information in a more precise way. it is useful to convert numbers to percentages in order to be able to talk about the proportion responding in a certain way and able to make comparisons. findings and discussion the researcher collected the literature review, distributed questionnaires to the students, and interviewed with one of the english teachers. after collecting the literature review, the researcher first distributed the questionnaires to the students. the respondents of the questionnaires were 30 students. the results of the questionnaires have presented in table 1 and 2. table 1. summary of learners’ questionnaires no statement percentage yes no 1 i learned about a narrative text in this semester. 100% 2 i have access to technology/ digital media. 100% 3 in learning narrative, my teacher mostly uses digital media. 100% 4 i a m interested i n l e a r n i n g narrative using digital media. 87% 13% 5 do you think digital media will help you to learn narrative? 100% 6 are y o u familiar w i t h d i g i t a l storytelling media? 93% 7% 7 have you ever learned using digital storytelling media? 100% all of the students had learned narrative in the even semester. all of them also have easy access to technology or digital media. in teaching narrative, their teacher mostly uses digital media to teach narrative in the classroom. however, not all of the students are interested in learning the narrative using digital storytelling media. 87% of the students said that they are interested in learning using digital media, and 13% say that they are not interested. nonetheless, all of them agree that digital storytelling could help them in learning the narrative. 93% of the students stated that they are familiar with the use of digital storytelling in the learning process, and 7% of the students are not familiar with the media. all of the students had ever used digital storytelling in the classroom. besides the close-ended questions, there are also three open-ended questions. these questions are aimed to ask the students’ opinions about the elements in digital storytelling, preferred activities in learning narrative, and also the knowledge that they want to sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 19 improve after learning the narrative. the results of the questionnaires have presented in figure 1. the first figure shows the elements needed in digital storytelling. besides the close-ended questions, there are also three open-ended questions. these questions are aimed to ask the students’ opinions about the elements in digital storytelling, preferred activities in learning narrative, and also the knowledge that they want to improve after learning the narrative. the results of the questionnaires have presented in the figures below. the first figure shows the elements needed in digital storytelling. figure 1. crucial elements needed in digital storytelling the researcher picked the three highest percentages of the categories. the highest percentage of the figure above is graphic (26%), followed by a storyline (23%), and the last is a storyteller (22%). students consider those three elements as vital elements that have existed in digital storytelling. the rest of the categories are less important, namely sound effect (15%) and duration (13%). the next figure shows the activities they prefer to have in learning the narrative. figure 2. prefered activites in learning narrative most students like to have read as the main activity (43%). the second activity is listening (26%), followed by speaking (17%) and writing (13%). in developing the exercises, the researcher would take the two highest categories: reading and listening. the next figure shows about expected knowledge to be gained by the students. figure 3. expected knowledge to be gained from learning narrative sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 20 the last question in this questionnaire is about the knowledge expected to be gained by the students. the result shows that 33% of them expect to gain more knowledge about english tenses used in narrative stories. the next categories are vocabulary (28%), language feature (22%), and the generic structure of the narrative (17%). after distributing the questionnaires, the researcher interviewed one of the english teachers. the interview conducted by employing a semi-structured interview. the researcher had already prepared seven interview questions in advance. the last three questions had formed during the interview. the interview revealed narrative is one of the topics taught by the teacher, and this year the topic was given on the even semester. they had given the material based on the basic competencies stated in the school curriculum, but the activities in employing the material had developed by the teacher. usually, the teacher uses conventional methods such as role-play or puzzles, but in some classes, she integrated digital media in the teaching process. the students quickly attracted by motion pictures, such as video and movie, and it increases their attention in the learning process. in one of her teaching, she used digital storytelling as a tool for her teaching. the students’ reaction when she used the medium was good. most of them were excited and paid attention to the storyline. however, based on the teacher’s experience, it is better to use digital storytelling media as warming up tool in the classroom. even though the teacher did not agree to use digital storytelling as the main media in the class, she will still be using it in her future teaching process. from the interview results, the researcher discovered some findings. the narrative is one of the topics taught by the teacher, and this year the topic was given on the even semester. they were given the material based on the basic competences, but the activities in employing the material were developed by the teacher. usually, the teacher uses conventional methods such as role-play or puzzles, but in some classes, she integrated digital media in the teaching process. the students were easily attracted by motion pictures, such as video and movie, and it increases their attention in the learning process. in one of her teaching, she used digital storytelling as a tool for her teaching. the students’ reaction when she used the medium was good. most of them were excited and paid attention to the storyline. however, based on the teacher’s experience, it is better to use digital storytelling media as warming up tool in the classroom. even though the teacher did not agree to use digital storytelling as a main media in the class, she will still be using it in her future teaching process. preliminary product developing the researcher began to develop the medium as it is the main focus of this research. in this step, the researcher also made a complimentary lesson plan and worksheet for the students. they were compiled in teacher’s guideline booklet made to complete the digital storytelling. the worksheet was designed based on the basic competences, and the result of learners’ needs, which focuses on reading and listening activities. after deciding goals, general purposes, and the topic of the medium, the researcher started to design the medium. in this research, the researcher made digital storytelling, which is the art of combining narrative with digital media such as images, sound, and video to create a short story. there are 7 elements that make a good digital storytelling. they are 1) point of view, 2) a dramatic question, 3) emotional content, 4) the gift of your voice, 5) the power of the soundtrack, 6) economy and 7) pacing (robin, 2008). to provide an aid for delivering the material, the researcher made digital storytelling. script and pictures were assembled and combined in an online platform named powtoon. the medium was uploaded into youtube complete with the subtitle and teacher’s guide to using digital storytelling. the researcher designed a lesson plan and worksheet as complementary material to digital storytelling. the researcher also put the result from the research and information gathering to design the activities in the class. based on the result of the questionnaires, the students prefer to have reading and listening activities. thus, the activity used in the lesson plan consisted of reading and listening activities. evaluation feedback the pre-made product and complimentary lesson plan and worksheet had validated by three respondents; 2 experts and 1 english teacher. the researchers distributed questionnaires to the respondents. the questionnaire consists of 7 close-ended questions and three open-ended questions. evaluation of the designed product and complimentary lesson plan helped the researcher to develop a better product. from the evaluation, the researchers knew which part of the medium was excellent sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 21 and which part that needed to be improved. it could also know whether the medium has met the learners’ needs. the product evaluation gave data and information, whether it has been relevant and suitable to teach narrative for students. the respondents in the evaluation process had chosen from their language expertise and experience in teaching. table 2. summary of medium evaluation questionnaires (close-ended) no statement degree of agreement 1 2 3 4 5 1 the designed media has already met the learners’ need. 0 0 50% 50% 0 2 the designed media aligned with school curriculum 0 0 0 100% 0 3 the designed media has been communicative. 0 50% 0 50% 0 4 the length of the media is suitable for a classroom activity. 0 0 33,3% 66,6% 0 5 the designed media is fascinating. 0 0 0 100% 0 6 the elements of narrative covered in the media. 0 0 0 100% 0 7 the content of the media is suitable to teach narrative. 0 0 33,4% 66,6% 0 from the result of the evaluation, it can be seen that overall the medium design is already good and appropriate for teaching narrative. although respondents said that the medium has been communicative, 1 respondent said that it tends to be a monologue performance. the length and content are also suitable for classroom activity. all of the respondents also agreed that digital storytelling is interesting and can be used by teachers to teach narrative. the respondents were asked about the strengths and also weaknesses of the medium. the respondents stated their opinion and suggestion related to the designed media. table 3 below shows the strengths and weaknesses of the designed media according to the respondents’ evaluation. table 3. summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the media strengths weaknesses  the duration is appropriate for brainstorming session.  the material is interesting for brainstorming session.  the audio is clear the transition between one slides to another is good, the pictures are very clear.  designed media is interesting.  the story has promoted local culture in learning english.  for whilst teaching, it is less communicative and tend to monologue performance.  check the sentences before entering the story. all sentences are missing a full stop.  no exercises / activities to help learners identify the generic structure of the text.  no voice heard in the opening. main product revision the overall review from the respondents related to the appearance of the media was pleasing and enjoyable to watch, especially for brainstorming activity. however, there were some changes that needed to be done to make the media appearance’s better. in the beginning of the written narration, the sentences were lack of proper punctuation. the researcher did not put a period marks in most of the sentences, so it had to be retyped to fix the mistakes. sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 22 in general, the respondents agreed that the media was already suitable for teaching. however, one respondent said that the recording on the sound or spoken narration of the story needed to be improved. it could not be heard clearly by the respondent and in some sentences, the voice volume was not consistent yet. some sentences were spoken louder than the other. usually, it was the article, such as “the” and “an”. to overcome the problem, a new narration record was made to replace the earlier recording. the new recording was only done for some parts that were still lack of volume consistency. most respondents stated that the materials are already suitable for learners. however, one respondent said that the researcher should add one more material on the generic structure so that the students could also learn about it. a question then added to the complementary material, which is “please write the generic structure of the story using your own sentence”. the question is aimed to make the student understand more about the generic structure of a narrative text and also make them practice using correct tenses to rewrite the story. the media appearance modeling is the process of making object models in a 3d / 2d form on a computer. models can be in the form of characters (living things), such as humans, animals or plants; or in the form of inanimate objects, such as houses, cars, equipment, etc. the model must be made in detail and in accordance with the size and scale of the design/model sketch that has been predetermined so that the object model will look ideal and proportional to be seen. figure 4. modelling texturing is the process of making and giving color and material (texture) to an object that has been modeled before so that it will appear a real impression. giving material or texture to 3d / 2d objects will define the appearance and type of material from 3d / 2d objects. material or texture can be in the form of photos or images created with 3d software applications, such as 3ds max, maya, etc., or with the help of digital imaging software, such as photoshop, photopaint, or gimp. figure 5. texturing sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 23 animation is the process of making an animation for a model. animation can be in the form of movements, be it object/model movements or camera movements to create walkthrough animations, flythrough animations. figure 6. rendering rendering is the final process of the whole process of modeling or computer animation. in rendering, all data that has been entered in the process of modeling, animation, texturing, lighting with specific parameters will be translated in an output form (final display on the model and animation). the output of the animation that we make can be in the form of photos or videos. figure 7. the process of rendering figure 8. the process of providing animated text discussion the findings show that students have positive views on the use of interactive storytelling. most of them liked video narration. they concluded that multimedia storytelling was a handy tool for education from a semi-structured interview. several students also said that when they recorded their voices as part of a digital storytelling project, they might improve their pronunciation. kuforiji & sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 24 williams (2011) uncovered that multimedia stories were an enjoyable activity in the schoolroom. it is essential when planning suitable lessons and activities that the students would like to learn english. besides, students enjoy interactive storytelling because the english language is easy to use. afrilyasanti & basthomi (2011) said that interactive storytelling in classrooms could easily be carried out. most participants liked the easy steps by using corel videostudio to create their digital storytellings and then presented the story. as reported in lee (2014), digital storytelling is an attractive language teaching practice, easy to use for speaking. it can be a positive way of encouraging students to use the language in and out of the classroom. ariffin (2010) addressed the value of multimedia storytelling, including sharing experiences. therefore, visual history is a useful technology for learning english in particular. teachers will encourage students to build their multimedia worlds and share their stories with peers in their classes. active thinking was also encouraged in interactive storytelling classes. throughout the use of the app, they were autonomous of english. nonetheless, teachers will find some potential issues in integrating storytelling files in a framework in order to develop interactive storytelling, which may take quite a while. students require vivid visual storytelling images and illustrations. lessons with images and sounds, which enable all students, especially students with learning difficulties, to better understand concepts before reading a lesson text (piotrowski & reason, 2000). integrating visuals and illustrations in the visual storytelling phase can, therefore, inspire students to learn more. the advanced technology needs more photographs and better graphics. the video should be rendered faster by using a decent notebook/computer with a powerful processor. overall the product is already excellent and appropriate for teaching narrative. the designed medium has also aligned with the students’ needs. the elements of the narrative had completely covered (generic structure, language feature, and english tenses). although respondents said that the medium has been communicative, one respondent said that it tends to be a monologue performance. the length and content are also suitable for classroom activity. all of the respondents also agreed that digital storytelling is exciting and can be used by teachers to teach narrative. this research conducted in order to design digital storytelling as a medium to teach narrative for junior high school students. once digital storytelling was designed, like the framework, the researcher combined two significant theories, which were the cycle of educational research and development and instructional design model. the instructional design model put under the cycle of instructional design and development. to create an exciting and proper digital storytelling, which started about seven elements of digital storytelling, and also the implementation of narrative in learning (göbel, rodrigues, et al., 2009; sweeney-burt, 2014). among study results, one crucial finding asserts that students are interested in using digital storytelling to learn narrative because it is more exciting and could help them to understand the topic better. in line with this, kim (2014) & menezes (2012) argued that digital storytelling is useful to build students’ background knowledge and attract them to the learning process. the researchers created a complimentary lesson plan and exercises and put in a teacher’s guide booklet. fifth, the evaluation was done once the digital storytelling medium and teacher’s guide. from the evaluation process, the researcher found out that the media and exercises are already appropriate for teaching narrative. nonetheless, some respondents suggested to fix the recording and added more exercise in the teacher’s guide. one respondent also suggested adding a subtitle to digital storytelling so that it can be used to check the answer when doing the exercise. the researchers presented the media on a digital platform through youtube. the teacher’s guide was presented both in written form and digital form so that any teacher could download it easily. the researchers also provide subtitle which can be used to check the answers of the exercise. conclusion digital storytelling is a ipowerful itool ifor icreating ie-learning ienvironments ibased ion constructivist iprinciples iof ieducational iactivity iand ilearning. iit ipossesses ithe ipotential ito engage ilearners iin iintegrated iapproaches ito ilearning iwith idigital imedia. inotwithstanding, ia framework iis irequired ithat icaters ifor ilearners iat idifferent ilevels. iin ithis iresearch ishowed ithe product ifor icreating ie-learning isystems ithrough idigital istorytelling. ithe iproduct igrounded ion twelve istorytelling iaspects iand ifive ilevels, iand ieach iaspect iadvances iin icomplexity ias ithe learner’s ilevel iadvance ifrom ilevel ione ito ifive. ithe iproduct iwill ibe ifurther ideveloped ito employ iall iof ithe istorytelling iaspects iin idiverse ieducational isettings. iit iwill ibe iused ito icreate sarah bibi, dian shinta sari, muhammad iqbal ripo putra/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 25 a inew ielearning isystem ithat ican ibe iutilized iat idifferent ilevels iof ieducation. ifuture iresearch will icentre ion ihow idigital istorytelling ican ienhance ithe istudents’ iengagement iand iprovide better ieducational ioutcomes ifor iall ilearners. iproving iand ivalidating ithe iproposed ie-learning digital istorytelling iframework iwill ibe iundertaken iin ifuture iresearch iprojects. acknowledgement the research and development introduced in this work is funded by the ministry of research, technology and higher education (kemenristekdikti) under the year of 2019 framework programme in the ict research priority. references afrilyasanti, r., & basthomi, y. 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(2010). educational uses of digital storytelling around the world. in m. koehler & p. mishra (eds.), proceedings of the society for information technology & teacher education international conference 2011 (pp. 1264-1271). chesapeake, va: aace. microsoft word 9. 85-95 37187-article text-98254-1-18-20200623 (2 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 85 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs towards written corrective feedback alviana tri adhi kencana english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 3 february 2020 approved in 6 february 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: corrective feedback; efl writing; error correction; written corrective feedback; perceptions ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ writing skill has been considered as a crucial skill that efl students need to master. one of the techniques usually employed by teachers to help students improve their writing is via written corrective feedback (wcf). although many studies have been conducted to test its effectiveness, fewer studies have examined students’ and teachers’ preferences and beliefs towards the usefulness of wcf. therefore, the present study analyzed students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs regarding wcf. the participants consisted of 35 efl students and 5 efl teachers enrolled in smk negeri 1 bawang banjarnegara, a vocational high school in banjarnegara, indonesia. the data were both obtained through written questionnaires for the students and interview questions for the teachers. the collected data were analyzed based on wcf types classified by ellis (2008), specifically for certain types like direct, indirect, and metalinguistic corrective feedback. the result of the present study demonstrated that both students and teachers mostly agreed that students should receive wcf in large amounts. both of them also agreed that teachers should provide comprehensive feedback which consists of correction and explanations. finally, both of them also had similar opinions that form-focused errors should be prioritized for correction than content-focused errors. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: arubiandesu@gmail.com alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 86 introduction english is an international language, and therefore learning english is necessary for global communication. besides, being able to use english for communication gives numerous advantages for individuals, especially for foreign language learners. khunaivi and hartono (2015) stated, “in indonesia, english belongs to a foreign language in which it is used for academic purposes, job vacancies’ requirement, and traveling overseas” (p. 15). hence, it is very helpful to learn and be capable of using english. writing is one of the most essential skills for efl students alongside reading, listening, and speaking. it is also the most difficult skill to learn among others. “when compared with other fundamental skills such as listening, speaking, and reading; writing is the most difficult skill because it requires writers to have a great deal of lexical and syntactical knowledge as well as principal of organization in l2 to produce a good writing.” (tangpermpoon, 2008, p. 1). it has been teachers’ job to find appropriate teaching techniques to encourage students’ success in learning such skill. one of the techniques commonly employed by teachers to improve students’ writing skill is through the provision of written corrective feedback (wcf). in this context, wcf is a written response made by a teacher that aims to correct linguistic errors found in students’ written text. bitchener and storch (2016) added that “it seeks to either correct the inaccurate usage or provide information about where the error has occurred and/or about the cause of the error and how it may be corrected” (p.1). many aspects of writing can be given feedback by teachers, such as form (grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary) and non-form (organization and ideas). more than often wcf has been used as a technique for correcting grammatical errors as well as other errors found in students’ written text. even so, the effectiveness of wcf to improve students’ writing skills is still debatable. based on prior investigations conducted by the researcher, it is found that some of the students claimed that they have difficulties in handling their teachers’ written feedback given to their written errors. after being investigated in further, it turned out that some of them preferred certain kind of feedback rather than the ones given by their teachers. they also criticized their teachers’ written feedback because they often receive not enough or too many feedback which made some of them discouraged. the dissimilarity between students’ and teachers’ perceptions may lead to misunderstandings and ineffective learning. this is supported by horwitz (1990), kern (1995), and schulz (1996) as cited in brown (2009) who stated, “mismatches between fl students' and teachers' expectations can negatively affect the students' satisfaction with the language class and can potentially lead to the discontinuation of study” (p. 46). therefore, some studies are needed to look into both students’ and teachers’ perceptions regarding the wcf in order to give better decisions for the teachers in using certain types and amount of wcf. there are also many pros and cons related to the effectiveness of wcf in writing classes. truscott (1996) initiated the debate against the usefulness of wcf specifically on grammar correction. he stated in his review article: my thesis is that grammar correction has no place in writing courses and should be abandoned. the reasons are: (a) research evidence shows that grammar correction is ineffective; (b) this lack of effectiveness is exactly what should be expected, given the nature of the correction process and the nature of language learning; (c) grammar correction has significant harmful effects; and (d) the various arguments offered for continuing it all lack merit (p. 328). this argument received many cons by several researchers in the same research field. responding to truscott’s views, ferris (1999) argued as cited in tseng (2018): teachers should continue correcting grammatical errors because: 1) l2 students wanted it, 2) students needed to produce academic text with manageable errors to proceed to mainstream curriculum, and 3) students should become self-sufficient in editing (p. 160). several studies (e.g. ellis, sheen, murakami, & takashima, 2008; bitchener & knoch, 2010; sheen, 2010) also supported this argument, showing that wcf can be helpful for students’ writing accuracy. however, further investigations are still needed to clarify its utility. alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 87 teachers and students are the primary subjects involved in wcf. hence, their perceptions and preferences towards wcf are considerable. this is supported by lee (2008) who stated that, “without understanding how students feel about and respond to teacher feedback, teachers may run the risk of continually using strategies that are counter-productive” (p. 145). accordingly, in order to achieve effective wcf practice, it is crucial to see whether students’ preferences are in line with teachers’ beliefs in practicing wcf or not. there are many studies focusing on the effectiveness of wcf in specific (e.g., ahmad, saeed, & salam, 2013; bitchener, young, & cameron, 2005; ellis et al., 2008; baleghizadeh & dadashi, 2011; sheen, 2007; bitchener & knoch, 2010b). however, a few have explored the aspects which determine its usefulness: students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs towards the usefulness of wcf itself. moreover, published literature that investigates this topic in indonesia is still scarce. therefore, the researcher is interested to conduct a study in this area. methods the objective of the present study is to explain students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs towards the usefulness of wcf. thus, the descriptive design is adopted. the study will combine quantitative and qualitative research methods. the researcher uses quantitative research in order to gain statistical data regarding students’ preferences and teachers’ beliefs towards wcf. in addition, qualitative research is conducted to obtain more descriptive information regarding students’ and teachers’ reasons why they preferred certain types of wcf and particular error types that should be corrected. the subject of this study included five efl teachers and 35 efl students majoring in software engineering in smk negeri 1 bawang banjarnegara. the student participants consist of 15-16 years old males and females. the majority of the students have been learning english since junior high school. the teacher participants consist of one male and four females. most of the teachers have been teaching for at least nine years. in addition, one of the teachers has exact 29 years teaching experience to this date. thus, the teachers are considered as experienced teachers. in collecting the data, the researcher distributed questionnaire sheets to the students and interview questions delivered to the teachers. both instruments had almost similar questions that focused on certain questions: (1) what amounts of wcf do you think are most useful?; (2) what types of wcf do you think are most useful?; (3) what types of errors do you think should be corrected? the collected data were then imported into an excel spreadsheet for quantitative analysis. the data were categorized based on common themes to make the analysis easier and more readable. afterwards, the data were imported into spss for statistical analysis. the analysis involved several tests which compared both students and teachers’ responses whether there were significant differences between the two subjects. after doing the analysis, the researcher concluded students’ and teachers’ responses. finally, the results can answer the present study’s research questions. findings and discussion useful amounts of written corrective feedback on questionnaire and interview question item number one, participants were asked regarding their preferences about how many wcf teachers should provide on students’ written errors. on this item, participants were allowed to choose one or more options; thus the total percentages of participants’ choices can be more than 100%. table 1 demonstrated the statistics for options chosen by student and teacher participants. alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 88 table 1 participants’ preferences for useful amounts of wcf options student s teacher s n % n % mark all errors 25 71% 3 60% mark all major errors but not minor ones 11 31% 3 60% mark most major errors, but not necessarily all of them 0 0% 0 0% mark only a few of the major errors 1 3% 0 0% mark only errors that interfere communicating ideas 1 3% 0 0% mark no errors; respond only to ideas and content 0 0% 0 0% total responses 38 108% 6 120% the researcher then asked participants’ explanations for their preferences towards different amounts of wcf. 64.41% of the participants (students=69%; teachers=40%) pointed out that students should know all of the errors. in addition, 24.39% of the participants (students=23%; teachers=40%) believe that teachers should only mark major errors focusing on the current topic. interestingly, 9.76% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=40%) think that too many markings can make students discouraged. finally, 2.44% of the participants (students=3%) argued that teachers should prioritize the content by only marking errors interfering the communication ideas. in order to obtain more data that support the findings, questionnaire and interview question number nine asks the participants whether teachers must correct repeated errors on students’ written work. as shown in table 2, the results demonstrated that most teachers and learners think that it is helpful to mark a repeated error whenever a learner makes the same error. fisher’s exact test shows that significant difference was not found between students’ and teachers’ views in this regard (p=.427). table 2 correction for repeated errors no yes total responses students n 3 32 35 % 9% 91% 100% teachers n 1 4 5 % 20% 80% 100% the researcher also asked participants’ reasons for correction for repeated errors. 60% of the participants (students=64%; teachers=40%) believe that teachers should correct repeated errors so that students understand their errors better. in addition, 17.5% of the participants (student=20%) think the same because correction for repeated errors can remind students of their errors. moreover, 12.5% of the participants (students=9%; teachers=40%) argued that correction for repeated errors will not make students repeat the same errors. in contrast, 5% of the participants (students=6%) believe that correction for repeated errors is not helpful because students should think about their errors and do it themselves. moreover, 2.5% of the participants (teachers=20%) think similarly by noting that students can instead ask their peers for their reoccurring errors. finally, another 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) stated that teachers should do it once or twice only. useful types of written corrective feedback questionnaire item number one and interview question item number one to seven asked the opinions of participants regarding the helpfulness of different wcf types. the participants rated each question from scale 1 to 5 (1 = least helpful, 5 = most helpful). table 3 presents preferences of both participants regarding useful types of wcf. table 3 participants’ preferences for useful types of wcf no. options means students teachers alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 89 1. clues or directions on how to fix an error 3.7 4 2. error identification 2.9 4 3. error correction with a comment 4.8 4.8 4. overt correction by the teacher 4.0 4.2 5. comment with no correction 2.8 4 6. no feedback 1.2 1 7. personal comment on content 2.7 2.4 the researcher also asked the reasons of participants for choosing clues or directions on how to fix error. the test displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.636). according to the result, 52.5% of the participants (students=57%; teachers=20%) think that clues or directions are helpful because they let students practice selfcorrection and they will make students remember the errors better. additionally, 5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=20%) also believe that clues or directions are promising to follow since they will surely guide students to find the correct answer. on the other hand, 22.5% of the participants (students=26%) believe that clues or directions are not enough because students need clearer explanations so the students can find the correct answer effectively. moreover, 5% of the participants (students=6%) demonstrated that they believe clues or directions are not straightforward and leave too much work for the students. furthermore, 12.5% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=60%) believe that clues or directions are only suitable for clever students. in addition, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) stated that some students may not have access to find out the clues or follow the directions because some of the students may not have the resources like books or any references that the clues or directions usually require. the researcher also asked for participants’ explanations for error identification. the test displayed that there is a significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.013). the result shows that 47.5% of the participants (students=51%; teachers=20%) consider error identification useful because it helps students get noticed where the errors occur so then they can make follow-up corrections. 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) also think similarly that error identification makes students more observant of occurring errors. in addition, another 2.5% of the participants (teachers=20%) believe that error identification makes students more self-reliant because they have to do follow-up corrections by themselves. however, on the opposing side, 40% of the participants (students=40%; teachers=40%) believe that error identification is not useful because it does not provide enough information for the students and they need more information on how to handle the errors. additionally, 5% of the participants (students=6%) believe the same because error identification gives students a lot of work to do and they have to put quite effort to correct the errors. furthermore, 2.5% of the participants (teachers=20%) think that error identification is not always practical as it is only suitable when students study certain topics. the researcher then asked for participants’ explanations for error correction with comment. the test displayed that there is no significant difference between student and teacher participants (p=.618). according to the findings, there are 37.5% of the participants (students=14%) who believe that error correction with comments is helpful for students because it helps them know why an error exists and also the correct form to the occurred error. in addition, 37.5% of the participants (students=43%; teachers=60%) pointed out that although it provides commentary for the error, the error correction alone is helpful for the students to solve the occurring error. moreover, 12.5% of the participants (students=14%) think similarly that error correction with comments gives students detailed information about the error handling so the students can learn much from there. furthermore, 12.5% of the participants (students=14%) pointed out only for the value of comment that it helps students understand why errors exist. moreover, 5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=20%) believe that error correction with comments is useful; however, it has a negative impact that it makes students effortless because the teacher gives spoon-feeding to the students. additionally, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) think that error correction with comments is helpful because students do not have to do much work for the correction since the information is quite detailed. another 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) argued that error correction with comments is useful because it gives a new insight to students that learning english is not difficult. in contrast, on the opposing side, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) demonstrated that error correction with a comment is not helpful because it does not promote self-correction for the students. alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 90 the researcher also asked participants’ reasons for choosing overt correction by the teacher. the test displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.369). according to the findings, 57% of the participants (students=63%; teachers=20%) think that it is helpful for students because it helps them to know the correct forms of occurring errors. in addition, 17.5% of participants (students=17%; teachers=20%) agreed that error correction is useful; however, they believe that it is not enough. they also consider the addition of comments to the feedback because they are necessary. moreover, 7.5% of the participants (students=9%) think that error correction without comment promotes more self-correction for students; and therefore it is helpful. furthermore, another 7.5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=40%) stated that error correction without comment is more straightforward because students can directly see the correct form of their errors. contrarily, 7.5% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=20%) believe that it is not helpful for students because they do not pay attention to the nature of why the error occurred. they only see the correct form without explanations. additionally, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) argued that error correction does not promote self-correction for students. the researcher also asked participants for choosing comment without correction. the test displayed that there is a significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.047). according to the result, 27.5% of the participants (students=29%; teachers=20%) believe that comment without correction is helpful because it makes students more active in looking for the correct form. in addition, 20% of the participants (students=20%; teachers=20%) also think that comment without correction is useful as long as it is explanatory. in contrast, 27.5% of the participants (students=31%) consider that comment without correction is not helpful because it is too confusing for students; and thus they do not understand it. 22.5% of the participants (students=20%; teachers=40%) believe the same as well regarding its usefulness. they think that comments are not enough and students need correction in addition. besides, 2.5% of the participants (teachers=2.5%) argued that comment without correction is only suitable for clever and high-level students. the researcher also asked participants’ explanations for no feedback on students’ written errors. the test displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.373). the majority of the participants believe that giving no feedback to students’ written error is not helpful. 92.5% of the participants (students=94%; teachers=80%) argued that without feedback students would assume that there are no errors in their written work. moreover, 2.5% of the participants (teachers=20%) commented that it is the teachers’ duty to provide feedback on students’ written errors. furthermore, another 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) argued that giving no feedback to students’ written error indicates that teachers are ignorant to students. on the other hand, there are 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) who argued that giving no feedback to students’ written error is not a problem. it is said that without receiving feedback from teachers, students will experience less stress regarding the occurring errors. the researcher also asked for participants’ explanations for a particular wcf type, specifically comment on content/ideas. the test displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.567). according to the result, 37.5% of the participants (students=37%; teachers=40%) believe that giving comments about the content or ideas on students’ written work is helpful because it makes students feel motivated and dedicated. in addition, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) stated that comment on content is acceptable. moreover, another 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) argued that comment on content challenges students to correct errors by themselves. at the same time, 52.5% of the participants (students=51%; teachers=60%) think that comment on content/ideas is not helpful because it is not enough. they believe that grammar errors should be responded too. additionally, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) believe the same that students prefer grammar correction to comment on content. furthermore, another 2.5% of the participants (3%) argued that comment on content will not affect students in learning the material after all. types of errors that should be corrected item number four of the questionnaire and number ten to sixteen of the interview questions ask the participants’ opinions about what types of errors that should be corrected. participants chose rating for each question that describe their preferences (1 = least helpful, 5 = most helpful). table 4 presents students’ and teachers’ mean results for types of error that should be corrected. alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 91 table 4 different types of errors no type of errors means students teachers 1. wcf on organization errors 4.5 4.8 2. wcf on grammar errors 4.7 5.0 3. wcf on content or ideas 3.8 4.2 4. wcf on punctuation errors 4.1 4.8 5. wcf on spelling errors 4.6 5.0 6. wcf on vocabulary errors 4.5 4.8 the test for wcf on organization errors displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.310). according to the data, 65% of the participants (students=74%) believe that teachers need to give wcf on organization errors because it helps students understand correct writing organization. in addition, 20% of the participants (students=20%; teachers=20%) stated that giving wcf on organization errors helps to make students’ writing more understandable. moreover, 10% of the participants (teachers=80%) argued that as long as giving wcf on organization errors affects students’ writing quality, then the teacher should do it. furthermore, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) pointed out that giving wcf on organization errors motivates students to learn more about writing organization. interestingly, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) believe that grammar is more important than organization so teachers should focus on grammar instead. the test for wcf on grammar errors displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.146). 82.5% of the participants (students=91%; teachers=20%) argued that it is important because it helps students to understand the correct grammar. moreover, 10% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=40%) argued that grammar is important so students need to receive wcf on it. additionally, 5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=20%) think that correcting grammar is the most important; thus giving wcf on it is simply necessary. finally, 2.5% of the participants (teachers=20%) believe that as long as giving wcf on grammar errors affects students’ writing quality, then the teacher should do it. the test for wcf on content/ideas displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.319). according to the findings, 57.5% of the participants (students=66%) believe that giving wcf on content or ideas is important for students because it makes students feel motivated. moreover, 7.5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=40%) argued that giving wcf on content or ideas helps content improvement. in addition, 5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=20%) think that it makes students know whether their content is correct or incorrect. additionally, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) stated that students appreciate any comment on content. furthermore, the other 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) believe that wcf on content or ideas is always necessary so teachers should do it. moreover, the other 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) think that wcf on content or ideas is okay as long as it does not judge the idea wrong. likewise, the other 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) pointed out that wcf on content or ideas is okay as long as it is positive for students. finally, the other 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) stated that wcf on content or ideas makes students learn to receive criticism on their writing content. in contrast, 7.5% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=20%) believe that wcf on content or ideas is not a priority because other writing errors should be complementary to the feedback. additionally, 5% of the participants (students=6%) argued that wcf on content or ideas will not affect students’ writing. finally, another 5% of the participants (students=3%; teachers=20%) pinpoint the importance of focusing on linguistics errors rather than focusing on content or ideas. the test for wcf on punctuation errors displayed that there is a significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.041). based on the findings, 37.5% of the participants (students=37%; teachers=40%) believe that by giving wcf on punctuation errors, students can use correct punctuation. in addition, 27.5% of the participants (students=26%; teachers=40%) explained that punctuation is important for the quality of writing so teachers should give wcf on it. moreover, 20% of the participants (students=23%) think that punctuation gives clarity to the writing so it is important for students to receive teachers’ wcf on punctuation errors. furthermore, 7.5% of the participants (students=3%) argued that students tend to forget the use of alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 92 punctuation so teachers should remind them by giving wcf on punctuation errors. at the same time, 7.5% of the participants (students=6%; teachers=20%) stated that giving wcf on punctuation errors is not important. they believe that punctuation errors are not a big problem so teachers do not have to prioritize it. the test for wcf on spelling errors displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.150). according to the results, 55% of the participants (students=54%; teachers=40%) think that giving wcf on spelling errors is important because spelling errors can lead to misunderstanding. in addition, 40% of the participants (students=40%; teachers=20%) agreed as well because with the wcf provision students can use correct spellings. moreover, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) think similarly because with wcf on spelling errors, students will not repeat the same error. in contrast, 2.5% of the participants (students=3%) think differently that giving wcf on spelling errors is not important. they argued that spelling errors are not a big problem as long as the reader understands the meaning. the test for wcf on vocabulary errors displayed that there is no significant difference between student participants and teacher participants (p=.319). 72.5% of the participants (students=77%; teachers=40%) believe that giving wcf on vocabulary errors is important because it makes students know the correct and suitable vocabulary to use in their current written work. in addition, 17.5% of the participants (students=11%; teachers=60%) think the same because it helps students to know more vocabulary. moreover, 5% of the participants (students=6%) argued that vocabulary is simply important so teachers should provide wcf on vocabulary errors. in contrast, 5% of the participants (students=6%) do not agree if wcf on vocabulary errors is important. they explained that vocabulary error is not a big problem so teachers should not focus too much on it. discussion useful amount of wcf types the majority of the students prefer that teachers should provide wcf on all errors that are found on students’ written text. therefore, for the majority of the students, they think that the greater the amount of wcf given by the teacher, then the more valuable it is. similar to students, several teachers also believe that they should give wcf on all errors, but some of them also consider providing wcf only on most of the major errors. overall, teachers’ opinions are similar to the majority of students’ perceptions and both of them demonstrated that the students and the teachers prefer wcf provision on large quantities of errors. the findings are consistent with that of sayyar and zamanian (2015), which found that most students and teachers prefer comprehensive correction on students’ writings. when both participants were asked whether teachers should mark students’ reoccurring errors, the majority of them consider that errors should be corrected although they occur again. one of the students (s4) stated, “yes, so students will get reminded with the reoccurring errors.” furthermore, there is a teacher (t5) that argued, “i will surely correct the same errors that students make. students may not understand the first correction so the second or third is simply required.” this preference is in line with the research conducted by amrhein and nassaji (2010), which demonstrates that both students and teachers value consistency. useful types of feedback the second research question asked the types of wcf that students and teachers believe to be the most helpful. the students argued that they appreciate any kind of feedback even though they prefer receiving more linguistics feedback rather than personal comment on content or ideas. the finding is in line with that of sayyar and zamanian (2015), which found that students expected all types of linguistics errors to be corrected by teachers and they saw problems in the content are not too important. the students in the present study tend to choose to have overt correction with a comment because they claimed that they will receive better understandings. one of the students (s16) explained, “if the teacher told students the location of the errors as well as the explanation, students will understand better.” similar to students’ preferences, teachers also agreed that error correction with explanatory is the best. one of the teachers (t3) explained, “i like this type of wcf. it gives corrections as well as the explanations, so students will completely understand their errors. however, it is too time-consuming.” this alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 93 finding is consistent with that of amrhein and nassaji (2010) that to minimize time-consumption, the teachers focus only on correcting the important errors. types of errors that should be corrected the third research question asked what types of errors students and teachers think should be corrected. both students and teachers showed overall positive opinions about the usefulness of wcf on certain errors such as organization errors, grammar errors, punctuation errors, spelling errors, and vocabulary errors. however, the students saw wcf on content or ideas to be the least of their interest. these findings partly support the research done by halimi (2008), which found that students tended to value teachers’ wcf provision on surface-level errors (grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary choice) than correction of other surface-level errors (content). for organization errors, most students believed that it is important to receive wcf on this type of errors because it helps students to know a good and correct writing organization. one of the students (s21) argued, “it improves students’ writing skill especially in paragraph writing.” this finding is not in line with that of diab (2006), which found that there were slightly fewer students that consider organization in writing. similarly, one of the teachers (t1) stated, “as long as it gives good impact to students’ writing quality, teachers should correct students’ written errors. thus, giving feedback on organization errors is simply necessary.” for grammar errors, the majority of the students argued that correction on grammar errors is important because it helps students to know the correct grammar. the student (s21) stated, “it helps students in understanding grammar such as word order and sentence structure.” this finding confirms that of jodaie (2011), which showed that a majority of students expected their teachers to correct grammatical errors on every draft. most teachers also believed that grammar is important so students need to receive wcf on it. one of the teachers (t2) argued, “correction on grammar is very important. let’s say that i instructed the students to make a recount text. then, they made errors on their writing regarding the tenses. it will affect the quality of the writing. it needs to be corrected.” for wcf on content or ideas, most students believed that it simply makes students feel motivated. one of the students (s25) stated, “it is useful. positive comments improve students’ motivation.” in addition, the teachers explained that students should not only concern improvement on form-focused errors but also the content or ideas as well. one of the teachers (t5) stated, “emphasizing feedback on content or idea is important so students’ writing idea quality will improve.” interestingly, this finding contradicts with that of hartshorn et al., (2010), which suggested that ...utilizing wcf in many esl writing contexts is overwhelming for both the teacher and the student. providing quality feedback can be time-consuming for the teacher, and the tasks of processing and implementing large amounts of feedback can be unrealistic for the student. (p. 86). it indicates that providing wcf on all kinds of errors requires much effort yet time-consuming. thus, it is considered to be inefficient and unrealistic practice. for punctuation errors, the majority of the students argued that wcf on punctuation errors is needed so students can use correct punctuation. one of the students (s32) stated, “punctuation is important because it affects written text quality.” this finding is consistent with that of seker and dincer (2014), which found that students preferred to receive feedback for both content and form, including the punctuation errors. most of the teachers also believed that punctuation is important for the quality of writing. one of the teachers (t4) explained, “it is clearly important. imagine that there are a lot of punctuation errors on students’ written work. of course, it will degrade the quality of the writing. teachers should correct this kind of errors.” for spelling errors, the majority of the students believed that spelling errors can lead to misunderstanding; thus, correction on spelling errors is important. one of the students (s17) stated, “incorrect spelling can lead to misunderstanding for the readers. thus, teacher’s feedback on spelling errors will be useful.” this finding is in line with that of amrhein and nassaji (2010), which displayed the same students’ preferences on the importance of correcting form-focused written errors such as spelling. most of the teachers also believed that spelling errors can lead to misunderstanding. the teacher (t4) stated, “spelling errors are common in students’ writing. small mistake on a letter can even confuse the reader. hence, it is clear that spelling errors need to be considered.” alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 94 lastly, for vocabulary errors, the majority of the students believed that correcting vocabulary errors is necessary so that students are able to know the correct and suitable vocabulary in their writing. one of the students (s10) saw the importance of correcting vocabulary errors because, “it helps us to know the words that we are supposed to use or the words that suit the context.” in addition, most of the teachers agreed that vocabulary errors are important to be noted. one of the teachers (t3) stated, “vocabulary is one of the most important aspects in writing. if the students incorrectly use certain word, then the meaning can be different with the one that the students want to express. thus, vocabulary mastery is needed. whenever i notice a vocabulary error, i always provide alternative words that suit the context. therefore, the students can learn new words from there.” this finding is in line with that of iswandari (2016), which found that vocabulary errors are believed to be useful to correct. conclusion both students and teachers showed similar views about the useful amount of wcf and correction for repeated errors. most of the students preferred to receive large quantities of feedback. the majority of the students also preferred to receive correction on repeated errors. the teachers had similar beliefs that they mostly chose comprehensive feedback. the majority of the teachers also chose to provide corrections on repeated errors. both students and teachers also share similar perspectives about the useful types of wcf. most of the students expect to receive comprehensive feedback which includes correction and explanations. the teachers also agreed that comprehensive feedback is the most useful form of feedback; however, they consider it as time-consuming. ultimately, both students and teachers also have similar opinions about the error types that should receive correction. the majority of the participants stated that personal comment on content or ideas is not a big problem, so teachers should not put much effort into providing this kind of feedback. instead, the findings demonstrated that teachers should focus on linguistics errors especially grammar, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary, and organization. references ahmad, i., saeed, m., & salam, m. (2013). effects of corrective feedback on academic achievement of students: case of government secondary schools in pakistan. international journal of science and research, 2(1), 36–40. amrhein, h. r., & nassaji, h. (2010). written corrective feedback: what do students and teachers think is right and why? canadian journal of applied linguistics/revue canadienne de linguistique appliquee, 13(2), 95–127. baleghizadeh, s., & dadashi, m. (2011). the effect of direct and indirect corrective feedback on students’ spelling errors. profile issues in teachersprofessional development, 13(1), 129–137. bitchener, j., & knoch, u. (2010a). raising the linguistic accuracy level of advanced l2 writers with written corrective feedback. journal of second language writing, 19(4), 207–217. bitchener, j., & knoch, u. (2010b). the contribution of written corrective feedback to language development: a ten month investigation. applied linguistics, 31(2), 193–214. bitchener, j., & storch, n. (2016). written corrective feedback for l2 development. multilingual matters. bitchener, j., young, s., & cameron, d. (2005). the effect of different types of corrective feedback on esl student writing. journal of second language writing, 14(3), 191–205. brown, a. v. (2009). students’ and teachers’ perceptions of effective foreign language teaching: a comparison of ideals. the modern language journal, 93(1), 46–60. diab, r. l. (2006). error correction and feedback in the efl writing classroom: comparing instructor and student preferences. english teaching forum, 44, 2–13. ellis, r., sheen, y., murakami, m., & takashima, h. (2008). the effects of focused and unfocused written corrective feedback in an english as a foreign language context. system, 36(3), 353–371. ferris, d. (1999). the case for grammar correction in l2 writing classes: a response to truscott (1996). journal of second language writing, 8(1), 1–11. halimi, s. s. (2008). indonesian teachers’ and students’ pref erences f or error correction. wacana: jurnal ilmu pengetahuan budaya, 50. hartshorn, k. j., evans, n. w., merrill, p. f., sudweeks, r. r., strong-krause, d., & anderson, n. j. (2010). effects of dynamic corrective feedback on esl writing accuracy. tesol quarterly, 44(1), 84–109. alviana tri adhi kencana / elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 95 iswandari, y. a. (2016). written corrective feedback in writing class: students’preferences and types of errors. jurnal penelitian, 20(1). jodaie, m. (2011). a comparative study of efl teachers’ and intermediate high school students’ perceptions of written corrective feedback on grammatical errors. english language teaching, 4, 36–48. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n4p36 khunaivi, h., & hartono, r. (2015). teacher’s and student’s perceptions of corrective feedback in teaching speaking. english education journal, 5(2). lee, i. (2008). student reactions to teacher feedback in two hong kong secondary classrooms. journal of second language writing, 17(3), 144–164. sayyar, s., & zamanian, m. (2015). iranian learners and teachers on written corrective feedback: how much and what kinds. international journal of educational investigations, 2(2), 98–120. seker, m., & dincer, a. (2014). an insight to students’ perceptions on teacher feedback in second language writing classes. english language teaching, 7(2), 73–83. sheen, y. (2007). the effect of focused written corrective feedback and language aptitude on esl learners’ acquisition of articles. tesol quarterly, 41(2), 255–283. sheen, y. (2010). differential effects of oral and written corrective feedback in the esl classroom. studies in second language acquisition, 32(2), 203–234. tangpermpoon, t. (2008). integrated approaches to improve students writing skills for english major students. abac journal, 28(2). truscott, j. (1996). the case against grammar correction in l2 writing classes. language learning, 46(2), 327–369. truscott, j. (1999). the case for “the case against grammar correction in l2 writing classes”: a response to ferris. journal of second language writing, 8(2), 111–122. truscott, j. (2004). evidence and conjecture on the effects of correction: a response to chandler. journal of second language writing, 13(4), 337–343. tseng, c.-t. h. (2018). delayed effect of teachers’ error correction on efl students’ ability in self-correction in writing: a case study. the second tamkang international conference on second language writing, 153. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421e1928209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421edd97a631 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word [article 3]_38131-article text-96677-3-15-20200601 27 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt teacher social competence, student learning motivation, and learning outcomes in english subject qurrot ainy, hendi pratama english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 3 april 2020 approved in 1 june 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: teacher social competence; learning motivation; learning outcomes ____________________ abstract ________________________________________________________________ this study aimed to investigate the correlation between teacher social competence, student learning motivation, and learning outcomes in english subject. the population of this study is all the students of junior high school 1 purbalingga academic year 2019/2020. the sample in this study is 90 students. the sampling technique is stratified convience sampling. in collecting data, there were some research instruments used; questionnaires and documentation. the research data were analyzed by peason product-moment correlation. based on the analysis and statistical quantification, it was found that the results of the study were (1) there is a positive and significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes as shown by the value of pearson correlation coefficient 0.919; (2) there is a positive and significant correlation between student learning motivation and student learning outcomes as shown by the value of pearson correlation coefficient 0.908; (3) there is a positive and significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation as shown by the value of pearson correlation coefficient 0.994. in conclusion, teachers’ social competence correlation is higher than students learning motivation. therefore, the teachers should work on their social skill to improve student learning outcomes. on the other hand, the students needs to motivate themselves. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: aqurrot@gmail.com, hendipratma@mail.unnes.ac.id 28 introduction the quality of education in indonesia is still far from adequate. based on the global education monitoring report from unesco data in 2016, the teacher in indonesia ranked 14th out of 14 developing countries. moreover, from the teacher competency test in 2015 results, the national average is only 44.5 far below the 75 standard. while according to the study conducted by chang et al. (2014) both certified and uncertified teachers have no impact on student learning outcomes. the teacher is associated closely with student in the implementation of education on daily. in carrying out the task the teacher must have competence. minister of national education regulation number 16 of 2007 regarding academic qualification standards and teacher competencies explains that every teacher must meet the teacher competency qualification. the teacher should have four competencies such as professional, pedagogy, personality, and social competence (uno & lamatenggo, 2016). social competence is needed to attract students’ interest in teaching and learning sessions. social competence is the teacher’s ability to communicate and interact effectively and efficiently with students, peers/professionals, parents of students, and society moreover does not discriminate against ethnicity, race, and language (kunandar, 2014). to have the best learning outcomes the student must have high learning motivation. learning motivation is an impulse for someone to do something and achieve a goal and that is learning outcomes (uno, 2007). learning outcome is the goal of the studies to be achieved and product from the learning process which can be seen from the improvement of the behavior obtained after the process of learning (anni, 2004). learning outcomes for the students are an improvement of mental development after learning activities include cognitive, affective, and psychomotor, while for the teachers are the completion of the learning material that has been delivered (mudjiono, 2006). the principle underlying the assessment of learning outcomes is to provide hope for students and teachers to be able to improve the quality of learning (mansur, 2009). quality in the sense that students become effective learners and teachers become good motivators. in this case, the learning outcomes become the reason for determining the next steps to solve the problems so the students can improve their learning. four teacher competencies such as pedagogical, personal, professional, and social partially influence the learning performance also simultaneously and significantly in improving the quality of performance in the learning process (hakim, 2015). muda’i (2017) states learning motivation is a complex thing, many factors might affect this. musriana (2018) states teachers as a motivator toward student learning outcomes. a competent teacher with a good environment improving the student learning motivation (tabi’in, 2016). a study conducted by mappeasse (2009) revealed the way students learn and their motivation to learning affected their learning outcomes. while bernaus and gardner (2008) stated that the language teaching strategies on students' motivation were on relative frequency while english achievement is not correlated. wardani et al. (2018) attempt to ascertain whether there is an influence and how big it is of social competence on student learning motivation at xi grade students of accounting of vocational high school 7 pontianak. the result of the study revealed after done simpe linear regression on the variables of x and y said that social competence has a negative influence on student learning motivation with 23% the other 77% was affected by another factor that was not examined in this study. problems investigated in this research are (1) what is the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school? (2) what is the correlation between student learning motivation and student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school? (3) what is the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation in english subject at junior high school? from the studies above, there have been many researchers who conducted studies about teacher competence and student learning motivation in english subject separately. my research is different from the previous research upon the details of the research. in my research, i will concern to investigate the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation on student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school. objectives of this study are (1) to investigate the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school, (2) to investigate the correlation between student learning motivation and student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school, (3) to investigate the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation in english subject at junior high school. methods this research focuses on the the correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation on student learning outcomes. research variables of this study are teacher social competence ( ଵܺ) and student learning motivation (ܺଶ) as independent variable. the dependent variable in this study is student learning outcomes (y). this research used quantitative method. quantitative is a type of data that can be 29 calculated which contains information or explanations expressed with a number (sugiyono, 2010). in this research, the source of quantitative data is from the questionnaire. a questionnaire as a research tool includes a set of questions or any other types of prompts aimed at collecting information from a respondent (adi, 2019). the type of questionnaire here is a structured questionnaire. the type of questions in the questionnaire that the researcher used in this study is close-ended questions. both of the questionnaire is quantitative for 90 respondent. type of the data in the instrument is index. one datum is one index comes from one of the respondent. minimum index is 1 and maximum index is 4. the instrument for teacher social competence is 15 items, while the instrument for learning motivation is 30 items. the total of the data is 90. the research was conducted a study at junior high school state 1 purbalingga. the sampling technique is stratified convenience sampling. the sample was chosen from each level proportionally and then was divided into strata (sugiyono, 2015). convenience sampling is a method where the main data source available without additional requirements, there is no criterion for inclusion defined before selecting the subject (dudovskiy, 2016). the research takes 30 students for each grade to be the sample. the total of the sample was 90 students. after all the data gathered, the next step is analyzing the data. in this research, the data are analyzed using statistic method because the process of compiling the data, draw a conclusion, and making a decision arranged systematically. statistical functions used in this study include validity, reliability, normality, and linearity. validity is defined as showing the suitability, compatibility, usefulness of specific conclusions that have been made based on research data that has been collected. with the validity of the instrument, strong evidence has been carried out to support the conclusion of the instrument. the validity tested in this study is content validity. to measure the content validity, the internal consistency method is used to measure the magnitude of the correlation between each item and all statement items using the product-moment correlation formula. the decision is based on the number of r quantification. the data is valid if r quantification > r table (sujarweni, 2014). the value of r table based on the value of df (degree of freedom) in the research. the formula of df is n-2. n is the total of the respondent. the test of reliability is done to know the accuracy of the research instrument (sujarweni, 2014). the reliability test of the questionnaire to determine whether it is a good questionnaire to gather the data. to test the reliability the researcher use spss 23 for windows. the decision based on the value of cronbach alpha. the data is reliable if the number of cronbach alpha > 0.60. the normality test aims to determine whether the sample taken comes from populations that are normally distributed or not, so it will be more accurate and effective (pratama, 2019). to test the normality, the researcher using kolmogorov-smirnov. the data was analyzed with the help of spss 23 for windows. the decision is based on the number of asymp. sig. (2-tailed). if the number of asymp. sig. more than 0.05, the data is normally distributed. this linearity test aims to see whether the linearity of the two variables is significant or not (widiyanto, 2012). to detect the correlation between the regression equation and the linearity test of the regression line needed help by looking at linearity in the anova table of spss 23 for windows. if the significance of the linearity is less than 0.05 then the variable is stated linear. the decision was also based on the significance of deviation from linearity, it must be more than 0.05. the f quantification < f table. the distribution of the f table was based on the number of df (degree of freedom). the hypotheses tested in this study are the influence of independent variables namely the teacher’s social competence ( ଵܺ), student learning motivation (ܺଶ) to the dependent variable student learning outcomes (y). to do the calculation and analysis used a computer program that is microsoft excel and spss 23 for windows. the test of the hypothesis using pearson’s correlation coefficient. correlation is a technique for investigating the relationship between two variables (pratama, 2019). pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) is measure of the strength of the relationship between the two variables. with help of spss 23 for windows this test aims to test the first and second hypotheses. the result will show up in the table of model summary. to determine an interpretation of the result correlation coefficients, it can be seen in the list below based on nangolo and musingwini (as cited in pratama, 2019): table 1. interpretation the power in correlation test coefficient range power of correlation 0.00 – 0.30 0.31 – 0.50 0.51 – 0.80 0.81 – 1.00 weak medium strong very strong 30 the significant correlation marked by a symbol (**), if the correlation is not really strong marked by only one (*), and there will be no symbol (*) if the correlation is weak. after that to test the hypothesis based on the condition as follows: the correlation ଵܺ and ܺଶ toward y is partial h0 : = 0, means ଵܺ and ܺଶ partially not correlate significantly toward y h0 : ≠ 0, means ଵܺ and ܺଶ partially correlate significantly toward y based on the result of correlation coefficient and the symbol (*) the decision was made. findings and discussion the data for this study was gathered by distributing the questionnaire at junior high school 1 purbalingga. the researcher came into class seven, eight, and nine with a total of 90 students as the sample. the students were filling up the questionnaire by giving a checklist for each statement. for the questionnaire about teacher social competence, there is 15 items. for the questionnaire about student learning motivation is 30 items. each answer of the item changed into a number, for positive statement strongly agree is 4, agree 3, disagree 2, and strongly disagree is 1, while the negative statement is reversed. the researcher attained the learning outcomes in the cognitive area from the report book first term academic year 2019/2020. after all the data were collected, the researcher conducted the test of validity, reliability, and linearity as a requirement before the test of the hypotheses. the test used spss 23 for windows. the result of research instruments validation test were valid shown in table 2 and 3 below: table 2. the result of ଵܺvalidation test item r quant. r table 5% 1 0.518 0.205 2 0.384 0.205 3 0.422 0.205 4 0.506 0.205 5 0.457 0.205 6 0.490 0.205 7 0.359 0.205 8 0.444 0.205 9 0.544 0.205 10 0.317 0.205 11 0.535 0.205 12 0.478 0.205 13 0.389 0.205 14 0.390 0.205 15 0.462 0.205 table 3. the result of ૛validationࢄ test item r quant. r table 5% 1 0.518 0.205 2 0.384 0.205 3 0.422 0.205 4 0.506 0.205 5 0.457 0.205 6 0.490 0.205 7 0.359 0.205 8 0.444 0.205 9 0.544 0.205 10 0.317 0.205 11 0.535 0.205 12 0.478 0.205 13 0.389 0.205 14 0.390 0.205 31 15 0.462 0.205 16 0.513 0.205 17 0.336 0.205 18 0.424 0.205 19 0.528 0.205 20 0.482 0.205 21 0.506 0.205 22 0.385 0.205 23 0.447 0.205 24 0.541 0.205 25 0.210 0.205 26 0.522 0.205 27 0.494 0.205 28 0.412 0.205 29 0.342 0.205 30 0.467 0.205 the data will be valid if r quantification > r table (sujarweni, 2014). the value of r table based on total of the respondent (n). in this research n = 90. the distribution of r table product moment for n 90 at 5% signification is 0,205. in table 2 and 3 all items of the research instruments are valid. the questionnaire about teacher social competence and learning motivation in table 4 is reliable because the number of cronbach alpha > 0.60 (sujarweni, 2014). all of the items of the research instrument are reliable. in conclusion, it’s a good instrument to gather the data. table 4. the result of reliability test variable crobach alpha teacher social competence 0.711 learning motivation 0.857 before the test of the hypotheses, the data that have been stated as valid and reliable still need to do normality and linearity test. the purpose of normality and linearity test is to discover whether the distribution of the data is normal and linier or not. the result of normality test shown in table 5 below: table 5. the result of normality test unstandardized residual n 90 normal parametersa,b mean .0000000 std deviation 1.54202805 most extreme differences absolute .090 positive .090 negative -.079 test statistic .090 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .068c the decision based on the number of significance. if it’s more than 0.05 then the data is normally distributed (pratama, 2019). as shown in the table kolmogorov-smirnov sig 0.068 > 0.05. it can be conclude that the data is distributed normally. the result of linearity test based on anova table. the variable teacher social competence ( ଵܺ) and student learning outcomes (y) is linear because the significance of the linearity is 0.000 < 0.05, the significance of deviation from linearity is 0.278 > 0.05, the f quantification 2.186 < f table 2.280. the f table based on df that is 16 and 71. the f table for df 16 and 71 is 2.280. 32 table 6. the result of ଵܺ and y linearity test anova table sum of squares df mean square f sig. learning outcomes * teacher social competence between groups (combined) 1257.652 18 69.870 37.229 .000 linearity 1175.139 1 1175.139 626.164 .000 deviation from linearity 82.513 16 4.854 2.186 .278 within groups 133.248 71 1.877 total 1390.900 89 based on table 7 the variable student learning motivation (ܺଶ) and student learning outcomes (y) are linear because the significance of the linearity is 0.000 < 0.05, the significance of deviation from linearity is 0.197 > 0.05, the f quantification 1.402 < f table 1.670. the f table based on df that is 30 and 55. the f table for df 30 and 55 is 1.670. table 7. the result of ܺଶ and y linearity test anova table sum of squares df mean square f sig. learning outcomes * learning motivation between groups (combine d) 1290.733 34 37.963 20.845 .000 linearity 1146.384 1 1146.384 629.462 .000 deviation from linearity 144.349 30 4.374 1.402 .197 within groups 100.167 55 1.821 total 1390.900 89 after the data stated as valid, reliable, distributed normally, and linier, the data could be use to test the hypotheses. the result of the hypotheses based on pearson’s correlation coefficient. the result of the test explained below: teacher social competence correlate with learning outcomes the first hypothesis is there is a significant correlation between teacher social competence ( ଵܺ) and student learning outcomes (y) in english subject. the hypothesis analyzed based on pearson’s correlation coefficient in table 8. the correlation (r) is 0.919 which is very strong. marked by (**) means the correlation is significant. in conclusion the first hypothesis that there is significant correlation between teacher social competence on learning outcomes accepted. table 8. coefficients correlation and signification test ଵܺ toward y correlations teacher social competence learning outcomes teacher social competence pearson correlation 1 .919** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 learning outcomes pearson correlation .919** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). 33 student learning motivation correlate with learning outcones the second hypothesis is there is a correlation and significant between student learning motivation (ܺଶ) and student learning outcomes (y) in english subject. the hypothesis analyzed based on pearson’s correlation coefficient in table 9. the correlation is 0.908 which is very strong. marked by (**) means the correlation is significant. in conclusion the second hypothesis that there is significant correlation between learning motivation on learning outcomes accepted. table 9. coefficients correlation and signification test ܺଶ toward y correlations learning motivation learning outcomes learning motivation pearson correlation 1 .908** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 learning outcomes pearson correlation .908** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). teacher social competece correlate with student learning motivation the third hypothesis is there is significant correlation between teacher social competence ( ଵܺ) and student learning motivation (ܺଶ) in english subject. the hypothesis analyzed based on pearson’s correlation coefficient in table 10. the correlation is 0.994 which is very strong. marked by (**) means the correlation is significant. in conclusion the third hypothesis that there is significant correlation between teacher social competence on student learning motivation accepted. table 10. coefficients correlation and signification test of ଵܺ and ܺଶ correlations teacher social competence learning motivation teacher social competence pearson correlation 1 .994** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 learning motivation pearson correlation .994** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 90 90 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). discussion learning outcome is the goal of the studies to be achieved and product from the learning process which can be seen from the improvement of the behavior obtained after the process of learning (anni, 2004). learning outcomes for the students are an improvement of mental development after learning activities including cognitive, affective, and psychomotor, while the teachers are the completion of the learning material that has been delivered (mudjiono, 2006). learning outcomes include learning achievement, speed of learning, and affective results (bloom, 1976). human characteristics include a typical way of thinking of action and feeling, its related to cognitive, affective, and psychomotor (anderson, 1981). the elements included in all three aspects of learning are: (1) learning outcomes in the cognitive: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, (2) learning outcomes in the affective dealing with behavior and score. the students’ behavior could be seen from their attention when learning sessions, discipline, learning motivation, how they respect their teacher and classmate. affective as objectives and types of learning outcomes include: receiving or attending means sensitivity in receiving stimuli from inside and outside, responding or answer, respecting and characteristics that influence personality and behavior, (3) learning outcomes in the psychomotor: in the form of skills, and ability of one’s after mastered the cognitive and affective level to the subject (sudjana, 2005). for this study, the researcher focuses on learning outcomes in the cognitive area relate to their knowledge. the minimum learning mastery standard for english subject in junior high school 1 34 purbalingga was 80. the learning outcomes or english subject of the sample in this study in first semester academic year 2019/2020 as follow: table 11. learning outcomes in english subject range total of the student grade percent 94 – 100 6 a 31.11% 86 – 93 56 b 62.22% 79 – 85 28 c 6.67% 71 – 78 d 0% < 71 e 0% as shown in table 11 the learning outcomes of students at junior high school 1 purbalingga almost all the student pass the minimum learning mastery standard. there are two factors affected students learning outcomes, there are internal and external factors (slameto, 2010). internal factors come from inside of the student itself, there are three factors included: (1) physical such as health and disability of the body, (2) psychological such as intelligence, attention, interests, talents, motives, maturity and readiness (3) fatigue that affects physical and psychic. it makes lethargy and boredom drive to the loss of desire to finish the work. based on the theory above high or low student result depends on many factors such as their learning motivation. learning motivation is a process of changing one’s behavior or personality based on interactions between individuals and their environment which are carried out formally and informally (uno, 2007). learning motivation also an impulse that makes someone do something and to achieve the best learning outcomes. the nature of learning motivation is internal and external encouragement. there are two types of learning motivation, namely: (1) intrinsic motivation comes from inside and does not need external encouragement because every individual already has an urge to do something, (2) extrinsic motivation is an impulse from the outside. the desired goal of behavior that is driven by extrinsic motivation lies outside of that behavior (sadirman, 2008). learning motivation can arise due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors (uno, 2007), such as: (1) intrinsic factors such as the desire to succeed and the drive for learning needs, hopes for aspirations, (2) extrinsic factors are appreciation, a conducive learning environment, and interesting learning activities. the learning motivation was measured by the desire to be success in english subject, their need in studying, have hope and dreams, have an appreciation for the study, have an interesting activity on studying. based on pearson’s correlation coefficient relate to learning motivation and learning outcomes the result is 0.908**. the power correlation is very strong. the correlation is positive because there is no minus mark. there is (**) signed that the correlation is significant. in conclusion, there is a significant correlation between student learning motivation and learning outcomes for english subject at junior high school 1 purbalingga. rumpaka (2016) stated the higher the learning interest the higher students learning achievement. learning interest is one of the factors that impacted learning motivation. the researcher conducted a study of whether there is an effect of the learning interest on students’ learning achievement. the research conducted the study at junior high school 2 galur. the population is 187 students while the sample is 127 students selected by means of the proportional stratified random sampling. the instrument of the research is a questionnaire that tested with a product-moment correlation formula and the reliability with the cronbach’s alpha formula. the data were analyzed with simple regression and regression significance used the t-test. the result of the study revealed there is a significant positive effect of the learning interest on the learning achievement based on the regression coefficient of 0.838 and t-observed = 13.628 > t-table = 1.98 at a significance of 0.000, it smaller than 0.05. three external factors affect students learning outcomes, there are: (1) family such as how they parent educate them, the relationship in their family, the environment of their family, and economic stability, (2) the school such as teaching method, curriculum, the relationship between their peer and the teacher, (3) the society such as student activities in the community, media mass, their friend, and lifestyle. the teacher is associated closely with the student in the implementation of education on daily. the teacher determined student success in achieving the best learning outcomes. social competence is the teacher’s ability to communicate and interact effectively and efficiently with students, peers/professionals, parents of students, and society moreover does not discriminate against ethnicity, race, and language (kunandar, 2014). mulyasa (2013) states the teacher’s social is an ability to prepare the student to become good members of the community and the ability to educate, guide in facing life in the future. 35 based on pearson’s correlation coefficient relate to teacher social competence and student learning outcomes the result is 0.919**. the power correlation is very strong. the correlation is positive because there is no minus mark. there is (**) signed that the correlation is significant. in conclusion, there is significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes for english subject at junior high school 1 purbalingga. in accordance with a study done by maryam (2017) about the influence of teacher social competence toward students learning achievement in mathematics subjects at senior high school 1 narmada academic year of 2016/2017. the study used proportionate stratified random sampling to determine the sample. the sample is 82 students out of 456 students. the study used the ex-post-facto research design. the instrument is a questionnaire with a close-ended answer and final exam 1st-semester score as the learning achievement data. the instrument is already been tested the validity and reliability. while for the data analyzed using the normality test, linearity test, and correlation test. the hypothesis was analyzed using simple linear regression. the result shows the student perception of teacher social competence categorizes in the middle with an average value of 48,5244 or 98%. while for student learning achievement in mathematics subject categorize as strong with an average value of 83 or 83%. the hypothesis shows there is significant influence between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes in mathematics subject at senior high school 1 narmada academic year 2016/2017 for about f-distribution 9.027 and f-table 3.96. a competent teacher is a teacher who can influence students positively in learning. not only the student but also the parent and the community. to achieve all of that a teacher needs to have communication skills and get along with the students, peers, and parents. for the student, they should motivate their self to get the best result. based on pearson’s correlation coefficient relate to teacher social competence and student learning motivation the result is 0.994**. the power correlation is very strong. the correlation is positive because there is no minus mark. there is (**) signed that the correlation is significant. in conclusion, there is significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation. tabi’in (2016) stated that a competent teacher with a good environment improving the student learning motivation. there are several ways to motivate students that have been done by the teacher giving gifts, approaching, raising enthusiasm for learning, directing learning activities, giving praise. this study used a qualitative approach. the data collection procedures are in-depth interview techniques, participant observation, and documentation. the sample of the study is students at madrasah tsanawiyah state pekan heran indragri hulu. the data were analyzed using data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. the school here gives freedom to choose the strategies, method, learning techniques, and the most effective teaching technique according to the characteristics of the subjects and teacher’s background education. figure 1. the result of hypotheses test as the final result, teacher social competence, student learning motivation and student learning outcomes correlation are positive, significant and very strong. teacher social competence correlate for 0.919 on student learning outcomes, student learning outcomes correlate for 0.908 on student learning outcomes and teacher social competence correlate with student learning motivation for 0.994.the result show that teacher social competence correlation is higher than student learning motivation. in that case, teacher should working on their social skill to improve student learning outcomes. however, the student also need to keep motivate their self because the correlation itself is very strong. all in all, teacher social competence and r = 0.919** student learning outcomes teacher social competence student learning motivation r = 0.994** r = 0.908** 36 student learning motivation is influence student learning outcomes in english subject at junior high school 1 purbalingga. conclusion based on the result of the study and discussion, the researcher drawn a conclusion as follow: (1) there was a positive and significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning outcomes at junior high school 1 purbalingga on english subject as indicated by the correlation coefficient (r) of 0.919, (2) there was also a positive and significant correlation between student learning motivation and student learning outcomes at junior high school 1 purbalingga on english subject as indicated by the correlation coefficient (r) of 0.908, (3) there was a positive and significant correlation between teacher social competence and student learning motivation at junior high school 1 purbalingga on english subject as indicated by the correlation coefficient (r) 0.994. based on the findings and the conclusion of this study, the researcher made the following suggestion: (1) teacher should improve their social competence, especially for their communication skill to develop their relationship with their student and build a friendly environment around the class and school. student should maintain their learning motivation to get the best result, (2) the student could boost their motivation by raising their interest in english subject, doing fun activities related to english language such as listening to music, watching films, playing games and many others, (3) for other researchers, you could find out another research dealing with teacher social competence, (4) for future research, it is suggested to investigate other factors that affect student learning outcomes. references adi, b. 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(2012). spss for windows. surakarta: badan penerbit-fkip universitas muhamadiyah surakarta. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421d6ff02007 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421fe86720b5 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421edd96a631 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421e2fab2085 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421eca2b209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 8 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt an analysis of students’ error in perception or production in pronouncing english sounds which have different distributions with their native language ryan biantoro, amir sisbiyanto, suprapto  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: analysis; error; perception; production; different distribution. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is written based on the error analysis on perception or production in pronouncing english sounds which have different distributions by the students of smp n 2 demak in academic year of 2015/2016. the study was aimed to describe and to explain the most common problems faced by the students in learning english final voiced stops [b, d, g]. this study is using qualitative approach. the population of the study was the eight grader students of smp n 2 demak. the total numbers of the population used in this research are 310. random sampling technique was used to get the sample. the data of this study was obtained from listening and speaking tests. the result of those tests were used as the source of data collection. then, the result was interpreted by using tinambunan‟s criterion grading. in perception test, the error proportion of the 30 students was 6,07% while in the production test, the error proportion was 28,2% out of 30 students. based on the results, it is concluded that the students were considered exellent in perceiving but fair in pronouncing final voiced stops [b, d, g]. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: ryanbiantoro@gmail.com r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 9 introduction language is a means of communication. many people in the world use the different languages because of their different locations and historic backgrounds. english as a means of communication plays an important role. it can be seen in the newspapers that vacancies need persons who can speak english well. the implication is that english should be taught to the students earlier before they continue their study to higher level. especially, the students in the universities must be equipped with english because many of the books are written in english. in addition, in order to understand english text books and fulfill the requirement of vacancies, people try to develop their ability to master both spoken and written english. english as a foreign language has got a special attention in indonesia. english has been taught not only in junior high school, senior high school, and vocational school but also in elementary school or even in paud. like any other learners of english as a foreign language, indonesian learners also meet difficulties in learning english since their native is quite different from english. they are not used to produce english sounds. and therefore they may do some errors in pronouncing words in english. this study is motivated by the fact that the main goal of teaching and learning english is communicative competence which is aimed to enable the students to create texts fluently based on the context. one of the components of communicative competence is linguistic competence. linguistic competence refers to creating grammatical sentences, good pronunciation, or having many vocabularies. a good pronunciation is important because different pronunciation may have different meaning and may cause misunderstanding. according to ramelan (1994:6-7) there are several kinds of pronunciation problems appeared in learning foreign language: (1) the existence of a given sound in the target language which is not found in the student‟s language. (2) sounds which have the same phonetic features but differ in their distributions. (3) similar sounds with different allophones. (4) similar sounds with a slight difference in their phonetic features. (5) consonant clusters. this research will be focused on analyzing students‟ error in production and perception in pronouncing english sounds especially those that have different distributions [ b, d, g ] with their native language. i want to find out the difficulties faced by the students in listening or producing english words, especially, in smp negeri 2 demak. methods this research uses descriptive qualitative method to find the answer of the objective of the study that is to describe whether the students do errors in perception or production while pronouncing english words which contains english sounds [ b, d, g ], by collecting, analyzing the data, and drawing conclusion based on the data analysis. the conclusion cannot be expressed in number, but in sentences. qualitative research is a research that produces a procedure of analysis. it doesn‟t use a statistical procedure of analysis or the other quantitative method (moleong, 2010: 6). the purpose of descriptive research is to record exactly what happened, whether the researcher is describing an experimental treatment or something occurring in the natural habitat of study participants (lecompte et al. 1993: 39). moore (1983:110) as quoted by sulistyo (2008:29) states population means a complete set of individuals or object having some common observable characteristic. moreover, a population is a set or collection of all elements possessing one or more attributives of interest.” r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 10 i chose the eighth graders students of smpn 2 demak as the population of this research. it was based on consideration as the population is homogeneous for the research because they were all the same year. the total numbers of the population used in this research are 310 from the eighth grader students smpn 2 demak. after determining the population, then sample was selected. a good sample is one that representatives and reflects the condition of the population from which it was selected. i used a random sampling technique in collecting data because the population was homogenous. i picked up them randomly as the sample of this research. by using this technique, i hoped that the samples would be representative. instrument plays important role in a research project in which the reliability of the instrument will affect the reliability of the data obtained in the research. tinambunan (1988:75) states some advantages of using multiple choice forms. the advantages are as follows: 1. the multiple choice item is adaptable to subject matter content areas as well as different levels of behavior. it can be used in assessing ability to reason, discriminate, interpret, analyze, make inferences and solve problems. 2. the structure of a premise with three alternatives provides less chance for guessing the correct response. 3. three options in the multiple choice test provide more incorrect choice for selections of responses by the students who don‟t know the best or correct answer. 4. the difficulty of multiple choice item can be controlled by changing alternatives. the more homogeneous the alternatives, the more difficult it is to select the correct response from the given alternatives. from the statements above, i use multiple-choice test to obtain data because multiple choice is easy to analyze and to determine how well each alternative functioned in discriminating between the higher achieving and the lower achieving students. furthermore, the test consisted of 90 items. each item contained a blank, in which the respondents were supported to answer by choosing and crossing the best answer a, b, or c. in constructing all the questions in the test items, i used daily vocabularies, which are familiar with the respondents. i hoped they would have no problem with the test items. results and discussions the study aims to analyze the cause of errors made by the eighth year students of smpn 2 demak, whether in the level of perception or production. the data collected through perception and production test. in the perception test, the students were asked to have listening test consisted of 90 multiple choice items and for the speaking test, the students were asked to pronounce 30 english words consisted the english voiced stop [b, d, g]. the tests were used to find the errors in the level of perception and production which later will be analyzed. the data analyzed in this study were those sounds that falsely judged by the students in listening test and english words that pronounced incorrectly in the spesking test. the following table, table 1, shows the number of errors by the students in the listening test. sample code total proportion (%) s01 2 2,2% s02 10 11,1% s03 1 1% r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 11 s04 1 1% s05 4 4,4% s06 12 13,3% s07 12 13,3% s08 11 12,2% s09 15 16,7 s10 4 4,4% s11 2 2,2% s12 5 5,5% s13 8 8,9% s14 3 3,3% s15 1 1% s16 7 7,8% s17 0 0% s18 7 7,8% s19 3 3,3% s20 1 1% s21 7 7,8% s22 6 6,7% s23 4 4,4% s24 3 3,3% s25 3 3,3% s26 7 7,8% s27 2 2,2% s28 6 6,7% s29 5 5,5% s30 2 2,2% total 154 average 5,13 6,07% table 3.1. errors by the students in the listening test table 1 shows that the students didn‟t find any difficulties in perceiving [b, d, g] sounds. the lowest proportion of errors was 0% and the highest proportion is only 16,7%. the average (mean) proportion of the errors in listening test were 6,07%, less than 10%, which means the students didn‟t find any difficulties to differentiate words contained english voiced stop [b, d, g] and the distractor words based on brown absolute rating scale. in the production test, the students were asked to pronounce 30 english words contains english voiced stop [b, d, g]. then, i analyze the errors made by the students as shown in the table 2 below. r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 12 no words freq propo-rtion 1 cab 12 40,0% 2 cob 8 26,7% 3 cub 9 30,0% 4 hob 14 46,7% 5 mob 9 30,0% 6 nab 12 40,0% 7 nob 11 36,7% 8 rib 13 43,3% 9 rob 11 36,7% 10 tab 12 40,0% total errors 111 average 11,1 37% table 3.2. substitution errors of voiced stop [ b ] table 2. shown the errors made by the students of smpn 2 demak in production test. the first 10 items in the production test were the english words that contains final voiced stop [ b ]. they were cab, cob, cub, hob, mob, nab, nob, rib, rob, and tab. as shown in the table 4.2 there were a total of 111 errors made by the students, with the average errors of 11,1 (37%). the highest frequency of error was also found in the item number 4 for 46,7% of the students made error. the words number 4 is „hob‟, the correct pronounciation is [ hab ] where the students‟ pronounciation was [ hap ]. since in bahasa the voiced stops are never found in utterance final position, indonesian students may have difficulty to pronounce the final voiced stop. no words freq propo-rtion 1 bad 9 30,0% 2 bed 8 26,7% 3 code 3 10,0% 4 food 8 26,7% 5 had 13 43,3% 6 hid 4 13,3% 7 kid 5 16,7% 8 led 7 23,3% 9 nod 6 20,0% 10 sad 7 23,3% total errors 70 average 7,0 23,3% table 3.3. substitution errors of voiced stop [ d ] the second 10 items in the production test were the english words that contains voiced stop [ d ]. they were bad, bed, code, food, had, hid, kid, led, nod, and sad. as shown in the table 4.3 there were a total of 70 errors made by the students, with the average errors of 7,0 (23,3%). the high frequency of error was also found in the item number 5 for 43,3% of the students made error. the words number 4 is „had’, the correct pronounciation is [ hæd ] where the students‟ pronounciation was [ had ]. since in bahasa the voiced stops are never found in utterance final position, indonesian students may have difficulty to pronounce the final voiced stop. r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 13 no words freq propo-rtion 1 bag 8 26,7% 2 brig 9 30,0% 3 bug 7 23,3% 4 dog 9 30,0% 5 dug 7 23,3% 6 log 5 16,7% 7 mug 8 26,7% 8 pig 5 16,7% 9 rig 6 20,0% 10 tag 9 30,0% total errors 73 average 7,3 24,3% table 3.4. substitution errors of voiced stop [ g ] the last 10 items in the production test were the english words that contains voiced stop [ g ]. they were bag, brig, bug, dog, dug, log, mug, pig, rig, and tag. as shown in the table 4.4 there were a total of 73 errors made by the students, with the average errors of 7,3 (24,3%). the high frequency of error was also found in the item number 2, 4, and 10 for 30,0% of the students made error. the word number 2 is „brig’, word number 4 is „dog‟, word number 10 is „tag‟ , the correct pronounciation for the word brig is [ brɪg ] where the students‟ pronounciation was [ brɪk ], second, the correct pronounciation for the word dog is [ dɔg ] where the students‟ pronounciation was [ dɔk ], third, the correct pronounciation for the word tag is [ tæg ] while the students‟ pronounciation was [ tæk ]. the students found it difficult to pronounce the english word „brig’, „dog‟, and „tag‟ since in bahasa the voiced stops are never found in utterance final position. from the table 1, we can see that the students found it easy to determine the right answer in the listening (perception) test. it can be seen from the value of the mean or the average errors of the students. tinambunan (1988:103) says the mean is the average of a group of scores. it is represented by the letter m or (x). the mean is the sum of all the values in a distribution divided by the number of cases or it is the average or arithmetic average of a group of scores. tinambunan (1998: 103) also adds “the computation of mean from ungrouped data is done by adding a series of scores and then dividing this sum by the number of scores.” there are an average of 84,8% of correct answers, while the incorrect answers are on the average of 5,51%. i classified the students‟ achievement by using five letters, those are a, b, c, d and f, which expressed various level of achievement. in addition, it was relatively easy to translate from letter grading to percentage grading. the standard is as follows: percentage of correct answer grade level of achievement 93-100 percent correct a = outstanding outstanding achievement 85-92 percent correct b = very good above average achievement 75-84 percent correct c = satisfactory average achievement 60-74 percent correct d = very weak below average achievement below 60 percent correct f = fail insufficient achievement r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 14 the students‟ achievement could be classified based on the categorization or grade. based on the categorization, the students‟ achievement can be classified as follows: number of students grade percentages of students 20 a 66,7 % 9 b 30 % 1 c 3,3% 0 d 0 % 0 f 0% the result of the test showed clearly that 20 students or 66,7 % got a, 9 students or 30 % got b, and 1 students or 3,3 % got c. the result from the analysis showed that 29 students or 63.33% of 30 students got very good grade. it means that they found no difficulties in the listening test. speaking test no sample code correct incorrect 1 s01 96,7% 3,3% 2 s02 56,7% 43,3% 3 s03 73,3% 26,7% 4 s04 80,0% 20,0% 5 s05 96,7% 3,3% 6 s06 93,3% 6,7% 7 s07 30,0% 70,0% 8 s08 46,7% 53,3% 9 s09 70,0% 30,0% 10 s10 90,0% 10,0% 11 s11 96,7% 3,3% 12 s12 70,0% 30,0% 13 s13 76,7% 23,3% 14 s14 0% 100% 15 s15 93,3% 6,7% 16 s16 40,0% 60,0% 17 s17 86,7% 13,3% 18 s18 76,7% 23,3% 19 s19 40,0% 60,0% r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 15 20 s20 93,3% 6,7% 21 s21 66,7% 33,3% 22 s22 96,7% 3,3% 23 s23 0% 100% 24 s24 73,3% 26,7% 25 s25 53,3% 46,7% 26 s26 33,3% 66,7% 27 s27 90,0% 10,0% 28 s28 70% 30% 29 s29 73,3% 26,7% 30 s30 80,0% 20,0% average 68,11% 31,89% from the table above, we can see that the students found it easy to determine the right answer in the listening (perception) test. it can be seen from the value of the mean or the average errors of the students. there are an average of 84,8% of correct answers, while the incorrect answers are on the average of 5,51%. i classified the students‟ achievement by using five letters, those are a, b, c, d and f, which expressed various level of achievement. in addition, it was relatively easy to translate from letter grading to percentage grading. conclusions after conducting the research, doing the analysis, and presenting the results, in this last chapter, i will draw a conclusion from what i have discussed in the previous chapters. subsequently, i will also offer a number of suggestions regarding with the teaching and learning practice in smp n 2 demak. based on the interview in the school under study, narrative text was stated to be the most difficult one among the other text types (functional text, procedure, recount, descriptive, report) for the students. in narrative text, students are often asked to figure out the message, main idea, and even particular information from the story. to overcome this problem, the teachers manage this problem by implementing various kinds of teaching techniques. one of them is deducing meaning from context. it is applied as a technique which enables the students to deduce meaning of a word by observing its context. this was the reason why this research is conducted whether or not there was a significant correlation between the students‟ mastery of deducing meaning from context and their reading comprehension of narrative text. the data analysis showed that both students‟ mastery of deducing meaning from context and reading comprehension of narrative text were still poor. it was proved from the average of deducing meaning from context was 53.3 and reading comprehension of narrative text was 56.7. the result of the data analysis also showed that the correlation coefficient between the two variables was 0.85, while the critical value for 5 % significance level was 0.433. thus, it could be concluded that there was a very significant correlation between the students‟ mastery of deducing meaning from context and their reading comprehension of narrative text. from the result of analysis it could also be seen that in general both the students‟ mastery of deducing meaning from context and their reading comprehension of narrative text were still poor. r. biantoro, a. sisbiyanto, suprapto / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 16 based on the finding, i would like to give some suggestions to be considered. 1. teachers as the center of the teaching and learning process play an important role in every development of their students. language teaching is different from other subjects, teachers not only dealing with the language itself but has to know the art of using the language, the art of how the native people using their language. english teachers, they play more than two roles since they‟re not only dealing with english itself but also the native language of their students. many of the students still carry the attributes of their mother language. teachers must learns more about pronunciations. they should be a good model for their students. instead of just showing whats right or wrong, they can ask their students the reason why it is right or wrong. 2. the students often struggle to pronounce some unfamiliar words in english. so it will be better if the students enrich their vocabulary through real life, such as television, social media, and internet. social media can be extremely useful to them if they use it well. references alderson, j. charles. 2000. assessing reading. melbourne: cambridge university press. arikunto, suharsimi. 2010. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta : rineka cipta. bastian, aj. 2013. a correlation study between student‟s reading interest toward their vocabulary mastery. skripsi. salatiga : stain. pdf 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rostanti. 2009. students‟ mastery of reading skills and its correlation with their reading comprehension ability. thesis. bandung : upi. pdf. vallette, rebecca m. 1997. modern language testing. english : harcourt college publication. california standards test. wiyasa, pangestu adi. 2015. improving students‟ english reading skills by using peer assisted learning strategies of grade vii students of smp 1 jogonalan klaten in the academic year of 2013/2014. thesis. yogyakarta : uny.pdf. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were 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microsoft word 8. nur aeni afiati mafuroh 86 coherence in students’ analytical exposition texts nur aeni afiati mafuroh, yusnita sylvia ningrum  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 25 october 2018 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: analytical exposition; coherence; schematic structure; thematic choices; thematic development ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aims to reveal the coherence of 19 analytical exposition texts written by the fourth semester students of english department of unnes through analysis of schematic structure, thematic choices, and thematic development. coherence is an essential component to create a make-sense text. thus, it is very important to know the students’ competency in writing a good text. this study applied a qualitative approach. it employed theories of schematic structure based on stages proposed by gerot and wignell (1995), thematic choices from gerot and wignell (1995) and thematic development by eggins (2004). the findings indicated that students preferably used topical theme (67.79%) and textual theme (30.42%). in addition, in terms of thematic development, theme reiteration is the most common pattern applied by the students. based on the findings, students’ texts were less coherence because there were several texts having an incomplete thesis at the beginning of the paragraph and one text leaving 1 out of 3 stages of exposition text. furthermore, the over-use of theme reiteration might show that the students’ writing skill is low because they could not elaborate their ideas through various methods. therefore, it is suggested that the students should learn how to organize their ideas into a coherent analytical exposition text. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: aeni9037@gmail.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 87 introduction there are four skills of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. to master a language including english, those skills are, then, very important. among those language skills, writing is considered as the most difficult skill for english as a foreign language (efl) students (fitriati & yonata, 2017; kilic, genc, & bada, 2016). the difficulties in writing are due to some aspects, starting from choice of words, grammar, spelling, punctuation to the more complicated aspects such as generating ideas and putting these ideas together in harmonious and logical ways (katrini & farikah, 2015). in other words, there are many things to consider when a student wants to produce a good text. producing a text is not only about how to express the writer’s ideas by using appropriate structures. it is not only about putting ideas in a combination of words, but also turning such ideas logically into a readable text (katrini & farikah, 2015). the text which is understandable is called a coherent text. text coherence has been a point of interest of some writing experts. for example, oshima and hogue (2006) explained that coherence means all sentences hold together in which the movement of one sentence to the next is logical and smooth. thornburry (2005) also argued that a coherent text is a text which makes sense to the readers. it means a writer must write a make-sense text to the readers by arranging the sentences in the text so that they move logically and smoothly. thornburry (2005) mentioned two perspectives of analyzing coherence, the micro and macro levels. while micro level coherence can be realized through texts’ logical relations and theme-rheme; in the macro level, coherence is achieved by looking at texts’ lexical chains, schemas and scripts. in regards to this study, i analyzed text coherence through analysis of schematic structure in order to recognize the genre of the text, thematic choices in order to know how students write a text effectively by paying attention to the front of the clause, and thematic development analysis in order to find out how students shape their writing through pattern they mostly use. if the students can use the patterns well, their writings certainly have logical movement of ideas. the failure to construct a logic movement of sentences may lead the readers misunderstand, or worse they may have different interpretation to writer’s purpose of writing, for example in writing analytical exposition. gerot and wignell (1995) defined an analytical exposition as a text which persuades the readers that something is the important case. to make the readers believe, the writers must write a well-organized exposition text. however, many efl students still got difficulties in writing a coherent exposition text. they had problems of empty theme and empty rheme (setiawati, 2016). they also did not use thematic patterns for all clauses (ervina, sukmawati, & zakiyah, 2016). in addition, it was found that some analytical exposition texts had no reiteration at the last paragraph (undayasari & saleh, 2018). seemingly, coherence is still the current issue which happened to efl students. thus, this study is an attempt to reveal coherence in analytical exposition texts through analysis of schematic structure, thematic choices, and thematic development. to sum up, the objectives of this study are to (1) figure out the schematic structure in the students’ exposition texts, (2) find out the types of thematic choices and thematic development found in students’ exposition texts, and (3) examine the students’ exposition texts coherence in terms of schematic structure, thematic choices, and thematic development patterns. methods this study used a qualitative research since it is aimed to reveal the coherence in analytical exposition texts through schematic structure, thematic choices, and thematic development in nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 88 the form of words. the object of this study was 19 analytical exposition texts written by the fourth semester students of unnes majoring in english education and taking genre-based writing (gbw) class in rombel 207-208 in the academic year of 2017/2018. to collect the data, the researcher firstly asked the students to give permission. after that, the researcher asked them to send the copy of the data via email or whatsapp. finally, the researcher listed the texts based on the students’ register numbers. then, were several steps to analyze the data: (1) reading each of texts, (2) analyzing the schematic structure of each text, (3) diving each text into clauses, (4) determining thematic choices (5) analyzing thematic development, (6) presenting the data in forms of tables, (7) interpreting the data based on theories from gerot and wignell (1995) and eggins (2004), and (8) concluding the findings. findings and dicussions schematic structure in students’ analytical exposition texts the finding of schematic structure was presented in the following table. table 1 schematic structure analysis in students’ exposition texts texts components of analysis thesis arguments reiteration text 1    text 2    text 3    text 4 *   text 5 *   text 6 *   text 7 *   text 8  only 1 argument elaborated text 9    text 10 *   text 11 *   text 12    text 13 *   text 14    text 15    text 16    text 17 *   text 18 *   text 19    note: * means the thesis only contains the writer’s position. there is no preview or the writers did not outline the main arguments to be presented. according to table 1, there were 3 types of schematic structures found in the students’ analytical exposition texts elaborated below. thesis, arguments, and reiteration the example could be illustrated by text 14. according to gerot and wignell (1995, pp. 197198), thesis must contain writer’s position and preview. the thesis on text 14 was realized in the sentence “one of the methods to teach english to the early childhood is using children’s songs, because children’s songs have some benefits”. from this sentence, the writer’s position was positive because she agreed to use songs in teaching english. moreover, the preview could be seen in the words “because children’s songs have some benefits”. it could be assumed that in the next paragraphs, the writer would elaborately inform the benefits of children’s songs. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 89 paragraph 2 and 3 were the arguments of the text. paragraph 2 performed the first benefit of children song. it was realized by the sentence “firstly, the lyrics of children’s songs are not too long and not complicated”. next, paragraph 3 used the sentence “secondly, the tone and rhythm of the children’s songs will make the children’s mood become happy” as the second benefit of the songs to teach english for children. in addition, the last paragraph was the conclusion of the text. the writer concluded her arguments by writing the sentence “in conclusion, children’s songs are really good for early childhood to learn english because children’s songs are not complicated with entertaining lyrics and have good tone with exciting dance movement”. in other words, she restated her arguments briefly. incomplete thesis, arguments, and reiteration the example of the text containing this schematic structure could be illustrated by text 5. as explained by gerot and wignell (1995), a thesis must have position and preview. however, in paragraph 1 of the text 5, the writer only showed her position for the issue. in the first paragraph, she just informed what 5 words per day is effective without giving the main reasons or arguments. in other words, she only showed her agreement of using this method. she did not give the reasons why this method is good in learning english. paragraphs 2,3, and 4 were the arguments of the text. in paragraph 2, the writer informed the first reason of using 5 words per day method. it was realized by the sentence “firstly, the ability of the human brain has its limits”. then, paragraph 3 showed the second reason to use 5 words per day method, which could be seen in the sentence “secondly, this method doesn’t take much time”. moreover, in paragraph 4, the sentence “thirdly, this method is quite fun and will not bore us” can be regarded as the third reason. furthermore, paragraph 5 was the reiteration or conclusion of the text. the writer reiterated her arguments by writing the sentence “thus, for the reason above, we can conclude that this method should be applied for beginners and for all.” thesis, incomplete arguments, and no reiteration the example of the text having such schematic structure was realized in text 8. in the first paragraph, the writer could make a good thesis by writing the sentence “this method is quite effective to improve students’ skill in speaking english because it’s more focused on speaking and listening practice rather than writing and reading”. from this sentence, it seemed that the writer showed her agreement of using audio-lingual method in learning english. moreover, she also introduced two main arguments that were about speaking and listening skills. however, in paragraph 2-4, the writer only restated and developed her first argument about speaking skill. she did not elaborate her second argument properly that was about listening skill. in addition, she also did not summarize her all arguments. therefore, the schematic structure of text 8 was not good because it left one out of three stages of analytical exposition text thematic choices in students’ analytical exposition texts the first finding was about three types of theme: topcal (ideational), textual, and interpersonal theme (gerot & wignell, 1995; halliday, 2014). the finding was presented in table 2. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 90 table 2 types of themes in students' analytical exposition texts texts topical textual interpersonal f % f % f % text 1 24 3.97 13 4.8 0 0 text 2 22 3.64 16 5.9 0 0 text 3 21 3.48 9 3.32 0 0 text 4 30 4.97 6 2.21 2 12.5 text 5 24 3.97 13 4.8 0 0 text 6 33 5.46 10 3.69 0 0 text 7 43 7.12 15 5.54 1 6.25 text 8 44 7.28 11 4.06 0 0 text 9 34 5.63 14 5.17 2 12.5 text 10 29 4.8 13 4.8 1 6.25 text 11 44 7.29 16 5.9 2 12.5 text 12 46 7.62 25 9.23 2 12.5 text 13 28 4.64 13 4.8 0 0 text 14 22 3.64 12 4.42 0 0 text 15 55 9.11 27 9.96 4 25 text 16 28 4.64 16 5.9 0 0 text 17 15 2.48 8 2.95 2 12.5 text 18 29 4.8 13 4.8 0 0 text 19 33 5.46 21 7.75 0 0 total 604 100 271 100 16 100 % total theme types % total topical % total textual % total interpersonal 67.79 30.42 1.79 table 4.2 performed that topical theme (67.79%) was the dominant type of theme followed by textual theme (30.42%) and interpersonal theme (1.79%). example 1 (text 15 clause 7) 7 because, generally a child imitate struct. modal adjunct nom. group rheme 7 text. inter. un. top. theme 7 this example contained three types of themes which can be realized by the words “because”, “generally, and “a child”. topical theme topical theme is divided into unmarked and marked as shown in table 3. table 3 types of topical themes in students' exposition texts texts unmarked marked f % f % text 1 20 3.7 4 6.25 text 2 19 3.52 3 4.6 text 3 20 3.7 1 1.57 text 4 23 4.26 7 11 text 5 21 3.9 3 4.6 text 6 31 5.74 2 3.2 text 7 34 6.3 9 14.1 text 8 41 7.59 3 4.6 text 9 33 6.11 1 1.57 text 10 25 4.64 4 6.25 text 11 42 7.78 2 3.2 text 12 43 7.96 3 4.6 text 13 25 4.63 3 4.6 text 14 22 4.07 0 0 text 15 49 9.44 6 6.25 nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 91 text 16 26 4.81 2 3.2 text 17 10 1.85 5 7.81 text 18 23 4.26 6 9.4 text 19 31 5.74 2 3.2 total 538 100 66 100 % total topical types % total unmarked topical % total marked topical 89.07 10.93 table 3 showed that the occurrence of unmarked topical was higher than marked topical theme. while marked topical only performed 10.93%, unmarked topical theme achieved the higher occurrence with the percentage of 89.07%. unmarked topical theme based on gerot and wignell (1995), in a declarative clause, unmarked topical theme can be defined as the subject of the clause. there are several subjects or elements of unmarked topical theme including nominal group, nominal group complex, and nominalization or embedded clause. halliday (2004, p. 85) also argued that in a wh-interrogative clause, whitems have the function as unmarked topical theme because they represent participant or circumstance. the following table is the result of unmarked topical themes types found in students’ exposition texts. table 4 types of unmarked topical themes in students’ exposition texts texts ng ng cp. embed. str. rel. exist. wh-intr. f % f % f % f % f % f % text 1 20 4.18 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 2 18 3.76 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 7.69 0 0 text 3 18 3.76 1 10 0 0 1 3.03 0 0 0 0 text 4 22 4.59 0 0 0 0 1 3.03 0 0 0 0 text 5 19 3.97 0 0 1 50 0 0 1 7.69 0 0 text 6 31 6.47 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 7 29 6.05 1 10 0 0 3 9.09 1 7.69 0 0 text 8 33 6.89 4 40 0 0 2 6.06 2 15.4 0 0 text 9 29 6.05 0 0 0 0 3 9.09 0 0 1 100 text 10 23 4.8 1 10 0 0 0 0 1 7.69 0 0 text 11 39 8.14 0 0 0 0 2 6.06 1 7.69 0 0 text 12 40 8.35 1 10 0 0 2 6.06 0 0 0 0 text 13 24 5.01 0 0 0 0 1 3.03 0 0 0 0 text 14 19 3.97 1 10 0 0 2 6.06 0 0 0 0 text 15 39 8.14 0 0 0 0 7 21.2 3 23.1 0 0 text 16 21 4.38 0 0 0 0 3 9.09 2 15.4 0 0 text 17 8 1.67 1 10 0 0 0 0 1 7.69 0 0 text 18 20 4.18 0 0 1 50 2 6.06 0 0 0 0 text 19 27 5.64 0 0 0 0 4 12.1 0 0 0 0 total 479 100 10 100 2 100 33 100 13 100 1 100 % total un. top. 89.03 1.86 0.37 6.13 2.42 0.19 89.03 1.86 0.37 6.13 2.42 0.19 as shown in table 4, students used all types of unmarked topical theme suggested by gerot and wignell (1995). it was found that nominal group was the dominant subject used by the students was nominal group due to performing 89.03% followed by structural relative (6.13%), existential (2.42%), nominal group complex (1.86%), embedded clause (0.37%), and wh-interrogative (0.19%). the examples of unmarked topical theme were presented below. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 92 example 2 (text 2 clause 10) 10 the students could share their knowledge and opinion in doing the exercises and discussing the answer to the exercises. nom. group rheme 10 un. top. theme 10 example 3 (text 3 clause 7) 7 ostrander and schroeder cited in harmer said nom. group complex rheme 7 un. top. theme 7 example 4 (text 5 clause 22) 22 the results we get will always be attached to our memories. embedded clause rheme 22 un. top. theme 22 example 5 (text 1 clause 18) 18 reading english newspapers can be supplementary to texts books. nom. group rheme 18 un. top. theme 18 example 6 (text 11 clause 21) 21 there are some benefits of using picture. existential rheme 21 un. top. theme 21 example 7 (text 12 clause 29) 29 who have learning difficulties in all subjects. struct. rel. rheme 29 un. top. theme 29 example 8 (text 9 clause 5) 5 so what is the best way to learn english in the shortest amount of time? struct. wh-inter. rheme 5 text. un. top. theme 5 examples 5-8 showed the various functions of unmarked topical theme other than participant. example 5 used the words “reading english newspapers” in order to represent the theme functioning as a process. example 6 used the word “there” in order to represent the theme functioning as an existential. example 7 used the word “who” in order to represent the theme functioning as wh-relative. furthermore, example 8 used the word “what” in order to represent the theme functioning as wh-interrogative. thus, there are many ways of presenting unmarked topical theme. marked topical theme nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 93 in a declarative clause, marked theme refers to the topical theme which is not the subject. marked topical theme is not common to appear in the beginning of a sentence or clause. according to gerot and wignell (1995), marked topical theme usually happens in the forms of adverbial, prepositional phrase, and complement. the finding showed that students used three types of marked topical as mentioned by gerot and wignell (1995). the following table is the result of marked topical theme. table 5 types of marked topical themes in students’ exposition texts texts adverbial prep. phrase complement f % f % f % text 1 0 0 4 6.35 0 0 text 2 0 0 3 4.76 0 0 text 3 0 0 1 1.6 0 0 text 4 0 0 7 11.1 0 0 text 5 0 0 3 4.76 0 0 text 6 0 0 1 1.6 1 100 text 7 2 100 7 11.1 0 0 text 8 0 0 3 4.76 0 0 text 9 0 0 1 1.6 0 0 text 10 0 0 4 6.35 0 0 text 11 0 0 2 3.17 0 0 text 12 0 0 3 4.76 0 0 text 13 0 0 3 4.76 0 0 text 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 15 0 0 6 9.52 0 0 text 16 0 0 2 3.17 0 0 text 17 0 0 5 7.95 0 0 text 18 0 0 6 9.52 0 0 text 19 0 0 2 3.17 0 0 total 2 100 63 100 1 100 % total marked topical types % total adverbial % total prep. phrase % total complement 3.03 95.45 1.52 from this table, prepositional phrase (95.45%) was more frequent than adverbial group (3.03%). on the contrary, complement (1.52%) was the rarest subject used by the students. example 9 (text 7 clause 23) 23 and automatically they will learn how to pronounce the words correctly. struct. adverbial rheme 23 text. marked top. theme 23 example 10 (text 1 clause 16) 16 by reading english newspapers students can have knowledge about their country as well as about the world. prep. phrase rheme 16 marked topical theme 16 example 11 (text 4 clause 16) 16 in public places we need to have a confidence. prep. phrase rheme 16 marked topical theme 16 nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 94 example 12 (text 17 clause 8) 8 almost everyday we may listen to western music / song anytime and everywhere without realizing prep. phrase rheme 8 marked top. theme 8 example 13 (text 6 clause 13) 13 or the way teacher(s)speak struct. complement rheme 13 text. marked topical theme 13 according to example 9-13, it could be assumed that there are various ways of presenting marked topical theme. textual theme the finding of textual themes was presented in table below. table 6 types of textual themes in students' exposition texts texts continuative conjunctive adjunct structural f % f % f % text 1 0 0 7 10.3 6 2.97 text 2 0 0 5 7.35 11 5.44 text 3 0 0 2 2.94 7 3.47 text 4 0 0 1 1.48 5 2.48 text 5 0 0 4 5.88 9 4.46 text 6 0 0 1 1.48 9 4.46 text 7 0 0 2 2.94 13 6.44 text 8 0 0 0 0 11 5.44 text 9 0 0 2 2.94 12 5.94 text 10 0 0 3 4.41 10 4.95 text 11 0 0 4 5.88 12 5.94 text 12 0 0 6 8.82 19 9.4 text 13 0 0 2 2.94 11 5.44 text 14 0 0 3 4.41 9 4.46 text 15 0 0 9 11.76 18 9.4 text 16 0 0 6 8.82 10 4.95 text 17 1 100 1 1.48 6 2.97 text 18 0 0 5 8.82 8 3.47 text 19 0 0 5 7.35 16 7.92 total 1 100 68 100 202 100 % total textual theme types % total cont. % total conj. adj. % total struct. 0.4 25.1 74.5 as presented in table 6, structural was the most frequent of textual theme due to appearing 74.5% whereas conjunctive adjunct performed 25.1%. on the contrary, the rarest of textual theme was continuative with the percentage of 0.4%. example 14 (text 17 clause 14) 14 well from the memorized lyrics we can learn new words, expressions or phrases. cont. prep. phrase rheme 14 text. marked topical theme 14 nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 95 the second type of textual theme is conjunctive adjunct. as said by gerot and wignell (1995), conjunctive adjuncts are free to move in a clause. the result of conjunctive adjuncts was presented in table 7. table 7 types of conjunctive adjuncts in students' exposition texts no add. temp. causal sum. adv. verif. app. correct. cond. text 1 5 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 2 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 3 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 4 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 5 0 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 6 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 7 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 text 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 9 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 10 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 11 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 12 1 0 2 1 2 0 0 0 0 text 13 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 14 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 15 0 1 3 1 1 0 1 1 1 text 16 0 4 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 text 17 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 text 18 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 text 19 2 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 14 26 11 9 4 1 1 1 1 % 20.5 38.2 16.2 13.2 5.9 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 table 7 portrayed that there were several types of conjunctive adjuncts realized in students’ exposition texts. those types were additive, temporal, causal, summative, adversative, verificative, appositive, corrective, and conditional. from those types, the highest percentage was found in temporal type because it appeared 38.2%. the most recurring temporal type functioning as conjunctive adjunct was “then”. the following is the example of conjunctive adjunct. example 15 (text 15 clause 24) 24 then, a child like something conj. adj. nom. group rheme 24 text. un. top. theme 24 example 15 revealed the most frequent conjunctive adjuncts was realized in the word “then”. the last type of textual theme is structural. the common structurals functioning as textual theme were “that” and “because” as shown in examples below. example 16 (text 4 clause 28) 28 that oral presentation is very important for university students’ thought and professional. struct. nom. group rheme 28 text. un. top. theme 28 nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 96 example 17 (text 4 clause 12) 12 because we kindly open our mind to receive other’s opinions. struct. nom. group rheme 12 text. un. top. theme 12 interpersonal theme gerot and wignell (1995) mentioned that interpersonal theme includes modal adjunct, vocative, finite, and wh-interrogative. however, students only applied modal adjunct. the most frequent types of modal adjunct were “of course”, “once”, and “now” as shown in the following examples. example 18 (text 11 clause 42) 42 of course they will speak modal adjunct nom. group rheme 42 inter. un. top. theme 42 example 19 (text 9 clause 17) 17 once you have listened to the english audio book modal adjunct nom. group rheme 17 inter. un. top. theme 17 example 20 (text 15 clause 1) 1 now english is a second language modal adjunct nom. group rheme 1 inter. un. top. theme 1 thematic development in students’ analytical exposition texts the finding of thematic developments was presented in the following table. table 8 types of thematic development in students’ exposition texts texts theme reiteration zig-zag pattern multiple rheme f % f % f % text 1 12 8.51 3 2.4 0 0 text 2 5 3.55 2 1.6 0 0 text 3 4 2.84 3 2.4 1 33.33 text 4 6 4.27 6 4.8 0 0 text 5 8 5.67 0 0 0 0 text 6 9 6.38 3 2.4 0 0 text 7 9 6.38 13 10.4 0 0 text 8 9 6.38 10 8 1 33.33 text 9 10 7.1 5 4 0 0 text 10 3 2.13 8 6.4 0 0 text 11 17 12 6 4.8 0 0 text 12 10 7.1 6 4.8 1 33.33 text 13 6 4.27 3 2.4 0 0 text 14 5 3.55 4 3.2 0 0 text 15 6 4.27 20 16 0 0 text 16 9 6.38 10 8 0 0 text 17 3 2.13 5 4 0 0 text 18 2 1.42 9 7.2 0 0 text 19 8 5.67 9 7.2 0 0 nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 97 total 141 100 125 100 3 100 % total pattern types % total reiteration % total zig-zag % total multiple rheme 52.41 46.47 1.12 table 8 showed that theme reiteration pattern (52.41%) was mostly used by the students in writing analytical exposition texts followed by zig-zag pattern (46.47%) and multiple rheme pattern (1.12%). theme reiteration the example of theme reiteration pattern could be seen below. example of theme reiteration pattern in text 1 clause theme rheme 14 besides, english newspapers help students to enjoy reading, based on their interests. 15 so, the english newspapers can be learners personal english classroom and can help students acquire higher level of proficiency in english. 16 by reading english newspapers students can have knowledge about their country as well as about the world. 17 again, reading english newspapers widens students outlook and enriches their knowledge. 18 reading english newspapers can be supplementary to texts books. this example revealed that theme reiteration pattern could be found on text 1. in this pattern, the theme of the first clause is also selected as the theme of the following clause. from this table, the theme was “english newspapers”. the theme in clause 14 was also chosen as the theme in clause 15-18. zig-zag pattern the following was the example of the zig-zag pattern found in text 7. example of zig-zag pattern in text 7 clause theme rheme 3 in indonesia, english is used as a foreign language. 4 english is divided into four skills 5 which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 6 all of these skills should be taught by english teachers (depdiknas, 2006:307). based on the example above, zig-zag pattern could be found in text 7. this pattern performed that the rheme of a clause became the theme of the following clause. in clause 4, the theme was about “english” which was taken from the rheme in clause 3. next, in clause 5, the theme is “which” referred to the rheme in clause 4. moreover, the theme in clause 6 also referred to the rheme in clause 5. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 98 multiple rheme pattern the following is the example of multiple rheme pattern which could be realized in text 8. example of multiple rheme pattern in text 8 clause theme rheme 28 there are some types of drill: repetition drill and substitution drill. 29 in repetition drill, we only ask the students to repeat sentences or words said before without making any change. 30 in substitution, the students have to substitute the words in sentence with the words the teacher about to mention, this example provided the use of multiple rheme pattern in the students’ exposition taken from text 8. multiple rheme occurred when a clause contained more than one information, and each of which would become the theme of the subsequent clauses. in clause 27, the rheme informed two ideas. those ideas were about two drills: “repetition drill” and “substitution drill”. the first idea then was elaborated in clause 29 and the second idea was developed in clause 30. the result of schematic structure showed a similarity and a difference with studies committed by garintama (2018) and undayasari and saleh (2018). the similarity could be seen in the use of reiteration as the last stage in analytical exposition. based on the findings, there was one text which had no reiteration. both this current study and those previous studies found that “reiteration” was one of the components of analytical exposition which is commonly left by a few students. the difference between this current study and studies from garintama (2018) and undayasari and saleh (2018) was in the use of thesis and arguments. although students had already applied good schematic structure, there were several theses which were not complete. some students only gave their position towards the topic presented in the text. they did not inform their preview. thus, students might get difficulty in creating a good thesis and reiteration. the result of topical theme as the dominant type of theme is in line with the results of previous studies committed by az-zahro (2017), babaii et al. (2016), jalilifar et al. (2017), katrini and farikah (2015), setiawati (2016), and undayasari and saleh (2018). those previous studies figured out that topical theme was frequently used by the students instead of textual and interpersonal theme. this occured because almost all of the students’ analytical exposition texts contained declarative sentences which put subject as the starting point of the clause. from the view of thematic developments, this finding is similar to the result of studies conducted by setiawati (2016) and undayasari and saleh (2018). theme reiteration was mainly used because it is easy for students especially novice writers to organize their ideas by using the same participant as the theme in each clause. conclusions firstly, students used three schematic structures including texts containing thesis, arguments, and reiteration, texts comprising incomplete thesis, arguments, and reiteration, and a text only consisting of thesis and incomplete argument. considering those structures, students might get difficulties in organizing a good thesis and reiteration. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 99 secondly, topical theme was mainly used instead of textual and interpersonal theme. then, in terms of thematic developments, theme reiteration was the dominant pattern because it is the easiest way in organizing ideas in which the students simply use theme on the first clause to be the theme on the next clauses. in conclusion, students’ texts were less coherent. although they had used a correct schematic structure, there were several texts having an incomplete thesis and there was also one text which left 1 out of 3 stages of analytical exposition text. in addition, from the view of thematic developments, the over-use of theme reiteration might show that the students’ writing skill is low because they could not elaborate their ideas through various methods. suggestions for the english students, they should learn how to organize a good thesis in order to write a coherent analytical exposition text. furthermore, it is suggested that english teachers or lecturers should relate the material of thematic choices and thematic development. during the process of learning, they also should give clear explanation and instruction in order to make the students understand. in addition, for the future researchers, they are expected to find an alternative approach or way to help the students in writing a coherent text. references az-zahro, u. f. (2017). the coherence of the background of the study of the undergraduate students’ final project proposals. babaii, e., atai, m. r., & shoja, l. (2016). a comparison of thematic choices and thematic progression patterns in the research articles of well-established and emerging disciplines. iranian journal of applied linguistics (ijal), 19(2), 33–60. eggins, s. (2004). an introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.). london: continuum fitriati, s. w., & yonata, f. (2017). examining text coherence in graduate students of english argumentative writing: case study. arab world english journal (awej), 8(3), 251–264. doi: 10.24093/awej/vol8no3.17 garintama, d. y. p. (2018). analysis on analytical exposition text written by eleventh graders of sma hang tuah 4 surabaya. gerot, l., & wignell, p. (1995). making sense of functional grammar. sydney: antipodean educational enterprises (aee). halliday, m. a. k. (2014). halliday ’ s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). new york: routledge. jalilifar, a., alipour, m., & rabiee, m. (2017). a comparative study of thematicity in the argumentative writing of university efl students and the introduction section of research articles. journal of teaching language skills (jtls), 36(1). 85-110. doi: 10.22099/jtls.2017.4043 katrini, y. e., & farikah. (2015). analysis of theme of the analytical exposition texts written by the third semester students of english department of tidar university. international journal of english and education, 4(3). 548-565. kilic, m., genc, b., & bada, e. (2016). topical structure in argumentative essays of efl learners and implications for writing classes. journal of language and linguitic studies, 12(2), 107–116. nur aeni afiati mafuroh & yusnita sylvia ningrum / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 100 oshima, a., & hogue, a. (2006). writing academic english (4th ed.). united states of america: pearson longman setiawati, n. (2016). thematic development on students’ analytical exposition texts. thornburry, s. (2005). beyond the sentence: introducing discourse analysis. oxford: macmillan publisher limited. undayasari, d., & saleh, m. (2018). comparison of thematic structure and progression between english and indonesian exposition texts written by undergraduate students of upi ( rhetorical study ). english education journal, 8(1), 43–50. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421ddcdc20fd • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421fafbea637 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 63 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the influences of tongue twister in teaching pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph] anik kholisoh, alief noor farida  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: aspirated sound; pronunciation; tongue twister. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ speaking english for indonesian students needs more than an effort to master as they cannot produce intelligibly pronunciation. besides, their mother tongue interferes them when there is different sound production between indonesian and english; hence, they have difficulty in pronouncing aspirated sound that does not exist in indonesian. this study aims to find out how indonesian students pronounce aspirated sound [ph] and the influences of tongue twister to teach pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph]. this research uses pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design. the data were collected from the result of pronunciation tests of seventh graders of smp negeri 12 magelang in academic year 2016/2017. the findings showed that students mispronounced [ph] into /p/ as what they had in indonesian. after being taught with tongue twister, the mean score of experiment group increased from 13.28 to 50.16. there was significant difference of the ability between students who were taught pronunciation using tongue twister and those who were not. the t-test result was 0.000 sig 5%; it means there was different ability between control and experiment group after receiving the treatment. based on the result, the researcher concluded that tongue twister helps indonesian students to improve their pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph]. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: anikkholisoh.10595@gmail.com a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 64 introduction the fact that english is considered as inconsistence language is very crucial since its spelling is different from its pronunciation. for english native speaker, it would not be a big problem, but for english as the second language (esl) and english as the foreign language (efl) learners, it may take a long time and need more than an effort to master the language. indonesian students are one of the ones who find it difficult to learn english as indonesia is included in the expanding circle of braj kachru’s circle together with china, egypt, israel, nepal, saudi arabia, zimbabwe and some other countries (yoneoka, 2002). thus, the problem arises in speaking field as the learner cannot produce the intelligibly pronunciation or pronunciation that is good enough to be always understood (harmer, 2001). sometimes esl and efl learners who are good at vocabulary and grammar have some difficulties in pronunciation because they do not learn pronunciation from the early time as they start learning english. in addition, brown (2001) stated that for general speaking, children have an excellent opportunity to sound like native speaker if they keep being in authentic context. consequently, learners in the beginning level need to have more practice if they want to have good ability in pronunciation. unfortunately, indonesian learners do not have sufficient training in this language aspect when they study english at school. as the compulsory subject, each english aspects does not have balance portion in teaching learning process. harmer (2001) revealed that “almost all english teachers get students to study grammar and vocabulary, practice functional dialogues, take part in productive skill activities, and become competent in listening and reading. yet some these same teachers make little attempt to teach pronunciation in any overt way and only give attention to it in passing.” in line with this statement that, in fact in indonesia, pronunciation practice do not have enough portion to be taught in the class because teachers tend to focus on the main lesson material such as reading text. students has not been introduced to any segmental feature such as english sounds nor supra-segmental features such as stress and intonation. another thing to be concerned about learning new language for esl and efl learners is the influence of the native language or first language (l1) to the target language or second language (l2). if some sounds are very similar in both native and target language, the influence is called facilitating. for example, both indonesian and english have sound /n/; for indonesian students, the existence of sound /n/ helps them in acquiring sound /n/ in english because they are somewhat similar. however, the interfering influence comes when indonesian students face english sound /ʒ/ which does not exist in their native language, so does happen for sound [ph] from all those discussions, the main problem for indonesian students is in learning pronunciation practice. it is in line with wulandari (2011) who stated that students meet difficulties in learning english pronunciation due to the different elements between their mother language and the target language. they do not have enough basic knowledge in pronunciation to go one step ahead to speaking so that many indonesian people consider speaking english is very difficult to do and to master. besides, mother tongue interfering problem comes to learners who have learned english but finding hard to be fluent in speaking and hard to catch native speaker spoken due to the different sound production between indonesia and english. thus, learning english pronunciation in the very early level can help to overcome this problem because learners stand a good chance to sound like native speaker. moreover, the way to teach pronunciation needs to be effective so that the learning process gets maximum result. one of the effective method to teach pronunciation is using tongue twister that is fun and challenging as being suggested by prošic-santovac (2009) that “tongue twisters were a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 65 generally perceived as a useful exercise for improving pronunciation, and their potential for providing context for the target phonemes was valued the most.” this study aims to find out how indonesian students pronounce aspirated sound [ph] before this research was conducted. further, researcher also wants to know whether tongue twister gives influences for indonesian students when teacher uses it to teach pronunciation of aspirated sound [p h ]. methods this research used quantitative research in which the data analysis could be done by statistical calculation. there are some types of quantitative research, but in this study quasi-experimental design was chosen. for the reason of not making a mess on the class which had been set by the school, the pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design was quite suitable for this study. the population of this study was the seventh grade students of smp negeri 12 magelang in the academic year of 2016/2017. the seventh graders were chosen because the study about pronunciation practice was very effective given to english learners in beginner level to help them overcame the fossilized accent. furthermore, cluster sampling technique was selected because the design of this research was quasiexperimental which inquired nonrandom control and experiment group. it was simpler if the sample was taken as group or cluster than as individual subject. in this study, vii a consisted of 31 students was chosen as the control group, and vii d consisted of 32 students was chosen as the experiment group. paper [ˈpeɪ.pə r ] pencil [ˈpen t  .s ə l] parking [ˈpɑː.kɪŋ] pepper [ˈpep.ə r ] picture [ˈpɪk.tʃə r ] party [ˈpɑː.ti] partner [ˈpɑːt.nə r ] parent [ˈpeə.rənt] pretty [ˈprɪt.i] peter [ˈpiː.tə] paris [ ˈpær.ɪs] proper [ˈprɒp.ə r ] apology [əˈpɒl.ə.dʒi] repeat [rɪˈpiːt] peanut [ˈpiː.nʌt] people [ˈpiː.pl  ] post office [ˈpəʊst ɒf.ɪs] personal [ˈpɜː.s ə n. ə l] practice [ˈpræk.tɪs] power [paʊə r ] table 2.1. list of words consisting of aspirated sound [ph] using test as the instrument of collecting data, the researcher conducted two kinds of tests, they were pre-test and post-test. however, before the instrument was tested, researcher tried it out to know whether the test was eligible and suitable to be used using validity and reliability test. the try a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 66 out test was conducted once in vii c consisting of 31 students. the researcher handed in student worksheet in order to give chance for students to study at a glance first before the test was delivered. there were twenty words consisting of aspirated sound [ph] in the worksheet that is presented in table 1. after giving short explanation about the objective of the test and the material of the test, students came forward one by one to read twenty words consisting aspirated sound [ph]. the result of the study was score which represented students’ ability in pronouncing aspirated sound [ph]. after the data was collected, the researcher analyzed them using statistical analysis. the statistical analysis in this research was the analysis of pre-test and post-test result which included descriptive statistic, normality, homogeneity, and t-test calculation using spss 20.0 to gain the hypothesis. the hypotheses of this research were: h0 : there is no influence of tongue twister in students’ ability in pronouncing aspirated sound [ph] ha : there is influence of tongue twister in students’ ability in pronouncing aspirated sound [ph] the researcher used the probability level to determine the result of hypothesis. if the probability > 0,05 it means h0 is accepted and ha is refused. if the probability < 0,05 it means h0 is refused and ha is accepted. results and discussions based on the researcher’s observation and experience during teaching practice for three months in smp negeri 12 magelang, students’ ability in pronunciation was in general low especially in pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph]. their sound production on [ph] sound was influenced by their mother language. they mispronounced [ph] into /p/ as what they had in indonesian. when they started learning english, they were difficult to acquire aspirated sound. it was proved by the low score of pre-test that was delivered before students got any treatment. 3.1 pre-test pre-test was test given before conducting the treatment. both control and experiment group received similar test. this test was used to measure the initial ability in both groups. it was also used as a guide for the researcher to know that students’ ability in pronunciation in control and experiment group was in the same level. using the reliable and valid test, researcher tested students one by one pronouncing words consisting aspirated sound [ph] and gave score. score 1 was given for the correct sound production and score 0 was for the incorrect one. the final score was drawn from the following formula. 𝑆𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 × 5 = 𝐹𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 the result of the test was analyzed in statistical analysis using spss 20.0. the mean of pre-test in control group was 13.39 with the highest score was 30 and the standard deviation was 8.697. whereas the mean of the experiment group was 13.28 with the highest score was 30 and standard deviation was 8.855. kolmogorov-smirnov df sig. pre-test control group 31 0.186 pre-test experiment group 32 0.116 table 3.1. pre-test normality test a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 67 the result of pre-test statistical analysis was then analyzed in normality and homogeneity test. the normality test in this study was conducted by kolmogorov-smirnov in spss 20.0. the distribution is normal if the significance value is > 0.05. table 2 showed that the sig value of pre-test control group (0.186) was higher than 0.05 and the sig value of pre-test experiment group (0.116) was also higher than 0.05. in short, the distribution of the test score in pre-test both in control and experiment group was normal. figure 1 and 2 present the normal distribution of pre-test of control and experiment group. figure 3.1. score distribution of pre-test of control group figure 3.2. score distribution of pre-test of experiment group levene statistic df1 df2 sig. 0.000 1 61 0.996 table 3.2. pre-test homogeneity of variances test the homogeneity test was conducted using the formula of one way anova. from the calculation, the probability/sig was 0.996 which meant that it was higher than 0.05. therefore, this test was homogeneous or the pre-test of control and experiment group came from the same variance. a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 68 levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper nilai equal variances assumed .000 .996 .048 61 .962 .106 2.212 -4.317 4.529 equal variances not assumed .048 60.987 .962 .106 2.211 -4.316 4.528 table 3.3. pre-test independent samples test in this study, the researcher used independent sample t test. the result showed that the sig (2-tailed) which was higher than 0.05. it meant that there was no difference initial ability between students in the control and experiment group. from all pre-test calculations, it can be concluded that in the initial condition, both control and experiment group were in the same level. the mean scores of the two were merely similar. if we look at the histograms in figure 1 and 2, they performed less skewness or the shape was almost close to bell shape which showed the normal distribution of mean scores (tuckman in saleh, n.d.). furthermore, the spread or variance of the two groups was equal or homogeneous proved by the value of homogeneity of variance was 0.996 > 0.05. at last, the t-test score that was 0.962 > 0.05 means h0 is accepted and ha is refused or there is no different ability between control and experiment group before the treatment was given. 3.2 treatment the experiment group was taught pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph] using tongue twister. the researcher provided videos as the media in delivering tongue twister, modeled how to pronounce and guided students to practice. on the other side, control group was taught using conventional method (unstructured discussion). however, this group were still given brief explanation about the material of pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph]. below is the list of tongue twister used in the treatment. pirates private property pirates private property pirates private property peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 69 a peck of pickled peppers peter piper picked. if peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers peter piper picked? based on researcher observation during the treatment, students quite enjoyed practicing tongue twister since it is fun and challenging. automatically they trained their tongue to produce aspirated sound while pronouncing tongue twister. 3.1 post-test the post-test for experiment group was done after this group was given special treatment which was practicing tongue twister. students did the same test as they did in pre-test; they pronounce twenty words one by one. the researcher’s observation focused only on students’ production of the aspirated sound [ph]. score 1 was given for the correct sound production and score 0 was for the incorrect one. control group had exactly the same post-test, technique and scoring system as experiment group. the mean of post-test in control group was 29.03 with the highest score was 85 and the standard deviation was 17.341. whereas the mean of post-test in experiment group was 50.16 with the highest score was 100 and standard deviation was 20.260. kolmogorov-smirnov df sig. post-test control group 31 0.129 post-test experiment group 32 0.200 table 3.4. post-test normality test the result of pre-test statistical analysis was later analyzed in normality and homogeneity test. the distribution is normal if the significance is > 0.05. table 5 showed that the sig value in post-test control group (0.129) was higher than 0.05 and the sig value in post-test experiment group (0.200) was also higher than 0.05. consequently, the distribution on the test score in pre-test both in control and experiment group was normal. figure 3 and 4 present the normal distribution of post-test of control and experiment group. figure 3.3 score distribution of post-test of control group a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 70 figure 3.4 score distribution of post-test of experiment group levene statistic df1 df2 sig. 0.956 1 61 0.332 table 3.5. post-test homogeneity of variance test table 5 presents the result of post-test homogeneity of variance test. the result of homogeneity test showed that the probability/sig was 0.332 which meant it was higher than 0.05. therefore, this test was homogeneous or the post-test of control and experiment group came from the same variance. levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper nilai equal variances assumed .956 .332 -4.440 61 .000 -21.124 4.758 -30.638 -11.610 equal variances not assumed -4.451 60.099 .000 -21.124 4.746 -30.618 -11.630 table 3.6. post-test independent samples test table 6 presented that sig (2-tailed) or probability was 0,000 while the significance level was 0,05 (5%). it showed that the probability was less than the significance level (0,000 < 0,05). from all post-test calculations, it can be concluded that after receiving treatment, the mean score increased quite significant for both control group (13.39 to 29.03) and experiment group (13.28 to 50.16). moreover, the post-test score was also in normal distribution. the histogram of post-test control on figure 3 performed a little bit skewness, but the normality value was still in normal category (0.129 > 0.05) while the distribution of post-test experiment score on figure 4 was almost symmetrical which meant normal distribution. both groups score spread or variance was also homogenous or equal proved by the value of post-test homogeneity of variance was 0.332 > 0.05. finally, the final condition of the two groups was shown by the value of t-test 0.000 < 0.05. the probability is less than 0.05 then h0 is refused and ha is accepted or in other word there is a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 71 different ability between control and experiment group after receiving the treatment. from the result, the researcher concludes that teaching pronunciation of aspirated sound using tongue twister influences students’ ability shown by the score after the treatment was higher than the score before the treatment and the significance difference in t-test of post-test. from the result of the research, it can be drawn a theory that english pronunciation of indonesian students is influenced by their mother language especially in aspirated sound [ph]. they are hard to pronounce [ph] because they do not have aspirated sound in indonesian. when they learn [ph] sound, it is interfered by /p/ sound of indonesian or /p/ without aspiration. this problem makes the researcher to find out the solution that is applying tongue twister to teach pronunciation of aspirated sound [ph]. the result of the research proves that students’ performance or ability in pronouncing aspirated sound increases. the theory is strengthen by a study on the influence of mother language to the target language conducted by andi-pallawa (2013). in the comparative study of phonological system between indonesian in english, he found that both languages supply several similarities and differences. the similarities did not give significant impact but the difference put learners into trouble. researcher found out that phonemic features: / p, t, k / were never aspirated in indonesian words wherever they occurred. that is why indonesian students had difficulties to pronounce [ph]. to find the solution of this problem, a previous researcher also used tongue twister to teach pronunciation. iriyani (2015) tried to improve fifth graders' pronunciation of “th” by using tongue twister. the result of the study showed that there was improvement after the treatment was given. by pronouncing words over and over, students were aware of their mistakes and memorized vocabulary at the same time. tongue twister also gave different atmosphere in classroom learning as it could break the boredom of monotonous learning process. the present study proved that fun media once again was well accepted by the student especially young learners and tongue twister as one of them gives significant influence in pronunciation practice of /th/ sound. in addition, tongue twister also works on other english sound such as [ph]. conclusions according to the data analysis in the previous chapter, the conclusions could be drawn as follow 1. students’ ability in pronunciation was in general low. students’ sound production on aspirated sound [ph] was influenced by their mother language that does not have aspirated sound. students mispronounced [ph] into /p/ as what they had in indonesian. in addition, students did not get enough pronunciation practice in the classroom as teacher focused on the material such as grammar and reading. 2. there was difference in students’ ability in pronouncing aspirated sound [ph] between those who had been taught tongue twister and those who had not or who had been taught using conventional method in smp negeri 12 magelang. besides, based on the researcher’ observation, students enjoyed practicing tongue twister since it is fun and challenging. students kept repeating unique series of words after a model on videos and they automatically trained their tongue to produce aspirated sound while pronouncing tongue twister. in short, students’ ability in pronouncing aspirated sound [ph] increased by using tongue twister and it was effective to use. a. kholisoh, a. n. farida / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 72 references andi-pallawa, b. (2013). a comparative analysis between english and indonesian phonological systems.international journal of english language education, 1(3), 103-129. retrieved february 9, 2017, from http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ijele/article/viewfile/3892/3180 brown, h. d. (2001). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). white plains, ny: pearson education. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (3rd ed.). essex: longman. iryani, t. (2015). improving fifth graders' pronunciation of “th” by using tongue twisters (a classroom action research at fifth graders of sdn mojoagung 01, trangkil-pati in the academic year of 2014/2015). final project. semarang state university. prošic-santovac, d. (2009). the use of tongue twister in efl teaching. annual review of the faculty of philosophy. novi sad, 34, 159-169. retrieved july 18, 2017, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277173037_the_use_of_tongue_twisters_in_efl_teachi ng saleh, m. (n.d.). statistics in educational research: handouts and assignments. semarang: unnes press. wulandari, c. (2011). the description of pronunciation practice in the classroom (a case study of the seventh grade students of rsbi classes of smp n 2 wonosobo in the academic year of 2009/2010). final project. semarang state university. yoneoka, j. (2002). englishes in asia. retrieved february 6, 2017, from www2.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~judy/gyoseki/30asianenglish.doc microsoft word 2. flávius almeida dos anjos 14 appropriate pedagogy to teach english: contemporary tendency focusing on non-native flávius almeida dos anjos  center of culture, language and applied technologies, recôncavo of bahia federal university (ufrb), brazil article info ________________ article history: received in 17 december 2018 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: pedagogy; english language; non-native ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is about the teaching of english. it takes into account the global role this language gains today, to reflect on how it should be taught. the main objective of it is to defend a current tendency concerning the teaching of english. in the pursuit of an appropriate pedagogy to teach english, i propose the focus on non-native speaker, since i undestand that english is a world language, spoken by a great number of people, from different cultures, what has recreated this language in many aspects. that is why this language should not be only taught based on the hegemonic cultures. the reflection proposed here is, especially, anchored on freire´s (1996) ideas on education, mainly when he defends learner’s autonomy. thus, to teach english through an appropriate pedagogy, teachers should allow students to have ownership of it as well, but starting from a local perspective, avoiding, this way, bad feelings on the part of students. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: flaviusanjos@gmail.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 15 introduction to get into the appropriate pedagogy world for the teaching of english, it is necessary, first, to reflect upon some features of this language. because of the indisputable global role the english language takes now, several studies have emerged in the last few years. many of them bring relevant data on the rise of this language, outlining its historial trajectory, as old english, middle english until the modern english. (graddol, 2000; 2004). there are some that highlight the trajectory of english as colonial, imperial and global language. (graddol, 2000, lacoste; rajagopalan, 2005, kumaravadivelu, 2005, crystal, 2012). others are more delimiters, such as the one of kachru (1985), that, to explain the expansion, acquisition and the role of english, displays three circles, the inner, the outer and the expanding one. today, some terms have also been used to make reference to the english language: english as a global language, english as an international language, world english, englishes and english as a língua franca. there are also the varieties inglish, chinglish, espanglish, singlish. these varieties reflect the spread of english around the world. bhowmik (2015), about this, highlights that with the emergence of new varieties of english, the teaching of this language can not be based either on the british or american models only. concerning this, harmer (2007) says that upon concentrating the teaching of english, on the british and american varieties, it ignores the others, such as australian english, canadian english and irish english. but this author remind us that even these varieties are irrelevant in a setting where the number of world englishes also have the status of variety, mentioning english as a lingua franca as one with its own right. what, in fact, is happening is that english has broken off from its origins and it has been ressignified by a great number of speakers, giving origin to new englishes. thus, in several communication settings, english speakers are using more the varieties of english they know and they have employed several pragmatic strategies to communicate with other speakers of english. (marlinda, 2014). this points to the fact that english takes a global feature, because of its reinless expansion, reaching, virtually, all territories. for crystal (2012), this global feature of english occurs because it has played a special role in many countries. but for marlina (2014), english as an international language, as a paradigm, acknowledges the international functions of this language and its use in a variety of cultural and economic arena, where speakers of different linguacultures establish communication and they do not speak each other language. in this line of thought, mckay (2009) agrees that english as an international language is used by people of diverse cultures. mackay’s tenet aligns with the one of jenkins (2006), because when the latter defines english as a lingua franca, she says it is about a common language used by people who do not share the same cultural background. this new language acquires features of certain social groups, with several linguistic innovation, in léxicon, grammar and in terms of phonology, different from the native version. (jenkins, 2014). another term is “world english” (we), used by rajagopalan (2005) to make reference to the english language in an expanding process around the world. this author characterizes we as a linguistic phenomenon that emerges from the contact of 2/3 non-native users. this linguistic contact does not happen based on the pattern of the hegemonic cultures, however, it emerges articulated with these speaker’s identity and with the influence of their culture, mainly non-native. the term world englishes can be defined as the norm that includes all varieties of this language. (farrel & martin, 2009). the “s”, added to english, signals the plurality of this language, that not being local any more, it turned into new versions, it has become the language of the world, that is why the word “world”, as an adjective. this term was, in the truth, coined by kachru, in early 1979, to evidence how the english language works in different settings in the world. in this sense is that for kumaravadivelu (2005), english has, inevitably, given origin to a great number of local varieties and flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 16 these varieties have multiplied themselves to the point of pluralizing it as world englishes. bhowmik (2015) reflects about this, when he says that: the continuous spread of english worldwide has put it in a unique situation. for example, because of its spread over time, english has become more hybridized and diverse, phenomenon captured by the term world englishes. (bhowmik, 2015, p. 143). actually, the sociolinguistics of english has been more complex than the ones of other languages (marlina, 2014), what has required more critical eyes on how to teach this language, thinking of practices that ensure its character of “world language” and that make possible the assumption of new learners/users.the aim of this paper is to reflect on a viable educational alternative for english brazilian students. i intend to deconstruct wrong notions that overestimate the mythical image of the native speaker, that feed, even today, the elt1 powerful industry, because although english non-native speakers outnumber the native ones, the latter still enjoys the privilege of being “native”. (bhowmik, 2015). therefore, it is necessary to understand the character of world language that english takes in the contemporaneity. although, there are people who do not take this fact into account, it affects deeply the pedagogy to teach and learn this language, if we have the commitment with our students, to teach them english for life. regardless of the issues that leaded english to this status, it is necessary to think of alternatives that can support learners of this language, in order to favor the learning process, making possible that learners may use this language more autonomous. the term “pedagogy” mentioned here should be understood as an approach that ensures the learning consolidation. however, in the specific case of learning/teaching english, this approach is defined according to the speakers of this language, mainly based on the old fashioned labels “native” and ‘non-native”. in fact, what exists are speakers of a language! because of this, this paper signals, in someway, a brake of paradigms with these patterns. it is anchored is assumptions that also authorize new speakers of english to use it with ease, without being tied in patterns that inferiorize learners, what, many times, hinder them to go ahead and get progress as english users. thus, based on this linguistic reality, briefly outlined here, how does the teaching of english should happen nowadays? before trying to answer this question, that is about the pedagogy of english, i want first to say something about the current pedagogy to teach english used in many settings, based, exclusively, on the native speaker. after, i reflect on a pedagogy, i think, it is appropriate for brazilian learners, for example. i want to say as well, that my idea is to write about the appropriate pedagogy to teach english, but it is closely linked to freire´s (1996) view of education. appropriate pedagogy for english brazilian learners before making comments on the appropriate pedagogy to teach english, i start saying some words on the inappropriate one. traditionally, the pedagogy to teach english has been that one based on the native speaker. in my opinion, the problem here is with the exclusivility that embraces only the two hegemonic cultures. about that, kumaravadivelu (2012a) highlights that, historically, the pedagogy to teach english has been dominated by the assumption that english bilingual users’ goal is to conquer the native competence. such practices have made possible to erase the identity of many learners, because in many contexts, institutions and teachers still believe in the native speaker’s supremacy fallacy and his culture and adopt methodologies that subvert the attempt to maintain learner’s identity and the exposure of his culture. concerning this, mota (2010) remind us that, in 1 english language teaching. flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 17 1970, there were pedagogical practices that engedered actions in the classrooms, aiming at memorizing the foreign culture values, what favored the development of a superiority atmosphere on the part of the native speaker. in practice, for example, this happened when learners were stimulated to change their names by a foreign one; to imitate characters of a book or movies, making them believe that they had a new (but false) identity. and, in this sense, it is necessary to be cautious not to allow that the teaching of a foreign language be solely a fiction universe, making learners abandon or erase their identities. mackay (2009) questions this (wrong) conception that the target pedagogy to teach english should (or must) be based on the native speaker’s norms. in this sense, this author argues about reasons to reject the native speaker model as a pedagogical practice to teach english. she believes that this rejection should occur because the pragmatic nature of communication should be considered, that is to say, for her, english as a global language is used in several social settings, by many speakers of english legitimized. in this line of thought is that kumaravadivelu (2012a) suggests an epistemic break of our indelible colonial dependence. he suggests a careful reconceptualization and organization of knowledge. thus, it seems that kumaravadivelu (2012a) proposes a descontinuity of the way english has been taught, since new guidelines have emerged in light of the role this language gains today. in practical terms, kumaravadivelu (2012a) puts in check the native speaker’s competence as model to be reached. he also puts in evidence that the center based knowledge system, somehow, spreads issues such as native accent, native teachers, native speaker competence, methods from western universities, researches based on hegemonic cultures etc. because of these issues, that still bring problems and impede the teaching/learning process, is that kumaravadivelu (2012a) proposes to break our dependence with terminologies such as esl, efl, eal, we, elf e eil2, so that we can undo the ties with the native speaker episteme. he also suggests to break our dependence of the compentence based on the hegemonic cultures and, that is why, it is necessary to spread the conception of the english language plurality and the understanding that this language is not property of a specific culture or community solely anymore (baker, 2009). thus, if we truly agree with kumaravadivelu (2012a), concerning the fact of breaking with these conceptions, especially regarding the terminologies that frame us in patterns, almost confinable, we have to admit that our generations can not stand anymore the adoption of inappropriate pedagogies to teach/learn english. besides that, nobody should go on carrying the burden of having to try to equal to the native speaker, what has been a[n] (unreachable) goal of many institutions, without thinking of the consequences of this prerrogative for learners. almost always these pedagogies put us in patterns, such as learners and speakers of english as a foreign language, who aim to reach the standard of speakers of english as a first language, or the english of the native speaker, or the english from the inner circle, that is, from the hegemonic cultures. thus, it is clear that learners of a “foreign language”, in brazil, suffer, even without knowing it, a comparative exam. (grigoletto, 2005). this brings out unpleasant consequences, when a serious inferiority feeling emerges on the part of the students. (harmer, 2007). that is why ramathan and morgan (2009) draw the attention to inadequate pedagogies to teach english for speakers of other languages, that are in evidence, even today. in this sense is that matsuda (2009) warns as well to the fact that teaching english as an international language requires practices different from the traditional, that is to say elt, that places 2 esl – english as a second languag, efl – english as a foreign language, eal – english as a asian language, we – world english, elf – english as a lingua franca e eil – english as na international language. flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 18 english as the language of the united kingdom or the united states. this approach is outdated and, for some experts, it might bring negative consequences for learners. farrel and martin (2009) point that this might happen because: 1. to insist in teaching the (supposed) standard english might devalue other varieties of english in the world, because it still persists this notion that any form of english different from this standard is inferior and 2. teaching the standard english might provoke discrimination, because some employers, for instance, might discriminate speakers of other varieties of english, which are not hegemonic. thus, it is clear, by the ideas raised thus far, that my thought about the appropriate pedagogy to teach english aligns with that one that may benefit the learner. the appropriate pedagogy to teach english in brazil is the one that acknowledges the learners in their individualities, with their own brazilian identities. in another text (anjos, 2019), i argue about which english variety one should teach in brazil, in the future. i answered that it could be the brazilian english version, since the wrong idea, that the only model considered pedagogically appropriate would be the standard english, does not find resonance among experts anymore. (rajagopalan, 1999). in this sense, it is necessary to acknowledge the idiosyncratic form that brazilans speak english. and there is someone who does this, because in his own words: brazilian portuguese english, for example, i define as the kind of english i need to know about when i go to brazil, otherwise i will be unable to converse efficiently with local people in english. it would be amazingly useful to have a glossary of the english language of brazilian cultural references. (crystal, 2010, p. 2). crystal (2005) believes that when a great number of people use english in a country, they end up developing their own english. this way, in several parts of the world, the english language receives a natural charge from the local context it is being used and the users’ mother tongue ends up exerting influence in the syntatic and phonological organization as well. this happens because the new speakers opt to keep their identities, transfering, thus, features of their own mother tongue. (jenkins, 2007). in this option, there is a natural language appropriation attitude. based on that, we should make efforts to understand that the appropriate pedagogy to teach english should also be the appropriation pedagogy; the one that can prepare learners to be both local and global speakers, so that they can feel comfortable to use this language with national and international cultures, so that they can have control of this language as well. (kramsch & sullivan, 1996). methods this paper presents some data of the research3 i conducted with a group of undergraduate students, in brazil. i define the methodology i used as of ethnographic stamp. as an ethnographic researcher, i tried to interpret the meaning of social experiences, analysing learners’ evaluative reactions, in the english language classroom. i followed the line that to understand a culture, it is necessary to describe it, and that is what i did. i took note of students’ attitudes and also interviewed them with the objective to find out their reactions behind their speeches. to do that, i based myself on bortoniricardo’s (2009) inquiries, that researchers should answer: a) what is happening here?, b) what these actions stand for people who are involved with these actions and c) how these actions which have a 3 this research was properly protocoled at plataforma brasil, as the current academic formalities require, and it had approved opinion by the ethic committee, from the federal university of bahia (ufba), which number of certification is (caae) é 59915516.7.0000.5531. the proceedings adopted in this research obey the ethic criteria concerning research with human beings, according to the resolution cns n° 466 de 2012. flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 19 place in a microcosm as the classrooom are related with dimensions of macrosocial nature in several levels, starting from the local system where the school in inserted, the city and the national community? for this purpose, it was used three instruments to collect the data: 1. questionnaire, 2. interview and 3. fieldnotes. thus, it is a qualitative study, developed under the light of applied linguistics, which tried to to find out some answers for questions that emerge from an epistemological curiosity.the research took place in one of the centers of the recôncavo of bahia federal university and 91 (ninety-one) learners took part in it. next, i briefly present some findings and my interpretation of them. findings and discussion to be aligned with the objectives of this paper, in the next lines, i comment the findings based on some scholars. (matsuda, 2009; mackay, 2009; kumaravadivelu, 2012, 2012a; harmer, 2007). let us start with matsuda (2009), when he says that to teach english today requires (new) practices, different from the traditional ones. old fashioned practices to teach english have a strong relation with demotivation to learn this language. about this anjos, scheyerl [in press] say it seems obvious that the teacher’s methodological choices influence learning, because they might cause motivation or demotivation. the teaching/learning sources and methods ensure not only the studies continuity or waiver, but success or failure as well. as a proof of this, i share three statements, where it is clear that the teaching methodology, somehow, was causing demotivation. question: do you feel yourself motivated to learn english here at this university? a31: no. because the university doesn’t aim the teaching of english to embrace the deficiencies of all students, mainly those who didn’t have contact with the language. the university “throw” the language as if all learners were fluent in it. besides that, it teaches a “mechanic”, boring english, the one which does not stimulate the learner to go deeper in the knowledge. when i studied the subject, at ufrb, i studied the verb to be the whole semester, what i studied my whole school life. a39: no. i believe that the university does not use attractive methods so that learners can have access to english. conversation practice and courses continuity are lacked. a89: i don’t feel myself motivated. during my academic life i took part in some courses offered by the university, but they didn’t have a level parameter and i didn’t get to follow the group, the methodology was not good and the tutor frightened who didn’t have knowledge. a31’s statements is relevant for this analysis, because though there are people who believe that this attitude (“i studied the verb to be the whole semester”) is typical of the elementary education system, i can assure that it occurs in higher education as well. that is why it is necessary to rethink the teaching of english together with the university, its board, with professors and learners, in order to pursuit alternatives that may make viable the english language learning consolidation, with methods and approaches sensitive to the learners’ reality, what may extinguish from this setting a high number of beliefs and negative attitudes. (anjos & scheyerl, [in press]) these last statements signal, somehow, almeida filho’s (1993) coherence, on the fact that the inconsistency between the leaner’s culture to learn and the teacher’s culture to teach may cause resistance and demotivation to learn a new language. secondly, mackay (2009) questions whether the pedagogy to teach english should be based on the native speaker´s norm. about this, many leaners still think they should learn to speak english just like an american, for example. however, as i mentioned, kumaravadivelu (2012a) alerts on the need to break our colonial dependence, upon proposing the descontinuity of the way english has been taught, based on the hegemonic cultures exclusively. in this sense, it is of crucial importance flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 20 teachers’ action, in order to make learner’s aware on the fact that any english learner can speak english keeping his/her own identity, his/her sense of nationality. next, i share some learners’ statements, which show how learners changed their way of thinking about this issue: a71: i think that we should not imitate [the native speaker], as we discussed in classroom. there are regional particularities. languages are merged, they are influenced by many other languages, other people, but if we get to speak in a way that others can understand our message, i think it is essential. i think what matters is to establish communication. it is not a priority, in english, in my point of view, to speak english just like a native. a4: i thought like this, but later, when the teacher explained in classroom, that he knows a teacher who has a brazilian northeast accent, i got quite happy, because we “print” our own identity. it is about what teacher said on língua franca, to bring what is not only of them, but what is ours as well. a25: actually, i thought like this before, in the beginning of the classes. i believed we had to get closer at most of the target language. but we learned and i understood it is not necessary. we can speak with a [brazilian] northeast accent, with our own particularities. as we could realize, there was an attitude change concerning the native accent, as the only model to be followed, taught and learned. thus, it is evident, the need of linguistic educators ready to contribute with attitude changes, what, in many contexts, underestimate non-native speakers of english, influencing their motivation to learn this language. thirdly, harmer (2007) mentions unpleasant consequences, such as inferiority feelings on the part of learners, because of a pedagogy based on the hegemonic cultures norms. in the research, i also asked the participants about their feelings when speaking english with other people. next i share some of their answers: a12: an illiterate in a language extremely used, which is part of our everyday life. a40: i feel myself inferior. but i know its importance! a52: i have a feeling of “superiority” of that person, i think he/she is a step ahead of me. in this sense, several foreign language learners feel themselves decreased in their self esteems, because they attend learning settings which spread the hegemonic cultures sovereignty in detriment of the learners, product of a macabre ideology, which makes students feel ashemed of their own linguitic condition (rajagopalan, 2003). however, the great majority of the participants did not see the native speaker as superior, because of the fact of being born in developed countries, quite different from what i found out in the data of my master’s thesis (anjos, 2013), when a great number of the participants showed to have overvaluing attitudes toward the native speaker, when they said the native speaker is superior, putting themselves in a inferiority position, giving support to the supremacy of the developed countries, which have english as their official language. and thus such overvaluing attitudes have put the native speaker in a pedestal, immune of any critic, idealized, the perfect model to be follwed, but that can never be reached. thus, i have said that an appropriate pedagogy to teach english should be that one which respects learners individuality and their national idiosyncrasies. in practical terms, about this, for instance, i have verified, in my classes, the emergence of sentences such as “i have 19” instead of “i am 19”; “i am married with mary” instead of “i am married to mary” as well as “she work” instead of “she works”. look at my note: flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 21 class 7, october 10 th, 2017, english laboratory 1 the topic of the class today was ‘talking about age’, to teach them to talk about age, years and months. firstly, i showed them some slides with this question: ‘how old are you?’ and some possible answers. also, i showed them some brazilian people and asked them to guess their ages. they tried well. next, i asked all of them ‘how old are you?’ i could realize that most of them used the verb ‘to have’ instead of ‘to be’, as an influence of our native language [portuguese], in which we use the verb to have to talk about age (eu tenho 19). [...] this excerpt is an inequivocal proof of an idiosyncratic way of speaking english in brazil. that is why i draw attention to the fact that teachers should take into account local and idiosyncratic issues to teach english. in this line of thought, kumaravadivelu (2012b), in a post-method perspective, describes what he calls particularity. it is about the fact that teachers should take into account features of the learners and the context of learning. for kumaravadivelu (2012b), any pedagogic knowledge, to have local relevance, must emerge from daily teaching practices. an example of this is in the ethnographic note i did: class 1, may 10th, 2016, english language laboratory the class started at 12. the topic was “talking about family”. initially, i showed them some slides with definitions of term ‘family’. next, i asked them some questions: what is family for you? what are the types of family?, what are families for? and how can a person form a family? theses questions provoked a great reflection among the group, with different opinions on the conceptions of family. one of the students, for instance, said to be bisexual, and that she has not decided whether she will form a family with a man or a woman. another learner said to be evangelical, and that family is only the union of a man and a woman. later, i showed them images of different types of families, traditional, modern, nuclear etc. and thus we established a very interesting dialog. they talked about their families and what they thought about contemporary families formations. at last, i showed them a slide with the biggest family in the world: ‘ziona family’, from india, with 181 members. the class went on quite interesting and it was finished with an activity about family to be revised in the next class. thus, to me, it was evident an atmosphere favourable to reflection, when learners got engaged in the learning process, expressing their opinions, from their own perspectives, resulting in positive attitudes toward learning english, because of a teaching/learning based on local and global perspectives. next, i offer my final considerations on this reflection. conclusion in many english teaching/learning context, a language approach, in a sociofunctional perspective is applied. however, quite distant from learner’s reality, because many teachers still opt to “sell” exclusively images of beautiful and successful artists, from families without problems, harmoniously happy (scheyerl, 2012) and they have forgotten to make a local approach. that is why kramsch and sullivan (1996) defend that the appropriate pedagogy to teach english should be a process of appropriation both local and global. and i think there should not be privilege, to avoid division of worlds. i would like to emphasize what kramsch and sullivan (1996) defend, because when they say that language pedagogy should be based on a global thinking, but as a local practice, they, somewhat, touch in a fundamental tenet of the freirian critical pedagogy. relating their thought with a local reality to teach english, i realize the importance to focus on non-native, since critical pedagogy advocates that the classroom should be an arena to discuss social reality with learners, seeking to provoke an intimacy with their social experience (freire, 1996). but how can teachers conduct this task? to make that happen, teachers need to be familiar with what they propose to share with their students. richards (2017) calls this of “teacher knowledge flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 22 teaching” and also “pedagogic content knowledge”, what for him includes the knowledge of the subject the teacher will teach, the set of techniques it will be applied together with theories, beliefs, tenets, values and ideas, so that he/she can prepare learners for the world outside classroom. this can also be done through a foreign language, since we understand education is a form of intervention in the world. (freire, 1996). thus, we need to provide our students with the best tools we are able to. however, readers can also ask: what does he mean whe he says “focusing on non-native”? as teachers, we should grasp the idea that english is not the same anymore! this way, the appropriate pedagogy to teach english should take into account the role of english in the world, but especially who are the learners, their origins, their local perspectives. i mean, as teachers, we need to humanize the teaching/learning process. but how? being sensitive to our students. listening to them. supporting them, to make them progress. it means to teach english respecting the idiosyncratic way of this non-native speaks english, mainly. it is to understand that non-natives’ mother tongue and their particular cultures will influence in the production and the communication through english, because their monther tongue grammatical and phonological structure probably will influence in the production of the new language. it is to accept these facts as creative contingent samples. so, with the focus on non-native, given the current status of english, the process will produce better outcomes. this is my hope! references almeida filho, j. c. p. 1993. dimensões comunicativas no ensino de línguas. campinas, sp: editora pontes. anjos, f. a. 2013. “pra que aprender inglês se não vou para os estados unidos”: um estudo sobre atitudes de alguns alunos da escola pública em relação à aprendizagem do inglês como língua estrangeira. salvador: ufba. 2013. 152 f. dissertação de mestrado. mestrado em língua e cultura. instituto de letras, universidade federal da bahia (ufba). anjos, f. a. 2019. desestrangeirizar a língua inglesa: um esboço da política linguística. cruz das almas: edufrb. anjos, f. & scheyerl, d. [in press]. the need of language politics for the teaching of english in higher education in brazil: a brief reflection under the light of logisti factors. baker, w. 2009. the cultures of english as a língua franca, in: tesol quarterly, vol. 43, no. 4, p. 567592. bhowmik, s. k. 2015. world englishes and english language teaching: a pragmatic and humanstic approach. in: colomb. appl. linguist. journal, vol 17, no. 1, p. 142-157. bortoni-ricardo, s. m. 2009. o professor pesquisador. introdução à pesquisa qualitativa. são paulo: parábola editorial. crystal, d. 2005. a revolução da linguagem. rio de janeiro: jorge zahar ed. crystal, d. 2010. new englishes: going local in brazil. disponível em: http://www.davidcrystal.com/. acesso em: 13/set/2017. crystal, d. 2012. english as a global language. usa: cambridge university press, 2a ed. flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 23 farrel, thomas, & martin, sonia. 2009. to teach standard english or world englishes? a balanced approach to instruction. in: english teaching fórum, n. 2, p. 2-7. freire, p. 1996. pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à prática educativa. 15ª ed. são paulo: paz e terra. graddol, d. 2000. the future of english? the united kingdom: the bristish council. graddol, d. 2004. english next: why global english may mean the end of english as a foreign language. the british council. london: the english company (uk) ltda. grigoletto, m. 2005. ideologia e processos identitários: o simbólico em questão. in: maximina, m. f. et alii, linguística aplicada & contemporaneidade. são paulo: pontes editores, p. 53-63. harmer, j. 2007. the practice of english language teaching. edinburg: pearson education limited, 4th edition. jenkins, j. 2006. the spread of eil: a testing time for testers. in: elt journal. vol. 60/1, p. 42-50. jenkins, j. 2007. english as a lingua franca: attitude and identity. oxford, uk: oxford university press. jenkins, j. 2014. global englishes: a research book for students. taylor and francis, florence. kachru, b. b. 1985. standards, codification and sociolinguistics realism: the english language in the outer circle. in: quirk, r.; widdowson, h. g. english in the world: teaching and learning the language and literatures, cambridge: cambridge university press, p. 11-30. kramsch, c., & sullivan, p. 1996. appropriate pedagogy.in: elt journal. vol. 50. july.oxford university press, p. 199-212. kumaravadivelu. b. 2005. deconstructing applied linguistics: a postcolonial perspective. in: maximina, m. f. et alii, linguística aplicada & contemporaneidade. são paulo: pontes editores. p. 25-37. kumaravadivelu, b. 2012a. individual identity, cultural globalization, and tecahing english as na international language. the case for an epistemic break. in: alsagoff, l., hu, g., & renandya, w. a. principles and practices for teaching english as an international language. routledge, united kingdom, p. 15-34. kumaravadivelu, b. 2012b. language teacher education for a global society: a modular model for knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing and seeing. new yoork: routledge. lacoste, y. 2005. por uma abordagem geopolítica da difusão do inglês. in: lacoste, y., & rajagopalan, k. (org.). a geopolítica do inglês. são paulo: parábola editorial, p. 7-11. marlina, r. 2014. the pedagogy of english as an international language (eil): more reflections and dialogues. in: marlina, r., & giri, r. a. the pedagogy of english as an international flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 24 language: perspectives from scholars, teachers, and students, springer international publishing switzerland, p. 1-19. mckay, sandra lee. 2003. toward na appropriate eil pedagogy: re-examiningcommon elt assumptions. in: international journal of appliedlinguistics, vol 13, no. 1, p. 1-22. mckay, s. l. 2009. pragmatics and eil pedagogy. in: sharifian, f. english as na international language, perpspectives and pedagogical issues. great britain, m matsuda, aya. 2009. desiable but not necessary? the place of world englishes as na international language in english teacher preparation programs in japan. in: sharifian, farzard. english as an international language, perpspectives and pedagogical issues. great britain,multilingual matters, p. 169-189.atilingual matters, p. 227-241. mota, k. 2010. incluindo as diferenças, resgatando o coletivonovas perspectivas multiculturais no ensino de línguas estrangeiras. in: mota, kátia, scheyerl, denise. (org.) recortes interculturais na sala de aula de línguas estrangeiras. salvador: edufba, p. 3762. rajagopalan, k. 1999. of efl teachers, conscience, and cowardice. in: elt journal. vol 53/3 july. oxford university press, p. 200-2016. rajagopalan, k. 2003. por uma linguística crítica. linguagem, identidade e a questão ética. são paulo: parabola. rajagopalan, k. 2005. a geopolítica da língua inglesa e seus reflexos no brasil. por uma política prudente e propositiva. in: lacoste, y, & rajagopalan, k. (org.). a geopolítica do inglês. são paulo: parábola editorial, p. 7-11. ramanathan, v., & morgan, b. 2009. global warning? west-based tesol, class-blindness and the challenge for critical pedagogies. in: sharifian, f. english as an international language, perpspectives and pedagogical issues. great britain, matilingual matters, p. 169-189. richards, j. c. 2017. teaching english through english: proficiency, pedagogy and performance. in: relc journal, vol. 48(1) 7–30. scheyerl, d., & siqueira, s. (orgs.) 2012. materiais didáticos para o ensino de línguas na contemporaneidade: contestações, proposições. salvador: edufba. elt forum 1 (1) (2012) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the influence of using voice blog on students’ speaking ability of analytical exposition ratih laily nurjanah department of english, faculty language and arts, semarang state university, indonesia abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengamati bagaimana blog suara digunakan untuk mengajar eksposisi analitis lisan dan untuk mengamati apakah blog suara memberikan perbedaan yang signifikan dalam meningkatkan kemampuan siswa berbicara tentang analisis eksposisi.desain penelitian adalah eksperimental kuantitatif.teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan tes lisan, dan rubrik evaluasi.data dianalisis menggunakan formula uji-t, untuk mengetahui apakah ada perbedaan yang signifikan antara skor rata-rata kelompok eksperimen dan kelompok kontrol. hasil penelitian menunujkkan skor rata-rata post test kelompok eksperimen lebih tinggi kelompok kontrol. oleh karena nilai t hitung lebih tinggi dari t tabel-, maka itu berarti ada perbedaan yang signifikan antara kemampuan analitis siswa yang diajarkan menggunakan blog suara dibanding mereka yang diajarkan tanpa blog suara. abstract the objectives of the study was to observe how voice blog is used to teach spoken analytical exposition and to observe whether or not voice blog gives significant difference in improving students’ speaking ability of analytical exposition.to achieve the objectives of the study, an experimental quantitative research was conducted. spoken test, and rubric of evaluation were used to collect the data. the technique to analyze the data was t-test formula. it was used as a technique to determine whether there was any significant difference between the means of the score of the experimental and the control group or not. the mean score of the post-test of the experimental group was higher than the mean of post-test of the control group. and the t obtained value (4.703) was higher than the t critical table (1.67). since the t-test was higher than the t-table, then it means that there was a significant difference of the spoken analytical exposition text score of the students who were taught using voice blog to the score of those who were taught without voice blog. © 2012 universitas negeri semarang issn 2252-6706 info artikel sejarah artikel: diterima januari 2012 disetujui februari 2012 dipublikasikan agustus 2012 keywords: voice blog spoken analytical exposition  alamat korespondensi: gedung b3 kampus sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: ratihfbs@unnes.ac.id ratih laily nurjanah/ journal of english language teaching 1 (1) (2012) 2 introduction using blog for english teaching and learning process can be so interesting for students because they tend to like using and taking part in acitvities familiar to them. the technology, for them, represents a fun activity. by blogging, teacher feedback can be given instantly in the form of comments or as a response to what the students has produced or poted on their blogs. each student is free to demonstrate what they have been learning and their thoughts on a given topic, ideas, or concepts. galien (2010), on her journal, pointed out the advantageous of using blog in esl/ efl classroom; they are: (a) increased peer interaction among students, (b) increased teacher interaction with the students, (c) students exhibiting more positive emotions about learning, and (d) an increased sharing of ideas among students and with the teacher. the use of voice blog was firstly introduced by yu chih sun in his study voice blog: an exploratory study of language learning. voice blog as a medium for students to improve speaking skill helps students to have a lot of chance to practice their speaking skills. first, teacher will give them a model how to produce good spoken text. the page on voice blog will help teacher to show to students. it starts from making an outline and draft. second, the students will learn how to select words and sentences which are appropriate for them by using mini dictionary provided in the blog. this mini dictionary helps students to choose some words which may be suitable for their thesis.. third, they will be guided by teacher to conceptualize their thoughts about an issue by doing a brainstroming. fourth, students are guided to write their concepts into an outline or a draft and then post them to the voice blog. fifth, they will be helped by teacher to organize the outline into meaningful and logical sequence, in this case is analytical exposition text. sixth, they ‘memorize’ what they have organized and produce it in form of spoken language to be recorded and uploaded to the voice blog to complete the outline/ draft they have posted before. teacher can evaluate or assess the students speaking skill by visiting the pages and giving feedback in form of comments. methods i used experimental study to observe the improvement of students’ speaking skill in spoken analytical exposition. arikunto (2006) says that an experiment is the way in which a researcher created a situation or an event which was then analyzed in order to find out the effect that it made. each control and experimental group involves 18 students of eleventh grade of sma n 1 tuntang as the objects of the study. this study took 5 meetings which were held on november 19th to november 28th 2011. in this study, there a two type of test, pretest and posttest, which were conducted at the first and last meeting. the score of the test is based on the some categories. they are grammar, vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation and content. on each category, there are five items that have different score. the score are 1 up to 5 to each item in each category, so the total of all items are 25. here, i modified my own rubric of evaluation which is suitable for english as foreign language students. the mean score of each test reached by control and experimental group was the result of the statistics: m = ∑x/n where : m = mean ∑x= the sum of students’ scores n= the sum of students and then the mean was used to get t-obtained value by using this formula: voice blog was used during the treatment, second to fourth meeting, given to experimental group as a medium to improve the students’ speaking ability. i used t-test method to observe whether or not voice blog gives significant difference (brown, 2004) result and discussion i conducted the pre-test on november 19th 2011. the students of experimental and control group were introduced to analytical exposition and taught about generic structure, lexico grammatical features, etc. students were given models how to read an analytical exposition text. later, they were given an issue and were asked to discuss the issue in pairs. the issue for this pre-test was ‘cigarette and students’ last, they had to deliver their opinion about an issue orally individually. while students delivered their opinions, i recorded their performances. and from each record, i wrote the transcript so i could actually catch the mistakes or errors made by students by matching the record with the transcript and then assessed the performances one by one. i assessed the per21 n 1 n 1 s xx t 21 + − = 3 ratih laily nurjanah/ journal of english language teaching 1 (1) (2012) formances based on the certain chriteria made before. from this pre-test, the result was unsatisfying, since students made errors and mistakes in pronouncing familiar/ common words; such as: students, school, etc. they couldn’t perform the good spoken texts because they had limited vocabularies so they were not able to expand their main ideas. the mean score gained by experimental group was 64,7 and control group gained 67,5. from the scores, found that t-obtained value of pre-test was -1.478. the first treatment was done on november 23rd 2011. the activities in this treatment were using voice blog to help students arranging outline and draft for their spoken analytical exposition text. the issue for the treatment was “free sex among students”. first, students were reviewed the pre-test material about analytical exposition in sub-page ‘what to do’. and then, from this page they learned how to prepare a good spoken text. it was start by making an outline. in this page, they could find an example of outline so they could learn how to make it as the example given. this page provided vocabularies to help students decide which words were suitable for their thesis, whether agree or disagree. next, students did the second step of preparing a good spoken text, it was making a draft. this page gave an example of draft which was developed from the outline. the drafts they have made were uploaded to the blog to “students’ works” page to be viewed by teacher and commented as the feedback. students could view the comments at home and revise the drafts for the next performance so the process of teaching and learning didn’t stop at school. in this activity, students are helped by voice blog in choosing words and improving vocabularies into an outline and arranging sentences with correct tense into a draft by providing mini dictionary and examples of outline and draft. so, students’ difficulties which was found in previous session (pre-test) may be solved. the second treatment was done on friday, november 25th 2011. in this meeting, students are helped by voice blog to perform spoken analytical exposition well by observing the script and examples given on the blog. students performed the speech based on draft they had revised before. the performance of students were recorded and uploded to the blog so the teacher could listen to them and left comment as feedback. at home, students can view the comments and prepare themselves to perform the revised version. in this session, teacher tried to solve students’ difficulties by correcting pronounciation with voice blog as the medium. students still did some mistakes and errors even in pronouncing common words such ‘students’, ‘parents’, and spelling ‘hiv’. the third treatment was the last treatment. it was done on saturday, november 26th 2011. in this meeting, the students performed the revised version of their last records and recorded by teacher. they compared the last records with the recent ones. from this acitivity, i concluded that students can accept the comments well since most of the records showed improvement in pronounciation and fluency. teacher left comment again to motivate students in performing the best spoken analytical exposition. the post-test of the both groups were conducted on november 28th 2011. the students were asked to perform the spoken analytical text and recorded by teacher. the issue for this post test was “social networks and students”. from the result, students’ score showed improvement and the records sound better compared with pretest. the step and the chriteria used in this posttest were same as the pre-test ones. first, students were given the issue. and then, they applied the steps taught in the treatments. last, they performed one by one and teacher recorded their performances. teacher wrote the script of each performance and matched the script with the record. from the analysis found that students of experimental group suceeded in improving their speaking ability by gaining higher score than the previous pre-test. they are able to solve their difficulties in making some errors and mistakes in pronouncing words, expanding their ideas and arranging their ideas into proper generic structure of analytical exposition text. the mean score of experimental group in this test was 90. on the other hand, the control group did not show satisfying improvement since they kept repeating the same mistakes and are not able to arrange a good analytical exposition texts. the control group reached 80 as the mean score of post-test. from the mean scores of those two groups, the t-obtained value of post-test was 4.594. this improvement can caused by the use of voice blog of spoken analytical exposition in teaching spoken analytical exposition in experimental group. this blog helps students to solve their difficulties in 5 aspects of scoring speaking skill. the difficulty in vocabulary aspect was solved because voice blog provides mini dictionary which helps students to get their words easily but still motivates students to enrich their vocabulary knowledge by not providing the meaning of words. in this case, students still have to look up their dictionary to find the meanng of the words. the students were helped to solve their gramratih laily nurjanah/ journal of english language teaching 1 (1) (2012) 4 mar difficulties because voice blog provides clear example of how to arrange the words into a good analytical exposition. the example was in the form of draft not in the form of tenses formula so students were motivated to conclude from what they read. moreover; they have learned simple present tense before. so the draft was purposed to keep them in the right track of arranging words into simple present tense. the improvement on pronunciation was caused by the chance given by teacher via voice blog for students to have a guide in practicing their performance at home. this chance happened through the comments from the teacher left as the feedback on each student’s work in every meeting. this thing also happened to the improvement on fluency aspect. students have more time to keep on practicing perform their spoken analytical exposition at home because they were motivated to perform the best for the blog since the blog is also visited by other students. teacher’s comments also causes the improvement on content aspect. by noticing the guideline from teacher in developing ideas, students were helped to arrange their spoken text script with good and relevant content without ignoring their own opinion of the topic. the effectiveness of using voice blog is also caused by the blog itself. students nowadays are really close to internet and working with internet becomes one of their interests. this blog actually supports the process of non-stop teaching-learning by giving chance to students and teacher to communicate outside the classroom and school hours. teacher can view the works carefully and give suitable feedback, while students are motivated to prepare the best performance at home. and this blog also gives students complete examples and guides for students. conclusions voice blog can be used to teach spoken analytical exposition by guiding students to follow the steps to perform good spoken analytical exposition. voice blog leads students to make an outline, draft, and gives students chance to practice at home so it helps students to solve their difficulties in spoken analytical exposition. voice blog is used by teacher as a medium to observe students’ improvement by viewing their works on the blog and giving them comments as feedback for students. voice blog can improve students’ speaking ability by giving sinificant difference in students’ scores. it was proven by the t-obtained value of post-test (4.594) which was higher than t-critical value (1.67) which means that there was significant difference between the score of post teas of experimental group and control group’s. references arikunto. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: p.t. melton putra brown, h. d. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: longman galien, p. and w.l. bowcher. 2010. using blogs in esl/efl teaching and teacher-training. asian efl journal. professional teaching articles, 42/2: 4 – 23. online at www.asian-efljournal.com/pta-february-2010.pdf [acessed 04/05/11] attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421d7c4a20fd • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42206ca3209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word 2. 128 the use of cue card in cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary parmi  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 21 july approved in 29 november published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: cue card; cooperative learning; english vocabulary. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ vocabulary is the basic of english that is very important and difficult to master. vocabulary will help students to master the four skills of language. therefore, teacher have to make creative and interesting a way for teaching vocabulary. this study concern about how cue card and cooperative learning is used for teaching vocabulary. this study focused on the use cue card as learning media and cooperative learning as learning method. the subject of this study was seven grade student of smp n 41 semarang. the aim of this study was to describe the implementation of cue card with cooperative learning in teaching vocabulary to the students in the classroom. this study was a qualitative case research. the observation, questionnaire, interview, and document analysis was used to collect the data. the questionnaire was given at the end of the study. the observation sheet used to monitor the students and teacher’s activities during the teaching learning process. the interview was done at the end of the meeting. based on the result, the researcher concluded that the use of cue card for teaching english vocabulary is interesting, effective, efficient, and affordable. in addition, cooperative learning was helpful to increase the student’s confidence. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 129 introduction english as international language is very important to the society because english is used in several aspects such as education, social, culture etc. as brown says that language is a system of arbitrary of conventionalized vocal, written, or gestural symbol that enable members of a given community to communicate intelligibly with one another (brown, 2000:5). indonesian curriculum has stated that english is one of the compulsory subjects that have to be taught in junior and senior high school. base on curriculum 2013 junior high school student will get english at the first time because some of them do not get english in elementary school. there are four skills in english. they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. to be competent in english, the students should have a good skill especially those four skills. without those four skills student will not be able to communicate and write. to be competent in those four skills student must master vocabulary. mastering english vocabulary as foreign language is not easy as mastering indonesia vocabulary. the fact that english is considered as inconsistence language is very crucial since its spelling is different from its pronunciation. in addition, memorizing is also claimed as a bored and difficult activity for some junior high school student. based on those opinions, the teacher should be creative and active. vocabulary is the most important component language because it affects the four language skills. that is why students should improve their vocabularies. according to nugroho et al (2012), that matter is indicated from two indicators; first is viewed from vocabulary mastery and second is viewed from the student’s motivation during teaching-learning process. in addition, i find several problems about student’s vocabulary mastery such as difficulties in understanding the meaning of words, difficulties in pronouncing words correctly, and they could not spell the words correctly. with regard to vocabulary mastery, it also connects to the student’s motivation. according to purnama (2016) junior high school students are different from adults or senior high school students. they need more motivation from the teachers to mastering vocabularies. the indicators are: a) some students were busy talking with their friends when learning process was occurring; b) some students were busy drawing picture to their books; c) the students were not actively involved in the leaning process; they tended to be passive; d) some students ignored the teacher’s instruction. base my experience in training practice in junior high school 41 knows why those problems arose. one of them is that the teacher often teaches by doing the task on lks, so the students did not have enough experience in learning vocabulary. it also made the students bored and they were not interested with the lesson. based on the facts above, it can be concluded that the main reason causing the problem is the teacher not creative to use media in teaching vocabulary mastery. in order to improve student’s vocabularies, a teacher should concern about the students’ motivation, and interest. the use of media, however, would help the students to reach the objective of teaching and help the students in understanding and learning a particular lesson. according to sofwan (2013) these strategies hoped can help students to understand the materials and to stimulate student’s interest during teaching learning activities. there are several techniques concerning in teaching of' vocabulary if they want to present a new vocabulary or lexical items to their students that want students to remember new vocabulary. for instance, if we want to mention name of animal, media like dolls, realia, pictures, and so forth might help the students in visualizing the shape of those animals easily. some previous studies show that pictures and game give much contribution to the teaching vocabulary. the students will more active and interesting in picture. they will more understand and easy to remember the words. therefore, i decide to use cue card to teach vocabulary. cue card is card with picture and word. budiastuti (2007) point that cue card is card with words or picture on, which is used to encourage the students to respond. cue card is interesting due to its simplicity and attractiveness. the use of media is significant as it would help the students in understanding and learning particular lesson. we are so familiar with pictures. we can find many pictures in every corner of the street. cue card is claimed as the simple and attractive card. in this research i use cooperative learning as learning method. cooperative learning model focuses on student’s cooperative learning which means every student is accustomed to share their knowledge, experience, duty and responsibility. the teacher is only the facilitator but the student is the subject of the study. sofwan (2013) said that using cooperative learning is effective to increase the students’ vocabulary. it was proved that result of students’ average score increase, from 64.1 in cycle 1, to 84.2. in cycle 2. vocabulary is the basic of english that will help to master the four skill of language. junior high school students are different from adults or senior high school students. they need more parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 130 motivation and guidance from the teachers to mastering english vocabulary. without mastering vocabulary, student will not be able to mastering the four english skills. the difficulties that are faced by the student in mastering vocabulary are difficulties in memorizing and less motivation in classroom activities. according to those statements i have mention above, i would like to use cue card as learning media to take the student attention and cooperative learning is learning method in improving student’s vocabulary to make interesting atmosphere in the classroom. i sought to answer how cue card used with cooperative learning for teaching english vocabulary in junior high school efl classroom. i would like to analyze the teaching and learning process using cue card and cooperative learning. methods the research method that i used is a qualitative method. i used qualitative case study since the main purpose of this study is to explore the used of cue card in cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary. the research was conducted at sma n 41 semarang in the academic year of 2018/2019. i choose grade vii a in smp n 41 semarang. it consists of 32 students that are 17 girls and 15 boys. in conducting the study, i collaborated with miss miming in preparing lesson plans, choosing the class, and designing the media. the instruments of this study were observation guideline, questionnaire guideline, interview guideline, and document analysis guideline. in order to collect the data efficiently, i firstly did an observation at the class. the purpose of observation is to know the students’ behavior and teacher’s performance in the teaching-learning process. it helped me to observe the class situation. in terms of the chosen the classes, we choose them randomly. secondly, i interviewed the teacher to get deeper information about the students’ interest, like and dislike, and also an opinion about the use of cue card and cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary. i did the interview at the end of the meeting. i did semi-structured interview. i was recording and write the result of the interview. the interviews were used in order to get information from the english teachers whether (1) they found difficulties in teaching and learning using cue card and cooperative learning, (2) what kinds of problems they faced, (3) what caused the problems, (4) how they solved the problems, and also (5) what the different between using media and without media for the student. third, i gave the questionnaire to the students. the questionnaire was an open ended question. there are 10 questions. the questions were related to the student knowledge about cue card and cooperative learning and their opinion about teaching learning using cue card and cooperative learning. the questionnaire collected data information from the students based on the needs, interest, like and dislike about the teaching learning process. the questionnaire was given to the students at the end of learning process. the document analyzed was the lesson plan of the english teachers. i and miss budi made the lesson plan together. however, i took some pictures as another supporting data. the purpose is to find the evidence of what the observation sheet stated. it means whether or not the student interest, like or dislike in the use of cue card during the lesson. it also means whether or not learning activities of cooperative learning help the students develop student vocabularies. the steps of data analysis in this study are data reduction, data display, conclusion drawing and verification. data reduction can be interpreted as the process of selection, simplification, and transformation, of the data to the field note. data display includes many types of columns, tables and charts. the data display of this research is provided in the descriptive form. i drew the conclusion throughout the course by verifying the data. the conclusion was be gained based on the data obtained. findings and discussion findings the research findings are purposed to answer the research question of the study that is how cue card in cooperative learning is used for teaching english vocabulary, specifically in smp n 41 semarang. the data were gathered from the classroom observations, the questionnaires, the interviews, and document analysis. since this research was a qualitative case study, i would present the findings in the form of a rich description of the studied phenomenon. parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 131 cue card as interesting media cue card is an interesting method for teaching english vocabulary. it helped the student to remember the word more easily. based on the result of student’s questionnaire was conducted on 8th augustus 2018, the students were happy. they said that cue card and cooperative learning were more interesting rather than remembering. it helped them to understand the meaning, the pronunciation, and remember the word easier. it was also easy to use and simple. by using cue card, they will be more understood not only meaning but also the pronunciation of the word. there were a picture and word in each card. it was difficult for them to understand the materials without understanding the meaning and knowledge in the picture or the thing as stated by one of the students: the student said that they are very happy and want to study using cue card and cooperative learning (student’s questionnaire). media is very important in teaching and learning process. they were bored since the teacher did not use any media for the teaching and learning process. miss budi often uses media for teaching and learning process. she thought that cue card is very useful for teaching and learning english. it can attract the student’s attention. miss budi as a teacher stated that: media is number one. it can take student attention. the student will be less motivation and concentration when she did not use media (teacher’s interview, 08082018). first of all miss budi introduce the cue card to the student and how to use it. she used cue card by showing the picture and pronouncing its expression fluently, the students repeat it after her. miss budi distributed five cue card and student’s worksheet to the leader of the group. the cue card contains a picture and dialog that express the picture and situation. the teacher and the student discuss about the materials. the student asked to match the picture with the correct expression and situation. the teacher gave question and answer to the students. the students discussed with their groups. they practice some expression on the cue card. the teacher used the cue card to give example to the student about the vocabulary, the pronunciation, and the expression. by using cue card and cooperative learning, the teaching and learning process run very well and the students looked interested on it. the students were very enjoyed and confident. based on the observation that was conducted on 25th july 2018, there is one student did not come. the total of the student were 32 students. since most of the students were less concentration and make noisy, she tried to get the student attention by using cue card. it is effective to use cue card to take student attention. after getting the student attention, she gave instruction to look at the paper. the students were active in a group and their self. they were able to read and remember the expression in the cue card. in doing duty, they divided the duty with their groups to answer the question. after that, they write the answer in the paper. in this time, they were very interesting and easy to arrange. they were very interesting to come forward. they confident to read the expression even they still fell shy (observation, 01082018). the students look enthusiastic and enjoy in the teaching-learning activity using cue card in cooperative learning for teaching english vocabulary. most of the student paid attention to the teacher. they followed the teacher’s instruction. they were able to make a group quickly. they were active in response to the teacher’s questions. some of them were able to answer the questions. they had been able to discuss in a group. they looked enjoy and interesting. they read the book and expression loudly. they were able to response the expression individually. they did the work in groups. they had known the roles of the activities (observation, 06082018). they look enthusiastic to the teaching-learning activity using cue card in cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary. they asked the teacher to use a cue card again. they were able to follow the teacher’s instruction. they were able to make a group quickly and needed only a few minutes. they were active in response to the teacher’s question. they were able to discuss in a group. they were able to response the expression individually. they did the work in groups(observation, 08082018). based on the student’s questionnaire was conducted on 8th augustus 2018, i also found that this is the first time the student study using cue card. they had studied in a group in elementary parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 132 school but it was not frequency. most of them are enjoyable and interesting teaching and learning using cue card in cooperative learning. they enjoyed with the picture and the materials. in sum, we know that a cue card is an interesting method. students enjoy and they were happy to use it. they looked very happy and interesting in teaching and learning process using cue card in cooperative learning. in the first meeting may be they feel difficult the role but after a few meeting, they have known the role. they looked like understand the role of activities and be able to enjoy the activities. they are more relaxed and confident in teaching and learning process. they were more relaxed when they studied with their friends. teacher’s and students’ perceptions of cue card as a teaching medium based on the teacher’s and students’ perceptions, cue card is effective and easiest media. we know that there are some methods in teaching and learning process. one of them is a cue card. according to harmer (2001) cue card is cards with words or picture on that, which are used to encourage the students to respond in pair or group work. this is the first time miss budi used cue card. she thought that cue card was an effective and efficient method. it was very cheap and simple. she usually used lcd, flash card, and realia. she ever used cooperative learning. she thinks that using cooperative learning student would be able to work together. by doing work together, they would also be able to share their knowledge and ability with their friend. the student ability would be more spread evenly. she also said that cue card and cooperative learning were efficient and effective to teach english vocabulary and it is also easy to use. she said that the teacher did not need much cost to make it. they only need to look for the materials and print it the buffalo (interview, 08082018). in the second meeting, there were some students that were very noisy. they talked with their friend out of the topic. the teacher tried to get student attention using cue card. most of them paid attention to the teacher but there were some of them that were playing with their groups. the teacher gave stimulation to make them more active and confident. they followed the teacher instruction to make a group (field note, 30072018). some of them were able to come forward. actually, they were afraid to make mistake but they continue to come forward and read the expressions. the teacher gave motivation to all of the students. the students did not be able to change their mind yet. they did not be able to remember all the expression yet but they were able to guess the expression by looking at the picture. they were very enthusiastic about teaching and learning process (field note, 30072018). based on the result of the interview was conducted on 8th august, she said that cue card and cooperative learning is a complete package. in one time we can use the cue card for a deeper understanding of the material and use cooperative learning to teach social aspect. cue card is easy to make and easy to use. we can take the picture from the magazine, paper, and also the internet. it is very cheap. we only need to print it and the media is ready to use. we can use it not only to teach vocabulary but also improved their speaking skill. it is very useful. based on the student’s questionnaire was hold on 8th augustus 2018, i found that this is the first time they studied using cue card. when in the elementary school they only used the picture. they also had studied in a group when they were in elementary school but it was not frequency. they said that they sometimes studied in the pair when they in elementary school. they word with their friend beside them. they said that study using it was more effective and easy to understand. they said that they are very happy and want to study using cue card and cooperative learning. cue card helped them to remember and know the meaning. they said pictures help them to remember than without picture. by illustrating the object they can understand the meaning quickly. by understanding the meaning they fell more easily to remember the word and expression (student’s questionnaire, 08082018). most students think that cue card and cooperative learning gave some profit. those are easy to use, effective to use, and easy to understand. the teacher explained the role of cue card one by one. all the material was taken from the book. the materials were appropriate for them. they enjoy using cue card in cooperative learning for teaching vocabulary. i know that cue card helps the student to remember the word and expression. cue card makes them easy to understand the meaning. in another side, grouping makes the student more confidence to express their knowledge and ability. base on those statements, we know that cue card is effective and easy to use in teaching and learning english vocabulary. it helped the student to understand and remember the meaning. it also helped to take the student attention. parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 133 based on the teacher’s questionnaire, cue card are affordable media. there were some media in the teaching and learning process. some of them were very expensive that take much cost. cue card was cheap and easy to make. miss budi used cue card which is very cheap and easy to make. she only needed buffalo’s paper for the media. she also needed cut to make the card. in this research, i did an interview on 8th augustus 2018. based on the result of the interview, miss miming said that cue card in not only interesting but also cheap and easy to use. the purpose of the interview was to get deep information from the teacher. how the teacher thought about using cue card in cooperative learning for teaching english vocabulary. miss budi also said that this is the first time she used cue card as media. she realized that media is very important, useful, and helpful in teaching and learning process. it could take student attention. she usually uses lcd, video, audiovisual, and ppt. from those four media, she commonly uses video (teacher’s questionnaire, 08082018). based on the result of interview on 8th augustus 2018, miss budi said that student will be more interesting and active if she used media. when she did not use media, the student will say “yahhh, why did not we use a picture?” using media can improve student knowledge and take their attention. it is not must, but it is very important and useful. in sum, cue card is easy, practical, and cheap. it is a complete package. we only need to look for the picture and the media from the internet, book and the other source after that we can print it. it was not expensive. it is very cheap and easy to make. difficulties in using cooperative learning based on curriculum 2013, we need to use cooperative learning as the learning method. harmer (2001) said about different models which people have used to describe teaching such as ppp (presentation, practice, and production), task-based learning (which puts first and language study last) and communicative language teaching (with its twin emphasis on appropriate language and activation methodology). it shows that models in teaching such as cooperative learning are more active to improve the student’s vocabulary. hence, i and miss budi tried to use cue card in cooperative learning for teaching and learning process. based on the observation was held on 30th july 2018, there were two students that did want to join their group. the teacher tried to persuade them, but they still did not want to joint. the teacher tried to go on the show. even most of the students were afraid, actually, they were able to read and practice the expression. they were only less confident. most of the student did not able to work in the group yet. they were more concentration to the talk with their friend rather than the materials. in this time, there were four students that able to answer the teacher’s questions even though that were wrong. they tried to read the dialog their self, but they were not able to remember the expression yet. they look very interesting in teaching and learning using cue card in cooperative learning. in this research, miss budiused the lesson plan that we made for each meeting. instead of english, the lesson planused the indonesian language. cooperative learning method was stated in the lesson plan. she used cue card as media and cooperative learning as the method. at the beginning of the lesson, she explains the procedure using cue card with cooperative learning for the teaching learning process. based on the document analysis, she implemented the techniquewith the right steps during the teaching and learning process. first, miss budi opened the class and explained the purpose of the learning and teaching process. next, she asked the students to make five groups in a class. and then, the studentjoint to their own groups. she gave the example to the student how to read the expression, what the meaning is, how to pronounce, and the last try to remember some expression. miss budi asked the student to discuss the expression from the cue card with their groups. miss budi took the student attention and supported them.in the first meeting, the student feels afraid and shy. after a few meeting, thestudents were not afraid to ask a questionif there was something that they did not understand. many students had to be chosen by the teacher in order to answer the question, yet there were some students who were brave enough raising their hand and coming forward to give their ideas about their answer. there were some skills that were used in class activities. for instance, writing skill when the students wrote the answer in the paper. then, speaking skill was applied when the students came in front of the class to present their answer with the reason. during the lesson, the teacher often used indonesian even javanese instead of english. parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 134 based on all of the data i obtained and analyzed, it was found that cooperative learning is very good but sometimes we need to manage the student first. she said that it is difficult to make a group. some student did not want to join with some people. some of them talked with their friend in a group. there were gaps between them. some of them talked aloud with their group member. discussion in this section, i discuss the result of research. this study was conducted in smp n 41 semarang. this study was conducted in vii a. it consisted of 15 girls and 17 boys. in this research, miss budi taught the student used cue card as media and cooperative learning as the method. the purpose of this research was to find out how cue card in cooperative learning was used for teaching english vocabulary on seventh-grade student of junior high school 41 semarang in academic years of 2018/2019. based on the observation, it showed that the students were interesting on using cue card for teaching and learning process. they looked enjoyed and confident during the teaching and learning activity. it means that cue card in cooperative learning was effective to attract the students’ interest to and help them in remembering some word and expression. on the other hand, the result of the interview showed that cue card was effective to take the student attention. miss budi said that cue card helped her to take the student interest and attention. from the first meeting until the last meeting, the student showed some progress. they were more active to speak up. vocabulary is basic of the english. the student must mastery vocabulary to be mastered in english. to mastering vocabulary, they need to enjoy and interest on it. this result in line with a study conducted by nation (2001) that vocabulary items play a vital role in all language skill (i.e. listening, speaking, reading, and writing). vocabulary is central to language teaching and learning english. the result of the observation also shows that cue card was effective and easiest to teach english vocabulary. in the first meeting, they needed guidance to use it. they need to behave to understand the role of the activity. in the third meeting, they have understood the role and able to follow the role. they were happy and enjoy in teaching and learning process. base on the result of the interview, miss budi said that cue card is very useful. it is a complete package. it is easy to make and use. the picture helped the student to remember the verb. it could be said that cue card in cooperative learning was effective to attract the students’ interest to and help them in remembering some word and expression. this result in line with rizki, rukmini, sutopo (2013) that picture game can improve student motivation. the student felt happy so that the student motivation and achievement were improved. based on the researcher’s observation during teaching practice in smp negeri 41 semarang, i know that in every meeting there is an increase. in the first meeting, the students look very confused and less concentration. they still confuse about the roles. there were still gaps between them. most of them were afraid and less active. in the next meeting, they have understood the role and look confident. they know what they should do. they are more manageable. their ability to remember is improved. it means that the student needed habituation. it also means that the cue card is effective to improve student vocabulary. every meeting there is an increase. in the first time they still confused, but after that, they enjoy and interested in it. they were less confident before but now they can read and understand the expression confidently. they were able to come forward and they did not afraid again. they feel competitive. in the first meeting there is a gap between girls and boys but in the second meeting, there is no serious gap between the students. they can work with anyone. this is the goal of grouping. this is in line with fekri (2016) that cooperative learning improved student vocabulary and made a competitive situation in teaching and learning process. based on the result of the interview, miss budi said that cue card is a complete package. it is simple, easy to make and very cheap. she only needs a paper and printout. based on the questionnaire, the students thought that cue card and cooperative learning are easy to use. even this is the first time they used it, but they did not find any serious difficulties. when used cue card in cooperative learning, they can easily to understand the meaning and remember it. it is very useful to improve vocabulary. so, cue card in cooperative learning is very simple, useful, easy, and interesting for teaching and learning english vocabulary. according to the result of the interview, this is the first time the teacher use cue card. she usually uses ppt, video, and realia. cooperative learning in here refers to the grouping that is so familiar for the teacher. she sometimes used cooperative learning for teaching and learning process. she thought that cooperative learning sometimes was difficult to apply because the student parmi / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 135 sometimes did not pay attention to the teacher and material. they talked to their group member that was out of the topic. cue card in cooperative learning is an interesting, effective, easiest, and cheap method but we need to manage it carefully. especially, we need to manage the student to act in their own group and pay attention to the materials. conclusion based on the research finding and discussion, i draw some conclusions. firstly, i conclude that the use of cue card for teaching english vocabulary is interesting, effective, efficient, and cheap. it can be seen from the result of observation and questionnaire, almost all of the students were interested in teaching and learning using cue card, therefore teaching and learning process become more interesting. in addition, cue card helped the student to memorize new word or expression more permanently. they will more easy to remember when they illustrate the picture. they not only know the word but also the meaning. secondly, i conclude that a cue card in cooperative learning can improve students’ vocabulary. however, cue card with cooperative learning was more effective, easy, and cheap to practice. moreover, the student usually will be more confident to share their problem with their friend rather than their teacher. the student will study to work together and try to change their mind with their friend. it will improve student knowledge, society, and mental. it meant that cue card in cooperative learning is very helpful for students. bibliography brown, douglas. (2000). principles of language learning & teaching(4th ed.). new york: longman. budiastutu, riana eka. (2017). the use of cue cards in teaching spoken descriptive text: the case of eighth year students of smp n 13 semarang academic year 2006/2007. semarang: semarang state university. fekri, neda. (2016). investigating the effect of cooperative learning and competitive learning strategies on the english vocabulary development of irania intermediate efl learners. canadian center of science and education. english language teaching; vol. 9, no. 11; 2016 issn 1916-4742 e-issn 1916-4750. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (rev. ed). london: longman. nation, i. s. p. (2001).learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge: cambridge university press. nugroho, yosephus setyo. (2012). improving student’s vocabulary mastery using flashcards. surakarta: sebelas maret university.pamela, baxter and susan jack. 2008. qualitative case study methodology: study design andimplementation for novice researchers. the qualitative report volume 13 number 4 december 2008 544-559 available at http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr13-4/baxter.pdf purnama, kartika dewi. (2016). improving students’ writing ability through the use of cue card at grade eight of smp n 4 yogyakarta in the academic year of 2015/2016. yogyakarta: yogyakarta state university. rizki, m. syaeful, dwi rukmini, and djoko sutopo. (2013). the use of picture games to improve students’ motivation in learning vocabulary. eej 3 (2) (2013). available at http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej sofwan, imam. (2013). improving vocabulary through cue cards in cooperative learning: thecase study of seventh year students of smp n 2 satu atap alian in theacademic year of 2012/2013. purworejo: muhammadiyah university of purworejo. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421fe86520fd • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word 10. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 190 elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt vocabulary acquisition (incidental) through watching subtitled video material alvin rosales  department of language and literature, far eastern university-manila, philippines article info ________________ article history: received in 22 august 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: subtitle; incidental vocabulary learning; receptive vocabulary knowledge; productive vocabulary knowledge; vocabulary knowledge scale. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ subtitle refers to the time-synchronized text on a video that translates the spoken audio to another language. this research deals with the effect of watching subtitled video material on the vocabulary acquisition (incidental) of the filipino learners of english with an emphasis on the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. the study was participated by 100 university students in a private higher education institution in the philippines. the study used a pretest and posttest design in which the vocabulary knowledge scale developed by paribakht and wesche (1993) was employed. the results show that there is a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest performance in vocabulary acquisition in terms of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants. the findings imply the integration of subtitled video material in the teaching of vocabulary in philippine classrooms because of its effectiveness which, up to this point, is not yet realized. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 132 capillan street, san antonio quezon city, metro manila 1105 e-mail: arosales@feu.edu.ph alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 191 introduction in learning english, students need to see that it covers the macro skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking and viewing; and to effectively learn all these, they need to see the importance of vocabulary as a language component because it can really affect the skills mentioned. in other words, without vocabulary, learning cannot be achieved. the question then lies on whether filipino students are motivated to learn english or even just learn vocabulary. one assumption would be “no” for some part, and the researcher being a language teacher has noticed such problem. some would say that one cause of that is that english teaching is more teacher-centered. the researcher came across students who shared their experiences inside the classroom as far as language teaching is concerned. they tend to withdraw themselves from it because how it is done is contrary to their interest. in other words, they get bored easily with the lesson and that they need something like attractive images or animations. one means by which these needs can be well served is multimedia technology. multimedia can appeal to many types of learning preferences – some students profit more from learning by reading, some by hearing and some by watching. writing for unesco institute for information technologies in education, andresen and brink (2013) state that some learners can consider multimedia as a means to acquire more knowledge and effective in improving learning (e.g. by enhancing motivation). this is probably because it promotes a greater involvement in the learning situation. also, learners can represent multimedia as a way of speeding the learning process and reducing information overload. multimedia technology includes motion media, music, text material, graphics, illustrations, photographs and digital software (“educational technology,” 2017). motion media, like videos, is one common multimedia technology which the students are exposed to. they may watch it for academics, but most of the time for entertainment. since their first appearance, motion pictures have still got the interest of all people, from young to old. in the case of filipino students, they now get hooked on watching subtitled films. hollywood movies are not the only ones saved in their computers; there are also anime films from japan and telenovelas from south korea which are watched with subtitles in most cases. filipino students being movie lovers is what prompted the researcher to conduct the present study with the assumption that people can achieve learning from pleasurable activities, and since it is evident that subtitled video materials have become a part of their lives, the researcher used it as a main variable in connection to language learning, particularly to vocabulary learning. sabouri and zohrabi (2015) concluded that the use of subtitled films can promote students’ engagement in language learning and can improve retrieval of new vocabulary words in learning english among foreign learners. baltova (1999) found that watching subtitled video material helped the learners acquire more vocabulary. gorjian (2014) stressed that learners of english as a foreign language have improved their comprehension of the content of the video, and have increased their vocabulary knowledge through the subtitles, especially if the video is watched significantly. though there are already foreign researches conducted on subtitle or subtitling or the like, the researcher also considered that there is only a few studies known to the researcher on the effect of watching a subtitled video material on second language vocabulary learning, and there is no study in the philippines as far as the researcher’s record is concerned on the effect of watching a subtitled video material on vocabulary acquisition with an emphasis on the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge: receptive and productive. receptive vocabulary refers to the words that learners recognize and understand, while productive vocabulary is the utilization of the words. though the latter can be written or spoken, yet in the study, the written production was only considered. methods participants the participants of the study were 100 tertiary students, mostly aged 18-20 and enrolled in the technical writing classes of the researcher in a private hei in manila, philippines. technical writing is the last english subject to be taken in the institution. thus, it was assumed that the students enrolled in this subject are at least knowledgeable about the fundamentals of english which they have already taken in the previous semesters. they may not be highly proficient on the target language, but when compared to the other students who are yet to take the subjects that they have already taken, they are more knowledgeable for the most part. this consideration has something alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 192 to do with the written production of the participants which was an important element in the pretest and posttest. the instruments one subtitled film and the vocabulary knowledge scale (for the pretest and posttest) were employed in the study. subtitled film as for the subtitled film, the researcher used “el pasajero, a 37-minute spanish short film which he downloaded from youtube. el pasajero, first released in 2008, is an award-winning film in the international film festival. it was directed by andres faucher and starred by jorge palacios and dimas gonzalez. el pasajero (“the passenger” in english) is about a taxi driver and his passenger. using a gun, the desperate taxi driver attempts to rob his passenger who offers to buy the gun which will lead to an event that no viewer will ever expect. the researcher purposefully selected the film because no one among the participants has ever watched it prior to the testing. the vocabulary knowledge scale for the pretest and posttest, the researcher used the same instrument which was the vocabulary knowledge scale developed by paribakht and wesche (1993) to measure the vocabulary knowledge of the participants along with their receptive and productive knowledge. this scale is a control scale of how well words are known and what control one has over them. the vocabulary knowledge scale format falls into the following five categories: 1. i don't remember having seen this word before. 2. i have seen this word before, but i don't think i know what it means. 3. i have seen this word before, and i think it means __________. (meaning/synonym/translation) 4. i know this word. it means _______. (meaning/synonym/translation) 5. i can use this word in a sentence: ___________. (if you do this section, please also do category in scoring the vocabulary knowledge scale, the researcher used the rubric showed in table 1. table 1. the rubric in scoring the vocabulary knowledge scale receptive vocabulary knowledge score meaning of score 0 the word is not familiar at all. 0 the word is familiar but its meaning is not known. 0 an incorrent meaning or synonym or translation is given. 1 a correct meaning or synonym or translation is given. productive vocabulary knowledge score meaning of score 0 the word is not used in sentence writing. 0 the word is not used with semantic appropriateness in a sentence. 1 the word is used with semantic appropriateness in a sentence. alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 193 data gathering procedure the procedure was carried out in three phases: first, administering the pretest; second, watching of the video material, and third, administering the posttest. first phase the vocabulary knowledge scale was used in administering the pretest to measure vocabulary knowledge of the participants, along with their receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. the test has five target vocabulary words from the film which are low frequency words. two of them are adjectives; another two are nouns; and one is a verb. regarding the pretest, the researcher told the participants not to use any kinds of dictionary, and not to talk to any participants during the test. this could make sure that their answers are actually based on their background knowledge of the vocabulary items. after they answered the pretest, the participants were told not to check the words in a dictionary and not to discuss them among themselves inside and outside the testing area. this could make sure that their answers on the posttest later would be based on the vocabulary knowledge gained from watching the subtitled video material presumably. second and third phase the second (watching the subtitled video material ) and the third phase (posttest) took place a month later. yuksel and tanrıverdi (2009) suggested that a pretest and a posttest must be separated by a longer period. to achieve the objective of the study which is on the subconscious learning of the vocabulary items from watching the subtitled video material, the researcher made sure that the participants were unaware that they would be tested after watching (posttest). the participants watched the film twice, however on the second time there are few scenes that were skipped or disregarded like in the opening and in the end which do not actually detract from the purpose of the study. sabouri and zohrabi (2015) stated that subtitled movies could have an effect on vocabulary recognition if learners watch the movie more than once. after watching, the vocabulary knowledge scale with the same vocabulary items was used in administering the posttest to measure the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants. in the study, the researcher used a basic statistical tool, the mean. he also used the frequency and percentage distribution of the participants based on their pretest and posttest performance in vocabulary acquisition in terms of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. for the statistical hypothesis test, the researcher used the z-test, a basic inferential statistical tool to see if there is a difference on the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants before and after watching the subtitled video material. results and discussions the performance in vocabulary acquisition before watching as shown in table 2 below, the mean score for the receptive vocabulary knowledge of the target words of the participants was 1.51. the result shows that half of the participants was able to give the correct meaning of the word ‘salsa’. this means that ‘salsa’ having the highest frequency is the least difficult word that could be given a correct meaning. salsa in the study refers to a type of music or a form of dancing. an example of that in a sentence is ‘hector and alfredo are dancing salsa’. out of the 5 target words, ‘temperamental’ got the lowest frequency that no participant or 0% of the participants got its correct meaning/synonym. in the study, temperamental refers to a performance being unpredictable. an example of that in a sentence is ‘his temperamental computer always annoys him; sometimes it would start and sometimes it would not’. alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 194 table 2. students’ receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge (pretest) receptive productive target words f % f % temperamental 0 0 0 0 salsa 50 33.11 12 42.86 fleeting 10 6.62 4 14.29 tropic 43 28.48 4 14.29 devalue 48 31.79 8 28.57 total 151 100 28 100 mean 1.51 0.28 for the productive vocabulary knowledge, the participants were tested if they could write the five target words: temperamental, salsa, fleeting, tropic and devalue with semantic appropriateness in a sentence. and as shown, the productive vocabulary knowledge of the target words of the participants has the mean score of 0.28. the result shows that only twelve of 100 participants were able to write the word ‘salsa’. next to that is ‘devalue’ which was used by only 8 of the participants. ‘tropic’ and ‘fleeting’ were used by only 4 participants and for ‘temperamental’, no one was able to use it with semantic appropriateness in a sentence. the performance in vocabulary acquisition after watching after watching the subtitled video material, the mean score of the receptive vocabulary has increased to 3.39 while the mean score of the productive vocabulary has increased to 2.93 as shown in table 3. table 3. students’ receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge (posttest) receptive productive target words f % f % temperamental 28 8.26 25 8.53 salsa 97 28.61 92 31.40 fleeting 36 10.62 26 8.87 tropic 83 24.48 4 22.53 devalue 95 28.02 8 28.67 total 339 100 293 100 mean 3.39 2.93 the result shows that for on the receptive vocabulary knowledge of the participants, ‘salsa’ got the highest frequency of 97 while the lowest is ‘temperamental’ with the frequency of 28. on the productive vocabulary, salsa also got the highest frequency of 92, while the lowest is still ‘temperamental’ with the frequency of 25. the difference between the pretest and posttest on the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge as shown in table 4.1, the z-test value of -13.20 was obtained for the receptive vocabulary knowledge, and is smaller than the alpha value, and is significant. alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 195 table 4.1. differences between the pre-test and posttest (receptive) test mean sd alpha value z value pretest 1.51 1.06 0.05 -13.20 posttest 3.39 0.95 decision: rejected remark: significant on the difference between pretest and posttest performance in terms of productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants, table 4.2 shows the z-test value of -19.84 which is is smaller than the alpha value of 0.05, and is also significant. table 4.2. differences between the pre-test and posttest (productive) test mean sd alpha value z value pretest 0.28 0.62 0.05 -19.84 posttest 2.93 1.81 decision: rejected remark: significant the results on both the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants after watching the subtitled video material mean that there is significant difference between the pretest and the posttest performance in the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants of the target words. thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. discussions watching subtitled video material, as shown in the results of the study, has a positive effect on the vocabulary acquisition of the learners of english as second language in terms of their receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge which is also translated as “there is a significant difference between their pretest and posttest performance in both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge”. another significant thing shown in the results is that the performance in the receptive vocabulary knowledge of the target words of the participants is greater than their productive vocabulary knowledge. this is what exactly songbo (2010) pointed out that receptive vocabulary knowledge is usually larger than the productive. receptive vocabulary being larger in size than the productive vocabulary was identified by harmer (2001) as passive vocabulary of words. passive vocabulary of words, though known by the learners, yet they cannot produce them, and in the case of this study, in writing. speaking of receptive vocabulary being larger than productive, loewen and sato (2017) concluded that knowledge of the different word knowledge aspects seems to be more robust and be acquired earlier than productive knowledge. the mean score that the participants gained for their productive vocabulary knowledge of the target words was 0.28. this result actually shows what loewen and sato (2017) pointed out, and if it would be tried to see the difference between the receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants of the target words in the pretest, 24.6% would be the result, so it would mean that the receptive knowledge of the participants is 24.6% larger than their productive vocabulary knowledge. in other words, receptive vocabulary knowledge is four times larger than productive vocabulary knowledge. from the results gathered, it can be inferred that because the learner recognizes and understands the word does not necessary mean that he or she can produce it. however, it should be noted that after watching the subtitled video material, the productive vocabulary knowledge of the participants was so close to their receptive vocabulary knowledge which can be considered a substantial increase. alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 196 conclusions it was revealed that the receptive vocabulary knowledge of the participants was larger than their productive vocabulary knowledge which is also pointed out in the past studies. this is the case before and after watching the subtitled video material. in the results obtained, it was found out that there was a considerable improvement on both the receptive and productive knowledge of the participants after watching the subtitled video material. and, it was revealed that there is a significant difference between the pretest and the posttest on both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge; thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. this study also suggests multimedia facilities to be provided in both private and public schools in the philippines which are needed in the use of subtitled video material in the teaching of vocabulary. references ahmad, j. (2011). intentional vs incidental vocabulary learning. interdisciplinary. elt research journal, 1(1), 71-79. andresen, b. b., brink, k., & unesco institute for information technologies in education. (2013). multimedia in education: curriculum. moscow: unesco institute for information technologies in education baltova, i. (2019). the effect of subtitled and staged video input on the learning and retention of content and vocabulary in a second language. (doctoral dissertation). university of toronto, toronto, canada. barcroft, j. (2009). effects of synonym generation on incidental and intentional l2 vocabulary learning during reading. tesol quarterly. 43(1), 79-103. biswas, ranjita (2005). hindi film songs can boost literacy rates in india. chai, j. & erlam, r. (2008). the effect and the influence of the use of video and captions on second language learning. new zealand studies in applied linguistics, 14(2), 25-44. education technology. (2017). educational multimedia. retrieved from http://uca.edu/legal/educationalmultimedia/ faraj, a. (2015). effective strategies for turning receptive vocabulary into productive vocabulary in efl context. journal of education and practice, 6(27), 10-19. ghabanchi, z., & ayoubi, e.s. (2012). incidental vocabulary learning and recall by intermediate foreign language students: the influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and summary writing. https://doi.org/10.19030/jier.v8i2.6828 gorjian, b. (2014). the effect of movie subtitling on incidental vocabulary learning among efl learners. international journal of asian social science, 4(9), 1013-1026. groot, p. (2000). computer assisted second language vocabulary acquisition. language learning and technology, 4(1), 60-81. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching, 3rd edition. london: pearson education. henriksen, b. (1999). three dimensions of vocabulary development. studies in second language acquisition, 21(2), 303–317. loewen, s. & sato, m. (eds). (2017). the routledge handbook of instructed second language acquisition. abingdon-on-thames, oxfordshire: routledge nasab m., & motlagh s. (2017). vocabulary learning promotion through english subtitled cartoons. communication and linguistics studies. 3(1-1), 1-7. nation, p. (2001). learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge: cambridge university press. alvin rosales / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 197 paribakht, t. & wesche, m. (1993). reading comprehension and second language development in a comprehension-based esl program. tesl canada journal, 11(1), 09-29. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v11i1.623 richards, j. & schmidt, r. (2002). longmandictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. malaysia: pearson education. sabouri, h. & zohrabi m. (2015). the impact of watching english subtitled movies in vocabulary learning in different genders of iranian efl learners: international journal on studies in english language and literature (ijsell), 3(2), 110-125. schmitt, n. (2008). review article: instructed second language vocabulary learning. language teaching research, 12(3), 329-363. senate (n.d.). republic act no. 10905. retrieved from https://www.senate.gov.ph/republic_acts/ra%2010905.pdf shahraki h. & kassaian, z. (2011). effects of learner interaction, receptive and productive learning tasks on vocabulary acquisition: an iranian case. procedia social and behavioral sciences. 15, 2165-2171. shahrokni, s. a. (2009). second language incidental vocabulary learning: the effect of online textual, pictorial, and textual pictorial glosses. iran university of science and technology (iust). songbo, z. (2010). comparing receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge of chinese efl learners. asian social science, 6. 10.5539/ass.v6n10p14. souleyman, h. m. (2009). implicit and explicit vocabulary acquisition with a computer-assisted hypertext reading task: comprehension and retention (doctoral dissertation). the university of arizona publisher. yali, g. (2010). l2 vocabulary acquisition through reading: incidental learning and intentional learning. chinese journal of applied linguistics, 33(1), 74-93. yildiz, t. (2017). the effect of videos with subtitles on vocabulary learning of efl learners. international journal of humanities and social science, 7(9), 125-130 yuksel, d. & tanriverdi b. (2009). effects of watching captioned movie clip on vocabulary development. the turkish online journal of educational technology – tojet, 8(2), 48–54. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 40 elt forum 7 (2) (2018) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text ade resky swarini, dwi anggani linggar bharati, djoko sutopo  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in october 2018 approved in november 2018 published in january 2019 ________________ keywords: correlation, reading comprehension, paraphrasing ability, narrative text. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ paraphrasing activity allows the students to interpret what they have understood from the text in reading activity. this study investigates the correlation of the students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. there are two hypotheses in this research; null hypothesis (ho) and the alternative hypothesis (ha). the null hypothesis says “there is no correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text”. then, ha says “there is a correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text”. the population of this study is the eleventh graders of sman 1 ambarawa in the academic year of 2016/2017. the students of xi mipa 5 are taken as the samples. the design of this study is explanatory research design. the data are gained by administering two kinds of tests; reading comprehension and paraphrasing tests. those tests are administered twice by using two different texts. there are three main processes in applying this method in the study; the use of the scatterplot, pearson product moment coefficient, and correlation coefficient interpretation. scatterplots displays that there is a positive linear relationship. then, the data are calculated by using the pearson product moment to know the degree of relationship among the variables. the results of the computation of correlation coefficient applied to the sample are 0.67 and 0.84. the consultation to the critical value of the r product moment with 95% confidence level and the number of the subjects 32 is 0.349. it means that the results obtained from the computation are higher than its critical value. next, the results of the computation of correlation coefficient are consulted to the criteria of correlation coefficient interpretation. the interpretations of the relationship are substantial and high to very high. it can be concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between students’ reading comprehension ability in narrative text (x) and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text (y) on the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa in the academic year of 2016/2017. © 2018 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: aderesky123@gmail.com a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 41 introduction language is important for people to carry out their daily activities. without language, people cannot communicate with other people. it means that we cannot get any information we need, because the use of language is to express our communicative needs either in speech or writing. english is one of international languages that is most frequently used. it is used in many fields of life like in business, politics, education, literature and so on. because of its role in all over affairs, english is mostly learned in non-english-speaking countries, and one of them is indonesia. in indonesia, english is learned at school from elementary school to university. english is even being taught from kindergarten in many big cities. harris (1969: 9) says that language exists in two forms, the spoken and the written. two language activities are associated with both speech and writing: an encoding and a decoding process. speaking and writing themselves are the encoding processes whereby we communicate our ideas, thoughts, or feelings through one or the other form of language: and listening and reading are the parallel decoding process by which we “understand” either a spoken or written message. in teaching and learning english process, both students and teacher can develop their four language skills. and the goal of teaching language is the mastery of the four language skills which include listening, speaking, reading and writing skills that correlate one and others. one of the four language skills is writing skill. writing is an output of reading skill. this skill is very important for us because science and knowledge always have transformation and by writing, we can also express our ideas. here, writing draws the kinds of symbols to describe anything recognized by someone and it conveys the message from the writer through those symbols. paraphrasing activity allows the students to interpret what they have understood from the text in reading activity. paraphrasing is, quite simply, restating ideas in different words. in this process, a reader (or listener) can choose to paraphrase one statement, a group of statements, or entire passage (kissner, 2006: 6).there are many factors that influence someone’s difficulties in paraphrasing a story, such as the input of the ideas from the reading activity. there are many ways to avoid those things. one of them is by comprehending a story in reading activity as the input. in senior high school nowadays, the students are expected to learn many kinds of text, such as narrative, descriptive, recount, report, procedure, explanation and so on. therefore, in order to do this research, the writer chooses the narrative text. a narrative is a piece of text which tells a story and, in doing so, entertains or informs the reader or the listener (anderson and anderson, 1997:6). by conducting the research in knowing the correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability, it will figure out how is the students’ reading comprehension, how is the students’ paraphrasing ability, and how is the correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. it will also help the students to know what should they do in order to avoid their difficulty in paraphrasing a story of narrative text. moreover, this study will also give the teacher a description about the correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. due to that point, the teacher will know what should be done in teaching and learning process, especially in reading comprehension and paraphrasing of narrative text, so the teacher can help the students not only in understanding and comprehending text, but also how to express and convey their ideas in writing text. methods research design used in this study was explanatory research design. it was used to find out the correlation between two variables; students’ reading comprehension ability and students’ a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 42 paraphrasing ability. the population was the entire of the eleventh grade students of sma negeri 1 ambarawa in the academic year of 2016/2017. the total number of population was 360 students. from the population, i took class xi mipa 5 with 32 students by using cluster random sampling. in collecting the data, i used two tests. there were reading comprehension test within ten multiple choice items and paraphrasing test in the form of responsive writing. before the test was administered, the reading test was tried out and analyzed. it was conducted in order to know whether the test was valid and reliable or not. after the tryout, the results were analyzed to make sure whether the instruments of reading comprehension can be used or not. then, i conducted the research to collect the data. the reading comprehension and paraphrasing tests were administered twice with two different narrative texts. the first text entitled “the legend of rawa pening” and the other was “the story of malin kundang”. i administered those tests in one meeting of two lessons in 90 minutes. in the first part of the lesson, the students had to read narrative text entitled “the legend of rawa pening”. after reading and comprehended the text, the students had to answer ten multiple choice questions which would measure their reading comprehension ability in narrative text. they had to do that test in ten minutes. after they had done with the reading comprehension test, they had to move to the paraphrasing test. here, i gave them 25 minutes to retell the story that they had read before. they had to tell the story in their own words with at least 100 words. after conducting the test with the first narrative text, i continued the test in the second part of the lesson. i distributed the texts, the booklets, and the answer sheets to the students. in the first ten minutes, the students had to read the narrative text entitled “the story of malin kundang”. after reading that text, they had to answer ten multiple choice items of reading comprehension questions. then, they had to go to the next paraphrasing test. the students had to retell the story, at least in 100 words. after conducting the test, i would like to score the test and analyzed the correlation of students’ reading comprehension ability and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. results and discussions the researcher had conducted the test. then, i analyzed the data by using the statistical analysis and interpretation analysis to support the data clearly. scatterplot was used in analyzing the data to describe the association between the two scores. these scatterplots displayed the sets of scores in reading comprehension ability and paraphrasing ability in narrative text for participants. here were the scores of the participants which had been achieved and its displayed on the graph. figure 4.1 scatterplot for reading comprehension and paraphrasing ability of the first narrative text (the legend of rawa pening) from the figure 4.1, the distribution of the scores of students reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability showed that there was a positive linear relationship, in which low (or high) 0 50 100 0 50 100 s c o re s o n p a ra p h ra si n g a b il it y scores on reading comprehension scatterplot of text 1 a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 43 scores on one variable related to low (or high) scores on the other variable. it meant the scores of students’ reading comprehension ability was associated with the scores of paraphrasing ability. figure 4.2 scatterplot for reading comprehension and paraphrasing ability of the second narrative text (the story of malin kundang) figure 4.2 displayed how the scores of students reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability distributed. according to the graph, i could conclude that there was a positive linear relationship. the low (or high) scores on one reading comprehension related to low (or high) scores on the paraphrasing ability. then, the data of students’ reading comprehension and paraphrasing ability were calculated by using pearson product moment to know the degree of relationship among those variables. the formula of the pearson product-moment is as follows: (brown, 2005:143) in which: rxy : pearson product-moment correlation coefficient x : each student’s score on test x mx : mean on test x sx : standard deviation on test x y : each student’s score on test y my : mean on test y sy : standard deviation on test y n : the number of the students who took the two tests the calculation of the correlation coefficient of the first text (the legend of rawa pening) is presented below: the result of the first data shows that . if rxy ≥ 0.349 there is a significant correlation. it can be concluded that from the first data, there is a significant relationship between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. then, the correlation coefficient of the second data of the reading comprehension and paraphrasing ability test is also calculated. the result is presented below: 0 50 100 0 50 100 s c o re s o n p a ra p h ra si n g a b il it y scores on reading comprehension scatterplot of text 2 a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 44 the calculation of the correlation coefficient from the other data showed that . if rxy ≥ 0.349 there is a significant correlation. it could be concluded that from the other data, there was a significant relationship between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. after i had calculated the degree of relationship between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text, i could interpret the level of relationship among those variables based on the following criteria: coefficient (r) relationship .00 to 0.20 negligible .00 to .40 low .40 to .60 moderate .60 to .80 substantial .80 to 1.00 high to very high (best and kahn, 1995: 308) since the result of the correlation coefficient of the first text (the legend of rawa pening) was , it could be interpreted that the correlation was in the level of substantial. then, the result of the correlation coefficient of the second text (the story of malin kundang) reached , it could be interpreted that the correlation is in the level of high to very high. based on the research finding on students’ reading comprehension ability in narrative text, i could say that the students’ reading comprehension ability in narrative text was good. it could be seen from the computation in which the average of students’ reading comprehension in narrative text reached 69,38 and 73,44. when they were consulted to the table of criteria of ability by brown, the scores are categorized as “average” and “good”. the paraphrasing ability of the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa could also be categorized as “good”. it can be seen from the computation in which the students’ scores in paraphrasing ability reached 75,13 and 75,09. when the scores are consulted to the table of criteria of ability suggested by brown, the scores were categorized as “good”. in relation to the result of the correlation coefficient of the first text (the legend of rawa pening) that it was . when it was consulted to the criteria of the degree of relationship suggested by best and kahn, it could be interpreted that the correlation was in the level of substantial. then, the result of the correlation coefficient of the second text (the story of malin kundang) reached , it could be interpreted that the correlation was in the level of high to very high. according to those results, it could be said that the relationship between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text was significant. conclusions the purpose of the research is to answer the research questions of how is the students’ reading ability in narrative text, students’ paraphrasing ability in narrative text, and how is the correlation between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text. to obtain the intended data, i arrange the two sets of test with two titles of narrative text. in each of the tests, there are reading comprehension test to measure the students’ reading comprehension in narrative text and paraphrasing test to measure the students’ paraphrasing ability in narrative text. after conducting the research, i come to some conclusions. first, the reading comprehension ability in narrative text of the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa is good. it can be seen from the computation in which the average of students’ reading comprehension in narrative text reaches 69,38 and 73,44. when they are consulted to the a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 45 table of category level by brown, the scores are categorized as “average” and “good”. so, it can be concluded that the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa have good reading comprehension ability in narrative text. they can comprehend and understand the message that the writer of the story wants to deliver to the reader. second, the paraphrasing ability of the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa is also categorized as “good”. it can be seen from the computation in which the students’ scores in paraphrasing ability reach 75,13 and 75,09. when the scores are consulted to the table of category level of ability suggested by brown, the scores are categorized as “good”. in conclusion of students’ paraphrasing ability in narrative text, the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa have a good ability in understanding and retelling a story that they have read in a good composition. third, there is a significant positive relationship between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text on eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa in the academic year of 2016/2017. in dealing with the result, the computation of correlation coefficient between students’ reading comprehension and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text applied to the sample are 0.67 and 0.84. then, the consultation to the critical value of the r product moment with 95% confidence level and the number of the subjects 32 is 0.349. it means that the result obtained from the computation is higher than its critical value. when the results of the computation of correlation coefficient are consulted to the criteria of correlation coefficient interpretation suggested by best and kahn, the interpretations of the relationship are substantial and high to very high. it can be concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between students’ reading comprehension ability in narrative text (x) and their paraphrasing ability in narrative text (y) on the eleventh graders of sma negeri 1 ambarawa in the academic year of 2016/2017. references anderson, m. and k. anderson. (1957). text types in english 2. australia: macmillan education. anne, b. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. best, john w. and james v. kahn. (1995). research in education. new delhi: prentice hall. brown, h. d. (2001). teaching by principles. san fransisco: longman inc. brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment principles and classroom practices. san fransisco: pearson education, inc. brown, j. d. (2005). testing in language program: a comprehensive guide to english language assessment. new york the mcgraw-hill. brown, j. d. (1988). understanding research in second language learning. cambridge: cup. cohen, louis. (2007). research method in education. oxon: routledge. creswell, john w. (2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. boston: pearson education, inc. fraenkel, jack r. and norman e. wallen. (2009). how to design and evaluate research in education. new york: the mcgraw hill. a. r. swarini, d. a. l. bharati, d. sutopo / journal of english language teaching 7 (2) (2018) 46 griffee, dale t. (2012). an introduction to second language research methods, design, and data. berkeley: tesl ej publication harris, d. p. 1969. teaching english as a second language. new york: me graw-hill book company. hyland, k. (2003). second language writing. new york: cambridge university press. hyland, k. (2004). genre and second language writing. michigan: university of michigan press. kissner, emily. (2006). summarizing, paraphrasing, and retelling: skill for better reading, writing, and test taking. portsmouth: heinemann. kothari, c.r. (2004). research methodology: methods and techniques. new delhi: new age international publisher. mcnamara, t. f. (1996). measuring second language performance. new york: addison wesley longman. o’malley, j. m. and lorraine v. d. (1996). authentic assessment for english language learner. new york: addison wesley longman. siahaan, s., & shinoda , k. (2008). generic text structure. yogyakarta: graha ilmu. smalzer, william r. (2005). write to be read: reading, reflection, and writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. snow, catherine. (2002). reading for understanding: toward an r&d program in reading comprehension. santa monica: rand. ur, p. (n.d.). a course in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. microsoft word [article 4]_38404-research results-99388-1-15-2020 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 38 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt potential relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and proficiency in grammar among tertiary efl learners achmad kholili institut ilmu keislaman zainul hasan genggong, probolinggo, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 21 april 2020 approved in 1 july 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: self-efficacy; english; grammar ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ a multitude of studies on self-efficacy beliefs have been undertaken to date, especially in language learning. however, little evidence is given on looking into the relationship between self-efficacy and english grammar. to this end, the present study goes about identifying to what extent the correlation between learners’ self-efficacy and their achievements in the grammar test is. drawing on the correlational design, an english grammar test was administered to the learners to know the learners’ acquaintance with the english grammar. meanwhile, a self-efficacy questionnaire was performed by the researcher to the learners to figure out to what extent their efficaciousness is. a pearson-product moment correlation was performed to analyze the relationship between such variables. the result demonstrates that there is a high positive significant correlation between learners’ self-efficacy and their attainments in the grammar test, displayed by r correlation = +1. this finding brings a recent insight in the field of language learning. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 department of english, faculty of tarbiyah kraksaan, probolinggo, east java, indonesia, 67282 e-mail:achmadkholili93@gmail.com achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 39 introduction notable success from learners is, among other things, considerably influenced by their beliefs in themselves, including the achievements in academic settings. a set of the beliefs is strengthened and combined with their ability to cope with something they are dealing with. in this regard, this perceived beliefs are summoned as selfefficacy, referring to the beliefs one has about their ability to perform a task or behavior (bandura, 1997). this puts strong emphasis on the way a person should address the problems, including how people or learners overcome their difficulties in learning english, one of which is grammar. to date, a mass of evidence has emerged that self-efficacy has a dramatic impact on one’s achievement. this has been accounted for by numerous studies carried out by some researchers. first, a study was undertaken by bai et al. (2018). they conducted a study on the relationship between social supports, self-efficacy, and english language achievement in hong kong. employing a correlational study, (bai et al., 2018) found that social supports (teachers, parents, and peers), self-efficacy, and english learning achievement are closely related to each other from the weak to moderate strengths. looking back to several years ago, the co-relational study was also ever made by (wang, 2005). he examined the relationship between language learning strategies and language self-efficacy. seventy-four graduate esl pre-service teachers (13 males, 61 females) of a teacher’s college in kuching, sarawak, malaysia took part in this study. by distributing self-efficacy questionnaire and interview, the finding demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between language strategies and language self-efficacy. the high selfefficacy of the pre-service teachers reported more frequent use of more number of language learning strategies than did low self-efficacy pre-service teachers. quite recent research was also carried out by (ivars et al., 2014), especially on the correlation between self-efficacy and language proficiency in interpreter trainees. drawing upon the sample of 281 participants enrolled as the final year students in the translation and interpretation degree program at university of jaume i, spain, over three consecutive academic years-i.e. approximately 90 subjects per year, all of the students, obtained the same training in interpreting-approximately 160 contact hours ranging from 18-24 in age. the findings of his study exhibit that self-efficacy relevant when predicting performance only in trainees with high linguistic competence. however, high linguistic competence trainees lacking self-efficacy offered poorer interpretation renderings. while a bulk of former studies on self-efficacy have been done by the researchers, there is a paucity of the study on the relationship between self-efficacy and the grammar performance. to this effect, the researcher devotes his full attention to the correlation between learners’ perceived self-efficacy and performances in the grammar test. this study is aimed at examining whether or not there is a correlation between both of the variables. literature review self-effiacy self-efficacy has been defined as one’s beliefs about one’s ability to perform a task or behavior (bandura, 1997). in this regards, the belief becomes a critical factor detemining one’s success, say, in academic settings. therefore, the performance of the task may differ markedly depending on the belief of their efficacy in that task (bandura, 1997, 1986, 1997) cited in (sala& redford, 2012). furthermore, magowwe & oliver (2007) notes that this selfefficacy may mediate the effects of other influences, including aptitude, previous achievement, or subsequent achievement. bandura (2010) further emphasizes that the stronger the perceived self-efficacy, the higher the objective challenges ones set for themselves and the stronger is their commitment to them (bandura,2010). accordingly, this factor has a huge impact on how people accomplish their goals. this self-efficacy indeed contributes significantly to the ways people lead to their success. the scenario they set to achieve the goal may be enormously affected by self-efficacy they construct in themselves; and therefore, those who have a high sense of efficacy visualize success of scenario that gives positive guides and supports for performance. on the other hand, those who doubt their efficacy portray failure scenario and dwell on the many things that can go wrong. as a result, it is difficult to achieve much while fighting self-doubt (bandura, 2010). grammar grammar which has been continuously studied by both efl and esl learners still becomes problematic for learners in particular. while the methods and approaches have been executed, the learners still grapple with some complexities, such as tenses, adjective clauses, the use of preposition, conjunction usage, and etc in constructing a sentence. greenbaum & nelson (2013) note that grammar is set of rules which allow us to combine words in english into larger units. achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 40 grammar, however, is still deemed as a complex rule which makes efl learners fail to achieve success in studying it. for instance, the use singular and plural may be different each other in terms of combining it with verbs in the sentence. a case in point is that the verb used in a sentence is “come”, and when it is used in a sentence, it will definitely be relied on what the subject the one uses. if the subject is i, then the sentence becomes ‘i come’, and may slightly differ from the sentence employing a singular form, say, “he”, then it will become “he comes”. this complexity makes some efl learners bored in learning english grammar. as a consequence, they fail to achieve good in english, as has been stated by rimmer (2006) that difficulties of grammar can be found in the form and structure. methods this study draws on the correlational research for which participants, data collection, and data analysis are accounted in the following. the correlational research, in this case, was carried out to examine the relationship between the students’ perceived self-efficacy and their performance in the grammar test. participants the study elicited 30 english major students from univeristy of islam zainul hasan genggong, probolinggo, east java, indonesia. the learners were taken out with the simple random sampling. at first, all of the learners majoring in english department at the university were 60 students: 30 in class a and 30 in class b. however, the researcher subsequently selected one of them randomly as the sample of this study and it was found class a to be the sparticipants. to this end, 30 learners in class a voted for their efficacies and accomplished the grammar test. data collection the researcher sought to gather the data by delivering a general self-efficacy questionnaire and the grammar test to the learners. the general self-efficacy questionnaire was used to investigate their beliefs of their ability to complete a task, and the grammar test was used to know their knowledge of grammar. there were 10 questions in the grammar in which all are in the form of multiple choice tests taken from (http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/q7m/1.htm), whereas 10 statements of the general self-efficacy questionnaire adopted from jerusalem & schwarzer (1995) were distributed to the students, determining to what extent the learners’ efficacies towards the grammar test. the data were garnered after the students studied a tefl in their class in which it occurred approximately at 11 a.m. in the daylight. during the time, the learners began completing the self-efficacy questionnaire and the grammar test. data analysis after the data were gathered, the researcher subsequently calculated the data by counting up the results revealed by the students in the self-efficacy questionnaire and in the grammar test. it was counted up based on to what extent their self-efficacies were and how many students received the correct answers from the grammar test. a person-product moment correlation was afterwards performed to identify the relationship between the selfefficacy and their grammar performance. therefore, the hypotheses are formulated in the following. there are two hypotheses proposed in this study, namely the alternative hypothesis and null hypothesis: 1. h1 (alternative hypothesis): there is a significant correlation between learners’ perceived self-efficacy and their grammar performance. 2. h0 (null hypothesis): there is no significant correlation between learners’ perceived self-efficacy and their grammar performanc following that, the formula for person-product moment correlation is presented in the following: ݕݔݎ = ݊∑ܻܺ − (∑ܺ)(∑ܻ) ඥ{݊∑ܺ2 − (∑ܺ)2 }{݊∑ܻ2 − (∑ܻ)2 } where: rxy : pearson r correlation coefficient n : numbers of samples x : independent variables y : dependent variables meanwhile, the formula for calculating the results of the grammar test is presented in the following: achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 41 where: y : the result of the correct answers n : the total number of answers finding and discussion the finding of this study demonstrated that self-efficacy has a remarkable correlation with the performances in grammar. this finding indeed reports a straightforward fact that learners’ efficaciousness confirms a definite prediction in terms of how learners notch up their success in completing the grammar quiz. the following is the r calculation result. in this case, the two variables are correlated using a person product moment correlation. no x y x2 y2 xy 1 37 70 1369 4900 2590 2 40 80 1600 6400 3200 3 38 85 1444 7225 3230 4 40 95 1600 9025 3800 5 36 75 1296 5625 2700 6 40 95 1600 9025 3800 7 38 80 1444 6400 3040 8 37 90 1369 8100 3330 9 29 50 841 2500 1450 10 34 65 1156 4225 2210 11 31 45 961 2025 1395 12 35 70 1225 4900 2450 13 32 50 1024 2500 1600 14 33 60 1089 3600 1980 15 39 90 1521 8100 3510 16 15 60 225 900 450 17 27 50 729 2500 1350 18 30 60 900 3600 1800 19 32 60 900 3600 1920 20 38 75 1444 5625 2850 21 40 85 1600 7225 3400 22 38 80 1444 6400 3040 23 18 45 324 2025 810 24 37 80 1369 6400 2960 25 40 95 1600 9025 3800 26 39 75 1521 5625 2925 27 35 80 1225 6400 2800 28 40 80 1600 6400 3200 29 23 20 529 400 460 30 28 65 784 4225 1820 total 1019 2080 35.857 154.900 173.870 they were then calculated using the formula of person-product moment correlation as follows: gramar test n= ࢅ ࢔ ࢞૚૙૙ achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 42 notes: the degree of freedom r table r calculation correlation 0.361 882.65 significant the result above indicates a surprising finding with r correlation = 8. it means that this is more than 0.01 or > 1 and is therefore categorized as the highest positive significant correlation between learners’ perceived selfݕݔݎ = ݊∑ܻܺ − (∑ܺ)(∑ܻ) ඥ{݊∑ܺ2 − (∑ܺ)2 }{݊∑ܻ2 − (∑ܻ)2 } ݕݔݎ = (30.73870) − (1019)(2080) ඥ{30.3585 − (1019)2 }{30.154900 − (2080)2 } ݕݔݎ = 2.216.100 − 2.119.520 ඥ{1.075.710 − 1.038.361 }{4.647.000 − 4.326.400 } ݕݔݎ = 96.580 ඥ{ 37.349 }{ 320.600 } ݕݔݎ = 96.580 √11.974.089.400 ݕݔݎ = 96.580 109,42 ݕݔݎ = 882,65 achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 43 efficacy and their proficiency in grammar. therefore, h1 is accepted and h0 is clearly rejected. in brief, the higher the students’ self-efficacy they have, the better they perform in a certain task or behavior. discussion the present study is predicated on the idea that successful language learners, including in grammar performances are, among other things, by dint of beliefs and cognitive factors, such as self-efficacy. the students, in this case, was required of completing both the general self-efficacy questionnaire and the grammar test to identify the extent to which the relationship between self-efficacy and learners’ performances in grammar. what follows is a quick view on the relationship between both of the variables. along with the research questions addressed in the former chapter, that is, is there a significant correlation between learners’ perceived self-efficacy and performances in grammar? the findings have come up with the full attention that self-efficacy is significantly correlated with the academic performances, particularly in grammar, with the view of (r): 0.80, categorized as high significant correlation. the learners with high selfefficacy could pass the test well, reflected by their marks on the subject, ranging from 70, 80 up to 100. those with high self-efficacy attained the grammar test between 80 and 100 on average, whereas those who have low self-efficacy got hold of 30 and 50 evenly. those with high self-efficacy believe firmly in the grammar test that they could perform correctly in grammar rather than those with the low ones. as has been claimed by schunk & pajares (2010) that self-efficacy beliefs heighten human accomplishment and well-being in countless ways. they affect the choices people make and the courses of action they pursue. the finding carries a profound implication that learners should have high self-efficacy in learning to reach a satisfying result, including english grammar. bandura and his colleagues have undertaken an experiment on the power of self-efficacy and found that this variable has a considerable impact on students’ level of performance, task choice, effort, persistence, thought patterns, and stress reactions (bandura, 1986), cited in (word & locke, 1987). this self-efficacy becomes a key determinant in academic success, including the success of learning english grammar as has been depicted in the finding earlier. beliefs and confidence in copying with particular task or exhibiting a behavior may significantly come to fruition. it encompasses the academic success in college. no matter what the tests are, self-efficacy factor enormously predisposes learners to their levels of performance in the academic settings. chemers, hu, and garcia, (2001) affirmatively argue that it must be acknowledged that high school gpa itself is closely correlated to academic self-efficacy and that high school performance is likely to have been affected by the levels of academic self-efficacy that existed at the time. furthermore, bouffard bouchard, parent, and larivee (1991) also claim that those self-efficacies wield great influence on various aspects, such as self-regulation, task persistence, and performance further studies in terms of self-efficacy are strongly suggested. the ensuing researcher may carry out a study on other dimensions, such as on toefl test, placement test, and several similar teststhat can be administered using larger samples in different spots. conclusion the findings of this study stress the importance of drawing on self-efficacy in english learning, for instance, grammar as stated above. the students, above, with high self-efficacy engender greater confidence than those who are not. those categorized as highly efficacious learners gained better in the grammar test than those with the low ones. this definitely proves that self-efficacy contributes heavily to the achievement.. in brief, the higher the students’self-efficacy the learners have, the better they perform in the grammar test. notes on the contributor: achmad kholili is an english lecturer at the universitas islam zainul zainul hasan genggong, probolinggo, indonesia. formerly, he has published his research articles in international journal of research in english education, lingual: journal of language and culture, and veles: voice of english language education society. his research interests fall within the area of elt and applied linguistics. references bai, b., chao, g.c.n., & wang, c. (2018).the relationship between social supports, self efficacy and english langauge learning achievement in hong kong.tesol quarterly, 0(0), 245-269. bandura, a. (2010). perceived self-efficacy in cognitive development and functioning.educational psychologist, 28(2), 117-148. bouffard-bouchard, t., parent, s., &larivee, s. (1991). influence of self-efficacy on self regulation and perfromance among junior and high school age students.international journal of behaviorial development, 14(2), 153-164. achmad kholili/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 44 chemers, m.m. hu, l. & garcia, b.f. (2001).academic self-efficacy and first year college student performance and adjustment.journal of educational psychology, 93(1), 55-64. greenbaum, s., & nelson, g. (2013).an introduction to english grammar(3rd ed.). new york: routledge. ivars, a.j., catalyud, d.p. &fores, m.r.i. (2014).self-efficacy and langauge proficiency in interpreter trainees.the interpreter and translator trainer, 8(2), 167-182. magogwe, j.m. & oliver, r. (2007). the relationship between language learning strategies, proficiency, age, and self-efficacy beliefs: a study of language learners in botswana. system, 35, 338-352. pre-sala, m. & redford, p. (2012). writing essays: does self efficacy matters? the relationship between self efficacy in reading and in writing and undergraduate students’ performance in essay writing.educational psychology, 32(1), 9-20. rimmer, w. (2006). measuring grammatical complexity: the gordanian knot. language testing, 23(4), 497519. schunk, d.h. &pajares, f. (2010).self efficacy beliefs.in elsevier ltd. schwarzer, r. & jerusalem, m. (1995). generalized self efficacy scale. in j.weinmen, s. wright, & m.johnston. measures in health psychology: a user’s portfolio. causal and control belifes (pp. 35-37). windsor, uk: nfeer-nelson. wong, m.s.l. (2005). language learning strategies and language self-efficacy: investigating the relationship in malaysia. relc journal, 36(3), 245-269. wood, r.e. & locke, e.a. (1987).the relation of self-efficacy and grade goals to academic performances. educational and psychological measurement, 1(47), 1013-1024. microsoft word 1. muhammad ichsan andi wahyono 1 students’ translation techniques and grammatical errors in translating narrative text muhammad ichsan andi wahyono, issy yuliasri  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 25 july 2018 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: translation; translation techniques; students’ translation; grammar; grammatical errors; narrative text.____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research attempted to find out the translation techniques and grammatical errors in students’ indonesian-english text translation. the objectives of this research were to describe the choice of translation techniques and grammatical errors of the students’ translation of a narrative text. this research used descriptive qualitative method. the translation techniques analysis was done by using molina and albir's (2002) classification of translation techniques while grammatical errors of the students’ translation were analyzed using the guide for correcting writing errors by betty azar (1941). the translation technique analysis was done by comparing the students’ translation work with the source text of a narrative entitled lari kepagian then grammatical errors analysis was done to find out their errors in the use of grammatical rules. the result of the study found that there were 3012 data of translation techniques and 429 grammatical errors. the data showed that the most used translation techniques were literal translation technique (30.1%) and modulation technique (22.6%) and the most grammatical errors made was capitalization (18.2%) and verb tense (16.6%). the most used translation technique that resulted in most grammatical errors was modulation technique (17%) in the translation done by 24 students. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 2 introduction translating is not only translating text from source language to target language. it is also not out of translator’s skill to divert meaning and its aesthetic elements-including in this case is the style of language. as stated by nida and taber (1982: 12) that there are two processes in translation. the processes are to reproduce both message and style equivalence from the source language. however, translation in terms of style is something complicated. nababan (2008: 59) states that the stylistic complexity is one of the factors causing the difficulty. to produce a good translation, the translator has to know almost perfectly the language translate from, and above all, the language to be translated into. there has to be no mystery for the translator in the original text, has to understand every nuance. otherwise, he will lose pieces of information. in other words, translation is not merely the transfer of words in l1 into those l2 or vice versa. most translators used to do equivalence rather than did any theoretical status. translating from source language to target language is determining the most appropriate equivalence in the target language. baker (1992) proposes that equivalence of translating source language into the target language often face difficulties for the translator. she divides the equivalence into six levels; they are equivalence at the word level, equivalence above word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence, and pragmatic equivalence. as stated by molina and albir (2002), in order to classify the equivalencies, translation techniques can be used as the tool to analyze and classify the translation equivalence. in addition, the use of translation techniques will help in-depth translators determine the form and structure of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences of translation. in order to translate a text properly, a translator requires certain skills in translation or often referred to as translation competence. process of acquisition of translation competence and evaluation (pacte) (2011) states that the translation competence consists of several subcompetencies, namely: bilingual competence, extra linguistic competence, translation knowledge competence, instrumental competence, strategic competence, & psycho-physiological competence. the bilingual competence to use two languages well is very much determined by the communicative competencies they have, which include grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence (bell, 1991: 41). grammatical competence is knowledge of language rules which refers to the vocabulary, word formation, pronunciation and sentence structure. knowledge of grammatical rules and skill of using translation techniques are very much needed in understanding and producing translation. however, foreign language learners often make errors in the use of english grammatical structure. due to first language grammatical structure interference, indonesian students tend to produce the grammatical errors in almost all of english grammatical aspects. based on richards (1971: 182-88), there are many categories of grammatical errors. the grammatical error classification proposed by betty s. azar (1942) in a guide of guide for correcting writing errors are singular-plural, word form, word choice, verb tense, add a word, omit a word, word order, incomplete sentences, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, article, meaning not clear, & run-on sentence. this study was done to answer the following questions: (1) what translation techniques are used by students in translating narrative text? (2) what kinds of grammatical errors are made by students in translating narrative text? (3) which translation technique does cause most grammatical error? muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 3 methods this research was a case study which investigated the students’ translation work. this study focused on students’ translation techniques and their grammatical errors. this research used descriptive qualitative method, using a content analysis approach. the data were collected by assessing students to translate a narrative text, which were around 3 pages. in order to collect students’ translation work, contacting the lecturer was chosen to ask their permission to conduct the research of collecting data from indonesian – english translation class of english department of universitas negeri semarang. there were twenty four students. for the execution, first, the indonesian short story entitled "lari kepagian" was given to the students. after the text was given, they were asked to read the text carefully and asked to translate the text into english. after their translation result was collected, then analyzing their translation results was started in a lot of varieties of translation techniques proposed by molina and albir (2002) they used and occurred grammatical errors proposed by betty azar (1992). then, the students' translation works were classified to represent the general findings because it was impossible to presents all of the translation techniques and grammatical errors were founded. the translation technique analysis was conducted by using a translation technique proposed by molina and albir (2002). there are adaptation, amplification, borrowing, calque, compensation, description, discursive creation, established equivalent, generalization, literal translation, modulation, particularization, reduction, substitution, transposition, and variation. the grammatical error analysis was conducted using a guide of guide for correcting writing errors proposed by betty azar (1941). there are singular-plural, word form, word choice, verb tense, add a word, omit a word, word order, incomplete sentences, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, article, meaning not clear, & run-on sentence. findings and discussion the data analyzed in this study were the translation techniques and grammatical errors found in the translated short story written by the fifth semester of english education program in indonesianenglish translation class of english department 2017/2018 which had taken a part of their learning experience in translating text from indonesian into english. there were 24 students had made their own translation by their self as the subjects of the research. after the data were identified, it was found that the majority of the subjects made errors in the use of grammar (subject, verb, tenses and pronoun) in their letters. the names of the applicants were pseudonyms. below are the examples of the errors analysis of motivation letters. this part shows the result of data analysis, which is expected to be the answer to problems in this research. this analysis will answer the question of types of translation techniques and grammatical errors aspects which are occurred in indonesian-english class of english department 2017/2018. the number of translation techniques founded can be shown in the table below: table 1. translation techniques used technique % literal translation 30 modulation 22.6 reduction 10.9 established equivalent 8.4 borrowing 6.7 linguistic amplification 5.7 amplification 4.3 muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 4 adaptation 3.8 linguistic compression 2.7 transposition 2.3 compensation 1.4 particularization/ generalization 1.3 the table 1 above was the result of the counting the number of all the translation techniques analyzed that was founded. the most used translation technique by the students is literal translation technique (30%), followed by modulation technique (22.6%) and the others. the lowest used translation technique is particular/generalization technique (1.3%). table 2. grammatical errors occurred grammatical error % capitalization 18.2 verb tense 16.6 punctuation 11.4 word form 11.2 spelling 8.6 word choice 8.2 add/omit a word 7.5 article 5.4 word order 4.9 meaning not clear 2.6 singular plural 2.4 incomplete sentence 2.1 run-on sentence 1.2 the table 1 above was the result of the counting the number of all the grammatical errors analysis that was founded. the most used translation technique by the students is capitalization error (18.2%), followed by verb tense error (16.6%) and the others. the lowest occurred grammatical error is run on-sentence (1.2%). the combination of the translation techniques and students’ grammatical errors might not be simple or so easy correlated. therefore, the fact was one of translation technique could have many counts of grammatical errors more than its translation technique count. in other words, one translation technique could have many grammatical errors. the followings are the detailed description of each translation technique found in the students translation. the detailed description is also provided with some examples. literal translation according to molina and albir’s (2002), the literal translation is a technique that the translator translates a word or an expression in sl by word for word. there were 905 times or about 30.05% of literal translation was found in analyzing the translation technique. an example of the literal translation data is presented below: muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 5 (1.) student number 4, datum number 101 st : ia berlari pagi saat orang-orang masih tertidur lelap. tt : he ran early while the people were still slept soundly. reconstruction : he ran early when the people still slept soundly. the sentence in st above was translated using the word by word techniques into tt. the translator translates the sentence ‘ia berlari pagi saat orang-orang masih tertidur lelap.’ (he was running in the morning while people was still sleeping) into ‘he ran early while the people were still slept soundly.’ by literal translation technique. the one should be emphasized by an explanation was ‘tertidur’ that was being got asleep by something or someone translated as ‘sleep’ passively which was ‘slept’ & ‘were’ to adjust the source text grammar into target text grammar, so the translation became ’the people still slept’. it still belonged to literal translation because the source text was directly translated word by word. this translation was in one way with the explanation of literal translation by molina and albir (2002). the grammatical use of both phrases in the simple past tense and the simple past tense in the passive form were considered that the translator must use ‘when’ since both the 2 clauses are in the simple past form & the function of the ‘while” as the time reference. the sentence should be “he ran early when the people were still asleep soundly.” modulation modulation is a technique that is the change a point of view, focus or cognitive category of the translator; it can be lexical or structural (molina and albir, 2002). the researchers finds out there are 679 times or about 22.54% of modulation in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are some examples of modulation. capitalization is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 19.18% in the modulation technique. and meaning not clear, word order, and spelling is the least frequent error made by the students with a percentage of 2.74%%. the change of focus, the point of view, & cognitive categorization in modulation technique was found in some samples below: for the first mention by the researcher, i would like to mention is the modulation which is the change of focus. the students from the translation class change the source text main focus into the other focus on the target text such as below: (2.) student number 2, datum number 39 st : bayangan itu berjalan menuju ke arahnya! (the shadow walks toward him) tt : the shadow approached him close and close! reconstruction : the shadow approached him closely and closely! (3.) student number 5, datum number 61 st : “ooh, jadi kamu yang meleparku yaa?” ujar nenek ranta. tt : "ooh. so you're the one who threw the pebble at me, aren't you?" said grandma ranta. reconstruction : "ooh. so you're someone who threw the pebble over me, aren't you?" said grandma ranta. in sample 7, the phrase ‘berjalan menuju ke arahnya’ (‘walked into her’) is translated into ‘approached him close and close’ and in sample 8,the phrase ‘jadi kamu yang meleparku’(ooh, so you throw me, don’t you? said granny ranta.) is translated into ‘the one who threw the pebble at me’. although the meaning of the translation will be affected with shifting a little bit in a different way, the manner of both phrase use is still enough appropriate with the target language. therefore, the muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 6 translator changed the focus of the source text becomes ‘approached him close and close’. this translation is in accordance with the definition of modulation by molina and albir (2002) that changes the focus in translation. reduction the next technique used is reduction, which occurs 13 times. in this translation technique, the information item in the tl is compressed by the translator (molina and albir, 2002). the translator omits word(s) or phrase because probably he thinks it is not important. the researcher finds out there are 328 times or about 10.89% of reduction in analyzing the translation technique. word choice is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 25% in the reduction technique. an example of the reduction technique data presented below: (4.) student numbers 1, datum number 39 st : bayangan itu berjalan menuju ke arahnya! tt : the shadow walked to him. reconstruction : the shadow walked into him! in the sample above, the word ‘menuju’(‘aim’) is not translated into the target language. the translator omitted the word because the meaning is still conveyed in the target language. the translation above does have some grammatical error. it can found in the particle of phrase ‘walked to’. the students might think that s/he is possible to use the particle ‘to’ in the ‘the shadow walked to him.’ then, some grammatical errors were founded. they are punctuation and word choice. the particle of ‘walked’ should be ‘into’ and the punctuation of the end sentence should be ‘!’ as the emphasizing of the source text message story. established equivalent according to molina and albir (2002), in established equivalent translator uses a familiar term or expression (according to dictionaries or language in daily use) as an equivalent in the tl. the researcher finds out there are 254 times or about 8.43% of established equivalent in analyzing the translation technique. here are several established equivalent used. word form, word choice, & verb tense are the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 13.79% in the established equivalent technique. spelling and word order are the least frequent error made by the students with the percentage 3.45%. an example of the established equivalent technique data can be shown below: (5.) student number 6, datum number 35 st : tapi seorang diri di kebun yang gelap begini, siapa tahaan? tt : but if he had to be alone in the dark garden, who braved? reconstruction : but if he was alone in the dark garden, who braved? the student of the translation sample above chose to translate the phrase ‘siapa tahan’(who can stand it?) into ‘who braved’ by establishing the equivalent. the student might thought that the ‘who braved’ was common used as the target language meaning transfer, so the reader could understand s/he translation. then, it might be reconstructed as the right grammatical translation in the correct grammatical form. the reconstruction is ‘but if he was alone in the dark garden, who braved?’ muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 7 borrowing according to molina and albir (2002), borrowing is to take a word or expression directly from sl text. the borrowing can be pure or naturalized. if the translator uses pure borrowing, he takes the word exactly the same without any changes. the naturalized borrowing is adjusted the phonetic and morphology in tl. the researcher finds out there are 201 times or about 6.67% of borrowing in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are the examples of borrowing found. capitalization is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 40.48% in the borrowing technique. and spelling is the least frequent error made by the students with the percentage 2.38%. in the analyzing the borrowing technique in the students’ translation, i found that some students translated some source text by directly translated it without changing the spelling of the word. then, the word that was translated by some students by borrowing is just ‘serabi’. they translate the word without change into another word or modify the word’s morpheme. then, a sample of data contained borrowing technique is below: (6.) student number 15, datum number 60 st : setiap pagi nenek ranta berjualan kue serabi di pertigaan jalan kampung. tt : every morning grandmother is selling “kue serabi” at a intersection in the village road. reconstruction : every morning grandmother was selling “kue serabi” at the intersection in the village road. there are some grammatical errors in the sentence ‘every morning grandmother is selling “kue serabi” at a intersection in the village road.’. they are verb tense and article. like the other students, this student translates the sour text into the target text in inappropriate tenses form. s/he might think that every tense in the narrative text can be present tense and the use of determiner and article is the same. then, the sentence should be reconstructed to be ‘every morning grandmother was selling “kue serabi” at the intersection in the village road.’ . the reason is as the narrative text as the target text, the context of the text should be using past tense, and for the determiner of the explained object should use determiner. linguistic amplification according to molina and albir (2002), linguistic amplification is adding linguistic elements in the tl. this technique is often used in consecutive interpreting and dubbing. the researcher finds out there are 170 times or about 5.64% of linguistic amplification in analyzing the translation technique. here are some examples of this technique found in this short story. verb tense is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 20.83% in the linguistic amplification technique. and singular plural, article, and meaning not clear are the least frequent error made by the students with the percentage 4.17%. an example of the linguistic technique data can be shown as below: (7.) student number 12, datum number 5 st : berarti sudah pagi. tt : it meant morning was coming. reconstruction : it meant that the morning was coming. the student translated the phrase ‘berarti sudah pagi.’(‘means it was already morning’) was translated into ‘it meant morning was coming.’. the translation can be seen that the student was trying to give clarification from the source text by giving ‘coming’. the student added some muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 8 linguistic element to clarify the meaning from the sour text into the target text. the student tried to make the target text clear and understandable for the target text reader. s/he can add a clause conjunction and determiner in the target text as ‘it meant that the morning was coming.’. the reason is the use of the conjunction and the determiner can make the target text to be making sense. the function of determiner in this reconstruction is to refer a thing in general or to explain someone mean and ‘that’ as apart to introduce part of sentence. amplification according to molina and albir (2002), amplification is a technique that adds the detail information that does not exist in the sl text such as explicative paraphrasing. amplification is the opposite of reduction. the researcher finds out there are 129 times or about 4.28% of amplification in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are some examples of amplification. word form is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 35.29% in the amplification technique. incomplete sentence is the least frequent error made by the students with the percentage 3.33%. an example of the amplification technique data can be shown as below: (8.) student number 4, datum number 25 st : rasa heran piyun muncul lagi. tt : piyu’s sense of wonder come up some more again. reconstruction : piyun’s sense of wonder came up some more again. the student of this sample translated the source text ‘rasa heran piyun muncul lagi.’ (it was a wonder piyun appeared again.) into ‘piyu’s sense of wonder come up some more.’ it was seemed using amplification techniques because the student translate the phrase ‘muncul lagi’ into ‘come up some more again’. s/he did paraphrase to clarify the meaning. then, the grammatical error should be solved to be ‘piyun’s sense of wonder came up some more again.’. the changes are in the verb tense of the target text and the spelling of the character name. adaptation adaptation is to replace the cultural element in sl text with another acceptable and familiar term in tl (molina and albir, 2002). the researcher finds out there are 114 times or about 3.78% of adaptation in analyzing the translation technique. the following are several example used of adaptation in the students’ translation. word form is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 20.83% in the adaptation technique. an example of the adaptation data can be shown as below: (9.) student numbers 16, datum number 2 st : kukuruyuuuuuuk…..!! tt : cock a doodle doo……!!! reconstruction : cock-a-doodle-doo……!!! the onomatopoeia of chicken sound ‘kukuruyuuuuuuk…..!!’ in indonesian version translated into english version ‘cock a doodle doo……!!!’ it was belonged to adaptation technique according to the definition of amplification by molina and albir (2002). the translation above seems having one grammatical error in the onomatopoeia word. it is punctuation error which is losing hyphens. generally, hyphens are used to connect two words or muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 9 parts of a word while avoiding confusion or ambiguity. opening the dictionary is important to make sure whether a hyphen is needed in compound words. linguistic compression according to molina and albir (2002), in linguistic compression the translator compresses linguistic elements in the tt. this is often used in simultaneous interpreting and in sub-titling when using this technique. the researcher finds out there are 81 times or about 2.69% of linguistic compression in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are some examples of linguistic compression. capitalization is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 35.90% in the linguistic compression technique. an example of the linguistic compression data can be seen as below: (10.) student number 5, datum number 21 st : tapi sekarang tak seorang pun yang terlihat,” kata piyun dalam hati. tt : but now, no one does,“ said piyun silently. reconstruction : but now, no one does.“ said piyun silently. the context of the text can be understood with the previous sentence. then, the student translate the phrase ‘tak seorangpun terlihat’ (no one is seen, into ‘no one does’. s/he tried to reduce some words into the simpler one. the student was synthesizing existing linguistic elements to be simpler because it can be understood. it was belonged to linguistic compression technique according to the definition of amplification by molina and albir (2002). then, it can be reconstructed to be ‘but now, no one does.“ said piyun silently. ’. it has been fixed by adding the capital letter and full stop punctuation. transposition based on molina and albir’s translation technique, the grammatical category in the sl is changed into another form of grammar in the tl. the researcher finds out there are 70 times or about 2.32% of transposition in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are some examples of transposition. capitalization is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 35.90% in the transposition technique. an example of the transposition techniques can be seen as below: (11.) student number 3 initially gat, datum number 20 st : “aneh, biasanya setiap hari minggu banyak orang lari pagi. tt : “it’s weird; usually there are lots of people do the morning every sunday reconstruction : “it’s weird, usually there are lots of people do the morning run every sunday the translation above changed the function of word ‘minggu’ (‘sunday’) from initially as the noun into adverb of time. there is a change. this change is in line with the definition of transposition by molina and albir (2002) that is a change of grammatical category. for overcoming those grammatical errors, the target text might be reconstructed to be “it’s weird, usually there are lots of people do the morning run every sunday’. the correction is on the word ‘run every sunday’ and addition of some punctuation, then they makes the meaning clear. muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 10 compensation it is to introduce st (source text) element of information or stylistic effect in another place in the tt (target text) because it cannot be reflected in the same place as in the st (source text). there are 42 data found or about 1.39% using compensation technique. the following data are some examples of amplification. capitalization is the most frequent errors made by the students fifth semester of english department with the percentage 30.00% in the compensation technique. an example of the compensation techniques can be seen as below: (12.) student number 1 initially hh , datum number 73 st : “iya. kamu bukan lari pagi, tapi lari kepagian! tt : “yes, you didn’t run in the morning, but you run while a lot of people still asleep tightly! reconstruction : “yes, you didn’t run in the morning, but you run while a lot of people still were asleep tight! the phrase ‘lari kepagian’(running too early morning) is translated into ‘but you run while a lot of people still asleep tightly!’. the translation changed the stylistic effect by attaching information elements or other stylistic effects to the target text because it is not placed in the same position as the source text. the translation is still good enough to understand in order to correct the grammatical errors that are occurred, the target text is reconstructed to be “yes, you didn’t run in the morning, but you run while a lot of people still were asleep tight!’ it has been fixed the verb tense error and word form error. particularization/generalization particularization is used when the translator transferences the term in tl that is using more specific, suitable, concrete or special (molina and albir, 2002). this technique is the opposite of generalization. generalization is defined as using a more general/common or neutral term in the target language. the researcher finds out there are 39 times or about 1.29% of particularization/generalization technique in analyzing the translation technique. the following data are some examples of particularization/generalization technique. spelling and punctuation are the least frequent error made by the students with the percentage 8.33%. one of the examples of the particularization/ generalization techniques can be seen as below: (13.) student numbers 2 initially p , datum number 32 st : bulu tengkuknya berdiri .(his nape hair stood.) tt : his hair stand end on. reconstruction : his hair stood on end. the sentence above is translated using generalization technique when it was transferred into tt. the translator translates the phrase ‘bulu tengkuknya’(his nape hair) into ‘his hair’ by generalization technique. moreover, translator may translate it into other words but s/he still want to make the proper translation which more easy to understand in the target language. this translation is one way with molina and albir’s generalization technique. the grammatical use of the sample sentence was considered that the translator must use ‘stood’ in order to make the sentence in the past tense which more appropriate. and also the position of ‘end’ or the word order should be ‘stood on end’. the sentence should be “his hair stood on end.” the relation between translation techniques and grammatical errors needs to be spread out their counts. then counting table below will clearly show how the errors occurred in the translation techniques occurred in the students translation. muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 11 tabel 3. the relation between error and translation techniques t (f) grammatical errors sp wf wc d ao wo is s p c a mnc rs ad 24 0 5 0 2 3 0 0 3 4 3 2 2 0 am 30 0 6 5 5 0 3 1 4 3 0 3 0 0 bo 42 0 2 0 6 3 2 2 1 4 17 5 0 0 co 20 0 3 0 3 2 2 0 2 2 6 0 0 0 es 29 3 4 4 4 2 1 0 2 3 2 2 2 0 li 24 1 1 3 5 3 0 0 3 4 2 1 1 0 lic 44 0 5 3 5 5 3 0 2 6 9 2 2 2 lit 70 2 7 2 19 7 2 0 15 7 9 0 0 0 mo 73 0 5 11 9 4 2 6 2 11 14 4 2 3 pg 12 0 0 0 4 0 2 0 1 1 2 2 0 0 re 22 4 2 5 2 3 2 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 tr 39 0 8 2 7 0 2 0 0 2 14 2 2 0 ∑ 429 10 48 35 71 32 21 9 37 49 78 23 11 5 note : ad : adaptation lc : linguistic compression sp : singular plural s : spelling am : amplification lt : literal translation wf : word form p : punctuation bo : borrowing mo : modulation wc : word choice c : capitalization co : compensation re : reduction d : verb tense a : article tr : transposition es : established equivalent ao : add/omit a word mc: meaning not clear la : linguistic amplification wo: word order rs : run-on sentence pg : particularization/ generalization is : incomplete sentence t : technique the total grammatical errors that were founded are 429. then it will be simplified as the table below: tabel 4. techniques resulting error technique % modulation 17 literal translation 16.3 linguistic compression 10.3 borrowing 9.8 transposition 9.1 amplification 7 established equivalent 6.8 adaptation 5.6 linguistic amplification 5.6 reduction 5.2 compensation 4.7 particularization/ generalization 2.8 muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 12 it can be seen from the table above that the most translation techniques occurred grammatical errors is modulation technique (17%). the table also shows that he lowest translation technique occurred grammatical error is particularization/generalization technique (2.8%). discussion the most used technique is literal translation occurred 905 times and represented 30.05%. the lowest used translation techniques are particularization & generalization occurred 39 times and represented 1.29%. therefore, those percentages would be 100% in total. comparing this finding with the other researcher, lestiyawati (2014), the findings indicate that, after analyzing and interpreting 225 sentences, literal translation is dominantly used as a technique in translating the source text with the highest used technique in which 149 of 225 sentences applied the technique. the result is same with this research found, which is the most used translation technique is literal translation. in order to find the relation with the other research, the educational translation product research, a’yun (2013) conducted a research about translation techniques that used in academic product, the result were 113 complex sentences found in chapter five and six of the bilingual textbook biology 1 for senior high school year x published by yudhistira. there were only nine translation techniques; they were literal translation, borrowing, adaptation, reduction, particularization, amplification, generalization, transposition, and description. it can be concluded that literal translation dominated the translation techniques used by the translator. the researcher found is same with this research found which is the most frequent of using techniques is literal translation. based on the calculation above, it can be explained that the total errors of capitalization was the most frequent errors was made by the students’ fifth semester of english department with the percentage 18.18%, and incomplete sentence and run-on sentence were the least frequent error were made by the students with the percentage 2.10% and 1.17%. the result of the analysis showed is almost same with the research result conducted by koman (2019). the result of his research showed that there were 21 translation errors of 26 error categories according to ata’s framework for standardized error making. in conclusion, the three most prominent error categories made by the students were grammar, syntax, and faithfulness error. in addition, grammatical error was also an errors that almost made by students. this finding is different with the other research whereas grammatical errors in translation are also can be found in not only the students’ product but also in the translation machine. the research conducted by adam (2016) also showed that statistical method of google translate, the inability of google translate to understand the contexts of the texts beyond sentence, and errors in the source texts that carried into translation errors in the target texts were the causes of translation errors found in the data. from the finding, we could find out that the most used translation technique that have a lot of errors was literal translation technique in the first place and then followed by modulation technique in the second place. furthermore, this finding is not be found the comparison and relation with the previous studies because there is no previous research discuss this kind of research which means this is the new research. conclusion the types of translation techniques and the types of grammatical errors were made by the students in translating indonesian text into english were classified as follows: the most used type translation technique was literal translation (30%) and modulation technique (22.6%). the most frequent error made by the students in translating indonesian text into english text is errors in capitalization muhammad ichsan andi wahyono & issy yuliasri / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 13 (18.2%) and verb tense (16.6%). furthermore, the translation technique that is mostly occurring grammatical errors was modulation technique (17%). suggestion hopefully, the results of the study may be useful for future researchers in translation study. the researcher hopes that this research can be the source for making research in the future. bibliography azar, b. s. 1989. understanding and using english grammar: second edition. new jersey: prentice hall regents. baker, m. (1992). in other word: a course book on translation. london: routledge. bell, r. t. 1991. translation and translating: theory and practice. london: longman. albir, l. m. (2002). translation techniques revisited: a dynamic and functionalist approach. meta, xlvii, 498-512. beekman, j. c. (1989). translating the word of god. michigan, usa: zondervan publishing. brown, h. douglas. principle of language learning and teaching, 5th edition. new york: pearson education, inc., 2007. cambridge. (2008). cambridge advance learner’s dictionary. cambridge university press. creswell, j. w. (2003). research design: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method. . united states of america: sage publications. ellis, rod.( 2005) analysing learner language. new york: oxford university press,. fedora, l. (2015). an analysis of procedures in translating cultural words and their meaning shift found in the indonesian novel laskar pelangi. . vivid journal, 4(1), 1-8. hubbard, peter, et.al. (1983). a training course for tefl. new york: oxford university press. larson, m. l. (1984). meaning based translation: a guide to cross language equivalence. . london and new york: university press of america. mangatur nababan, a. n. (2012). pengembangan model penilaian kualitas terjemahan. artikel kajian linguistik dan sastra, 24, 39-57. mujiyanto, y. (2011). petunjuk penulisan skripsi. semarang: unnes press. newmark, p. (1998). a textbook for translator. united kingdom: prentice hall international (uk) ltd. salar, m. a. (2004). a function-based approach to translation quality assessment. journal of translation studies, 1, 31-52. trisakti agriani, m. n. (2018). translation quality on words containing spelling, punctuation and grammar error. international journal of multicultural and multireligious understanding , 224240. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421edad42007 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word 7. 166 the analysis of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction in english for young learner nurul khusnaini  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 13 august 2019 approved in 29 november 2019 published in 30 november 2019 ________________ keywords: teacher talk; classroom interaction; flanders interaction analysis categories ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was aimed to find out the type of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction take place in the english language classroom of semarang multinational school.this study applied descriptive qualitative research. there were two activities in gathering the data of this study: observation and audio recording. in analyzing this study, the researcher used interactive theory proposed by flander (1989). the findings showed that based on flanders interaction analisys categories (fiav), the teacher indirectly influenced the students in teaching and learning process by relying hard on asking questions. besides asking questions to students, teacher also used (1) accepting students’ feeling, (2) praising or encouraging students, and (3) accepting or even using students’ ideas. in addition the pattern of content cross interaction tended to be more on asking questions than lecturing behavior. it indicated that teacher often relied on asking questions to students in the teaching and learning process rather than to introduce new learning material and help conveying information to students. in conclusion, the teacher indirectly influenced the students in the teaching and learning process. this kind of interaction indicated that teacher often relied on asking rather than lecturing the students. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b8 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: e.teacher.ichsan@gmail.com elt forum 8 (2) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 167 introduction there is no learning without teaching. so as a tool of implementing teaching plans and achieving teaching goals, teacher talk plays an important role in classroom activities. some researchers have discussed the relationship between teacher talk and language learning. nunan (1991) stated: "teacher talk is one of important aspect not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of the acquisition." teacher talk is undeniably essential feature in relation to classroom interaction. gebhard (2006, p.81) stated that in english as a foreign language classroom, teacher talk is an important input for the students there has been a growing number of attention in regards to classroom interaction which involve teacher and students. brown (2006) notes that, “interaction is the collaborative exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people, resulting in reciprocal effect on each other” (p.165). rivers (brown, 2000, p.65) previously states that through classroom interaction, students could enhance their language ability since they are exposed to teacher’s explanation or authentic materials teacher provides, group discussion, etc and students also has chances to practice the language that they possess. some studies about teacher talk and classroom interaction have conducted to overcome the problem. yanfen and yuqin (2010, p.77) denotes that appropriate teacher talk could create positive atmosphere in the classroom and make friendly relationship between teacher and student. many interactive strategies also appear in teacher talk to make more interaction with the students. they include repetition, prompting, prodding, and expansions, according to yanfen and yuqin (2010). inamullah (2005) wanted to explore patterns of classroom interaction at secondary and tertiary levels in the northwest frontier province of pakistan using flanders interaction analysis system. she found that it would be better to stimulate teachers to improve their teaching behavior to maximize students learning. in addition, by using flanders interaction analysis categories, li, shouhui, & xinyin (2011) found that the management of the english classroom and atmosphere during the teaching-learning process depended on the activities which are done by the teachers so that the students who were getting bored would become interested in participating in the class. dagarin (2015) based on fiac she stated that teachers could do a lot of things to make the students more interest in classroom activities. the classroom interaction could be more effective if a variety of teacher and student talk was applied in the classroom. all of the researchers above discussed the teacher talk and classroom interaction. almost all studies conducted their research at junior high school, few of those studies conducted a study at elementary school, there is a study from li, shouhui, & xinyin (2011), however, they focused in the implementation of fiac during classroom activities. therefore, the writer will try to analyze the teacher talk type and the characteristics of classroom interaction take place during classroom activities. problems investigated in this research are (1) what type of teacher talk take place in the english language classroom? (2) what is the characteristic of classroom interaction that occurs in classroom activities? objectives of this study are (1) to find out the type of teacher talk take that goes on english language classroom of semarang multinational school, (2) to find out the characteristic of classroom interaction that occurs in classroom activities. methods this study focuses on the teacher talk and classroom interaction during teaching and learning activities in the classroom. thus, the object of this study was teacher talk and classroom interaction during teaching and learning activitiess. especially all teachers from grade 1 until grade 6 in elementary school level of semarang multinational school. this research used qualitative method with descriptive research type. the rresearcher wants to describe the phenomenon in accordance with actual circumstances, the object of this research is an object that is natural and does not change either before the researchers enter the object or when the researcher is in the object or after the researcher is out of the object. “qualitative method is a research method used to examine the condition of natural objects, where researcher as a key instrument, techniques data analysis in qualitative research conducted in triangulation (joint), inductive analysis, and qualitative research results more emphasis on the meaning of the generalization” (sugiyono, 2013, p. 1). descriptive research describes what it is which involves description, recording, analysis, and interpretation of conditions that exist. it involves some types of comparison or contrast and attempts nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 168 to discover relationships between exiting non manipulated variables (best, 1981, p. 25). the purpose of descriptive research is to describe the facts and characteristics of the object or subject studied systematically the data used in this study are qualitative data. this research requires some data to be analyzed. there are observation and audio recording. observation is a person's ability to observe using the five senses of the eye and assisted with other senses (bungin, 2011). according to nurkancana (1986), observation is a method used to do direct and systematic research in which the data obtained in the study are recorded in the observational note. recording activity is an observation activity. sanafi faisal (1990) as cited by sugiyono (2008, p. 227), classify the observations into three that are participant observation, overt or covert observation, and unstructured observation. in collected the data, the researcher used overt observation. researcher said honestly to the data source that she would conduct the research, but the researcher did not involve with the activities carried out by the data sources (only as observers). the researcher observed how the ability of teacher talk in classroom activities. before doing an observation, the researcher would use guideline which is made by the researcher based on ‘flanders' interaction analysis category'. another tool for collecting the data in this research was an audio recording. according to etsu human research protection program (2017, p. 1) audio recording, video video recording, and digital recordings (avd) of research participants are considered identifiable data as they include images and/or voices of research participants. in addition to analyze the recording for this research study, the researcher needed to ask permission to the participants whether they willing to be recorded or not. after the researcher asks their permission, the participants agreed to be recorded. this method was used to investigate the characteristic of classroom interaction which happens in class. a cell phone would place during the class. it would record how the class takes place, the teacher and students interaction, and the teacher talk itself, this audio which would be analyzed by coding, pairing and put the data code in the calculation matrix. findings and discussion this phase explains the result of the study. it consists of two sub-chapters. they are findings and discussion of the findings. findings present the result of the observation and audio coding from elementary teachers and their students at semarang multinational school in the chapter of the detail explanation regarding the types of teacher talk and the characteristic of classroom interaction take place during the class and the perception of the students about their teacher talk in teaching english for young learners. moreover, the findings will discuss in the discussion of the findings. the type of teacher talk teacher talk was considered one of the essential features in classroom interaction. in this section, the result of the observations is elaborated. indirect influence in the type of indirect influence, there were four categories of teacher talk. they were accepting the feeling, praising or encouraging students, accepting and using students ideas, and the last asking questions. table 1. accepting feeling observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 2 r accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 3 p accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 4 l accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 5 y accepting/deals with feeling yes yes 6 j accepting/deals with feeling yes yes table 1 presents accepting or deals with feeling result. from the observation for two meetings of teaching and learning process in every class with the same teacher, it was found that almost all of teacher use their influence in accepting the students. this behavior was reflected from the teacher's action when they trid to make sure the condition of the students and also when they helped the nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 169 students in remembering the previous material before the lesson begins. in that situation, the teacher tried to build an interaction with students first. table 2. praises and encouragement observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 2 r praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 3 p praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 4 l praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 5 y praises and uses ideas of students yes yes 6 j praises and uses ideas of students yes yes table 2 presents praises and encouragement result. praises and encouragement appeared almost in every activity, almost 100% all of the teacher used this influence to make the students feel happy or proud of their work. the teacher praised or encouraged students often by repeating students' answers and giving words of praises, for example, "well done", "good job", "nice", and so on. besides giving praises and encouragement, the teacher sometimes accepted students' ideas or even used their ideas or their answer. some teachers used the student's ideas to build a new material like making a new sentence, phrase, and more. this kind of behavior was reflected by the teacher's elaboration, clarification, modification, and summary of students' responses (answers or ideas) to the teacher talk. table 3. asking question observation result no name indirect influence yes/no yes/no 1 k asking question yes yes 2 r asking question yes yes 3 p asking question yes yes 4 l asking question yes yes 5 y asking question yes yes 6 j asking question yes yes table 3 presents asking question result. it showed the category of teacher's talk which dominated the indirect influence type was asking questions. the teacher often asked questions when they wanted to begin the lesson, introduced new learning material, starting a new topic, and stimulated student's knowledge about the lesson. direct influence direct influence included the behavior of lecturing or giving information, giving direction, criticizing student's behavior and also criticizing student's responses. table 4. lecturing observation result no name direct influence yes/no yes/no 1 k lecturing/gives information yes yes 2 r lecturing/gives information yes yes 3 p lecturing/gives information yes yes 4 l lecturing/gives information yes yes 5 y lecturing/gives information yes yes 6 j lecturing/gives information yes yes table 4 presents lecturing and giving information result. based on the result above from two meetings for each class, we could see that all the teacher use this point of direct influence in guiding the students during class activities. some of the teacher's lectures were follow-ups to the teacher's response to students' answers. besides, the teachers also used their explanation before they get down to the material. in other words, when students gave the right answers to the teacher's question, the nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 170 teacher often gave praises to the student's answer. after praising the students, the teacher continues to explain the material, by giving questions when explaining the material it wa expected that students would find it easier to understand the material given. table 5. giving directions observation result no name direct influence yes/no yes/no 1 k gives directions yes yes 2 r gives directions yes yes 3 p gives directions yes yes 4 l gives directions yes yes 5 y gives directions yes yes 6 j gives directions yes yes table 5 presents the result of giving direction. after the observation results were obtained, it could be seen that all of the teachers used this point in the category of teacher talk. the direction was often given if the teacher wanted students to make a project, work in a group, come to the front of the class, exercise individually, etc. table 6. criticizes student's behavior observation result no name direct influence first meeting second meeting 1 k critizes student’s behavior yes yes 2 r critizes student’s behavior yes yes 3 p critizes student’s behavior yes yes 4 l critizes student’s behavior yes yes 5 y critizes student’s behavior yes yes 6 j critizes student’s behavior yes yes table 6 presents criticizes student's behavior result. after the observation was done, the researcher finds the result above. it could be seen that all of the teachers of the elementary level of semarang multinational school use the influence in criticizes student's behavior. the teacher would like to comment on students' behavior and then acknowledge them what was right to be done so that students did not make any more mistakes. this was done to control the behavior of students in the class and also to maintain the classroom condition so that it stayed quiet during the learning process. table 7. critizes student's responses observation result table 7 presents the result of criticizes student's behavior. after the observation result was obtained, based on the table above, it can be seen that there is some teacher criticizes their student's responses, but some of them did not do that. some of the teacher criticized their student's responses like reminding the students if their responses were not appropriate, and also when the student wanted to interrupt his or her teacher in the middle of the teacher's explanation. however, some teachers just gave a sign to the students for silent than gave an unnecessary response. the teachers have done all of the indirect influence to gain student's attention and also to make the students more active during the class activities. in addition, the category of teacher's talk, which dominated the indirect influence was asking questions. the teacher often asked questions when they wanted to began the lesson, introduced new learning material, starting a new topic, and stimulated student's knowledge about the teaching. in line with research by li, shouhui, and xinyin no name direct influence first meeting second meeting 1 k critizes student’s responses yes yes 2 r critizes student’s responses no yes 3 p critizes student’s responses yes no 4 l critizes student’s responses yes yes 5 y critizes student’s responses yes yes 6 j critizes student’s responses no no nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 171 (2011), the teachers of english could determine how english is to be taught to young learners– learning english through activities in social contexts. meanwhile, the management and the atmosphere of the english classroom depend on the activities done by the teachers, so that the students who were especially getting bored, will become interested and pay attention to the learning activities. asking questions seemed to be the essential features in the teaching and learning process. by asking questions, teachers were considered successful in getting students' attention, involved students' interaction, conveyed the learning material, and introduced new content without direct explanation. this finding was consistent with the results of yanfen and yuqin (2010). yanfen and yuqin (2010) found that asking questions was the most common way used by the teacher to invite pupils to talk and it found a valid invitation. by giving questions, it is hoped that it would encourage students to participate more in class, expressing their ideas or opinions on the material, rather than just listening to the teacher explanation. besides, the implementation of direct influence, including the behavior of lecturing, giving direction, and criticizing and justifying authorities, most of the lecturing process were follow-ups the teacher's response to students' answers. in other words, when students give answers to the teacher's questions, the teacher tended to give praises to the right answers. after praising students, the teacher managed to start giving some explanations to students, so students can more easily understand the material provided. this finding is in line with jones (2000), he found that increasing student participation with teacher support made teaching activities more effective. by giving questions, the teacher can trigger students to speak and simultaneously reduce the delivery of material directly. another teacher's talk category is giving direction or instruction. the direction often given when the teacher wanted students to work in a group, come to the front of the class, exercise individually, etc. the teacher was also likely to criticize her students when students answered her question incorrectly. they also criticized students' unacceptable behavior, and also acknowledged them what was right, so that students did not make any more mistakes. this finding is in line with amatari (2015, p.47) he stated that teacher needs to experiment with one's behavior, obtaining objective information about one's behavior, evaluating the data in terms of the teacher's role, in other words, attaining self-insight while acting as a teacher. the characteristics of classroom interaction classroom interaction characteristic was defined by making use of the audio recording. the audio recording that had been transcribed was then coded based on the coding procedure of fiac. the coding procedure was followed by pairing the code and then put into the interaction matrix. from the interaction matrix, the researcher was able to define the character of the interaction in the classroom. from all two meetings, it was discovered that the interaction pattern was content cross according to flanders’ interaction analysis categories.the content cross pattern marked by many appearances in the columns 4-5 and rows 4-5. code four represents asking questions categories, while code 5 shows the lecturing behavior of the teacher. table 8. audio coding result 1st meeting grade categories teacher talk pupils talk 1 42,1% 21,05% 2 36,8% 31,6% 3 31,6% 21,05% 4 31,6% 26,3% 5 36,8% 26,3% 6 36,8% 26,3% table 8 shows the result of audio recording from meeting one including the audio recording result from grade one until grade six. the audio recording was coded based on flanders interaction analysis categories (fiac). it showed the result between the content cross and the students' participation percentage. it could be seen that the teacher talk was more dominant than the student's participation in the action of the teacher often asked questions before they explained or introduced the material to the student. nurul khusnaini / elt forum 8 (2) (2019) 172 table 9. the result of audio coding 2nd meeting grade categories teacher talk pupils talk 1 47,3% 26,3% 2 36,8% 26,3% 3 42,1% 36,8% 4 42,1% 26,3% 5 36,8% 31,6% 6 36,8% 26,3% as shown in table 9, after the audio recording result of the second meeting was obtained, it shows some differences with the previous meeting result. it culd be seen that both teachers talk either student's participation increased during the second meeting, it had occurred when the teacher introduced new material, the teacher often gave questions and explanations which triggered students to respond to questions and explanations given. based on the result above, in the first meeting, the percentage of content cross reached the total number of 35,9% while it turned to be 40,31% in the second meeting for the hole class. this characteristic of interaction was affected by the context of language teacher use in the teaching and learning process. here there is an increase in the second meeting since the teachers tried to introduce new learning material to students. the second pattern that dominated the classroom interaction was students' participation, which was in the number of 25,4%. in the second meeting, the students' involvement in the classroom was increased by 28,9%. students' participation characteristic identified since students were encouraged by the teacher to participate in the class by answering the teacher's questions, presenting the material, and giving their ideas to the class. the finding of classroom interaction pattern was consistent with the previous studies conducted by dagarin (2015) and sharma (2016). dagarin (2015) and sharma (2016) uncovered that the content cross pattern in their research tended to be more on asking questions rather than lecturing. in this research, the researcher also found that the discovered of the content cross pattern fell more on asking questions rather than teaching. it showed that teacher often relied on asking questions to students in the teaching and learning process either to introduce new learning material and help convey information to students. yanfen and yuqin (2010) support that most teachers make more use of asking questions to student to attract students' attention and make students talk. conclusion based on the data analysis in the previous chapter, the researcher found out that the result of the research denotes that teacher talk type in the classroom interaction is indirect influence based on flanders' interaction analysis categories (fiac). data from observation result highly show that the teacher indirectly influences the students in teaching and learning process by relying hard on asking questions. besides asking questions to students, the teacher also made use of accepting students' feeling, praising or encouraging students, and accepting or even using students' ideas based on the observation done by the researcher. the type of teacher talk also leads to classroom interaction pattern. by making use both of the audio recordings either the interaction matrix, the researcher can identify the interaction pattern in the classroom. it found that the interaction pattern that occurred in the classroom was content cross, which was marked by the emergence of code 4 (asking question) and code 5 (lecturing). however, the content cross characteristic could be more on to one of the categories. in this research, it discovered that the pattern of content cross tended to be more on asking questions than lecturing behavior. it indicates that teacher exceptionally depends on asking questions. this result is consistent with the observation result that the teacher often asking questions either to familiarize the students with a new chapter of the lesson and also attract students' attention either make 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(2007). case study as research method. jurnal kemanusiaan, 9, 16. microsoft word 6. ehsan namaziandost 60 texts with various levels of hardness, reading comprehension and reading motivation ehsan namaziandost, mehdi nasri, fariba rahimi esfahani  department of english, faculty of humanities, islamic azad university, shahrekord, iran article info ________________ article history: received in 21 june 2019 approved in 29 july 2019 published in 29 july 2019 ________________ keywords: comprehensible input; extensive reading; foreign language reading motivation; input; reading comprehension; text difficulty level ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ considering the vital role of comprehensible input, this study attempted to compare the effects of input with various difficulty levels on iranian efl learners’ reading comprehension and reading motivation. to fulfil this objective, 54 iranian preintermediate efl learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 27 each). the selected participants were randomly assigned to two equal groups, namely “i+1” (n=27) and “i-1” group (n=27). then, the groups were pretested by a researcher-made reading comprehension test. after carrying out the pre-test, the treatment (i.e., extensive reading at different levels of difficulty) was practiced on the both groups. the participants in “i+1” group received reading passages beyond the current level, on the other hand, the “i-1” group received those reading passages which were below their current level. after the instruction ended, a modified version of pre-test was conducted as posttest to determine the impacts of the treatment on the students’ reading comprehension. the obtained results indicated that there was a significant difference between the post-tests of “i+1” and “i-1” groups. the findings showed that the “i+1” group significantly outperformed the “i-1” group (p < .05) on the post-test. moreover, the findings indicated that “i+1” group’s motivation increased after the treatment. the implications of the study suggest that interactive type of input is beneficial to develop students’ language skills. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: issn 2252-6706 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-maile.namazi75@yahoo.com elt forum 8 (1) (2019) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 61 introduction there is a consensus of agreement among the researchers that input is vital for language learning to come about but they may not have analogous opinions about the way it is utilized by learners (gass & selinker, 2008). input may be operationally described as “oral and/or written corpus of target language to which second language (l2) learners are subjected via different sources, and is perceived by them as language input” (kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 26). according to ellis (2012), input-based instruction “includes the utilization of the input that learners are presented to or are needed to process” (p. 285). in this procedure, through presentation to language input, if students discover the way language works or the way language is rehearsed in workplace, or handicraft target condition, learning will be occurred (basturkmen, 2006). thus, it can be deduced that input is of fundamental significance for language learning abilities particularly reading. reading is seen as “an essential expertise for efl learners to enhance their language ability” (chiang, 2015, p. 11). reading is characterized as “a fluent process of readers joining information from a text and their own background knowledge to fabricate meaning” (nunan, 2003, p. 68). it gives chances to foreign language learners to be presented to english in circumstances that language input is entirely restricted (lao & krashen, 2000; namaziandost, rahimi esfahani, & ahmadi, 2019; wu, 2012). in recent years, extensive reading (er) has gained particular consideration as an impressive and undertaking way of expanding foreign language skills (yamashita, 2013). er aims “to progress good reading habits to form knowledge of vocabulary and grammar and to encourage a liking for reading” (richards & schmidt, 2010, p. 194). the major purpose in er is to reach at a general understanding of what is read (richards & schmidt, 2010). er is for general comprehending in which “the minimum 95% comprehension figure” (meng, 2009, p. 134) is admissible and the reading velocity is below 100 to 150 words per minute (mikeladze, 2014). truly, some studies (e.g., bell, 2001; chiang, 2015; hitosugi & day, 2004; iwahori, 2008; leung, 2002; namaziandost & ahmadi, 2019; tanaka, 2007) have presented that er significantly enhanced foreign language reading comprehension and general proficiency. one of the best bountiful sources for providing language input for efl learners is through extensive reading (er) (day & bamford, 1998; krashen, 1982; nasri, biria, & karimi, 2018). as indicated by krashen (1982), the input to which learners are presented ought to be a little above their current level of competence, ‘i + 1,’ in which ‘i’ alludes to the present language capacity of learner, though ‘1’ alludes to the input that is somewhat above the learners’ present language ability. on the other hand, day and bamford (1998) suggested a diverse model on the hardness level of the input. based on this hypothesis, “er is efficacious if it furnishes students with input which is marginally beneath their current level of competence (i.e., ‘i-1’)” (day & bamford, 1998, p. 36). this way language learners can swiftly develop their reading certainty, reading fluency and construct sight words and high-frequency words. however, a glance to the prior literature divulges that there are rare studies on the impacts of these two viewpoints (i.e., ‘i + 1’ and ‘i 1’) on efl learners’ reading comprehension and reading motivation. to cover the extant gap, the current study tried to focus on this theme by inspecting how krashen’s input hypothesis through ‘i + 1’ and ‘i 1’ materials may impress efl students’ reading comprehension and reading motivation. reading comprehension has been defined by researchers as "a critical part of the multifarious interplay of mechanisms involved in l2 reading" (brantmeier, 2005, p. 52). for many students, reading is presumed as the beneficial dexterity that they can utilize inside and outside the classroom. it is additionally the skill that can preserve the lengthy time. according to allen and valette (1999), “reading is not only allotting foreign language sounds to the written words, but also the comprehension of what is written" (p. e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 62 249). miller (2008) characterized "reading comprehension as the ability to comprehend or to get meaning from any kind of written materials” (p. 8). furthermore, papalia (2004) believed that reading comprehension in prevalent utilization and more particularly in referral to training and psychology has approximately identical meaning as comprehending the massage of the text. grellet (1981) guaranteed that "reading comprehension is getting written text means extricating the needed information from it as effectively as feasible" (p. 3). grellet additionally believed that “reading comprehension is not sufficient to comprehend the epitome of the text but further voluminous information is indispensable too” (p. 13). wood (2005) confirmed reading included understanding meaning from the written words. janzen (1996) declared that “reading comprehension as the capacity to learn lexical data (i.e., semantic data at the word level and infer sentences and discourse elucidations but reading on graphic regarding development touching through the eye” (p. 8). webster's collegiate dictionary considered reading comprehension as "the valence of mind to see and comprehend the meaning imparted by the content." regarding the mentioned points, reading widely is an individual movement which depends on the students' fondness (nasri & biria, 2017; nation, 1997). extensive reading (er) boosts reader’s reading aptitudes and it is shortsighted to urge efl students to peruse better through er which is enchanting to them (azadi, biria, & nasri, 2018; nuttal, 2000). the principle objective of an extensive reading plan is to give a circumstance to students to appreciate reading a foreign language and new real messages quietly at their own velocity and with satisfactory comprehension (day & bamford, 1998). “er is bolstered by krashen’s (1982, 1994) input hypothesis, affective filter hypothesis, and delight hypothesis” (bahmani & farvardin, 2017, p. 6). reading extensively is an individual activity which is based on the learners’ interest (nation, 1997). er enhances reader’s reading skills and it is easy to teach efl learners to read better through er which is enjoyable to them (hosseini, nasri, & afghari, 2017; namaziandost, nasri, & rahimi esfahani, 2019; nuttal, 2000). the fundamental objective of an er program is to provide a situation for learners to enjoy reading a foreign language and unfamiliar authentic texts silently at their own pace and with sufficient understanding (day & bamford, 1998). er is supported by krashen’s (1982, 1994) input hypothesis, affective filter hypothesis, and pleasure hypothesis. according to krashen’s (1982) input hypothesis, adequate exposure to comprehensible input is essential for language learners to learn the language. according to this hypothesis, the input to which learners are exposed should be a little beyond their current level of language competence, i.e., ‘i+ 1.’ based on this hypothesis, when learners frequently and repeatedly meet and concentrate on a large number of messages (input) which is a little beyond their level of competence, they gradually acquire the forms. furthermore, based on krashen’s affective filter hypothesis (1982), language acquisition occurs in lowanxiety situations. foreign language learners with a low affective filter (e.g., anxiety) will attain the language acquisition or comprehension more easily (huang, 2001; namaziandost, abedi, & nasri, 2019). in the same vein, krashen (1994) proposed the pleasure hypothesis, arguing that the pleasurable activities are effective and facilitating for language and literacy development. based on this hypothesis, er provides a low-anxiety situation for learners to learn a foreign language. krashen’s hypotheses have encouraged different universities and institutions to do research in er and utilize er programs in foreign language teaching (chiang, 2015). the input hypothesis directs the question of how we get language. this speculation expresses that we obtain (not learn) language by comprehending input that is a little past our current level of procured capability (krashen & terrell 1983; namaziandost, rahimi esfahani, nasri, & mirshekaran, 2018). this has been lately declared perspicuously by krashen (2003a): “we procure language in just one way: when e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 63 we comprehend messages; that is, when we acquire “comprehensible input” (p. 4). this potent allegation is rehashed in different spots where krashen expresses that ‘comprehending inputs is the main way language is obtained’ and that ‘there is no individual variety in the key procedure of language procurement’ (krashen 2003a, p. 4). consequently, krashen frequently utilizes the term ‘comprehension hypothesis’ (2003a) to allude to the input hypothesis, contending that ‘perception’ is a superior depiction as only input is not sufficient; it must be comprehended. thus, based on krashen’s (1982) input hypothesis, adequate presentation to understandable input is essential for language students to learn language. in light of this speculation, the input to which students are uncovered ought to be a little past their current level of language ability, i.e., ‘i + 1’. considering krashen’s perspective, when learners constantly and repeatedly confront and concentrate on an expansive quantity of input which is a little higher than their level of capability, they inchmeal obtain the structures. krashen’s input hypotheses have motivated different universities and institutions to accomplish researches and studies in er and utilize er programs in teaching tefl (bahmani & farvardin, 2017; chiang, 2015; hashemifardnia, namaziandost, & sepehri, 2018). day and bamford (1998), in particular, suggested a modern scheme which is diverse from krashen’s (1982) input hypothesis. based on this scheme, “er is advantageous if it furnishes the students with input which is somewhat beneath their current level of competence (i.e., ‘i-1’)” (bahmani & farvardin, 2017, p. 4). moreover, “‘i-1’ creates a condition for automaticity educating and extending a huge sight vocabulary rather than learning new target structures” (mikeladze, 2014, p. 5). truth to be told, ‘i-1’ is considered as the learners’ tranquility zone where they can rapidly construct their reading certainty and reading fluency (chiang, 2015; namaziandost & nasri, 2019). all of researchers and teachers accepted that motivation is a basic factor to enhance reading comprehension. as indicated by dornyei (2001), the meaning of motivation is very intricate and obscurant because it is t is made out of various models and hypotheses. as discussed by protacio (2012), “reading problems occur partly due to the fact that people are not motivated to read in the first place” (p. 11). moley bandré, and george (2011) explain that, motivation happens when “students develop an interest in and form a bond with a topic that lasts beyond the short term” (p. 251). furthermore, guthrie and wigfield (2000, p.405) propound that “reading motivation is the individual’s personal objectives, values, and beliefs regarding the topics, processes, and outcomes of reading”. considering this delineation, one would come to two principle consequences: the first is that reading motivation refers to putting together of various dimensions of motivation in an intricate route. the second is the type of agency people have over it since they can manipulate, unify and divert their motivation to read in terms of their credence, worthiness and objectives (wigfield & tonks, 2004). “not only does reading motivation relate to reading comprehension, but it also relates to both the amount of reading and students’ reading achievement” (guthrie & wigfield, 2005, p. 76). guthrie et al. (2006, p.232) elucidate that “reading motivation correlates with students’ amount of reading”. for this purpose, guthrie and wigfield (2005) emphasize the perspective that “reading motivation is domain-specific as it belongs to a status that necessitates an emotional reaction particular to a reading material, and that would metamorphose based on the diversity of activities inaugurating it” (p.89). pachtman and wilson (2006) expressed that it is crucial to propel students to read by giving them chances to choose their interest materials. in other words, readers need to read more when they are allowed to choose their reading materials since they should find out that reading is a pleasurable action. as indicated by hairul, ahmadi, and pourhosein (2012), reading motivation is the substantial measure of motivation that learners need to focus their positive or negative feelings about reading. for example, students who read for joy and utilizing ways to help their understanding are amazingly roused readers. e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 64 students of this sort regularly view reading as a vital factor in their daily exercises, acknowledge difficulties in the reading procedure and are probably going to be effective readers. hairul, ahmadi, and pourhosein (2012) believed that reading motivation greatly affects reading appreciation. the researchers proceeded with that reading motivation impacts all parts of motivation and reading appreciation procedures in various conditions. they additionally accentuated that learners' inspiration totally influences their understanding; it implies that learners with more stronger reading inspiration can be relied upon to read more in more extensive territory. as indicated by hairul, ahmadi, and pourhosein (2012), a standout amongst the most essential components which help students read more is reading inspiration and it importantly affects reading perception. in this manner, numerous researchers have been very much aware of the noteworthiness of inspiration in the objective language learning and how inspiration expands appreciation among language students. prior researches have checked the impacts of er on efl reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. bell (2001) carried out a two-semester study on young adult students at the elementary level in yemen to compare the impacts of er and intensive reading on reading speed and reading comprehension. this study was run over two semesters. the researcher divided students into two groups: an experimental group (n = 14) and a control group (n = 12). the experimental group received an er program and read graded readers; these students had access to 2000 graded readers in the british council library. on the other hand, the control group received the intensive reading program, read short passages and filled the tasks. the researcher measured students’ reading speed by utilizing two reading tests, and for measuring their reading comprehension he utilized three various texts with three types of questions (cloze, multiplechoice, and true-false). the two groups enhanced both in speed and reading comprehension, but the er program based on graded readers was much more effective to the enhancement of reading speed than the intensive reading program. the outcomes of the reading comprehension test also indicated that the learners in the extensive group got higher scores than students in the intensive group. chiang (2015) researched the impacts of different text difficulty on l2 reading perceptions and reading comprehension. to give the ideal test to l2 reading, comprehensible input hypothesis hypothesizes that selecting text somewhat more difficult than the student's present level will improve reading perception. fifty-four freshman from one college in central taiwan were arbitrarily separated into two groups. level 3 and level 4 oxford graded readers were given to the learners in the ‘i -1’ group while students in the ‘i + 1’ group were equipped with level 5 and level 6. quantitative data were collected through the english placement test and the reading attitudes survey. findings from the pretest and posttest of the reading attitudes survey propose that the i-1 group has achieved significantly in reading attitudes, while no difference in reading attitude was recognized with the i + 1 group. the outcomes additionally indicated that diverse hardness levels of reading text did not significantly influence participants’ reading comprehension. bayat and pomplun (2016) aimed to indicate how several eye-tracking features within reading are influenced by different primary agents, as individual discrepancies, the hardness level of the text, and the topic of the text. to this end, they directed an eye-following experiment with 21 participants who read six sections with various points. for each topic, metamorphosis in three factors were assessed: the mediocre obsession term, the student estimate, and the normal rapidity of reading. the flesch reading ease score was utilized as a measurement for the hardness level of the content. examination of difference is utilized as a part of request to break down determinant factors related with content attributes, containing the difficulty level and the point of the content. the findings showed that during the reading of entries with comparable difficulty levels, the point of the content has no noteworthy impact on mediocre obsession e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 65 span and mediocre understudy estimate, though a critical effect overall speed of reading is watched. additionally, individual properties have a primary effect on eye-movement demeanor. ahmadi (2017) attempted to consider the effect of reading motivation on reading comprehension. in his paper, he explained the terms reading motivation, different types of motivation, reading comprehension, and different models of reading comprehension. the review of this study showed that reading motivation had a considerably positive effect on reading comprehension activities. recently, bahmani and farvardin (2017) examined the impacts of various text difficulty levels on foreign language reading anxiety (flra) and reading comprehension of english as a foreign language (efl) learners. to fulfil this objective, 50 elementary efl learners were chosen from two intact classes (n = 25 each). one class was considered as ‘i + 1’ and another as ‘i-1’. the participants in each class practiced extensive reading at diverse levels of difficulty for two semesters. a reading comprehension test and the flra scale were administered before and after the treatment. the outcomes indicated that both text difficulty levels significantly enhanced the participants’ reading comprehension. moreover, the results revealed that, the ‘i + 1’ group’s flra augmented, while that of the ‘i 1’ group diminished. however, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, rare studies, if any, have been carried out on the impacts of krashen’s input hypothesis (i.e., ‘i + 1’ and ‘i 1’) on efl learners’ reading comprehension and reading motivation. to reach the purposes of the study, this study attempted to response the following research questions: rq1: are there any significant differences between and within the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups’ reading comprehension after implementing the treatment? if so, which group has higher reading comprehension in english? rq2: are there any significant differences between and within the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups’ reading motivation after implementing the treatment? if so, which group has higher motivation towards reading in english? methods design a quasi-experimental approach was utilized in this study gather data from 54 efl learners to check the potentially various impacts of using ‘i + 1’ versus ‘i 1’ readers on reading motivation and reading comprehension. to this end, the reading motivation and reading comprehension of the participants were quantitatively measured prior to and after the intervention of er through the foreign language reading motivation and the fce (first certificate in english). participants fifty-four efl learners (25 males and 29 females) from a private language institute in ahvaz, iran, took part in this study. the participants’ ages ranged from 16 to 21. american headway 1 (soars & soars, 2010) was the textbook taught to the participants. according to the common european framework of reference (cefr) classification, american headway 2 is appropriate for the b1 level. to ensure the participants’ proficiency level, cefr headway placement test (2012) was performed to all participants, and their score ranged between 66 and 74, which is equal to b1 level. the participants were chosen from two intact classes. each class was assigned to a group (i.e., ‘i + 1’ or ‘i 1’). the ‘i + 1’ group (n = 27) read graded readers stories which were beyond their level of proficiency, whereas the ‘i 1’ group (n = 27) read graded readers stories which were below their level of proficiency. the participants read graded readers e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 66 along with their classroom materials. per week, 35 minutes of class time was devoted to the participants’ narration of the novels they had already read. instruments cefr headway placement test cefr headway placement test is designed to provide a useful tool to estimate the participants’ level at which they should begin or continue their english language studies (bahmani & farvardin, 2017). this test was selected because the participants were studying american headway. moreover, the american headway book, cefr headway placement test (2012) and oxford bookworm series (the graded readers in this study) were classified based on cefr. it could be a big help to determine the probable ‘i’ of participants (bahmani & farvardin, 2017). cefr headway placement test (2012) comprised of 100 multiple-choice items with three sections, including 50 vocabulary, 25 grammar and 25 reading comprehension items. the findings were compared with the band score of cefr headway placement test (see table 1). table 1 band score of cefr headway placement test test result cefr level 0-40 a1low 41-48 a1high 49-56 a2low 57-65 a2high 66-74 b1low 75-83 b1-low-medium 84-92 b1medium-high 93-100 b1high graded readers the reading materials in this study were the oxford bookworms series published by oxford university press. the oxford bookworms series classifies books into seven levels. table 2 indicates the word counts and cefr levels in the oxford bookworms series. table 2 word counts and cefr levels in the oxford bookworms series book levels word counts cefr levels starter 250 a1 level 1 400 a1/a2 level 2 700 a2/b1 level 3 1,000 b1 level 4 1,400 b1/b2 level 5 1,800 b2 level 6 2,500 b2/c1 to make sure what level is appropriate, nine efl learners at the pre-intermediate level and four efl teachers were asked to read the oxford bookworms series at various levels. after studying the books, all teachers agreed that for the pre-intermediate level learners, starter, level, and level 2 were really easy, e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 67 and levels 4, 5 and 6 were both grammatically and lexically difficult. according to the teachers, level 3 was considered suitable for the pre-intermediate level. the learners also reported that level 3 was comprehensible for them. level 3 equals to levels b1 in cefr. therefore, level 3 was determined as the appropriate level for the participants. accordingly, the ‘i 1’ group was proposed to read levels 1 and 2 and the ‘i + 1’ group was suggested to read levels 4 and 5. the participants were required to read two books at each level throughout the study. reading comprehension test the reading comprehension part of the cambridge first certificate in english (fce, 2008) was used to measure the participants’ reading comprehension ability. this part comprised of three reading passages which include both macro and micro questions, such as the expression of opinion, attitude, purpose, main idea, detail, tone and gist. the reading section of the fce includes 30 items that should be replied in 30 minutes. this study utilized two equivalent versions of the fce, one as a pretest and the other as a posttest. a parson correlation coefficient between the two equivalent forms of the fce was calculated as 0.936 which indicated a high reliability between the two versions of the test. the motivation for reading questionnaire (mrq) another instrument utilized in the present study was a modified sample of motivation for reading questionnaire (mrq). mrq was expanded by dr. allan wigfield and dr. john guthrie from university of maryland in 1997. wigfield and guthrie utilized the mrq on a group of students at one mid-atlantic state school during implementation of concept-oriented reading teaching. factor analyses carried out by wigfield and guthrie affirmed the essence of construct validity which backups eleven factors for the total 53 -item in this mrq. there was an affirmative relevance of maximum segments of reading motivation with low to high levels. they additionally asserted that their questionnaire has a reliability range from .43 to .81. in this research, the researchers had selected 30 items of the entire 53 items in the questionnaire because solely eight aspects of total eleven aspects of reading motivation were identified to measure. they are: reading efficacy, reading challenge, reading curiosity, reading involvement, importance of reading, reading word avoidance, social reasons for reading, and reading for grades. mrq was a five-point likert scale questionnaire made up of five options: 1 for ‘i strongly agree’, 2 for ‘i agree’, 3 for ‘i don’t know’, 4 for ‘i disagree’, and 5 for ‘i strongly disagree’. the mrq was given to participants twice, one before the treatment and once after the treatment. data collection procedure fifty-four pre-intermediate efl learners were participated in this study. in the first week, the cefr headway placement test was performed to specify the participants’ proficiency levels. this test additionally helped the researchers detemine the probable participants’ ‘i.’ in the second week, the mrq and the reading comprehension test were carried out in 80 minutes. based on the outcomes of the cefr headway placement test (2012), the ‘i + 1’ group were assigned to read graded readers at levels 4 and 5, and the ‘i 1’ group were assigned to read level 1 and level 2 graded stories. there was a small library and bookstore in the language institute to provide the participants with the graded readers. it was also proposed that if they would not find the book of their interest, they could find them from other libraries and bookstores outside. the number of pages the participants required to read was specified at the outset of each week. at the end of each week, 20 minutes of the class was allocated for their reports. the participants were given e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 68 time to talk about various parts and the characters of the novels, their ideas about the end of the novels, and even provided some comments regarding the novels. in the first semester, the ‘i + 1’ group read two graded readers at level 4 which were one level beyond their ‘i’, and in the second semester, they read two graded readers at level 5. on the other hand, in the first semester, the ‘i 1’ group read two graded readers at the level 1 which was two levels below their ‘i’ and in the second semester, they read two graded readers at level 2 which was one level below their ‘i.’ finally, after a three-month involvement in this study, the findings of these two various ways were compared with each other. in the last week of, the participants received an immediate posttest. they responded the mrq and an equivalent version of the reading comprehension test in one session. the procedure was like the pretest. data analysis collected data through the aforesaid procedures were analyzed by using statistical package for social science (spss) software version 25. firstly, kolmogorov-smirnov (k-s) test was run to check the normality of the data. then, two independent samples t-tests were done to figure out if there was any significant difference between the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups in terms of reading comprehension and mrq. at the end, two 2 x 2 mixed analysis of variance (anovas) were run to discover significant interaction impacts between time and group from the reading comprehension test and the mrq. furthermore, independent samples t-tests were run to test the simple main impacts of group on the pretests and the posttests. paired samples t-tests were also done to further follow up on the simple main impacts of time on mrq and reading comprehension for both groups. to indicate the practical significance, for all of the t-tests, effect sizes (cohen’s ds) were computed. findings and discussion the previous section included a delineation of the methodology which was utilized to respond the research questions of this study, which are rewritten here for reasons of convenience: (a) are there any significant differences between and within the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups’ reading comprehension after implementing the treatment? if so, which group has higher reading comprehension in english? and (b) are there any significant differences between and within the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups’ reading motivation after implementing the treatment? if so, which group has higher motivation towards reading in english? results of normality tests before conducting any analyses on the pretest and posttest, it was indispensable to peruse the normality of the distributions. thus, kolmogorov-smirnov test of normality was run on the data acquired from the above-mentioned tests. the consequences are presented in table 1: table 3. one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test (groups' pretests, post-tests, and mrq) kolmogorov-smirnova statistic df sig. i+1 pretest .165 27 .058 i+1 posttest .192 27 .298 i-1 pretest .215 27 .098 i-1 posttest .223 27 .092 i+1 mrq (before treatment) .186 27 .187 i+1 mrq (after treatment) .220 27 .086 e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 69 i-1 mrq (before treatment) .218 27 .772 i-1 mrq (after treatment) .173 27 .183 a. lilliefors significance correction the p values under the sig. column in table 3 determine whether the distributions were normal or not. a p value greater than .05 shows a normal distribution, while a p value lower than .05 demonstrates that the distribution has not been normal. since all the p values in table 1 were larger than .05, it could be concluded that the distributions of scores for the pretest, posttest, and mrq obtained from both groups had been normal. it is thus safe to proceed with parametric test (i.e. independent and paired samples ttests and mixed-anova in this case) and make further comparisons between the participating groups. table 4 displays the means and standard deviations of the participants’ scores on the reading comprehension tests and the mr questionnaire before and after the study. table 4. descriptive statistics of the ‘i 1’ and ‘i + 1’ groups’ responses to reading comprehension test and mrq pretest posttest reading comprehension mrq reading comprehension mrq groups n mean sd mean sd mean sd mean sd i+1 27 9.37 1.66 52.96 4.72 13.07 2.05 58.11 5.83 i-1 27 9.22 1.05 51.07 6.89 11.48 .096 50.37 3.66 to answer the first research question, one mixed 2 x 2 anova with two main factors, time (i.e., reading comprehension pretest and posttest) and group (i.e., ‘i + 1’ and ‘i 1’) was run to examine whether there were significant interaction effects between difficulty levels. furthermore, independent samples ttests were run to check the simple main impact of group on the reading comprehension pretest and the posttest, respectively. finally, paired samples t-tests were done to investigate the simple main impact of time for each group. tables 5and 6 shows the results of the mixed anova on the reading comprehension tests. table 5. results of mixed-anova on reading comprehension pretest and posttest with time and group factors tests of within-subjects contrasts source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. partial eta squared time 240.009 1 240.009 107.445 .000 .674 time * groups 14.083 1 14.083 6.305 .015 .108 error(time) 116.157 52 2.234 tests of between-subjects effects source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. partial eta squared e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 70 intercept 12566.898 1 12566.898 5496.122 .000 .991 groups 20.454 1 20.454 8.945 .004 .147 error 118.898 52 2.287 the results indicated that the main impact of the text difficulty level was not significant [f (1, 52) = 8.945, p = .004, partial eta squared = .147], proposing a significant difference in the reading comprehension scores of the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups. moreover, there was a significant interaction between difficulty level and time [f (1, 52) = 6.305, p = .015, partial eta squared = .108], suggesting that over the course of two semesters, the changes in scores from the reading comprehension differed significantly between the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups. there was also significant main impact of time [f (1, 52) = 6.305, p = .000, partial eta squared =. 674], suggesting a substantial difference in the reading comprehension scores across two periods. next to a mixed anova, two independent samples t-tests were run as follow-up tests to check the simple major impact of group on the pretest and the posttest, respectively (table 6). table 6. independent samples t-tests on reading comprehension pretest and posttest scores mean difference std. error difference t df p cohen’s d pretest .14815 .37924 .391 52 .698 0.106358 posttest 1.59259 .43705 3.644 52 .001 0.991757 as table 6 illustrates, the findings indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups on the pretest (t = .391, p = .698, d = 0.106358), showing that both the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups were at a similar baseline prior to the experiment. moreover, the outcomes show a significant difference between the two groups in their posttests (t = 3.644, p = .001, d = 0.991757) after the intervention. furthermore, paired-samples t-tests were run as follow-up tests to check the simple main impact of time for each group (table 7). table 7. paired samples t-tests of both groups (reading comprehension pretest and posttest) mean differences sd sem t df p cohen’s d i+1 3.70370 2.64306 .50866 7.281 26 .000 1.978905 i-1 2.25926 1.39622 .26870 8.408 26 .000 2.239838 as illustrated in table 7, the findings propose that both groups’ reading comprehension was significantly progressed at the end of this study (t = 7.281, p = .000, d = 1.978905 for the ‘i + 1’ group’s reading comprehension; t = 8.408, p = .000, d = 2.239838 for the ‘i 1’ group’s reading comprehension). that is, the reading comprehension of the ‘i 1’ and the ‘i + 1’ groups significantly enhanced after the intervention of er. cohen (1988) expressed that the impact size (cohen’s d) of 0.2 is small; 0.5 is moderate; and 0.8 is high. cohen’s effect size values of the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups’ paired samples ttests are d = 1.978905 and d = 2.239838 for reading comprehension, respectively, proposing high practical significance. to response the second research question, first, a mixed anova was run to assess the impact of two discriminatory text difficulty levels (‘i + 1’ vs. ‘i 1’) on participants’ scores from the mrq before and after the treatment (table 8). e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 71 table 8 results of mixed-anova on mrq before and after treatment with time and group factors tests of within-subjects contrasts source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. partial eta squared time 133.333 1 133.333 3.355 .073 .061 time * groups 231.148 1 231.148 5.816 .019 .101 error(time) 2066.519 52 39.741 tests of between-subjects effects source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. partial eta squared intercept 304857.815 1 304857.815 16089.782 .000 .997 groups 625.926 1 625.926 33.035 .000 .388 error 985.259 52 18.947 as table 8 indicated, there was significant interaction between difficulty level and time [f (1, 52) = 5.816, p = .019, partial eta squared = .101], suggesting that over the course of the treatment period, the changes in scores from the mrq differed significantly between the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ groups. there was no significant main effect of time [f (1, 52) = 3.355, p = .073, partial eta squared = .061], proposing no substantial difference in the mrq scores across the two periods. moreover, the major impact of the text difficulty level was significant [f (1, 52) = 33.035, p = .000, partial eta squared = .388], suggesting a difference in the mrq scores of the two text difficulty levels. after the mixed anova, two independent samples t-tests were run to check the simple main impact of group on the pretest and the posttest, respectively (table 9). table 9. independent samples t-tests on mrq before and after treatment mean difference std. error difference t df p cohen’s d pretest 1.88889 1.60963 1.173 52 .246 0.319386 posttest 7.74074 1.32528 5.841 52 .000 1.589669 as table 9 shows, the findings indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups before the treatment (t = 1.173, p = .246, d = 0.319386), suggesting that both the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’groups were at a similar baseline of mr prior to the experiment. the outcomes also show a significant difference between the two groups in their posttests (t = 5.841, p = .000, d = 1.589669) after the treatment. in other words, the ‘i + 1’ group was found to have greater increases in their mrq scores. furthermore, cohen’s effect size value of the groups’ independent t-tests on the posttest is d = 1.589669 showing high practical significance. paired-samples t-tests were also conducted as follow-up tests to check the simple main impact of time for each group (table 10). e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 72 table 10. paired samples t-tests of both groups (mrq before and after treatment) mean differences sd sem t df p cohen’s d i+1 -5.14815 8.86525 1.70612 -3.017 26 .006 0.969698 i-1 .70370 8.96495 1.72531 .408 26 .687 0.127414 as illustrated in table 10, the findings propose that the ‘i + 1’groups’ reading motivation was significantly progressed at the end of this study (t = -3.017, p = .006, d = 0.969698), whereas the ‘i 1’ groups’ flra was significantly decreased after the intervention (t = .408, p = .687, d = 0.127414). cohen’s effect size values of the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’groups’ paired samples t-tests are d =0.969698 and d = 0.127414 for reading motivation, respectively) proposing high practical significance for the ‘i + 1’ group and moderate practical significance for the ‘i 1’ group. in summary, the text difficulty significantly affected the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ participants’ flra. the findings imply that the ‘i + 1’ group had greater increases in their mrq scores. in brief, the present study aimed to see whether using the i+1 and i-1 could improve the reading comprehension of efl learners, and whether there was a difference between the learners’ motivation in this regard or not. the outcomes of the study indicated that this i+1 significantly improved reading comprehension of the learners in the experimental group; moreover, the motivation of the experimental group (i+1) was increased after the treatment. consistent exposure to the input (i.e., graded readers) over the treatment period seemed to have had an important effect on improving participants’ reading comprehension. it could be possible that consistent exposure to written input facilitated the participants’ incidental vocabulary learning (mikeladze, 2014; waring & takaki, 2003). the obtained results may be due the significant role of inputs which the students had received before they produced the language. the comprehensible inputs which the students were subjected to before producing the language greatly helped the students to be able to read english more efficiently. it can be deduced that comprehension proceeds the production. students of the experimental group had improvement on the post-test thanks to the treatment they had received. the researcher found that the classes were more challenging and the students were more involved in learning to understand the reading texts. the improvement of the students can be attributed to the ‘i + 1’ reading texts as krashen (1982) states input which is somewhat above the present level of competence of the language learner can be conducive to learning. if i is the language learner’s current level of competence in the foreign language, then i+1 is the following prompt advance along the improvement continuum. accordingly, if the objective is to help the language student advance in their task, it is basic to furnish the learner with comprehensible input [i +1]. the researcher observed that the students were more motivated to read and understand the texts that were more difficult for them, they seemed curious to know the meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases, consequently, they asked the researcher to provide the meaning of unknown words, phrases, and sentences, and this attempt led to their success in reading comprehension. more significantly, based on the comparison made between two groups of varying text difficulty, the i+1 group performed better in reading comprehension and gained better results at the end of the study. this finding is in line with krashen’s (1982) input hypothesis. according to krashen (1982), it was expected to observe the development of reading comprehension only in the ‘i + 1’ group. for that reason, the similar development in the ‘i 1’ group’s reading comprehension seems skeptical. the results of statistical analysis accepted such an idea and showed that reading the ‘i 1’ materials did not improve e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 73 participants’ reading comprehension. this finding is in contrast with chiang’s (2015) research in which the ‘i 1’ group’s reading comprehension was developed. the results can be due to using ‘i + 1’ materials which provided a situation for participants to expand their reading comfort zone in which they had the opportunity to build up their reading confidence and develop a large sight vocabulary rather than learning new linguistic elements (day & bamford, 1998). this study is supported by bahmani and farvardin (2017) who discovered the effectiveness of different text difficulty levels on flra and reading comprehension of efl learners. the final findings uncovered that both text difficulty levels significantly enhanced the participants’ reading comprehension. the outcomes additionally revealed that, the ‘i+ 1’ group’s flra enhanced, while that of the ‘i 1’ group lessened. the results of this study also revealed that there was significant effect of time suggesting substantial difference in the reading comprehension scores across two periods. however, regarding the other previous studies, time might be less crucial in affecting participants’ reading comprehension. whether the time of intervention was two months (mason & krashen, 1997), five months (tanaka, 2007) or even one year (chiang, 2015), reading comprehension increased. it might be possible to identify more obvious differences in reading comprehension between the two groups if the duration of participation in er could be extended. to sum up, the positive effect of i+1 viewed in this study can be ascribed to the vital role of comprehensible language input providing learners with linguistic data that they are able to understand. in the field of sla, there is a mimic metaphor about language input proposed by vanpattn (2003) “input is to language acquisition what gas is to a car”. there is language input that is better than other input, just like there is high octane gas that is better than low-octane gas. the “better input” here is comprehensible and meaning bearing. the more comprehensible and meaning –bearing the input is, the more likely it will be turned into intake that learners are able to internalize into their cognitive systems. in contrast to the common belief that easy materials may increase the motivation of efl learners, this study proved that the more difficult materials could increase iranian efl learners’ motivation towards reading english. it can be claimed that difficult materials have discovery nature, meaning that, students want to discover and understand new things. in addition, students may do not have much more motivation to learn easy and ordinary materials without rich content. these results are congruent with former study (chiang, 2015; tanaka, 2007). constant offering to the input (i.e., i+1) over times appears to have had a significant impact on developing learners’ reading comprehension. conclusion this study compared the effects of i+1 and i-1 materials on iranian efl learners’ reading comprehension and reading motivation. the findings revealed that i+1 group outperformed the i-1 group. i+1 material increased reading comprehension and reading motivation of the participants. in addition, it can be concluded that the materials of efl english textbooks should be one level higher than the current level of the students to motivate and challenge them. this study comes to the conclusion that the input hypothesis of krashen (1982) “learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level” is valid. the other conclusion which can be drawn from this study is the importance of the efl learners’ motivation. the motivation of the students should be increased to learn english language more easily since motivation directs behavior toward particular goals, it will augment students' time on task and is additionally a momentous factor having effect on their learning and development. e. namaziandost, m. nasri, & f. r. esfahani / elt forum 8 (1) (2019) 74 motivation boosts cognitive processing. motivation specifies whether a student will pursue a task (even a difficult one) with enthusiasm or a lackluster attitude. so, it is important to recognize aspects that foster internal motivation in english language learning. this study provides some implications for teachers who are interested in using er in their classes. teachers can take benefit of the ‘i + 1’ or the ‘i 1’ in er as a supplementary activity in english courses. this study suggests that er is effective in improving efl learners’ reading comprehension, and helpful in enhancing vocabulary, grammar and reading speed regardless of the level of materials learners choose. this study indicates whether the learners choose easier or harder er materials, they gain more or less similar results in reading comprehension. according to this study, choosing novels based on the participants’ own interests can encourage them to eagerly participate in er program. ideally, teachers should consider the value of self-selected materials as a key to a successful implementation of er. there are, however, some limitations in the study. first, there were 54 participants in the current study. in order to gain more evidence about the influence of text difficulty on participants’ flrm and reading comprehension, more participants are recommended. second, lack of random sampling was one of the limitations of the study. random sampling will provide more concrete evidence for the effects of text difficulty on flrm and reading comprehension. it is recommended to invite larger samples of learners in order to provide an opportunity for selecting them randomly. third, future research can be replicated in esl contexts. fourth, in the current study, participants read four novels. future research needs to provide a big stock of books and also ask participants to read more to maximize the effects of er. fifth, future research can focus on the effects of the ‘i + 1’ and the ‘i 1’ hypotheses on other areas of language learning like grammar. finally, time commitment is important for er to be reasonably successful; this study lasted for three months which may not be enough for full benefits of er. future studies can gain better results if learners participate in er program for a longer time. references ahmadi, m. r. 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(2013). effects of extensive reading on reading attitudes in a foreign language. reading in a foreign language, 25, 248–263. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4220fdf5206d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word 6. 37148-article text-93274-2-15-20200319.docx putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 55 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt theme-rheme configuration in recount texts produced by indonesian efl students kiki meiarista, widhiyanto english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 3 february 2020 approved in 13 july 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: textual meaning; thematic structure; thematic development pattern; the problem of thematic development; recount text ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the topic of this study is the textual meaning in recount texts written by the fourth semester students of english department universitas negeri semarang in the academic year 2018/2019. this study is conducted since there are still limited research that is conducted in indonesia which analyses the problems of thematic development because most of indonesian researchers are only analyses the thematic structure and thematic development pattern. this study aimed to figure out the thematic structure, thematic development pattern, and the problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts. the text analysis of qualitative method was employed to enhance the results. the result of the thematic structures showed that the unmarked topical theme was frequently used than the marked one in terms of topical theme, the conjunctions became the mostly used element in textual theme, and the modal adjuncts became the frequently used constituent in interpersonal theme. in the case of thematic development patterns, the theme re-iteration (constant theme pattern) became the mostly used pattern since the function is to keep the text focused. it has been found that there were three problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts: (1) the problem of the brand-new theme, (2) the problem of double rheme, and (3) the problem of empty rheme. the results of this study indicate that the students belong to beginner (inexperienced) writer. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: kikimei96@gmail.com kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 56 introduction in learning language, people have to master the four main skills of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. listening and reading are considered into receptive skills because people only receive information either through listening or reading. whereas speaking and writing are considered into productive skills because people produce sounds in speaking and symbols in writing. writing is considered as a difficult task for english as a foreign language (efl) students because of the complexity of the writing process. during the writing process, students need to organize ideas into a good sentence, then arrange sentence by sentence into a good paragraph, and link paragraphs into text. students also need to pay attention on vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, grammar, cohesiveness, and coherence of a text in order to make the text is readable, acceptable, and meaningful. most of the students find difficulties in starting ‘what to write’, generating ideas, choosing the proper words, and relating each clause into a cohesive and coherence text. it happens because they do not know about theme and rheme. the students are not familiar or even do not know about the systemic functional linguistics (sfl). sfl is a theory that is developed by m. a. k. halliday in the 1960s. it focuses on the purposes and the uses of language as a system for making meaning. in sfl, meaning is divided into three: ideational/experiential, interpersonal, and textual. textually, the clause contains a message; interpersonally, clause is seen as an exchange; and experientially, clause is seen as a representation. ideational meaning is a meaning which construing human experience. interpersonal meaning is a meaning that enacting personal and social relations, this meaning expresses attitudes and judgements. textual meaning is a meaning which relates to the construction of a text. those meanings are also called metafunction (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, pp.30-31). one of the meaning that is going to figure out in this study is textual meaning. the textual meaning is realized through the theme and rheme. theme is the point of departure to guide the addressee in developing an interpretation of the message and rheme is the part where the theme is developed (halliday & matthiessen, 2004, 2014). theme is realized by initial position in the clause and rheme follows (martin, matthiessen, & painter, 1997, p.21). in short, theme is the beginning of the clause which contains the information and rheme is the rest of the clause which contains new information. the theme elements are divided into three: ideational/topical theme, interpersonal theme, and textual theme (halliday & matthiessen, 2004, 2014). the ideational/topical theme is the first constituent that is either participant, circumstance, or process. it is divided into two: marked and unmarked topical theme. the unmarked topical theme is theme on to subject, while the marked topical theme is theme other than subject. the ideational/topical theme occurs in all clauses although it might be ellipsis. the interpersonal theme is an element that occurs before the topical theme, includes modal/comment adjunct, vocative, and finite verbal operator. the textual theme occurs before the interpersonal or topical theme which relates the clause to its context. it includes continuative, conjunction, and conjunctive adjunct. the theme which contains more than one element is called multiple theme (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.107). the development from theme to rheme shows the flow of information. it is common to put an old information (the information from the previous sentence or clause) followed by a new information in order to maintain the cohesiveness and coherence of a text. there are three main patterns in developing a text: theme reiteration, the zig-zag pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern (eggins, 2004, pp.324-325). in the theme reiteration (constant theme pattern), re-iterate an element is a way to keep the cohesiveness or the focus of a text. this pattern is found when the same element appears regularly in the beginning of the clause (theme). the repetition of the same element of theme provides a clear focus of the text. the zigzag/linear pattern occurs when the element that is introduced in the rheme of the previous clause becomes the theme of the next clause. in this pattern, the cohesiveness of a text is achieved by building on the newly introduced information. the last pattern is multiple-rheme pattern. in this pattern, the rheme of the previous clause is divided into a number of different pieces’ information, each of them becomes the theme of other clauses afterwards. the thematic structure can be used as a tool to analyse how the construction of a text and also to diagnose language weaknesses in writing product. there are three common problems of thematic development, those are the problem of the brand-new theme, the problem of double rheme, and the problem of the empty rheme (bloor & bloor, 1992). the problem of the brand-new theme frequently occurs in writing product of inexperienced writer. this problem occurs when the new kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 57 information is put on theme position (bloor & bloor, 1995). the next problem is the problem of double rheme. it happens when a sentence has two rhemes, one of which has never been mentioned previously (bloor & bloor, 1992). the last is the problem of empty rheme. it refers to the clause which fails to present new information in the rheme position (bloor & bloor, 1992). in communication, people produce a text either spoken or written and convey a meaning. the text means any connected stretch of language that is doing job in some context (halliday & hasan, 1985, p.10). a text is created when some words are put together which contains a meaning in order of communication. creating a text requires us to make choices about the words used and how to put them together depends on the purpose and surrounding (context). the texts that were analysed in this study is recount texts. recount text is a text that retells past events in the order in which they happened (anderson & anderson, 2003, p.48). this type of text demands the writer to arrange some events into chronological order. in recount text, learners must retell the sequence of events or experiences which they have ever got in the past (nafisah & kurniawan, 2007, p.65). the generic structure of recount text consists of orientation, record of events, and re-orientation (anderson & anderson, 2003, p.50). the orientation provides the background information of a text, such as who was involved, what happened, where the events took place, and when it happened. the record of events contains a series of events in a chronological sequence. the re-orientation consists of closure of events or the end of the story, usually stating personal comment of the writer to the story. since recount text deals with sequence, the textual analysis of theme-rheme is suitable to be used. the textual meaning builds up sequences of discourse, organizing the discursive flow, and creating cohesion and continuity as it moves along (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, pp.30-31). there have been numerous studies on sfl in the field of textual meaning analysis. in this case, several researchers conducted studies on the textual meaning analysis of various kinds of texts. some of the indonesian researchers are interested in analyzing textual meaning on students’ recount texts (dewi & kurniawan, 2018; febriyana, sofwan & farida, 2018; safitri & bahri, 2017; yunita, 2018). moreover, some studies from another country were focused on the types and problems of theme-rheme in efl students’ texts (arunsirot, 2013; ridha, 2014). based on those studies, the study that is conducted in indonesia which analyses the problems of thematic development is considered as the limited study. in short, the theme is essential to determine the point of departure in a text. the development of the theme-rheme is also essential because it shows the flow of information to maintain the cohesiveness of a text. meanwhile, in constructing a text, efl students do not pay attention on the thematic structures and thematic development, so it leads them to produce the problem. undertaking the opportunity that there are still limited studies in indonesia which analyses the problems of thematic development, this study is conducted in order to explain how the thematic structures and thematic development patterns of recount texts written by the fourth semester students of english department universitas negeri semarang is realized. further, this study also tries to uncover the problems of thematic development in recount texts written by the fourth semester students of english department universitas negeri semarang in the academic year 2018/2019. methods this study investigates how the thematic structure, thematic development pattern, and the problems of thematic development that are found in students’ recount texts. therefore, the qualitative approach was used to figure out the realization of the meaning. the object of this study is students’ recount texts, so the text analysis is employed. the researcher collected the data from the genre-based writing course of english education programme which consists of five classes. the researcher only took two best texts of each class based on the lecturers’ selection, so there were ten texts. the best text is chosen because of this study aims to figure out the real problems that students’ face in terms of textual meaning. in analysing text, there are three level of analysis: the text as a whole, the sentence level, and the word or phrase level (huckin, 1997, pp.81-84). the sentence level is chosen as the unit of analysis in this current study. before analysing the data, the researcher read the texts and identifying clauses which representing textual meaning. after that, breaking down the texts into clauses. then, the clauses were numbered and analysed into three steps: analyse the thematic structures, analyse the thematic development patterns, and analyse the problems of thematic development. first, the data were given kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 58 codes based on the categories of theme elements. there are three elements of theme: ideational/topical, interpersonal, and textual (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.107). after the thematic structures are analysed, the next step is identified the thematic development patterns. there are three patterns: constant theme/reiteration pattern, zigzag/linear pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern (eggins, 2004, pp.324-325). the thematic structures analysis is used to figure out the point of departure of each clause whereas the thematic development patterns analysis is used to see the flow of information in the texts. the last step is investigating the problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts. there are three common problems of thematic development: the problem of the brand-new theme, the problem of double rheme, and the problem of empty rheme (bloor & bloor, 1992). after analysing the texts, the researcher presented the results by using tables. then, the results were put into the discussion part in order to discuss and review the meaning realized in students’ recount texts. after that, the researcher drew the conclusion of the results. in order to know the validity of the data in qualitative research, the triangulation technique is employed. the type of triangulation technique that is chosen is investigator triangulation as an alternative observation from different expert of textual meaning. findings and discussion this study investigated the textual meaning of recount texts written by the fourth semester students of english department universitas negeri semarang in the academic year 2018/2019. there were ten best texts taken from genre-based writing course of english education programme. the findings of this study were derived from the theme-rheme system of each clause. there were three kinds of analysis: the thematic structures analysis, the thematic development patterns analysis, and the problems of thematic development analysis. the thematic structures were analysed to figure out the types of theme that is used by students in order to show the point of departure of the message in each clause. the thematic development pattern analysis is used to see the flow of information in students’ recount texts. the problems of thematic development analysis is used to uncover the common problems of misusing theme-rheme in students’ recount texts that indicates the students’ writing ability. thematic structures realized in students’ recount texts the thematic structure plays an important role in organizing the message and enhances connectivity between ideas in the text (halliday & matthiessen, 2014). theme is divided into two: simple theme and multiple theme. simple theme is a theme which contains the experiential elements either participant, circumstance, or process which refers to topical theme (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.105). furthermore, the other elements may occur before the topical theme, either textual, interpersonal, or both of them. the table below shows the thematic structures in students’ recount texts. table 1. summary findings of thematic structures recount texts ideational/ topical textual (textualtopical) interpersonal (interpersonaltopical) textualinterperson al-topical sum ∑ % ∑ % ∑ % ∑ % ∑ % text 1 18 4.8 17 4.5 0 0.0 1 0.3 36 9.6 text 2 8 2.1 2 0.5 0 0.0 0 0.0 10 2.7 text 3 26 6.9 14 3.7 0 0.0 0 0.0 40 10.7 text 4 30 8.0 17 4.5 0 0.0 1 0.3 48 12.8 text 5 18 4.8 18 4.8 0 0.0 0 0.0 36 9.6 text 6 15 4.0 20 5.3 0 0.0 0 0.0 35 9.3 text 7 25 6.7 22 5.9 5 1.3 1 0.3 53 14.1 text 8 28 7.5 31 8.3 1 0.3 0 0.0 60 16.0 text 9 26 6.9 15 4.0 0 0.0 0 0.0 41 10.9 text 10 7 1.9 7 1.9 2 0.5 0 0.0 16 4.3 sum 201 53.6 163 43.4 8 2.1 3 0.9 375 100.0 kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 59 as showed in the table 1, the ideational/topical theme is frequently used by students (53.6%) followed by the textual theme (43.4%), interpersonal theme (2.1%), and the rarest used is textualinterpersonal-topical theme (0.9%). thematic development patterns in students’ recount texts there are three main patterns of thematic development namely constant theme/reiteration pattern, zigzag/linear pattern, and multiple-rheme pattern (eggins, 2004, pp.324-325). the table below shows the thematic development patterns in students’ recount texts. table 2. summary findings of thematic development patterns recount texts constant theme pattern zigzag theme pattern multiple rheme pattern sum ∑ % ∑ % ∑ % ∑ % text 1 6 2.7 10 4.5 1 0.4 17 7.6 text 2 1 0.4 2 0.9 0 0.0 3 1.3 text 3 14 6.3 11 4,9 0 0.0 25 11.2 text 4 9 4.0 13 5.8 2 0.9 24 10.7 text 5 11 4.9 12 5.4 0 0.0 23 10.3 text 6 16 7.1 2 0.9 1 0.4 19 8.5 text 7 20 8.9 16 7.1 2 0.9 38 17.0 text 8 22 9.8 14 6.3 4 1.8 40 17.9 text 9 18 8.0 8 3.6 0 0.0 26 11.6 text 10 7 3.1 2 0.9 0 0.0 9 4.0 sum 124 55.2 90 40.3 10 4.4 224 100.0 as showed in the table 2, the constant theme pattern is mostly used by students (55.2%) followed by the zigzag pattern (40.3%), and the rarest pattern that is used by students is multiplerheme pattern (4.4%). the problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts there are three common problems of thematic development resulting from the misuse of themerheme, those are the problem of the brand-new theme, the problem of double rheme, and the problem of the empty rheme (bloor & bloor, 1992). the problems of the brand-new theme the new theme is introduced in the text causing a lack of organizational skill in the writing. here are some examples of the brand-new theme found in students’ recount texts: (a) all of the students, except a boy who was my rival in the subject, agreed that it was the right answer. (b) then, the time that had been anticipated finally came, the teacher’s justification. (c) when i was looking for boarding house, unexpectedly i met my best friend, … the sentences (a) and (b) belongs to the problems of the brand-new theme since the text is focused on ‘i’ and ‘the teacher’, so the theme ‘all of the students, except a boy who was my rival in the subject’ and ‘then, the time that had been anticipated’ include into new themes that have been introduced. meanwhile, in the clause (c), the theme ‘when i was looking for boarding house’ introduced as a new theme since the text is focused on ‘i’. the problems of double rheme this problem occurs when the sentence has two rhemes with one of the rhemes is not mentioned previously (bloor & bloor, 1992). below are some examples of the double rheme found in students’ recount texts: (a) at that time men and woman workers rallied demanding justice for workers… (b) … so that good working condition and working hours became reasonable not too long. (c) at that time my friend and i were practicing football with our teacher. kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 60 each of the example above contains two rheme which is the second rheme is not mentioned previously. the problems of empty rheme the empty rheme refers to the clause which fails to present new information in the rheme position (bloor & bloor, 1992). there is an example of the empty rheme found in students’ recount texts: (a) after considered a lot of things which course i would choose. the example above is a sentence that considered into dependent clause and does not have independent clause until the full stop, so it is considered as a problem. discussion this part presents the interpretation of the findings compared to the previous studies and the theories used. thematic structures realized in students’ recount texts theme is the point of departure while the rheme is the part which the theme developed (halliday and matthiessen, 2014, p.89). based on the amount of the theme in a clause, theme can be divided into two categories: simple theme and multiple theme. simple theme is a theme which contains the experiential elements, either participant, circumstance, or process which refers to topical theme (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.105). multiple theme is a theme which contains more than one element, the other elements either textual, interpersonal, or both of them preceding before the topical theme (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.107). the findings show that students tend to use simple theme than the multiple theme (see table 1). this finding in contrast with arunsirot’s (2013) study. this could be happened due to the fact that the object in arunsirot’s study has different genre with this current study. arunsirot analysed argumentative texts while this study analysed recount texts. in argumentative texts, students are attempted to persuade the readers by adding textual theme and interpersonal theme before the topical theme in order to link logical steps of their arguments. whereas in recount texts, students do not need to persuade the readers, they only tell the readers about the past experiences through the series of events, so they often used circumstance of time and place which belong to topical theme. furthermore, the occurrence of simple theme mostly found on descriptive and recount text (yunita, 2018). it is not surprising if simple theme which contains the topical theme became the most frequently used theme in students’ recount texts. it is because of each clause contains one topical theme, in turn, is one nominal group, adverbial group, or prepositional phrase (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.92). topical theme is divided into marked and unmarked. unmarked topical theme is more dominant than the marked one. it is found that the use of nominal group occurs in great quantities than the other groups. almost all of students’ recount texts use pronoun ‘i’ in the beginning of the clause, for example i’m very excited and enthusiastic.; i went to kediri by train.; finally, i held back my pee.; i felt very embarrassed…; etc. the students emphasized on the nominal group as the point of delivering the message since it is about their personal experience. it is also easier to begin a clause using nominal group than adverbial, complement, or prepositional phrase. it is in line with the findings of the study conducted by febriyana (2017) since the genre of the object of the study is the same. she also assumed that it is an ordinary case for those who belong to beginner writers. based on the similarity of the tendency of the chosen component in the beginning of a clause, it can be said that as ‘a writer’, the students are considered to the beginner writers. the marked themes are chosen by skilful writers or speakers to add the coherence and emphasis their texts (eggins’s, 2004, p.320). the next type of theme realized in students’ recount texts is textual theme (see table 1). based on the findings, the most used element is conjunctions. for example, … and the ritual was held on may 1.; …and sometimes she was crying.; … because i had not been accepted…; etc. the use of conjunctions is the easiest way to link one clause to another than the other elements. it is not surprising because the function of conjunction is to link clauses in order to maintain the coherent and cohesiveness of a text. it is in line with the study conducted by arimafrida (2016) although it has different genre with this object of the study. students tend to choose conjunctions than continuatives or conjunctive adjunct. it indicates that the students are aware of the important role of the conjunctions and have been trying to maintain the coherent and cohesiveness of their text. in kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 61 contrast with conjunctions, there is only one continuative found in students’ recount texts since it is associated with the spoken features. it happens because continuative element is mostly used in spoken text as a set of words which signal a move in the discourse: a response, in dialogue, or a new move to the next point if the same speaker is continuing (halliday & matthiessen, 2014, p.107). the last and the rarest type of theme found on students’ recount texts is interpersonal theme (see table 1). students tend to use modal adjunct than the other elements. some examples of the used of modal adjuncts in interpersonal theme such as… unfortunately, that is not apply…; … unexpectedly i met my best friend, …; … maybe at 8 p.m. we decided to leave…; etc. the rare used of the interpersonal theme in students’ recount texts is acceptable since it commonly occurs in the conversation (eggins, 2004). it happens because the interpersonal theme often found in spoken texts for students to join and sustain their interaction (butt et al., 2000). and also confirms by halliday & matthiessen’s (2004, p.84), statement as follows. “if there is a vocative in the clause, or a modal or comment adjunct, it is quite likely to be thematic: these items are characteristic of dialogue, in which the speaker may be calling the attention of the listener, or else expressing his or her own angle on the matter in hand, whether probable, desirable, and so on, and hence they tend to be brought in as key signature to the particular move in the exchange – in other words, as theme of the clause.” from those statements, it can be concluded that interpersonal theme tends to be used in spoken text. meanwhile, the conversation or spoken interaction is rarely used in the recount texts, thus it may lead the background of infrequent number of occurrences of the interpersonal theme in students’ recount texts. the analysis of textual meaning clause by clause gained by an insight that the students made clear to the reader their underlying concerns and how they developed it. the theme-rheme analysis showed that the students presented their concerns of their story and provided the details by presenting the definition, giving example, stating the value, and elaborating the sequence of event. based on the tendency of the chosen component in the beginning of a clause, the students are considered to the beginner writers although they have been in the fourth semester college students (see eggins, 2004, p. 320). thematic development patterns in students’ recount texts after the thematic structure of each clause is analysed, it is needed to know how theme of each clause related each other in order to be cohesive and coherent. then the analysis of thematic development employed to know the flow of information in which how meanings are packaged in order to make it easier to understand (martin & rose, 2007, p. 187). an analysis of the thematic development in each clause is important since it is particularly sensitive to the staging of genre (martin & rose, 2007, p. 198). there are three patterns of thematic development: constant theme pattern; zig-zag pattern; and multiple-rheme pattern (eggins, 2004, pp.324-325). based on the findings, the constant theme pattern became the most used pattern followed by zig-zag pattern and the last is multiple-rheme pattern (see table 2). it happens because ‘one basic way to keep a text focused (i.e. cohesive) is simply to re-iterate an element’ (eggins, 2004, p. 324). constant theme pattern is considered to be the easiest way to provide the text with a clear focus. this can be examined in the following examples. theme rheme since then, i had been traumatized by that moment until i didn’t want to answer teacher’s question anymore because i was afraid in case i would have been yelled again if i gave the wrong answer. although begin with different conjunctions, the point of departure is still same in which the repetition of the topical theme ‘i’. the repetition of the subject ‘i’ represents that the focus of the kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 62 message is about ‘i’. since the text contains reiteration of the element, it is considered to have the constant-theme pattern in the text development. theme rheme we continue our trip by visiting zoo near there. we walked around and (we) saw various kinds of animal. we also fed them and (we) took photos with them. all of the clauses above use pronoun ‘we’ as the topical theme. they reiterate the point of the departure in order to keep the text focused. the text is also containing the repetition of the conjunction ‘and’ to connect a clause with the previous clause in order to maintain the coherence of the text. even though the subject ‘we’ after the conjunctions was ellipsis, the point of departure is still the same. thus, the focused message of the text is about ‘we’. the next pattern appears in students’ recount texts is zig-zag pattern. the zig-zag pattern reached cohesion of the text by building on newly introduced information (eggins, 2004, p.325). in other words, the rheme of the previous clause is taken into the theme of the next clause. from the findings, the writers used zig-zag patterns as the second way to make new clauses besides constant theme pattern (see table 2). here is an example of zigzag pattern found in students’ recount texts. theme rheme first, “bukit pananjakan” to enjoy the sunrise, second, “gumuk pasir berbisik” and the last “bukit telletubies”. in "bukit pananjakan", we could see and enjoy the sunrise, it was very amazing. in "gumuk pasir berbisik", we could take some pictures with background of bromo mountain behind us which was very close and clear. from the text above, the rheme of the first clause ‘bukit pananjakan’ is elaborated as a theme in the fourth clause. it is the same with the second clause and the sixth clause. the rarest pattern that is students used is multiple-rheme pattern. there are only 2 patterns appear among 10 texts. the pattern belongs to multiple-rheme pattern when the rheme of a clause is elaborated into some themes for the next clauses. here is one of the examples. theme rheme there are three points that we would visit. first, “bukit pananjakan” to enjoy the sunrise, second, “gumuk pasir berbisik” and the last “bukit telletubies”. this part of the text contains the multiple-rheme pattern in which the rheme ‘three points’ in the first clause is elaborated in the theme of the next clauses as the points which are mentioned. each of text-types tends to deal with the particular types of thematic development, these are re-iteration (constant), zigzag (linier), and multiple (split). the constant continuous themes tend to be used mostly in such texts as narratives, recounts, and reports while simple linier pattern or crossreferential thematic theme mostly used in descriptive and reports (rosa, 2013, p.223). therefore, re-iteration (constant) pattern is the most frequent pattern used in the texts since recount text is a text-type which mostly uses constant pattern as the thematic development. moreover, it is also kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 63 found the combination of re-iteration, zigzag and multiple patterns in students’ recount texts as it is uncommon to have only one pattern in a whole text. there is always a possibility to use all types of thematic development pattern in a particular type of text, but the text must have one dominant type of thematic development pattern (rosa, 2013). the problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts thematic structure plays an important role in organizing the message and enhances connectivity between ideas in the text (halliday, 2014). it is used as a tool to analyse how the texts are constructed and to diagnose language weaknesses in the student’s writing product. there are three common problems of thematic development resulting from the misuse of theme-rheme, those are the problem of the brand-new theme, the problem of double rheme, and the problem of the empty rheme (bloor & bloor, 1992). through those categories, it is found several problems in students’ recount texts. several problems in terms of the brand-new theme were found in students’ recount texts. in this case, the new theme is introduced in the text causing a lack of organizational skill in the writing. for example, the writer talks about her embarrassing experience in english class in text 6. the themes of almost all sentences in the body paragraph refers to the writer by using the pronoun ‘i’ and ‘the teacher’, except the seventh and ninth sentences. in this case, the themes ‘all of the students, except a boy who was my rival in the subject’ and ‘then, the time that had been anticipated’ were introduced in the text. here, these themes are first mentioned among the text. it happens because the students are considered as the beginner writer as mentioned in the previous part of discussion. the occurrence of this problem indicates that the writer, in case student, showing inability in developing a coherence text. it can be said that the problem of a brand-new theme occurs in the work of inexperienced writers who put new information in the theme position (bloor & bloor, 1995). the next problem occurs in students’ recount text is the problem of double rheme. this problem occurs when the sentence has two rhemes with one of the rhemes is not mentioned previously (bloor & bloor, 1992). this problem causing confusion since the rheme that is mentioned previously will seem as not related to the remains. in the analysis, it is found that there are three clauses having this problem. one of them is ‘… so that good working condition and working hours became reasonable not too long.’. it can be seen that the rhemes are ‘good working condition became reasonable not too long’ and ‘working hours became reasonable not too long’. the occurrence of the second rheme will make the previous rheme seem as not related to the remains of the rheme (became reasonable not too long). this problem did not occur in the study that was conducted by arunsirot (2013) and ridha (2014). it may happen because the genre of the analysed texts is different. the empty rheme refers to the clause which fails to present new information in the rheme position (bloor & bloor, 1992). in other word, the rheme is not further developed. it only found one sentence having this problem. the sentence is ‘after considered a lot of things which course i would choose.’. this sentence is considered into dependent clause and does not have independent clause until the full stop. the sentence contains a theme, but does not have rheme, that is called empty rheme. it causes confusion for the readers because the writer of the text does not mention what happens after the course is chosen. this problem occurs in the study conducted by arunsirot (2013) and ridha (2014), but in different case. conclusion this study aimed to figure out the thematic structure, thematic development pattern, and the problems of thematic development found in recount texts written by the fourth semester students of english department universitas negeri semarang. the result of the thematic structures show that the unmarked topical theme is frequently used than the marked one in terms of topical theme, the conjunctions became the mostly used element in textual theme, and the modal adjuncts became the frequently used constituent in interpersonal theme. in the case of thematic development patterns, the theme re-iteration (constant theme pattern) became the mostly used pattern since the function is to keep the text focused followed by the zigzag pattern, and the last is multiple-rheme pattern. it has been found three problems of thematic development in students’ recount texts, there are the problem of the brand-new theme, the problem of double rheme, and the problem of empty rheme. the results of this study indicate that the students belong to beginner (inexperienced) writer. any kiki meiarista & widhiyanto/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 64 analysis of sfl needs more linguistic evidence to make judgement rather than intuition, thus research on different kind of text may reveal additional findings. references anderson, k. & anderson, m. 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(2014). an introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). london: routledge taylor & francis group. huckin, t. n. (1997). “critical discourse analysis”, in miller, tom (ed). functional approaches to written text: classroom applications. washington dc: united states information agency, pp.7892. martin, j. r., matthiessen, c. m. i. m., & painter, c. (1997). working with functional grammar. london: arnold. martin, j. r. & rose, d. (2007). working with discourse: meaning beyond the clause (2nd ed). new york: continuum. nafisah, n. & kurniawan, e. (2007). writing english for general communication. bandung: upi press. ridha, n. s. a. (2014). theme and rheme: types and problems in efl university students’ written texts. pp. 93-114. rosa, r. n. (2013). thematic progression as a model used to keep cohesion in writing an exposition text. proceedings of iselt fbs universitas negeri padang, 1, pp.220-228. safitri, i. & bahri, s. (2017). thematic progression on students’ recount texts. journal of english language teaching, 6(1), pp. 69-82. microsoft word 8. 38676-article text-100301-1-6-20200709.docx putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 75 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt english teachers’ methods in teaching reading comprehension of procedure text akidatul yusmalinda, puji astuti  english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 12 may 2020 approved in 12 july 2020 published in 30 july 22020 ________________ keywords: english teacher; teachers’ methods; teaching reading; reading comprehension; procedure ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study focuses on english teachers’ methods in teaching reading comprehension of procedure text. the main purpose of this study is to describe the methods used by english teachers and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of those methods used for teaching reading comprehension of procedure texts. the research was a qualitative case study. the participants of this research were two english teachers at one of junior high schools in semarang in the academic year of 2019/2020. in collecting data, several data collection instruments were used, including: interview, observation guideline and document analysis checklist. the findings showed that english teachers planned the teaching materials and strategies in advance. they also used various methods in teaching reading of procedure text. both teachers almost used the same methods which were audio-visual method, scaffolding, grammartranslation method, and project-based learning. the difference was in the step of the strategy implementation. in addition, the findings showed that the most appropriate method in teaching reading comprehension was grammar-translation method since it helped students comprehend the procedure text. there were several students who still had a hard time following the lessons. teachers are supposed to make sure that all students have understood the whole text or not and they should observe the students’ situation and needs so that the teaching and learning is contextual. © 2019 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: yusmalinday@gmail.com akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 76 introduction it is a fact that english has been chosen as an international language because of widespread use among all countries in the world. therefore, it is obviously significant for all people to learn english in every level by considering the importance of daily life in all skills. therefore, people have to master all the required skills in english such as listening, reading, speaking, and writing. these four skills cannot be separated, they are linked to each other and related to receptive skills and productive skills. while listening and reading are receptive skills, writing and speaking are productive skills (harmer, 2001). due to the fact that reading is a receptive skill, it means reading is one of the ways to get the knowledge in english, because when we read a text we can obviously get the knowledge what exactly the text tells to us, in addition, we can get a lot of vocabularies that will help us in speaking and writing. hence, reading skills is very important especially for students to collect as many as possible the vocabulary from the text they have read. by reading, students can use their time in a good way to get information, knowledge, as well as enrich their vocabulary, and improve their ability in english. according to dean (2013), reading is more than seeing words clearly, more than pronouncing printed words correctly and more than recognizing the meaning of isolated words. reading requires you to think and feel. reading is not just looking and pronouncing words in the text but comprehending all the components of a text. in short, the goal of all reading is the comprehension of meaning that is conveyed in the written text. students in junior high school are supposed to learn several genres of text. according to indonesia curriculum education 2013, there are several texts that must be studied such as descriptive text, narrative text, procedure text, and so on. each of them has different generic structure, aim, and also language features. hence, it would make students difficult either to identify or differentiate the text. since we know that they must understand the whole text; what the writer tries to inform and tell the readers. moreover, students must get the knowledge and information of the text, they have to be able to think critically, so whenever they are asked to answer some questions based on the text they have read, they can answer it correctly. in addition, as we know, nowadays the national examination (un) is not a key to determine whether the students pass or fail in junior high school. yet, the function of the un has changed, it becomes the standard of education quality of indonesia. besides, for students, the result of their national examination will be a consideration of entering the next level of education which is senior high school and the next after is university. if they do not succeed in answering the whole question means they might have difficulty in the future for students who want to apply for school in their out zone since their final marks will be a consideration for its school. according to the pos, all the questions of un are from the material from seventh to ninth of junior high school which means the students need to brush up on their memory of all materials. due to the importance of english and national examination, students were worried about having a bad score in national examination. therefore, students had to work hard to pass the national examination. nevertheless, those things are not easy because one text contains of a lot of vocabulary, grammatical structure and also its story which has differences with other texts. the students need an extraordinary effort to comprehend all the text, so they can master the whole text and answer the questions related to the text. that understanding text is called by reading comprehension. hence, the teacher should help the students with all their difficulties. the teacher must consider what the best way to teach reading. in teaching reading, a teacher may use many different methods. according to brown (2002) method is a generalized set of specifications in the classroom for achieving linguistic objectives. methods main concern is to teachers and learners’ role and behavior. besides, the concern of method is to linguistic and subject matter objectives, sequencing and materials. this is the key of success of the reader. a teacher needs to select which one that must be implemented in teaching certain text so that students can easily get the knowledge of that text. preparing students for what they are going to read can make comprehension much easier. teacher as a mediator in teaching at school is supposed to help students getting the best education in their life. if the students faced a difficulty in studying, it is teacher’s obligation to help them. based on the reason that i have been mentioned, students need teachers’ help in mastering all skills of english, especially in reading comprehension. however, teaching reading is not as easy as we think, because it is not only asking the students to read the whole words in the text but akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 77 encouraging them to understand the text even conduct a critical thinking. hence, teacher should consider what method or strategy that could make a reading text easier. on the other hand, most of the previous researchers conducted their studies in order to find out what the difficulty that were facing the students and teachers in reading (masadeh, 2015) and what teachers’ perception on reading method (ness, 2016). as well as some of them found that reading strategies will help students in improving their reading comprehension. in addition, in teaching reading teachers have used an interactive method and strategy in order to make the reading text easier for students, whereas other teachers still used a traditional method and questions in textbook as a media for teaching reading comprehension. there were many previous studies that discussed about teachers strategies and methods in teaching reading comprehension such as done by soleimani and hajghani (2013), ferdila (2014), souhila (2014), almasri and alshumaimeri (2016), and muslaini (2017). soleimani and hajghani (2013) found that reading strategy instruction can lead to the use of an extended range of reading strategies by the learners. besides, the reading strategies are able to enhance students’ reading performance. ferdila (2014) found that teachers should find an appropriate technique to encourage students’ interest instructions in various levels of indonesian school dominantly adjust to intensive reading. thus, this study was to investigate the benefits of using extensive reading in teaching reading and as well as students’ attitudes toward it. the result showed that hence, extensive reading can be used as one of the method or strategy to teach reading. it can be a resource or an option for the teacher when they want to teach a certain genre. souhila (2014) found that students had some difficulties in approaching reading strategies task. it confirmed that reading is a challenging and complex skill because students showed that they have a great awareness about reading, but unfortunately they have lacked some of reading strategies. the result showed that there was a strong relationship between the students' knowledge (whether linguistic and background) and their success in applying strategies of reading about the text (whether general or specific).almasri and alshumaimeri (2016) found that the performance of the students in the control and the experimental group improved significantly in reading comprehension scores. however, the strongly significant differences occurring in the experimental group’s post-test comprehension performance when compared to the pre-test indicate that using web-quest can improve students’ reading comprehension performance. the authors suggest that the teacher’s experience of the web-quest tool, and the challenges to its integration in the blended learning classroom, should be investigated further. muslaini (2017) conducted a study with the objective were to find out how reading comprehension was taught at an islamic boarding school in pidie jaya, the strategies that were used by the teachers for teaching reading comprehension, and the responses of the students towards the teaching-learning of reading comprehension. based on the observations, both of the teachers used various strategies to teach reading comprehension. they were both very creative in handling their classes and they made the students actively involved in the teaching-learning for english reading comprehension. from those studies that have been conducted, it was just a few studies examining about how the teachers teach reading comprehension in class. this is a gap in the literature. the previous researchers have not investigated yet what the strategies that are used by teachers in teaching reading comprehension. for instance, how the teachers find the appropriate method for teaching reading, how they conduct their lesson plan, whether they teach reading based on curriculum or not. the notes above show that teachers play an important role in teaching their students in order to make them comprehend and master the reading skill. a good and appropriate method is really needed for students in comprehending the reading text, medina (2012). as a teacher, they have to choose and select which best method that is good to be implemented in class and also the teaching method must be modified depending on the students’ needs. based on these gaps, the study focused on conducting a research which aimed to find out what the strategies that are used by teachers in teaching reading comprehension. one main reason for conducting this research because there were just few studies discuss about that topic since we know that reading method is essential for teaching reading and also by conducting this topic we can know whether the teachers’ strategies are appropriate or not for the students in learning reading comprehension especially in procedure text. akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 78 methods this section describes the research approach used, respondents involved in the study, if any, which should be kept confidential, instruments, procedures of collecting the data, and ways of analyzing the data. the blueprint of the instrument may be provided if necessary. commonly used statistical formula should not be putin this section. in the present study, it used qualitative approach as the research design. according to creswell (2003), a qualitative approach is one in which the inquirer often makes knowledge claims based primarily on constructivist perspectives or advocacy/participatory perspectives or both. it also uses strategies of inquiry such as narratives, phenomenologies, ethnographies, grounded theory studies, or case studies. the researcher collects open-ended emerging data with the primary intent of developing themes from the data. in this present study, we used qualitative case study research since this study focused in answering “what” questions. this research used that method because it was also appropriate to the objectives of the research which focused on teachers’ strategies in teaching reading comprehension. the results of the research emphasized in the form of words and it was presented in narrative. the results of the research emphasized in the form of words and it was presented in narrative. the data taken from the interview answered the questions from the interviewer while the observation examined the correlation between the interviewee’ answer and his/her action in class. in addition, the use of document analysis help the data more accurate and valid. the data was also recorded in a form of audio which later on would be examined and re-examined to minimize the mistakes in analyzing the data. respondents the research participants of this study were two english teachers at one of junior high schools in semarang in the academic year 2019/2020. data collection methods procedures an instrument is a tool for measuring, observing, or documenting data. it includes interview, questionnaire, observation, and test (saleh, 2012). to generate findings in a systematic way, it is needed to have some instruments in the research. the instruments that used to collect the data from the research participants were interview, observation and document analysis. data collection procedures this research used in-field analysis gibson and o’connor model (2017) to analyze the data. data analysis in qualitative research, conducted at the time of data collection took place, and after completion of data collection in a certain period. the process of analyzing data consists of five steps, there are organizing the data, finding and organizing ideas and concepts, identify patterns and connections within and between categories, and interpretation. therefore, in this study, we used methodological triangulation was applied in this study because there were three data techniques used which were interview, observation and document analysis. interview and observation correlated to each other, which meant the two data supported each other in drawing the data to the conclusion. the document analysis made the study more accurate. we used the triangulation technique in order to get the most valid data as possible. using triangulating data, it attempt to provide ‘a confluence of evidence that breeds credibility’ (eisner, 1991). by examining information collected through different methods, the researchers could corroborate findings across data sets and thus reduced the impact of potential biases that can exist in a single study. findings and discussion the main purpose of this research is giving the readers detail information about strategies used by english teachers in teaching reading comprehension especially in procedure text. moreover, the strengths and weaknesses of each strategies will be explained as well. after doing the research, i found that there are three strategies mostly used by english teachers in teaching procedure text. those strategies are scaffolding and audio visual method, grammar translation method and project based learning. besides, the findings are divided into two parts. akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 79 three methods used by english teachers’ in teaching reading comprehension of procedure text scaffolding and audio visual method in attaining the goal of comprehension, mrs. gea and mrs. nia had done a scaffolding method in advance. they had similar thought in gaining students’ attention but they did it in a different way. mrs. gea created attracted-materials such as colorful photos and videos related to procedure text which often about food in order to be showed and seen by students on lcd screen. this method aimed to gain the students’ attention and build a concept of the material that are going to be taught in class. on the other hand, mrs. nia also did scaffolding in different way. she began the class by giving a text or asking the students to open the book and read a certain text about procedure text. the teacher would read the text first, sentence by sentence then the students would repeat. the objective of such activity was to make the students reading aloud the text so that they are accustomed to the vocabulary and the text. after read the text, she also played a video in order to make the students more understand about what the procedure text is since it will be difficult to comprehend the text by only reading it. grammar-translation method mrs. gea and mrs. nia did the grammar-translation method after asking the students to read the text. she said that grammar-translation method is a must since the students learnt foreign language which absolutely was difficult to be mastered. at class, she asked what point they did not understand, and difficult words of the text. the teacher opened a question and answer section and discussion within the method which aimed to ask the students about the difficult words in such text. if they did not know the meaning, teacher explained the certain word by giving a movement such gestures to represent the meaning of the word. the students were enthusiastic in mentioning the words and got the idea of the content of the text. it help the students mastering the content of the text (see appendix 1). mrs. gea and mrs. nia used grammar translation method in order to help students converting the words from english into bahasa so that they can easily comprehend the content of procedure text. in translating the words teachers used some gestures to represent the meaning of the text to stimulate the students’ mind in guessing the word. that such method was really effective for students in comprehending the text. so that they can easily answer the questions related to the text. project-based learning according to teachers’ interview, they both said that procedure text often related to how to make something. so, they wanted the students not only able to read and understand the text but also practice and implement the content of text in real life. so, both teachers used project based learning as final assignment to be done in the last meeting. mrs. gea divided their students into some groups and each group were asked to choose one of the recipes to be demonstrate in front of class. she recorded the performance as a reflection of the learning process. moreover, mrs. nia also did the same method as mrs. gea. she grouped the students in order to train their skill in performing the recipe in front of the class. most of them demonstrated the menu or food the next meeting, and then mrs. nia assessed their performance. the strength and weaknesses of three methods used in teaching procedure text scaffolding and audio-visual method from the data of interview and observation that i got, this method had some strengths and also weaknesses. first, when mrs. gea used scaffolding by showing pictures and videos all students were enthusiastic in watching the video, the pictures could attract students’ attention. so, they were really enjoy the learning process through media such as power-point and video. on the other hand, when teacher asked the students some questions related to the video, not all students were active in answering those questions. some of them understood the content of the text, but others just focused on images which showed up on screen. besides, the position of the screen was not on the center of class, so the students who were sitting at the back corner of class could not see the power point clearly. it also had impact on their reading comprehension. when they read the text on the screen, they might miss some words, so their understanding of the content were less than others. akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 80 besides, when mrs. nia used scaffolding by giving all the students printed text, they all seemed seriously read the text since the reason mrs. nia gave the strategy was because she wanted the students got used to in reading procedure text. reading the text made the students understood in pronouncing new vocabularies that came up in text, yet they might not pay attention to the content of the text. so when she asked some questions related to the text, students must read again the text in order to build the comprehension of the text. grammar-translation method this method is really helpful since first language of the students is bahasa, they needed a certain strategy to make them understand the whole text. mrs. gea and mrs. nia used grammar translation method in order to help students converting the words from english into bahasa so that they can easily comprehend the content of procedure text. from observation, i saw that students can understand the whole text easily since they succeed in finding the meaning of difficult words that came up in the text. besides, in translating the words teachers used some gestures to represent the meaning of the text to stimulate the students’ mind in guessing the word. that such strategy was really effective for students in comprehending the text. so that they can easily answer the questions related to the text. in addition, from the interview, i have asked both teachers about the weakness of using grammar-translation method in teaching procedure text. the result showed that grammar-translation method is the only one method which has not any weaknesses from teachers’ point of view. this strategy was appropriate in teaching reading comprehension about procedure text. project-based learning the third method that used by english teacher in teaching reading procedure text was project-based learning. this method was very effective in training students skill in speaking since they were supposed to perform in front of class. nevertheless, the aim of using such strategy was to assess students understanding of procedure text. this method was effective because it would stimulate students’ ability in speaking so that all students have the same opportunity to demonstrate the recipe of certain food. yet, the speaking skill can be achieved if the students master the whole text. if the students have mastered the whole text, they can perform properly. this method was effective in stimulating students in order to understand the text, so that they can train their speaking skill in front of class. yet, this method used so much time because one group may perform more than 15 minutes and the effect was not all students can perform properly. discussion in teaching and learning process teachers had designed such the lesson plan so that they know what should do in class. they set such activities and decided what methods which are suitable and appropriate to be implemented. they had written step by step in teaching procedure text, start from the beginning of class by preparing students to pray, motivating, giving a material and assessing the students’ comprehension and skill. in class, they had done such activities they planned in advance, but sometimes they did improvisation due to the class and students’ situation. nevertheless, each teacher had difference in beginning the materials in class. mrs. gea showed the video and pictures to introduce the materials, so that students could guess and grab the idea of the materials. besides, mrs. nia began the class by giving a text or asking the students to open the book and read a certain text about procedure text. the teacher would read the text first, sentence by sentence then the students would repeat. the objective of such activity was to make the students reading aloud the text so that they were accustomed to the vocabulary and the text. afterward, what she had done in continuing the teaching and learning process almost the same as with mrs. gea. both teachers discussed the materials such as asking the unfamiliar words in text which made students difficult in comprehending the text then teachers translated those words together with the students. teachers used to call the process as grammar-translation method. krashen (1987) the aim of language learning in this method is described as to help students attain the ability of reading the literature of the source language by studying its structures and akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 81 lexicon, with a special weight on grammar rules, vocabulary memorization and written translations into and out of the target language, with a strong focus on the form and meaning. students learn new vocabulary and grammatical rules through their own native language. it is also widely used in explanation about new concept. meaning of the target language items is made clear via translation into students’ native language. as my observation, students are involved in translating the reading text from their book into bahasa after reading aloud by lines or sentences. as i have seen in the experience, individual students do the translation orally, yet the teacher can also ask students to write down their translation in their notebooks, as well. teachers also did not forget to explain the materials more detail and deeper as they explained what the text was and video told about, the function, generic structure and also the common words which often appear in procedure text. while explaining, teachers also often gave several oral questions, and students answered it orally. at the end of the discussion, teachers gave written question to the students so that the teacher would know how the process of understanding the material especially in procedure text in each students. yet, mrs. nia added some task from the questions of national examination. she wanted her students familiar with each kind of questions, because sometimes the question about procedure text can be unfamiliar for students due to the use of words. for example, the question would be about the function of the text, yet the writer used the synonym of the word “objective” like goal or aim. by giving the different type of questions, students are supposed to train in understanding what the question wants to ask. after giving a lot of explanation and task related to procedure text, teacher wanted the students to use their comprehension in real life. this will be happened by asking the students to perform. teachers divided the students into some group and ask them to find a recipe or any kind of procedure text that related to their life, and after that they asked them to perform in front of class. teachers will assess their performance and also knowledge by measuring their pronunciation, intonation, teamwork and their performance whether they gave the explanation of their project by reading the text or they have mastered the text so they can do it without reading any text. this process is called project based learning. according to jalinus, nabawi and mardin (2017) in project-based learning, students are the center of learning who are learning actively to improve their competences. teachers act more as a guide since it is student-centered. project based learning focuses on a real-world problem in this case, the students’ work related to their life such as an easy recipe that can be made in their real life. the significant improvement that occurred in ability doing project work could be seen from skilled student in preparing the materials, the materials and ingredients in accordance with procedure, managing of work, managing of time, cooperation with team work more solid and show better work attitude. the most important thing is the ability of comprehending the text. teacher chose and prepared such strategies and methods because they thought those were appropriate in teaching reading comprehension in particularly procedure text. the use of scaffolding aimed to build a concept of procedure text, stimulate students’ mind, and also attract students’ attention. when students had focus on the teacher and materials, teachers gave warming-up material by discussing about what the video was, what the text was and guessing the content. it can motivate the students to learn new materials. while learning new materials students surely got some obstacle in learning. thus the teacher helped them by asking difficult words, translating so that students felt helped and easy to understand the materials. discussing in question and answer session was a way to know whether the students have understood the material or not, if the students can answer the whole questions and know the whole text or what the content of the text, teacher can move forward to the next step. the goal of the use project based learning as final project in procedure text was to make each individual student not only able to read aloud and translate the words from english into bahasa, but also understand and comprehend the content of the text. the result was they could implement their understanding into skill by performing a certain text in front of class. they thought that by demonstrating a certain procedure text into performance means they were able to understanding and comprehension the text, especially when they performed without text. it concluded that they comprehend the text well. by doing so, teacher could assess students’ comprehension and also skill through performance, besides giving a certain text with some questions to be answered in order to know the students’ comprehension in reading procedure text. giving a text and some questions relate to text can be a training for students to achieve reading comprehension as the more they read, the more they know and feel familiar about the words which often appear in procedure text. akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 82 nevertheless, mrs. gea and mrs. nia did not mention the name of each strategy either in class or in lesson plan they conducted. they both only gave materials, instruction as they set in advanced. they just simply wrote discovery learning as approach and learning method without writing detail each strategy that will be used in class. they should have written all methods and activities in lesson plan in order to measure whether what they have done in class as same as with the lesson plan or not. in addition, mentioning the strategy in class is also important since the students will know what they are going to do in that learning process. it can be done by changing the name of strategy with any easy term which make students understand the aim of learning activities in class. observing the students’ respond, actually not all students were active in learning process even teachers had set and prepared such materials and methods using medium, some students seemed not focus so that when teacher asked, they could not answered it. it also happened when teacher gave an exercise and asked them to write the answer, they were wrong in finding the correct answer. from five questions, most of students could not answer one question that was about implicit question, for example the question was about “how long does it take to cook rice?”, most students answered the written-minutes, but actually the answer was implicit. on the other hand, when it came to question and answer section orally, they seemed enthusiastic and scrambling in answering the meaning of words. from the result of study showed that project based learning has been implemented in teaching procedure text, yet it just focused on how the implementation of such strategy at class and the process of students’ activity. students were encouraged to collaborate in teamwork duty, stimulated to master their portion of duty in group. it can be concluded that project based learning has been used to teach procedure text. the result of this observation related to the study conducted by tan (2016) he said that grammar translation method and task based language teaching were two effective teaching methods in reading and they did improve chinese college students’ reading comprehension over a certain period of time. based on two previous studies, those two methods were appropriate in teaching. that is the reason why i choose to examine the methods used by english teacher in teaching reading comprehension in particular procedure text because there are some methods and strategies which proven effective in teaching reading. krashen (1982) the second way to develop competence in a second language is by language learning. the term "learning" henceforth to refer to conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them. in non-technical terms, learning is "knowing about" a language, known to most people as "grammar", or "rules". some synonyms include formal knowledge of a language, or explicit learning. those points mean that reading comprehension is one of the input in acquiring english especially for indonesian students as the second language. those point of krashen meant that reading comprehension help students in acquiring english as their second language. by knowing new vocabulary that came up in text as many as possible make them collect those word in memory so the library of words will increase day by day. in the end, they could master english well. in line with the result of the study i did at one of junior high schools in semarang, teachers had prepared and chose the best methods in teaching reading about procedure text. hence, they did some activities in class using three best method that they thought can build students’ reading comprehension. what i saw in my observation, teachers did not only pay attention on how students could understand the text well, but also how the students can use and apply the procedure text in real life which can be achieved if the students have really comprehend the content of the text. if students have understood what the text is going to tell, they can implement that meaning and aim of the text, they can show or perform it in front of their friend and others. thus all activities that had been done in class were connected one to another. the most important thing is students must achieve the reading comprehension of procedure text if they want to train other skills such as speaking and writing. the result of my observation showed that the teachers had drilled the students to read and understand the text using three methods i had mentioned. so, they get accustomed to reading procedure text and understanding the context of the text. at the end, they all have mastered the reading comprehension of procedure text, it also can be seen from their performance in class. akidatul yusmalinda & puji astuti/elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 83 conclusion the strategies used by english teachers can be concluded as, mrs. gea conducted the lesson plan in advance, then did audio visual method by showing video and pictures, and scaffolding by showing the text related to the video. after that she did grammar translation method, then giving question and answer session by discussion and also as individual work. the last she implemented the project based learning to know the students’ comprehension into performance. on the other hand, mrs. nia conducted lesson plan in advance, then reading aloud the text, did scaffolding after that, showed video used audio visual method, then grammar translation method, thus giving question and answer session and the last she implemented the project based learning to know the students’ comprehension into performance. in short, those english teachers had used various strategies in teaching reading comprehension. they did not only use one method to teach all students. the three strategies that most used by english teachers were scaffolding and audio visual method, grammar-translation method and project based learning. moreover, the most appropriate method in teaching reading comprehension according to english teachers was grammar-translation method as it really helped students understanding the text easily. second, project based learning, it stimulated the students to work in group and trained their speaking skill which obtained from the result of reading and comprehending the procedure text. the last but not least, scaffolding and audio-visual method since it really worked on attracting the students to focus on the materials and introduced them what kind of text they were going to learn. the use of different methods is good in order to make students understand the materials due to the fact that students have difference ability, needs and background knowledge. by using miscellaneous strategies may help teacher in teaching process, because we never know which method that appropriate to such students. the result may be different from one students and others. from that point a view means teachers had made and conducted the materials and strategies as good as possible yet the point of success and effectiveness of the use of a certain strategies can be achieved not only from the teachers’ side but also from the students’ side, since each students has difference background knowledge, needs, ability, the situation of students in class at that day can be influenced as well. so, that is difficult to know whether a particular method is effective or not. it has to be done in a long time to prove it. moreover, for further researcher could ask and interview students’ whether what teachers did in class related to teaching reading comprehension in procedure text has made them understand the materials and text or not. besides, post interview after doing an observation class is good to be done. this method can be used as reflection in teaching and learning process. so, for the next researcher can do this method to make the research more valid. acknowledgment i would like to give my deepest gratitude to my advisor puji astuti, s.pd., m.pd., ph.d. for her patience in giving me guidance and meaningful suggestions during the consultations for this final project. moreover, the twenty six participants who belong to those abstracts. in addition, they were willing to become the participants of this final project. references almasri, meshail m. & alshumaimeri, yousif a. (2016). the effects of using web quests on reading comprehension performance of saudi efl students. saudi arabia: king saud university. brown, h. d. 2002. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy-second edition. new york: addison wesley longman, inc. creswell, john w. 2003. research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches –2nd ed. california: sage publication, inc. dean, g. (2013). teaching reading in the secondary schools. second edition. london: david fulton. eisner, e. w. (1991). the enlightened eye: qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. toronto: collier macmillan canada. ferdila, raihani. (2014). the use of extensive reading in teaching reading. journal of english and education, 2(2), 68-80. indonesia: indonesia university of education. gibson, nancy & o’connor, helene. 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(2012). the effects of strategy instruction in a efl reading comprehension. colombia: universidad de antioquia. muslaini. (2017). strategies for teaching reading comprehension. english education journal, 8(1), 6778. banda aceh: syiah kuala university. ness, m. k. (2016). reading comprehension strategies in secondary content area classrooms: teacher use of and attitudes towards reading comprehension instruction. reading horizons: a journal of literacy and language arts, 49 (2). soleimani, hassan & hajghani, sajadeh. (2013). the effect of teaching reading comprehension strategies on iranian efl pre-university students' reading comprehension ability. international research journal of applied and basic sciences, 5 (5), 594-600. souhila, rouai. (2014). the use of reading strategies in improving reading comprehension. university kasdi merbah ouargla. microsoft word 7. sm-pa-selecting appropriate english textbook.do putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 57 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt strategies employed by efl teachers at a vocational high school for selecting appropriate english textbook siti maftukah1, puji astuti2 1,2english department, faculty of language and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 28 may 2020 approved in 8 november 2020 published in 30 march 2020 ________________ keywords: teachers’ strategies; appropriate; english textbook selection ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ textbook is a tool which functions as a manual instruction in any branch of study included in language learning. therefore, teachers should select an appropriate english textbook to support the learning activity because it have a big influence in the learning process. this study is about strategies of efl teachers at a vocational high school in semarang for selecting appropriate english textbook. the main purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate english textbook and dr. this study drew from the teachers regarding their criteria in selecting appropriate english textbook. hence, this is a qualitative study that investigate the efl teachers as the subjects. in collecting the data, we used open ended interview, questionnaire, and document analysis checklist. this study eployed theory of garinger (2002) and bnsp by permendikbud (2013) to analyse the data in order to know the strategies and the criteria used by the teachers in selecting appropriate english textbook. based on the interview and the questionnaire, the finding showed there are some strategies in selecting appropriate textbook: teacher matched the textbook with the 2013 curriculum, read the ki, kd, syllabus and learning objective. the data showed that all teachers select textbook based on their chosen, so that they were free to choose their textbook to support learning activity. however, some teachers select textbook by involving administrator and head school. there are also some textbook criteria there are: considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, learning objective in the textbook, the age and background of the students, the availability and the effective cost. based on the document analysis checklist, this research showed that the criteria of appropriate textbook in line with the garinger (2002) and 2013 curriculum aspects based on bnsp. next, the teachers also considered about the price of the textbook that must be cost effective and the textbook is easy to obtain. we argue that the identified strategies and criteria can be used as a consideration by english teachers to selectan appropriate english textbook. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: sitimaftukah1@gmail.com siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 58 introduction in this modern era, there are many modern media that are used to support teacher and students in teaching learning process, such as video, e-book, power point, lcd projector and etc. however, the most common teaching and learning material which guide teachers and learners in many classrooms are textbooks. textbook is a tool which functions as a manual instruction in any branch of study included in language learning. research by rindawati (2013) showed that english language teaching (elt) textbook plays a very important role in language classrooms. it has been more crucial when english is learnt as foreign language like in indonesia. richards (2001) state that textbook is used in different ways in language programs. for example, a reading textbook might be the basis for a course on reading skills, providing both a set of reading texts and exercises for skills practice. a writing textbook might provide model compositions and list of topics for students to write about. a grammar textbook might serve as a reference book and provide example as well as exercise to develop grammatical knowledge. a speaking text might provide passage for students to read and discuss. a listening text together with audiocassettes or cds might serve as the primary listening input in a listening course. textbooks can provide the materials that help the student to understand about the subject beside given explanation by the teacher. according to richards (2001) teacher need good materials to teach from either in form of commercial textbooks or institutionally prepared materials. nothing is more demotivating to teacher than having to use a textbook that no one likes or materials that are poorly prepared or presented. without a textbook, the material that delivered by the teacher will be forgotten quickly. so by textbook, the student can learn by themselves and try to explore more about the material. the textbook is one of the crucial factors in determining the learners’ success in language courses. teachers or curriculum developers should select this teaching material carefully. selecting a good material to support the teaching and learning process has a great influence on the success of a teacher when implementing the learning process (brown, 1994). textbook can be the model of learning. in the textbook there are a lot of exercise and task that can improve the student ability. considering the importance of the textbook, it is necessary for efl teachers to select appropriate textbook carefully since textbook do not only influence what and how students learn, but also what and how teacher teach. textbook selection is a significant educational and administrative decision in which there is considerable financial, professional and even political investment (sheldon, 1988). teachers have right in selecting textbook as it use for their teaching guide and learning material. in some school the textbook selection process involve not only the teachers but also the school staff. masuhara (1998) in mijayanti (2015) suggests that teachers who conduct the textbooks selection have to consider the students’, teachers’, and administrators’ needs and wants. students’ needs refer to the personal, learning, and future professional needs. meanwhile, teachers’ needs include personal and professional needs, while administrators’ needs cover the socio-political needs, educational policy, and some limitations such as financial problem. selecting the appropriate textbook for use in the english classroom is not an easy way. thus teachers are required to make informed and appropriate choices when selecting textbook (rubdy, 2003). textbook are also under the influence of constraints, such as economics, and precedents set by states (hubisz, 2003). teachers should have the criteria on selecting which book they are going to use. kay (2006) stated that the criteria for selecting textbook different from one person to another based on their context. now days, there are varieties of textbook published in the market to provide student’s requirement in learning process. this is both an advantage and disadvantage. it increases the possibility of selecting most appropriate one between many references of the textbook. on the other hand, it also increase of the selecting process to be more careful because not all textbook are appropriate. for this reason, it is a must to spend a lot of energy and time on the textbook selection process. there is a variety of the approaches for textbook selection. one of the most practical method is considering the general goals and the curriculum of the program at first step and specific details as exercise and actives at later steps (amerian, 2014). garinger (2002) stated that curriculum of the program should be examined closely to see whether the goals are clearly defined. after that, it should be evident whether the objective of the textbook matches the objective of the course or not. siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 59 richards (2001) identified four types of factors, which are essential for textbook selection and evaluation: a) program factors b) teacher factors c) learner factors d) pedagogical factors. another important criterion is the intended learners. the material should be interesting for them and satisfying their needs. the states above shows that textbook is important role in learning activity in order to guide he students for mastering the material. selecting appropriate textbook is needed for the teacher to get the good reference or guidance in their teaching activity. they need the staregies and criteria in selecting appropriate textbook to get the best textbook. review of previous studies many studies have proved that textbook selection is one of the crucial aspects in learning activity (e.g. lemmer, 2008; mijayanti, 2015; işık & kurum, 2002; sikorova, 2004; watt, 2009; ho and hsu, 2011; yuen and ting, 2012; amerian and khaivar, 2014; marczak, 2013; chang, 2002; huang, 2011; kim, 2002; garinger, 2002; kiai and maroko, 2013; frediksson & olsson, 2006; mahmood, 2011; labelle, 2010; deuri, 2012). for the criteria of appropriate english textbook, researchers have discovers many criteria used by the teacher in selecting their textbook (e.g. rahimpour, & hashemi, 2011; makgato & ramaligela, 2013; rodriguez, 2015; reid, 2017; mukundan, 2011; akbar, 2016; shabani, 2017). most of the previous studies focused on textbook selection evaluation. then, they described what are the evaluation techniques in selecting textbook that used by the teacher. they did not explain what the strategies in selecting appropriate textbook are. it was very important to give detailed description about how the teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate textbook. therefore, in this study focused on the description of what and how strategies of the teachers’ in selecting appropriate textbook for their learning tools. from the gaps found that the study has different field of subjects. most of the previous studies conducted their study without focusing on certain school. this was important to to conduct the study focusing on the certain school to give limitation of the study. based on these gaps, the study focused on how efl teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate textbook. the strategies here is included the procedure and the criteria of an appropriate textbook. one of main reason for conducting this study because there were just few studies discuss in detile how the strategies and criteria were used by theacher since selecting appropriate textbook was important to support teaching and learning process. method this study was qualitative research, creswell (2013) stated that like other forms of qualitative research, the researcher would seek to explore, and understand and present the participants’ perspectives and get close to them in their natural setting. this study employed qualitative case study method to answer the research questions. it focused on teacher’s strategies in selecting appropriate textbook. the area of the investigation was about the teacher’s process and criteria in selecting appropriate textbook. qualitative case study was chosen in this research because it was the most suitable method to conduct an in-depth analysis of an issue since this research investigated the teacher’s strategy through questionnaire, interview and document analysis. research participants the research was conducted at a vocational high school in semarang. in this study, we positioned teachers as the subjects; they were our research participants. the school was selected based on some consideration. the first one was because the first author did her teaching practice praktik pengalaman lapangan/ppl there for 45 days so she knewthe school. the second was the teacher used varied textbooks to support their teaching activity. this was supportive of the present study. third, the teachers at the school had a good experience and background in teaching english, hence, they could provide the needed data. data collection methods this study used questionnaire, interviews and document analysis. the questionnaire was to find out teachers’ criteria of appropriate textbook they choose. the interview was to display how does the teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate textbook, and how the process of textbook selection. in the document analysis, the textbook was analyzed based on the data result after conducted the siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 60 questionnaire and interview. this aims to find out whether the textbook used by the teacher was accordance with the teachers’ criteria or not. data collection procedures the data collection procedures in this study was questionnaire, interview, and document analysis. the first step to do was distribute the questionnaire to the teacher participants. specifically, in the questionnaire, we used checklist as an instrument for textbook selection. the checklist instrument was a combination of garinger (2002) and the standards for the 2013 curriculum. checklist by garinger (2002) covers the questions related to teachers’ strategy and criteria in selecting appropriate textbook, then the 2013 curriculum provided textbook standard that should suit with students’ learning needs. interview was also the next procedure of collecting the data. in the interview section, the teacher was interviewed with several questions to see how the process of textbook selection and what the criteria of appropriate textbook. while doing an interview, we recorded the conversation and take notes. lastly, to gain the trustworthiness, we did document analysis by taking the sample of textbook used by the teachers. the textbook used by the teachers was analyzed based on the identified criteria of good textbook. by doing the document analysis, we examined whether or not the textbook was relevant with the teachers’ criteria. data analysis this study employed a qualitative technique in analyzing the data. this research used technique of data analysis based on miles and huberman (1994) as stated in sugiyono (2014). the data analysis involved three steps: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. however, in conducting qualitative research method, the data bias might occur and the findings were often doubtful for several reasons such as the subjectivity of the researcher, the instruments used is considered have many weaknesses, and the data sources less trustworthy that affect the results (bungin, 2014). to avoid that assumption, this study used triangulation. triangulation is defined as the mixing of data or methods so that diverse viewpoints or stand points cast light upon a topic (oslen, 2004). the data sources triangulation carried out by comparing the all data already collected: questionnaire, interview, and document analysis. findings and discussion based on the questionnaire, interview, and document analysis that have been concucted, the data showed the efl teachers’ the strategies and criteria for selecting appropriate english textbook. findings teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate english textbook this finding answered the research question based on the questionnaire and teacher interview. by doing questionnaire, it found how the textbook are selected. the teachers filled out the questionnaire sheet based on their own experience. afterwards, the teacher gave explanation about their strategies in selecting appropriate textbook through interview. how textbook are selected in the questionnaire sheet, we gave six items of questionnaire about how textbook are selected. those items are: administration select the textbook, department head select textbook, teachers all together select textbook, teacher select textbook, learners get involved in selecting textbook, and there is a textbook criteria. here is what we found in the teachers’ answers. the results showed that administration and department head chose the english textbook used at the school. their contribution was approximately 50%. teachers all together as a teamand individual teachers selected the textbook; they did it regularly. it indicates that all the efl teachers at the school selected english textbook based on his or her criteria and a team of teacher was involved in the process of selecting english textbooks. in addition, the result showed that learners were not involved in the selection process . while selecting appropriate textbook, teachers have criteria. these criteria will be explained in the next discussion. siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 61 teachers’ strategies in selecting appropriate english textbook at the time of this study, four teachers were interviewed several questions to find out what the strategies do they employ in selecting a textbook. in this investigation, we found the teachers’ steps of selecting appropriate english textbooks. the firs teacher is mrs. lusi. in selecting an appropriate english textbook, mrs. lusi did a meeting with mgmp team in the school. the teachers compared the book with another publisher. the price of the textbook was also one of the considerations. the teacher made use of exiting textbooks instead of buying a new one. to complete material that does not exist, the teacher completed it by making a handout. based on the interview, mrs. lusi involved another participant in selecting a textbook that is the mgmp team. the selection process was by comparing the textbook with another publisher by considering the price and exiting textbooks. the second teacher is mrs. lala. in selecting appropriate english textbook, mrs. lala adjusted with the industrial needs and the curriculum. the best textbooks were those that fit the curriculum. that was one of the consideration of mrs. lala in selecting appropriate textbook. based on the interview, the step of selecting textbook were matching the textbook with the curriculum and industrial need with considering the price. then mrs. lala involved the coordination of the school about the price. the process of textbook selection was without involving another participant, but if the students must purchase the textbook, it involved the school cooperation because teacher cannot sell the textbook. the tird teacher is mr. koko. mr. koko selected the textbook by see the syllabus, ki, kd, and the learning objective. after known what the syllabus, ki, kd and the learning objective, he matched it with the textbook candidate. he used the e-book from the government but that was not the main book. in his opinion, the textbook by government did not present listening skill so he use another textbook from another publisher to cover it. according to the result of the interview, there was no interference from other parties in selecting textbook. mr. koko selected the textbook by himself with considering the criteria that is suitable with the syllabus, curriculum, ki, kd, and learning goals. the fourth teacher is mr. sapto. mr. sapto used textbook from the government, which has been provided by school, but if he wanted to use another textbook for the initiative textbook, he discussed it to head school. the meeting was not a formal meeting, just the informal meeting where the teacher asked about the approval. the head school involved in approving the textbook selection because it considering the price of the textbook. according to the interview, mr. sapto selected the textbook by himself and if there was additional textbook as an initiative, he needs the consideration from the head school. after the textbook were approved by the head school, mr. sapto coordinated with the school library. then the textbook would be distributed to the student trough the school library administrator. according to the data from teacher interviews, teachers used the textbook from the government, but the teachers still use the textbook from another publisher to support the materials. in selecting the appropriate english textbook, the teachers have some steps. in accordance with the interview, teachers selected the textbook by matching the textbook with the ki, kd, current curriculum and industrial needs. after that, the teacher did an informal meeting with another teacher to make coordination about the textbook. even there was a meeting with another english teacher in the school; still the teacher itself has his or her own choice. then teachers did a comparison with other english textbooks to see which one is the appropriate accordance with their criteria of textbook. one of the considerations was about the price of the textbook. most of the textbooks were free for students; the students could borrow the textbook in the library. teachers’ criteria of appropriate textbook based on the data found after conducting the questionnaire and interview, all teachers used the criteria of appropriate textbook. the teachers’ criteria are: textbook must support the goals and curriculum program, it is better that the textbook is part of the series, the textbook must address the learning objective, and then the textbook must base on the learner’s age and backround. the teacher also see the content criteria that was created by the bnsp such as: the suitability with the core competent (ki) and basic competent (kd), the material accuracy and the material supplementary. for the practical concern criteria was also be consicedered by the teacher such as: the availability of the textbook, the textbook can be obtained in timely manner, and cost-effective. siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 62 discussion this present study answered the research question. it was to find out the efl teachers’ strategies in selecting an appropriate english textbook at the vocational high school. moreover, this study drew the criteria of efl teachers in selecting an appropriate english textbook. this section discusses the study’s findings resulted from our analysis of questionnaire, interview, and document analysis data. we discuss the findings withwith our theoretical framework in mind and in connection with the findings of the existing studies. textboojk was one of the most important tools to support learning activities. according to the questionnaire and interview, teachers have the steps and criteria in selecting an appropriate english textbook. ensuring the criteria of appropriate textbook helps teachers deciding which textbook that they will use. in accordance with the questionnaire and interview, mrs. lusi selected textbook by involving consideration of administration school, department head, all teachers, and the teacher itself. she did not involve the students in selecting process. this result finding was in line with isik and kurum (2002) that the teacher did not select the textbook by themselves. mrs. lusi also had criteria in selecting an english textbook. in the questionnaire checklist about the criteria of appropriate textbook was in line with the criteria of appropriate textbooks by garinger (2002) that she selected textbook by considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, course objective in the textbook, the age and background of the students, the availability and the effective cost. it was also in line with the 2013 curriculum aspects that the textbook must be suitable with ki and kd, the material should be accurate provided social function, linguistic features, and the generic structure. mrs. lusi also considered the supplementary material that the material and the exercise in the textbook should be up to date, developed the life skill, and wawasan kebhinekaan. next teacher was mrs. lala. based on the interview with mrs. lala, she selected appropriate textbook by involving many participants, those were administration, department head all efl teachers and learners. there were also criteria of appropriate textbook. this result finding also strengthens the research by isik and kurum (2002). in selecting appropriate textbooks, mrs. lala adjusted to the industrial needs and the curriculum. then there was an offering from the publisher so that mrs. lala will choose the textbook that she were going to use. in this result finding were accordance with research by kiai and maroko (2013) that the procedure of selecting a textbook based on the marketing by the publisher. in the criteria of appropriate textbook, mrs. lala’s criteria were accordance with garinger (2002) that she selected textbook by considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, course objective in the textbook, the age and background of the students, the availability and the effective cost. it was also in line with the 2013 curriculum aspects based on bnsp that the textbook must be suitable with ki and kd; the material should be accurate provided social function, linguistic features, and the generic structure. mrs. lala also considered the supplementary material that the material and the exercise in the textbook should be up to date, develop the life skill, and wawasan kebhinekaan. mr. koko selected english textbook see the syllabus, ki, kd, and the learning objective. after known what the syllabus, ki, kd and the learning objective, he matched it with the textbook candidate. based on the questionnaire, he selected textbook without involving the school administration, department head school, and the learners. he selected textbook by himself and other english teachers. this result finding does not in line with isik and kurum (2002). based on the interview and the questionnaire was line with garinger (2002) that he selected textbook by considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, learning objective in the textbook, the age and background of the students, the availability and the effective cost. he also in line with the 2013 curriculum aspects based on bnsp that the textbook must be suitable with ki and kd; the material should be accuracy provided social function, linguistic features, and the generic structure. he also considered about the supplementary material that the material and the exercise in the textbook should be up to date, develop the life skill, and wawasan kebhinekaan. according to data interview from mr. sapto, it relevant with the research finding by isik and kurum (2002) that was for the initiative textbook, if it required students to buy, the selection involved the head department. the involvement of the head school here means he just conducted the informal meeting consulting about the textbook that he would going to use. however, for the main textbook mr. sapto used the book by the government. based on the questionnaire and interview, mr. sapto selected textbook by considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, course objective in the textbook, the age and background of the siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 63 students, the availability and the effective cost. this result was in line with textbook criteria by garinger (2002). it was also in line with the 2013 curriculum aspects based on bnsp that the textbook must be suitable with ki and kd; the material should be accuracy provided social function, linguistic features, and the generic structure. mr. sapto also considered about the supplementary material that the material and the exercise in the textbook should be up to date, develop the life skill, and wawasan kebhinekaan. next, we compared the result of this study with the previous studies. the result of this study was almost the same with the result of some previous studies. the different was most of the previous studies are focused on the criteria of the appropriate textbook. they did not explaining how teacher select their textbook. whereas this study focused on the strategies including how textbook are selected, how the step of selecting appropriate english textbook and the criteria of appropriate textbook. in this study, we aimed to give the readers detail information about the teachers’ step and their criteria for selecting appropriate textbook for their english instruction. conclusion based on the study that has been done, we drew the following conclusions. there are some strategies in selecting appropriate textbook. first, teacher matched the textbook with the recent curriculum, which is 2013. then the teacher read the ki, kd, syllabus and learning objective. based on the questionnaire, all teacher select textbook based on their chosen, so that they were free to choose their textbook to support learning activity. beside the teacher select textbook based on their chosen, there is still the teachers who select textbook by involving administrator and head school. the textbook criteria are important to get an appropriate textbook. after conducting the research, there are some criteria of appropriate textbook that the teacher use. the criteria is in line with garinger (2002) and bnsp 2013 curriculum. the criteria that the teacher use in selecting appropriate textbook are by considering the goals and curriculum, textbook series, learning objective in the textbook, the age and background of the students, the availability and the effective cost. this research showed that the criteria of appropriate textbook in line with the 2013 curriculum aspects based on bnsp that the textbook must be suitable with ki and kd, the material should be accuracy provided social function, linguistic features, and the generic structure. next, the teachers also considered about the supplementary material that the material and the exercise in the textbook should be up to date, develop the life skill, and wawasan kebhinekaan. the three teachers at the school used a textbook provided by the government as the main textbook. the other one used a textbook from a local publisher after taking into consideration some aspects. in this case, we conducted the analysis on the textbook mostly used by the teachers. the document analysis showed that the book used by the teachers is accordance with the criteria of appropriate english textbook. for future studies, we suggest reserachers to investigate the role of the textbook in the classroom activities. by conducting this line of inquiry, we will know whether or not teachers use the selected book appropriately. a good textbook will not be beneficial for learners if it is not used properly. references akbar, rizky. 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(2012). textbook selection using fuzzy promethee ii method. international journal of future computer and communication, 1(1). 23-25. retrieved from http://www.ijfcc.org/papers/20-e10008.pdf siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 66 appendices appendix 1. result about how the textbook are selected how are textbook selected? mrs. lusi mrs. lala mr. koko mr. sapto result administration select textbook   50% department head select textbook   50% teachers all together select textbook     100% teacher select the textbook     100% learners get involved in selecting textbook  25% there is a textbook criteria     100% appendix 2. result of teacher’s criteria in selecting appropriate textbook number criteria of an appropriate textbook selected by the teacher teacher result 1 2 3 4 a. program and course 1. does the textbook support the goals and curriculum of the program?     4 2. is the textbook part of a series, and if so, would using the entire series be appropriate?     4 3. are a sufficient number of the course objectives addressed by the textbook?     4 4. was this textbook written for learners of this age group and background?     4 b. curriculum 2013 aspect based on content suitability of bnsp criteria 1. the suitability of material with core competence (ki) and basic competence (kd) a. does the textbook expose the students to understand and produce both interpersonal and transactional conversation?     4 b. does textbook expose the student with many kind of text that relevant with student daily life?     4 siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 67 c. does the textbook guide the student in understanding the social function, structure text, and linguistic features?     4 2. the accuracy of the materials a. does the textbook provide social linguistic?     4 b. does the textbook provide generic structure?     4 c. does the textbook provide linguistic feature?     4 3. supplementary materials a. does the textbook material and exercise up to date?    4 b. can the textbook develop the life skill?     4 c. can the textbook develop wawasan kebhinekaan?    4 c. practical concern 1. is the textbook available?     4 2. can the textbook be obtained in a timely manner?     4 3. is the textbook cost-effective?     4 appendix 3. the teachers’ interview guide about their criteria and steps in selecting appropriate english textbook. 1. what do you think about textbooks selection? 2. how important textbook selection in getting an appropriateness? 3. why should you as a teacher select textbook? 4. what criteria should a good textbook have? tell me what they are? 5. how should textbooks suit to teachers, students, and administrators? 6. what steps do you employ in selecting textbook? tell me the process of selecting textbook? siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 68 appendix 4. document analysis checklist number criteria an appropriate textbook selected by the teacher scale note yes no a. program and course 4 does the textbook support the goals and curriculum of the program?  5 is the textbook part of a series, and if so, would using the entire series be appropriate?  6 are a sufficient number of the course objectives addressed by the textbook?  7 was this textbook written for learners of this age group and background?  b. curriculum 2013 aspect based on content suitability of bnsp criteria 1. the suitability of material with core competence (ki) and basic competence (kd) a. does the textbook expose the students to understand and produce both interpersonal and transactional conversation?  b. does textbook expose the student with many kind of text that relevant with student daily life?  c. does the textbook guide student in understanding the social fuction, structure text, and linguistic features?  2. the accuracy of the material a. does the textbook provided social linguistic?  b. does the textbook provided generic structure?  c. does the textbook provided linguistic feature?  3. supplementary material a. does the textbook material and exercise up to date?  b. can the textbook develop the life skill?  c. can the textbook develop wawasan kebhinikaan?  c. practical concern 1. is the textbook available?  2. can the textbook be obtained in a timely manner?  siti maftukah, puji astuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 69 3. is the textbook cost-effective?  putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 131 elt forum 9 (2) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt cohesion and coherence in the final project abstracts written by undergraduate students ilham setiawan arifin1, alief noor farida2 1,2universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 26 february 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ________________ keywords: abstract; cohesion; coherence; cohesive devices; theme and rheme; thematic progression ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ writing an abstract was not different from writing other kinds of text. as a part of the final project, an abstract should be written clearly, cohesively and coherently. this study aimed to examine cohesion and coherence of the students’ final project abstracts. it also focused to reveal the factors which influenced the quality of the students’ final project abstracts. this study concerned with text analysis. the investigation approach of this study used written discourse analysis. the data of this study were thirty abstracts which were taken from final project abstracts of english department undergraduate students of universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2017-2018. the findings showed that the students did not utilize the five types of cohesive devices to build cohesion in their abstracts. however, it was sufficient to utilize at least three types of cohesive devices to make the abstracts cohesive. based on theme and rheme theory by halliday, the abstracts were written coherently because they applied the use of cohesive devices. this research also found that there were two factors which influenced the quality of the abstracts. they were the usage of cohesive devices to build cohesion in the abstracts and the usage of theme and rheme and thematic progression to build coherence in the abstracts. in conclusion, it was clear that the usage of cohesive devices and theme and rheme helped the students write the abstracts cohesively and coherently.the abstract should be written in one paragraph of 150-250 words. calisto mt font size 9 single spacing. it should containgeneral statement about the primacy of the topic under investigation, research gap, the objectives, method, main findings, and the conclusions. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: ilhamsetiawan909@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 132 introduction writing ability is very important for everyone especially students of the english department. one of the reasons is that they are going to write their own final project in english as one of the graduation requirements. they also learn how to write well from the beginner level to the advanced one to improve their writing ability. for example, the students learn how to create a good paragraph in paragraph based writing. on the next level, they learn how to compose good texts based on generic structures in genre-based writing. for the final, they learn how to write an essay and critical review based on an article in academic writing. writing in english also has some characteristics. they are cohesion and coherence. cohesion defines as all the supporting sentences connect to each other in their support of topic sentence (boardman, 2008). the ways of connecting sentences to each other are called cohesive devices. cohesive devices have four important things. they are connectors, definite articles, personal pronouns, and demonstrative pronouns. in addition, cohesion is the tie and connection that exist within the text (yule, as cited in poudel, 2018). while coherence, when the supporting sentences are ordered according to a principle and the sentences are put in order so that the reader can understand your ideas easily. furthermore, the capacity of a text to make sense is called coherence (thornbury, 2005). since the concepts are interconnected and meaningful to the readers, that is the objective of cohesion and coherence in a text. poudel (2018) indicated to help the readers in constructing meanings from the text, cohesion and coherence have a significant role as they create a text such that it has a contextual adjustment of ideas connectedly in an orderly sequence. furthermore, a text with cohesive ties and coherence is more comfortable for the readers to comprehend and interpret the message of the writer as well. besides helping the readers in comprehending the text, cohesion and coherence should occur in the text in order to achieve good writing. thus, the writer is able to develop the paragraph in a clear and coherent way by using cohesive devices and the theme & the rheme. however, for some reason, it is not easy to be able to write well. the lack of grammar and vocabulary may assume the complexity of the foreign language. this assumption is correct enough since the vocabulary and grammar in english are exactly different from them in indonesian. the difficulty in mastering these language components will cause to write well. in addition, the early learners of a new language were dominated by difficulty in vocabulary, while the advanced learners as students in universities are dominated by genres and rhetorical organization problems. consequently, the text they write often does not show its unity or incoherent for they do not know much how to link one sentence to the other or one paragraph to the other cohesively (kern, as cited in suwandi, 2016). thus, not all students are able to write cohesively and coherently. the fact that writing an abstract is not different from writing other kinds of text. an abstract is a concise summary of a research paper or the entire thesis (koopman, 2010). as a part of the final project, an abstract must be written clearly, cohesively and coherently. furthermore, it must be fully self-contained and make sense by itself, without further reference to outside sources or to the actual paper. nevertheless, it is informative and completely clear, not to mention cohesive and coherent. hence, the students must pay attention to their abstracts. it should be written coherently and cohesively. they need to study the use of cohesive devices and theme and rheme theory in order to help them in writing the paragraphs coherently and cohesively. andayani & marjohan (2013) all stated that cohesive devices are linguistic features which tie sentences together. these can make a text an efficient means of understanding and help the reader create a meaningful semantic unit of the text for textual interpretation. in addition, khoirunnisa, jufrizal, & marlina (2018) all indicated that cohesive devices are the most important in writing. since there is no relation between one sentence to another sentence there is no idea from text or sentence itself. besides, cohesive devices, in approaching coherence and cohesion, some researchers show that theme and rheme also influenced in constructing texts to be cohesively and coherently. leza (2012) indicated that by implementing the theme and rheme technique, the teacher or lecturer can stimulate and enable the students to produce good and coherent writing. in addition, le (2013) stated that the effectiveness of theme and rheme in analyzing esl learners' writing is useful to help them see their writing problems concerning cohesion within texts and master a good command of english writing skills. moreover, it is necessary to know the factors which influence the quality of student’s abstract in term of cohesion and coherence. since they are absolutely important for a good writing. saragih & septiani (2017) all stated that cohesion and coherence were important elements for good writing. they were certainly important to the linkage between reader and writer in readable writing. ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 133 thus, this study aims to find out how well the coherence and cohesion of the students’ final project abstracts. in addition, it also focuses to reveal the factors which influence the quality of the students’ final project abstracts. methods this study is concerned with texts analysis as the data analysis. it aimed to describe the cohesion and coherence final project abstract. therefore, the investigation approach of this study used the descriptive qualitative method. qualitative research involves the analysis of data such as words, pictures, or objects (neil, 2007, p.74). furthermore, qualitative research is an exploratory approach emphasizing words rather than quantification in gathering and analyzing the data (bryman, as cited in devetak, 2010, p.79). the object of this study was the final project abstract of the english department undergraduate of universitas negeri semarang in the academic year of 2017-2018. this study used cohesive devices by halliday and hasan as the tools to measure the cohesion of the text, and the theme and the rheme analysis as the tools to measure the coherence of the text. furthermore, the thematic progression by eggins was used in order to show the pattern which was used by students in writing an abstract. in addition, a questionnaire was utilized to find the factors which influence the quality of students’ final project abstracts in terms of cohesion and coherence. there were some steps in analyzing the data. first, the researcher read and re-read the final project abstracts to find the cohesion and coherence. second, in analyzing the coherence and cohesion, the researcher focused on the investigation of the logical relationship by breaking up the paragraphs of the final project abstract into sentences and looking the cohesive devices which were used in connecting one sentence to the others. third, after the process of analyzing the coherence and cohesion in the final project abstracts was done, the researcher made a conclusion as the end of a written report. findings and discussion cohesion based on the taxonomy of cohesive devices by halliday and hasan, the data analysis showed that the students did not use the five types of cohesive devices to build cohesion in their abstracts. the findings showed that the use of reference was the most dominantly used. next, the use of substitution was rarely used. then, the use of ellipsis was not found. finally, the use of conjunction was occasionally higher than reiteration in the abstracts. table 1. the occurrence of cohesive devices used in the abstracts text reference % subs. % ellipsis % conj. % lexical cohesion % 1 37 70 13 24 3 6 2 38 53 29 40 5 7 3 40 65 16 26 5 8 4 47 65 20 28 5 7 5 35 67 14 27 3 6 6 29 54 3 5 16 30 6 11 7 41 71 12 21 5 9 8 34 62 17 31 4 7 9 24 70 6 17 4 12 10 54 54 34 34 11 11 11 54 76 10 14 7 10 12 34 64 11 21 8 15 13 37 66 17 30 2 4 14 45 64 19 27 6 9 15 37 63 14 24 8 14 16 31 55 16 29 9 16 17 30 53 18 32 9 16 18 17 57 6 20 7 23 19 25 59 9 21 8 19 20 17 57 7 23 6 20 21 63 58 24 22 24 22 22 23 45 3 6 17 33 8 16 ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 134 23 34 56 12 20 15 25 24 37 57 21 32 7 11 25 35 47 20 27 19 26 26 37 51 18 25 17 24 27 21 41 16 31 14 27 28 35 65 10 19 9 17 29 24 46 11 21 17 33 30 31 50 15 24 16 26 total 1,046 6 468 267 reference the findings indicated that reference was mostly used by the students to make their abstracts cohesive. there were 1,046 references which occurred in the thirty abstracts. they consisted of personal reference and demonstrative reference. based on the findings, it was able to be assumed that the students know very well in using references in their abstracts. abdurahman (2013) indicates that the students are more familiar with the use of reference although they are able to use other types of grammatical cohesive as well. in addition, nugraheni (2017) stated that learners will not avoid the use of the words when they are familiar with the use of words. personal reference there were a lot of personal references which occurred in the abstracts such as personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. they were presented in the example below. this final project is based on the condition of the students that have some problems in pronouncing –ed ending in regular past verb. it is focused with the use of odd one out game in teaching students’ pronunciation of –ed ending in regular past verb. the word ‘it’ is called personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. it is also called anaphora because it refers to the word in the preceding sentence. therefore, the word ‘it’ in the example above made the text cohesive. demonstrative reference there were also a lot of demonstrative references which occurred in the abstracts such as this, there and the. they were presented in the example below. this research is an experimental one using two groups with pre-test and post-test design. therefore, the word ‘this’ in the examples above made the text cohesive by a form of verbal pointing. substitution the findings indicated that substitution was rarely used by the students to make their abstracts cohesive. there were 6 substitutions which occurred in the thirty abstracts (see appendix 1). they consisted of nominal substitution and clausal substitution. it was probably the lack of the students’ understanding of substitution to make their writing cohesive. mawardi (2014) indicated that substitution and ellipsis were not used much in the essays because of the fact that the students overused the repetition of lexical items, or they were confused between ellipsis and substitution since there is no clear cut between them. however, it is not that way. nilopa, miftah & sugianto (2017) all stated that substitution and ellipsis are more characteristically found in spoken discourse dialogue. nominal substitution in nominal substitution, the item which occurred as the substitute was one. it is functioned as the head of nominal groups. it was presented in the example below. the average score of the pre-test for the experimental group was 67.47, and the control one was 66.10. ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 135 the word ‘one’ substitutes only for an item which is itself as the head of the nominal group. it also made the simple sentence and avoids repetition in the sentence. clausal substitution the other type of substitution which occurred in the abstracts was clausal substitution. it occurred only in one abstract which was ‘so’. it was presented in the example below. judy was the one who strong enough to bear the double-edge side of ambition and utilized it into her achievement, while bellwether was the one failed to do so. the word ‘so’ substitutes the whole previous clause. the complete sentence is ‘bear the double-edge side of ambition and utilized it into his achievement’. therefore, the use of substitution made the text cohesive because it showed a relation between linguistic items, such as words or phrases in the text. conjunction the findings indicated that the occurrence of conjunction was occasionally higher than lexical cohesion in the abstracts which were 468 conjunctions (see appendix 1). they consisted of additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. while the type of conjunction which mostly occurred was additive. it happened because this conjunction marked any additional information added by the students to complete the ideas. afrianto (2017) stated that the most occurring type is additive conjunction which appears 6 times, it happens because the student describes and elaborates a topic by often giving more additional information. in addition, linda & ismail (2018) all indicated that the use of additive devices is a very simple and staple use of a cohesive device which can indicates that the writer is still at the novice level. furthermore, the use of additive conjunction is similar to the use of conjunction in indonesian. additive the additive conjunction mostly occurred in every abstract which was expressed by the words and, or, moreover, besides, furthermore, and in addition. they were presented in the example below. the study was started with initial pre-test and ended with final post-test. based on the example above, it can be said that the additive conjunction is functioned to give additional information to the related sentences as a complex sentence and to link one sentence to another. the students used this conjunction to make the text cohesive by linking one sentence to another or give additional information. adversative the adversative conjunction was expressed by the words yet, but, however, and nevertheless. they were presented in the example below. the results of this study showed that the mean score of the pre-test in the experimental group was 59.8, while in the control group was 58.5. however, the result of post-test is increased. based on the example above, it can be said that the adversative conjunction is functioned to give a contrary connection which means that it indicates the contrary to the preceding clauses. causal the causal conjunction was expressed by the words for this reason, then, therefore, consequently, because. they were presented in the example below. the result was that limited human imagination happened because the lack of knowledge that the person had. ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 136 based on the example above, it can be said that the causal conjunction is functioned to link the causal connection in one clause to another. it provided a cohesive relation with previous clauses. it also can be interpreted as the reason related to the clauses that have been said in the previous ones. temporal the temporal conjunction was expressed by the words finally, at last, then, next, first, second, after and before. they were presented in the example below. firstly, the processes found are relational, mental, material, existential, verbal, and behavioral process. secondly, the dominant participants found in this study are carrier, attribute, senser, and phenomenon. based on the example above, it can be said that the temporal conjunction is functioned to link sentences with a sequence of time. it can be interpreted that the second sentence happened after the preceding sentence or clause. reiteration the findings indicated that the occurrence of reiteration was occasionally lower than conjunction in the abstracts which was 267 (see appendix 1). it was a form of lexical cohesion which involved the repetition of a lexical item or the use of a synonym. the repetition provided continuity and creates coherent in the text. nurul (2017) indicates that lexical cohesion contributes to the coherence of the text. the cohesive relations that occur in the text contribute to the continuity and also set up the context for the interpretation. the examples were presented in the sentences below. this research is about using alphabet island game in hyponymy technique for teaching vocabulary in the first grade of junior high school. alphabet island game in hyponymy technique is an interactive technique that encourages the participants to be more creative and active in team work. this research aimed to find out whether or not alphabet island game in hyponymy technique is effective to teach vocabulary at the first graders of smp n 6 blora in the academic year of 2016/2017. the research design used was quasi experimental research. the repetition in this sentence was ‘this research’. this type of repetition was a nominal repetition. it was one of the attempts to make sentences cohesive and coherent in the text by the authors. it clearly showed that the bold items above some kinds of repetition such as this research, this research design, the purpose of the study, and the study were repeated continuously. they occurred to make the text more cohesive and coherent. the repetition helped the text to be consistent with the context. coherence based on theme and rheme theory by halliday and hasan to show the coherence of the text, it indicated that the abstracts are written coherently (see appendix 2). besides, the coherence theory by halliday and hasan to support the coherence in the text, it is necessary to show the pattern which is used by students in writing an abstract. some researchers showed that thematic progression contributed to the cohesive development of a text and it can strengthen the text’s coherence and cohesion. xiao (2017) stated that thematic progression is the movement of theme and rheme in the sentences to develop into a cohesive text. it is important for a good writer to consciously control the flow of information from theme to rheme in the writing process. in addition, jing (2015) also indicated that thematic progression helps students become aware of how information and ideas should flow in a text so that it could be easily understood by the reader. table 2. the occurrence of thematic progression used in the abstracts no. thematic progression type number of occurrence 1 reiteration 26 2 zig-zag 16 3 multiple 18 total 60 ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 137 the findings showed that the pattern which was the most dominantly used was reiteration. however, the multiple and zig-zag pattern was used as well in the abstracts. the pattern of theme and rheme indicated that it was correlated to make the coherence in the text. the example was presented in the sentences below. this final project is an experimental study to find out whether there is any learning achievement of students who are taught writing descriptive text using photographs as media which is significantly different from those who are taught without photographs. on the first paragraph, the theme and rheme showed the correlation between one sentence to the other and also consistent with the context. the first sentence explained the objective of the study. then, the second sentence explained the subjects of the study. while the pattern of the thematic progression on the first paragraph showed that the students used the zig-zag pattern. it was presented in the analysis below. this final project is an experimental study to find out whether there is any learning achievement of students who are taught writing descriptive text using photographs as media which is significantly different from those who are taught without photographs. the subjects of the study were the 8th year students of smp negeri 1 ungaran. the factors which influence the quality of the abstracts based on the questionnaire answers, they indicated that some factors influenced the quality of the students’ final project abstracts. there were two factors which influenced the quality of the abstracts. first was the usage of cohesive devices to build cohesion in the abstracts. second was the usage of theme & rheme and thematic progression to build coherence in the abstracts. andayani & marjohan (2013) all stated that cohesive devices are linguistic features which tie sentences together. in addition, theme and rheme also influenced in constructing texts to be cohesively and coherently. leza (2012) indicated that by implementing the theme and rheme technique, the teacher or lecturer can stimulate and enable the students to produce good and coherent writing. the findings showed that the usage of cohesive devices was the most dominantly used to build cohesive in the abstracts. however, the usage of thematic progression and theme and rheme were used as well to build coherence in the abstracts. the factors indicated that they were correlated to make the cohesion and coherence in the abstracts. table 3. the occurrence of factors which influence the quality of abstracts question response total yes no 1 30 0 30 2 10 20 30 3 30 0 30 4 30 0 30 5 2 28 30 6 0 30 30 7 30 0 30 8 30 0 30 9 10 20 30 10 10 20 30 11 10 20 30 12 12 18 30 13 6 24 30 14 28 2 30 15 25 5 30 16 19 11 30 17 16 14 30 18 20 10 30 19 17 13 30 20 18 12 30 21 24 6 30 ilham setiawan arifin, alief noor farida/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 138 22 17 13 30 23 15 15 30 24 15 15 30 25 14 16 30 26 11 19 30 the findings indicated that the usage of cohesive devices was the most dominantly utilized to build cohesion in the abstracts. the factors which influence the quality of the abstracts were the usage of reference, substitution, conjunction, and lexical cohesion. however, only two students utilized substitution within their abstracts. based on the questionnaire answers, it was caused by the students’ comprehension of using cohesive devices. it showed that the students learned the cohesive devices in writing class. however, not all students had a deep knowledge of cohesive devices even though their lecture explained the material clearly. to improve the comprehension in learning cohesive devices, they did the exercise as well. in addition, they have enough sources to learn cohesive devices. moreover, the findings indicated that the usage of thematic progression and theme and rheme were utilized to build coherence in the abstracts. however, not all students utilized them within their abstracts. based on the questionnaire answers, it was caused by the students’ comprehension in using theme and rheme or thematic progression. it showed that the students learned theme and rheme or thematic progression in writing class. however, they faced some difficulties in learning theme and rheme. in addition, not all students had enough sources to learn the theme and rheme. the result showed that the students do not have a deep knowledge of cohesive devices and theme and rheme because they face some difficulties in learning theme and rheme. it was possible that the students lacked knowledge about writing in english. ghasemi (2013) stated that it could be emanated from the lack of nonnatives’ english language proficiency, especially, because nonnatives may lack knowledge of what makes a written material a meaningful english text. thus, it was clear why not all students utilized cohesive devices and theme & rheme in the abstracts. conclusion based on the findings, the conclusions were able to be drawn. first, the students did not utilize the five types of cohesive devices to build cohesion in their abstract. however, it is sufficient to utilize at least three types of cohesive devices to make the abstracts cohesive. second, based on theme and rheme theory by halliday and hasan to show the coherence of the text, it indicated that the abstracts are written coherently because they apply the use of cohesive devices and it is consistent with the context in which it is created. besides, the coherence theory by halliday and hasan to support the coherence in the text, it is necessary to show the pattern which is used by students in writing an abstract. it is called thematic progression. the findings showed that the pattern which was the most dominantly used is reiteration. third, there are two factors which influence the quality of the abstracts. they are the usage of cohesive devices to build cohesive in the abstracts and the usage of theme & rheme and thematic progression to build coherence in the abstracts. references abdurahman, n. h. 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android-based exam browser to assess final examination prahda alifa fegasanti1, arif suryo priyatmojo2 english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ______________ article history: received in 7 agustus 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ______________ keywords: students’ perception; androidbased exam browser; exam browser; final examination ______________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aims to find out the students’ perception toward the use of androidbased exam browser as the medium to assess final examination. android based exam-browser is one of the secured web browsers for conducting online examination. this study is conducted since there are still limited research that is conducted in indonesia which analyses the students' perception toward the implementation of online examination by using android. this study was employed qualitative survey design in which the data of the students’ perception on the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination were obtained by questionnaire, interview, and also observation. this research shared questionnaires to 33 students. the questionnaire was a close-ended question. based on the findings of the study, 75,8 % of the students give a positive perception about android based exam browser. the students believed that android based exam browser was a useful, clear, and understandable platform for conducting online examination and it gave some positive impacts such as improving students’ speed in answering the questions, improving students’ performance in the test, and helping them to answer the exam easily. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: prahdaalifa080198@gmail.com prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 163 introduction the development of information and communication technology from the future increasingly facilitates human needs. along with the development of the age of technology increasingly role and benefit almost in all fields, including education. there are several factors that must be considered to improve the quality of education, one of which is students’ learning achievement. learning achievement is the result achieved by a person after he makes learning changes, both at school and outside of school. winkel (1996) argues that learning achievement is evidence of success that has been achieved by someone. meanwhile, according to gunarso (1993) suggests that learning achievement is the maximum effort achieved by someone after carrying out learning efforts. therefore, nasution (1996) argues that learning achievement is the perfection of a student in thinking, feeling and doing. so, learning achievement is the maximum result achieved by someone after carrying out learning efforts. learning achievement can be measured through tests which are often known as learning achievement tests. according to saifudin (2005), the test of learning achievement when viewed from the objective is to reveal a person's success in learning. in the world of education, exams are an effective way to measure the level of student achievement in schools, such as the daily examination, mid-semester examination, and final semester examination. in the 2014/2015 academic year there was a new policy that exams are carried out in two ways by a written mechanism or paper based test (pbt) or can be carried out with a computer-based mechanism or what is known as the computer based test (cbt). paper-based test (pbt) has many shortcomings in the preparation of test material, multiplication and distribution of question scripts, cheating during the test, requires a lot of cost, energy, time (clariana & wallace, 2002). with the development of technology at this time, one way to deal with the problem of the invalidity of the assessment is that the implementation of the national examination no longer uses the paper-based test system but uses the computer-based national examination system or computer based test (cbt). computer based test (cbt) is a test implementation system using computer media, android, and ios (akasheh, 2000). applications that can be used to carry out this test are html applications that can be used for applications on the os, for example android, ios and all computer operating systems, which is very important to use this application we need a web browser, for example google chrome, etc. currently, to optimize the use of information and communication technology in the world of education, several schools have begun to use devices (android) to carry out online-based exams. android based exam-browser is one of the secured web browsers for conducting online examination. it works in lock mode, so it prevents opening of any page, switching to unnecessary programs, operating system-specific key combinations and functions, leaving the browser secure at any time and opening gallery (putra & pamungkas, 2020). therefore, the use of the browser-based android exam is expected to minimize the opportunities for students to cheat (putra, maulana, & iriani,2019). android based exam browser system is considered very beneficial with a realistic process, saving costs and time (chikmah, 2016). a large body of research has been carried out to find out the use of computer based test to support the current study. the first study related to this article is a study conducted by chikmah (2016) entitled “students’ perception on proprofs online computer-based assessment software as an assessment tool at english education departement, uin sunan ampel surabaya”. the aim of the study was to determine the students’ perception and the result score towards the use of proprofs online cba (computer based assessment) software as an assessment tool. the finding of this research is there were 93% from the positive component and 7% from the negative component. it means that the students’ perception was positive about proprofs online computer as assessment tool. in addition, the conclusion of this study could give evaluation for the lecturer who uses proprofs. the previous studies conducted by chikmah (2016) was focused in the use of android based exam regarding the compatibility of a mobile phone, self-efficacy, and perceived ease of use. in this study, it not only focus on the compatibility of a mobile phone, self-efficacy, and perceived ease of use but also focus on knowing the students’ intention, anxiety and also android's attitude towards using cbt using android based exam browser. the second study related to this article is a study by by nugroho, kusumawati and ambarwati (2018) entitled “students’ perception on the use of computer based test”. this research filled the void in the literature by offering the experience of the students on the two evaluation methods (cbt and ppt). the aim of the study was to determine the students’ perception on the use of computer based test (cbt).the finding of this research was 31% of students that using cbt as their final exam prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 164 prefers to use cbt as the means to conduct a test. meanwhile only 34% of them were disagree of cbt usage for conducting a test. the other students have neutral opinion towards the cbt test (35%). this previous studies was focused on students 'perceptions regarding whether or not to use cbt for exams without exploring students' perceptions of performance as well as the drawbacks of using cbt. this study will fill the gap in the literature by providing students' perceptions of focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of using cbt based exam browser by using android. this present study is conducted based on theory of perception (koentjaningrat, 1985) about the alignment of factors in the expression of perceptions such as feelings, needs, motivation, educational background and experiences which strongly related to a sense of organs (walgito, 2004). meanwhile, to determine the outcome of perception, theories that related to the types of perceptions (robbins, 2002; sarwono, 2002) to classified as positive perceptions or negative perceptions are used in this study. additionally, in relation to cbt (computer based test) knowledge, theories that related to the definition of cbt by using android-based exam browser (james, 2018; sarrayrih&ilyas, 2013), and key features of android-based exam browser (william, 2012) are used in this study. in terms of perception (koentjaningrat, 1985) explained that perception is a re-alignment of the human brain process and appears to be a phenomenon view many factors, such as feelings, needs, motivation, educational background and experience that are involved in this process. then the process is followed by a process which a person's brain arrives at meaningful perception of stimuli. furthermore, the stimulus can arrive from outside and inside of the individual (walgito, 2004).in addition, sarwono (2002) clarified that perception could be a way of feeling happy or unhappy that can be classified as positive perceptions and negative perceptions. positive perception plays a role in our senses that we continue to like or support a specific object. on the other hand, negative perception is a perception where a person tends to dislike or not support something. moreover, robbins (2002 ) described positive perception is an individual opinion about an object or information with an outlook, or the information is the same as that predicted by an person. meanwhile, negative perception is an individual perception that has a negative perspective on an object or specific knowledge that is different from the individual's expectations. the dissatisfaction of a human with an object is the source of negative perception. in terms of the definition of cbt by using android-based exam browser (sarrayrih & ilyas, 2013) stated that exam browser is a knowledge management program for quizzes, tests, practice, flashcards and information bases. exam browser is an application that is packaged in all in one moodle cbt or aiocbt mode which is a program to run computer-based exams but can also be accessed using android/ios.the benefit of students using mobile devices when conducting examinations is that they are more flexible because they do not need cable networks (sarrayrih and ilyas, 2013). moreover, android kiosk is basically a gadget or smartphone that is intended to run a single application and to serve certain cases. some basic requirements to be in kiosk mode include the need to be in a single mode serving specific use cases, hiding navigation, removing the toolbar, controlling or blocking all ways of setting it to the smartphone, turning off calls or messages according to the use case and the application must continue to run in mode full screen (james, 2018). the key features of this application used is lockdown application that is a computer program used during an online exam that attempts to prevent users from accessing software other than the exam application. the application will lock the online exam environment in a classroom or through an actor; prevent access to applications and other websites during the exam; prevent test takers from copying or printing exam content; as well as displaying the contents of the exam in full screen and cannot be minimized (william, 2012) so it can be helpful for less cheating by the students. however, due to the negative perceptions that arise from the results of previous study, this motivates me to know more about how the students’ feel about the implementation of android-based exams. on the other hand, because there are pros and cons related to the implementation of this online-based exam, this research is very important because students' perceptions are the main source for knowing and measuring the effectiveness of using android as a medium for implementing online exams. this study is intended to find out students’ perception on the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination. methods in this study, the researcher uses a descriptive qualitative method as her research methodology. in a qualitative method, it utilizes certain methodologies and procedures to generate qualitative data in the forms of words, either spoken or written (nahdia,2017). denzin & lincoln (2008), defines “qualitative prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 165 research involves an interpretive and naturalistic approach means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them”. in other words, qualitative research tends to obtain the meanings, perception, explanation, and sensations. also, one fundamental characteristic of qualitative method is naturalistic data involvement (sumpada,2019). so, this research method attempts to study language learning and teaching in their naturally occurring setting without any intervention or manipulation of variables. this study was employed qualitative survey design in which the data of the students’ perception on the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination were obtained by questionnaire, interview, and also observation. ary et al (2018) state that survey is a researcher’s technique in which data are gathered by asking questions on a group of individuals called respondents. moreover, wiersma (1995) states that surveys are used to measure attitudes, opinions, or achievements in any number of variables in natural settings. in addition, according to arikunto (2010), a combination of various data resources and methods (multi data collection methods) is the appropriate method for qualitative study. for that reason, in this study, the researcher did some data collection methods such as observation, interview, questionnaire, and also documentation for having a complete data collection. this research was arranged in academic year 2019/2020. firstly, the researcher asking permission from the school’s area. after the researcher get permission from the headmaster, the researcher makes an appointment with teachers for the observation in class which already doing the examination by using android based exam browser. furthermore, during the data collecting methods, the researcher also documented the implementation of android-based exams. after did the observation, the researcher distributing the questionnaire to the students in that class. then, to obtain more in-depth information, the researcher was gathering the students in one room, and call them one by one in turn to conduct interview. after analyzing the texts, the researcher presented the results by using tables. then, the results were put into the discussion part in order to discuss and review the students' perception on using android based exam browser as the medium to conduct examination. the data gathered from the questionnaire were analyzed by the most frequent degree of agreement chosen as the way to summarize the data in a frequency distribution and calculate all the scores of each statement and process the total scores as the result in percentage. the data gathered from interview were analyzed by changing and describing the interview answers in text form, and it analyzed based on predetermined factors, then calculated the results obtained using a percentage. furthermore, the result of observation was used to support the previous data collected by the questionnaire and presenting together as the finding of the research. after that, the researcher drew the conclusion of the results. in order to know the validity of the data in qualitative research, the triangulation technique is employed. the type of triangulation technique that is chosen is method triangulation. through different data collection methods, it is expected to obtain results that are close to truth. findings and discussion the findings are presented into five parts; they are the students' interest, students' perception (perceived usefulness), students' perception (perceived ease of use), students' anxiety, and students' android attitude about the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination. students' interest about android-based exam browser according to ubaidillah (2020), interest is a constant process of paying attention and focusing on something that is of interest to him with feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. suharyat (2009) stated that interest is a mental device which consists of a mixture of feelings, hopes, convictions, prejudices, fears or other tendencies that lead the individual to a particular thought. in simple terms, interest (interest) means a tendency and high excitement or a great desire for something. abror (1993) said that interest can relate to the power of movement that encourages us to tend or feel attracted to people, objects, or activities or it can be an effective experience stimulated by the activity itself. in other words, interest can be a cause of activity and a cause of participation in activities. the table below shows the students' interest about android-based exam browser. prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 166 table 1. students' interest about android-based exam browser item description agree percentage factor 1 intention 1. by using the android based exam browser system in the exams, i was able to answer the questions more quickly compared to a paper-based exam. 27 82% 5. android based exam browser system enabled me to take exams easily. 26 79% 12. using the android based exam browser system to take exams was a good idea. 22 67% 13. using the android based exam browser system to take exams was a wise idea. 23 70% 14. i liked the idea of using the android based exam browser system. 20 61% 15. using the android based exam browser system was pleasant. 26 79% 16. the android based exam browser system provided an attractive exam environment. 21 64% 17.i found using the android based exam browser system enjoyable. 25 76% 18.in general, i was positive toward android based exam browser system. 27 82% 19.i intend to take courses that use the android based exam browser in the future. 22 67% in this study, the researcher can conclude that the students believe that the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination is a good system for test. it can be proven by the result of questionnaire that 72% of the students give a positive perception about the use of android based exam browser system. it is also in line with chikmah (2016) statement that says computer based test is a good and enjoyable system for conducting online examination. the students believe that the use of android based exam browser can improve the students' speed in answering the questions and can make the exam easily. they also believe that android based exam browser is an attractive and enjoyable system and a good and wise idea from school which already implemented android based exam browser system. students' perception (perceived usefulness) about android-based exam browser information systems will be said to be effective if users believe that using information systems will improve their performance and believe that using information systems will make their efforts easier (wixom and todd, 2005). this is a certain perception and leads to user beliefs about information systems that affect the benefits they feel (wixom and todd, 2005). according to davis (1993) and algahtani (2001) the usefulness of information systems (perceived usefulness) is the extent to which an individual believes that using a particular system will improve performance. meanwhile, according to gong and xu (2004) the definition of perceived usefulness is the subjective probability that users using certain application systems can increase their expectations. the table below shows the students' perception (perceived usefulness) about android-based exam browser. table 2. students' perception (perceived usefulness) about android-based exam browser item description agree percentage factor 2 perceived usefulness 2.using android based exam browser system improved my performance in the exam. 19 58% 4.using android based exam browser system enhanced my effectiveness in the course. 17 52% 20.i wish i used the android based exam browser system for other courses as well. 18 55% in this study, the researcher can conclude that the students believe that the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination is perceived usefulness. it can be proven by prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 167 the result of questionnaire that 55% of the students give a positive perception about the use of android based exam browser system. the students believe that the use of android based exam browser can improve the students' performance in the test, and they also believe that android based exam browser is an effective system for assessing exam. students' perception (perceived ease of use) about android-based exam browser according to ndubisi et al. (2003) perceived ease of use refers to how clear and understandable, interaction with the system is ease of getting the system to do what is require, mental effort required to interact with the system and ease of use of the system. refers to how the interaction is clear and easy to understand on the information system used, the ease of getting the information system to do what is needed, the mental effort required to interact with the system and the ease of use of the information system (ndubisi et al., 2003). the table below shows the students' perception (perceived ease of use) about android-based exam browser. table 3. students' perception (perceived ease of use) about android-based exam browser item description agree percentage factor 3 perceived ease of use 3. i found the android based exam browser system useful. 26 79% 6. i think the android based exam browser system was useful in all course. 23 70% 7. learning to use the android based exam browser system was hard for me. 14 42% 8. my interaction with the android based exam browser was clear and understandable. 21 64% 9. my interaction with the android based exam browser system did not require a lot of mental effort. 20 61% 10. i found the android based exam browser system easy to use. 31 94% 11. it was easy to navigate through the android based exam browser system. 22 67% 31. i felt comfortable when using the android based exam browser system on my own. 18 55% 32. i was able to use the android based exam browser system even if there was no one around show me how to use it. 18 55% 33. i was confident that i had adequate ability to operate the android based exam browser system. 22 67% 34. i was confident that i could use the android based exam browser system even if i had no prior experience on similar systems. 17 52% 35. i could use the android based exam browser system if an assistant showed me how to do it first. 29 88% in this study, the researcher can conclude that the students believe that the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination was an easy tool system for test. it can be proven by the result of questionnaire that 66 % of the students give a positive perception about the use of android based exam browser system. the students believe that the use of android based exam browser was useful, clear and understandable, easy to use and navigate. rogers (2010) stated that perceived ease of use demonstrates the degree to which an invention is seen as being no too difficult to understand, learn or operate). the students also believe that they were confident to used android based exam browser even if they had no prior experience on similar system. students' anxiety about android-based exam browser johnston (1991) argues that anxiety is a reaction to threats, obstacles to personal desires, or a feeling of distress because of disappointment, dissatisfaction, insecurity, or hostility to others. furthermore, deese, lazarus, & keenan (1953) divides anxiety into two senses, namely anxiety as a response and as an intervening variable. anxiety as a response is divided into two, namely state anxiety and trait anxiety. state anxiety is the symptoms of anxiety that arise when the individual is exposed to certain situations that are perceived as threatening. this level of anxiety depends on the intensity of the stimulus that affects it, meaning that the individual will experience anxiety as long as the condition exists. trait anxiety is anxiety that remains in a person. this anxiety has been integrated into the prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 168 personality so that individuals who have this anxiety are more likely to become anxious when they face situations that are considered threatening themselves. the table below shows the students' anxiety about android-based exam browser. table 4. students' anxiety about android-based exam browser item description agree percentage factor 4 anxiety 21. the android based exam browser system was somewhat intimidating to me. 16 48% 22. i hesitated to use the android based exam browser system for fear of making mistakes that i couldn’t correct. 21 64% 23. i felt anxious about using the android based exam browser system. 18 55% 24. working with the android based exam browser system made me nervous. 19 58% in this study, the researcher can conclude that the students believe that the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination make students have a sense of anxiety. it can be proven by the result of questionnaire that most of the students give a negative perception about the use of android based exam browser system. the students believe that the use of android based exam browser creates anxiety for students.this finding is in line with research findings of nahdia (2017) which proved that exams put pressure on students due to fear, panic, and fatigue. this anxiety is seen as a symptom, which means a condition that shows difficulty in carrying out the adjustment process. computer anxiety can take the form of experiences of unknown fear, feelings of frustration, failure and disappointment, and unpleasant feelings (orr, 2002). they feel intimidated, anxious, nervous and scared by the use of android as a medium for exams. students' android attitude about android-based exam browser chart 5. students' android attitude about android-based exam browser item description agree percentage factor 5 android attitude 25. it was comfortable to work with the android based exam browser system. 21 64% 26. computer based test (cbt) based android are bringing us into a bright new era. 25 76% 27. the use of computers based test (cbt) based android is enhancing our standard of living. 26 79% 28. there are unlimited possibilities of computer applications that have not even been thought of yet. 27 82% 29. computers based test (cbt) based android are responsible for many of the good things we enjoy. 19 58% 30. working with computers based test (cbt) based android is an enjoyable experience. 24 73% in this study, the researcher can conclude that the students believe that the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination is a good system for test. it can be proven by the result of questionnaire that 71 % of the students give a positive perception about the use of android based exam browser system. the students believe that the use of android based exam browser can brought them into a bright new era, enhanced their standard of living and they also believe that android based exam browser is an enjoyable system. the students also believe that android based exam browser is responsible for many of the good things such as saves paper and stationery, savings cost, and summarizing tasks for correction for teachers. conclusion the students’ perception on the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination was positive. the students believed that android based exam browser is an attractive prahda alifa fegasanti, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 169 and enjoyable system or platform to assess final examination. it can be proven by the result of questionnaire that 75,8 % of the students give a positive perception about android based exam browser. the students believed that android based exam browser was a useful, clear, and understandable platform for conducting online examination and it gave some positive impacts such as improving their speed in answering the questions, improving their performance in the test, and helping them to answer the exam easily. besides the positive perception about the use of android based exam browser as the medium to assess final examination there were also the negative perception. the 57,6 % students believed that using the android-based exam browser was somewhat intimidating to them because not all students used android with enough internal memory to install these applications. the students 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(2005). a theoretical integration of user satisfaction and technology acceptance. information systems research, 16(1), pp. 85-102. http://www.sidalc.net/cgibin/wxis.exe/?isisscript=uady.xis&method=post&formato=2&cantidad=1&expresion=mfn=003185 http://www.sidalc.net/cgibin/wxis.exe/?isisscript=uady.xis&method=post&formato=2&cantidad=1&expresion=mfn=003185 https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/technological-approaches-maintaining-academic-in-tegrity/17447 https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/technological-approaches-maintaining-academic-in-tegrity/17447 10 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the benefits of using dialogue journal writing for imroving students’ writing of personal letter nur aininna  english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: dialogue journal, personal letter, genre, writing ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aims at investigating how dialogue journal writing benefits students’ writing of personal letter and how significance the resulted improvement is. personal letter is important for it is used by people in their daily lives in diverse forms. meanwhile, dialogue journal is chosen as the method for it is powerful to bridge learners’ needs of supplementary learning times and a private student’teacher’s interaction. the research design of the study is mainly qualitative. however, quantitative analysis is still used to reveal students’ overall writing proficiency and the significance of students’ improvement. the five writing aspects mentioned by brown (2004) are used as the basis of both analyses. the qualitative analysis attempts to describe how the students perform the aspects in their writing. meanwhile, the quantitative analysis tries to assess students’ performance of the aspects by giving each aspect a score realization according to the criteria outlined in brown’s rubric of writing assessment. the results of the analysis show that students’ writing improves all the aspects quite well. the biggest improvement lies in the content aspect. majority of students’ earlier writing fails to address the topic of writing. nonetheless, all of their final writing has already addressed the topic correctly. meanwhile, the aspect of style and quality of expressions seems to undergo the least improvement. some vocabularies are still found to be incorrectly used. however, students’ later writings exhibit a better sentence variety realized through the use of various cohesive devices. the improvement unfolded in the qualitative analysis is supported by the findings of the quantitative analysis of which all of the twenty students improve their writing scores in the final test. some scores are even elevated quite significantly. the improvement of the five aspects presented in students’ later writing has turned the writing to be more communicative. therefore, the mastery of the aspects is very beneficial. since all the five aspects belong to the micro and macro-skills of writing, the teaching of these skills is then imperative to be given. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: nuraininna90.na@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 11 introduction writing is a language skill which remains problematic for many students. when are faced to the task of writing, students, especially nonnative students, find it hard to not only decide what to write, but also how to write it in the target language. the students’ confusion of writing is due to several reasons. firstly, it may deal with various aspects of writing which need to be considered by writers, such as the system of genre which requires writers to employ different structures and features according to the purpose of their writing and other systems of language which demand writers to perform the proper grammar, linking words, vocabulary usage, and many other systems according to the necessity. secondly, writing is not an easy task for it brings along some vexatious characteristics, which include permanence, production time, distance, orthography, complexity, vocabulary, and formality (brown, 2001: 341). however, the time allotment provided for the teaching and learning process is very limited at schools. this limited time results in the limited knowledge of writing internalized by students. besides, the problem of writing is also caused by some student-related factors, such as confidence, laziness, motivation, and consciousness. some students are not confident to express their ideas to others, moreover when they have to tell it in english. they are often too afraid and ashamed of making mistakes and therefore assume that saying nothing is way much better. some others are too lazy to practice writing and review the materials they have learnt at school. this laziness can be caused by the students’ lack of motivation or their unconsciousness of the importance of writing. all the boundaries of learning mentioned before lead to the students’ low performance of writing. the research done by beh (1997) who examined english language instruction provided to 1265 third year students in four provinces reported that 80% of the indonesian students involved in the research promoted a less than good writing ability. similar findings were also seen in the students’ writing product gathered by the researcher in the writing pretest activity in 2013 which took place in a junior high school in semarang, central java, indonesia. almost all of the students she taught at the school failed to properly perform some basic tenses, which are the simple present and the simple past tense. some common mistakes the students presented in their writing are the incomplete structure of text, the incorrect use of verb form, the overuse of verb of which they used both operator and full verb in a sentence at once (‘i am go to in grand mother house’, ‘i’m can play with you’), the improper use of vocabularies, and the lack of sentence variety that most of them began their sentence using ‘i’ and that the use of transitional words and other conjunctions are still poor. the presence of numerous writing mistakes makes students’ writings hard to understand. the message the writer encoded in their writing is then not successfully conveyed. when a piece of writing fails to transfer the intended information, it is then not communicative. if it is not communicative, it then fails to achieve its ultimate goal as a mode of communication. therefore, it is obvious that the students’ low performance of writing needs to be improved. to realize this improvement, the researcher used dialogue journal writing to aid the teaching and learning of writing she conducted. peyton (2000) defines dialogue journal as written conversations in which a learner and a teacher (or other writing partners) communicate regularly (daily, weekly, or on a schedule that fits the education setting) over a semester, school year, or course. this journaling method was chosen because it was seen as a powerful means to bridge the students’ needs of extended learning time and space; private, safe and nonthreatening learning atmosphere; also informal, relaxing, and intimate student-teacher’s interaction. dialogue journal can be carried out by using both offline and online media. jones (1991) suggests that dialogue journal writing can be done in a bound notebook or on a computer disks or nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 12 files. in the research, the researcher preferred to use the online media by using the message service of a popular social network namely facebook. the students were demanded to make a piece of writing over a certain topic and then send it to the researcher’s facebook account. the researcher will send back a feedback to their account afterwards which included some necessary corrections and encouragement for the students. this kind of activity is maintained for as long as two weeks in which they had to submit two journals in each week. the progress of students’ writing made in each journal was noted in order to be able to meet the objectives of the research, which were to investigate in what ways dialogue journal benefit students’ writing of personal letter and how significant the improvement of the writing is. personal letter is “a letter directed to one person and contains so many specific personal references and so much personal information…” (levinson, 2007). it belongs to the genre of personal writing and comes in many different forms in people’s daily lives. in the research, this type of writing was chosen because it was included as one of the obligatory genres which needed to be learnt by the eighth grade students. hence, a better mastery of the letter would help students answer and solve any related question, task, or test. therefore, it would further help students improve their academic achievement at school. this research needs to be done to find out how the use of dialogue journal writing affects each aspect in students’ writing and whether or not it is effective to improve students’ overall writing. secondly, it is necessary to be done in order to know how significant the students’ writing improvement is. the findings of the research can be beneficial for teachers and researchers in general as a source of consideration in order to conduct a better teaching and research of dialogue journal in the future. methods of investigation in the process of gathering the data, this study uses one group pretest-posttest design. the diagram is shown as follows: figure 1. one group pretest-posttest design linguistics and educational research (campbell and stanley cited in saleh 2011: 150) this study consists of pre-observation (o1), treatment (x), and post-observation (o2). pre-observation is the earlier stage aims at measuring students’ initial personal letter writing ability and finding out several students’ related factors which may influence their products of writing. this stage consists of two activities, which are pre-test and the pre-interview. the second stage is the treatment which also consists of two activities, which are the explicit teaching and the dialogue journal writing activities. the explicit teaching is the ordinary teaching conducted in four meetings inside the classroom, within the school hours. the material taught in each meeting differs one from another and covers several theories of personal letter, the simple past tense, cohesive devices, and recount text. just as the explicit teaching, the dialogue journal activities also last for four submitted journal entries in which each journal entry is assigned to the students in the end of every explicit teaching. however, the assignment is supposed to be done outside the school hours. the topic of the writing tasks also varies but is still related to the material taught earlier in the explicit teaching. the last stage is the post-observation which is accomplished in two major instructions. the first is the posttest and the second is the post interview. posttest is done to measure students’ nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 13 later ability in writing personal letter, while post interview is conducted to find out students’ later perspective of english and dialogue journal writing, their problems when attending the journal writing activities, the benefits they get from the dialogue journal activities, and their suggestion regarding the task. the participants of the research are eighth grade students of smpn 8 semarang studying in class viiib in the academic year of 2013/2014. there are totally 36 students inside the classroom. however, 20 of them are chosen randomly as the main participants of the research. in collecting the data, the research uses tests, field notes, and interview. the collected data are then analyzed in two ways. the students’ writing in the pretest, posttest, and dialogue journal writing activities as well as their answers in the pre and post interview are analyzed qualitatively. the qualitative analysis of students’ writing is done by describing how the writing performs some aspects of writing included in brown’s rubric of assessment, which are organization, content, grammar, punctuation/spelling/mechanics, and style/quality of expressions (brown, 2004). this description is then used as a basis to classify students’ writing proficiency and to draw a conclusion of the students’ achievement of discourse competence as well as their mastery of the micro and macro-skills of writing. the qualitative analysis is also used to analyze students’ answers in the pre and post interview. students’ answers to the same question are listed and then grouped based on its similarity. the findings of the grouping are used to draw a conclusion over the interview. secondly, to support the qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis is also done to students’ writings in both tests. the description made in the qualitative analysis is used as a consideration to determine students’ score realization of each writing aspect. to aid the scoring, the researcher uses brown’s rubric of writing assessment (2004). after getting the score for each aspect, the researcher then sum up the scores to obtain the total scores which are further used to calculate the average score. the mean scores of the students’ writing in the pre and posttest are then compared to one another to see whether or not there is an improvement. furthermore, the mean scores of students’ writing in the two tests are used to measure the significance of the improvement by using t-test formula. results of the study 3.1 findings of the qualitative analysis the first qualitatively analyzed data was students’ writing in the pretest, posttest, and in the dialogue journal writing activities. as the writer described the students’ performance of the five writing criteria by using brown’s rubric of writing assessment (2004), she found that the students occupied three levels of proficiency, which were good, adequate, and fair. each of these proficiency levels are further explained as follows: good proficiency refers to the developed ability of the five criteria. in the aspect of organization, students could be labeled as good if they were able to present all the needed structure of personal letter, a varied use of cohesive devices, and a good coherence in their writings. meanwhile, the content aspect looked for the ability to address the topic of writing and develop the ideas put in the writing. thirdly, the aspect of grammar required students to present the correct system of the simple past tense, in their writing which included the correct use of verb form, word order pattern, and other tense sequences. furthermore, the fourth aspect of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing could be labeled as good if students could present all the needed punctuation properly, all the spelling of words correctly, and obey kinds of writing convention, such as the use of indentation, capitals, etc. finally, the aspect of style and quality of expressions was said to be good when students could show the appropriate vocabulary usage and a good register. 1. good writing in the pretest in the pretest, no students’ writing could be labeled as good. however, there were 2 students showed a good performance of organization in nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 14 which they presented almost all of the needed structure of personal letter and only missed out the part of heading in their writing. the other 4 students did well in the aspect of content for they could address the topic of writing appropriately although some of their ideas still needed to be more developed. additionally, there was also 1 student presented a good performance of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing. unlike the majority, this student had made all her paragraphs indented. she had also presented all the needed capitals and full stops in her sentences. 2. good writing in the dialogue journal activities students’ writing performance during the journal writing activities fluctuated in each task. in the first journal writing assignment, no writing could meet the classification of a good writing. however, in the second assignment, 4 students’ writings could be labeled as good. these four students showed a complete and well-structured writing. in the aspect of grammar, three of the students successfully avoided the occurrence of grammatical errors in their writings, but one of them still presented a few mistakes of grammar, such as the absence of a needed preposition and grammar. the number of good writings decreased in the third journal writing assignment in that only one writing was labeled as good. this good student presented no mistake of grammar in her third journal writing assignment. she also included all the needed structures of personal letter and showed a varied use of cohesive devices. regarding the content, the topic of writing was quite well addressed but the ideas were not fully developed. few mistakes of punctuation and spelling were also still presented by the student. in the fourth journal writing assignment, five students’ writings were labeled as good. these students did well in all the five writing aspects even though some grammar and punctuation problems still appeared. the students’ clearest improvement was seen in the aspect of organization, particularly in the area of generic structure, in which they exhibited a complete heading containing city, zip code, and full address which were mostly absent in their previous journal assignments. 3. good writing in the posttest as many as 11 students presented a good writing in the posttest. considering that no student was good in the posttest, such a number represented a quite great improvement of students’ writing proficiency. 6 from these students even elevated their proficiency from fair to good, while the rest moved from adequate to good. the students’ improvement in the posttest took place in all the five assessed writing aspects. in the aspect of organization, all of the writings presented a complete and well structured letter. majority of the students had also made use of various cohesive devices, such as the use of temporal conjunction, references, etc. in the content, most of the students’ writings in the posttest already mentioned the statement of the topic and the conclusions which were absent in all the pretest writings. grammar was the worst aspect performed in the pretest. however, it turned to be the second best performed aspect in the posttest. there was even one student who did not show any single mistake of grammar in her posttest writing. the rests might still present some grammar mistakes but it was getting fewer in number. in the aspect of punctuation, spelling and mechanics of writing, students improved their writings through the presence of indentation, a needed comma in the closure and salutation, as well as the correct spelling of some words which were used to be misspelled in the students’ earlier writings. the students’ style and quality of expressions also improved quite because unlike their pretest writings, the students’ posttest writings already attempted variety which was realized through the use of various cohesive devices. adequate level of proficiency refers to students’ enough ability of the five aspects. adequate organization means students are able to present an acceptable introduction, body, and conclusion. as an instance, they may not clearly state the topic sentence, but if their introducing sentence is still topic-related then it is still acceptable. this adequate proficiency is also represented by the misuse or the absence of nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 15 transitional expressions, and omission of one or two parts of the letter structure. in the content, a piece of writing is said to be adequate if it appears several criteria, which are first, the essay addresses the issues but misuses some points. second, the presence of not-fully developed ideas, and the last is the presence of extraneous material in the writing. meanwhile, adequate proficiency of grammar allows the occurrence of some grammatical problems as long as those do not harm the communication of the ideas. on the other hand, the fourth aspect is adequate if students present some problems of writing conventions, punctuations, and occasional spelling errors. in the last aspect of style and quality of expressions, students’ writing is adequate if it shows some misused vocabularies. however, it does not accept writings from being too wordy. 1. adequate writing in the pretest in the pretest, 11 students’ writings were labeled as adequate. among all the aspects, almost all of the students were adequate in the aspect of style and quality of expressions. students’ writings in the posttest already attempted variety unlike theirs in the pretest. this was realized through the use of many references in the beginning of their sentences which made it less monotonous. however, they still showed some inappropriate uses of vocabulary, such as preposition ‘in’ in the reference in there, ‘such’ in the sentence such letter from me, and ‘much’ used in so much letter from me. aside of style and quality of expressions, many students were also adequate in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, or mechanics of writing, organization, and content. however, in the aspect of grammar, no student was labeled as adequate because all of their grammar were fair in the pretest. 2. adequate writing in the dialogue journal writing activities adequate writings could be found in all the four journal writing assignments. in the first journal assignment, 19 students’ writings were labeled as adequate. in the organization, students failed to present the complete structure of personal letter for most of them omitted the part of heading, while some others excluded the salutation part of the letter. besides, half of the students missed out the statement of the topic in their writing. nevertheless, several uses of cohesive devices already appeared in the students’ first journal writing assignment. in the content, all of the students’ writings addressed the topic quite well but their ideas could be more developed. students’ grammar in the first journal assignment was also almost good for the system of the simple past tense was already presented quite properly in most of the sentences. the form of the full verbs and the sequence of words were correct. however, the form of operator verb was still incorrect in some of the students’ writing. in the aspect of spelling, punctuation, and mechanics of writing, students exhibited some common mistakes, such as the absence of comma in the salutation and closing, the omission of indentation, misspelling of words, and the absence of needed capitals. these many mistakes caused this aspect to be labeled as fair. regarding the style and quality of the expressions, the students’ first journal writing assignment had attempted variety which was seen from the various uses of cohesive devices. students’ writing proficiency in the second journal writing assignment generally improved. the number of adequate writing in the second task was fewer than that in the first task and it resulted in the greater number of good writings presented in the second journal writing assignment. the best performed aspect was grammar which was the worst performed aspect in the first journal writing assignment. in this second assignment, most of the verbs used were in the correct form. this excellent performance might be resulted from students’ fresh memories and understanding of past tense which had just been taught in the second explicit teaching. besides, students’ grammar might be good because they did not really apply it to create a whole text but simply sentence per sentence which did not seem to be related to one another. however, the students’ overall writing performance in the third journal writing assignment was worse than that in the second assignment. nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 16 3. adequate writing in the posttest the number of students who obtained the adequate scores in the posttest was smaller than that in the pretest. the minimum writing score given to the adequate students in the posttest was also higher. among all the analyzed writing aspects, majority of the students were adequate in the aspect of style and quality of expressions. students’ register in the posttest was actually quite good for all the students’ writings already attempted variety. aside of the reference, they had also begun their sentence by using some adverbs of time. however, some misuses of vocabulary still appeared in many of the students’ writings. those frequently misused vocabularies include preposition in and pronoun your. the insufficient ability in performing the aspects of writing leads students to the fair level of proficiency. in the organization aspect, students’ writings are said to be fair if they present a minimally recognizable introduction and conclusion in their writings, also when they demonstrated many problems of word order pattern, less developed ideas, few or even no uses of cohesive devices, and when they omitted some parts of the generic structure. in the content fair proficiency refers to the incomplete development of ideas and an off the topic essay. meanwhile, students’ grammar ability is fair if they appear many problems of grammar which give a negative effect on the communication of the ideas. in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics, fair level of proficiency refers to the presence of error uses of general writing conventions and punctuation which interfere with the writing ideas and the problems of spelling which distract readers. lastly, fair ability of the style and quality of expressions means that the students misuse many vocabularies and present a lack awareness of register, poor expressions of the ideas, and a too-wordy writing. 1. fair writing in the pretest almost half of the students’ writings in the pretest were labeled as fair. the students’ worst performance lied in the aspect of grammar in which 19 of the 20 students were labeled as fair in this third aspect. they showed numerous problems such as the incorrect uses of verb form, the problems of sentence structure in which the students failed to create a proper sentence because they missed some elements needed in the sentences, such as subject, verb, etc., the misuse of pronoun, and plurality, modality, preposition, ownership, and the mistakes of making correct noun phrases. secondly, fair proficiency in the pretest was also demonstrated in the aspect of organization by 5 students. in this first aspect, no student could present a complete and wellstructured letter for all of them omitted some parts of the letter, such as heading and closure. besides, they also failed to create a good coherence because their ideas were incomplete and not fully developed. the use of cohesive devices was also poor that they frequently used adding ‘and’ and causal ‘because’ only. in the content, 9 students were labeled as fair because the ideas they included in the writing were very limited, did not fully developed, and even off the topic for they filled their letters with greeting and questions related to the addressee’s life instead of retelling their holiday experience. meanwhile, in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing, 3 students were labeled as fair. these students presented many mistakes in their writings, such as misspelling of words, problems of indentation, capitalization, as well as commas and full stops usage. smaller number of fair performances was shown in the aspect of style and quality of expressions in which only 2 students were labeled as fair in this fifth aspect. one of the students was even labeled as fairly unacceptable because he only wrote an introducing sentence in his writing and did not include any ideas nor he provided any conclusion or closing to finish his letter. 2. fair writing in dialogue journal writing activities there was only one piece of writing fairly performed in the dialogue journal activities. this writing was submitted by s-3 in the first journal writing assignment. in the aspect of organization, this student omitted three parts of the generic structure, which were heading, closure, and the signature. the statement of the topic and the conclusion were also absent in her writing. additionally, the flow of the ideas was not good nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 17 for each idea seemed to stand alone. hence, the coherence of the writing still needed to be improved. the use of cohesive devices was also still poor because the only devices found in the writing were only adding conjunction ‘and’ and causal ‘because’. another aspect which was fairly performed by the student was the aspect of grammar. the verbs used were mostly mistaken and some needed subject, verb, and prepositions were absent in the writing. it made the writing difficult to understand. a fair performance was also shown in the aspect of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing in which the student presented many mistakes, such as the omission the full stop in the final sentence, the absence of indentation and needed capitals, some misuses of comma, as well as the incorrect spelling of word vacation which was spelled vocation. however, the student’s performances of the content and style or quality of expressions were not fair but adequate. 3. fair writing in the posttest in the posttest, no writing could be labeled as fair because the lowest score obtained by the students was 73 which belonged to the adequate range of scores. the findings of the qualitative analysis showed that students’ initial writing proficiency was still low. it was shown from the various mistakes presented in their earlier writings. these mistakes appeared in all the 5 writing aspects and led to the great number of fair writings in the pretest. this was such an irony considering the findings of the interview which revealed that the students had actually learnt the language for many years. this might be caused by the negative perspective of english they held ever since. in the pre-interview, it was found that more than half of the students thought that english was important yet difficult, boring, scary, and confusing. these perspectives might have discouraged students to pay attention to the language and attend more of its learning. their low ability of writing might also be caused by the limited time they got to learn the language. 85% of the students admitted that they did not take any english course outside the school and so their learning of english only depended on the learning given at school which was very limited due to the time and the great number of materials required by government. nevertheless, their writing performance improved in the later writing as seen from the increasing number of students whose writings were labeled as good. a better perspective of english and the presence of dialogue journal writing activities might have something to do with it. students’ answers in the post interview uncovered that 90% of the students held a positive perspective about english and dialogue journal by saying that the two were fun and easier to understand. this positive perspective might have motivated the students more to learn english, especially writing. besides, they also claimed that dialogue journal really had helped them absorbed more knowledge of english writing, allowed them to interact with the teacher easily within a private ambience, so that they could ask everything more comfortably, and let them experience a new interesting way of learning. 3.2 findings of the quantitative analysis just as the findings of the qualitative analysis in the pretest, the findings of the quantitative analysis of students’ pretest writings showed that their proficiency in this first test was only in between fair or adequate. none of their scores could successfully reach the minimum score of good writings that was 81. the highest score the students got in the pretest was 73, while the lowest was 9. in order to find out the overall students’ writing proficiency, the students’ pretest scores were all summed up to be divided by the total number of students and so the average score could be obtained. based on the formula, the mean score of students’ writings in the pretest was 62,75. the students’ writing scores improved quite greatly in the posttest. the highest score obtained by the students in this final test was 91, while the lowest was 73. it was then clear to see that the students’ highest score in the pretest became the lowest in the posttest. this score improvement resulted in the increasing students’ posttest mean score. in the posttest, the students’ average score was 82,35 and it was 19,6 higher than the mean score obtained in the pretest. the nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 18 significance of the improvement was also proven in the calculation of t-test. t-test was done by comparing t-value with the critical value of the ttable. if the value of t-value was higher than the ttable, it could be concluded that the improvement was significant and vice versa. the calculation of the t-value is shown as follows: t − value = 19.60 √ 6427 20(20 − 1) = 4,769 after obtaining the t-value, the next step was to gain the critical value of the t-table. firstly, the writer calculated the degree of freedom by using the formula (df) = n – 1. n represents the number of the research participants and since there were 20 students in the research, then the (df) was 19. by using the (df) 19 and the level of critical value of the t-table which was 1, 73 and it was 3,03 smaller than the value of the t-value. hence, the really was a significant difference between the pre and posttests which indicated that there was also a significant improvement of the writing products. the improvement of students’ writing products took place in all the five writing criteria. the greatest improvement lied in the aspect of content, while the smallest improvement was in the style and quality of expressions. this was seen from the comparison of the mean score of each aspect obtained in the pre and posttests. the comparison of the mean is shown in the following table: table 3.2.1 improvement of each writing aspect writing aspect mean of scores of the aspect improvement percentage of the improvement pretest posttest organization 13,65 17,90 4,25 21,25% content 13,05 18,55 5,5 27,5% grammar 9,8 14,35 4,55 22,75% punctuation, spelling, mechanics 13,45 16,65 3,2 16% style and quality of expressions 12,8 14,9 2,1 10,5% 3.3 discussions of findings based on the findings, there is a connection between the students’ performance of organization and theirs of content. as that mentioned in chapter two, one of the area of organization aspect is coherence. this coherence refers to the logical connection between ideas. a logical connection between ideas can be seen if only students develop and divide their ideas clearly into opening or introduction, body which contained main and supporting ideas, and conclusion. similarly, the aspect of content also assessed whether or not students fully develop their ideas. therefore, both organization and content pay attention to the development of ideas in students’ writings. students’ completion of the area of coherence in the organization then reflects their accomplishment of content in the area of ideas development. if their coherence was good, then their development of ideas was also good. however, it only works in the area-level and not in the aspect-level. a good completion of organization does not mean that the content is also good because both aspects cover some other different areas which need to be considered in doing the holistic analysis. therefore, the performance of a particular area of an aspect cannot be used to draw a conclusion over the aspect as a whole. another similar connection lies between the aspect of organization and the aspect of style and quality expressions. the later aspect assesses nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 19 several areas, one of them is the register or sentence variety presented in students’ writing. one of the ways to see whether or not the students attempt variety in their writing is by observing how the sentences begin. if they are always begun with the same thing, for example it is always started with subject i, the writing tends to be monotonous and thus, the writing is lack of register. meanwhile, if the sentence beginning varies from one to another, it shows that the writing attempts variety or may even be good at register. some cohesive devices can be very useful for creating sentence variety. the simplest and most common devices to use include reference and temporal conjunction. several references, such as we, they, it, this, that, he, she, etc can be used to refer to a subject mentioned in the earlier sentence and avoid repetition in the later sentences. meanwhile, temporal conjunction can also be used to clarify the sequence of events and distinct the sentence beginning at once. the ones such as firstly, secondly, then, next, and after that are the ones frequently used by the students in their writing. in short, it can be seen that when the use of cohesive devices varies, then the sentence variety is likely well presented. on the other hand, when its use is poor, the register is then not so good or even absent. aside of the relation between aspects, the findings are also useful for revealing students’ achievement of discourse competence because the areas of some writing aspects are also the areas on which discourse competence concerns. the three areas of organization are the areas of discourse competence. the areas of content are the areas of sociocultural competence. meanwhile, the areas of grammar, spelling (in the aspect of spelling-punctuation-mechanics), and vocabulary usage (in the aspect of style and quality of expressions) are the areas of linguistic competence. hence, students’ performance of the areas reflects their achievement of discourse, socicultural, and linguistic competence. according to the findings of students’ writing in the pretest, no student seems to have possessed a good discourse, sociocultural, or linguistic competence at first. it is shown from their performance in all the areas of the writing aspects which is initially both adequate and fair. the adequate proficiency presented in the aspect of organization shows that students’ achievement of discourse competence still needs to be developed. besides, the adequate proficiency showed in the content indicates that their achievement of the sociocultural competence is still below the expectation. meanwhile, the aspect of grammar, the area of spelling and vocabulary usage which are shown to be fair in students’ earlier writings reflects that students’ initial linguistic competence is still low. linguistic competence is then the worst competence among all the competencies performed in students’ early writings. nonetheless, students’ performance in their later writings shows a quite great improvement for they can successfully improve their achievement of discourse and sociocultural competence from adequate to good, and their performance of grammar from fair to adequate. furthermore, the findings of the data analysis help the researcher figure out students’ mastery of micro and macroskills of writing. based on the findings of the students’ earlier writings, the worst skill performed by the students is the fourth microskill of writing that is to use the acceptable grammatical systems. this is proven by the numerous problems of grammar presented in their initial writings. however, the students’ grammar starts to improve from their second journal writing to the final writing. the second worst performed aspect is the third microskill of writing, which is to produce an acceptable core of words. this is seen from the presence of many misuses of vocabularies. the third problematic microskill is the first microskill of writing which deals with the production of grahemes and orthographic patterns of english or spelling. many students frequently misspelled several words, such as the word regards which is spelled regrads, reply which is spelled replay, and your which is spelled you’re or vice versa. an improvement is also seen in the students’ mastery of the first macroskill of writing of which is the use of rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse. this macroskill relates to the use of punctuations and other writing conventions. in nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 20 the early writings, students mostly omit the indent in their paragraphs. many of them also leave out a needed comma in both closing and salutation. on the contrary, in their later writings, the students already make their paragraphs indented and they have also put a comma in the closing and salutation. the students’ improvement of organization aspect leads to the improvement of several micro and macroskills of writing. a varied use of cohesive devices presented in the students’ later writings shows that their mastery of the sixth microskill develops much. the complete completion of the generic structure in the later writings demonstrates that the students have a better mastery of the second macroskill of writing. meanwhile, a better flow of ideas which indicates a better achievement of coherence shows that the students’ mastery of the third macroskill of writing is also better. conclusions based on the analysis of the research, two kinds of conclusion can be drawn as follows: 1. dialogue journal writing improves students’ writing of personal letter in several ways. those are: a) first, it improves the writing in terms of organization, particularly in the completion of generic structure and in the achievement of cohesion. unlike what was found in the initial writing, after being involved in such activities, students’ later writings demonstrate all the five needed structures of personal letter. besides, they also show a better cohesion in their writing which is realized through the various uses of cohesive devices, including temporal conjunction, listing and adding conjunction, consequence, reference, and synonyms. b) second, dialogue journal writing contributes to develop the content of students’ writing. the findings of the field notes and the post test show that students can address the topic of writing better as compared to their writing before accomplishing the activities. furthermore, they also develop their ideas more fully by providing some supporting sentences and examples to support their main sentences in their later writing. c) third, dialogue journal writing improves students’ performance of grammar. the improvement is shown in the use of correct verb form and the presence of all the needed elements of a sentence (parts of speech, article, pronoun, etc) in students’ later writing. d) fourth, dialogue journal writing helps improve students’ mastery of punctuation, spelling, and mechanics of writing. commas and full stops that were mostly misused and absent in their earlier writings are already present and correctly used in their later writing. in addition, the beginning of the paragraphs has also been indented. furthermore, the spaces in between clauses or sentences that were absent before has also been presented afterwards. e) finally, dialogue journal writing improves students’ writing of personal letter in terms of sentence variety and the quality of the expressions through the presence of fewer misused vocabularies and various uses of reference, temporal conjunction and other devices which improve the register of the writing. 2. the improvement of students’ writing is quite significant as seen from the measurement of students’ writing scores in both pre and posttest which shows that the average score of the students’ writing in the post test is higher than that of the pretest. however, since there were two kinds of treatment given to the students in the research namely explicit teaching and dialogue journal writing itself, the writer cannot be so sure whether such a great improvement is merely resulted from the dialogue journaling. the explicit teaching might also have given some contribution to the improvement. nonetheless, considering that language needs practice, dialogue journal writing which is also another form of language practice is believed as having a quite great influence to it. references beh, y. 1997. current research in southeast asia. relc journal, 28 (1), 175 – 179. in beryl, exley. 2005. learner characteristics of asian efl students: exceptions to the ‘norm’. in nur aininna / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 21 young, janelle, eds. proceedings pleasure passion provocation. joint national conference aate & alea. 2005. pages 1 – 16, gold coast, australia brown, d. h. 2001. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy, second edition. new york: longman brown, d. h. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education jones, paul. 1991. what are dialogue journals?. in joy kreeft peyton and jana staton (eds.), writing our lives: reflections on dialogue journal writing with adults learning english. new jersey: prentice hall. levinson, jay conrad. 2007. guerilla marketing. new york: houghton mifflin peyton, joy kreeft. 2000. dialogue journals: interactive writing to develop language and literacy. national center for esl literacy education saleh, mursid. 2011. linguistic and educational research. semarang: unnes press 68 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt error analysis on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb in the students’ recount text (a case of the 8th grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014) danik cahyaningrum  english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: to be as auxiliary verb, to be as linking verb, recount text, error analysis. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project was conducted to analyze the students’ errors on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb on the students’ recount text that made by eight grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014. this study has three objectives; i.e. to identify errors, to find out the most frequent errors and how to avoid errors on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb. the population of this study was eighth grade students of smp n 19 semarang. this study used purposive random sampling and one class had been taken as the sample under the consideration that the number of the sample was about 10% 15% from the population. i chose class 8b which consist 31 students, but only 28 students could participate on the research. this study used qualitative research method in analyzing the data since the aim of the study is to identify errors, to find out the error, type and how to avoiding error on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb. in gathering the data, i conducted the instructions for the students’ free writing using some topics that had been prepared before the research on 10 may 2013. to find out the errors, i used the error taxonomy according dulay, burt and krashen (1980:50). i classified the errors into 4 types that are omission, addition, misinformation and misordering. the result showed that 11.3 % from the total findings belongs to errors on the use of auxiliary verb which consisted of 8.1 % in misinformation types and 3.2 % in omission types and 88.7 % from the total findings belongs to errors on the use of linking verb which consisted of 45.2 % in misinformation types, 20.9 % in omission types, 19.4 % in addition types and 3.3 % in misordering types. after analyzing and counting the data, i found out that the most frequent errors were errors on the use of linking verb which were dominated by misinformation types. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building, fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: cahya.luphvice@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 69 introduction every country has its own languages including grammatical rules, speech and sound systems, but english is selected as the lingua franca (common communicative language) in the world. english is the first foreign language in most countries which do not use english as their mother tongue. similar with other countries, indonesia chooses english as the first foreign language. ramelan (2001:1) states that “english has been taught in this country as the first foreign language since the proclamation of independence on the august, 17th 1945”. it means that english has an important role in indonesian education and becomes one of the important subjects since the elementary school to university level. since english is the first foreign language, indonesian learners need time and more process in order to master all skills in english includes listening, speaking, reading and writing. moreover, learning english is very useful in order to take part in globalization as the consideration that english is the common communicative language in the world. it can not be denied that understanding the grammatical structure of english becomes the priority to the indonesian leaners who learn english in order to master english skills as stated by douglas (1980:264) that “in learning a language we must know the grammar rules for forming correct sentence”. it also happens on teaching learning process in indonesia that grammar becomes the basic rule in order to improve students’ ability in mastering english. cook and sutter (1980: 1) also stated that grammar is a set of rules by which people speak and write. it means that grammar is rule how words and their components are combined to make sentences both of spoken or written. grammar is also seen as a handy tool in a language. since it is one of the important aspects in learning english, indonesian learners assessed grammar to be one of the most difficult parts to learn. moreover some indonesian learners also stated that the most difficult part of grammar was applied in the writing form. basically writing is one of basic major that has the most difficulties, for example: using inappropriate grammatical structure that is going to affect reader or listener understanding about what message is going to be delivered. indonesian learners either in junior high school or senior high school also often have problems deal with the grammatical structure both in spoken or written forms. particularly, when it comes to written form, understanding the grammatical structures include sentence pattern, sentence structure and also functions of the sentences are very important part in creating a good paragraph. mainly when it comes to the patterns of to be uses in english and indonesian mother tongue are exactly different. sometimes, it makes them find it as one of the difficulties in writing. to illustrate the differences in grammatical structure, the following is an example between english and indonesian sentences. ind : murid – murid smp n 19 semarang sangat rajin dan cerdas. eng : the students of smp n 19 semarang are very diligent and smart. the comparison of the two sentences above can be stated that there are differences in grammatical structure between indonesian and english language. the difference is in the use of to be as a linking verb. the use of to be is a must, because it links the subject with the complement that follows regarding the example above. it means that the sentence is not gong to be acceptable according to the grammatical, if there is no to be in the sentence. to be itself split up into some forms: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, and been depends on the type of subject and tenses. truthfully, writing is one the most difficult language skills to be learned by all of students who learn english especially for junior high school students. using the appropriate grammatical structure makes the meaning of the sentences are going to be accurate, easily understood and acceptable. the other significant part is some aspects in writing such as logical thinking, paragraph development, diction, spelling, punctuation and word order that are required students to fulfil. danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 70 students often make errors on the use of grammatical structure in english because english grammar is more complicated than indonesian. errors in language learning are natural. many aspects are caused by the students to make errors especially english as the first foreign language. sometimes, mother tongue interference also becomes one of the causes. errors are regarded as substantive things to both students and teachers since errors are important part of learning process in order to get information. corder, in ellis and barkhuizan (in adi jaya putra 2008;13), stated that there are three functions of learner’s errors which are as follows: (1) they serve a pedagogic purpose by showing teachers what learners have learnt and what they have not yet mastered; (2) they serve a research purpose by providing evidence about how languages are learnt; and (3) they serve a learning purpose by acting devices by which learners can discover the rules of the target language. it means that errors contain a lot of information’s about which part of the students difficulties that are hard to produce correctly. errors are unavoidable; it happened in all components of english grammatical structure such as errors on using to be, using verb, using conditional sentences, etc. this study is going to highlight about errors on the use of to be for junior high school students in eighth grades. actually to be it self has two grammatical functions and various forms. to be also has the important role to create a sentence because to be is the part of verb. to overcome students problem in errors on the use of to be using genre based approach becomes one of the ways that was chosen by the researcher. basically genre based approach is used in the process of teaching and learning english, especially in junior high school on the eighth grade students. in this approach, teaching and learning process focuses on the understanding and production of selected genres of texts. the focuses are on the content information and the language of the genre of the text that is going to be used. it also focuses on relevant vocabularies and grammatical patterns. this study is going to use recount text as the students writing tasks. students often make some errors on the use of to be in their recount text such as, choose the wrong to be, put double to be, put to be after verb and displacement of to be .some problems usually happen because of the students’ understanding. they know the theory about to be, where and when to be should be put, but they get confused when apply it in sentences, paragraphs and also texts. for example i’m so happy there. the right sentence is i was so happy there, because it tells about something in the past. the others problem is displacement of to be. they sometimes put to be in the wrong position, for example where your house is? it should be where is your house? the differences in writing english from indonesian mother tongue often make it more difficult. therefore, it is going to make some grammatical errors. it causes ambiguity and even changes the meaning of the sentences. based on the explanation above, the researcher decided to analyze the error analysis on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb in the students’ recount text; a case of the 8th grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014. method of investigation the objectives of this study are to identify and find out the students’ errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and linking verb in students’ recount text by analyzing their errors. this study used qualitative research with descriptive method to analyze the errors that was made by students in writing recount text. i use descriptive method because it focuses on identification, classification, description and explanation based on the data collected from the students’ writing of a recount text. descriptive method is method that used to describe hypothesis based on the fact because it uses an explanation to describe the research. this research used purposive random sampling to pick up the sample. so, the researcher could choose a specific group of people or object on the population to analyse and the population danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 71 also had an equal chance of being included in the sample. it often chooses a group that deserve the most information that the researchers need as stated by patton (1990:79), that purposive random sampling will substantially increase the credibility of the results even of small samples. in this study, i chose class 8b from smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014 because the students have been studied about this material in the second semester. they also have done some exercises and writing about recount text. the teachers suggested doing my research in this class. there were 28 students that participate in this study. i picked up one class of 8th grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014 was class 8b which consists of 28 students. the reasons for selecting them were they have taken material about recount text and also about to be. so they knew about the material that the researcher examined in the area and some problem on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb possibly happened in junior high school students. the data collected by students’ free writing. it can be said that the students were free to choose the topic of their writing. the topics have been prepared before, so the students could choose one of the topics. students wrote recount text based on the topic that was chose and their own idea, for example about their past experience. i used their writing to analyze as the data the topic of my study are to identify and find out the errors analysis on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and linking verb in students’ recount text written by 8th grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014, i collected the data by coming directly to the school for one meeting in the class. they wrote the text in 40 minutes and the students should write 10 sentences to 20 sentences in their writing. after conducted the data, i collected the data and analysed the errors in the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb that they made. results of analysis 3.1 results of error analysis on the use of to be as auxiliary and linking verb in the students’ recount text i divided the analysis of errors into two parts. first, i analyzed errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in the students’ recount text. second, i analyzed errors on the use of to be as linking verb in the students’ recount text. as previously stated in chapter iii, researcher divided 4 types of errors according dulay, burt and krashen (in carl james 1998:106) as follows: omissions, additions misinformation and misordering. each sentence had been analyzed using 4 types of errors above to determine the errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and linking verb on the students’ recount text. total errors that occurred are 62 items that divided into 2 part (errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and linking verb). here, i counted the frequency of errors based on the tables using the formula below: where: % error is the percentage of error at one field ∑n is the sum of error at one field n is the whole error that students make the errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in the students’ recount text can be calculated as follows: danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 72 table 3.1 the frequency of error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb no category of error frequency % of error 1. 2. 3. 4. omission additions misinformation misordering 2 5 3.2 % 8.1 % total 7 11.3 % in the table above, it can be concluded that the errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verbs happen on 2 types of errors that are omission and misinformation. the incorrect forms on the use of to be as auxiliary verbs happened because the students missed the important part in creating a clause that is the progressive form of to be in the students’ recount text. it means that to be as auxiliary verb is needed before ving because of the period of time. the detail explanation as follows: (a) omission [230]. while … lunch we saw bird, beach, and coconut tree there are 2 clauses in this sentence. the first clause is the dependent and the second clause is the independent clause. in this sentence, “while” comes at the beginning of the sentence as the dependent clause. based on the situation, it can use past progressive tense because the action was happening over time. it means, the verb in the first clause will be form of to be as auxiliary verb (in the form of past) + main verb (v-ing). the correct sentence: while we were having lunch, we saw bird, beach, and coconut tree. (b) misinformation [58]. friday, 09 may 2014, that time i while walk to lesson schedule the sentence happens in period of time based on the next sentences “[59] in speat of, in middle trip i meet by for a dog was very horrible”. the student wants to say that “while i was walking to my lesson place, i met a dog that was very horrible on last friday”. it means that there is no to be in the form of past. it should be to be as auxiliary verb + the main verb (v-ing). the correct sentence: while i was walking to my lesson place, i met a dog that was very horrible on last friday. the errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in the students’ recount text can be calculated as follows: table 3.2 the frequency of error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in the table above, it can be concluded that error on the use of to be as linking verb happens in all of types of errors. the incorrect form on the use of to be as linking verb mostly happens because the students’ missed the important part in forming a clause that is past form of to be (was /were). student should be aware about nominal clauses which need was / were to connect the subject to its complement. the detail explanation as follows: no category of error frequency % of error 1. 2. 3. 4. omissions additions misinformation misordering 13 12 28 2 20.9 % 19.36 % 45.2 % 3.2 % total 55 88.7 % danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 73 (a) omission [130]. i …. confused with what she say the omission appears in this sentence because it includes in nominal sentence. in nominal sentence, to be needs to connect the subject and the complement. the complement here is “confused” that explains the subject situation. so, the function of to be is as linking verb. this sentence happens in the past because it tells about past story, it means to be is in the past form (was/were). the correct sentence: i was confused with what she say. (b) addition [119]. in there we are plant a paddy field the sentence (119) is incorrect because of the addition in the verb (predicate). the sentence above is an active sentence. it means that the verb is an activity (plant is menanam). the student added to be as linking verb in a sentence which contained verb in the past form. so, to be as linking verb in this sentence isn’t needed. the correct sentence: in there we planted a paddy field. (c) misinformation [106]. this is my horrible experience the sentence above [106] shows that the student missed the information they needed in forming a sentence in the past form. misinformation appears in this sentence because the use of to be as linking verb in the form of present, whereas it should be in the form of past. the correct to be is was/ were depends on the subject. the correct sentence: this was my horrible experience. (d) misordering [144]. because i are tired and my friends, i was not so cycling up at five intersections. misordering is deal with the correct placement of words in the sentences, but i just focus on the wrong placement of to be as a linking verb. the sentence above [144] shows that there is an incorrect placement of to be with the subject. the students want to say “ karena saya dan teman saya capek”. the form of to be is also incorrect. it should be “because my friends and i were tired”. the correct sentence: because my friends and i were tired, i was not so cycling up at five intersections. conclusion based on the findings on chapter iv, the conclusions could be drawn as the result of identifying the students’ errors on dulay, brut and krashen theory that there were 2 types of errors, it was misinformation and omission, occurred on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and 4 types of errors, it were omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering, occurred on the use of to be as linking verb. total errors that occurred are 62 items with 7 items errors on the use of to be as auxiliary verb and 55 items errors on the use of to be as linking verb. after conducting the research, it can be concluded that the most frequent errors occurred is on the use of linking verb with 88.7 % and mostly happened in the misinformation types with 45.2%. it can be seen from the result that error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb is 11.3 % and error on the use of linking verb is 88.7 %. the detail percentage in each types are 8.1 % error on the use of to be as auxiliary verb in misinformation type and 3.2 % in omission type, whereas 45.2 % error on the use of to be as linking verb in misinformation type, 20,9 % in omission type, 19.4 % in addition type and the last is misordering type with 3.3%. references anderson, mark and anderson, kathy. 1997. text types in english. australia : macmillan. arikunto, suharsimi. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: rineka cipta. azar, betty schrampfer. 1989. understanding and using english grammar. new jersey: prentice hall. brown, h.d.1980.the principle of language learning and teaching. new jersey: prentice hall.inc. brown, h.d. 2001.teaching by principles an interactive approach to language pedagogy second edition. new york : longman ellis, rod. 1997. second language acquisition. oxford : oxford university press. ellis, rod. 1994. the study of second language acquisition. new york : oxford university press. danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 74 frank, marcella. 1972. modern english a practical reference guide. new jersey : new york university. harmawati, rina. an analysis of errors in using of the simple present tense in the students short composition (a case study at the eight grade students of smpn 3 ronggacihampelas. stkip university, bandung. hornby,a.s. 1995. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. oxford university press. ixchell.2012 .three strategis for teaching grammar in esl.http://www.showme.com/blog/2012/0 7/three-strategies-for-teaching-grammar-inesl/ access on 15 july 2014 james, carl. 1998. errors in language learning use. london and new york: longman. kariadi, m.t. 2008. errors in using finite verbs in recount text written by 8th grade students of smp n 1 semarang theacademic year 2007/2008. semarang state university, semarang. nunan, d. 1992. research methods in language learning.cambridge : cambridge university press patton,m. 1990. qualitative evaluation and research methods. beverly hills, ca:sage putra, adi jaya. 2008. an error analysis on verb usage in english writing ( a case study at the third year students of smk puspitabangsaciputat). syarifhidayatullah state islamic university, jakarta ramelan. 2001. introduction to linguistics analysis. semarang: ikip semarang press. richards, j. c. 1974. error analysis (perspective on second language acquisitions). london: longman group ltd. santosa, rochmat, budi. 2011. error analysis in the use of be in the students’ composition.stain university, surakarta. saleh, mursid. 2001. pengantar praktik penelitian pengajaran bahasa.semarang : ikip semarang press. shah, farhanazbt.mohdbaldev. 2007. the acquition of to be as an auxiliary verb and linking verb in the written work of malaysian esl learners. international islamic university, malaysia suter, w richard and stanley j. cook. 1980. the scope of grammar ; a study of modern english. new york : mcgraw-hill book company. veit, richard. 1986. discovering english grammar. u.s.a : houghton mifflin company. watcharapunyawong, somchai and usaha, siriluck. 2012. thai efl students’ writing errors in different text types: the interference of the first language. canadian center of science and education. pp. 1 – 12. zawahreh, dr.firas, ali, suleiman. 2012. applied error analysis of written production of english essays of tenth grade students in adjloun schools jordan. international jurnal& development. pp. 1 – 20. http://www.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilas h/best%20of%20bilash/grammar.html access on 7 june 2014 http://www.englishtenses.com/tenses/past_con tinuous access on 20 may 2014 danik cahyaningrum / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 75 50 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of problem based learning to improve students’ speaking ability siti khotimah  english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: problem based learning, speaking ability, achievement, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ senior high school students are expected to have a good speaking skill, meanwhile their ability to speak english is very low especially in term of fluency. therefore, teachers need an alternative method to teach speaking skill that is called problem based learning. the objective of this study is to know the application of problem based learning as teaching method in improving students’ speaking ability and students’ achievement in speaking english. the action research was carried out in some steps. those steps were pre-elimination test, conducting the cycles starting with planning, acting, observing, reflecting, and post-test. as data collection instruments, i used observation sheets, questionnaire, interview, and self and peer assessment of the students. the implementation of this method was reflected in the classroom activity, students self and peer assessment, questionnaire, interview, and observation sheets. the result of the study showed that there were significant improvements of students’ speaking ability after being taught by problem based learning. they also enjoyed the activities in class by having a discussion, sharing, and cooperation with their friends. in addition, the students gave positive opinion, response, and interest toward the implementation of problem based learning method. therefore, the students’ speaking ability was increased. based on the result above, it can be concluded that this method gave positive contribution to the improvement of the students’ speaking ability. this method is beneficial to help the students to learn to speak english in more enjoyable way. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building, fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: khotimhasiti17@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 51 introduction speaking is one of the four skills that should be mastered beside listening, reading and writing. speaking has an important role in daily life that is to convey someone’s mind directly. it influences someone’s performance in many aspects, such as social, politic, bussiness and education. a good presentation comes from a good presenter who can speak effectively in front of many people. making students speak english is a difficult job for english teachers. it needs a long process of practice and learning. students of foreign language learners see that their native language is completely different from english while an opportunity to learn english and practice it in their real life is very limited in time and space. therefore, they need more practice to speak english. considering the importance of speaking skill, the indonesian government states that students should master this skill fully, not only the theory of speaking itself but also the practice. the latest curriculum, curriculum of 2013, recommends the use of scientific approach in its teaching learning process. furthermore, it suggests the application of teaching methods such as project based learning, problem based learning, and discovery learning. these new methods are much different from the common method used before. these methods emphasize on the process of learning, not the outcome of it. the center of teaching learning itself is the students not a teacher anymore. one of the methods offered by 2013 curriculum is problem based learning. yew (2009:11) states that problem based learning is a learning approach that seeks to create a learning environment where students learn in the context of meaningful problems, actively constructing mental models in the process, coconstructing ideas with peers in a collaborative fashion and developing self-directed learning skills in the process. thus, pbl brings together four fairly new insights into learning, namely that learning can be considered a constructive, self-directed, collaborative, and contextual activity. another source mentions that problembased learning (pbl) is focused experiential learning organized around the investigation and resolution of messy, real-world problems (imsa 2008:1). based on the definitions above, we can conclude that problem based learning is a method using problems as an approach to train the students to think critically when they face a problem. besides, this method also teaches them how to work in a group. therefore, the writer is challenged to find out whether problem based-learning method can be one of the alternatives to improve students’ speaking ability or not. i hope this study will help the teacher as a tutor and educator to improve their students’ ability in their speaking skill. literature review related to the definition of speaking, (brown, 1994; burns & joyce, 1997) in florez (1999:1) say that “speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and receiving and processing information.” in addition, hornby (2005: 1467) states that “speaking is used to show that what you are saying is true in general, to convey the ideas, and to have a conversation with somebody about something.” based on those statements, it can be inferred that speaking is the ability to use a language orally or say things that cannot go back and be changed except with repeating it. in another word, speaking is the key to communicate. 2.1 teaching speaking there are three theories about language learning (thornbury, 2005: 38) that can be applied in teaching speaking, that are behaviourist, cognitivist and sociocultural theory. behaviorist theory emphasizes its method on repeated reinforcement through modeling. while cognitivist theory sees that learning is a movement from controlled to automatic processing which applied the conscious attention to the learning of individual stages through repeated aviation (thornbury, 2005: 38). the last and more perfect than the previous is siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 52 sociocultural theory, all learning is mediated through social and cultural activity whereby the teacher interacts with the learners to provide a supportive framework within the learners, so that they can extend their present competence that is called by assisted performance (thornbury, 2005: 38). 2.2 curriculum of 2013 this curriculum was made based on the national education purpose; thinking pattern arrangement founded on students’ necessities, developing and intensifying material, reinforcing the teaching learning process, and adjusting students’ and teachers’ task. the expectations of this curriculum are developing students’ critical thinking, cooperativeness, awareness towards their surroundings, responsibility of their task, and developing students-centred learning. 2.3 problem based learning the pbl curriculum was develop in order to stimulate learners, assist them in seeing the relevance of learning to their future life, maintain their motivation towards learning in high level, and to show the learners to be responsible. the use of pbl has expanded from medical study to various education areas such as science, law, math, education, economic, business, social studies, engineering, etc. problem based learning uses “real world problems and tasks as the initiative objective in constructing knowledge and enhancing learning experience” (tai and yuan: 2007:1). whereas addalla and gaffar (2011:1) states that “pbl education strategy is characterized by using patient’s problem as a motive for students learning, to acquire knowledge of basic and clinical sciences related to that problem and acquire problem solving skills”. problem based learning can be described as “an instructional strategy in which students confront conceptually ill-structured problems and strive to find meaningful solutions” (rayne and symons 2005:6). 2.4 component of pbl based on rayne and symons (2005: 6) there are some components in problem based learning which will be explained as follows: a. group work. students work together in small groups and provide a framework in which students can test and develop their level of understanding of the material. b. problem solving. the problems given in a pbl environment are often daily problem means that they face it every time in their life that need enquiry and critical analysis to solve it. c. discovering new knowledge. in order to find a meaningful solution, students will have to seek new knowledge. d. based on the real world. the main emphasis is to encourage students to start thinking like an expert early on in their careers, thereby easing them to solve their daily problem in their real life. 2.5 implementation of pbl abdalla and gaffar (2011:15) state that there are three steps in implementing pbl in teaching learning process. a) first session of pbl the purpose of this phase is to discuss the objectives of problem based learning which include challenging students’ knowledge and experience in order to solve the problem given to them. in this phase, the group has to set up their roles and responsibilities in group discussion including leader of the group, secretary and also member of the group. the duration of this session should be 1-2 hours. following the first session of pbl, students will have several days to study individually to manage the task given by the teacher. b) second session of pbl the aim of this session is to share what students have learned individually before to solve the problem. the duration of this session should be 1-2 hours. meanwhile the objectives of this session are train them to be active thinker, cooperate with others, responsible for the task given to them, learn how to inform others and gat an early feedback on result of learning process. siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 53 c) third session of pbl the duration of the last session should be 1-2 hours. the aim is to create the discussion forum where the students can ask the expert concerning to the problem given before. they have to share their result of group discussion in front other groups to get a feedback from them. research methodologies the researcher applied the classroom action research and took a part as a teacher for 32 students of x ms 4 of sma n 1 muntilan in the academic year of 2013-2014 as the subject of the study. from nine classes of all students in grade tenth, this class was chosen as the subject of the study because it was the most managable class. the research was conducted in three cycles as an effort to improve the students’ speaking skills. the three cycles were called as cycle 1, cycle 2 and cycle 3. in this research, the researcher applied the four phases of kemmis and mc taggart in burns (2010:8) in each cycle. the phases are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. the design of this research is presented in the figure and explanation below: figure 1. action research process the action research consists of four phases as follows: 1. planning planning is the first step of the research procedure. the researcher made possible plans covering other research members' opinion, suggestion, and expectation and materials to overcome the reading problems. the teachers’ and the students’ opinion and suggestion were obtained through interviews. the materials and other sources of all about reading were collected based on related references and experience. 2. acting the action that had been planned in the planning step was applied here. in this research, the treatment was using “directed readingthinking activity strategy” to enhance their ability in reading comprehension. 3. observation observation is the activity of collecting the data to identify to what extent the result of “acting” reaches the objective. the data being taken were qualitative data. they were taken from observation checklist and field note. 4. reflection reflection is the activity of evaluating critically about the progress or change of the students, class, and also teacher. in this step, the researcher or collaborator observed whether the “acting” activity resulted any progress, what progress happens, and also about the positives and negatives, and so on. findings and discussion the data result from the pre-test up to the post-test showed that the students’ speaking skill increased relatively stable along the process of implementing problem based learning in the three cycles. the final result of the test deals with the total score the students gained before and after using problem based learning. in the pre-test result, the students had problems in every aspect of speaking skill. in short, pronounciation control was very poor and they could not produce utterances fluently. the lack of vocabulary variation was also the problem. it means that the vocabulary variation was not enough sufficient to express the idea. it influenced to the result of comprehension component, while the students couldn’t show the performance as the teacher’s expectation. siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 54 after conducting cycle one and cycle two, the result of the post-test increased. the figure below shows the improvement of each component: figure 1. students’ improvement by using problem based learning, the researcher improved students’ speaking in all aspects. all students got good scores in grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, pronunciation, and intonation. the improvement of each aspect of speaking skill is explained as follows: 1) grammar the target tenses that the students should be learnt in this material was simple past tense, because this chapter was about narrative story. they basically knew structure, but they could not implement it perfectly in speaking. they verb two or added –ed in the end of the verb. they often mixed the structure when spoke in english. after doing the cycles, the result of grammar aspect increased. the result showed that the students understood how to use simple past tense correctly. they also corrected their grammar by themselves when they did mistakes in performing a converstation. 2) vocabulary the pre-test data showed that the students had limited vocabularies to express their idea and feeling. they only used familiar and simple words in their sentences, even some of them forgot the simple word because of their nervousness. by using pbl method, the students got challenge to enrich themselves about the vocabulary variaton in order to make a good conversation and for the sake of their discussion. after doing several practices using pbl method, the test result increased from a test to another. the students’ vocabulary achievement improved because they got new vocabulary from the treatment also the teacher’s explanation and they accustomed to speak in english. they also tried to find new vocabulary from their dictionary or asked the teacher. 3) fluency fluency is one of the most important and difficult aspects to be achieved in speaking skill. the result of the pre-test showed that fluency got a second grade of low score. as stated above in the questionnaire result, the students admitted that they rarely spoken english english in their real life, so it influenced their fluency. after given the treatment, the students’ fluency increased. it was influenced by their habit in speaking when they practiced in discussion. they also had to present their discussion result in front of their classmate. it trained them a lot to speak. so, since they had a lot of practices, their fluency achievement in the post-test was much better than in the pre-test. 4) comprehension the next significant improvement was in the comprehension aspect. comprehension is the ability to understand the sentence or content of the story completely and be familiar with the situation, fact etc. the result of the research showed that the students’ comprehension increased. in the beginning of the treatment, the students did many mistakes related to the teacher’s instruction. they almost didn’t understand what they should do and don’t. after the treatment, the students could understand what the teacher said and got the point of information related to the topic discussed. in this aspect, the writer found out how good they understood a spoken language. 5) pronunciation the students’ pronunciation got the low score in pre test. they did many mistakes though they used a familiar and simple words. after given the treatment, the students’ achievement increased. the students’ pronunciation improved because they learned how to pronounce the 0 1 2 3 4 5 p ro n o n ci a ti o n v o ca b u la ry f lu e n cy c o m p re h e n si o n in to n a ti o n g ra m m a r pre-test post-test siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 55 words correctly since their wrong pronunciation were corrected in the cycle one, two and three. 6) intonation students could maintain their intonation quite well since pre-test. they could differentiate how to say a statement sentence or affirmative sentence. so that, the writer did not have any difficulties in helping them to improve the intonation aspect in speaking english. after conducting the third cycle, students’ improvement in intonation aspect were high and they could apply it in conversation unintentionally. 4.1 the advantages of using problem based learning method in teaching speaking the use of problem based learning method had several advantages towards the students’ speaking skill. first, the most important is it improves the students’ speaking skill in oral communication. problem based learning method forced the students to speak up only in english. all of the students must say something or must give opinion about something. this condition that made the class become conducive for the students to learn speaking english. all of the students could be more active in class, it increased students’ oral communication especially in english. the result is students’ speaking skill is getting better. second, the use of problem based learning method in teaching speaking could increase students’ motivation and interest in learning english especially for speaking skill. by using a fun treatment and not too formal, students will like the learning atmosphere. students will enjoy those condition so that their interest in english improves. besides, the problem used in discussion was a daily problem that they often face. it made them more active in discussing the solution of the problem. in addition, all the activities that were involved in this strategy gave the students an experience in speaking english so that they could be more confident in performing their speaking. students also will not feel shy when conveying their ideas. third, problem based learning method is a technique that requires cooperation with other students in group. students learn how to work together to achieve the goal and how to solve the problem. thus, by conducting problem based learning method, students learn social skills such as cooperation, teamwork, and communication skills which are useful in their future life. moreover, this method also required students to think critically before decided what they have to do, so that, it will help them to be a critical thinker. conclusion and suggestion 5.1 conclusion based on data interpretation and discussion presented in the previous, i draw the following conclusions: according to the data analysis in chapter 4, it can be drawn some conclusion that: first, the purpose of the study is ‘to find out how problem based learning is used in teaching speaking to the tenth graders of senior high school 01 muntilan in the academic year 2013/2014.’ it is based on the result of analysis from the observation sheets about students’ behavior during the treatment, and also the analysis of the questionnaire. the implementation of problem based learning itself was easy and students seemed to like this method based on the questionnaire analysis. this method was applied in class and the students played their role seriously, discussed the solution of the problem together with their group member and constructed the argumentation to back up their solution before they told their solution in front of the class. the application of this method could improve students’ speaking ability. the first purpose was accomplished well. second, the problem based learning method improves students’ achievement in speaking after being taught by this method. students’ improvement in speaking can be seen from the result of pretest and posttest. it can be seen from the aspects of speaking skill which covered grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, pronunciation, and intonation. the result from the test proved that students’ speaking ability was getting better after using this game. siti khotimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 56 5.2 suggestion based on the conclusion above, there are some suggestions which are presented to improve students’ speaking skill. firstly, working together in group is one of the methods that can be applied in teaching speaking. teachers should have interesting techniques to teach their students, for example by using discussion technique. students need to train their speaking skill by speaking english anytime and anywhere. by using problem based learning method that provides problem to be discussed, it will help the students to be more talkative in their environment and train them to be critical. this method was just an example to encourage students in learning speaking. teacher should be able to find another method which is interesting. furthermore, students need to be more active in learning speaking. they have to be active in every opportunity that requires them to speak in english. practicing is the best way to learn english, it will make them more fluent in speaking and improve their self-confidence. it will be easier if they have a discussion with their friends and share everything they think of. lastly, for other researchers who conduct an action research in speaking skill area, they can explore any other methods to apply in english speaking classroom. moreover, they can do further research on this topic in the future. references abdalla, muhammed elhasan & abdelrahim mutwakel gaffar. 2011. the seven steps of pbl implementation. ksa: jazan university. burns, anne. 2010. doing action research in english language teaching. new york: roudledge. florez, mary ann c. 1999. improving adult english language learners’ speaking skills. available at www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/speak .html . [accessed 07/01/2014] illinois mathematics and science academy. 2008. problem based learning matters. aurora, il: imsa. [online]. available at http://pbln.imsa.edu/resources/pbl_matters.p df [accessed 12/01/2014] raine, derek & sarah symons. 2005. possibilities: a practies guide to problem based learning in physics and astronomy. uk. university of hull. tai, gillian xiao lian & may chan yuen. 2007. authentic assessment strategies in problem based learning. singapore: journal thornbury, scott. 2005. how to teach speaking. new jersey: pearson education esl. thornbury, scott. 2005. how to teach speaking. new jersey: pearson education esl. yew, elaine h. j. 2009. process of problem based learning. singapore: ruby printing pte ltd. [online]. available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1 365-2923.2011.04035.x/abstract [accessed 09/01/2014] putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 21 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt students' perception toward gamification applied in english language classroom pandu perdana putra1, arif suryo priyatmojo2 1,2english department, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 31 august 2020 approved in 16 march 2021 published in 26 march 2021 ________________ keywords: students' perception; gamification; teaching technique; qualitative study ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aims to find out the students' perception toward gamification applied on english language classroom. gamification emerged as an innovation in classroom teaching. the basic concept is to incorporate game elements into teaching, taking advantage of students' interest in games that can be used for the purposes of the teaching process. this study is conducted since there is still limited research that is conducted in indonesia which analyses the students' perception toward the gamification utilization. this research used qualitative methods as a way to present research results from data collected. data from this study were collected using two methods, namely online questionnaires, and interviews. this research shared questionnaires to 30 students. the questionnaire was a likert-style close-ended question. from the research conducted, it was found that the majority of students' perceptions of gamification used in english classes was positive. the students believed that gamification was effective and fun to bring to classroom learning. this teaching method allows students to engage more in-class activities, reduces boredom because it creates a learning atmosphere, and increases learning motivation without disturbing the understanding of the material obtained by students. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: kangpandu22@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 22 introduction gamification appears as an innovation in language teaching. the basic concept is to insert game elements into teaching, different from game-based learning, where students learn directly from the game. this technique is believed to increase students' motivation and engagement in the lesson. platforms like kahoot, duolingo, and quizizz are examples commonly used for gamification. students were introduced to game elements such as points, badges, leaderboards, and incentives (werbach & hunter, 2012). the reward is often not directly related to the goal achieved. however, it serves as notice to the player and others that a level of competence has been achieved. progress tracking is often enabled and guided by reward systems; a sequence of intermediate goals maps out progress towards an overall objective. what distinguishes gamification most distinctly from traditional approaches is the explicit use of competition as a motivational tool. this competitive element is a source of motivation (nicholson, 2012). in some applications of this technique, students can see the progress of themselves and their friends directly. transparency in progress should be able to arouse students' motivation to be the best among their rivals. the application of gamification in classroom learning is becoming increasingly important as learners no longer seem to be as engaged with traditional teaching approaches as they once were. several studies have found game-based learning to be more interesting for learners (malamed, 2012). the gamification of learning has also helped students develop problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills (malamed, 2012). therefore, gamification needs to be considered to be applied in the classroom in the teaching process because the benefits obtained from gamification are quite beneficial. students' willingness to learn english in indonesia is still far from what is expected due to the lack of motivation. however, they are instructed to read at school; this habit does not permeate into students' routines at their homes (iftanti, 2012). therefore, the teacher's role is to raise students' interest in learning a subject, which is vital. technology supports the teaching process with ict utilization. (priyatmojo & areni, 2017) say that, in the current digital age, technology is essential for learning english because, with technology, there are many benefits that students may receive, including 1) promoting the learning process; 2) making it more straightforward for students to access information; 3) the pressure of learning materials (paperless); 4) the technology literacy; 5) forming independent learners (independent learning); 6), etc. this topic was chosen because of emerging trends in the development of education worldwide. therefore, research is needed to support the occurring rapid technological advancement. the research question in this research is to find out students' perceptions about the gamification used in english class, which later can be used as a reference in making decisions in the process of preparing class materials and activities. this research refers to the five article titles that are used as the basis for the study. the first study was conducted by cheong et al. in 2014 entitled 'towards the gamification of learning: investigating student perceptions of game elements.' what can be seen from cheong’s et al. study results are that research subjects agreed that gamification would add to their interest in the learning process. i want to prove whether it happens in international schools that have often used it-integrated teaching methods. a study by banfield & wilkerson in 2014 entitled "increasing student intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy through gamification pedagogy" aimed at assessing gamification as a method of experimental learning theory. ibanez et al. (2014) had a study entitled "gamification for engaging computer science students in learning activities: a case study." it was appealed that there is a positive effect on students' engagement toward gamification learning activities and a moderate improvement in learning outcomes. in 2018, bicen & kocakoyun conducted a study entitled "student perceptions for the gamification approach: kahoot as a case study. this method was also found to have a positive impact on student motivation. the last reference was taken from research in 2017; buckley & doyle conducted a study entitled "game on! student perceptions about gamified learning". this study explores students' perceptions of gamified learning interventions used in large undergraduate modules and small postgraduate modules. the perception of undergraduate students tends to be positive when viewed from fgd data. while postgraduate students are the opposite, they are more questioning and less crediting gamification. the definition of game by salen (2004, p. 81) defines "a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict defined by rules that result in a quantifiable outcome." aside from that, according to kim in 2012, games provoke robust emotional responses, such as curiosity, frustration, and joy. from pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 23 the definition mentioned, it can be said that the elements in the game can stimulate the player and indirectly provide simulation and input to the brain. according to kapp, the definition of gamification is integration by "using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems" (kapp, 2012, p. 10). it applies characteristics associated with video games, such as game mechanics and game dynamics, to non-game applications (simões et al., 2013). it was explained that gamification is a combination of material delivered by a teacher or lecturer combined with game mechanics. the other distinguishing characteristic is the explicit use of competition as a motivational tool (nicholson, 2012). competition may be generated at an individual level through progress tracking, whereby movement towards an overall objective is mapped by a sequence of intermediate goals to be achieved. it may also be social, with individuals competing against each other to achieve the highest score. according to deterding et al. (2011), the competition is often operationalized in a leader board, which ranks first to last in performance. this is one of the instant feedback examples that students can receive; in gamification, students can see how their grades or progress in the quiz is running. although only using elements taken from the game, deterding (2012) says that gamification is well-known for motivating and engaging players for lengthy periods. in the era called education 4.0 or 21st century education, gamification has the potential to be the answer to the challenges of education in this era. in order to achieve this, we also need to consider students' perceptions. every person has his perception of something. mcdonald (2011) said that differences in perception lead to miscommunication and suboptimal results. montague (1997) said that students' perception is what the students feel about a particular thing. therefore, to understand student perceptions, i focused on student perceptions of students' feelings about their learning experiences. chen & hoshower (2003) stated that students' perception is essential for considering the success of the strategy of learning. based on these considerations, the researcher agreed that students' perception is the main aspect of the learning process, not only for evaluation but also for increasing understanding. in applying a method, feedback from participants is needed to evaluate how the method is implemented. in this case, the students' perceptions of gamification applied in the english class. chen & hoshower (2003) also stated that students' perception is vital for considering the success rate of a strategy. the students' perception helps the teacher see something or decide something from the point of view of students. furthermore, the perception is taken what matters can be improved or what is too high; in other words, adjusted so that the gamification method's application can be optimal. methods this study used the descriptive qualitative method. cresswell (2014, p. 4) stated, "qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem." the role of the researcher in this research is a data collector and a data analyst. as a data collector, the researcher collected the students' perceptions through two methods, which are questionnaires and recorded interviews. as a data analyst, the researcher analyzed the data gathered on behalf of the research to conclude gamification perceptions. in selecting research subjects, all students from the school were chosen as the population of the research. furthermore, 30 students from one class were taken as the research sample. clustered sampling was used to determine the sample in this research. the subject was chosen because the teacher used gamification with kahoot and quizziz platforms in learning english. the research was done in the academic year 2019/2020. during this time, the researchers conducted data collection by distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews. two instruments were used to collect data in this research, namely, questionnaires and interviews. the questionnaire was created to collect students' answers regarding their perceptions of gamification. the form of the question and answer form is on the online platform to facilitate the collection process. the questions were using statement sentences are then sorted according to the perception domain for easy reading and analysis. choices used are 'strongly disagreed,' 'disagreed,' 'agreed,' and 'strongly agreed.' this design uses a likert-scale questionnaire to reduce the bias of answers from subjects. the next instrument is the interview. an interview was held to obtain more in-depth information that was paired with the results of the questionnaire. the form of the questions asked is an open-ended question that is still guided around students' perceptions about gamification. the process of taking was using recorded teleconference media one by one with the students. after the pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 24 records are obtained, the next process is to transcribe and label the relevant information with the other instrument, the questionnaire. after that, the data is presented with a table. each statement is averaged with a percentage formula to see the trend in student answers. this is followed by additional information obtained from one-on-one interviews with students. findings and discussion the questionnaire responses were analyzed by interpreting the students' answers, with information from the results of student interviews relevant to the statements on the likert-scale questionnaire. table 1. students' perceived feeling no statements answers percentages strongly agreed agreed disagreed strongly disagreed 1 gamification makes me happy 60% 37% 3% 0% 2 gamification is childish 0% 0% 33% 67% 3 gamification is not necessary 53% 40% 3% 3% 4 gamification is a waste of time 0% 0% 23% 77% 5 i am bored with gamification 7% 3% 20% 70% 6 i prefer longer portion of gamification in my class 37% 37% 17% 10% 7 i think gamification needs to exist in every meeting 47% 40% 7% 7% in the first statement, we found that 18 students strongly agreed, 11 students chose to agree, one student chose to disagree, and no students strongly disagreed. it indicated that there was a positive perception about gamification. we also provided several answers from the interview describing the subjects' perceptions about the use of gamification. this statement is supported by several answers on the subject related to the first statement. interviewee 1 : "i think using it makes me happy; it is fun because there are games." interviewee 11 : "i prefer to be taught using gamification, sir. it is not boring." interviewee 12 : "very happy, sir, when i was taught using this method because we rarely play the game in the class." interviewee 29 : "yes, sir. i am very happy because while playing the game too." the next results of the statement "gamification is childish" got no students answered strongly agreed, no one agreed with it. followed by ten students have disagreed, and 20 students strongly disagreed with the statement. this signifies that the students thought that gamification is applicable to their age. after that, the next statement contains "gamification is not necessary." explained that students tend to disagree with the statement. with 16 students answering firmly disagreed, 12 of the students disagreed, one student agreed, and one more student strongly agreed with the statement. students strongly disagreed that "gamification is a waste of time," which shows the acceptance of positive gamification in english classes. furthermore, data that can be seen are 23 students strongly disagreed with the statement, seven students of the total answers disagreed, no students who agreed, and 0 students who strongly agreed with the statement that gamification is a waste of time. the next statement is, "i am tired of gamification." the students' answers are the opposite of the statement, meaning that students are not bored with gamification in their class english. the information obtained was that 21 students strongly disagreed, six students disagreed, one student agreed. the last two students strongly agreed with the statement. the sixth statement, which is "i prefer longer portion of gamification in my class," was responded to be quite varied but is still dominant to students' approval to prolong gamification's use in english class. based on the table, 11 students strongly agreed, followed by 11 students who agreed with the statement, five students chose to disagree, and three students strongly disagreed with statement 6. pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 25 in addition to the questionnaire data taken, some students also mentioned several things about statement 6, as follows: interviewee 9: "yeah, sir, if possible, we want teachers to extend the time to play games in the class." interviewee 14: "in my opinion, if it is too long, it is no fun any longer, sir." interviewee 25: "i have a difficulty because there was no enough time to do it in a hurry; if the time is longer, it seems good." the following statement, which is the need for "gamification to exist in every meeting," explained that fourteen students chose strongly agreed, 12 students chose to agree, two students chose to disagree. the last two students also chose to disagree strongly. although the answers are quite distributed, the tendency of student acceptance of gamification is positive. they want gamification to be present in every teaching process in the english class. in the interview session, the subject also conveyed things about statement 7. interviewee 8: "i think it should be in every meeting, except for the test, but. because there are many benefits, sir." table 2. students' perceived classroom atmosphere no statements answers percentages strongly agreed agreed disagreed strongly disagreed 8 gamification makes the classroom atmosphere more lively 70% 30% 0% 0% 9 gamification makes the classroom atmosphere chaotic 3% 3% 20% 73% 10 gamification makes joy in the classroom 83% 17% 0% 0% furthermore, what can be translated from statement 8, "gamification makes the classroom atmosphere more lively," is getting very positive reactions from students. data shows 21 students who strongly agreed, nine students, or who agreed; no students disagreed and strongly disagreed. this means that gamification does make the classroom atmosphere more lively in learning. this result was reinforced by several students interviewed and mentioned the classroom atmosphere's positivity when using gamification. interviewee 3: "yes, sir, usually silent, but if the teacher uses the game even though sometimes it is noisy, but it is still good." interviewee 6: "i agreed with that statement, sir, because if you use gamification, the class atmosphere will be cheerful. i don't feel sleepy." the next statement is "gamification makes the classroom atmosphere chaotic." getting the questionnaire responses showed that 22 students strongly disagreed, six students disagreed, one student agreed, and one student strongly agreed with the statement that gamification creates a chaotic classroom atmosphere. this statement was also reinforced by several students who mentioned the disruption caused when gamification was being used in the english class. interviewee 13: "even though it's crowded, but if it's too much, it becomes disturbing, sir." interviewee 16: "if it became noisy, i would be disturbed, sir, i cannot concentrate." they also believe that the use of gamification can make joy in the classroom, as it is statement 10. took 25 students strongly agreed, five students agreed, 0 disagreed, 0 strongly disagreed. besides being able to be seen from the results, several students also gave their opinions through interviews, including: pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 26 interviewee 5 : "i agreed with that because my classmates and i feel joy when taught by using it." interviewee 19 : "compared to the usual ones, this is more fun, sir." table 3. students' perceived classroom engagement no statements answers percentages strongly agreed agreed disagreed strongly disagreed 11 gamification makes me interested in joining classroom activity 57% 37% 7% 0% 12 i don't care about the game being played by the class 3% 3% 17% 77% the next statement, number 10, which reads "gamification makes me interested in joining classroom activity," shows very positive results with 17 students strongly agreed with the statement, followed by 11 students agreed, two students disagreed, and 0 students strongly disagreed with the statement. this indicates that gamification can increase students' motivation to participate in-class activities. this statement was also reinforced by several students who mentioned the interest in joining classroom activities when gamification was being used in the english class. interviewee 23: "yes, sir, playing games is fun, so i want to join class activities. not lazy anymore." statement 11, which reads "i do not care about the game being played by the class," shows the statement's significant negation. the data obtained were 23 students strongly disagreed with the statement, followed by five students who disagreed, one student agreed, and one other student strongly agreed with the statement. this illustrates that gamification can make students care about the game being played by the class. table 4. students' perceived motivation no statements answers percentages strongly agreed agreed disagreed strongly disagreed 13 gamification motivates me to compete to be the best 70% 23% 7% 0% 14 gamification makes me interested in the material being taught 60% 37% 3% 0% 15 when i lose or get a low score, i lose motivation 3% 23% 27% 47% 16 gamification makes me want to learn more about material outside the classroom 23% 67% 10% 0% the next statement is "gamification motivates me to compete to be the best," illustrates that 21 students strongly agreed, seven students agreed, two students disagreed, and 0 students strongly disagreed, which means that the application of gamification in english classes can motivate students to compete to be the best. this statement was also reinforced by several students who mentioned the motivation caused when gamification was being used in the english class, they are: interviewee 1: "i encouraged to be the best sir, to be the best in the score." interviewee 7: "i feel like to have the biggest score, sir, even though there is no gift or so." interviewee 10: "the game makes me want to compete; it is like adrenaline when playing like this." statement fourteen, which reads "gamification makes me interested in the material being taught," showing 18 students strongly agreed, 11 students agreed, one student disagreed, and 0 pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 27 students strongly disagreed with the statement. this means that students' acceptance in terms of motivation to positive gamification makes them interested in the material being taught using gamification in the english language classroom. in statement fifteen, which said, "when i lose or get a low score, i lose motivation," it is obtained that one student strongly agreed, seven students agreed, eight students disagreed, and 14 students strongly disagreed. the spread of these answers tends to negation, which means that when students lose the gamification process or get a low score, most of them stay motivated and do not lose the spirit. the next statement, "gamification makes me want to learn more about the material outside the classroom," getting results seven students strongly agreed, 20 students agreed, three students disagreed, and 0 students strongly disagreed. this means that gamification indirectly makes students like english lessons, so they intend to study more outside the classroom. table 5. students' perceived comprehension no statements answers percentages strongly agreed agreed disagreed strongly disagreed 17 gamification makes me distracted from the core of the lesson 10% 3% 20% 67% 18 in the use of gamification, i can still understand the core material being taught 43% 50% 3% 3% 19 gamification has more impact than conventional teaching 43% 40% 7% 10% 20 gamification blurs the learning objective 0% 3% 23% 73% the next statement is number 17, which reads, "gamification makes me distracted from the core of the lesson" data obtained three students who strongly agreed, one student agreed, six students who disagreed, and 20 students strongly disagreed that gamification makes students in x ips 1 distracted from the core of the lesson. this data indicates that most students can still understand core lessons when the method being used is gamification. the other statement is, "in the use of gamification, i can still understand the core material being taught." data obtained 13 students strongly agreed, 15 students agreed, one student disagreed, and one student strongly disagreed, showing students can still accept lessons and still understand the core material when gamification is used. the next is statement 19, which reads, "gamification has more impact than conventional teaching." the data obtained are 13 students strongly agreed, 12 students agreed with the statement, two students disagreed, and three students strongly disagreed. the majority of students have a positive perception of gamification. this result was reinforced by several students interviewed and mentioned the classroom atmosphere's positivity when using gamification. interviewee 2: "i agreed with that statement, sir. it is clearly having more impact, sir, because it makes it easier to understand and, most importantly, because it is cool." interviewee 4: "because in my opinion, it is very far from boring. the usual thing is that you only listen. this way of teaching makes me think and play." interviewee 19: "this is better, sir, because we used technology. i'm interested. i realize i am interested more in being able to speak english better." interviewee 24: "i chose disagreed because the process was still not perfect, sir, yesterday there were still some problems, the question did not appear several times on my cell phone." the last statement discussed in this section is "gamification blurs the learning objective" gets the results of 0 students who strongly agreed, one student who agreed, seven students disagreed, and 22 students strongly disagreed that gamification of blurs the learning objective. the students felt that learning objectives could still be achieved from this positive reception even though gamification using games risked making learning objectives uninteractive. pandu perdana putra, arif suryo priyatmojo/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 28 conclusion it can be concluded that gamification is acceptable to be applied in english classrooms and fulfill the objective of gamification, which is to increase the student interest in learning the english language. the data presented that gamification can enliven the classroom atmosphere because it is no longer teacher-centered. however, in the application of gamification, all students also participate inclass activities. the second statement explains that gamification can also make the chaotic atmosphere class. although only a few students agreed with the statement, it should be noted in its application that gamification can also cause noise. the next assertion indicates that students find that gamification should not confuse the learning goal. in contrast, gamification is closely related to the game and high student excitement. despite that, most students still agreed that gamification has a more significant effect than the traditional teaching and learning process. this is backed by the innovation of the process, including the use of technology in teaching. students' interest in the material being delivered also increases because what is in the game is the teacher's material, so they try to understand the material to compete. students' interest in learning material, in this case, english outside the classroom, also increases. this can be integrated because gamification is not only in the classroom, but the teacher can make games that students can do at home. in the game, some students lose motivation when getting low scores in the game. however, the majority of students do not lose enthusiasm when getting low scores. we suggest that gamification can be used in learning english in the classroom. referring to the results obtained, students feel that gamification can make the teaching and learning process of english in the classroom more lively. therefore, teachers need to be more aware of gamification by upgrading their ict skills so that they can more freely adopt beneficial methods, especially gamification. references banfield, j., & wilkerson, b. (2014). increasing student intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy through gamification pedagogy. contemporary issues in education research (cier), 7(4), pp. 291-298. bicen, h., & kocakoyun, s. (2018). perceptions of students for gamification approach: kahoot as a case study. international journal of emerging technologies in learning, 13(2), pp. 72–93. buckley, p., doyle, e., & doyle, s. (2017). game on student’ perceptions of gamified learning. educational technology and society, 20(3), pp. 1–10. chen, y., & hoshower, l. b. (2003). student evaluation of teaching effectiveness: an assessment of student perception and motivation. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 28(1), pp. 71– 88. cheong, c., filippou, j., & cheong, f. (2014). towards the gamification of learning: investigating student perceptions of game elements. journal of information systems education, 25(3), pp. 233– 244. cresswell, j. w. (2009). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. thousand oaks: sage. deterding, s. (2012). gamification: designing for motivation. interactions, 19(4), pp. 14–17. deterding, s., dixon, d., khaled, r., & nacke, l. (2011). from game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification. proceedings of the 15th international academic mindtrek conference: envisioning future media environments. pp. 9–15. ibanez, m.-b., di-serio, a., & delgado-kloos, c. (2014). gamification for engaging computer science students in learning activities: a case study. ieee transactions on learning technologies, 7(3), pp. 291–301. iftanti, e. (2012). a survey of the english reading habits of efl students in indonesia. teflin journal, 23(2), pp. 149–164. kapp, k. m. (2012). the gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education. san francisco: pfeiffer. kim, b. 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(2017). ict dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris. semarang: fastindo. salen, k. (2004). rules of play: game design fundamentals. cambridge: mit press. simões, j., redondo, r. d., & vilas, a. f. (2013). a social gamification framework for a k-6 learning platform. computers in human behavior, 29(2), pp. 345–353. werbach, k., & hunter, d. (2012). for the win: how game thinking can revolutionize your business. philadelphia: wharton digital press. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421fecb92007 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 140 elt forum 9 (2) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt syllabus design in business english based on the needs of economics students tiara nove ria1, djamaludin malik2 1,2universitas pandanaran, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 13 october 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ________________ keywords:syllabus; business english; needs analysis ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________ business english is one branch of english for specific purposes. in determining the abilities to be achieved in learning objectives, material selection, and learning methods in this course, the syllabus design must be tailored to the needs of students and it is better to combine with the real work situation. therefore, a need analysis is essential to use for designing the syllabus however, the recent syllabus did not match students need so that the aim of this study was to conduct need analysis to develop the business english syllabus design for economics students. it was based on two situations, learning needs and target situation needs. the subjects were students, lecturer, graduates and employers. the instruments to collect the data in this study were questionnaire and interviews. this study used quantitative and qualitative method. the results showed that students mostly need speaking skills to be emphasized to learn, while mastering vocabularies was the weakness that the students need to improve. moreover, they tended to have drilling as the learning method. while the most materials of english business used in workplace was reading instruction related work and documents. based on the findings of this study, it can be used for designing the new syllabus. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: tiaranoveria@unpand.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 141 introduction english is a language that must be mastered by most people today. english language skills are seen to support self-development. in today's world of work, many companies have implemented english language skills to support their work. a study conducted by (setiawan, 2014) stated that english is highly essential used in the world of work and this skill helps the workers enhance their career. consequently, universities as places that produce people to compete in the world of work must provide english learning facilities. the economics faculty of universitas pandanaran seeks to produce graduates who can compete in the world of work. therefore, the study program facilitates students by providing english courses, one of which is business english. this course is given to students in semester 2. in order to achieve learning objectives, a course syllabus is compiled. the syllabus contains the course achievements, the course objective, the learning materials, the learning methods and time allocation. in pre observation, the researcher observed by asking students about business english learning and teaching process, then students gave information that was based on their experience. some materials that were given by the lecturer were not tailored to their needs at work. the students’ background was part time employers, so they had already known the use of english in their company. it happened because the syllabus and materials were design by the lecturer itself. it was designed only by putting the material that the lecturer felt was appropriate to give. based on this case, the lecturer eager to find the solutions. business english is one branch of english for specific purposes (esp). as stated in (hutchinson, t., & waters, 1987), esp is the way the learners learn english for the needs of specific fields. the use of english varies from one field to another. an engineer needs the knowledge of english about their engineering field, and it will be different in english used by the people who work in the economic environment. the specific terms used are different to each other. it brings the nonnative to learn english for specific purposes. english for specific purposes (esp) are subjects that are designed based on the specific needs related to the work or academic of students, and the subjects offer a description of the use of language in the discipline or job they serve (basturkmen, 2010). so it is clear that english is only designed for material specifically to suit the learner's scientific background. business english is a branch of esp apart from others such as english for police, english for nurses, legal english and so on (richards, 2001). in this case, the students of economics need to focus their learning in business english as their knowledge to be ready in their future work. according to (basturkmen, 2010), a need analysis can be the way to develop what the need to teach and learn english for specific purposes. need analysis was an essential component to design and develop the course. this is the chance for the lecturer to do a need analysis so the course can meet the students’ goals. determining learners’ needs in learning english is called needs analysis or needs assessment (hossain, 2013). needs analysis is the process of gathering information and improving language planning. as concluded by alfehaid in his dissertation, the findings from the needs analysis are analyzed to propose improvements so that academic needs and workplace language can be integrated, thereby increasing future student achievement (alfehaid, 2011). according to hutchinson and waters in (diana & mansur, 2018), need analysis is divided into two, target situation needs and learning needs. the target situation needs can specify goals and objectives. it is like a compass for learners to know the road to their goals. on the other side, the learning needs specify the learners’ situations (background, motivation, skills, strategies). the syllabus design is the necessary process of planning the teaching, while needs analysis is the primary guide of the phases that are passed to design (li, 2014). therefore, in the process of syllabus development planning, a needs analysis is carried out. according to (chunling, 2015), needs analysis is the first thing to do in designing a business english course. the things that are needed in developing syllabus design based on the needs analysis are knowing the learning needs, learning objectives, final abilities to be achieved, determining the learning method and the suitable time that should be allocate in each meeting. in several studies, it was stated that to design material and syllabus was essential to conduct need analysis. according to (diana & mansur, 2018), in her study, the design of the syllabus for ict students was based on the lecturer’s perception so that the syllabus did not meet the students’ need. then she conducted the need analysis to find the appropriate materials needed by ict students. in line with diana & mansur's research, (aflah & rahmani, 2018) stated that needs analysis plays a tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 142 vital role in teaching and learning students majoring in nutrition because it would improve the learning process. students, lecturers, learning objectives, learning materials, and learning methods would be well connected because they know the learning needs. another study by (remache & ibrahim, 2018), suggested that english teachers conducted a similar study using needs analysis for designing better syllabus. the result of the study was syllabus design that suits with students’ needs, wants, desires and expectations of the students. according to (dzięcioł-pędich, 2014) her research presented possible suggestions for business english course design and stressed the importance of needs analysis for developing an esp syllabus in the context of polish education. from several kind of research that have been conducted, it concerns only on the students situation. it has not been investigated in the real work situation. the employers and the graduates who already face the real situation can be the external factors besides students who know and feel the needs based on their own. the employers and graduates can give the information of the needs which can be verified. hence, the researcher wants to conduct the research of need analysis to get the best design of syllabus that is taken from two situations so that the students of economics at universitas pandanaran central java indonesia reach the goal of studying business english course. methods this study's participants were 52 students in the second semester of economics faculty of universitas pandanaran, an english lecturer who teaches in this institution, 50 graduates, and two employers from hospitality and manufacture companies. the students consist of 35 females and 17 males that had already taken general english in the previous semester. the students' age was between 19 to 25 years old. the english lecturer (el) had been working in universitas pandanaran for three years. graduates who work in various companies. the employers' position was a sales manager (sm) of hotel horison semarang and a manager hrd (h) of holi karya sakti semarang. in need analysis, there are some instruments that can be used to conduct a need analysis such as interviews, questionnaires, or observation (basturkmen, 2010). in this study, the instruments consist of questionnaires and interviews. the questionnaires were distributed to 52 students and 50 graduates of economics faculty. the students were the 2nd semester who took business english course and the graduates of economics faculty were taken from the convenience sampling technique. at the same time, the interview was conducted to an english lecturer who teaches in this institution, graduates and employers. the interview employed semi-structured interview. the questionnaire consists of several questions, including the students' background, the students' perception of learning business english, the students' lacks and wants in learning english, students' preference of learning method during the class, and students' need for time allocation. while the graduates' questionnaire includes the importance of english language, the frequency of english skills used in the workplace, and the materials used in the workplace. the types of questions in this questionnaire are closed questions and multiple-choice questions. the interview employed semi-structured interviews that were asked to the lecturers, the graduates, and employers. the procedures of data collections were from questionnaires submitted by students and graduates then classifying the results. then the interview that was conducted to the english lecturer, graduates and employers to get deeper information based on the questionnaire. the qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyze the result after the researcher collected the data. the questionnaires were tabulated using quantitative by writing the percentage then it was displayed to words for showing the result and the last the researcher drawn the conclusion. the interview was analyzed qualitatively to interpret the result of the study objectives (creswell, 2002). the semi-structured interview was conducted by the researcher to support the data from questionnaires that were distributed to the students and graduates. findings and discussion the first sources are based on questionnaires of the students and semi-structured interviews with the lecturer. in the questionnaire, the first information was about the students' backgrounds. the students who participated in this study were 52 consists of 35 females and 17 males. they were 39 (75%) students of management and 13 (25%) students of accounting. the range of students' age was varied. they were from 19 to 30. the 24 students in the age of 19-21, at the age of 22 to 24, were 18 students, at 25 and above were 10 students. next was about their assessment self. it was conducted in the questionnaire questions, which showed the students' level of english proficiency. the level ranged from low (6), fair (38), good (7), tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 143 and very good (1). it indicates that the students were mostly in the average level of english. these students' backgrounds must be the lecturer's concern to know how to treat the students. the students' age was majority mature. it will influence the way they learn. as stated by (palea & bostine-bratu, 2015), age cannot be used as a benchmark between adolescents or adults in foreign language learning. learning achievement depends on how the lecturer creates situations and motivates students to achieve what they are aiming for. it also applies to the level of english proficiency, that learning strategies are the main thing that lecturers must consider in improving students' english skills (kunasaraphan, 2015). the second information, the questions were about the students' perception of the business english course. there were three questions asked to the students for supporting the students' perception. they are (1) english language skills are needed for their future work, (2) business english course is needed to be taught for students and (3) business english course supports their english task at work. for the first question, there were using scales with range "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," and "strongly disagree." table 1. english language skills are required for your future work choices answer percentage strongly agree 27 52% agree 24 46% disagree 1 2% strongly disagree table 1 above shows the response from the participants. more than half of participants strongly agree (52%) and agree (46%) that english language skills are required for their future work. it is only 2% or one student said disagrees. the second question also scales by the same range. the question about the participants’ perception of the business english course, whether it was needed for the learners. table 2. business english courses need to be given to students choices answer percentage strongly agree 30 58% agree 22 42% disagree strongly disagree the response was 58% strongly agree, and 42% agree that business english needs to be given to students. the next question was about the participants’ perception of the business english course to support their future work. table 3. the business english courses that are taught will support your future work choices answer percentage strongly agree 27 52% agree 24 46% disagree 1 2% strongly disagree 52% or 27 participants strongly agree with the perception that the business english course will support their future work. this result followed by 46% of participants agreeing with the perception and only 2% or one participant who disagrees with the perception. the finding of the perception above indicates that students had already realized the importance of english skills and english business for their future careers or work. they have tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 144 positive perceptions and motivations in learning english business. the english lecturer (el) supports this finding. based on the interview, the el said: “….mahasiswa perlu diajarkan kemampuan bahasa inggris bisnis yaitu bahasa inggris yang memang khusus untuk menyiapkan mahasiswa di pekerjaannya nanti…” the translation: “…students need to be taught business english, specifically for prapring the students in their future workplaces…” based on the results above, it is in line with what was said by (meenu & pandey, 2014) that speaking english is essential because it is in high demand in the workplace. therefore, business english courses need to be taught as a provision for students in their future workplace. the third information was the participants’ lack and wants in english learning. the results of the data were shown in the table below: table 4. students' difficulties in english mastery difficulties yes no has a limited vocabulary of english 49 (94%) 3 (6%) cannot speak english well 40 (77%) 12 (23%) difficult in pronouncing english words 40 (77%) 12 (23%) cannot understand conversation in english well 33 (63%) 19 (37%) difficulty in writing english sentences 28 (54%) 24 (46%) difficult in understanding english texts 24 (46%) 28 (54%) based on the result above, it was shown that the most difficulty in english skills was in the limitation of vocabulary. there were 94% of participants, while only 3% showed that they did not have a limited vocabulary. the next result was the difficulties in speaking well. there were 77% of the students found difficulty speaking english, and 23% of students stated that there were no difficulties in this skill. following it, 77% of participants found that pronouncing english words was difficult. in percentage, 63% of participants had difficulties cannot understand english conversation well and found it challenging to write english sentences (54%). the last rank was 46% of the participants had difficulties in understanding english text. table 5. students wants in learning english skill reading 25 48% writing 35 67% listening 30 62% speaking 45 86% table 5 showed the result of students' want to learn english skills. the speaking skill was the most wanted to be learned. there are 86% of participants needs this skill. in the second position needs by the participants was writing, 67%. then, there were 62% wanted to learn to listen, and the last was reading, in which only 48% of students want to learn the reading skill. according to the lecturer, the students need all four english skills because it was english skills are interrelated with each other, so that all need to be learned. it is in line with what the lecturer wants: the el said that “…buat saya kemampuan berbicara harus diajarkan di urutan pertama karena memang tujuan dari perkuliahan ini, jadi tiap pertemuan harus wajib ngomong ...” the translation: “…speaking is the first sequence to learn, followed by listening then reading and finally writing…” the above research results can be used as guidance for lecturers in teaching the business english courses. students' weaknesses and desires become a reference for lecturers in choosing english skills that will be emphasized in class. as stated by (huh, 2006), teaching business english tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 145 should meet the learners' lacks and wants. it must be balanced so that it can meet the needs of students. the fourth information was about the students' preference for learning methods. table 6 below showed the results. table 6. learning methods that suitable drilling 38 73% games 9 17% discussion 20 38% role play 10 19% lecturing 1 2% there were 73% of participants agree to use drilling as the learning method during the course. the second rank was discussing methods in learning english business (38%). then 19% agree that role-playing was a suitable learning method. following by gaming, 17% of participants wanted to use this method, and the last was lecturing, only 3%. based on the el, she said: “…untuk pembelajaran bahasa inggris bisnis akan lebih mudah diserap oleh mahasiswa jika metode yang digunakan adalah drilling atau bermain peran, kadang juga dengan model diskusi atau berkelompok…” translation: “…for learning business english it will be more easily absorbed by students if the method used is drilling or role playing, sometimes also with discussion or group models…” as stated by (montero et al., 2017), learning strategy is an important step that supports students in achieving their learning. the lecturers’ concern is to follow what learning strategies fit the class to achieve the students’ learning goals. in line with montero, (fatmawati et al., 2018) stated that teaching and learning activities would help students achieve the learning objectives. the fifth information was about the time allocation for the business english course. the result showed the high motivation of students in learning business english. more than half of students or 60% stated agree, and 29% of students strongly agree that the time allocation of the business english course should be added. so far, the business english course's time allocation was only two credits points x 45 minutes in the 2nd semester. it indicates that they had a more profound desire to learn business english. it is known that motivation is an essential factor in foreign language learning. therefore, the lecturer needs to identify the students' motivation in learning (tambunan & siregar, 2016). the last information was about the skills use and materials use in the workplace. the data sources taken from the questionnaire spread to graduates and interview to get the more in-depth information to graduates and employers. the graduates work in various companies such as manufacture, hospitality industry, distributor, education fields, and finance. it can provide information on the use of english in various fields, and the information comes from employers who understand the duties of their staff. the graduates consisted of 22 females and 28 males. they mostly work in semarang and surrounding areas. while the employers were two males where the company is located in semarang. the result of the questionnaires and interviews were presented below. the first question was about the importance of english skills. table 7. the importance of english skills total % strongly agree 28 56 agree 19 38 disagree 2 4 strongly disagree 1 2 tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 146 the data showed that graduates are mostly strongly agreed on the importance of english skills in the workplace (56%), followed by 38% that agree that graduates have to master english skills. however, there were 4% disagree, and 2% strongly disagree with having english skills. it indicates that the graduates strongly agree that english skills were vital because they often used these skills in their workplace, while the graduates who disagree and strongly disagree because they did not use english frequently so that they did not master english. as stated by the manager hrd of holi karya (hr) about the importance of english in the workplace. the hr said: “….bahasa inggris harus bisa, bahasa inggris menjadi dasarnya, apalagi jika bekerja di situasi yang lingkungannya berhubungan dengan pihak luar..” translation: “….english is a must. english is the basis, especially if you work in a situation where the environment is related to foreign parties…” based on the data above, english skills are essential. english language skills are needed in the world of work, especially now that many companies are associated with foreign parties or even companies owned by foreigners. according to (clement & murugavel, 2018), english is essential for requiring a job, and these skills can effectively support the employees' career. in line with (khan, 2017) that english is the dominant language globally because of globalization, it is essential to understand english skills and how we use it to communicate. the english skills often used in the workplace can be seen in the table below. table 8. the frequency of english skills used in the workplace total % speaking 30 60 listening 28 56 reading 36 72 writing 29 58 the questionnaire results showed that reading and speaking were mostly used at work through writing, and listening skills were needed in supporting their works. it was supported by an interview with graduates (g1) who work in fuel and basic chemical distribution. the g1 said: “….bahasa inggris banyak bu dipakai, seperti mendengarkan dan membaca istilah-istilah yang digunakan di pekerjaan, jika di level tertentu seperti manager harus komunikasi karena direkturdirekktur ada yang dari luar…” translation: “…english is often used, such as listening and reading the terms used at work, if at a certain level, such as manager, they have to use their speaking skill because there are directors who are a foreigner…” compared to the students' results, the students' and lecture's preference for learning english skills was quite different from the real situation. the graduates' responses were based on the use of their work places. though the learning process was based on student needs as stated by (hutchinson, t., & waters, 1987), it must be combined with the real situation of target situations (mahardika, 2014). the materials used in the workplace are listed below: table 9. the use of english in the workplace total % verbal instructions related to work 20 40 written instructions related to work 27 54 tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 147 business presentations 17 34 job interview 12 24 business letter 14 28 business email 18 36 proposals (projects, plans, etc.) 6 12 expression of opinions at business meetings 11 22 work-related literature 16 32 serving customers orally 23 46 documents report (meetings / sales / finance, etc.) 24 48 business conversation over the phone 17 34 job application letter and personal data 12 24 negotiation 14 28 the results showed the activities in english used in the workplaces of the graduates. these findings can be the reference of the lecturer to choose material for the students in each meeting. verbal instructions related to work, written instructions related to work, business presentations, job interview, business letter, business email, proposals (projects, plans, etc.), expression of opinions at business meetings, work-related literature, serving customers orally, documents report (meetings/sales/finance, etc.), business conversation over the phone, job application letter and personal data, negotiation. the data above was supported by the interview from the sales manager of horison hotel and graduates who work in a manufacturing company. the next interview came from the sales manager (sm). the sm gave information about the use of english at work. the sm said: “…. di awal mendaftar pekerjaan saya mendaftar di perusahaan ini menggunakan surat lamaran dan wawancara dalam bahasa inggris...kalau penggunaan bahasa inggris sendiri di dalam pekerjaan seringnya digunakan dalam menulis surat atau email seperti guarantee dan confirmation letter karena saya di bagian reservasi, tapi di bagian lain seperti sales itu biasanya melakukan meeting dengan pelanggan dari luar negeri…” translation: “….at the beginning of applying for this job, i was asked to use application letter and interview in english ... if the use of english at work is often used in writing letters or emails such as guarantees and confirmation letters because i am in the reservation section, but in the section others such as sales usually hold meetings with customers from abroad..” then the information from the graduate (g2) who worked in manufacturing company as purchasing staff. g2 said: “…pada bagian pekerjaan saya di purchasing, saya biasanya menggunakan bahasa inggris itu untuk membaca dan menulis email, surat bisnis dan laporan penjualan. pekerjaan lainnya yang kadang menggunakan bahasa inggris itu melayani complain dari customer, kadang lewat email atau lewat telepon jika memang dari customer menelepon…” translation: “…in my part of the job at purchasing, i usually use english to read and write emails, business letters and sales reports. other jobs that sometimes use english serve complaints from customers, sometimes via email or by phone if the customer calls …” the course objective can be the guidance of the lecturer to decide the topic that will be taught to students. as what (remache & ibrahim, 2018) concluded in his study, that this was an opportunity for the lecturer to design better materials that meet the students’ language need. tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 148 conclusion based on the result, the lecturer should concern all english skills, explicitly speaking and listening, that students mostly need to learn. however, the skill of writing and reading should be emphasized too in order to achieve the target needs. students' wants and lacks in mastering english language skills are the central guides for the lecturer in motivating students to achieve learning goals. also, the learning methods have to suit the students' needs to motivate them to acquire their language skills. the last is the time that should be allocate based on the needs of students in learning. the graduates' information about the language activity that often used can be the guidance for the lecturer to design a syllabus of business english course that fits with the students' and targets' needs. for further research, this need analysis is essential for the lecturer in designing the syllabus based on students' needs in another esp field. the combination sources from the learning and the target needs can be a good overview for improvement at esp class. acknowledgement the authors would like to express special thanks for directorate of research and community service (drpm) kemenristekdikti who has supported the funding of this research with the scheme of hibah penelitian dosen pemula in the 2020 budget hence the research can be completed well. references aflah, m. n., & rahmani, e. f. (2018). analisa kebutuhan (need analysis) mata kuliah bahasa inggris untuk mahasiswa kejuruan. jurnal pendidikan bahasa, 7(1), 77–89. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.31571/bahasa.v7i1.828 alfehaid, a. f. t. (2011). developing an esp curriculum for students of health sciences through needs analysis and course evaluation in saudi arabia. in unpublished doctoral thesis (issue january). university of leicester, leicester, united kingdom. basturkmen, h. (2010). developing courses in english for specific purposes. london: palgrave macmillan. chunling, g. (2015). need analysis and curriculum design in business english. studies in english language teaching, 3(2), 146. https://doi.org/10.22158/selt.v3n2p146 clement, a., & murugavel, t. (2018). english for the workplace: the importance of english language skills for effective performance. the english classroom, 20(1), 41–50. creswell, j. w. (2002). educational research planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). boston, us: pearson education,inc. diana, s., & mansur, m. (2018). need analysis on english teaching materials for ict students. eternal (english, teaching, learning, and research journal), 4(2), 209. https://doi.org/10.24252/eternal.v42.2018.a6 dzięcioł-pędich, a. (2014). business english in the eyes of economics and management students at the university of białystok. studies in logic, grammar and rhetoric, 38(51), 83–102. https://doi.org/10.2478/slgr-2014-0033 fatmawati, gani, s. a., & samad, i. a. (2018). techniques for esp students in teaching english. english education journal, 9(4), 513–526. hossain, j. (2013). esp needs analysis for engineering students: a learner centered approach. journal of presidency university, 2(2), 16–26. huh, s. (2006). a task-based needs analysis for a business english course. second language studies, 24(2), 1–64. hutchinson, t., & waters, a. (1987). english for specific purposes. cambridge: cambridge university press. khan, p. . b. (2017). review article: impact of english for better employment. research journal of english language and literature (rjelal), 5(1), 612–613. kunasaraphan, k. (2015). english learning strategy and proficiency level of the first year students. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 197(february), 1853–1858. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.246 li, j. (2014). needs analysis: an effective way in business english curriculum design. theory and practice in language studies, 4(9), 1869–1874. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.4.9.1869-1874 mahardika, a. . n. y. m. (2014). the need for needs analysis in curriculum development in esp course : a reflection on curriculum development in indonesia. lingua scientia, 6(2), 183–194. tiara nove ria, djamaludin malik/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 149 meenu, p., & pandey, p. (2014). better english for better employment opportunities. international journal of multidisciplinary approaches and studies, volume 1(august), 96–103. montero, c. r., sierra, b., & arizmendiarrieta. (2017). the effectiveness of a learning strategies program for university students. psicothema, 29(4), 527–532. https://doi.org/10.7334/psicothema2016.171 palea, l.-l., & bostine-bratu, s. (2015). age and its influence on second language acquisition. revista academiei fortelor terestre, 20(4), 428–432. remache, a., & ibrahim, m. k. (2018). business english syllabus design: putting students needs first. international journal of english language and literature studies, 7(4), 81–93. https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.23.2018.74.81.93 richards, j. c. (2001). curriculum development in language teaching (1st ed.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1080/0261976022000044872 setiawan, d. (2014). workplace english in indonesia. victoria university. tambunan, a. r. s., & siregar, t. m. (2016). students’ motivation in learning english language (a case study of electrical engineering department students). the journal of english language studies, 01(02), 63–70. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.30870/jels.v1i2.956 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42220be820b5 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421a0aae209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 113 elt forum 10 (2) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies in answering reading comprehension section elika aji zulmaini english department, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 16 december 2020 approved in 28 march 2021 published in 28 july 2021 ________________ keywords: toefl; reading comprehension; test-taking strategies; toefl preparation class ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the study was aimed at finding the difficulties faced by test takers in reading comprehension section of toefl and describing the teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies of reading comprehension section of toefl. this study used qualitative research design. to collect the data, the researchers used document analysis and observation as the instrument of the study. the subjects of this study were the students or test takers and a teacher or tutor in toefl preparation class. the study showed the range of difficulty faced by students or test takers are skill 6 (57.14%), skill 8 (50%), skill 7, 9, 10, and 11 (33.3%), skill 3 (31%), skill 4 and 12 (16.7%), skill 1 (8.3%), and skill 5 (0%). in teaching and learning strategies, the planning strategy was applied in skills 1, 3, 9, 6, 7, 4, 5, and 8. monitoring strategies was applied in in skills 1, 3, 9, 6, and 4. comprehending strategy was used in skills 1, 3, 6, 7, 4, 10, and 11. retrieval strategy was applied in skills 9, 5, and 8. socioaffective strategy was applied in skill 9. test-wiseness strategy was applied in skills 1, 3, and 9. based on findings, the researchers found that there is still high percentage of difficult skills faced by students or test takers and more than one strategies were applied in almost every skill of the reading comprehension section of toefl.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: elikaaaji@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 114 introduction english is an important language in the world as it is used as an international language. moreover, nowadays, english becomes a necessary need of some individual skills for every person in every country. english as a foreign language needs to be mastered, so that it can be used to get a job, to get promotion at work, to continue to the next level of education, to enter universities where english is spoken as the first language, to get scholarship, and to graduate from university. to measure one’s english proficiency, toefl test is used with determined minimum scores. unfortunately, because english is not the first language in indonesia, some indonesian people are having difficulties in taking this test, which one of the sections is the reading comprehension section. farha & rohani (2019) have stated that “reading is the process of connecting written symbols with reader’s knowledge to comprehend the content of the text.”as abboud & hussein (2011) found that “the difficulty in time allotted for each section with percentages shows that listening comprehension section has 70% difficulty percentage, structure and written expression section has 68% difficulty percentage, and reading comprehension section has 77% difficulty precentage.” (pp. 110-138) from the difficulties in taking this reading comprehension section, the researchers is interested in investigating the difficulties and the strategies in answering the reading comprehension section. the researchers has formed two statements of the problem that are used to guide this research. they are (1) what are the difficulties faced by test takers in answering the reading comprehension? (2) how is the teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies in answering the reading comprehension section? by those two statements of the problems, this research also has purposes to the readers to pay more attention to the difficulties in the reading comprehension section and the strategies to overcome the difficulties, so that this research will help them when they are taking the reading comprehension section. furthermore, this can help tutors or teachers of toefl preparation rich their knowledge in teaching in toefl preparation class. in conducting this research, the researchers provided several previous studies related to the topic. a number of research have been performed related to the toefl, difficulties, and test-taking streategies in answering reading comprehension section of toefl. these studies are conducted by (lestari & syaifullah, 2017; antoni, 2014; oktarina, 2018; samad et al., 2017; sudrajat & astuti, 2018; suyatman & rachman, 2017). lestari & syaifullah (2017) have showed in their research that predicting, skimming and scanning, and re-reading are the strategies employed by test takers. moreover, in samad et al. (2017), based on students questionnaire, skimming, background of the knowledge, translations and re-reading are the most used strategies in answering the reading comprehension section. suyatman & rachman (2017) have stated in their research about strategies in answering the vocabulary test on the reading section of toefl. the result showed that students used all the staretgies of answering the vocabulary test of the reading comprehension, the most strategies used by students was looking for contextual clues to the meaning of unknown words, and the least strategy used by students to answer vocabulary test was developing a new vocabulary study system (suyatman & rachman, 2017). related to the topic about the difficulties about the toefl test, antoni (2014) has conducted this topic as his research. the result showed that most of the students have difficulty in understanding the spoken language, determining the sucject and the verb of sentences, and understanding the meaning of the written passage. then, oktarina (2018) has also conducted the same topic, but she focused on the reading comprehension section. her research showed that finding main idea, implied detail question, unstated detail question and unstated detail question belong to four difficult skills. related to the topic of toefl preparation class, sudrajat & astuti (2018) conducted this topic. the result showed that after joining the toefl preparation class, their motivation, attitude, and their confidence have improved. some of the previous studies have been described on the previous paragraph. the researchers have not found the study using all of the language learning strategies along with test-wiseness strategies in which those strategies are requiring both cognitive and non cognitive skills. moreover, from finding out the difficult percentage ranges from hardest to least difficult, the reader can be more concern with skills being tested in the toefl test. there are some similarities and differences between the previous studies and the present study. the similarities are the studies are about investigating the difficult skills in the reading comprehension section faced by the test takers and some of the strategies found are scanning and skimming. then, the differences are the subjects of the research are in the toefl preparation class elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 115 in an english course which the main program in this course is toefl preparation class. the strategies taught to students can be such a new knowledge to other tutors or people who are going to take a toefl test. the use of theory is from (o’malley & chamot, 1990) strategies called language learning strategies in which the researchers employed all of the three classifications, besides using the language learning strategies, the researchers used test-wiseness strategies presented by (cohen & upton, 2006) and the researchers explored the test-taking strategies taught by the teacher or tutor of toefl preparation class in answering the reading comprehension section. in using the language learning strategies, the classifications that are used to analyse the strategies are metacognitive, cognitive, and socioaffective. those classification have related to the material learning while the test-wiseness strategies have not related to material learning. metacognitive strategies, regarding to usman et al. (2017) are categorized as self-monitoring and selfregulating activities of the students who can then focuss on both the process and the product of the reading. in cognitive strategies, regarding to sukmawati (2016), enable test takers to use their linguistic and world knowledge to solve given tasks. in vijaya (2012), socio-affective strategies as parts of learning strategies are applied to make a better learning. as english teachers it is very important to know what socioaffective strategy possibly and significantly borne by students. to facilitate the concepts of conducting this study, the researchers made a framework. this study concerns the difficult skills faced by test takers and the test-taking strategies in answering reading comprehension section. the researchers took a toefl preparation class as the subjects. the researchers focused on the reading comprehension section. the researchers categorized the skills of the reading comprehension section by adapting from phillips (2001) and calculated the percentage to find the difficulty percentage and ranged them. in analysing the test-taking strategies, the analysis is based on language learning stratetegies and test-wiseness strategies. methods this research uses the qualitative descriptive approach as the researchers analysed the data descriptively and a form of explanation of words is the way the researchers presented the result based on the tables. lune, h. & berg (2017) have stated that qualitative research is characterized as meanings, concepts, definitions, metaphore, symbols, and a description of things. in conducting this study, the subjects of this study are a teacher and three students of toefl preparation class. the teacher’s name in abbreviation is afd and the three students’ name in abbreviation are ami, aap, asra. the objects of this study are three answer sheets of those three students and a teacher and three students’ utterances when being in teaching and learning process. i took a toefl preparation class and the observation was held at 12:40 – 02:00 pm on july 31st, 2020. in doing the research, the researchers used document analysis and observation. the researchers analysed the three students’ pre-test answer sheets focusing on the reading comprehension section for the first research question. to the second research question, the researchers did a video recording as the source of the data by transcribing into the written text. in collecting the data, this study has several procedures. for the document analysis, the researchers collected three pre-test answer sheets. then, the researchers determined the skills of each item question of the pre-test by using phillips (2001) theory. from determining the skills of each item question, the researchers then categorized the same skills of each question into one that there are 13 skills. after that, the researchers calculated the wrong answer and calculated into percentage. for the observation, the researchers did a video recording, then it was transcribed into written text both of the teacher’s utterances and the three students’ utterances. after transcribing into written text, the researchers analysed and identified the utterances by using language learning strategies proposed by o’malley & chamot (1990) and test-wiseness strategies by cohen & upton (2006) the teachinglearning process was using indonesian language, but, the researcher translated into english with an aim that the readers will understand. data analysis the several steps were required to find the answer of the first and the second research questions. for the first research question, the researchers determined the skills of each item question of the pre-test by using phillips' (2001) theory. from determining the skills of each item question, the researchers then categorized the same skills of each question into one that there are 13 skills. after that, the researchers calculated the wrong answer and calculated into percentage. then, the researchers ranged elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 116 the difficult skills from the highest to lowest percentage. then, for the wrong answers of each skill, the percentage is calculated. in gaining the result of the second research question, the researchers did an observation by recording the video. then, to analyze the data to find the findings, the researchers took several steps. the first is transcribing the teaching and learning process by transcribing the utterances both from the teacher and the students. then, the researcher read the transcription. the third step is the researchers bolding the clause or sentences which are assumed to contain the language learning strategies and test-wiseness strategies. in order to simplify the analysis, the researchers provide coding as follows: skill 1 answer main idea questions correctly skill 2 recognize the organization of ideas skill 3 answer stated detail questions correctly skill 4 find “unstated” details skill 5 find pronoun referents skill 6 answer implied detail questions correctly skill 7 answer transition questions correctly skill 8 find definitions from structural clues skill 9 determine meanings from word parts skill 10 use context to determine meanings of difficult words skill 11 use context to determine meanings of simple words skill 12 determine where specific information is found skill 13 determine the tobe, purpose, or course findings and discussion the difficulties faced by test takers in answering the reading comprehension section to categorize the skills of 50 questions, the researcher used phillips' (2001) theory. the result can be seen through the following. table 1 the skills of the reading comprehension section of english proficiency test number of skill type of skills number of test item question 1 answer main idea questions correctly 1, 11, 13, 30 2 recognize the organization of ideas 3 answer stated detail questions correctly 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 21, 25, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 47 4 find “unstated” details 24, 42 5 find pronoun referents 3 6 answer implied detail questions correctly 2, 4, 19, 23, 26, 32, 44 7 answer transition questions correctly 20, 50 8 find definitions from structural clues 5, 7, 31, 48 9 determine meanings from words parts 12, 22, 45, 46 10 use context to determine meanings of difficult words 9, 14, 27, 35, 38 11 use context to determine meanings of simple words 16, 18, 28, 31, 43 12 determine where specific information is found 29, 49 13 determine the tone, purpose, or course total number of questions 50 the next step is calculating the wrong answers to find the difficult skills. the calculation is presented in the following table. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 117 table 2 the result of analyzing the correct and wrong answers of each skill of reading comprehension section number of skill type of skills total correct answers total wrong answers total wrong and correct answers % 1 answer main idea questions correctly 11 1 12 8.3% 3 answer stated detail questions correctly 29 13 42 31% 4 find “unstated” details 5 1 6 16.7% 5 find pronoun referents 3 0 3 0% 6 answer implied detail questions correctly 9 12 21 57.14% 7 answer transition questions correctly 4 2 6 33.3% 8 find definitions from structural clues 6 6 12 50% 9 determine meanings from words parts 8 4 12 33.3% 10 use context to determine meanings of difficult words 10 5 15 33.3% 11 use context to determine meanings of simple words 10 5 15 33.3% 12 determine where specific information is found 5 1 6 16.7% in order to range the difficulty from the highest percentage to the lowest percentage, the result is below. table 3 difficulties faced by test takers in answering reading comprehension section of toefl no skill of reading comprehension section percentage 1 answer implied detail questions correctly (skill 6) 57.14% 2 find definitions from structural clues (skill 8) 50% 3 answer transition questions correctly (skill 7) 33.3% 4 determine meaning from word parts (skill 9) 33.3% 5 use context to determine meanings of difficult words (skill 10) 33.3% 6 use context to determine meanings of simple words (skill 11) 33.3% 7 answer stated detail questions correctly (skill 3) 31% 8 find “unstated” details (skill 4) 16.7% 9 determine where specific information is found (skill 12) 16.7% 10 answer main idea questions correctly (skill 1) 8.3% 11 find pronoun referents (skill 5) 0% we can see the table 4.1 above, that there are three skills that were not tested in the proficiency test, they are skills 2, 12, and 13. the most difficult skill of the reading comprehension section of the toefl test is skill 6 with 57.14%. this skill requires the test takers to draw a conclucsion from the specific details in the passage and to let the test takers know that the answer to the question is not directly stated. from the table above, we can also see that skill 8 is the second of the most difficult skill with 50%. furthermore, there are four skills having the same difficulty percentage as the next, they are skills 7, 9, and 11. the fourth difficult skill is skill 3, with 31%. the next same percentage of difficult skills are skills 4 and 12, with 16.7%. skill 1 becomes the sixth difficult skill of reading comprehension section, as 8.3%. the last difficult skill is skill 11, as 0%. we can conclude that the most difficult skill in reading comprehension section of toefl preparation class is skill 6 and the least difficult is skill 5. teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies in answering the reading comprehension section the result for the answer of the second research is presented in table 4. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 118 t a b le 4 t e st-t a k in g s tra te g ie s in a n sw e rin g r e a d in g c o m p re h e n sio n se c tio n o f t o e f l n o t y p e o f s k ill o f r e a d in g c o m p re h e n sio n s tra te g ie s e x a m p le o f s tra te g ie s l a n g u a g e l e a rn in g s tra te g y (o ’m a lle y & c h a m o t, 1 9 9 0 ) t e st-w ise n e ss s tra te g y (c o h e n & u p to n , 2 0 0 6 ) 1 a n sw e r m a in id e a q u e stio n s c o rre c tly (sk ill 1 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) m o n ito rin g s tra te g y (m ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) t e st-w ise n e ss s tra te g y p la n n in g s tra te g y : u n d e rsta n d in g w h a t th e q u e stio n is a b o u t a n d e x p lic it stra te g y in stru c tio n m o n ito rin g s tra te g y : g iv in g q u e stio n s to th e stu d e n ts in o rd e r to m a k e su re th a t th e stu d e n ts u n d e rsta n d w h a t th e m a te ria l le a rn in g is a b o u t; a n d a sk in g th e te a c h e rs q u e stio n s a b o u t th e le a rn in g m a te ria l in o rd e r to u n d e rsta n d a n d k e e p fo llo w in g th e le a rn in g m a te ria l. e v a lu a tin g s tra te g y : r e fle c tin g th e stra te g y b e in g a p p lie d to a n sw e r th e q u e stio n s. c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y : id e n tify th e m a in id e a to u n d e rsta n d th e m e a n in g ; m a k e a c o n c lu sio n b y u n d e rsta n d in g th e m e a n in g o f th e c la u se o r se n te n c e s; s k im m in g a n d sc a n n in g th e c la u se o r se n te n c e s; t ra n sla tin g ; a n d u n d e rsta n d in g th e c la u se o r se n te n c e s to p re d ic t th e c o h e siv e a n d c o h e re n c e m e m o ry s tra te g ie s: r e m e m b e rin g id e a s to m a k e c o n c lu sio n ; e lim in a tin g th e a n sw e rs; r e trie v a l s tra te g ie s: o b ta in in g a n d e x tra c tin g th e in fo rm a tio n s o c io a ffe c tiv e s tra te g ie s: t h e in te ra c tio n b e tw e e n th e te a c h e r a n d th e stu d e n ts, r e in fo rc e m e n t, m o tiv a tio n , l o w e rin g th e a n x ie ty , a n d r e w a rd in g t e st-w ise n e ss s tra te g ie s: u n d e rlin in g th e k e y w o rd s, n o te -ta k in g , a llo c a tin g th e tim e , c h e c k in g th e a n sw e rs in la st m in u te s, s ta rtin g w ith e a sy q u e stio n s 2 a n sw e r s ta te d d e ta ile d q u e stio n s c o rre c tly (sk ill 3 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) m o n ito rin g s tra te g y (m ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) t e st-w ise n e ss s tra te g y 3 d e te rm in e m e a n in g fro m w o rd s p a rts (sk ill 9 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) m o n ito rin g s tra te g y (m ) r e trie v a l s tra te g y (c ) s o c io a ffe c tiv e s tra te g y (s ) t e st-w ise n e ss s tra te g y 4 a n sw e r im p lie d d e ta il q u e stio n s c o rre c tly (sk ill 6 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) m o n ito rin g s tra te g y (m ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) 5 a n sw e r t ra n sitio n q u e stio n s c o rre c tly (sk ill 7 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) 6 f in d “ u n sta te d ” d e ta ils q u e stio n s c o rre c tly (sk ill 4 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) m o n ito rin g s tra te g y (m ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) 7 f in d p ro n o u n r e fe re n ts (sk ill 5 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) r e trie v a l s tra te g y (c ) 8 f in d d e fin itio n s fro m s tru c tu ra l c lu e s (sk ill 8 ) p la n n in g s tra te g y (m ) r e trie v a l s tra te g y (c ) 9 u sin g c o n te x t c lu e s to d e te rm in e m e a n in g s (sk ill 1 0 a n d 1 1 ) c o m p re h e n d in g s tra te g y (c ) elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 119 we can see the result of the strategies being applied in answering the reading comprehension section questions in the teaching and learning process being observed above. in planning strategy, the researchers found planning strategy in form of defining the general purpose of the questions and what to learn when we face the certain kind of questions. in monitoring strategy, this strategy appears in order to monitor or check the understanding of the students themselves. furthermore, in comprehending strategy, this strategy is employed in purpose to answer skills 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, and 11. in memory strategy, this strategy is not found. in retrieval strategy, this strategy is used to answer skills 5, 8, and 9. sociaoffective was found when answering skill 9. then, the test-wiseness strategies were found in skills 1, 3, and 9. discussion in discussion section, the researcher would furthermore explain the findings. to gain the first research question, the researchers calculated the percentage of wrong answers to find the difficulty. in the findings, skill 6 is the most difficult skills with 12 wrongs answers of 21 total answers with the result of 57.14% which means that more than half of the answers are wrong. the next difficult skill is skill 8 proven by calculating the 6 out of 12 answers were wrong that resulted in 50%. the third difficult skill is skills 7, 9, 10, and 11, with 33.3%. skill 3 be the next difficult skill with 31% proven by 13 out of 42 answers were wrong. then, there are skills 4 and 12 were found to have the same percentage of difficulty, 16.7%. skill 1 is the tenth difficult skill with 8.3% proven by 1 out of 12 students chose the wrong answer. the easiest skill is skill 5 proven by 0 out of 3 answer is wrong. answer main idea questions correctly (skill 1) skill 1 is the first skill being learned in this teaching-learning process. in skill 1, based on language learning strategies and test-wiseness strategies theories, the researcher found planning, monitoring, comprehending, and test-wiseness strategies. the example of planning strategy is below. usually, the first question appear is the main idea, which is number 1. so, we are assigned to find the main idea of the paragraph or the topic. the utterance above indicated that the teacher attempted to inform the students what the questions is about so that the students have the idea what and how to answer the question. the example of monitoring strategy is presented below. what is differs? utterance above is expressed by students to the teacher in order to make sure that he tried to understand the learning material by asking the definition of a word. the example of comprehending strategy is presented below. ah, if you find the topic or main idea question, the answers can usually be found in the first sentence of the paragraph. because the example only has one paragraph, it means that we only have to read the first sentence, then, look for the synonym whether it is a, b, c, or d. the utterance above is expressed by a teacher as a way of teaching a strategy in answering the main idea questions. by reading the first sentence and finding the synonym to the options, the teacher show that the students are asked to comprehend the meaning of the sentences. in test-wiseness strategy found by the researchers, this strategy is used to find strategy by not involving the cognitive strategies, but the situations. the example of test-wiseness strategy is presented below. we read the questions first. answer stated detail questions correctly (skill 3) in skill 3, the researchers found planning, monitoring, comprehending, and test-wiseness strategies. in planning strategy, the teacher delivered the utterance in purpose to teach the students about what answer stated detail questions is about and the strategy. the example is presented below. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 120 answer stated detail questions correctly means that you have to answer a question written in the reading passage. written in the reading passage means that you will exactly find the answer in the passage. meanwhile, you will find implied question, which means that you have to look the answer by drawing the conclusion based on yourself utterance above is expressed by students to the teacher in order to make sure that he tried to understand the learning material by asking the definition of a word. the example of comprehending strategy is presented below. what is indicate? furthermore, in cognitive strategy, comprehend strategy is found. in order to answer the stated question, the students have to find the keywords by skimming. then, the students have to understand the meaning of the sentence or the clause as a guide to find the right options. well, in the question, you have to look for the keywords, and in that question, there is jamestown as the keywords. then, you have to look for the word of jamestown in the paragraph, which is in the first sentence. the last, you have to read the sentence of every multiple choice options and choose the sentence contain of the keywords. besides, test-wiseness strategy is also found in this strategy without involving the cognitive strategy. this is taught to use the time effectively. the example is below. you may try for the number 2, read the question first. determine meanings from word parts (skill 9) the researchers found planning, monitoring, retrieval, socioaffective, and test-wiseness strategies in skill 9. in planning strategies, the researchers found that the teacher taught about what the skill is about and how to answer it. the example is presented below. the meaning of this skill is to find the meaning by finding the word-forming structure. there, you are assigned to read the english passages as much as you can so that you will enrich your vocabulary and the structure of english sentences. in order to explain the monitoring strategy, the example is presented below: so, what is the synonym of subjugation? in utterance above, the researchers found one utterance expressed by a teacher in form of questioning. the question is delivered by the teacher in order to make sure that the students keep the track, in other words, understand the learning material. then, retrieval strategy is defined in answering the meaning from word parts. in planning strategy, the teacher taught the students about what the question is about and how to answer the question. in this skill, the students have to learn about prefix of english and remember the meaning. so, when the students find this skill, they only have to remember the prefix and the meaning without understanding the sentences. the example is below. if you print a photo, you will find a vivid menu in the printer. this vivid wod means looks alive. for the first time, a socioaffective is found in this teaching-learning process. the teacher deliver a speech meaning that he praised the students for being able to answer the questions correctly. the example is following. control, yes. a very smart person. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 121 besides socioaffective strategies, the researchers also found the test-wiseness strategy. this is about doing an alternative way to help students find the answer without cognitive skill. the example is below. well, we go to the question first. read the question first. find the keywords. it will be effective if you underline the keywords that you may erase once you finish answer the question. answer implied detail questionss correctly (skill 6) to find the answer of implied questions, some strategies were found. those are planning, monitoring, and comprehending strategies. in planning strategy, the teacher’ utterance indicated what the question is about and how to answee it. the example is presented below. we go the next skill. this skill is implied detail questions correctly. implied means conclusion. so, we are assigned to conclude the answer as the answer is implied. the next strategy found is monitoring strategy. the teacher tried to warn the students about implied questions skill. the example is presented below: i warn you to be more careful because this skill is a little bit hard as the answer is not stated in the passage. in the cognitive strategy, comprehending strategy was determined. in answering this skill, the students have to comprehend the sentences to be finally able to make a conclusion that the answer cannot be found in the reading passage. the example is presented below: there, you will find the keywords in the third row. the language, which means the hawaiian words, the synonym, ends in a vowel, and two consonants never appear together. so, in the hawai language, there will be no two consonants in row which means vowel consonant vowel consonant or two vowels in row. so, the conclusion is in the c option, because of k as the consonant and l as the consonant also as they are in row. answer transition questions correctly (skill 7) some strategies being applied to answer skill 7are found. planning and comprehending strategies were required in answering the transition question. in planning strategy, the teacher taught the students about what transition questions is about and how to answer it. the example is in the following. this skill will test you on how far you understand the good writing skill which requires a good transition, or the transition from one paragraph to another paragraph. the paragprah, before or after the paragraph you read, what to discuss. as this, we will learn about cohesion and coherence. when are writing a paragraph, writing a report or research, the paragraph must be cohesive and coherence. when we are writing about a, do not write about z afterwards. we have to write b instead. so that the paragraph will be correlated. so, in the question, as the example, we find paragraph preceding. preceding means before the paragraph being read. in order to answer this type of question, comprehending strategy is required. the students have to comprehend the idea by skimming to find the answer. the example is presented below. how to answer the question is based on the preceding or the following keywords in the queestion. if the question is preceding, we have to read the first sentence. if the question is following, we have to read the last sentence. then, you read the sentence, the last, you match the answers options with the sentence. find “unstated” details questions correctly (skill 4) planning and monitoring were required to answer this question. in planning strategy, the teacher taugh about what unstated details question is about and how to answer it. the example is presented below. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 122 well, this kind of question, has not true, not mentioned, not discussed, and except are the characterictic features in the questions if you find some of those characteristic features, you have to chose the wrong answer. three true answers are stated in the paragraph, the one is not, and you have to choose t he not stated answer. we straightforwardly go to the example. on the other hand, to answer unstated questions, comprehending strategy is embroiled. the students have to scan the reading passage and eliminate the answers that they need to read carefully. the example is in the following. please underline the gadget word, as this is the keyword. then, find the keyword in the passage, do a scanning. then, find the wrong answer. or you can do another way by checking every answer option. find pronoun referents (skill 5) to find the answer of pronoun referents, some strategies are applied. those are planning and retrieval strategies. in planning strategy, the teacher taught the students about what the skill of this question is about and how to answer it. the example is below: this skill is correlated eith english grammar. find pronoun reference means you have to find a pronoun. this skill is considered as an easy one. the answer has been stated in the passage, andlocated right before the word being questioned. the characteristic features of this question is the pronoun blablabla in line x refers to which of the following? in pronoun referents, in order to answer this question, the test takers need to learn english grammar, especially about the pronoun. without comprehending the sentence, the students are expected to be able to answer this question. the students only need to refer to the previous noun. find definitionsfrom structural clues (skill 8) in order to answer by analyzing the structural clues, some strategies are applied. those are planning and retrieval strategies. in planning strategy, the teacher taught the students about what the question is about, the marker of the question so the students will be able to recognize the type of the question. the example is below: for structural clues question, the characteristics is the same as the word parts and there are some additional characteristics. those are is closest in meaning to, or could be replaced by... in order to find the answer of skill 8, the students are allowed to eliminate their l1 language and learn the english sentence structures. the students are also allowed to memorize the lexical bundles and mark them as a hint to find the answer. the example is presented below. well, for structural clues question, if you cannot find the answer by classifying the word parts, you can find by this strategy. the characteristics of structural clues are the existence of punctuation, such as comma, brackets, or hypens. then, there will be restatement, such as or, that is, in other words. it can be shown by example sentences, marked by word such as, for example, or e.g.. e.g means example. how to answer is find the keywords, find in the paragraph and the sentences being correlated with th e keywords. for the example of question, we are going to discuss next meeting. using context clues to determine meanings (skill 10 and 11) the skills are basically constructed by two skills. those are skill 10 and 11. to answer these skills, comprehendin gstrategy is applied. in comprehending strategy, the students are required to comprehend the sentences to find the answers. the example is in below. and this is the last, using context clues to determine meanings. to identify the question is the same as the structural clues, find the keywords, then read the sentences containing the keywords, look the answer option one by one and match with the sentence containing the words. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 123 regarding to the reasons for choosing the topic, the researchers wanted to know about effective reading strategies being applied in answering the reading comprehension section. to gain the answer to it, the researchers did an interview to the tutor or the teacher of this toefl preparation class as this is used as the triangulation. the interview was held on thursday, 21st january, 2021. from the interview transcripts, the interviewee has been teaching for teen years in toefl preparation class. by far, the tutor or teacher, based on the interview, faced some challenges in teaching, one of the examples is the low knowledge about english of students or test takers. moreover, in teaching and learning process of test-taking strategies of reading comprehension, the tutor or teacher used some facilities to support the effective teaching and learning process. some of them are the use of air conditioner, monitor, the chair and the table. then, in teaching and learning of the material itself, the tutor or teacher attempted to recognize the difficulty faced by test takers or students and the tutor or teacher give a help to them in overcoming the difficulty. to the main answer of the effective reading strategies in answering the reading comprehension section of toefl, the answer the researchers gained is followed. i used bahasa indonesia to teach in this class, of course. the first thing i have to do is to teach how to identify the questions, as you have observed, every identified question is categorized as skill, has its strategies to answer. to make sure whether the students understand the material and the strategies, i give them some minutes to do the exercise as the example i gave them. from the extract above, the main answer of the effective reading strategies is gained. the test takers or students are instructed to apply strategies based on the skill or the kind of questions. besides the material strategies, the non-material strategies were also taught. some of the examples are the habit of reading the question first. then, instruction to the test takers ot students to always exercise and enrich the vocabulary everytime they find a new vocabulary. of all the strategies, skimming and scanning are the most used strategies in reading the passage. it is because most of the skill need skimming and scanning in the process of applying the strategies. conclusion based on findings, for the first research question, the researchers found that the difficult skills ranged from the hardest to the least difficult were: skill 6, 57.14%, skill 8, 50%, skill 7, 33.3%, skill 9, 33.3%, skill 10, 33.3%, skill 11, 33.3%, answer stated detailed questions correctly skill 3, 31%, find skill 4, 16.7%, skill 12, 16.7%, skill 1, 8.3%, skill 5, 0%. for the second research questions, the researchers found the test-taking strategies using o’malley & chamot's (1990) and cohen & upton's (2006) theories. in skill 1, planning, monitoring, comprehending, and test-wiseness strategies were found in this research. for the skill 2, applied planning, monitoring, comprehending, and test-wiseneses strategies. skill 9, has five strategies, those are planning, monitoring, retrieval, socioaffective, and test-wiseness strategies. skill 6 had three strategies, those were planning, monitoring, and comprehending strategies. skill 7 applied two strategies, planning and comprehending strategies. in skill 4, planning, monitoring, and comprehending strategies were found. in skill 5, planning and retrieval strategies were found in this observation. planning and retrieval strategies were also found in skill 8. the last skill being taught and learned in this observation were skill 10 and 11, with comprehending strategy found in this teaching-learning process of test-taking strategies. toefl test has been important requirement for the future and learning and applying the strategies have been something important also to help successfully pas the toefl test, including reading comprehension section. whoever wants to take the toefl test should join the toefl preparation class beside doing exercise. this study hopes that it can help teachers or tutors of toefl class to enrich their knowledge of teaching in toefl preparation class. acknowledgement the greatest praises and gratitude are addressed to allah swt, for the blessing and mercy foe every single thing happened to the researchers. shalawat and salam is always dedicated to pour beloved prophet muhammad saw. i would like to dedicate my sincerest gratitude to my dearest father ngadiono, and my super mother ngatini, and my brother who always supports me, indra aji ardianto. elika aji zulmaini/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 124 i am sure that this research would never have been completed without the assistance and supports of other. therefore, i would like to express my gratitude especially for my advisor, galuh kirana dwi areni, s.s., m.pd, for the guidance. also, my deepest appreciation and thankfulness goes to the ceo of edubright, mr. andhika farid abdillah for permitting me to observe the toefl preparation class. references abboud, z. a. r., & hussein, n. j. 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(2017). qualitative research methods for the social sciences (9th edition). in pearson education limited. o’malley, j. m., & chamot, a. u. (1990). learning strategies in second language acquisition downloaded (m. h. long & jack c. richards (eds.)). press syndicate of the university of cambridge. oktarina, r. (2018). difficult skills in reading section of toefl faced by sixth semester english students. https://repository.unja.ac.id/id/eprint/4713 phillips, d. (2001). longman complete course for the toefl test: preparation for the computer and paper tests. longman. samad, i. a., jannah, m., & fitriani, s. s. (2017). efl students’ strategies dealing with common difficulties in toefl reading comprehension section. international journal of language education, 1(1), 29–36. https://doi.org/10.26858/ijole.v1i1.2869 sudrajat, w. n. a., & astuti, e. r. (2018). students’ perceptions of the use of toefl preparation online course on the test performance: the case of toefl structure and written expression test. humaniora, 9(3), 275. https://doi.org/10.21512/humaniora.v9i3.4807 sukmawati. (2016). the correlation between cognitive test-taking strategies and achievement in toefl reading comprehension of the students of english department at state university of makassar. exposure jurnal, 5(1), 53–64. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.26618/exposure.v5i1.813 suyatman, s., & rachman, d. (2017). vocabulary test strategies used by the students to answer vocabulary test the reading comprehension of toefl. script journal: journal of linguistic and english teaching, 2(2), 213. https://doi.org/10.24903/sj.v2i2.102 usman, b., aziz, z. a., & absida, n. r. (2017). improving reading comprehension using metacognitive strategies. english education journal (eej), 8(4), 425–438. vijaya, r. j. (2012). student’s socioaffective strategy in reading. journal of english and education, 6(1), 76–100. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 87 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt implementing a mobile application quizlet to help senior high school students learn vocabulary alesandro woisela prayogi1, mega wulandari2 1,2sanata dharma university, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 23 november 2020 approved in 21 march 2021 published in 31 march 2021 ________________ keywords: quizlet; mobileassisted language learning; perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use; vocabulary __________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study analyzed how quizlet, a digital vocabulary learning platform, was implemented in helping students learn vocabulary and how students perceive the application. there were 13 high school students of a private school in yogyakarta who took part in this study. the vocabulary studied were taken from the students' course book which was on the level b2 of cefr. this research employed car (classroom action research) as its methodology. the findings of this research suggested that the students were engaged when using quizlet during the class activity. the mean score of perceived usefulness is very high (m= 4.03, sd= 0.86) and perceived ease of use is also very high (m=4.38, sd= 0.75). this indicated that students had favorable views towards the application. the data acquired from the interview also indicated that quizlet was a practical and easy-to-use learning platform. the application was a one-stop vocabulary learning platform. moreover, it utilized cutting-edge technology in learning and the application was practical and easy to use. based on the results mentioned, the researchers strongly recommend that teachers start using quizlet to help their students learn vocabulary. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: mega@usd.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 88 introduction technology has been undergoing rapid advancement these past years. the internet connection can now be accessed from myriads devices. these days, students are able to get an internet connection through their mobile devices anytime and anywhere and also able to access anything they desire. students could easily download any application they want, including learning applications, into their devices. students’ addiction toward mobile devices might be a “blessing in disguise” for themselves and for teachers. while it is dangerous for students to be too absorbed in their own world with their mobile devices, teachers may as well take the advantage of them by implementing different tools or technique in teaching using mobile devices in classroom activities. this research will use quizlet as the learning medium for the students in learning english. quizlet is a popular online learning tool which can be accessed through both computer and mobile device. it can be used to study any subject, but its main feature is language learning (kalecky, 2016). in quizlet, students are able to do self-study to acquire their language mastery. moreover, teachers can also make classes, invite their students, create study sets, and track their progress. most importantly, it can be accessed freely by everyone. in terms of learning foreign language, vocabulary is one of the most significant aspects in mastering a language that is learnt in almost all levels of education, from elementary schools, or even kindergarten, to college. moeller et al. (2009) states that vocabulary is the main key to teaching and learning a second language in order to understand all forms of oral and written communication. this shows that learning vocabulary is essential for students in order to be able to reach the goals of learning a language. however, the way of teaching and learning vocabulary has not been improved much. students are still learning vocabulary through books and dictionaries while technology has provided them with a more authentic, eco-friendly, and interactive method. moreover, barr (2016) states most vocabulary learning in todays’ practices only used as an incidental learning and receives a little attention, which means that vocabulary is learnt by doing other activity such as reading. sometimes vocabulary does not even receive any attention during the learning activity. paribakht & wesche (1997) states that students only gain shallow knowledge toward the words they encounter during a reading activity. thus, a change is required in the way teachers teach and students learn vocabulary. based on the displayed problems, the researchers made some efforts by implementing quizlet in classroom activities and finding out students’ perception towards the application and the practice. literature review this literature review discusses related theories being used in this study and some previous studies with similar focus. the theory of vocabulary is discussed first. the next discussion includes mall (mobile assisted language learning), tam (technology acceptance model), and quizlet. vocabulary vocabulary is very critical in one’s language mastery for without a sufficient amount of vocabulary mastery, one cannot meet the goal of learning a language. wilkins (as cited in thornbury, 2002) states that “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. taylor (1990), explains that vocabulary has a special importance in language learning since it is the part which will not be slowed down by age. hence, it will be beneficial for a language learner to give more attention to vocabulary mastery when learning a language. nation (1990) explains four approaches of vocabulary learning from indirect to direct approaches. direct vocabulary learning pays more attention to the vocabulary itself. some examples of direct vocabulary learning is word guessing, learning from word lists, and vocabulary games. indirect vocabulary learning focuses on other features. for example, when a learner is focused on his/ her reading skill, then the process of learning new vocabularies will automatically happen as he/ she reads a passage. the first approach is the most indirect approach which happens when a teacher uses simplified material. new vocabularies are given gradually to students so as not to confuse students with too many new items in the lesson. the second approach deals with unintentional vocabulary learning. any new vocabularies will be dealt with as they unintentionally appear in the process of learning. teachers will give the attention to the new word and learners will learn the new word moments after they encounter it. teachers also need to explain the underlying concepts of the word such as the regular features of the spelling and the grammar rather than just explain the definition of the word. the third approach is about learning vocabulary in association with another language alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 89 activity such as reading or speaking. the last approach, and the most direct one, deals only with vocabulary. no another language activity involved in this last approach. learners focus and spend more time on learning vocabulary. the example is when learners learn to guess the meaning or definition of a word or when they study words’ definition from dictionary. mall (mobile assisted language learning) mobile assisted language learning is a subset of m-learning. mobile learning (m-learning) is defined as the use of handheld devices such as mobile phones, pdas, and smartphones as a means for learners to learn through its mobility, flexibility, and interactivity (bukharaev & altaher, 2017). mall is used specifically for language learning activity that is assisted through handheld devices. kukulska-hulme & shield (2008) explain that mall is the use of mobile technology in language learning where the mobile technology offers various advantages. mobile technology has influenced cultural practices and provide new contexts in learning (pachler et al., 2010). it provides many advantages such as flexible, small-sized, and user-friendly, researchers are trying to find techniques on how to use mobile technology to help learning activity (huang et al., 2012). a study conducted by lu (2008) on vocabulary learning via short message service (sms) with high school efl students in taiwan indicated that students had positive views toward the method. they believed that such method was convenient and interesting. parallel with lu’s finding, azabdaftari & mozaheb (2012) conducted an experimental study on university students in iran. they implemented two strategies of vocabulary learning; traditional paper-based flashcards and mobilebased flashcards. the findings revealed that students who used mobile-based flashcards had much higher mean score than those who used traditional paper-based flashcards. furthermore, the students found that using mobile phone in learning activity provided more flexibility and entertainment. dizon (2016) conducted a study on the efficacy of quizlet on 9 japanese university students’ vocabulary mastery. the ten-week study showed an improvement of the pre-test and the post-test score of the students. the results also indicated that they prefer using mobile devices than conventional method. tam (technology acceptance model) the theory of technology acceptance model, henceforth tam, was introduced by davis (1989) and nowadays it is often used by researchers to foresee use and acceptance of information technology by its users (surendran, 2012). in tam, there are two factors that influence users to accept or reject any information technology; perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (davis, 1989). davis believed that these two factors were important in determining one’s acceptance or rejection toward any information technology. perceived usefulness (pu) can be defined as user’s individual perception toward the prospect that using particular information technology will improve the user’s job or life performance (davis & venkatesh, 2000). perceived ease of use (peou), on the other hand, is “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort” (davis, 1989, p. 214). in other words, people will likely to use a system information if it will improve their performance and if it is practical for them to use. figure 1. technology acceptance model alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 90 quizlet quizlet provides attractive interface and various features to give learners a new learning experience from using the app. quizlet can be accessed from both computer and mobile devices. students just need to download the application and sign up to the application. they could simply sign up through their google account. once they have signed up, they could start searching for any type of materials that they want to learn. furthermore, the app is free and the users could access millions of sets made in quizlet. quizlet will also automatically rearrange the items within the set to avoid serial learning and there are various features provided for the users to interact with (barr, 2016). quizlet has some feature that is able to help students study vocabulary more easily and fun. those features are flashcards, learn, write, spell, match, and test. flashcard feature allows students to study the term and its definition by simply tapping a set of digital flashcards. learn feature allows students to study vocabulary by answering multiple choices or written questions while write feature requires students to type the answers of the given questions. in match feature, students are required to match all of the terms with their definitions. lastly, the test feature will allow students to evaluate their knowledge about a set of vocabularies that they have learnt by answering true or false, multiple choices, and written questions. an experimental study conducted by baptist (2018) on 38 high school students. among all the students, 10 of them were students with special needs. the students were divided into 2 groups, a group consisted of 20 students and other group which was consisted of 18 students. the first group were instructed to use index cards and the second one was instructed to use quizlet. the students were given 12 words to study each week and will be given a quiz on the following meeting. after roughly 9 weeks, the treatment was switched. the result of baptists’ study showed improvements in terms of their score in their quizzes. 16 out of 28 students (approximately 57%) without special needs increased their score compared to the score of their quiz before quizlet was implemented. moreover, 7 out of 10 students (70%) with special needs increased their score compared to the score of their quiz before quizlet was implemented. the respond of the survey from the students also showed a positive perception toward the app. the result of the survey showed that they enjoyed the app very much and they felt that they gained a benefit from using the app. methods classroom action research was used in this study. reason & bradbury (2008)states that action research aims to combine theory and practice as a method to solve practical issues concerned with people. wallace (2010) added that doing action research will help researchers to make decisions on what their future practice should be as it allows them to collect data from their everyday practice and analyze it. according to kemmis and taggart (as cited in khasinah, 2013), action research involves more than one cycle and consists of four steps in each cycle. those four steps are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. the first step is planning. in this step, the researchers focus on the problem and formulates a set plan which will be conducted to solve the problems in the research. the second step is doing the action. in the action phase, the researchers implement the activities formulated in the planning phase. the action is then observed. in this study, the aspects that were observed are the students’ behavior when using quizlet and the situation within the class when situation within the class when they are using quizlet. the goal of the observation itself in this study is to be able to get a better understanding of how the action performed is implemented and to know the characteristics of the students. the fourth step involves the reflection that explores which problem has or has not been solved and to find out whether there is a new problem emerges when the first cycle is being conducted. after the first cycle was finished, the researchers then revised the plan based on the gathered data and the reflection. in this research, the researchers employed two cycles to correct any errors or mistakes made on the first cycle. the figure below shows the graph of action research cycle (carr & kemmis, 1986). alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 91 figure 2. car cycle respondents the participants of the study were 13 indonesian-speaking 11th grade students who enrolled at a private senior high school in yogyakarta. the research was conducted in the second semester of the 2018/2019 academic year in february-june 2019. none of the students had studied abroad in an english-speaking country. based on cefr framework, their english level of proficiency is a2-b1. instruments there were three instruments employed in this research, namely class observation, questionnaire, and interview. the observation was conducted during the implementation of quizlet in the classroom. observation is a technique to collect data by looking carefully at the action being performed (ridwan, 2004). this study also used questionnaire to obtain the data from the participants about their attitudes toward quizlet. the questionnaire was developed based on the theory of technology acceptance model: perceived usefulness & perceived ease of use (davis & venkatesh, 2000), and the principles of mobile learning by herrington et al. (2009). respondents (n=13) responded a 5-point likert scale (from 1= “strongly disagree” to 5= “strongly agree.). aside from the questionnaire, the researchers also conducted interviews with three participants . edwards & holland (2013) states that an interview is done in order to study people’s understandings toward their recent experience. in this study, the interviews were conducted to the english teacher and the students of the school. the interview of the english teacher was conducted to identify the problem existing in vocabulary learning within the class. the results of the interviews with the students were used to gain a deeper information about students’ perception toward the implementation of quizlet in the classroom. data analysis further in this research, the data that had been obtained were analyzed to acquire the answers for the mentioned research questions. the observation was used to analyze students’ behavior and the class situation during the implementation of quizlet. through the observation, the researchers were able to find the aspect which could still be improved and what problems should be dealt with. in other words, it was helpful for the researchers as a guide to reflect to what had gone right and what aspects needed some improvements during the first and the second cycle. the questionnaire provided quantitative data which were analyzed by finding the mean of each item. by finding the mean, the researchers were able to discover the average score for each item in the questionnaire and able to determine the central tendency for each item and, thus, allowed the researchers to identify which answer or scale in each item has the highest central tendency. the formula used to calculate the data from the questionnaire was mean formula. the researchers also provided the score responses for each item. the aim was to determine the level of agreement of each item. the researchers used mean distribution formula to determine the range of each scale. after calculating the score responses of the questionnaire, the result obtained was 0.75. hence, ranging from the low up to the very high, the scale range would be as follows: alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 92 table 1. the scale range of score responses no score range interpretation 1 1 – 2 low 2 2.01 – 3 moderate 3 3.01 – 4 high 4 4.01 – 5 very high as the researchers has explained in the previous section. the interview was conducted for the teacher in order to identify problems existing within the current practice in english teaching. the result of the interview became the reference for the researchers to make a plan to be implemented in the action phase. as for the interview of the students, the result of the interview was used to gain a deeper information about the students’ perception and to support students’ responds from the questionnaires. the validity and reliability were ensured by having data source triangulation which was examining evidence from different data sources (observation, questionnaire, and interview). the information gathered was used to build a coherent justification. findings and discussion quizlet implementation in the first cycle, the researchers used quizlet as an opening activity. but before the students could access the set, they were required to join the class by typing the class link. after that, they studied the first set of the vocabulary practices. they were given 10 minutes to study the set. they could freely choose between various available features within the application and were not obliged to do repetitions from a particular feature. as vidal (2003) states in his study that intentional or direct vocabulary learning provided solution for greater words retention. there are various quizlet features from which the students could choose to study. they are namely learn, flashcards, write, match, and test. figure 3. quizlet’s flashcard feature after studying with quizlet, the students were given a reading comprehension worksheet. the reading passage contained some of the vocabularies which they had studied from the application. after they read the passage, they answered some questions to test their comprehension. the purpose of this activity was to show the students how the vocabularies they had learned were used in sentences. as nation (2001) states, learners may need to learn vocabularies in the passage first before reading the passage so that they could better understand the message conveyed. in addition, learners who understand complex vocabulary will be more likely to understand more complex passage and, thus, alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 93 improve their proficiency (baptist, 2018). upon finishing the worksheet, the students were not allowed to consult to any dictionary nor quizlet. in the second cycle, the students were still provided with two sets of vocabulary lists for two meetings. in this phase, the students studied the set-in middle of the learning activity. although they could choose freely which features, they want to study from, the researchers suggested the students to try the flashcards feature before they tried the other features. this was done in order to help the students better understand and comprehend each word before they try to test themselves through other features. in the second cycle, the set made for the students contained not only the terms and the definitions of the words, but also a picture of the term and its part of speech. figure 4. quizlet’s flashcard feature after studying the set, the students were given a worksheet to test their understanding about the vocabularies they had studied. the worksheet contained vocabularies that they needed to answer after listening to a spoken conversation. after finishing the worksheet, the students played a game which required them to make a sentence from a word they had randomly chosen. in this phase, the same treatment was given for the students. the sets in this cycle contained some words that were included in the previous two sets so that the students would not need to understand and memorize too many words in each meeting. moreover, doing repetitions of studying isolated vocabulary is really helpful for learners in order to gain greater retention of the words (de groot, 2006). upon finishing studying the set, the students were then given a worksheet containing listening practice, vocabulary practice, and reading comprehension practice. this worksheet contained not only the vocabularies they had learned prior to these activities, it also contained other vocabularies from previous sets. students’ perception the data acquired to answer the second research question were gathered from questionnaires, interviews, and the researchers’ observation during the implementation. although there were 14 students in xi-intermediate class, the researchers only gave the questionnaire to 13 students who were present at least 75% of the whole implementation process. besides the questionnaire, the researchers also conducted an interview with 3 students. davis’ theory of technology acceptance model (1989) was divided into two – perceived ease of use (peu) and perceived usefulness (pu). the first part of this section would discuss students’ perceived ease of use toward the use of quizlet in vocabulary learning and students’ perceived usefulness on the following subtitle. perceived ease of use there were four statements in the questionnaire which discussed davis’ theory of tam about perceived ease of use. seeing the results of this variable (m= 4.38, sd= 0.75), it could be concluded that quizlet was easy to use and the instructions within the application were clear and easy to be understood. further details will be shown in the table below. table 2. questionnaire result of perceived ease of use alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 94 question strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree mean -quizlet is easy to use 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 6 (46.15%) 7 (53.85%) 4.54 -the instructions in quizlet are easy to understand 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 8 (61.54%) 4 (30.77%) 4.38 -i could learn vocabulary more easily with quizlet rather than books 0 (0%) 2 (15.38%) 6 (46.15%) 5 (38.46%) 4.08 -i can easily review the vocabularies i have studied before in quizlet 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 6 (46.15%) 7 (53.85%) 4.54 this result showed that almost all of the students agreed to the first and the second statements of the questionnaire. the result was also supported by one of the students’ statement in the interview. the students felt that the application was easy to use and the instructions were simple and easy to understand. “once you have joined the class, we could study the sets comfortably. the sets and the content are clear. we could study independently with the features within the app. we could study from the flashcards, the test, and memorize the correct pronunciation easily.” (s1/i7). it could also be seen from the researchers’ observation when implementing quizlet in the classroom. once the students had been explained of how the features work, they did not ask any more questions nor seemed to be confused in using the application. furthermore, the students mentioned in the interview that it was more practical to study with quizlet rather than books. “using quizlet is preferable for me rather than books because it is more practical and more interesting.” (s2/i4) furthermore, all students agreed that it was easy to review the material they had studied with quizlet. this item was included in ‘very high’ within the level of agreement (m= 4.54, sd= 0.52). as davis (1989) states in his study, an application which is perceived to be easy to use will have a higher chance of getting users’ acceptance. this is parallel with the results of the questionnaires, the students’ statements in the interview, and the researchers’ observation during the implementation of quizlet which showed their positive attitude toward the application and its easiness to use. perceived usefulness the second part of this section would show students’ perception about the implementation of quizlet based on davis’ theory of perceived usefulness. there were seven items in the questionnaire which discussed students’ perception about quizlet regarding to its usefulness. furthermore, interviews with three students were also conducted afterwards. the results of the questionnaire (m= 4.03, sd= 0.86) also indicated that students had favorable views towards quizlet. table 3. questionnaire result of perceived usefulness statement strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree mean -i found quizlet useful for my learning 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 7 (53.85%) 6 (46.15%) 4.46 -quizlet has improved my vocabulary mastery 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 8 (61.54%) 4 (30.77%) 4.15 -i do not mind spending my data plan on quizlet 0 (0%) 3 (23.08%) 6 (46.15%) 4 (30.77%) 3.85 -i can learn vocabulary more effectively with quizlet 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 7 (53.85%) 5 (38.46%) 4.23 -quizlet provides various features which make my 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 11 (84.62%) 2 (15.38%) 4.15 alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 95 vocabulary learning more interesting -i can practice my pronunciation with quizlet 0 (0%) 4 (30.77%) 7 (53.85%) 2 (15.38%) 3.54 -i could understand the meaning of a word and how to use it easier with quizlet 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 9 (69.23%) 3 (23.08%) 4.08 -quizlet helps me to prepare for my english test or quiz 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 9 (69.23%) 4 (30.77%) 4.31 -i will use quizlet for my further study to help me improve my vocabulary mastery 0 (0%) 4 (30.77%) 8 (61.54%) 1 (7.69%) 3.46 the item which would be discussed first is the statement about whether quizlet is useful for the students or not. the results showed that all students agreed to these statements, which meant that the students felt that quizlet was useful in helping them to study vocabulary. the students were also willing to spend their data plan for the application because it was worth it, although there were three students who disagreed with this item. this item had a mean of 3.85 and the standard deviation of this item was 1.14. in the following statement, almost all students (92.3%) agreed that studying vocabulary with quizlet was more effective than any other media that they had tried before. “although we need to spend our data plan to use the application, because it is an online application, we could learn so much from the app. it has many features and sometimes it has pictures which could help us. each set also does not contain too many words. we enjoy using the app and it is also a fun app to study with.” (s1/i8). in the next statement, all students agreed that quizlet provided many features which made their study become interesting. this item had a very high level of agreement with all the students responded to either ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ (m= 4.15, sd= 0.38). the next item showed a high level of agreement (m= 4.08, sd= 0.76). it meant that the students agreed that they could understand the meaning of a word and how to use it easier with quizlet rather than any other media that they had tried before. this was because the students could practice not only their vocabulary mastery, but also other skill such as pronunciation. “aside from learning vocabulary, we could also learn the pronunciation of the words. we could understand the pronunciation right away.” (s3/i2) the next statement in this section which discussed about whether quizlet helped them to prepare upcoming tests or quiz indicated a very high level of agreement from the students (m=4.31, sd= 0.48). moreover, the results of the interview also hinted that mobile learning, through quizlet, could open opportunities for the students to do collaborative learning as stated by herrington et al. (2009). “in quizlet, we could try to guess the meaning of the words. it is like playing a game. we could also play (learn) and interact with our friends. once we feel that we have memorized the words, we could try the test feature as a practice and to test ourselves.” (s1/i3). the last item discussed whether they will continue using quizlet for further study in order to improve their vocabulary mastery had a mean of 3.46 with four students stated that they would not use quizlet for further study. the standard deviation of this item was 1.05. regarding this, phua et al. (2012) states in their study that users’ peu and pu do not fully affect users’ behavior toward the actual alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 96 and continuous use of any technology although it has positive relation. there are some other factors which would influence users into continuous use of a technology. students’ perception on the use of quizlet based on principles of mobile learning the table below shows the students’ responses from the questionnaire which discussed whether the use of quizlet fulfilled the principles of mobile learning as proposed by herrington et al. (2009). this variable also had a mean higher than 4, which showed students’ favorable views upon the apps (m= 4.07, sd= 0.96). table 4. questionnaire result of students’ perception based on principles of mobile learning statement strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree mean -i can learn vocabulary anytime and anywhere with quizlet 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 6 (46.15%) 7 (53.85%) 4.54 -i enjoy using quizlet to learn vocabulary 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 10 (76.92%) 2 (15.38%) 4.00 -after using quizlet, i understand that learning vocabulary can also be done with the help of mobile devices 0 (0%) 1 (7.69%) 4 (30.77%) 8 (61.54%) 4.46 -i prefer using my mobile device in learning vocabulary rather books 0 (0%) 3 (23.08%) 6 (46.15%) 4 (30.77%) 3.85 -i become more autonomous in learning with my mobile device 0 (0%) 2 (15.38%) 7 (53.85%) 4 (30.77%) 4.00 -i gained a new learning experience after using quizlet 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 10 (76.92%) 3 (23.08%) 4.23 -i use quizlet for my study outside the classroom 1 (7.69%) 4 (30.77%) 5 (38.46%) 3 (23.08%) 3.38 from the results above, it could be concluded that the students had favorable opinions toward the use of quizlet since all of those items in the questionnaire were included in either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ within the scale of level of agreements. the first item in this section, “i can learn anytime and anywhere with quizlet”, had the highest mean among the other items (m=4.54, sd= 0.52). the result was also emphasized by the student’s statement in the interview. “i sometimes use quizlet outside the class. sometimes while i am in the toilet and i get bored, i open the application and do a practice with the flashcards feature. it is a good way of memorization.” (s1/i9). this result indicates mobile device’s ubiquity. the students could study with the application anytime and anywhere. in addition, herrington et al. (2009) states that mobile learning should provide the students with mobile contexts where the students have the mobility in learning. mobile learning provides learners with much more flexibility than traditional computing (ballance, 2012). the next item which discussed whether the students enjoyed using quizlet had only one students who responded ‘disagree’ (m= 4.00, sd= 0.71). the result is similar to what baptist (2018) had conducted in her classroom which showed that her students enjoyed using the application for it used various engaging techniques to help the students master vocabulary. moreover, a student in this research also stated similarly. “it is fun because i feel like playing game whenever i use the app. i can also do a quiz (test feature) within the app. i also learn a lot of new vocabularies.” (s3/i1) alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 97 in the next statement, “after using quizlet, i understand that learning vocabulary can also be done with the help of mobile devices”, it was proven that almost all students had not been using their mobile devices for studying vocabulary. the statement had a mean of 4.46 and a standard deviation of 0.88, which could be included in the ‘very high’ within the level of agreement range. with quizlet, they were able to utilize their own mobile devices for studying. herrington et al. (2009) also stated that mobile learning ought to utilize students’ own mobile technology. additionally, most of the students preferred to use quizlet application to study vocabulary rather than their books (m=3.85, sd= 1.14). there were three students who disagreed with the statement. however, this item still had high level of agreement. the next statement, “i become more autonomous in learning with my mobile device”, had a mean of exactly 4.00 and a standard deviation of 1.00. there were only two students who felt that their mobile devices, and with the help of quizlet, did not help them in becoming more autonomous in learning. “i carry my mobile device every time and and everywhere. i can choose when and where to open the app and start studying. it is way easier and more practical than using books.” (s3/i3). as lu (2008) states, the primary advantage that mobile device possesses over traditional methods of learning is its ubiquity. however, nurhaeni & purnawarman (2018) explain that the most common problems faced by students during autonomous studying with their mobile devices are related to technical factors and their internal initiative. the sixth statement on this section was also included in ‘very high’ within the level of agreement (m= 4.23, sd= 0.44). all of the students agreed that quizlet had given them a new leaning experience with some features that they had never tried before in other learning media. a statement from students also indicated that, before using quizlet, they only learn vocabulary through handouts, digital dictionary, and online translation machine. “before using quizlet, we were only given handouts filled with lots of words and the meaning. we were a bit unwilling to memorize and learn all the words. conversely, quizlet offered us something new that we had never tried before. there are many feature from which we could choose to study.” (s1/i8) the last item on this section discussed whether the students used quizlet outside the classroom. this item had the lowest mean among all the item in the questionnaire although it was still included in ‘high’ within the level of agreements with four students responded to ‘disagree’ and one student responded to “strongly disagree’ (m=3.38, sd= 1.39). some of them did not use quizlet outside the class because they thought that the sets only contain the material about the current unit of the english course and it was irrelevant with the other courses. actually, the users of the application could search millions of other sets who had been made by other creators. “i have not used quizlet outside the class because the sets are just about natural health. so i can just only study vocabulary related to it and cannot study other materials.” (s3/i9). discussion from the data acquired above, it could be concluded that quizlet has fulfilled some of the principles proposed by herrington et al. (2009), although it did not possess all the principle proposed by the researchers such as the principle of ‘real world relevance’ because the content of the sets were isolated words. since vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of a language, it is of vital importance to involve more vocabulary practice in teachinglearning activity. from the data gathered through the questionnaires and interviews, the researchers found three main benefits the students got from the implementation. the first benefit is that students consider quizlet as one-stop vocabulary learning application. quizlet has various features and modes which could really help the students not only to learn the words, but also to test themselves and practice their pronunciation. the flashcard feature introduce them to the words, they could easily see the words and the definitions just by tapping their screen. the learn, write, and match features help them deepen their understanding toward the words. lastly, the test feature could help them to find out how far they have understood what they have learned. alesandro woisela prayogi, mega wulandari / elt forum 10 (1) (2020) 98 moreover, they could also learn the correct utterance of each word. in the interviews, all of the three students mentioned that knowing the correct pronunciation of the words had helped their learning. besides being one-stop learning application, students also consider quizlet as an cutting-edge technology used for learning vocabulary. studying vocabulary through an application such as quizlet was something that the students had never experienced before. from the data acquired through the questionnaires and the interviews, it could be seen that the students showed good responses toward the application. all of the questionnaires results indicated either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ level of agreements toward the implementation of the quizlet, meaning that they experienced the benefits of quizlet for their learning. this finding strengthen previous studies about learners’ perception toward the use of quizlet (baptist, 2018; christanti, 2018; dizon, 2016) students also perceive quizlet as a practical and easy to use tool. quizlet can be accessed through computer and mobile devices. this research focused on the implementation of quizlet through mobile devices. based on the results of the questionnaires and the interviews regarding to the application’s ease of use, the researchers could safely conclude that quizlet is easy to use. moreover, two of the three students who did the interviews mentioned that learning through their mobile devices was more practical than learning from books because they did not need to bring a book and write anything. they just needed to take their devices out, open the application, and study the sets right away. from this implementation, it could be concluded that the problems mentioned in this research has been solved. in the first chapter, the researchers has mentioned that todays’ approach of vocabulary learning has been treated as incidental learning and only receives a little attention. from these two cycles of classroom action research, it has been showed that direct vocabulary learning was helpful for the students in learning english. moreover, the involvement of technology has made the learning become easier and more practical. conclusion after going through two cycles of quizlet implementation in the classroom, it can be concluded that the students were engaged with this practice. the students could learn independently through their own devices and it was more practical than using books or handouts. furthermore, the students could practice through different modes which made their learning even more interesting and fun. the data from the questionnaire showed that studying vocabulary with quizlet was a new experience for all the students. quizlet could help students learn vocabulary through its interactivity and various modes. all the questionnaire results were included in the ‘high’ and ‘very high’ within the level of agreements, showing students’ favorable view toward the implementation of application. the data acquired from the interviews also showed their favorable view toward this practice. they thought that using quizlet for vocabulary learning is fun and helpful. one of the students even said that it was like playing a game whenever he used the application and he became more engaged in studying. the students also said that they could study through the application whenever and wherever they want, emphasizing its practicality. references azabdaftari, b., & mozaheb, m. a. 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(2010). action research for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421a09622007 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 30 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt major phonemic problems of bangladeshi learners of english: reasons behind and solutions a k m mazharul islam college of languages and translation, king khalid university, kingdom of saudi arabia article info ________________ article history: received in 16 februari 2021 approved in 28 march 2021 published in 29 march 2021 ________________ keywords: consonant and vowel sounds; sound production; phonemic problem of bangladeshi learners; differences and difficulties ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the issue of bangladeshi efl learners’ phonemic challenges, though not very battered, has been addressed by some researchers at different times. even after having a prolonged history of learning and teaching and some research in the field, awkward pronunciations and misunderstandings are still prevailing everywhere, from the primary level to tertiary level and beyond. this study is undertaken to heighten the importance of delving deeper into the root causes of phonemic difficulties of the learners and to pinpoint the major problems. to add flesh to the theoretical skeleton of the topic a group of university students was interviewed along with a questionnaire to check their understanding of english phonology along with some other basic questions related to pronunciation. it can firmly be stated that teaching/learning pronunciation and hence starting from the segmental level has never been followed. like any other country where english is in the status of a second language or foreign language, it is very natural to face difficulties to master the intricate phonemic features of the target language for the learners. supposedly, it mostly results from the lack of knowledge of phonology and phonetics of the target language and due to the phonemic differences between the first language and the target language. in this study, the focus is kept mainly on the salient phonemic challenges faced by bangladeshi learners of english. bringing in the basic ideas of consonant and vowel sounds, the sound production mechanism is shown, and then the differences between the vowels and consonants of two languages are held out. tracing out the key difficulties, some suggestions are provided. this writing is expected to be of considerable and comprehensive help for the instructors as well as for the interested learners and crucial addition to the literature of the topic. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: amazharul@kku.edu.sa http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 31 introduction language is a sublime gift to human beings since language is the species-specific and species-uniform feature of the human being (varshney, 2000). vowels and consonants are the bricks of the great edifice of language within which dwell our thoughts and dreams, prayers and meditations, relation and communication. proper understanding of vowel and consonant sounds is at the root of expertise in spoken skill. bangladeshi learners of english usually face some difficulties as the language is not their mother tongue. though bangla and english are the offspring of the same language family, namely indo-european, more particularly, english descends from the germanic group, whereas bangla belongs to the indo-aryan group and is derived from sanskrit. with the passage of time, english and bangla have developed in their own ways. each with its own characteristics in sounds, in words and sentence structures, in stress and intonation today they are entirely different languages (fergluson, hai, & ball, 1962). the study was triggered by few fundamental questions. firstly, the question pursued is ‘what are the major segmental differences between the target language and mother tongue?’. secondly, the question, ‘what difficulties do the learners face in learning the pronunciation of the target language?’ is handled. thirdly, the factors causing those difficulties are tried to be traced. at the very end, answers to the question‘what are the probable solution to these problems?’ are looked for. this study is an addition in the stream of the topic and an effort to lay further emphasis for taking the issue with more seriousness and an appeal to the concerned stakeholders to address the problem institutionally, embracing it in the materials and making it an integral part of the pedagogy of the discipline. the history of institutional teaching-learning of english can be traced far back to the colonial period. the whole timespan of english learning and teaching in bangladesh can be broadly categorized into three phases. the first period covers till 1947 up to independence from british rule. the second period, during the regime of newly created pakistan, covers the postcolonial period ranging from 1947 to 1971. the third phase is from the independence of bangladesh till now, starting from 1971 onward (islam & hashim, 2019). interesting enough, teaching pronunciation had never been taken into consideration. the credit for early elementary work on bangla phonetics supposedly goes to chatterji (chatterji, 1921) where he has elaborated the segmental and suprasegmental features of the language in considerable detail and minuteness. ferguson et al. (ferguson et al., 1962) have held out the basic differences between english and bangla. they also have clearly shown the phonetic inventory of the two languages side by side at a very early time. these early works have not shed enough light to find out the causes of the difficulties of the learners. haque (haque, a., & a., 1990), rahman (rahman a. h., 1996) have mentioned few major issues of the learners like the learners’ using mother tongue accent for the target language without following sound pattern, accent and intonation. failure to differentiate between long and short vowel is another notable flaw of the learners. mujaffar (mujaffar, 1999) has also observed the learners’ difficulties with /z/, /ʤ/, /f/, /v// /ᴣ/; /θ/ and / ð /; /t/ sounds. banu (banu, 2000) along with these problems has also discussed the issue of learners’ inability to handle the features of aspiration and stress. barman (2011) in his work has shown the contrastive features of the two languages concerned. he has not included the causes of the difficulties. monjur and uddin (2015) have shown the effects of dialects on the learners’ output. they have pointed out that except for few regions the same tendency is observable among the learners. tahreen (2015), osmany (2017) have discussed the issue from the teacher’s perspective and thrown some light on the challenges of teaching pronunciation in bangladesh. the comprehensibility and intelligibility of the spoken language is highly dependent on its pronunciation (morley, 1991). despite pronunciation being the most integral element of oral communication and communicative competence, this sub-skill of english has always been neglected in bangladesh (maniruzzaman, 2008; osmany, 2017; tahereen, 2015). recent studies are conducted mainly from the teaching point of view to find out the challenges in teaching pronunciation. early works on the topic dealt mainly with differences between two sets of phonemes. a deeper understanding of the segmental features of the target language is very crucial. awareness of the segmental differences between mother tongue and target language is at the root of mastering the proper pronunciation of the target language and hence, this study narrowed down the focus on the major phonemic differences and difficulties from the learners’ standpoint and comes up with some pedagogical implications in the end. though various aspects of english language teaching have been covered by researchers at different times, enough research on the topic has not been done. in this respect, this study is expected to play an important role by providing the stakeholders an insight and pave the way to better learning/teaching. sound production mechanism before we explore the segmental difficulties let us have a glance at the sound production mechanism which is regarded indispensable to the study of phonetics. the production of any sound is not as simple as merely a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 32 opening and closing the mouth. it is a rather complex process. three stages are involved here psychological, physiological and physical. in the psychological stage, when we try to produce any sound then a group of brain cells is excited, and a message is formed. then in the physiological level, the message is carried to the diaphragm. in the third level, which is in the physical level, the message is passed to the diaphragm. the diaphragm gives a squeeze and a flow of air rushes out through the windpipe and is finally released either through the oral cavity or nasal cavity (sethi & dhamija, 1998). in the case of consonant sounds, the flow of the air is obstructed almost at a dozen places. but regarding vowel sounds, that flow of air is not hindered anywhere and directly let out in the air (yule, 2008). the following figures would help us to understand the production of consonant and vowel sounds. to produce any sound, the diaphragm starts the physical process by throwing the airflow outward; the thrown air then passes by various articulators. the flow of the air is being played by a group of active and passive articulators for producing consonant sounds. if the airstream is directly emitted to the air without having any blockage or obstruction, then vowel sounds are produced. the following fundamental figure as presented in islam (2017) is a placeworthy one. 1nasal cavity 2lips 3teeth 4aveolar ridge 5hard palate 6velum (soft (palate) 7uvula 8apex (tip) of tongue 9blade (front) of tongue 10dorsum (back) of tongue 11oral cavity 12pharynx 13epiglottis 14larynx 15vocal cords 16trachea 17esophagus figure 1. the organs of speech basic sounds of english all the speech sounds created by human beings are broadly divided into two categoriesvowels and consonants. a vowel is a hum or a tune which is produced with the thrown air stream of the lungs and the airflow is not hindered anywhere from the voice-box to lips and no audible friction is caused. in other words, vowels are sounds that are produced when the airflow from the lungs passes through the larynx without any obstruction anywhere (sethi & dhamija, 1998). so, we can say that vowels are sounds that are articulated without any obstruction, partial or complete, in the oral cavity. the vowels can be monophthongs, diphthongs and triphthongs regarding their quality. the monophthongs or the pure vowels can again be divided into long and short categories in respect of their length. lip rounding and tongue advancement and height also add to the subtle features of vowels. consonants, on the other hand, are the sounds in the production of which there is an obstruction or a constriction in the airstream. consonants are divided into various types according to places and manners of articulation. the vibration of the vocal folds at the time of articulation divides all the consonants into voiced and voiceless types again. the number of speech sounds varies from language to language. in english, according to most accounts, there are 49 phonemes including the triphthongs. there are 12 vowels, 8 diphthongs, 5 triphthongs and 22 consonants (roach, 2000). it is very hard to ascertain the exact number of bangla phonemes due to controversies among linguists working with bangla phonology. according to chatterji (1921) the number of the essential phonemes of standard colloquial bangla it is 35. a recent account of the bangla phonemes shows the number to be 62 (hasan, 1995). they are 7 oral vowels, 7 nasal vowels, 18 diphthongs and 30 consonants. methods the qualitative approach was mainly adopted for this study. fifty student respondents were randomly chosen from two private universities of bangladesh. they were all first year first-semester students of ba a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 33 in english program, both male and female, age ranging from seventeen to twenty-two. they did not attend any course on pronunciation or phonetics in the department by that time or before at any other stage of their study. in a formal setting, the students were asked to read a script with a list of words including the vowel and consonant sounds of english. particularly the words with sounds which were thought to be challenging had mostly been given. their readings were recorded and analyzed. an analysis especially of their common mistakes was also made and presented in the discussion section. recordings of structured/semi-structured interviews, class/presentation observation is a common practice in the study of phonetics, particularly in the study of segmental and suprasegmental features of any language. like many other researchers, haque and begum (hoque & begum, 2016), goswami (goswami, 2020) maintain the same tool in their studies. the instrument type of the study is very common and widely used and hence, it is expected to satisfy the validity and reliability concerns. the reading script was developed with a special focus on the words with the sounds that are absent in the learners’ mother tongue. regarding the consonants, words like ‘vine’, ‘think’, ‘zero’, ‘measure’, ‘war’ and ‘yes’ were given to check the pronunciation of the sounds /f/, /v/, /θ/, /z/, /ʒ/, /w/, /j/ respectively. words with consonant sounds that are absent in the target language were also included. in respect of the vowel sounds, words were selected following the same principle with special importance on the words with /ə/, long vowels and diphthongs. learners’ attempts are presented in the tables in the discussion section. the respondents were also asked some elementary questions related to english language learning in general and the importance of learning pronunciation. permissions were duly taken to use the samples for research purposes, and they were also ascertained of the confidentiality of their identity. in the study, the knowledge of the segmental features of english language is briefly discussed. then, the segmental differences of the target language and mother tongue are held out. after that, effort is taken to diagnose the phonemic difficulties of the learners. it is also tried to track down the reasons behind these difficulties. and finally, some pedagogical suggestions are offered for consideration. findings and discussion learners’ difficulties with english vowels islam (2018) observes that a speaker’s articulators usually get set with the sounds of his/her mother tongue. when he tries to learn a language other than his mother tongue then he faces problems with those sounds that are not found in his tongue. several problems may be traced regarding vowel sounds. one of the remarkable problems of bd learners of english is that his mother tongue vowels often intrude into the target language vowels. another problem is the learners cannot handle long and short vowels. in bangla long and short vowels do not make any difference in meaning usually. it is rather a phonetic feature than phonemic. in english they are very crucial. we have noted that the quality of a bengali vowel is not conditioned by length. on the other hand, length distinguishes english vowel sounds, / ii:, ɔɔː, uu: /. bengali speakers do not usually make any distinctions between short and long vowels. for example, they pronounce /ful/ and /full/ in the same way (haque, 1990, p. 101). some of the vowels in english are not there in bangla. schwa ‘ə’ is a characteristic sound which becomes very tricky for the learners. long vowels /ɑː/, /ɔː/ are also difficult to tackle. another noticeable difficult area for the learners is diphthongs. davenport (davenport & h., 2010) mentions that the strong feature of english diphthongs is the glides from one vowel to the other. the common mistake that is made by the learners is that they only say the first part of the diphthong and ignore the second part and in consequence, they sound like a short vowel. in respect of diphthongs, similar to tahreen’s (2015) findings, learners pronounce the diphthongs as monophthongs. last part of the sound is missed. they pronounce /go/ for /ɡoʊ/, /mek/ for /meik/ and the like. yet, the learners were not able to handle the triphthongs and were mostly not aware of them. they are found in the words like ei+ ә = eiә(player) ɑi + ә = ɑiә(fire) ɔі + ә = ɔіə (loyal) әʊ + ә = әʊә (lower) aʊ + ә = aʊə (power). in the following chart we can show the difficulties in brief: table 1. attempts of the bengali learners of the english vowels sounds in english example in words correct pronunciation attempt of the learners and notes i:, i feel, fill /fi:l/,/fil /fi l/ both long and short becomes the same, they use their only vowel a: , ʌ , 3: bard, bud, bird /ba:d/, /b ʌd/, / b3:d/ /bad/; in all cases they use only /a/ sound a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 34 ə about /sbʌv/ / əbʌv/; learners use 3rd bengali vowel o: saw /so:/ /so / learners use their own vowel 5 u, u: full, fool /ful/, /fu:l/ /ful/ ; both cases only bangla vowel no 7 is used eə, iə, uə air, fear, poor /eə/, /fiə/, /puə/ the learners usually break the diphthongs in their own vowels and first made long; becomes very different from the right one discussion on difference between english and bangla vowels to be aware of the difficulties of bangladeshi learners of english we are to be familiar with the differences between bangla and english vowels. there are some vowels of english which are not present in bangla and the vice-versa. in bangla alphabet though the feature long and short is mentioned but it is not maintained in pronunciation. the intermingling between short and long vowels does not make any difference in meaning but this is not the case in english. the use of short vowels in place of long ones and the vice-versa may be a blunder. the meaning may be altogether different with the change of long and short vowels. diphthongs of these two languages are also not the same. whereas english has 8 diphthongs bengali has 18 regular diphthongs (ferguson et al., 1962). the bangla diphthongs are far greater in number than english diphthongs. another point of difference is that unlike english vowels bangla vowels can be nasalized and can affect the meaning. the following table can be helpful: table 2. difference between bangla and english vowel sounds. t: present; x: not present phonetic symbol english bangla key word i: t x feel i x t chil (eagle) i t x fill e t t bed æ t t cat a x t bhat (rice) a: t x part ɒ t t hot o x t gol(round) ʊ t x full u: t x fool u x t chul (hair) ʌ t x but ɜː t x third ə t x above o:/ ɔ: t x saw the following quadrant would help us to understand the comparative spots where from the vowels of two languages are produced. some of the vowels conform in their positions but some are not identical. quadrant 1. english vowel (barman, 2011) quadrant 2. bangla vowel (barman, 2011) quadrant 3. relative positions of english and bangla vowels from (ferguson et al., 1962) figure 2. quadrans of the vowels a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 35 learners’ difficulties with consonants some problems can be traced regarding consonant sounds. in this respect, a noteworthy thing is that the problem often arises due to the knowledge of l-l interference. the mistakes the learners make are listed below: • in place of ‘flower’, ‘fine’ ‘full’ they pronounce it ‘phlauar’ ‘phine’ and ‘phull’. here we see labiodental sound /f/ becomes bilabial /p1'/ • ‘vast’ /va:st/, ‘van’ /vaen/ become /bhtsn/ and must/. labio-dental /v/ becomes bilabial plosives /w/ and /y/ are not properly pronounced. they are treated as vowels rather than consonants. in place of ‘water’ /wɔ:tə/ they say /ɔtʌr /. • common speaker mostly pronounces the final /r/ of the syllable. • interdental /θ/ often made alveolar thus / θink/ becomes /think/. • interchangeability between some pair sounds in different regions of the country/s ʃ / /fpʰ /, // bʰ v / /ʒ dʒ/ figure 3. (a) labio-dental (b) bilabial (roach, 2000) major difficulties are presented in the following table. table 3. bangladeshi learners’ attempt of english consonants islam (2017) summarizes the problems nicely. he points out that sounds /p/, /t/, /k/ are different from bangla counterparts /p/ (প), /t/ (ট), and /k/(ক) in respect of aspiration. he presents the differences and the difficulties hierarchically. sounds in english example in words correct pronunciation attempt of the learners and notes /f/ fine /fain/ it is pronounced as /phain/ using aspirated bangla bilabial consonant /v/ van /væn/ it is pronounced as /bitten/ with bilabial /bh/ /ʒ/ pleasure /'pleʒə/ it becomes /plejar/ or /plezar/, here the /ʒ/ becomes plosive /z/ or affricate /j/ /w/ wash /'wɒʃ/ it becomes /ɔʌʃ/, bilabial english consonant /w/ is completely ignored /j/ yes /jes/ it becomes /ies/ ommitteng the palatal consonant /j/ /r/ barber /ba:b?/ it becomes /ba:rba:r/, final id is mostly pronounced /z/ zeep/zoo /zi:p/ /zu:/ it becomes / dʒip/, /dʒu/ a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 36 figure 4. image of a table of difficult english consonants islam (2017) discussion on findings regarding consonants there are many consonants in bangla and english which click with each other, yet there are some which are not so. some consonant sounds of english are missing in bangla and some of the bangla consonants, in the same way, are not found in english. overlooking suprasegmental features of consonants, we can notice some major differences between the consonants of these two languages. there are six plosives in english. they are: /p/, /b/, /k/, /1/, /g/ and /d/. whereas, in bangla, there are twenty plosive sounds. the intermingling of bilabial and labio-dental consonants of english is a common vulnerable area for bangladeshi learners. the sound /z/ is often replaced by bangla /j/ sound. affricates also become more and more plosives. the following table may be helpful to understand the major differences. table 4. different bangla and english consonants t: present; x: not present sounds place of articulation english bangla key word /f/ labio-dental t x fine /v/ labio-dental t x vine /θ/ inter dental t x think /z/ alveolar t x zero /ʒ/ post alveolar t x measure /w/ bilabial t x war /j/ palatal t x yes /kh/ velar x t ‘khaua’eat /gh/ velar x t ‘gham’ sweat / jh/ alveopalatal (plosive) x t ‘jhanu’expert /ʈ/ dental x t ‘tala’ lock /th/ dental x t ‘thala’plate /dh/ dental x t ‘dhoni’rich /ph / bilabial x t ‘phol’fruit /bh/ bilabial x t ‘bhalo’good a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 37 at this point we are looking for the causes behind the difficulties. we shall find a number of causes at work. when a learner wants to learn a different language other than his mother tongue then the main problem, he faces is his prior knowledge of l 1; it intrudes every now and then. the age factor is also there (roach, 2000), (ukessays, 2018). osmany (osmany, 2017) mentions in her findings that though pronunciation is held very important by the learners and the teachers, it had never been taught, trained and tested. let us try to enumerate the major causes: • knowledge of li sound pattern interference • interference of regional accent • lack of awareness • lack of exposure • lack of knowledge of the sound pattern of sounds of english • alphabatic english spelling • lack of practice • lack of motivation • shortage of trained instructors some suggestions can rightly be offered at this stage. though teaching/learning of english has a long history in bangladesh which even dates back to the starting of the british colonial time (islam & hashim, 2019), the teaching/learning pronunciation has never been considered. of course, it is not very easy to master all the sounds of a language which is not one’s mother tongue. the first job is to become aware of the problems. once the problems are diagnosed then they can be faced easily. to handle them we can try the following suggestions: • making the learners aware of the differences • making the learners aware of their difficulties • making the learners aware of all the sounds along with their places and manners of articulation • finding out major problematic sounds • treating them one by one • engaging in more communicative activities • providing them with regular reinforcement • providing them a native or near-native model • providing them maximum positive exposure in this respect, harmer (harmer, 2003) offers some suggestions to help the learners out. it is not possible to learn the pronunciation exactly like the native speakers. some learners deliberately do not want to sound like the natives. so, he fixes intelligibility to be the target of the nonnative speaker learners. he lays much importance on listening since a learner will not be able to give the right pronunciation unless he can listen properly. there are two ways of dealing with this: in the first place, we can show students how sounds are made through demonstration, diagrams, and explanation. but we can also draw the sounds to their attention every time they on a tape or in our own conversation. in this way, we gradually train the students’ ears. when they can hear correctly, they are on the way to being able to speak correctly (harmer, 2003, p. 185) a guide or teacher is to determine when to teach pronunciation and he is to choose the best suitable class technique for his learners among the techniques like whole lesson, discrete slot, integrated phase, and opportunistic teaching. and he also suggests the phonemic chart to be hung in the classroom near at hand. the learner can be instantly directed to the chart when some sounds are mispronounced or confused. finally, he opines“the key to successful pronunciation teaching, however, is not so much getting students to produce correct sounds or intonation tunes, but rather to have them listen and notice how english is spokeneither on audio or videotape or from the teachers themselves” (harmer, 2003, p. 185). a syllabus designed rahman (rahman & chowdhury, 2019) for teaching pronunciation to bangladeshi learners can rightly be placed here. a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 38 table 5. a model syllabus for teaching pronunciation to bd learners id syllabus item objective 0 the human musical instrument familiarize learners with the human vocal sound making instrument 1 consonant sounds 1.1 the fricatives (voiced and unvoiced) /s/,/r/,/f/,/v/,/z/,/3/ address problem 1 1.2 english consonants which are replaced by similar sounds from the l1 or from english— to address problem 2 address problem 2 1.3 consonants /l/,/r/, one form only problem 3 address problem 2 2 consonant clusters: non-deletion of the first consonant in word initial clusters and no vowel insertion at word initial position address problem 4 3 nuclear stress: to be taught through songs. may be left for the second stage after learners have mastered items 0 to 2. (problem 7) address problem 7 intelligibility and understandability should be the focus rather than perfection in pronunciation is the opinion of tahreen (2015). she also offers a list of suggestions to overcome the problem like integrated pronunciation teaching from the beginning, introducing ipa symbols, comparing the sounds with the bangla counterparts, commutative activities, using dictionaries, smartphones and computers and so on. conclusion language is a rare blessing shown to humankind and vowels and consonants are the souls of any language. when english is not the mother tongue, learning the sounds of the language is surely not an easy job. receiving proper guidance, a careful and enthusiastic learner may acquire them with the expected accuracy. taking the offered suggestions into consideration, one can minimize the obstacles and can maximize his learning of the sounds to the desired extent if not exactly like the natives. our effort has been to find out the major problems of bangladeshi learners with the sounds of english and to look for some solutions. suprasegmental features are beyond the limit of this study and hence there are obvious scopes of future broader research. connecting the old works with the recent ones, this mixed kind of study has been undertaken to add to the scanty body of available literature and above all, to give a comprehensive view of the issue to the concerned stakeholders. references banu, r. (2000). bangladeshi english: a new variety? journal of the institute of modern languages, 6465. barman, b. (2011). a contrastive analysis of english and bangla phonemics. dhaka university journal of linguistics, 19-42. chatterji, s. k. (1921). bengali phonetics. bulletin of the school of oriental and african studies, 2(1), 125. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x0010179x davenport, m., & h., s. j. (2010). introducing phonetics and phonology. uk: routledge. fergluson, c. a., hai, m. a., & ball, w. j. (1962). the sound structures of english and bengali. language, 460-462. goswami, a. (2020). changing contours: the interference of the mother tongue. the journal of english as an international language, 15(2). retrieved from https://www.elejournals.com/eilj2020/volume-15-issue-2-2020/ haque, s., a., e. b., & a., a. (1990). bengali speech sounds and their effects on efl learners' pronunciation. belta journal. harmer, j. (2003). the practice of english language teaching. pearson education limited. hasan, a. d. (1995). the segmental phonemes of bengali. journal of the institute of bangladesh, 23-49. hoque, m. a., & begum, a. (2016). english pronunciation problems of tertiary level students in bangladesh: a case study. journal of arts, science and commerce, 7(4), 50-61. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.18843/rwjasc/v7i4/06 a k m mazharul islam/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 39 islam, a. (2018). a comparative study of english and bangla vowel system. bulletin of advanced english studies, refaad, 130-137. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.31559/baes2018.1.2.1 islam, m. n., & hashim, a. (2019). historical evolution of english in bangladesh. journal of language teaching and research, 10(2), 247-255. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1002.05 islam, s. m. (2017). a contrastive analysis of english and bengali consonant. journal of education and social sciences, 159-170. maniruzzaman, m. (2008). teaching efl pronunciation. why? what? and how? munich, germany: grin publishing. monjur, s., & uddin, m. n. (2015). the influence of regional bangla dialects on english pronunciation. international journal of arts,, 11-23. retrieved from http://ijahms.com:80/03.12.20151.pdf morley, j. (1991). the pronunciation component in teaching english speakers of other languages. tesol quarterly, 25(3), 481-520. mujaffar, t. b. (1999). on gees and zees: a comparative phonological study towards better english pronunciation. proceedings of the international conference on national and regional issues in english language teaching: international perspective (pp. 69-71). eltip. osmany, s. (2017). factors affecting teaching pronunciation at tertiary level. dhaka: east west university. retrieved from http://dspace.ewubd.edu:8080/bitstream/handle/2525/2750/samira_osmany.pdf?sequence =1&isallowed=y rahman, a. h. (1996). problems of pronunciation for bengali learners of english. journal of the institute of modern languages, 1-15. rahman, a., & chowdhury, d. r. (2019). an elf-based syllabus for teaching english pronunciation to native bengali speakers. belta journal, 47-64. roach, p. (2000). english phonetics and phonology. cambridge university press. sethi, j., & dhamija, p. v. (1998). a course in phonetics and spoken english. prentice hall private limited. tahereen, t. (2015). challenges in teaching pronunciation at tertiary level in bangladesh. internation journal of english language and translation studies, 9-20. ukessays. (2018). problems faced by asian students in english pronunciation. problems faced by asian students in english pronunciation. ukessays. retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/education/problems-faced-by-asian-students-in-englishpronunciation-education-essay.php varshney, r. l. (2000). an introductory textbook of linguistics and phonetics. student store. yule, g. (2008). the study of language. cambridge university press. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421bca3ba62b • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare microsoft word [article 5]_38287-article text-99374-1-6-20200615. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 45 elt forum 9 (1) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt junior high school students’ difficulties of english language learning in the speaking and listening section alan jaelani1, olivia widad zabidi2 english department, faculty of teacher training and education, universitas ibn khaldun, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 13 april 2020 approved in 1 july 2020 published in 30 july 2020 ________________ keywords: english education; difficulties learning; english speaking; english listening; english learning strategies. _________________ abstract _________________________________________________________________ this study aims to determine students' problems in learning english, especially in terms of speaking and listening. basically, the teaching and learning process will run smoothly if students feel comfortable with the learning activities; therefore, this research provides some appropriate suggestions for teachers in overcoming difficulties faced by students. the respondents of this study were junior high school students. this study used a questionnaire as an instrument to determine the extent of students' skills in english. this study also conducted data analysis by analyzing the importance of english in students' views, the difficulties encountered in learning english, and also the teacher's teaching strategies desired by students. the results of this study indicate that most students have some difficulties in speaking due to lack of confidence and skills such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. likewise, the difficulty in listening is caused by students’ lack of vocabulary that leads to the difficulty in understanding conversations in english. to overcome this problem, teachers need to have strategies such as identification, diagnosis, prognosis, and assistance or therapy. this research can facilitate the teachers in knowing complaints about english language difficulties experienced by the students. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 kh. sholeh iskandar km. 2 street, kedung badak sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: author@gmail.com alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 46 introduction language is a tool of communication that is very instrumental in daily life. because of language we can exchange information and ideas with others and express the feelings, desires, opinions and needs of each individual. human’s life cannot be separated from language activities. language is a means to communicate between humans. in line with the development of science and technology humans are required to have good language skills. someone who has adequate language skills will be easier to absorb and convey information both spoken and written. this skill is not a type of skill that can be passed down for generations though basically naturally every human being can talk. however, speaking and listening skills basically require intensive training. thus, english subjects are really needed for every level of education. language learning lessons in schools are expected to not only focus on theory, but students are also required to be able to use language as a function, namely as a tool for communication. according to yamin (2017), teaching is not just about delivering subject matter, but teaching is the process of changing student behavior in accordance with expected goals. therefore, a teacher needs to have the ability to design and implement a variety of learning strategies that are considered in accordance with interests and talents and in accordance with the level of student development. according to pane & dasopang (2013, p.333), learning and learning are two things that are closely interrelated and inseparable in educational activities, learning and learning are said to be a form of education that makes an interaction between teacher and student. learning and learning take place in a process that begins with planning various components and learning tools so that they can be implemented in the form of educational interactions, and ends with an evaluation to measure and assess the level of achievement of the learning objectives expected by hanafy (2014, p.67). along with the times, this world has set one language as an international language, namely english. therefore, learning english is very important, because english is an international language that is generally used as a language of communication for people who come from abroad. hawkes & schechter (2016, p.3) quoted that due to the importance of mastering foreign languages, german philosopher johann wolfgang von said "those who know nothing about foreign languages, they have nothing about their own." this saying implies that how important is the education of foreign languages besides mother tongue and national languages. handayani (2015, p.104) states that english is not only an academic need because its mastery is not only limited to aspects of language knowledge but also as a medium of global communication, especially in terms of the economy. in this case asean is one of the gateways to the global economy, where industries and business activities in the asean region are key and major players in the supply chain and production network, both globally and regionally. in connection with that, according to megawati (2016), mastery of international language skills are things that need to be developed at this time because with the appointment of indonesia as a member of the mea (asean economic community), it is fitting for a more advanced generation of the nation in terms of science and technology supported by the mastery of good and correct language of instruction. in addition, english in indonesia has also developed into an intellectual and social media of self-image, for example young people are currently using english in their daily activities. this relates to statement by ningsih (2019, p.6) which states that currently english has been successfully accepted and accepted by the indonesian people especially millennial generation. many found in social media the use of english is more prominent when compared to the use of indonesian itself. basically, according to megawati (2016, p.148) english has three additional abilities, namely grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, all of these components are very important for improving optimal english language skills. in addition, mastery of the material and practice must also be given a balanced portion. improvement of english language skills in the people of indonesia can be realized by holding language classes, both formally and informally. widyasari (2016, p.31) argues that the importance of the role of english in the learning and teaching process requires an appropriate method to improve students' english proficiency with learning activities that are fun and attractive to students. according to the authors this can happen because not all indonesian people enjoy enjoying learning a new language, therefore if all learning conditions are generalized it will be difficult to achieve the expected learning goals, because basically every student has different characteristics including learning techniques and portions absorption of matter. this is in line with the statement of suherman & yustiana (2017, p.6) which states that with the many factors involved in the learning process, not all individuals have the ability to overcome problems related to learning activities. in this case, teaching strategies by way of identification, diagnosis, prognosis, and providing assistance or alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 47 therapy were considered quite effective. with the aim of being able to treat each student with proper care, the english learning method plays a very important role in english learning activities. there are many students who are able to achieve good performance because they are taught using the english learning method correctly. fun english learning methods are the key to learning yamin (2017, p.84). meanwhile, according to mistar (2014, p.204) there are several factors that are considered influential on the assessment of skills, such as achievement in school, attitudes toward english speaking, tasks completed, and also topics that delivered by teachers. in fact, not a few students are still unable to understand the sentence that spoken in english verbally by the interlocutor. this means that their english skills are still lacking and their vocabulary is still very limited. speaking skills are productive skills that can be directly observed. according to siska (2011, p.3) speaking is a language skill that develops in the life of someone who is preceded by listening skills, in that time speaking ability is learned. speaking is closely related to the development of vocabulary that is obtained by someone through listening and reading activities. however, formal speaking skills require intensive training and direction. as according to wallace, et al (2004, p.13) write that listening skills are very important skills because these can make humans gain insight, understanding knowledge and information, and achieve success in communicating with others. therefore, speaking and listening skills are two very important things in language. however, listening is not a simple process. someone who listens must distinguish between sounds and understand vocabulary also grammatical structures, remember and interpret them all at the same time. likewise, according to harmer (2013, p.269) which describes the ability to speak fluently not only rely on knowledge of language features, but also the ability to process information and language. in the process of english learning, a student certainly has experience an obstacle in learning. these obstacles can cause the maximum lack of student learning outcomes. of the problems that faced are certainly encouraging a teacher or language instructor to pay more attention to the conditions of their students followed by readiness in the implementation of learning. by understanding the problems faced students, an educator can do self-reflection to find out how much effective implementation of the learning process in the classroom and to improve student quality. previous research related to this article is "students’ difficulties in speaking english at the tenth grade of vocational high schools" studied by catur widyasworo (2019). this study uses descriptive qualitative data methods that aim to find out the factors that influence students 'difficulty in speaking english, researchers also conduct research on the scores of these students and the results of this study indicate that the average score of students' speaking skills is 64.8. that includes enough categories. the difficulty of speaking students is discussed in the category of linguistic and non-linguistic problems. the second study related to this article is a study entitled " study of the factors that cause learning difficulties of english listening in pbi iain students raden intan lampung in the academic year 2015/2016." researched by dewi kurniawati (2015). this study uses descriptive qualitative data methods that aim to find out the factors that influence students' difficulty in listening to english. this study focuses on the difficulty of students in learning english listening, this study shows that the average student has difficulty listening because of internal factors such as fatigue so students become less focused. based on the concepts presented above, it can be concluded that there are many difficulties faced by students when learning english. the two reference articles above only focus on one of the difficulties of listening or speaking. therefore, in this article the author is interested in digging deeper into the obstacles experienced by students in the four language skills related to speaking and listening simultaneously. according to the authors, this research is important because through this research the teachers can find out what difficulties and obstacles are experienced by students while learning to listening and speaking in english, if that's the benefit gained from this research. methods this study employed the descriptive qualitative method which involved 20 students from two schools in bogor and focuses on the difficulties faced by students during the learning english process in class. the researcher wants to find the right solution for the problems faced by students, therefore the researcher conducts this study. in this regard, the notion of qualitative research itself is study that is descriptive in nature and tends to use analysis, processes and meanings highlighted in qualitative research, the theoretical basis is also used as a guide so that the focus of research is in accordance with facts on the ground. alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 48 according to rahmat (2009, p.2), one of the reasons for using qualitative methods in a study is because this method can be used to find and understand what is hidden behind phenomena that are sometimes difficult to clearly understand. while descriptive research is study that involves description, recording, analysis, and interpretation of existing conditions. the purpose of descriptive research is to describe the facts and characteristics of the object or subject being studied systematically. the data used in this study is qualitative data. this research needs some data to be analyzed. thus, this study uses data retrieval by providing instruments that have two types of questions such as; open-ended questionnaire as explained by dwinawan (2018) that open-ended question is a type of question that is used to get broad answers, this is intended so that researchers obtain clearer data, and also make it easier for respondents to answer it. this type of question has been asked by the author to respondents by giving questions that are similar in nature to essays, where respondents can freely give answers without the need to be stunned by the choices of answers that have been provided by the author. the second type of question is the closed-ended question as explained by lidiana (2011) that close-ended question is a type of question that requires a more specific answer, this type of question makes it easy for the interviewer to control the sources and get the information they need. this type of question has been asked by the author to respondents by giving questions that are similar in nature to multiple choice in which the respondents do not have the opportunity to write their own responses but have been provided choices by the author. this type of question limits the person being asked because it is only possible to choose one of two choices such as; yes or no, true or false, agree or disagree. based on these explanations, the researcher gave some closed ended questions in which respondents could choose one of the three answer options prepared, this type of question is used to convince researchers of the answers to which options have a bigger percentage. in addition, the researcher also gave an open ended question in which the respondents were entitled to give their opinion in the blank answers column that have provided, this type of question was quite helpful in the process of identifying data because the researcher could find out the wishes of the respondents in accordance with the opinions they gave. after successfully collecting data based on the questionnaire used, the researcher began to analyze the data to determine the results of this study then analyzing by using analytical techniques consisting of data identification, followed by the process of data tabulating, then calculating the data by totaling and then changing to percent form. this method is used to find out in detail about the results of this study, the number of percentages in a study is important to include. according to hidayat (2019), in research, the percentage results are important things that are used to generalize the results of a study. indeed this is not a mandatory requirement in a study that uses qualitative data methods, but if a study does not use this calculation technique, then the research cannot be drawn to broader conclusions. the results of the study are limited to research objects that are limited in time and place of research. therefore, research like this is still needed. findings and discussion this section explains the result of the questionnaire given. it consists of two stages, namely the stage of finding and discussion stage. findings finding will explain the results of observations about the difficulties faced by students in learning english, and of course using a predetermined instrument that is a questionnaire. while the discussion is used to find out and explain the right steps to overcome the problems contained in the finding section. below, the results of the questionnaire which used close ended question will be presented in the form of diagrams. alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 49 45% 15% 40% diagram 1 students' interest in english language learning interested not interested little bit interested the author tries to explore how much interest students have in learning english and also find out how important english learning is to them. this is because that apart from the teacher factor, motivation within students is also very influential in the development of language skills. according to harahap & syarifah (2015, p.22) students who like and consider english important will be easy for them to understand and master english. therefore, based on diagrams 1 and 2 above, it is known that most of the smp / mts students consider that english is a compulsory subject that is important to learn, even most of them are also students who like english subjects. behind it all, of course there are things that become obstacles in the learning process, namely the difficulties experienced by these students. alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 50 in diagram 3, it has been noted that most students have difficulty in listening and speaking. as stated by hasan (2000), the difficulty faced by many english language learners as a foreign language is the lack of understanding of english pronunciation expressed at normal speed through listening material. the next statement from megawati & mandarani (2016) found that the difficulty students often face when speaking english lies in the lack of english vocabulary. in this regard, the authors have examined the factors that make students feel difficulty in learning english, the results will be seen in diagrams 4 and 5 below. seeing from these difficulties, researchers also took the initiative to ask about the teacher's strategy what they want in the teaching and learning process. here, researchers use open-ended questions to explore more information related to the things desired by respondents, because in this part of the question respondents can answer anything in accordance with their opinions and desires of each. this is in line with the statement of nohda (2000, p.41) with the existence of open-ended questions, the teacher has the opportunity to help students understand and elaborate ideas or learning strategies desired by students as far and as deep as possible. no answer of 20 respondents percentage 1 students wants the teacher to continue to provide exercises and tests to students 45.0% 2 students want the teacher to continue to motivate students and educate patiently 30.0% 3 students wants the teacher to explain in detail and not rush in providing material 25.0% alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 51 for this last question, this is a close-ended type of question because the author wants to infer about how persistent their efforts are in learning english. as quoted by reja et al. (2003, p.159) close-ended questions in general yield higher percentages than open-ended questions for answers that are identical in both question forms. therefore, the following will be seen in diagram 6. in diagram 6, it is seen that the majority of respondents choose to continue to struggle in overcoming the difficulties they faced, this thing of course can facilitate teachers in implementing specific teaching strategies because what is most important in a learning is strong desire and determination. discussion after successfully collecting the data by means of a survey and using a questionnaire instrument, here will be explained in detail about the responses of students in the questionnaire form that researchers made. the first is the interested and importance of english in the students’ view, after seeing the results of some of the diagrams above, it appears that english is an important subject and of course most students are interested in learning english in this modern era. this of course becomes a very important supporting factor in developing language skills for students, as said by baker (1992, p.205) that the problem of students' attitudes is recognized as one of the most important factors affecting language learning. therefore, with the results of research that show that most students behave well in looking at the importance of english then it is also a good start in the learning process. the second is the difficulties experienced by student, of course in learning something, we will face some or maybe many difficulties. according to ahmadi & supriyono (1991, p.88) states that learning difficulties are a condition of the learning process marked by certain obstacles to achieving learning outcomes. an example is the difficulty experienced by students in listening and speaking in english. from these two aspects, first aspect is listening that based on the survey results, it appears that most students have difficulty in speaking due to lack of vocabulary mastery, while the average assignment given in the listening section is related to audio / video that contains conversations. therefore, the lack of mastery of vocabulary is certainly very influential on the smooth learning process of english subjects themselves. this is in line with wilson (2008, p.12) which groups the factors causing students' difficulty in listening into three general groups namely; (1) characteristics of the message where the message delivered contains difficult words and grammar, the listener's ignorance of the topic being discussed, as well as its rapid delivery, will 'force' the listener to concentrate fully on listening to the message. these factors are one of the causes of difficulty in listening; (2) characteristics of message delivery, regarding whether the message delivered by reciprocal listening or non-reciprocal listening. reciprocal listening is an interaction that occurs by involving two or more people as in a conversation. on this occasion the listener can react, ask questions or ask for clarification to people who convey the message if they feel something is confusing. on other occasions they can ask people alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 52 who speak to be able to speak slowly and clearly so that what they say can be understood. whereas the non-reciprocal listening listener cannot control the speaker, or to find out whether the message received is correct or wrong. for example when listening to radio broadcasts, announcements, watching tv and so on. that is why non-reciprocal listening is considered more difficult than reciprocal listening; (3) characteristics of message recipients or listeners, individual differences cause the same message to be understood differently. this happens because of differences in motivation, age, ability to concentrate for a long time, physical conditions and so on, for example for people who are physically weak may have to listen to a message over and over again, while for oaring whose physical condition is good, it may only require one delivery only. the next aspect is speaking, in the speaking section, most students find it difficult because of internal factors, namely feeling anxious and afraid of incorrect pronunciation. this is of course related to external factors such as; do not have good pronunciation, lack vocabulary, and do not master grammar. this is in line with the statement of sari & lestari (2009, p.445) which revealed that speaking difficulties are usually caused by several factors such as; a) difficult to express ideas verbally; b) limited vocabulary, so it often stops suddenly while talking; c) limited grammar ability, so it is difficult to speak with the correct rules; d) limited pronunciation, so it is difficult to pronounce the words spoken correctly and make the listener confused with his words; e) lack of courage to speak out of fear of being wrong. the third is teacher strategies desired by students, based on the survey results, there were answers from 20 respondents about how to teach the teacher wanted by students. in overcoming the difficulties faced by these students, it is known that as much as 25% of students want the teacher to explain in detail and not rush in providing material, as much as 30% of students want the teacher to continue to motivate students and educate patiently, and as much as 45% of students want the teacher to continue to provide exercises and tests to students. this shows that students actually understand that the key to success in english is to continue to train themselves. however, often students feel pressured by english tests. apart from lack of skills, they also often feel discouraged when making mistakes, this usually happens because the environment is less supportive. for example, when student a ventured to speak english in front of his classmates but he made a mistake, it was not uncommon for student a to be laughed at by his classmates. so far, the biggest factor in hindering the process of learning english is anxiety and fear of making mistakes due to lack of skills. this is of course related to the teaching and learning process of listening and speaking. this is a challenge for teachers to be able to overcome the difficulties faced by students. because according to inayah (2017, p.4) the success of the teaching process can be achieved if the teacher can present the material well and can increase student interest. munirah (2018, p.15 & 16) has delivered a number of tricks such as identification, diagnosis, prognosis, and assistance / therapy which are considered effective in overcoming these difficulties. identification is an activity directed to look for students who have learning difficulties, i.e. seek information about these students. according to lubis (2018, p.30) identifying initial behavior and characteristics of students in the development of learning programs is very necessary to determine the quality of individuals so that it can be used as a guide in describing learning management strategies. diagnosis is the determination of the results of data processing about students who have learning difficulties and the types of learning difficulties experienced by students. as according to yunita (2016, p.9) diagnosis is the process of determining the location of weaknesses or abnormalities by examining and analyzing the background or causal factors as well as symptoms of problems that appear with the aim of drawing conclusions and looking for alternative solutions. prognosis is an activity that refers to the activity of preparing a plan or program that is expected to help overcome the problem of student learning difficulties. kemala (2015, p.18) states that this step is carried out to estimate whether the problems experienced by students are still possible to be overcome and determine various alternative solutions, this is done by integrating and interpreting the results of the second and third steps. kumalasari (2017, p.16) said that the problem of students' self-confident can pose major obstacles in the areas of social life, learning and career. students who have low self-confidence (hard to adjust themselves) in their personal lives are filled with doubts to determine an action or are often anxious and like to be alone and stay away from the environment. the therapy referred to here is to provide assistance to children who have learning difficulties like that, assisted in accordance with the program that has been prepared at the prognosis stage. alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 53 conclusion based on data analysis and data interpretation, the conclusion is that this study uses descriptive qualitative data methods that aim to find out the factors that influence students' difficulties in listening to english and use qualitative descriptive methods involving 20 students from two schools in bogor. based on the survey results, most of the students at bogor junior high school are students who like english, they also understand the importance of english in the modern era, this is a pretty good supporting factor for the development of students' english skills. this research also found that many of them had difficulty in listening and speaking due to lack of mastery of vocabulary and lack of confidence to dare to practice directly about the knowledge they had acquired. in overcoming this problem, the strategy undertaken by the teacher is by way of identification, diagnosis, prognosis, and providing assistance or therapy. based on these results it can be concluded that it is important for english teachers to teach using a variety of specific strategies as described above, because this is useful to overcome the difficulties faced by students for the smooth teaching-learning process. besides because english is a subject that must be mastered because it will be found on the national examination, english will also make it easier for us to communicate with people from abroad because english itself has been established as an international language. for this reason, it is important for students to acquire and have good english skills. references ahmadi, h. a., & supriyono, w. 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(2015). kinerja guru pembimbing dalam mengatasi kesulitan belajar siswa smp negeri banda aceh. [thesis, universitas syiah kuala]. etd unsyiah. kurniawati, d. (2015). studi tentang faktor-faktor penyebab kesulitan belajar menyimak bahasa inggris pada mahasiswa semester iii pbi iain raden intan lampung tahun pelajaran 2015/2016. english education: jurnal tadris bahasa inggris, 8(1), 157-178. lidiana, e. (2011). interview method. blogspot.com. retrieved from http://evimursalim.blogspot.com/2011/01/interview.html. megawati, f. (2016). kesulitan mahasiswa dalam mencapai pembelajaran bahasa inggris secara efektif. pedagogia: jurnal pendidikan, 5(2), 147-156. megawati, f., & mandarani, v. (2016). speaking problems in english communication. [proceeding eltic conference 2016]. universitas muhammadiyah sidoarjo. alan jaelani, olivia widad zabidi/ elt forum 9 (1) (2020) 54 mistar, j., & umamah, a. (2014). strategies of learning speaking skill by indonesian learners of english and their contribution to speaking proficiency. teflin journal, 25(2), 203-216. munirah, m. (2018). peranan guru dalam mengatasi kesulitan belajar siswa. tarbawi: jurnal pendidikan agama islam, 3(02), 111-127. ningsih, a. n. m. (2019). penggunaan bahasa indonesia dan bahasa inggris dalam menunjang ilmu pengetahuan di era global. solo: universitas sebelas maret. nohda, n. (2000). learning and teaching through open-ended approacrh method. dalam tadao nakahara dan masataka koyama. proceeding of the 24th of the intenational group for the psychology of mathematics education. hiroshima: hiroshima university. pane, a., & dasopang, m. d. (2017). belajar dan pembelajaran. fitrah: jurnal kajian ilmu-ilmu keislaman, 3(2), 333-352. pupu, s. r. (2009). penelitian kualitatif. jurnal eqiulibrum, 5(9). reja, u., manfreda, k. l., hlebec, v., & vehovar, v. (2003). open-ended vs. close-ended questions in web questionnaires. developments in applied statistics, 19(1), 159-177. sari, l., & lestari, z. (2019). meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara bahasa inggris siswa dalam menghadapi era revolusi 4.0. in prosiding seminar nasional program pascasarjana universitas pgri palembang, vol. 12, (01). siska, y. (2011). penerapan metode bermain peran (role playing) dalam meningkatkan keterampilan sosial dan keterampilan berbicara anak usia dini. j. educ, 1(1). wallace, t., stariha, w. e., & walberg, h. j. (2004). teaching speaking, listening and writing. international academy of education. widyasari, f. e. (2016). pembelajaran bahasa inggris dengan menggunakan metode multiple intelligences: studi kasus di sekolah internasional. jurnal pendidikan edutama, 3(1), 31-45. yamin, m. (2017). metode pembelajaran bahasa inggris di tingkat das. jurnal pesona dasar, 1(1). yunita, w. (2016). diagnosis dan upaya mengatasi kesulitan belajar matematika dengan induced fit remedial teaching strategy dengan pendekatan participative learning [doctoral dissertation, universitas negeri semarang]. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 235 elt forum 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt efl students’ voices on digital peer feedback berliana dyah ayu aprilianti1, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh2 1,2universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 27 march 2021 approved on 18 october 2021 published on 30 november 2021 ________________ keywords: feedback; online peer feedback, efl; e-learning. ____________________ abstract ____________________________________________________________________ education and technology have been tailed by some conditions. some parts in education are technologized including peer feedback activity, but the use of peer feedback combined with e-learning needs to be reviewed in terms of its practical use. the affordance of technology has enabled peer feedback to take place online. despite the potential benefits that online peer feedback may offer, there is a lack of studies on the topic. therefore, this paper aims to explore students’ perspectives on the benefits of online peer feedback. this research was done qualitatively. interview to six students of english language education department was conducted to gain the data. the academic year 2018/2019. in selecting the participants, purposive sampling was applied. the finding of this study revealed that the use of technology particularly in giving peer feedback brought some benefits e.g., increasing students’ autonomy and reviving student’s critical thinking. besides, the cons of this phenomenon were that students felt the activity ruined their energy to stay focused in front of the screen to give others a review. some suggestions in the last part of this paper also appeared as the researchers respond to this phenomenon.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 e6 building, fpb umy kasihan, bantul, d.i yogyakarta, 55183 e-mail: berlianadyahayu@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& berliana dyah ayu aprilianti, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 236 introduction for the sake of innovation in education, in this era education has integrated with technology which has an aim to ease the teaching method and learning process. a popular concept was raised by some scholars to respond this. information communication technology (ict) has raised as the effect of development of technology. moreover, ict offers interaction among the users. by knowing this function, some teaching activities has been integrated with ict including english language teaching. for instance, the use of website materials could improve students’ skills in listening, speaking, and increase other students’ assessment score, (mateo, 2012; comi et al., 2017). additionally, ammanni and aparanjani (2016) also stated that the use of interactive white board to stimulate students in learning vocabularies. therefore, information communication technology (ict) is oftenly said as the way to boost moderanization of education. ict has given a positive impact to both students and teacher in terms of learning process. along with the concept of ict, moderanization also brings a new tems in learning namely e-learning (puspawati & juharoh, 2021). the concept of using e-learning is to make easier the process in education. furthermore, e-learning can be described as non face-to-face instruction or face-to-face instruction delivered using digital device which has a purpose to promote learning material or topic discussion (clark and mayer, 2016). e-larning has a pivotal role in promoting education without any places and times restriction (mayer, 2017). therefore, in the education field, many things have collaborated with technology, including giving feedback. in the larger discussion, if we break down the term of feedback, (ravand & rasekh, 2011) has said that feedback is essential in offering educational and professional literacy abilities to learners and it is a way to help learners negotiate access to information and procedures. moreover, writing feedback also projected to be one-way teachers to promote students writing development. as mentioned by (dayat, 2021) that in higher education particularly in efl, the use of writing feedback is to improve students’ writing with two focus objectives which are knowledge and writing improvement. in addition, the researcher tries to take a topic related to feedback which is peer-feedback. the existence of peer-feedback based on (wu & schunn, 2021) is to decrease the workload of teacher in giving feedback. moreover, the students were more facilitated in learning process by receiving and giving multi peer-feedback that feedback from teacher only (cho & schunn, 2007). wirantaka (2019) supported, “the importance of feedback emerges with the development of student-centered learning especially in language education context” (p.1). on the other hand, giving feedback also train students’ critical thinking and perspective of something in several sides, because when they are giving feedback, they have to be critical person to see the weakness or the strength of someone's work. students might be in charge of obtaining solutions that are tailored to their own learning requirements (choi & ho, 2002 as cited in sweeny, 2010). in addition, peer feedback based on sholihah (2015), peer feedback is an activity that allow students to give comment and review towards other students’ written work. in correlation with moderanization of education, the process of giving feedback has been technologized by several institutions by using e-learning. the ideas of integrating of giving feedback and e-learning make some benefits not only for teachers but also for students. the invention of integrating feedback and e-learning also want to implement an innovation to create students be an active learner. the development of e-learning also has an aim to make students as student centered learning environment (scele) (hasibuan and santsoso, 2005). for instance, kassymova et al. (2020) argued that e-learning also ease the access of students and educational institution because it provided in an open access. another researcher, roblyer and ekhaml (2001) as cited in (appana, 2008) asserted that students show a positive effect of e-leaning towards their flexibility and responsiveness. in addition, portability, immediacy, connection, ubiquity, and flexibility are technical aspects of e-learning. in addition, making the activity of giving peer-feedvak to be associated with elearning is not that easy. emphasized by (wu & schunn, 2021) that peer-feedback is a complex processing activity either giving or receiving feedback. therefore, this study intended to answer the research question: to what extent students’ perspective about advantages and disadvantages doing online peer-feedback. this study is taking a gap between peer-feedback and e-learning. the researchers believe that the use of e-learning as a platform to allow students giving feeback also raise some issues and facts. therefore, the study about giving online peer-feedback is intended by finding the benefit and the issues in attempting online peerfeedback in one of eled in private university. some suggestion for novice or department that want to apply this phenomenon also appear as the researchers’ responsibility towards this current study. berliana dyah ayu aprilianti, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 237 feedback has an essential role in learning, because its activities have offering educational and professional literacy abilities to learners, and it is a way to help learners negotiate access to information and procedures, (ravand & rasekh, 2011). moreover, there is two types of feedback that depend on different learners and situation: oral and written feedback. teachers must consider various aspects while providing oral feedback, such as the length of therapy and the age of the student (lyster et al., 2013) furthermore, peer feedback, to put it simply, is the careful, unbiased evaluation of any scientific work that has been submitted for formal review (ruiz et al., 2007). therefore, teachers usually give peer feedback activity to their students as one of the essignment or event an assessment. students need to see examples of writers revising their work after receiving criticism through think-alouds (or any other type of peer review) (nelson & schunn, 2007). the statement above is one of example of written feedback. in this example, it's worth noting that throughout the course of the semester, the students in the receiver group improved in both overall and specialized categories (lundstrom & baker, 2009). in the development of the era, e-learning has used to ease teaching and learning process. learning and technology were brought together in e-learning (aparicio et al., 2016). it was used for substituting the media of learning to be easier. most schools use e-learning as their ways to enhance students’ skill. through elearning students could access the material of schools; search the explanation of the teachers about a subject and etc. means that e-learning could enhance students’ receptive skills and productive skills. students can form deep bonds with their peers in an engaging online learning community (murdock & williams, 2011). in relation with the development of technology in education and the benefit of peer feedback, therefore, teachers start to conduct peer feedback activity in e-learning. this phenomena can be supported with the massive use of e-learning in higher education context. digital peer feedback is powerful to promoting and stimulating students’ writing process, (latifi et al., 2021). besides, digital peer feedback also suggest a critical activity to students without having fear to the other students, (al abri et al., 2021). (noroozi and hatami (2019) supported that digital peer feedback on the argumentative writing help students in improving their ability. in addition, digital peer feedback also offers a supportive atmosphere of learning, proven by (latifi et al., 2021) in their finding mentioned that students seemed attractive and engaged with the activity in digital peer feedback. therefore, this research aimed to investigate students’ perception about advantages and disadvantages of using digital peer feedback. furthermore, some scholars tried to jump in to this topic discussion. in the past a decade ago some scholars discussed about online peer feedback, such as lu and law (2012); latifi et al. (2021); liu (2016) and many others. a study about the effect of conducting an online peer review also has successfully conducted by lu and law (2012). with their article, "online peer evaluation: impacts of cognitive and emotional feedback," they set out to investigate the effects of cognitive and affective feedback on online peer assessment. 181 thirteento fourteen-year-old hong kong secondary school pupils took part in this study. the goal of this study was to see if high school students' participation in online peer evaluations influenced their success on ls projects. because it allowed students to review the work of others, online peer evaluation was found to have a substantial impact on the quality of students' project learning results. we talk about how grading affects people, then we go into cognitive and emotive feedback. another research by liu et al. (2016) focused on the impact of peer review on the creative selfefficacy has similar research’s objectives, in which investigating peer feedback on education aspect. the recommended peer feedback was found to improve narrative performance without compromising creative self-efficacy. it's also worth noting that this was a small-scale study that focused mostly on narrative activities. two classes of 53 sixth graders from a northern taiwanese primary school were chosen at random to be the study's subjects. students' creative performance and self-efficacy may be influenced by cultural differences. it would be fascinating to study how web 2.0 learning activities affect the creative processes of students of all ages and from other nations. despite this, many online web 2.0 learning activities include a peer review method. despite the sample size and creative task constraints, this study might nevertheless suggest ways to use web 2.0 technology to enhance learning activities in other fields. one more research by (latifi et al., 2021) entitled how does online peer feddback improve argumentative essay and writing. the partisipants were 52 college students. moreover, the participants were required to use e-learning platform namely edutech platform by the researchers. then, they were signed by the researchers to make an argumentative essay and also give feedback to others. the result revealed that students were more motivated in giving comments and suggestion to berliana dyah ayu aprilianti, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 238 other students because they would be able to give comments and suggestion annonymously. consequently, the students could give their critical comments without feeling intimidated. in the mean time, the argumentative essay by the students were also getting increased in terms of the quality because the others’ comments. by recognizing the previous studies, the researchers indicate that the use of digital peer feedback need to be reviewed. therefore, the digital peer feedback can be more applicable for students. furthermore, from the previous studies mostly mentioned about the effects of online peer feedback, but the students’ views of online peer feedback have not been much discussed by scholars. therefore, this current research aimed or research question: what extent students’ perspective about advantages and disadvantages doing online peer-feedback? methods this current study implemented a qualitative research design and used a qualitative method to gather and analyze the data. individual interpretation and the need to report the complexity of a situation were discussed in the qualitative method (cohen et al., 2018). by doing in-depth interview to six students in english language education department. interview would be used as the way how to collect the data toward the participants because interview could enrich the statements of the participants, besides the researchers also would get many information through interview (adhabi & anozie, 2017). the participants of this study were six students of an english education department in a university in yogyakarta. the participants were suitable for this research because they had experienced using online peer-feedback during their learning process. moreover, all of participants had been experiencing online peer-feedback for one semester in their second academic year. therefore, they could express what their thought, feeling, and idea about online peer-feedback. in doing the indepth interview we use ten questions toward the research and some questions related to the research question. the questions have been translated by the researcher to ease the participant understand the questions. the interview protocol was developed by the researchers using two types of questions by (fraenkel at al., 2012) namely experience question and feeling question. furthermore, the experience questions consist of questions that lead to the experiences that the participant have had. while the feeling questions will lead to what participants' feeling in experiencing some phenomena. all of the recording of in-depth interviews had been transcribed and member checked for reliability and validity (meriam, 1998) the data were analysed using coding process. according to (elliott, 2018) coding is a process of labelling or mapping data to suggest an overview of data. the process of coding started by giving some marks to participants' responses. then, it followed by selecting the same responses to be led into the categorized finding. the data were grouped based on participants’ responses. furthermore, the research’s results were categorized into two focus, namely advantages and disadvantages of digital peer feedback. then, the researcher put some responses into a big result by referring them with the research question: to what extent students’ perspective about advantages and disadvantages doing online peerfeedback. in addition, all of the participant names had been annonymoused by the researcher to keep the privacy of the participants toward their responses. in presenting the result of interview process, the researcher had already set and excerpt the conversation into standardized english and the result. findings and discussion increasing students’ autonomy the first finding that researcher found in the research was online peer feedback increase students’ autonomy. it was being said by participant 4. they assumed that in processing of giving peer feedback, they also opened other resources to make their comment and reviewed more credible and reliable “i have to search for some theories on the internet just to make sure whether my correction true or not…”.#s4-line4 it also indicated that when the students were doing online peer-feedback, they would use their skills or any kind of stuff that they have such internet or book just to make sure what they had given to the other students’ assignments, or their comments were right or not. the activity that had been done by the participants were really their initiatives not from the order of the teacher or someone. meaning that, students were in the processing of giving online peer feedback, they tried to browse other resources berliana dyah ayu aprilianti, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 239 by themselves. this also indicated that students’ autonomy was played role in giving online peer feedback. reviving students’ critical thinking the second advantage from online peer-feedback was students being more critical. the task that students had to review require them to evaluate and give a comment to others’ work. there wass a popular taxonomy named bloom’s taxonomy that put evaluate in the middle of process of thinking. it could be assumed that evaluation process in online peer feedback also could be a decoyed to hook students’ critical thinking. it had been proved by participant 3 by saying: “in finding someone’s mistake, i need to be focus to see the lack…”. #s3-line17 the researchers assumed that the process of finding a lack of someone’s work could be interpreted as the process of reviving students’ critical thinking, because the students have to give more attention and increase their critical thinking just to see and make sure that there would be no errors on the other students’ assignments. it means that peer feedback activity is affect students’ critical thinking. moreover, the other participant, they are participants 1, 2, 4, and 6 said: ”i got a new idea for making my work better by giving feedback…”. #s1-line19 “i think i have to revise my work after giving comments to my friends”. #s2-line10 “...i tried to analyzed my friends’ work by comparing it to my own work”. #s4-line15 “i do not why, why my friends’ writing seems like just on the surface”. #s6-line17 by giving peer feedback also could be reference for corrector’s work. it meant that when the students see the other students’ assignments, they could get such inspiration, or they were realizing something wrong, or they got additional ideas to improve their own assignments. unstable result based on the interview, all of the six participants that researcher had chosen in this research had already took a part in online peer feedback in a course, they stated that online peer feedback also decrease their focus. the reasons of decreasing their focus were because of the amount of the task or others’ work that they have to be reviewed. it could be so, because the online-peer feedback activities require the students to review certain student’s fellow’s works. due to the amount of the task that the participant got in online peer feedback. it was being said by participant 3 that: “when i have 5 tasks to do corrections, only the first task will be the best correction…”#s3-line25 one of the participants said that the amount of the task also would interfere their result in reviewing work. by knowing that, researchers assumed that if students have an assignment and it required the students to write an essay at least 1000 words, it means, in a day each student have to read 5000 words with different style and content. while the students also said they have other tasks to be done too. at the beginning, the students would give much attention to the other students’ assignments, but as time goes by their focus would be decreased because they tired or with the other results. it has been proven that online-peer feedback also has disadvantages for the students. this currrent research had gotten the result for the research question: what did extent students’ perspective about advantages and disadvantages doing online peer-feedback? then, the answer for advantages of online peer feedback were increasing students’ autonomy and reviving students’ critical thinking, while for the disadvantage of doing online peer feedback was unstable result. for the advantages, increasing students’ autonomy mean that students could get any new information and it opened their mind to get some new knowledge toward the other students. therefore, the students who did the online peer feedback could give the best comments or suggestion toward the other student’s task. then, for reviving students’ critical thinking mean, when students’ re-read their friends’ task, they had to give their own best comment, and it used their thought. which the researchers could conclude that the students’ mean by used their own thought were used their critical thinking. for the disadvantage of doing online peer feedback, the participants’ answer was unstable result, where in this case it was because the total of task which the students would do was more than 3 of other students’ berliana dyah ayu aprilianti, sibakhul milad malik hidayatulloh | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 240 task, therefore it made them confused and could not be focus. when the students did not focus, the students believed that they had unstable comments and suggention toward the other students’ task. discussion those advantages and disadvantages have answered the research question. online-peerfeedback has two advantages and one disadvantage for students in one of department in a university in yogyakarta. starting from the advantages, participants mentioned that online peer-feedback increased their self-learning autonomous. on the other hand, online peer-feedback also revived their sense to be independent learning. it is also harmonized with (appana, 2008) that every e-learning activity will raise students’ responsiveness and flexibility. this responsiveness makes students becoming autonomous. other advantages of online peer feedback are increasing the students’ critical thinking furthermore, there were five out of six participants stated that the activity of online peer-feedback also reinforced them to be more critical. this could be happened because along giving the comment, the participants also had a chance to find other resources to be used in giving comment. this ocean of knowledge also require student to be more selective. therefore, they felt that the critical thinking was needed in selecting the knowledge. (li & grion, 2019) stated that in giving peer feedback, students would use their critical thinking to find the best comments or suggestion toward their friends’ work. it is also in line with (ke & hoadley, 2009) that online learning and communities will build participant’s learning skill and knowledge. the learning skill of critical thinking also raised in the process of giving online peer feedback. researcher also found that online peer feedback giving a disadvantage which happen because of the amount of the task that students need to be reviewed. in this case, each student needs to review five tasks from their others. researcher assumed that this happen because their effort has been already put on the criticizing of each task that they face. this finding also contradicted with gazi (2009) said that e-learning process whatever it takes, it will build a positive attitude. in fact, the participant feel that the activity of online peer feedback decreased their focus and quality of their work comparing to one another work. since the participants' experiences in this research had to put review on more than five papers, so the finding found that the participants' feedback were varied because the amount of the works to be reviewed by the students. conclusion development of technology impacts many things including the education side. ten years ago, we only know that the learning activity should be done in the classroom with the teachers and students, but right now the appearing system in education called “e-learning” change the terms. the teacher only needs to put a material in the e-learning system and the students will read and do the activity in the system and they all do not need to come to the class. previous studies had been conducted by the researcher toward e-learning system such as murdock & williams (2011) found that an interactive online learning community allows students to develop strong relationships with fellow students. it provides learners with opportunities to meet regularly with their partners for collaborative construction and improvement of knowledge about chosen topics. (ke & hoadley, 2009) also did research and found that a great deal of literature suggests that online learning communities are an effective way to promote the sharing and building of knowledge by learners. due to the limitation in this study such as participant and place of research, this study cannot measure the perspective of online peer feedback in a context especially indonesian context. it is highly suggested to scholars to take wider participant number and place of research, so that the result of the research can be used as a representative of a context. as mentioned before in the introduction, the study also can be used to implicate the use of online peer-feedback for teacher or in a department. the researcher imply that online peer-feedback can be applied to boost students’ autonomy. however, the amount of task must be calculated properly so that students will be able to give feedback to others with stable result of each task. references adhabi, e. a. r., & anozie, c. b. l. 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(2021). the effects of providing and receiving peer feedback on writing performance and learning of secondary school students. american educational research journal, 58(3), 492–526. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831220945266 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42226e332037 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 171 elt forum 9 (2) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt team pair solo plus pictures for teaching writing descriptive text siti muamalah english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 11 may 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ________________ keywords: team pair solo; cooperative learning; picture; teaching writing; descriptive text ____________________ abstract ________________________________________________________________ this study was conducted to explore the implementation of team-pair-solo and pictures by an english teacher in teaching writing descriptive text. there were just a few studies that tried to analyze how team-pair-solo or pictures were used by the english teacher in the teaching and learning process. most of them only focused on the improvement of the students’ achievement. thus, to fill the gap in the literature, i conducted this study. the objectives were to describe the implementation of teampair-solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by an english teacher, explainthe difficulties the english teacher faced, and describe how she solved those difficulties. in this study, i used qualitative method. the participant was an english teacher in one of the schools in tegal in the academic year of 2019/2020. i used questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis as data collection methods. the results revealed that the teacher integrated team-pair-solo and pictures with lecturing technique, a game and other language skills. this study showed that there were two difficulties faced by the teacher namely students’ lack of enthusiasm and crowded students. to solve those difficulties, the teacher conducted a game and asked the students to memorize vocabulary as the punishment for the crowded students. in conclusion, team-pair-solo was an interesting technique and pictures were helpful media that helped english teacher in the teaching and learning process and were somewhat easy to be implemented. the technique and media helped students to be actively engaged in the classroom activity. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: sitimuamalah11@gmail.com siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 172 introduction english has become an international language for a long time, and it has been learned by indonesian since they are in elementary school. yet, many students in indonesia still face difficulties in mastering english, especially in writing. indeed, among the four english skills that have to be mastered, writing skill is regarded as the most difficult skill. widyanita (2017) said that the learning of writing skill is as difficult as the teaching of this skill. it is because, in writing, the writer has to pay close attention to some components such as grammar, content, vocabulary, punctuation, and sentence structure. writing is a complex activity and it needs some steps during the process. there are four steps during the writing process as stated by harmer (2004) namely planning, drafting, editing, and final draft (p. 4-5). from that process, we can see that writing is not an instant activity, that’s why mastering writing skill is not easy for students and the students need to practice a lot by using some steps in order to be able to improve the skill of writing (detapratiwi, 2013). discovering the correct technique is important to help teachers in teaching writing to their students in order to make the teaching of writing easier and more fun so that the students are interested in learning and they can enjoy the teaching-learning process and finally they can master the skill. in curriculum 2013, teaching-learning process is required to use student centered learning approach. students are required to be active in the teaching-learning process and in fact, cooperative learning techniques use student centered. moreover, in the syllabus, it is stated that vocational high school students are required to master some of the genre texts, such as descriptive, announcement, recount, and narrative texts. all of those texts are difficult for them if in the teaching-learning process teachers only use conventional techniques (fajlin, 2017). in this study i chose cooperative learning as an alternative in teaching writing. kassner (2002) said that cooperative learning is a system which is well-developed in which to teach students in small group settings (p. 17). there are many cooperative learning techniques that can be used as an alternative in teaching writing, one of them is team pair solo. according to kagan (as cited in wibisono, 2017) team pair solo is a technique that can develop student’s virtue learning. through this technique, students can learn and work together in groups first before they solve the problems on their own. students can help each other during the group process so that it can motivate them to learn. in addition, team pair solo involves students’ participation and they have to work cooperatively with their classmates in groups. furthermore, to be more effective in teaching writing especially writing descriptive text, it is good if the teachers use pictures as the media. according to asrifan (2015) teaching using pictures is very suitable to be applied to the students as a media in writing and also is very helpful for the students in generating and organizing their ideas in writing through pictures. also, raimes (1983) stated that pictures provide an experience for students in the classroom, a common base that leads to a variety of language activities (p. 27). in this study, i used the theory from carroll and wilson (as cited in widyanita, 2017). they said that writing as a process means giving students time to pre-write, write, post-write, proof read and edit their papers. it means teaching writing, not just assigning it, but also the teacher has to find the appropriate technique in teaching so that the students will be interested in joining and following the lesson. this study also used the theory from klimek (2009) about cooperative learning. klimek said that cooperative learning is where teams of students, with various abilities and skills, work together on different activities to learn about a subject. the cooperative learning that i used here was team pair solo. kagan (as cited in sutarno, 2015) stated team pair solo is teaching technique that allows the students to work on problems first as a team, then with a partner, and later they will easily solve the problems by themselves. it means that before doing problems alone, in team pair solo, the students first do them as a team and as a pair, receiving plenty of tutoring, encouragement and support. in addition, team pair solo is a technique that can develop student’s virtue leaning. those virtue learning are cooperation, helpfulness, leadership, self-motivation, and pride. through this technique, students can learn and work together in group first before they solve the problems on their own. students can help each other during the group process so that it can motivate them to learn (kagan, as cited in wibisono, 2017). i also used the theory from sadiman (2003) that pictures media are pictures that are related to the subject, useful for conveying messages from teachers to students (p. 21). this means that when pictures used as the media in teaching, the pictures can help the students understand the material siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 173 easily. alexander (1988) said that the use of picture may trigger a desire to learn more about the topic being presented (p. 44). moreover, chairenna (2007) stated that the use of picture in teaching writing can help the students catch and express their ideas easily by looking at the picture (p. 13). there were many previous studies that discussed about team pair solo and picture in helping students improving their skills such as done by sumarsih and sanjaya (2011), khasanah (2013), siregar and nugroho (2015), hapsari, sudarsono, and bunau (2015). sumarsih and sanjaya (2011) conducted a study with the objectives were to improve students’ achievement in writing descriptive through the application of team pair solo and the resullt showed that students’ performances were improved in every test. khasanah (2013) found that the students’ ability in writing descriptive text improved after being taught by team pair solo combined with picture guessing game. it could be seen from the students’ test results which were improved namely from the average score 71.68 to 79.15. moreover, siregar and nugroho (2015) revealed that the picture’s implementation in teaching descriptive text made the students gain more vocabulary and be more interested in following the lesson. it also created interesting atmosphere and stimulated students’ creativity as well. team pair solo and picture were not only effective to teach writing skill, but also to teach another skill. for example, hapsari, sudarsono, and bunau (2015) reported that the use of team pair solo is very effective to teach reading comprehension. the examples above showed that team pair solo and picture used by many researchers in various of skills improvement. however, the studies were only focused on the improvement of students’ skills. the studies only focused on the result of the implementation of team pair solo and picture as media whether or not the technique and the media gave impact on students’ ability, for example, in writing. moreover, the research only focused on the improvement of students’ score to indicate the success of the implementation of team pair solo or picture in a certain skill. there was just few studies that try to examine or analyse how team pair solo or picture are used by the teacher in the teaching and learning process. the previous studies have not investigated yet how an english teacher teach in a class using a certain teaching technique in this case team pair solo and also the picture used as media. therefore, based on the reviewed, to fill the gap in the literature, i conducted a research dealing with analyzing an english teacher in implementing team pair solo combined with pictures in teaching writing descriptive text. i analyzed how the technique and media were applied by the teacher in a certain school. the reason why i chose this topic was because there was only few studies related to it and by doing this research we could find out how team pair solo and pictures were implemented in that school. the research emphasized on the process of the implementation of team pair solo and the used of pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by english teacher. the process studied were how an english teacher implemented team pair solo technique and pictures as media in the classroom, what difficulties that faced and how she solved those difficulties. methods this study used qualitative research design. this was a case study because the aim of this study was to describe the implementation of team pair solo technique which was combined with pictures to teach writing of descriptive text by an english teacher. marshall and rossman (2006) defined qualitative research that it is pragmatic, interpretive, and grounded in the lived experiences of people. in addition, rossman and rallis (2003) said that there are five characteristics of qualitative research namely it is naturalistic, draws on multiple methods that respect the humanity of participants in the study, focuses on context, is emergent and evolving and it is fundamentally interpretive. this study explored and investigated how an english teacher implemented team pair solo which was combined with pictures in her teaching and learning process, in this case when teaching writing of descriptive text. in this study, i took an english teacher in one of the schools in tegal as the research participant. the reasons was that she was the practitioner of cooperative learning in which it was in line with my research topic. other than that, i was the alumnus so that it was easier for me to get the permission procedural. as the instrument in this research, i used questionnaire, interviews, observations, and document analysis for collecting the data. the procedures of collecting data were as follows: the first that i did was gave the questionnaire as soon as i met the english teacher. after it done, the next step was conducting classroom observation. in this step, i observed the teaching and learning process when the teacher was implementing team pair solo and pictures as media in teaching writing descriptive text. i made siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 174 an agreement with the english teacher on what day and what time i could conduct the classroom observation. after we agreed, i could immediately conduct the classroom observation. the next step was that doing the interview towards english teacher and some students from tkr one to tkr six. the interview with the teacher was conducted after the classroom observations from tkr one to six were done. whereas the interview with the students were done directly after the clasroom observation. the last was document analysis. the document analysed was the lesson plan made by the english teacher. the document analysis was done throughout the study. i informed the english teacher that i needed her lesson plan in the first meeting and asked for conducting the classroom observation. then, there were three steps of analyzing data in this study namely data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. the first one is data reduction. in this step i collected all data from questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis (lesson plan). after all data were gathered, i started to analyze the data one by one carefully and selected the important findings that i got from the research instruments and then i simplified the data until it transformed into important data that i used for presenting the results in this study. the second one was data display. in this research, i presented the data display in descriptive form. in this step, i organized all the data and described the answer of the research questions, such as describing the implementation of team pair solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text in this schooland explaining the difficulties faced by the english teacher and how she solved them. the third was conclusion drawing and verification. the conclusion in this study was made based on the data obtained and was made by using my own words and thoughts reflecting to the findings of this research. findings and discussion team pair solo and pictures for teaching writing descriptive text the purposes of this study were to describe the implementation of team pair solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by an english teacher, the difficulties that faced by english teacher and how she solved them. the data were collected through questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. the participant in this study was one of the english teachers in one of the schools in tegal named mrs. putri (pseudonym). she was the practitioner of cooperative learning. from the questionnaire, it is known that mrs. putri has been teaching english for about five to ten years and in her teaching and learning process, she implemented k-13. mrs. putri taught x grade of tkr (teknik kendaraan ringan). there were six classes in total and i observed all those classes. since this research was a qualitative case study, i would present the findings in the form of descriptive explanation. based on the data, i presented the findings as follows: the integration of other language skills as well as another teaching technique in teacher's instruction based on the classroom observation, it was found that mrs. putri taught descriptive text materials by implementing one of the cooperative learning techniques namely team pair solo. she combined it with pictures and another teaching technique namely lecturing technique. during the observations, i also found that mrs. putri taught not only writing skill but also other languange skills like speaking, listening, and reading. based on document analysis, mrs. putri did not make a lesson plan for her teaching and learning process. instead, she used the lesson plan from the last year academic. in fact, the lesson plan was also used for more than one meeting. in the lesson plan, cooperative learning method and media pictures were not stated. the learning approach stated in the lesson plan was scientific learning with some models of learning such as discovery learning, demonstration and direct instruction. instead of english, the lesson plan still used indonesian language. broadly, mrs. putri’s way of implementing team pair solo technique and pictures to teach writing of descriptive text was the same in all classes she taught, there was only a little bit difference namely in tkr six where she used a game in this class. she used some aids to support teaching and learning process like lcd, ppt, video learning, and some pictures. the following was the description of how mrs. putri implemented the techniques and the media in tkr one till five (field notes, 18-19/09/19). at the beginning of the lesson, mrs. putri opened the class by greeting the students and then checked the attendant list first as usual. after that, she began the class by reviewing some vocabulary the students learned in the last meeting, showing again pictures of places and asking the students to siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 175 redescribe in brief. then, the teacher did question and answer about the last meeting’s material to make sure that the students had already understood the materials well. next, she began to explain what they were going to learn of that day namely still about descriptive text but at this time they were going to learn how to describe people. starting with describing the phisycal look of someone, then, mrs. putri continued the lesson by teaching them how to describe someone’s personality as well. she taught some vocabulary related to someone’s personality such as kind, honest, arrogant, etc. mrs. putri then asked the students to look at the ppt, there was a video lesson about descriptive text. the video was about how to describe what someone looked like. during the playing of the video, mrs. putri translated the meaning and explained the content of the video to make sure that the students understood the vocabualry and content in the video. the students paid attention to mrs. putri’s explanation. in the ppt, there were also some pictures of artists such as cinta laura, demian, wayne rooney, yuki kato, rina nose, and nisa sabyan. the students together were asked to decribe those artists. in this activity, all of the students were enthusiast and active during the lesson. they actively described those artists even though not always using english. when the students described it in bahasa then mrs. putri would tell them the english of it. after describing the artist orally, then the students were given an example of a good descriptive text. the example showed how to make a good descriptive text in which there were two parts namely identification and description. the teacher explained about it clearly. after explaining the example of good decriptive text, mrs. putri began the next activity namely asked the students to make a group of six as a team. the members of the team were decided by the teacher since if the students chose by themselves it would take a long time. also, it was to make sure that the team was heterogeneous with some students had higher abilities than others so that the students who had higher abilities could teach those who had lower abilities. in this activity, mrs. putri did not explain that she would use team pair solo technique. she just directly asked the students to make a group of six as a team. after the students made the team, then, each team was given worksheet. she, then explained what the students needed to do namely they were required to do team work. the students seemed understood the teacher’s instruction’s well since the teacher made the instruction clear. on the worksheet, there was a picture of an artist with some questions related to the artist such as their physical look, what the artist was wearing, the artists’ main job and etc. that the students needed to discuss together with their team in order to find out the answer. when the students began the team work, mrs. putri went around to each group to check whether the team work worked well or not. from the classroom observations, the team work activity ran smoothly in all classes. the students did the work appropriate with the teacher’s instruction. the students seemed actively discussed with their friends in a team, they worked and discussed together with their team to answer the questions given. the next activity was pair work. in this activity, the students were asked to make a group of two. in pairs, the students had to discuss some questions given by the teacher. the questions in this pair work were different from the questions in group. the questions were in the form of some clues given related to the personality of the artist being described. here, the teacher explained that the students were required to guess the personality of the artist based on the clues given. after they did pair work, the next activity was that the students conducted solo activity. they were asked to practice making a complete form of descriptive text based on the information they got from work and pair activity. in solo activity, the students completed the work individually, they did it on their own yet there were some students that seemed having the difficulty in composing complete descriptive text. some of them cooperate with his partner. when the teacher knew this, she went to those students and helped them solving their problems. that was the end of the team pair solo activity. however, mrs. putri gave some students chance to those who were brave to read their work in front of the class. then after that she also asked the students to give comments to their classmate’s work. in some classes, like tkr one till four, the students were enthusisat to come forward reading their work in front of the class. however, in tkr five, only several of them were brave enough to come forward. nevertheless, when the teacher asked the students to give comments to their friend who came forward, almost in all classes, there was no student who was brave to give comments, the students seemed shy and did not dare to raise their hands in order to get the chance to give comments. hence, the teacher then pointed to some students to give their comments. siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 176 all language skills were included in mrs. putri's classes. for example, listening skill. it happened when the teacher played the video learning and the students listened to it. then, writing skill. it was when the students were writing a draft of descriptive text during the team pair solo activity. the next was reading skill. it was applied when the students were asked to present their work in front of the class by reading their work. then the last was speaking skill, it was applied when the students gave comments to their friend who came forward presenting his work. mrs. putri also used the combination of techniques in her teaching. they were team pair solo and traditional one. at the beginning of the lesson, she used the traditional technique first namely explaining the material in front of the class while the students in their seats listening to the teacher’s explanation. the purpose of explaining the material fisrt was that to give the students input of the materials first so that when they started to learn with their group they already had the knowledge of the materials being taught. in addition, the pictures that were used by mrs. putri also could make the students motivated during the lesson. the pictures were some artists that were wellknown and had various characters such funny beautiful and handsome. in the interview, almost all of them said that they really liked the pictures because the pictures helped them to get the ideas of what they were going to describe. the pictures made the lesson be more fun and more enjoyable. the integration of game in teacher's instruction for building students' enthusiasm the class in which taught by using team pair solo technique combined with pictures and game was tkr six. however, in this class, the descriptive text materials was just about to be taught unlike the other five classes that had one meeting discussing about descriptive text materials. therefore, in this class the descriptive text materials was still about describing places. based on the interviews, at first, the teacher would use the same technique and media to teach descriptive text in this class without any game since the materials for this class was left behind the other five classes. however, in fact, during the teaching and learning process, several students seemed bored and not enthusiast in joining the class. only a few of them were listening to the teacher’s explanation. the teacher said that this maybe because the english subject for this class was in the last hour of class, the students might feel tired. hence, the class was not really conducive. because of that condition, the teacher decided to conduct a game. the following was the description of how mrs. putri implemented the techniques and the media as well as the game in tkr six (field note, 170919). at the beginning of the lesson, the teacher greeted the students and checked the attendance list. after that, the teacher began the class. since the descriptive materials was just about to be discussed in this class, so the first thing that mrs. putri did was exploring the students’ knowledge about descriptive text. mrs. putri then asked the students what descriptive text was. after the students answered the question, the teacher then gave them appreciation by saying good job to them because of their braveness answering the question and she explained about the definition of descriptive text. after that, mrs. putri began to explain the generic structure of descriptive text. however, in this activity, some students seemed start not paying close attention to the teacher’s explanation. some of them start having chat with their seatmate, some seemed they were sleepy, so the teacher then decided to play a game. the game was that the teacher played music and there was a pen given to one of the students. when the students were ready to play the game, the music would be played. during the music was being played, the student gave the pen to the next student continuously until the music stopped by the teacher. when the music stopped, the pen was also had to stop moving and the students who held the pen when the music stopped, he had to come forward and tried to describe a place orally in front of the class. unfortunately, this activity took much time because the students had a little vocabulary to be used in decribing the place. as the consequence, the group work activity in this class was dismissed. the teacher immediately asked the students to make a group in pairs and gave each group worksheet to be discussed together with thier partner before finally they did the solo activity to complete the task given. also, in this class there were no students who got the chance to come forward reading their work beacuse the time was over. from the observation intkr six, mrs. putri implemented team pair solo inappropriate with the steps because she dismissed the team work activity. the reason was because the time was not enough if the team work activity was included since the game activity took much time. based on all of the data i obtained and analyzed, it was found that mrs. putri implemented team pair solo in the same way in all classes that i had observed except in tkr six. each classes received the same instructions. she used the combination of the traditional technique and team pair solo. she could implement team pair solo technique step by step properly. however, in tkr six she used a game. siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 177 the use of the game made the implementation of team pair solo in this class inappropriate because the team work activity was dismissed. difficulties faced by the english teacher and how she solved them based on the observation, it was found that the teacher could teach well. however, there were difficulties faced by the teacher, they were students’ lack of enthusiasm and crowded students. to solve those difficulties, the teacher conducted a game and asked the students to memorize vocabulary as the punishment for the crowded students. there were also difficulties faced by the students namely students’ limited vocabulary, students’ pronunciation problems and students’ sepaking problems. there were some efforts that were done by mrs. putri in order to help the students gain more vocabulary. the first was that mrs. putri always asked the students to bring dictionary whenever there was english class so that when they found the difficult words, they could directly open the dictionnary that they brought. in addition, mrs. putri also did another effort namely she would ask the students to memorize vocabularies as much as possible and then test them. to overcome students’ pronunciation as well as students’ speaking skill problems. the efforts that mrs. putri did were asked the students to speak in english as often as possible and gave additional acitivity by asking the students to come forward to reading their work so that the teacher could correct the students’ pronunciation if they pronounce them wrong so that the students would know the correct pronunciation. discussion this study showed that one of the reasons of difficulties in writing was lack of vocabulary. it was found through the observation in six classes that there were many students who still had difficulty in composing the descriptive text because they knew little vocabulary. in the interviews with the students, many of them admitted that the diffculty that they faced was they did not have a lot vocabularies in mind so that they had to often open the dictionnary to look for vocabularis they had not known yet. the same statement also revealed by the teacher, she said that many students were lack of vocabularies. this was related to the findings of pratiwi (2012). in her study, she revealed that vocabulay became one of the most difficult aspects found in the students’ writing. the use of team pair solo could help the english teacher in teaching writing descriptive text. mrs. putri said that through the implementation of this technique, the students were more active and enthusiat in joining the lesson. moreover, the group and pair work made the students could have the chance to help each other in terms of peer tutoring since the team were heterogeneus consisted of students with high ability and those with low ability so that the students who had higher ability could help their friends who had lower ability. this was related to the thoery i used from klimek (2009) that in cooperative learning, the team of students consists of students with various ability working together on different activities to learn about a subject. furthermore, team pair solo technique has the steps in which those steps are what make the learning successful because helping the students in building their confidents especially when dealing with more difficult content material (spring, as cited in ogunleye, 2011). nevertheless, from the classroom observation, it was also found that students’ enthusiasm and motivation were somehow changeful. it happened in tkr six when the students started to get bored. being in this kind of situation, the english teacher had to be clever finding ways to overcome this problem so that the students keep being involved in the lesson activity. fortunately, here mrs. putri could solve the problem by creating a game to make the students’ enthusism and motivation to learn back. this problem was also proved by widyaningsih (2014) that the english teacher should also be creative in using interesting activities in order to attract the students’ involvement in the teaching and learning process. moreover, through the implementation of team pair solo, students’ activeness leveled up to some degree. it could be seen from the classroom observation such as when the students were in group of six as a team, they became more active and enthusiastic in doing the task. they actively discussed the task with their friends in group. this findings related to the findings of rambe (2014) who revealed that the use of team pair solo could increase students’ activeness and thus improve their achievement. the same finding was explained by yati, syarif and amri (2018) that the implementation of team pair solo technique guides students to be active and more participate during learning activity. they added that each step of this technique invites the students to participate and more active during learning activities. in addition, susilawati (2015) found that siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 178 through the implementation of team pair solo, the students were participate in the teaching learning process happily and each student is active. furthermore, the use of pictures were also an effective way to teach writing especially descriptive text. based on the interview, almost all of the students said that they like the media which were some pictures of some famous artists. the students added that the pictures also help them a lot in terms of catching ideas of what to be described by just looking at the pictures. this was in line with heaton (1990) who claimed that pictures provide students with ideas for tasks like describing people, objects, places, and even processes, enabling them to give their full attention to use written language (p. 107). secrica, jismulatif and afrianto (2017) reavealed in their study that the use of pictures can help the teaching and learning process run well. the students are able to gain the ideas in writing a composition especially writing a descriptive text by looking and understanding the pictures. from the interviews that i had done with the teacher, she revealed that team pair solo and pictures was a suitable combination and was effective to teach decriptive text material. by the combination of team pair solo and pictures, it created a more lively learning atmosphere, creating an active learning environment, communicative, enjoyable and not boring especially the pictures seen were idols. in addition, the students also stated that the combination of team pair solo and pictures was good since it helped them to be active and creative, helped them a lot in composing descriptive text. due to the fact that the students actively involved in the learning process, the class become alive and fun. the teacher displayed the pictures of some artist in ppt, the students actively described those pictures together, there were some students that sometimes did it using funny word that make the whole class laugh that made the atmoshphere in class became more fun and enjoyable. through the implementation of team pair solo, the class activity become more interesting and it created enjoyable circumstance. all of the students participated in these activities and made the class alive and cooperative, and the students were more confident to study writing skill. those kind of situation was also found by hapsari, sudarsono, and bunau (2015), they explained that during the process of teaching and learning, the implememntation of team pair solo made the students were active and enthusiastic. when the group work was in progress, the class was so alive with some students who tried to explain each other about their understanding related to the given task. the students showed their enthusiasm when they discussed in group. then, the group broke in pairs. they helped each other by explaining to their partner who didn’t get deep understanding about the text. by the treatment, the students’ confidence and their courage got improved. team-pair-solo can improve students’ social skills and students’ motivation by giving support and helping each other. conclusion based on the results of the study, it could be concluded that the use of team pair solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text was somewhat easy to be implemented in the classroom activity. the findings of this study showed that the technique and the media were appropriate to teach students in writing descriptive text material. team pair solo and pictures were a suitable combination and were effective to teach decriptive text material since it could create a more lively learning atmosphere, an active learning environment, communicative, enjoyable and not boring especially the pictures used were idol pictures. team workpair worksolo activity were the steps in team pair solo. the team and pair work made the students could have the chance to help each other in terms of peer tutoring before the students work on their own. the team were heterogeneus in which consist of students with high ability and those with low ability so that the students who had higher ability could help their friends who had lower ability. those steps could help the students in building their confidents so that it could create successful learning. the pictures used by mrs. putri also made the students more creative. it was related to the pictures that could help them get the idea of what going to be desribed by observing the pictures. in addition, the pictures made the teaching and learning process be more fun and exiciting as well as increased students motivation to learn as seen during the observation that the students gave positive response by showing their interest, enthusiasm and motivation during the lesson. from the explanation above it could be concluded that the use of team pair solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by the english teacher was successfully implemented. however, although team pair solo and pictures were easy to be implemented, still, there were some difficulties that faced by the english teacher. the teacher had to be able to overcome those difficulties in order to siti muamalah/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 179 make the teaching and learning process could be successful. otherwise, those difficulties somehow could be serious problems. in the teaching and learning process, mrs. putri found some difficulties when she used team pair solo technique and the lecturing technique in her classroom. from the data gathered, some difficulties were revealed, they were crowded students and students’ lack of enthusiasm. there were also some difficulties faced by the students namely students’ vocabulary mastery, students’ speaking skills, and pronunciation problems. from the observations and the interviews, what mrs. putri did to overcome those two difficulties were that she asked the students who triggered the fuss to write vocabulary as much as possible and memorize them which then the teacher tested that student’s memorization in front of the class. this was used as the punishment for the students and it worked to make the student did not repeat their mistakes anymore. whereas for the second difficulty namely students’ lack of enthusiasm, the teacher conducted a game that was created by the teacher herself. the solutions for the difficulties faced by the students were mrs. putri did some efforts like asking the students to always bring dictionary, having the students memorize vocabulary as much as possible and tested them. other solutions were for students’ speaking skill and pronunciation problems namely the teacher asked the students to speak in english as often as possible and gave additional activity by asking the students to come forward to reading their work so that the teacher could correct the students’ pronunciation if they pronounce them wrong so that the students would know the correct pronunciation. based on the conclusion, i would like to give some suggestions: the first one was that the english teacher could give more variations such as game in which it should be well prepared. english teacher should pay attention more about the game chosen. the chosen game should be a game that can improve students’ vocabulary given that the students' vocabulary was still low. in addition, i suggest that instead of using paper dictionary, the teacher and students can try using electronic dictionary to help the students gain more vocabularies. another suggestion is that, in terms of making lesson plans, in order to help the teacher arrange the teaching and learning activities, it is suggested that the english teacher makes an appropriate lesson plan for each meeting. furthermore, for other researchers, it is expected that the future researchers can explore other areas that have not been explored yet such as conducting a research using team pair solo which was combined with another cooperative learning techniques or combined it with another media. furthur, it is recommended that future researchers can use team pair solo not only in writing descriptive but also in the other genre of text or even in the other other skills other than writing. although this study was well prepared and it has reached the aims, still there were some limitations. the first one was that this study was lack of formal interview since i only used semistructured interview during the study. according to singh (2002) “a formal interview is a systematic procedure to dig up information about the respondent where a set of questions is asked in the order that has been prepared by the interviewer and the answers are recorded in a standardized form”. hakim (2013) stated that “a formal interview is important since it has higher validity compared to the informal one”. the second limitation was for the data triangulation, i didn’t ask the students about their opinions on how the teacher implemented team pair solo and pictures whether she could implement the technique and the media well or not, or whether she seemed to have difficulty or not in implementing team pair solo and pictures. acknowledgement i would like to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my advisor, puji astuti, s. pd., m.pd., ph.d., who has been willing to constantly give valuable information, guidance, advice, solution as well as encouragement throughout the course of this final project. without her help, i would never be able to complete this journal. references alexander, j. e. 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(2018). the effect of team pair solo technique on students’ reading comprehension of narrative text at grade ix of smpn 14 pekanbaru. english language teaching and research, 2(1), pp. 189-195. https://www.slideshare.net/msklimek/cooperative-learning-powerpoint 62 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of snakes and ladders game to improve students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts (a quasi-experimental research of the eighth grade students of smp n 2 demak in the academic year of 2013/2014) ulil albab  english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: snakes and ladders game, students’ mastery of simple past tense, constructing recount texts, quasiexperimental research ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study concerns with the use of snakes and ladders game as a medium to improve students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts. the purposes of this study are to show whether snakes and ladders game gives contribution to improve the students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts and to find out whether snakes and ladders game gives the significant difference or not. quasi-experimental research was used. the population of this study was the eighth grade students of smp n 2 demak. the experimental group consisted of 30 students and the control group also consisted of 30 students. there were four meetings during the experiment. before the experiment was conducted, a pre-test was given to both groups. a post-test was given after the experiment was done. to find out the significant difference statistically, t-test formula was used. before applying the formula, the data were checked by using normality and homogeneity. the result shows that the data have normal distribution and homogeneity. the result of t-test is 3.41, for α = 5% with df = 58, t-table = 2.002. it means that the t-value is higher than the t-table (3.41 > 2.002). the purposes of this study are achieved because the students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts improve. then, the t-value of the post test is higher than the t-table; it means that the use of snakes and ladders gives the significant difference. in fact, based on this study the use of snakes and ladders game is effective and applicable enough as a teaching medium to be used in improving the students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building, fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: uuliilalbab@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 ulil albab / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 63 introduction grammar is very important in spoken and written language. as a result, students are not supposed to understand only the theories and knowledge of grammar, but in practice, they also have to know how to apply it in both oral and written form. as a matter of fact, written communication is partly different from spoken. in written, students generate their ideas and thoughts into readable texts and they also have to pay attention to spelling, punctuation, word choice, and so on. however, in spoken, they express their ideas and thoughts orally. in the level of eighth grade students, there are text types or genres that have to be learnt by the students in english writing. two main categories of text types that have been learnt by them are literary and factual texts. for instance, narrative belongs to literary texts; whereas, factual texts include descriptive, recount, and procedure. each text has its own language features, such as tenses that are used in different texts. simple present tense is used in the form of descriptive and procedure text; on the other hand, simple past tense is used in recount and narrative text. in fact, students have already been familiar with writing text in learning english. however, they sometimes face some difficulties. they understand the generic structure in certain text types and have many ideas to express in written texts, but they feel difficult to write because their mastery of tenses in certain text types or genres is weak. in conventional teaching, teachers usually have explained the generic structures of the text and tenses of the language features before starting writing. in fact, there are still some errors that can be found from their result of writing practice, such as the grammar construction of the tenses in sentences. in order to solve the problems of the students’ grammar in writing, especially in constructing a text, the writer has an innovative and attractive method, especially for teachers in teaching english. harmer (2001:1) stated that “they should make their lessons interesting so you do not fall asleep students.” thus, teachers as the main actors in the classroom can look for other methods of teaching to design an interesting and attractive learning activity. as a result, the writer tries to combine teaching using some methods; they are pictures, videos, or games. by using one of those attractive media, students will be enthusiastic and they also will understand the lesson easily. in this research, the writer would like to focus in improving student’s mastery of simple past tense to construct recount texts by using snakes and ladders game. as we know, simple past tense belongs to language feature of recount text. in addition, snakes and ladders grammar game is used in this research through a quasiexperimental research to find out how effective it contributes in improving the students’ past tense competence. hopefully, their writing skill, especially in writing recount text will be improved. review related literature 2.1 snakes and ladders game in science and technology education book, the definition of “snakes and ladders is a popular game for children in many countries of the world. it is easy to make from basic materials and can be adapted to suit many learning situations.” this game also “can assist in developing basic arithmetic such as counting, addition and subtraction, communication, as well as the concept for which a game has been developed” (lowe, 1988:27). 2.2 simple past tense in modern english book, the definition of simple past tense is explained that “both forms (simple past tense and past progressive tense) of the past tense represent definite past. they refer to events that were completed before the statements is made. they are often accompanied by such expressions of definite past as yesterday, last year, two weeks ago” (frank, 1972:49). 2.3 recount text in text type in english 1 book, the definition of recount text “is a piece of text that retells past events, usually in the order in which ulil albab / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 64 they happened. the purpose of a recount is to give the audience a description of what occurred and when it occurred” (anderson and kathy, 1997:48). research discussion 3.1 research design the research design that was used in this study was an experimental research and it was conducted in the classroom. ross (2005:3) stated that “experimental research is used in settings where variables defining one or more ‘causes’ can be manipulated in a systematic fashion in order to discern ‘effects’ on other variables.” furthermore, specifically the writer chose quasiexperimental research in the form of nonequivalent control group design. this design is often used in classroom experiments when experimental and control groups are such naturally assembled groups as intact classes, which may be similar. best (1993:151) stated that “quasi-experimental design provides control of when and to whom the measurement is applied, but because random assignment to experimental and control treatments has not been applied, the equivalence of the groups is not assured.” the design of quasi-experimental research can be described as the following: 𝑂1 x 𝑂2 𝑂3 c 𝑂4 (best, 1993:151) in which: o1 = pre-test for the experimental group o2 = post-test for the experimental group o3 = pre-test for control group o4 = post-test for control group x. = exposure of a group to an experimental by giving treatment using snakes and ladders game c = exposure of a group to the control 3.2 theoretical framework in this study, the writer wants to find out how effective snakes and ladders game to improve students’ mastery of simple past tense in constructing recount texts. hence, the research design that is going to be used this study is a quasi-experimental research. the writer will use two classes from the population. one class will be the control group and the else will be the experimental group. before the treatments are conducted, first, the writer gives pre-test for the students. then, the treatments are given for the students. there are two meetings for each the control and experimental groups during the research. the experimental group is the group which is the treatment of snakes and ladders game will be delivered. after all the treatments were conducted, the writer gives post-test for the students. the last activity, he analyses the result of pre-test and post-test by comparing the mean using t-test formula to find out the significant different of the experimental and control groups. the scheme of the quasi-experiment can be described as the following diagram: diagram 2.1 scheme of quasi-experimental research 3.3 pre test after conducting the try-out test and revising the instrument, the writer gave the pretest for the experimental and the control groups for the next activity on march, 27th 2014. in the instrument of pre-test, there were 20 items of ulil albab / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 65 sentence constructions and picture-cued story sequences in constructing recount texts. in doing the test, the writer gave 40 minutes for the students. the following is the chart of the result from the pre-test of the control and the experimental groups: chart 4.1 pre-test comparison of experimental and control groups based on chart 4.1, there were 6 students who got 31-40 in the control group and in the experimental group was just 1 student. then, there were 2 students in the control group and 5 students in the experimental group who got 4150, 11 students in the control group and 9 students in the experimental group who got 5160, 14 students in the control group and 7 students in the experimental group who got 6170, 4 students in the both groups who got 71-80, and 4 students in the experimental group who got 81-90. as a result, there was no significant improvement between the scores of the students in the control and experimental groups. 3.4 post test after the treatment was done in the experimental and the control group, the writer gave a post-test for both groups on april, 19th 2014. the instrument was the same test item as the pre-test. this last activity was done to find out the result of the students’ achievement of simple past tense in constructing recount texts after they were given treatment of snakes and ladders game. the following is the chart of the result from the post-test of the control and the experimental groups: chart 4.2 post-test comparison of experimental and control groups based on the chart above, there were 4 students in the control group and there was 1 student in the experimental group who got 41-50. there were 5 students and in the experimental group was just 1 student who got 51-60. then, there were 10 students in the control group and 3 students in the experimental group who got 6170, 7 students in the control group and 11 students in the experimental group who got 7180, 4 students in the control group and 7 students in the experimental group who got 81-90. the last, there were 7 students in the experimental group who got 91-100. thus, based on the data of the result of the post-test in both groups, it can be concluded that the scores of the students of experimental group were higher than those of control group. 3.5 test of significance the following table is the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test from the students: table 4.4 mean of pre-test and post-test based on the table above, it can be seen the means of pre-test and post-test for the experimental and the control groups. after that, the writer compared between the two means. the post-test of experimental group was higher than that of the control group. the difference between group the mean score of the pre test the mean score of the post test experimental group control group 63.08 56.75 81.25 67.83 ulil albab / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 66 the two mean is (81.25 – 67.83 = 13.42). it indicates that the treatment is effective because there is an improvement in the experimental group than in the control group. however, the writer could not conclude that the difference between the two means above were significant. thus, to make the analysis be more reliable; the writer proved it by using t-test formula to determine whether the difference between the two means was statistically significant. the writer analyzed the data using t-test. before applying the t-test formula, s had to be found out first. the step of the computation is as follows: 𝑆 = √ (𝑛1 − 1)𝑠1 2 + (𝑛2 − 1)𝑠2 2 𝑛1 + 𝑛2 − 2 = √ (30 −1) 119.90+ (30 −1) 36.97 30+30 −2 = √ 3477.1+1072.13 58 = √ 4549.23 58 = √78.44 = 8.86 after getting the standard deviation (s), the computation of t-test can be done as the following: 𝑡 = 𝑋1− 𝑋2 𝑆 √ 1 𝑛1 + 1 𝑛2 = 18.17 −10.33 8.86 √ 1 30 + 1 30 = 7.84 8.86 ×0.26 = 7.84 2.30 = 3.41 before the computation above was concluded by the writer, the final result of t-test would be compared to the critical value of t-table to prove whether the difference was significant or not. in this experiment, the writer used α = 5%. furthermore, the number of samples in this experiment for the experimental and the control group were 30 students with the degree of freedom (df) that was (n1 + n2 – 2 = 30 + 30 – 2 = 58). for α = 5% and df = 58, the writer checked the degree of freedom in the t-table. the result was 2.002. the t-value was 3.41 and the t-table was 2.002. thus, the t-value was higher than the critical value, (3.41 > 2.002). it can be concluded that the result of the test after getting the treatment between the experimental and the control group was significantly different. furthermore, teaching simple past tense by using snakes and ladders game in order to construct recount texts was more effective and got higher grades than the students who were taught without snakes and ladders game. conclusion according to the result of this research, the writer can conclude as the following: (1) there were improvement of scores after the students were taught by using snakes and ladders game. it is proven by the t-value which is higher than t-table, (3.41 > 2.002). (2) this game makes the students active in discussing simple past tense because there is an interaction and communication while they are playing the game. (3) snakes and ladders game is a new game for the students in learning simple past tense; thus, the students are enthusiastic to study grammar, especially simple past tense. (4) this game can ease the students to correct and find out some common errors in making simple past tense. (5) this game provides language practice in various skills – listening, speaking, reading, and writing. references anderson, m. and kathy a. 1997. text type in english 1. south yarra: macmillan education. best, j.w. and j.v. kahn. 1993. research in education. new delhi: prentice-hall of india. frank, m. 1972. modern english: exercises for native speakers. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. harmer, j. 2001. how to teach english. edinburgh: longman. lowe, n. k. 1988. games and toys in the teaching of science and technology. paris: unesco. ulil albab / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 67 ross, k. n. 2005. educational research: some basic concepts and terminology. paris: unesco. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 146 elt forum 10 (2) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt teaching strategies: how do teachers in remote area survive during remote learning? rini amelia1, tia nur istianah2 1politeknik negeri banjarmasin, indonesia 2institut agama islam cirebon, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 30 june 2021 approved in 26 july 2021 published in 28 july 2021 ________________ keywords; teaching strategy; remote area; remote learning ____________________ abstract during the pandemic of covid-19, remote learning has been very highlighted. this environment creates huge challenges especially to those teaching in remote areas. drawing on them, this descriptive qualitative study aims to explore teaching strategies applied there. in collecting the data, interviews and questionnaires were given to two english teachers of a junior high school in aranio, banjar regency. the results show that they have to face some challenges such as the limitedness of internet access and low motivated students when implementing remote learning. due to this condition, they need to survive by making some efforts such as creating and using interesting teaching modules, coordinating with the related parties, carrying out blended learning, conducting home visit and setting up offline classes because of no possibility for online learning. through this study, other teachers are kindly informed on the applicable teaching strategies to create effective remote learning experiences in remote areas.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 jl. brig jend. hasan basri, pangeran, kec. banjarmasin utara, kota banjarmasin, kalimantan selalatan, indonesia 70124 e-mail: rini.thabrani@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 147 introduction the pandemic of covid-19 declared as a global pandemic has affected many sectors including education. a number of schools are closed and students are sent home in order to prevent the spread of corona virus. then the concept of studying from home are newly introduced by the circular of the ministry of education and culture no. 4 of 2020. consequently, remote learning becomes a big necessity. remote learning brings some challenges and urge teachers to find some applicable teaching strategies to deal with it. it is then brought to the surface and highligted since it must be carried out to keep teaching and learning process going. the covid-19 pandemic does shift face-to-face interaction in physical classroom to remote learning. some other significant impacts are also seen in education. the rise of virtual learning contributes to the emergence of several online teaching platforms which soundly offer their free services. also, a number of webinars, online courses, workshops and trainings starts mushrooming. they all offer feasibility for all educators around the world, including indonesia. as an archipelagic country, indonesia owns special geographical condition in which the infrastructure development is still considered uneven. consequently, some areas are called developed and others are underdeveloped. those in developed areas get some feasibility in many aspects of life. they are very familiar with many sophisticated technologies. meanwhile, those living in underdeveloped areas, also called remote areas, find it difficult to catch up. it is no wonder that the quality of education in developed or urban areas is claimed much better than that of remote areas. this factor also makes some differences and gives certain impacts on the implementation of remote learning during the pandemic of covid-19. in regard to remote learning, it is frequently seen as an obvious choice for many students with access limitation (macintyre & macdonald, 2011). in addition, rizaldi & fatimah (2020) state that remote learning is an effective solution to continuing the learning process during the covid-19 pandemic when it does not allow direct learning in the classroom. those experts claim the importance of remote learning as one alternative way to implement. dealing with remote learning environment, belastock (2020) says that transitioning a school community to a remote learning environment involves long-range strategic planning, allocation of resources, focused sustainable professional development and equitable access to devices and connectiviy for students. moreover, ray (2020) states that remote learning should provide an opportunity for students and teachers to remain connected and engaged with the content while working from their homes. paolini (2015) adds some points to be concerned in order to create or enhance wellorganized learning such as communication, class environment, students’ engagement, teaching material, and teaching strategy. the previous statements explicitly tell several essential elements should be included when implementing remote learning. it is surely not an easy task for teachers. the necessity for conducting remote learning does challenge teachers especially those teaching in remote areas. as it is known, remote area is a geographic area located far from the city and hard to reach (due to limited means of transportation) and difficult to access because of its geographical conditions (archipelago, mountainous, or swamp areas). besides, the internet connection and electricity are frequently nowhere to be seen. drawing on these conditions, they are certainly not capable of doing online activities since they have limited or no access to the internet. this inability may cause other teaching obstacles emerge. nevertheless, the teachers must ensure the continuity of teaching and learning activities. they need to make some efforts to deal with the hardships they face. although all learning activities are not able to be carried out online, the effectiveness of teaching and learning and the expected students’ outcomes must be considered by the teacher. what teacher has prepared before teaching can determine the learning results. in conclusion, it is compulsory for teachers to make learning organization or planning before a given class on the subject of teaching strategy which is also the focus of this study, paolini (2015) states that teaching strategy can create effective teaching. besides, (kistner et al., 2015) argue that teaching learning strategy is one important aspect of the consistenly claimed promotion of self-regulated learning which involves planning, executing, and evaluating learning process. many educational institutions design their teaching strategy to be used during remote learning because they want the essence of learning to be implemented in remote learning as well. concerning teaching strategy, teachers must coordinate well with parents. during remote learning, the students are allowed to learn anytime and anywhere systematically, according to teacher’s instructions (pratiwi & chasanah, 2018). in accordance to the learning situation during covid-19, rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 148 students have to study by the help of their parents. in other words parents take responsibility for their children learning at home. therefore, parents have the opportunity to observe and evaluate their children learning (carpenter & dunn, 2020). besides parents’ reliance, the use of technology becomes the most powerful means in current educational condition. online learning or remote learning is created along with technological advancement. this learning utilizes the internet and sophisticated media that assist its process from explaining the material, giving the task, and also assessing students’ competence. according to munir (2017), online learning is the use of information and communication technology developments in education that can reach all levels of society. another assumption also states that technology opens up learning opportunities for all students because it helps them to access, provide, and express their knowledge in a variety of ways (torrey, 2018). in addition, several online platforms for teaching and learning are exposed. a lot of webinars, online trainings and workshops are set up. those are designed to assist teachers to go through remote learning successfully. there have been a lot of studies on remote learning done such as learning with online activities: what do students think about their experience? by abdallah in 2009, the effectiveness of online learning: beyond no significant differences and future horizons by nguyen in 2015, the online learning activities during the covid-19 pandemic by lubis and sari in 2020, etc. those studies mainly focus on teaching techniques or online classroom activities potentially done when implementing remote learning. but what about teaching strategies used in remote learning settings? how do teachers, especially those in remote areas, survive when they are incapable of conducting online teaching and learning activities? thus, this present study is significantly conducted to reveal the challenges faced and the teaching strategies applied by remote school teachers during the implementation of remote learning. methods the method used in writing this study is descriptive qualitative method, to expose how teachers in remote area survive in remote learning environment during the covid-19 pandemic. the challenges and teaching strategies applied are two central themes in this study. in order to get rich information regarding what the researchers are looking for, this study was guided by the following questions: table 1. list of interview questions theme questions challenges during implementing remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic, how was the teaching and learning process going on there? are you conducting remote learning? what are the challenges you face in remote learning environment? based on your experience, what is the biggest obstacle when implementing remote learning? teaching strategies applied in remote area what has been prepared by the school in implementing remote learning? what teaching strategies have you used in remote learning environment? in accordance to students’ motivation to take part in this remote learning, what tips have you done to get their attention and interest during learning process? are there any advantages and weaknesses of the teaching strategies that you have applied? respondents and instruments those questions, set in a form of questionnaire and interview, were given to two english teachers of junior high school. these two teachers were selected because the researchers got their phone number and could easily contact them. thus, it definitely increases the feasibility of this study. they teach at a school which is located in aranio, one remote area in banjar regency, south kalimantan. data collection procedures at the beginning, the questionnaire was administered in the form of google form to help the researchers to take and organize the responses. meanwhile, the interviews were addressed in the form rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 149 of semi-structured interviews which were searching for information related to participants’ name, age, and also school’s name, then followed by the same main research questions mentioned but in a deep review. the data gained from the interviews were taped and transcribed via whatsapp (wa). this is because our distance between the participants and the researchers is beyond the reach. collecting the data was held on 27th april 2021, and the data were immediately analyzed after all the data from both techniques were collected. data analysis a 5-step process that was used to analyze the data includes narrative, coding, interpretation, confirmation, and presentation (merriam, 1998). in order to increase credibility and validity of the findings, the researchers used data triangulation. rugg (2010), the chief of unaid, defines this as the use of a variety of data sources, including time, space, and person in a study. the data obtained from the questionnaires and interview are compared. it is then found out that both data sources yield the same result. the final findings of this study will present the summary of the two central themes of this study in a detailed description. findings and discussion as discussed earlier, the data in this study were obtained from the questionnaires and interviews. the questions are set up to answer two central themes: challenges and teaching strategies applied during implementing remote learning. challenges based on the result of the interview and questionnaire, it is found out that their school which is located in aranio is categorized into a remote area. this is viewed from sk bupati document of banjar regency no.390 of 2013. the teachers, hr and n, state that during covid-19 pandemic their school has implemented remote learning. they acknowledge that this remote learning environment has challenged them to keep teaching and learning process going well. they also notice that their students seem to be thriving with this new environment. there is no internet access and electricity here, so we couldn’t carry out online teaching and learning activities to implement remote learning. if we have to, we need to find the signal in certain locations such as on the hill or in higher areas. (n) being far away from the city, it is no wonder that this area has limited or no electricity and no internet access. they said that, although their school has coordinated to some parties such as teachers, a headman, and also students’ parents for funding internet data packages, remote learning still could not run well without internet access. this then becomes their main obstacle when implementing remote learning. consequently, there are no online teaching activities such as video conferences, online quizzes or exercises and even no teaching materials shared online. even though they have had workshops on creating videos for teaching, there is no medium to share those with their students. we have to visit their (students) home, door to door, to distribute the learning assignment and evaluation, and we take them back. because of the limitedness of the internet access, it is difficult to implement remote learning so that we ask every class representative to take the assignments and learning materials at school. we even had to do face-to-face learning by following the health protocol due to this condition. (hr) it could not be denied that the use of media in teaching and learning is very important as tools to enhance the meaning of active learning. however, the implementation of remote learning will use several digital applications to support the learning system. based on the teacher’ statements, it is clear that they lack the main vehicle to run remote learning program. their students could access education at their home by studying the learning materials given through home visit and face-to-face sessions at school. blended learning can be held every week, if the internet can be accessed. it is a learning system that combines remote learning with face-to-face learning. the teachers also argue that they could not pack their online teaching materials with interesting pictures or videos to attract their students. in addition, they could not explain the teaching materials rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 150 and give an assignment to their students online. meanwhile, english is one subject that really needs teachers’explanations, they add. they believe that this case has triggered their students to be less motivated in studying english in remote learning environment. not only those who live in remote area with its limitations, students in downtown also have low motivation during remote learning amid the current covid-19 pandemic. students who do not get used to this learning system will get difficulties in following the process. remote learning could be one new thing for some schools especially those in remote area, and the use of sophisticated technologies is feeling odd for them. furthermore, other obstacles stated previously such as limited internet access and learning media can trigger students to be less motivated to learn. then what the main point when implementing remote learning is that the environment needs to be accessible and empowering so that students’ motivation in learning could be optimized. the previous paragraphs illustrate how remote learning activities done in remote area with many challenges that they have to face. in the next section, the researchers explore several teaching strategies applied by the teachers and school in remote area to survive during remote learning. teaching strategies the teachers need to respond well and fast to this learning transition. the need to develop teaching strategies for creating good teaching learning and for motivating students to learn online is imperative. drawing on the challenges faced in remote area, the teachers took several ways to deal with this remote learning environment. the major challenge that participants mentioned during remote learning was limited or even no internet access. connections that should be made using online forum, email, and virtual meeting during remote learning cannot work well in their environmental conditions. therefore, they create selfstudy modules for their students. what i’ve done to handle the limited internet access is giving a learning modul to my students, then i will ask them to do the exercise or assignment on it. (hr) the teachers said that they pack their materials with some interesting pictures, simple explanations and exercises. those are designed to help the students to study the materials and motivate students to learn. interesting and simulating teaching media is one of many factors that influence students’ motivation. (filgona et al., 2020) state that the use of variety teaching methods and aids is needed to revive and maintain students’ interest in learning. then we coordinate with some parties involving pembakal, paman kapal, and a few teachers living in that village to distribute modules or teaching materials to the students. (n) to regulate their own learning, the teachers distribute the modules and teaching materials to the students and make sure every student has one as their learning source that should be learned at home. they ask paman kapal (the one who controls the small ship/helmsman), pembakal (the head of the village/ headman) and teachers who live in the village to distribute their teaching materials to their students. since the area is surrounded by water, kapal and kelotok (small local ship) are the means of transportation to get to the area. the students live separately in three different islands there. as the results, headman, helmsman, and the teachers living there work together taking the responsibility to deliver the materials to the students every week. a module is very important in online or remote learning environment because of its function as an aid for the presentation of the teaching and learning process. considering students’ difficulty to access the internet, providing modules for them can be one of many solutions that are used when materials cannot be delivered through online applications or online learning platforms. the teachers in this remote area just give the instructions on what students should do during the meeting through whatsapp group. then students’ work will be submitted once a week at school. creating learning modules is a simple teaching strategy used during remote learning. also, teachers could ask their students to explore the content in the modules in any order and at their own pace. for example, the students are asked to describe one of the learning topics in a brief summary with some pictures to complete their own description. this is what the teachers experience when creating a learning module to support remote learning activities. rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 151 besides distributing learning modules, the participants also stated that they conducted offline classes with a limited number of students. however, it did not last long since the pandemic became rampant and the teaching and learning process was redirected to remote learning. then, recently they carry out blended learning. in this pandemic situation, blended learning can be an alternative solution in implementing teaching and learning processes, especially for schools that cannot only depend on online or remote learning system. the learning is not only held through face-to-face interaction at school but also combined with online learning or other media. first of all, what the teachers do is arranging the schedule of face-to-face interaction. the teachers get to standby all day long waiting for the students. then the students in turn come to consult the teachers on the materials that are hard for them to understand. the implementation of their blended learning must be student-oriented. therefore, supporting learning videos, textbooks, and other communication media provided by the school are used simultaneously during face-to-face meeting. it aims to increase the quality of students’ learning. blended learning is not unfamiliar in this educational era. for schools that are located in remote areas, there are many advantages offered while implementing this learning method. face-to-face interaction which is done once a week certainly saves our time, money, and energy. the students do not have to pay for going to school, and save the cost of learning quota. the students also get proper and comfortable teaching because they are guided individually by the teachers. basically, the implementation of blended learning in junior high school is quite different from that in university. looking how teachers as our reasearch participants conduct blended learning, it is a good step for them to do face-to-face interaction because students in junior high school tend to be more dependent learning and are not more adaptable to this kind of learning rather than those in university. in summary, one of the benefits when implementing this learning method in remote areas is that it is wellorganized and relatively pays attention to students. teaching and learning media in this method are relative. it means the media used can be accessed and students get all learning materials. in this context, blended learning could be one appropriate learning method that can be implemented during remote learning in remote areas. another teaching strategy, besides blended learning, that we used during remote learning is home visit. both strategies gives us (teacher and students) the opportunity to communicate with each other. (n) the need of teachers to find out students’ learning development is by conducting home visit programs. the teachers come to their students’ house to advise students and their parents on the learning progress they experience. the teachers believe they need to work together with parents to control the students. the teachers have established ties with students and their parents through home visit activities. these program are believed to build positive relationship, especially, between teachers and students that give good impacts for students’ learning. without solid relationship and trust among them, no good learning outcome and no quality learning will happen. however, if positive relationship is created, it will help students keep engaging in learning, encourage best behaviour, and develop students self-worth. when the teachers have positive interaction, praise the students, and give them positive feedback, the students are directly motivated and give more attention on learning that may potentialy produce good learning outcomes. positive relationship also helps teacher to improve students behaviour. the teacher can share about their personal lives in order to allow students to know them and the students likewise. so they will feel more comfortable and receptive. for this reason, it is important that sudents in junior high school have good role model, namely their teachers to emulate and shape their good behaviour. as a result, these conditions produce good learning environment where every student feels wanted, appreciated, and loved. and then students feel more confident taking risk and pushing their intellect to higher levels. as teachers, they can also observe, interview, and listen to their students’ problems related to learning facilities, materials, and completing the assignment given. in other words, home visit activities are their effort in building positive relationship between teachers and students during remote learning environment, and the result of these activities can be an evaluation of teaching learning system. the importance of building relationship between teachers and students was also declared by varga (2017). he comments that a positive relationship between teachers and students is fundamental in succeeding teaching and learning process. in addition, the advantages of home visit activity or program for young students have been reported by many schools or educational institutions. for examples, a school in washington dc has rini amelia, tia nur istianah/ elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 152 implemented home visit program. the program has been claimed very beneficial since it has successfully improved attendance, reading proficiency and parent engagement for children in more than 12,000 families visited. moreover, another report also states that the parent teacher home visits (prhv) organization has the same opinion that this strategy can reduce inaccurate assumptions among teachers and help them build relationships with families. the teaching strategies above have been carried out by the english teachers of junior school in aranio. those certainly provide opportunities and enable their students to remain connected while studying from home. in addition, for the teachers, this remote learning environment with many complex elements in it has been considered as one interesting individual experience that can be shared with other teachers with the same condition. although the strategies surely have some limitedness, those all they can do to keep up with the condition now. the findings of this study go hand in hand with several studies. one study concerning distance learning remote areas is conducted by rayuwati (2020). she states that some handicaps appearing during implementing remote learning are experienced by students specially those in remote areas. moreover, adnan & anwar (2020) claim that distance learning could not produce desired result since the vast majority of the students are not capable of accessing the internet. they also highlight some issues on the lack of face-to-face interaction with teachers, response time and absence of traditional classroom socialization in implementing remote learning. furthermore, a study conducted by (octaberlina et al., 2020) declare that providing online class is one of the difficulties in implementing virtual english teaching. another study completed by (ferri et al., 2020) also reveals similar findings. they claim that the unreliability of internet connectios and students’ lack of electronic devices are the technological challenges which exist in emergency remote teaching and learning. the results of those studies indicate the same major issue in remote learning environment. conclusion the purpose of this study is to expose the challenges and the teaching strategies used by the english junior high school teachers of remote area during implementing remote learning. the researchers explored the variety of ways in which the teachers work really hard to convey the lessons when there is no possibility for online teaching and learning activities. location might be required as the main consideration in implementing remote learning and it is still one major issue for them. the challenges faced by the participants of this research indicate that implementing remote learning in remote areas needs more considerations and efforts. despite their efforts, there certainly remains limitedness. nevertheless, other teachers in many other different remote areas could adopt their ideas and adjust them to their environment. further research is required to explore how remote learning in remote areas is implemented and how they experience remote learning within that condition. in relation to the context of this study, the findings suggest that the schools must provide supporting remote learning facilities so that students have their best learning experience. besides, assessing students’ learning and giving motivation when attending face-to-face interaction are needed to enhace education quality. also, a kind suggestion is given to many other researchers to find out some potential ways to deal with the implementation of remote learning in remote areas where internet access is still as the major issue. acknowledgement the researchers would like to express their sincere gratitude to some parties including the teachers and colleagues for their valuable support and help while conducting the research and producing this research paper. hopefully, the result will give positive contribution to the educational development and the readers. references abdallah, salam. 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(2017). the effect of teacher-student relationship on the academic engagement of students. goucher college. https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2020/07/how-improve-remote-learning-experiences https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2020/07/how-improve-remote-learning-experiences https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2020.1822727 https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10040086 https://doi.org/10.9734/ajess/2020/v10i430273 https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v3i4.1407 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i4.847 https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/what-is-remote-learning https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/what-is-remote-learning https://doi.org/10.21744/irjmis.v7n6.1032 https://doi.org/10.46966/ijae.v1i3.42 https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2018.1442073 22 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the maintenance of implicatures in the english translation of dialogues in the novel “the land of five towers” (a descriptive qualitative study) fatimah english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: translation, implicatures, novel, “negeri lima menara”, “the land of five towers” ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is about the implicatures found in the source novel entitled “negeri lima menara” written by ahmad fuadi that are translated into english by angie kilbane entitled “the land of five towers”. in understanding the novel, implicature seems harder to be understood since implicature means something beyond what is stated; it may emerge many interpretations. besides, the implicatures in this novel actually contain the point or message of the novel. so, it is essentially needed for the readers to understand those implicatures for understanding the novel. the objectives of this project are to describe the maintenance of implicatures in the english translation of dialogues in the novel “the land of five towers” and to explain the achievement of the equivalence in meaning. this project was designed as descriptive qualitative. it means that descriptive interpretation was used for examining the data on this research so that the conclusions were based on that interpretation. the object of this project is the utterances containing implicatures that were found in both the indonesian text as the source text and english text as its translation. documentation method was used to collect the data in this research. the data was in the form of printed text in the novel, both indonesian and english versions. in analyzing the data, observation method was done in six steps; they were listing, identifying, classifying, tabulating, interpreting, and drawing conclusion. the findings of this project are from 780 utterances that are stated in these novels, 40 of them are found as utterances containing implicatures. those utterances flout one of the maxims that grice stated, whether it flouts maxim of quality, quantity, relevance, or manner. the percentages of them are as follows: there are 11 (27.5%) utterances flouting maxim of quality, 7 (17.5%) utterances flouting maxim of quantity. in addition, there are 6 (15%) utterances flouting maxim of relevance and 16 (40%) utterances flouting maxim of manner. moreover, for keep maintaining the implicatures, they are mostly translated literally and the translator keeps using some cultural and religious terminologies for keep showing the cultural and religious situation in the translated novel. furthermore, the meaning equivalence is mostly achieved since the original and the translated novels have the same meaning of the implicatures. by considering them, it can be concluded that the implicatures are mostly maintained when they are translated into english because the meanings and conditions of those implicatures can be similarly understood like what are stated in the st. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: fatimah_tamy@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 23 introduction translation plays an important role in communication since it is the medium for changing information and ideas among people from different languages and cultures. a good translation needs to paid attention in both semantic and pragmatic aspects since they determine the understanding of the hearers or readers. the differences between them are “semantics relates meaning to logic and truth (linguistic meaning), pragmatics relates meaning to context of utterance (speaker meaning)” (hassan, 2011: 21). this paper is going to analyze one part of pragmatic aspects; it is what is called implicature. baker (1992: 250) said that “implicature is the question of how it is that we come to understand more than is actually said.” in other words, implicature is the hearer’s/reader’s understanding of what the speaker/writer said even it is not stated directly; the hearer/reader knows what the speaker’s/writer’s intentions of saying that. it rarely happens for indonesian novel being translated into english and “the land of five towers” or in indonesian version is known as “negeri lima menara” is one of them. the novel contains many dialogues to describe the plot of the story; however, some of them contain implicatures. this becomes a problem since implicature means something beyond what is stated; it is harder to be understood since the utterances that contain implicatures may emerge many interpretations. besides, the implicatures in this novel actually contain the point or message of the novel. so, it is essentially needed for the readers to understand those implicatures for understanding the novel. in the process of translating this novel, it is needed for the translator to maintain the implicatures since s/he is the mediator for presenting the writer’s intention of stating the implicatures for the target readers that come from different languages and cultures. newmark (1988: 5) argues that “it is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text.” from that definition, it can be seen that the translator needs to deliver the author’s intention in all parts of the text, including in implicature’s parts. then, it is also an issue of meaning equivalence achievement; this is the job of translator to find the appropriate equivalence of meaning from the source text to the target text to make the implicatures translation become smooth and easier to be understood by the target readers. by observing some problems above, this study is trying to investigate the maintenance of implicatures in the english translation of dialogues in the novel “the land of five towers”. this topic was chosen since impicature is one of important aspects for understanding the translated novel since it deals with the meaning that the writer wants to share implicitly. it is needed to check the maintenance of the implicatures and the achievement of meaning equivalence to see how the writer’s intention of stating the implicatures is delivered by the translator to the target readers. so, the objectives of this research are to describe the maintenance of implicatures in the english translation of dialogues in the novel “the land of five towers” and to explain the achievement of the equivalence in meaning. grice theory of cooperative principles will be used in conducting this research. this theory is used to find which utterances that contain implicatures. cooperative principles means “make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged (grice, 1975: 45). this cooperative principles has four maxim, they are: maxim of quantity, quality, relevance (relation), and manner. the description of them is the following: 1. quantity (a) make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). (b) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. 2. quality 'try to make your contribution one that is true', specifically: fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 24 (a) do not say what you believe to be false. (b) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. 3. relevance make your contributions relevant to the current exchange. 4. manner be perspicuous, specifically: (a) avoid obscurity of expression. (b) avoid ambiguity. (c) be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). (d) be orderly. (grice, 1975: 45-46) hopefully, this research can give more information in translation study dealing with implicature and can be a reference for those who want to conduct the similar studies. furthermore, this will also help the target readers to understand the content of this novel, especially in the implicatures’ part. method of investigation this is a descriptive qualitative research that investigated the maintenance of implicatures found in the translation of dialogues from the novel “negeri lima menara” written by ahmad fuadi as the source text comparing with the english version entitled “the land of five towers” that is translated by angie kilbane as the target text. the objects of this study were only the utterances containing implicatures that were found in both the indonesian text as the source text and english text as its translation. as a researcher, i became the reader of the two novels, research designer, data collector, data analyst, and also reporter to analyze how the implicatures were maintained in the english translation of dialogues in the novel “the land of five towers”. then, i also analyzed the achievement of meaning equivalence in the implicatures in both of the novels. documentation method was used to collect the data in this research. the data was in the form of printed text in the novel, both indonesian and english versions. this novel has 46 chapters and i analyzed the whole chapters to get sufficient data of implicatures from these novels. i analyzed the utterances containing implicatures from the whole chapters of these novels that i found through their translation maintenance and meaning equivalence achievement. i followed some steps for collecting the data. first, i began the research by reading both the indonesian version entitled “negeri lima menara” novel and also the english version entitled “the land of five towers”. next, i highlighted relevant utterances from those novels. then, i quoted the source and target dialogues from the novels and put them into table. after that, i grouped them from the source and target text. i wrote the table side by side so that it would be easier for me to compare the original to the translation text. next, i classified the data by examining them and counted the amount of implicatures in the novels. in analyzing the data, observation method was done in six steps; they were listing, identifying, classifying, tabulating, interpreting, and drawing conclusion. the explanations of each are as follows: 1. listing while reading both of the novels, i highlighted all dialogues that were stated in the novels. after finishing reading the novels, i listed those dialogues and put them into table. the table contained two sides; it was for the dialogues from indonesian and english versions. those dialogues were grouped in each chapter. there were 780 dialogues that were found in these novels from the 46 chapters they contain. every chapter contained different numbers of dialogues. 2. identifying in this step, i identified which utterances that contain implicatures from the dialogues of the novels and also analyzed the maxim that was flouted from each utterance containing implicature. at last, i found 40 utterances that flouted those maxims. 3. classifying after identifying, i classified the utterances that contain implicatures based on the maxim they were flouted. i grouped them into four parts, utterances containing implicature that flout maxim of quality, quantity, relevance, and manner. i put those implicatures in the fourth different tables based on the maxim they have fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 25 flouted and analyzed their literal meaning, implicit meaning, and context. i also put some utterances before and after the utterance containing implicature to check the context of it. after classifying them, i checked the meaning interpretation to see the achievement of meaning equivalence 4. tabulating then, after classifying those utterances in each of the maxim it flouted, i made some tables for further analysis of this study. i made 2 tables, first was the table about the implicatures translation, so i gave number, maxim that it was flouted, data number, indonesian and english version of the text, the literal meaning, implicit meaning, context, and also gave comment. i also put some utterances before and after the utterance containing implicature to make the context easier to be understood. furthermore, the second table drawn was dealing with the meaning equivalence achievement of the novel. i drew the table for comparing the indonesian meaning of the implicature to the english version; then, checked its equivalence. i also asked two raters to see the accuracy of the implicatures’ translation. 5. interpreting here, i gave further explanation about what i have understood from the implicatures of the source novel and compared it to the target novel. i also checked the way the translator maintained in translating those implicatures. moreover, i also tried to interpret the particular meaning of implicatures there and understood it in specific ways to see the achievement of meaning equivalence. 6. drawing conclusion in this step, i have found a number of implicatures and the most style that was used by the translator to maintain when translating them. so, i could draw the conclusion of how the implicatures in the dialogues from indonesian into english in the novel “the land of five towers” were maintained. last but not least, i also got the conclusion how the equivalence in meaning can be achieved. result of the study there are 780 utterances founded in the novel. there are 40 utterances that have implicit meaning. those utterances are flouting some maxims; they are maxim of quality, quantity, relevance, and manner. the percentage of each can be seen in the table below: table 3. percentage of utterances containing implicatures for presenting an efficient and effective data, only some implicatures found in the novel will be presented here as the data representative. to do so, it will be divided into two sections to discuss about the data findings. first is about the classification of data from each maxim and the reason why it flouts the maxim and the way the translator maintains in translating the implicatures. second, it will also be presented the achievement of the translation equivalence in meaning when the implicatures flout the maxims. the data representative for both analyses will be the same. the utterances that are analyzed will be put into table to make it easier and more effective to be read. then, the analysis will be in the form of paragraph so that it will be more clearly. the order of maxim analysis will quality, quantity, relevance, and manner for all data presented. no. maxim amount of implicatures in the maxim percentage quality 11 27.5% quantity 7 17.5% relevance 6 15% manner 16 40% total 40 100% fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 26 3.1 utterances containing implicatures that flout maxim of quality sl tl man: “bapak mau menuju ke mana?” ayah: “saya mau mengantar anak. mau masuk sekolah di pondok madani di jawa timur.” man: “maksudnya, pondok tempat orang belajar agama itu, kan?” ayah: “iya betul, pak.” man: “wah, bagus lah itu,” “semoga berhasil pak. saya dengar, pondok di jawa itu memang bagusbagus mutu pendidikannya. anak teman saya, cuma setahun di pondok langsung berubah menjadi anak baik. padahal dulunya, sangat mantiko. nakal. tidak diterima di sekolah mana pun karena kerjanya ngobat, minum dan suka berkelahi. anak begitu saja bisa berubah baik.” ayah: pak… anak ambo kelakuannya baik dan nem-nya termasuk paling tinggi di agam. kami kirim ke pondok untuk mendalami agama.” man: “wah lebih bagus lagi itu,” man: “where are you headed?” father: “i want to escort my son. he wants to go to school at madani pesantren in east java.” man: “you mean the pesantren where people study the religion, right?” ayah: “yes, that’s right.” man: “wow, that’s wonderful,” “hopefully he succeeds. i hear the pesantren in java offers a very high-quality education. after just a year at the pesantren, my friend’s son turned into a good kid. before, he was very mantiko. bad. not accepted in any school because he took drugs, drank, and liked to fight. even that kind of child can be made good.” father: “sir… my son is well behaved and his gpa is among the highest in agam regency. we are sending him to the pesantren to learn religion more deeply.” man: “wow, even better yet,” this dialogue takes place in a bus when father escorts alif to madani pesantren in java for continuing his study there. then, they meet a man in that bus. they are engaged in a conversation. then, when the man knows father’s destination and reason, he starts to encourage father for entering alif in pesantren. the speaker thinks that alif is a naughty boy and it is good to enter him to pesantren in java. he thinks that alif is like his friend’s son. he compares between them without knowing alif’s behavior first. he just thinks that everyone who enters pesantren is bad person and pesantren is the only place that can make them better. he flouts maxim of quality since he says about which he has lack adequate evidence about alif. the utterance that should be highlighted is: lelaki: “semoga berhasil pak.” man:”hopefully he succeeds.” in this utterance, it can be seen that the implicature in the translation novel begins with the man’s praying for father’s son directly; the speaker directly prayed for alif’s success in pesantren. it is a little bit different with what the writer has stated. it is about whishing father’s luck for entering his son in pesantren. because of this, the translation of the implicatures does not maintain here. 3.2 utterances containing implicatures that flout maxim of quantity sl tl kak sofyan: “ayyuha thalabah. para siswa semua. penerima wesel hari ini harap segera datang ke bagian sekretariat. nama-namanya adalah…,” “panggilan ke mahkamah keamanan pusat.” “nama-nama ini diharap segera menghadap ke bagian keamanan segera…” kak sofyan: “ayyuha thalabah. all students. would this week’s money order recipients please go to the secretariat. the names are…” “summons to the central security court.” “the names are expected to soon face the security section.” fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 27 “dari kelas satu, namanya adalah: alif fikri, said jufri, dulmajid, raja lubis, baso salahuddin dan atang yunus.” said: “masya allah, padahal aku tadi hanya berdoa dapat wesel,” “from year one, the names are: alif fikri, said jufri, dulmajid, raja lubis, baso salahudin and atang yunus.” said: “masya allah, i only prayed for a money order,” this dialogue happens when alif fikri, said jufri, dulmajid, raja lubis, baso salahudin and atang yunus get two calls. first, they have to get their money order. second, they have to go to security section that they are not expected. said, as the speaker here, is shocked since he and his friends have to face two great things at the same time, one is good news; however, the other is not. this implicature is stated to express that the speaker feels sorry about the condition. this utterance flouts maxim of quantity because the speaker says something less informative than it is needed. he just says that he hopes to get the money order only. only here means there is something unexpected also happens but he does not mention it. the utterance that should be highlighted is: sl: “masya allah, padahal aku tadi hanya berdoa dapat wesel,” tl: “masya allah, i only prayed for a money order,” in this utterance, it can be seen that the translator still uses the phrase masya allah instead of good heavens! in this utterance to maintain the same religious situation to her target readers. 3.3 utterances containing implicatures that flout maxim of relevance sl tl kurdi: “saya baru dapat info kalau kita akan punya warga baruyang istimewa di sini. seorang gadis caaaantik.” “nah, kalau cantik aku bilang, baru kalian tertarikmendengar,” “keluarga ustad khalid baru pulang dari mesir, dan merekaakan tinggal di rumah dosen, tidak jauh dari sini.” alif: “lalu, apa hebatnya!” kurdi: “nah, ini yang kalian tak tahu. telah jadi legenda dikalangan kakak kelas bahwa ustad ini punya anak gadis cantik yang tidak jauh umurnya dengan kita.” alif, said, raja, baso, dul: “wah!” kurdi: “iya, jadi gosipnya kita akan punya “putri” di sini.” kurdi: “i just got information that we are going to have a special new citizen here. a beaaauutiful young lady.” “hah, only when i say ‘beautiful’ do you guys want to listen.” “ustad khalid’s family just got home from egypt, and they are going to stay at faculty house, not far from here.” alif: what’s so great about that? kurdi: “now, this is what do you don’t know. legend among the upperclassmen is that ustad has a beautiful daughter around our age.” alif, said, raja, baso, dul: wow! kurdi: “yeah, so rumor has is that we’re going to have a ‘princess’ here.” this dialogue happens when some of the mp’s students get engaged in a conversation. one of the students shares what he has just known about the newest issue in mp. it is that there will be a new beautiful member in mp. it seldom happens in mp for having a girl that lives there because it is known that mp is only for boys. so, this is very surprising news and because she is the only girl there, she is called as a princess. this implicature flouts maxim of relevant because it is known that there is no king in mp. so, choosing the term “princess” is irrelevant with the now time and mp’s condition. it can be seen from this utterance that the translator translates the word gosip into rumor has it instead of gossip that is already existed in english. the rest, it is literally translated. in fact, the translation of implicature gives the same sensation like in the st. fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 28 3.4 utterances containing implicatures that flout maxim of manner sl tl said:” bagaimana mungkin pm bisa membangun pemimpin umat yang sehat jiwa dan raganya kalau tidak menghargai pertandingan bersejarah seperti ini. kalau menghargai, kita harus menonton siaran langsung.” “tapi sudahlah, kita kan bias baca beritanya nanti!” alif: “iya, tapi kan tidak bias lihat liem swie king melakukan smes lompatnya.” dul:“siapa bilang kita tidak bisa nonton?” atang: “lalu… usulmu apa?” dul: “kita dekati siapa yang berkuasa di sini.” said: “how can mp develop community leaders of sound mind and body if they don’t appreciate a historical match like this? we have to match it live.” “but whatever, we can read about it later.” alif: yeah, but we can’t see liem swie king do his jump smash.” dul: “who said we can’t watch?” atang: “so… what do you suggest?” dul: “we approach who’s in charge here.” there will be an international badminton match that will be broadcasted on tv soon. indonesia will also play on this match. there are a group of students in mp are talking about this match. they want to watch this match live; in contrast, mp does not allow the students for watching tv. some of the students are showing their disapoinment about this condition. on the other hand, one of the students named dul gets brilliant idea so that they can watch the match live legally. he plans to persuade person who is in charge in mp to make watching that badminton match legally in mp. it flouts maxim of manner because it is very unclear. he does not mention a name/institution that he means to be persuaded to do what he wants. the utterance that should be highlighted is: sl: “kita dekati siapa yang berkuasa di sini.” tl: “we approach who’s in charge here.” in this utterance, it can be seen that the implicature is literally translated since the translator wants to build the same mysterious feeling about this utterance like in st. 3.4.1 the achievement of meaning equivalence for utterances that flout maxim of quality sl tl rater 1 rater 2 equivalence or non equivalence semoga berhasil pak. means supporting what father will do. hopefully he succeeds. means praying for one’s success. less accurate less accurate non equivalence it can be seen the above table shows that the translation of the implicatures is not equivalence since the speaker does not mean the same intention. in the st, the writer gives a support to father, on the other hand, in its translation, the translator shows a wish for father’s son. so, it gives different meaning. rater 1 says that the translation’s accuracy is less accurate; in addition, rater 2 has the same opinion. so, it can be said that the equivalence of this implicatures in its translation cannot be achieved. fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 29 3.4.2 the achievement of meaning equivalence for utterances that flout maxim of quantity sl tl rater 1 rater 2 equivalence or non equivalence masya allah, padahal aku tadi hanya berdoa dapat wesel. means the speaker does not hope to get something else except a money order. masya allah, i only prayed for a money order. means the speaker does not hope to get something else except a money order. very accurate accurate equivalence the table above tells about the implicature of an unexpected situation that happens. the st and the tt have the same meaning in this implicature. rater 1 says that this utterance is very accurately translated and rater 2 says that the translation of this implicit meaning is accurate. so, the meaning equivalence is achieved and the accuracy level is also high. 3.4.3 the achievement of meaning equivalence for utterances that flout maxim of relevance sl tl rater 1 rater 2 equivalence or non equivalence iya, jadi gosipnya kita akan punya “putri” di sini. means very surprising news that there will be a beautiful girl lives here and it will make those boys feel so happy. yeah, so rumor has is that we’re going to have a ‘princess’ here.” means very surprising news that there will be a beautiful girl lives here and it will make those boys feel so happy. less accurate less accurate equivalence the implicature in st of the table above has the same meaning in its translation version. it means news of the new mp’s beautiful creature that will live near them and this news really makes them happy. the equivalence of meaning is achieved. however, the two raters give a less accurate point for this implicature’s translation. it is because the word “gosip” in bahasa is translated into “rumor has it” instead of “gossip” that is also existed in english. fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 30 3.4.4 the achievement of meaning equivalence for utterances that flout maxim of manner sl tl rater 1 rater 2 equivalence or non equivalence kita dekati siapa yang berkuasa di sini. means approaching someone that is in charge in mp for some missions. we approach who’s in charge here. means approaching someone that is in charge in mp for some missions. less accurate accurate equivalence the original novel means this implicature as a plan to approach someone that is in charge in mp for some missions and the translation’s novel does the same. the meaning equivalence is achieved here. moreover, there are two raters that score the accuracy of the implicature. rater 1 says that the translation’s implicature is less accurate; however, rater 2 says that this is an accurate one. conclusion firstly, the implicatures are mostly translated literally from indonesian into english in the dialogues of the novel “the land of five towers.” moreover, since the original novel uses some cultural and religious terminologies, such as: amak, ustad, masya allah, etc, those terms are not translated into english; the translator keeps using those words for keep showing the cultural and religious situation in the translated novel. by considering them, the meanings and conditions of those implicatures can be similarly understood like what are stated in the st. as a result, it can be said that the implicatures are mostly maintained when they are translated into english. secondly, the meaning equivalence of the implicatures is mostly achieved. the equivalence in meaning can be reached when the original and the translated novels have the same meaning of the implicatures. it can be seen by comparing and understanding the situation between the utterances in the two novels. if the implicatures in the source novel and the target novels have the same meaning and situation, it is said that they have reached the meaning equivalence. besides, after doing the tallying, it is found that the mean of accuracy from the two raters that are asked to rate the translation is accurate. so, these implicatures have good accuracy points in translation as well as the meaning equivalence of them is achieved. references baker, mona.1992.in other words. london: routledge fuadi, ahmad. 2011. negeri lima menar. jakarta: pt gramedia pustaka utama and its translation by kilbane, angie. 2011. the land of five tower. jakarta: pt gramedia pustaka utama grice, h.p. 1975. logic and conversation. in cole et al(eds)syntax and semantics 3: speech acts (pp. 41-58). university college london for the pragmatics theory online course. online. available at: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j &q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=r ja&uact=8&ved=0cc0qfjaa&url=http %3a%2f%2fwww.ucl.ac.uk%2fls%2fst udypacks%2fgricelogic.pdf&ei=kbb0ux_cig9ugsiwig4ag&usg=afqjcneta aphwt1wpq8botyhzzwpa38gkw&si g2=pfllp7ff2jhxrmux30qew&bvm=bv.669174 71,bs.1,d.bmk [access on 17 october 2013] hassan, bahaa-eddinabulhassan . 2011. literary translation: aspects of pragmatic meaning. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing. online. available at https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j fatimah / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 31 &q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=r ja&ved=0ccmqfjaa&url=https%3a% 2f%2fwww.c-s-p.org%2fflyers%2f9781-4438-3358-5-sample.pdf&ei=rl0buore8mjrqfn_4dwbw&usg=afqjcn g8txfofst3jrfq0qgestrtoe4hcg&bv m=bv.61535280,d.bmk [accessed 17/02/14] newmark, peter. 1988. a textbook of translation. hertfordshire: shanghai foreign language education press. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421c2e29209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 42 elt forum 3 (1) (2014) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the use of kung fu panda film serials to enhance students’ ability in writing narrative text tsalits muhammad nugroho english department, faculty of languages and arts, state university of semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in april 2014 approved in mei 2014 published in juni 2014 ________________ keywords: cooperatif model type talking stick , innovative lesson, folklore attentive, multimedia quiz creator. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is about the use of films as learning media to improve the writing skill of narrative text at eleventh grade students of sma n 1 banjarnegara in the academic year of 2013/2014. this study aimed at knowing the difficulties faced by the students and the extent of the kung fu panda film serials implementation on the improvement of their writing skill in creating narrative text. to achieve the objectives, an action research was designed and carried out through preliminary observation, formative observation, and post observation. the subject of this research was 34 students of class xii social 2 of sma n 1 banjarnegara. i used writing tests, observation checklist, and questionnaire as the instruments for collecting the data. there were six meetings in this research. first meeting was used for conducting pre-test, second, third and fourth meeting were used to conduct cycle 1 and formative test, and fifth and sixth meeting were used to conduct cycle 2 and post-test. the results of the study, after analyzed and described qualitatively, showed a significant improvement of the students’ achievement. the students’ writing skill improved in all writing aspects: grammar, vocabulary, mechanic, relevance, and fluency. the result of the observation sheet showed that after learning narrative texts using kung fu panda film serials, the students became more cooperative, active, and the class become more joyful. the analysis of the questionnaire showed that the students gave positive responses towards the use of kung fu panda film serials as media in their learning. based on the results of those research instruments, it can be concluded that the use of kung fu panda film serials as learning media contributes to the improvement of students’ writing skill in narrative texts. © 2014 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building, fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: tsalitsnugroho@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 43 introduction as an obligatory subject taught at school, english is sometimes seen as a difficult subject to teach and learn. students are supposed to master four language skills at the same time; listening, speaking, reading and writing. on the other hand, teachers also struggle with students’ reluctance to engage in english learning activities. one skill considered as a difficult task to teach is writing. heaton (1988:135) states that “writing skills are more complex and difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgment elements.” in fact, although some students are happy to have a go at writing in english, other can be less keen. this unwillingness may derive from anxieties they have about their writing, their spelling, or their ability to construct sentences and paragraphs. this can also happen because they rarely write even in their own language, so the activity of writing feels alien for them. besides those reasons, another difficulty comes from various genres of text in english such as narrative, descriptive, recount, spoof and many more. each text has different purpose, characteristic, and structure or grammatical feature. harmer (2004:17) says that “without knowledge of genres, a communication would have a little chance of success.” in fact, students are usually difficult to differentiate genres. therefore, it will be a challenge for the teacher to find out the way to develop students’ ability of writing and seek for interesting method and media to teach writing. after collecting information through interview with the english teacher and some students in sma n 1 banjarnegara, i find that the difficulty of writing narrative exists in the students of eleventh grade of this school. from initial interviews with them, it is inferred that the students are confused when they are asked to write a narrative story. they say they do not know what and how to write. after checking their assignments in previous semester, i conclude that their writing are not satisfactory enough. the vocabulary used and the way they connect ideas still need to improve. another problem is the structure of narrative text that has not been understood by the students. they write down their own ideas but they fail to relate them well. this may be caused by their unfamiliarity with the structure of narrative text. as a result, their works are not easy to comprehend and make it less interesting, although actually their ideas are interesting enough to read. the english teacher in sma n 1 banjarnegara said that the problem emerged because of the students’ lack of confidence in writing. students said that they had ‘nothing to say’ when they were given a writing task. the teacher has tried to extend the writing activities but the students were unable to complete the tasks successfully. as a result, the student’s attitude to writing is likely to become more negative. considering these difficulties and facts, teacher needs an improvement in his writing class. the teacher should find a better method or medium to deliver the material of writing. the improvement should be initialized by analyzing the students’ needs. from the problems stated before, it seems that the students need something enjoyable, attractive, and worthwhile. in this study, i offer film as an alternative way that meet students’ needs to improve the learning process of writing. it offers enrichment of vocabulary, language use in contexts, and enjoyment to watch. film prevents students from the boredom of learning and set the class free of excessive explanation. therefore, in this final project proposal, the film that i propose as a medium in teaching narrative writing is kung fu panda film serials. the films talks about heroism, friendship and goodness. they last for about 25 minutes and contain rich vocabulary to learn as well as good example of language use. moreover, i explore narrative because it is an interesting genre for students to share their idea, imagination and their own experience. this medium will try to attract the students to be willing to invest the time and effort in writing narrative. the product of the study will be the students’ own story that will show how far they have understood the narrative text and measure their mastery of writing. tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 44 methods this study employed action research design. elliot (1991:69) says “action research is the study of a social situation with the view to improve the quality of the action in it.” because the study was conducted in the class, it could be called classroom action research. the total number of subjects involved in this research are 34 students, consists of 21 females and 13 males of xi social 2 class sma n 1 banjarnegara in the academic year of 2013/2014. the study started by giving pre-test followed by two cycles of treatments. pre-test was held on january 8th 2014 with the purpose to find out the students’ prior knowledge and ability of writing a narrative text. cycle 1 was conducted in three meetings, on january 11th, 15th and 18th 2014. cycle 2 was held on january 29th and 1st february 2014. there were three instruments used to collect the data: tests, observation checklist, and questionnaire. three assessment tests were given to measure students’ progress in writing narrative text: pretest, formative-test, and post-test. the tests were given three times (pre-test, formative test, and post-test) with the purpose of measuring students’ writing ability before and after the action research conducted. pre-test was held to measure the prior skill of the students before the treatment was implemented. it was given in the beginning of the study. formative-test was done after the students were given some treatments in cycle 1, whereas post-test was the last test given after students had been taught in cycle 2. after those three tests had been given, the results were compared to find out whether or not there was any improvement in their narrative writing skill. observation checklist in the form of behaviour recording functioned to observe the students’ behaviour progress during the teaching learning process. this observation checklist recorded four aspects; they were students’ enthusiasm during learning process, students’ participation in classroom activities, students’ cooperative attitude during the lesson, and students’ activities in group discussion. the questionnaire was distributed to the students before and after the treatments. it was used to collect the information about students’ opinion toward writing in english and their perception of using kung fu panda film serials as media in learning. by the use of questionnaire, the information about the students’ responses toward english subject, writing skill, and the use of kung fu panda film serials in teaching learning process were collected. results 3.1 the use of kung fu panda film serials in writing class here are the steps in implementing kung fu panda film serials as learning media in the writing class: a) the students were engaged to get deep information related to the topic of narrative text; b) the narrative material was explained, consisted of the purpose of the narrative text, its generic structures, and language features; c) the students were given vocabulary exercises before watching the film; d) the students watched the film attentively; e) the students and teacher discussed the film based on its generic structures and language features; f) the teacher gave examples of generic structures and language features taken from the film; g) the students were taught about using scaffold to construct a narrative text; h) the students were given a chance to discuss the films or material with their partner or in groups; i) the students wrote their narrative stories based on the films they had watched or they made their own stories; j) the students were given homework to enhance their understanding; k) the students were given feedback and reinforcement of their writing; l) the students were given opportunity to share their difficulties dealing with the activity during the treatments. the use of films in learning seems very flexible. teacher may use various methods and tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 45 additional instruments to support the learning. in this study, i accompanied the films with crossword and anagram as activities to prepare the students understanding the vocabulary in the films. i also used cooperative learning by giving some tasks to students to work in pair or in groups. to create a joyful situation and a competitive class, i conducted a group competition in the third meeting. it was also one of my efforts to check the students’ comprehension of narrative writing before i moved to the second cycle. 3.2 the improvement of students’ writing skill the improvement of students’ writing skill can be seen from the result of tests which consisted of pre-test, formative test, and post-test. the analysis of those tests showed that students’ writing skill improved in all aspects of writing: grammar, vocabulary, mechanic, relevance, and fluency. the analysis was done by describing the students’ works qualitative one by one. a rubric evaluation was also used, modified from heaton’ grid and categories. highlighting the analysis of each student’ writing in the pre-test, it could be drawn a conclusion that their ability in writing was still poor and far from satisfying. the aspect that still needed to improve was the grammar point. most students failed to use past tense properly and still used present form. therefore, this aspect, grammar, was given more attention and emphasis on the cycle one. meanwhile, the students of xi social 2 had improved their ability in writing, especially in grammar aspect in this first cycle. their vocabulary also became wider after being given the treatment in the first cycle. numerous errors in the previous writings seemed decrease and their stories started easy to enjoy and understand. however, the problem remained was the way students organized and developed their ideas. some students’ works showed lacks of organization and it made the communication impaired. students should write more well linked stories to engage the readers’ interest, so that their stories would find its goal; amusing the readers. therefore, the relevance aspect was the focus of the second cycle and the learning method and media were be re-adjusted to gain a better result. after reviewing the 34 texts produced by the students in the second cycle, it could be seen that students had successfully improve their writing ability by the assistance of kung fu panda film serials. their works were better than the first cycle and fewer mistakes were found in the cycle two. the relevance aspect, which was the concern in this cycle, showed a good progress after given the treatments. in short, it could be generalized that students’ writing ability had improved much better than the first time they wrote. the use of kung fu panda film serials had given a positive impact to their learning and mastery in writing narrative text. since the result was satisfying, i thought the media here had been appropriate to use in learning writing. there was no need to continue modifying the media and method due to these positive improvements. furthermore, the improvement of students’ writing skill was not only showed by the result of the tests but also by the analysis of observation sheet and questionnaire. in the observation checklist, i concentrated on four points during the two cycles. they were students’ enthusiasm during learning process, students’ participation in classroom activities, students’ cooperative attitude during the lesson, and students’ activities in doing individual and group assignments given. based on the observation checklists, it could be concluded that the students’ behavior improved positively. some students, who were passive in the first meeting, showed greater interest and enthusiasm after given the treatment. overall, students became more enthusiastic, active, and cooperative during the lesson. the first indicator was the students’ enthusiasm during teaching and learning process. in the first cycle most students had focused on my explanation and instruction. more than half of the class, there were 22 students, had shown medium and high enthusiasm. meanwhile, the rest of them seemed not really enthusiastic with the lesson. they still tried to give infrequent response and kept silent, and looked hardly paid tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 46 attention to the lesson. it might be because of their unfamiliarity with the method and media. in cycle two, students had shown an improvement in their focus to follow the lesson. some of the students even showed that they were really interested in the material. half of the class, 17 students, had high and very high enthusiasm, while another half was in a medium rank. everyone paid attention to me and no one looked reluctant to learn english at that time. the second indicator which was observed was the students’ participation. in cycle one, the students’ participation was still low. most of them were in the middle level of participation. there were 12 students in rank 2; meaning low participation, 18 students in rank 3; meaning middle participation; 4 students were in rank 4; meaning high participation, and no student was in rank 5 or very high participation. the condition changed in cycle two. there was no student in very low and low category; meaning that students’ participation in the classroom activities increased. 25 students in medium, 7 students in high, and 2 students in very high category. it indicated that the students had involved in the learning quite well, proved by they confidently asked and answer my questions during the learning. the third indicator was the students’ cooperative attitude during the lesson. based on the observation in cycle one, there were 8 students who hardly cooperated with me. most of the students, 19 people, were in medium level, meaning that they cooperated well enough during my teaching. meanwhile, only 7 students who showed their high cooperative attitude during the cycle one. the result of the cycle two showed that the number of students who could cooperate well increased. there was no student in low category and 19 students were still in medium level of cooperation. the improvement happened in high and very high category. 13 students were in the high level and 2 students had a very high level of cooperation. it proved that the treatment was useful develop their cooperative attitude toward the teacher and their classmate. the fourth indicator was the students’ activities in group discussion. in the first cycle, most students had actively involved in the discussion. 20 students were in medium level and 6 of them were in the high level. however, there were still 8 students who passively participated in the group. they kept silent and just did what his friends decided, without giving much contribution to the group. in the second cycle, students’ activities in their group had shown a good progress. there was no student in low level, meaning no one gave a low contribution in the groups. most of them, 21 students were in medium level, 12 students were in high level, and one students was very active contributing to his group. although only one person showed a high activity in group, overall most of the students had ran the group tasks well and actively contributed to the discussion. it meant the treatments i used could improve their willingness to cooperatively learning together in groups. first questionnaire was given to know the students’ opinion towards english lesson at school especially writing skill. this questionnaire was given on wednesday, 8th january 2014 after they had finished doing the pre-test. to help the students understand the statements, the questionnaire was written in indonesian and were presented in simple sentences consisted of 10 statements. each item of the statements provided four options for students to choose. the first item was given to know whether they thought english lesson was an important lesson or not. the result of questionnaire showed that 73.5% of the students strongly agreed that english is a very important subject to learn. 26.5% of the students thought it is important enough, and no one thought it is unimportant. it meant that basically all of them considered english as an important subject to learn and master. the second item found out the students’ opinion whether learning english gave many benefits or not for them. 58.8% of the students strongly agreed that english brought many benefits for them, while 41,2% also agreed with the statement. it showed that the students tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 47 realized that learning english would be beneficial for them. the next item, number three, sought the students’ interest in writing english. 11.8% of the students had a very high interest in it, 55.9% of the students belonged to high category, and 32.3% of the students had a low interest in english writing. it meant more than half of the class was interested in writing, but still several of them did not have a high interest in writing english. the fourth one questioned the students whether they considered writing in english was difficult or not. 35.3% of the students strongly agreed that writing was a difficult task, 58.8% fairly agreed, and 5,9% less agreed. it indicated that most of the students thought writing in english was not an easy job for them. only one student believe it was fairly easy task. the item number five asked the students’ opinion with the statement that learning writing in english should be made as interesting as possible. most of the students, 79.4% strongly agreed and 20.6% agreed with the statement, and no one disagreed. it clearly showed that they needed an interesting way in learning english, not just ordinary way or even a traditional one. the sixth item asked the students about their recent condition of their english class. one student (5,9%) thought the class did not run well. meanwhile most of the students thought the english class was in very good condition (11,8%) and good condition (32.3%). the next item asked the intensity of using audio video media by the english teacher. no one said that the teacher always used audio visual aid. 32.4% of the students said it was often used, 64.7% said sometimes used, and 2.9% said never used it. it showed that the teacher had not used the media maximally to provide students an alternative way of learning. most students admitted they had ever used audio video media in their english learning, but it was not too often. the item number eight found out the students’ interest in watching film. more than half of them, 61.8% told they had a very high interest, 35.3% had a high interest and only 2.9% said they were not really interested in watching film. it was a sign that the use of film as media would likely attract students’ motivation in learning, so that the purpose of the study could be achieved. the ninth item asked the students whether they agreed to learn english through film or not. 52.9% extremely agreed, 47.1% agreed, and no one disagreed to learn english by using film. it seemed they were willing to use film as a media to improve their english. the last statement in the first questionnaire asked them how if the film was used to study writing in english. 35.3% extremely agreed and 64.7% agreed to learn english writing by using film. it was a sign that film would be likely accepted by the students to be part of their learning about writing in english. from the result of the first questionnaire, i concluded that the students’ attitude toward the english learning, especially in writing, still needed to improve. they had realized the importance of learning english and its benefits. however, for writing, they still believed that it was a quite difficult task. meanwhile, they admitted that the teacher rarely used audio visual aid in english class although the class ran relatively good. therefore, an alternative way i proposed to improve their writing ability was using films as media. this first questionnaire also showed that the students had a high interest and willingness to study writing english through films as media. by this willingness and motivation, hopefully they could improve their ability in writing, especially in creating narrative story. the second questionnaire was held on 1 february 2014. after conducting the post-test, the questionnaires were given to the students to know their attitudes after given the media during the treatment. there were ten questions in the questionnaires with four options in each of it. the first item asked the students whether learning writing in english was easy or not. most of students had agreed that writing was easy to learn. 8.8% said it was very easy, 85.3% believed it was quite easy, and only 5.9% said it was quite difficult to learn. it showed that their perception about learning writing english had changed from the earlier before given treatments. most of tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 48 students did not consider writing as a difficult task anymore. the second item found out the students’ opinion toward the kung fu panda film used during the study. all of them liked the media used here. 94.1% extremely liked the film and 5.9% students fairly liked it. it meant the film could attract students’ interest and give a joyful stimulus to learn writing in english. furthermore, the third item asked whether they could easily understand the film or not. 70.6% students extremely agreed that the film was easy to understand. 29.4% agreed that it was quite easy to comprehend and no one said the film was difficult. it showed that the students did not have a problem with the film they used in improving their writing ability. the next item asked students’ opinion about the necessity of using film in learning writing english. 88.2% of students argued that film was really needed and 11.8% believed it was quite needed to use film as media in learning writing. this told us that students needed various media in learning english, and the film i used in this study was one of them. the fifth statement asked the students whether the kung fu panda film in the study was helpful in understanding narrative text or not. 76.5% of the students thought that the film was really helpful and the rest, 23.5% said it was quite helpful. no one thought the film was useless. it could be said that the film was beneficial and the students could get the benefits of it. item number six questioned the students whether their grammar and vocabulary were improved or not after the study. 70.6% of students really believed their grammar and vocabulary had been improved after given the treatments, while 29.4% believed their grammar and vocabulary was quite improved. it seemed the treatments had succeeded in improving the students’ grammar and vocabulary since no one felt his vocabulary was still the same as before having the treatments. item number seven found out students satisfaction of their writing after learning by using film as media. the students gave different answers for this question. 35.3% of the students was very satisfied with their work, 61.8% was satisfied, and only 2.9% was not satisfied with the writing result. it showed most of the students had satisfied with their own result of learning writing english. only a small part of the class who thought their writing was not satisfying. the next question, number 8, clarified that the study had improved the students’ general ability in english or not. 67.6% of the students believed that the study was very helpful in improving their general english ability, while 32.4% thought it was quite helpful. it meant the treatments i used during the study did not just help the students in improving their writing. it also helped them to increase their ability of english in general. then the statement number nine found out the students’ motivation to learn english after studying with film as media. all of them said they had high motivation after the study (67.6%) and even very high motivation after it (32.4%). it could be concluded that the treatments used during the study had successfully contributed to the increment of the students’ motivation to learn english in general. the last item asked whether the situation of the english class became more joyful when using film than before or not. 91.2% of the students felt the situation in the class was much more fun than before. meanwhile 8.8% of the students thought it was quite right that the class situation became more joyful. it meant the treatments and media had successfully created a more convenient situation in the class. in sum, the study and treatments changed students opinions toward writing, improve their ability, and create more joyful situation in class. the students admitted they had been satisfied with their work and thought their english had been improved. moreover, they also felt happy to have film as media in learning english, and considered the use of it was quite needed to help improving their ability in general english, especially in writing. conclusion based on the data findings of the tests, observation sheet, and questionnaire, it can be tsalits muhammad nugroho / journal of english language teaching 3 (1) (2014) 49 concluded that the use of kung fu panda films serials as media in leaning narrative writing brought many benefits for students. the application of kung fu panda films serials could improve the students’ writing skill, particularly it could improve their writing skill in narrative text. not to mention, the class situation was more enjoyable and the students could write their ideas into paragraphs better. these improvements were supported by the results of the observation sheet, which showed they performed more positive behaviour during the learning, and the analysis of questionnaire that conluded they changed their opinion positively about writing in english. moreover, students’ writing ability improvement through the use of kung fu panda films serials as media can only happen if it is well prepared and carefully observed. teachers should design other supporting activities to ensure the learning goal is achieved. if teachers fail to do that, the use of films in the class may become a wasteful activity. therefore, it is advised to them to carefully plan their media and method of teaching. they can use many aids, not just film for writing class, but also other media in improving students’ other abilities; speaking, listening, or reading. references elliott, john. 1991. action research for educational change. buckingham: open university press. harmer, jeremy. 2004. how to teach writing. essex: pearson esl heaton, john brian. 1988. writing english language tests (longman handbooks for language teachers). new york: longman group. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 163 elt forum 10 (2) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt pre-service efl teachers’ perception on technology-based formative assessment in their teaching practicum entika fani prastikawati universitas pgri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 4 july 2021 approved in 27 july 2021 published in 28 july 2021 ________________ keywords: technology-based formative assessment; pre-service efl teachers’ perception; teaching practicum. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the spread of the pandemic covid-19 has made many changes in educational policy such as the assessment in english teaching and learning process. the process and procedures in the assessment need to be adjusted from face-to-face assessment into blended and online assessments. not only english teachers, pre-service efl teachers are also required to be ready and adapt to the changes quickly. to adapt it, the integration of technology in the assessment process has been examined. however, the involvement of technology in the area of formative assessment remains underexplored, particularly in the teaching practicum conducted by pre-service efl teachers. the present study is trying to fill the gaps by investigating pre-service efl teachers’ perception on technology-based formative assessment which is implemented in their teaching practicum. a total of 57 pre-service efl teachers completed a likertscale questionnaire. after fulfilling the questionnaires, there were 19 pre-service efl teachers who agreed and volunteered to be in a semi-structured interview. the findings show that the involvement of technology in formative assessment is perceived positively by pre-service efl teachers in their teaching practicum during the pandemic covid-19. they confess that technology has played its practical role in helping them assess their students. further, the implementation of technology-based formative assessments promotes the students’ performance.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: entikafani@upgris.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 164 introduction the advancement of technology in education has been massively proliferated during the spread of the pandemic covid-19 (prastikawati, 2019; prastikawati et al., 2020; wiyaka & prastikawati, 2021). this is due to the changing shift in the teaching and learning process from face-to-face interaction into online interaction. this changing shift forces both teachers and students to have a transformative experiment in the process of teaching and learning (abduh, 2021; zhang et al., 2021). for that case, many educational institutions are obligated to apply the changes. the changes leave e-learning as the only option for teachers to interact with the students. adopting technology also occurs in assessment practices. the use of technology in assessment is considered a potential tool to assist the teachers to monitor and evaluate the students’ learning (brady et al., 2019; deeley, 2018; spector et al., 2016). on the other hand, some scholars mention that the complex process of adopting technology in the assessment process raises other problems. this complexity is influenced by the teacher’s individual and technical factors that vary among them (atmojo & nugroho, 2020; starkey et al., 2021). according to mimirinis (2019), the teacher’s belief in how technology is utilized in assessment practices is also regarded as the crucial factor affecting the teacher’s decision in using technology-based assessment. despite teacher’s perception on technology-enhanced assessment, it is also important to see how the teachers perceive the assessment in the teaching and learning process. the fact shows that most teachers are familiar with summative assessment rather than formative assessment (defianty et al., 2021). meanwhile, formative assessment is highly needed by the teachers in gaining informative evidence on the students’ learning. this kind of assessment can obtain information that is beneficial for the teachers to adjust their teaching instruction based on the students’ needs. further, formative assessment emphasizes feedback in bridging the gaps between the students’ levels of competence and their learning goal (vattøy, 2020). this constructive feedback in formative assessment also motivates the students to reach their learning goal (zhu et al., 2020) as well as their autonomy in learning. in english language teaching (elt) context, integrating technology in formative assessment also has been widely accepted since the pandemic covid-19. english teachers start improving their technological competence to support their ability in implementing formative assessment in their english teaching. the use of technology in formative assessment has been regarded as a help for the english teachers to reduce their workload (beatty & gerace, 2009). moreover, it also imparts the existed automatic feedback to the students’ works. some studies have revealed that technology-based formative assessment is beneficial. elmahdi et al. (2018) stated in their study that the involvement of technology in formative assessment practices improves both the teachers’ and students’ motivation in the process of teaching and learning. further, the regular implementation of technology-enhanced formative assessment encourages the students to engage in their learning (kent, 2019; wiyaka & prastikawati, 2021). another benefit of implementing technology-enhanced formative assessment is also mentioned by hodgson & pang (2012). they reveal that technology in formative assessment creates great interest and curiosity for the students to demonstrate the given tasks. the students are eager to take part more in the impelementation of technology-enhanced formative assessments. daly et al. (2010) also emphasize that online formative assessment leads to meaningful interactions between the teachers and the students. it implies that the use of online formative assessment has given the opportunities to enhance interactivity in the teaching and learning process. due to the importance of formative assessment as well as the technology enhancement in formative assessment practices, english teachers and pre-service efl teachers should build their perception and conception of formative assessment well (khodabakhshzadeh et al., 2018). their assessment literacy must be developed to implement formative assessment on the right track. furthermore, the previous studies mostly underline in-service efl teachers’ perspectives on the practice of technology-based formative assessment. meanwhile, the discussion on how pre-service efl teachers perceive technology in formative assessment practices during their teaching practicum is underexplored. for that reason, this current study is trying to fill the existing gaps by focusing on pre-service efl teachers’ perception on formative assessment and how they perceive the role of technology in formative assessment practices during their teaching practicum. method this study employed a descriptive mixed-method design which connects the quantitative and qualitative phase by selecting the participants in the qualitative phase from those who responded to entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 165 the questionnaire (quantitative phase). in the quantitative phase, i delivered a questionnaire for 57 pre-service efl teachers. meanwhile, in the qualitative phase, i conducted a semi-structured interview. the participants of this study were 57 pre-service efl teachers who have finished their teaching practicum (internship program). they were chosen as the sample by using purposive random sampling. in this case, 57 pre-service efl teachers were those who conducted their teaching practicum in the senior high schools. this is based on the consideration that students in senior high school are more ready to use technology-based formative assessment in teaching and learning (reddy et al., 2018). in collecting the data, a likert-scale questionnaire was given in the survey. this questionnaire was adopted and adapted from the previous research from alotaibi (2018). this questionnaire was given in the google form since the covid-19 pandemic spread. to support and gain more in-depth information from the questionnaire, the participants were invited to a semi-structured interview that was conducted in an online setting using the zoom application. there were 19 pre-service efl (p1p19) teachers who agreed and volunteered to be interviewed. this semi-structured was fully recorded. in the interview process, the participants were allowed to use bahasa indonesia or mixed it with english. after collecting the first data from the questionnaire, i analyzed it using spss 21 in terms of mean (m) and standard deviation (sd). to measure the internal consistency and reliability, i employed cronbach alpha. meanwhile, the data that was gained from the semi-structured interview was transcribed. the indonesian transcripts were translated into english. finally, it was sent back to the participant to check and get their confirmation and verification. to validate the data, i applied triangulation to the data that i got. finding and discussion the finding and the discussion of this study focus on two main points; pre-service efl teachers’ perception on formative assessment and the role of technology enhancement in formative assessment practices. pre-service efl teachers’ perception on formative assessment in the teaching practicum capturing the perception of pre-service efl teachers on formative assessment is the first agenda of this study since it is essential to know how pre-service efl teachers value formative assessment in their english teaching practicum. according to table 1, pre-service efl teachers perceive formative assessment positively (m=3.86; sd=0.11). they believe that formative assessment has a substantial purpose to capture and monitor the students learning progress (m= 3.78; sd=0.99). this belief is in line with the conception that formative assessment can help the pre-service efl teachers to check their students’ understanding (m=3.91; sd=0.95). this confirms how formative assessment is an integral part of english teaching and learning activity (m=3.84; sd=0.94). table 1. pre-service efl teachers’ perception on formative assessment items m sd formative assessment should be an integral part of teaching and learning. 3.84 0.94 formative assessment helps the teachers to check the students’ understanding of the learning material that is learned. 3.91 0.95 formative assessment gives information to the teachers on the students’ learning progress during the teaching and learning process. 3.78 0.99 the regular formative assessment practices engage the student’s motivation in learning. 3.89 1.03 the evidence from formative assessment practices can be used as a teaching reflection for teachers to develop their teaching in the future. 3.98 0.95 feedback in formative assessment helps the students to achieve their learning goals. 3.86 0.97 peer-feedback among students in formative assessment is helpful for students in evaluating a friend’s work. 3.61 0.90 entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 166 the teachers need more time to evaluate the students’ works in formative assessment 3.87 1.07 formative assessment is assisting the teachers and students in making a decision about how to move forward to reach their goals. 4.00 0.84 overall 3.86 0.11 responding to the questionnaire, how pre-service efl teachers value formative assessment is also reflected in their interview. they consider formative assessment assists the students to engage in their english learning process by realizing their weaknesses and strength. “i think formative assessment is crucial for us to do. it can be some activities such as giving the quiz, discussion, or even direct questions to students. these activities engage my students in their learning process and motivate them to learn more” (p4) “i learn a lot in my teaching practicum especially about formative assessment. it is an important assessment to do by us as the teachers. direct questioning was one of formative assessment i used to do in my teaching practicum. my students are motivated when i ask some questions on the materials that i explain.”(p5) “…i ever conducted online quizzes and direct questions for my students. i also asked my students to peer-assessment in my teaching practicum. they learned to share comments and opinions on their friends’ works. to add, the activity can help my students to recognize their strength and weakness in their english learning” (p11) another finding is about feedback and its close relation with formative assessment. based on table 1, pre-service efl teachers believe that feedback in formative assessment is the help for students in achieving the goals of english learning (m=3.86; sd=0.97). in the interview, they reveal that feedback from them is influential for students to make an english learning improvement. “the feedback that i give to my students is really impactful. my students will revise their works based on what i commented. so, feedback in formative assessment is important” (p9) “i know that feedback from me as the english teacher is good for my students’ learning progress, but it takes time if i give feedback to all of my students. so, i let them do peer feedback. however, peerfeedback sometimes doesn’t work since they feel awkward to comment negatively” (p13) “…i prefer to use online feedback rather than direct feedback to my students’ works. it helps me to save my time” (p15) “online feedback helped me so much in my formative assessment practices. it is not time-consuming”. (p19) overall, pre-service efl teachers have shown their efficacious perception towards formative assessment. they perceive formative assessment as a praiseworthy activity that is beneficial and impactful for the student’s learning progress (dalby & swan, 2019; elmahdi et al., 2018). meanwhile, formative assessment is more than just monitoring the students’ learning progress in teaching and learning (black & wiliam, 2010). the correct and regular formative assessment practices can obtain more information (chong, 2018; dalby & swan, 2019) that can be used by the teachers to adjust their teaching instructions, methods, and techniques which are suitable for the students’ need and the curriculum demands (hasim et al., 2018; luthfiyyah et al., 2021). moreover, the evidence which is obtained from formative assessment can reveal the students’ strengths and weaknesses, especially in english learning. this is then in line with the purpose of feedback in the formative assessment that is given by the teachers in supporting the students’ improvement (deeley, 2018). on the other hand, teachers also can take benefit from the evidence obtained from formative assessment by reflecting kinds of teaching instructions that are effective for the students (owen, 2016). when the teachers find the teaching instructions are not suitable, they may reconstruct and choose another teaching instruction. finally, the constructive and collaborative activities can impact the teaching and learning quality that is conducted by the teachers. qualified teaching is also supposed to gain students’ motivation in learning (cauley & mcmillan, 2010; prastikawati et al., 2020). this is essential to reach the main goal of learning. entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 167 the roles of technology in formative assessment practices in the teaching practicum in the implementation of formative assessment in the teaching practicum, pre-service efl teachers confess that technology has played an important role. table 2 has shown pre-service efl teachers’ perception towards technology-enhanced formative assessment in their teaching practicum at schools (m=4.02; sd=0.11). they have perceived that the multiple roles of technology in formative assessment practices help them to do the teachers’ work efficiently and reduce their workloads (m=4.10; sd=0.90). the use of technology also facilitates them to check the students’ scores in a fast way (m=3.89; sd=1.04), so the feedback for the students can also follow it quickly (m=3.91; sd=0.96). “…it is a help for me to involve technology in my formative assessment when i have a teaching practicum. moreover, the online learning setting supports the technology advancement in formative assessment practices that i regularly do in my english teaching”(p5) “it is fun to have ict in my formative assessment practices especially in my teaching practicum. i can save my time and reduce my overload work that i must do”(p8) “i like using technology in the formative assessment such as online quizzes in kahoot and quizziz. the feedback is quick for my students and it saves my time”(p19) pre-service efl teachers also reveal that the involvement of technology in formative assessment practices brings a new atmosphere of learning which is suitable for today’s education needs. the use of online quiz platforms such as kahoot, quizziz, and socrative apps present a challenging and exciting learning environment. the touch of online platforms leads the students to be more competitive and engaged in learning. automatically, their learning motivation is increased (m=4.14; sd=0.91). it is a good condition for the students to play their best roles in making an effort in their study. table 2. the roles of technology in formative assessment practices in the teaching practicum items m sd using technology in formative assessment practices helps the teachers to reduce their workload. 4.10 0.90 using technology in formative assessment can assist the teachers to easily monitor the students’ learning progress. 4.07 0.88 the technology-advanced formative assessment facilitates the students to study independently and collaboratively. 4.14 0.85 the technology-advanced formative assessment facilitates the students to get quick feedback 3.91 0.96 the technology-advanced formative assessment facilitates the students to check their score as quickly as possible 3.89 1,04 the use of technology-advanced formative assessment in online quizzes offers an entertaining task environment 3.93 1.06 the use of technology-advanced formative assessment maintain motivates the students to improve their learning performance. 4.14 0.91 overall 4.02 0.11 according to pre-service efl teachers’ responses in table 2, another role of technology in formative assessment is as a fast monitor of the student’s learning progress (m=4.07; sd=0.88). the teachers’ role in monitoring the students’ learning is a must in the teaching and learning process, so it is clear that technology has helped the teachers to do it efficiently. the advancement of technology in the implementation of formative assessment practices leads to the efficiency of the works that preservice efl teachers need to do in their teaching practicum. moreover, the principle of practicality in the assessment process is also mentioned by pre-service efl teachers when using technology in the implementation of formative assessment in their online english teaching. entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 168 “…i ever implemented plickers and it was helpful for me to monitor the student’s learning progress quickly. for me, plickers could play well in formative assessment practice”(p14) “kahoot is one of the technology-based formative assessment that i used in teaching practicum. it is like a helper for me to check my students’ learning progress whether they have comprehended and understood what i have explained before or not.”(p16) “ ..kahoot and quizziz application is so practical for me. those applications are so simple to be implemented as online formative assessment practices in the classroom. both online and face to face classroom setting can use them anytime.”(p7) furthermore, technology-enhanced formative assessment facilitates the students to learn both individually and collaboratively (m=4.14; sd=0.85). pre-service efl teachers reveal that collaborative learning can be realized in online formative assessment practices such as commenting, editing, and revising the works in peer or group. the students were set in a group by using zoom’s break-out room provided by the teacher to works together. “the use of technology in my formative assessment practices can realize the concept of collaborative learning. i let my students work together and comment on the work each other….”(p7) “technology-based formative assessment has brought a new and challenging learning environtment that is related to today’s demand.”(p10) “…i let my students to write in a small group using google docs. they work together in drafting, editing, revising their writing”(p11) “…collaborative learning is realized easily by the help of techmology-based formative assessment. the students are in the different places but they still can work together using an online application such as google docs. they are encouraged more in improving their learning quality, especially in writing process” (p15) as it has been explained in the findings that pre-service efl teachers value the technology enhancement as an effective tool in implementing formative assessment in their teaching practicum. the multiple roles of technology in formative assessment have assisted the teachers in reducing the workloads, monitoring the students’ learning progress, presenting a challenging learning environment, motivating the students in individual and collaborative learning, and engaging both teachers and students in the teaching and learning process. those multiple roles of technology in formative assessment are considered efficacious values for pre-service efl teachers in conducting their teaching practicum. furthermore, the advancement of technology in formative assessment practices also impacts on the pre-service efl teachers’ teaching quality. the quick way resulted from some online application of formative assessment assists pre-service efl teachers to make an adjustment in their teaching technique or media so that the quality of teaching is improved. in short, the role of technology in formative assessment cannot be neglected to present the qualified teaching for students. the first role of technology in formative assessment is reducing the teachers’ workloads. as it is mentioned by prastikawati et al. (2020), presenting qualified teaching and learning process is important to reach the main goal of learning. in this case, the teachers’ works become complex such as providing feedback (gikandi et al., 2011) for students relating their submitted and unsubmitted works. pre-service efl teachers have mentioned that they need more time to check and give feedback to the students. point to that, the use of technology in formative assessment practices reduces those time-consuming activities (brady et al., 2019; mahbub, 2020). the use of online quizzes has placed technology-based formative assessment in the current need of learning such as instant feedback for the students. it means that technology-based formative assessment presents fast transparency of the students’ work (spector et al., 2016; zainuddin et al., 2020). the fast transparency of the students’ work in technology-enhanced formative assessment is also beneficial for the teachers to monitor the student’ learning progress. by knowing the improvement of the students’ work, the teachers can adjust their teaching instruction. this is in line with the second role of technology in formative assessment perceived by pre-service is monitoring the students’ learning progress quickly. entika fani prastikawati / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 169 the second role of technology in formative assessment is regarded as an efficient tool to monitor the students’ work in a fast and valid way. technology has presented its benefit in term of the speed in monitoring the learning progress in everytime the material has been delivered. zainuddin et al. (2020) mention that it is crucial for the teachers to check the students’ understanding on the materials that has been delivered so that the teachers can decide to continue or not. this is an impactful process that should be well-considered by the english teachers to improve the learning quality. as one of the principles of formative assessment is to clearly monitor each learning process acquired by the students, so the teacher is the main actor to realize it. the information that is derived from formative assessment result is beneficial for the teachers to adapt and adjust the learning instructions pthat are presented in the class. further, this result also effects for the students to improve their learning strategies. here, the technology becomes the assistant of the teachers in completing their role in checking the students’ understanding so that the result of formative assessment can be accessed as soon as possible. this is one of technology speciality that may not be found in non-technology based formative assessment. another role of technology in formative assessment is leading the students to both individual and collaborative learning. in an individual learning, the student can realize their weakness and strength from the individual feedback given by the teachers. the more feedback in online formative assessment practices, the better improvement of a student will reach (burner, 2016; tosuncuoglu, 2018). meanwhile, the use of technology in formative assessment also highlights the concept of collaborative learning. one of the examples is collaborative writing in a small group using google docs. using this kind of technology-enhanced formative assessment can write, edit, and revise with their friends in a small group. meanwhile, the teacher also can monitor the students’ writing activities in this kind of collaborative activity. furthermore, this kind of technology-enhanced formative assessment motivate the students to share and respect what the other friends comment into. it creates a new learning environment for students especially when it relates to do some tasks. the challenging environment in an online formative assessment may stimulates them in an active task participant. an active and interactive student will lead to the successful teaching and learning that ends to qualified learning. finally, the realization of technology in formative assessment practices can be explored maximumly in the teaching practicum if pre-service efl teachers improve their technological competence. this competence is a must in today’s teaching and learning requirement since the online teaching and learning still exists in the pandemic era. conclusion the current study has revealed that the involvement of technology in formative assessment practices has been perceived positively by pre-service efl teachers in conducting their teaching practicum. they have mentioned that the multiple roles of technology in formative assessment practices help them in achieving the qualified teaching and learning that is beneficial for the students’ learning achievement. furthermore, the technology involvement also plays an essential role for the improvement of pre-service efl teachers’ technological competence in which it is considered as a must for today’s teaching competence (atmojo & nugroho, 2020). however, pre-service efl teachers need more disclosure as well as exposure to the assessment knowledge and purposes. furthermore, pre-service efl teachers also need to improve their competence on technology uses to support the formative assessment practices in their teaching practicum. since this study involves limited participants, it is essential for the further research to crry out a larger sample. moreover, the impact of technology-based formative assessment on certain language skills competences needs to be explored including the numerous factors influencing pre-service efl teachers in applying of technology-based formative assessment. references. abduh, m. y. m. 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(2020). the effect of automated feedback on revision behavior and learning gains in formative assessment of scientific argument writing. computers and education, 143(september 2018), 103668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103668 172 elt forum 10 (2) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt gendered perspective on online communication strategies: a case on english department students maulida nur aziza english department, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 3 july 2020 approved in 27 july 2021 published in 28 july 2021 ________________ keywords: gender; communication strategies; online face-to-face conversation ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aims to investigate whether gender influence on online communication strategies performed by the english department. this study provides types of communication strategies, the frequency of communication strategies used, and the factors that influence students in differentiating communication strategies used by both male and female students. the researcher used qualitative approach. online faceto-face conversation and interview were chosen as the data collection technique. for the research instruments that the researcher used were communication strategies sheet, interview, and audio and video recording. the participants of this study were the eight semester students of english department. the data collected were analyzed used communication strategies taxonomies proposed by celce-murcia et al. (1995). the results of this study show that used variety of communication strategies. the most frequent communication strategy used both male and female students is fillers, hesitation devices, and gambits. it was proven by the percentage that was 50%. the least used communication strategy by the students is circumlocution (0,07%). related to gender, female students almost show higher number of occurrences for all of the communication strategies than male students. this phenomenon happened due to some factors such as the female characteristics that is socially oriented, expressive and avoid making mistakes. meanwhile, male students showed characteristics such as talk simpler, have a great willingness to manage anxiety and they seem to conceal their inability to others.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: maulidanuraziza1998@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& mailto:maulidanuraziza1998@gmail.com maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 173 introduction having effective communication skill in this industrial modern era is important. research by faradilla and rukmini (2019) stated that to reach the goal of communication, english learner needs to have communication skill. she added that this is the tool in communication process which are used to remove barriers to reach effective communication. the fact that english is still considered as a foreign language in indonesia makes the students have limited chance to apply and use it outside of school in their daily life. as a result, they rarely speak english as their language for communication. hence, speaking skill is regarded as one of the most difficult aspects of language-learning (leong & ahmadi., 2017). in line with this, many learners state that they have spent so many years studying english language, but they cannot speak it appropriately and understandably (bueono et al., 2006). it seems that many indonesian students may find it difficult when they have to speak in english. they put more effort or use some strategies to overcome their communication problem while speaking english. those strategies called as communication strategies. dornyei (1995) views communication strategies as the ways a person employs to cope with problems and difficulties in oral communication. communication strategies can assist the students to solve their speaking problem and enhance their communicative competence. hence, it is important for students to know about it. a great number of studies concerning communication strategies have been carried out. some researchers who had the same interest to this topic are lai (2010), kaivanpanah et al. (2012), nasrullah (2017), mahardika et al. (2014), amin (2017), and yusparizal et al. (2018). those previous studies are similar to each other, but they had different categories to be observed. most of them were focusing on investigating communication strategies used by male or female students, the percentage of it, and the reasons using communication strategies. they had the same interest, but they employed different research designs, research instruments, and numbers of participants, so they produced a different result. concerning gender influence, there are still rooms for more investigation due to some inconsistencies in the findings of different studies. gender influence may give effect on communication strategies used by people. in line with that statement, mahardika et al. (2014) mentioned that gender is believed as the factor affecting the process of communication. this statement is strengthened by the fact from the development of neuroscience reveals that men and women have differences in the structures and function in the brain (rabinowicz et al., 2002). achiron et al. (2001) stated that the different structures in male and female begin since in the womb. furthermore, frederikse et al. (1999) mentioned that brains are more asymmetric in men not in women. regardless to those facts, it can be said that the different structure of their brain leads to the different ability to think, to communicate, or to solve problem between male and female. in this case, communication strategies used also influenced by gender. some experts had done doing a study related to gender and communication strategies. according to zhao & intraprasert’s research (2013), they found out that there is significant differences of individual communication strategies employment in relation to the students’ gender. female students used cs frequently than male students. this was consistent with the result study by mahardika et al. (2014) in which stated that male students used 180 strategies while female students used 214 strategies. the contradicted result of the study related to this issue showed by lai (2010). the findings from the interview showed that there was no significant differences between males and females in the use of css which was contributed to the learning environment. another research conducted by kaivanpanah et al. (2012), in which the results showed that there was no significant gender effect in the use of communication strategies except for strategies that were social in nature such as circumlocution, asking for clarification, omission, comprehension check, use of fillers, and over-explicitness. with respect to gender influence, there are still rooms for more investigation due to the differences in the findings of the previous studies. this study is trying to investigate the communication strategy used by english department students based on gender. the different thing of this study compared to the others is the researcher is trying to investigate different communication strategies used affected by the students’ gender and the communication partner’s gender. in short, the researcher curious about whether the students use different communication strategies while communicating with the same gender and different gender or not. regarding the current situation in indonesia and some countries in the world which got infected by the covid-19, some countries implemented nationwide locked down. the government demanded all of the citizens to stay at home for several weeks or months for reducing and stopping the increasing numbers of infected patients by the coronavirus. knowing how dangerous this virus is, the indonesia maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 174 government instructed all the citizens for supporting large scale social restriction. this instruction demanded some institutions to be closed and doing their activities through an online platform. due to this situation, some outside activities were prohibited to be conducted, especially activity which cause a crowd. the researcher who initially wanted to conduct the real face-to-face conversation for collecting the data then changed the plan. an online platform that is whatsapp video call was chosen as the application for collecting the data. this is because of the ease of use and all the students also have this application for their daily online chat. moreover, the different thing of this study compared to the previous studies is the researcher is trying to figure out different communication strategies performed by the students affected by the communication partner’s gender. in short, the researcher curious about whether the students use different communication strategies while communicating with the same gender and different gender or not. fishman (1983), mahardika et al. (2014), hancock and rubin (2014), amin (2017), yusparizal et al. (2018), or kaivanpanah et al. (2012), they focused on investigating gender influence on communication strategies. they tried to find out types of communication strategies performed based on gender. meanwhile, for this study, the researcher differentiates it by using two interlocutors with different gender to be the communication partner of the students. this idea was inspired by samar and alibakhsi’s research which seeking of gender influence on linguistic strategies, and they tabulated the data based on male and male, male and female, female and female, and female and male. what makes it different from that study is the researcher here investigating communication strategies. besides, the research methodology used by the researcher were online face-to-face conversation and interview in which this is new for the related topic. building on the case above, the researcher was interested to conduct a research entitled gendered perspective on online communication strategies: a case on unnes english department students. then, the researcher formulates the research questions for this study as follows. the first research question is focusing on investigating types of communication strategies performed by english department students in their daily communication based on their gender and their communication partner’s gender. the second research question is trying to figure out factors that influence the students in using communication strategies based on their gender and their communication partner’s gender. reviewing the previous studies, there are some available communication strategies taxonomy that can be used. the first is taxonomy of communication strategies proposed by tarone in 1977 (as cited in dornyei & scott, 1997) which consisted of avoidance, paraphrase, conscious transfer, appeal for instance, and mime strategies. later, faerch & kasper (1983) postulated the taxonomy which comprised formal reduction, functional reduction, and achievement strategy (as cited in dornyei & scott, 1997). furthermore, other experts proposed other categories of communication strategies, they are dornyei and scott’s taxonomy (1997). they categorized based on these main categories: interactional strategies, compensatory strategies, reduction strategies, focus-on form strategies, sociocultural strategies, and paralinguistic strategies. afterward, for this study the researcher used communication strategies taxonomy proposed by celce-murcia et al. (1995) as the framework for analyzing the communication strategies performed by the students. the reason of this choice it is because the newest and completeness of the taxonomy. they suggested component of strategic communication as follow: maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 175 figure 1. communication strategies taxonomy by celce-murcia et al. (1995) methods this study used a qualitative approach. according to polit et al. (1999, as cited in purnomo, 2017), he stated that “qualitative research involves broadly stated questions about human experiences and realities, studied through people in their natural environments, generating rich, descriptive data that helps us to understand their experiences and attitude.” this qualitative research focused on investigating gendered perspective on online communication strategies used by english department students. the conversation of this research was conducted naturally where the participants didn’t recognize the focus objective of the research and it happened once for each person. there was no repetition so their answer was natural. the subject of this study were the 8th semester students of english department. there were eight participants, i.e. four female students and four male students. this consideration is based on the statement from creswell (1998) which recommends 5-25 subjects for phenomenological qualitative research. the researcher used purposive sampling when choosing the students as the participants in which the categories used are english department student, student of 8th semester, and they are willing to join. furthermore, the selected students had already taken basic courses of english learning in the previous semesters. thus, the students were accustomed to speak english bravely. the reason of choosing eight semester students as the participants because they will graduate soon this semester, and hopefully, this research enriches their knowledge about communication strategy so they can speak english effectively and have a greater chance to have better job. this statement has been supported by baker & westrup (2003) who said that learners who speak english very well can have greater chance for better education, finding good jobs, and getting promotion. for collecting the data, the researcher employed some research instruments. they were communication strategies sheet, video recording, and interview. communication strategies sheet was developed based on the taxonomy of communication strategies proposed by celce-murcia et al. (1995). the researcher printed out the communication strategies sheet for each student. the use of the communication strategies sheet itself in this study is as a guideline for the researcher to analyze and categorize the communication strategies used by the participants during the conversation. it helped maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 176 the researcher to be more focus on collecting the data so there won’t be any missing information that must be collected for analyzing the data. furthermore, the researcher chose video recorder as another instrument used because it helped the researcher a lot in observing the communication strategies used by the students. it is because communication strategies not only consisted of verbal strategies in form of but also includes non-verbal strategies such as gestures or facial expression, so the researcher needs detail information about it and records it into a video. at last, interview is useful when there is a need to collect in-depth information in a systematic number of respondents. in this case, the interview needs to collect the participants’ perception of using communication strategies to the different gender. furthermore, by using the information from the interviews, it helped to strengthen the validity and reliability of this study. for collecting the data, the researcher conducted an online face-to-face conversation and interview. all of the participants have a chance to communicate with the interlocutor both the same gender and opposite gender. the female interlocutor focused on discussing about university life while male interlocutor talked about studying abroad. the conversation was conducted through an online application called whatsapp video call. the researcher chose this strategy due to the situation that happened in indonesia that caused by covid-19. the government demanded all of the citizens to stay at home. as a result, to overcome this situation, the researcher used an online face to face conversation. the data transcription of their conversation then was analyzed by using the taxonomy of communication strategies proposed by celce-murcia et al. (1995). then, for the interview session, the researcher did the interview through whatsapp call and recorded using audio recorder. after conducting the online face to face conversation, the researcher collected the data and tried to figure out what communication strategies used by the participants. the classification of the collected data based on gender, for example, what communication strategies performed both males and males, females and males, males and females or females and females used. the result of analysis based on communication strategies sheet was crosschecked for two or three times to the video recorder transcription for avoiding any missed information that the researcher analyzed. moreover, for the interview data analysis, the researcher transcribed the recording into words. based on the transcription of the interview session, the researcher tried to interpret it to draw the conclusion. interpreting was used to investigate the why the research subject used some communication strategies and their perception about gender of communication partner influence to their chosen communication strategies. at the last step is drawing the conclusion, based on the interpretation, the researcher can draw the final result of the interview. findings and discussion communication strategies performed by the students the researcher had already collected the main data through an online face-to-face conversation with the participants. the data collected were in the form of video and audio recording. those data were transcribed and then analyzed based on strategic competence from celce-murcia et al. (1995). based on the data analysis, five sub-categories of communication strategies were employed by the students during their communication. both male and female students used those five categories, but not all of the strategies were used by the students. there 16 communication strategies used among 19 strategies that proposed by celce-murcia et al. (1995). those communication strategies that were used by the students during their conversations were topic avoidance, message abandonment, circumlocution, approximation, all-purpose words, non-linguistic means, restructuring, literal translation from l1, code-switching, retrieval, fillers, hesitation devices and gambits, self and other repetition, self-initiated repair, self-rephrasing, appeals for help, and meaning-negotiation strategies. meanwhile, message replacement, word-coinage, and foreignizing were the strategies which never employed by the students during the conversation. furthermore, the details analysis of the finding will be explained on the following paragraph with more explanation for the frequencies of each communication strategies, the description of the communication strategies used, and the interpretation of why the participants used those communication strategies related to gender. table 1. table of recapitulation of communication strategies performed by the students type of communication strategies appearance male to male male to female female to female female to male message replacement topic avoidance 2 4 1 maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 177 from the table of recapitulation above, both male and female students showed different number of occurrences. there was no significant gender effect on communication strategies used except for some strategies such as literal translation from l1, code-switching, fillers, hesitation devices and gambits, self-initiated repair, appeal for help, and meaning-negotiation strategies which showed significant differences. it can be deduced that excepts for those strategies mentioned above, the rest communication strategies showed similar numbers of usage. here is the explanation for strategies that showed similar numbers of occurrences. for topic avoidance and message abandonment strategies, both of them are the opposite of communicating. they are decisions not to communicate. if topic avoidance occurs when someone is trying to avoid some topics or concepts which they don’t understand about and lack of vocabulary about it, message abandonment is a communication strategy used by the speaker when someone suddenly stops talking and leaving a message unfinished because of language difficulties. here is the sample for topic avoidance “yeah, i think. and then, the importance of education in college, i think [eee] i don’t know, i don’t know.” for message abandonment, here is the sample “more be hard and … [eee]”. students showed similar numbers of usage of these strategies. this finding revealed with mahardika et al.’s study (2014) which found out that almost similar numbers used by male and female students for these strategies. the researcher speculates that they have the same characteristic that is avoiding talking about something they don’t know about. also, they may think that by using those strategies could enhance the effectiveness of communication. this statement echoed with canale’s study (1983) which argued that communication strategies can assist learners to enhance the effectiveness of communication. however, for this case, it was not suggested for the students to use these strategies a lot because it will make the interlocutors confused especially when leaving an unfinished message. this statement is supported by mariani (1994) who stated that reduction strategy can affect the content of the communication goals. furthermore, for other strategies such as circumlocution (1), all-purpose words (1), and retrieval (3) which the most rarely used by the students, the researcher assumed that those strategies performed by the students unconsciously. one possible explanation for appearing of retrieval strategy by one male student it is because of the characteristic of the student itself. he might accustom to use this strategy while facing language difficulties, especially when speaking english. he retrieved the word until it complete and meaningful. meanwhile, for the circumlocution strategy only appeared once. the researcher speculates that the students find it difficult when using this strategy. circumlocution is a strategy in which the speaker overcome their speaking problem by describing or exemplifying the target object. they cannot remember the term or the word that they wanted to say, so how could possible they explain it using other words which leads the interlocutor to understand the avoidance or reduction strategies message abandonment 4 11 11 11 achievement or compensatory strategy circumlocution 1 approximation 4 15 4 3 all-purpose words 1 1 non-linguistics mean 4 15 11 5 restructuring 3 8 2 10 word-coinage literal translation from l1 14 22 9 6 foreignizing code-switching 6 11 19 retrieval 2 1 stalling or timegaining strategies filler, hesitation devices and gambits 126 182 158 236 self and other repetition 40 76 57 60 self -monitoring strategies self-initiated repair 4 13 21 10 self-rephrasing (over elaboration) 10 18 6 10 interactional strategies appeals for help 8 7 29 32 meaning negotiation strategies 15 15 17 33 total 236 393 338 437 maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 178 message. this statement is supported by one of the participants who said in the interview “it is because to explain the words that i’m confused has already difficult things to do, how could be i can explain it using words. it makes me more confused.” and for all-purpose word strategy which is used to explain a certain item using the general word as a compensatory, both male and female students rarely used it because they possibly have already known the words in english since they are english department students. again, those three strategies showed no significant effect of gender in communication strategies used. moreover, approximation, self-rephrasing, and restructuring strategies are strategies that deal with the placement and use of words. those strategies showed insignificant numbers of usage. these similarities both male and female students in performing these strategies perhaps because they prefer employing verbatim strategies. they are as english department students have better language proficiency compared to the other majors. their understanding and stock of vocabularies in their mind might pursue them to explain something and coping their communication problems by arranging the words. that’s why they used approximation, self-rephrasing, and restructuring as their communication strategies. the finding of approximation strategies was supported by mahardika et al.’s research (2014) which revealed that there were slightly different numbers of occurrence both male and female students for this strategy. besides, restructuring strategy in which showed lower rate appearances is echoed with ugla’s study (2013) which stated the finding of this strategy is a very low rate. for non-linguistic means strategy, the occurrences of this strategy used by the students across gender are slightly different and showed a lower rate of occurrences. male students performed it 19 times, while female students 16 times. these findings did not match with what they said in the interview session in which they said that to overcome their communication problems, they usually use gestures or explain it in other words. online communication (video call) limit the use of gestures as compared to face to face conversation. furthermore, this finding indicates that there is no gender affecting the use of this strategy. this fact echoed with their statement in the interview session which said that for overcoming their communication problems while speaking english, they would use gestures. one of the students said “yes, it’s always a problem. sometimes i feel uncomfortable speaking in english, and the way i deal with it is by using body language or finding closest related words.” perhaps, this is an easier way for them to make the interlocutor understand their thought while they are confusing to explain using words. yet, this strategy is not always successful to be applied because it has limitations and leads to misunderstanding if the interlocutor has a different perception. in addition, the researcher assumed that both male and female students are expressive. this is indifferent to parkins’ study (2012) who states that women are the more emotionally expressive gender in the realm of face-to-face communication. this statement indicates that when females have face-to-face communication, they will be emotionally expressive. the last one is self-repetition. there was only one different number of occurrences of this strategy, 116 times for male students and 117 for female students. this strategy is the second-highest strategy used by the students during the conversation. there are slightly different numbers between female and male students. the researcher realized that there are significant different numbers of this strategy used by the male students to the interlocutor. they frequently used this strategy while talking to the opposite gender. actually, the female students did the same, but the different numbers of occurrences are not significant. this phenomenon could happen because they felt more burden and nervous while talking to a different gender. this statement in line with one of the student’s statements which said that he becomes more nervous when talking to someone of a different gender. also, the similarities of this strategy used by them could be the cause of their eagerness not to make mistakes while speaking english. they gained time to think the correct utterances or words they want to say by repeating the words. this strategy also showed their intention to maintain communication. to sum up, the similarities numbers of usage of those strategies mentioned above because the students both male and female want to enhance the effectiveness of communication, they prefer playing with the words, they are expressive, and they want to maintain the conversation by gaining time. for the following paragraphs, the researcher explains more about differences in communication strategies performed by the students. as mentioned above in the table, there are some categories that showed significant differences in the numbers of usage. those strategies are literal translation from l1, code-switching, fillers, hesitation devices and gambits, self-initiated repair, appeal for help, and meaning-negotiation strategies. literal translation from l1 strategy was one of the favorite strategies used by the students. this was proven by the number of occurrences in which male students used it 36 times, while female maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 179 students 15 times. literal translation is translating words by words, the lexical item, idiom, compound words, or structure from l1 to l2. it means that the speaker directly translates the words without taking into consideration the grammatical of the sentence. here is the sample, “… second is i live a far from my family and when. i’m feel so missing them, i just can look at by video call or calling my mom like that. yeah, just that.” the female student wanted to say that whenever she misses her family, she usually calls or video calls her mom. she didn’t consider the grammatical aspect. as we can see, this strategy was more frequently used by male students rather than female students. looking through the conversation of the participants, the male students spoke simpler and shorter sentences compared to the female students. this can be one possible explanation whereas the male students’ characteristics in which say something to the point so that they uttered simply. this is in line with mahardika et al’s research which found out the male students have frequently used this strategy than female students. for another strategy that showed differences numbers of usage is code-switching. codeswitching is using l1 word with l1 pronunciation or a lt word with lt pronuniciation in l2. (dornyei, 1995). in another words is including the use of the native language of words or utterance during the conversation in the target language. from this research, almost all of the students had ever used this strategy during their conversation with the interlocutors. one of the students mentioned that whenever he talked to the native speaker, he would like to change the language into the native language to make it clearer. the result of this strategy showed female students performed it more frequently which was 30 times while male students only 6 times. the researcher speculates that the female students’ characteristic which is socially oriented influences them to perform any strategy as long as to maintain their conversation keep going. they don’t want to leave ambiguity and see this strategy as an easier strategy for maintaining the conversation. this finding is supported by fishman (1983) who stated that men use short responses to show a lack of interest while women would utilize more responses to demonstrate her participation and interest in the interaction. fillers, hesitation devices, and gambits is the most frequent strategy performed by the students. whether male or female students used this strategy more frequently than other strategies. the result echoed with mahardika et al’s study which also found out that both male and female students use fillers most frequently. the use of fillers, gambits, and hesitation devices itself is used as gaining time for thinking what’s they want to say. this is in line with ikawati’s finding (2011) which stated that students needed a little time to think about what to say next while they have oral communication. although they use this strategy frequently, but the numbers of usage are quite different. female students performed it 394 times while male students 308. the significant different numbers among them in using this strategy possibly because female students avoid silence during conversation and use this strategy as their way to show their effort to keep the conversation going. yet, this cannot be the only consideration as the effect of gender on the use of this communication strategy, other variables such as individual characteristics, the background of knowledge, or enthusiasm in the topic discuss should be taken into account. besides, the lower numbers of usage of the male students were probably caused by the fact that male students have confidence enough in conveying their thought while speaking. like what zhao and intraprasert’s study (2013) argued that male students had a greater willingness to manage anxiety while interacting in english to maintain the conversation than female students. that’s why male students performed fewer numbers of usage as a consequence of their effort in managing their anxiety. regarding self-initiated repair strategies, again the female students employed this strategy more frequently than male students. self-initiated repair is a strategy in which the speaker initiates to correct his words after he realized there is something wrong with his utterances. the findings of this resonate in ugla’s study (2013) that the research subject used a self-repair strategy extensively. this was to compensate for their low proficiency in the english language. the differences number of occurrences between female (31 times) and male students (17), the researcher speculates that female students are more aware of realizing their mistake compared to the male. this was probably somewhat strongly influenced by the innate characteristics of females. this could be a possible reason why females innately better at language learning (oxford, nyikos, and ehrman, 1988). consequently, they immediately aware of their mistakes and repaired their incorrect words. for appeals for help strategy, tarone (1977) gives a brief explanation about the appeal for assistance that the speaker asks for the correct term or structure. it means that the speaker asks another for help in order to help him with a certain term or item in the target language. the numbers of usage of this strategy is quite different for both female students and male students. on one hand, male students performed it only 15 times while female students used it 61 times. another researcher who has the same result conducted by hou (1998), he mentioned that the participants used more asking for maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 180 help when they are performing the task. different results showed by mahardika et al’s research (2014) which found out that male students more frequently used this strategy than female students. the researcher assumed that possible explanation of this strategy because male students didn’t want to show their inability by asking with the interlocutors but they performed other strategies. in line with this, they argued that a similar gender between male students and the interviewer encourages the male students to ask the interviewer when finding difficulties. differed with the male students who handled their communication problems by performing other strategies, the female students who were social-oriented in communication tried to ask for help from the interlocutor to get the answer and help quickly. female students typically rely heavily on verbally and socially mediated approaches in their interaction (halpern, 1992 as cited in vandergrift 1997). that’s why they don’t consider showing their difficulties to the interlocutors to get help from them. to sum up, male students are typically don’t want to show their inability to others, while female students perceived this strategy as their way to cope with their communication problems quickly. the last communication strategy which showed different numbers of usage is meaning negotiation strategies. again, female students are dominating the numbers of usage of this strategy. ugla et al. (2013) found out that the students used this strategy frequently, especially asking repetition requests. in line with that, this research found out that the use of meaning negotiation strategy was the second-highest communication strategy used by the female students, and the fourth-highest communication strategy used by male students. regarding the gender perspective, the researcher argues that possible reason for explaining the frequent numbers of usage by female students because they do not want to leave ambiguity or uncertainty in the conversation. if we look back on types of meaning negotiation strategies that consist of indicators of non-misunderstanding, responses, and comprehension check, three of them help the speaker to clearer the ambiguity or checking the same understanding both the speaker and the interlocutor. they may think that this strategy also effective to deal with their communication problems. this statement is supported by the previous study from yaman and özcan (2015) which argued that negotiation for meaning strategies is effective oral communication strategies that help students overcome communication problems. to sum up, among all of the communication strategies performed by the students, the female students are superior in employing the strategies. as we can see, the total number of cs used by female students is 775 while male students only 629. this was consistent with the results in mori and gobel’s study (2006), in which females had more desire to make l2-speaker friends and greater interest in direct contact with english speaking people than their male counterparts. other studies showed significant female superiority in the use of all language learning strategies (ehrman and oxford 1989; ellis 1994). that statement strengthening the fact that female students employed more communication strategies. factors that influence the students in using communication strategies to answer the research question number two, the researcher conducted semi-constructed interview. they were eight questions delivered to the students using indonesia language because the researcher intended to dig up more information from the respondents. for the factors that influence the students in using communication strategies, the researcher had already collected the data. based on the interview transcription, there are some factors which influence the students in using communication strategies, they are: closeness of the relationship, gender, age, social status, preferences and interest. for closeness of the relationship, most of the students agreed that this factor influence their way of speaking style in communication. they said that whenever they talk to someone that is new or they don’t know before, they will select their words. like what female student’s said “partners in communication, right? i wouldn’t mind whether they are boys or girls because i don’t feel any different to have a conversation with either one. but it’ll be matter if, for example, a and b both are my friends, but compared to a, i barely talk to b. so, that makes our communication quite plain.” furthermore, gender is another factor which influence the students in communication. some of the students mentioned that gender of the communication partner influences them in their conversation. they will treat and behave different while talking with someone with the opposite gender. they differentiate their words, their politeness and their gesture. one of the male student stated that “yes. i think it is also about gender. the way i talk to the girls and boys are slightly different. i would be more polite when talking to the girls.” besides closeness of the relationship and gender, social status and age also matter. this was proven by the male student’s statement which said “yes, indeed. i think it is due to the social status. the way i talk to my lecturers will be quite different from the way i talk to my fellow friends. i have to maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 181 mind my language somehow.” besides, preferences and interest both the speaker and the interlocutor is influential for someone in communication. some of the participants had the same argument about it and mentioned that this factor influence them to their communication style. one of them said “perhaps the circumstance, relationship, and the range of the topic.” another findings from the interview session is the students answer about the usual communication strategies that they used in their daily life. the researcher had already collected the data that show types of communication strategies performed by the students from the online face-toface conversation. on another side, the researcher asked the students about what type of communication strategies they usually used through this semi-structured interview in order to know how far their understanding about communication strategies. in fact, the result of the interview was slightly different from the result of the analysis of their communication strategies during the online face-to-face conversation. from the interview session, mostly mentioned that the students overcome their communication problems by using gestures, using similar words, description, asking for help, or switch their words into their mother tongue. however, the findings showed that there were 16 communication strategies employed by the students during the conversation. the following sentences provide the students’ answers in the interview session. male (4) “i used gestures and sometimes my first language which is bahasa.” male student (4) “i can just use my smartphone to translate it using the google-translator.” female student (4) “sometimes i feel uncomfortable to speak in english, and the way i deal with it is by using body language or finding closest related words.” the first statement indicated that the student chose a code-switching strategy to overcome his communication problems. meanwhile, the second statement provided a different strategy that he also prefered using a smartphone to help him while facing language difficulties. this strategy can be categorized as asking for help strategy. furthermore, the female student’s statement showed that she chose body language or gesture and finding closest related words. finding the closest related words that the female student mentioned can be restructuring, self-rephrasing, circumlocution, or approximation strategy because those strategies focused on arranging words. based on the findings above, the researcher predicts that the difference between the students answer in the interview and their communication strategies used during conversation happened perhaps because they do not know about what the exact name of the communication strategy. yet, actually, they have the concept of the strategy but they don’t know any kind of other communication strategies, so they answered what they know. it can be concluded that the students employ more communication strategies rather than what they answered before. so, they need to know more about the types of communication strategies to help them improve their communication ability. besides, the explanation above can not be the one of the reasons for the differences that appeared in this strategy. due to the use of whatsapp video call, an online platform, as the instrument, the researcher speculates that other factors may influence it. those extrinsic factors affect the different numbers itself. the factors can be the quality of the internet connection, the quality of the headset or speaker of the smartphone whether interlocutor or the students, the quality of the video recorder, and it can be the situation. what is meant by the situation here is whether are there any disturbance which affects the concentration of the students. to sum up, there was no significant differences of cs used based on gender except for some strategies. this phenomenon happened caused by other factors such as topic discussion, the closeness of the relationship, topic, age, social status, preference and interest, internet connection, headset, video recorder, or the situation of the surrounding. for the future researcher, they need to try to conduct this study with different methods and numbers of participants. the researcher predicts that the result will be different if the study conducted face-to-face in real life. conclusion there were no significant differences in communication strategies performed by the students based on gender except for some strategies. those strategies are literal translation from l1, code-switching, fillers, hesitation devices and gambits, self-initiated repair, appeal for help, and meaning-negotiation strategies. they showed significant different numbers of occurrences. the researcher argues that the maulida nur aziza / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 182 similarities number of occurrences happened because of some factors. those factors include the students’ eagerness to enhance the effectiveness of communication, the different of students’ characteristics, they prefer playing with the words, they are expressive and they want to maintain the conversation by gaining time. meanwhile, for the differences, it is influenced by some factors such as female students prefer avoiding silence in communication, females are socially oriented, males students speak simpler and to the point, innate ability of male and female, males students do not want to show their inability, and the students do not want to leave ambiguity. besides, those factors, external factors also give a big impact on the numbers of occurrences. the external factors are the internet connection, the quality of headset/speaker of the smartphone, the quality of the video recorder, and the situation around the speakers or interlocutors. furthermore, based on the interview result, there are some factors that influence the participants in the conversation. those factors are gender, the closeness of the relationship, topic, age, social status, preference, and interest. interestingly, some students argued that they do not matter about the gender of the communication partner in affecting them while communicating. based on the result of online face-to-face conversation, students who have that argument performed different result. both male and female students performed frequent communication strategies towards different gender of the partner of communication. any factors related to the gender difference which might influence them are the closeness of the relationship, topic, interest, characteristic of the communication partner, and the feeling that the speaker has toward the interlocutor. as a result, due to the different gender with the communication partner makes some students nervous, lack of confident, or limiting their body language. hence, they performed frequent numbers of communication strategies used. the researcher realizes that this research has limitation. firstly, this research was conducted during the pandemic of covid-19 viruses spreading around the world. indonesian government demanded all of the citizen to stay at home. as a result, this study conducted through online platform. for the future researchers, they need to consider some matters such as the signal of the internet connection and the quality of the video and audio recorder while collecting the data through an online platform. although, they are external factors, they have such a big impact on your data collection. the better of the audio and video recording, the better of the transcription and analysis as well. communication strategies not only includes verbal words but also there are gestures, facial expression, or sound imitation which has to be analyzed. as a result, they need good quality of video and audio recording to get the best analysis of their studies. secondly, this research is limited to eight participants only. the researcher suggests that for the more concrete research, future researchers are better to use more participants and using different settings. for example, they can conduct a study that focused on investigating oral face-to-face conversation not online conversation. furthermore, they can use different setting such as employing the real native speakers to have a face-to-face conversation with the participants. the more different methodologies used, the broader available resources related to this study. it is meant to gain concrete data and findings references achiron, r., lipitz, s., & achiron, a. 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(2013). use of communication strategies by tourism-oriented efl learners in relation to gender and perceived language ability. english language teaching, 6(7), 46–59. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n7p46 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42227c46a619 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 125 elt forum 10 (2) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the analysis of teachers’ professional competence in utilizing information and communication technology noven aquilla abkarin english department, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 26 august 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 28 july 2021 ________________ keywords: teachers’ professional competence; information and communication technology; supporting and inhibiting factors ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study is about the utilization of ict in classroom learning to develop teacher’s professional competence. nowadays, covid-19 pandemic has already spread around the world. it brings bad impacts on many sectors, especially the education sector. based on the issue, this study aims to investigate teacher’s familiarity with the use of ict, to find out teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict in classroom learning, and to obtain supporting and inhibiting factors of teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict. a qualitative approach was used as a method of this study. data collection was conducted by distributing questionnaires, carrying out structured interviews, and documentation addressed to ten respondents consisting of english teachers from three schools in wonosobo, central java, indonesia. this study reveals that ten teachers were familiar with using ict in classroom learning. they claimed that the use of ict can help their works in the teaching and learning process. second, the teacher’s professional competence can improve ict utilization in teaching and learning classrooms. the use of ict also can improve teachers’ professional competence because ict usage is easier and more effective to deliver materials. third, some supporting factors of the use of ict were found in this study. they were making teaching and learning process easier, increasing students’ motivation, and improving teachers’ professional competence. the use of ict also could make teachers easily take part in this digital era.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: novenabkarin@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 126 introduction in the 21st century, indonesia is able to pursue the technological developments. changes and developments are also happening in the world of education, including education and teaching english (priyatmojo et al., 2017). it has been proven by the rise of the use of information and communication technology in the classroom activity. information and communication technology is modern renewal which can be applied in education. fu (2013) stated that information and communication technology (ict) is electronic devices that are mostly used in education sector nowadays such as computers, televisions, radios, internet, projectors, and others. in indonesia, ict is often related to current development. therefore, education minister has revised some curriculum from ktsp 2006 into the newest one, called revised k-13. in this case, the government has policy in increasing the quality of education. in ict development, it brings many advantages in education field. 2013 curriculum is competence-based curriculum that requires all of the activities as studentcenter. it means that all the classroom activities in teaching and learning english require that students have to be active. hence, the teacher should use ict for the effective classroom learning. nowadays, covid-19 pandemic has already spread around the world. it brings bad impacts on many sectors, especially the education sector. according to unesco (2020, in di perto et al., 2020) showed that at the end of april 2020, educational sectors immobilize in 186 countries, affecting approximately 74% of the total enrolled learners around the world. it has devastated teachers, students, schools, and the education system.teachers as a role model for students, the teachers’ performance are noticed by the students. therefore, teachers have come to realize that every meaningful improvement that students receive depends on the quality of teaching. a good teacher must have good competences. according to the act number 14 year 2005, there are four competences that teachers must have including personality, pedagogy, social, and professional (lao et al., 2017). first, personality competence is one of the abilities that teacher must have. pahrudin et al. (2016) stated that it reflects a good personality e.g. wise, kind, maturity, etc., being a role model for students, and also having good character. second, pedagogy competence is the teachers’ ability to design and implement the learning strategy. third, social competence is teachers’ ability to do interaction with their students, colleagues, students’ parents and society (pahrudin et al., 2016). fourth, professional competence is teachers’ ability that they have to master learning material deeply, curriculum, management classroom, lesson plan, etc. (pahrudin et al., 2016). in addition, this study focused on the ict utilization teachers needed to develop their professional competence. this study aims to find how teacher’s familiarity on the use of ict in classroom learning is, how teachers’ professional competence in utilizing information and communication technology in classroom learning is and what supporting and inhibiting factors of teachers’ profession competence in utilizing ict in classroom learning are. adhini (2018) conducted a study entitled teachers’ perception of social media in developing pedagogical competence. this study investigated teachers’ perceptions of using social media to enhance pedagogical competence. the objectives of the study were to explore the teachers’ familiarity on the use of social media, to explain the teachers’ frequency in using social media and to analyze teachers’ perception of using social media in developing their pedagogical competence. this is related to the writer’s research in using the part of ict in the teaching and learning process. this study attempted to find out teachers’ frequency in using social media and analyze teachers’ perceptions of using social media in developing their pedagogical competence. it is a bit different from the writer’s research because this research only focused on the use of social media in learning activities whereas the writer’s research will use information and communication technology generally to find out english teachers’ factors in mastering ict. next study was conducted by akinwamide & felicia (2018) entitled professional updates for language teachers in digitally infected clime: the ict utilization sensibility. the objectives of this study were to find out the training or retraining of the ict utilization for the english teachers and whether there was a provision to develop human capacity in the learning process. this study used descriptive survey design. there were 571 english teachers (all english teachers) in a senior secondary school in ekiti state. they were collected as a population. in selecting the sample, a multistage random sampling technique was employed by the writer. in collecting the data, a questionnaire was used by the writer. based on the finding of the research, this study indicated that there was no significant relationship between the provision that enacts human capacity for ict utilization. the teachers had not received training to develop their skills in utilizing ict. this study related to the writer’s noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 127 research because it explained the teachers’ sensibility in the use of information and communication technology in the digital era. this study was conducted in nigeria with a lot of problems against the integrity of the profession. on the other hand, the difference is the writer wants to know how ict utilization in improving teacher’s professional competence. al-munawwarah, (2014) conducted a study entitled teachers’ perception on the use of ict in indonesia efl learning context. this study investigated teachers’ perceptions in implementing the use of ict in the efl learning process. this study was almost similar to the writer’s study because this study implemented ict in the teaching and learning process and found out the advantages and disadvantages of the use of ict. the writer also emphasized english teachers’ professional competence in using ict. this study will be useful for one of the references to support the research. methods this study used qualitative research method. it tended to explicate the analysis of research problems in this study. according to creswell (2014), qualitative method has different approach to investigate the study than quantitative method. qualitative meth od relied on data analysis such as text and image data. in collecting the data, i used three types of data collections. there was questionnaire, structured interview and documentation. the research instruments of this study were developed to solve the research problem of this study. a questionnaire used to find out teachers’ performance in the use of ict in classroom. therefore, a structured interview involved open-ended questions and it gained to find out supporting and inhibiting factors th at teachers faced in the learning activities by using ict. documentation use d to support interview process. the subject of the study was 10 english teachers who teach in senior high school and vocational high school in wonosobo regency. there were the engl ish teachers who have professional competence in teaching and learning process especially in the use of ict. this study used three data collection; questionnaire, interview, and documentation. the aim of providing questionnaire is to find out how english teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict is, supporting and inhibiting factors of english teacher has to use ict in classroom learning, and teachers’ perception of the use of ict to develop their professional competence. the questionnaire was distributed to investigate general opinion of the participants toward the ict utilization in classroom and the ict utilization to support teachers’ professional competence. the purpose of this study was to get detail information about teachers’ perspective i n the use ict in mastering professional competence. the result of the ict utilization in classroom learning can be explored by calculating integrated score. the structured interview was to investigate teacher’s familiarity in the use of ict and supporting and inhibiting factors in the use of ict. structured interview was distributed to analyze teacher’s familiarity on the use of ict and analyze twelve dimensions and items of supporting and inhibiting factors in the ict utilization. the general opinion was about teachers’ perception in the ict utilization to find supporting and inhibiting factors. lastly, documentation was used to support questionnaire and interview process. the data analysis had conducted during the data collection take place and after finish the data collection. there were three activities in analyzing data. data reduction was data that has been summarized and chosen into the main point. reduced data gave description easily, and makes the researcher easier in collecting data. after data reduction, the data was displayed in form of graphics, table, chard, pictogram, etc. data display also can make the researcher easier to understand what’s happening and to do something-further analysis. the last step of analysis data was conclusions. the conclusion of qualitative research was new findings. the finding can be formed a description of an object that was originally still in doubt so that after doing research, it became clear one. findings and discussion this study showed the findings of the research. this research finding discussed research problems. the research problems were how teachers’ familiarity on the use ict in classroom learning is, how the teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict in classroom learning is, and what supporting and inhibiting factors of teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict are. respondents’ familiarity on the use of ict in classroom based on the result of respondents’ familiarity on the use of ict in classroom learning, i found three indicators in table 1. indicator no. 1 was used to present information about teachers’ understanding noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 128 of ict. in this statement, option a was social media’s meaning. option b was ict’s meaning (correct answer). then, option c was internet’s meaning. indicator no. 2 was used to present information about ict classification. in this statement, option a was social media (e.g. whatsapp, line, facebook, skype, twitter, and my space). option b was accessing internet (e.g. drive, elena, google classroom, blog, and wordpress). option c was using computer or laptop. indicator no. 3 was used to present information about teacher’s frequency in the use of ict in classroom. in this statement, there were three options; (a) every meeting, (b) once a week, and (c) once a month. indicator no. 4 was used to present information about teacher’s readiness in using ict in classroom learning. in this statement, there were three options; (a) not ready (b) ready without preparation (c) ready with preparation. indicator no. 5 was used to present information about the use of ict can support teachers’ professional competence. in this statement, there were three option; (a) yes, always (b) yes, sometimes (c) not at all. table 1. teachers' familiarity in the ict utilization no. indicator category a b c frequency precentage frequency precentage frequency precentage 1 ict understanding 60 60% 10 10% 30 30% 2 ict classification 26 26% 37 37% 37 37% 3 frequency of the use ict 20 20% 50 50% 30 30% 4 teachers’ readiness in using ict 20 20% 30 30% 50 50% the utilization of ict in classroom to support teachers’ professional the questionnaire was distributed to investigate general opinions of the participants toward the ict utilization in classrooms and the ict utilization to support teachers’ professional competence. the purpose of this study was to get detail information about teachers’ perspective in the use ict in mastering professional competence. the general opinion about utilization ict in classroom learning was presented in table 1 while the ict utilization to support teachers’ professional competence was presented in table 2. table 2. the ict utilization in the classroom learning no. statements scale 5 4 3 2 1 1 i always utilize ict services to look up teaching materials (news, article, video, etc.). 3 6 1 0 0 2 i think using ict makes effective use of class time. 1 8 1 0 0 3 i think using ict makes me more productive as a teacher. 3 6 0 1 0 4 i think that i can use ict in class activities more effectively day by day. 0 9 1 0 0 5 i believe that ict services like internet, computer, laptop, socialmedia will make communication with my students easier. 6 4 0 0 0 6 i think that usage of instructional ict makes it easier to prepare course materials (assignments, handouts, etc.). 4 6 0 0 0 7 i can handle different learning preferences of my students having different learning styles by using instructional ict. 2 8 0 0 0 8 i think that ict media makes it easier to reach instructional resources in the class. 3 7 0 0 0 9 i think that using ict will change pattern of learning and work activities. 2 7 1 0 0 10 i feel that i must use ict services during my classes. 3 5 1 1 0 total 27 66 5 2 0 total in percent 27% 66% 5% 2% 0% noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 129 the result of the ict utilization in classroom learning can be explored by calculating integrated score. table 3 was presented each integrated score of item. table 3. integrated score for each respondent in the ict utilization in classroom learning statements no. statements integrated score percentage 1 i always utilize ict services to look up teaching materials (news, article, video, etc.). 42 10,04% 2 i think using ict makes effective use of class time. 40 9,56% 3 i think using ict makes me more productive as a teacher. 41 9,80% 4 i think that i can use ict in class activities more effectively day by day. 39 9,33% 5 i believe that ict services like internet, computer, laptop, social media will make communication with my students easier. 46 11,04% 6 i think that usage of instructional ict makes it easier to prepare course materials (assignments, handouts, etc.). 44 10,52% 7 i can handle different learning preferences of my students having different learning styles by using instructional ict. 42 10,04% 8 i think that ict media makes it easier to reach instructional resources in the class. 43 10,28% 9 i think that using ict will change pattern of learning and work activities. 41 9,80% 10 i feel that i must use ict services during my classes. 40 9,56% total 418 100% the result of the ict utilization in classroom learning can be explored by calculating integrated score. table 4 was presented each integrated score of items. table 4 integrated score for each respondent in the ict utilization in classroom learning statements no. statements integrated score percentage 1 i always utilize ict services to look up teaching materials (news, article, video, etc.). 42 10,04% 2 i think using ict makes effective use of class time. 40 9,56% 3 i think using ict makes me more productive as a teacher. 41 9,80% 4 i think that i can use ict in class activities more effectively day by day. 39 9,33% 5 i believe that ict services like internet, computer, laptop, social media will make communication with my students easier. 46 11,04% 6 i think that usage of instructional ict makes it easier to prepare course materials (assignments, handouts, etc.). 44 10,52% 7 i can handle different learning preferences of my students having different learning styles by using instructional ict. 42 10,04% 8 i think that ict media makes it easier to reach instructional resources in the class. 43 10,28% 9 i think that using ict will change pattern of learning and work activities. 41 9,80% 10 i feel that i must use ict services during my classes. 40 9,56% total 418 100% based on the table, it can be concluded that the highest respondents’ statement on the ict utilization was teachers’ belief on the ict services like the internet, computer, laptop, and social media will make communication with the students easier. in addition, the lowest statement of respondents’ ict utilization in classroom learning was teacher thinks that they can use ict in class activities more effectively day by day. the following table presented the result of ict utilization in mastering teachers’ professional competence. noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 130 table 5 ict utilization in mastering teachers' professional competence no. statements scale 5 4 3 2 1 1 the use of ict will improve teacher’ professional competence. 5 5 0 0 0 2 the use of ict will be easier and effective. 5 5 0 0 0 3 the use of ict will facilitate teacher in delivering materials. 6 4 0 0 0 4 the use of ict will increase students’ motivation in learning process. 2 8 0 0 0 5 the use of ict will greatly help students understand the material. 1 7 2 0 0 6 i think that ict helps in bridging communication gap among people. 0 6 4 0 0 7 i think that there are many support factors of the use ict 1 9 0 0 0 8 i think that there are many inhibiting factors of the use ict 0 5 3 2 0 9 teachers need to provide learning materials for students that can be accessed any time outside of school hours 2 7 1 0 0 10 teachers need to attend teacher’s training and education about the integration of ict for improving their professional competence. 4 6 0 0 0 total 26 62 10 2 0 total in percent 26% 62% 10% 2% 0% the result of ict utilization in mastering teachers’ professional competence can be calculated into integrated score. the integrated score was showed in table 6. table 6. integrated score of ict utilization in mastering teachers' professional competence no. statements integrated score percentage 1 the use of ict will improve teacher’ professional competence. 45 10,92% 2 the use of ict will be easier and effective. 45 10,92% 3 the use of ict will facilitate teacher in delivering materials. 46 11,16% 4 the use of ict will increase students’ motivation in learning process. 42 10,19% 5 the use of ict will greatly help students understand the material. 39 9,46% 6 i think that ict helps in bridging communication gap among people. 36 8,73% 7 i think that there are many support factors of the use ict 41 9,95% 8 i think that there are many inhibiting factors of the use ict 33 8,01% 9 teachers need to provide learning materials for students that can be accessed any time outside of school hours 41 9,95% 10 teachers need to attend teacher’s training and education about the integration of ict for improving their professional competence. 44 10,67% total 412 100% based on table 6, it can be concluded that the highest statement of respondents’ ict utilization in mastering teachers’ professional competence was the use of ict will facilitate teacher in delivering materials. while the lowest statement of respondents’ ict utilization in mastering teachers’ professional competence was teacher thinks that there are many inhibiting factors of the use of ict. supporting and inhibiting factors in the ict utilization in this study, there were twelve dimensions and items of supporting and inhibiting factors in the ict utilization. the general opinion was about teachers’ perception in the ict utilization to find supporting and inhibiting factors. the result was presented in the following table. table 7. supporting and inhibiting factors in the ict utilization no. indicators a b c d(optional) 1 teachers’ understanding about professional competence. 30% 20% 50% 2 teachers do activities to improve teachers’ professional competence 37,5% 31,25% 31,25% 3 reason to use ict in classroom 0% 0% 100% 4 the advantages that teachers get in using ict 50% 42,8% 7,14% noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 131 5 teachers need ict in delivering materials 7,6% 76,9% 15,3% 6 there still are some teacher who are reluctant in using ict in delivering materials 16,7% 50% 33,3% 7 teachers’ consideration choose media in classroom learning 43,75% 18.75% 37,5% 8 the problems that teachers found in using ict 58,3% 25% 16,7 9 supporting factors 45,4% 27.3% 27,3% 10 inhibiting factors 26,7% 33,3% 33,3% 6,7% 11 a provision that requires in using ict 40% 60% this structured interview discussed eleven dimensions has been observed including teachers’ understanding about professional competence, teachers’ activities to improve professional competence, reason to use ict, the advantages of using ict, teachers’ needs in using ict, there are some teachers who reluctant in using ict, teachers’ consideration in using ict, the problem that teachers found in using ict, supporting factors, inhibiting factors, and a provision that requires in using ict. the first dimension was teachers’ understanding about professional competence. there were 50% of respondents agreed with the correct answer (professional competence is teachers’ ability they have to master learning material deeply, curriculum, management classroom, lesson plan, etc.) 30% of respondents chose option a and 20% of them chose option b. it can be concluded that half of respondents have understood about the definition of professional competence. otherwise 50% of them did not understand about it. the next dimension was about teachers’ activities to improve professional competence. in this statement, there were three alternative responses about teachers’ activities to improve professional competence that were option a; mastering learning materials, option b; using ict in classroom, and option c; attending teacher’s competency training. this structured interview question can be chosen more than one alternative respond by the respondents. based on the data, there was 37,5% of respondents agreed with mastering learning materials. 31,25% of respondents agreed with using ict in classroom and 31,25% of respondents agreed with attending teacher’s competency training. the third dimension was about reason to use ict in classroom. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were option a; because of teacher’s supervision, option b; it is used to utilize teacher’s professional competence, and option c; to make teaching and learning process easier. from the data, it can be concluded that 100% of respondents agreed with option c; reason to use ict in classroom is to make teaching and learning process easier. the next dimension was about the advantages of using ict. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were option a; to make teaching and learning process easier, option b; to increase student’s motivation in learning process, and option c; to improve teacher’s professional competence. the respondents also can pick more than one alternative responses because there were many advantages in using ict in classroom. based on the data, it can be concluded that 50% of respondents agreed with option a. 42,8% of respondents agreed with option b. then, 7,14% of respondents agreed with option c. the further dimension was about teachers’ needs of using ict. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were option a; to prepare teacher’s supervision, option b; to make easier in delivering material, and option c; to take part in digital era. the respondents also can pick more than one alternative response. based on the data, respondents agreed with option a was 7,6%. there was 76,9% of respondents agreed with option b that was to make easier in delivering materials and respondents agreed to take part in digital era was 15,3%. the sixth dimension was about there are some teachers who are reluctant in using ict. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were option a; the lack of facilities, option b; the lack of competence in utilizing ict, and option c; the lack of motivation in utilizing ict. respondents agreed with the lack of facilities was 16,7%. there was 50% of respondents agreed with the lack of competence in utilizing ict. respondents agreed with the lack of motivation in utilizing ict was 33,3%. it can be concluded that the lack of competence in utilizing ict was the highest response of why teachers still reluctant of using ict are. the further dimension was about teachers’ consideration in choosing media to deliver materials. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were access, cost and facilities. from the data, the respondents can choose more than one response that 43,75% of respondents agreed with access. 18,75% of respondents agreed with cost. then, 37,5% of respondents agreed with facilities. noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 132 the next dimension was about the problems that teachers found in using ict. in this statement, there were three alternative responses. they were facility limitations, teacher’s unwillingness, and teacher cannot operate media such as computer, social media, etc. based on the data. it can be concluded that 58,3% of respondents agreed with facility limitations. there were 25% of respondents agreed with teacher’s unwillingness and 16,7% of respondents agreed with teacher cannot operate media such as computer, social media, etc. the next dimension was about supporting factor in the ict utilization. in this statement, there were three alternative responses. they were facilities, teacher’s competence and time. respondents also can write other opinion about supporting factor in the ict utilization. based on the data, there were 45,4% of respondents agreed with facilities. furthermore, 27,3% of respondents agreed with teacher’s competence. then, 27,3% agreed with time. it can be concluded that facilities was the highest response of supporting factors in the ict utilization. the further dimension was about inhibiting factor in the ict utilization. in this statement, there were three alternative responses that were the lack of facilities, the lack of teacher’s competence, and the lack of time. respondents also can write other opinion about inhibiting factor in the ict utilization. from the data, there were 26,7% of respondents agreed with the lack of facilities. while 33,3% of respondents agreed with the lack of teacher’s competence and also 33,3% of respondents agreed with the lack of time. in addition, there was other response that written by respondent that was the lack of access, it was 6,7%. the last dimension was about a provision that requires in using ict. there were two alternative responses. those responses were yes, there is a provision and no, there is no provision. based on the data, there were 40% of respondents agreed with there is a provision. on the other hand, 60% of respondents agreed with this response; there was no provision. the respondents who agreed with there was a provision have some reasons. it can be a provision from the governor and the principal of the school to use ict in classroom. discussion this part presented the discussion and answer of the research questions. they were (1) how is teachers’ familiarity on the use ict in classroom learning? (2) how is teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict in classroom learning? (3) what are supporting and inhibiting factors of teachers’ professional competence in utilizing ict? based on the result of the questionnaire and structured interview, it can be concluded that ten english teachers have already utilized ict in teaching and classroom learning. they were aware of the use of ict in the classroom having an important role in mastering teacher’s professional competence. even though they still did not know about the definition of ict and professional competence correctly, but they have already used ict in the learning process well. this result was in line with the result of the research conducted by adhini (2018). she presented that fourteen english teachers were able to use social media in the classroom and outside of the class influenced by social media workshops attended by teachers. fourteen english teachers asserted that they cannot ignore the role of social media in education because social media today plays a key role in developing the quality of education and increasing enrollment across the world. next research conducted by jatileni & jatileni (2018), they claimed that namibian primary school teachers hold positive perceptions towards the use of ict in teaching and learning. based on the findings, it can be concluded that ten teachers were familiar in using ict in classroom learning. they claimed that the use of ict can help their works in the teaching and learning process. they used media of ict such as social media, accessing the internet, laptop, computer, etc. they were also ready in the use of ict in every meeting or once a week/month even though they were ready with the preparation or without preparation. this finding is in line with the research conducted by budiman et al. (2018). they revealed that the teachers believed that the integrating of ict in the classroom is crucial. this positive perception of the use of ict contributes to the ease of ict integration in learning, as explained by saeed (2015). he showed that most of the english teachers have positive attitudes towards the use of ict in teaching english language. when delivering the materials by using ict, it has greatly enhanced the quality of the outcomes of the lesson taught. ict is beneficial for both teachers and students as well. it can also motivate students to learn more because of the interesting display provided by ict in the teaching and learning process. on the other hand, teachers stated that the teacher’s role in 21st-century learning is merely as facilitators, no noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 133 longer as transmitters. thus, they also have to take part in this digital era, they should be ict literate to face the challenge of 21st century learning. from the data questionnaire, the teacher’s professional competence can improve by utilizing ict in teaching and learning classrooms. it can be testified in tables 2 and table 3. ict utilization such as the use of a computer/laptop was a medium in delivering materials in the classroom, accessing the internet to upload and downloading some tasks given by the teacher. the use of social media is to share some information about the material. the use of ict also can improve the teacher’s professional competence because ict usage is an easier and effective way to deliver materials. it can facilitate teachers, increase students’ motivation, and greatly help students understand the material. in addition, ict utilization has brought good impacts on teachers’ professional competence because of covid-19 pandemic. nowadays, teachers were more interesting to master the use of ict in classroom learning. furthermore, teachers are required to use ict in the online classroom. this finding is in line with research conducted by akinwamide & felicia (2018) that ict was an appropriate medium used in teaching and learning process. ict is a professional resource, a mode of classroom delivery, and a source of valid and valuable text types. in the structured interview, there were supporting and inhibiting factors on ict utilization. based on the data findings, these were the supporting factors such as making it easier in the teaching and learning process, increasing students’ motivation, improving teachers’ professional competence, and taking part in the digital era. in addition, the adequate facilities and time were in supporting factors. this finding is in line with the research conducted by al-munawwarah (2014). she showed that there were some benefits of ict utilization; helping teachers to conduct interesting and enjoyable learning activities; promoting learning autonomy; motivating students to learn. helping teachers to conduct interesting and enjoyable learning activities means that ict integration helps the teachers to give examples and design interesting teaching materials. they also assumed that by utilizing ict in english language teaching and learning process helped the teachers to organize interesting and enjoyable learning activities. promoting learning autonomy means that the use of ict, particularly web-browser may help teachers to build students’ awareness to learn by assisting them to seek various resources related to the materials given. motivating students to learn means that the materials were taken from online language websites and language programs increased students’ motivation to learn since it provided the students with a motivating learning atmosphere to engage in the teaching and learning process. otherwise, there were inhibiting factors such as the lack of facilities, the lack of teachers’ competence, the lack of time, the lack of motivation, the lack of accessing media of ict, and lastly teachers’ unwillingness. this finding is in line with the research conducted by al-munawwarah (2014). she showed that there were some inhibiting factors on the use of ict; time allocation; technical problems; the strategies used by the teachers to overcome the challenges in using ict. the teachers mentioned that the lack of time as one of the inhibiting factors in using ict. they spent more time to check the entire tools and program before using it. if there is something wrong with the tools or programs, they found technical problems in using ict. the teachers usually found the problems; they faced the lack of internet connection. they faced technical support problems when they were conducting learning process in language laboratory due to some headphones, language programs, and computers which were unusable. they also faced an unexpected situation in the middle of teaching and learning process. for example, the online language websites could not be used because the lack of internet connection. teachers had the strategies to overcome the challenges in using ict. they preferred to use downloadable materials including videos and prepared those materials before conducting the teaching and learning process. moreover, they also prepared to design powerpoint presentations before entering the classroom. by doing this strategy, they could conduct the learning process more effectively. according to suryani (2010), there are some potential benefits of ict. those are: by using ict in teaching and learning classrooms, the students can be active learners, by having access to the internet in their schools, the students will not totally depend on the teachers, the use of blogs, for instance. it can allow the teachers and students to be very up-to-date to the issues and discussion in the educational sector or other sectors, and ict can also provide a way for dynamic and collaborative learning. besides dynamic learning, ict allows all the human components of schools; the principals, administrations, teachers, it coordinators, and the students to get involved in the collaborative learning and forming learning communities. learning using ict is more than learning through memorization. it allows the learners to experience their learning processes, being noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 134 interactive, enjoy, and have fun with technology. ict also can improve children’s literacy. the use of ict not only can support the cognitive development of the students but also increase their motivation to learn and their interaction in learning. this study is in line with the writer’s study that there were supporting factors on the use of ict in the classroom. the supporting factors were making teaching and learning process easier, increasing students’ motivation, improving teachers’ professional competence, and taking part in this era. on the other hand, suryani (2010) stated the difficulties of ict; teachers’ readiness, school supports, and finance. if the teachers have inadequate preparation in using ict in the front of their students, they will be afraid. when in the middle of teaching the tools or program of ict learning cannot operate well, they will be embarrassed. the other factors of teachers’ readiness are teachers are not competent due to technical training and insufficient access to technological resources. teachers do not have sufficient school support and computing educational background/skills. the school supports also include the lack of school leaders (principals). if there is an unsupportive leader, it may impede the successful implementations of ict. the successful implementation of ict in developed countries like in indonesia also can be impeded by insufficient funds. to maintain up-todate technology also need a lot of finance. some institutions have high finance to support the ict implementations, other institutions may do not have sufficient finance. this can open up a huge technology gap between the technologically advantaged and disadvantaged institutions. conclusion based on the findings in the previous chapter, it showed that there were some points as the conclusion of this research. first, ten english teachers were familiar in the use of ict in classroom learning. they realized that the presence of ict is able to develop their professional competence. in addition, there were five indicators that presented information about teacher’s familiarity on the use ict in classroom. they were; teachers’ understanding about ict; ict classification; teacher’s frequency on the use ict; teacher’s readiness in using ict; and the use ict can support teacher’s professional competence. the first indicator showed that there was only one of ten english teachers who understood the truly meaning of ict. they were still difficult to distinguish the correct meaning of ict, social media, and internet in words. however, they have already known about ict, social media and internet services. second indicator presented ict classification that teachers often used in classroom. accessing internet and using computer or laptop have the same percentage. it meant that most of the teachers preferred to use computers or laptops and access the internet than using social media. third indicators displayed teacher’s frequency on the use ict. a half of ten teachers used ict once a week. three teachers used ict once a month. two of the teachers used ict every meeting. fourth indicators stated that five teachers were ready to use ict in classroom learning and they also prepared material and ict services. meanwhile, there were two teachers which are not ready to use ict in classroom. the last indicator reported that four english teachers agreed; the use of ict always supports their professional competence. on the other hand, the use of ict sometimes supports their professional competence was selected by six english teachers. second, the ict utilization in classroom can support teacher’s professional competence. questionnaire was taken to get information about ict utilization. first questionnaire reported that the ict utilization could look up teaching materials; the use of ict made effective time; teachers were more productive; the ict utilization made preparation of materials easier, etc. second questionnaire stated that the ict utilization can improve teachers’ professional competence. the teachers believed that ict services made communication with their students easier. there were also many advantages of the use of ict such as the ict utilization can facilitate the teachers in delivering materials; the ict utilization will be easier and effective; the use of ict increases students’ motivation; the ict utilization will greatly help students to understand the material; etc. third, there were some supporting and inhibiting factors on the use of ict in classroom learning. the supporting factors were; making easier in teaching and learning process; increasing students’ motivation; improving teachers’ professional competence; and taking part in digital area. in addition, the facilities and time were in supporting factors. the inhibiting factors were as the lack of facilities, the lack of teachers’ competence, the lack of time, the lack of motivation, the lack of accessing media of ict and teachers’ unwillingness. noven aquilla abkarin / elt forum 10 (2) (2021) 135 acknowledgement i would like to thank my sincere gratitude to mr. arif suryo priyatmojo, s.pd., m.pd. as the advisor who have led and provided invaluable and continuous guidance, advice, as well as encouragement in making and completing my final project. references adhini. i. n. (2018). teachers’ perceptions of social media in developing pedagogical competence. final project. english department.faculty of languages and arts. universitas negeri semarang. akinwamide, t. k., & felicia, f. b. k. (2018). professional updates for language teachers in a digitally infected clime: the ict utilization sensibility. international journal of english language teaching, 6, 40-48. al-munawwarah, s. f. (2014). teachers’ perceptions on the use of ict in indonesian efl learning context. english review: journal of english education, 3(1), 70-80. budiman, a., rahmawati, r., & ulfa, r. a. (2017). peran teknologi informasi dan komunikasi dalam pendidikan. al-tadzkiyyah: jurnal pendidikan islam, 8, 31-40. creswell, j. w. (2014). research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage di perto, g. et al.. (2020). the likely impact of covid-19 on education: reflections based on the existing literature and international datasets, eur 30275 en, publications office of the european union, luxembourg, isbn 978-92-76-19937-3, doi:10.2760/126686, jrc121071. fu, j. s. (2013). ict in education: a critical literature review and its implications. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology (ijedict), 9, 112-125. jatileni, m., & jatileni, c. n. (2018). teachers’ perception on the use of ict in teaching and learning: a case of namibian primary education. thesis philosophical faculty university of eastern finland. lao, h. a. e., kaipatty, g. j., & jeronimo, a. d. c. (2017). a study on teachers’ competency inteaching english at sma negeri 2. 3rd international seminar on education and technology – iset, 3, 45-50. pahrudin, martono, t., & murtini, w. (2016). the effect of pedagogic competency, personality, professional and social competency teacher to study achievement of economic lesson in state senior high school of east lombok district academic year 2015/2016. proceeding the 2nd international conference on teacher training and education, 2, 332-345. priyatmojo, a. s., areni, g. d. k., & purwanto, b. (2017). ict dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris. semarang: fastindo. saeed, y.b.m. (2015). the effect of using computer technology on english language teachers’ performance. sust journal of humanities 16, 1. suryani, a. (2010). ict in education; its benefits, difficulties, and organizational development issues. jurnal sosial humaniora, 3, 1. unesco. (2020). covid-19 impact on education data. covid-19 education disruption and response. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, unesco. paris, france. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 252 elt forum 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt rural learners’ communication apprehension and urban learners’ fear of negative evaluation in speaking performance: what lies within? agung ginanjar anjaniputra1 1english education study program, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 12 may 2020 approved on 8 november 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords: urban and rural learners; language anxiety; speaking performance; efl ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ anxiety-trigerring conditions that can facilitate and debilitate learning must be made known to teachers. besides, studies comparing foreign language anxiety in rural and urban areas are inconclusive and incongruous. thus, this study is intended to explore learners’ language anxiety in speaking performance at urban and rural high schools. the investigation of language anxiety particularly addresses the extent of language anxiety, the anxiety factors as well as the relationship among language anxiety, school sites, and speaking. this study utilized a questionnaire, a test, and a learner interview to collect data by involving urban and rural school. quantitative data analysis was carried out through descriptive statistics to find out learners’ language anxiety levels, and through multiple regression correlation (mrc) to determine the relationship among the variables. qualitative data analysis was conducted in relation to language anxiety sources by generating broad themes from the interview. the analysis revealed that (1) the extent of learners’ language anxiety was distinct from one another and subject to certain circumstances and their anxiety sensitivity; (2) four factors causing language anxiety were discovered; and (3) a new insight into the correlation between urban and rural learners, language anxiety, and speaking was noticeable. these findings suggest that teachers recognize the circumstances leading to anxiety, which is a basis for successful language acquisition and learning.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: anjaniputragi@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 253 introduction language anxiety is considered to be a factor affecting language learning and acquisition (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986; ellis, 1987; aida, 1994; onwuegbuzie, bailey, & daley, 1999; gass & selinker, 2008). it is asserted that being capable of coping with anxiety can lead to the success of learning and acquiring second or foreign languages (horwitz et al., 1986). language anxiety may bring about reactions which prevent learners from performing well in a foreign language class (horwitz et al., 1986; aida, 1994; horwitz, 2001). it has also been associated with the performance of language skills (see saito, horwitz, & garza, 1999; cheng, horwitz, & schallertz, 1999; matsuda & gobel, 2004). one of them is speaking which is believed to be affected by language anxiety (macintyre & gardner, 1991a; woodrow, 2006; suherdi, 2012). speaking is also a problem faced by most efl learners in indonesia. many secondary school learners do not seem to have sufficient ability to speak english (widiati & cahyono, 2006). therefore, an exploration of language anxiety among urban and rural learners is necessary to be investigated. anxiety has long been associated with fear to be regarded as having “a powerful influence in contemporary life” (spielberger, 1966, p.3). it was freud, along with his psychoanalysis theory, that first shared the notion of anxiety as an unpleasant feeling reacting against dangerous situations, yet the vagueness of its source frequently exists (feist & feist, 2009; schultz & schultz, 2012). it is the vagueness that makes anxiety distinguishable from fear as objects related to fear are specific and apparent (rachman, 2004), while anxiety itself is deemed as “a vague and unspecific apprehension” (may, 1950, p.51). it is further supported by corey (2012) asserting that it is triggered by dealing with options with no clear guidelines and no knowledge of what the consequences are. besides, it is related to individual susceptibility to threatening circumstances in which task performance is possibly distracted by intimidating-perceived situations (eysenck & byrne, 1992, p.798). concerning language performance, three categories of performance anxiety such as communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation are introduced by horwitz et al. (1986). besides, it is also stated that the components have to do with strong speaking anxiety (puškar, 2010). in addition, they are mostly used as the basis for foreign language anxiety measurement (see onwuegbuzie et al., 1999; gregersen, 2005; ezzi, 2012). communication apprehension is defined as “a type of shyness characterized by fear or anxiety about communicating with people” (horwitz et al., 1986, p.127). it is further argued that anxiety in speaking emerges as a result of lack of confidence in linguistic knowledge (arnold, 2000; ewald, 2007). in this sense, speaking is regarded as an activity provoking anxiety in foreign language learning (macintyre & gardner, 1991a, as cited in chan & wu, 2004), especially when performed in front of the class among other learners (iizuka, 2010). it is in line with the manifestations of communication apprehension, as argued by horwitz et al. (1986) and puškar (2010), reflected in difficulties when speaking in groups or in public. test anxiety is a type of anxiety triggered by a fear of failure so that perfect performance is conceived as the only acceptable achievement (horwitz et al., 1986). besides, in language class, the pervasiveness of test anxiety is largely prevailing phenomena due to its continuous evaluative nature on performance (tanveer, 2007). two main factors of test anxiety encompass lack of preparation and worry (birjandi & alemi, 2010). lack of preparation is characterized by learners who cram the night before the test, have indigent time and study management, and fail to process text information. meanwhile, the second factor has something to do with worry about performance on past exams, the way classmates and other learners perform, and the negative consequence of failure. fear of negative evaluation deals with the feeling of apprehension about others’ evaluation (horwitz et al., 1986). in addition, to follow lucas et al. (2011), it includes avoiding evaluations and negatively thinking too much about others’ evaluation. fear of negative evaluation differs from test anxiety in a way that it has broader scope, not limited to test situations (horwitz et al. 1986). it may occur in circumstances such as group works, interview tasks, and other activities which have something to do with evaluation among peers, groups or even individuals. as a result, learners hardly speak voluntarily to initiate conversation and interaction, and the worst case of this is that learners skip class as a way to avoid evaluative situations causing the anxiety (gregersen & horwitz, 2002). the reason behind this, as stated by hashemi (2011), is that learners have a fear leading to the shortfalls in positive self-image or self-identity when speaking in a foreign language. any evaluations in social situations such as speaking in foreign language class where teachers and learners take part in evaluating the performance can cause the fear of negative evaluation (chan & wu, 2004). lucas, et al. (2011) state fear of negative evaluation may also include the fear learners experience during agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 254 language class with the presence of peer pressure. as they further argue, the use of certain learning activities and methodology by the teacher leads to language learners’ anxiety. anxiety may be associated with the areas in which individuals live as reported by mckenzie, murray, & booth (2013) that the urban-rural classification becomes an influential factor triggering mental health that is indicated by the prevalence of anxiety. the difference can also be caused by several demographic factors (see ozer, fernald, & roberts, 2007; lyneham & rapee, 2007; abbo et al., 2013; nair et al., 2013; zhao et al., 2013). it is shown in three australian rural settings that the highest rates of anxiety are apparent in a 45-54 years-age group with no significant difference among three areas (kilkkinen et al., 2007). meanwhile, another result is somewhat distinguishable that the prevalence of anxiety is high among adolescents and children in a rural area of uganda (abbo et al., 2013). it corresponds to the symptomatic anxiety among youngest age group in a rural community in kenya (abbot and klein, 1979). several aspects contributing to the prevalence of anxiety in either urban or rural areas (see hraba, mccutcheon, & vecernik, 1999; kilkkinen et al., 2007; leeuwen, 2010; stanley, 2010; romans, cohen & forte, 2011; mckenzie, 2013; florida, 2015), encompass diversity, education, access to public services, types of living environment, socioeconomic status, and values. research on language anxiety has long been conducted by many experts concerning both first and second/foreign language learning. among others, two studies are conducted to investigate language anxiety and its relation to different forms of anxiety and to native and second language processing (macintyre & gardner, 1991a), and to input, processing, and output (macintyre and gardner, 1994). moreover, it has also examined the relationship of japanese learners’ language anxiety to gender and their learning of japanese (aida, 1994), and to shed light on the correlation of anxiety and achievement in second language learning through the literature on language learning anxiety (horwitz, 2001). its relation to speaking has also been concerned, which provides novel insights into the association of language anxiety and oral performance (gregersen & horwitz, 2002; woodrow, 2006; ewald, 2007; hewitt & stephenson, 2011). furthermore, in oral presentations, non-verbal cues of anxious language learners are also examined (gregersen, 2005 & 2009). research found that language anxiety is also influenced by residential locations. one relevant study was conducted by piechurska-kuciel (in pawlak, 2012, pp.169-184) who investigated language anxiety levels of polish secondary grammar school learners from urban, suburban, and rural areas. another one was the research in yemen by ezzi (2012) who also found that residence contributed to the level of foreign language anxiety. however, the two studies came up with contradictory results, in line with several studies of urban–rural differences in psychiatric disorder rates (romans et al., 2011). for these conflicting results, this study refines the association of language anxiety in speaking performances among rural and urban learners. besides, the exploration of foreign language anxiety based on school locations by means of qualitative and quantitative inquiry is rarely conducted. thus, this study is going to qualitatively and quantitatively explore foreign language anxiety experienced by learners from urban and rural schools. given the consideration that language anxiety can determine the success of learning as well as acquiring languages (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986; ellis, 1987; aida, 1994; onwuegbuzie, bailey, & daley, 1999; gass & selinker, 2008), affect speaking performance and may also be influenced by the areas in which learners live and study (see ezzi, 2012; pawlak, 2012; romans et al., 2011), a concern of whether learners from rural and urban high schools experience language anxiety emerges. hence, this study is conducted in urban and rural secondary schools in a district of west java province, indonesia, to investigate learners’ language anxiety: the extent to which learners are anxious, why they experience anxiety, and the relationship among school origins, their language anxiety and speaking performance in english classrooms. methods a mixed method design was deployed since the data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. the data were collected by involving one senior high school located in urban area of sumedang, west java, indonesia, and one located in its rural area. a total of 58 learners were taken as the sample. qualitative data were gathered to address the extent to which learners are anxious and the causes of anxiety. quantitative data were also collected to address the relationship between school origins (urban and rural secondary schools), language anxiety (measured scores), and speaking (measured scores). such a relationship can be accommodated by using multiple regression correlation or mrc (lewis-beck, 1980; draper & smith, 1998; cohen et al., 2003; kutner et al., agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 255 2005). the pattern of relationship is in accordance with “model b two-variable redundancy” (cohen et al., 2003, p.76), where school origins (x1), as represented by urban and rural secondary schools, might produce differences in language anxiety (x2) in a sample of school learner, and each is likely to cause differences in speaking scores (y). techniques of collecting data in this study encompassed questionnaires, learner interview, and speaking tests. the questionnaire, adapted from horwitz, horwitz & cope’s flcas (1986), was to gauge the learners’ language anxiety and to choose seven learners with the highest level of anxiety as participants of the interview. the selection of the flcas was based on a consideration that it is reported to be valid and reliable in addressing foreign language anxiety (onwuegbuzie et al., 1999; gregersen, 2005; ezzi, 2012). the questionnaire consisted of 33 closed-ended items based on three constructs: communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety (horwitz et al., 1986; lucas, miraflores, & go 2011). to preclude learners’ misunderstanding, it was translated into bahasa indonesia. the word “english” was used instead of “language” and “foreign language”. for example, the original version “i feel confident when i speak in foreign language class” was changed to become “i feel confident when i speak in english class”. to maintain the reliability, the questionnaire was piloted twice to a learner exclusive of the 58 participants. as a result of the first pilot, the researcher rephrased the term native speakers of english to become englishmen. besides, to ascertain the validity, all the participants were guided to answer each item. additionally, the learner interview was administered to enrich the data and to assure objectivity of the researcher to answer the problems. a semi-structured interview was also simultaneously carried out with audiotaping to be able to analyze interviewees’ statement thoroughly. the interview questions were developed based on the results of the questionnaire, in line with the components of speaking anxiety: communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety. as for ethical considerations, the researcher asked the participants if they were willingly involved in this study. moreover, their consent to publish any data was obtained with confidentiality of their personal information. in addition to the questionnaire and learner interview, a speaking test was done to 58 participants in this study. the participants in each school were assessed by the english classroom teachers and the researcher. this is suggested that speaking performances involve more than one person to rate or assess the skill (douglas, 2010, p.110). the test was administered in the two classrooms, before the other students. in both classes, it was carried out in the morning so as to ensure the reliability. the speaking performance done by students was based on a topic, family, in which students were helped to speak up their ideas through several probing questions. the probing questions encompass how big is your family? (how many people are in your family?, how many brothers and sisters do you have?), how old are your brothers and sisters?, how old are your parents?, what are the occupations of your family members? (what does your father do?, what's his job?, what does your mother do?, what do your brothers and/or sisters do?), what do you and your family like to do together?, and what do your parents do in their free time?. the assessment of their speaking performance was based upon a speaking rubric adapted from brown (2001). for the qualitative data analysis, the data from the interview were reduced, displayed, and verified as well as concluded (denzin & lincoln, 1998). in this regard, the factors were coded with lp for lack of preparation, ta for teaching activities, sh and lc for shyness and lack of confidence merged into learner personality (ly), and fm for fear of making mistakes. then, the coded utterances and expressions from the interview were put into two tables of categorization. once all the potential and relevant data from interview were presented, these were interpreted to generate the findings of what factors cause language anxiety. the result was finally interpreted in relation to previous theories and studies. quantitative data analysis included calculation of the results of the questionnaire and to measure the relationship among variables. it was carried out by emphasizing areas, sub-areas, and items of the questionnaire to discern the extent of the learners’ language anxiety. in regard to the measurement of the relationship among variables, the data of three variables were first tested by basic assumptions of mrc, comprising residual normality, multicollinearity, autocorrelation, and homoscedasticity (caroll & ruppert, 1988; cohen et al., 2003; chatterjee & simonoff, 2013; johnson & wichern, 2014). having been proven to pass the tests for the basic assumptions, the scores of learners’ language anxiety from urban and rural secondary schools were computed by using mrc to see its relationship to speaking performance, where urban and rural agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 256 secondary schools were coded by the value 1 and 0 consecutively. the computational analysis of mrc was completed by using the statistical packages for social sciences (spss version 18) with α value at .05, which was critically interpreted. findings and discussion language anxiety levels of learners at the urban secondary school the portrayal of learners’ language anxiety at urban secondary school is conveyed. not only does it concern their language anxiety level, but also it deals with the extent of their language anxiety from the analysis of a questionnaire in accordance with the three constructing components and its subareas. prior to the portrayal of learners’ language anxiety from its components, each urban learner’s language anxiety level is reflected in the table below. table 1. overall language anxiety levels of the urban learners levels range no. of learners percentage total score highly relaxed 33-59 relaxed 60-86 1 2.94% 73 normal 87-113 16 47.06% 1623 anxious 114-140 17 50% 2078 highly anxious 141-165 sum 34 100% 3774 average 111 the table above shows that the language anxiety level of the urban learners is 111 in average. of all the learners, their levels are categorized into three levels of language anxiety: relaxed, normal, and anxious level. it is worth noting that a half of the learners from the urban school are in anxious level. this contributes to the dominance of this level over other levels of anxiety. this denotes that the urban learners seem inclined to experience language anxiety more intensely. this may be caused by intolerance and individuality of the people (huggins & debies-carl, 2014 cited in florida, 2015). the average score of 34 learners in the urban secondary school is also presented in table 2, alongside a number of other scores of the areas of flcas. the scores range from 2.853 up to 3.949, signifying anxiety levels which are simply in two different levels: the normal level and the anxious level. in addition, the average score of each component also needs to be taken into account in order to see its contribution to language anxiety in general. the highest average score among the main components is fear of negative evaluation (3.419), resulting in the score included into the anxious level (3.401-4200), followed by communication apprehension (3.385) and test anxiety (3.258) consecutively. the results indicate that the urban learners are mostly anxiety-prone to situations involving evaluations. the presence of fear of negative evaluation contributing to emergence of language anxiety is confirmed by horwitz et al. (1986) that it deals with the feeling of apprehension about others’ evaluation occurring in situations such as group works, interview tasks, and other activities which have to do with evaluation among peers, groups or even individuals. table 2 language anxiety based on the flcas in the urban secondary school (n=34) areas and sub-areas of foreign language anxiety mean level communication apprehension 3.385 n communication with others 3.235 n speaking in front of others 3.382 n receiver anxiety 3.539 a test anxiety 3.258 n fear of failure 3.461 a self-preoccupation 3.441 a self-preparation 3.015 n fear of negative evaluation 3.419 a avoidance of evaluative situations 2.853 n teaching styles and activities 3.596 a peer pressure 3.949 a overall 3.364 n hr (highly relaxed): 1.000-1.800; r (relaxed): 1.801-2.600; n (normal): 2.601-3.400 a (anxious): 3.401-4.200; ha (highly anxious): 4.201-5.000 agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 257 as shown in the table above, the highest average score among all the sub-areas of language anxiety is peer pressure (3.949). this sub-area is a part of the ‘fear of negative evaluation component’ that deals with items accounting for other learners’ superiority in english and speaking of english, worry about getting left behind, and fear of being laughed at by other learners. the most significant anxiety-provoking situations based upon the items in this sub-area are those concerning “i keep thinking that the other students are better at languages than i am” and “i always feel that the other students speak the foreign language better than i do”. the two items generate remarkable scores, more than four points to include these in the anxious level. it appears that learners are extremely prone to language anxiety as a result of threats from their classmates. regarding this, horwitz et al. (1986) posit that severe proneness to peer evaluations causing language anxiety may be undergone by learners. the results imply that there are still many learners anxious about learning or speaking english in urban school. it will be worsened if english teachers keep providing them with the learning activities provoking their anxiety without being aware of the affective factors, one of which is anxiety, in learning and acquiring the foreign language. regarding this, the significance of anxiety is said to be influential in learning and acquiring languages (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986; ellis, 1987; aida, 1994; onwuegbuzie, bailey, & daley, 1999; gass & selinker, 2008). it is further supported that the presence of language anxiety can trigger negative behavior of learners and inhibiting achievement (suherdi, 2012; gass & selinker, 2012). nevertheless, it does not necessarily mean that they are anxious in any situation they are exposed to when learning the language as explained above through comprehensive insight into the questionnaire items. language anxiety levels of learners at the rural secondary school the extent to which rural school learners experience anxiety is portrayed in table 3. the average of learners’ anxiety level is 110.1. dispersal of their language anxiety levels is limited to three levels, similar to that of the urban learners. this denotes language anxiety experienced by the learners that is relatively equal regardless of the school origins. in detail, the dispersion of learners’ language anxiety level in three distinct levels is noticeable that 15 learners are in the normal level of language anxiety, followed by eight learners in the anxious level, and only one in the relaxed level. this dispersion of the learners occupying each language anxiety level is different from that of the urban learners that the number of the rural learners in the anxious level results in a smaller number of learners with only 33.33% of them. the smaller number of anxious learners can be an indication of a lack of competitiveness among the learners so that they may not feel pressure. this is consistent with the theoretical position of bailey (1983, as cited in tóth, 2007) and may (1950), according to whom anxiety can be caused by competitiveness. this implies that the less competitive the class is, the less anxious the learners are. the lack of competitiveness can be caused by the community-held value that english may give no significance to themselves. furthermore, rural areas can constitute convenience for the people. the convenience is related to the availability of green space in rural areas is predominant (leeuwen, 2010; mckenzie, 2013). besides, it is affirmed that there is less noise in rural society (stanley, 2010). this circumstance, as further argued by mckenzie (2013), can be beneficial as a means for reducing stress. therefore, to some extent language anxiety could be suppressed. table 3. overall language anxiety levels of the rural learners levels range no. of learners percentage total score highly relaxed 33-59 relaxed 60-86 1 4.17% 76 normal 87-113 15 62.5% 1579 anxious 114-140 8 33.33% 987 highly anxious 141-165 sum 24 100% 2642 average 110.1 in terms of its sub-areas, of 24 rural learners the overall average score for each item is 3.336 (see table 4), slightly lower than the urban learners. in addition, all the scores denote a range of data dispersion from the lowest 2.650 up to the highest one 4.011. besides, the inclusion of the scores in language anxiety levels shows uniformity with the urban learners that these scores among others are agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 258 in the normal level (2.601-3.400) and in the anxious level (3.401-4.200). a difference lies on the lowend point lower than and the high-end point higher than those points of urban learners. moreover, in contrast to the result in the urban school, in the rural school the result yields a distinction in a way that the communication apprehension component generates the highest average score, before fear of negative evaluation and test anxiety component. it suggests that situations included in the ‘communication apprehension’ component will induce a higher sense of anxiety instead of ‘fear of negative evaluation’ and ‘test anxiety’ whose average scores are below it. the score of communication apprehension (3.602) is nearly 0.3 higher than the score of the urban school learners. the sub-areas, ‘communication with others’ and ‘receiver anxiety’, are presumably related since their two scores are all categorized into the anxious level. in other words, the rural learners are anxious not only about producing utterances, but also about receiving them. it is in line with horwitz et al. (1986) that ‘communication apprehension’ is manifested in speaking and listening. hence, language anxiety is not only experienced in language output when producing utterances, but also in language input when trying to understand the language. table 4 language anxiety based on the flcas in the rural secondary school (n=24) areas and sub-areas of foreign language anxiety mean level communication apprehension 3.602 a communication with others 3.931 a speaking in front of others 3.442 a receiver anxiety 3.542 a test anxiety 2.986 n fear of failure 3.319 n self-preoccupation 2.813 n self preparation 2.823 n fear of negative evaluation 3.353 n avoidance of evaluative situations 2.650 n teaching styles and activities 3.573 a peer pressure 4.011 a overall 3.336 n hr (highly relaxed): 1.000-1.800; r (relaxed): 1.801-2.600; n (normal): 2.601-3.400 a (anxious): 3.401-4.200; ha (highly anxious): 4.201-5.000 the result of communication apprehension as the highest score of the components has to be noted. it may be due to the lack of access to public services in rural areas (kilkkinen et al., 2007). this can restrict the chance of the rural learners in developing their communication skills. furthermore, it can be associated with the socioeconomic status of rural people that they generally receive a lower income than those in urban areas (stanley 2010) where socioeconomic status can be crucial in order to provide learners with the best facilities for optimum learning development (memon, joubish, & khurram, 2010). based upon table 4, the highest score among all the sub-areas is of fear of negative evaluation component, namely peer pressure (4.011). the anxiety level of this sub-area among the rural learners is somewhat higher than the urban learners’. this indicates severe anxiety proneness to getting left behind among the rural learners. it denotes a difference from the urban learners who are extremely anxious when preoccupying their classmates’ performance. this phenomenon shows that pressure from their peer has a considerable trigger for language anxiety. the reason for this can be their worry about looking awful in front of their friends. with regard to this, brown (2001) states that selfimage is highly crucial for teenagers since they are vulnerable to others’ perceptions on themselves. the second highest sub-area average score comes from the component of communication apprehension. the sub-area is ‘communication with others’ that is categorized into the anxious level with an average of 3.931. the item with the highest score concerns a situation where anxiety causes forgetting things, which is deemed highly anxious (4.25) for rural learners. this result confirms what is argued by puškar (2010) that the impact of language anxiety on learners comprises the limitation of memory, being lost in concentration and creativity. this is also what is supported by eysenck et al. (2007, p.337) that concurrent task processing is gradually obstructed by the worrisome thoughts triggering a deficit in the attentional quality of working memory. the findings suggest that the rural learners might be convenient in the english class, but not in participating in the class. they are solely anxious about a certain situation in the class, which is agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 259 known as state anxiety (pappamihiel, 2002; pawlak, 2012; suherdi, 2012). since the learners are not hindered by anxiety in any situations in class, it shows a chance for the learners to foster their english ability, particularly when exposed to non-anxiety-provoking situations. according to gregersen & horwitz (2002) to avoid evaluative situations that cause anxiety, learners hardly speak voluntarily to initiate conversation and interaction, and in the worst case, they skip class. however, the rural learners seem to barely avoid the evaluative situations in the class. the reason for this may be caused by their willingness to be relieved to pass such a situation at once so that they can focus on other subjects and to be eventually adaptive to the threatening situation, alongside for the sake of getting marks. this shows that anxiety does not have to be avoided since it can encourage people to take precisely appropriate actions (ewen, 2010; corey, 2012). from the findings, it is found that the urban and rural learners have the average individual scores of anxiety which are relatively the same, 110.1 among the rural learners and 111 among the urban learners. moreover, seen from language anxiety constructs and their sub-areas, both the learner groups merely lie in two anxiety level categories comprising the normal, and the anxious levels, despite the emergence of some items included in the relaxed and highly anxious level. however, it merely covers an interpretation of the scores based upon descriptive data. notwithstanding this similarity, the differences are discernible in and dependent upon the situations they are exposed to. for instance, the urban learners are mostly anxious about the teacher’s correction, meanwhile, the rural learners are anxious about getting left behind in the class. these differences account for anxiety sensitivity (as) denoting individual differences in the anxiety (taylor, 1999). therefore, inferential statistical calculation is operated in this study to provide a holistically illuminating discussion of the phenomenon and its relation to speaking performance and school regions. the causes of language anxiety about speaking performance experienced by learners from urban and rural secondary schools this section concerns the second research question on why the urban and rural learners undergo language anxiety in speaking performance. the reasons for their language anxiety are reported to result from several factors associated with lack of preparation (see woodrow, 2006; liu, 2007), teaching activities (see marwan, 2007; tanveer, 2007), memory disassociation (see liu, 2007; nuranifar, 2014), shyness (see liu, 2007; indrianty, 2012), lack of confidence (see marwan, 2007; 2008;), fear of making mistakes (see jackson, 2002; guanyu and wei, 2006; liu, 2007; indrianty, 2012), and lack of vocabulary (see pappamihiel, 2002; liu, 2007). through analysis of interview to the learners in both the urban and rural secondary schools, this study slightly modifies the categorization of these causes of language anxiety which entails teaching activities that are found to relate to memory disassociation, learner personality that includes shyness and lack of confidence, and fear of making mistakes that is associated with the lack of vocabulary. lack of preparation the prominence of lack of preparation as one of the factors causing language anxiety among learners is in accordance with what is found by woodrow (2006) and liu (2007). it triggers language anxiety, as expressed by the urban learners, if there is an unexpected speaking test (see extract 1). in other words, being informed of what will be done in the class in advance can allow the learners to have time for preparation. this finding confirms the previous research that lack of preparation has been mentioned to result in test anxiety among learners (birjandi & alemi, 2010). finally, to ascertain that she feels anxious because of lacking preparation, a confirmation question was delivered and once again this emerges as one of the factor affecting language anxiety. in relation to this finding, the significance of preparation is prevailing since it was found in previous research that some learners experienced a less anxious state of affairs and an enhanced selfconfidence for preparation, and avoided speaking performance without preparation beforehand (liu, 2007). it is further asserted that learners’ confidence in speaking english could be enhanced through preparation (ibid.). the enhancement of self-confidence through preparation denotes the merits of preparation for learners experiencing language anxiety. this is in line with the notion that sufficient preparation is likely to lower language anxiety undergone by learners (chan & wu, 2004). hence, having prepared materials before coming to class or performing oral skills, learners are expected to have a sense of readiness which ensures their ability. agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 260 i: in your opinion what makes you anxious when speaking english or in english class? us13: if for example there is an unexpected speaking test, that makes me anxious, yes today i lacked preparation in my home. … i: just then what else? that makes you anxious, what else? us13: if, yes, lacking preparation. (extract 1, lp#1) concerning lack of preparation, the rural learner expresses his laziness in preparing the materials before the class. his laziness is known to result from language learning experience when he was in junior high school, “if i don’t like the teacher, i must be slothful … but when i was in smp there was a teacher i didn’t like”. in this regard, it is affirmed that building rapport with learners is of importance in learning languages (worde, 1998, as cited in marwan, 2007). if not, it can cause a negative attitude detrimental to language learning since according to ellis (1997), it can affect the degree of learners’ struggle to learn a language. besides, the attitude towards a language has a significantly negative correlation with the level of foreign language anxiety (dewaele, 2005). teaching activities the identification of this factor is in line with what is found in the previous research (see marwan, 2007; tanveer, 2007). teaching activities triggering language anxiety comprise speaking before others, direct oral questions from the teacher, and fear of their teachers’ anger. this shows that anxiety is probably experienced when living as an autonomous individual, leaving immediate positions of security or breaking the habits (may, 1950). the situation may be conceived as a threat by the learner because anxiety itself is “a response to a situation or stimulus perceived to be threatening or dangerous” (spielberger, 2004, p.139). hence, inviting learners to perform before others in the class, regardless of urban or rural learners, needs to be undertaken very carefully so that it is not deemed stimulus threatening to their state of safety. i: how often do you experience anxiety? rs25: often when going to follow a test, before the class as well as when asked to perform in front of the class. … i: if only learning as usual, do you feel anxious? rs25: when being asked indeed if i do not pay attention, then being asked, i usually experience it. (extract 2, ta#9) as depicted in the extract above, the rural learner also feels anxious especially when being pointed out to answer unexpected questions. this finding confirms the previous result in china conducted by liu (2007), affirming that being singled out by the teacher brings about a situation that is deemed the most anxious by the learners. in addition, based upon a study by guanyu & wei (2006), pointing out learners randomly is caused by teachers’ intolerance of silence in classroom so that teaching activities can run smoothly regardless of learners’ emotion. the finding denotes the activities provoking language anxiety including being called on to utter personal responses and giving a whole-class presentation, a performance of speaking and a large group discussion (tanveer, 2007, p.18). such anxiety has to do with communication apprehension, defined as “an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons” (mccroskey, 1977, p.78). concerning this, the teachers’ roles suggested is to provide learners with a truly communicative approach to allow them to practice their speaking skills, and to encourage learners’ feeling of success and satisfaction when speaking english by means of scaffolding appropriate lessons (hashemi & abbasi, 2013). in addition, one of the urban learners feels anxious about speaking performance due to the provision of activities by the teacher. as further stated by the learner, the teacher looks angry when having the learner participate in the lesson. furthermore, it is revealed that such pressure and anxiety are to some extent discouraging so that the learner becomes reluctant to learn; “yes, it does if the teacher mmmh seems to be mmmh angry so it leads to unwillingness to learn”. this rare occurrence, specifically prevalent in the urban school, may denote that the teacher’s high expectation of the agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 261 learners in the urban area because of the school status as the most favorite school in town so that the learners are supposed to attain remarkable targets. the situation underwent by the learner can be categorized as debilitating anxiety because of the learner’s unwillingness to learn. it is stated that debilitating anxiety constitutes anxiety resulting in negative trigger in learning and inhibiting achievement (humphries, 2011; gass & selinker, 2012; suherdi, 2012). this is supported by gregersen (2009) that foreign-language anxiety is deemed a debilitating emotion particularly related to the language-learning environment. according to worde (1998, as cited in marwan, 2007) this can be caused by inappropriate teaching procedures by teachers and their limitation to build rapport with learners. it can be seen in the finding that the teacher seems to be unsupportive by showing her anger to force the learner to participate in class activities. hence, it is important to provide learners with sincere supports and interests to reduce language anxiety as suggested by horwitz (2001). unanticipated teaching activities demanding learners’ participation tend to cause language anxiety since these bring about bewilderment among them. it is as supported by corey (2012) that anxiety is triggered by dealing with options with no clear guidelines and no knowledge of what the consequences are. in addition, these can cause learners to become perplexed as stated “if suddenly singled out, i got blank”. this occurs to the learner even if she knows the answer. according to liu (2007), this condition refers to memory disassociation that deals with the situation where learners are nervous or anxious because of forgetting what they have to say. forgetting occurs due to reparations of a close association between anxiety and memory which is blacked out of consciousness (nuranifar, 2014). in addition, according to liu (ibid.), learners’ language anxiety could cause inability to remember what they have learned, bringing about a greater anxious state of affairs. moreover, some experts posit a number of manifestations of language anxiety in relation to memory disassociation such as going blank prior to tests (horwitz et al., 1986), reduced word production (de bot et al., 2005), and the limitation of memory (puškar, 2010). furthermore, the occurrence of memory disassociation affects mental processing in all three stages of input, processing, and output (macintyre & gardner, 1994). therefore, it implies that the difficulties of anxious learners digesting language input lead to the problem of processing the input which in turn distracts language output or production. learner personality this factor stems from two specific themes that encompass shyness and lack of confidence. the prevalence of shyness is in accordance with a finding that, according to liu (2007) and indrianty (2012), shyness is one of the factors causing foreign language anxiety. in addition, the association of confidence and language anxiety is reported that lack of confidence induces language anxiety about speaking performance among learners (marwan, 2007; 2008). among the urban learners, the learner personality that is associated with the emergence of language anxiety is solely about lack of confidence, as shown in extract 3. according to arnold (2000) and ewald (2007), anxiety in speaking emerges as a result of a lack of confidence in linguistic knowledge. moreover, it is worthy of note that the learner does not express shyness in performing her speaking skills. this may be because of the characteristic of people in urban areas that, as stated by jayapalan (2013), are diverse in terms of cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds of its people. therefore, the learners are accustomed to encountering people with distinct backgrounds so that they are not shy of others in the class. i: what do you feel when speaking english in the class? us1: i’m not confident (extract 3, lc#1) meanwhile, data from the rural learners show that lack of confidence and shyness are likely to be interrelated as depicted in extract 4. this is further argued by nickdaw (2014) that shyness of people to some extent is initiated by lack of trust in them. shyness is closely associated with communication apprehension which means “a type of shyness characterized by fear or anxiety about communicating with people” (horwitz et al., 1986, p.127). shyness can be detrimental for learners because shyness leading to anxiety regularly prevents learners from participation and engagement in the classroom. according to gregerson & horwitz (2002), not only do anxious learners commit themselves to avoidance and procrastination in their language learning, but they agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 262 become reluctant to comment on their performance, fear to be evaluated by their peers, and concern over their errors. as the learner further mentions, this situation is influential to her confidence. i: you were anxious just now, why does it, speaking in front of the class, make you feel anxious? rs21: mmhh i lack confident i: what causes you to feel lack of confidence? rs21: mmhh the cause is, perhaps confronting many people. i: confronting other learners? rs21:yes, mmh i have mousy personality. (extract 4, sh#3) the interrelation between shyness and lack of confidence is also confirmed by another rural student, “perhaps lack of confidence. the main reason is lack of confidence and i am mousy, shy of being the center of attention”. regarding this, the emerging sense of anxiety among language learners has been argued to depend upon their self-confidence (park & lee, 2005). this is in contrast to puškar (2010) affirming that it is language anxiety that affects learners negatively including lowered self-esteem and self-confidence. lacking confidence when speaking in front of others conforms to the inconsistency of selfconfidence (see osboe, fujimura, & hirschel, 2007). this inconsistency refers to confidence enhanced when working in pairs and small groups, yet diminished when performing in whole-class situations (ibid.). therefore, the presence of confidence in language learning is essential. brown (2001, p.62) contends that belief possessed by learners in accomplishing an activity partially facilitates their eventual success to complete the task. in the same vein, huang (2014) states that selfconfidence is important in alleviating language anxiety by means of affecting learners’ attitudes and motivations towards the language being learnt. nevertheless, the shortcoming of self-confidence is still prevalent among learners especially those with lower intermediate achievement due to their inadequacy of mastering the foreign language (marwan, 2008). fear of making mistakes the emergence of this factor is in line with what is found by jackson (2002), guanyu & wei, (2006), liu (2007) and indrianty (2012). it is found that fear of making mistakes also leads to low voice production, presumably intended to avoid laughter from others (see extracts 5 & 6). this is in line that learners with anxiety frequently associate their mistakes to the possibility of negative evaluations by others (gregersen & horwitz, 2002). this finding may be associated with what may (1950) asserts that cultural standards of success and competitive ambition lead to anxiety. in relation to this finding, the learners are studying in an environment whose individuals judge mistakes by laughter. the avoidance of being laughed at, similar to previous research by jackson (2002) and liu (2007), is manifested in fear of making mistakes leading to anxiety. such anxiety deals with reality anxiety, referring to a reaction to tangible dangers in the real world (may, 1950; feist & feist, 2009; ewen, 2010; schultz & schultz, 2012). the function of reality anxiety to have a person prepared for the actual upcoming events or occurrences, namely ‘anxious readiness’ (may, 1950, p.114). besides, it is argued that prior experiences build one’s perception on surrounding subjects whether or not these are perceived as threat (ewen, 2010; schultz & schultz, 2012). therefore, fear of making mistakes can be initiated by recurring anxious experiences in speaking performance such as being laughed at or embarrassed. i: well, when you are speaking english in the class, there may be times that you may feel anxious about it, like just now, mayn’t there? us26: yes, because of fear of making mistakes so i like to lower my voice. if the voice is heard, i fear that it is wrong. (extract 5, fm#8) the fear of making mistakes is also found to have been caused by several underlying factors, one of which is lack of vocabulary in relation to pronunciation as expressed by a learner from the urban school, “fear of making mistakes in pronouncing words”. this reason is common since harmer (2007a) avows that pronunciation and its spelling makes english considered difficult by learners. this finding to some extent confirms previous research identifying that lack of vocabulary is a factor causing foreign language anxiety (pappamihiel, 2002; liu, 2007). close relation between vocabulary agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 263 and pronunciation is argued by linse (2005) that vocabulary mastery constitutes the collection of words that an individual knows. instead, vocabulary mastery is not only about knowing words, but also most importantly using the words in accordance with grammatical structure (harmer, 2007b), which is apparent in the extract below. i: how often do you experience the language anxiety? rs7: (laughing) in each english class, because of fear, when asked, fear of mistaking the answer, fear of arranging the words incorrectly fear of being laughed at by my friends, fear of being the topic of discussion among friends afterwards. (extract 6, fm#14) the learner states that he has fear of making mistakes in arranging the words into correct grammatical structures, which is according to harmer (ibid.) a part of vocabulary mastery. therefore, from the two extracts, fear of making mistakes results from lack of vocabulary not only in terms of pronunciation but also in relation to grammar. this finding highlights the importance of grammar which is why it should be taught in english classrooms (richards & renandya, 2002). in addition, thornbury (2005) also posits that it is crucial to have an access to the sources of the language’s grammar in order to be able to produce a much more sophisticated range of meanings. as the findings suggest, this situation may jeopardize the learners’ learning development since, to follow tanveer (2007), lacking vocabulary in speaking foreign languages creates a hindrance for learners. moreover, vocabulary is one of the aspects which initiates lack of confidence and a sense of anxiety (thornbury, 2005; tanveer, 2007; liu, 2007; indrianty, 2012). the presence of fear of making mistakes indicates learners who are not accustomed to being exposed to using english (marwan, 2007). it can also be due to fear of losing face in front of other learners since learners have a fear of losing one’s positive self-image or self-identity when speaking in a foreign language (hashemi, 2011). for facilitating learners to be used to english, classroom environment which is less-burdening, non-threatening, and supportive as well as friendly can be provided (liu, 2007; hashemi & abbasi, 2013). nonetheless, it does not mean to let mistakes as they are without being corrected. feedbacks and correction should be delivered properly to ascertain that learners are not demotivated (brown, 2001; thornbury, 2005; harmer, 2007b). appropriate feedbacks delivered to learners will be beneficial and helpful for them if they are provided after learners’ performance and without revealing individual errors (brown, 2001; harmer, 2007b; bailey, 2005; linse, 2005; thornbury, 2005; nation and newton, 2009). if not, the learners who are fearful of making mistakes will be overwhelmed by their fear, presumably leading to motivation degradation in learning english. without motivation, their chance to successfully learn and acquire english is at stake as motivation constitutes the crucial aspect in the process of foreign language learning (harmer, 2007a, 2007b; johnson, 2008; murray, gao & lamb, 2011; pawlak, 2012). the relationship between school origins and learners’ language anxiety to their speaking performance hypothesizing that there is no correlation between school origins, language anxiety and speaking performance, this section presents the data in descriptive and inferential statistics. descriptively, as shown in table 5, the average scores of language anxiety among the urban and rural learners seem to indicate similarity that the scores have only a slight difference, 111 for 34 urban learners and 110.1 for 24 rural learners. meanwhile, speaking scores among the learners show that the average of the urban learners (64.1) is higher than that of the rural learners (59.8). the urban learners having the higher average of language anxiety score higher in the average of speaking test, while the rural learners having the lower average of language anxiety results in lower average of speaking performance. in addition to the means, standard deviation (sd) for each score both anxiety and speaking of the urban and rural learners denotes different data dispersal. firstly, the standard deviation of the urban learners’ anxiety score is 14.056, which is higher than that of the rural learners’ resulting in 12.991 standard deviation. this suggests that the urban learners’ anxiety is highly varied when compared to the rural learners’, having a long range of anxiety. secondly, while the anxiety scores result in dispersed distribution of the urban learners, the speaking scores generate distinguished result where high dispersal of data is possessed by the rural learners. it can be seen in the standard agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 264 deviation among them that is 14.565, almost six points higher than that among the urban learners (9.105). table 5. descriptive statistical data learners’ anxiety learners’ speaking scores urban rural urban rural means 111 110.083 64.118 59.833 standard deviation 14.056 9.105 12.991 14.565 partial correlation is required prior to the mrc analysis. since there are two independent variables, school origins and language anxiety, and one dependent variable of speaking, the correlation will be emphasized first on the relationship between school origins and speaking, language anxiety and speaking, as well as school origins and language anxiety. the relationships among the variables are shown in the table below. table 6. correlations among the variables speaking school origins language anxiety pearson correlation speaking 1.000 .243 -.491 school origins .243 1.000 .034 language anxiety -.491 -.034 1.000 sig. (1-tailed) speaking . .033 .000 school origins .033 . .401 language anxiety .000 .401 . n speaking 58 58 58 school origins 58 58 58 language anxiety 58 58 58 the correlation between school origins and speaking results in r =.243 and in the significance of p-value =.033 <.05, meaning that there is a significantly low positive correlation between school origins and speaking performance. it can also imply that perhaps urban school learners achieve higher speaking scores. in addition, the relationship between language anxiety and speaking results in r =-.491 and the significance of p-value =.000 <.05. this denotes a significantly moderate negative correlation that the higher the anxiety is, the lower the speaking performance can be. meanwhile, no significant correlation is found between school origins and language anxiety (r =.034) with the p-value =.401 higher than .05. in addition, the correlation between the origin of the school and language anxiety, and speaking is shown in table 7. the data result in r=.556 and r2=.309. r signifies the coefficient of multiple regression of the independent variables: school origins and language anxiety, and the dependent variable: speaking performance, and r2 indicates the magnitude of the effect of the independent variables simultaneously on the dependent variable, namely coefficient of determination. the result denotes the medium correlation between the independent variables (school origins and language anxiety) and the dependent variable (speaking performance). there is also .309 coefficient of determination meaning that only 30.9% can account for this relationship. in this regard, the rest, 69.1% of information concerning speaking performance, cannot be explained or predicted by the independent variables, likely to be influenced by other variables not included in this study. table 7. model summary model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .556a .309 .284 .01045409 a. predictors: (constant), language anxiety, school origins b. dependent variable: speaking the coefficient correlation gets bigger as school origins is involved (.556), previously only .491. it implies that the presence of school origins of the learners, whether it is urban or rural school, to some extent generates the difference on speaking performance alongside the presence of language anxiety among learners. the result (.556) signifies that the urban learners coded by the higher agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 265 number of “1” have a tendency to score higher in language anxiety and higher as well in speaking performance. in addition, table 8 is used to see whether or not the independent variables simultaneously are influential to the dependent variable. the presence of f obtained and its significance can be an indicator of the regression model which is used to predict the dependent variable. as shown in the table below, the result denotes f which is 12.310, and the significance of .000. it is found that f-table for df=1 and df2=55 at α =.05 is 2.773 which is lower than the obtained f. besides, the significance in the table also tends to be significant since .000 is lower than .05. from this finding, it suggests that school origins of the learners and their language anxiety simultaneously have a significant effect on speaking performance. table 8. anova model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression .003 2 .001 12.310 .000a residual .006 55 .000 total .009 57 a. predictors: (constant), language anxiety, school origins b. dependent variable: speaking in general, there is a significantly moderate correlation (r=.556) between the independent variables: school origins and language anxiety, and the dependent variable: speaking performance. regardless of learners’ school origins, language anxiety itself has a negative correlation to speaking performance, which is further determined that the effect of this independent variable is significant. this is in line with what is reported that language anxiety affects speaking performance (horwitz, et al., 1986; macintyre & gardner, 1991a; woodrow, 2006; puškar, 2010). the significance is also apparent in another independent variable accounting for urban and rural school where this has a significant effect on speaking performance, t obtained =2.321 > 2.004, and causes a higher correlation coefficient compared to the coefficient of language anxiety variable alone. despite its significance on speaking performance, school origins of the learners seem not to account for the difference in language anxiety as the partial correlation between school origins and language anxiety indicates no significance. this is in contrast to previous studies yielding the significant difference of language anxiety among learners from different areas which is higher among rural learners (puškar, 2010; piechurska-kuciel, 2012, as cited in pawlak, 2012, pp.169-184) and higher among urban learners (ezzi, 2012). moreover, although all the learners involved in this study are adolescents, this study results in a distinctively novel output from other studies concerning the prevalence of anxiety among rural communities where those denote higher anxiety among the rural youngsters in rural north-eastern uganda (abbo et al., 2013) and in a rural community in kenya (abbot & klein, 1979, p.177). the result of this study that school origins and language anxiety have a significantly moderate correlation with speaking performance can be accounted for by three reasons. the first one is related to the notion that language anxiety causes poor speaking performance (horwitz et al., 1986; macintyre & gardner, 1991a; woodrow, 2006; puškar, 2010). this implies that the higher the anxiety is, the lower the speaking performance becomes. the second reason deals with three main components of the questionnaire to measure language anxiety, including communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. according to puškar (2010), the components have to do with strong speaking anxiety, which is why they are correlated. the last logic behind the result has to do with the disparity of urban and rural areas. it is stated that urban populations are more educated than rural populations (hraba et al, 1999). given being more educated, urban populations presumably plan the best for their children in order to compete in and contribute to the society by, for instance, enrolling their children in language courses. this in turn can be fairly instrumental to the urban learners’ speaking skills. conclusion the average scores of the learners in urban and rural high schools were in the normal level of anxiety, except some of the components and its sub-areas which were in the considerable levels of anxiety. while the urban learners mostly concern the fear of negative evaluation, the rural learners have high communication apprehension. in regard to the reasons for their language anxiety, four factors triggering language anxiety in speaking performance among the learners were lack of agung ginanjar anjaniputra | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 266 preparation (lp), teaching styles and activities (ta), learner personality (ly), and fear of making mistakes (fm). lp happened to be a result of inappropriate teaching and learning instructions. ta is concerned with speaking before the class and being singled out directly by the teacher. moreover, ly was caused by shyness and low confidence, whereas fm has to do with a lack of vocabulary and grammar. these findings denote language anxiety leading to both facilitating and debilitating anxiety. thus, preserving the anxiety among the learners should be seriously considered in order to suppress debilitating anxiety, in turn facilitating learners’ language learning and acquisition. it is also worthy of note that the relationship between school origins, language anxiety, and speaking performance shows a significantly medium correlation where school origins and language anxiety simultaneously are related to speaking performance (r=.556). however, school origins of the learners seem not to account for the difference in language anxiety, suggesting they are equal and of the same potential. notwithstanding the fact, the school origin variable happened to generate a higher correlation coefficient to predict speaking performance as merged with the language anxiety variable. furthermore, significant effects of these two independent variables both simultaneously or partially on learners’ speaking performance were noticeable. in other words, the variables, school origins and language anxiety, can predict speaking performance. references abbo, c., kinyanda, e., kizza, r. b., levin, j., ndyanabangi, s., & stein, d. j. 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(2006). anxiety and speaking english as a second language. regional language center journal, 37(3), pp.308-328. doi:10.1177/0033688206071315 zhao, x., chen, j., chen, m. c., lv, x. l., jiang, y. h., & sun, y. h. (2013). left-behind children in rural china experience higher levels of anxiety and poorer living conditions. acta paediatrica, 103, pp.665–670. doi:10.1111/apa.12602 http://asian-efl-journal.com/thesis_m_tanveer.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 243 elt forum 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt a genre analysis of master dissertation abstracts written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners: pedagogical considerations sondes hamdi1 1carthage university, tunis, tunisia article info ________________ article history: received on 17 july 2021 approved on 13 november 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords: genre analysis; tunisian; english; dissertation abstract; move ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ despite the growing interest in genre analysis, on the one hand, and the continuous concern with academic writing, on the other, very little has been done on the move structure of abstracts in linguistics master dissertations written by native speakers and non-native speakers of english (al-khasawneh, 2017). in the same vein, no single cross-linguistic study has investigated variations in the move structure of abstracts in dissertations written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. this paper is a response to this need. it purports to analyze the move structure of abstracts in linguistics ma dissertations written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners, within the theoretical framework of hyland’s five-move model (2000). twelve abstracts were selected for this study: six abstracts were written by tunisian efl ma students at the institut supérieur des langues à tunis (islt, tunisia) and six abstracts were written by english native speakers. the native speakers’ abstracts were randomly chosen from the brigham young university website for linguistics theses and dissertations. the efl learners’ abstracts were randomly chosen from the islt library. the findings suggest that the purpose move, the method use and the product move are frequent in both corpora. however, only one english abstract in 6 contains the conclusion move, whereas 4 efl abstracts in 6 contain the conclusion move. both corpora contain the introduction move, with equal frequency (4 in 6 for both corpora). pedagogical considerations are highlighted for efl teachers in order to ensure an efficient abstract teaching. it is argued that this study represents a contribution to the field of academic writing and genre analysis.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: sondeshamdi@yahoo.fr http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 244 introduction ever since the publication of j. m. swales’s book (1990) on genres in academic discourse, there has been an upsurge of scholarly studies on the functions and move structure of abstracts (hyland, 2000; lores, 2004; benhnam & golpour, 2014; can et al., 2016; kai, 2008) as well as their cross-linguistic differences (ji, 2015; fan & song, 2017; al-harbi, 2011). also, much research has been done on the different sections of research articles (amirian et al., 2008; dobakhti, 2016; safnil, 2013). however, very little attention has been assigned to the move structure of abstracts in linguistics master dissertations written by native speakers and non-native speakers of english (al-khasawneh, 2017). in the same vein, to the best of our knowledge, no single study has examined cross-linguistic variations in the move structure of abstracts in dissertations written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. this paper will try to fill this gap, at least partially, by analyzing the move structure of abstracts in linguistics ma dissertations written by native speakers and tunisian efl learners. to this end, hyland’s five-move model will be used for data analysis. this paper comprises five main sections. the first will provide the study’s theoretical framework. the second will summarize a few studies conducted on abstract analyses. the third will describe the methodology used for data collection and for data analysis. the fourth will present the study’s results and discussions. the last section will shed light on important pedagogical considerations that efl teachers should take into account when teaching abstract writing. since this paper is on abstract moves, this section will first present the key concepts related to the analysis of move structure of abstracts, such as the concepts of genre and discourse community. then, hyland’s five-move model (i.e., the study’s theoretical framework) will be defined. the concept of genre genre analysis first emerged in esp in 1980s (al-khasawneh, 2017). originally, as argued by allison (1999), the term ‘genre’ referred to artistic and literary products. linguists have broadened its use to encompass classes of language use and communication. swales (1990) defines ‘genre’ as “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (p. 58). according to swales, abstracts constitute a genre with communicative purposes that are recognized by the discourse community. an abstract is defined as “an abbreviated, accurate representation of the contents of a document, preferably prepared by its authors for publication with it” (lores, 2004, p. 281). in the same vein, huckin (2001) states that abstracts serve many functions in academic communication. they are “mini-texts” summarizing the research topic, methodology and main results. they are also “screening” tools that help readers decide whether to read all the article or not. hyland (2000) asserts that “to gain readers’ attention and persuade them to read on, writers need to demonstrate that they not only have something new and worthwhile to say, but that they also have the professional credibility to address their topic as an insider” (p. 63). as such, abstracts have both informative and persuasive functions (zanina, 2017). discourse community genre analysts contend that ‘community’ is a key element in the definition of genre. swales (1990) fleshes out the six main features shared by the members of discourse community. these are: having a set of common public goals, having mechanisms of intercommunication among members, using these mechanisms for feedback and information, using and then owning one or more genres in the communicative “furtherance” of its goals, having acquired a particular vocabulary, and having a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discourse knowledge. johns (1997) lists particular types of genre knowledge shared by a discourse community: a common name, common communicative goals, shared knowledge of roles, common knowledge of context, common register, etc. this paper aims at comparing and contrasting the move structure of abstracts in the master dissertations of english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. to this end, hyland’s five-move model (2000) is used. hyland’s model was chosen for data analysis because it is a “detailed” and “elaborate” model that is “favored by genre analysts” (zanina, 2017, p. 67). hyland’s five-move model is presented in table 1 below: sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 245 table 1. hyland’s five-move model this paper analyzes the move structure of the abstracts at hand by following hyland’s model. the study aims at (1) highlighting cross-linguistic similarities and differences in ma dissertation abstracts written by native speakers and tunisian efl learners; and (2) shedding light on pedagogical aspects that efl teachers should consider in the process of abstract teaching. it is worth-noting that after the publication of swales’ book (1990) on academic genres, many studies have been done on the move structure of abstracts. this section summarizes selected studies conducted on abstract analysis, such as the work of zanina (2017), fan and song (2007), al-harbi and swales (2011), al-khasawneh (2017), and jeon and eun (2007). zanina’s study (2017) used hyland’s model to compare and contrast the move structure of abstracts in english and russian. the results suggest that the russian abstracts opt for a three-move structure (purpose, method, and product), whereas the english abstracts follow the five moves as in hyland’s model. also, the english abstracts are found to be more “precise” or “detailed” in providing research methods and results than the russian abstracts. another comparative study by fan and song (2007), aimed at comparing the schematic structure of english research article abstracts written by native english speakers and chinese writers in the domain of agricultural sciences and technology. the results reveal that english writers opt for an interactive style by using background information, whereas chinese writers consider this move “optional.” al-harbi and swales (2011) examined 28 arabic and english paired abstracts on language sciences taken from three journals. they found that move structures are simple in both corpora. however, some english abstracts give more importance to background information than do the arabic abstracts. these differences, according to the authors, may be attributed to certain “scholastic traditions in the arab world.” al-khasawneh (2017) studied twenty abstracts written by native and non-native speakers of english in applied linguistics. the abstracts were analyzed on the basis of hyland’s model (2000). the results suggest that both native and non-native writers followed a three-move structure (purpose, method, and conclusion). a difference in the conclusion and introduction moves between the two groups was observed. jeon and eun (2007) analyzed 10 doctoral dissertations abstracts written by korean and american writers. using swales’ imrd model, the authors found no significant differences in the macro-structure of abstracts written by the korean and the american writers. the aforementioned comparative studies gave insights into cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the move structure of abstracts by using different move models. however, very little has been done on master dissertation abstracts in the field of linguistics. this study addresses this gap. it purports to analyze linguistics ma dissertation abstracts written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. methods this section describes the methodology used for data analysis in terms of data collection and research instrument. this qualitative study is based on the analysis of abstracts written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. move function introduction it situates the paper within a context. it states what has motivated the research or discussion. purpose it outlines the purpose of the paper. method it provides information about the methodology used to reach the paper’s objectives (design, data, procedures, etc) product it states the main results, what the paper has accomplished conclusion it interprets the study’s results. it goes beyond the paper’s scope (inferences and implications). sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 246 data collection twelve abstracts were selected for this study: six abstracts were written by tunisian efl ma students at the institut supérieur des langues à tunis (islt, tunisia) and six abstracts were written by english native speakers. the native speakers’ abstracts were randomly chosen from the brigham young university website for linguistics theses and dissertations. the efl learners’ abstracts were randomly chosen from the islt library. the abstracts were written on various topics in theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. we have opted for twelve abstracts because we believe that the analysis of this number of abstracts can give us a clear idea about the moves that constitute the abstracts written by native speakers and efl learners. to protect the confidentiality of participants in this study, abstracts were presented anonymously. the participants’ names were hidden, and the abstracts were assigned numbers (eg. abstract 1, abstract 2, etc). research instrument to identify the move structure of the abstracts at hand, this study used hyland’s five-move model (2000). as shown above, this model consists of five moves: introduction, purpose, method, product and conclusion. each move serves “a communicative purpose.” the choice of hyland’s model is motivated by its efficiency in identifying different moves in abstracts, as reflected by several studies conducted within the theoretical framework of hyland’s model. also, as stated by zanina (2017), hyland’s model is “detailed” and “elaborate.” it is “favored by genre analysts” (p. 67). after data collection, the analysis was conducted. the following example illustrates the way in which the analysis was carried out: [adult japanese learners of english (jles) are often stereotyped as being unable to produce or perceive the english phonemes /l/ and /r/.] (introduction) [this study analyzed acoustic examples of /l/ and /r/ obtained from intermediate-level japanese speakers in two variable contexts: word position (initial/final) and task type (controlled/free).] (purpose) [these tokens were subjected to acoustic analysis which is one way of comparing oral productions of native and non-native english speakers. previous research has identified a lowered third formant (f3) as the hallmark of an american english /r/ as produced by a native speaker, independent of word position or task type.] (method) [the results indicate that participants can produce appropriate and statistically significant differences between these two phonemes across word position and task type. other findings indicate that neither task type nor word position had a significant effect on f3 values. these results indicate that japanese speakers of english may have the ability to distinguish /l/ and /r/ without specialized pronunciation training, but these differences are less dramatic as identified by f3 frequency values than those produced by native english speakers when producing these contrasting phonemes. in most tokens, however, large effect sizes remained between jle productions and nes standards] (product) (native speaker, abstract 5). abstract 5 above is composed of four moves: introduction, purpose, method, and product. each move is put between two brackets for the sake of clarity. the introduction move outlines what motivates the study (eg. a stereotype about adult japanese learners of english). in the purpose move, the study’s objective is presented. the study aims at analyzing acoustic examples of /l/ and /r/ pronounced by adult japanese learners of english. the method move describes the methodology used to reach the study’s objective. in the product move, the results of the comparative analysis are described. findings and discussion this section presents the results of the data analysis. the frequency of moves in the abstracts in both corpora is illustrated in table 2 below: table 2. frequency of moves in both corpora move native speakers tunisian efl learners introduction 4 4 purpose 6 6 method 5 6 sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 247 product 5 6 conclusion 1 4 table 2 above shows that the purpose move, the method move and the product move are those most frequently used by native speakers and tunisian efl learners. in what follows, a detailed description of each move will be presented. introduction move according to hyland’s model, in the introduction move, the study is situated within its context. native speakers and efl learners use the introduction move. examples (1) and (2) below are introduction moves in both corpora: (1) ‘error correction for english language learner’s (ell) writing has long been debated in the field of teaching english to learners of other languages (tesol). some researchers say that written corrective feedback (wcf) is beneficial, while others... context’ (english speaker, abstract 4). (2) ‘critical thinking (cl) has been regarded as an essential attribute for writing well-reasoned essays at a ma level. yet, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no previous studies have been conducted to examine efl ma student’s critical thinking abilities within the tunisian context’ (tunisian efl learner, abstract 5). purpose move the purpose move outlines the objective of the study. according to genre analysts, there are two ways of presenting a study’s objective: descriptive and purposive. in the descriptive way, the author describes the features of the study. in the purposive way, the author uses explicit expressions encoding purpose, such as the nouns ‘aim’ and ‘objective,’ and the verb ‘to purport,’ etc. the difference between a ‘purposive’ purpose and a ‘descriptive’ purpose is reflected in examples (3) and (4) below: (3) ‘this study aims to address this lack of research by examining how the avl words vary in cumulative frequency bands and also in separate frequency bands with regard to level and topic’ (english speaker, abstract 2). (4) ‘the work provides a framework for evaluating recommender systems and is flexible enough for use with either website’ (english speaker, abstract 3). example (3) above explicitly uses the verb “aim” in order to define the purpose of the paper. example (4) above does not use any explicit term to outline the purpose; it simply describes aspects related to the study. on the basis of the data, it can be noted that all abstracts contain a purpose move. the presence of the purpose move in both native and non-native abstracts indicates its importance in linguistics. a piece of linguistics research should have a specific objective, highlighting the gap that the study aims at filling. below are other examples of the purpose move in both corpora: (5) ‘this study analyzed acoustic samples /l/ and /r/ obtained from intermediate-level japanese speakers in two variable contexts’ (english speaker, abstract 5). (6) ‘this study analyzes the problems of intermediate tunisian learners’ communicative competency imbalance. it investigates the causes behind the gap in students’ oral english proficiency’ (efl learner, abstract 6). method move all tunisian abstracts contain a method move in which the study’s methodology is displayed in terms of participants, instruments, data collection, etc. in the english speakers’ abstracts, only one abstract has no method move. examples (7) and (8) below are method moves from the corpus: sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 248 (7) ‘a qualitative analysis of the manageability of dwcf was done via interviews of experienced teachers that have used dwcf and the author’s experience and reflections using the strategy’ (native speaker, abstract 5). (8) ‘two instruments were used for data collection. a likert format questionnaire was conducted on 110 students from the preparatory school in boumerdes (al-mahdia). descriptive statistics are used in data analysis’ (efl learner, abstract 2). product move both corpora contain the product move in which the author summarizes the study’s main results. examples (9) and (10) below are product moves from the corpus: (9) ‘the results indicate that this strategy can be manageable with some possible adaptions and while avoiding some common pitfalls’ (english speaker, abstract 4). (10) ‘findings revealed that students have positive attitudes towards the integration of technology in efl classes. classroom observations indicated that through participation in computer-based presentations, students’ motivation in oral communication skills increased. results from the observation sheet indicated that while on task and when authentic materials were used, motivation increased significantly’ (efl learner, abstract 2). conclusion move the conclusion move is not frequent in the english speakers’ abstracts; only one english abstract in 6 has a conclusion move. however, 4 efl abstracts in 6 contain a conclusion move. examples (11) and (12) below are conclusion moves from the corpus: (11) ‘implications for researchers, administrators, and teachers are discussed, including the role of silence as an important self-regulated learning practice for language learners’ (english speaker, abstract 1). (12) ‘this study concluded that tunisian efl master students encountered some challenges in argument evaluation, particularly in terms of detecting some logical fallacies. to alleviate these difficulties, the present study recommended that the explicit teaching of ct and the introduction of logical fallacies would foster master students’ critical writing abilities’ (efl learner, abstract 5). the study’s results suggest that the purpose move, the method move, and the product move are those most frequently used by native speakers and tunisian efl learners. these findings are different from those of zanina’s study (2017) in which the move structures of abstracts in english and russian were compared. zanina found that the russian abstracts had a three-move structure (purpose, method, and product), whereas the english abstracts followed the five moves as in hyland’s model. interestingly, the present study’s results are similar to those of al-khasawneh’s study (2017) in which twenty abstracts written by native and non-native speakers of english in applied linguistics were examined. as with the present study, al-khasawneh’s study suggests that both native and non-native writers follow a three-move structure (purpose, method, and conclusion). data analysis shows that the abstracts at hand have different compositions. some abstracts include five moves; others have one or two moves missing. this difference in abstract composition reflects the fact that students are not familiar with the standard composition of abstracts. this difference in abstract structure in the data also reflects the fact that an abstract is not an easy form of scholarly writing. however, we believe that through practice and exposure to good models of abstracts, students will be able to write a good five-move abstract. in this context, the teacher’s role is important. the teacher can play different roles to enhance the learners’ learning process: the source of knowledge, facilitator, and guide for learners. the teacher can be the source of knowledge by informing learners and instructing them in the main structure of a well-written abstract. this knowledge can be delivered to learners through lectures and lessons on abstract structure. the teacher functions like a coach, accompanying students in the process of abstract writing. s/he should guide learners, give them advice, and provide feedback throughout the process of abstract writing. sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 249 teachers may also identify the students’ attitudes and motivation to learn the instructional content (jing et al., 2006). there are pedagogical considerations that efl teachers, for instance, should bear in mind in abstract teaching. this point will be discussed in the next section. pedagogical considerations for teaching abstract writing in efl context this section will highlight a few pedagogical aspects related to abstract writing that efl teachers should consider. it is important to teach abstracts in that they are an “initial stage of scholarly writing” and constitute “building blocks for more complex writing” (harris, 2006, p. 137). efl teachers should inform learners about “expectations” from abstract writing. frocse et al. (1998, p. 103) assert that the gap between expectations and performance may emanate from “instructional deficiencies.” for this reason, teachers should not limit abstract teaching to definitions and examples as these constitute insufficient instruction and might “fail both students and faculty” (p. 137). researchers contend that efl learners should have a clear idea about the “desired outcomes” from abstract writing. thus, it is important for teachers to specify the main objective of writing an abstract. here, teachers might give a good definition of an abstract as “a summary written in a scholarly writing style that represents a thorough comprehension of the article” (p. 139). previous research has shown, for instance, that graduate students achieve cognitive complexity in literature reviews when they clearly understand the desired outcomes (frocse et al., 1998). scaffolding can be an efficient technique that helps students move forward progressively in the learning process. thus, teachers are encouraged to use different forms of instructional scaffolding in teaching of abstracts in order to bridge the gap between what students have acquired and what they are expected to learn. teachers should focus on the five-move structure of abstracts: introduction, purpose, method, product and conclusion. thus, classroom exercises should shed light on the standard form and the objective of each move. a typical exercise would be to give learners two abstracts; one poorly written, and another one well structured, with five moves. then, students might be asked to compare the two abstracts and discuss them with their peers. discussions would enhance students’ critical thinking. students might learn better if exposed to good models of abstracts. in the same vein, the abstracts' guidelines should be clearly presented, and the assignment objectives well explained. in this context, for instance, teachers might specify that the abstract text should be 100 to 150 words. collaborative learning is a positive approach that teachers might encourage in teaching abstracts as it helps reduce the students’ frustration felt in the learning process. receiving feedback from teachers and peers is beneficial in that it enhances learning in an interactive manner. in other words, efl teachers should perceive abstracts writing as a process rather than a product. in this process, students should be “supported, engaged, and challenged” (harris, 2006, p. 137). in order to ensure efficient teaching of abstracts, harris (2006) proposes an instructional threestep model. it involves (1) “laying the foundation;” (2) “communicating expectations and evaluation criteria; and (3) “scaffolding for success.” the first step, “laying the foundation,” pushes students in the “right direction” by establishing a link between the students’ prior knowledge and previous experiences in writing and the task of abstracts writing. it also helps students identify the learning objectives, which establishes “a concrete foundation for learning” (harris, 2006, p. 138). as for the second step, "communicating expectations and evaluation criteria," it makes sure that students understand the assignment guidelines. in this step, the teacher clearly explains the assignment guidelines and the evaluation rubric. step three, “scaffolding for success,” involves peer feedback process and the teaching of apa referencing. it can be argued that the three-step model proposed by harris (2006) is an efficient tool for abstract teaching for several reasons. first, it is comprehensive in that the three steps are well explained and are realistic. thus, they can be implemented in any context. second, this model is based upon the perception of abstract writing as a process rather than a product. for this reason, it values feedback and review in the writing of abstracts. third, this model is concerned with the different aspects of writing, such as accuracy, grammar, spelling, etc. it focuses on peer feedback and on teacher feedback in order to end with a well written final product. the objective of feedback is to ensure that the abstract is accurately written in terms of content, style, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 250 conclusion the objective of this paper was to analyze the move structure of abstracts in linguistics ma dissertations written by english native speakers and tunisian efl learners. to this end, hyland’s five-move model was used for data analysis. the results suggest that the purpose move, the method move and the product move are frequent in both corpora. however, only one english abstract in 6 contains the conclusion move, whereas 4 efl abstracts in 6 contain the conclusion move. both corpora contain the introduction move, with an equal frequency (4 in 6 for both corpora). this paper sheds light on important pedagogical aspects that efl teachers should consider in the teaching of abstracts. learners, for instance, should be aware of the “desired outcomes” and the teachers’ “expectations.” they should be familiar with the five-move structure of abstracts through practice and exposure. it has been noted that the teacher’s role is important for the success of the writing process. teachers can play different roles to accompany learners in this writing process as source of knowledge, guide, and facilitator. teachers are encouraged to diversify their teaching techniques by using different forms of scaffolding. feedback and practice would enhance students’ learning of abstract writing. in this context, harris (2006) proposes a comprehensive three-step model for abstracts teaching. this model comprises three main steps: “laying the foundation;” (2) “communicating expectations and evaluation criteria;" and (3) “scaffolding for success.” each step has specific goals and objectives. it can be argued that the importance of this model lies in its perception of the writing of abstracts as a process rather than a product. throughout this process, students should be “supported, engaged, and challenged” (harris, 2006, p. 137). this paper addresses a need in the esp literature since very little has been done on the move structure of abstracts in linguistics dissertations written by native speakers and efl tunisian learners. in addition, a cross-linguistic study allows us to identify what is common and what is different in academic writing, a result that cannot be obtained from monolingual studies. in the same vein, this paper sheds light on significant pedagogical considerations that efl teachers should bear in mind for the successful teaching of the writing of abstracts. this paper represents a contribution to the field of academic discourse. it helps both native and non-native writers improve their academic writing by enhancing their genre knowledge and by exposing them to abstract genre conventions. indeed, as stated by many genre analysts, it is important for non-native academic writers to be aware of the role of moves in dissertation abstracts. this paper also fleshes out the importance of good pedagogy for the efficient teaching of abstracts writing. scaffolding, for instance, is a good strategy to bridge the gap between what students have learned and what they are expected to learn. in the same vein, harris’s three-step model (2006) provides a comprehensive method for teaching abstracts. in this model, writing abstracts is perceived as a process involving different steps; each step has specific goals and objectives. references al-harbi, l. m & swales, j. m. (2011). arabic and english abstracts in bilingual science journals: same or different?. languages in contrast, 11(1), 70-86. al-khasawneh, f. m. (2017). a genre analysis of research article abstracts written by native and nonnative speakers of english. journal of applied linguistics and language research, 4(1), 1-13. allison, d. (1999). genre. elt journal, 53(2), 144. amirian, z., kassaian, z., & tavakali, m. (2008). genre analysis: an investigation of the discussion sections of applied linguistics research articles. the asian esp journal, 1, 39-63. benhnam, b & golpour, f. (2014). a genre analysis of english and iranian research articles abstracts in applied linguistics and mathematics. international journal of applied linguistics and english literature, 3, 173-179. can, s., karabacak, e. & qin, j. (2016). structure of moves in research article abstracts in applied linguistics. mdpi, 4, 23, p.1-16. dobakhti, l. (2016). a genre analysis of discussion sections of qualitative research articles in applied linguistics. theory and practice in language studies, 6, 1383-1389. fan, y & song, y. (2017). a contrastive analysis of english abstracts for agricultural science and technology by english and chinese writers. proceeedings of the sixth northeast korea symposium, 252-256. frocse, a. d., gantz, b. s. & henry, a. l. (1998). teaching students to write literature reviews: a metap-analytic model. teaching of psychology, 25, 102-105. sondes hamdi | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 251 harris, m. j. (2006). three steps to teaching abstract and critique writing. international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, 2, 136-146. huckin, t. n. (2001). abstracting from abstracts. in m. hewing (ed.), academic writing in context (pp. 93-103). birmingham, uk: university of birmingham press. hyland, k. (2000). disciplinary discourses: social interactions in academic writing. london: longman. jeon, b & eun, h. (2007). a contrastive rhetoric of doctoral abstracts written by american writers and korean writers. the linguistics association of korea journal, 161-188. ji, x. (2015). comparison of abstracts written by native speakers and second language learners. open journal of modern linguistics, 5, 470-474. jing, l., tindall, e., & nisbet, d. (2006). chinese learners and english plural forms. linguistics journal 1(3), 127-147. johns, a. m. (1997). text, role, and context: developing academic literacies. cambridge: cambridge university press. kai, j. (2008). lexical cohesion patterns in ns and nns dissertation abstracts in applied linguistics: a comparative study. linguistics journal, 3, 132-144. lores, r. (2004). on ra abstracts: from rhetorical structure to thematic organization. english for specific purposes, 23(3), 280-302. safnil, s. (2013). a genre-based analysis of the introductions of research articles written by indonesian academics. telfin journal, 24, 180-200. swales, j. m. (1990). genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. zanina, e. (2017). move structure of research article abstracts on management study (the case of english and russian). journal of language and education, 3(2), 63-72. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42226e322037 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you 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came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42213e30209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 121 elt forum 9 (2) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt periodic assigment: exploring students’ perception and their academic achievement husnul khatimah1, miftahul jannah2, khairil razali3 1iain langsa, indonesia 2,3uin ar-raniry, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 28 september 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ________________ keywords: periodic assignment; students’ perception; academic achievement; english for academic purpose ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ determining the perception of english department students toward the periodic assignment and how it develops students’ academic achievement was the aim of this study. the correspondents were 42 students who experienced periodic assignments in english for academic purposes subject at english department of uin ar-raniry, banda aceh. this study used a quatitative descriptive research design. the data were collected through questionnaires as the researcher used a four-point likert scale questionnaire adapted from turanli (2009) as the instrument. the scale was taken for exploring respondent’s personality. frequency distribution was used to analyze the obtained data and it would be presented in percentage. from 16 questions, the findings revealed that many students expressed positive perception towards periodic assignments in learning english for academic purposes. the students also expressed that the periodic assignments had developed their academic achievement. this study was not only useful for teachers’ practical teaching, but it provided the base for future research about periodic assignment. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 lambirah village, no.10, suka makmur, aceh besar, aceh, 23361 e-mail: husnul@iainlangsa.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 122 introduction in educational sectors, assignment is considered as a common tool which has value to assess students' improvement in mastering learning resources. teachers, students, and parents share the same perspective about it as an assessment tool. simply, assignment could be a task or a homework that must be done by the students. it facilitates the students not only in internalizing information that has been presented in the class, but also in encouraging students to practice materials that have just been learned. in fact, the main actor who has a significant role in assigning the assignment is a teacher or a lecturer in this research context. for instance, a lecturer is a planner, facilitator, and evaluator. in order to optimize the assignment as the assessment tool, the lecturer must consider paulu’s (1998, as cited in mousavi et al, 2012) suggestion about varying the assignment types to make it pleasant and enjoyable for the students. besides, after providing the assignment, the lecturer shall not leave his/her students to accomplish the assignment given on their own without further guidance. if appropriately treated, assignment will work beyond the tool, as collier (2007, as cited in costley, 2013) had explained that the assignment can improve students’ retention and understanding of the materials, and “reinforce it” pytel (2007). in addition, bas, senturk, and cigerci’ (2017) stated that assignment has positive effects on students' academic achievement. each lecturer has different ways in assigning the assessment, either the types of assignment or the due date of it. some lecturers assigned the assignment frequently, while others assigned minimal assignments. the periodic assignment is a frequent task given to students with precise time to submit. periodic assignment has many advantages, such as to teach target skills, to increase the students' independence and their participation, and to avoid the students from doing the procrastination. in a study conducted by trautwein (2007) noted that students' learning achievement developed more favorably in classes in which the teachers set frequent (but not necessarily lengthy) rather than infrequent assignments. moreover, research was done by zhang (2002) also showed that assignments are able to develop students’ cognitive competency. for this research context, based on writer’s preliminary research observing english for academic purposes (eap) subject, the lecturer gave the assignments periodically, especially one assignment every week. honestly, the students expressed a different reaction towards the assignments. for some students, the assignments were a piece of cake. hence, trough doing the periodic assignments, they had chance to practice the materials that had been presented in the class every week. therefore, they could recall the information that had been learned in each meeting. besides, it estranged the students from doing procrastination since the due date was already set. as the lecturer checked the assignment at the beginning of the week before the one was given for next week, the students were able to identify their mistakes through feedbacks (hashemnezahd and mohammadnejad 2012). on opposing side, other students believed the periodic assignments were hard to execute. for them, assignments cause learning to be unpleasant or worthwhile. in a study, kohn (2007) stated that students did not need many homework assignments because doing more tasks would not increase students' grades. he also added that for undergraduate students, time was precious, so to assess their learning perhaps was enough through the test score. to be more specific, periodic is occurring or recurring at regular intervals; occurring repeatedly from time to time (meriam webster dictionary, 2017). assignment is an out-of-class activity that a teacher assigns to students, for both including task and homework. hong and milgram defined assignment as ‘tasks assigned to learners by their teachers that are to be done outside the class without concomitant teacher direction’ (2000, p.5). in addition, cooper et al. (2006, as cited in booth, 2010) stated that homework assignments are meant to extend and supplement in-class activities. peng et al. (1997) defined the periodic task as “the baseload" invoked at fixed time intervals. in this research, periodic assignment was the assignment given by the english for academic purposes (eap) lecturer after explaining the course material. as in eap subject, four skills had been taught; speaking, listening, reading, and writing, so did the assignment, for example, after presenting the material about speaking, the lecturer assigned the assignment such as speech, drama, role play, or oral presentation. in fact, different university sets diverse assignment types, but they have comparable structures and features. indeed, to elucidate the types of university assignment, the writer focuses on the four skills assignments that had been taught in eap subject such as reading, speaking, listening, and writing. the writer took example of reading assignments types from harvard university, in which they often husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 123 used types of reading assignment, such as weekly reading, close reading, case reading, scientific reading, reading for context, and reading for research (honor.fas.harvard.edu, 2018). besides, the writer also adapted brown’s (2003) types of listening assignments, such as (1) listening cloze; in this assignment, the students listen to a story, monologue, or conversation and simultaneously read the written text in which selected words or phrases have been deleted. (2) information transfer; after listening to some information, the students are asked to transfer the information to a visual representation, such as labeling diagram, identifying an element in a picture or completing a form. (3) communicative stimulus-response tasks; the students present a stimulus monologue or conversation and then they are asked to respond to a set of comprehension questions. (4) authentic listening task; such as note-taking, editing paragraph, paraphrasing, and retelling the information. furthermore, for speaking assignment types, it was taken from university of mary washington, those are (1) presentational speaking; this assignment encourages students to understand course material well enough to communicate it to others. (2) learning groups and class discussion; learning group activities give students specific oral tasks, such as analyzing a problem or examining the textual material. the assignment is designed so that collaboration by group members is essential to make progress on the task. (3) task group project; in these assignments, students work together for longer periods of time and may be expected to produce a final report of some sort. (4) interpersonal communication; these assignments involve projects in which two students communicate together for the purpose of achieving some common goal. typical formats include role-playing cases. (university of mary washington, 2018) therefore, according to the writer’s preliminary research in english for academic purposes class, types of the periodic assignments were essay, annotated bibliography, reflective journal or thesis, news report, tourism place report, role play, and writing a business plan. as society shares the common belief that learning in the class is not enough for teachers to teach all materials, it is necessary for lecturers to ask the students to learn outside the class through assignments. it is aline with the assigment purposes to support students’ learning in increasing their capabilities and practical skills to develop their academic achievement (mulyasa, 2005; bishop, 2008; and susana, 2010), and to prepare them for the next lesson (hong and milgram, 2000). indeed, many studies have examined the impact of assignments on students’ academic achievement at the elementary and secondary education levels, but only a few studies have investigated this issue in a university-level setting. cooper (1989, as cited in latif and miles, 2011) provided an excellent about this in elementary and secondary school. he conducted a review of nearly 120 empirical studies of homework assignment's effects and the ingredients of the successful homework assignment. his study revealed that homework assignment enhances students’ academic achievement. trautwein’s carried out research (2007) about homework assignments-achievement relation on 2.216 students in classes participating in a large educational assessment. the result of his research showed that students' learning achievement developed more favorably in classes in which teachers set frequent (but not necessarily lengthy) rather than infrequent homework assignments. moreover, hallam (2004) believed the students like the teachers who assign regular and reasonable amount of assignment. similarly, zhang (2002) investigated 82 hong kong university students and found that critical and creative thinking assignment types develop stduents’ achievement. based on the previous elaboration, the researcher would like to explore deeper on the students’ perception towards periodic assignment and to determine whether it develops students’ academic achievement in learning english for academic purposes subject. methods this study employed the quantitative method. it was a method used to explain phenomena by collecting numerical data that will be analyzed through mathematically based method (aliaga and gunderson: 2002, as cited in muijs 2004). the questionnaire was used for the research instrument. it was conducted at department of english language education, faculty of education and teacher training, ar-raniry state islamic university (uin), banda aceh. ar-raniry state islamic university is the islamic university under the administration of the ministry of religious affairs. the former name of uin ar-raniry was iain (the state institute of religious affairs) ar-raniry. department of english language education provides many subjects; one of them is english for academic purposes (eap) subject which lecturers usually give the periodic assignment. therefore, english language husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 124 education was chosen as the research location and the respondents were taken from semester vii as eap subject was setting for them, in order to know their perception about the periodic assignment and whether it develops students' academic achievement. additionally, the population of this study was 168 students in the 7th semester in academic year 2018/2019. the researchers used a purposive sampling method. the sample of this research was taken based on the number of students who took english academic purposes subject and given periodic assignment by the lecturer. according to sugiono (2008), if the population is large, then the sample can be taken between 10-15% or 20-25%. there were six classes of english for academic purposes, among them only two classes that were given the periodic assignment. therefore, the sample of the questionnaire was 42 students at english language education department of ar-raniry state islamic university. furthermore, to gain intended data, the questionnaire was distributed to 42 respondents. the researchers used a four-point likert scale questionnaire adapted from turanli (2009) as the instrument to find out the students’ perception toward periodic assignments. the scale was taken for exploring respondent’s personality as hadjar has explained (2006, as cited in taniredja & mustafidah, 2012) “it usually uses the likert scale which aims to take a gauge of people's characteristic" (p.44). the questionnaire was close-ended questions with 4 points wherein the level was made up from one to four; (1) strongly disagree; (2) disagree; (3) agree; and (4) strongly agree. it consisted of 16 questions that asked the students' perception toward periodic assignment and the benefits of periodic assignment on students' academic achievement. in analyzing the questionnaire data, researchers followed kasiram’s advice (2018) as there were several crucial steps to accomplish; checking, editing, coding, and tabulating the data. the researchers first checked all questionnaire items of missing characters or words to avoid any misunderstanding issue, then distributed those questionnaires to the participants. after distributing the questionnaire, the researchers collected the questionnaires from respondents and all data were gained, the researchers analyzed the collected data by using the statistical simple formula, it was appliying frequency distribution. the data would be presented in percentage by using the following formula (sudjono, 2008) p = f n 𝑥 100%. this percentage was grouped based on the scale so that the researcher were able to find out the students’ perception towards the questions. after analyzing the data from questionnaires, the data were presented in a table and it will be followed by brief explanation to describe the students’ perception. findings and discussion after collected the data through the questionnaire, the researchers acquired the findings as there were 42 students filled the questionnaire. findings the data analysis of the questionnaire were displayed in the following table. table 1. the result of questionnaires no statements strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 1 i am happy if the lecturer gives periodic assignment 14.3% 64.3% 21.4% 0% 2 the periodic assignment is helpful for me to understand the related topic 14.3% 64.3% 11.9% 9.5% 3 i find periodic assignment helps me in increasing my academic achievement 16.7% 71.4% 11.9% 0% 4 i find periodic assignment facilitates my learning 16.7% 76.2% 7.1% 0% 5 i find periodic assignment in eap class is fun because it has a various form of assignment 31% 47.6% 21.4% 0% 6 i find periodic assignment is interesting 6.5% 61.9% 26.2% 2.4% 7 i find periodic assignment helps me to deal with many resources in doing assignment 28.6% 66.7% 4.7% 0% 8 i find periodic assignment useful for my short term goals 14.3% 78.6% 7.1% 0% husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 125 9 i find periodic assignment useful for my long term goals 16.7% 61.9% 21.4% 0% 10 i find periodic assignment help me to understand the next course material 21.4% 59.5% 16.7% 2.4% 11 i find periodic assignment help me to become more innovative 14.3% 59.5% 23.8% 2.4% 12 the due time to submit the assigned assignment is usually enough to do it properly 14.3% 64.3% 19% 2.4% 13 i have enough resources/books to use for my assignment 0% 76.2% 21.4% 2.4% 14 the lecturer checks regularly if i have done my the assigned assignment 4.7% 73.8% 19% 2.4% 15 the lecturer usually help me correct my mistakes 9.5% 66.7% 21.4% 2.4% 16 the lecturer assigns too much assignment in teaching english for academic purposes 16.7% 50% 28.6% 4.7% in accordance with the table above, question number 1 displayed that 14.3% of the students answered strongly agree and 64.3 % of the students answered agree. it indicated that, most of the students were happy if the lecturer assigned them the periodic assignment. on the other hand, 21.4% of the students chose to disagree which meant they did not like to be given the periodic assignment. the percentage of agreement was above 50% which presented that the happy feeling the students had toward periodic assignment. then, question number 2 pointed out that 14.3% of students marked strongly agree and 64.3% of them marked agree. meanwhile, few other students also marked disagree for 11.9% and strongly agree for 9.5%. however, it still designated that most of the students agreed that periodic assignment was helpful for them to understand the related topic. furthermore, 16.7% of students chose strongly agree and 71.4% of students chose to agree for question number 3. it displayed that the periodic assignment help in increasing their academic achievement. on contrary, 11.9% of students chose to disagree which meant that periodic assignment did not help them in increasing their academic achievement. their ‘above 50%’ agreement manifested the help that was provided by periodic assignment towards students’ academic achievement. in addition, the question number 4 pointed out that 16.7% of students chose strongly agree and 76.2% of the students chose to agree. it reflected that most of the students agreed that periodic assignment facilitated their learning. meanwhile, only 7.1% of the students who found that periodic assignment did not facilitate their learning. based on the answer of 5th question, 31% of the students answered strongly agree and 47.6% of the students answered agree. it revealed that most of the students found periodic assignment was fun because it had a various form of assignment. yet, 21.4% of the students found that the periodic assignment in eap class was not fun. indeed, this question was the highest percentage of students’ choice on strongly agree among other question listed. it revealed the strong positive feeling students experienced during accomplishing the periodic assignment that was given. in addition, the answer of question number 6 about students’ interest, it emphasized the former discussion as 9.3% of the students marked strongly agree and 61.9% of them marked agree, and only few other students also marked disagree for 26.2% and strongly agree for 2.4%. it confirmed the pleasant perception the students had towards periodic assignments as disagreement percentage was still below 50%. furthermore, the next answer of question number 7 pointed out that 28.6% of the students chose strongly agree and 66.7% of the students chose to agree. it designated that the majority of the students found that periodic assignment helped them dealing with many resources when accomplishing the assignment, only 4.7% of them who disagreed that periodic assignment helped them dealing with many resources. for question number 8, the table above displayed that 14.3% of the students chose strongly agree and 78.6% of the students chose agree. at the same time, 7.1% of the students disagreed that periodic assignment useful for their short-term goals. 78.68% was the highest percentage of the agreement that students revealed among other question listed. it reflected the most positive perception students had toward periodic assignment as it was useful for their short-term goals in learning eap subject. husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 126 in exploring about the students’ long term goals, the table above displayed that 16.7% of the students chose strongly agree and 61.9% of the students chose to agree. it indicated that students found that periodic assignment useful for their long-term goals. despite, there were 21.4% of students who found that periodic assignment was not useful for their long-term goals. as the disagreement was below 50%, the positive perception still dominated the answer. besides, the answer of question number 10 (about dealing with next course materials) showed that 21.4% of the students marked strongly agree and 59.5% of the students marked agree. it expressed that periodic assignments helped students to understand the next course material. on the other hand, 16.7% of the students marked disagree and 2.4% of the students marked strongly disagree which displayed that periodic assignment did not help them to understand the next course material. in accordance with the table above, for question number 11, it could be seen that 14.3% of the students answered strongly agree and 59.5% of them answered agree. it showed that more than half students agreed that periodic assignment made them innovative. on the other hand, 23.8% of the students chose to disagree and 2.4% of them chose strongly agree which showed that periodic assignment did not make them innovative. below 30% percent of disagreement did not distracted the positive perception that had been shown before. additionally, the answer of question number 12, it could be studied that 14.3% of the students marked strongly agree and 64.3% of the students marked agree. it showed that most of the students agreed the due time to submit the assigned assignments was enough to do the assignment appropriately. yet, still 19% of the students marked disagree and 2.4% of them marked strongly disagree which indicated that the due date was not enough to the assigned assignment properly. it also can be seen that from the question number 13, even though there were 0% of students’ strongly agreement, but 76.2% of the students agreed that they had enough resources/books to use for their assignment. this number was the second highest result of students’ agreement among the questions that had been listed in the table above. conversely, 21.4% of the students disagreed that they had enough resources/books to use for their assignment. since the disagreement was below 50%, the indication of students’ positive perception was accepted. for number 14, the table above stated that 4.7% of the students marked strongly agree and 73.8% of them marked agree. it indicated that the lecturer checked regularly if they had done the assignment. nevertheless, 19% of the students marked disagree and 2.4% of them marked strongly disagree. this showed that there were some students who did not agree if the lecturer checked regularly if they had done the assignment. in the next answer, it can be seen that 9.5% of the students answered strongly agree and 66.7% of the students answered agree. it indicated that most of the students found that the lecturer usually helps them corrected their mistake. meanwhile, 21.4% of the students answered disagree and 2.4% of the students answered strongly disagree which showed that the lecturer usually did not help them corrected their mistake. the disagreement was below 50%, the positive perception was also reflected. besides, question number 16 illustrated that 16.7% of the students marked agree while 50% of the students marked disagree. nonetheless, 28.6% of the students marked disagree and 4.7% of them marked strongly disagree. it showed that more than half students agreed that the lecturer assigned too much assignment in teaching english for academic purposes. this was the highest number of students marked on disagreement among the questions listed, somehow it indicated the students negative feeling towards ‘too much assignment’ given. however, since the disagreement was still below 50%, otherwise the agreement was more than 70%, thus most of the students’ perception about periodic assignment was positive. honestly, during the process of collecting data, the researcher found three students who did not submit their assignments. when comparing their answer in the questionnaires, they agreed that the lecturer usually assigned too much assignment but the due time to submit the assigned assignment was not enough to do the assignment properly. hence, the researcher assumed that they did not submit the assignments because it burdened them and they did not have enough time to finish it. discussion regarding the table and brief explanation above, it revealed the result of students' perception toward periodic assessment. the percentages of the questions were almost 100% on agree option. the highest result was 95.3 % on question number 7. this reflected the students’ agreement having many resources helped them in accomplishing the assignment. the second highest percentage was 92.9% on question husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 127 number 4 and number 8. they agreed that periodic assignment helped them in the learning process. besides, they found enough resources to finish the assignment on time. furthermore, the percentages were almost all above 50% agree on the question except for question number 5 which only 47.6%. however, question number 5 was the highest percentage of strongly agree answer, 31%, which profusely emphasized the fun feeling students had towards periodic assignment. additionally, the highest result on agree answer was for question number 8, about usefulness of periodic assignment on the students’ short-term goals. this designated that periodic assignment provided real benefit in supporting students to visualize, identify and pursue their shortterm goals. the second highest result on agreement were for question number 4 and question number 12. question number 4 was about periodic assignment facilitates the students learning and question number 12 about the appropriate resources/books available for students’ usage to accomplish their assignment. for both questions, the percentage was akin, 76.2%. this reflected that periodic assignment facilitated the students’ learning as there were enough books and sources to be used. indeed, the data exposed that most students agreed with the statement which was provided in questionnaire. otherwise, there were seven questions which had 0% percentage on strongly disagree. those questions were about; the students’ happy feeling towards periodic assignment, their though about periodic assignment was fun, the help that was provided by periodic assignment in dealing with many resources, it facilitated the students’ learning, it helped them dealing with their short-term and their long term goals, and the last but the most important one, the students’ marked 0% for strongly disagree option on the question about the periodic assignment helped them to develop their academic achievement. this 0% manifested that all of the students agreed on the questions (which elaborated about the students’ feeling and the help that was provided by the periodic assignment) that had mentioned above. however, the highest percentages on disagree option could be seen on question number 14. the data showed that 33.3 % of participants disagreed on the statement. they minded if the lecturer gave many assignments for them. it signalled that most of the students did not mind about all questionnaires statements, especially statement number 14. it meant students still bared the positive perception on periodic assignment. according to 16 statements on questionnaires which was answered by the correspondents, the first concern in the questionnaire was about how students feeling toward periodic assignment. the finding from the study manifested that more than half of the students (78.6%) were pleased when the lecturer gave them periodic assignment. besides, 71.4% of students also found that the periodic assignment was interesting. according to hallam (2004), teachers who assign regular and reasonable amount of assignment are liked by students comparatively more than other teachers. in other words, the respondents seemed to be happy and enjoy when the lecturer assigns the periodic assignment. the second concern in the questionnaire was about how helpful the students found the periodic assignment and what benefits they obtained from the assignment towards their academic achievement. most of the students (78.6%) agreed that periodic assignment helped them to understand the related topic. it was in line with the result of a study by turanli (2009) which indicated that the students believe the assignment helps understand the topics in learning. pytel (2007) also added that the main reason for assigning the assignment is to reinforce material that has already been presented in class. indeed, the participants approved that the periodic assignment was helpful to understand the subject matter. when students understood the subject materials, their learning process became convenient and smoother for them in performing better academic achievement. furthermore, this finding emphasized the purpose of the assignment that was elaborated by bishop (2008), which was to teach students to concentrate, to write a report, to spend time alone, and to develop a curiosity to be a continuous learner. all of those purpose ended up to one path, the development of students’ academic achievement. it also supported the explanation of susana (2010) and mulyasa (2005) about the assignment purposes such as; academic as the major purpose and nonacademic as the minor purpose. the major purposes of the assignment are to practice and to improve student's academic achievement; to stimulate the students about the topic proposed or taught, to know to what extent the students’ mastery of the proposed assignment, and to see the weaknesses and shortage of students in their work. meanwhile, the minor purpose of the assignment is closely related to self-oriented goals. it is to help students develop time-management, self-confidence, and accountability; to develop initiative and learn to work independently, to gain a sense of personal responsibility for learning, and to develop self-belief and moral. husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 128 further, the majority of students (88.1%) maintained that assignment contributes to the students' learning. many students agreed that periodic assignment helped them in increasing their academic achievement. latif & miles (2011) and trautwein (2007) reported that periodic or frequent assignment has positive effects on students’ academic performance and improves student’s learning achievement. by all means, the students believed that the periodic assignment was necessary for their academic achievement. another concern of this study was to identify whether periodic assignment facilitates students’ learning. almost all of the students (92.9%) agreed that periodic assignment facilitated their learning such as helped them to prepare and understand the next course material (80.9%) and to deal with many resources in doing the assignment (95.3%). it was in line with the purposes of assignment proposed by pytel (2007) as assignment prepares the students in learning new materials so that they get the benefit while the new material is introduced in the class. in addition, hong and milgram (2000) mentioned that by doing the assignment, students are asked to review, practice, and drill material that has been learned at school and university. besides, assignment also provides the students with the opportunity to amplify, elaborate, and enrich previously learned information. this emphasized by susana (2010) that was by doing the assignment, students are expected to review and study over what they have already learned, to prepare for the next meeting, and to utilize the available sources such as library and laboratory. the next question in the questionnaire aimed to identify how necessary students found assignments for students' short-term and long-term goals (such as weekly quizzes, mid-terms, and final examination). it was discovered that 92.9% of students agreed that periodic assignment useful for their short-term goals while 78.6% of students also agreed that periodic assignment useful for their long-term goals. turanli (2009) said that students believed that doing the assignment is necessary to help them achieve their short-term and long-term goals. simply stated, students agreed on the usefulness of assignments for their short-term and long-term academic goals. the students who were concious about their learning goals would have better chance to pursue the goal than those who were not. this awareness was needed for shaping their academic achievement. the enjoyable moment in completing the assignment was one of the factors that must be considered by the lecturers when assigning the assignment. the students were conveniently felt boring if assignments types were all similar. for this reason, the lecturer should highly put the effort in varying the assignment types. the majority of students (78.6%) agreed that periodic assignment in eap class was fun because it had a various form of assignments such as a written assignment, video assignment, and project assignment. paulu (1998, as cited in mousavi et al, 2012) suggested that to vary the assignment in order to make the assignment is pleasant and enjoyable to do. as commonly suggested, monitoring assignments (whether and how well the students had been doning) may contribute positively to students' achievement. most of the students (78.5%) agreed that the lecturer checked regularly if the students had done the assigned assignment. somehow this activity motivated the students to do not deny the assignment that had been given. while 26.2% of the students also agreed that the lecturer helped them correct their mistake. it was in accordance with the study by hashemnezahd and mohammadnejad (2012) which found that when the lecturer checks the student’ assignment and gives the feedback, it will facilitate the students’ skill to identify the existence of their mistake. understanding their mistakes promoted students to revise and relearn the materials as the washback impact of the assignment was available for them. summing up, first, based on the finding of this research, the periodic assignments had helped students to internalize information that has been presented in the class and to practice materials that had just been learned. second, periodic assignment also had provided students’ preparation for the next lesson, had motivated students to pay attention in class, and had given the students’ chance to receive the teacher’s feedback on students’ strengths and weaknesses, so that the students had understood how well they have comprehended the lesson. in addition, it had helped the students to develop self-discipline and time management skill as well. however, the researcher also found some factors that inhibited the process of the periodic assignment facilitated the students' academic achievement. the first factor was the lecturer assigned too much assignment in a week. this resulted in the negative feeling as students received the assignment as the burden. it led to some students did not collect or finish their assignment. 66.7% of students mentioned in the questionnaire that the lecturer assigned too much assignment they could handle. kohn (2007) asserted that there is not enough evidence to claim that assignment contributes to academic achievement and students’ academic performance will not decline even if they are not husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 129 given any assignment. similarly, bennet & kalish (2006) and buell (2004) revealed that too much assignment negatively affect family life, overburden many students, and cause negative emotions in parents and students. the second factor was the students did not have enough time for preparation. although 78.6% of students agreed that the due time to submit the assigned assignment was usually enough for them to do it properly, still in the reality there were some students who were late or even did not submit the assignment. 21.4% of students answered that they did not have enough time to submit a well-prepared assignment. it was in line with the result of a study by turanli (2009) which stated that lecturer should give the students enough time to prepare their assignment properly before they submit it. therefore, in order to promote students’ academic achievement toward periodic assignment, teachers or lecturers need to consider about the length of time for students to accomplish their assignment, as well as the amount and the quality of assignment. when lecturer chose to provide many assignment at one time, lecturer needed to lower the difficulties level of the assignment, otherwise when lecturer assigned some assignments, the level of the difficulties had to be increased. summing up, based on the questionnaire result that had explore the students’ perception towards periodic assignment, it could be concluded that the periodic assignment had developed the students’ academic achievement in learning english for academic purposes (eap) subject. conclusion the research was conducted to explore deeper on students’ perception toward periodic assignment and whether this type of assignment can develop students’ academic achievement. the participants were 42 students who were given periodic assignment in english for academic purposes (eap) subject at english department of uin ar-raniry. the researchers used quantitative method and the data were collected through questionnaires. to analyze the collected data, the researchers used the statistical simple formula. it was the statistical method applied by frequency distribution and presented in percentage. based on the finding of study, it could be concluded that most of the participants showed positive perception towards periodic assignment in learning english for academic purposes subject. it was very helpful for their learning progress, for example, periodic assignment helped students to understand the related topic, to increase students' academic achievement, to understand the next course material, and to deal with many resources in doing the assignment. all of this process had provided the development of students’ academic achievement. the researchers suggest, the research findings should be used for practical process of teaching and learning, not only in english for academic purposes subject but also in many other subjects. beside for practicing, the findings also could be utilize for further research for example by gathering more extensive data and by analyzing more types of periodic assignments. references baş, g., sentürk, c., & ciğerci, f. m. (2017). homework and academic achievement: a-meta-analytic review of research. issues in educational research, 27(1), 31-50. bishop, j. (2008). 10 benefits of homework. retrieved on october 15, 2018, from http;//www.lessonplanspage.com. booth, g. i. (2010). the effects of homework assessment on student motivation and achievement. washington: central washington university. brown, h. d. (2003). language assessment: principles and classroom practice. white plains, ny: pearson education. costley, k. c. (2013). does homework really improve achievement?. arkansas tech university, 1-10. hallam, s. (2004). current findings homework: the evidence. british educational research association research intelligence, 89, 27-29. hashemnezhad, h., & mohammadnejad, s. (2012). a case for direct and indirect feedback: the othersside of coin. english language teaching, 5(3), 230-239. doi: 10.5539/elt.v5n3p230 hong, e., & milgram, r. m. (2000). homework: motivation and learning preference. united stated of america: greenwood publishing group, inc. honor.fas.harvard.edu. (2018). reading assignments. retrieved on october 9, 2018, from https://honor.fas.harvard.edu/reading-assignments. kasiram, moh. (2008). metodologi penelitian. malang: uin-malang pers. kohn, a. (2007). the homework myth. cambridge, mass: da capo lifelong. http://www.citethisforme.com/ husnul khatimah, miftahul jannah, khairil razali/elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 130 latif, e., & miles, s. (2011). the impact of assignments on academic performance. journal of economics and economic education research, 12(3), 1-12. mousavi, s., radmehr, f., & alamolhodaei, h. (2012). the role of mathematical homework and prior knowledge on the relationship between students’ mathematical performance, cognitive style and working memory capacity. electronic journal of research in educational psychology, 10(3), 12231248. muijs, d. (2004). doing quantitative research in education with spss. london: sage publication mulyasa, e. (2005). menjadi guru professional. bandung. pt. remaja rosda karya peng, d. t., shin. k. g., & abdelzaher, t. f. (1997). assignment and scheduling communicating periodic tasks in distributed real-time systems. ieee transactions on software engineering, 23(12), 745-758. doi: 10.1109/32.637388 periodic. (2017). in meriam-webster dictionary online. retrieved on december 25, 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/periodic . pytel, b. (2007). homework what research says? retrieved on november 20, 2018, from http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/homework_what_research_says. sudjono, a. (2008). pengantar statistika pendidikan. jakarta: raja grafindo persada. sugioyono. (2008). metode penelitian kuantitatif kualitatif dan r&d. bandung: alfabeta. susana, t. (2010). pr dan belajar sulit bisa menyenangkan. yogyakarta: kanisius. taniredja, t., & mustafidah, h. (2012). penelitian kuantitatif. bandung: alfabeta. trautwein, u. (2007). the homework-achievement relation reconsidered: differentiating homework time, homework frequency, and homework effort. learning and instruction, 17(3), 372-388. turanli, a. s. (2009). students’ and parents’ perceptions about homework. education and science, 34(153), 61-73. university of mary washington (2015). speaking intensive program. retrieved on october 9, 2018, from https://academics.umw.edu/speaking/resources/sample-assignments/. zhang, l.f. (2002). thinking styles and cognitive developmant. journal of genetic pschology, 163(2), 179-195. http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/homework_what_research_says https://academics.umw.edu/speaking/resources/sample-assignments/ attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4221ebcb20b5 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 203 elt forum 9 (2) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt an analysis of the english course book viewed from higher-order thinking skills riski norita sari1, zulfa sakhiyya2 english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 14 may 2020 approved in 29 november 2020 published in 30 november 2020 ________________ keywords: higher-order thinking skills; textbook analysis; variety ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study analyzes an english course book entitled symphony 1 to find out to what extent higher and lower-order level thinking used in the reading tasks. the focus of this study was on the availability and the variety of hots on reading assignments on the symphony 1 english course book. this descriptive qualitative research adopted the cognitive domain of revised bloom's taxonomy as the instrument. subsequently, the researcher calculated the percentage and the frequencies of the cognitive field of questions analyzed. afterwards, the items indicated as hots are analyzed again by using tools from keshta and sheif to know the variety of hots found in the textbook. the results showed that the percentage of lots items was 63% while the percentage of hots items was 37%. it indicated that lots dominated the book. this domination discourages students from thinking critically. based on the finding, the researcher recommends that textbooks authors need to advance hots to develop students' critical thinking, and teachers have to improve their knowledge about hots. © 2020 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: riskinorita16@gmail.com mailto:riskinorita16@gmail.com riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 204 introduction antara (2019) reported indonesian students have poor literacy; as indicated in pisa (programme for international student assessment). besides, antara (2019) reported that makarim, the current indonesian minister of education and culture, stated that indonesian students’ pisa scores of reading were low in 2018. further, the minister noted that pisa’s report was critical to give perspective for indonesia education. moreover, lifelong learning could be built from reading because students would learn almost all materials from reading (pisa for development reading framework, 2018). however, the pisa score of reading in indonesia is still low. also, only 30% of students from indonesia attained at least level 2 proficiency in reading (pisa for development reading framework, 2018). meanwhile, 77% of students from oecd (organization co-operation and development) achieved at least level 2 proficiency in reading. textbooks are widely available in indonesia. however, most of the textbooks in indonesia contain lower-order thinking skills because most of the books comprise of memorizing and understanding (margana & widyantoro, 2017). this shows the reason why it is hard for students to develop their critical thinking and reading comprehension. therefore, a study should be conducted to understand the type of order of thinking skills available. furthermore, revised bloom's taxonomy can ease the researcher to differentiate the higher-order levels and lower-order levels (anggraeni & suharyadi, 2013). from the findings found, there are 72.5% of lower-order thinking skills and 27.5% of higher-order thinking skills in the textbook. another research was conducted by freahat and smadi (2014). based on the research, high school stage efl and new headway plus pre-intermediate textbooks were dominated by lower level questions. then the researchers suggest textbooks authors have to balance both questions in higher-order levels and lower-order levels. similar research conducted by raqqad and ismail (2018). this research is about analyzing the reading tasks based on bloom’s taxonomy. moreover, assaly and igbaria (2014) used bloom’s taxonomy and the outcome of that study showed that 114 activities presented lower-order thinking skills, while only 59 questions presented higher-order thinking skills. as a result, lower-order thinking skills dominated the findings. moreover, tangsakul et al. (2017) did a research by applying the cognitive domain of revised bloom’s taxonomy. the result of the study found that understanding level dominated the findings. on the other hand, level cognitive of creating did not exist in the research. textbooks are an essential thing to espouse a learning process because textbooks will guide students and teachers in a learning process. moreover, abdelrahman (2014) stated that textbooks have instructional materials that can support the learning process. thamrin and agustin (2019) about higher-order thinking skills. that research led to developing students' critical thinking skills. besides, they stated that students have to acquire the higher-order thinking skills strategy to improve the thinking process from lots to hots. as a result, students’ critical thinking can be encouraged through hots. thus, teachers should give higher-order questions related to the material during class activities. also, adams (2015) researched bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives. the study aimed to analyze the relationship between bloom's taxonomy with critical thinking. the investigation resulted that there is a new dimension across all six cognitive processes. besides, assaly and smadi (2015) researched by using bloom's taxonomy to evaluate the cognitive levels of master class textbook's questions. this study focuses on assessing the cognitive level according to bloom's taxonomy. also, the instrument of this study was used to categorize the cognitive level of those questions. the result of the analysis showed that the book analyzed contains lower-order level and higher-order level cognitive. on the other hand, the variation of the cognitive domain is not significant. it can be known from the results that 60% is lower-order level and 40% is higherorder level. besides, anggraeni and suharyadi (2013) researched reading questions in an english textbook based on bloom’s taxonomy. assaly and smadi (2015) stated textbooks should have sufficient hots questions to improve students' cognitive level. the ideal distribution of higher-order and lower-order levels is 50:50 (anggraeni & suharyadi, 2013). problems investigated in this research are (1) how the availability of hots on the reading tasks of the symphony 1 english course book is and (2) how the variety of hots in the reading tasks of the symphony 1 english course book is. based on the previous studies, some textbooks and tests have been analyzed by using bloom's taxonomy and or revised bloom's taxonomy. some of them are also related to critical thinking. although those studies are similar to the present study, however there are differences. most of the studies only focus on the availability of hots. meanwhile, this study also analyzes the variation of hots analyzed by using the framework from keshta and sheif (2013). riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 205 methods qualitative research aims to make new insight. it uses a natural setting to conduct research. according to sherman and webb (2005), qualitative research has the main goal that is to find new insight from discovery. also, qualitative research is not conducted to conclude the verification of a predetermined idea. subsequently, qualitative research sometimes is called a naturalistic inquiry. in this qualitative research, the study aimed to explain hots’s composition and variation on the reading tasks of symphony 1 english course book. to collect the data, the researcher used content analysis. the researcher adopted a qualitative research approach to conduct this study. qualitative research is more iterative, while the content defined by the researcher (crescentini & maninardi, 2009). qualitative research aims to make new insight. qualitative research uses a natural setting to conduct research. according to sherman and web (2005), qualitative research has the main goal that is to find new insight from discovery. also, qualitative research is not conducted to conclude the verification of a predetermined idea. subsequently, qualitative research sometimes is called as a naturalistic inquiry. as a result, definitions and ideas are refined through the process recursively. besides, qualitative research aims to find a holistic picture of the historically odd situation (ospina, 2004). content analysis is a procedure to categorize messages based on their meaning (holsti, 1969). in this qualitative research, the study aims to explain hots's composition and variation on the reading tasks of symphony 1 english course book. to collect the data, the researcher used content analysis. content analysis means the process of summarizing and reporting data (manion, et. al, 2007). cognitive domain of revised bloom's taxonomy was used to analyze the data of this study. table 1 shows the content analysis using cognitive process of revised bloom’s taxonomy for the symphony 1 english coursebook. the data acquired are then analyzed and divided into remembering, understanding, applying, evaluating, and creating. the researcher conducted several steps in the procedure of collecting data: 1) reading all the tasks inside the textbook, 2) deciding the tasks to be analyzed, and 3) selecting tasks that have the potential to support the realization of higher-order thinking skills. in doing the data analysis, the researcher used the method from milles and huberman (1994). the data analysis consists of three levels: data reduction, data analysis, and conclusion and drawing verification. then, below is the data reduction conducted by the researcher: 1) selecting the data: the researcher read all the tasks inside the book; 2) focusing the data: the researcher focused on the questions of reading tasks selected. 3) simplifying the data: the researcher placed all questions selected into the table then analyzed by using the instruments; 4) abstracting the data: after the data had been placed, then, the researcher put the data into the classification to know the variety of hots; and 5) transforming the data. the researcher summed up the lower-order and higher-order questions of the reading tasks from the textbooks in quantitative output to show the percentage and number. the data analysis displayed data reduction, after the level of data reduction, then the data analysis throughout data display. data display can extend to the graphic, diagram, chart, or matrix. in the third level of the data analysis, the researcher drew the conclusion and verification. the end draws aimed to consider what data mean and to assess the implication from the research questions. meanwhile, confirmation means linked integrally to the conclusion drawing, so this aims to verify these new conclusions. table 1.structure of the cognitive domain and the explanation of the revised bloom's taxonomy (anderson & krathwohl, 2001) remembering understanding applying analyzing evaluating creating recognizing interpreting executing differentiating checking generatin g recalling. exemplifying implementing organizing critiquing. planning classifying attributing producing summarizing inferring comparing: explaining. riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 206 findings and discussion the data for this research was gathered by analyzing the reading tasks from the symphony 1. thus, the reading tasks from the book analyzed by using the instruments from anderson and krathwohl (2001). then questions indicated hots were analyzed again by using the tools from keshta and sheif (2013). it intended to know the variety of hots in the reading tasks. the availability of hots in the symphony 1 some studies previously found that in indonesia, the textbooks used are more on lots (margana & widyantoro, 2017). it made the researcher wanted to find out the availability of hots in the english textbook entitled the symphony 1 english coursebook. based on the finding of the book, there are 18 reading tasks and 135 reading question items analyzed. the questions were analyzed and classified into six levels of the cognitive domain in revised bloom's taxonomy. this table and chart below show the frequency and percentage of each level. table 2.the cognitive domain of revised bloom's taxonomy found in the symphony 1's reading tasks no categories frequency percentage 1 remembering 52 39% 2 understanding 33 24% 3 applying 0 0% 4 analyzing 43 32% 5 evaluating 6 4% 6 creating 1 1% figure 1.the cognitive domain of revised bloom's taxonomy found in the symphony 1's reading tasks based on table 2, there are six classifications of the question items from the cognitive domain of revised blooms' taxonomy. from figure 1, lower-order levels dominated the reading tasks in symphony 1 just like a finding in freahat and smadi (2014), based on the research high school stage efl and new headway plus pre-intermediate textbooks were dominated by lower level questions, the most of the remembering 39% understanding 24% applying 0% analyzing 32% evaluating 4% creating 1% remember understand apply analyze evaluate create riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 207 coursebook contents were in lower-order level, in detail the percentage of lower-order level was 63%. like the remembering level was the highest frequency with 50 cases, and the rate was 37%. the understanding level recorded 32 cases or 24%. furthermore, the lower-order level applying did not exist on the reading tasks, which was mentioned as 0%. another case in the chart and table was 39% of higher-order level questions or 50 questions from the total. afterward, the result shows that the higher-order level analyzing level was 32% or 43 items. besides, the higher-order level of evaluating level reached 4% or six questions. moreover, the higher-order level creating level recorded only 1% or one issue. as a result, creating was the lowest point from the higherorder level, and analyzing was the highest point of the higher-order level. the explanation below is the detailed information related to the table and graphic. the types of the cognitive process dimension aim to serve a classification for some cognitive processes that include in objectives. as shown in the table above, there are some parts of the cognitive process of revised bloom's taxonomy, such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. remembering level means by recalling proper knowledge from memories. besides, intelligence is defined as establishing meanings of messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication. moreover, applying mentioned as utilizing knowledge in a given situation. furthermore, analyzing level means splitting materials based on the information's core, after determining how the parts of the report are related to each other. additionally, evaluating means deciding judgment based on a standard. lastly, creating a level, this element is defined by placing some materials from an idea into an original product. along with the data from the analysis, the remembering level used some action verbs such as find, name, relate, list, show, and tell. action verbs dominated by the verb telling with 26 questions. furthermore, there are 14 action verbs of showing, six action verbs of finding, three action verbs of relating, two action verbs of listing, and one action verb of naming. moreover, this analysis also used cognitive processes and then found some cognitive processes, such as recalling and recognizing. the number of cognitive process by utilizing the recalling process was 46 questions. in contrast, the number of cognitive process by using the recognizing method was only six questions. the action verbs used on the understanding level were translated, explained, and summarized. there were some action verbs found on the book including two translate verbs, 27 describe verbs, and 3 summarize verbs. as a result, it was dominated by explaining the verb. also, on the analysis by using the cognitive process, there were some processes found, such as interpreting, explaining, and summarizing. in detail, the number of interpreting process found was only one. on the other side, the total of explaining process reached 29 questions. however, the sum of the summarizing process found were three issues. along with the data, applying process was not found in the data. moreover, the one found in the data was analyzing level. according to the data, analyzing level used some action verbs such as examine, analyze, compare, assume, inspect, classify, discover, inference, distinguish, and compare verb. analyzing level was dominated by examining, and inference verbs. the evaluating level is one of the higher-order levels in revised bloom’s taxonomy. then, there were some action verbs used in the analysis, such as assessing, deciding, and appraising. action verb dominated by assess verb that uses three action verbs. furthermore, there were two verbs of appraising verb and one verb of assess. besides using action verbs, this analysis also used the cognitive process of critiquing. creating a level is one of the parts of higher-order level skills. then, the analysis of the data resulted in only one question included creating a standard. also, this creating level used to adapt as an action verb. furthermore, the cognitive process found in the data is the generating process. variety of hots in the symphony 1 analyzing level analyzing level is the starting point in higher-order levels. according to nourdad et al. (2018), higherorder level is the starting stage of the higher-order level. besides, learners can break down the information on analyzing level. however, this case also needs calculations and classifications. in the reading tasks, 45 questions belong to the analyzing level. cases in the analyzing level are related to breaking up the material into smaller part which is engaged with constituent parts and determining how the pieces are associated with the whole structure. the cognitive processes in the analyzing level are differentiating, organizing, and attributing. analyzing questions found in the textbook were then analyzed and categorized into 13 criteria, as shown in the table below: riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 208 based on table 3, there are five out of thirteen cases found in analyzing items of symphony 1's reading tasks. types included in the analysis are as follows: comparing things in the text, guessing the meaning of words in context, reading between the lines, and recognizing clues and evidence. the item using explaining the information introduced is the highest number among the five things that are 40% or 18 cases. table 4.the example of analyzing item from symphony 1 no items categories action verbs cognitive process 1 what is the meaning of the statement “pickwick was noted for his honesty and humanity”? analyzing inference attributing 2 describe the humor contained in the line “huge pickwick approach him with a whip”. analyzing interpret differentiating table 4. shows the categories of explaining the information introduced. according to keshta and seif (2013), this category requires students to find the meaning of some statements shown. then students should explain what the purpose of the report is. as a result, students have to understand the comments in the context. for making students can answer the questions, they can enlighten the statement based on the context. in this step of explaining, the information introduced and students should develop their ability to recognize the explanation related to the setting. thus, students should know the meaning of the statement then interpret it according to the context. after that, they had to explain in their own words. also, the cognitive process included in the first question was attributing. according to anderson and krathwohl (2001) attributing is something resulted from a particular thing. the writer defines that the attributing process happens from the questions since students should find an explanation about the problem context. as a result, students have to find a particular meaning related to the statement. another cognitive process related to this explains the information introduced as differentiating. the differentiating cognitive process is to recognize that two things are not the same. this definition means students should identify differences between two things or among more than two words. after that, they should explain the information about the differences. another item is ‘reading between the lines’. this item means students have to elaborate the text to look for the hidden message from the document, which is implicitly stated in the report. based on the analysis, it depicts a percentage of 29% with 13 frequencies. table 5.the example of analyzing items from symphony 1 no items categories action verbs cognitive process 1. what decision does the author make in this poem? analyzing examine attributing table 3.the types of analyzing item in symphony 1 no item types frequency percentage 1 distinguishing facts from opinion 0 0 2 categorizing information in text 0 0 3 comparing items in text 3 7% 4 guessing meaning of words in context 1 2% 5 reading between lines 13 30% 6 recognizing causes and effects 0 0 7 explaining the information introduced 18 42% 8 recognizing clues and evidence 8 19% 9 eliciting rules and principles 0 0 10 inferring the mood, attitudes, or tones of the author. 0 0 11 distinguishing main ideas from supporting ones. 0 0 12 ordering items according to their importance. 0 0 13 breaking down the text into its main component. 0 0 total 45 100% riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 209 2. what do you think the author is saying in this poem? analyzing analyse attributing the first question on table 5 demands students to explore the poem related to the content of the poem. to find the answer, students have to know the clues that can support the solution. usually, the evidence appears after the students understand what the meaning of the question is. the second question is almost the same as the first question. answering the questions above cannot be found from the lines printed. as a result, the writer categorized these questions as reading between the lines items because the answers are not stated implicitly in the text, students should find the answer after analyzing the information presented in the book, finding the relevant information, and making conclusions related to the questions demanded. those processes for finding the solution also happen in the attributing. in short, those questions are analyzing items. besides, these questions encourage students to make them develop their critical thinking because they should find the answer according to the students’ perspective—the students’ perspective which built from the information collected. another sub-skill found in the analysis is recognizing clues and evidence. in this matter, students have to find clues and indications on a particular topic. in this case, below is the example for identifying clues and evidence in the text. evaluating level the evaluating level includes the higher-order thinking skills. this cognitive domain level demands students to give and defend opinions by presenting judgment sourced from criteria and experience (anderson & kratwohl, 2001). this category consists of the cognitive process of checking (judgments about internal consistency) and critiquing (judgments based on external criteria). in short, this level is higher than the analyzing level because, at this level, students urged to make judgments and or opinions after examining the text by looking for some point of view. for making a clear explanation, below is the example of evaluating level based on the book of the symphony 1. according to the analysis found in the symphony 1, this level only was counted six-question or 4% from the complete review. instruments from keshta & sheif (2013) analyzed the questions. the analysis is presented below: table 6.the types of evaluating items in symphony 1 no item types frequency percentage (%) 1 expressing his/her opinion towards situations in the target text 6 100 2 concluding themes of texts 0 0 3 recognizing subjectivity and objectivity 0 0 4 making choices based on reasoned argument 0 0 total 6 100 from those criteria in table 6, there was only one type found in the textbook. this type encourages students to express their arguments based on the situation in the target text. in this level, students should make a judgment whether they agree or disagree with the opinion. then they should find evidence to strengthen their argument. table 7. the example of evaluating item from symphony 1 no items categories action verbs cognitive process 1 what do you think about singkawang? are you interested to go there? give reasons. evaluating assess critiquing 2 discuss with the class what each local government should do to boost income from tourism. evaluating decide critiquing the first question demands students to declare their argument about singkawang. this evidence-based on the situation there. in short, they have to give a reason why they attractive in it. students have to assess a case, so the researcher uses action words to determine. the second question requires students to take action toward the situation in the text. students have to find solutions to the job. they may have other sources to make their idea more potent and more effective. in this case, the researcher uses action verbs to riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 210 decide because this question encouraged students to determine what the proper actions are. both of the items use the cognitive process of critiquing. according to anderson and krathwohl (2001), critiquing is judging because those questions demand students to give an opinion. creating level the creating level is the highest at bloom's taxonomy level. from this level, students have to result in a new product. the new product can be managed from the pattern or information before (anderson & krathwohl, 2001). this level can be done after students through other levels such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, and evaluating. creating a level is the highest level in bloom's taxonomy level. from this level, students have to result in a new product. this level is done after students through other standards such as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, and evaluating. yet creating a level is the part of a higher-order level, so students have to think critically to manage this case. moreover, in creating something, students have to collect from some sources to make the product in prior knowledge. some elements can be put in a way that makes the product to be structured well. subsequently, students should have ideas and creativity. also, this level adopted three cognitive processes such as generating, planning, and producing. based on the research from this book, the researcher found only one question that requires creating a level. as a result, this is only 1% of the total. creating a degree is the lowest number found in the reading task of symphony 1. the following is the creating level found in symphony 1. table 8.the types of creating items in symphony 1 no item types frequency percentage (%) 1. rearranging information related to the text 1 100 2. summarizing texts 0 0 3. writing or retelling the material of the text using his own words 0 0 4. predicting events or solutions related to the text 0 0 5. discussing to persuade 0 0 6. hypothesizing data 0 0 7. generating information related to the text 0 0 8. combining his information with the information in the text 0 0 9. connecting knowledge from different sources 0 0 total 1 100 the data from table 8 shows that the lower-order level dominates the task. it can be seen from figure 1 that lower-order level was 63%. this result is significant because this is more than 50%. the research also found that there is no level of applying found in the data in the lower-order level. higher-order level in the tasks is dominated by analyzing level it reaches 32% out of 37% from the total of higher-order level. it is followed by evaluating level counted 4%, then creating a level of only 1%. table 9.the example of creating item in symphony 1 no item categories action verbs cognitive process 1. compose a single stanza quintet using the same pattern of rhymes found in this poem. creating adapt generating this question demands students to make a new product by using the pattern in the issue. as a result, this case encourages students to adapt further information. also, the cognitive process involved in this question is generating. anderson and krathwohl (2001) declared that the generating process involved with produce or create something. the higher-order level exists on the task, but most of them were not distributed well in all items by kesthta and sheif (2013). it can be seen from the data of analyzing level which only contains five out of thirteen pieces. it consists of comparing items in the text, guessing the meaning of words in context, reading between the lines, explaining the information introduced, and recognizing clues and evidence. besides, most questions require revealing the information presented that reached 42% out of 100%. on the other hand, guessing the meaning of words, only 2% out of 100%. this result is quite a significant comparison. it riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 211 demonstrates that the tasks in the textbook did not have many varieties of higher-order level, and this is in line with the statement that most of the textbooks in indonesia contain lower-order thinking skills because most of the books comprise of memorizing and understanding (margana & widyantoro, 2017). thus, based on the finding, this book could not stick to the criteria of higher-order. the ideal distribution of higherorder and lower-order level is 50:50 (anggraeni & suharyadi, 2013). if this continues, then students will not be exposed to higher-order instructions that stimulate their critical thinking and holistic comprehension. conclusion the researcher can conclude some numbers from the overall findings. first, the higher-order cognitive skills in the textbook's reading tasks are not distributed and treated well. the result of higher-order levels in the textbooks' reading tasks was less than lower-order levels. according to the information, there are six classifications of the question items from the cognitive domain of revised bloom's taxonomy. also, lowerorder levels dominated the reading tasks in symphony 1 with the percentage of 63%. remember, the standard has the highest frequency among all levels, with 50 cases and a 37% rate. the understanding level resulted in 32 cases or 24%. furthermore, the lower-order level apply does not exist on the reading tasks. in another case in the information, there are 39% of higher-order level questions, or there are 50 questions from the total. then, the higher-order level of analyzing reaches 32% or 43 items—meanwhile, the higher-order level of evaluating touched 4% or six questions. subsequently, the higher-order level creating level recorded only 1% or one issue. as a result, creating is the lowest point from the higher-order level, and analyzing is the highest point of the higher-order level. then questions indicated of higher-order level have been analyzed to know the variety of hots found in the textbooks. from analyzing the level contained four out of thirteen items. they compared things in the text, guessing the meaning of words in context, reading between the lines, explaining the information introduced, and recognizing clues and evidence. also, most questions that contain disclosing the information presented reached 42% out of 100%. on the other hand, the questions that contain guessing the meaning of words had only 2% out of 100%. the result was entirely a significant comparison. it proved that the tasks in the textbook do not have many varieties of higher-order level. references abdelrahman, m. s. h. b. 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(2014). a content analysis of the reading and listening activities in the efl textbook of master class. a content analysis of the reading and listening activities in the efl textbook of master class, 3(2), 24-38. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.edu.20140302.11 assaly, i. r., & smadi, o. m. (2015). using bloom's taxonomy to evaluate the cognitive levels of master class textbook's questions. journal of english language teaching, 8(5), 100-110. crescentini, a., & mainardi, g. (2009). qualitative research articles: guidelines, suggestions, & needs. journal of workplace learning, 21(5), 431-439. freahat, n. m., & smadi, o. m. (2014). lower-order & higher-order reading questions in secondary & university level efl textbooks in jordan. theory & practice in language studies, 4(9), 1804-1813. holsti, o. r. 1969. content analysis for the social sciences and humanities, reading. ma addison wesley keshta, a. s., & seif, a. (2013). evaluating the higher order thinking skills in reading of english for palestine grade eight. asian journal of education and e-learning, 1(1), 2321–2454. http://library.iugaza.edu.ps/thesis/105688.pdf%0awww.ajouronline.com manion, l., cohen, l., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education (6th ed). routledge falmer. https://tekno.tempo.co/read/1279711/skor-pisa-murid-indonesia-di-bawah-rata-rata-ini-kata-nadiem https://tekno.tempo.co/read/1279711/skor-pisa-murid-indonesia-di-bawah-rata-rata-ini-kata-nadiem https://doi.org/10.11648/j.edu.20140302.11 http://library.iugaza.edu.ps/thesis/105688.pdf%0awww.ajouronline.com riski norita sari, zulfa sakhiyya/ elt forum 9 (2) (2020) 212 margana, m., & widyantoro, a. (2017). developing english textbooks oriented to higher-order thinking skills for students of vocational high schools in yogyakarta. journal of language teaching and research, 8(1), 26-38 milles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. 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(2017). using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze reading comprehension questions in team up in english 1-3 & grade 9 english o-net tests. international journal of research granthaalayah, 5(7), 31-41. thamrin, n. r., & agustin, s. (2019). conceptual variations on reading comprehension through higherorder thinking skills (hots) strategy. journal of english education, 7(2), 93-100. al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 290 elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the influence of playing digital game in distance learning towards students’ speaking skill doni wijanarko1, samsul hadi2, indah puspitasari3 1-3stkip pgri pacitan, indonesia article info _________________ article history: received on 30 july 2021 approved on 23 november 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords: : distance learning; digital game; learning media; speaking skill; among us game ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the lack of class interaction in distance learning makes students can not practice their speaking skills. in another case, the use of digital game has been familiar among students. this situation forces teacher to serve students with creative teaching-learning in the class. novelty is on the specific game which was used in this research. the researcher experimented to apply digital games namely “among us” then investigated the impact on students’ speaking skills. this research aimed to answer the question, how were digital games become an alternative medium to learn english in the distance learning situation? inherently, this research was a pre-experimental research method with a design of one shoot case study. the main data source in this research was based on students' assessments scores and students’ questionnaire scores then supported by other questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. the average scores indicate that students were good in speaking skills overall, it could be known by the detailed results of the assessments that were pre-activity 2.64, during-activity 2.50, and post-activity 2.22. moreover, the results of regression analysis indicated digital games influenced students' achievement and students' motivation. it can be known by the significance of annova tables results that students’ achievement 0.022 < 0.05 and students motivation 0.000 < 0.05. the researcher concluded that students were comfortable and more confident to learn and practice their speaking skills during playing the digital game. finally, through giving correct treatment, digital game activity was possible to be an alternative way to learn english especially to practice speaking skills.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 jl. cut nyat dien no. 4-a kebon, ploso, kec. pacitan, kabupaten pacitan 63515 e-mail: doniwijanarko09@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 291 introduction starting from the middle of 2020 the indonesian government decided to limit outdoor activity. this was a response to the pandemic situation. certainly, like many other aspects of everyday life, covid19 had a serious impact on students, instructors, and educational organizations around the globe (mailizar, et al., 2020). to prevent the spread of this pandemic, the central government and regional government issued a policy to change educational activity to be a distance learning model. it was a considerable educational method in the media of learning applied. a stakeholder, institution, teacher, or student should take it as a distance learning policy. the digital game usage issue is one of the examples that are popular in students’ environments nowadays. according to (johnson, et al., 2012) trip wire magazine reported that in 2011 about 61.9 million people were engaged in digital games; an increase of 9 million from 2010. the digital game has grown in popularity due to the advancement of the internet and computer technologies. nowadays we find any kind of digital game application on our computer or smartphone easily. the ease of digital game access today brings students to a new habit. the risk is the addiction effect of digital games potentially affecting students in their daily activity. consequently, they cannot manage their time and become lazy to learn the materials. according to (griffiths, 2009), as a result of scientific research, it is seen that digital game addiction has many psychological effects on individuals. (kétyi, 2013) states “the integration of the mobile device in our language teaching practice could gain our students' valuable additional learning time outside the school and improve their language learning efficiency”. according to the statement above, the role of digital game usage is necessary to develop our teaching and learning media in efl, especially in this situation. most researchers argue that games have a great educational value for students to build fun and non-stressful learning process. moreover, digital games provide an interesting tool for communication. in learning english as a foreign language (efl), students have to practice more besides learning the theory. (chen, n.d.) claims that games promote communicative competence and encourage creative and spontaneous use of language. besides, there is more motivation to learn english through digital game usage. (bennett, 2011) overemphasized the power of games and play to facilitate deep and meaningful learning where most productive and motivating learning experiences take place outside of school through playing and participation where children do enjoy learning via having a sense of their progression and where the learning is relevant and appropriate. therefore this study aimed to investigate digital games' impacts on students’ speaking skills. the research gap found by the researcher such as first, (alamr, 2019) investigated the relationship between playing digital games as a leisure time activity and english language learning achievement among efl students at an english language center (elc) in a tertiary institute in riyadh, saudi arabia. the difference between the previous study and this research is the previous study investigated the 4 skill in efl whereas this research focus on speaking skills used by the students. second, (gozcu & caganaga, 2016) investigates the importance of using games in efl classrooms that aimed to find out how games were important and effective when used in efl classrooms. the difference between the study and this research was the previous study used qualitative descriptive research whereas this research used one shoot case study research. the influence of distance learning was also a big deal in this background of the study. the researcher explored and investigated the distance learning activity and digital game pattern of tenth graders students at one of public senior high school in pacitan in the academic year of 2020/2021. the school is one of the favorite schools in pacitan. most students there are familiar with the technology application in their teaching and learning process. moreover, ten graders students are the right time to learn comprehensive in efl, particularly in speaking skills practice. the output of this study drew the right application of this tool which was useful for the education field in the future. it is an effort to obviate the negative impact of the digital game by making this habit become a new medium of learning. finally, in this research the researcher argued that there were positive indications of digital game activity in students’ motivation and students’ achievements in speaking skills. this research assumed that students can learn english with fun and non-stressful learning through the among us game. otherwise, digital games were recommended to apply to an informal class. furthermore, the guidelines to apply this tool particularly commercial games like among us to be alternative media to learn in efl are needed to deal with the teachers’ target. doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 292 methods research design the research method is a scientific way of obtaining data with specific purposes and uses. to do research, the right application in the research design is required as a research strategy, so that research can achieve an answer in the form of an answer to the problem of the research. according to (fathoni, 2006), "the research method is a way of working used in conducting research". the method used in this research was a pre-experimental research method with a design one-shot case study and mixed-method that were used to measure the students pattern on digital games. the researcher used the pre-experimental research method for probable causal relationship by exposing one or more groups experimental conditions to get the result of students speaking skills impacted by digital games. furthermore, this study applied mixed methods design assisted in investigating the problem from students’ perspectives on digital game pattern, using both a quantitative approach by the digital games namely among us treatment then continued with examining the expected relationship between the result of students assessment as the independent variables while students’ motivation and students’ achievement as the dependent variables. in addition, the researcher analyzed the perspectives of learners from the qualitative data captured in the questionnaire and the student interview. (sugiyono, 2012) classifies three types of research designs commonly used in pre-experimental design methods, namely one-shot case studies, one-group pretest-posttest design, and intact-group comparison. this study used a one-shot case study design. in this section, there was no control group and students were given special treatment or supervision for some time (x mark). the subjects in this study got a treatment by used digital games namely among us. then students were given tests related to the treatment / that is given (mark t). table 1 one shoot case study concept subject treatment test group of students x t detail: x : the treatment of using among us game. t : the test that giving after the treatment has been given. respondents therefore this study aimed to investigate digital games' impact on students’ speaking skills. the influence of distance learning was also a big deal in this background of the study. the researcher explored and investigated the distance learning activity and digital game pattern of tenth graders students at one of public senior high school in pacitan in the academic year of 2020/2021. the school is one of the favorite schools in pacitan. located in central of pacital regency had influence students habituaton. most students there are familiar with the technology application in their teaching and learning process. escpecially in this condition. moreover, ten graders students are the right time to learn comprehensive in efl, particularly in speaking skills practice. data source the population was used to state all of the elements and participants of the research from the place as the target of the research. the population was mentioned to all groups based on the samples. according to (subagyo, 1991), "population is the object of research as a target for obtaining and collecting data ”. the population in this research was ten graders students of at one of public senior high school in pacitan on 2020/2021 academic year. the populations were 55 students and selected to be the sample in the assessment activity were 17 students. the sample is part or representative of the population of the research (arikunto, 2006). therefore the variable of this research consists twocomponent. first, the independent variable was the digital game namely among us as the treatment of this research. second, the dependent variables were students’ motivation and students’ achievement. doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 293 data collecting technique the research was conducted in three phases: (1) phase one: explained the whole of the research and gave treatment to students (2) phase two: applied of among us game treatment continued with students’ speaking assessment. (3) phase three: designed questionnaire and interview of the overall targeted sample of students. data collecting technique in the research explained as follow: 1. the main collecting data technique was a students’ speaking assessment or test. the researcher designed the speaking assessment instrument that used in this section. it aimed to find out how much digital games “among us” influenced students’ speaking skills. furthermore, the assessment activity was done in three sections including pre-activity, during-activity, and post-activity. 2. the second collecting data technique was a questionnaire. the questionnaire explored three aspects in students’ relationship with a digital game issue and students’ speaking skills: (1) patterns of distance learning, (2) patterns of the digital game, and (3) students’ perception after following the test. 3. students’ interview was the final data of this research. it was used to deeply investigated students’ perspectives of digital game usage as the medium of learning. it did towards students who have been following the assessment activity. therefore in this section, three aspects were investigated by the researcher. those were students’ knowledge of digital games particularly among us, students’ perceptions after got the treatment, and students' perception of speaking skills. data analysis the collected data in this research were analyzed in the form of quantitative and qualitative data. exactly the data gathered from assessment activity, questionnaire, and interview. the quantitative data of this research were obtained from the test. the test consists of three phases. those were pre-activity, during-activity, and post-activity. the results of students’ speaking performance were analyzed to find out the students' average score of their speaking skills. the researcher compared the results from three phases and conclude the results by calculating the average score from the three phases of the assessment activity. it was the main data in this research. regarding data analysis, the researcher concluded the data based on students’ assessment in three activities then resumed into an average score of each student in each assessment activity called “students’ achievement score”. moreover, the questionnaire score got by students’ perception after the test was investigated about students’ speaking skills after following the activity called “digital game score” and students’ motivation after following the activity called “students motivation score.” all data were analyzed with regression analysis, calculated by spss application. moreover, files and the communication between students were recorded and securely saved to ensure validity, accuracy and reliability of the data. finally, the researcher validated the results of the data. (creswell, 2012) argues that the role of validation is considered as a measure of how accurate a study was. the validation of the study was taken from expert judgment and quantitative as well as qualitative data collection methods from two main sources: (1) the score of students’ assessment, and (2) the score of the questionnaire after the test. findings and discussion findings the study's goal was to see how digital gaming activity in distant learning affected students' speaking skills in tenth grade pupils at one of public senior high school in pacitan in the 2020/2021 academic year. furthermore, the researcher looked into how digital game usage could be used as a medium for english learning, notably in the field of speaking skills. the conclusions of this study centered on the research hypothesis by analyzing the students' motivation and achievement during the study. furthermore, regression analysis was used in this study, which was done using the spss application. table 2. the resume of students’ score students students’ students’ digital doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 294 achievement motivation game 1 2.773333333 5 5 2 2.346666667 5 4 3 3.146666667 5 5 4 1.773333333 4 3 5 2.346666667 3 4 6 2.72 4 5 7 2.133333333 3 4 8 2.613333333 4 4 9 1.866666667 4 3 10 2.666666667 5 5 11 2.506666667 5 4 12 2.253333333 4 4 13 2.733333333 5 5 14 2.666666667 5 5 15 2.453333333 4 4 16 2.613333333 4 4 17 2.88 5 5 the table above showed the final scores of the pupils. the table's specifics were the results of the digital games test, as determined by a questionnaire. the table also included the students' achievement score based on the average of their evaluations, as well as their motivation score based on a post-test questionnaire. 1. student motivation table 3. variables entered/removedb model variables entered variables removed method 1 gamea . enter a. all requested variables entered. b. dependent variable: motivation the table above was about the variable used in this research. the table above explained that the independent variable was digital games and the dependent variable was students’ motivation. table 4. model summary model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .550a .302 .256 .606 a. predictors: (constant), game the table above was the summary of the regression analysis. based on the table above the score of the correlation (r) was 0,550. moreover, presentation of the independent variable towards the dependent variable is called coefficient determination (r2) which is the result of quadratic from correlation (r). based on the table above the results of coefficient doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 295 determination (r2) was 0,302. that means the influence of independent variable (digital games) towards dependent variable (students’ motivation) was 30,2% meanwhile 69,8% was influenced by the other factor besides digital games. table 5 anovab model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 2.382 1 2.382 6.497 .022a residual 5.500 15 .367 total 7.882 16 a. predictors: (constant), game b. dependent variable: motivation annova table explained the real impact (significance) of the independent variable towards dependent variable. based on the table above score was 6,497 with the score of significance or probability was 0,022 < 0,05, which means the regression models was possible to predict the dependent variable (students’ motivation) table 6 coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) 1.938 .959 2.020 .062 game .562 .221 .550 2.549 .022 a. dependent variable: motivation the table above was coefficient table that used to analyze whether if the score of digital game increases in a piece, the score of students’ achievement also increases. based on the table above the result of the positive constant “a” (digital game) score was 1,938 while the score of the students' achievement “b” is 0,562. here was the formulation of regression models. y= a + bx or 1,938 + 0,562x the conclusion of the coefficients table above was explained as follows: 1) the positive constanta was 1,938 which meant the positive score influenced independent variable (digital game). if the variable was increased or giving influence in a piece then the dependent variable (students’ motivation) also increases. 2) the score of coefficient regression x was 0,562 which means if the digital game (x) increases in a piece, then the dependent variable (students’ motivation) will increase to 0,562 or 56,2%. doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 296 2. students’ speaking skills achievement table 7 variables entered/removedb model variables entered variables removed method 1 gamea . enter a. all requested variables entered. b. dependent variable: students’ achievement the table above was about the variable used in this research. the independent above was the digital game and the dependent variable was students’ achievement. table 8 model summary model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate 1 .890a .792 .778 .166 a. predictors: (constant), game the table above was the summary of the regression analysis. based on the table above the score of the correlation (r) was 0,890. moreover, presentation of the independent variable towards the dependent variable that called coefficient determination (r2) which was the result of quadratic from correlation (r). based on the table above the results of coefficients determination (r2) was 0,792. that means the influence of independent variable (digital games) towards dependent variable (students’ achievement) was 79,2% meanwhile 20,8% was influenced by the other factor besides digital games. table 9 anovab model sum of squares df mean square f sig. 1 regression 1.580 1 1.580 57.020 .000a residual .416 15 .028 total 1.995 16 a. predictors: (constant), game b. dependent variable: students’ achievement annova table explained to analyze whether the real impact (significance) of the independent variable towards dependent variable. based on the table above score was 57,020 with the score of significance or probability was 0,000 < 0,05, which means the regression models were possible to predict the dependent variable (students achievement). table 10 coefficientsa model unstandardized coefficients standardized coefficients t sig. b std. error beta 1 (constant) .533 .264 2.022 .061 game .458 .061 .890 7.551 .000 a. dependent variable: students’ achievement doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 297 the table above was coefficient table that was used to analyze whether if the score of digital game increases in each then the score of students’ achievement also increases. based on the table above the result of the positive constant “a” (digital game) score was 0,533 while the score of the students' achievement “b” was 0,458. here was the formulation of regression models. y= a + bx or 0,533 + 0,458x the conclusion of the coefficients table above was explained as follows: 1) the positive constanta was 0,533, indicating a positive score for the independent variable's influence (digital game). when a variable is enhanced or given more weight in each, the dependent variable (student accomplishment) rises with it. 2) the score of coefficient regression x was 0,533 which means if the digital game (x) increases in a piece, then the dependent variable (students’ achievement) will increase reach 0,458 or 45,8%. discussions the researcher limited the discussion based on the hypothesis of this research. moreover the researcher answered the formulation of the problems of this research. the hypothesis discussed the things that perhaps influenced students after the research. the researcher discussed two aspects, which were 1) students’ motivation, 2) students’ speaking skills achievement. furthermore, this section provided a summary and discussed the researcher’s hypothesis and the data results of this research. 1. whether digital games influence students’ speaking skills? a. students’ motivation based on the data finding researcher concluded that digital games influenced students' motivation to learn particularly to practice their speaking skills. the data showed that most students felt that they had no opportunity to practice their speaking skills in the class. the lack of class interaction during distance learning was another cause to deal with this problem. furthermore, the integration and regulation of digital game usage in the educational field was should be considered (gozcu, e., & caganaga, 2016) state that using games creates an environment in which there are fun and satisfaction besides high motivation for learning a language. in addition to this, games had been found as a serious and pervasive element for providing stimulation and simulation in educational settings. in an informal context, games had often related to the leisure activities of students' off-school practices and most interactive games provide learners with communicative activities as they play games. (sørensen, b.h., & meyer, 2007) “games have often been utilized to increase motivation and authentic communicative practices, since games have been conceptualized as a fun factor in language learning.” the role of games was needed to decrease the anxiety of using the target language cannot be ignored. the new habitude of students’ environment and the importance of education should be understood to provide more creative teaching and learning process in this situation. b. students’ achievement based on the data results found by the researcher that students' achievement during assessment activity indicated that as tenth graders students, they were still poor and cannot to speak fluently. the most problem was the less experience to practice their speaking skills. conversation practice enables language learners to assimilate their acquired knowledge, integrating a variety of cognitive skills at once to produce oral communication. in effect, this is learning by doing (paisley, 2019). it knew that the average score of each student in three assessment activities was still low. this point was supported by students' perception about their activity in the class that most of them had not opportunity enough to practice their speaking skills. moreover, in the pandemic situation, the lack of class interaction made students rarely practice their speaking skills. otherwise, based on the questionnaire and interview, the researcher concluded that the doni wijanarko, samsul hadi, indah puspitasari | elt forum vol 10 (3) (2021) 298 right application of digital games was possible to develop student's skills in english, particularly their speaking skills. the other study azman & dollsaid (2018) states that multiple digital games encounter with other numerous speakers help students improving their confidence and build new knowledge as they engage in achieving a collective goal as online players. digital games were mostly discussed cornering social online interaction in these games. in this research, students’ online interaction through among us game allowed students to connect with their friends with active interaction. c. the guidelines of among us games as the media of efl learning a) students should download discord and among us, b) students should use discord to communicate during playing the game, c) students login into the game, d) students should create their name by following format (nama_kelas), e) students join the room that was created by the teacher, f) the game will start when all participants already join in the room, the participant is 4-10, g) students should use the english language to communicate with each other, h) students should communicate one by one during the discussion section, i) the students who have dead do not permit to join the discussion section, j) students should be active and communicative during the discussion section, k) in addition, students should note every new vocabulary that got during playing the game. conclusion this study provided strong positive indications about the utilization of different types of digital gaming opportunities as means of facilitating efl learning as an out-of-classroom leisure activity. it could be known by the detailed results of the assessments that were pre-activity 2.64, during-activity 2.50, and post-activity 2.22. moreover, the results of regression analysis indicated digital games influenced students' achievement and students' motivation. it could be known by the significance of annova tables results that students’ achievement 0.022 < 0.05 and students motivation 0.000 < 0.05. furthermore by the observation the researcher found that mostly students was agree to use digital game as the alternative media to practice their speaking skills. the major findings of the study confirmed that playing digital games might have a positive effect on some aspects of efl learning. specifically, playing among us games that require and provide students to practice and train their speaking skills. these games stimulate the incidental and indirect language learning process. in this process, the learners’ attention is directed toward playing and succeeding in the game, while they unintentionally internalize a large number of language expressions, vocabulary, and structures. the outcomes of this study identified social interaction experiences through online gaming as an important provider of an authentic english language environment. efl learners engaging in digital game social interactions benefitted from these practices, particularly in enhancing communicative competencies. this can be achieved by increasing the stimulation and motivation for language learning for students by utilization of new pedagogical strategies rather than the more common teacher-centered strategies of the traditional classroom. finally, the need to obviate the negative impact of the digital game around students’ in distance learning situations was the motivating issue for this research study. furthermore, the learning media to practice students’ speaking skills is also a consideration in this research. this study focused on among us digitial game which are more to invetigate. in the conclusion, the researcher believes that the variety of learning media and application of technology development is necessary things that should be noticed by the teacher today. references adams, s., & burke, m. 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(2020). secondary school mathematics teachers’ views on e-learning implementation barriers during the covid-19 pandemic: the case of indonesia. eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education, 16(7), em1860. paisley, v. (2019). five reasons why conversation practice is key to learning a language. learnlight. https://insights.learnlight.com/en/articles/conversation-practice-is-key-to-learning-alanguage/ sørensen, b.h., & meyer, b. (2007). serious games in language learning and teaching: a theoretical perspective. www.digra.org/dl/db/07312.23426. sourmelis, t., ioannou, a., & zaphiris, p. (2017). massively multiplayer online role playing games (mmorpgs) and the 21st century skills: a comprehensive research review from 2010 to 2016. computers in human behavior, 67(1), 41-48. subagyo, j. (1991). metode penelitian dalam teori dan praktek. rineka cipta. sugiyono. (2012). metode penelitian pendidikan pendekatan kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan r & d. alfabeta. putri t al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 271 elt forum 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt a study on factors contributing to students’ english pronunciation nur cholisah1, sintha tresnadewi2, rahmati putri yaniafari3 1,2,3department of english, universitas negeri malang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 13 september 2021 approved on 23 november 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords: factor; pronunciation; english pronunciation. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ one of the most important things in learning english as a second language is pronunciation. having good pronunciation can lead to a successful speech communication. however, many students find it difficult in learning pronunciation. many studies have already been conducted to dig in the difficulties and try to overcome the issue. in fact, there are still many students who have good pronunciation, yet not many researchers have conducted studies on how to dig in the factors contributing to it. this study aims at finding the factors that may contribute to the students’ good english pronunciation by applying a descriptive qualitative research design. some instruments were used in collecting the data such as a pronunciation test, an observation checklist, a field note, and an interview guide. this study found that there were four big factors that contributed to the students’ english pronunciation: education, exposure, environment, and motivation. each factor has made a powerful contribution to the subjects’ english pronunciation such as applying a reflective practice method, providing a lot of input about english, providing supportive family and friend, and providing a strong motivation to reach something. this study suggests that future researcher might use the pronunciation test with categorization of words in it.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 universitas negeri malang jl. semarang 5, malang 65145 e-mail: nurcholisah14@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 272 introduction in this globalization era, english is a very important language to be mastered because english is a lingua franca which means it certainly becomes the most widely used language for international communication today. for that reason, it has recently got a lot of attention from linguists across the board (hülmbauer et al., 2008). there are many important elements of english that people from nonnative english-speaking countries have to master in learning english, one of which is english pronunciation. according to ikhsan (2017), pronunciation refers to the production of sounds that we use to make meaning. pennington and richards (1986) stated that there are three big components of pronunciation; segmental features, voice-setting features, and prosodic features. segmental features are the minimal units of sound defined in phonetic terms. phonemes and acquisition of the target language are traditionally the two most important aspects of pronunciation. mastery of the phonemic differences encoded in its phonological inventory, as well as the phonetic variations of phonemes that occur in certain situations inside syllables and words, is considered as a phonological system. meanwhile, segmental features refer to specific phonetic characteristics of individual sound segments and voicesetting features refer to general articulatory characteristics of stretches of speech. the other components of pronunciation are stress and intonation, the so-called prosodic, or suprasegmental, domain, together with the related coarticulatory phenomena of the blending and overlapping of sounds in fluent speech. prosodic features involve the relative levels of stress and pitch within syllables, words, phrases, and longer stretches of speech. supported by gilakjani (2012), it is also mentioned that the features of english pronunciation are segmental features and suprasegmental features as illustrated in figure 1.1. figure 1. various features of english pronunciation people need communication to deliver messages to other people. the communication should be clear including the pronunciation so that it will run successfully. it is indicated successful if the audience or listener can decode what the speaker is saying. communication needs understanding between the audience and the speaker. if the audience cannot get what the speaker is saying, it will lead to misunderstanding. according to hişmanoğlu (2006), the speaker and the listener should have a mutual relationship in communication. it means that one must be able to grasp what he hears in the target language and appropriately produce the sounds of the language he has learnt. he cannot encode a message to anyone or decode a message sent by another person unless he has sufficient understanding of the target language’s sound patterns. there are many words in english that have similar pronunciation. for instance, a speaker wants to say, “please help me bring the pan /pæn/ here” but pronounces it as “pen” /pen/. those features of english pronunciation segmental features suprasegmental features phonemes (sound difference within a language linking intonation stress sentence stress word stress consonant sounds vowel sounds voiced unvoiced single dipthongs short long nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 273 words have almost the same pronunciation, but they are of totally different meanings. in some cases, it can be fatal because the wrong pronunciation may bring the speaker into a weird situation in which the listener may assume that the speaker is asking to bring him a pen. this is crucial for especially people from non-native english-speaking countries that must be aware and know how to pronounce each word correctly in avoiding misunderstanding. fraser (2000) stated that pronunciation is the aspect that most affects how the speaker is judged by others, and how they are formally assessed in other skills (e.g., anta 1999: a new assessment tool p.10 tells of a manager who severely underestimated workers’ literacy levels due to their poor pronunciation). according to burns & claire (2003), clear pronunciation is essential in spoken communication. they also added that even when learners produce minor inaccuracies in vocabulary and grammar, they are more likely to to be understood when they have good pronunciation and intonation. in english as a foreign language (efl) context, having good and correct pronunciation is not something that can be achieved from short time learning. efl learners are drilled to learn it and usually take some time to get used to speaking with accurate pronunciation. there are many ways they can learn english pronunciation, one of which is through formal education because pronunciation teaching is a part of speaking when efl teachers teach english to the students. since sounds are crucial in communication, efl teachers must give a proper pronunciation teaching to their classes (hişmanoğlu, 2006). by drilling the students to practice good pronunciation, it will make them be more confident when they speak english because in the context of interactions between both non-native english speakers and native speakers in general, pronunciation teaching is essential for l2 learners. also, improper pronunciation habits are difficult to change so that learning acceptable pronunciation is very crucial. according to kelly (2002), learners who consistently mispronounce a series of phonemes will make it difficult for speakers of other languages to comprehend them. therefore, pronunciation teaching really plays an important role in students’ english pronunciation skill. unfortunately, pronunciation teaching has become a neglected element by efl teachers in teaching english (ikhsan, 2017). pronunciation has long been considered as a challenging subject by teachers and it is frequently neglected in language teaching in favour of reading and writing, which are more likely to lead to success in examination. it is impossible to conduct a lesson that is only focused on pronunciation practice because it is often overlooked as a separate activity during the learning process (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016). as cited from gilbert (in gilakjani & sabouri, 2016), there are two main reasons why people disregard english pronunciation. first, this is an inherently uninteresting activity, and the results tend to be discouraging. it requires a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the teacher to keep the class engaged. second, teachers tend to conceive the subject as being extremely technical, since it is frequently taught that way in teacher training courses. some teachers need to put much effort to teach pronunciation as if it is a phonetics course which can be discouraging for both teachers and students. some course materials include impractical stress and intonation rules in which it burdens the teacher. pronunciation instruction tends to be avoided due to several factors, among others, teachers frequently feel unprepared to teach it; pronunciation instruction is not sufficiently stressed in curricula, and appropriate tools for teaching pronunciation are frequently unavailable (macdonald, 2002). due to those assumptions, english teachers do not emphasize the pronunciation teaching, and as a result, many students do not get the right pronunciation learning. some words may be pronounced incorrectly, and it will lead to misunderstanding. then, it is important for efl teachers to make the inclusion of pronunciation teaching in the class. however, training to enhance students’ pronunciation may be ineffective if the students do not recognize the significance of such needs (bakar & abdullah, 2015). therefore, efl teachers should persuade their students that the goal of pronunciation is to help them pronounce correctly enough to be understood by other people, rather than to gain a native accent (ur, 1984). on the other hand, in efl context, there are still many students who have good pronunciation and teachers who do not ignore the pronunciation teaching in the class. most students who have good english pronunciation are students who are passionate in english. for example, those who are enrolled in english department. emaliana (2010) found that students in the english department are more motivated to learn english so that is why they take english majors. they frequently use english in their daily conversation inside and outside the class. in other words, they have more exposure in english. according to (ikhsan, 2017), there are some possible factors that contribute to their good nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 274 pronunciation such as education, age, accent or mother tongue, aptitude, attitude, exposure, and motivation. those possible factors can be referral strategies for students who want to improve their english pronunciation. some studies have been conducted in exploring factors of students’ english pronunciation. however, only a few studies have concern in conducting the research on factors that contributed to good pronunciation. only a few research have looked at the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching (derwing & munro, 2005). studies by brown (1992), claire (1993), fraser (2000) and yates (2001 as cited in macdonald, 2002) said that because they lack confidence, skills, expertise, many teachers avoid dealing with pronunciation. considering the importance of having correct pronunciation, this present study has been focused on completing the previous studies and exploring the factors that may contribute to students’ good english pronunciation. more specifically, this study was conducted in english language education study program at universitas negeri malang. the results of this study will give a practical contribution to efl learners in knowing more about an effective method in learning english pronunciation. furthermore, this study can be a reference for english teachers in giving effective strategy of pronunciation teaching in the classroom. methods this study used a descriptive qualitative research design which emphasizes on how things happen, and focuses on attitude, beliefs, and thoughts of the things that happen (koh & owen, 2000). all data were analyzed based on the procedure of qualitative method and displayed qualitatively. the study was conducted in the english language education study program in universitas negeri malang, particularly in speaking for general purposes class b. this particular class was the closest resource that was suitable for the researcher’s needs in this study. however, further step, a pronunciation test, was conducted to decide the subject of the study. adjusting to this pandemic of covid-19, the test was conducted to all students using jotform web-based software. the pronunciation test was in the form of minimal pairs and read aloud. the first part was the minimal pairs containing fifteen pairs of words. the last three parts were the read aloud section which focused on the correct pronunciation, stress, and intonation. the students were asked to record while they were pronouncing the words given on jotform. each item in the first part was valued four points, and the other last three parts were valued two points each item. in order to determine the correct pronunciation, the researcher used the latest oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. the test required the students to reach a score of 90-100. there were three students who were qualified to the score, but it could not be the only consideration to choose the subjects. the scores should be matched to the performances to be selected as the subjects of the study. after getting the results of the pronunciation test, the researcher started doing the class observation to obtain the data and intensively monitor the three students who got the best scores. it was also conducted online via whatsapp group and also virtual meeting on zoom or google meet. observations were aimed at finding the strategy used by the lecturer in giving pronunciation teaching and the students’ behavior in the classroom. the researcher recorded the learning process and also took notes. the researcher also listened to the students’ recording tasks to check whether the scores matched their performance. after conducting observation for eight meetings, there were two students who were excellent at pronunciation so that they were qualified to be the subjects of the study. next, the researcher proceeded to in-depth interview to the two-selected two students. the interview process dug information related to pronunciation, interest and experience in learning pronunciation, habits and social life. according to brounéus (2011), in-depth interviewing is used to know deeper about the information of the subjects. therefore, in-depth interviewing was suitable for the researcher to dig information related to the factors that contributed to the subjects’ english pronunciation. in the process of the interview, the researcher gently guided the conversation using validated interview guide that became an extended discussion. the researcher extended the conversation if there was something to be explored more (rubin et al., 2011). this interview was performed in a semi-structured interview. thus, the researcher developed an interview guide which had been validated by the experts. it contained a list of questions that needed to be covered during the interview. another data was also collected from the lecturer to explore more about the factors that may contribute to their english pronunciation. the duration of conducting either interview or observation was as frequent as possible until it reached data saturation. according to saunders et al. (2018), data saturation is the condition when there is no additional data are found by the researcher. nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 275 it would depend on the data obtained. when it reached the data saturation, then the interview or observation can be stopped. after all data were collected, the researcher analyzed them through some steps based on gay & airasian (2000). these following three iterative or repeating steps is one way to continue with analysis: reading/memoing, describing what is happening in the setting, and categorizing the research data. the process focuses on (1) becoming familiar with the data and identifying potential themes (i.e., to get an initial sense of the data, the researcher read and wrote memos about all field notes, interview results, and observations and then when it came deeper into the analysis, the researcher began looking for recurring themes or common threads); (2) examining the data in depth to provide detailed descriptions (i.e., the researcher accurately represented the perspectives of the research participants so that the subsequent description could explain each factor that contributed to the students' english pronunciation.); and (3) categorizing and coding pieces of data and grouping them into themes (i.e., the researcher did the process of breaking down data into smaller units and then the pieces of data were categorized. the categories provided the basis for structuring the analysis and interpretation). findings and discussion the data presented here are the main findings of the factors contributing to students’ english pronunciation. the discussion is also presented based on the findings of the study. the students’ ponunciation competence the two highest scores of the test selected to be the subjects of the study, yet they were observed first by the researcher to make sure that the scores matched their performances. student a and student b were qualified to be the subjects of the study because both of them had a score of 94 and 91 respectively that were qualified for the score range. also, their performances during the classroom activities were excellent. it was proven by the lecturer’s comments on their performances, saying that they had good english pronunciation. in doing the pronunciation test of the first part, from fifteen pairs to pronounce, student a could pronounce twenty eight words correctly. whereas, the other two items were pronounced wrongly. for instance, student a pronounced “write” /raɪt/ as /wraɪt/ and the word “idle” /ˈaɪdl/ as /ˈɪdl/. in the second part which was full sentences form, she got two words pronounced wrongly. she pronounced “effect” /ɪˈfekt/ as /eˈfekt/ and “development”’ /dɪˈveləpmənt/ as /deˈveləpmənt. in the third and last part of the test, student a got perfect scores; word stress and intonation focus. meanwhile, student b in doing the pronunciation test got a little bit different results. in the first part, he could pronounced twenty eight items correctly. the other three items were pronounced wrongly. he pronounced the word “except” /ɪkˈsept/ as /ekˈsept/ and “give” /ɡɪv/ as /ɡɪf/. in the second part which was full sentences form, he got three words pronounced wrongly. he pronounced “effect” /ɪˈfekt/ as /eˈfekt/, “wringkles” /ˈrɪŋkəls/ as / ˈwrɪŋkəls/, and “development” /dɪˈveləpmənt/ as /deˈveləpmənt. in the last two parts, he pronounced all words correctly as it was instructed; word stress and intonation. the following is the result of the first part of the pronunciation test. table 1. the result of the first part of the pronunciation test no. words sa sb words sa sb 1. suite ✓ ✓ suit ✓ ✓ 2. borrow ✓ ✓ sorrow ✓ ✓ 3. sheet ✓ ✓ sit ✓ ✓ 4. poor ✓ ✓ pour ✓ ✓ 5. accept ✓ ekˈsept except ✓ ✓ 6. hurt ✓ ✓ heart ✓ ✓ 7. greet ✓ ✓ great ✓ ✓ 8. lounge ✓ ✓ launch ✓ ✓ 9. force ✓ ✓ fourth ✓ ✓ 10. write /wraɪt/ ✓ right ✓ ✓ 11. idle ✓ ✓ idol /ˈɪdl/ ✓ 12. morning ✓ ✓ mourning ✓ ✓ 13. shore ✓ ✓ sure ✓ ✓ 14. give ✓ /ɡɪf/ gift ✓ ✓ 15. sheep ✓ ✓ ship ✓ ✓ notes: s (a/b) = student (a/b); ✓ = correct item; = wrong item nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 276 as mentioned earlier, the subjects’ performance during the learning process in the class was also considered to be taken into account by doing some observations in order to know the subjects’ development and made sure their performances matched their scores. during the observations which took eight meetings, the students were asked by the lecturer to make a voice recording of certain topics given. altogether, there were four recordings. the assignments became the consideration of the researcher to decide the subjects of this study as well. the factors contributing to students’ english pronunciation education the data collected from the observations were analyzed to identify the pronunciation teaching in the class. as learning pronunciation is crucial for the elt students to know and even master it, pronunciation teaching cannot be neglected anymore. from the observations that the researcher collected, it could be summed up that the teacher employed reflective practice methods. in applying this method, the lecturer helped the students to improve their english pronunciation skill by analyzing their own pronunciation after making a voice recording. the lecturer used this method from the first until the sixth meeting. the students were asked to speak about some topics provided by the lecturer such as covid-19, likes and dislikes, giving opinion on issues, and live after the pandemic by recording it. then, they were asked to re-listen to their own voice recording and made an audio version as the reflection of the previous audio. the lecturer recommended the students to use monolingual dictionaries in checking their pronunciation, but she also gave them necessary feedback. by using this method, they were expected to be able to analyse their own pronunciation in the future. in addition, the subjects said that their skills were improved by implementing this method instead of the other method they have got when they were in elementary to high school which was repetition method. it is a method where the teacher repeats a word as often as possible so that the words will stick to the students’ memories (wirawan, 2019). by recognizing their own mistakes, as they said in the interview, it made them remember more the mistakes and took them as valuable experience that later would not be repeated anymore. exposure based on the results of the interview, both subjects of the study had similar exposure in learning english pronunciation by watching movies, tv show, or cartoon films in english, listening to music or podcast; joining english competitions, looking for the pronunciation of words through google translate, and repeating the pronunciation of words right after listening to some new words. as student a was interviewed, she said that almost every day she watched movies, tv shows, or cartoon films when she was a child yet now she does it once a week. in addition, both subjects believed that english pronunciation can be learned by having much exposure. even sometimes many people find it difficult in learning english pronunciation because of their mother tongue, they said that it could not be the reason why people cannot pronounce english words correctly. moreover, they said it would not significantly influence someone’s english pronunciation skill because every skill can be sharpened by having a lot of exposure to english such as watching movie, listening to music or podcast, talking in english, repeating english words, and any other related english activities. thus, both subjects suggested that these activities can be the references to those who want to learn or even master english pronunciation. environment both subjects had very supportive environment in learning english such as family and friends. based on the interview to sudent a, she said that her mother had a good background knowledge in english. her mother liked to use english in all daily activities they had at home or outside the house. one of the examples that student a gave was when her mom asked her about something in their daily life, she would use english: “al, where did you put the salt?”, said her mom, and then she answered it using english as well, “on the small table, mom”. besides, she also has a friend from australia when she was in junior high school that she still kept in touch with. they always used english to communicate and student a learned a lot from him. even though she did not know exactly the phonemic transcription of the words, but she could speak english in correct pronunciation because she already familiarized herself with the correct pronunciation. meanwhile, student b also has a brother that helped him improve his english pronunciation. he liked to have a discussion with his brother using english, for instance discussing the meaning of a new word. this kind of habit could gradually improve his english pronunciation. nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 277 motivation another important thing in learning english is a strong motivation coming from inside. based on the interview, student a said that she learned english because of her ambition to have an opportunity to study abroad. that is the reason why she was eager to master all skills in english, including pronunciation. on the other hand, student b said that he was always eager to learn a new language, especially english. he also mentioned that it made him more confident if he could master english. both of them had their own motivations that drive them to learn english pronunciation seriously. discussion based on the results of the data analysis above, the researcher interpreted the factors that can seriously improve the students’ english pronunciation. the researcher summed up that reflective practice method can be another alternative to improve the students’ english pronunciation skill. a lot of input or exposure to english can also help them to be more advanced in english pronunciation. education there are many ways or methods that can be used to teach or learn english pronunciation. based on the findings, the subjects said that repetition is one of the methods that they were familiar most since they were in elementary school until senior high school. during the learning process in the class for eight meetings, reflective practice could be another method that also gave contribution in teaching or learning english pronunciation. this method is worth for teachers to implement in the classroom as the subjects said that reflective practice method was preferable than the previous learning methods such as repetition. reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one action in order to engage in a continual learning (mathew et al., 2017). they also added that one of the most compelling arguments for reflective practice is that experience alone does not always imply learning since deliberate reflection on experience is essential. having the experience only is not enough to be a lesson, yet it is needed to reflect on what have been experienced in learning then it will be a valuable lesson. it is in line with the statement that prior pronunciation experiences may have an impact on students’ ability to succeed in english pronunciation (florez, 1998). it means that having a lot of experience in the knowledge of english will give influence to the students in mastering english pronunciation. experience is the fondation and source of learning because noteworthy individual learning experiences can be a capable drive in learning (boud et al., 1993). exposure according to al zoubi (2018), exposure is defined as the interaction that the learners have with the target language that they are aiming to learn. based on the findings, the subjects often did activities that helped them to improve their english pronunciation, either inside or outside the class. according to benson (2013), outside-of-class language exposure term as any kind of learning that takes place outside the classroom and involves self-instruction, naturalistic learning or self-directed naturalistic learning. it means that it is not enough to get exposure from the institution or school only. students should have more exposure outside the class by having a lot of input such as listen a lot, practice a lot with either native or non-native speakers, and get feedback from peers or teachers. it is in line with murcia et al. (2010)’s statement that it will be easier to learn good pronunciation when you have a lot of exposure to the target language. environment based on the results of the study, the environment factors are divided into two aspects, family and peers. the students’ first environment is their family, and it has an impact on them as individuals. the students will receive influence from how their family educate them. this is in line with kurniawan et al. (2018)’s statement that parents play a big role because they are directly related to children and give influence on children’s learning success. in this context, the more family give the knowledge about english, the more the students get better understanding in english, for instance english pronunciation. it is also supported by kurniawan et al.'s (2018) findings that the students’ learning performance is also influenced by their family environment. thus, a good family environment will significantly encourage students to achieve more. it serves as a motivation that will drive students to do something they are passionate in, thus students will be more driven to do well in their learning process. in addition, the fact that the subjects have very supportive friends also contribute to their improvement. it is in line with wentzel (1998)’s statement, relationships with peers certainly can have nur cholisah, sintha tresnadewi, rahmati putri yaniafari | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 278 a significant impact on the students' overall emotional well-being at school. it was proven by the opinions from the subjects on the interview that they were more comfortable to have an english conversation with friends, especially with friends who had good english background knowledge, and discussed it if there were something unclear. by doing that conversation, it could improve their confidence in speaking english with correct pronunciation. motivation the other factor that may contribute to students’ english pronunciation is the internal motivation. dehkordi (2017) mentioned that motivation as one of psychological factors that has always played a crucial role in language teaching and learning. it gives a significant simultaneous effect on students’ learning motivation (kurniawan et al., 2018). it is proven by student a who has strong ambition to go abroad, which gives her strong motivation to master english, especially the pronunciation. it makes her always practice in pronouncing words and do any other activities related to english that makes her pronunciation get better. it shows that the higher motivation leads to higher language achievement. but in the data, the researcher also found that not having strong motivation does not always mean people cannot master english, as what student b experienced in learning english pronunciation. it is different from what student a wants to achieve; student b thinks that having a good pronunciation will make him cool. it also makes him indirectly learn english pronunciation by doing some activities the same as student a. conclusion this study has shown that there are four big factors contributing to the students’ english pronunciation: education, exposure, environment, and motivation. those factors come from either internal or external contributions. having a lot of input is the key to be successful in learning english pronunciation. one of the effective ways is that implementing suitable learning method such as reflective practice. the subjects proved that reflective practice method can give them better experience in improving their english pronunciation skill. thus, it is suggested for other teachers to implement this method in the learning process to help the students improve their english pronunciation. moreover, those who want to master english pronunciation can apply the method as their daily routine activity. this study also suggests that future researcher might explore further about the effectiveness of implementing reflective practice method in improving the students’ english pronunciation skill, using the pronunciation test to assess the students’s english pronunciation skill, and categorizing the words used in the test. references al zoubi, s. m. 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(2019). effect of repetition method on teaching english process in classroom. 3(3), 143– 146. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 41 elt forum 11(1) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature from the philippines and the world: learners’ views and reflections richard e. parcon1 1tañong high school, deped marikina philippines article info ________________ article history: received on 9 december 2021 approved on 25 march 2022 published on 30 march 2022 ________________ keywords: task-based instruction; language teaaching; literature teaaching; 21st century literature; ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aimed to determine the learners' views and reflections on task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature from the philippines and the world subject. specifically, the following objectives were attained: to determine the understanding of learners in the concept of task and task-based instruction, to know learners' perceptions in the implementation of task and task-based instruction used by the teacher in teaching 21st century literature subject, to point out the problems encountered by the students and how the students overcome those problems in performing task-based activities. 73 grade 11 students served as the respondents of this study. using the descriptive method, specifically survey and interview, the study revealed that most students clearly understood the concept of task and task-based instruction. however, some students only agreed that performing tasks and the teacher's task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature use the english language. the majority of the respondents strongly agreed that task and task-based instruction is implemented in their 21st century literature class. external factors, language used in the instructions written in the module, interest in literature and familiarity with literary materials, and difficulty level of taskbased activities in the module are problems that the respondents encountered during the implementation of task-based instruction in their 21st century literature class. while seeking classmates' and teacher's assistance, teacher's motivation and teaching strategies, and self-initiative and motivation are the means for the students to overcome the difficulties they encountered in implementing the task and task-based instruction in 21st century literature class.  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 tañong high school, deped marikina ncr, philippines 1802 e-mail: richardparcon04@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 42 introduction as the call in delivering quality instruction in the classroom, teachers are doing their best to use instructional practices to help the students learn new ways and ways of coping with the demand of 21st-century opportunities. teachers do tailor the learning objectives to their motivation, discussion, and performance tasks up to the assessment to deliver their lessons effectively. in addition, 21st-century teaching and learning require new strategies and dedication to successful teaching and learning. teachers need to implement various strategies and practices in helping the learners to think critically regarding the world they are living in, immerse themselves with digital and social media, and utilize collaboration and communication skills needed for the learning environment. literature can help the learners to achieve 21st-century skills through reading literary materials suited to the learner's ages and interests. therefore the goal of every literature teacher is to teach the learners to love literature. traditionally, literature was considered the primary source in teaching language classes during the grammar-translation method (khatib et al., 2011). it also asserts that literature is life, regarded as the entrance in the outside world, and can be a means of knowing who the people are, what they are, and what they used to be (magulod, 2018). moreover, teaching and reading literary text play an essential role in learning the english language, such as improving communicative competence and the best tool for intensive and extensive reading, which can help the learners to improve their reading skills (khan & alasmari, 2018). in the era of globalization, a classroom can promote cultural and intercultural awareness through teaching literature. literature can flourish sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence through its authenticity as reflected in the communicative model (khatib & nourzadeh, 2011). in teaching english through literature, the l2 can be considered an additional corpus that answers a grammar based on firm rules and focuses on a fixed canon of literary text as a source, tool, and model for composition (ghani & din, 2017). experts in literature teaching suggested some techniques in integrating literature in the classroom; first, teachers should work for students' connection with literary texts. second, literature should be a source for language learning in language classrooms and not as an end itself. third, the involvement of literary texts does not mean the elimination of other literary texts. fourth, students should have the opportunity to utilize the literary language in innovative ways. fifth, teachers should secure the accessibility of literary materials for their language classrooms. sixth, teachers integrate macro skills in teaching literature in the classroom. lastly, teachers should give scaffold assistance with literary materials (khatib & nourzadeh, 2011). the study about instructional practices in teaching literature revealed that instructional practices conducted by the teachers in teaching literature should be connected to the learner's development as reflected in the goal and instructional objectives of the lesson (mustakim et al., 2018). while the findings on the study regarding the approaches in teaching literature employed by senior high school teachers found out that the ultimate objective in teaching literature is to let the learners appreciate the content through the use of various approaches reflected from the techniques utilized by the teachers (parojenog, 2020). regarding the study on the relationship of literature-based activities on learner's emotional intelligence showed that literature-based activities had a positive impact on learner's emotional intelligence as well as the measures of fluency, complexity, and accuracy also had a positive correlation with students' scores in the test (shiriyan & nejadansari, 2014). the reader-based post-structuralist analysis method in teaching literature helps learners reform into their cognitive structure and perceive the world from multiple perspectives (yaqoob, 2011). while literature use in efl teaching and learning process believed that short stories are considered the most effective means of teaching literature and language classes (pardede, 2021). in studying literature regarding the contemporary environment and accessing its impact on educational policies and curriculum may affect the choice of literary materials and literature itself as a desirable curriculum (dazz, 2014). in the philippine context, particularly with the implementation of the enhanced basic education act of 2013, also known as the k-12 program, one of the core subjects that the senior high school students need to take is 21st century literature from the philippines and the world. as reflected in k-12 curriculum guide on 21st century literature, this subject intends to immerse the learners in appreciation and critical study of 21st-century literature from the philippines and the world comprising many dimensions, genres, elements, structure, contexts, richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 43 and traditions (21st century literature, curriculum guide). with this, teachers can choose the teaching strategies that they can use to teach this subject. these are the suggested approaches in teaching literature; information-based approach, personal-response, language-based, pharaphrastic approach, moral-philosophical, and stylistic approach (mustakim et al., 2018). but, in teaching literature, task-based instruction can also be used by the teachers. the use of language tasks improves the learner's communicative ability (bhandari, 2020). in addition, taskbased instruction aims to develop the learner's linguistic repertoire of l2 by letting the learners get involved in classroom activities using authentic materials (nhem, 2020). in line with literature teaching, task-based instruction is anchored with whole literary engagement wherein task is defined as “piece of language that linguistically, physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, critically, meaningfully, creatively, consciously, or subconsciously, aesthetically, spontaneously, motivationally, and experientially involves learners in the process of learning.” (khatib et al., 2011, p.216). therefore, literature is a basis where the whole engagement can be easily achieved given that the teachers consider various ways in which students can be wholly involved. in order to fully involve and immerse the 21st century learners in learning and appreciating literary materials, the cited study aboved introduced task-based instruction in teaching world literature. based on this empirical observation, the researcher was prompted to conduct this initial study by determining the views and reflections of learners on the use of task-based instruction in teaching the subject of 21st century literature from the philippines and the world. specifically, it sought to answer the following research questions. 1. how do students understand the concepts of task and task-based instruction their teacher uses in teaching 21st century literature from the philippines and the world? 2. how do students perceive the implementation of task-based instruction in their 21st century literature from the philippines and world subject? 3. what are the problems that the students encountered in performing task-based activities? 4. how do students overcome the constraints that they encounter in performing taskbased activities? this study can serve as an additional contribution to teaching literature course in this 21st-century era. it can help the teachers to have various options or teaching strategies that they can use in teaching literature. the focus of the study is determining the learners' views and reflections on the use of task-based instruction. it will serve as a guide to design an instruction that is appropriate to the needs and knowledge of the learners regarding task-based instruction. lastly, it will serve as a baseline for future researchers to conduct studies regarding various teaching literature strategies. methods this study used a descriptive method to gather pertinent information relevant to this research. the descriptive method identifies attributes of a particular phenomenon based on an observational basis (creswell, 2009). the quantitative technique through the descriptive survey was used to determine the respondents' understanding and perception of task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature. qualitative technique through open-ended interview was utilized to determine the constraints that respondents encountered in performing task-based activities and their way to overcome the limitations they encountered. the respondents in this study were the grade 11 students from the two sections of accountancy business and management strand and 1 section from technical vocational livelihood track-bread and pastry strand of tañong high school in marikina city. they were enrolled in 21st century literature from the philippines and world subject during the second semester of 2020-2021. table 1 presents the distribution of respondents according to their track and strand. as reflected in table 1, 34 and 14 respondents were from accountancy business and management strand while 25 were from the tvl track. the researcher used a total of 73 respondents in this study. richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 44 table 1. distribution of respondents grade and section track and strand number of respondents percentage 11-consistency academic track/accountancy business and management strand 34 46.58 11-competency academic track/accountancy business and management strand 14 19.18 11-diplomacy technical vocational livelihood track-bread and pastry strand 25 34.25 total 73 100 the researcher used two instruments to gather the data needed—the likert questionnaire adopted from the study of (jeon & hahn, 2006). originally the instrument was composed of likert-type questionnaires with 15 item questions. seven (7) questions focused on teacher’s understanding of task and task-based and eight (8) questions focused on teachers’ views in implementing task-based instruction in language classroom. to fit this questionnaire with this study, the researcher modified the questionnaire and integrated some literature and literature teaching aspects and contextualized it for learners since the original questionnaire is intended for teachers. from fifteen (15) item questions, it became sixteen (16) item questions. five (5) questions were intended to measure the understanding of students about task and task-based instruction and eleven (11) questions to determine students' views in the implementation of task-based instruction. the second instrument was the researcher-made open-ended questionnaire for the interview to determine the problems the respondents encountered during the implementation of task-based instruction and how they overcame those identified problems. the researcher sought the assistance of experts in literature teaching and task-based instruction to validate the content of the adapted research instrument. in gathering the data, the researcher first sought permission from the office of schools division superintendent of division of marikina to conduct the study. after the validation of instrument, the researcher administered the survey questionnaire through an online platform, and interviewed the respondents through the google meet platform. the researcher conducted all these procedures to comply with the minimum health standard protocol guidelines to prevent the covid-19 virus. the responses of the students were transcribed, coded, formulate the recurring themes based on the responses of participants in the interview, then the data were analyzed, and interpreted. findings and discussion students' understanding of the concept of task and task-based instruction table 2 shows that 38 or 52% of the respondents strongly agreed with the first indicator, a task is a communicative goal, while 34 or 47% of the respondents only agreed. only one respondent disagreed on the first indicator. in the second indicator, 40 or 59% of the respondents strongly agreed that taskbased instruction implemented in the classroom is composed of pre-task, during the task, and posttask. meanwhile, 32 or 44% of respondents agreed and only one respondent disagreed in the second indicator. in response to indicator 4, 40 or 42% of the respondents agreed that a task primarily focuses on meaning. while in indicator 5, most of the respondents (39 or 53%) strongly agreed that the objectives of the lesson were attained through performing the task given. lastly, in response to indicator 5, most of the respondents only agreed (43 or 59%) that a task in any lesson/activity used the target language (english) by the learners themselves. as manifested in the survey result regarding the students' understanding of the concept of task and task-based instruction, most of the students showed a clear understanding of the concept of task and task-based instruction. this clear understanding of task and task-based instruction was made possible by systematically discussing the literature lessons with the students. by following the cycle, pre-task, during task, and post-task, used by the teacher, task-based instruction in the literature classroom was already familiar to the students. with regard to the tasks implemented in their richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 45 literature class, students perceived it as student-centered by nature because the teacher included them in planning the task and allowed them to do the task gradually until they became independent in doing the task. it also reflected that the students understand the task they were performing in their literature class clearly defined in the goal of the literature lesson. table 2. students' understanding of the concept of tasks and task-based instruction item sa % a % d % sd % a task is communicative goal directed 38 52 34 47 1 1 0 0 task-based instruction is based on student-centered approach 43 59 28 38 2 3 0 0 task-based instruction implemented in the class comprises pre-task (lecture or discussion provided before doing the performance task). during task (the teacher gives the activities, guided with instructions discussed in the pre-task, and shows the students doing the task). post-task (students' output of performance is being assessed and evaluated using a rubric intended for a specific topic 40 55 32 44 1 1 0 0 a task involves primary focus on meaning 29 40 42 58 2 3 0 0 a task performed in the class is clearly defined in the goal of the lesson 39 53 33 45 1 1 0 0 a task in any lesson/activity used the target language (english) by the learners 27 37 43 59 3 4 0 0 on the other hand, it also observed that the student only agreed that a task in any lesson or activity used the target language (english) in literature class. this understanding of students on this specific indicator is affected by the language used in online classrooms. since there is an implementation of a distance learning class, learners are encouraged to speak in the language they are comfortable with, especially when conducting an online class to promoted active participation in online classroom discussion. however, it does not mean that the target language, english, is not promoted or used. based on their responses in the activities and output in their task, most students used english. with this, the students need to have a positive attitude regarding the concept of task and task-based instruction to achieve the desired outcome (hadi, 2013). moreover, a communicative approach is appropriate to promote a better understanding of task and task-based instruction in teaching the macro skills or teaching literature (du et al., 2017). it also observes that the students participating in task-based classroom activities improve students' interest in and motivation in learning the lesson and learning the target language (hadi, 2013; mozgalina, 2015; park, 2012). students' perceptions on the implementation of task and task-based instruction in their 21st century literature class table 3. students' perception of the implementation of task-based instruction in their 21st century literature class item sa % a % d % sd % my teacher presents the learning competency and specific objectives before the implementation of task-based instruction in the 21st century literature class 47 64 25 34 1 1 0 i'm very interested in the implementation of task-based instruction in 21st century literature class 33 45 40 55 0 0 task-based instruction in 21st century literature class provides me a flexible atmosphere and environment in promoting target language (english) use 38 52 35 48 0 0 task-based instruction helps me to activate my needs and interest in doing the tasks given in our 21st century literature class 39 53 33 45 1 1 0 task-based instruction in 21st century literature class helps me to develop and integrate my skills in the distance learning 35 48 38 52 0 0 richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 46 task-based instruction in 21st century literature class requires me to use more time in preparation of doing the task compared to the traditional approach used in the class 39 53 34 47 0 0 task-based instruction in 21st century literature helps me to have a deeper understanding of literary terms 35 48 38 52 0 0 task-based instruction in 21st century literature class provides me an avenue to appreciate various literary materials used in the class 41 56 32 44 0 0 task-based instruction helps me to activate my critical and analytical thinking skills in analyzing literary materials. 37 51 36 49 0 0 task-based instruction helps me to create my literary materials during their implementation in the classroom 38 52 34 47 1 1 0 in using task-based instruction, my teacher provides appropriate materials (module and video clips of literary materials) that we can use as a guide in performing various tasks in our 21st century literature class. 41 56 32 44 0 0 table 3 presents the respondents' perceptions in the implementation task and task-based instruction in their 21st century literature from the philippines and the world subject. in indicator 1, most of the respondents (47 or 64%) strongly agreed that their teacher presents the learning competency and specific objectives before implementing task-based instruction in their class. in response to indicator 2, 40 or 55% of the respondents only agreed to implement task-based instruction in their 21st-century literature class. while 38 or 52% of the respondents strongly agreed that task-based instruction in 21st-century literature class provides them a flexible atmosphere and environment in promoting target language (english) use. for indicator 4, most of the respondents (39 or 53%) strongly agreed that task-based instruction helped them activate their needs and interest in doing the task given in their 21st century literature class. in response to indicator 5, only 38 or 52% of the respondents agreed that task-based instruction in 21st century literature class helps them develop and integrate their skills in distance learning. while 39 or 53% of the respondents strongly agreed that task-based instruction in 21st century literature class requires them to use more time to prepare for the task than the traditional approach used in the classroom. regarding indicator 7, most of the respondents (38 or 52%) only agreed that task-based instruction helped them have a deeper understanding of literary terms. in response to indicator 8, 41 or 56% of the respondents strongly agreed that task-based instruction in their 21st century literature class provided them the avenue to appreciate various literary materials used in the class. for indicator 9, 37 or 51% strongly agreed that task-based instruction helped them activate their critical and analytical thinking skills in analyzing literary materials. while 38 or 52% of the respondents strongly agreed that task-based instruction helped them create their literary materials during its implementation in the distance learning classroom. lastly, 41 or 56% of the respondents strongly agreed that in using task-based instruction, their teacher provided them with appropriate materials (module and video lesson) that they can use as a guide in performing various tasks in their 21 st century literature class. based on the survey result regarding the perceptions on the implementation of task and taskbased instruction in the 21st century literature class, students strongly agreed on the majority of the indicators presented. it shows that the teacher provided the learning competencies and the specific objectives of the lesson. through task-based instruction, students were able to arouse their interest and motivation in doing the task given in the 21st century literature class. moreover, the teacher provided ample time for the students while they were doing the task given. however, some students were not using the target language fluently. it also observed that task-based instruction provided a flexible atmosphere and environment to gradually learn to use the target language (english) in their communication in online classroom discussion or written communication while doing their module and written tasks. it also shows that the students asserted that they appreciate the literary materials discussed in their 21st century literature class through performing various tasks related to the literary materials and anchored with the learning competencies and their specific objectives. in addition, by performing the task and with the help of task-based instruction in 21st century literature class, students developed and activated their critical and analytical skills interpreting literature materials. richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 47 this observation led them to create their literary materials by integrating ict to create and disseminate their literary materials. lastly, with the help of appropriate instructional materials aligned with the learning objectives, students perceived that this strategy helped them appreciate task-based instruction and 21st century literature using the task implemented. students' willingness to adapt another strategy used by the teacher to teach specific subjects, especially task-based instruction, showed a positive effect in developing their interest in language teaching (hashim et al., 2014). in addition, tasks used in the classroom should have a sense of completeness that the improvisation of a literary text can do within its various forms or levels (khatib et al., 2011). with the help of literature and literature-based teaching, students can get tangible benefits from exposure to other literature. it can serve as a new language learning experience in improving engagement with others, improving personal development, and becoming responsible for regulating their learning (tuğrul, 2021). problems encountered by the students in performing task-based activities in their 21st century literature class external factors "loss of internet connection" "my problems were about the signal and load, then that's it" "the cellphone used is not good." "sometimes i do not attend the class nor answer the module because my sister and i are sharing materials have the same schedule of the class." “ang problema ko lang po ay pag di ako nakaka attend sa klase kaya pag dating sa module ang iba di ko masagutan” "poor internet" as reflected in their responses, technical difficulties are problems they encountered in performing task-based activities in their 21st century literature class. with the abrupt changes in the learning mode, students need to abreast themselves in using technology and other means to adapt to the new normal education. consequently, learners encounter problems such as internet connection because the setup is in distance learning class, lack of signal, and gadget for the online class. this result is the same in the situation in which the learning environment may affect the learners' learning outcomes, such as school supplies or materials and inappropriate learning place or hub, which can distract students from attending the class or performing various tasks (gilavand, 2016). the language used in the instructions written in the module "there are some instructions that aren't clear to me." "sometimes, i don't understand what to do." "sometimes i don't understand the instructions written in the module, so i have to read and study the module many times to understand it." in this part, the students found the language used in the instructions written in the module difficult to understand. the use of language is one of the considerations that writers and even teachers should consider in doing instructional materials so that the student can easily understand the module's instructions and context. the importance of using appropriate language may assist the learners in comprehending the materials, the instructions in the tasks, and engage the learners in collaborative dialogue in the online classroom may enhance the language learning among the students (wencheng et al., 2011). interest in literature and familiarity in the literary materials "the only problem is that i'm not really interested in literature." "sometimes, i'm not familiar with the lesson or the topic." "understanding the context knowing author context and comparing and contrasting between genres." richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 48 the students' responses show that some of them are not interested in literature or reading literary text. this is the common reason students are having hard time learning and appreciating literature because they are not interested in it or have a passion for reading. literature promotes students' creativity and increases their emotional awareness. moreover, using literature in language teaching encourages students to read and experience it for their enrichment (ceylan, 2016). difficulty level of task-based activities in the module "difficulty in making mp4-video format adaptation and also creative digital picture presentation." "i found some of the tasks were difficult to do." "since it requires us to do the task with the use of technology, there were tasks that were too difficult to do." the responses clearly stated that the level of difficulty was considered one of the students' problems. some activities or tasks given in the module require technology to come up with an output. higher skills are also needed to do the task required. therefore, as early as junior high school, teachers should expose the learners to the tasks that measure their skills and abilities. in the study regarding the perspective on second language task difficulty, teachers should consider the linguistic background or factors of the students in providing a certain difficulty level of the task. also, modification of taskdifficulty should consider the conceptual factors such as: reducing the number of items in the task, including more visual representation, level of students, and providing rewards (révész & gurzynskiweiss, 2016). students' means to overcome the problem they encountered in performing task-based activities seeking classmates and teacher's assistance "i will ask my teacher if they can do the task. in solo, and ask clearly way." "by asking my teacher how to do it." "since our teacher is always there to help, i always him to clarify and re-explain the instructions and tasks in a simple language." "i always admire how the teacher explains the instructions and tasks in a way that we can understand it." "since i belong to the modular class, i always rely on the recorded video discussion of our teacher posted on the facebook page and google classroom." based on these responses, the students sought the assistance and guidance of their teachers in doing various tasks in their 21st century literature class. this strategy helped them to do the tasks and comply with the output needed in every lesson. the study's findings regarding teacher's and student's scaffolding in an efl classroom revealed that not only can the teachers help the students, but a student can also successfully scaffold their peers. one must understand that every language learner has different strengths and weaknesses. therefore, the teacher should use it properly in the classroom (samana, 2013). teacher's motivation and teaching strategies "i started to love literature because of the guide and teacher. "i positively answer the module because of how our teacher taught a lesson and always motivated us to the tasks by relating the topic in our real-life situation." "whether it is online or modular class, the strategy of the teacher used in teaching 21 st century literature is effective because the difficult tasks in the module became easy for us." "i always listen attentively to our teacher during the discussion." richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 49 it is observed that students start to love literature. students are also interested in doing the tasks in 21st century literature lessons. it is one of the teacher’s strategies in motivating students in performing a specific task. task-based teaching and learning reinforce the learners to learn and absorb language skills and develop their creativity. moreover, interaction is also an effective means to achieve significant results by stimulating learners' motivation and willingness to learn and promote english language (pietri, 2015). self-initiative and motivation "i overcame my problem in doing task-based activities by focusing on the tasks." "i try my best to do my task. i searched if i did not understand the question." "there's none, but for me, i can possibly overcome it by simply asking related questions that are beneficial in discovering accurate and valid information needed." "by researching that certain topic." "first self -confidence second understanding of what is being read third listening to class." "by thinking that in every problem, there is always a solution." "i buy loads of data." "just focus on the module." "i give myself time to relax and think clearly when i'm okay then i do chores." i gave time and effort to doing activities/tasks that our teacher gave. and i want to improve myself and be the best version of myself while doing all the tasks. i was thinking of the positive that would happen to me, and i put aside the problem i am facing now because i'm a working student, i can't participate in the online class, so i look at our fb page or google classroom to find out what to do, and i pass my output even late i prioritize the easy lastly, most of the students responded that the strategy they are using to overcome the problems they encountered in 21st century literature is self-initiation. it observes that students are doing their strategy to cope with the assigned tasks and lessen the difficulty level that they experience in performing tasks. this situation is similar to the study findings of fostering language learning through literature and task-based instruction. the use of reading guide and self-initiative of the students, the student's motivation to accomplish the task-based reading and writing project was high and had a positive impact on improving their language skills (arboleda-arboleda & castro-garcés, 2019). conclusions based on the findings of the study, the researcher drawn the following conclusions: first, as reflected in the result of the study, students showed a clear understanding of the concept of task and taskbased instruction; however, some students only agreed that performing tasks and the task-based instruction used by the teacher in teaching 21st century literature use the target language (english). therefore, teachers should intensify and maximize the use of the english language in discussion and in performing the given task. second, most respondents strongly agreed that task and task-based instruction is implemented in their 21st century literature class. so based on the perceptions of the respondents, the implementation of tasks and task-based instruction is an effective strategy for them. third, external factors, language used in the instructions written in the module, interest in literature and familiarity with literary materials, and difficulty level of task-based activities in the module are problems that the respondents encountered during the implementation of task-based instruction in their 21st century literature class. therefore, teachers should consider these factors in producing instructional materials and teaching 21st century literature classes among the students. lastly, seeking classmates' and teacher's assistance, teacher's motivation and teaching strategies, and selfinitiative and motivation are the means for the students to overcome the difficulties they encountered in implementing the task and task-based instruction in 21st century literature class. this study does not intend to shift the paradigm of teaching literature using task-based instruction firmly. it only reveals that based on the learner's views and perceptions, task-based instruction used by their teacher in teaching 21st century literature can be considered as a different approach to teach literature, specifically in the 21st-century era. though literature teaching is classroom-oriented and task-based instruction is quite a different concept, it is recommended that richard e. parcon | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 50 language teachers and literature teachers embrace the use of task-based instruction to develop language skills needed and help the students appreciate literature well (nawaz, 2019). since this initial study focused on learners' views and understanding regarding task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature, aspiring researchers may conduct a quantitative study to determine the effectiveness of task-based instruction in teaching 21st century literature. acknowledgement the researcher would like to express their grateful appreciation to the deped marikina specifically ms. sheryll t. gayola, the schools division superintendent and mr. antonio g. andres, school principal for allowing the researcher to conduct the study in tañong high school grade 11 students who served as the participants of the study. references arboleda-arboleda, a., & castro-garcés, a. 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(2011). reader and text: literary theory and teaching of literature in the twenty-first century. 2011 international conference on languages, literature, and linguistics. http://ipedr.com/vol26/102-iclll%202011-l10180.pdf microsoft word 6. flavius dos anjos copyedited.docx putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 50 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt deforeignizing the english language: national identities making the world language flávius almeida dos anjos centro de cultura, linguagens e tecnologias aplicadas, universidade federal do recôncavo da bahia, brazil article info ________________ article history: received in 30 november 2020 approved in 15 march 2021 published in 30 march 2021 ________________ keywords: deforeignization; english; teaching. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is a brief reflection on the varieties of english around the world. as it stands, english is one of the most popular languages in the world. english is arguably the language that most people seek to learn, hence the popularity. the fact that it has numerous people learning this language, national identities have converged to change it as the world language. the objective of this study is to advocate an epistemology of deforeignization of this language, based on the assumption that many people have recreated it naturally, in lexical, grammatical, and phonological terms. ‘to deforeignize’ the english language, it is necessary to allow the recreation of this language, so that it can be adapted to the learners’ linguistic and cultural patterns. for this purpose, some data are shared. the relavance of this study lies is the possibility to shed light in a topic which still needs to be reflected, mainly because it can support the understanding of how the teaching and learning process of english should be conducted. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 rua benjamin constant, 15, historical center, cachoeira town, bahia, brazil, code – 44300-000 e-mail: flaviusanjos@gmail.com flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 51 introduction it is a well-known fact that english has become a world language, due to the power of its speakers, mainly the economic and military ones (crystal, 2012). there is no use in denying, the fact that english is almost everywhere, with more than 1 billion and 350 million non-native speakers living with this language every day, in numerous settings. thus, english has bursted into different areas of social life, that is why it is possible to say, it is the language of science, of diplomacy, of tourism, of cartoon, of films, of the internet etc. people have now bee attracted to learn english. this has come as no surprise knowing that english is the most commom language studied in the world, which, according to the washington post, there are 1.5 billion learners. now that english has countless leaners around the world, it is safe to assume that national identitie have converged to change this language, making english as the world language. as seidlhofer (2011) points out, english is not only an international language, but the international language. obviously, ‘the’ instead of ‘an’ has a meaning, especially with implications for the teaching of this language, because as it has already escaped from the hands of north americans, australians, new zealand and all those who believed to have ownership on it, it gives us, at the same time, clear signs of untying with its roots (rajagopalan, 2014), reaching the status of world language. for that reason, this paper is about how and why english can be considered as the world language. therefore, the purpose of this study is to share some information on how this language has been used and modified by different people, in different countries, that it has cemented its current status as the world language. i have called this ‘deforeignization of the english language’, to refer to a set of changes, adjustments, and recreations of the emnglish language by different speakers. my purpose is to present the underlying assumption that national identities, in many parts of the world, have recreated this language. the relavance of this study lies in the possibility to shed some light on a topic which still needs to be discussed, mainly because it can support the understanding of how the teaching and learning process of english should be conducted aligned with its current status. many english learners feel awkward when they speak english. in regard to this, i had conducted an ethonographic research (anjos, 2018), with 91 undergraduated students, in brazil. the results suggested that some of them had negative attitudes when they had to speak english. to put in a context, one of them said to feel ‘inferior’, when he had to use english. others used the terms ‘insecure’, ‘ashamed’ and even ‘illiterate’ concerning the same issue. thus, these data open rooms for researchers to ask why students had these kinds of feelings. the same study pointed that 14 per cent of them overvalued the native speaker of english and 5 per cent said one should imitate these people. the data suggested as well that english learners had the desire to speak just like natives and yet that non-natives feared to express themselves in english. this way, one of my first insights, regarding this issue, was the position of these two identities, being confronted: native and non-native. thus, i concluded that identity was a core issue to figure out learners’ feelings, because these feelings were related to a notion of supremacy, what might impede learners of expressing themselves from the locus of their own identity, impeding them of using a local, a national discourse through the english language, to communicate themselves (anjos, 2019). i realized this fact was related with power relationship, since learners of english as a foreign language and english native speakers have been put themselves in confrontation. i mean, these are settings of true subjugation toward the new learners of english, in which new ways of using this language receive a stigma of inferior. that is why, in many educational contexts, the ideal model, where the native speaker is built as a user/owner of a homogenous, perfect language, is spread, disseminating an implied message that to speak a good english is to speak the north american and british models. i confront this assertive, since as english has followed a path of deterritorialisation, the way is opened to make it closer to the new users. i mean, a post-modern approach to teaching english should take into account the fact that a great number of learners of english has the possibility to change it. in this respect, galloway and rose (2018) highlight that, in addition to their repertoirs, many learners have changed english, what has a very significative impact on this language. according to them, this language has not been spoken anymore as the first language to those who were born in the hegemonic countries, such as the united states and the united kingdom. this is aligned with the fact that the spread of english can promote the assumption of new users and owners; what has taken out the native speaker, the enigmatic being (rajagopalan, 2004), from the position of the only one who owns the language custody, who holds the right to dictate patterns and prescribe rules. thus, as english has increasingly been used in local perspectives, there is no sense in teaching this language based, exclusively, on the hegemonic cultures, since local users have used and changed this language in a flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 52 very idiosyncratic perspective. this converges to what i have called ‘deforeignization’ of english. let me explain the meaning behind this word. in the semantic field, ‘deforeignize’ is to take out what is foreign, strange, unknown. the prefix ‘de’ denotates opposition, negation. in arabic and hebrew, ‘strange’ is equivalent to ‘demoniacal’ and ‘horrible’. freud (1919) said ‘strange’ was related to what is frightening, fear and horror. in his reflections, he stated that, perhaps, our mother tongue was a foreign one. thus, as far as i am concerned, our own language ceases to be strange, as we get familiar with it. but how we can do this? this way, i assume that to be familiar with the new language one learns, it is necessary to take out or change the strange part of it. in this respect, revuz (2002) draws attention to fact that we always go through a strangeness experience when learning a language. thus, i assume there is a kind of psychical and corporal discomfort when a person learns for the very first time a new language, which is quite normal. however, we should be careful no to extend this stage. besides that, we should be careful as well with the identity issue, not to block it, not to allow embarrass to the learners. this issue is aligned with the recreation of a language, in lexical and phonological terms, including the interference of ones’s mother tongue and the local culture. however, this is not always seen with good eyes. jing and niannian (2006), in the chinese scenario, for example, make criticism on the fact that undergraduate students’ oral expression is far from being satisfactory. they claim chinglish has been used a lot in their oral expression, what, according to them, is very destructive. however, they do not show clearly, in which extent chinglish is negative. what happens, actually, is that these researchers do not give credit to non-hegemonic ways of expression of the english language, and as a result, negative attitudes might emerge concerning new varieties of english, what signals, somehow, that national identities all over the world must not be expressed through english, if they recreate, modify this language. but all of this can be overcome, if we take into account the respect with which different national identities are expressed, when they recreate the english language, especially because this recreation has made the world language itself. therefore, ‘to deforeignize’ the english language, it is necessary to allow the recreation of this language, so that it can be adapted to the learners’ linguistic and cultural patterns. this way, i have defined the ‘deforeignization’ of english as a set of changes new speakers make, in different levels, to make this language closer to them, because a language is deforegnized when it is familiar to us and it does not belong only to others, but to us as well who use it. this way, the learner prints his/her identity in the new language, which upon deforeignizing itself, it is being not only spoken with authentic purposes, but the learner himself/herself speaks in that language, revealing features of his/her identity (almeida filho, 1993). this relationship between the language and the learners converges to reshape the language, giving rise to new varieties, with idiosyncratic features of a certain social group. in the next section, i share some data concerning this issue. method this study can be considered as a literature review one. to support my assumptions, i took as base some samples of the english language already researched by other scholars in some parts of the world, which ratifies the deforeignization process. it can also be said this study has a qualitative bias, since it was based on the previous findings for which i provided some conclusions. the qualitative model of research has its origin in the phenomenological conception of knowledge, which emphasizes the subjectivity of human behaviors and advocates the penetration in the individuals’s conceptual universe, to understand how and which type of meaning they give to the events and social interactions that happen in their daily lives. as the deforeignization process is intrinsically related with language change, i truly agree the english language has been oponed to the winds of linguistics changes in totally unpredictable ways and the spread of it has already demonstrated this, with the emergence of new varieties where it has taken roots (crystal, 2012). aligned to this, i analysed some language occurances in the english language, from some parts of the world, taking into account the assumption of language variation, which claims that heterogeneity is not random, but ordered by linguistic and extralinguistic restrictions. but it is nonetheless true that these variations are related with space, time and diachonic perpectives. these restrictions make speakers use one form instead of another. based on that, i made some linguistic descriptions, to support my assumption of the deforegnization process, showing language changes speakers have made in that language. for this purpose, i considered grammatical, phonological and cultural aspects from different speakers of english. flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 53 findngs and discussions national identities deforeignizing english around the world in this section, i intend to illustrate briefly how national identities around the world have deforegnized the english language. in historical terms, north-american people are the pioneers in deforeignizing this language. for kumaravadively (2005), these people not only denativized the colonial language imposed to them, but they decolonized it as well. in practical terms, north-american people have changed the lexicon, the grammar, and even the phonology of english. thus, for instance, while a british might ask “have you got a bike?”, on the other hand, north-americans might “do you have a bike?” which means the same thing. based on this, it is possible to state that a single english pattern is a fallacy, since many varieties of english are emerging with their own lexical and pronunciation norms (raihan; deterding, 2018). because of this, the english language has been under a process of deforegnization, mainly taking as reference countries and emergent regions: among the countries of the outer circle, several varieties have also grown in distincctiveness in recente decades. there is one group in india, pakistan, bangladesh and sri lanka, often collectively called south asian english. there is another group in the former british colonies in east africa. other emerging varieties have been noted in the caribbean and in parts of south-east asia, such as singapore. [...] they are an inevitable consequence of the spread of english on a world scale. (crystal, 2012, p. 144) crystal (2012) argues that several changes can be identified in the english language, describing some grammatical and lexical features of these changes, what he thinks illustrates trends in the formation of new regional grammatical identities. in this perspective, he draws attention to the fact that the spread of english has demonstrated that this language is open to the winds of linguistic change, converging to the emergence of new varieties in different places this language has taken root. in this respect is that in the south of nigeria, people use ‘pidgin english’, especially in the urban perimeter. this version of english combines local language terms with a more simplified english in phonological terms. actually, the english language, in the nigerian context, has been under a redefinition process, because it has been pidginized, nativized and assimilated (dangana, 2014), since it has deviated itself from the british and north-american norms, and it has, thus, consolidated itself as a local language. in indian, inglish has been spoken by more than sixty million speakers, what makes this version the third more used in that nation. inglish is a kind of deforegnized english, with so many features to ratify this assumption. for instance, though normative grammar advocates that the ‘ing’ form must not be used with certain verbs, mainly those which express feelings, in india, it is common the use of sentences such as “he is knowing you’ and ‘she is understanding you’. concening pronunciation, ‘w’ has the sound of ‘v’, that is why the personal pronoun ‘we’ is pronunced /vi/ and ‘water’, /vater/. about this, bansal (1991), upon analyzing the pronunciation of english in india, states that the deviations from native are much greater concerning the phonological and phonetic patterns. however, he also draws attention to the fact that differences in lexis and grammar also exist. these features point to the defereignization of english in a multicultural country. in brunei, a country located in the borneo island, in asia, with a population of 400 million inhabitants, they used ‘brunei english’. rainhan and deterding (2018) highlight that although this variety of english had been built based on the british english, it evolved naturally, developing its own traces, pointing to the deforeignization process. as an example, rainhan and deterding (2018) mention that speakers of brunei english reproduce the sound of /t/ instead of /th/, in words such as ‘thought’ and ‘third’. in this line of thought, gough (1996) describes black english in south africa, signaling the existence of many particular features. he describes some features in terms of its phonology, grammar, intonation, stylistic etc. in this respect, he says, for example, that the consonantal systems are fairly complex and that the native english phonemes lacking generally are /ᶞ/ and /ᶿ/, which are replaced by /t/ and /d/ respectively. still concerning the african context, simo bodba (2000) claims that most of the features common to all african accents of english are shared by many other new englishes, including pronunciation and deviations. he mentions the fact that all africans are likely to pronounce the ‘b’ of ‘bombing’ and ‘plumbing’ as well as the ‘f’ of ‘of’. besides that, this reseacher lists that other phonological features are related with any african accent of english, such as the non-application of vowel reduction, consonant cluster simplification, rphenomena, glide formation, pre-ion devoicing and processes involving the alveolar fricative. japlish is the japanese variety of english. according to stanlaw (2009), english in japan is like the air, it is everywhere, with 95% of japanese people using this language. for him, japan, today, can not exist flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 54 without this variety, because it is essential for the japanese society. this language has deeply entrensched in the japanese people’s life, rewriting the local culture, art, economy and consumism. however, this language has been reshaped by japanese people as well. in this sense is that rice bocomes raisu, bus is busu, apartment is apaato, home é hoomu and hot is hootu, clearly following the path of deforeignization. spanglish is another deforeignized varierty of english. for orsi (2008), spanglish is a kind of code mix; an alternance of use between english and spanish, marked by factors such as nationality, identity and social class. orsi (2008) claims that spanglish serves to express feelings and emotions and it is potentially understood and spoken by 45 millions of speakers in the united states. he also thinks spanglish has become a unifying vehicle of communication of a bigger group, from different countries that use spanish. he mentions for instance ‘troka’, ‘traila’, ‘chimenay’, ‘lonch’ and ‘mol’ which have replaced respectively ‘truck’, ‘trailer’, ‘chimney’, ‘leaking, ‘lunch’ and ‘mall’. these examples of lexical changes also validate that spanglish is nothing more than a deforeignized version of the english language. all these changes around the english language is perfectly understandable, since international varieties, emerged from communities separated by different climates, fauna and flora, express nationals identities and are a way of reducing the conflict between intelligibility and identity (crystal, 2012). in the following part, i will briefly discuss the implications of this process for the teaching/learning of english. implications for the teaching/learning process a question emerges in front of this diverse scenario: which english to teach? it might prove to be problematic for teachers, because they have faced with many english varieties. however, it could be a good thing that they can choose any model of english they want to teach. the teachers need to take into account the varieties that suit their students. in relation to that, a more local version would be a better option that it might empower new learners. it is mainly because using the language aligned with local culturemake it possible the empowerment of new learners, since using the language aligned with local culture would give these learners the sense of ownership. i do not mean we should ban the hegemonic cultures of classrooms, but decentralize the position they get in many educational settings. teachers should balance local culture with the hegemonic ones. in regard to that case, kumaravadivelu (2012) proposes an epistemic break of our indelible colonial dependence. as teachers, we have to ignite a descontinuity in the way english has been taugh recently. other experts also question this old-fashioned approach based on native speaker norms. mckay (2012) is one of them, she rejects the native speaker model as a pedagogic practice to teach english. matsuda (2009) also emphasizes that english as an international language requires new ways of approaching it, different from the ones based on the hegemonic cultures. canagarajah and said (2010) argue that learners of english need to acquire the ability to negotiate with the varieties of english, developing the compentence to deal with diferente norms. rajagopalan (2004) also claims that its is the speaker’s decision to undertake a radical rethinking of our practices, concerning elt approaches centred in the native speaker model in light of the new role assumed by english as this language metamorphoses itself into a world language. he alerts our practices need to be drastically reviewed because of the challenges english as a world language puts upon us. he draws attention to the need in deconstructing the belief that someone wants to learn english to be able to communicate with the so-called native speaker, because elt practices based on this premise has been profoundly deleterious, resulting in an extremely enervating inferiority complex on the part of learners. in this perspective, it is necessary changes in elt. if we live in a diverse world, we need to acknowledge this premise even in linguistic terms. we should know and respect new linguistic versions as much as possible. new formations around the language should be considered, in terms of grammar, lexicon, phonology etc. this leads to the understanding and occurrence of english in the means of a língua franca. from my own experience in the last years, as a professor at a federal university in brazil, i have realized a series of new occurrences, when my students use english. initially i thought these occurrences seemed to be specific of brazilian students, such as the use of the verb ‘have’ to talk about age ‘i have 19 years old’instead of using the verb to be. however, spanish speakers also use this verb in the same way. this is perfectly understandable, since here in brazil we use the verb ‘to have’ to talk about age. that is why it is true and it should be acceptable the fact that the mother tongue influences the way a speaker build the new language he/she is learning. also, some students use prepositions they use in our mother tongue – ‘she is married with john’ instead of ‘she is married to john’. still some students do not mark the third singular person, such as in ‘she work(s) hard every day’. thus, these data point to the fact that many new features flávius almeida dos anjos / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 55 emerge whithin a language, with characteristics of the social groups, in grammatical, lexical and phonological terms, different of the native versions (jenkins, 2014). these occurrances should not be taken as mistakes, but as contingent examples of creativity and adaptation of a language affected by many cultures (jenkins, 2014), because as crystal (2012) argues, english spoken in each nation has its own distinction, reflecting the society it is part of. conclusion now that i have explained some facts regarding english as a world languagein front of these facts, what are the implications expected for elt? this implies, among other things, changes need to occur in the way textbooks and teachers approach the language, recognizing its status of world language, respecting new features which belong to different cultures. if textbooks are accompanied with audio recordings, for example, they should bring a diversity of englishes. one of the things i want to draw attention is the fact that teachers, before making an abrupt correction, that can opress and silence learners, should understand the dynamic of languages, upon analysing these recreations, through the lens of diversity, there are not reasons to condemn these new linguistic innovations, based on the fact that these constructions are not in accordance with the preconceived notion of how a language must be or sound (crystal, 1963). that is why i have also called attention to the fact that, as teachers, we should be sensible to local issues, balancing our approaches with local and global cultural aspects, to evidence the diverse feature of a language. the need for change in elt is aligned with the status of world language english achieves today. native english should be shared as well as local versions of this language. this is a key issue to avoid negative feelings on the part of the learners, paving the way for a harmonic learning. references almeida filho, j. c. p. (1993). dimensões comunicativas no ensino de línguas. campinas, sp: editora pontes. anjos, f. a. (2018). "passei o semestre todo estudando o verbo to be": atitudes, (des)motivação e orientação para aprender inglês de alguns bacharelandos da ufrb. tese de doutorado. 254 f. universidade federal da bahia (ufba). salvador, 2018. anjos, f. a. (2019). desestrangeirizar a língua inglesa: um esboço da política linguística (2ª ed.). cruz das almas: edufrb. bansal, r. k. (1991).the pronunciation of english in india. in: ramsaran, s. studies in the pronunciation of english, pp. 219-230. canagrajah, s.; said, s. l. (2010). english language teaching in the outer and expanding circles. research gate, pp. 157-170. crystal, d. (1963). a language must change, to keep pace with society. liverpool daily post, may 16th, pp. 910, 1963. crystal, d. 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(2008). spanglish: identifying some motivations a group of bilingual had to code-switching in informal social interactions. saint paul: hamline university. raihan, n., deterding, d. (2018). the fallacy of standard english. in: o. kang, r. i. thomson, & j. m. murphy (eds.), the routledge handbook of contemporary english pronunciation. abingdon and new york: routledge, pp. 203-217. rajagopalan, k. (2004). the concept of ‘world english’ and its implications for elt. in: elt journal, 58(2), pp. 111117. rajagopalan, k. (2014). o professor de línguas e a suma importância do seu entrosamento na política linguística do seu país. in: correa, d. a. política linguística e ensino de língua. são paulo: pontes, pp. 73-82. revuz, c. (2002). a língua estrangeira entre o desejo de um outro lugar e o risco do exílio. in: signorini, inês (org.). lingua(gem) e identidade: elementos para uma discussão no campo aplicado. campinas, sp: mercado de letras. seidlhofer, b. (2011). understanding english as a língua franca. oxford: oxford university press. simo bobda, a. (2000). comparing some phonological features across african accents of english. english studies, 81(3), pp. 249–266. stanlaw, j. (2009). japanese english: language and culture contact (3ª ed.). hong kong: hong kong university press. microsoft word 1. dwi nikita sari et al.docx putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 1 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt short-animation video in web meeting classes for secondary school learners’ efl writing achievement dwi nikita sari1, susilo susilo2, efendi limbong3 1,2,3english department, fkip, mulawarman university article info ________________ article history: received in 1 januari 2021 approved in 3 march 2021 published in 26 march 2021 ________________ keywords: efl writing; secondary school learners; short animation video; web meeting circumstances abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the study aims at investigating whether there is an effect of short animation video on the efl narrative writing achievement of the secondary school efl learners in the circumstance where web meeting was becoming the class. the study was an experimental study using static group comparison design. respondents participated in the study were the 8th graders of junior high school. there were 32 students in the experimental group and the other 32 students in the control group. the data were collected by conducting writing tests, i.e. post-test for both the experimental and control groups. independent sample t-test was used to test the significant difference for pre and post-test scores. the results revealed that the students under the experimental group (m = 83.22, sd = 7.979, n = 32) performed higher in scores on their narrative writing achievement than the students under the control group (m = 76.00, sd = 9.824, n = 32), t(32) = 3.227, p < .002, two-tailed. it means there is a significant difference between narrative writing achievement of the students under the experimental group and those under the control group. this finding implies there is a significant effect of short animation video on the narrative efl writing achievement of the secondary school efl learners. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: airafsusiloreno111@yahoo.com dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 2 introduction to fit for the disruption of the normal function of education since the covid-19 outbreak began to run its course, students, teachers, and leaders of education had put in place various alternative ways to continue all the businesses of education. due to the restriction of people congregating in public place, all educational institutions had to prefer choosing virtual meeting classes to continue the process of teaching and learning. as a result, to explore various innovations of the online meeting class has been becoming new challenges for all teachers to obtain a bright sustainable future. such a sustainable future might strongly presumably be related to the interaction with digital resources (flores, 2020; napal et al., 2020; rosa et al., 2016). at the same time, digital resources may bring teachers to shift their roles to be more active, innovative, critical, open-minded, driving them to manage, mentor, and motivate their students in digital learning environment (amin, 2016). that is why, it is necessary for teachers to have virtual-web meetings with learners in order that they are able to help students navigate complex communication situations in a digital environment (o’dowd et al., 2019). apparently, using technology-based media in web meeting circumstance of learning is a panacea. there are numerous technology-based media used in teaching efl writing, one of which is a video. as what richards & renandya (2002) elaborated about video, compared to other visual media, video covers more quite heavy sense in terms of an access to learners’ experiences which might make the learners easily digest materials given. according to cakir (2006), media and styles of visual presentation are useful for language learners. in addition, smaldino et al., (2011) argued that numerous teachers use videos for various ends since short video might give more flexible media in teaching in the classroom. especially for animation video, it is quite useful to be a means of leading learners in optimal learning. presumably, teaching efl writing by using animation video has been evidently claimed effective. the claim about effectiveness of teaching efl writing by using a short animation video has been proved by some research findings. numerous previous studies were conducted to investigate technology-based media in efl teaching by mentioning various platform of technology, among others are explainer video, short animations with dialogue, short video, short english video, plotagon, tailormade animated cartoons, modalities of videos, short stories through computers, whatsapp group, and silent short movie as pedagogical terms which were related to video as media in teaching, being claimed to give a significant effect on the students’ achievement in efl narrative writing (see akib & syatriana, 2019; bakla, 2019; guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar, 2019; marashi & adiban, 2017; haslida, 2019; irawati, 2016; masruddin, 2018; kartika et al., 2017; umutlu & akpinar, 2020; wahyuni & febianti, 2019; yilmaz, 2015). most of those previous findings are strengthening the use of video as media in learning. having a stronger notion on the effectiveness of video usage in efl teaching since many previous findings have been conducted, animation video functioned as helpful media in teaching efl writing apparently shows its significance. in terms of efl writing, using short video as media in learning has been proved as a panacea of healing some learners’ barriers in accomplishing their achievement. for instance, silent movie was proved as effective media in efl writing achievement of vocational school students (kartika et al., 2017); short movie was claimed as effective media to teaching speaking senior high school students (masruddin, 2018); and short video animation was evidently seen as effective media in writing in tehran language learners (marashi & adiban, 2017). moreover, machili et al., (2020) were interested in conducting research on the role of video in the integrated writing and strategy instruction (si) in english for academic purposes (eap). the findings suggested positive impact of si on the integrated writing performance. to mention some, those studies are dealing with video in the form of short movie, accept marashi & adiban's (2017) study, in the asian context of efl as prototype of large class learning. however, spesifically researches on the use of animation video for learners of efl writing in larger classes are still rarely done. it is obvious that investigation on the animation video as media in learning elf writing class needs more wider practical perspectives. this current study appeared to strengthen the wide prism of technology praxis in efl teaching, especially in efl writing for the larger classes in indonesian secondary schools. moreover, as one of the most effective media used in the teaching during the pandemic outbreak circumstances, animation video functioned to be a means for transferring messages in the process of teaching in such condition. especially this study proposed a research question of ‘is there any significant effect of short animation video on the efl narrative writing achievement of the 8th graders of junior high school?’. dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 3 literature review writing process the writing is someone’s ability to compose stretches of words into meaningful forms of communicative means in order that he/she shows communicative skills for good way of expressing ideas in an purposive end (celce-murcia & olshtain, 2000; harmer, 2007). the process of writing consists of pre writing, drafting, and revising. in addition, there are many ways in the process of organizing paragraphs in writing, in which the writer’s purposes can be clearly defined (smalley et al., 2001). differently, langan (2008) divided the writing process into four types, they are: a) pre writing this is a phase where writer starts to think of what to write. at least langan argued several strategies in having such pre writing, i.e. questioning, making a list, clustering, mapping, or preparing an outline. b) writing a first draft this phase is real writing phase where writer should put ideas on paper, starting to prepare what it will be for initial draft. c) revising once writer gets his/her ideas put in the paper as drafts, he/she should see again whether the ideas are put a good way. in this case, there is a need for writer to rewrite everything she/he wants to revise. d) editing this is the phase of checking anything related to grammatical mistakes, punctuation, spelling etc. furthermore, the purpose of writing is to express ideas, convey messages to the readers; therefore, the ideas should arguably be seen as the most important aspect of the writing. diction and sentence structures are similarly important in conveying messages. according to (grenville, 2001) at least there are three purposes of writing: a) to entertain writing deliberately designed for entertainment usually provides more imaginary or creative writing forms. it means that the writer needs to use his/her creativity to write. b) to inform writing aimed at informing something is included in this purpose. this kind of writing will lead writers to focus their writing on objects, places, procedures, or events. it can be seen in newspaper and articles, scientific or business reports, instructions or procedures, and essays for school and university. c) to persuade the writer tries to convince the reader of something that a point of view is valid by presenting the fact/data so that readers follow writer’s opinions and act upon it. in short, writing aims at not only expressing ideas, feelings or thought in written symbol but entertaining, informing and persuading readers. in addition to the writing process, something that is important to know is the organization of the paragraphs in writing. there are many ways in the process of organizing paragraphs in writing, in which the writer’s purposes can be clearly defined; among others is narrative. in a narrative paragraph, the writer describes a sequence of past events (smalley et al., 2001). moreover, knapp & watkins, (2005) stated that there are three generic structures in narrative composition, i.e. orientation, complication and resolution. meanwhile, according to it can be concluded that narrative text is one of the text genres which is constructed by developing three different generic structures, i.e. orientation, complication, and resolution. orientation deals with the introduction of the character, time, and the place; complication is problems or the conflicts which happen in the story and they have to be solved by the character; while, resolution is the solution of the problems. video as media of teaching smaldino et al., (2011) traced the term ‘media’ from the latin language ‘medium which means ’intermediary’. therefore, media can be labelled as an intermediary message source to a receiver. by this term means it referred to ways to communicate an information. the format of media is more in dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 4 the terms of form, where a message is incorporated and displayed. according to (mahajan, 2012), media can be classified into six categories, namely: a) graphic media: any kinds of printed media. things like charts, posters, graphs, photographs, maps books, pictures, or diagrams are incorporated in this medium. b) media for display: a tool like a board. the examples are peg boards, bulletin board, chalkboard, or flannel board. c) three-dimensional media: a medium that has 3d shape. for example, models, objects, specimens, puppets. d) media for projection: a technology device for displaying message like projector. for example, slides, filmstrips, transparencies, films, video tapes, gramophones, records. e) audio device: a tool for audio function, such as radio, audio cassettes, gramophones, records. f) audio-visual media: a technology device which covers both audio and visual senses, for instance, televisions, computers, videocassettes, or cd. g) media for activity: a technology tool that catches motion activities. for example, fieldtrips, dramatization, demonstration, and role-playing. referring to such classification, it is apparent that video means a medium that provides audiovisual domain useful for helping the teaching and learning. it can be played back in a slow motion hence human eyes are able to see events occurring too fast in order that the normal vision is registered. in addition, the use of meaningful video in teaching might be the most appropriate for introductory courses, courses of complex topics, lower achieving-students, and visual/spatial learners. videos can also operate recorded-pictures display on television-type screen (newby, 2002). richards & renandya (2002), furthermore, elaborated that as audio-visual media, video incorporates more extremely heavy senses in terms of an access to learners’ experiences which might make the learners easily digest materials given. it means that video incorporates visual and audio effects. in the context of teaching, brewster et al., (2002) concludes some benefits of using videos for young learners into four aspects as follows: a) teaching and learning can get psychological aspect of watching video in terms of various ways, such the fact that the learners find video fun, stimulating and highly motivating. in addition, the learning experience successful in class, the positive attitudes appeared in class, and feeling confident are things that video can contribute to the classroom. b) all factors of communication, such as language forms, nonverbal codes, meaning negotiation, and interaction are the linguistic aspect of video that can be presented to represent new words, phrases, and expressions of messages. it is all showed by the video consequently learning can be more accessible and memorable. c) the increase of learners’ curiosity and up-to-date information can be provided in the cognitive aspect of video. it enables learners to maximize their abilities to infer form context. in addition, learners’ motoric abilities, research knowledge and experiences, abilities to communicate, autonomous learning can be developed through video. d) in terms of cultural aspect, video enables learners to see the world beyond the classroom and improves their cultural awareness. however, despite the strength of video as media in learning, riddel, (2003) stated some disadvantages of using video as media. the weakness is regarded with lack of naturalness in learning when using video. it is not rare that learners feel frustrated with the ‘stop-start’ nature of lesson; in addition, with a very big class, not everyone may be able to see the screen. in a nutshell, using video as media of learning might either provide advantages and disadvantages depending on how we as teachers develop media in the circumstances in such as a way that students are able to feel secure and fun in learning. indeed, media should be helpful in the classroom. teaching efl writing and short animation video various research findings proved the claim about effectiveness of teaching efl writing by using short animation video. such findings showed investigation of video as media in efl teaching by mentioning various models of short video; namely, explainer video, short animations with dialogue, short video, short english video, plotagon, tailor-made animated cartoons, modalities of videos, short stories through computers, whatsapp group, and silent short movie as pedagogical terms which were dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 5 related to video as media in teaching, being claimed to give a significant effect on the students’ achievement in efl narrative writing (see kartika et al., 2017; akib & syatriana, 2019; bakla, 2019; guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar, 2019; marashi & adiban, 2017; haslida, 2019; irawati, 2016; masruddin, 2018;; umutlu & akpinar, 2020; wahyuni & febianti, 2019; yilmaz, 2015). furthermore, of the mentioned previous findings, some were conducted in asian contexts in which learners were engaged in large classes. for instance, kartika et al., (2017) involved participants of 61 indonesian vocational high school students. this study intended to investigate the effect of silent movie on their efl writing achievement. the findings showed that students who were taught by silent short movie got significantly different achievement in efl writing than did the students who were not taught by silent short. in addition, masruddin (2018) studying the effectiveness of short movie in teaching speaking skills of the 25 eleventh grade students of sman 4 luwu in luwu regency, south sulawesi province, indonesia. it was proven by the data that there was a significant difference between the students’ mean score of pretest and posttest. moreover, masruddin (2018), using 60 preintermediate efl learners from a language school in tehran as participants of experimental and control group. in both groups, the participants were asked to write five writings regarding the subjects of the animations during the term and each of the writings should have contained a minimum of 90 and maximum of 140 words. the results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group. methods research design the study was an experimental study using static group comparison design. there were two nonrandomized groups, i.e. experimental and control group as it is shown in table 1. teaching narrative text by using short animation video was the independent variable and students’ efl narrative writing achievement was the dependent variable in the study. table 1. static group comparison design research subjects respondents participated in the study were the 8th grade students of junior high school. there were two classes used as samples in the study. they were the viii b class, as the experimental group, consisting of 32 students and the viii d class, as the control group, containing 32 students. those samples were taken from the population by using cluster random sampling technique. those sample classes were taken from the 160 students who were gathered in 5 parallel classes as the population of the study. research procedure the data were collected by conducting writing post-tests, i.e. for experimental group and control group. the writing tests were conducted by giving the students writing prompts to write narrative texts after the treatments were done to both groups. the treatment was conducted virtually using online platform, i.e. google classroom (the treatment activities was wrapped up in table 2.) and so was the administration of the pretest and posttest. the treatment activities were done for 45 minutes in every meeting (i.e. one meeting was named as one treatment and there were four meetings in a whole), therefore totally the time that the researchers needed to conduct the experiment was 180 minutes. writing prompts were given to the respondents to write narrative texts after the treatments were done to both groups. the treatment was done virtually using online platform, i.e. google classroom. in regard with data analysis, researchers used independent sample t-test. firstly, the descriptive analysis was used to elaborate the mean and the standard deviation of the scores. then, after the percentage scores for pre and post-test were collected from different groups of students, the independent sample t-test was used to test the significant difference for pre and post-test scores. the independent sample t-test was conducted to test the hypothesis of the study, as follows: group independent variable post-test experimental group x o2 control group o2 dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 6 h0: teaching narrative text by using animation video do not give statistically significant difference on students’ narrative writing achievement before and after the treatment. h1: teaching narrative text by using animation video gives statistically significant difference on students’ narrative writing achievement before and after the treatment table 2. research procedure and treatment findings and discussion results as it seen in table 3, the result revealed that in terms of the efl narrative writing achievement, the students under the experimental group (x= 83.22) outperformed those under the control group (x= 76.00). activities experimental group control group treatment 1 opening checking the students’ attendance apperception checking the students’ attendance apperception teaching explaining the materials about narrative text to students explaining the materials about narrative text to students asking the taught materials the students asking the taught materials to the students teaching the narrative text by using an animation video teaching the narrative text with conventional way using whiteboard as the media closing closing the meeting closing the meeting treatment 2 opening checking the students’ attendance apperception checking the students’ attendance apperception teaching teaching the narrative text by using an animation video giving assingments to the students asking the students to observe the story played in the video asking the students to rearrange the sentences to make a story in the text written in the whiteboard asking the students to explain the story played in the video asking the students to tell the story based on the arrangement of the text written in the whiteboard closing teacher close the meeting teacher close the meeting treatment 3 checking the students’ attendance apperception checking the students’ attendance apperception teaching asking the students to mention the character, and setting of the story played in video asking the students to mention the character, and setting of the story in the text written in the whiteboard asking the students to mention the generic structure of the story played in the video asking the students to mention the generic structure of the story written in the text written in the whiteboard closing teacher close the meeting teacher close the meeting treatment 4 opening checking the students’ attendance apperception checking the students’ attendance apperception dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 7 table 3. the results of descriptive statistics the spreading scores found in terms of their frequencies varied. as it is showed in figure 1, in the experimental group, students who got most 80 were the most in number, i.e. 6 students; meanwhile four students got 92, 88, and 78 subsequently. in addition, only one student who obtained 90, one obtained 91, and one obtained 96. there were more than one, but less than four other students who got various other scores. it means that more higher scores (the scores higher than the mean score) were spreading throughout in terms of their frequencies. figure 1. the results of post test scores in the experimental group meanwhile, in the control group different spreading scores happened. as it is seen in figure 2, there were six students who got 80; five others obtained 84 and the other five got 76. moreover, there were four students who got 60 and only one got 92; in the meantime, two students got 56, three students got 72, one student got 74, and two others got 78. this means lower scores (the scores lower than the mean score) were spreading more active throughout the frequencies. it implies low efl narrative writing scores happening in the control group (see figure 2). figure 2. the results of post test scores in the control group n minimum maximum mean std. deviation post-test (experimental group) 32 68 96 83.22 7.979 post-test (control group) 32 56 92 76.00 9.824 dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 8 to know whether or not there is significant difference between control and experimental group, the researchers used independent t-test. the steps were to checking the normality, homogeneity of variance, and checking the hypothesis. the normality test is to reveal that the samples are in normal distribution. the homogeneity test is to reveal that both samples of experiment group and control are homogeneous. the researchers also analyzed the samples of this research. it was because the samples should be checked if the distribution of every variable in the data was normally distributed. therefore, the normality of the data could be checked by using kolmogorov-smirnov. thus, the table below showed the result of the normality of the data. table 4. the results of one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test table 4 presented the result of kolmogorov-smirnov’ normality data of this research. that result showed that the significance value of the two groups was higher than 0,05 (sig. > 0,05). if the result of significant is more than 0,05 (sig. (2-tailed) > 0,05 or ≥ 0,05), then the distribution of data was normal. it means that the data of this research was normal because the significant scores is more than 0,05 (sig. 2-tailed) > 0,05). the data also was calculated using parametric statistics which is required homogeneity of the research. homogeneity means the samples of the research come from the same variance or have same characteristics. meanwhile, table 5 showed the homogeneity of variances that was analyzed by using levence statistic. table 5. the result of homogeneity of variances as seen in table 5, the data showed that f value of 0.240 with df1 was 1, the df2 was 62 and significance was 0.626. it means that the data was significant because 0.626 > 0.05 and the data are homogeneous. an independent t-test was conducted to know whether there is a significant difference between narrative writing achievement of the students under the experimental group and those under the control group. as shown in table 6, results from an independent samples t test indicated that students in the experimental group (m = 83.22, sd = 7.979, n = 32) scored higher on their narrative writing achievement than students in the control group (m = 76.00, sd = 9.824, n = 32), t(32) = 3.227, p < .002, two-tailed. table 6. the result of independent sample t-test group sig. α distribution of normality post-test control group 0.189 0.050 normal post-test experimental group 0.245 0.050 normal levene statistics df 1 df 2 sig. .240 1 62 .626 students learning outcomes levene’s test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean differe nce std. error differe nce 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper equal variances assumed .240 .626 3.227 62 .002 7.219 2.237 2.746 11.691 equal variances not assumed 3.227 59.497 .002 7.219 2.237 2.743 11.695 dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 9 thus, it can be concluded that the null hypothesis is rejected. this means that there is a significant effect of short animation video on the narrative efl writing achievement of the 8th graders of junior high school. discussion it has been apparently proved that there is a significant effect of short animation video on the narrative efl writing achievement of the 8th graders of junior high school. this implies the importance of teaching efl by using short animation video, as it is in line with some previous findings, for instance, explainer video was claimed both qualitatively and quantitatively can outperform the narrative writing achievement of efl students of muhammadiyah university (akib & syatriana, 2019), short animations with dialogue was argued effective to increase efl oral and written ability (marashi & adiban, 2017), short video used in group discussion was evidently effective in teaching speaking to indonesian efl students (masruddin, 2018), short english video can also improve learners’ vocabulary mastery (haslida, 2019), plotagon can create learners’ motivation to write (guzmán gámez & moreno cuellar, 2019), tailor-made animated cartoons presumably were mentioned as a good facilitator for learners’ way of writing punctuation rules in english (bakla, 2019), for the flipped classroom, different modalities of videos was needed for english writing classes (umutlu & akpinar, 2020), short stories through computers was implemented in language classrooms to have very positive effects on learners’ language learning process (yilmaz, 2015), whatsapp group used as media for learning in english writing (wahyuni & febianti, 2019), and silent short movie was claimed to give a significant effect on the students’ achievement in efl narrative writing (kartika et al., 2017). having similar conclusions with some other previous findings, indeed, this current study appeared to strengthen the wide prism of technology praxis in efl teaching, especially in efl narrative writing. as one of the most effective media used in the teaching during the pandemic circumstances, animation video functioned to be a means for transferring messages in the process of teaching. it is true then that technology and its function are really necessary media in the process of teaching and learning, especially video. video used as media in learning can function as helping students organize events in their mind when they are learning, for instance it might catch events happening too fast since in video everything can be recorded dan replayed. in addition, video provides visual elements which is helpful for the learners and learners also experience audio element (newby, 2002); richards & renandya 2002). accordingly, the students are able to happily manage the circumstance when learning, hence they can easily create the idea by using media in learning. in brief, using video makes the students easier in learning efl as it is implied in the findings revealed in the current study. moreover, this current study provides pedagogical implication that short animation video was used a media in a learning circumstance which is in regard with the process of efl writing in secondary schools. this pedagogical conclusion has a similar notion in terms of using short animation video in efl writing, however, what is relatively new is that this happens in indonesian secondary schools in which large classes are very common. large number-students managed in every classroom of the secondary schools should be taught using appropriate media in order that fun and optimal class circumstances can be obtained by the teachers. conclusion the current study draws a conclusion that the students under the experimental group (m = 83.22, sd = 7.979, n = 32) performed higher in scores on their narrative writing achievement than the students under the control group (m = 76.00, sd = 9.824, n = 32), t(32) = 3.227, p < .002, two-tailed. it means there is a significant difference between narrative writing achievement of the students under the experimental group and those under the control group. this means that there is a significant effect of short animation video on the narrative efl writing achievement of the 8th graders of junior high school. having such a conclusion, the study gives a pedagogical implication that short animation video might be presumably important as media of technology in increasing the effective process learning narrative writing for efl students in the secondary schools. in an education science, especially instructional science, the effective learning process helps both teachers and students accomplish their goals of learning, i.e improving the quality of learners’ life in the future. spesifically, in terms of efl learning, such life quality improvement might be related to good communication skills with people from different countries and cultures. as a result, this brings an ease of culturalization process in the international global village. dwi nikita sari, susilo susilo, efendi limbong/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 10 references akib, e., & syatriana, e. 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(2019). the use of whatsapp group discussion to improve students’ writing achievement. indonesian educational administration and leadership journal, 1(1), 45–51. yilmaz, a. (2015). short stories via computers in efl classrooms: an empirical study for reading and writing skills. the reading matrix, 15(1), 41–53. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4222e92520cd • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 12 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt identifying the teaching of english to early young learners at stepping stones school surabaya margareta desi restuti stepping stones school surabaya, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 8 december 2020 approved in 16 march 2021 published in 26 march 2021 ________________ keywords: early young learners; teaching english; teyl ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ in indonesia, learning english becomes one of the important parts of the process of learning at the school. there are notes to be considered in introducing english as a second language to young learners. the research was conducted to find out that there are key factors to be considered dealing with teaching english to early young learners. as a qualitative descriptive case study research, the research was conducted at stepping stones school surabaya as it is a school for very young learners. the method of the research is qualitative descriptive research. the research found out that a full english school and a school with a fun learning environment are important for young learners. besides identifying the key factors of teaching english to young learners, the research also aims to identify the underlying methods of teaching english at the stepping stones school surabaya as the school has a preschool and kindergarten level program with a well-designed curriculum; the school also support the programs with well-qualified teachers; the school pays attention to the age of the students especially in applying the full english method; the school involves the parents to be in part of the learning by having similar ways in treating the children at home. this research was conducted as a way to give insight, especially to the opinion of worrying about introducing english as a second language too early young learners and for the parents who do not have english skills to accompany their children's process of learning. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: margaretadesirestuti@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 13 introduction the influence of english in indonesia can not be prevented, (sadtono, 2013) english has become a subject in lessons of the educational process of the students in indonesia that was managed by the state through the educational ministry (septy, 2000). the experience of the researcher shows that the curriculum of the school and the teacher's role are important to apply the curriculum (restuti, 2017) of teaching english to indonesian students especially the young learners. for example, one of the characteristics of the early young learners is they have a short attention pan, here the teachers should makea creative lesson where it shows the various activities to be presented or done together with the children. the curriculum of the school must consider this as a very important thing then the teacher must apply it in daily based planning and teaching. the other characteristics of early young learners are enjoying imitating and are skillful in listening accurately so the teachers should master english especially in the term of pronunciation that the learners are accustomed to hearing the correct pronunciation of english words. this supports the statement that language (english) is a good example of an area in which children come to preschool and the importance of teachers' role to recognize the language children have and to provide the use of the language with its growth and meaningful conversation so the children have many opportunities during the preschool to interact with new peers and adults (clark, 2000). meanwhile, many people realize that english has become an important language to be used nowadays school should consider carefully how to teach english to the students, especially to the young learners. there were questions and worries if english is introduced earlier to the students such as an opinion that the english teaching would ruin the first language acquisition of the early young learners, while as stated that the children's brain is programmed to learn the language (matthews, 2005). about teaching english to young learners especially in indonesia, other researchers have found out important findings such as the teachers teaching english to young learners in lampung were not ready to teach english that they teach english fully in bahasa indonesia (apriliana, 2018). the findings of the previous researchers mostly about the readiness of the teacher that they need further training in the using of english though those teachers were confident enough to teach english to the young learners (mutiah et al., 2020) as also stated by the other researcher (nufus, 2019). in west sumatra, a researcher found out that there were some essential requirements in teaching english to young learners such as curriculum, teacher competency, media, and method used (pransiska, 2016). another researcher also highlighted the teachers' readiness in teaching english to young learners in the field of pedagogical values that the teacher should know the principles and should be able to do things to facilitate children learning english as a foreign language in indonesia by determining who children are, how children learn, how children learn a language, and how children learn english as a foreign language (musthafa, 2013). the researcher expected that the research would help on how to teach english to early young learners especially the technical things to be done and applied in teaching english to young learners in indonesia as a portrait at the stepping stones school of surabaya that has run the system since the year of 2000. one of the researcher's experiences at the stepping stones school was she found that the children did not find it difficult to speak bahasa indonesia while they are exposed to english fully at school from a year old to four years old of age. literature review the research was conducted to find out the key factors of teaching english to young learners at stepping stones school surabaya by describing the teaching english at the school and the key factors underlying the methods of it. to support the research, there were many literature reviews about teaching english and young learners. about the young learners, montessori has become an important expert to be cited that she said that education is to be focused on the children to help them during the development in the process to be a complete adult human being that has the competence and to contribute to the society and humanity generally. the montessori approach is centered on supporting the human being's natural development. this concept could support the development of language in young learners especially about english (restuti, 2017). other expert stated that in the areas of vision, hearing, social attachment, language, motor skills, math/ logic, music, and foreign languages where the windows of opportunity for brain development, and so there are important things to be done to develop the children's capacities to guide them to bea fine adult (stiles & jernigan, 2010). montessori has thought about the substance of the human being including the integration of the character development and the whole personality that should be instilled into the child. this has margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 14 changed the paradigm of education for centuries especially that the children could guide their development, even to guide the educators in supporting the children (nicholas, 2014). montessori stated that the role of the adults is to help the children meet their potential. montessori supported the idea that the children possess great constructive energies that would support the formation of the children's mind and body. montessori's approach has been seen as the appropriate tool to develop education for early young learners (sacks & ruzzi, 2005). one of the results of the approach is that the children should become the center of the education process such as the class and its environment should support the children, for example with the multi-sensory equipment, and enough space for motor development. those are to provide rich experiences to support the 'wiring' process in the children's brain. in early education for young learners, a school should provide a suitable curriculum to fully support the children's growth and development. the curriculum should provide the multi-sensory experience with repetition that would strongly support the brain connections (matthews, 2005). a discussion about teaching english as a second language can be related to bilingual education where the use of languages focused on the teaching of subject matter content, not merely the use of the language itself (damico, 2010). in that book section, cummins (2010) explained that there are types of bilingual educations focusing on the goals of the program, organizational structures, and characteristics of students in the program. according to cummins, bilingual education carries a positive impact on the children especially on the aspect of the development of linguistic of the children involved in the program and on the aspect of the development of the children's education themselves. he concluded that the positive development could be seen in the children continuing to develop their abilities in two or more languages, it has been comprehended through the program that has been followed by the children since their primary level including the early learner stage of the education. the benefit of the program could be seen in the term of gaining a deeper understanding of the used language and how to use the language effectively. the children have the chance to process the language, to apply the language in the literacy process in both languages. the children also would be able to compare and contrast the ways of using both languages separately in daily practice. the result of the bilingual program has supported what goethe ever stated that the person who knows only one language does not truly know the language (cummins, 2001). on the other hands, bilingual children develop more flexibility in the way they are thinking as a result of information processing the experiences, they have in a bilingual education program. the stage of human growth and development that now becomes a very important thing is the young stage of human or even the early young stage of human being development. many countries are now (or has paid) attention to anything needed to deal with the early young generation. human development especially brain development is very significant to determine someone's future. it happens dominantly in the golden age of an individual. it was mentioned that the foundations for thinking, language, vision, attitudes, aptitudes, and other characteristics are laid down during the preschool period especially the first three years of life (kotulak, 1997). . the other experts mentioned the importance of the early life of the human being especially during the first ten years of life especially related to the development of the language at the acquisition stage. once again it was related to the development of the brain, the 'wiring' process that could be happening in the sound aspect of the language. again the repeated exposure of the language becomes an important aspect in this stage. it was also noted that the existence of the adults around the children play a very important role in the children's language development and so the brain development (graham & forstadt, 2011). the role of english as a second language will innate the children's ability to use the language when the language is presented within a context that is meaningful and communicative. the environment for l1 and l2 acquisition can be quite different although children may use similar processes for acquiring l1 and l2 (karavas, 2010). so, in teaching l2, the teacher needs to remember to provide the language itself in very rich contexts that are meaningful and communicative. as required that the teaching should provide highly contextualized language, the use of authentic language in the real world, and the highly motivated learners; as the young learners can learn l1 (restuti, 2017). margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 15 methods the research design refers to a qualitative descriptive case study research that this research focuses on covering the background information and accurate descriptions of the tcase in question (johansson, 2007). the purposes of this research are mainly stated as to describe the teaching of english to young learners at the stepping stones school surabaya and to describe the key factors underlying the methods of teaching english at the stepping stones school surabaya. the source of data of the research was from the documents of the school, the students, the parents of the students, and the teachers of the school. parents are the closest resources to observe and to realize the children's development on the students. they are not only the parents of the current students but some parents are the parents of the alumni (baxter & jack, 2008). the data resources were the school documents, the recorded interview with some parents of the students, and also the teachers. there were also the parents' notes and observations when they attend the open class program. there was an important thing related to the research that the researcher has got permission from the school founder and the school manager to reveal the name of the school in the research and its related publication. the unit of analysis is related to the fundamental problem of defining the case; that the case might be an individual or individuals that might also involve the influence of early childhood or the role of peer relationship; the case also can be some events, decisions, programs, the implementation of process and about organizational change (yin, 2013), the unit of analysis of this research would cover the key factors of teaching english to young learners at the stepping stones school surabaya: the school curriculum, the teaching by the teachers, the learners' experience, the classroom context, the materials and resources, the learners and the parents of the learners. there are many approaches in the way of teaching english to young learners. the most important thing is the fun things, young learners should have fun with english (kang shin, 2006), here, the design of the teaching is important. hence curriculum of the stepping stones school and the way teachers plan the english teaching would become one of the units of analysis to this research. the curriculum would cover also the learning and teaching style at stepping stones school surabaya especially that the tagline of the school is where learning is fun. as mentioned, that the curriculum should emphasize communicative competence in teaching english to young learners (copland & garton, 2014). many aspects that should be seen and considered deeply such as approaches to language teaching, recruitment, and training, teacher's level of english proficiency, the classroom context, examinations and assessment, materials and resources, learners (garton et al., 2013), beside the curriculum represented by the school documents of the stepping stones school of surabaya, there would be the teachers' comment about the stepping stones school, the parents' comments about the stepping stones school and the students of stepping stones school itself, the students' learning result, and the field observations that also covers the class observations done at the stepping stones school as the unit analysis of this research. to sum up the methods of the research, here are the steps were taken by the researcher: 1) read and comprehend the school documents as the guidance of the curriculum of the school. 2) observed the running of the class to see how the teachers plan and conduct the class. 3) conducted discussion and evaluation with the teachers about the running of the class. 4) together with parents the researcher observed the running of the class of the school. 5) conducted discussion and evaluation with the parents about the running of the class. 6) during those observations, the researcher also observed the students of the school. 7) the researcher did the data analysis. subjects/ participants the subjects of the research are the students, the parents, and the teachers of stepping stones school surabaya. in 2017 there were around 70 students at the school with 15 teachers involving in the educational process at the school. instruments the instruments that were used in the research area in a form of taking notes upon the related documents: the school documents that cover the curriculum and the learning result of the students. other note-taking would be also about the field observation that covers the class observation (baker, 2006) and (allen, 2017). here the students became the observation target when the researcher took notes about the students’ performance, attitude, response, knowledge, language skills, habit, and margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 16 relationship with peers, teachers, parents, and other people at the school. the other instrument would be on interview guidance or questions for the parents beside the form of observation with certain theme or rubrics of evaluation or assessment related to the application of the curriculum of the school specially to facilitate the students’ learning and the school already have those documents as the school property that the researcher adopted from the literature and reflected them into research object. the researcher expected that those instruments would help the researcher to get suitable data for the research. data collection procedures to conduct this research, the data collection procedures done by the researcher were: 1) the researcher collected the data by reading and comprehending the school documents since 2011 about the school. 2) the researcher also collected the data using a scheduled observation and the incidental observation to the classes of the school. 3) there was the recording of the interview to parents and the teachers that would be the data collection of the research. 4) the observation was done by recording the class activity and taking notes during the observation of the class. in terms of the rubric of evaluation used during the open class program, the questions or the rubric have been prepared as the school property. the open class program was conducted every 3 months with random parents to be invited. the invited parents came to attend the process of learning of each class in a day. the parents might observe and give notes about the whole activities in the class including the interaction between the teachers and the children, the teachers' preparation, and also the teacher's language fluency. then the parents might fill the form based on their observation as the result of an evaluation or in case input for the teacher specifically and to the school generally. this data collection was the activities done by the researcher since 2011 when she joined the school and needed to know and comprehend the school well. data analysis the data analysis activity was to analyze the primary data and the secondary data. the primary data that the researcher got was the result of observations of the class including the observation of the students, discussion, and evaluation result with the teachers and the parents of the students. the secondary data was documents both the documents about the stepping stones school and the document from the government about early young learners' education. findings and discussion table 1. findings of the research finding 1 finding 2 • stepping stones school surabaya is a school with a full english system. • the school should become a high-quality preschool program • to be a high-quality pre-school, one of the important ways is that the schools for young learners need qualified teachers. • stepping stones school surabaya sets the fun learning reflected in the entire program of the school that can be found in its history and profile. • dealing with teaching english to young learners, the schools themselves have to be a full english school by considering the period of age of the students to support the children in having a rich english exposure environment. • dealing with the young learners, the schools need to remember to always involve the parents of the students. . following the characteristics of young learners, they enjoy imitating and are skillful in listening accurately; interpret meaning without necessarily understanding the individual word; understand margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 17 language as units, not as separate words. it is important to provide a rich environment that exposes english more. it is also suitable to support the characteristics of early young learners who are very active and imaginative and enjoy learning through playing, acting, making, and doing. that four key factors are underlying the methods of teaching english at the stepping stones school surabaya, first, the school should become a high-quality preschool program, because the schools would cause positive long-term improvements in participants' school performance and social outcomes. the school should be ready with a very well-designed curriculum. a well-designed curriculum is a curriculum that is suitable for the early young learners, fulfills the young learners' needs, and research-based curriculum. remember also that the brain wiring would be affected by the early interactions, so it is very important to give rich experiences to early young learners to have a great effect on their brain wiring by providing the required environment of learning for them. it is also a matter of fact that a child's brain is two and half times as active as an adult, this is important to do something not to lose the chance (sacks & ruzzi, 2005). second, to be a high-quality pre-school, one of the important ways is that the schools for young learners need qualified teachers. these teachers are the ones interpreting the curriculum to be daily based practices in teaching. moreover, as the main resource of the students, the teacher should have qualified english skills. there is evidence also that the non-native speaker teachers can be trusted to deliver a very good english skill as long as the teachers have qualified pronunciation, rich vocabularies, and the ability to deal with young learners. third, dealing with teaching english to young learners, the schools themselves have to be a full english school in such period of the age of the students to support the children in having a rich english exposure environment. as stated, that preschools have the greatest impact on children living in poverty and those who do not speak english at home, there is evidence that the children have the capacities to learn english and to apply their english in communicative ways. there is no reason to be afraid that the students would undergo the loss of the first language skill because the right bilingual education would make the students master the languages well (sacks & ruzzi, 2005). fourth, dealing with young learners, the schools need to remember to always involve the parents of the students. the parents are the basic need for every child. by involving the parents, the schools communicate well with the parents, so the parents may have similar ways of treating the children at home. on the other hand, the parents have the right to know and comprehend things delivered by the schools to every child they send to the schools. discussion in designing or conducting the teaching of english to young learners, it is important to pay attention to the characteristics of young learners. they are different from teenagers and adults (bessie, 2014) ) for example young learners have a short attention span. it is applied by the school that the teacher must be creative in designing their lesson plan where there are many activities to attract the students' attention and in order not to make the students get bored in the class with a specific period. time becomes a very important consideration when the teachers designing their lesson plan as the daily based application of the school curriculum. the next characteristic of young learners is understanding language as units not separate words, at the stepping stones school surabaya, it is applied by providing the full english environment with fun learning where the teachers are challenged to design a creative lesson plan and apply it in the class activity. dealing with teaching english to young learners, schools for early young learners need to use the opportunity well. the school should become a high-quality preschool program. the schools would cause positive long-term improvements in participants' school performance and social outcomes (sacks & ruzzi, 2005). the school should be ready with a very well-designed curriculum. a welldesigned curriculum is a curriculum that is suitable for the early young learners, fulfills the young learners' needs, and research-based curriculum. it is important to remember also that early interactions also affect brain wiring, so it is very important to create such an environment to support the early young learners to have their best experience to have a great effect to their brain wiring and it is also a matter of fact that a child’s brain is two and half times as active as an adult, this is important to do something not to lose the chance of stimulation to wire the brain of early young learners. to be a high-quality pre-school, one of the important ways is that the schools for young learners need qualified teachers. these teachers are the ones interpreting the curriculum to be daily based practices in teaching. moreover, as the main resource of the students, the teacher should have qualified english skills. there is evidence also that the non-native speaker teachers can be trusted to deliver a margareta desi restuti / elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 18 very good english skill as long as the teachers have qualified pronunciation, rich vocabularies, and the ability to deal with young learners. dealing with teaching english to young learners, the schools themselves have to be a full english school in such period of the age of the students to support the children in having a rich english exposure environment. preschools have the greatest impact on children living in poverty and those who do not speak english at home (sacks & ruzzi, 2005). there is evidence that the children have the capacities to learn english and to apply their english in communicative ways. there is no reason to be afraid that the students would undergo the loss of the first language skill because the right bilingual education would make the students master the languages well. the schools need to remember to always involve the parents of the students. the parents are the basic need for every kid. by involving the parents, the schools communicate well with the parents, so the parents may have similar ways of treating the children at home. on the other hand, the parents have the right to know and comprehend things delivered by the schools to every child they send to the schools. conclusion the conclusion of the research as stated below as the methods of teaching english to young learners at stepping stones school surabaya are full english schools with the fun learning process that is applied in all aspects of the educational process for the children. the important key factors to be considered as following: 1) the set of curriculums that consider the characteristics of early young learners including the certain ground rules, certain programs with the guidance of lesson plans and observation chart, the set of clear scope and sequence for each specific range of age of early young learners.2) the application of the curriculum by the competent teacher to reach the students' ability in using english and provide the fun process of learning. there was also discussion and evaluation among the teachers to provide the appropriate process of learning for the students besides the creative ways of the teachings to walk in line with the tag line of the school which is where learning is fun. 3) english environment. it is important to create an english environment for the young learners such as the lessons were delivered in english.4) involving parents is a great resource of the process of learning and the most important support part needed by each child. 5) get the research or information about young learners learning and teaching especially also the government document to make sure the path is taken by the school. for teachers and future researchers dealing with teaching english to young learners the researcher would suggest some matters first, the well-designed curriculum for early young learners is very important to set a consistent and continuous learning environment such as the full english system. the curriculum also needs to be interpreted in daily based activities by the teachers. involving the parents during the process of learning is also a crucial thing to do. the bilingual education research would help the researcher in understanding that properly learning other languages would not ruin the mother tongue is important for those who are interested in developing the teaching english to early young learners. it should be noted that there are some effects on this kind of education when school is trying to introduce more than one language in the classroom. it is also important to be remembered that bilingualism has positive effects on children's linguistic and educational development. when children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary school years, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. they have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both, and they can compare and contrast how their two languages organize reality (damico, 2010). researchers assured that when the bilingual education system is applied well, it will help the early young learners a lot such as on children's linguistic and educational development. references allen, m. 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(2013). applications of case study research. applied social research methods series, 34, 173. https://doi.org/10.1097/fch.0b013e31822dda9e attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42207c112055 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 222 elt forum 10 (3) (2020) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the online global quarantine conversation club as the way to trigger students’ ability in speaking english totok indra suswanto1 1universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 3 july 2021 approved on 23 november 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords:global quarantine conversation club; efl; speaking ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ global quarantine conversation club (gqcc) is a speaking practice program that involves more than 20 countries across the world. since the english subject has not attracted students’ attention yet, this program is expected to trigger the students in learning english. the study purposed to describe the implementation of gqcc, to analyze the students’ perception toward the implementation of gqcc, and to analyze the teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of gqcc. this study belonged to qualitative research approach with case study design. one english teacher and two students of a senior high school in gresik, indonesia, were selected as the subjects of the study. the instruments used in this study were observations, interviews, and documentations. the result showed that (1) the teachers and the students’ activities were doing briefing and rehearsal in pre-program, doing presentation and group discussion during program and doing evaluation and reflection in post program, (2) the students found that the gqcc program gave positive impact on their english as well as gave them new cultural knowledge, and (3) the teacher was becoming aware about the need of improving the students’ speaking skill through some accelerated programs as well as the technology literacy. this study gave some recommendations for both school and further research.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: totokindra2010@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 223 introduction mastering english skill is still becoming a big challenge for students, especially speaking skill. the problem is that most students fail to use english as a means of communication whereas they have been learning english since elementary school. this phenomenon mostly can be found in very school in indonesia. the failure of communication in english is caused by many factors. wahyuningsih (2020) conducted research on investigating english speaking problems involving 30 students of english language education department at state islamic institute of kudus exploring the factors of why english lesson failed to be studied by indonesian students. they stated that the problems encountered by the students in english language education department especially in speaking english cover the lack of appropriate vocabulary, the lack of grammar mastery, the lack of correct pronunciation, the lack of input of english outside the class, the lack of confidence and the lack of english-speaking curriculum development (songbatumis, 2017). another research was also conducted by (rihardini et al., 2021) involving 115 students from tenth and eleventh grade students of smk negeri 10 malang exposing that the indonesian students had low degree of willingness of communication which causes the low effort on practicing english. basically, the existence of those problems has long been identified by the school community especially the teachers. however, the teachers fail to provide the real solution. consequently, that condition brings about the negative perception of the students on learning english at school (riadil, 2020). theoretically, nanay (2013) says that perception sometimes deals with the action. wood (1996) states that teacher’s perception is linked to belief, attitude, and knowledge. knowledge refers to a subset of facts in a broad sense. belief refers to a conception (narrower than knowledge) believed by people that influences attitude (skott, 2015). attitude refers to a person’s action or behavior that reflects his/her beliefs (aw & olafson, 2014). in addition, eggen & kauchak (2001) stipulated that perception seen from its process related to the people’s effort to attach meaning to experience. it means that experiences will be very valuable if taken from meaning studies as a result of perception activity. related to efl teaching and learning program, perception is very important not only in providing estimation but also in providing the development of teaching and learning purpose (chen & hoshower, 2003). by asking perception to the students, the teacher can develop the changes in elt classroom as the way to achieve the determined goal. teaching reflection means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works a process of self-observation and self-evaluation (tice, 2004). by getting the information about what is going on in our classroom from the beginning to the end, analyzing and evaluating it, the teacher can explore the effectiveness of their teaching in the classroom by solving the problems exist. tice (2004) revealed that reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analyzing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes. similarly, fatemi et al. (2011) using teachers’ perspective in defining reflection stated that reflection “involves thinking about and critically analyzing our experiences and actions, and those of our students, with the goal of improving our professional practice”. in another word, reflection is critical thinking on what happened in the classroom related to students-teachers’ experiences and actions. related to the factors which influence the teachers to do reflection, moradkhani & shirazizadeh (2017) revealed that there are five factors influencing teachers to do reflection, they are; knowledge of reflection, institutional demands, teachers’ attitude toward teaching, availability of resources, and collegial support. several researches had been conducted related to the importance of students’ perception and teachers’ perception on the implementation of english teaching and learning (alsanie et al., 2018; khoirunnisa et al., 2018; liansari et al., 2021; resmini, 2019; riadil, 2020; rianto, 2020; shukri, 2014). khikmiah (2011) had conducted the case study on the impact of english club towards students’ speaking skill at the eleventh grade students of state senior high school 1 of pekalongan. they stated that english club had many advantages which could improve and develop students’ speaking skill. similarly, kusriandi (2016) had carried out the study on students’ perception on english extra-program in speaking practices at madrasah aliyah pembangunan mandirancan involving 26 students who joined an english club. the findings revealed the suggestion that the students should join english club of extra-program because it can improve students’ speaking skill. related to the teachers’ perception related to the importance of reflective teaching, cholifah et al. (2020) did research on investigating teacher's perceptions of reflective peer observation to promote professional development involving the service teacher in one of senior high schools in surakarta totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 224 who teaches english with 10 years of teaching experience. they found that the teachers have positive perceptions of peer observation as a professional development tool. similarly, shukri (2014) had conducted the research on female teachers’ perception of reflective teaching as a teacher development tool in the saudi context with one hundred female teachers as the subject of the study. the finding supported the hypothesis in which the participants’ perception revealed a strong relationship between reflective teaching and professionalism in teaching (shukri, 2014). besides, there were some researches regarding with the importance of conducting reflection in teaching english (ayoobiyan & rashidi, 2021; farrell, 2021; fatemi et al., 2011; hashim & yusoff, 2021; mede, 2010; yalcin arslan, 2019). fat’hi et al. (2015) conducted research involving 648 teachers as the participants of the study. the findings showed a meaningful positive relationship between the post-method attitudes of the participating english language teachers and their reflection in teaching. in addition, kholis & madya (2021) conducted a research in jogjakarta involving 131 efl teachers of public senior high school and revealed an insightful finding that the efl teachers are mostly in the level of pedagogical reflection measured from four levels of reflective teaching stage, namely pre-reflection, surface reflection, pedagogical reflection, and critical reflection. in advanced, ayoobiyan & rashidi (2021) did the similar research using efl iranian teachers as the subject of the study to uncover the relationship teachers’ reflection and resilience. the results showed positive relation on teachers’ reflection and their resilience. as the new model to accelerate the students’ ability in speaking english, global quarantine conversation club was expected to solve the classic problem of english interaction in indonesia since they used presentation (hammad, 2020; le hoai, 2021; ng et al., 2012) and group discussion as its core of activities (al jawad & abosnan, 2020; ganji et al., 2020; safarnejad & montashery, 2020; yu & hu, 2017). global quarantine conversation club was a conversational class involving participants from around 20 countries over the world. the purpose of the class meeting was to practice english internationally by discussing the actual problems which possibly existed in every country. there were many countries involved in this program, such as indonesia, india, america, turkey, pakistan, thailand, japan, singapore, canada and so on. the program was under the coordination of kasabian armen from the usa and kohei nakashima from japan and conducted twice a week. the first was on friday evening under the coordination of kasabian armen from usa and the second was on saturday under the coordination of kohei nakashima from japan. from a preliminary study conducted at school through interview and observation, it was found that the existence of this program in that school was very unique and special because this program was successful in attracting the attention of the school community especially the students. specially, the existence of this program could wake the school community up and did some progressive actions related to the development of english at school. those are the considerations of the researcher to conduct this research. in addition, the research related to the implementation of extra program especially using global quarantine conversation club was still under-researched since the researches mostly focused on the instructional practices in the classroom-curriculum based (çelik, 2020; isti, 2018; kheryadi & hilmiyati, 2021; songbatumis, 2017). this fact, then, was used by the researcher as the gap of the study. therefore, the researcher was trying to investigate the implementation of the global quarantine conversation club program at a senior high school in gresik as well as the students’ perception and teacher’s reflection toward this program. the detail research questions were presented as below: 1. how was the implementation of the global quarantine conversation club program at a senior high school in gresik? 2. how was the students’ perception toward the implementation of the global quarantine conversation club program at a senior high school in gresik? 3. how was the teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of the global quarantine methods this research employed a qualitative approach with case study design (creswell & poth, 2016). the researcher used this design under some considerations, (1) the novelty of the program in indonesia which has just existed during the pandemic era, (2) the involvement of around 20 countries over the world, and (3) the positive impacts of the program at the school. the setting of this research was at one of senior high schools in gresik involving 1 english teacher and 2 students participating in that program. the instruments used in this study were observation, semi-structured interview and documentation. to answer the first research question about the implementation of the global totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 225 quarantine conversation club program, the researcher used observation and documentation. to answer the second research question on knowing about the students’ perception toward that program, the researcher used semi structured interview, while documentation on the form of teacher’s notes was used to get the data about the reflection of the teacher toward the gqcc program. related to the procedure on collecting the data, the researcher did a school visit to permission to be able to conduct a research in that school. after meeting the headmaster, the researcher met the teacher to socialize the way to collect data, then the researcher started to collect the data. in collecting the data, the researcher gathered the data differently from one research question to another. to gather the data for the first research question, the researcher asked the documentation related to the implementation of the gqcc program, such as teacher’s lesson plan, as well as the videos. in this case the researcher used video which was recorded by the teacher. to gather the data for the second research question, the researcher conducted a semi-structured interview. the semistructured interview was done toward two students to ask their perception about the program. the interview was conducted in indonesian language to dig the deep information of the phenomena and to avoid the misunderstanding between the interviewee and the researcher. to keep the originality of the data, the procedure of interview was done together. the researcher did it to eliminate the nervousness of the students when being interviewed by the researcher. to answer the third research question, the researcher used the teacher’s note as a part of teacher’s document. the teacher’s note was in the form of hand writing notices taken during the implementation of gqcc program and in the form of the reflective notices taken from evaluation meeting with the school curriculum team. to get the validity, acceptability and reliability of the instruments, the researcher consulted to the expert related to construction of the interview items, and did pilot testing to see the acceptability of the items. during the pilot testing, the researcher interviewed the three students respectively to see the effect of the instrument acceptability. the commonality of descriptive perception by the students was used as the consideration of the instruments’ acceptability. the last, the researcher used the triangulation of the data taken from all instruments as the criteria of the reliability of the instruments. dealing with analyzing the data, the researcher focused on analyzing the data taken from the teacher’s lesson plan to know the preparation activity before the conduction of the program and the post activity done by the teachers after the conduction of the program. to know the implementation of the activity during the program, the researcher did observation by taking a part in the video conference as the observer. creswell & poth (2016) stated that the researcher can gather the notes by spending more time to be the participant as well as the observers. also, the researcher asked the recorded video meeting from the teacher and analyzed them as documents to find the phenomena during the three program phases, that is pre activity, whilst activity and post activity. the description of the phenomena found in those three phases would be considered as the finding of the research. dealing with the data about students’ perception, the researcher used a semi-structured interview consisting of three components recommended by patton (1987) which were asking about students’ knowledge, students’ belief, and students’ attitudes of the motion. the last of all, dealing with the teacher’s reflection, the researcher used the teacher’s notes as a part of the teacher’s documents taken in both during implementation and after implementation of the program when having an evaluative meeting with the school curriculum team. both of the data were analyzed qualitatively involving three stages of organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and representing (creswell & poth, 2016). findings and discussion global quarantine conversational club was conducted involving the students of senior high school in more than 20 countries over the world. since the program was conducted internationally, indonesian students needed to make some adaptation toward the program. technically, the school needed to select the appropriate students as the participants of the program. it was a reality that not all students in indonesia could speak english well. thus, it became another challenge for the teacher to participate in the program. here, the researcher would like to present the data findings which were found for each research question. the display of the data in this chapter would be presenting the results, summarizing the results, commenting and interpreting the results as well as comparing the results with the literature. the data were collected from observation, analyzing documents, interviewing the students and analyzing the teacher’s note. totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 226 the implementation of global quarantine conversation club in this part, the researcher was trying to present the findings related to the first research question about the implementation of global quarantine conversation clubs. the data were collected from observing phenomena when participating in the zoom meeting as the participant-observer, observing the zoom meeting conference video, and analyzing other documents related to program such as the lesson plan of the teacher. as the result, the researcher found several activities appearing in pre-program, duringprogram (zoom meeting conference), and post-program done by the teacher and the students. table 1 showed the pre-program done by the teacher and the students. table 1. the teacher’s and students’ activities before the implementation of zoom meeting no activities done by teachers activities done by students 1. making a list of the students who will join as presenter in this week’s conference. preparing the materials used for conference this week 2. consulting them to the curriculum team. creating the questions related to the topics 3. preparing the materials related to the topics. consulting the materials to the teacher. 4. doing a briefing with students, mostly related to the topic mastery. joining briefing conducted by the teacher. 5. doing rehearsal with the students and teacher as facilitator/moderator. doing rehearsal with the teacher from the table 1 above we got three points related to the pre-program activity of the teacher and the students. the teacher focused on selecting the students, preparing materials, conducting the briefing and rehearsal to the students. similarly, the students consulted the materials, created the questions, and joined briefing and rehearsal with the teacher. those activities seemed normal in the senior high school where not every student was good in english. the conduction of the briefing and rehearsal became very significant since both teachers and students needed to make some preparation. the lack of speaking english curriculum development became the reason why speaking ability is difficult to be achieved by the students at school (wahyuningsih, 2020). the students were occupied with multiple choice reading based to meet the qualification of national examination (daeli et al., 2020). as a result, the students got little chance to use their english in the classroom since the teacher also still liked to use the l1 language in the classroom (riadil, 2020). as a solution, preparing the questions, doing briefing and rehearsal became unavoidable as the preparation stage before the program. related to the implementation of zoom meeting conference in during-program, the researcher found the detail of activities in the three phases; those are in the pre-whilst-post-activities. table 2 showed the detail activities acted by the teacher and the students when zoom meeting conference started. table 2. the teacher’s and students’ activities when implementing zoom meeting in the gqcc program phases moderator activity teachers/ facilitator activity students activity pre-activity • choosing the facilitators of the group • dividing the participants into group • responding and clarifying the topics • responding the moderator whilstactivity1 (in break room) no activity • guiding the presentation and the group dialog • presenting the topic one by one • responding the questions from other participants whilstactivity2 (in main room) • calling the presenters one by one • listening to the presentation • presenting the topic by delegation of group totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 227 post-activity • concluding the materials • evaluating and reflecting • giving some final comments • listening to the moderator the table 2 above presented detail activities done by moderator, teacher and students in the implementation session. the moderator did some activities, such as choosing the facilitators of the group and dividing the participants into group as pre-activity phase, calling the presenters one by one in the whilst-activity phase, and concluding, evaluating and reflecting the program in post-activity phase. differently, the teacher had series of activity, such as responding and clarifying the topics in pre-activity phase, guiding the presentation and the group dialog as well as listening to the presentation by the participants in whilst-activity phase, and giving some final comments in postactivity phase. on the other hand, the students had different activities, such as responding the moderator in pre-activity phase, presenting the topic one by one as well as responding the questions from other participants in break-room session, presenting the topic one by one in main room session in whilst-activity phase, and listening to the moderator in post-activity phase. from the description of the activity circle above, it seemed that there were no differences from the casual meeting in the classroom. the use of presentation and group discussion were dominant as the actions of the program. several teachers had used group discussion as technique to teach speaking and had proved its effectiveness (al jawad & abosnan, 2020; ganji et al., 2020; safarnejad & montashery, 2020; yu & hu, 2017). similarly, several studies had been conducted and presented the effectiveness of groups discussion as the technique of teaching speaking (argawati, 2014; bohari, 2020). in gqcc during activity, the pre-activity phase and post-activity phase seemed to be normal. it dealt with the interaction of the moderators with the participants, such as greeting, confirming the topics, concluding, evaluating as well as reflecting. however, the surprising fact appeared in whilst activity phase. there were two sessions in this phase, namely the break room session and the main room session. the activity in the break room was led by the teacher/facilitator. in this break room session, everything seemed to go normally. the students presented the topic one by one, and it was continued by group discussion. surprisingly, when the students backed to the main room, the students did not present the topic one by one but just listened to the presentation done by a delegation of every group without any further discussion. it meant that the group discussion of the topic only occured in the break room session. the rationale of this action probably was based on the fact that the meeting was limited by the time, just in an hour. as a result, the process of group discussion was only implemented in whilst activity in break room session. the use of oral presentation in break-room period is very reasonable if seeing the effectiveness of oral presentation technique. that oral presentation is a good way to foster the students’ ability in speaking english is a fact which had been studied by many researchers previously (hammad, 2020; le hoai, 2021; nguyen, 2020) related to the post-program done by the teacher and the students, table 3 gave information about the activities. as stated previously, the post program was concerning about the activities after the implementation of the zoom meeting. table 3. the teacher’s and students’ activities after the implementation of the zoom meeting in the gqcc program. no activities done by teacher activities done by students 1. doing evaluation and reflection with the students doing evaluation with the teacher 2. doing evaluation and reflection with the curriculum team doing reflection with the teacher 3. confirming the next topic for conference to the committees sharing problems with other friends based on the data above, the teacher and the students had several activities related to postprogram of gqcc. the teacher did evaluation and reflection with the students and curriculum team. also, the teacher did confirmation of the next topic for conference via whats’ up group. similarly, the students followed the evaluation and reflection from the teachers and continued by sharing with other students. the post-activity was dominated by evaluation and reflection toward the implementation of the program. the both terms were considered very important by the school community to have better participation in the next program (farrell, 2021). tice (2004) stated that totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 228 doing evaluation and reflection is very important for the sake of the changes for next stage. also, activities were purposed to provide any information about what had been done during the implementation of the program and gave the teacher sources to make changes for better quality (fatemi et al., 2011). the students’ perception toward the global quarantine conversation clubs program the second problem statement was trying to answer the students’ perception toward the implementation of gqcc program. the data were collected from the semi-structured interview toward two students participating on that program. the content of the interview utilized the theoretical framework proposed by patton (1987) related to the three components used to dig the student’s perception toward the program. those three components were knowledge, belief, and attitude. in detail, there were six questions used for digging the students’ knowledge about the program, three questions used for gathering information about the students’ belief, and four questions used for knowing the students’ attitudes. the results of the interview were presented as follow. related to the knowledge about the gqcc program, the interview using patton (1987) was carried out to know about the students’ definition about gqcc program, from whom the students knew the program first time, the frequency of the students to follow the program, the length of time when the students joining the program, what kind of topics used in the program as well as what topic the students like most. dealing with the definition of the program and the source of information of the students about the program, the s1 said that the program was conversational program participated by the students from around 10 countries or more to discuss about the specific topic, while the s2 stated that this is kind of sharing program about a specific topic involving the students from many countries. the students were coming from different levels of education such as junior high school, senior high school, university and even elementary school. on answering the second question about from where they knew about the program first time, both of the students said that they got to know the program first time from the teacher/school. it was not surprising fact since the novelty of this program was only known by specific community. dealing with the frequency and the length of time of the students to follow the program, the students had difference answers. the s1 said that she involved with the program 8 times while the s2 said that he involved with the program only 6 times. interestingly, both of them always followed the program in full time, starting from the opening of the zoom until closing zoom. the frequency of the students in participating in that program functioned as a validation of the originality of the information. the next question was about the variety of the topics used in that conference and what topic the students liked most. the s1 and the s2 students helped each other to remember the topics they had used such as influential woman, the benefit of artificial intelligence in our life, you are positive or negative thinkers, recalling our childhood moment, telling the historical places in the world, the inspiring film, and the down syndrome phenomenon of the children. specifically, the topic telling about the historical places over the world was favored by the s1student while the s2 student favored the inspiring films as the topic discussion, especially indian films. as the results of the interview related to the belief of the students toward the gqcc program, the researcher gave them three questions about whether that program was important for the development of the students’ english in general, whether the students got the benefit from that program at current time related to their english development, and whether the students believed that they would get benefit in the future time from that program (patton 1991). the first question about the importance of the program for the development of the students’ english in general was revealed by the s1 and s2 students. the s1 student said, “i think this program is very important because here we can learn to ‘speak up’. we do not only study reading or writing, but also speaking. the s2 added the proposition, “here we can learn to communicate with the native where we find the strange accents and dialects”. dealing with the second question about whether the students got the benefit from that program at current time related to their english development, the s1 student stipulated, “for me, i become more confident and more proud of speaking english since i can speak with the native and my speaking can be understood by them”. the s2 student said, “besides self-confident, i can learn the value of life from this program, such as when we discuss about the phenomena of down syndrome on the children, i finally realize that they should not be treated differently as commonly appears in society. we are actually the same, as person, but they only have different condition”. the last, related to the benefit of the program for the future time, the s1 student explained, “previously, i did not brave to speak to the native, but in the future time, i believe that i will greet them and discuss totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 229 something with them”. the s2 student added, “besides speaking english, in the future time i hope to be able to take a benefit of using artificial intelligence since most of the instructions are written in english”. the last, as the results of the interview about the students’ attitudes toward the program, the researcher gave four questions; they were about the challenges of the students when following the program, the actions to be taken by both the teacher and the students as the response of the challenges, the new experiences that the students achieved when following the program, and the ideal condition which should be fulfilled in order that the students could enjoy the activity when joining the program (patton, 1987). related to the first question about the challenges of the students when following the program, the s1 student responded, “i get problems on understanding what the native speakers mean. the foreigners speak english so fast such as the one from india and turkey that i fail to understand them”. the s2 student had the same problem with the s1 student but he added, “the problem is about the internet connection that always disappears, and i also don’t understand when we make microsoft teams and we finally back to use zoom again”. both of them added that their classmates also got the same problems especially about understanding and responding the chat from other participants. they liked to keep silent when they got the turn to speak. the next question was about the actions to be taken by both the teacher and the students as the response of the challenges. the s1 student said, “the teacher facilitates us to have an extra studying about english speaking, and the teacher does briefing and rehearsal before the zoom meeting conference”. to solve the problem of technology, the s2 gave brief explanation, “the school gives us free internet card and adds the power of the wifi internet connection so that the zoom conference will not be disturbed by the problem of technology”. the next interesting question was dealing with the new experiences that the students achieved when following the program. the s1 and s2 had the same opinion that they got some new insight about the cultural values over the world especially about the accents and dialects practiced by other participants. they felt the accents and dialects of the foreigners were very strange, especially the one from india and pakistan. the last question probably would be the most interesting one. it dealt with the ideal condition which should be fulfilled in order that the students could enjoy the activity when joining the program. the s1 student explained that the most important one was to ascertain the students’ ability in english especially in speaking and listening skill and providing stable internet connection, while the s2 student differently added that besides mastering the english ability, the students had to have the large background knowledge related to the topics, as well as the ability to operate the technology. the information above explained the students’ view on the implementation of the program. discussing about the knowledge of the students about the gqcc program, it could be concluded that the both students had enough understanding about the program. the reason of that opinion was that the involvement of the students achieved 6-8 times starting from the opening of the zoom meeting until closing time. the frequent participation of the students showed that they had understood the objectives of the program as well as its detail activities in every stage of the program. an interesting finding was that when the both students said that the program was really important for developing their english at school. they said that the students needed to learn to speak up, not only to read and to write. it meant that the students had limited practice of english in the classroom so far. this condition was in line with the research by wahyuningsih (2020) that the current curriculum has lack of speaking materials development in which the materials were dominated by reading and writing. the domination of reading was due to the fact that the content of ujian nasional (un) was only dominated by multiple choice types of questions (daeli et al., 2020). this condition led the school stakeholder to focus on preparing national examination. as a result, speaking skill was neglected by most teachers in indonesia. besides, the s1 students commented that she got more selfconfidence was another interesting finding on this study. she also felt proud to see the fact that her english could be understood by the native participants. this phenomenon was in line with the research conducted by chun (2014) stated that the native teacher's oral proficiency positively affects the learners' level in the english skills especially on listening and speaking skill. it meant that the frequency of meeting with native speakers could increase the students’ self-confidence and result to the development of speaking ability (kheryadi & hilmiyati, 2021). related to the benefit of this program to their future, the both students said that this program is very beneficial for their future. the s1 student said that this program would give positive energy when she met native speaker, while the s2 student stipulated that he hoped to get to know about some artificial intelligences in which totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 230 most of their instructions were written in english. both of them believed that the future careers and jobs would possibly be achieved if speaking skill was mastered well (suresh, 2017). there were some challenges and new experiences that the students encountered joining the program. the result of interview stated that the biggest problem was about the limited ability of speaking english. even though the students had briefing and rehearsal from the teacher before, they still spoke nothing when they got their turn. most of them got problem on understanding the foreign participants. the lack of listening ability brought about the problem for the students resulting the inability to respond the other speakers’ idea. as a result, they became silent during the meeting. basically, the listening skill of the students in indonesia was still low, particularly when speaking with native (megawati et al., 2016). the lack of opportunity to listen to the native was becoming the major reason for that. this affected on the ability of speaking english because theoretically there was positive correlation between speaking skill and listening skill (demir, 2017). moreover, the use of indonesian language by english teacher in the classroom caused the problem of listening became deeper and deeper (huriyah & agustiani, 2018). that some teachers and students still tended to use l1 language when teaching and learning english in the classroom is true (riadil, 2020). positively, the students learnt some new cultural understanding and communication since both of the terms were very important in learning english (ibrahim zakarneh et al., 2021). they learnt some different accents and dialects from the meeting conference. it gave them new insight about the different cultural value over the world. dealing with the ideal condition for the students to be able to enjoy the meeting conference, both students commented that mastering english well, having good background knowledge of the topics, and mastering technology are the key factors. background knowledge is very important in speaking (shabani, 2013). it gave the students possibility to develop the idea. most of the students failed to maintain their presentation because they had lack of background knowledge. beside background knowledge, mastering technology had an important role especially when we had online learning (ferri et al., 2020). the fact that the students still had limited knowledge about technology literacy had become one of so many challenges for the implementation of online learning at school as well as the internet connection provision. the teacher’s reflection toward the global quarantine conversation clubs program the last research question was prompting to answer about the teacher’s reflection toward the global quarantine conversation clubs program. in this step, the researcher used the teacher’s notes as one of the documents as the instruments to collect the data. the teacher wrote some notes in three phases of implementation of the program. the first was the notes before the program started (pre-program), the notes when the zoom meeting conference on action (during-program), and the notes after the program done (post-program). the teacher’s notes were in the form of handwriting using three subtopics, namely problem column, solution column, and reflection column. the following table represented the reflection of the teacher in pre, during, and post program taken from the documentation of teacher’s note. table 4. the data on teacher’s reflection toward the implementation of the program phases problems solution reflection pre-program difficult to select the student as participants doing briefing and rehearsal not many students are good in english during-program unstable internet connection upgrading the capacity of the power increasing technology understanding as well as the capacity of the power is needed not every student has laptop conducting program at school and laptop is from the teachers don’t know how to use microsoft team giving suggestion to the committee to use zoom meeting again many students keep silent and cannot speak giving briefing and rehearsal the ability of the students at the school is still low and needs improvements they don’t understand what the other participants mean giving them facilitators preparing the next students to be participants with good english is needed totok indra suswanto | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 231 post-activity difficult to find the time for evaluation and reflection meeting with curriculum, sometimes with headmaster or conducting it via what’s up application. good team, run well table 4 confirmed problem, solution and reflection taken from the teacher’s notes during the program. there were some points that the teacher reflected from the program; the ability of the students at the school was still considered as low level and needed improvements, the technology literacy and facility as well as the capacity of the connection power was needed to be upgraded ferri et al. (2020) and the lack of understanding about the importance of gqcc program by the school community so that the more socialization was needed. knowing that the students could not maximally involve in discussion when meeting conference made the teacher shocked. the students did not understand not only how to speak english but also how to use technology (ferri et al., 2020). the teacher got difficulty to choose the students to be the participants of the program. the existence of briefing and rehearsal did not help much, so the course of action should be made for better changes in the future time. this finding was in line with the data taken from the students’ perception explained in the previous section. the students seemed to have problems in speaking as well as in listening english since the lack of opportunity that the students got in the classroom and they mostly still used l1 in their language classroom (riadil, 2020). surprisingly, the school community did support on this program. the school management did some improvements to anticipate the problems, such as conducting an extracurricular program cooperating with english course and upgrading the internet power connection. the solid team, the headmaster, the head of curriculum, as well as the english teachers were expected to give big contribution on succeeding the gqcc program in the future time. conclusion global quarantine conversation club gave much contribution to the students in learning english. the limitation of its implementation was not because the program was unqualified, but it was merely the un-readiness of the school community in indonesia, especially in providing the students with good english mastery. here, the researcher would give a brief conclusion starting from the first research question to the third research question. dealing with the first research question about the implementation of the program, the researcher concluded some specific activities related to the pre-program, during program and post program. the series of activities related to the implementation of gqcc program were that the teachers and the students were doing briefing and rehearsal in pre-program, doing presentation and group discussion during program and doing evaluation and reflection in post program. dealing with the second research question about the students’ perception, the researcher concluded that the gqcc program gave positive impact on the students’ english development as well as gave them some new cultural knowledge over the world. the students became more aware with differentiation among the people from different country and learnt about life from the discussion. the last, dealing with the third research question about the teacher’s reflection, the researcher inferred that the teacher became more aware about the importance of upgrading the students’ speaking skill through some accelerated programs as well as improving the understanding of the technology literacy. to anticipate the problems of this program, the english teacher should start using english language as lingua franca when teaching in the classroom and provide more innovative and creative extra school programs for the students. the possibility of the future research can be conducted on exposing the teachers’ perception toward this program and well as the comparative study between the students who join this program and the students who do not. references al jawad, a. s. h., & abosnan, s. h. 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(2017). can higher-proficiency l2 learners benefit from working with lowerproficiency partners in peer feedback? teaching in higher education, 22(2), 178–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1221806 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 40 elt forum 10 (1) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt distance learning in the time of covid-19: exploring students’ anxiety christianti tri hapsari 🖂 english department, faculty of languages and arts, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received in 15 march 2021 approved in 29 march 2021 published in 30 march 2021 ________________ keywords: distance learning; covid-19; students; anxiety ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ performing sudden and uncertain distance learning can be difficult and complicated experiences for students as they may suffer from anxiety. the study of anxiety in indonesia typically concentrated on the relation of anxiety with speech production (anandari, 2015), gender differences (nurhaeni, 2019), four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) (male, 2018) and its impact on language learning (budiman, ngadiso, & suparno, 2017). the study of anxiety in distance learning especially in the time of crisis, like the outbreak of covid-19 is rare. thus, the study to examine the distance learning anxiety faced by higher education students in the time of crisis (covid-19) and explore the cause of those anxieties is important. the data of this study was collected using two instruments, a questionnaire and an interview. to get the data, the researcher modified the foreign language classroom anxiety scale questionnaire (flcas) by howitz and young (1991) which is commonly applied to determine the level of anxiety. since the study concentrated in distance learning, the researchers also decided to adopt an “on-line language learning anxiety (olla) inventory” (majid, othman, & rahmat, 2007). findings revealed that students experienced higher anxiety levels in the beginning stage of distance learning. a year after the implementation of distance learning, students had adapted well and the level of anxiety they encountered was reduced. yet, technical problems like unstable internet connection and devices’ malfunction that occurred during distance learning still triggered much anxiety among students since that condition made them lose the opportunity to receive some important information and chances to actively participate in online activities as well as improve their skills. © 2021 universitas negeri semarang correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: christianti@mail.unnes.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 41 introduction distance teaching is an instructional method in which teaching behaviors and learning behaviors are performed separately so that teacher and learner communicate by making use of printed, electronic, or mechanical devices (moore, 2013). distance education offered a method of education which physically separates learner and teacher. this type of education can be applied for individual purposes, or in conjunction with other forms of education, including face to face (simonson, smaldino, & zvacek 2015). simonson, smaldino, & zvacek (2015) also outlined the early history of distance education, they explained that the concept of distance education was firstly introduced in 1833 by means of an advertisement of swedish newspaper. seven years later, issac pitman offered shorthand instruction via correspondence but distance education in the form of correspondence study was established by charles toussaint and gustav langenscheidt in germany in 1843. the development of distance education was then introduced by keegan (2000), he claimed that the start point of distance education as research projects began in 1967 when the world’s first distance education research centre was established in germany. in that year, the two pioneer scholars of distance education, guther dohmen and otto peters published their works. moreover, keegan (2000) emphasized that the rapid advances of electronic telecommunications in the 1980s and 1990s have prospered the development of distance education. the foundation of asian distance teaching universities has started its operation since 1980s. in the 1990s, some universities offered professional qualifications at degree level for distance education. in the 2000s, technologies such as audio connections, videotapes, and television began to be utilized by many institutions to help lessen the demand of travel for faculty and students (meyer, 2002). as an alternative option to traditional teaching practice, distance education has proved its significant existence by supplying students with numerous advantages, such as study from everywhere and anytime, easy commuting, save time and money, freedom to choose, and earning while you learn (sadeghi, 2019). although distance education offers greater opportunity for people to access higher education, distance education still has lots of limitation and drawbacks. a study taken in an australian university between 20013 through 2007 by owens, hardcastle, & richardson, (2009) showed that distance education of remote students issued some problems including feeling isolated due to minimum face-to-face interaction and the lack of digital literacy. time differences, poor internet connection and staffs’ limited knowledge toward the uses of technology also hampered the implementation of synchronous learning. the matter of isolation was as well found in croft, dalton, & grant’s (2010) study, saying that the matter of isolation can be the indirect or direct source of influence to students’ learning experience. leontyeva (2018) added that parents-teachers’ unreadiness, inadequate references, insufficient academic mentors, unsuitable managerial structure and inefficient facilities affected how distance education developed. apart from the struggle of social interaction, distance education brings high chances of distraction, displays complicated technology, and offers limited chances to get jobs with online degrees (sadeghi, 2019). unfamiliarity and incapability in performing some tasks as well as the difficulty in functioning social interaction can be the cause of anxiety among students in distance learning. in the study of tuncay and uzunboylu (2010), the students resisted to do distance learning for not being able to do face-to-face communication. the study also found that girls were more anxious than boys in participating in distance learning. a study of allama iqbal open university argues that the anxiety among male students was slightly higher than female students (ajmal & ahmad, 2019). bolliger and halupa (2012) stated that the level of anxiety of students in online learning was correlated with the degree of students’ satisfaction toward the courses. on the other hand, majid, sharil, luaran, & nadzri (2012) mentioned that readiness and cognitive ability caused a lot of anxiety among adult learners. whereas the study of bollinger (2017) about foreign language anxiety in traditional and distance learning foreign language classrooms confirmed that distance learning created more anxiety than traditional classes. moreover, anxiety could affect the academic performance among distance learning students (ajmal & ahmad, 2019). the development of distance learning in indonesia also has its own bitter sweet experience, but not many researchers studied its practices in indonesian contexts. one interesting study of distance learning in indonesia only explored the part of instructional media and technologies used in the learning process. yaumi (2007) stated that english instruction for distance learning in indonesia made use of printed materials, radio, telephone, audiotapes, television, and computer-based technology in supporting the learning system. the other study of indonesian researchers mainly focused on online learning. a study by rahmawati (2016) that examined the benefits and the drawbacks of e-learning in christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 42 indonesia exposed typical findings, in line with the study by sadeghi (2019) and other distance learning researchers. the benefit of online learning is related to flexibility and the drawbacks involve decreasing social interaction, internet connection problems, increasing the possibility of plagiarism or cheating, lack of actual or direct teachers’ feedback, and lack of technological skills. the differences between rahmawati’s study and previous study were on how the study found out that online learning could help less active students to be active students and it would be a costly learning. distance learning does not only support remote or working students but also support students in the time of crisis. meyer and wilson (2011) highlighted the importance of emergency plans for institutions to handle emergencies like h1n1. the study investigated the websites of the 50 state flagship higher education institutions to know how distance learning was included in the institutions’ emergency plans. only one institution mentioned online learning as the emergency plan and the other institutions gave no reference and the rest said that the emergency plan will apply another methods of delivering courses by utilizing technology or particular tools. a college of business impacted by earthquakes in 2011, in new zealand (ayebi-arthur, 2017) revealed that the implementation of technology during the crisis helped breaking through barriers to learning in hard times. the students’ engagement and familiarity with technology as well as the infrastructure capability to afford continual services are crucial to its implementation. more stories like this may happen in the future and online learning and related technology can offer practical solutions to higher education institutions hit by disasters in the future (meyer & wilson, 2011). in sustaining equitable experiences for students in times of crisis, “institution can evaluate and improve the resilience of their academic programs by identifying and maintaining resilient communication channels, preparing staff to use blended or online learning strategies, preparing students to work independently and online, ensuring resources are readily accessible in alternative formats” (mackey, et.al., 2012). since march 24th, 2020, due to the corona outbreak, the ministry of education has enacted the shift of the educational system from traditional classroom meeting or blended learning to completely online learning mode. this rapid sudden major shift of teaching and learning delivery has left students and teachers unprepared. the recent study by noor, isa, & mazhar (2020) showed that both students and teachers encountered many barriers during online learning in the time of covid-19. the challenges occurred during online learning were devided into three types, technology-related, teachers-related and students-related challenges (noor, 2020). some common challenges that refered to technology were low digital literacy (alamzova et. al, 2020), lack of devices, and poor internet connection (noor, 2020). in addition to technology-related challenges, high internet quota price also affected the learning performance of students with low financial conditions (noor, 2020). during the shift of teaching from classroom setting to online learning, teachers needed to adapt the curriculum, teaching materials, and methods to fullfil the goals of online learning. however, teachers experienced problems like digital literacy, poor interaction with students, poor material development, and the limited time for teaching preparations as well as giving feedback (noor, 2020). besides, students have some problem in mainting positive attitudes, interaction (alamzova et. al, 2020), motivation, and cooperation during online learning (noor, 2020) that caused the feeling of isolation (kaisara & bwalya, 2021). inconducive home environment also interfered the teaching and learning process (kaisara & bwalya, 2021). home during the online learning was usually noisy. performing sudden and uncertain distance learning can be difficult and complicated experiences for students as they may suffer from anxiety. tuncay and uzunboylu (2010) in their study of “anxiety and resistance in distance learning” affirmed that among some types of anxiety in distance learning, such as online-test anxiety, internet anxiety, talking in virtual groups and computer anxiety, the highest level of anxiety ranks belonged to online-test anxiety and internet anxiety. many indonesian researchers have focused their study to online or e-learning as a part of instructional methods but few researchers have started to study the practice of online learning as part of distance learning in indonesia. a study that captured the face of indonesian distance learning only exposed the instructional media and technologies being utilized in the learning process (yaumi, 2007). whereas, the study of anxiety in indonesia typically concentrated on the relation of anxiety with speech production (anandari, 2015), gender differences (nurhaeni, 2019), four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) (male, 2018) and its impact on language learning (budiman, ngadiso, & suparno, 2017). the study of anxiety in distance learning especially in the time of crisis, like the outbreak of covid-19 is found rare. thus, this study aims to examine the distance learning anxiety faced by higher education students in the time of crisis (covid-19) and explore the cause of those anxieties. christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 43 methods students majoring indonesian literature and english education at one of public universities in semarang, enrolled in some english courses which were initially blended learning but due to the outbreak of coronavirus, the course fully shifted into online distance learning. the course made use of google classroom platform, youtube and whatsapp as the medium of instruction during the distance learning. english is not a new thing for them since they have had the subject during their compulsory secondary schooling years. although they have experienced online learning through blended learning, all of the participants were considered as first-time distance learning students. they never had a learning system with the absence of face-to-face interaction. a total of 42 students who joined the course in the even semester were asked to complete a survey which includes anxiety items. then, in the second cycle of data collection, the same survey was carried out to check the changes of their answers. out of 42 students who joined the study, eight of the participants were selected for further interviews. the data were collected using two instruments, questionnaire and interview. the study modified the foreign language classroom anxiety scale questionnaire (flcas) by howitz and young (1991) which is commonly applied to determine the level of anxiety. the flcas was based on a five-point likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). this scale originally consisted of 33 questionnaire items which were categorized into communicative anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and anxiety of english class or classroom. the questionnaire involved 33 statements which were divided into the following categories: 8 items (1, 9, 14, 18, 24, 27, 29, 32) were linked to communication anxiety, 9 items (3, 7, 13, 15, 20, 23, 25, 31, 33) to fear of negative evaluation, and 5 items (2, 8, 10, 19, 21) to test anxiety. whereas the 11 items remained, they were organized as anxiety of english classes (zhao, 2007). since the study concentrated in distance learning which was mostly implemented online learning, the researchers decided to adopt an “on-line language learning anxiety (olla) inventory” to examine anxiety level (majid, othman, & rahmat, 2007). this model was designed based on language learning anxiety inventory (howitz and young, 1991). adjustments were created during the design to involve distance learning. there were 33 items which reflected 7 constructs. the breakdowns of the constructs are as follows. likert scale of 1 to 5 was used, 1 as strongly disagree and 5 as strongly agree. domain 1 was associated with the attributes of distance english language learning and corresponded to questions on the negative perception that the participants have towards distance language learning. domain 2 linked to the motivation for distance english language learning. the statements helped the participants to distinguish their positive attitude towards distance language learning programs. the third domain was about the confidence in distance english language learning where the statements allowed the participants to measure their confidence level when undergoing distance language learning. the fourth domain was on experiencing distance english language learning. this domain was used to identify the level of comfort, the participants felt during distance language learning. domain five was related to the fear of the distance english language learning which helped the participants to identify their fear in the distance learning process. domain 6 examined the cognitive ability of the participants in distance english language learning. the last domain was on the readiness in distance english language learning, which studied the learners’ perception of their readiness to uncover distance language learning experience. the first cycle data collection was carried out three months after distance learning due to covid-19 outbreak while the second cycle data collection was done a year after that emergency remote teaching. before administering the questionnaire, a brief written instruction was given to assist participants in filling out the questionnaire. the researcher also opened opportunities for students to ask questions via whatsapp groups if they failed to understand the instructions stated in the questionnaire. then, the questionnaire was distributed by the researcher to students via google forms. the researcher asked the students to select the choice that best describes their experiences and feelings during distance learning. the students were also notified that their responses are confidential and will be used for research purposes only. the students took around 20 – 30 minutes to finish the questionnaire. during that time period, the researchers were prepared to answer any question asked by students, and explain some items which were considered confusing by the students. after distributing the questionnaire, an interview was administered to a number of students who were willing to share their experiences and anxiety during distance learning. a recorded phone call was used to facilitate the researcher interviewing the participants. the interview questions were originated from some written statements on the questionnaires. the interview was done to further christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 44 discover the causes of anxieties experienced by the participants. each participant spent almost one hour or more for the interview section. to check the validity and the reliability of the questionnaire, the researcher used pearson product moment correlations and cronbach’s alpha, calculated by spss. the researcher also applied triangulation by source. the same technique (interview) was employed to different sources to get the validity of the data. the data analysis of the study was done in two techniques. to analyze the collected data from questionnaire, the researchers employed the descriptive statistic technique by tabulating the data obtained. the data collection from the interview was transcribed, analyzed and used to validate the data obtained through the questionnaire. findings and discussion the results of seven domains of distance english language learning are presented in table 1 and 2. from the first data collection cycle, it showed that among 6 items of attributes of distance english language learning, most of students’ anxiety were derived from “worried being left behind because program runs so quick”. the second rank of students’ anxiety came from “overwhelmed by the number of process have to go through”. the data also revealed that most of the students did not really bother with the statement “dislike working with machines smarter than me.” interestingly, in the second cycle of data collection, most of the students’ anxiety were derived from cognitive ability. they were worried a lot about not being able to fully understand the knowledge obtained during distance learning. the other source of students’ anxiety was related to readiness. students tend to experience anxiety when they were not ready enough for online learning, especially when their lecturer started discussion activity that demanded them to answer or respond to certain topics directly. technological anxiety did not become the issue of anxiety among the students but the internet anxiety did. student had mastered the basic technology skills like using word processing, spreadsheets, working with communication and presentation software programs and navigating the internet (kay, 2008). in this case, internet anxiety did not relate to the cognitive skills on how to navigate the internet but the anxiety was associated with technical problems occurred during online learning that caused ineffective performances both receiving knowledge and demonstrating abilities. this result was differ from what halupa (2004) found in his study that the students had a slightly positive attitude toward internet and online learning. whereas, meaningful learning could not be realized if the internet connection was still in trouble. this obstacle did not meet the basic requirement of online learning where learning performed assisted by electronic devices with internet connection (gonzalez & louis, 2018). table 1. online language learning anxieties cycle 1 mean std. deviation attributes 3,49 0,87 motivation 3,21 0,70 confidence 3,46 0,82 experiencing 3,11 0,88 fear 3,33 0,87 cognitive 3,28 0,88 readiness 2,51 0,70 table 2. online language learning anxieties cycle 2 mean std. deviation attributes 3,22 0,96 motivation 3,67 0,85 confidence 3,51 0,968 experiencing 3,39 1,14 fear 2,95 1,18 cognitive 3,48 1,04 readiness 3,12 1,09 christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 45 attributes of distance learning attributes of distance learning were questioning the notion that talked about students’ attitude toward working with smart machines, understanding responses, receiving feedback, and cognitive performances during the process of online learning. differ from what majid, et. al (2007) found in her study that the respondents mostly disliked working with the machines which are smarter than them. this study found out that the students were pretty comfortable working with smart machines (80%). they are in an era where technological developments are very well received. whereas, the other attributes of distance learning, such as have to be a genius to understand all the special; get upset when i don’t understand the responses; afraid to receive negative responses; worried being left behind because program runs so quick; overwhelmed by the number of process have to go through showed similar patterns. those attributes were quite frustrating for the students. the high contribution to anxiety was linked to inability to understand responses (70%) and follow the tight online learning process (70%). from this result, it can be concluded that the attributes of distance learning were pretty intimidating for the students. the shift from face to face learning to emergency remote teaching that limit the interaction both between lecturers & students and also students & students affects how messages deliver and receive. during the process of communication in distance learning, information can be interpreted differently from one person to the other that can cause frustration and misunderstanding. motivation for distance learning respondents appeared to have a positive attitude toward distance learning (80%). they were also eager to have extra online learning for the sake of developing and improving their knowledge and skills but in the process of learning they still thought about other unrelated things. even if their motivation in doing distance learning was high, they still had some difficulties to not lose focus during the process. the students’ motivation in doing distance learning is originated from the desire of their own self-fulfillment to be able to successfully excel the knowledge and skills of the subject they learn (gill et. al, 2001). the tendency to think of unrelated things could come from the unconducive environments, fatigue, or double responsibilities as students, children, or employers (knowles, 1990). confidence in distance learning the result of the study revealed that 50% of the respondents were confident to learn through distance learning and the half of the respondents were not. even though the percentage of confident respondents was quite high, the respondents still had a tendency to doubt their own capability. they also get nervous with the facts somehow in learning, they could forget the things they have known before (70%). moreover, the study exposed the reality that online learning gave more tense and nervousness to the students. they hardly felt sure and relax during distance learning (66.7%). technical problems like device malfunction and unstable internet connection as well as a lot of disturbance got the students less confident toward their knowledge and skills they gained during distance learning. they were afraid of getting none that could improve their english skills. majid, et. al (2007) claimed that learners could fail in learning in distance learning environment due to difficulties in dealing with tools, machines, or new circumstances. before the distance learning was conducted, students had their own insecurity toward their psychomotor and cognitive skills of english. yet, the sudden changes of learning environment into online learning with limited interaction and some technical problems increased their worries. they needed to cope with not only their inner confidence problems related to knowledge and skills but also with external factors that were associated with limited or delayed interaction, devices’ malfunction, unstable internet connection, limited time of synchronous learning, and overwhelmed materials and assignments. even if, higher education students had the capacity to move from dependence to independence in learning (knowles, 1990), the change into fully autonomous learners could take long time. the students of distance learning need the full attention of their lecturers in providing advice, guidance and support (dembo & lynch, 2004). those roles can help institutions to maintain students’ confidence during the tough process of distance learning (lake, 1999). experiencing distance learning adapting the change of learning mode from face to face learning into emergency remote teaching could be hard and burdensome at first. in the first cycle of data collection, the students expressed that distance learning was not an exciting activity (66%), although they claimed that the challenge of christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 46 learning was exciting and they believed that distance learning will be more comfortable as the time goes by. that belief was true since in the second cycle of data collection, the students had changed their perspective toward experiencing distance learning. they had felt the exciting experience during distance learning, even if some respondent stated that distance learning was monotonous. nothing has changed since the beginning, lack of interaction was the issue. some technology had applied to substitute the missing exposure of interaction between lecturers and learners as well as learners and learners, but for some of respondents, those interactions could fully complete the missing parts that face to face interaction used to give. the negative feeling that related to isolation was the challenge (croft et. al, 2010). moreover, the opportunity to get guidance and feedback during distance learning was limited that caused some students’ difficulties and problems unsolved. the fear of the distance learning the respondents’ fear during distance learning was related to something technical like unstable internet connection and device’ malfunction. there was no big issue that was correlated with digital literacy. few first year respondents admitted that university lms was a bit confusing at first but later on they had mastered in navigating it after some guidance. differ from what majid et. al (2007), in this study, the respondents were still afraid of making mistakes during distance learning (76.2%). yet, the issue relied on the idea of making mistakes. making mistakes was still connected to low cognitive skills that for some respondents could be considered as something embarrassing. in their learning, they were expecting that the process and the result should be successful in order to achieve intended goals. avoiding making mistakes was also students’ strategy in obtaining an optimal score in learning. cognitive ability of the participants in distance learning the result of the study revealed that respondents had difficulties in understanding the process involved in distance learning (67.9%). shifting the mode from face to face learning to online learning can be challenging with the struggle of reducing mistaken understanding (weller, 2002), facilitating critical online discussion, helping students’ anxiety (hughes & daykin, 2002), fostering active participation (gibson et al., 2001), and meet the demands quickly (hughes & daykin, 2002). instead of material delivery challenges, distance learning also faces the needs of continuous and structured support, feedback, and guidance from the lecturers to the students to fully support students’ cognitive development. moreover, the demands of self-study were getting bigger but the time was limited. the students should be able to deal with the learning expectations and requirements to do some reading, finishing assignments, doing projects, reviewing materials, doing quizzes or tests and also doing revisions or improvements on some works (croft, 2010). with the diverse courses, they took every semester, those processes could be overwhelming and hinder their capability in understanding something. readiness in distance learning the respondents claimed that they experienced cultural shock during the shifting between face to face learning to distance learning. the absence of direct interaction between lecturer and students got them nervous since in some cases, the information about some courses was limited or unclear. in addition, when the internet connection was not stable, the information was only shared during synchronous meetings, the students had tendency to feel anxious. the anxiety also occurred during lecture and discussion sessions. the students stated that understanding lecturer’s material delivery during distance learning was harder, especially at the moment the device was error, the internet was lost, the fatigue caused by overtask, and noisy environment. the result of the study showed that the student would not avoid distance learning (85%). moreover, they were willing to take more distance learning (85.8%). those findings prove that even though the students experienced some difficulties in adapting with the mode of distance learning, as the time went by they could build readiness in learning through distance education. distance learning obliges the students to be fully independent, but in fact not all students are ready to learn and work independently (leontyeva, 2018). the university itself is facing the struggles of adjusting the curriculum, technology, and lecturers to fulfill the demands of distance learning. conclusion the shift of face to face learning to distance learning caused some anxieties to students. moving the mode of learning from classroom activity into learning with the use of electronic devices, educational christianti tri hapsari/ elt forum 10 (1) (2021) 47 platforms, social media and internet connection needed great efforts and habituation. the old practices that used to be done through classroom setting must be substituted by online learning activities synchronously and asynchronously. the challenges developed from technology, internet, devices, materials, material delivery, assignments, feedbacks and assessment. the absence of direct interaction between lecturers and students as well as students and students also brought the feeling of isolation toward the concept of learning. therefore, distance learning was claimed as monotonous, boring and frustrating by some of the students. technical problems like unstable internet connection and device’s malfunction also contributed to the ineffective process of distance learning since it opened the high possibility of mistaken understanding and unequal distribution of materials’ mastery. those were the main sources of anxiety faced by the respondents of this study. moreover, distance learning demanded the high independence of students to learn not only from the given materials and lecture but also some further self-study. thus, the anxiety that occurred due to students’ lack of readiness during distance learning can be minimized. 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(2007). a study of high school students’ english learning anxiety. the asian efl journal, vol. 9(3), 22–34. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4221bbf4a619 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 201 elt forum 12 (3) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt code switching in grade 11 students of um peñaplata college clares fe enriquez1, glyza candido1, nicole fletcher abing1, franlo bucog1, jovenil bacatan1 1teacher education, um peñaplata college, philippines article info ________________ article history: received on march 14, 2022 approved on july 30, 2022 published on november 30, 2022 ________________ keywords: code switching; multilingual, bilingual; textual analysis; philippines ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study aimed to discover the code switching found in impromptu speeches of the grade 11 students of um peñaplata college. specifically, the study sought to determine and describe the common words used in code switching in the impromptu speeches of the grade 11 students and to analyze the types and functions of the common words they code switched. since there have been no studies related to cs in the island garden city of samal, the researchers are urged to conduct this kind of research. in addition to this, the researchers also want to know the role of cs in the academe since english language proficiency is highly necessary especially in an english classroom. the participants of this study are from um peñaplata college, specifically the grade 11 senior high school students. among the 78 respondents, there were 67 purposively selected which were subjected to textual analysis. analysis revealed four most common codeswitching words committed in impromptu speeches. these are ahm, ah, kanang, and ay. the types of these code-switching words are intersentential, intra-sentential, intraword, and tag-switching. also, the functions of these code-switched words are fillers, hesitations, discourse markers, literary translation, and repetition of words. with these, language educators should continuously find strategies to suit the ever-changing nature of the curriculum and handle the weakness evident in the teaching of the english language.  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 brgy. penaplata, island garden city of samal davao del norte, philippines 8119 e-mail: jovenilbacatan@umindanao.edu.ph http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 202 introduction due to the varieties of language that an individual has and able to use, code switching (cs) is widely utilized as a strategy of communicating (canete, 2018). based on the department of education implementation of bilingual education policy, english and filipino language should be used as a medium of instruction. this policy includes two major domains: the english domain, which contains english communication arts, mathematics, and science; and the filipino domain, which consists of all other subjects, including filipino communication arts, social studies, and history (porciuncula, 2011). this policy is one of the reasons why cs becomes unavoidable. there are positive views regarding the use of cs. as stated in the study of cahyani et al. 2016), cs is the set of creative and practical shifting between two languages. however, bullock and toribio (2009) viewed that cs is an index of bilingual proficiency among linguist; it is more commonly perceived by the general public as indicative of language degeneration. since there have been no studies related to cs in the island garden city of samal, the researchers are urged to conduct this kind of research. in addition to this, the researchers also want to know the role of cs in the academe since english language proficiency is highly necessary especially in an english classroom. cs is the use of more than one language in the classroom by any of the classroom participants such as teacher and students (lin, 2008). it means that not only learners switch codes but also mentors. additionally, cs is an art of speech wherein bilinguals shift from one language to another between or within sentences. therefore, the use of only one language as a medium of instruction may lessen the communication process in the classroom (macswan, 2017). various studies (aljoundi, 2013; astrid; 2015; youkhana, 2010; moetia, 2018; & ali, 2020) have studied code switching that takes place in the classroom over the last two decades or more. code switching was not favored by many educators, thus, one should have at least an understanding of switching between the mother language and the second language and its underlying reasons. the abovementioned studies have not covered the functions and types of code switching. with this issue being identified, the researchers want to determine the functions and types of code switching commonly used by the grade 11 students of um peñaplata college to provide a heightened awareness of its use in the classroom discourse and will lead to a better instruction by either eliminating it or dominating its utilization during the second language instruction in an esl classroom setting it is unavoidable that students will shift from one language to another when speaking. alenezi (2010) claims that in a bilingual classroom worldwide, using code switching is a frequent practice. thus, this suggests that the necessary use of the english language in the classroom contributes to the occurrence of code switching and a reason why students across the world switch codes as a way of communicating. cs helps express ideas clearly and socio-linguistically. it is because not all people in a multilingual society like the philippines could understand and use english as the primary language for communication. this is sided with gocheco (2013) wherein he believes that the combination of two or more languages such as english and tagalog is intentional. according to him, culture sometimes enables what language is more proper to use in different situations. therefore, the use of only one language is not advisable at all times. there is a need for switching codes under certain conditions and culture. specific patterns of cs could be identified through closer scrutiny. in the research of kustati (2014) code switching could be intra-sentential wherein switching occurs within a phrase, a clause or a sentence without affecting the syntax of the sentence. it could also be within the words (intraword) or at the phonological level (tag switching). switching codes, on the other hand, could occur outside a phrase, a clause or a sentence (intersentential). furthermore, the study of alheeti and al abdely (2016) states that the types of cs include tag switching which is the use of a short phrase in one language. these include filler, interjections and idiomatic expressions. the next type is called inter-sentential switching wherein one sentence is in a different language, and the other sentence or clause is also in another language. the last type is intra-sentential switching wherein switching can occur at the word level, sentential or even clausal. on the other hand, there are purposes in which students code switch. as cited in alenezi (2010), these include equivalence and floor holding. equivalence is a technique that bilinguals utilized to find the equivalent of the unknown lexicon of the target language in the speaker's mother tongue to overcome the deficiency in the second language. floor holding, on the other hand, is a clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 203 strategy used by bilingual students when communicating in the target language to replace the stopgap with words in the vernacular language to maintain conversation fluency. in support with this, cs could be seen as an innate effect of language and culture relationship. expressing first language or some other language than the target one does not necessarily exclude learners from the community of english language students, but instead, they symbolize the desires to gain approval in the community. identity, equality, and mutual respect are several signals that take place during cross-cultural communication. various code switching found in the typical classroom show the presence of self-identity that is a characteristic of the locality where the learners are from. in these statements, it could be concluded that culture plays an indispensable role in the language used (kustati, 2014). furthermore, cs is utilized to replace a word in place of unknown word in the target language, to put emphasis on a particular point, to specify an idea that has no equivalent in other language, to clarify certain point, to reinforce a request, to express identity and communicate friendship, to alleviate tension and put humour into a conversation, and in some bilingual situations, code switching happens when the given topics are introduced (alenezi, 2010). based on the study of alenezi (2010), switching codes seems to be an aide for the lack of vocabulary in a particular target language. this also implies that the use of the first language has a more significant effect than a second or target language in highlighting information. cs, therefore, helps the speaker to ensure that the information he wanted to convey to the listener will be understood. furthermore, according to alenezi (2010), switching codes is seen as a tool in acknowledging the importance of using the vernacular language which he believes to allow the learners to draw on useful sense-making resources. this is in the reason that it is easier to create ideas using the first language than utilizing the second language directly. it is difficult in the sense that not all the words that we know in the second language are enough to coincide with our ideas when speaking wherein unlike the vernacular one there would be no limitations. additionally, through switching codes, the speaker and the listener would be able to identify the shifting of a topic from one to another. in this case, cs serves as a marker of discourse. this is supported by the research of ahmad and jusoff (2009) stating that cs is used to signal changes in context by using alternate codes or grammatical systems. it allows the efficient transfer of information from the senders to the receivers. there are many additional factors affecting people to do code switching. the most common elements are solidarity, social status, topic, affection, and persuasion (eldin, 2014; al-azzawi et al., 2018). additionally, maintaining privacy, avoiding misunderstanding and unfamiliarity are also factors of code switching (bista, 2010).one of the reasons why some speakers’ code switch from the target language to their first language is to present their perspective revealing mixed feelings towards linguistic behaviors. sometimes, cs is done either intentionally or unconsciously (amorim, 2017). cs is a result of being overwhelmed in expressing one’s idea. on the other hand, there are four broad motivations why someone might choose to use cs. social and interpersonal dynamics, compartmentalizing particular language use only for specific topics, indicating additional pragmatic meaning like emphasis or vagueness, and social acceptability of using a particular language in a given context (yarzebinski et al., 2015). for further emphasis of the social reasons why people code switch is that it can function as a broad label to include people who are part of an "in-group" or exclude an "out-group," in accordance to whether a particular person can understand what is being said.personal preference based on liu (2018) can indeed override cs in interacting, but such effects are constrained by individual differences in cognitive capacities of processing, which in turn relates to the frequency of the usage of a specific language which automatizes processing. in the study of kustati (2014), code switching is a communicative strategy that is the same with literature translation, appeal for assistance, mime, paraphrase or avoidance of communication breakdown. in other words, code switching serves as a communicative technique that students used to either intentionally or unconsciously to reach communicative goals. also, cs acts as fillers, pauses, hesitations, repetition of words, and speech marks. these functions are the common ways that learners are used in pursuing effective communication. generally, these functions help the students in dealing class talks (amorim, 2017). however, even though code switching seems beneficial in maintaining good communication, there are still many researchers arguing that the reason of code switching is said to avoid clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 204 communication, stop the conversation or shows destructed communication (paculanang, 2018). in the research of valerio (2015) code switching should not be employed in second language classroom because of two reasons: (a) code switching by either the teacher or the students can heighten the use of non-target language producing unusual linguistic patterns and (b) students are sensitive to the alteration of these patterns. kuang (2017) and bista (2010) also offer an interpretation that cs is a result of the inability and incompetence of multilingual speakers to carry on a conversation using the second language. when a multilingual person cannot formulate the word that his l1 is telling him, he will most likely do code switching.this is in contrast with the study of macswan (2017) believing that cs was not hap-hazard or a result of language confusion but was following a certain rule and was systematic. therefore, code switching should not be seen as language degeneration. methods since the goals of this study are to perceive the common word as well as the functions and types of code switching used by grade 11 students in um peñaplata college, the researcher utilized quantitative and qualitative design. the quantitative model is used for the tallying of the most common words and the number of participants who commit certain types of switching code. on the other hand, the discourse type of qualitative design is utilized in the study. discourse analysis is a study of the language that naturally occurs in any social situation. it includes identifying themes, coding, sorting of categories and making conclusions to answer a research question (shanthi et al., 2017). this study used textual analysis in identifying the functions and types of code switching the participants commonly utilized when performing an oral presentation. it is a method used by the communication researchers to describe and interpret the characteristics of a recorded message (frey et al., 2000). this study needed the grade 11 senior high school students of um peñaplata college. there were sixty-seven (67) students subjected in our study among seventy-eight (78) participants as we had a purposive sampling in the conduct of our research. this is because only 67 participants committed code switching in their speaking performance during the conduct of the study. purposive sampling refers to the process of selecting a sample group within a population with significant data on the characteristics of interest (guarte and barrios, 2006). the researchers asked the grade 11 students to answer a specific question being prepared. the questions are all open-ended and revolve around personal questions and fundamental issues in the society. this is done to ensure that the lack of knowledge about the question will not be the reason for their switching of code. the answers of the target participants were scrutinized by the researchers for this study. the researchers asked permission from the school’s director about the conduct of the study and its schedule as well as from the senior high school principal. since the researchers have purposively chosen the grade 11 students as the participants for the study, they asked permission from the english teacher of that grade level to integrate speaking performance for three minutes as part of his class. as cited in the research of conti (1997), three minutes is sufficient to deliver a point. the researchers were the one who managed the oral presentation by utilizing their crafted questions. the constructed questions were based on real issues in the different areas of the society. asking questions that are relevant to the life of the participants can help elicit meaningful responses and can be a reliable basis of determining whether there is a code switching or none. the set of questions was then validated by three high school english teachers. to be free from bias, students answered the question they have picked through drawing lots. each one of them was covered in an audio record in which they are aware of. the collected answers of the participants during the speaking performance served as the data of the study. textual analysis is utilized in this study for analyzing the function of the words and the types of code switching that our participants used during their speaking performance. in his research, abastillas (2015) claims that despite the difficulty of identifying particular types of code switching to be a real one, many researchers concur that code switching is entirely not an effect of language inadequacy. cs instead helps both lecturers and learners to determine the relationship among education, language, and culture (kustati, 2014). thematic analysis will also be incorporated into this study. it is a method for analyzing and determining patterns of meaning in a set of data. it describes which themes are necessary for the phenomenon's description under study (joffe, 2012). in this study, clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 205 determining recording patterns is emphasized. coding and transcribing were done after gathering the data. the words used by the target participants in code switching were thematically analyzed to identify commonality and its types. this is done by making a tally for determining the most common words and types. the tally contained the most common words that were alphabetically arranged with its corresponding frequency. it also included the types and functions of code switching. participants’ answers were audio recorded with their consent and then transcribed by the researchers. the way of data analyzing was based on the transformative types of framework specifically the social constructivism theory since the nature of this study focuses on interaction through open-ended questions. the following are examples of themes after the transcription: table 1. examples of themes (words used when code switching) themes coding frequency ah 26 ahm 33 ano 3 ay 13 kanang 19 table 2. examples of themes (functions of code switching) words coding frequency themes evidences ahm 33 fillers respondent 2: “well, when i’m facing my conflicts and problems i usually doing ahm.. talking to my friends and telling my problems to help them guide me all over what situation i do.” respondent 7: “...sitting at the front because if i sit in front row ahm ..i can learn a lot because i listen to according to my teacher so that ahm.. i can learn a lot” hesitation s respondent 4: “...forgiving is not forgetting ahm..ay..kanang kuan kanang tawag aning...” respondent 5: “...could affect my study because ahm..ahm.. because ahm” ahh 26 fillers respondent 1: “...because cheating is ahh.. cheating is di siya pwede maconsider na acceptable.. (cheating cannot be considered acceptable)” respondent 5: “...for me having a boyfriend ..ah.. could affect my study...” table 3. examples of themes (types of code switching) themes coding frequency evidences tag-switching (include interjections, fillers and idiomatic expressions) 59 student 1:” no, because cheating is ahh.. cheating is di siya pwede maconsider na acceptable kay cheating kay bad man gud siya.” student 5:” para sa ako ahm..for me having a boyfriend ..ah.. could affect my study because ahm..ahm.. because ahm when kanang..kanang makadisturbo siya kung busy ta sa atong pagstudy..ay..tungod sa kanang..makadisturbo siya sa atong pastudy tungod sa mga pag sig atubang nila” intra-word (switching occurs within the words) 12 student 1:” no, because cheating is ahh.. cheating is di siya pwede maconsider na acceptable kay cheating kay bad man gud siya.” student 5: “para sa ako ahm..for me having a boyfriend ..ah.. could affect my study because ahm..ahm.. because ahm when kanang..kanang makadisturbo siya kung busy ta sa atong pagstudy..ay..tungod sa kanang..makadisturbo siya sa atong pastudy tungod sa mga pag sig atubang nila.” clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 206 findings and discussion most common words from the research conducted, the researchers were able to identify the four most common words commonly utilized by the participants. these are ‘ahm’, ‘ah’, ‘kanang’, and ‘ay’, respectively. table 4 presents the tabulation of the code switched words utilized by the participants during their impromptu speech performance. it is a graphic presentation of the tally made by the researchers on any code switch words used by the participants as reflected in the data source which is the audio recording that is transcribed into written form. the first column shows the code switched words used by the participants and the second column illustrates the number of participants who utilized the particular code switched words. by this, the researchers were able to identify the most common words used by the participants when switching code. based on the table, the first most common word used by the participants is ‘ahm’. out of 67 participants who switched code, 33 of them used ‘ahm’ in switching code. the participants utilized ‘ahm’ more than once in their speech which could be observed in the answers of p5 and p7. for instance, in the speech of p5, ahm is repeated four times. also, in the speech of p2 and p7, ahm is repeated twice. it is also observable that ‘ahm’ commonly occurs before they give reasons to their previous statement which can be seen in the speaking performance of p2, p5, and p7 (p stands for participants). p2: “well, when i’m facing my conflicts and problems, i usually doing ahm (uhm) ... ahm (uhm)...” p5: “para sa ako (for me) ahm (uhm)... for me having a boyfriend... ah (no english equivalence)... could affect my study because ahm (uhm)... ahm (uhm)... because ahm (uhm)…” p7: “for me is kanang (that)... sitting at the front because if i sit in front row ahm (uhm)... i can learn a lot because i listen to according to my teacher so that ahm (uhm).....” table 4. words used by grade 11 students in um peñaplata college when code switching words number of participants percentage ahm [no english word equivalent] 33 49.25% ah [no english word equivalent] 26 38.81% kanang [that] 19 28.36% ay [no english word equivalent] 13 19.40% kuan [no english word equivalent] 5 7.46% unsa/unsay [what] 4 5.97% ano [what] 3 4.48% kay [instead, because] 3 4.48% kasi [because] 2 2.99% lang [only] 2 2.99% na [already, although] 2 2.99% para [for] 2 2.99% bitaw [indeed, of course] 1 1.49% dili [not] 1 1.49% eh [no english word equivalent] 1 1.49% gud [no english word equivalent] 1 1.49% gusto [like] 1 1.49% ha [no english word equivalent] 1 1.49% hmn [no english word equivalent] 1 1.49% importante [important] 1 1.49% makatabang [helpful] 1 1.49% mapabag-o [to become new] 1 1.49% nagmahalan [loving each other] 1 1.49% sa [in, at, by, for, from, into, of, on, through, to] 1 1.49% singot [sweat] 1 1.49% tas (shorten for tapos) [after] (then) 1 1.49% clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 207 based on the study of amorim (2017) switching codes involves the use of speech marks such as ‘er’, ’uhm’ and ‘ahm’ to avoid breakdowns and to keep communication which is evident on the above speech samples illustrated. therefore, the participants’ used of ‘ahm’ was their way of preventing their speech to stop in spite of their difficulties to maintain it. the second most common word used by the participants when code switching is ‘ah’. there have been 26 respondents who used ‘ah’ in switching code out of 67 respondents. the same with the first most common word, the occurrence of ‘ah’ in most of the participants’ speech was more than once. this can be seen in the speech of p65 wherein ah is repeated twice. for instance, ‘ah’ occurred twice in the speaking performance of p65. however, ‘ah’ commonly appears at the beginning as shown in p62 and p65 in their speech and the last part as shown in the speaking performance of p58. p58s2: ahm... ah... okay na (it’s okay already).” p62: “for me... ah... ..” p65: “... for your safe and ah... to... para mag unsa na oy (to what)... to ah... ” as stated in the study of blackburn (2013), code switching commonly occurs due to linguistic needs which are often marked by hesitations. this is to fill a certain linguistic gap. the participants in this study code switch due to some language difficulties they tried to cope up with it by using ‘ah’ to fill such problems. the third most common word used by the participants when code switching is ‘kanang’. out of 67 participants, 19 of them used ‘kanang’ in code switching. ‘kanang’ occurs more than once in most of the participants' speech. it is pronounced in the speaking performance of p3 where ‘kanang’ was utilized for three times and in the answer of p5 for two times. the word ‘kanang’ was commonly utilized by the participants when they tried to give their reasons as well as when they begin to state their answers. this can be seen on the examples given below. p3: “for me, the most suitable environment learning… kanang most suitable learning environment for me is kanang learning music because music is my life. kanang i’m comfortable with music when i’m alone and doing nothing. sometimes kanang ano tama na oy(that’s it).” p5: “para sa ako (for me) ahm... for me having a boyfriend... ah... could affect my study because ahm... ahm... because ahm... when kanang... kanang…” p7: “for me is kanang... “ from the study of paculanang (2018) ‘kanang’ is used for finding the appropriate structure of language while speaking. as observed, prolongation happens in the speech of p3, p5, and p7 while they utter the word kanang. this shows that as the participants were stating their answer, they were also unconsciously searching in their minds what to say next thus making them switch code. the fourth most common word used by the participants when code switching is ‘ay’. there are 13 out of 67 participants who used ‘ay’ when switching code. if observed, unlike the three most common words utilized by the participants in code switching which are already mentioned, ‘ay’ occurs mostly at least once in the speaking performance of the participants as shown in the answers of p4, p11, and p20. also, ‘ay’ commonly occurs in the middle of the speech. p4s1: “ahm... forgiving is not forgetting ahm... ay... kanang kuan kanang tawag aning(what do you call this)... dako kayo siyag natabang (it has a great advantage) p11s1: “i would like... ay.. p12s1: “for me, television is not good... not good... (unsa mani oy)(what is it)... it is not good to us because if we... ay... kana gung inig fro(just like)... kanang pananglitan no sige na tag(just like when we’re always)... magfocus nata pirmi ug kanang tan aw ug tv...(we will always be focus on watching tv)” as cited in the study of blackburn (2013), switching codes is often characterized by disfluencies, false starts and correcting oneself. since english is only the second language of the respondents, it is unavoidable that they will switch code. to sum up, the four most common words utilized by the grade 1 students in their impromptu speaking performance are ‘ahm’, ‘ah’, ‘kanang' and ‘ay'. according to some researches, these words are commonly used when code switching to avoid communication breakdown, supply the linguistic needs and difficulties as well as structure. clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 208 apart from this, the least used words when codes switching by the respondents are also shown in the table. this includes unsa/unsay which is utilized by four participants; ano and kay which are both used by three participants; kasi, lang, na, and para, which is all utilized by two participants; and bitaw, dili, eh, gud, gusto, ha, hmn, importante, makatabang, mapabag-o, nagmahalan, sa, singot, and tas (shorten for tapos) wherein each of them is all applied by only 1 participant. functions of the common words the researchers based the determining of code switching functions to the study of amorim (2017). they found out five functions which were used by the grade 11 students of um peñaplata college, and these are fillers, hesitations, discourse markers, literary translation, and repetition of words. among the five functions, the most common functions that were utilized by the participants are the fillers and hesitations. based on the research’s result, the first most common word which is ‘ahm’ that is used by grade 11 students of um peñaplata college acts as a filler. p2, p7, and p18 used ‘ahm’ in between phrases. it is also evident that p7 and p18 used ‘ahm’ more than once. the uttering of ‘ahm’ served as a prolongation and a sign that they were currently thinking and were still not done with giving their idea. samples are given below: p2: “well, when i’m facing my conflicts and problems i usually doing ahm... talking to my friends and telling my problems to help them guide me all over what situation i do.” p7s1: “...sitting at the front because if i sit in front row ahm... i can learn a lot because i listen to according to my teacher so that ahm... i can learn a lot." p18s1: “base on my understanding in ahm... for my own opinion...we can see the changes that hav e been ahm... put to us and the changes that are growing to become more and more ahm... good for ahm... students.” based on the given samples, ‘ahm’ is a filler because it was used by the speakers to prolong the conversation signifying that they were not finished yet with their speech. it is observable that the filler ‘ahm’ is used more than once in a sentence by the participants. ‘ahm’ usually occurs at the middle of the sentence and between phrases. this shows that the participants have difficulties in delivering speech smoothly and that the use of the filler ‘ahm’ helps them to have an opportunity to continue their speech while thinking on what they would say next. based on the study of brueckner and schuller (2014), ‘ahm’ is filler which is used by the speaker to hold the floor in conversations.also, ‘ahm’ also indicates hesitation. the p22, p38, and p31 used ‘ahm’ more than once in their speech, and it usually occurred in the middle or between phrases. it was observed that every time they utter ‘ahm’ the next utterances or words being spoken show hesitation and being unsure of what to say. examples are given below: p22s3: “...your mother is okay or still in good and ah... ahm... have ah... a rest in having an exercise and have a bad ahm... ah, mao nato siya.” p38: “...we can we can work ahm... two years ahm... two ahm... two to more than years pa...” p31s1: “everyone ahm... kanang naa man,(there is) ay mam uy (ma’am)because everyone wants so ay ma'am uy tama na ma'am uy,(it’s enough mam) so ahm... everyone kanang in our country ahm... the population is is becoming increasing..” from the above samples, ‘ahm’ serves as the starting point of the participants in which they tried to begin to use their mother tongue instead of the english language but due to the necessity to use the latter they result on switching two languages vice-versa. the use of ‘ahm’ by the participants is evidence that they are not sure of what would be the right english terms that they would say next. this shows that the participants are conscious and uncomfortable in expressing their answers using the english language. as cited in the study of schmid and fägersten (2010), ‘ahm’ is a hesitation marker uttered whenever the speaker is uncertain what to say next. on the other hand, the second most common word which is ‘ah’ functions as a filler. p49, p51, and p66 insert ‘ah’ in the middle of their speech to fill in the gaps during their thinking time. it signifies that, instead of pausing for a second to have thinking time, they utter ‘ah’. samples are given below: clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 209 p49s1: “for me ah...kanang makasasala para sa akoa nay uban na mga buotan bitaw..”( there are sinner who are not really bad) p51s1: “my greatest interest in life is ah... play basketball because i love to play basketball and ah... ball is life and ah...panington (makes me sweaty) and i running running..” p66: “i love minions because they are cute... ah... i love their character... and ah... they are loving pets.” based on the given samples above, ’ah’ occurs mostly before the participants state their answer and before they give reasons to their answer. this is evident that ‘ah’ is a strategy of the participants to have thinking time. as what erten (2014) cited in his research, “ah” is a filler which is subjective and is used to express a response or a reaction to the prior discourse involving also back-channel signals of comprehension and continuous attention while another speaker is having his turn. aside from that, ‘ah’ also acts as an indicator of hesitation. it was observed that p25, p29, p31 utter ‘ah’ while they were hesitating of what to say next. additionally, if observed in the speech of p31, the participants didn't only utilize ‘ahh’ but also ‘ayy’.it was also evident in their speech that they used ‘ah’ because they were uncertain of what they are talking about. examples are given below: p25s1: “...doctor ma'am ah...pwedi tagalong ma'am ay bisaya kaya(can i speak in tgaalog maam or bisaya), para makatabang ko sa mga masakiton .”(for me to help sick people) p29s1: “so, for me homo ah... homosexuality is ahh... if it is ah... base on bible it is a sin because god only made ah... female and male only but for these days ah...dawat naman gud na siya sa community...”(it has already been accepted by the community) p31s2: “...that’s why so rh bill is not good in our ah...ayy tama nani te uy .”(this is enough already) the use of ‘ah’ by the participants as a sign of hesitation shows that students have difficulties in speaking fluently through the use of the english language. it is also evident that the participants used ‘ah’ to choose and evaluate within themselves the next word that they would utter to continue their speech. jokinen and allwood, (2010) stated in their research that the uttering of “ah” during a conversation by the people in most eastern countries such as japan and philippines indicates that the speaker is hesitating and is uncertain on what to say or what to express. moreover, the function of the third most common word which is ‘kanang’ is filler. p3 and p5 used ‘kanang’ more than once in their speech. this word serves as a code switching which functions as filler inserted between phrases to replace a certain pause during a speech. samples are given below: p3: “for me, the most suitable environment learning... kanang most suitable learning environment for me is kanang learning music because music is my life. kanang i’m comfortable with music when i’m alone and doing nothing...” p5s1: “...when kanang... kanang makadisturbosiya kung busy ta saatong pagstudy.(it could disturb us whne we’re busy with our studies... ay... tungod sa kanang(because of)... makadisturbo siya sa atong pastudy...”(it can disturb our study) p9s1: “this is one of who guide us to be kanang i-guide ta sa..”(to guide us) from the above samples, it is identifiable that the word ‘kanang’ is used by the participants while they are searching the right word to say. the use of ‘kanang’ by the participants shows that there is confusion happening in their mind as to what they would say next. this confusion is not because of their lack of thought but because they are thinking of using their mother tongue which made it difficult for them to express it in the english language. as cited in the study of opina (2017) “kanang” is verbal filler in the visayan dialect which is committed by male and female students to fill in the gap or the silence during the speech. also, ‘kanang’ also functions as a sign of hesitation. it was observable that p2, p30, and p36 used the utterance ‘kanang’ during times of uncertainty in their speech. samples are given below: p23s1: “...as we all know that kanang ayy... as we all know that most...” p30s1: “...killing notorious criminals kanang... killing killing notorious criminals will not...” p36s2: “...for me the success is kanang when ahhm... ahh... aysa(wait)...” clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 210 the use of ‘kanang’ as a sign of hesitation that is evident in the above samples indicates that the participants' difficulty of translating their thought from their mother tongue to the english language because they are limited by their knowledge of the latter. the participants know what to say, but they don't know how to say it in english which resulted in the switching of code. furthermore, the function of the fourth most common word which is ‘ay’ is filler. the code switching ‘ay’ was observed as filler during the speech of p40 and p45. their utterance of ‘ay’ signifies that they were not yet finished with their statement. samples are given below: p40: “...if i am ay... if i am the leader i’ll overcome anxiety is ay... sharing with your mom...” p45: “...even though that we don’t have nature... ay... even though that...” as shown above, the participants used ’ay’ as fillers to change and interrupt their speech that they think as wrong or if their sentence is constructed inappropriately. it is supported by the study of opina (2017) at the beginning of the speech means that there has been a mistake that is needed to be clarified. aside from that, ‘ay’ also functions as a determiner of hesitation. the participants’ usage of ‘ay’ is a sign that they noticed that they committed a mistake during their speech. it is evident that uncertainty drove them to use the code switching ‘ay’. samples are given below: p12s1: “...it is not good to us because if we... ay! kana gung inigfro(just like)..” p23s1: “...as we all know that kanang ay! as we all know that most most..” p26s5: “i recognize him a good person because because importantesiya(important), ay! this is important...” as shown above, the participants’ used of ‘ay’ indicates their uncertainty in expressing their answer with the use of the english language. it is also observable that after the participants used the word ‘ay’, they repeat the first words or phrases that they have stated before it. this help determines that the participants are not sure and don't know what they will say next. in accordance to the study of opina (2017), it is being exemplified that the use of "ay" at the beginning of the speech means that there has been a committed mistake that is needed to be corrected. on the other hand, it also signifies that there is a realization regarding a prior proposition presented has been made by the speaker. as what has been observed, the most common words used by grade 11 students in um penaplata college function as both fillers and an indicator of hesitation.based on (masithoh et al. 2018) the use of fillers and hesitation devices as a function of code switching aims to fill pauses and use the time to think of what to say next. also, when code switching functions as filler, it seeks to achieve better expression, clarification, or better understanding (gumperz, 1982 as cited by ibrahim et al. 2013). on the other hand, the functions of the least common words used by grade 11 students of um penaplata college are kuan, unsa/unsay, ano, kay, para, bitaw, lang, kasi, makatabang, dili, eh, gud, gusto, hmmm, ha, importante, mapabag o, na, nagmahalan, sa, singot, and ta’s (tapos). types of code switching from the data gathered during the conduct of the research, the researchers were able to identify the types of code switching that the participants commonly used. table 5 presents the types of code switching utilized by the grade 11 students in their speaking performance. the types are based on the study of kustati (2014) as he analyzed the types of code switching through observation and indepth interviews. kustati (2014) presented four types of code switching that include intra-sentential code switching, intra word, tag switching, and inter-sentential. from the research conducted and as shown in the table in the next page, the researchers were able to identify 59 participants who have committed tag switching, 36 participants for intrasentential, 12 participants for intra-word, and two participants for inter-sentential code switching.the frequency means the number of participants who used certain type of code switching in their impromptu speaking performance. clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 211 table5. types of code switching used by grade11 students in um peñaplata college types of code switching number of participants percentage tag-switching 59 88.06% intra-sentential intra-word 36 53.73% 17.91% 12 inter-sentential switching 2 2.99% as seen from the table, the researchers found out that the first type of code switching commonly used by grade 11 students of um peñaplata college is the tagswitching since out of 67 participants, 59 students have committed this type of code switching. from the samples given below, it is evident that p29 uses tag switching since the code switched word ‘ah’ is used as a filler; thus, it is to be considered as tag switching. furthermore, it is also observable in the statement of p31 wherein the code switched word ‘ahm’ is used to sustain the gap the speech of the participants. also, p35 also uses the word ‘ay’ as filler wherein the code switched word is used by the participant to clarify his later ideas. it is also visible that in their utterance, the participants repeatedly code switched and the code switch words are bisaya language. p29: “so, for me homo ah... homosexuality is ah... if it is ah... base on bible it is a sin because god only made ah... female and male only but for these days ah... dawat naman gud na siya sa community(it has already been accepted in the community) my god, but todays ano... in our generation now ah... homosexuality is already adopted in our community. so that’s all.” p31: “everyone ahm... kanang naa man(there is), (ay mam uy)because everyone wants so (ay ma'am uy tama na ma'am uy)(it’s enough maam) , so ahm... everyone kanang in our country ahm... the population is... is becoming increasing that’s why so rh bill is not good in our ahh... (ayy tama na ni te uy .)(it’s enough already)” p35: “so for me, ay! so so for me, i can say that social aspect can... can develop ay! that social media can develop my social aspect since just for example facebook we can ay! through facebook we can connect to the other people ah... we can we can have some conversation with them, and we can know some people through fac1book or messenger or any social media such as instagram, twitter, and everything. so for me we can ah... we can socialize and we can... we can communicate other people we ay! we will know other people through social media so for me social media can deve... ah... can really develop our social aspect.” from the given samples above, the participants insert words within phrases and sentences without affecting the meaning of the sentences. it was also supported in the study of jingxia (2010) wherein; it has been mentioned that tag switching has lesser restraints as they are used infix clauses disregarding the syntactic rules. as cited in the study of cakrawarti (2011), emblematic code switching is also called tagswitching and this includes the insertion of phrases, exclamation, and tags of one language into an utterance of another language. in the study of novianti (2013), it was also cited that this type of code switching happens when a tag phrase or other certain phrases and exclamation of one language are inserted into another language’s utterance. apart from this, the researchers found out that the second type of switching code commonly used by grade 11 students of um penaplata college is intrasentential since out 67 participants, there are 36 students who have committed this type of code switching. in the statement of p1, the code switched phrase is “di siya ma-consider na acceptable kay cheating kay bad man gud siya," and it can be seen that the participant code switched within the phrase; thus, it is considered as intra-sentential code switching. p1 used bisaya language in code switching. it is also visible that the participant code switched to continue his utterance. aside from that, p7's act of code switching is committed to keeping up his speech which starts from the english language. the code switched phrase of p7 is “ta’s eh... kung maglingkod ko sa likod kanang madistruct ko sa kanang mga tabi kanang makalimtan nako ang mga gipangsulti sa mga teachers” which is in the form of bisaya language. it is also observable that the participant's code switching happens within the sentence; thus, the type of code switching being used by the participant is intrasentential code switching. the code switched phrase of p7 serves as the reason for his later statement. clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 212 the same type of code switching was used by p14 wherein the participant code switched to continue his discourse, and the code switched phrase which is “gusto ko mamatay kanang gibaril lang kay... kay para wala na siya’y... para diretso nalang kaisa nalang ba wala nay murag sakit pa” occurs" within the sentence. the code switch word is, therefore, to be considered as intra-sentential. p14 also code switched to deliver his idea continuously in his utterance which starts from using english language and ends up in using bisaya language. furthermore, the used of the intrasentential type of code switching by p1, p7, and p14 serves as a continuation of the participant's later statements. p1: “no, because cheating is ah... cheating is di siya pwede ma-consider na(cheating should not be considered) acceptable kay cheating kay bad man gud siya(because cheating is bad).” p7: “for me is kanang... sitting at the front because if i sit in front row ahm... i can learn a lot because i listen to according to my teacher so that ahm... i can learn a lot ta’s eh... kung maglingkod ko sa likod kanang madistruct ko sa kanang mga tabi kanang makalimtan nako ang mga gipangsulti sa mga teachers( if you sit at the back you’ll be destructed and most probably will forget what the teacher had said).” p14: “if i were to choose i would like... i would like to gusto ko mamatay kanang gibaril lang kay(like to die through guns... kay para wala na siya’y(so it will never have)... para diretso na lang kaisa na lang ba wala nay murag sakit pa.(so that it’s direct and you can no loner feel pain)” based on the samples given, it could be observed that the participants switch code within sentences and phrases. in one sentence, they used two languages. as mentioned in the study of jingxia (2010) intrasentential code switching happens inside the clause or phrase, and it is considered as the tough structure of code switching. as shown in the study of novianti (2013), intrasentential code switching happens inside a sentence and clausal level. it was also mentioned in the study of babalola and taiwo (2009) that intrasentential code switching is being described as a shift of the use of language inside a phrase or sentence. aside from that, the researchers also found out that the participants also utilized intersentential and intra-word switching. among 67 respondents there are two students who have committed the inter-sentential type of code switching. as what is seen in the utterance of p11, the participant code switched phrase is “mao lang," and it is in bisaya language. the act of code switching happens outside the sentence wherein the utterance of english language ended first before an utterance of bisaya language is inserted and continued. it can be seen that the participant’s act of code switching serves as an indication that his utterance ended up already. also, p22 code switched phrase is “mao nato siya” and it is in the form of bisaya language. the same thing happens in the previous utterance of p11 wherein p22's code switching also occurs outside the sentence. the act of code switching also indicates that the participant's utterance has ended up with the use of the code switched words. as a whole, it is visible that the use of intersentential code switching by p11 and p22 usually occurs in a separate sentence; thus, it to be considered as inter-sentential code switching. p11: “i would like... ay... i would say to him/her that in kanang... kanang... in private way gud siya(noe)... unya... that his/her armpit is in bad odor so that kanang... so that he will... he will... he will... she/he will be aware. mao lang.(that’s it)” p22: “for me is the... the useful socsocial media is facebook because in facebook we can see our... we can see our relatives where far from us and we can message them and have communication with them, so for example if kanang our mother is an ofw and in example in saudi so ah… sa pagkalayo nila is ma ma maano nato ma macommunicate nato sila ma ah... ahh... (we can communicate them even if they qare far) we can know if ah... he or ay! your mother is okay or still in good and ahh... ahm have ah a rest in have ah exercise and have a bad ahm... ah. mao nato siya. (that’s it)(hahaha).” the participants' used of inter-sentential code switching is evident by their switching of code by sentences. they used the english language for one sentence and mother tongue for the next sentence. the later statement is being supported by what has been mentioned in jingxia (2010) that inter-sentential code switching takes place at phrases or sentences wherein, each sentence's utterance is in a different language. as also cited in the study of novianti (2013), intersentential code switching happens among phrases and sentences wherein each sentence and clause uses different clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 213 language. also, babalola and taiwo (2013) described intersentential codeswitching as a change of the use of language in each sentence or phrase. furthermore, the research conducted revealed that few of the grade 11 students in um peñaplata college also used intra-word switching. as what is seen in the utterance of p1, the word “ma-consider” is the switched code. a word of english language which is ‘consider’ is being inserted with a bisaya morpheme ‘ma’; thus, considering it as an intra-word type of code switching. the same thing happens with the utterances of p5 and p7 wherein the participants inserted bisaya morpheme in an english word. for p5, the participant inserted the bisaya morpheme ‘pag’ to an english word ‘study’. for p7, the participant inserted the bisaya morpheme ‘ma’ to an english word ‘distruct’. it is also observable that the participants 1, 5, and 7 used intra word code switching to appropriately discuss their ideas through using the proper english word they think and it is being attached with a bisaya morpheme. p1:” no, because cheating is ahh.. cheating is di siya pwede ma-consider na (cheating should not be considered) acceptable kay cheating kay bad man gudsiya. (because cheating is bad).”” r5: “para sa ako ahm..for me having a boyfriend ..ah.. could affect my study because ahm..ahm.. because ahm when kanang..kanang makadisturbo siya kung busy ta sa atong pagstudy (it could disturb us whne we’re busy with our studies)..ay..tungod sa kanang..makadisturbo siya sa atong pagstudy tungod sa mga pag sig atubangnila (it can disturb our study because of always entertaining them).” p7: “for me is kanang ..sitting at the front because if i sit in front row ahm ..i can learn a lot because i listen to according to my teacher so that ahm.. i can learn a lot ta’s eh ..kung maglingkod ko sa likod kanang madistruct ko sa kanang mga tabi kanang makalimtan nako ang mga gipangsulti sa mga teachers.” (if you sit at the back you’ll be destructed and most probably will forget what the teacher had said).” the participants commit intra-word switching by combining both their mother tongue and the english language for a certain word. this is very common for bilingual individuals. as stated in the study of kustati (2014) switching code may happen within the word which is called intra-word switching. overall, the study of kustati (2014), jingxia (2010), cakrawarti (2011), novianti (2013), and babalola and taiwo (2009) agreed the same thoughts about the types of code switching and have supported the results of the study specifically in the types of code switching as what is presented and discussed in the above findings and discussions. conclusion based on the impromptu speaking performance of the respondents, it was found out that code switching is unavoidable for esl learners. the researchers have proven that whatever comes out from their speaking performance is not due to their lack of knowledge on the question. the basis of the analysis was transparently set by the researchers. the results of the study signify that the students focus more on accuracy rather than fluency. they code switched as a strategy to maintain accuracy in their speaking performance. the occurrence of code switching in relevance to the theory of communicative competence in which this study is anchored emphasized that it is a speaker’s way of adopting his/her use of verbal and nonverbal language to recompense for communication matter. however, this phenomenon gives a negative impact considering the expected competency that they should have already acquired in respect with their level. both accuracy and fluency must be given equal consideration and importance in the academic arena. based on the summarized study and implications, the researchers would like to recommend to the english curricularists to emphasize using the english language in class and keep ways to address the difficulties of esl learners regarding speaking. in addition, it is also recommended to the students’ to improve their vocabulary knowledge of the english language and practice speaking using the target language. lastly, future researchers may conduct a similar study to provide educators with a broader understanding of students' problems with regards to speaking using the english language because they have a more comprehensive knowledge of their first language. acknowledgement the overall success and completion of this research will be impossible without the divine guidance of our almighty god. clares fe enriquez, glyza candido, nicole fletcher abing, franlo bucog, jovenil bacatan | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 214 funding statement this is a non-funded study. references abastillas, g. 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(2010). code-switching in the foreign language classroom. höstterminen. engelska, 15, 61-90. putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 280 elt forum 10 (3) (2021) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt english language teaching for autism spectrum disorders (asd) learners during pandemic era ida vera sophya universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 30 juni 2021 approved on 27 july 2021 published on 24 november 2021 ________________ keywords: english language teaching; autistic spectrum disorders (asd); pandemic era ____________________ abstract an autistic child is a child who has special needs and developmental disorders. therefore, in the teaching learning process, teachers who teach asd learners need to have some knowledge of students’ needs. the objections of this study are to explain the implementation of english language teaching for asd learners during the pandemic era and parents’ role in helping asd learners understand english. this research employed qualitative research. the researchers applied observation, depth interview and documentation in data collection. the results showed that 1) the english language teaching process for asd at rba during the pandemic era applied offline and online learning mode. the material of english language teaching for asd learners was based on the level of asd diagnosis. the teachers used direct method, tpr, and lexical method in offline learning, but for online learning, they used direct and lexical methods. the teachers also utilised pictures or flashcards in offline learning whereas for online learning they gave the students worksheets and did a video call. in giving assessment, the teachers carried out anecdotal notes, checklists, interviews, and retelling stories 2) during the pandemic era, the role of asd parents was to accompany their child at home pronouncing english vocabularies that had been given by the therapist at rba. on the other hand, in on-line learning, the role of parents was as a teacher/therapist who gave treatment to their children at home based on therapists’ instructions.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 jl. conge ngembalrejo po box 51 kudus 59322 e-mail: verasofadel@students.unnes.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 281 introduction all human beings were born with equal rights. regardless of their disabilities, children with special needs (csn) have the same right to be loved, to start their own family, to have access to good education, and live a normal healthy lifestyle (united nations children’s fund, 2014). csn are individuals who have different characteristics from other individuals in general, alike physically, intellectually, and emotionally. therefore, csn learners need more attention in the learning process either from their teacher, their parents, and their environment. as stated (united nations children’s fund, 2014), csn learners are “deserved to be given the chance to grow, develop and enchanted”. hence, they need treatment, education, caregiving, and support to improve their abilities to get their future. an autistic child, or we called it autism spectrum disorders (asd) is one of the csn who has developmental impairment. asd is a child who has neuro-developmental disorders represented on a continuum of severity and marked by repetitive/restricted behaviours (american psychiatric association, 2013; world health organization, 2012). asd learners usually also have difficulties interacting and communicating with their society. they are different from other children in developing individuals, learn something or remember things. besides, their memory is often void of contextual details that situate past events in a particular place and time in personal history (bowler, et al., 2011) and they often find it difficult to spontaneously recall information without aids for retrieval (bowler, et al., 2004) because of the difference with normal children in general, asd learners need to join early intervention services programs to help and support those children with developmental delays or any other specific health condition (world health organization, 2012). those programs are called as therapists. the importance of intervention services programs is introducing language for asd learners to communicate with their environment. one of the examples of therapists is speech therapy. there are many scientific studies reported that such programs showed positive feedbacks on the children from different perspectives (batool & ijaz, 2015). therapists give a treatment to pronounce and imitate some words patiently until they can speak it well. in addition, the speech therapy services also can improve the interpersonal skills, psychological well-being of the children (roulstone et al., 2012). this research aims to explain the implementation of english language teaching for asd learners during the pandemic era and parents’ role in helping asd learners understand english. the author realizes that teaching english to asd learners is not easy. it is more challenging than teaching english to normal children and in normal conditions. based on the research of minsih (2021) found that the learning problem of asd in the pandemic era can be broken down into three factors, namely 1) teacher factor, 2) parents factor and, 3) environment factor. asd teachers should know about the students’ needs. dewi (2019) stated that they should be required to have more competencies for teaching asd than teaching normal children. they have to be required to understand the needs of the asd so that they can design, implement and evaluate the asd teaching and learning process properly. some researchers tried to find better methods to teach english for asd. the methods used in teaching asd can be done in the form of prompts, lectures, discussions, and q&a. a result of the research explored that teaching english can be delivered by using direct method, total physical response (tpr), and lexical approach (dewi, 2019). but since the teaching-learning process used online learning, parents have important roles in their success of learning. although many people think that english is not important to be taught to asd, the focus of learning english for asd learners is on how far they can learn new things. in addition, it is done as an effort to prepare asd learners before being included in inclusive schools or public schools. parents also have an important role to help asd learners understand english. as stated by meleady (2020), previous research has suggested that parents can experience positive contributions as the result of raising a child with the autism spectrum. qualitative (e.g., beighton & wills, 2017; corman, 2009; huws, et al., 2001; king, et al., 2012; gray, 1994; markoulakis, et al., 2012) and quantitative (e.g., altiere & von kluge, 2009; bayat, 2007; benson, 2010, 2014; griffith, et al., 2010) studies of parents with asd children, including autism, have found that these parenting experiences have some benefits for their children, especially for their personal growth. since the government informed that all schools have been closed because of the corona virus, so the teaching-learning process must be done through online learning. but it is difficult for the students to adapt to this situation as well as for asd learners. there are some problems facing by asd learners when they are learning during the covid-19 pandemic era. because of that reason, any schools still apply online and offline teaching-learning processes. rumah belajar anak (rba) is a ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 282 private institution that serves the learning guidance and therapy for children with special needs. every child who learns there must be diagnosed first by the therapist to get the suitable program of treatments for learning and practicing. fitri (2005, in ginanto, 2010) stated that the emphasis in teaching english to children with autism is not the benefits of learning the language; but more to the extent to which asd can receive any materials. based on those explanations, the research questions are 1) how do the asd teachers do the implementation of english teaching for asd learners during the pandemic era? and 2) what are the roles of asd parents in guiding their children to learn english during the pandemic era? methodology the design of this research is qualitative research with a descriptive approach. the researcher used this design to answer the research questions. the source of data was taken from the document of the school and interviews of teachers and parents. the document which was needed such as the list of asd programs, the students’ achievement, identities of students and parents, and teachers’ note about the development of asd learners. the setting of this research is in rumah belajar anak (rba). it is located in melati lor, gang kauman rt 02/rw 02 no. 187 kudus. rba is a private institution which serves the learning guidance and therapy for students who have special needs. but in this research, the researcher just focuses on the autism spectrum disorders (asd) learners. teaching asd learners are challenging because they do not have the abilities to learn with their environment, such as imitation skills, following orders, joint attention, and so on. each of asd learners has his own treatment programs based on the result of his diagnosis. in giving education and therapy, each of asd is handled by one teacher. therefore, the subject of this research is the head institute of rba, classroom teachers, parents, and asd learners. the data collection was observation, documentation, and interviews. the first step to collect data was observation. the researcher observed the therapist doing a diagnosis to the autistic children. from that diagnosis, the therapist arranged the programs which should be given to the asd learners. the second step was documentation. to get the data, the researcher needed some documentation like the list of teachers’ notes about treatment programs and the assessment results of the treatment. the last step was interview. the interview was done through semi-structured interviews. it was collected as “one of the qualitative data collection techniques (creswell, 2013). there are 3 interviewees, the head and the therapist of rba, an english teacher at rba and a asd parent. to answer the parents’ role in english learning for asd, the researcher used online interview with the representative of asd parents. to obey the social distancing rules, the researcher just did one time directly interview and the rest of the interview process was done through some online interviews. the online interviews were held by using phone calls and whatsapp message, which made it easier to utilize the space and time flexibility provided by the internet (crabtree, 1999; markham, 2004) the interviews were carried out between june 1 to june 19, 2021. during the teaching-learning process, the researcher recorded the asd activities and wrote some special notes or new findings. the researcher also conducted the data from the asd parents to get the data about their role during their children learning english at home. the triangulation techniques were implemented by confirming the result of observations through interviews and analyzing school documents. dealing with analysing the data, the researcher focused on the implementation of english language teaching for the asd during the pandemic era such as the material, method, media , and assessment. findings and discussion english language teaching during the pandemic era since the pandemic era, the tutoring and therapy class at rumah belajar anak (rba) are divided into 2 classes of treatment, namely regular treatment and full-day treatment. the class for regular treatment only lasted for 2 hours a day and the class for full day treatment was held for 8 hours a day. the teaching-learning process in rba was done by face-to-face and online learning. asd parents might choose one of those teaching-learning processes based on their wants and the condition of their children. every asd who wanted to learn and get therapy at rba, he/she should be diagnosed first by therapist. after he had been diagnosed, therapist gave him treatment programs which might be done during the treatment. therefore, the treatment program for each of asd was different. one therapist/teacher only handled one asd. as stated before that all asd activities in a day were ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 283 monitored by teachers. from that daily assessment, the therapist knew the development of his/her developmental impairment. based on that interview of rba, this research aims to explain the implementation of english language teaching for asd learners who learned at rba the during pandemic era and the role of asd parents in improving english. the results of this research will be explored below. material table 1. the results of the interview about english material given to asd learners material “i always do observation first to get the diagnosis of asd learners before i arranged target programs. each of asd is different based on their developmental impairment” (therapist) “i arranged the english teaching programs to introduce them english vocabulary” (therapist) “i introduce english vocabulary based on the grade of asd learners which arrange by therapist” (teacher) “after asd learners can mention and understand indonesian words correctly then i introduce them in english” (teacher) “bu vina gives some words in indonesian and also in english” (parent) “i ask my child to repeat some words in indonesian and english according to the guidance of therapist” (parent) based on interview in the table 1, the process of english teaching for asd learners at rba was based on the result of development impairment diagnosis. a therapist did observation to asd learners first to diagnose their developmental impairment. by looking at the asd diagnosis result, the therapist arranged a list of treatments program based on their needs and abilities. therefore, each asd learners had different program for the treatments. an english teacher gave the introduction of english vocabularies after asd learners mentioned and understood some words in indonesian perfectly. the words which had been introduced by teachers were the same words between indonesian and english. hopefully, asd learners understood some words using indonesian first than english because the environment of asd learners communicated with indonesian language. therefore, english language teaching in rba just gave asd learners the introduction of english vocabularies. fitri (2005, in ginanto, 2010) stated that the emphasis in teaching english to asd was not based on the benefit of learning the language; but the focus was to make asd learners receive new materials. there was no exception for asd learners to be able to know mathematics and even english. in line with fitri (2005, in ginanto, 2010) argued that “asd learners were unique, so the problem was not whether or not english was useful for them, but the problem was when they learned english (of course according to the needs and abilities of each child), and how english affect asd. asd learners who had good english verbally felt very happy when they learnt english, especially when they could pronounce english vocabularies very well. the materials were based on the level of asd needs and abilities. according to engle et al as cited in (world health organization, 2012) said that “the early intervention programs could enhance the children’s development and make them be able to follow well and be effective in the future schooling”. the materials of english language teaching for asd learners used at rba can be shown in the following table: table 1. the example of english material at rba level material basic a. identification the name of: colours numbers alphabets b. imitating words and arranging syllables intermediate a. identification the name of: fruits animals name of days ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 284 b. arranging words advance a. identification the name of: transportation occupation b. arranging sentence each of asd learner who had not been able to pronounce and understand the material well, he/she would not be leveled up. they needed to repeat the same materials, for the next meeting, and so on. this treatment was done to help asd learners to practice their speaking. teachers just focused on their pronunciation and their vocabulary mastery. many scientific studies reported that such programs showed positive feedback on the children in different perspectives (batool & ijaz, 2015). one of the examples of the programs was speech therapy. the therapist gave a treatment to pronounce and imitate some words patiently until they can speak it well. method table 2. the results of the interview about methods in teaching english method “we use various methods in teaching english language, for example direct method, lexical methods and total physical response (tpr)” (therapist) “i always give treatment by tpr method because it can make asd learners imitating what i said easily” (therapist) “but in online learning, i use direct method. asd learners can practice by imitating the right pronunciation in english (therapist) “i use direct methods in teaching english. i pronounce or use multiple examples of words or concepts, then asd practice and repeat those words correctly.” (teacher) “we can do that by video call” (teacher) the method of english teaching for asd learners in rba was by using direct method, lexical methods and total physical response (tpr). in offline learning, teachers/therapists at rba used all those methods, but in online learning, they only used direct method. by using direct method, asd learners practiced english words by imitating the right pronunciation in english. the therapist showed or used multiple examples of words or concepts, then asd practiced and repeated those words correctly. the repetition was needed to ensure comprehension since there was no translation being used at all. the use of direct methods in english language teaching activated the students’ learning awareness and engaged students to know more the meaning of the words he/she learnt and how to use them. the results of the study showed that all of students both with low and high abilities could easily learn the materials if the teaching method was direct method. by applying direct methods, it eased the learning process from the simple to the complex and from the real to the abstract (dewi, 2019). for the implementation of total physical response (tpr), the teaching-learning process could be done not only by repetition, but also by applying body movements and body language. this method was simple and easy to apply in english teaching. asd teachers and learners were also pleased to use tpr method. these activities could improve the students’ ability to master vocabularies. activities using lexical method were carried out by learning a word or sentences as full context or vice versa through lexical pieces. the use of this lexical approach was done by using short story, which helped students to learn in natural language. the research of dewi (2019) said that “the teaching methods that could be used for asd learners were prompts, lectures, discussions and question and answer. whereas teaching english could be delivered by applying direct method, total physical response (tpr), and lexical approach”. media table 3. the results of the interview about media in teaching english media “actually, we have many media to support teaching learning process from donation, but many of them have broken by asd learners when they are tantrum” (therapist) “i always ask to the teacher to be creative to make her own media simply and harmless for asd learners” (therapist) “the teachers prepared some worksheets to be done by asd learners at home”. (therapist) “i use pictures/flash cards to facilitate matching tasks. i ask to my students to match those charts with same form objects in activities to simplify asd learners decoding the information” (teacher) ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 285 “to make the students complete tasks, the teacher gave examples through both verbal and non-verbal instruction and asked student to do the same by himself” (teacher) “the teachers prepare some worksheets to be done by asd learners at home. (teacher) “during the pandemic, i always take worksheets at rba to be done by my child at home and collect it in a week”. (parent) “when my child is not tantrum, i call his teacher to get treatment by using video call (parent) by using media, english learning is more interesting and understandable. the media can be used to deliver all the materials and used as a form of instruction and facilitator for learners to reach instructional objectives easily. media used in teaching english at rba is picture and flash card. teachers used pictures/flash card to facilitate matching tasks. they were presented with same form objects in activities to simplify asd learners decoding the information. according to kellems, et al., (2018) the pictures are effective visual stimuli that act as facilitator for student to complete an entire task. the teacher used pictures in facilitating matching and writing tasks to simplify the students in completing the tasks. to make the students complete tasks, the teacher gave examples through both verbal and non-verbal instruction and asked student to do the same by himself. throughout the observation, all of teachers at rba used pictures because it was more effective and harmless in facilitating asd learner to complete tasks and learn something through the process. besides, it was because pictures greatly helped students to recall their visual memory. in short, pictures were effective for asd learners because they were taken from videos. moreover, it could be used for many purposes including supporting the students in finishing the tasks. the teachers alsp prepared some worksheets to be done by asd learners at home. the teachers prepared some worksheets to be done by asd learners at home. the teacher asked the parents to collect the worksheet in a week or in a month. however, teacher usually suggested to the parents to collect them in a week, because it was easier for therapist to check and know the development of asd learners. in giving therapy, teachers used video calls as an alternative platform to stay connected to their students and give the students opportunies to study. from the parents’ information, the teacher knew about the condition of the asd learners that they were not in bad mood (tantrum), so the teacher could call them via a video call. assessment assessment was done by evaluating english the teaching-learning process for asd learners at rba. they were not only evaluated the teaching-learning process by looking at the result of learning english but also the process of learning it. some methods of evaluation were done in a form of checklists and interviews. related to the evaluation, it did not only focus on the students’ abilities but also students’ language skills which supported them in using english functionally and contextually. dewi’s research (2019) proposed that “teachers were required to have more competence in asd teaching than teaching children in general, for example a teacher was required to be able to understand the needs of the asd learner so that they were able to design, implemented and evaluated the asd teaching and learning process properly”. the example of final assessment of asd learner in rba can be seen in table 4 below: table 4. the assessment of student mmm table 4 is the example assessment of student mmm who got a category of test, level 3. he got english language educational program about introduction of fruits, animals, and name of days. material program indicator level 3 daily assessment test average passing grade result notes education language 80 80 80 60 very good the student was able to read sentences, recognize the ending ng. reading sentences 95 95 95 60 a the student was able to mention the materials given very well. identify suffix -ng, -ny 80 80 80 60 b the student was able to mention the materials given very well. word recognition in english 90 90 90 60 a the student was able to mention the materials given very well. fruits, animals, name of days 72 75 73,5 60 b the student was able to complete the words/ phrases/ sentences given very well composing words/ syllables 80 85 82,5 60 b the student was able to identify the words well ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 286 teacher gave him final score 90 because he mentioned vocabularies in english correctly and understood those vocabularies perfectly, even though the places and words were reversed. below is the final example of assessment from student mfm. it can be shown in table 5 below: table 5. the assessment of student mfm material program indicator level 1 daily assessment test average passing grade result notes education language introduction in english 50 50 50 60 not good the student was not able to identify parts of body. color 65 75 75 60 sufficient the student was good enough in identifying colors. letter 55 60 57,5 60 sufficient the student was not good enough in mastering the materials and needed more practice. number 45 55 50 60 sufficient the student was not able to identify numbers and animals. matching color 70 75 72,5 60 good the student was able to match the color. things/ shopping 65 70 67,5 60 sufficient the student was good enough but still needed more practice. mfm is one of the learners of asd at rba. he learns english in basic level. he learnt about introducing colour, alphabets, and numbers in english. he still needed treatment or practice in mentioning english vocabularies. from that assessment in six months, it could be seen that the treatment of english language as foreign language for asd needed more time. parents’ role in english learning during pandemic era table 5. the results of the interviewed about the role of asd parents in english learning during pandemic era parents’ role “asd parents do not accompany their children at school because they don't have the heart to see their child crying continuously so that the child’s dependence of his/her parents is higher.” (therapist) “during pandemic, parents have important role to do their own treatment to their child at home” (therapist) “.asd parents should accompany their child to do some activities according to the worksheet which i give to them (therapist) “actually we give a chance to the parents to look at the teaching-learning process, because it can give them knowledge of how to face asd when they are in tantrum and how to solve it. but in fact, the parents do not want to do it. they trust us". (teacher) “i always delivered what has been done by faza during school. therefore, the parents will know the development of their child” (teacher) “i need more extra patience to ask my child to do the treatment activities like mentioning some vocabularies in english. because of her lack of english pronunciation, she cannot give the example to pronounce the words in english well”. (parent) “we do our own treatments ourselves to our child at home. (parent) “although i have found how to pronounce the english word, i still have difficulties to pronounce it correctly” (parent) based on the result of this research, parents had the important role to improve the development of asd learners. the success of asd learners depended on the strength and patience of their parents. the acceptance of the presence of family members with a diagnosis of autism syndrome was a form of resilience and support for the progress of growth, affection, and education given by parents (hartati, 2019). according to farmer & reupert, (2013), there were significant increases in parental understanding of autism and understanding of their own child, and in understanding communication, sensory, social, learning and behavioural features of autism. parents valued learning about the general nature of autism and sensory processing and reported feeling less alone. the role of asd parents in english learning at rba was based on interview. it could be described as follows: face to face learning all asd parents did not accompany their children to get therapy. based on the interview with the headmaster of rba, she said that it was done because many of parents did not have the heart to see their child crying continuously since the child’s dependence of his/her parents was higher. although all asd parents at rba did not accompany their children, the teachers always delivered the ida vera sophya | elt forum 10 (3) (2021) 287 assessment in the same day. mrs. u, one of rba teacher said that she always delivered what had been done by mfm during school. therefore, the parents knew the development of their children. sridevi & arya, (2014) said that it was clear that the families usually would be exposed to the knowledge and abilities in handling their children by attending the program and they would be able to practice the knowledge at their home. hardiono (2020) argued that it was be better for the parents of asd learners to accompany their children in doing therapy so that they could practice themselves at home. he did not like if there was therapist gives treatment to asd by closing the door and not allowing the parents accompany their children in the room. that is why the role of the asd parents was important because it gave them knowledge how to face asd when they were in tantrum and how to solve it. from the study, sridevi, & arya, (2014) explained that “it is helpful for a mother in handling the child when the parental counselling is provided by giving detailed information and knowledge about the disorder and ways to deal with the child. it is clear that the families will usually be exposed to the knowledge and abilities in handling their children by attending certain programs and they will be able to practice the knowledge at their home”. online learning the long pandemic of covid-19 had resulted in the limited time of therapy because therapy at treatment service facilities cannot be carried out as before. to prevent the spread of the covid-19 virus, therapist and parent had restricted their direct contact physically. they chosed to keep their health by staying at home. in this case, the role of asd parents was very important as the primary caregivers for asd children in the intervention process. this approach can be used to anticipate the limited time of interventions due to the pandemic. based on the interview of one of asd parents at rba said that they did their own treatment to their children at home. they accompanied their children to do some activities according to the worksheet they got from therapists. bm said that she needed extra patience to ask her child to do the treatment activities like mentioning some vocabularies in english. because of her lack of english pronunciation, she could not give the example to pronounce the words in english well. although, she had found how to pronounce the english word, she still had difficulty to pronounce it. as ardiyani, et al., (2020) said, parents can also take the role of coach or therapist in various interventions. conclusion rumah belajar anak (rba) is one of informal schools which give treatment programmes to help and prepare asd learners before being included in inclusive schools or public schools. during the pandemic era, teaching/therapy of english at rba was done by face to face and online learning. the material which was taught based on the level of each asd learner. there were three levels in learning english at rba, namely basic, intermediate, and advanced. in offline learning, english language teaching for asd learners were done by direct method, tpr and lexical method. but in online learning, teachers at rba used direct method and lexical method. teachers at rba used pictures and flash cards as their media in offline teaching and used worksheets and video call in online teaching. they also used anecdotal notes, checklists, interviews, and retelling stories to assess the activities of asd learners. parents have important roles to accompany the development of asd learners. during the pandemic era, the role of asd parents was to accompany their children at home in practising english pronunciation and making use of vocabularies which had been given by the therapist at rba. the other hand, in online learning, the role of parents was as a teacher/ therapist who gave treatment to their children at home. they did the treatment based on therapists’ instructions which were written in worksheet. hopefully, the teaching of english is not only to fulfil the demands of the rights of asd learners, but also it can provide satisfaction for them. therefore, it is hoped that fun language learning can be used as an additional therapy to heal autism. references altiere, m. j., & von kluge, silvia. 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(2012). early childhood development and disability:adiscussion paper. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/75355/1/9789241504065_eng.pdf putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 158 elt forum 11 (3) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt investigating an efl pre-service teacher’s reflections during school teaching practice sherlyvia zeyana walida1, banatul murtafi’ah1 1 english education department, universitas islam indonesia, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on june 12, 2022 approved on november 26, 2022 published on november 30, 2022 ________________ keywords: reflective practice; efl preservice teachers; teaching practice ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ studies examining the reflective teaching practice of pre-service teachers in the context of efl are still under-discussed as in indonesia. therefore, to fill this void, this study was conducted to identify the reflection of efl pre-service teachers during teaching practice at schools. in practicing teaching, pre-service teachers face several challenges such as factors that influence the success of prospective teachers in teaching practice, lack of evaluation, and problem-solving in the classrooms with students. therefore, through this research, the researchers try to examine the reflective teaching practice of an efl pre-service teacher. this is a qualitative study using thematic analysis to analyse the data. the data were gathered from interviews and teaching journals. the finding shows that during the teaching practice, the participant’s experiences were reflected through five dimensions, i.e., philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. overall, the results show that the participant’s beyond reflection remained the same with what she did in practice, and the themes that have been revealed from her reflections including the need to do a lot of preparation, having a variety of alternatives to minimize problems in the classroom, and the importance of students' success in understanding the material. the findings, therefore, are expected to provide insight to other efl pre-service teachers to have reflective practices while conducting teaching practice.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 jl. kaliurang, km 14,5, 55584, sleman, di yogyakarta e-mail: 18322109@students.uii.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 159 introduction in the context of initial teacher education (ite), reflection is an important component for english teachers to begin their teaching practices. reflective practices are the process of learning from classroom experience and gaining new insights into self and professional practices (finlay, 2008). reflective practices are analyzed and divided into three categories: (1) reflection in activity; (2) reflection on activity; and (3) reflection for activity (farrell, 2012; 2018). furthermore, in relation to components of teaching reflection, farrell (2015) has also proposed the teacher’s reflective framework which covers: philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. philosophy reflects the teacher's story in detail such as the development of personal beliefs in teaching and the development of personal values that are reflected at the level of self-development. principle includes reflection on the assumptions, beliefs, conceptions of teachers about teaching and learning. theory includes how teachers can reflect what theory is embedded in their general approach to lesson planning (front, middle, and back planning), activities, and methods are chosen when trying to practice. next, practice emphasizes the most visible behavior of their work as teachers, their practice, and what happens in the classroom during teaching practice. finally, beyond practice refers to outside of practice and examines the socio-cultural, moral, and emotional impact of reflective practice. loughran (2002) defines teaching reflection as a process in which pre-service teachers think about their teaching practice, analyze how something is taught and how that practice can be improved or changed for better learning outcomes and into effective learning. the first and most important basis for professional progress is simply the teacher's reflection on everyday classroom events. therefore, reflection requires the form of ideas, descriptions, and effective decision-making in classroom settings. furthermore, nelson and sadler (2013) stated that there are four components of reflection, namely: stimulus, content, process, and outcome. the first component is stimulus that refers to the context of the initial problem in the act of reflection. schön (1987) mentions components in experience and describes such an unstable and unpredictable event of the experience and professionalism of pre-service teachers which could lead to reflections since such reflection occurs in response to an alarming situation. the second component is content which refers to the teacher's main idea in the act of reflection. the third component is process. the process is a system of actions taken by pre-service teachers when analyzing the problem being evaluated. the fourth component is the outcome. this component is at the end, which concerns how different directions characterize the broader goals and outcomes of the reflection process. furthermore, farrell (2015) has also proposed the teacher’s reflective framework which covers: philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. the component in the first stage is philosophy. philosophy reflects the teacher's story in detail such as the development of personal beliefs in teaching and the development of personal values that are reflected at the level of self-development. the next component of a teacher's reflective practice is principles. principle includes reflection on the assumptions, beliefs, concept of teachers about teaching and learning. then, it comes to theory. theory is to describe and discuss how teachers can reflect the theory they have made into teaching practice. at this level when teachers reflect, they will note what theory is embedded in their general approach to lesson planning (front, middle, and back planning), activities, and methods are chosen when trying to practice. furthermore, practice is a stage that reflects the most visible behavior of their work as teachers, their practice, and what happens in the classroom during teaching practice. finally, beyond practice refers to the framework which encourages teachers to reflect outside of practice and examines the socio-cultural, moral, and emotional impact of reflective practice. a number of reflective practice research in teacher education have been conducted. for example, liou (2001) investigated the reflective practice of pre-service efl teachers in taiwan to seek advances in the reflective practice of teachers and ensure that the distinctiveness of these practices is rigorous. resulting in that the participants mostly discussed teaching-related topics. russel (2005) assesses his practice in teacher education and considers whether or not reflective practice can be used. pedro (2005) investigated a way for pre-service teachers to master a reflective practice. lee (2007) examines in what ways dialogue and rebuttal can be used as a guidance by the pre-service teachers for their reflection. cavanagh and prescott (2010) investigate in what ways teacher personality and reflection power can best increase during pre-service teacher practice as they enter the workforce. farrell (2011) examined the professional identity of participants through their sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 160 contribution to structured reflective practice in pre-service teacher groups. meierdirk (2016) analyzes reflective practice and its position in teacher student education. maaranen and stenberg (2017) student teachers' reflections on practical theory investigating environmental and behavioral factors. azizah et al. (2018) during her teaching practice, she reviews the experiences of efl pre-service teachers utilizing reflective practice programs. arslan (2019) investigate the nature of student-teacher individual reflection at the stage of the practical experience of teaching in schools and upon entering the world of work. although reflective teaching practices in the context of teacher education have an important role, until now there is still limited research that focuses on reflective teaching practices in the efl specifically in indonesia. most of the research related to reflective teaching practices in the context of english classrooms is outside indonesia, for example, studies conducted by (liou, 2001; pedro, 2005; russell, 2005; and lee, 2007). in addition, it was revealed that those previous studies did not refer to the reflective practice framework from farrell (2015). therefore, knowing the situation and experience in the field of teaching practice, the researchers were interested in conducting this study on efl pre-service teachers in teaching practice programs in indonesian context by referring to farrell’s framework of reflective teaching practice. this present study attempts to answer the following question: how does an efl pre-service teacher reflect her teaching during the teaching practice? methods the researchers chose the qualitative design because it was believed to be the most appropriate to be used to answer the research questions and objectives. qualitative methods, especially thematic analysis was used to identify and explain data analysis. thematic analysis was a technique for identify, analyze, describe, and report themes within the data (braun and clarke, 2006). in addition, thematic analysis can also generate a lot of data, clearly and in detail from the researchers’ questions, and gather meaning from the participant’s teaching experience. the participant of this study was one efl pre-service teacher (i.e., fee, pseudonym) from a private university in yogyakarta. the researchers decided to focus on one participant in terms of practical constraint, yet attempted to conduct more in-depth analysis by using two sources of data, i.e., reflective journal and interview. the participant of this research was from the english education department. here, fee was a student majoring in english education and was in her semester 7 when she was interviewed. she had conducted the teaching practice for 36 days. before teaching practice, fee had experience in teaching. one of them was when she had two months of experience teaching through community service. in addition, for evidence of reflective practice fee used the teacher's diary to reflect on teaching. the diary was written by fee every day of the 36 days of teaching practice. during the teaching, the practice fee may feel tired because the teaching practice is different from usual due to the pandemic situation. teaching practices were carried out online and offline and required pre-service teachers who can adapt their teaching aspects. the reflective teaching that exists in the teaching practice of pre-service teachers has the benefit of improving or evaluating their teaching in the future. this present study used two types of instruments, i.e., guided reflective journals and semistructured interviews. the guided reflective journals contain a reflection on their professional identity and learning to become a teacher after teaching practice. the reflection on this written description contains planning activities carried out in teaching practice, activities that are carried out by pre-service teachers when teaching, expressing feelings of pre-service teachers during teaching practice activities, activities that do not have problems, and problems experienced during teaching practice activities. during the teaching practice, all english education department students from the university were required to write a reflective journal that reflects their teaching experiences after completing teaching practice. after asking for permission from fee to access her reflective journal, she was then interviewed for further investigation. this interview lasted for about 15-30 minutes. the interviews were conducted in two languages, both bahasa indonesia and english. bahasa indonesia was used to make it easier and allowed participants to be free and fluent in conveying ideas without worrying about language barriers. furthermore, the results of the interviews were collected from the voice recordings and recorded some to be transcribed before the researchers conducted the analysis. as bryman (2012) stated that interviews should be recorded and transcribed. in this study, the analysis was carried out using thematic analysis. the data were collected through autobiographical writings and reflective journals to get a narrative of their experiences. by sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 161 using thematic analysis, there are six steps in analyzing data with thematic methods. the first step is to familiarize the data that has been collected by reading the data several times and noting the important parts of the data. after reading the data, the researchers collected all relevant data and code the data to make it easier to find. the third step is to analyze and theme the code that has been transcribed. after assigning a theme to the data, the researchers need to check the theme to make sure the code is appropriate. in the next step, the researchers must define and name the theme and the last step is to make a report based on the theme that has been made (braun & clarke, 2006). interviews were also used to see how their teaching identity was formed. this interview lasted about 15-30 minutes. interviews were conducted in two languages, both indonesian and english because using indonesian would make it easier and allow participant to be free and fluent in conveying ideas without worrying about language barriers. furthermore, the results of the interviews were collected from the voice recordings and recorded some to be transcribed before the researchers conducted the analysis. as bryman (2012) stated that interviews should be recorded and transcribed. the researchers applied the six phases of thematic analysis. therefore, to validate the trustworthiness of the interview, the researchrs used some recommended criteria by nowell et al. (2017) for each phase of thematic analysis. first, in familiarizing ourselves with the data, we triangulated different types of data collection sources (i.e., reflective journal and interview). next, in generating initial codes, the researchers used a coding framework based on farrell (2015). third, in searching for themes, the researchers highlighted the keywords from the interview transcript and the teaching journal. next, in reviewing themes, both researchers cross-checked the themes together for multiple times. fifth, in defining and naming the themes, we did the peer debriefing once again where both researchers checked the names of the themes. last but not least, in writing the report, we wrote the findings by referring again to the theories. findings and discussion in this section, the researchers present the interpretation of the research results. interpretation data is obtained from data that has been analyzed based on the theme in the theoretical construct used by the researchers. in this discussion, the researchers interpret the aspects of reflection based on farrell's theory, namely, philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. manifested aspects of reflective teaching practice by considering the theory from farrell (2018) that said when teachers are supported to reflect on philosophy, right here they could better apprehend the origin, formation, and improvement of teacher identity. when teachers are encouraged to mirror the principles, they must become more aware of the assumptions, values, and ideas they formerly held when they were students. when teachers are encouraged to mirror theories, they must be able to construct knowledge of instruction. when teachers are encouraged to reflect on practice, they become more aware of the relationship between theory, practice and they can understand classroom observations. when teachers are encouraged to go beyond practice, that is where teachers can reflect on issues such as the role of the teacher, and differences in power. the finding of this study also showed that most of the reflections made by teachers focus on aspects of farrell (2015), namely philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. in general, the summary of fee’s reflective teaching practice is presented in the following table and explanation. table 1. the summary of fee’s reflective teaching practice aspects findings philosophy she emphasized on her role as a teacher does not to be presence for the students. her teaching philosophy was constructed based on her teaching experiences. principles she wanted her students to be enthusiastic in learning english. she believed that she must do her best for the teaching. theory she was quite meticuluous in transforming the teaching theory into the lesson plan. practice she did not only the teaching practices but also classroom management practices. fee did what she had planned in her lesson plan, including the learning activities, questions, quiz, and assessment. in addition, she also attempted to manage the classroom effectively by taking attendance, memorizing students’ names, and even considering addressing students’ inappropriate behaviour by negotiating the consequences. sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 162 beyond practice she believed that being a teacher means being a long-lasting learner. thus, she is aware of the need for her professional development. through farrell's theoretical framework on the reflection of teacher teaching practices, which includes reflection on philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. overall, it can be seen that fee's reflections on hidden aspects of teaching (philosophy, principles, and theory) remain consistent with what she did in practice, and the relationships that emerge from her reflections can be categorized by the need for much preparation, having various kinds of alternatives to minimize problems in class, and the importance of students' success in understanding the material. in this critical reflection stage, it greatly helps the fee to reflect on its teaching to be even better when teaching in the future. this finding, therefore, confirms those from (farrell and kennedy 2019; playsted, 2019; farrell and avejic, 2020; kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah, 2020; farrell and macapinlac, 2021) stating that the teachers from their study have the three hidden aspects of teaching reflected in the practice. fee, indeed, walks the talk. she did what she said. for example, fee, the participant, explicitly stated that her principle, she needs to have a lot of preparation. then, through her journal, she wrote that on day 14 of her teaching diary, she practiced what she mentioned. she reread the syllabus and do various preparations as follow: “what i actually did today is to reread the syllabus and then determine the material that i will teach in this 1st semester. before making the rpp, i also read the rpp references on the website provided by the ministry of education. next, i made a lesson plan that was in accordance with the material in semester 1” furthermore, fee also mentioned having a reflection as her principles. she reflected her teaching by asking the students’ opinion about her teaching performance. on day 32 of her diary, she wrote: “after finishing their daily test, i gave a reflection on the impressions and messages that were taught by me. students can write on the padlet that i have provided.’’ then, the explanation of each aspect of the reflective teaching practice is discussed below. philosophy the findings in this component revealed that fee has a philosophy that was related to teacher’s roles in teaching. she believed that she must be able to memorize the names of each student. fee here also attempted to create an active class atmosphere and avoided boredom. in creating an active classroom and not bored, the teacher's role here is very important, the teacher must have a high creativity. the researchers and fee were discussing what makes a teacher's philosophy possible. her philosophy was formed when she already had the teaching experience. she tended to do a lot of preparation and practice. as a teacher, she must also be a role model for the students, and always give encouragement to students so that they want to learn english. she also said that when teaching students directly, it must be targeted and effective. so that the teachers not only transfer knowledge to the students but also educate them. ‘’my philosophy here is a lot of preparation, a lot of practice, and as a teacher, i have to be a model for the students and i also have to always give encouragement, encouragement to students so that they continue to want to learn....when teaching is not only an activity to transfer knowledge. but there is a response from students and changes in behavior’’ furthermore, to become a teacher, according to fee, required patience, compassion for students, and of course being a teacher with character. she pushed and challenged herself to be a good teacher, attempted to improve her learning, and wanted to make a difference in the lives of sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 163 others. this is also related to her statement about a sense of responsibility for the learning of her students. ‘’to be a teacher, we need patience and compassion for students to become teachers with character. in addition, we also needs to explain or provide material that is not monotonous’’ the philosophy from fee was reflected her background as a pre-service teacher who gain experiences from both in-class teacher training from the university and from her teaching practicum. the way she put these together and thus describe what a teacher should be is in line with what farrel and macapinlac (2021) proposed about philosophy in teacher reflection. in detail, farrell and macapinlac (2021) mentioned that philoshopy is constructed when teachers reflect on their previous experiences, take lessons from those experiences and thus describe themselves as teachers. this is in line with the findings of playsted (2019) that philosophy in teaching is used to reflect the way preservice teachers in teaching practice so that they become teachers with character, are fun for students, and can develop the abilities of pre-service teachers in the teaching and learning process. in line with research conducted by farrell and avejic (2020) that teaching philosophy is a guide when pre-service teachers practice teaching from their universities and can apply quality learning. this is also relevant to the findings of farrell and kennedy (2019) which explain that teaching philosophy can provide skills when pre-service teachers reflect on their teaching experiences so that they are better and have no shame. this philosophy also describes the time he will become a teacher in the future and as a motivation to pursue a career in education. this statement is also relevant to the findings of kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah (2020) which state that philosophy is a means for teachers to prove work experience, and learning outcomes, and is formed when pre-service teachers have practical teaching experience in schools. thus, they can describe themselves as teachers in the future. principles the answers from the participant indicated that the students she taught were quite unpredictable and tended to lack of interest in english. in results, fee took more time to understand the learning objectives, learning activities, and assessment aspects that would be used in the lesson plans. the students’ characteristics were one of the bases for her to adjust the learning goals. she believed that she needed to do her best for the students. for example, before fee started teaching, she must have prepared in advance, such as practicing her pronunciation so that when she could provide correct models for her students. then, after finishing her teaching, fee always evaluated or reflected on the lessons that she has done. she also attempted to build students’ enthusiasm in learning by preparing small rewards for them. ‘’prepare more effort....preparation for english... the pronunciation, then i teach here it must be perfect so that i can give a good impression.’’ ‘’so, (i) have to give a reward in the form of gifts like candy, biscuits, pencils, pens, small books’’ ‘’building enthusiasm, always involving students. so it's not just teacher-oriented, but teacher studentoriented. so here it is not only the teacher who explains, but the students are also directly involved’’ what fee has practiced is in accordance with farrell and macapinlac (2021) who stated that principles regarding qualities that are believed to be possessed by teachers such as fostering student motivation to be enthusiastic in learning english. these educational principles are closely related to the reflection of actual teaching practice. having a good relationship with students is the key to a successful classroom, and teachers need to be passionate in explaining the material and teaching in general. this is in line with playsted (2019) who states that the principles of quality in teaching that are owned by teachers are the application of pedagogical principles in teaching practice in the classroom. in line with the research conducted by farrell's and avejic (2020) before starting to teach, it is necessary to prepare vocabulary in english, so that when teaching can give good results. then he also has the principle of a student-oriented or student-centered approach. this statement is also relevant to the findings of kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah (2020) which states that in teaching pre-service teachers it is necessary to prepare foreign language knowledge and skills. because in sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 164 teaching, pre-service teachers need to master this foreign language knowledge and be able to demonstrate their abilities well. this is also relevant to the findings of farrell and kennedy (2019) which state that the principles regarding the qualities possessed by teachers such as establishing personal relationships with students and fostering curiosity. these principles are closely related to the reflection of his teaching practice. besides, having confidence in teaching is the key to success in the classroom. theory in terms of theory, teachers need to think of how they transform the teaching theory into practice in the classroom. this might also include lesson planning for teaching. the participant stated that in applying the theory of teaching, she always followed the format of the latest lesson plan so that the learning process would not be monotonous. fee said that the method she used for teaching was taskbased language learning. when fee said that she attempted to prepare the lessons beforehand, it seemed she really did what she said. in planning the lesson, she was quite meticulous. she began her lesson planning by surfing on the internet, visiting the websites from of indonesia to find the best model of lesson plan. after she found the examples of lesson plan that matched the basic competences that she would teach, she then consulted with her teacher supervisor. she asked the teacher from the school she conducted teaching practice whether she could use those format of lesson plans. after confirming the lesson plan format from the supervisor, she attempted to pay attention to the learning activities in the example of lesson plan she got. once she had finished with lesson plan things, she continued surfing the internet to find the best references for her lesson. she even prepared a quiz using online quiz platform to make the learning more interactive. i started looking for lesson plans references on the "ayo guru berbagi" site and found the lesson plans that matched the basic competencies that i used. then, i did a consultation session with ms yuli (pseudonym) regarding the rpp (lesson plan) format used at my school, whether to use the format from school or i could use the rpp format outside the school regulations. what worked well during the consultation session with ms yuli was that i got an explanation and information about the lesson plans used at school. here, she also explained that the school already has its own rpp format. she ad ded that they did not use the one-page rpp. (day 10 of the teaching practice) what i plan to do today is prepare myself to teach offline and review my lesson plans. i looked back at my lesson plans and made some minor improvements to the learning activities. next, i also prepared a quiz where i used the quizizz platform to make learning more interactive. (day 26 of the teaching practice) these findings are in line with the research findings from author farrell and macapinlac (2021) stating that identifying teaching content greatly affects the teaching methods chosen and adapted to the needs of students. during the teaching process, she prioritizes the needs of students and betters their professional development. in her theory, she first creates a new activity, prepares assignments according to the student's level, and the lesson plans that have been made are used to help her organize the class better. this is in line with playsted (2019) which states that learning theory and exploratory learning strategies greatly affect students' competence and ability in learning. in line with the research conducted by farrell and avejic (2020) during the teaching process, he prioritized the needs of his students by explaining the approach applied in the teaching and learning process. in theory, he also puts into practice the way he teaches. this statement is also relevant to the findings of farrell and kennedy (2019) which state that in applying teaching theory always pay attention to planning procedures so that the learning process can run well. he also said that the method he used to teach was a task-based approach and a simple structural approach. this statement is also relevant to the findings of kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah (2020) who states that in theory he prepares interesting learning concepts, adjusts the methods used to facilitate learning in the classroom, and the learning concepts that have been created are used to help control the class when students are not paying attention. sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 165 practice the participant stated that in applying the theory of teaching, she always followed the lesson plan so that the learning process is not monotonous. from what she did, it seemed that fee really did what she said. she really did embed quiz for her teaching to make the students’ interest in the lesson. regular teaching practices were also done by fee, such as providing the materials in lms (learning management system), explaining the material, giving examples of conversations from the material that has been explained, giving students practice questions, and even giving them assessment. these were reflected from her diary. what i did today is teaching students in class x mipa 4 using google meet for online class meetings and using google classroom to share the material. in addition, i did attendance by calling the names of students one by one. don't forget, i also give practice questions at the end of this online class meeting. (day 22 of teaching practice) when teaching, it also seemed that fee tried to engage the students to voluntarily involve in the learning process. the online quiz given by her was also used to attract the students’ enthusiasm. then asked if anyone would volunteer to read authentic material, there were some students who were very willing to read the material. (day 24 of teaching practice) i am also able to apply quizzes to provide a more interactive learning atmosphere. in addition, using quizizz to conduct my quiz can also provide enthusiasm for learning for students because of its attractive visuals. (day 26 of teaching practice) fee attempted to be a humanized teacher since she was not only teaching her students but also tried to involve them and was willing to listen to her students’ voices and opinions. after that i explained the material about the "should for obligation" capital. then, i give exercises so that students are willing to voice their opinions. (day 29 of teaching practice) fee also assessed the students once the topic has finished. from her diary, it seemed that the assessment ran well and even her students gained high scores for that. what i did today is to give daily tests to students through google classroom. (day 32 of teaching practice) what worked well was that i was able to provide a detailed explanation about the daily test to be carried out. the results of the students' grades were also very good and the average score was above 90. (day 32 of teaching practice) besides these teaching practices, it seemed that she also dealt with the classroom management practices during the teaching practicum, such as: taking the attendance, dealing with time management, calling and memorizing students by names, and dealing with discipline and consquences. most of these classroom management practices done by fee are all covered by the classroom management theories from marzano et al. (2003). these classroom management practice could be seen from her diary and also interview transcript as follows. what worked well today was that i was able to teach students with good time management. (day 22 of teaching practice) sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 166 what didn't work well was my weakness in spelling my students’ names. during a class session, i called one of the students, but the student said that my name was a little wrong and he confirmed how to call his name. (day 25 of teaching practice) what didn't work well was that i hadn’t memorized all the students’ names. (day 29 of teaching practice) ‘’so, on the second day of my teaching, there was a student whom i called more than three times without any responses. therefore, i told them, ‘’okey, for those who do not respond to me, i will consider them as absent.’’ the teaching practices that fee did mostly are in line with the research findings from farrell and macapinlac (2021) stating that identifying teaching content greatly affects the teaching methods chosen and adapted to the needs of students. during the teaching process, she prioritizes the needs of students and betters their professional development. in her theory, she first creates a new activity, prepares assignments according to the student's level, and the lesson plans that have been made are used to help her organize the class better. furthermore, one point that is interesting from this finding is that both the respondents of farrell and macapinlac (2021) and fee not only deal with teaching practices but also classroom management practices. this implied that fee, the respondent of this study, really put her philosophy into practice. she believed that teacher’s role is not merely delivering materials, but also building good rapport with their students. this is in line with playsted (2019) who states that in carrying out initial teaching practices, she teaches students by approaching and prioritizing students' needs. during the teaching process, she always finds out the progress of the students he teaches by providing explanations of the material and students' responses to understanding the material. in line with research conducted by farrell and avejic (2020) which states that in the teaching practice process, first look at the syllabus used to design the material. in carrying out teaching practice, he also applies classroom management practices. this statement is also relevant to the findings of kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah (2020) which focus on classroom management and student development. the results of her research indicate that in teaching practice classroom management is needed, especially in managing time and how to control the class when students are not paying attention. she also said that the role of the teacher was not only to make the learning process interesting but also to be able to manage the class well. this is also relevant to the findings of farrell and kennedy (2019) which state that in practice, following learning procedures always practice recognizing new vocabulary in english. in teaching practice, he also always considers the abilities of his students. beyond practice beyond practice refers to the critical reflection. fee mentioned how she reflected outside of teaching practice. she explained that she needed to improve her way of teaching, always tried to build good communication with students, at the end of the lesson she also provided a platform for the students to give impressions and messages to her as her evaluation. she did this reflection because she thought it was important to make students feel that their teachers treated their students well and avoid social gaps between students and teachers. when fee was not teaching, she positioned herself not as a teacher, but as a student. through this way, fee can see clearer how teacher should interact with the students. “outside of teaching, i am just like myself. so here i do not consider myself as a teacher.’’ ‘’i asked the students to write messages about me and their impressions of my teaching through padlet. here, they are free to want my teaching style, my character, or whatever the students can devote to them.’’ ‘’so how do i engage in the practice of critical reflection on myself? yes, by asking the students to complete the reflection task and writing about myself, then i also reflect on the feedback from the students ''oh it means i have to be like this'', from their testimony, i made improvements, and practiced a lot.’’ sherlyvia zeyana walida, banatul murtafi’ah | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 167 furthermore, fee also reflected on what she has taught. she believed that being a teacher means being a long-lasting learner. she believed that she should always learn and develop herself. “being a teacher means we do a long-lasting learning. it never ends. we need to always learn and improve and upgrade ourselves. we not only need to get the knowledge but also need to train our attitude and behaviour as teachers. that’s why i always question myself from what i have taught, about my teaching and learning.” these findings are in line with the research findings from farrell and macapinlac (2021) stating that reflected outside of teaching practice greatly influences future teaching. during the teaching practice process, she reflects outside of practice by controlling communication between students and wanting more constructive and supportive feedback from students. reflecting outside of practice can help teachers gain a better viewpoint on their side and get more understanding on how things work. this is in line with playsted (2019) stating that reflected outside of practice is very important, because it affects the quality of teacher teaching. she reflects outside of practice by establishing communication with students and at the end of the lesson he evaluates with students about his teaching. in the same vein with a study conducted by farrell and avejic (2020) stated that, during teaching practice he reflected outside the practitioner by wanting feedback from students that occurred during lessons and asking students to correct mistakes while teaching. this statement is also relevant to the findings of kusumarasdyati and retnaningdyah (2020) stating that she reflected outside of teaching practice by improving has teaching methods, controlling patience with students, and as an evaluation, also accepting criticism from students. this reflection is used to improve has way of teaching and can explain to students. this is also relevant to the findings of farrell and kennedy (2019) which state that reflection outside of practice is done by receiving feedback from students and he explains that he needs to improve his teaching methods so that students can easily understand the material. in addition, he also needs to improve his ability to approach students. conclusion this present study aims to identify the reflective practice of the efl pre-service teacher during teaching practice at schools. from the results and discussion, it was found that the pre-service teacher of this study not only had the three hidden aspects of reflective teaching (i.e., philosophy, principles, and theory), but also did them all in her real teaching practice. the reflection that she did, greatly influenced how she taught students to be a better english teacher in the future. this study, however, has limitations in some aspects. it is limited to only investigating one pre-service teacher from one batch and one school. further research, therefore, could dig deeper on the reflective teaching practices from more than one efl pre-service teachers who conduct teaching practice in different types of schools, and see the differences among them. funding statement this is a non-funded study. references arslan, f. y. 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(1987). educating the reflective practitioner. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.10 https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccm022 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(01)00011-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(01)00011-2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053001004 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2016.1169169 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.732946 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 125 elt forum 11(2) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt students’ practice on autonomous language learning behaviors: a narrative inquiry ai fatmawati1, yanty wirza1 1universitas pendidikan indonesia, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 15 june 2022 approved on 29 july 2022 published on 31 july 2022 ________________ keywords: autonomous; behaviors; challenges; learner autonomy ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the ability of learners to take an active role in their learning has attracted attention in foreign language learning as the focus of language teaching practice and theory have shifted to a student-centered approach. thus, this study aimed at exploring how students employed autonomous language learning behaviors, such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning, including the challenges that the students may find. by applying a narrative inquiry, this study focused on examining students’ experience in doing autonomous language learning behaviors and their challenges. the data were obtained using a semi-structured interview with four bilingual students who live at private islamic boarding school. the findings revealed that they implemented autonomous language learning behaviors, yet they met some difficulties in doing those behaviors, such as the dilemma in determining the goals or the priorities to learn, the lack of motivation in doing those behaviors, the need of others to help them doing the behaviors and misunderstanding of the autonomous behavior concepts. the findings imply that the participation of the teacher's assistance and encouragement in implementing autonomous behaviors is crucial. due to the limited data obtained in this study, future research can be done to explore more about autonomous behaviors. the findings of this study are expected to shed some light on autonomous behaviors implemented by students living in islamic boarding school, specifically who are bilingual.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 universitas pendidikan indonesia jalan dr setiabudhi no 229, kota bandung, 40154 e-mail: aifatma96@upi.edu http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 126 introduction indonesia’s recent curriculum, the 2013 curriculum, has required teachers to use student-centered learning in the classroom. it has been promoted for about seven years. since the focus of language teaching practice and theory has switched to a student-centered approach, the ability of learners to take an active role in their learning has received attention in foreign language learning. however, in asian societies, language learning is still known to be teacher-authoritative, encouraging obedience and reliance on the teacher (hsieh & hsieh, 2019). although it is difficult for some teachers to implement student-centered classroom, it still cannot be ignored due to the significance. one of the purposes to implement student-centered learning is to make students become autonomous learners. it has been argued that active participation in learning outside of the classroom is vital especially for foreign language students (hsieh & hsieh, 2019). learner autonomy is mostly known as the ability to take responsibility for their own learning (holec, 1981, cited in little, 2017). it includes the responsibility for determining the objectives, setting the content and progress, choosing the methods and techniques to be used, monitoring the acquisition process, and evaluating what has been obtained. cotterall & crabbe (1999) argued that students will be autonomous when they are: (1) promoted to self-monitor and self-assessment; (2) promoted to objectively focus on their learning process; (3) provided opportunities to choose content and learning activities, as well as opportunities to assess their own progress: and (4) promoted to find their own language knowledge and build their own learning assignments. the term ‘promoted’ shows that teachers need to foster autonomy to the students. it is stated by lengkanawati (2017) that no matter how experienced a teacher is, if the students do not make efforts by working independently outside the classroom on their learning and by becoming active participants in the teaching and learning process, the good learning outcome will not take place. geddes and strurtridge (1997, cited in kemala, 2016) argued that autonomous learners decide what they want to learn or why they need to learn, and then decide how to tackle the problems. furthermore, dang (2012) divided the characteristics of learner autonomy into three categories: initiating, monitoring, and evaluating. understanding personal learning preferences, defining goals, preparing study plans, and providing learning opportunities are all aspects of the beginning learning process. the monitoring learning process, which is likely the longest and where the majority of learning occurs, comprises traits linked to learning engagement and maintenance, such as selecting appropriate tactics, adjusting learning paths, and bargaining with others. the evaluating learning process predicts characteristics such as proofreading an assignment and evaluating a piece of writing while reviewing learning results. however, fostering learner autonomy is still difficult. nakata (2014) states that fostering learner autonomy in efl contexts face full of constraints and limitations and thus there is no much freedom because of, for example, fixed curricular goals, large class sizes, textbook and exam-oriented teaching, and teacher-faced instruction. another clear challenge is the socio-cultural background in which students respect the teachers and make them reluctant to speak up about their wants. as harmer (2007) asserted that for certain students from some educational backgrounds and cultures who have been led to believe that it is the teachers’ role to provide learning, this message can be challenging. tomita & sano (2016) investigated students’ needs in developing their learner autonomy by dividing them into low and high proficiency levels obtained from their toeic scores. the findings revealed that the students need the support of the teachers in developing their autonomy levels. research conducted by tuyen & an (2019) also studied the challenge in fostering autonomy. the findings of a study encountered that students themselves might be one of the challenges that the teachers find in promoting learner autonomy. the students with a low level of proficiency prevented the teachers from implementing strategies in their teaching. that can also be because the students are not motivated. some previous researchers in indonesia such as agustina and fajar (2018), khotimah et al. (2019) and ramadhiyah and lengkanawati (2019) discovered how learners view autonomy in language learning. for example, agustina and fajar (2018) found that although students believed that being autonomous and independent is important, they have not been able to sustain their autonomy as english learners because of a variety of reasons, such as their lack of motivation, consistency, willingness as well as supportive atmosphere. the findings are supported by chan et al. (2002) who said that motivation is an important aspect in determining whether or not a student is ready to learn independently. similarly, ramadhiyah and lengkanawati (2019) discovered that despite the fact that the students believed they were capable of controlling their own learning, they delegated that responsibility to their teacher. it could be due to socio-cultural factors in the indonesian environment, ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 127 which keep teacher-centered learning in place. a study conducted by khotimah et al. (2019) discovered that not all students comprehend the concept of autonomous learning in english lesson. they also found that among the autonomous behaviors, the monitoring phase, according to the thirdyear students in the study, was more important than the other two stages. other findings by kemala (2016) showed that independent learners are primarily impacted by their own desires, followed by the environment, learning activities, teachers, and materials. the majority of high autonomous learners were motivated to study english by their desire to advance their careers in the future, as well as other factors. the findings above indicate that being autonomous learners is influenced by many factors. since students may have various backgrounds and cultures in language learning, it will sometimes provide different situations in implementing autonomous language learning behavior. the students may have their own reasons why being an autonomous learner is challenging for them, especially the students in the dormitory area. it then becomes significant to be studied since students studying and living in islamic boarding school have many agendas outside their study at school which can be one of the factors to influence how they implement autonomous learning behaviors. the author, then, had curiosity on how students’ studying in private islamic boarding school who are in bilingual class implement their autonomous language learning behaviors. the previous studies had not covered autonomous behaviors from students living in islamic boarding school, specifically who are bilingual. this study is going to search how students who live in private islamic boarding school, specifically who are bilingual, do autonomous language learning behaviors, and the obstacles that they encounter in implementing the behaviors by using a narrative inquiry. hence, the research questions of this study is ‘how do the students plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning?’. methods this study used a narrative inquiry method. it is the study of the ways in which people experience the world (connelly & clandinin, 1990). demarrais & lapan (2004) claimed that narrative inquiry represents the researcher who wishes to understand a phenomenon or an experience rather than to formulate a logical or empirical theory. a narrative captures human experience through the creation and reconstruction of personal and social stories; and learners, teachers, and researchers are storytellers (connelly & clandinin, 1990; webster & mertova, 2007). in language teaching, narrative research attempts to recount the learner’s perspective with his language learning experience (barkhuizen et al., 2014). it is relevant to the purpose of this study, which was to explore the students’ experiences in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning, including the challenges they encountered. this study asked the participants to share their experiences by letting them tell their stories, which was a part of a narrative inquiry. as this research aimed at exploring students studying and living in islamic boarding school doing autonomous language learning behaviors, this study was conducted in private islamic boarding school in central java with four bilingual students that speak arabic and english for their daily activities. the school was purposively chosen because it provides two languages to be used by the students. it also provides autonomous learning environment in terms of english or arabic study club after the school hours. two of the students were in the second grade and the rest were in the third grade. all the names in the findings were pseudonym. they were chosen because of their availability in participating in the study. according to hamied (2017), in qualitative data, the participants can be based on the researcher’s convenience, hence the number of participants is insignificant. the data were collected using semi-structured interview. as connelly & clandinin (1990) stated, interview can be a tool to collect data in narrative inquiry. the interview questions were the elaboration of the questionnaire created by karababa, eker, & arik (2010) who had studied the skills of autonomous learning notion in turkey. the items covered students’ planning abilities, monitoring abilities, evaluation abilities, and the obstacles that they encountered during the process of autonomous learning behaviors. during this study, covid-19 pandemic was arising. the study in the private islamic boarding school was still conducted offline. yet it could not receive any visitors. since the researcher could not visit the school, the researcher contacted some students who were going back to their homes because of their individual reasons. at first, the author asked the students to be her respondents. they were going back to their home because of certain conditions so the author could reach them through phone. the collection of the data was done from 16 to 19 november 2020. after they agreed, the author sent the list of the questions to them by whatsapp. the author focused on asking how the students plan, ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 128 monitor, and assess their learning and the challenges in implementing it. the researcher allowed the students to answer using english or indonesian language depending on their preferences. adhikara and nanda answered using indonesian language, and rijal and rohman answered the questions using english. adhikara, rohman, and nanda answered the questions by typing them. meanwhile, rijal answered the questions by sending the researcher a voice note. some of the answers were not clear enough, so the researcher clarified it by validating the answers or by asking the participants another question regarding the answer to avoid misunderstanding. for instance, when the researcher asked rohman about how he evaluated his learning, the researcher asked another question to validate his answer. after the data had been gathered, the interview data from the voice note were transcribed. the transcription and the data in written response was coded and arranged into certain themes, such as planning the learning, monitoring the learning, and evaluating the learning; and based on the themes a further interpretation was developed. according to kim (2016) data analysis involves interpretation. analysis implies objectivity and interpretation implies subjectivity. after the narrative was created, to ensure the trustworthiness (developed by lincoln & guba, 1985 as cited in elo, et. al, 2014) of the data analysis, the author sent it back to the participants to check whether it represented their ideas correctly and to have their comments and feedback. the participants stated that the interpretation matched to what they have told the researcher. findings and discussion planning the learning students’ autonomous behavior was discovered by asking them how they planned their learning. from the six participants’ answers, it can be seen that they plan their learning by setting goals and priorities to be learned. they have different goals and priorities in learning english. for example, some of the participants stressed their english learning in memorizing new vocabularies, and some of them prioritized mastering the grammar. adhikara, rijal, and rohman shared their experiences: adhikara: “yes, before learning a language, i set goals and priorities. the first priority for my learning, i stress in memorizing new vocabularies that i didn't know before. usually in the beginning i always try to memorize new vocabularies as much as possible, after that i begin to think about how to pronounce it, then understand grammar and study english literature.” rijal: “i set a goal to be able to speak to native speakers fluently. another goal that i set was to watch a movie without any subtitles. to reach the goals, what i did was memorize as many vocabulary words as possible. rohman: “yes, the first goal i plan is mastering english grammar, then speaking.” planning a learning is one of necessary aspects that students studying and living in islamic boarding school must have to become autonomous learners. thus, they can manage what to learn and do first among many agendas they have. in relation to the question regarding the importance of planning students’ learning, they all agreed that planning their learning is essential to their english learning. adhikara, for example, asserted that planning his learning was important since he thought it was difficult to learn many things at once. so, he needed to plan his learning to see the first to the least learning priorities. then, he could start to learn english based on the priority. although the participants believed that planning their learning was important, they often found difficulties in planning their learning, determining the priority to learn, and deciding the strategies to reach it. for instance, rijal said that there was a lack of media as the source of learning in the dormitory to support his learning. so, it sometimes makes a little bit difficult to plan what to learn. meanwhile, rohman thought that it was difficult to find the methods that suited him the most. monitoring the learning in monitoring the learning, most of them would compare their progress by talking to their friends. for example, adhikara would compare his friends’ ability to his or listen to a song or watch a movie to know whether he understood the story. he thought that he would be good in english when he understood what the native said. it is also stated by rijal and nanda who often talked to their friends to see their progress. rijal usually observed his speaking and writing ability day by day to check his weaknesses to improve it. rijal said that: ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 129 “i often had a discussion with my friends. i write and i speak to find out my weaknesses. i observed it from my friends’ and my point of view so that i will always develop my english ability.” meanwhile, rohman observed his learning progress by doing a test, to what extent he could answer the test at school and how long he could speak english fluently. from the four participants, only one who was aware of his weaknesses and strengths. rijal said that his ability to speak or talk about a topic in front of many people was his strength in learning english, while his weakness was that he still found obstacles to watch a movie without any subtitles. the rest of them was not certain about it. adhikara: “sometimes i am aware and other time no.” rohman: “to be honest, i know a little about my strengths and weaknesses. i feel i am strong in grammar and analyzing a structure of a sentence. while my weakness is in vocabularies. nanda: “yes, i am aware that i am not really good in learning english. english is something relatively new for me.” regarding the question about who took the responsibility of monitoring their learning, adhikara thought that it should be the teacher’s task. he thought that the responsibility of his learning was not solely his job, but it needed a connection between him and the teacher. meanwhile the other participants believed that it was their own responsibility to monitor their learning. nanda put in words like “of course my learning is my responsibility. no way it is going to be another person’s responsibility.” rohman, in contrast, said that his learning is his responsibility, but he did not give much attention to his language. the participants also shared the problems that they found during monitoring their learning. it seemed that all participants could not monitor their learning well. adhikara said that he needed other people to monitor his learning. he told the author that only a few of his friends could monitor his english mistakes and progress in learning. adhikara: “yes. there is no person who can always monitor my english mistakes and see my progress during my studies.” rohman thought that monitoring his learning was challenging since he did not know his ability well. in the meantime, rijal and nanda argued that laziness was what made monitoring their learning did not work well. being able to monitor their learning by themselves is one of the characteristics of autonomous learners. in this part, students studying and living in islamic boarding school must be able to see how far they have made the progress. evaluating the learning evaluating the learning is the last autonomous behavior that is discovered in this present study. it was revealed that all the participants evaluated their learning. from their story, it can be seen that they evaluate their learning in different ways. adhikara sometimes evaluated his learning with his friends who were smarter than him to ask the materials that he did not understand. he understood that by evaluating his learning, he would get a maximum score. rohman evaluated his learning by doing a test, such as the toefl test without brushing up the materials. when he was able to finish it, it meant that he learned it well. however, when he did not do well on the test because he did not know or forget the materials, he would learn it again. he put in words “usually i do practice with some questions such as toefl without brushing up the materials. if i do not know or forget about some of them, then i will open my english book again. if i can answer the questions, it means i still remember the materials.” some problems appeared from the participants’ story. the same problem that adhikara and rohman encountered was they were too lazy to evaluate their learning so that they did not do it regularly. adhikara: “i did not regularly do it because i was not so serious in learning. that was why the difficulty of evaluating my learning was the continuity since i evaluated my learning depending on my mood. rohman: “yes, evaluating my learning important. but usually, i am still too lazy to do it. i did not evaluate my learning very often. maybe around once in two months. it was also because i ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 130 studied many subjects at school, so i found difficulty in seeking the time to evaluate each subject, including english subject.” in contrast, rijal told the author that he often evaluated his learning, even when he was at home having his holiday. he could play on his mobile phone when he was at home. rijal: “when i was at home where i could play on my mobile phone, i usually uploaded my speaking or writing so that other people could see it and could give comments to it. when other people gave comments about my speaking or writing, i could evaluate it.” while he was at the dormitory, he usually evaluated his learning with the groups for learning english, such as english daily mistakes, english debate group or the other small groups. lastly, nanda usually evaluated his learning progress by checking whether he had reached the targets in the time he planned. it can be seen that the participants need help in evaluating their learning. for example, rijal stated that he believed that evaluating his learning was important because it helped him know what he would do next. he said that he should develop himself from many sides. yet, he still found difficulty in evaluating his learning. he needed other people to help him evaluate or appraise his learning, but he could not find it easily. he was sure that he made a lot of mistakes, but no one reminds him. therefore, he thought he should be brave to ask them in person. meanwhile, nanda thought that evaluating his learning was not difficult. on the contrary, he also said that what was difficult for him was to find out why the targets were not reached and how to fix it. he put in words “for me, evaluating is not difficult. what is difficult is to observe why the goals are not reached and how to fix it, or i am too lazy to fix it.” he believed that evaluating his learning was important because it could help him realize what he had done or learned. students studying and living in islamic boarding school must have the ability to evaluate their learning since they cannot depend on their teachers or friends to check on the progress that they have made. discussion from the participants’ story, it can be perceived that they planned, monitored, and evaluated their learning, and they encountered some challenges in doing those behaviors. some participants did autonomous behaviors due to their needs in reaching something. for example, rohman has planned what to learn because he wanted to successfully speak to foreigners when he joined school outing program (sop) conducted by his school. it is in line with the finding discovered by kemala (2016) who stated that the majority of high autonomous learners were driven to study english for a variety of reasons, including a desire to enhance their jobs in the future. in planning their learning, some of the participants have difficulties determining the goals and methods they should use to reach them. it is aligned with the study conducted by cirocki, anam, & retnaningdyah (2019) that revealed students in indonesia were not ready to set learning objectives and choose learning resources for classwork or home study. whereas planning is a thinking skill that helps them develop strategies to reach their goals and take full control of their own learning. therefore, both parents and teachers need to guide the students to plan effectively including their learning strategies; since as stated by jin and cortazzi (1996, cited in talley, 2014), students are skeptical of changing their learning methods, as these changes may have a direct effect on their learning outcomes. monitoring and evaluating learning are two behaviors that are also crucial to do. from the participants’ story, it can be understood that most of them could not monitor their learning well. adhikara, for example, believed that monitor his learning is one of his teacher’s jobs. it is similar to the finding of ramadhiyah and lengkanawati (2019), who found that while believing they were capable of regulating their own learning, students assigned that task to their teacher. most of the participants. in monitoring students’ own learning, it is important to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses. from the participants’ stories, two of them are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. however, two the rest are sometimes aware and sometimes no. hermagustina & anggriyani (2019) argued that by being able to evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses, students will note other materials that they still need to improve and materials that they have already mastered. besides, gardner (2000) stated that self-assessments help students track their level of progress in particular learning tasks. similarly, pitaloka (2008) stated that self-assessment increases awareness among learners of students’ own learning the errors and accomplishments and gives them a tangible sense of ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 131 involvement in the learning process. as a result of aforementioned findings, it can be concluded that being autonomous learners is important because students who study and live in islamic boarding school are fostered to be independent. when they do the aspects of autonomous behaviors, they can manage their time to study more effectively. however, from the participants’ story, there are two kinds of obstacles that they encountered. firstly, some of the participants felt too lazy to monitor or evaluate their learning. the laziness may come because they had a lack of motivation. it is aligned with the finding discovered by agustina and fajar (2018) who stated that one of the factors hindering learner autonomy is the lack of motivation and consistency. whereas the lack of motivation can prevent students from being autonomous learners. therefore, before promoting learner autonomy, it is crucial to develop students’ motivation because motivation is a prerequisite for learning and responsibility development (scharle & szabó, 2000 as cited in talley, 2014). similarly, a study conducted by chan et al. (2002) revealed that students with greater motivation could achieve a higher level of autonomy. another problem that this study found was that the misunderstanding of autonomy conception. for example, nanda thought that evaluating his learning was not difficult, yet he said that what was difficult is to observe why his goal was not successful and how to fix it. the previous statement shows a contrary. it can be because he does not grasp the attributes of evaluating a learning. this finding is in line with what khotimah et al. (2019) found that not all students in this study comprehend the concept of autonomous learning in their english classes. secondly, the participants may have not understood how to do those behaviors, in which they need others to do so. it is assumed that since the ability to take charges of one’s own learning is not innate, learning to organize their work on their own must be taught. students need a great deal of an encouragement and input from the teachers (hermagustiana & anggriyani, 2019; masouleh & jooneghani, 2012). it implies that a teacher plays a great role in encouraging and guiding students to do autonomous language learning behaviors. conclusion this study was conducted to explore bilingual students’ experience in doing autonomous behaviors, such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning as well as the challenges that they discovered during implementing the behaviors. using the interview, it revealed that the students usually plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning. when the participants planned their learning, the problems they faced were the difficulty in determining the goals or the targets, the methods to apply in reaching the goals, the lack of the media to support the learning, and the lack of motivation, such as laziness. during monitoring their learning, the students encountered some difficulties, such as the need for other people to help them monitor their progress, the doubt on their abilities, the desire to move on to the other plan/ the inconsistency in the first plan, the lack of motivation, such as laziness. while in evaluating the learning, the problems that students encountered were the need for other people to help them appraise their learning, the limited time, the lack of motivation, such as depending on moods. students who live in islamic boarding school are being assisted to be independent. they are not watched by their parents directly. moreover, the participants of this study are bilingual who often held some agendas by themselves to learn english or arabic together. thus, they need to be able to implement autonomous behaviors, such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning. from the explanation above, it is assumed that in doing autonomous language learning behaviors, students still find many challenges. some of them thought that monitoring a learning is not their task but the teacher’s. yet, there is also misunderstanding about the concept of evaluating a learning. it seems that the participants are still not comprehend autonomous behaviors well. therefore, the participation of the teacher’s help and encouragement is needed the most. the author believes that this study has many limitations. firstly, due to the limited time and media, far distance, and unavoidable situation such as covid, the data was too little. in the future research, it can be carried out by having broader questions to have more data. secondly, this study only explored the challenges that the participants found. further research should be carried out to examine the solutions to the problems this study encountered. funding statement this research received no specific grant from any funding agency. ai fatmawati, yanty wirza| elt forum 11(2) (2022) 132 references agustina, d., & fajar, d. a. 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(2007). using narrative inquiry as a research method: an introduction to using critical event narrative analysis in research on learning and teaching. routledge/taylor & francis group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203946268 https://doi.org/10.25073/2525-2445/vnufs.4402 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.4324/9780203946268 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 10 elt forum 11(1) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt efl students’ self-regulated online learning in the expository and analytical writing course firnanda salsabila1 1state university of surabaya, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 9 july 2021 approved on 3 march 2022 published on 30 march 2022 ________________ keywords: expository and analytical writing course; forethought phase; performance phase; self-reflection phase; self-regulated online learning ____________________ abstract ________________________________________________________________ the online learning environment provides a flexible learning environment where the students can learn anytime and anywhere despite the distance. since the teaching and learning process shifts into online learning, the students should be able to manage their learning process by themselves. implementing self-regulated online learning could help the students to be responsible for their learning process to achieve good academic performance. several previous studies already discussed the implementation of self-regulated online learning across four language skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing. however, in writing courses, the previous studies did not mention the specific writing text applied in self-regulated online learning. this study aimed to identify the frequency of the undergraduates’ use of forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course. the instrument used in this study was the osel questionnaire which consisted of three phases: forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase. the subject enrolled in this study were 46 students from the freshmen class of the english education program at one state university in indonesia. in general, the result showed that three phases in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course have medium means which were above 3.00. only task strategies that had the lowest mean from all the sub-points were presented. further discussion will explain previous studies and theories that support the finding of this research.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 t4 building fbs unesa lidah wetan, surabaya, 60213 e-mail: firnandabella@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 11 introduction the covid-19 pandemic became a global health crisis that has massive impacts on global human lives. it also affected the world of education. the teaching–learning process shifts from a face-to-face approach into a distance learning approach or called online learning. according to (ally, 2008), online learning is defined as the use of internet to access the learning material and to interact with teachers and peers. (picciano & seaman, 2007) add that online learning also covers both the instruction and the assessment toward learning material given. to support online learning, information and computer technology (ict) developed into various forms including a chat room, video teleconference, and learning management system (charoenwet & christensen, 2016) the online learning environment provides both benefits and challenges. the online learning environment provides benefits both for the students and the teachers as stated by (ally, 2008). for the students, they can have a flexible learning environment where they can learn anytime and anywhere despite the distance. for teachers, the teaching process could be done anywhere and online learning material could be updated anytime. besides providing benefits for both the students and the teachers, online learning also provides challenges for the students and the teachers. according to (lie, 2020), the problems faced by the students and the teachers are the lack of access to the internet and lowtech gadget. (bali & liu, 2018) state that besides technical problems, online learning also contributed to a lack of social presence toward the students and the teachers and a lack of students’ engagement toward the learning material. despite the benefits and challenges faced by the students during online learning, another point that should be focused on is the teaching and learning process in online learning. in a face-toface learning environment, teachers play the main role in directing the students during the learning process. since the teaching and learning process shifts into online learning, the students should be able to manage their learning process on their own. students’ management of their learning process is defined as self-regulated learning. (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) determine self-regulated learning as one’s responsibility toward his or her learning process to achieve good academic performance. in self-regulated learning, there are three cyclical phases; forethought phase, performance phase and self-reflection phase. each phase has two sub-categories that explain the detailed points of self-regulated learning. in the forethought phase, there are two sub-categories; task analysis and self-motivational beliefs. in the performance phase, there are two sub-categories; selfcontrol and self-observation. in the self-reflection phase, there are also two sub-categories; selfjudgments and self-reaction. since this study focuses on online learning, the term would be selfregulated online learning. several previous studies discuss self-regulated online learning. the first study was conducted by (lear, li, & prentice, 2016). this study aimed to explore the self-regulated online learning applied by 20 undergraduate students in australia through a web-based platform called study skills success that offers ten courses which are academic reading, academic listening, independent learning, academic writing, grammar, critical thinking, describing visuals, research, vocabulary, and academic speaking. the results show the four most used self-regulated online learning that are selfmotivation, positive thinking, information seeking, and obtaining feedback. the second study was conducted by (jimoyiannis, schiza, & tsiotakis, 2018). the purpose of this study is to investigate self-regulated online learning applied by the students through online academic writing courses using blogs. the participants of this study are 20 students from the department of social and educational policy at university of peloponnese, greece. each student is required to make content about a scientific article on their blog. the finding presents that there are two self-regulated online learning mostly used by the students which are monitoring and strategy use with each frequency are 48.6% and 39.8%. from those previous studies, several research gaps can be explored more. the first gap is the variation of courses. both studies discussed writing course and the rest are another skill course which ranges from reading, listening, and speaking. the writing courses discussed above do not mention the specific writing text. the second gap is the participants. both of the studies present the same number of participants and only one study mentions the major at which the students learned. the third gap is the variation of platforms used in online learning. the first study applied a webbased platform while the second study used a blog in conducting online learning. based on the research gaps, there is a problem arises on how much do the undergraduates use self-regulated online learning in expository and analytical writing course toward online learning environment. the objective of this study is to know the frequency of the undergraduates’ use of forethought phase, firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 12 performance phase, and self-reflection phase in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course. self-regulated online learning according to (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009), self-regulated learning is defined as one’s responsibility toward his or her learning process to achieve good academic outcome. in selfregulated learning, there are three major phases which are forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase. each phase has two sub-categories to explain the detail of learning strategies. the forethought phase consists of task analysis and self-motivation beliefs. the performance phase consists of self-control and self-observation. the self-reflection phase consists of self-judgment and self-reaction. the forethought phase is stated as the step where the learners prepare their learning goals and motivation before the learning process begins. this phase has two sub-categories which are task analysis and self-motivation beliefs. task analysis is divided into two sub-points which are goalsetting and strategic planning. goal-setting refers to the specific outcome that learners want to achieve in a short time, for instance making an essay in three days. strategic planning is defined as the learners’ choice of learning strategies that are beneficial for them to attain good academic performance. self-motivation beliefs have four sub-points which are self-efficacy, outcome expectations, task interest, and goal orientation. according to (zimmerman, bandura, & martinezpons, 1992) self-efficacy is defined as one’s beliefs of his or her capabilities to learn and perform well in academic performance. outcome expectations refer to the final prediction of one’s academic performance, whether the learners will perform the assigned academic project well or not. task interest refers to one’s action of liking or disliking the assigned academic task. goal orientation refers to the purpose of learning. the performance phase is stated as the step where the learners monitor their learning process. this phase has two sub-categories which are self-control and self-observation. self-control consists of eight sub-points which are task strategies, self-instruction, imagery, time management, environmental structuring, help-seeking, interest incentives, and self-consequences. task strategies refer to the specific learning strategies applied by the learners to accomplish a particular task. selfinstruction refers to the explicit or implicit instruction as the learners accomplish the task. imagery refers to the mental pictures to assist the learning process, which transforms the contextual information into visual diagrams. time management is defined as the time allocation needed to accomplish a task. environmental structuring refers to the learners’ learning space which needs to be free of any distraction that later help learners to do a task better. help-seeking refers to the social assistance from both the instructor and the peers to help the learners to accomplish a task. interest incentives refer to the high quality of a task that makes the learning process more interesting. selfconsequences refer to the reward or punishment received by the learners toward the assigned task. self-observation has two sub-points that are metacognitive monitoring and self-recording. metacognitive monitoring refers to the learners’ tracking of the learning process and outcomes produced. self-recording refers to formal records made by the learners to trace their learning process. the self-reflection phase has two sub-categories which are self-judgment and self-reaction. self-judgment has two sub-points which are self-evaluation and causal attribution. self-evaluation refers to the comparison of students’ outcome toward a standard given. causal attribution refers to the contribution of the learners’ abilities, efforts, and the use of strategies. self-reaction has two subpoints which are self-satisfaction and adaptive or defensive action. self-satisfaction refers to the learners’ feelings toward the assigned task and the learning strategies applied. adaptive or defensive action refers to the learners’ decision in the learning process, whether to adapt the learning strategies already applied then modify it to adjust their need or to defend the learning strategies in which the learners no longer to put big effort and strategy use in accomplishing a task. firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 13 methods this study applied the quantitative method which gathers the data mostly in the form of numbers (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010)(). since the objective of this study was to investigate the frequency of self-regulated online learning applied by efl undergraduate students, this study used a survey as the research design. according to (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010), survey research is defined as a list of questions or statements made by the researcher to collect responses from the participants about their beliefs, opinions, characteristics, and attitudes toward a certain issue. this study used convenience sampling as the researcher intended to do survey research toward the available classes at the university. the subject enrolled in this study were 46 students from the total population of the english education program from the freshmen class batch 2020 which were 90 students. this study uses the freshmen class (batch 2020) because they experience online learning due to covid_19 pandemic, which the previous batch did not. based on this condition, it can be said that this study can be generalized only for batch 2020 of english education study program. the students who filled out the questionnaire were divided into four classes; class a with 13 students, class b with 14 students, class c with 13 students, and class d with 6 students. this study was conducted at one state university in indonesia. the subject already took the expository and analytical writing course as one of compulsory courses in the english department. this study applied the online self-regulated english learning (osel) questionnaire adapted from (martinez-lopez, yot, tuovila, & perera-rodríguez, 2017) and (zheng, liang, li, & tsai, 2018). this instrument measured the frequency of students’ use of self-regulated online learning toward online courses. this instrument covered six categories of self-regulated online learning which were goal-setting, environment structuring, task strategies, time management, help-seeking, and selfevaluation. this instrument has 20 items which divided into six categories; goal setting has four items, environmental structuring has three items, task strategies have four items, time management has three items, help-seeking has three items, and self-evaluation has three items. all of the questionnaire items use positive statements. some adaptations were made in the questionnaire by doing word changing and removing several items of each category that do not fit the need of this study. the researcher does the construct validity by checking the questionnaire to an expert as stated by (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010). the reliability of this questionnaire range from 0 (no consistency) until 1.0 (perfectly consistent) as stated by (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010). this questionnaire also do field testing both initial piloting and final piloting to several students. this instrument used the scoring likert scale from 1-5 which the responses range from never until always which is based on (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010) this study collects the data by spreading the osel questionnaire to 2020 class of the english education program students who already took expository and analytical writing course as one of compulsory courses in the english department. the researcher will give the google form link to the representatives of the 2020 class then they could share it with their classmates to fill the questionnaire. this study uses data triangulation to collect the data. data triangulation defined as applying more than one particular approach to perceive richer data or to confirm the result of a research (wilson, 2014). according to (flick, 2009), data triangulation has three main points which are using different times to collect the data, using different places to collect the data, and involving different people to collect the data. the procedure begins by asking the lecturer’s permission to collect the data from his/her class then they check the researcher’s questionnaire to examine if the questionnaire fulfilled the qualification. the next procedure is the researcher contacts the representatives of batch 2020 students from four different classes to spread the questionnaire via whatsapp. the last procedure is the researcher do the checking process via google form to observe the total number of students who filled out the questionnaire. this study analyzed the data by using mean as the stable measure of central tendency that show the average of students’ use of self-regulated online learning and standard deviation to show homogenous or heterogeneous the scores in the distribution of students’ use of self-regulated online learning. the next process was to convert the numbers into percentages to see the proportion of students’ use of self-regulated online learning toward three phases; forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase as stated by (ary, donald., jacobs, lucy cheser., sorensen, 2010) according to the study conducted by (reja, manfreda, hlebec, & vehovar, 2003) about frequency distributions of open-ended questionnaire and close-ended questionnaire, there are three percentage firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 14 categories; the first category is the percentage below 10% considered as low percentage, the second category is the percentage from 10% until 20% considered as medium percentage, and the third category is the percentage above 20% considered as high percentage. findings and discussion the result of this research is presented by the table and bar charts. table 1 showed the mean and the standard deviation from the osel questionnaire filled out by 46 students from freshmen class at one state university in indonesia. the first sub-point is goal-setting which is related to the forethought phase. the forethought phase is defined as the students’ preparation and planning process to do self-regulated online learning from the beginning until the end of the course. the second sub-points are the part of performance phase which are environmental structuring, task strategies, time management, and help-seeking. the performance phase refers to the students’ effort to do self-regulated online learning. the efforts range from choosing a convenient place, applying strategies to accomplish course assignments, managing study time, and seeking help from others. the third sub-point is self-reflection which is stated as the self-reflection phase. in the self-reflection phase, the students evaluate their whole learning process from the beginning until the end of the course. table 1. the mean and standard deviation of osel questionnaire no. items mean sd goal-setting 1. short term goal 3.74 .871 2. long term goal 3.38 .945 3. standard setting 4.02 .707 4. time setting 3.60 .925 environmental structuring 5. working location set 3.85 1.161 6. convenient time 4.00 .956 7. efficiency 4.02 .897 task strategies 8. note taking 3.51 1.019 9. highlighting 1.77 .428 10. summarizing 2.68 .958 11. making a mind-map 2.68 1.181 time management 12. keep regular schedule 2.89 1.127 13. allocating extra study time 3.15 1.042 14. keep track daily 3.11 .890 help-seeking 15. sharing problems with friends 3.79 1.082 16. doing peer-feedback 3.77 .960 17. consult with lecturers 3.19 1.035 self-evaluation 18. making study journal 3.02 .921 19. checking progress 3.47 1.060 20. monitoring 3.47 1.080 the undergraduates’ use of forethought phase in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course forethought phase from the bar chart presented in figure 1. the proportion of forethought phase, the result of the forethought phase is relatively high. all four items in the questionnaire have means above 3.00. consecutively, the first item has a mean of 3.74 which stated the short-term goal in online learning. the second item has a mean of 3.38 which stated the long-term goal in online learning. the third item has a mean of 4.02 which stated the standard setting related to writing rubric in online course. the fourth item has a mean of 3.60 which stated the time setting related to study time in doing online firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 15 course assignments. the proportion in the forethought phase is quite the same from all four subpoints. in the short-term goal, 23 students (48.9%) stated that they often use it. in the long-term goal, 19 students (40.4%) stated that they often use it. in the standard setting, 24 students (51.1%) stated that they often apply it. in the time setting, 18 students (38.3%) stated that they often apply it. from the result presented, it can be concluded that most of the students often use the forethought phase in self-regulated online learning. figure 1. the proportion of forethought phase based on the finding, goal-setting becomes the key point to achieve a good result in learning courses that students attended. this statement is proved by (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) theory about the importance of goal-setting in the learning process. (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) state that the students who have strong goal-setting will have strong self-reflection toward their learning process so they can achieve a good result in the learning course. according to the finding of this research, both the mean of forethought phase and self-reflection phase is relatively high which the means are above 3.00. it could be stated that self-regulated online learning theory from zimmerman and moylan (2009) supported the finding. the finding and the theory of self-regulated online learning are supported by previous studies conducted by (lear et al., 2016) and (zheng et al., 2018). the first study was conducted by (lear et al., 2016) discuss self-regulated online learning implemented in ten courses including academic writing in one university in australia. the result shows that most of the students apply goal-setting in the academic writing course. specifically, the students applied short-term goal-setting where they set a weekly goal to accomplish the assignment in online course. the second study was conducted by (zheng et al., 2018) discuss the relationship between english language learners’ motivation and selfregulated online learning. the finding shows that most of the students often applied goal-setting. this statement is proved by the means of the questionnaire which is above 3.00. the undergraduates’ use of performance phase in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course performance phase according to the bar chart presented in figure 2. the proportion of performance phase, the result of the performance phase in self-regulated online learning is relatively high. only one sub-point that has a mean below 3.00 which is task strategies. the detail of each sub-point will be discussed below. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 short term goal long term goal standard setting time setting forethought phase 3 = sometimes 4 = often 5 = always firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 16 figure 2. the proportion of performance phase environmental structuring in environmental structuring, all of the items have means above 3.00. consecutively, the first item has a mean of 3.85 which stated the working location set referred to as choosing a place with few distractions to do online course assignment. the second item has a mean of 4.00 which stated the convenient time referred to as the perfect time chosen to do an online course assignment. the third item has a mean of 4.02 which stated the efficiency referred to as the place chosen to do online course assignment effectively. based on the bar chart above, only the third item which is efficiency presented because it has a high mean from the other two items. there are 19 students (40.4%) who stated that they often apply it. from the result presented, it can be concluded that most of the students always pay attention to environmental structuring to do online course assignment perfectly. according to the finding, environmental structuring can affect the students’ learning process as stated by (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) affirm that environmental structuring is a part of self-control to increase the effectiveness of the learning process which is related to the learners’ study place. by choosing a good place to accomplish learning assignments, the students will get better achievement in their learning process. this theory supported the finding of this study. the finding and the theory are supported by a previous study conducted by (zheng et al., 2018). the result shows that most of the students applied environmental structuring which was proved by the means of the questionnaire that are above 3.00. (zheng et al., 2018) also state that by implementing environmental structuring, the students can have satiation control so that the students can achieve a good result in their learning process. task strategies in task strategies, all of the items have means below 3.00 except for the first item that has a mean of 3.51 which stated about taking detailed notes during online learning. this sub-point has the lowest mean than the other three sub-points; environmental structuring, time management, and helpseeking. consecutively, the second item has a mean of 1.77 which stated about highlighting main points from online course. the third item has a mean of 2.68 which stated about making a summary of the online course. the fourth item has a mean of 2.68 which stated about making a mind-map to organize essay structure in the online course. based on the bar chart above, only the first item which is note-taking presented because it has a high mean rather than the other three items. there are 14 students (29.8%) who stated that they sometimes use it, also there are 15 students (31.9%) who stated that they often use it. both the frequency scale only has one dispute in terms of the number of the subject. from the result presented, it can be concluded that most of the students are seldom implement task strategies in the online course, except for note-taking. based on the finding of this research, task strategies become the key point in self-regulated online learning to accomplish a specific task to achieve a good result in the learning process (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009). according to (oxford, 1990), task strategies in self-regulated learning had various forms such as taking notes, summarizing, and highlighting. in this research, 0 10 20 30 40 50 environmental structuring task strategies time management help seeking performance phase 3 = sometimes 4 = often 5 = always firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 17 only note-taking that has medium mean. for highlighting, summarizing, and making a mind-map have means below 3.00. this result contradicts with zimmerman and moylan’s theory about task strategies. further research should be done to analyze the factors causing the small use of task strategies in self-regulated online learning. the finding and the theory are supported by a previous study conducted by (zheng et al., 2018). the result shows that most of the student implement note taking in online learning rather than other strategies. the mean of taking detailed notes in the questionnaire is 3.18. taking detailed note in online learning is even more important than taking note in the regular classroom environment. time management in time management, two out of three items have means above 3.00 except for the first item. consecutively, the first item has a mean of 2.89 which stated the learning schedule applied during online learning. the second item has a mean of 3.15 which stated the extra studying time in learning online courses. the third item has a mean of 3.11 which stated about keeping track daily is referred to as distributing learning time every other day. according to the bar chart above, only the second item which is allocating extra study time presented because it has a high mean rather than the other two items. there are 17 students (36.2%) who stated that they often use it. from the result presented, it can be said that most of the students’ time management in the online course is at the mediocre level. according to the finding, time management can provide benefit for the students in their learning process as stated by (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) affirm that time management can profit both young and adult learners in achieving a good result in the learning process by implementing particular actions such as accomplishing learning assignments on schedule, setting a specific time to study the learning material, and monitoring the learning progress. from the finding of this research, it indicates that the students often apply time management in their learning process. two previous studies supported the finding and the theory. the first study was conducted by (lear et al., 2016) the result of this study stated that most of the students have good time management in attending academic writing online courses. the second study was conducted by (zheng et al., 2018) the result shows that most of the students have a mediocre level of time management. it proved by the means of the questionnaire which are above 3.00. help-seeking in help-seeking, all of the items have means above 3.00. consecutively, the first item has a mean of 3.79 which stated about sharing problem with friends in the online course. the second item has a mean of 3.77 which stated the peer-feedback implemented by the students in the online course. the third item has a mean of 3.19 which stated about getting help from the lecturers in the online course. according to the bar chart above, only the first item presented which is sharing problems with friends because it has a high mean rather than the other two items. there are 16 students (34%) who stated that they often use it. from the result presented, it can be concluded that most of the students often do help-seeking in their online learning. the finding of this research proved the theory of self-regulated online learning stated by (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) in the theory, it stated that help-seeking is part of performance phase where the students do information seeking and get assistance from both friends and teachers in their learning process. (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) state that help-seeking can improve students’ academic skills in the online course. (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) also state that the poor achievers are reluctant to do help-seeking. according to the finding of this research, most of the students applied help-seeking both information seeking and getting assistance from friends and lecturers. the finding of this research indicates that the students are highly motivated to achieve their learning goals. both the finding and the theory are supported by two previous studies. the first study was conducted by (lear et al., 2016) about self-regulated online learning implemented in ten courses including academic writing in one university in australia. the finding shows that most of the students applied information seeking and obtaining feedback. those two points support the finding of this study. the second study was conducted by (jimoyiannis et al., 2018) discuss self-regulated online learning applied by master degree students through online academic writing with bloggers. the result shows that most of the students applied help-seeking at which the total number of blog’s comments firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 18 are 131 comments for seeking additional information and 16 comments for seeking, offering, or providing help. the undergraduates’ use of self-reflection phase in self-regulated online learning toward expository and analytical writing course self-reflection phase from the bar chart presented in figure 3. the proportion of self-reflection phase, the result of the self-reflection phase is relatively high. all of the items have a mean above 3.00. consecutively, the first item that has a mean of 3.02 which stated about making a study journal referred to as summarizing online course material. the second item has a mean of 3.47 which stated about checking progress referred to as consulting online learning with friends. the third item has a mean of 3.47 which stated about monitoring referred to reviewing material and finding out the differences of learning material that had been learned. the proportion in the self-reflection phase is quite dynamic. in making a study journal, 20 students (42.6%) stated that they sometimes apply it. on the contrary, 10 students (21.3%) stated that they often apply it. from the bar chart above, it can be concluded that more students choose sometimes in the first item. in checking progress, 18 students (38.3%) stated that they sometimes apply it. on the contrary, 15 students (31.9%) stated that they often apply it. in monitoring, 19 students (40.4%) stated that they often apply it. according to the result, it can be concluded that most of the students do monitoring process by reviewing material and finding out the differences of learning material that had been learned in the online course. figure 3. the proportion of self-reflection phase the finding of this research proved the theory of self-regulated online learning by (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) (zimmerman, barry j.; moylan, 2009) state that the result of self-evaluation is affected by goal-setting in the forethought phase. the students who have strong goal-setting will have strong self-reflection. it can be seen from the findings of this research that both the forethought phase and self-reflection phase have means above 3.5. the findings indicate that the forethought phase and self-reflection phase correlate. the finding of this research and the theory are supported by two previous studies. the first study conducted by (lear et al., 2016) state that most of the students do self-evaluation during the academic writing online course. the second study was conducted by (jimoyiannis et al., 2018) state that most of the students do self-reflection by evaluating their writing performance on blogger with peer interaction to achieve a better learning outcome. according to the three items in self-reflection phase, most of the students do monitoring process rather than checking progress and making journal. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 making study journal checking progress monitoring self-reflection phase 3 = sometimes 4 = often 5 = always firnanda salsabila | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 19 this result contradicts with previous study conducted by that state most of the students do checking progress by evaluating their writing performance with peers. further study should be done to analyze the factors causing the difference use of self-reflection phase in self-regulated online learning. conclusion this study presents the frequency of self-regulated online learning applied by the students in the expository and analytical writing course which is divided into three phases: forethought phase, performance phase, and self-reflection phase. the data was gathered mainly from the osel questionnaire to measure students’ use of self-regulated online learning. the result of this study shows that most of the students are often applied self-regulated online learning in the expository and analytical writing course. three phases in self-regulated online learning have medium means which are above 3.00. only task strategies that has the lowest mean which is below 3.00. the limitation of this study is it could not explore more about students’ perception and actual behaviors in implementing self-regulated online learning. to overcome research limitations, qualitative studies should be implemented to get in-depth analysis by employing interviews and providing audio, text, or visual files in the process of self-regulated online learning applied by the students in the expository and analytical writing course. further studies can unveil self-regulated online learning in different language skills and identify the relationship between the forethought phase and self-reflection phase in self-regulated online learning to the extent of the research field in those areas. references ally, m. 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(2009). self-regulation where metacognition and motivation intersect. in d. j. hacker, j. dunlosky, a. c. graesser, m. lundeberg, & l. mohan (eds.), handbook of metacognition in education. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203876428.ch16 putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 1 elt forum 11(1) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the impact of game-based student response system on students’ learning outcomes in narrative writing yuni dwi susanti1, sri wahyuni2 1,2english education study program, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 8 march 2022 approved on 25 march 2022 published on 30 march 2022 ________________ keywords: writing; narrative text; game-based student response system; learning outcomes ________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this paper is based on research aiming to explore and evaluate the effectiveness of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, for teaching narrative writing. by using one group pre-test and post-test design, this quantitative research invited the eleventh-grade students of a senior high school in the academic year of 2021/2022, to actively participate in the project. in this case, the researchers administered a pre-test and post-test for measuring the significant difference in students’ scores, before and after the implementation of kahoot. based on the paired sample t-test result, the pvalue is 0,000. in addition to that, the t-coefficient is greater than the t-table value, which is 18,436 > 2,030. it means that the difference between students’ skills in writing a narrative text before and after the use of kahoot, is statistically significant. specifically, kahoot could enhance students’ writing in terms of organization, ideas development, grammar, mechanics, and writing style. since the p-value is less than the significant level or 0,000 < 0,05, and the t-coefficient (18,436) is greater than the t-table (2,030), it can be safely concluded that kahoot could significantly improve students’ writing skills, specifically in writing a narrative text.  correspondent address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: yunidwisusanti@students.unnes.ac.id yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 53 introduction writing is considered a part of literacy and the consciousness language in today's society. in the context of foreign language learning, writing plays a crucial role in enhancing the other three language skills and language components, including vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. for english language learners, writing is the most important skill to master among the four basic english language skills. yet, both teachers and students still argued that writing is the most difficult skill for english language learners (kris et al., 2016; permatasari, 2013). regan et al. (2019) have discussed in their study, with regard to the perceived writing needs for students, that students found writing difficult in the context of idea generation, organization, handwriting, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and keyboarding. they further explained that students’ writing was full of run-on sentences and lack of detail. muamaroh et al.(2020) also mentioned several factors that affect students’ writing skills, such as not being confident in their english writing, low grammar proficiency, low vocabulary mastery, and lack of writing practices. in addition, students have been finding it more difficult to improve their writing skills during distance learning. they stated that there is a lack of practical use of their writing skills during distance learning. in short, writing is recognized as the foremost problem that english language learners face. in senior high school, students are usually introduced to some english texts that could help them in mastering their writing skills. one of those texts is narrative text. the narrative text is usually taught in the eleventh grade. in this subject, the students are expected to write a good narrative story by themselves. however, based on the preliminary study in a senior high school, the students were stated that they still faced some problems in writing, especially in writing a story. the major problems they faced are fear of making grammatical mistakes, lack of vocabulary mastery, and problems in idea generation. those problems cause them to not be interested in the writing classroom. thus, the students’ writing skills still needs to be developed. in this case, teachers play a crucial role in developing students’ writing abilities. as stated by shahsavar and asil (2019) in their study, teachers have to give more assistance to enhance the students’ writing skills. teachers and students must realize that writing does not only require knowledge about grammar, ideas, and vocabulary, but writing is a process of planning, initiating, monitoring, and evaluating. the existence of intelligence and abilities of the students actually can enhance their writing skills. thus, teachers need to apply a proper teaching strategy that can support the students’ learning. for instance, teachers can integrate the use of technology in the classroom. it is proven that the use of an ict platform can be useful for teachers in improving their performance in english language teaching (haswani, 2014; lee, 2019; xu et al., 2019). in addition to that, the technology integration into classroom practices can also enhance students’ learning as it has been a part of a new teaching system for supporting 21st-century skills. furthermore, the continuation of technology use in the classroom is supported by the familiarity of technology among teachers and students (abkarin, 2021). one of the technology advancements for educational purposes is a game-based student response system platform, kahoot. holbrey (2020) has defined kahoot as a game-based student response system platform that is designed as a means to bring classroom engagement by providing some fun and enjoyable learning games design. ruiz (2021) has noted in his research that kahoot was developed in 2013 in order to help teachers in managing their teaching and learning process through any device. according to bawa (2019), there are some interesting and changing values that make kahoot closely relate to effective teaching and learning, including motivating, learning assistance, helpful, exciting, entertaining, difficult, and competitive. as a free student response system tool, there are some things that a teacher could do by using kahoot. firstly, a teacher could use kahoot for introducing new content. secondly, a teacher can use kahoot for reviewing content. next, kahoot can be used for reaching the students who aren’t at school. besides, kahoot can be used for teaching interactive lessons. additionally, a teacher can use kahoot for reinforcing knowledge. furthermore, kahoot can be used for running a formative assessment. in addition to that, kahoot can be used for collecting students’ opinions. lastly, kahoot can be used for fostering creativity and teamwork. in classroom practices, kahoot is commonly used for running a formative assessment (elkhamisy & wassef, 2021; kohnke & moorhouse, 2021; wang & tahir, 2020). they further mentioned that kahoot is valuable as an assessment tool, for increasing students’ academic performance. in line with that, goksun and gursoy (2019) also compared the use of kahoot and quizzes as an assessment tool. the result showed that kahoot has a better impact than quizzes. next, in the language classroom, kahoot has been used for increasing students’ motivation and engagement yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 54 (baszuk & heath, 2020; piskorz, 2016; yunus et al., 2019). those previous findings indicate that not all teachers utilize kahoot for enhancing their teaching performance. based on several studies that have been reviewed, there are still several gaps that have to be filled in. firstly, most previous studies examined the use of game-based student response system platform kahoot, as an assessment tool rather than as a teaching tool. it indicates that kahoot is commonly utilized for administering formative assessment. secondly, the majority of previous studies focused on investigating the use of kahoot as a tool to improve students’ engagement and classroom dynamics, rather than as a tool to improve students’ academic performance. thirdly, in the language classroom, kahoot was commonly used as a tool to increase students’ motivation and interest rather than to increase students’ language skills. lastly, there is a lack of research that examines the use of kahoot for teaching writing. in short, there has been limited research done on using kahoot as a teaching and learning aid for increasing students’ academic performance in language learning. therefore, the present study responds to a call for investigating the role of kahoot, as a teaching and learning tool, in increasing students’ skills in writing narrative text. the present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, which is used for teaching narrative writing. thus, the result of the study could hopefully be empirical evidence for teachers and students to integrate a game-based student response system platform in a more purposeful way towards english language teaching and learning, especially for writing class. methods the present study is quantitative research which applied the one-group pretest-posttest design. it was carried out in a senior high school by inviting thirty-six students of the eleventh-grade, to participate in the research. furthermore, the instrument used for gathering the research data was test, in which the students were asked to write a narrative text. this test was developed based on the basic competence 4.5, which is stated in the english syllabus for the eleventh-grade students in the academic year 2021/2022. also, the test has been validated by experts before being administered. in relation to that, kahoot was used as the treatment or intervention, for supporting students’ learning. in this case, the researchers integrated the teaching materials about narrative writing in the form of blind kahoot’ing. by using this concept, the researchers designed the teaching materials for narrative writing, which consist of tricky questions and presentation slides. the teaching materials prepared were mainly about narrative text and the steps in writing a narrative text. table 1. a visual representation of a one-group pretest-posttest research design (allen, 2017) pretest treatment posttest o1 x o2 in which: o1 : pretest on the students' writing skills before the treatment is implemented o2 : posttest on the students’ writing skills after the treatment is implemented x : treatment that will be given for the students regarding narrative writing according to allen (2017), a one-group pretest-posttest design is carried out in three phases, which are pretest, treatment, and posttest. in this study, the pretest was carried out in the first meeting. in this case, the students were distributed a paragraph constructing task, that they have to individually write a narrative text based on their personal experiences. in addition to that, the researchers provided a writing template to use and four writing topics to choose, including childhood memory, funny story, embarrassing story, and school memory. actually, the test is an online assessment that was distributed through the class team in microsoft teams, and the students compiled their works within three days by sending it via email. the next phase was the implementation of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot. in this study, the use of kahoot was implemented in the second to the fifth meeting. also, it was implemented through discovery learning model, specifically in the problem statement stage, data collection stage, data process stage, and verification stage. in this implementation phase, the researchers hosted the kahoot, and the students took a role as the kahoot players. following the treatment, the posttest was administered in the sixth meeting. for the posttest, the students were asked to write a personal narrative text based on one of the four writing topics yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 55 provided, including place they traveled, surprising story, betrayal, and great accomplishment. basically, the post-test is still the same as the pre-test, which was administered online, and the students compiled their work within three days by sending it via email. moreover, the pre-test and post-test scores were needed for testing the research hypotheses, which are the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. in this case, the null hypothesis states that there is no significant impact of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, on students’ writing skills. whereas, the alternative hypothesis states that there is a significant impact of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, on students’ writing skills. there were three phases of data analysis, namely assessing students’ writing, testing the normality of the research data, testing the homogeneity of variances, and conducting a paired t-test. firstly, the researchers used a scoring rubric adopted from brown and bailey (1984, as cited in brown & abeywickrama, 2018), that has been validated by experts, for assessing students’ writing. this scoring rubric highlights some elements of writing, including organization, writing ideas, grammar, mechanics, and style of writing. secondly, the normality test was conducted in order to know whether or not the research data is normally distributed, before administering the paired t-test. this test was done using spss, specifically used kolmogorov-smirnov test. the result showed that the research data was normally distributed, that then can be analysed using parametric test. lastly, the paired ttest was administered for measuring the pretest and posttest scores of students’ writing so that it could be known if there is a significant change. the paired t-test was also done using spss. findings and discussion findings the research question that has been investigated by the researchers is how effective a game-based student response system platform is in enhancing students’ skills in writing narrative text. in order to explore and answer this question, the researchers administered two tests, namely pre-test and posttest. the student’s individual scores in pre-test and post-test are attached in the appendix b. next, the test results were analyzed in three phases, namely normality test, homogeneity of variance test, and paired samples t-test. for analyzing the normality distribution of the pre-test and the post-test scores, the researchers used the kolmogorov-smirnov test. the result of the normality test is shown in table 2. table 2. the normality test result one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test pretest posttest n 36 36 normal parameters a,b mean 53.1944 76.8056 std. deviation 9.41373 5.18690 most extreme differences absolute .105 .092 positive .105 .089 negative -.081 -.092 test statistic .105 .092 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .200c,d .200c,d a. test distribution is normal. b. calculated from data. c. lilliefors significance correction. d. this is a lower bound of the true significance. generally speaking, a normality test is required to determine whether the research data will be analyzed using a parametric test or a non-parametric test. the rule of this test states that the data will be analyzed using a parametric test only if the research data is normally distributed. whereas, the data will be analyzed using a non-parametric test if the data is not distributed normally. in line with that, the kolmogorov-smirnov test’ rule mentions that a research data is considered normally distributed if the p-value is more than 0,05. on the other hand, the test is considered not distributed normally if the p-value is less than 0,05. as shown in table 2, the test distribution result is normal as the significance value or the p-value is 0,200. thus, the research data in the present study could be analyzed using a parametric test. in addition to the normality test, the researchers also tested the homogeneity of variance of the research data. the result shows in table 3. yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 56 table 3. the homogeneity of variances test result test of homogeneity of variances levene statistic df1 df2 sig. pretest based on mean 3.909 9 16 .009 based on median 2.525 9 16 .051 based on median and with adjusted df 2.525 9 8.717 .095 based on trimmed mean 3.834 9 16 .009 posttest based on mean 3.909 9 16 .009 based on median 2.525 9 16 .051 based on median and with adjusted df 2.525 9 8.717 .095 based on trimmed mean 3.834 9 16 .009 based on table 3, it can be seen that the p-value is 0,009. it means that we have violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance since the p-value is less than 0,05. in other words, the data from the pre-test and post-test results are unequal. since the research data is normally distributed, the parametric test used by the researchers to analyze the pre-test and post-test was paired-sample t-test. the purpose of using this parametric test is to compare students’ pre-test and post-test scores so that it could be seen whether there is a significant difference in students’ scores, before and after the treatment was implemented. the paired-sample ttest rules state that the difference score is considered significantly improved if the significant value of paired samples test result is less than 0,05. whereas, there is no significant difference if the significant value is more than 0,05. the result of the paired-sample t-test in the present study is shown in table 4. table 4. the t-test result of pre-test and post-test scores paired samples test paired differences t df sig. (2tailed) mean std. deviation std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pair 1 pretest posttest -23.61111 7.68404 1.28067 -26.21102 -21.01121 -18.436 35 .000 as shown in table 4, the p-value or the sig. (2-tailed) is 0,000. it means that there is a significant difference between the students’ pre-test and post-test scores as the p-value is less than the significant level, which is 0,05. in addition to that, the result also shows that the t-test coefficient is 18,436, and the t-table is 2,030. since the t-coefficient is greater than the t-table, it indicates that there is a significant improvement on students’ writing, before and after the use of kahoot. based on those two results of analysis, it can be safely said that a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, is effective to enhance the students’ skills in writing a narrative text. more specifically, each writing criteria was also analyzed statistically. it includes the pre-test and post-test scores of the organization, ideas development, grammar, punctuation, spelling & mechanics, and style of writing. this analysis is required to know the improvement of students’ writing in each aspect of writing. organization in writing narrative text, the organization deals with the students’ ability in organizing their writing based on the basic structure of the narrative text. there are three major structures of writing, including an introduction paragraph, a body paragraph, and a conclusion paragraph. in line with that, the basic structures of narrative writing are orientation, complication, resolution, and re-orientation. in this area, the students are expected to write a narrative story based on those basic structures. the result of the paired-sample statistics test of students’ writing scores in the area of organization is presented in table 5. yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 57 table 5. the paired-sample statistics result for organization of writing paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 organizationpre 11.8611 36 2.35618 .39270 organizationpost 16.6944 36 1.60035 .26672 table 5 shows that students’ writing in the aspect of the organization is improved. it is stated that the mean score in the pre-test is 11,9, whereas, the mean score in the post-test is 16,7. it means that the post-test score is 4,8 points higher than the pre-test score. in conclusion, students could organize their writing well after the use of kahoot. logical development of ideas the second aspect of writing is the logical development of ideas. ideas refer to students’ ability in developing the content of writing based on the writing topic. with regards to narrative text, ideas deal with the way students choose the writing topic and develop the topic into a story based on the gathered shreds of evidence, which is from their personal experiences. in addition to that, ideas refer to the 5w + 1h questions: 1) what the story happened; 2) when the story happened; 3) where it took place; 4) who were involved; 5) why it could happen; 6) and how it could happen. the result of the pairedsample statistics test of students’ writing scores in the area of ideas development is presented in table 6. table 6. the paired-sample statistics result for ideas development of writing paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 ideaspre 10.4444 36 2.84298 .47383 ideaspost 14.3611 36 1.88457 .31409 based on table 6, the students’ ability in developing their writing ideas was improved significantly after the use of kahoot as a teaching and learning tool. before the use of kahoot, the mean score of the ideas development in the students’ writing is only 10,4. however, the mean score is improved to 14,4 after the implementation of kahoot. it shows that the logical development of ideas is improved 3,9 points. therefore, it can be concluded that the use of kahoot positively fosters students’ ability in developing their writing ideas. grammar grammar is the most important aspect of writing. generally, grammar is recognized as the rule of the english language when it comes to a writing activity. it refers to the use of tenses sequencing, relative clauses, prepositions, modals, articles, and also verb forms. in narrative writing, there are also some language features that the students should pay attention to it. it includes the use of past tense, action verbs, and reported speech. the result of the paired-sample statistics test of students’ writing scores in the area of grammar is presented in table 7. table 7. the paired-sample statistics result for grammar paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 grammarpre 10.6389 36 2.86010 .47668 grammarpost 16.6389 36 1.33423 .22237 from table 7, it can be safely said that students’ grammar proficiency in writing narrative text is improved. it is improved from 10,6 points to 16,6 points. it means that the differences scores reach 6 points of improvement. thus, the use of kahoot has significantly enhanced students’ grammar proficiency. mechanics in writing, mechanics refer to the rules of written language, such as capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. more specifically, the mechanics of writing are the established rules that should be followed in sentence writing, paragraph writing, and even essay writing. it is well known that spelling, yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 58 punctuation, and capitalization go hand in hand with the rules of grammar. thus, both of them are basically related. the result of the paired-sample statistics test of students’ writing scores in the area of writing mechanics is presented in table 8. table 8. the paired-sample statistics result for mechanics of writing paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 mechanicspre 11.6944 36 2.43568 .40595 mechanicspost 16.9167 36 1.15573 .19262 based on table 8, students’ ability in using correct capitalization, spelling, and punctuation was improved. the mean point is just 11,7 before the use of kahoot, however, it was improved to 16,9 points after the use of kahoot. it proves that the use of kahoot could enhance students’ mechanics of writing with 4,3 points of improvement. therefore, it can be concluded that kahoot could improve students’ writing mechanics. style and quality of expression style and quality of expression in students’ writing refer to the use of precise vocabulary, sentence variety, parallel structure. it is closely related to the use of word choice and sentence fluency. in writing a narrative text, the students should use the right word that could give clarity and evoke feelings. additionally, the students should know whether or not their writing is easy to read, use different kinds of sentences, use some short and long sentences, and even begin with different words. the result of the paired-sample statistics test of students’ writing scores in the area of writing mechanics is presented in table 9. table 9. the paired-sample statistics result for style and quality of expression paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 stylepre 8.6389 36 2.29475 .38246 stylepost 12.2778 36 1.68372 .28062 referring to table 9, the students’ ability in using style and quality of expression towards their writing is improved 4,3 points. the mean score of the pre-test is just 8,6 points while the mean score of the post-test shows 12,3 points. therefore, the use of kahoot has positively fostered students’ writing in the aspect of style and quality of expression used. discussion kahoot for teaching narrative writing based on the study result, it can be safely said that students’ skills in writing a narrative text is improved with the use of kahoot. it was clearly stated that their writing was improved towards the five aspects of writing, including organization, logical development of ideas, grammar, punctuation, spelling & mechanics, and style & quality of writing. firstly, the organization in narrative writing typically refers to the generic structure of a narrative text, including orientation, complication, resolution, and re-orientation. in addition to that, the organization also refers to the students’ skills to organize their paragraphs and sentences. secondly, ideas development in writing is the way a writer develops their writing topic using appropriate supporting shreds of evidence or supporting ideas. writing is considered logically developed if the writer also uses the most suitable connections between ideas, in order to make a logical sense towards the writing. thirdly, grammar refers to the rules of writing, including morphological rules, phonological rules, and syntactical rules. in writing a narrative text, students must be aware of the language features used, such as past tense, linking words, action verbs, verbal, and mental processes, even direct and indirect speech. fourthly, writing mechanics are the technical aspects of writing, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations. lastly, the writing style in a narrative text refers to the way of students in using word choice and a variety of sentences in their writing. thus, in this part, the paired-samples statistics analysis result of those five writing elements is interpreted based on the writing criteria, including organization, logical development of ideas, grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, style, and quality of writing. yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 59 firstly, the paired-samples statistics analysis showed that students’ skills in organizing their writing was improved 40,8%, from 11,9 to 16,7. as stated in the scoring rubric, 11,9 is considered unacceptable while 16,7 is good. it means that before the use of kahoot, students still encountered some problems in organizing their writing. these problems include the ideas ordering problem, lack of supporting evidence, weak or illogical conclusion, and inadequate effort at the organization. whereas, students’ writing was improved after the use of kahoot. their writing is organized logically and coherently, starting from the introduction paragraph, body paragraph, and conclusion paragraph. besides, they could use an adequate title although some ideas weren’t fully developed. all in all, kahoot has improved students’ skills in organizing their writing. secondly, the points of logical ideas development were improved 37,5%, from 10,4 to 14,4. it means that students’ skills in developing their writing ideas in narrative writing was improved from unacceptable to fair. before the implementation of kahoot, students experienced some problems with their story development, such as incomplete ideas, lack of careful thinking or hurriedly written, and inadequate effort in the area of content development. whereas, the implementation of kahoot could enhance students’ writing so that the writing could address the assigned topic, and consisted of some extraneous materials although the ideas could be more developed. therefore, kahoot has improved students’ writing in terms of ideas development. thirdly, students’ skills in using correct grammar was improved 56,4%, from 10,6 points to 16,6 points. according to the scoring rubric, it is improved from unacceptable to good. in other words, students’ writing had numerous serious grammar problems before the use of kahoot. the problems include some difficult sentences to read that directly affect the communication of the ideas, so it needs a grammar review in some areas. however, the students’ writing did not encounter some serious grammatical errors after the game-based student response system platform kahoot was implemented. it means that kahoot was successfully enhanced students’ grammar proficiency. fourthly, students’ mechanics of writing was improved 44,7%, from 11,7 points to 16,9 points. it means that the mechanics of students’ writing improved from unacceptable to good. before the treatment of kahoot, students’ writings have encountered lots of errors in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. more specifically, they did not use periods or questions marks, and capital letters in the right places, leave spaces between words, and poor spelling. however, the students could minimize those errors after the use of kahoot. it means that kahoot is successfully helped students to learn the mechanics of writing. lastly, students’ skills in using style and quality of expression was improved 42,1%, from 8,6 points to 12,3 points. it is improved from unacceptable to fair. before the use of kahoot, the students’ writing did not contain different kinds of sentences, was too wordy, and had no precise word selection. it caused their writing to be difficult to read the first time. yet, they could improve the use of sentence variety and word choice, after the use of kahoot. the success of kahoot implementation kahoot is not a new digital technology; it has been widely used for educational purposes. kahoot is categorized as educational technology since it has some elements that could facilitate the teaching and learning process in the classroom. basically, educational technology could be used in the classroom as a teaching tool and an assessment tool. referring to the previous studies related to the use of kahoot in a language classroom, kahoot was proved to be an effective tool. however, kahoot is commonly used as an assessment tool rather than as a teaching tool. as a formative assessment tool, kahoot could enhance students’ learning performance (elkhamisy & wassef, 2021; goksun & gursoy, 2019 ; kohnke & moorhouse, 2021). in contrast with those previous studies, in the present study, the researchers utilized kahoot as a teaching tool. specifically, the researchers used kahoot to teach the students about narrative writing. the result indicates that kahoot is effective to foster students’ skills in writing a narrative text. it means that kahoot is valuable not only as an assessment tool, but also as a teaching tool. thus, the present study proves the effectiveness of a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, as a teaching tool. in line with that, this finding strengthens the previous studies conducted by haswani (2014), lee (2019), and xu et al. (2019), that an ict platform could positively enhance the teaching and learning process in language classroom. basically, there are some factors affecting students’ skills in writing a text. those factors are categorized into two major factors, namely internal factors and external factors. in this case, internal factor commonly refers to cognitive factors that could boost or reduce students’ writing skills. it includes the students’ intelligence, interest, and motivation in learning to write. whereas, an external yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 60 factor generally refers to social and affective factors. it includes their learning environment and the teaching methodology applied by the teacher. therefore, this section discusses the way kahoot successfully enhanced students’ writing skills based on those factors. kahoot could enhance students’ writing skills through the internal factors of writing. as mentioned earlier, there are some internal factors that could affect the success of kahoot implementation in improving students’ skills in writing a narrative text. first and foremost, the teaching materials which were integrated into kahoot, could foster students’ intelligence in writing. in relation to writing, intelligence here refers to the students’ knowledge and skills in writing a narrative text, including vocabulary mastery and grammar proficiency. in this case, kahoot could improve students’ writing in the form of organization, ideas development, the use of grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, and also their style of writing. in doing so, the students were trained to do some exercises with regard to those topics. by training and challenging themselves anytime and anywhere they want, they could increase their writing skills gradually. this finding relates to the previous study conducted by permatasari (2013), which found that the use of an interesting content material could help the students in learning narrative writing. secondly, kahoot could boost students’ motivation. as mentioned by kohnke and moorhouse (2021), students were highly motivated in learning english by the use of kahoot towards the teaching and learning process. motivation is one of the most important things to build among the students as it directly affected students’ performance and academic achievement. the present study also indicates that the use of kahoot could reduce students’ boredom, and it makes students become more excited during their learning process. towards the survey result, most of the students agreed that they were enthusiastic during the teaching and learning process by kahoot. therefore, in relation to students learning to write, kahoot could be an alternative teaching media that enhance their motivation to write. thirdly, kahoot could successfully enhance students’ writing as kahoot fostered students’ engagement towards the teaching and learning process. if students are fully engaged in the classroom, they could easily understand what the teachers deliver to them. goksun and gursoy (2019) also stated that kahoot was positively increased students’ attention and focus during the teaching and learning process. in the present study, the students mentioned that kahoot could be an alternative tool to build an active classroom. it means that the use of kahoot promotes a meaningful learning experience that could enhance students’ writing skills. additionally, the students also became more interested in learning to write by the use of kahoot. in conclusion, kahoot could improve students’ skills and knowledge in writing narrative text, and it also fosters their motivation and engagement in the writing classroom. in addition to internal factors, kahoot also could foster students’ writing towards its external factors, namely learning environment and teaching performance carried out by the teacher in the classroom. first and foremost, kahoot could build a learning environment which is fun, interactive, and interesting. as tom malone’s theory stated, there are three categories that make things fun to learn, including challenge, fantasy, and curiosity. challenge refers to a series of goals with uncertain outcomes. a challenge could be designed through the use of different levels of difficulty, hidden information, and randomness. kahoot provides a time limit and scoreboard which challenged the student to do better than the other student. in other words, the challenge in kahoot is to answer the questions provided as quickly as possible, and the final scores are uncertain until all students finish the game. this competitiveness creates a sense of a challenge for them. next, fantasy is the game environment that could satisfy the players. kahoot provides some fantasy elements for students, including the use of audio, video, image and also the use of different types of questions such as quiz, true or false, type answer, puzzle, poll, word cloud, open-ended, brainstorm, and also slides. the use of those different elements could reduce students’ boredom and increase their engagement during the teaching and learning process. moreover, kahoot could also build curiosity among the students. the curiosity in kahoot refers to the use of random elements or questions. all in all, kahoot could provide a learning environment which positively supports students’ learning experience, especially in learning to write. based on that analysis, it can be safely concluded that kahoot is an appropriate teaching tool for supporting students’ learning, especially in learning to write. this finding relates to the previous studies which found out that a game-based student response system could improve students’ motivation, engagement and classroom dynamics (baszuk & heath, 2020; piskorz, 2016; yunus et al., 2019). basically, those three areas are closely related to the teaching and learning process in the classroom. it is well known that the students could learn and understand the teaching materials only if they could boost their interest and motivation throughout the materials. in line with that, the present yuni dwi susanti, sri wahyuni | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 61 study results strengthen that finding in the area of students’ writing skills. the result of the present study indicates that kahoot is effective and appropriate to be used in classroom practices since it could boost students’ writing skills by increasing their motivation and engagement during the teaching and learning process. thus, this result conveys a novelty in terms of using a game-based student response system platform, kahoot, as a teaching tool, specifically for teaching and improving students’ writing skills. conclusion as the objective of the present study is to explore and evaluate the effectiveness of the game-based student response system platform kahoot in enhancing students’ skills in writing narrative text, the researchers have implemented the use of kahoot for teaching narrative writing. based on that implementation, the result indicates that kahoot is effective to be used for enhancing students’ writing skills, especially for writing a narrative text. this major conclusion comes from the paired t-test analysis result which shows that the pvalue of students’ pre-test and post-test scores is 0,000, or less than 0,05. additionally, the t-coefficient is also greater than the t-table, which is 18,436 > 2,030. it means that the ho is rejected and the ha accepted. in other words, the students’ writing skills is improved with the use of kahoot. further analysis revealed that kahoot is proven to significantly improve students’ writing in terms of organization, ideas, grammar, spelling, mechanics, and writing style. thus, it can be safely said that kahoot could effectively enhance students’ writing skills. it is also worthy of note that the success of kahoot implementation in narrative writing class is closely related to the factors affecting students’ learning, including students’ competence, motivation, interest, and engagement. in relation to that, hopefully, the result of this study could increase the use of kahoot as a teaching tool in language classroom practices. while the researchers have presented and discussed several insights towards the present study, the absence of a control group in the present study may affect the accuracy and the validity of the study results. thus, the researchers also suggest future research to investigate the implementation of kahoot towards narrative writing class using trueexperimental research since a control group is needed in order to gain a strong internal validity of the research data. references abkarin, n. a. 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(2019). kahoot!: engaging and active learning environment in esl writing classrooms. international journal of innovation, creativity and change, 5(6), 141–152. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42213918a61f • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 201 elt forum 11 (3) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt gender representation in the textbook for vocational school students in the indonesian efl settings mona safrida yanti1, yanty wirza2 ˡuniversitas pendidikan indonesia, bandung, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on july 25, 2022 approved on november 28, 2022 published on november 30, 2022 ________________ keywords: critical discourse analysis; gender representation; textbook evaluation ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ a textbook is expected to cover all of the teaching necessities as well as educational values contained in the curriculum. conversely, many scholars or researchers in the study of gender representation portrayed english language textbooks tend to have gender-biased in terms of gender representation in which males are represented more than females in many aspects. hence, investigating how males and females are represented in indonesian efl textbooks is highly beneficial to be explored to clarify and update the finding based on the previous studies. the concern of this current study is to investigate gender representation in the indonesian efl textbook for vocational school students by using the framework proposed by (amerian & esmaili, 2014). the analysis of the data is based on critical discourse analysis and content analysis. surprisingly, congruent with most previous studies, the finding reflects that there is inequality in terms of gender representation in which females are underrepresented in the textbook. the finding of this recent study pinpoints the depiction of how males and females are represented and depicted in the indonesian efl textbook, as a result, it is expected to convey the awareness of scholars, educators, textbook writers or designers, and policymakers as well related to this issue. then, it is still highly suggested for scholars or researchers in future studies exploring gender representation in indonesian efl textbooks by using other books or other levels of education to evaluate the development of this issue.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 universitas pendidikan indonesia isola, sukasari, bandung, west java 40154 e-mail: monasafridayanti@upi.edu http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 202 introduction textbooks are a primary tool in educational practice. nowadays, the role of textbooks in this modern era is still irreplaceable and still the primary media to transfer knowledge and values in the teaching and learning process. as a source of learning practice, textbooks have a beneficial role in achieving the objectives and aims of learners’ needs (cunningsworth, 1995). in indonesian educational practice, textbooks should fulfill indonesian standard values/norms and should be free from negative content, e.g. radicalism, pornography, violence, racism, and gender stereotypes; it should be noted that textbooks are required to encourage values or norms contained within the five pillars on indonesian ideology, i.e. religiosity, humanism, pluralism, democracy, and social justice as well (setyono & widodo, 2019). reflecting on the previous points, a textbook should fulfill the value of the curriculum, e.g. to deliver social justice by representing the role of females and males fairly. the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) emphasize the importance of gender equality in education by promoting education for all (efa) (as one of the proposals in the dakar convention held by unesco) in which some of the goals to voice that everyone (whether boys or girls) deserves to get education as well as learning sources equivalently; then, as stated before, gender equality has also become its concern (unesco, 2015). some scholars also promote the significance of gender equality, mägi et al. (2016) argue that gender equality is the key factor in a democratic society, societal well-being, and economic growth. ullah and skeleton (2013) convey that gender discrimination is necessary to be resolved in school as it may influence some crucial aspects of children, such as children’s life choices, motivation, selfesteem, and children’s role in society since they will see how their roles as boys and girls depicted toward the textbook. the study of gender representation has been conducted massively by scholars or researchers to seek how english language textbooks portray the figure of males and females. in uganda, barton and sakwa (2012) examined the representation of males and females in the textbook for secondary school by using both quantitative and qualitative analysis (using critical discourse analysis). the finding indicated that the roles of females are under-represented. ullah and skelton (2013) also did an investigation concerning gender equality in 24 school textbooks in pakistan by using qualitative content analysis. this investigation pointed out that the textbooks are embedded gender-biased in favor of males. males’ pronouns, pictures, and characters are found significant than females. then, in terms of gender roles, the textbooks still depicted traditional gender roles in which females are mostly described in the domestic domain, e.g. as mothers, and housewives; nevertheless, males occupy roles in the public domain, e.g. working in the office. moreover, in the indonesian context, tyarakanita et al. (2021) scrutinized the representation of gender stereotypes in two junior secondary school english textbooks by using visual narrative representation and language sexism theory and pinpointed that both textbooks reveal gender stereotypes in which the social role of males is presented more frequently compared to females in both written texts and visualizations. this study also notes that critical awareness of gender stereotyping is important to be considered for language textbook writers when designing language textbooks. correspondingly, fatmawati et al. (2022) interrogated gender representation in two english language textbooks for junior high school students and vocational school students by using mix method research approach. this study discovered that the chosen textbooks demonstrate the imbalance of gender representation in which males dominate all the criteria, e.g. characters, occupations, and activities. this study recommends efl teachers promote gender equality in education by examining and evaluating textbooks. in connection with the findings of the previous studies regarding gender representation in english language textbooks, it can be concluded that all the findings indicate the unequal representation between males and females in the textbooks. males are depicted as more visible compared to females for gender roles. for this reason, further investigation concerning the representation of males and females in the textbooks is still significant to be conducted to verify the results from the previous studies. in addition, exploring gender representation by using critical discourse analysis is still rare to be used based on the previous findings. to fill these gaps, this present study designs to discover the representation of males and females in the textbook for vocational school students by using critical discourse analysis as a research approach. moreover, the investigation of gender representation is conducted by applying the framework or category proposed by amerian and esmaili (2014), i.e. the intensity of males and females involved in the textbook, the mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 203 societal role of males and females, the semantic role of males and females, the title of males and females, order of appearance, activities of males and females, masculine generic construction, as well as the pictorial representation of males and females in the textbook. methods this study employs critical discourse analysis (cda). the main purpose of cda is ‘’to describe and explain how power abuse is enacted, reproduced or legitimized by the text and talk of dominant groups or institutions’’(van dijk, 1996, p. 84). cda is constantly utilized by scholars in the study of gender to unveil the relationship between text and society. cda not only focuses on the linguistic aspect of the discourse but also focuses on the hidden agenda that may shape the discourse. for this reason, cda is worthwhile to be conducted to uncover how the chosen textbook (i.e. forward an english course for vocational school students grade xi) displays females and males. the textbook is chosen for some substantial reasons: the former since it is used as the learning materials in english language teaching for vocational school students in indonesian efl settings; then, the investigation concerning gender representation in the textbook for vocational school students is infrequently to be explored in the previous studies, hence, investigating gender representation in this textbook is beneficial to be conducted for determining how males and females are demonstrated. further, for getting the unequivocal finding related to how males and females are portrayed in a textbook, the data derives from one textbook only. furthermore, this study also embeds content analysis perspectives. content analysis is a research technique in the social sciences that assumes that the data (e.g. texts, images, and expressions) require to be seen, read, and interpreted (krippendorff, 2004). it is done to reveal the meaning of the data. many scholars have utilized content analysis in the study of gender representation in the textbook. the data of this present study derives from the content (i.e. consisting of ten chapters) of the textbook published by erlangga company since it contains gender representation issues. it is written based on elements of the 2013 curriculum and scientific approach. it should be noted that the textbook is still employed nowadays as the resource or teaching material for english language teaching for vocational school students in the indonesian educational system. the data analysis relies on fairclough (2015) which consists of three stages, i.e. description, interpretation, and explanation. in the description stage, the analysis is based on linguistic aspects of the discourse and from the perspectives of content analysis. it is done by using the framework proposed by amerian and esmaili (2014), i.e. the intensity of both genders involved in the discourse, male and female societal roles, male and female semantic roles, male and female titles, order of appearance, activities both genders involved in, masculine generic construction, and pictorial representation of both sexes. then, each category of the framework is calculated to unfold the results of the framework. then, based on the result of the previous stage, in the second stage, the analysis goes to the interpretation related to the result of the previous stage. lastly, in the third stage, the analysis goes to uncover socio-cultural or ideology that may contain in the chosen textbooks and shape the authors’ perspectives in determining the roles or representation of males and females in the chosen textbook. findings and discussion discrimination toward the intensity of both genders involved in the discourse the intensity of the gender involved in the discourse can be one of the parameters to uncover whether the textbook is gender-biased or not. in this study, the number of males involved in the discourse is 46 times. whereas, the number of females involved in the discourse is 55 times. it indicates that males are underrepresented in the textbook in terms of their occurrence. then, in the textbook, they are labeled with nouns as well as their title or titular representation. the following table is the representation of males and females in terms of the intensity involved in the textbook. table 1. the intensity of males and females in the textbook males females dodi, roni, riko, deni, teddy, angga, mario, tito, denis, mr. made wijaya, mr. j. sitanggang, lukas, john robert, mr. wibowo, sir, sean alexander, mr. adam, akbar, john, ron, tim patrick filler, mr., lia, diana, sarah, ellen, gita, maya, chika, chika sarah, lia, tania, tiara ayu, mrs. diah sumitro, santi, patricia pepper, anna yapri, claire turner, lady white, ann brookers, mrs. william, halley, mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 204 tom, ronny simanjuntak, bambang, mr. rusdi handoyo, mr., tri handoyo, mr. bobby febrianto, mr., lukas sinatraya, doni, oka, noorhadi hermansyah m.a, prof. gordon marshall, rian pratama, bimo satrio, doddy, rudy, ketut yudistira, john, doni, thomas, sir, jim stuart, bagus sally, diana hill, melati tobing, farah, tiara, frida aryani, mrs. ramadhan, nadya citra rahmani, tiara shandy, mrs. lande, sheila lande, anis, wulan, nurhayati, widyawati, lia, nina, ms. ernani, ms. marita rawung, lala, nia, andrea,rosana, rita, amy, elsa, hamidah, andhita, vita, marita, sophie, mom, ashley, christine margaret total: 46 total: 55 figure 1. the example of the intensity female and male occurs in the textbook discrimination toward stereotypical representation in this present study, in terms of male and female societal roles, both males and females are represented equally. the male is shown as a parent, office worker, marketing, director, president of chambers of commerce, music conductor, bank director, school principal, chief scientist, professor, deputy manager, chief manager, photographer, and principal of the college. in the same way, female also plays a key role in societal role. they are presented as a radio announcer, parent, marketing, office worker, vice-principal, and office or school secretary as well figure 2. the example of societal role mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 205 discrimination toward semantic roles in terms of semantic roles, males might play a dominant role or inferior positions; whereas, females are presented to be dependent on males (ahmad & shah, 2019). correspondingly, in this textbook, males play the dominant role or inferior positions. they are shown as a leader of a particular position, such as office director, bank director, school principal, chief scientist, deputy manager, chief manager, and the principal of a college. on the other hand, females are shown dependently to males, e.g. as vice-principal, school principal, and office secretary. figure 3. the example of semantic role discrimination toward titular representation a different title for both genders is used in the english language. males are usually labeled with mr or sir. whereas, females are labeled with the title ms., miss, and mrs. in this textbook, males are labeled frequently with their titles, e.g. mr. and sir. in addition, mr. is used as long as nine times, then sir is used 3 times. so, the number of male titles used in this textbook is twelve. they are represented as mr. made wijaya, mr. j. sitanggang, mr. wibowo, mr. adam, mr., mr. rusdi handoyo, mr., mr. bobby febrianto, mr, sir, sir, sir john beddington. later, females are labeled as mrs. & miss. the title mrs. used in this textbook is four times. then, the title of ms. used in this textbook is two times. hence, the number of female titles used in the said textbook is six. they are represented as mrs. diah sumitro, mrs. william, mrs. ramadhan, mrs. lande, ms. ernani, and ms. marita rawung. figure 4. the example of titular representation mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 206 discrimination toward order of appearance order of appearance refers to the emergence of gender (i.e. male or female) to be first mentioned in the discourse. in this present study, the number of males to be first mentioned in the discourse is twelve. while the frequency of females to be first mentioned within the discourse are eleven. for this reason, it can be inferred that the inequality of gender representation in terms of order of appearance in the discourse is not extremely biased although the number of males to be first mentioned in the discourse is more than females. figure 5. the order of appearance example discrimination toward representation in activities in this study, the number of males involved in the various activities is fourteen, as follows: throwing garbage, playing football, doing homework, as president of the chambers of commerce, as a music conductor, celebrating of director bank, as a principal, as a chief scientist, as a professor, as a deputy manager, as a chief manager, as a photographer, as a principal of a college, and as a job seeker. conversely, the number of females involved in activities is only seven, such as a radio announcer, engaging in bridal shower, birthday party, as a vice principal, dinner, secretary of high school, and secretary of a company. then, it is essential to affirm here that there is also an unfair representation of females in the activities in which females are portrayed in doing insignificant activities, e.g. birthday party and bridal shower. thus, there is inequality in terms of gender representation in activities in the textbook since the social and outside activities are dominated and powered by males. figure 6. the example of activity figure 7. the example of activity discrimination toward male generic construction male generic construction is also mentioned with ‘androcentrism’. in this study, males are mentioned with titles, proper nouns, or names, such as noorhadi hermansyah, bimo satrio, doddy, mr. made wijaya, mr. j. sitanggang. then, females are also labeled with titles, proper mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 207 nouns, or even names. yet, it is surprising to figure out here that they are also mentioned by using common nouns, such as mom. the use of the common noun (e.g. mom) in the textbook for representing females indicates that there is unequal representation in terms of building their generic construction. figure 8. the example of generic construction discrimination toward pictorial representation pictorial representation in the textbook is investigated by observing the intensity of males and females involved in pictures for each chapter of the said textbook. the pictures of each chapter will be displayed below: figure 9. pictorial representation of males and females in the textbook based on the pictures, males are involved in terms of pictorial representation in chapters 1, 3,7, and 10. while females are involved in chapters 1,2,3,9 and 10. whereas, there is no representation of both genders to be involved in chapters 4, 5, 6, and 8. further, males and females are represented equally in terms of pictorial representation on the cover of the textbook in which the cover displays the pictures of four students that are comprised of two males and two females. interestingly, females also play a dominant role in terms of the quantity to be involved in all chapters. the number of females to be involved in all chapters are ten. on the contrary, the number of males to be involved is six times. by referring to the previous points, it can be affirmed that the said textbook tends to explore females to be represented in the book chapters more than males. so, it can be inferred that there is inequality in terms of pictorial representation in the said textbook in which females have the dominance to be involved in the book chapters. moreover, it is significant to note here, that females also lead the criteria in terms of the intensity to be involved in the discourse. this pinpoints that among eight criteria used in this study, females just dominate the criteria in terms of ‘quantity’ (i.e. the quantity of visibility and pictorial representation as well). meanwhile, the mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 208 representation of both genders in terms of semantic roles, titular representation, order of appearance, representation in activities, and generic construction is as if legitimized for males. this shows the stereotype in which females are depicted as an insignificant or passive group in the textbook. the result of this present study unveils if males play a dominant role in terms of gender representation. from the framework used, it can be implied that males dominate the representation in the categories, i.e. discrimination toward semantic roles, discrimination toward titular representation, discrimination toward an order of appearance, discrimination toward representation in activities, and discrimination toward male generic construction. whereas, females just dominate two among eight categories, i.e. discrimination toward the intensity of both genders involved in the discourse and discrimination toward pictorial representation. furthermore, in terms of discrimination toward stereotypical presentation, both of them are presented equally. here are some reflections and notes derive from the finding: first, in terms of the intensity of both genders involved in the discourse, the result reveals that the intensity of the females to be involved in the discourse is not too different compared to males but the facts reveal if females’ intensity to be involved in the discourse is more than males. the intensity of the representation between males and females obviously will bring an impact through their participation in the english language subject, since one gender gets more exposure compared to another gender. yet in this case, the intensity of females and males is not too significant. as a result, it will not cause a gigantic impact on the participation of both genders in the classroom since the number of males and females in the visibility is not too significant. however, this may create a hidden curriculum that justifies and transfers values to students (i.e. males and females) regarding the insignificant roles of females in society (since in this present study females are displayed as the passive or insignificant social group, i.e. they just ascribed in terms of the quantity in the visibility and pictorial representation); in addition, a hidden curriculum can promote privileges in favor of certain social groups (ahmad & shah, 2019); in this case, males are favored as the social group. second, this study indicates that there is no unsymmetrical representation of males and females in stereotypical representation. stereotypical representation has something to do with the societal roles of both genders (i.e. males and females) in society. the finding pinpoints that there is no gender-biased in the textbook in terms of societal roles since females also play a position in social life, such as: working in the office, as a school secretary, and as a vice-principal. this finding is congruent with the societal roles in the real life in which females also participate in the various kind of roles in indonesia. for this reason, it may affect the textbook authors’ perspective direct or indirectly related to the representation of males and females in terms of societal roles in this textbook. third, in terms of semantic role, it indicates that this textbook is gender-biased in which males are shown in inferior positions. however, females are presented to be dependent on males or in inferior positions. meanwhile, in the twenty-first century, the campaign for gender equality in indonesia has attained full support from the government and women could also have the same chance the same as men for working in various kinds of jobs and important positions (setyono, 2018). referring to the previous point, it can be inferred that the campaign for equal representation between males and females in terms of the opportunity for having a symmetrical position in occupation, is still not depicted in the chosen textbook and this kind of finding implicitly or explicitly may shape students’ minds and perspectives related to what kind of jobs that they may or will gain in the future. fourth, in terms of titular representation, it sheds light that there is an unequal or biased representation in terms of male and female titles in which males play a dominant role in the use of titles in the textbook. the emergence of using males’ titles frequently can give the portrayal implicitly or explicitly that males or men get more recognition compared to females or women by using their titles many times in the textbook. fifth, in terms of order of appearance, this study discovers although the frequency of males being mentioned first than females is not too different, it does not mean that the chosen textbook is free from gender-biased in terms of this category. further, in the reality of social life and indonesian culture, it could not be neglected that the fact that commonly males are still perceived as a leader, superior, and dominant in the various aspects of social life. therefore, the biased representation in this category can be the reflection of textbook authors’ beliefs that they discover in real society. later, in the perspectives of gender unsymmetrical, the first mentioned in the discourse is more mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 209 worthwhile than the second since it reflects the beliefs that the one who mentioned first is superior. conversely, the one mentioned in the second defines that they are dependent and inferior. sixth, this study points out that males and females are depicted unequally in terms of the activities of both genders involved in the textbook. the imbalance of representation of men and women in terms of activities will bring the message to students related to the what is the common things in society regarding their roles. hence, the students will internalize and absorb the message as natural and true (asriyama & sari, 2022). seventh, the portrayal of male generic construction in this study figures out that the depiction of both genders in terms of male generic construction is precisely not free from androcentrism. ‘androcentrism’ is a term used for the evaluation of individuals and cultures based on the standards, values, and perspectives of males; it does not explicitly present negative descriptions of girls and women, yet the concept of androcentrism is openly a favor to boys or men (hibbs, 2014). the use of common nouns (e.g. mother) in depicted women in the textbooks, shows if the textbook contains androcentrism and it directly or indirectly can be perceived by the students (especially girls or women) concerning the common roles of women in social life. last, in terms of pictorial representation of males and females, the finding is an imbalance in favor of females. it is also surprising to affirm here that women also lead the intensity in terms of inclusion to occur in textbooks as already stated before. to emphasize, if we see the phenomena of education regarding the number of males and females in the schools for any education level (e.g. elementary school, junior secondary school, and senior secondary school), female students constantly lead the quantity. for this reason, it might indirectly influence textbook authors in including the representation of both genders in this category. additionally, the issue of gender representation in the english textbook has also become a notable concern in other efl countries. in the saudi arabia context, aljuaythin (2018) investigated a study concerning gender representation within two efl textbooks and pinpointed that there is a gender imbalance in favor of males. thus, this imbalance has led to the representation of women as stereotypical figures and marginalized. additionally, this study argues that the underrepresentation of women as stated before could establish a false reality surrounding perceptions toward women and could hinder the process of ensuring equality for all humans. equally, sulaimani (2017) also explored gender representation in saudi arabia and revealed that the textbook is gender-biased due to the underrepresentation of women in the textbook. then, it should be noted that the previous studies regarding gender representation issues in efl textbooks are in line with this present study in which females are represented less than males. further, in the pakistan context, ahmad and shah (2019) conducted the same study in public and private schools in punjab and unveiled the textbook is highly gender-biased in which represented males more than females. similarly, norova (2020) also investigated the representation of males and females in efl textbooks for an elementary school in uzbekistan and found that there is an imbalance in gender representation within efl textbooks in which men are depicted considerably more than women. then, she also notes that the underrepresentation of females in the textbooks displays those english efl textbooks contain a stereotypical agenda and sexist ideology. hence, the previous studies from (ahmad & shah, 2019; norova, 2020) as already discussed also match compared to this present study. as stated before, the result of this study also illustrates that males and females are represented unequally. moreover, the same result concerning gender representation in efl textbooks is also revealed in other studies in the indonesian context. nashriyah et al. (2020) explored gender representation in efl textbooks for elementary school and pointed out every single textbook is gender-biased. males dominated three categories, namely: priority, activity, and occupation. whereas, females dominated in one category only. in the same way, agni et al. (2020) also did research related to the same issue and pointed out that female is hidden, underrepresented, and framed in traditional gender stereotyping. further, emilia et al. (2017) also explored gender representation in an indonesian efl textbook and revealed males were presented as adventurous, active, risk-takers, and independent. specifically, the previous finding is also in line with this present study in terms of male & female representation in activities and male & female representation in the semantic roles. according to those points, this present study notes that social roles and outside activities are dominated by males. males are shown in superior positions as well as independent people. then, the other investigation of gender representation conducted by nunun et al. (2020) also proves the same thing. mona safrida yanti, yanty wirza | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 210 considering the above-mentioned findings, in indonesia, the importance of gender equality has been promoted by the government and authorities in social life and education practices as well. in the context of indonesia, gender equality means a social movement to raise and voice that women can also occupy the roles of men in social roles, e.g. having the symmetrical opportunity the same as men in terms of occupation (lestariyana et al., 2020). furthermore, in the context of indonesian efl textbooks, the equality of the representation between men and women should also be implemented in the indonesian textbooks since as already affirmed by setyono and widodo (2019) that one of the pillars of indonesian ideology is the social justice for society (i.e. women and men). on the contrary, the reality of the movement and implementation of gender equality in indonesia is otherwise. the result of this present study and the previous findings from (agni et al., 2020; emilia et al., 2017; nashriyah et al., 2020; nunun et al., 2020) indicate that the disparity between men and women still exists in social life in which women are still considered to be dependent to men and still unsymmetrical compared to men in indonesian efl textbooks. all in all, it is very substantial to discuss here that ‘’every human being is born with a sex and into a gender, which is a formation of roles molded by society and culture” (söylemez, 2010, p. 751); and historically, obtaining the equal rights for indonesian women is not the facile thing since they had to struggle to gain it long before this country achieved its independence from dutch colonialism (setyono, 2018); moreover, widodo (2018, p. 133) argues that as one of the curriculum materials, ‘’textbooks are not neutral but value-laden and socio-historically constructed’’. accordingly, in connection with the previous points it can be inferred that gender-biased is frequently contained in this current study as well as the previous findings (as already stated and discussed before), may be affected by the indonesian culture and history in which the patriarchy culture which considered the image of a man as a superior and dominant person still exists and legitimized by the society; then, this kind of phenomena is implicitly or explicitly absorbed by the textbook designers and writers in representing men and women in indonesian efl textbooks conclusion this study is conducted to figure out how females and males are described in the english language textbook for vocational students. based on the framework proposed by amerian and esmaili (2014), it can be inferred that this present study portrays that males dominate the categories more than females. the result of this study pinpoints if males have dominated five among eight categories, i.e. representation toward semantic roles, representation toward the title, representation toward the order of appearance, representation toward activities, and the representation of males toward generic construction. while, females only dominate two of the eight aspects, i.e. representation of the intensity of both genders involved in the discourse and representation of pictures in the textbook. for this reason, there is inequality in terms of gender representation in the chosen english textbook for vocational school students in which females are underrepresented in the said textbook. then, to add a positive note, here are some recommendations based on this present study. the former, teachers’ commitment or teaching philosophy is needed to face this problem since the issue of gender representation in the indonesian efl textbook is tend to be neglected. later, by referring to the previous note, all of the stakeholders in the indonesian educational system, for example, government, policymakers, textbook authors, school stakeholders, and teachers should be aware of gender representation issues in the indonesian efl textbooks since it can also impose the value in character education which becomes the major concern in indonesian national curriculum. lastly, as affirmed by aljuaythin (2018) that the investigation of gender misrepresentation in efl textbooks is a never-ending process. for this reason, it is highly suggested for future studies for exploring the study of gender representation by using other books or other levels of education to observe and verify whether most indonesian efl textbooks tend to contain gender-biased or not. funding statement this research received no specific grant from any funding agency. references agni, z. a., setyaningsih, e., & sarosa, t. 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(2019). the representation of multicultural values in the indonesian ministry of education and culture-endorsed efl textbook: a critical discourse analysis. intercultural education, 30(4), 383–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2019.1548102 söylemez, a. s. (2010). a study on how social gender identity is constructed in efl coursebooks. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 9, 747–752. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.228 sulaimani, a. (2017). gender representation in efl textbooks in saudi arabia: a fair deal? english language teaching, 10(6), 44. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n6p44 tyarakanita, a., drajati, n. a., rochsantiningsih, d., & nurkamto, j. (2021). the representation of gender stereotypes in indonesian english language textbooks. sexuality and culture, 25(3), 1140–1157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-021-09813-0 ullah, h., & skelton, c. 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(2018). a critical micro-semiotic analysis of values depicted in the indonesian ministry of national education-endorsed secondary school english textbook. 131–152. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63677-1_8 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42231972209d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare 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attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4224794e2037 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 21 elt forum 11(1) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt teachers’ strategies to teach writing explanation texts dadan hidayat1, jejen jaenudin2 1universitas bina sarana informatika jakarta, indonesia 2 smk as-syukron limbangan, garut, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 6 september 2021 approved on 25 december 2021 published on 30 march 2022 ________________ keywords: teaching strategies; teaching writing; explanation text ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the strategy in teaching is very important for the teacher in teaching writing, especially in teaching writing explanation text. the teacher must have a variety in teaching to help the students study successfully. this research was intended to find out the teaching strategies used by the teachers at sman 10 garut. the purposes of this research are to identify some of the teachers' strategies and techniques used in teaching writing explanations. the data needed is gained through a sample consisting of 4 sman 10 garut (senior high school) teachers. the teachers are provided with 18 questionnaires. the responses are in the form of yes, sometimes, and no to the statements given. then, the result is formulated by using: = f × 100%. this research used the descriptive method and employed qualitative data. the writer observed the teachers in teaching writing explanation text and using teachers' observation form also. based on the findings, (61. 11%) of the respondents perceive that various teaching strategies were needed for the students. based on the writer's interpretation, it is suggested that the teachers practice specific strategies for teaching writing explanations.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 agung raya 1, lenteng agung, jagakarsa jakarta selatan e-mail: dadan.dhq@bsi.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 22 introduction writing is one of the essential skills that students in senior high school must accomplish. they may express ideas, information, and thoughts through writing. they use written language to express feelings and experiences wholly and regularly. however, when expressing oneself, essays or paragraphs represent ideas and thoughts. students still make some errors when they are writing. in this case, teachers have an important role in helping the students minimize the student's errors in writing. teachers need a strategy for helping students to improve students writing skills. teachers' strategies are essential in the learning and teaching process. the teachers must improve the teaching method by implementing good strategies. they play a necessary strategy in helping the student achieve the goal of language learning. the teacher also needs to improve their techniques in teaching. ariyanti and fitiana (2017) said that teachers must move away from various traditional methods and switch to a new approach to apply in the writing classroom to improve their students in all aspects of essay writing. in addition, modern teaching techniques and aids are indeed very helpful in enhancing students' writing ability. the teacher must help them express ideas in the language being taught. the teachers are obligated to find suitable teaching strategies. according to horby (1980), strategy is the technology of planning operations and actions, especially the movements of the army and navy, or the ability to organize and carry out something. another theory from ahmad (2007) stated that this strategy is intended as a teacher's effort to create an ecosystem that enables the educational process to achieve and succeed in formal learning goals. based on this explanation about the strategies in the learning and teaching process, it proves that the teacher needs some strategies in the learning process to help students understand the material and improve their skills in english. the teacher needs the strategies in teaching in the classroom because the teacher has some capital tasks that must be done. those are: the teachers must plan, teach, and evaluate the teachinglearning activity. and to do so, the teachers have to comprehend something closely related to the teaching-learning process. typically, strategies are divided into three main categories: metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective. brown (1994) explained that metacognitive is a term used in information processing theory to indicate an executive function of the strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring one's production or comprehension, evaluating knowledge after an activity is completed. cognitive strategies are more limited to specific learning material itself. socioaffective strategies have to do with mediating social activity with others. these strategies will help the teacher in the learning process to deliver the material in the learning process. the other hand, the teachers need to help students because teaching is showing or helping someone to understand as brown (2007) stated that teaching is showing or helping someone to learn something, giving instructions to someone, guiding someone in the study of things, giving knowledge to someone, and knowing something to someone. it is defined as making people understand. however, teaching and learning cannot be separated. it cannot be defined separately from learning. teachers have a role in the classroom. harmer (2004) stated that teachers have five parts: controller, prompter, participant, resource, and tutor. as the controller, the teacher must control the class or activity and often lead from the front. as a controller, he takes the register, tells students, organizes drills, reads aloud, and in various other ways exemplify the qualities of a teacher-fronted classroom. then as the prompter, the teacher gives the solution for students if they get the problem in the learning process. the teacher only provides the solution without giving the answers to their students. like the participants, the teacher stands back from the activity of learners to get on with it and only intervenes later to offer feedback and correct mistakes. as the resource, the teacher takes part or tries to control the students, or even turns up to prompt they might be entirely unwelcome. the help should be capable of applying suitable methods and techniques of language learning. based on these explanations, it proves that the teachers have an essential rule learning process. the teacher is the director of all students' behavior, and the students are imitators of her nonverbal model. the teacher is the authority in the classroom. the teacher and the student are more like panthers in the teaching-learning process. a teacher should be able to improve their student's skills. students must master four skills. one of them is writing. according to oshima (1996), it is one of the basic skills to be learned. writing is a process of creating, organizing, writing, and polishing. writing is one of the productive skills that can be used to measure students' improvement in learning english. another theory of writing explained by karim and rachmadi (2015) stated dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 23 that writing conveys ideas on a piece of paper where this activity aims to produce a good article by each writer, in this case, that is meant students. writing as one of the productive skills that students or writers must master is delivering ideas on a piece of paper. producing good writing that meets the rules of writing is the goal of every author or student because it is significant for the success of every student or writer in learning the language. in teaching english, there are some kinds of texts that the students must master. one of them is an explanation. according to horby and garry (1980), an explanation text is a text that explains the processes involved in the formation or workings of natural or social, cultural phenomena. especially for writing explanation text, students need techniques to help them write the text. based on haerazi et al. (2020), writing activities manifest the latest language skills that english teachers should acquire after listening, speaking, and reading. compared to the other three skills, writing skills are more challenging to learn than native speakers because they require learning various language elements and aspects and the language itself. writing is one of the basic skills that the student must master. it proves by the statement from patel (2008) writing is a skill that must be taught and practiced. writing is an essential feature of learning a language because it provides a very good way of foxing the vocabulary, spelling, and sentence pattern. it becomes an important aspect of students' expression at a higher stage—there are some writing processes. there are some stages in writing classroom activity as richards (2002) stated that the writing process as a classroom activity incorporates the four primary writing stages. planning, drafting (writing), revising (redrafting), and editing. the teacher also has three other externally imposed stages on students: responding (sharing), evaluating, and post-writing. here is the plot of the process of writing. the writer will explain all steps. the planning in writing is essential because the student can plan their activity and prepare something related to the report. they can write their idea on paper after they plan their training in pre-writing. the second stage is drafting. in section, the writers focused on writing fluency and were not preoccupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the draft. the third stage is editing. at this stage, students are engaged in tidying up their text as they prepare the final draft for evaluation by the teacher. for the editing section in writing, the student can evaluate their mistake and tidy up their writing. the last stage is revising. in the revising area, students change. they review their texts based on the feedback given in the responding setting. the final step is essential for the writer to find out their mistake forgive their input for their writing. then in the revising stage, the writer can find out the weakness of their writing teachers need some techniques or strategies to teach writing to make the learning process simple and successful. based on patel (2008), teaching writing techniques involves using pictures and reading, using all language skills, and controlling writing. in using the photo, teachers can find a valuable resource in the image: drawings, photographs, posters, slides, cartoons, magazine advertisements, diagrams, graphs, tables, charts, and maps. first of all, pictures provide a shared experience for students, a joint base leading to various language activities. then in the process of using reading, the teacher gives a short story, a newspaper column, an advertisement, a letter, a magazine article, a poem, or a piece of student writing that can work the same way as a picture to provide shared content in the classroom. in the process of using all language skills, the students will listen to each other listen-once the classrooms talk like," is she running? yes, she is." with listening comes comprehending what the speaker is saying. the listener can then react by writing down his version of the information he has just heard for a reader. in the technique process in teaching practical writing, practical writing has a clear purpose and a specific audience. much of this everyday writing is "writing to get the thing done. "messages, forms, invitation, letters, and instructions are types of writing that anyone might have to do at some time or other. the previous study about teaching strategies in teaching writing has gained much attention from some researchers. atikah (2018) presented a good model of effective teaching strategies in writing class. this result was based on small-scale research in one of the institutions in indonesia. she collected the data by doing class observation and interview to evaluate the lecturer's strategies in teaching writing and note down the rationales of using specific strategies. besides, she also used an online focus group to obtain the students' perceptions about the lecturers' ways of teaching. her research result indicates that some teaching writing strategies have been applied to the class, improving their writing skills. the rationale for choosing the specific lecturer was due to his popularity among students and colleagues who consider him a good writing lecture in the efl context. in general, the teaching approach implemented was the process-writing approach. some strategies applied were the lecturer asked to share the students' draft orally to their peers and criticize dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 24 their essay, used different strategies to provide feedback (oral and written corrective feedback). another researcher was karunia (2019). she presented teacher strategies in learning english in teaching writing. based on research that has been done that the teacher used some strategies in the teaching writing and learning process such as mind mapping and group discussion and the use of strategies in learning has a good impact on increasing student writing skills, students are more enthusiastic in following the learning material provided by the teacher. irikawati (2017) analyzed the strategy in teaching writing. several strategies are used, and almost all the steps in the strategy are conducted and implemented well by the english teacher. prabantoro and hikmat (2018) the researcher analyzed the teacher's strategy in teaching narrative text writing is using cooperative learning because this strategy keeps students active and can solve problems in analyzing generic structures, language features, and social functions of the narrative text so that they can make narrative text well. the other researcher is raharjanto (2016). he used collaborative learning and discussion to analyze teacher strategies in teaching writing by forming groups and examining pictures. there are some similarities and differences between previous and current studies. the similarities are studies are about investigating teachers’ strategies to teach writing skills. then the differences between previous research and recent studies are the previous research are focused by using group discussion and use some specific strategies in teaching writing such as mind mapping and group discussion, narrative texts, exploring the picture, applying cooperative learning to teach writing while in this research focusses on teachers’ strategies to teach writing explanation text. this researcher will analyze the teachers’ strategies to teach writing explanation texts by giving strategies in teaching writing. this research was intended to find out the teaching strategies used by the teachers in the senior high school. the purposes of this research are to identify some of the teachers' strategies and techniques used in teaching writing explanations. methods this research method was qualitative descriptive analysis; all aspects will be formulated in a written essay. according to alwasilah (2000), the observer provided the readers with facts and interpreted what was being investigated in descriptive research. in this research, the writer carried out an investigation. the descriptive method was used for this research. this is in line with meleong's (2007) argument that the descriptive methods interpret or explain the phenomenon. the subjects of this study were the teacher at senior high school. in abbreviations, the teachers' names are a.r, y.r, a.s, and s.k. the issues were the english teachers. the teacher was selected because the primary purpose of the study was to describe and document what strategies teachers use in teaching writing explanation text at senior high school. the researcher observes the teaching-learning process of the teachers in the class. the researcher observes how the teachers’ strategies in teaching writing explanation texts. in collecting data, the writer did three stages. the first stage was to organize the instrument. this study triangulated the methods to strengthen the validity and reliability of data. in other words, all data collection methods and the participants used in this study were the time to test and validate the data to see if it produces the same results (reliability). the instruments used questionnaire items and observation. second, the questionnaire items were administered to the teachers to know their teaching strategies. and the last, the writer observes the teacher in the classroom to investigate their teaching strategies. the writer acted as a non-participant observer and used teachers’ observation to observe the teaching explanation text's learning process. the writer observed the teachers’ strategies while teaching writing explanations, beginning from pre-activity until post-activity. the writer only writes the actual activities in the classroom when the teacher is teaching, writing a description on text. passive participant observation means the researcher only sits down and pays attention to the actual data. the questionnaires items were one of data collection of teachings in the descriptive method. it has been used to describe and support the data about the problem in teaching writing explanation. the questionnaire was given to the teachers for gathering data. it consists of 18 questions that respondents must fill. the choice completes the questions, yes, sometimes, or no. data analysis aims to discover patterns, ideas, explanations, and understanding (mcmillan, 2010). in this research, the data collected are analyzed to clearly describe teachers' strategies to teach writing explanation texts at senior high school. the writer did some steps for analyzing the data. the first step is editing. this stage checked the results of questionnaires collected to determine the suitability of respondents' answers. there were no replacement answers in editing with the intention dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 25 that the data was consistent and according to the research purpose. the second step is coding. at this stage, coding is referred to as open coding, preliminary coding, or provisional coding. to interpret the data, the most frequent strategy is to read and reread all of the material and categorize it by looking for units of meaning-words, phrases, and sentences. after receiving the data, the researcher collected it at this stage. involves the gathering of all data. the researcher groups all units with the same coding together. the data will be easier to read. in brief, by coding all of the data we gathered, we can highlight the appropriate data for this research topic. the last step is cleaning. at this stage, the data obtained and collected was then cleaned by checking the data and then only retrieving the correct data, so there was no dubious or false data. findings and discussion findings these are the overall results of the investigation on teachers' strategies in teaching writing explanation texts. table 1. teachers responses to questionnaire the questionnaire number yes sometime no f % f % f % 1. apakah saudara selalu mengacu pada kurikulum yang berlaku ketika mengajar ? 4 100 2. apakah saudara selalu menggunakan buku paket yang sudah tersedia di sekolah ? 4 100 3. apakah saudara selalu membuat persiapan rpp terlebih dahulu sebelum mengajar teks explanation ? 4 100 4. apakah saudara selalu menngunakan bahasa inggris ketika mengajar writing teks explantion? 4 100 5. dalam mengajar writing explanation, apakah saudara memperkenalkan terlebih dahulu teks explanation 4 100 6. dalam mengajar writing explanation, apakah saudara selalu menjelaskan ciri ciri teks explanation? 4 100 7. sebelum mengajar writing explanation, apakah saudara menjelaskan terlebih dahulu definisi explanation text? 3 74 1 25 8. apakah saudara pernah menyuruh siswa untuk menterjemahkan hasil teks explanation yang mereka tulis ? 3 75 1 25 9. apakah saudara pernah membuat group atau kelompok di kelas ketika mengajar writing explanation? 3 75 1 25 10. dalam mengajar writing explanation, apakah saudara selalu menyuruh siswa meringkas teks explanation? 1 25 2 50 1 25 11. dalam mengajar writing explanation, apakah saudara mengajarkan dengan cara menyusun kalimat ? 2 50 2 50 12. apakah saudara selalu menyuruh siswa untuk menentukan ide/ gagasan yang akan dikembangkan dalam menulis teks explanation? 2 50 2 50 13. apakah saudara selalu memberikan tugas kepada siswa untuk membuat teks explanation di rumah? 4 100 14. apakah saudara memiliki strategi pembelajaran dalam mengajarkan writing explanation? 3 75 1 25 15. pernahkah saudara mengajar writing explanation dengan menggunakan berbagai strategi sehingga siswa bisa menulis teks explanation dengan baik? 2 50 2 50 dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 26 16. apakah saudara selalu memberikan motivasi kepada siswa yang kurang dan yang belum bisa menulis teks explantion? 3 75 1 25 sum 44 1100 27 675 1 25 average 2.44 61.11 1.50 37.50 0.06 1.39 based on the table above, it is clear that respondents would prefer yes answers to sometimes answers and no answers. but, there are two dominant choices between yes solution and sometimes answer. data above show that all the teachers had different characters when teaching. teacher ar asked students about explanation text before teaching. “do you know about explanation text? “ some students responded to the teacher's question by referring to their understanding of explanation texts. following that, several students discussed explanation texts. teacher a.r went over the purpose of explanation texts, the basic structure, and language aspects in the teaching process. after that, teacher a.r. inquired about the material with the students. “ do you understand about the material? “ students said that they understood the material. after that, teacher a.r asked students to make explanation texts. teacher y.r had a different way of teaching with teacher a.r. before teaching, and teacher y.r did not ask students about explanation texts. she didn't go over the basics of genre theory instead of focusing on explanation texts. she described the explanation text's purpose, general structure, and language features. teacher y.r did not ask students about the material after she had finished teaching since she assumed that students understood it. teacher y.r instructs students to write/create an explanation text at the end of the teaching process. teacher a.s. and s.k. manage the class differently than teacher a.r. and teacher y.r. they do not maintain control over the class, resulting in a noisy situation. the teaching method was considered ineffective as a result of this situation. teachers a.s. and s.k. also instructed students to write/create explanation texts without specific instructions. as a result of this situation, some students were confused by the assignment. the data interpretations the findings of the research will be interpreted based on the number of each question. based figure 1, most teachers teaching explanation texts were based on the curriculum because the curriculum is a teaching reference to attain the purpose, but all teachers use english books. still, the teachers use other books such as 'lks.' the teacher always prepares the rpp before teaching, writing explanation text for students. the teacher uses rpp because it is essential to succeed in the class's teaching process. the teachers sometimes use the english language. they try to mix between english, indonesian, and sundanese languages to understand the teacher's explanation. the teachers always give the example of an explanation text before the students write it so that they do not get confused when they write an explanation text. the teacher always gives a detailed explanation about the explanation text, such as the generic structure and language features, so the student understands materials, especially for writing an explanation text in teaching writing explanations, the teachers sometimes faced some problems. the teachers felt the delivery method because they were afraid that the students could not understand the way of delivery. based on the interpretation above, most respondents chose yes to the statements given. it meant that the respondents almost had a good strategy in teaching writing explanations. in this case, the english teachers should be able to increase the suitable strategies in teaching. every teacher has a unique approach in teaching writing. teacher a.r. has good teaching strategies because he constantly asks students questions before going on to the next section. the interaction between teacher a.r and the students was active during the learning process. student a asked about explanation texts with the teacher. dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 27 figure1. data interpretation teacher strategies and teaching writing student 1 told the teacher a.r that she understood the material. still, she told the teacher that when she started to write an explanation text, she occasionally forgot about the tense used when writing explanation texts. “i understood about the explanation texts, but when i started to write an explanation text. i forgot about the tense and the rule.” student 2 told the teacher that she got the same problem with student 1. she forgot about the tense when she started to write. “i got the same problem with student 1. i forgot about tense when i began to write and explanation texts.” student 3 was different from students 1 and 2 . she told the teacher that she did not get confused with the tense but got confused with the idea when she began to write. “ i did not get confused with the tense, but i lost the idea when i began to write explanation texts.” based on students' problems, teacher a.r explained the tense and how to get an idea when they wrote explanation texts. at the end of the learning process, students said thank you to teacher a.r because they understood the material. they were enthusiastic when teacher a.r gave the assignment because they understood the material. teacher y.r got the same situation in the class with teacher a.r about students' writing problems. some students told the teacher that they were still confused with the tense , gaine the idea and rule when they began writing and explaining texts. teacher y.r explained clearly about the tense and rules in writing explanation text. “ hello, students. i will explain clearly to you about tense, how to get an idea when you begin to write “ teacher y.r had a good strategy and can manage the class well so the material can be delivered clearly and students also understand with the explanation from the teacher y.r. teachers s.k and a.s could not manage the class well, so the class was noisy. this situation confused some students, and some did not give attention to the teacher. so when the teacher gives them the assignment, they are still confused about how to do it. 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 1 2 2 4 3 2 33 4 3 4 3 4 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 3 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 data interpreatation teacher strategies and teaching writing teachers' strategies teaching writing dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 28 discussion based on the data analysis and data interpretation above, it can be concluded that the teachers almost have a good strategy in teaching writing explanation text. ahmad (2007) stated that the strategy is intended as a teacher's effort to create an ecosystem that enables the educational process to achieve and succeed in formal learning goals. especially in teaching writing, the teacher need more efort to creat a good situatiuon in the class. karim and rachmadi (2015) stated that writing conveys ideas on a piece of paper where this activity aims to produce a good article by each writer, in this case, that is meant students. although the result is good, the teachers still need to increase their strategy in education writing explanation. the writer found some different data about their statement on the questionnaire from the teacher's observation data. what the teachers chose on the questionnaire with their activities at class was different. each teacher has different strategies in teaching writing explanations. they also have different characters. so, the writer got some difficulties in analyzing each other. according to the statement above, the writer would like to explain the teachers' strategies in writing explanations based on the teacher's form. the first teacher was mr. a.r. he taught the twelfth-grade student. when the writer observed, he was at class xii ips 3. he was well prepared and well organized in class for the preparation stage. it is looked from the way he began the class activities with the good responses from the students. before going further, he reviewed material then used the english book to new material about explanation text. he explained the definition of explanation text then he asked students about this material. the teacher explained the text's purposes, general structure, and language features, such as using simple present tense conjunction and noun phrase. then he used the simple way in the teaching process to understand what he taught. he gave the simple technique of writing explanation text, so the student's enthusiasm for the subject led. when the student asked about explanation text, the teacher answered the question carefully and satisfactorily. the teacher knew the problem and gave the solution when the student got the problem—the methodology or strategies in the class were balanced and varied. the teacher strategies are practical and suitable for students' abilities. the teacher asked the students to write or write a descriptive text based on general structure and language characteristics. when the student has difficulties in writing explanation text, the teacher helps the students. after that, the teacher examines the result of the students' assignments. the second teacher was mrs. y.r. she taught twelfth-grade students. when the author observed, she was in xii ips 2 for the preparatory stage. she was well prepared and well organized. she checked the material and saw new material for obvious reasons. she had been warmed up in advance. then she explained the material of the explanation text. while she gave direction, it was clear and concise so that the students could carry it out. after that, she explained the material was presented in a logical sequence. she did not explain the basic theory of the genres, but she focused on explanation texts. she explained the purposes, general structure, and language features of the explanation text. the teacher was careful and satisfactorily when she answered the questions from the student. but she did not know when the student was having trouble understanding because she felt that the student understood the material. the students were interested and enthusiastic about the subject taught because the teacher explained the material very well. the method or strategies from the teacher are not too effective because there are students who sleep in the class. the teacher gave the student assignment to make or write the explanation text to the student. then she helped when the student had difficulties in writing explanation text. the third teacher was mr. a.s. he taught the tenth-grade student. mr. a.s. was not different from mrs. y.r. and mr.a.r in managing the class, but in the strategies and technique is different from the other. he explained material without using strategies effectively. the students did not understand what the teacher taught. the students felt confused with the instruction that the teacher explained. the teacher asked the students to write the explanation text without instructing them how to make a good writing explanation text. at the end of the teaching process, the teacher gave the students assignment, and he did not know that the students had difficulties writing explanation text. then he left his class without checking the assignment of his students. the last teacher was mrs. s.k. she taught the tenth-grade student. when she taught, she did not control her students in teaching. she could not manage the class, and the course was noisy. she explained purposes, general structure, and language features of explanation text with condition class dadan hidayat, jejen jaenudin | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 29 were loud. the writer looked at the teacher used the strategy that was not suitable for the student's writing ability. she did not have a strategy to motivate her students in writing an explanation. so, many students did not understand and could not write explanation text well. conclusion the following were conclusions of the research findings, which presented the teachers' strategies in teaching and learning writing explanation texts. the teachers' strategies were essential in teaching, especially in writing explanation text. the teachers' must-have strategy in teaching for helping students write explanations well. the teachers used many teaching strategies to motivate their students to write explanations. the teaching strategies were: the teachers helped students who could not write an explanation text. the teachers gave way to writing explanation text well when the students found some difficulty and some problem in teaching explanation. in teaching writing explanation text, the teachers always faced some problems. the problems faced by teachers were: the use of appropriate methods and techniques in teaching, the students did not understand the explanation text, and the students were still confused to determine their idea. acknowledgement the researchers would like to express their sincere gratitude to some parties, including the teachers and colleagues, for their valuable support and help while conducting and producing this research paper. hopefully, the result will positively contribute to the educational development and the readers. references ahmad, s. 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(1996). introduction to academic writing. longman. patel, f. (2008). englih language teaching. sunrise publisher & distributors. prabantoro, a. t., & hikmat, m. h. (2018). teacher’s strategies in teaching writing narrative text at smkn 1 kismantoro 2016/2017 academic year (doctoral dissertation, muhammadiyah university of surakarta). richards, r. (2002). methodology_in_language_teaching_2002_scanned.pdf (pp. 1–432). putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 73 elt forum 11(2) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt video and audio platforms for improving listening skills in spanish´s students of efl: a preliminary and descriptive study juliana leguizamon del portillo1, andres bernal-ballen2 1facultad de educación, universidad antonio nariño, colombia 2grupo de investigación conciencia, facultad de educación, universidad antonio nariño, colombia article info ________________ article history: received on 15 october 2021 approved on 24 july 2022 published on 31 july 2022 ________________ keywords: listening ability; didactic strategy; learning english as a foreign language ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ learning english as a foreign language can be challenging because it requires the development of tools which allows an effective communication process. in this sense, the phonetic differences between spanish and english are one of the reasons why it is difficult to develop listening skills for spanish native speakers. thus, in this research, a didactic strategy based on common audio and video platforms was designed in order to improve this ability in a sample of students. the sample was selected at convenience and consisted of fifteen students from an english intermediate course. the strategy was divided into three parts: a diagnostic test to demonstrate the level of listening; learning activities; and an exit test. a descriptive study was conducted. the obtained results showed students’ progressive improvement in pragmatics, understanding, and intonation. in addition, the results indicated that the use of alternative methods, mediated by new technologies, seems to be equal or more effective than traditional teaching and a better learning of english is perceived by using remote strategies than in face-to-face ones.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 calle 22 sur # 12d-81. 111821, bogotá, colombia e-mail: abernal93@uan.edu.co http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 74 introduction learning a new language involves the conjunction of many of the learner’s skills (elmetaher, 2021; nazarieh et al., 2022; neuner, 2020; rosales, 2019; shariyevna & israilova, 2020). three categories that affect learning have been reported: biological and psychological factors such as age, personality, and environment; cognitive factors such as intelligence, language skills, learning styles, and strategies; and affective factors such as attitudes and motivation (hartshorne et al., 2018; nussbaum & bernaus, 2010). thus, it is understood that every human being has particular characteristics, and those characteristics have notable implications in learning a foreign language (getie, 2020; manga, 2008). on the other hand, students of english as a foreign language (efl) must develop communicative skills. these skills are associated with biological and cognitive factors since the former requires an environment and a context to receive and transmit information, while the later requires listening abilities in order to engage in and develop a conversation. the main purpose of speaking is to transmit and capture information. communicative competence is a globalizing construct that encompasses skills, abilities, and knowledge that the language must use in order to communicate effectively (maturana patarroyo, 2011; zhang & zou, 2020). to achieve the communicative process, students must have a level for the four skills (writing, reading, speaking, and listening). by achieving that level, students are capable to communicate and express ideas. nonetheless, listening plays an important role in the learning process (cheung, 2010; gilakjani & sabouri, 2016; jemadi et al., 2022; karimova et al., 2020; shariyevna & israilova, 2020; yavuz & celik, 2017) and it has a positive impact on the students because they might receive information more clearly and consequently, the learning may be meaningful. the needs of the emitter are different from the needs of the receiver (ahour & mohseni, 2015). similarly, the skills for each of these two subjects are different, as both may present lower proficiency in different aspects of the communicative skill. several causes that affect the listen ability have been reported. the uncontrollable process of the skill (speed of deliver of the message and the accent) cognitive perspective, phonological and lexical problems, syntactic and semantic problems, discoursal and pragmatic problems can be mentioned (ozcelik et al., 2019). in fact, recently different publications have faced the listening problems (jemadi et al., 2022; jyoti, 2020; nushi & orouji, 2020). nonetheless, one cause of unsatisfactory communicative process in the listening skill is pronunciation (enciso et al., 2019; orlando, 2020). it plays a very important role in the efl learning process, and this linguistic component is key factor in achieving successful oral communication (setter & jenkins, 2005). whereas english has different phonemes for graphemes, spanish is a language that correlates the number of graphemes and phonemes (veiga-pérez, 2017). in spanish, there are just 24 phonemes and 27 graphemes, while in english there are 26 graphemes and 45 phonemes. moreover, in spanish there are 5 vowel phonemes, while in english there are 12, which shows the wide difference in sounds between the two languages. additionally, it has been reported that english possesses unique sounds that are not common to romance linguistic families (enciso et al., 2019). in this frame, it has been observed that students distinguish these differences more easily in written than in oral communication. it stands to reason students must perform identification of phonetics differences in different contexts, enabling them to improve perceptual phonemic discrimination to the point of being able to accurately identify them as two different non-native phonetic categories (llompart, 2021) even though speech perception may not adequately capture it (cutler et al., 2006). this prevents learners from becoming familiar with the different sounds that can be found in the english phonetic system. furthermore, the failure to represent pronunciation accurately and consistently is largely responsible for the constant difficulties among efl learners (umera-okeke, 2008). in order to overcome the reported problem, several publications have informed that audiovisual media are more effective for improving listening skills than other types of teaching media (ananda et al., 2021; asmawati & others, 2017; damanik & katemba, 2021; dizon & gayed, 2021). however, there is not much empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the use of these platforms in education (difilippantonio-pen, 2020; mango, 2021). it has even mentioned that the use of audio materials in the learning listening skills seems to be inefficient (sulaiman et al., 2019). considering the aforementioned reasons, the research problem is that native spanish speakers which are efl students have difficulties with their listening skills due to the phonetic difference between spanish and english. additionally, scientific literature has reported that these difficulties juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 75 with listening are due to schools’ prioritization of writing, reading, and vocabulary. listening is not part of many textbooks. indeed, most teachers do not conduct activities to develop this skill in their classes (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016). moreover, it has found that this skill does not receive enough attention and is considered a passive skill that is developed without help. however, listening is a complicated process because of the level of difficulty that requires comprehend the message as they listen to it, retain information in memory, integrate it with what follows and understand the incoming information (elmetaher, 2021). although direct or indirect didactic strategies for learning listening skills have been mentioned in the scientific literature (fetriani et al., 2020; vančová, 2019; yulianti, 2018), and despite the relevance of listening skills for efl students, there is scare reports in scientific data bases such as scopus or web of sciences that netflix party, flipgrid, or randall´s platforms are reported for improving listening skills in efl. for instance, in web of science the combination of netflix and listening indicates just five results. for that reason, the research here focuses on the use of a didactic strategy based on audio and video platforms such as netflix party, flipgrid, randalls’s esl cyber listening lab, and lyrics training platforms that help improve efl students’ listening skills for spanish native speakers. learning listening skills multiple authors have defined listening skills in scientific literature (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016; hwaider, 2017; khosroshahi & merc, n.d.; mohammadzamani & taki, 2018). however, current trends indicate that this skill helps to understand the world and is a necessary component of successful communication. students spend more than 50% of their time listening during their learning process (jafari & hashim, 2015; rost, 2009), which suggests that fostering listening skills is crucial in the learning process of an efl. furthermore, listening has been defined as the ability to understand native speakers when they speak at a normal speed. it also focuses on auditory discrimination, auditory grammar, selection of necessary information, and recall. listening is a process of understanding what is heard and organizing it into lexical items to which meaning can be assigned. students listen to spoken language, divide sounds, classify them into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehend the message. this ability is a process of receiving what the speaker says, responding, and creating meaning through participation, creativity, and empathy (gilakjani & sabouri, 2016). it is undeniable that listening is extremely important. conversations will only take place when one can understand what the speaker is saying, although input (listening and reading) alone is not sufficient for language acquisition. this acquisition refers to the development of appropriate responses and focuses on helping listeners develop an awareness of differences in cultural styles of listener feedback, and options for providing such feedback. awareness of listeners' choices and strategies can increase the effectiveness and the ease with which they engage in collaborative discourse. use of video and audio for learning english the strategies for teaching and learning have been studied in the last decades (davis et al., 2018; martin et al., 2020). nonetheless, educators as well as students do not seem to be aware of this fact, and the incorporation of new technologies in the process of teaching and learning is still under continuous development (d. ahmadi & reza, 2018). teaching and learning english is probably one of the most relevant topics in the field of education as a consequence of the ubiquitous need for preparing students with english abilities around the world. in this frame, diverse strategies have been implemented, and video or audios are commonly used by teachers during their lectures. in the current time, the incorporation of social media within education context have shown a relevant impact (dehghanzadeh et al., 2021; syafitri, 2021; wang & chen, 2020). in fact, some publications have evidenced that it is possible to improve listening skills by the incorporation strategies based on videos or audios (polat & eristi, 2019). for that reason, this research incorporated these kinds of material for helping students to develop intentionally listening skills. juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 76 teaching strategies a myriad of strategies and techniques are used in the process of learning a new language. three categories for language acquisition have been described: a) the breakdown of grammatical topics; b) the development and cohesion of topics related to the teaching methods; and c) evaluative material. these three categories allow the teacher to review the points that must be present when applying a strategy in class (neuner, 2020). however, when learning a new language, students activate learning processes that they do not usually use when learning their native language. as a result, it is necessary to propose a specific strategy during the teaching of the second language. a didactic strategy is a series of procedures and resources used by the teacher to promote meaningful learning (navarro & piñeiro, 2012). this underlines the importance of these strategies in the learning process since the strategy motivates the student to learn in various ways. similarly, a didactic strategy is a procedure that the teaching agent uses reflexively and flexibly to promote meaningful student learning. language learning strategies are specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques that students use (often intentionally) to improve their foreign language skills. teaching or learning efl means that a didactic strategy must be specific. for instance, the didactics used in a classroom for efl learning purposes must have attractive knowledge for students and each proposed didactic must emphasize specific knowledge (harjanne & tella, 2007; shofkorov & bagapova, 2020; talaván, 2020; uljens, 2004). since second language learning should have a communicative approach, it has been reported that dialogue and classroom interaction should take up an extensive part of the class. specific didactic strategies for learning a foreign language are classified as either direct or indirect strategies. these strategies allow students to identify different ways of learning. table 1 shows strategies that are specifically focused on developing listening skills (orrego & díaz monsalve, 2010). table 1. direct and indirect strategies for learning a second language direct strategies memory cognitive compensatory creating associations. infering relationships. remembering. rhyming. making clear mental images. visualizing. imitating. combining images with sounds. making word lists. looking up definition of new words. reviewing and refreshing what has been learned. understanding and reviewing what has been learned. practicing conversations in different contexts. identifying details elaborating a general idea of what is read in another language. summarizing. consulting different sources. recognizing similarities and differences. finding patterns. assuming/guessing meaning. anticipating content and meaning from the context of the subject matter. seeking help. using mimicry and gestures. looking for alternative ways to express ideas and make use of synonyms. indirect strategies metacognitive affective social evaluating the process. learning from mistakes. being responsible for your mistakes. identifying the objectives of what you are doing. planning learning tasks with clear goals. gathering the needed materials. organizing study schedules. making efforts to concentrate. seeking relaxation. consulting your concerns. making use of diaries. encouraging self-motivation. taking risks in learning in order to grow beyond the routine. asking for collaboration. allowing others to evaluate and correct one's own performance. asking questions. sharing information. identify with whom you study best. being attentive to what others feel. the strategies to improve listening skills can be developed: before, during, and after language activities. in the first category, there are strategies focused on connection, prediction, and conversation. during listening, taking notes and listening to the material several times is recommended. as a closing activity, repeating and summarizing the material have shown positive results (borjesson, 2012). additionally, to favor active comprehension, cognitive, metacognitive, and juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 77 socio-affective strategies must be taken into account. for this reason, a seven-step model has been created 1. students receive new information about the topic and type of text, then create hypotheses about the text. 2. students listen an audio and verify their hypotheses and add new information. 3. students work in groups to discuss and compare their results. afterwards, they come to a consensus. 4. they listen again, review, and check what they understand and what they have not yet grasped. 5. they discuss again, highlight the most relevant aspects, and reflect on what made them understand the audio and identify key words. 6. they listen, search, and add information to verify what they have understood. 7. they discuss what helped them understand by suggesting goals, both individually and as a group. scientific research has found that exposing learners to authentic materials through video helps with language learning, particularly listening skills. moreover, it has been reported that videos can be beneficial in improving l2 learners' listening skills, compared to lecture-based instruction (metruk, 2018). additionally, the use of podcasts to enhance listening skills has been documented as well. moreover, most podcasts are free, diverse, readily available, and play at a normal speed, among other things (naidionova & ponomarenko, 2018). having a variety of didactic strategies does not guarantee success for a spanish-speaking english learner. thus, it has been mentioned that these strategies must have a communicative approach since the strategy is not only about students acquiring a certain linguistic system but also about them being able to use the linguistic system to communicate effectively (rangel-palencia, 2015). several researchers have mentioned that having a communicative approach to efl teaching strategies allows students to interact with english-speaking communities. for example, the efl communication process is affected by efl learners’ limited vocabulary and lack of familiarity with slangs, grammatical topics, and their respective rules, the communication process is affected (s. ahmadi et al., 2020; hibatullah, 2019; yagang, 1993). on the other hand, for communication in l2, the ability to listen comprehensively must be specially developed. for instance, music (sabina & senad, 2021), metacognitive (valdés mendoza, 2021), or audiovisual strategies (collaguazo vega, 2021) can be mentioned. in accordance with the information above, this research proposes a strategy that favors a better way to learn a second language (english) by focusing on the use of video and audio platforms to develop listening skills. a detailed methodology to achieve these objectives has been proposed and is shown below. methods the present research is focused on improving listening skills for students of elf. in this regard, both, direct and indirect strategies (table 1) were planned and used. as can be notice in the detailed description of the process, audio interpretation, deduction, and vocabulary strategies are the main activities. it means that direct cognitive and compensatory strategies were used, as well as indirect metacognitive and affective activities were carried out. participants the participants for this research consist of students who hold military degrees. the students are part of the intermediate english course and have an academic load of 540 hours. specifically, a nonrepresentative sample selected for convenience was made up of students from group 2b of the intermediate english course, which consisted of 15 students total, 12 males and 3 females. a descriptive qualitative design was carried out. instrument design one instrument (sample´s perception test – instrument 2) was designed and validated by three experts in linguistic and didactic of english as a foreign language. sufficiency, clarity, coherence, and relevance were assessed. once the instrument was corrected according to the suggestions, it was juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 78 sent again to the experts for their final approval. a didactic strategy consisted of six learning guides that highlight activities to improve listening skill was developed and applied to the participants. additionally, a diagnostic test was used, which was provided by the american language course (alc). instrument 1. preconception’s test pretest the diagnostic test corresponds to the american language course placement test (alcpt), which consists of 60 multiple-choice questions whose objective is to identify the students' listening level. these questions cover two categories: interpretation and deduction. the test made it possible to verify the students’ level of comprehension and deduction of the audio. the audio tracks had american accents, different speeds, and military vocabulary. for this test, the students had 35 minutes to listen to all the audio tracks (which have a maximum duration of one minute and thirty seconds each) and answer the stipulated question. the students answered on a multiple-choice sheet and the alc level classification was obtained (table 2). table 2. alc level classification correct questions level 56-60 b2+ 41-55 b2 31-40 b1+ 21-30 b1 11-20 a2 0-10 a1 instrument 2. sample´s perception test seven multiple choice questions were formulated. each student had to indicate at what level he or she considered his or her communicative ability to be. the options for these levels were null, basic, and medium. additionally, these three categories were established for the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr), although without determining the specific english level. the survey was administered through google forms since this virtual platform allows for prompt responses from the participants. the survey was administered during class time. pedagogical intervention the didactic strategy was designed to improve listening skills. all guides were applied remotely (one per week) over a period of six weeks. each guide focused specifically on improving pragmatics, intonation, and accents. this strategy is explained and summarized in table 3. table 3. summary of the pedagogical strategy week activity platform duration characteristic 1 vocabulary randall’s esl cyber listening lab 35 min audio interpretation/ vocabulary 2 motivation flipggrid/ted talks 35 min deduction of audios/ vocabulary 3 video friends netflix party/flipgrid 60 min deduction of audios/ vocabulary 4 vocabulary randall’s esl cyber listening lab 35 min audio interpretation/ vocabulary 5 song lyrics training 35 min deduction of audios/ vocabulary 6 video blindspot netflix party/flipgrid 80 min deduction of audios/ vocabulary the first part includes the student's knowledge of some of the platforms they worked with in class. one such platform is randall's esl cyber listening lab, a free-to-access page that allows students to learn using podcasts on everyday topics, which utilize a variety of accents and speeds. a separate platform, lyrics training, is also a free-to-access page and an application that uses videos, juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 79 songs, and scenes from tv series to help students at different levels learn pronunciation, accents, and vocabulary in a more interactive way. these platforms allow the student to have a more realistic interaction with the way english speakers express themselves in everyday contexts. for this first part of the strategy, the podcasts and songs could be repeated a maximum of three times, depending on the initial level of the students. within the frame of listening, there was a second activity consisted of oral production, since listening and speaking are connected skills that should be developed simultaneously. this is because listening is a much more than hearing. in fact, to be able to transfer listening to other contexts, it is necessary to evidence oral communication (spataro & bloch, 2018). to make oral productions, different virtual platforms were used, such as flipgrid, a free-to-access application where audio and video recordings are made (the recordings are no longer than 90 seconds in length). this platform allows the user to play the video as many times as needed, and it is possible to make a video response to engage in a conversation between the participants. netflix party, on the other hand, is used to watch movies, tv series, and documentaries, allowing multiple users to watch teacherselected media simultaneously, even when the users are in different physical locations. these platforms facilitate direct conversations between peers (classmates). additionally, the variety of content available on netflix party means that there is appropriate material for each students’ english level. finally, the assessment to test students´ listening comprehension ability through understanding pronunciation and audio with neutral accents was carried out. this part consisted of two activities. the first was a weekly test where questions were characterized by pragmatics and an understanding of the general idea of each audio. a second test was carried out at the end of the course, which allowed a general review of the students’ progress from the first day that the strategy was applied. session 1 students listened to audios from randall's esl cyber listening lab. subsequently, five questions were presented that sought to identify the students’ comprehension and pragmatics of the audio. session 2 a ted talk on autonomous language learning strategies was used. after that, students were asked to identify their comprehension and pragmatics of the audios. these were solved on the flipgrid platform, which allowed the students to resolve areas of uncertainty themselves. session 3 once again, audios related to greetings and personal presentations were used from randall's esl cyber listening lab. after listening to the audio, the students were asked five questions about its context and pragmatics, while simultaneously working with the expressions used in the audio. session 4 the students were shown an episode of an american television series (“friends”) in which the main component was vocabulary about marriage. the students watched this episode simultaneously using the netflix party platform. pauses were made to ask questions and identify context. these questions were answered using the flipgrid platform. session 5 a faster and more demanding audio (the song “we don’t talk anymore” by carlie puth and selena gomez) was used. the lyrics training platform was used to work on this song because this platform helps students focus on the pronunciation of native english speakers session 6 an episode of a television series (“blindspot”) that uses language, codes, signs, and military slang was selected and netflix party platform was used. during the episode, pauses were made to facilitate questions formulation from the teacher to the students for identifying the context. these answers were answered on the flipgrid platform. juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 80 instrument 1. preconception’s test posttest a similar test to the diagnostic strategy was applied, which was also provided by the american language course placement test (alcpt). the test consisted of 60 multiple-choice questions whose objective was to identify the students' listening level. these questions are classified into two categories, interpretation, and deduction, which made it possible to verify the students’ level of comprehension and deduction of the audios. the audios have characteristic american accents, different speeds, and military vocabulary. data analysis in each activity students were assessed according to the specifications of the session. the obtained values were statistically treated, and average, standard deviation and mode were obtained. findings and discussion perception test this is a test in which the person qualifies his or her skills according to the appreciation of the level of language management (lobo et al., 2020). most students stated that their listening level was basic, that is, when listening different audios, they only understood certain words; four students mentioned that their listening level was medium, meaning they understood the context of the audios; and only one student stated that his listening level was null. next, the students selected the tools they used to improve their listening skills. the most voted answer was audios in class. interestingly, most students work exclusively with the material provided by the teacher, although films and songs were mentioned as well. this problem (working only wit materials provided by the teacher) is common in efl students, due to pronunciation, speed, unfamiliarity with words, and limited listening abilities. therefore, students feel more comfortable with the material worked on in class as they are appropriate for the level they exhibit (erzad, 2020). despite this problem, there is no evidence that teachers and students to broaden the types of aids to improve listening skills. in this sense, the use of audios and videos mediated by innovative platforms (as proposed by this strategy) can contribute to the solution to this problem. one factor which language learning skills is the number of hours devoted to study. it is remarkable that in the sample, 12 out of 15 students did not study english for more than a year. nonetheless it is worth mentioning that the greater the number of study hours, the better the academic outcome obtained by efl learners (lightbown & spada, 2021). thus, it is striking that the perception that students have about their listening level coincides with the results yielded by the diagnostic test, indicating that the students are aware of their level reflected in the results shown by both tests. diagnostic test it is well known that a diagnostic test is seen as one of the most useful tools for establishing previous knowledge about any topic. in turn, performing this type of diagnostic test through some virtual platforms allows students' stress levels to drop, resulting in tests that are conducive to the development of students’ potential. the obtained results from the alcpt test (table 4) were a starting point to carry out and apply the designed strategy. these results show that the entry-level of the students is very low and the sample is homogeneous. this suggests that the level of listening reported by the students coincides with the level of listening achieved during the test. for this reason, it is necessary to design strategies to improve this skill. “normal" classroom activities are not enough, and an intentional effort is required to develop and improve students’ listening abilities (alfuatin, 2019). table 4. statistical results for alcpt as diagnostic and output test function american language course placement test (alcpt) diagnostic test (60 points) output test (60 points) average 17,6 ± 4,6 22,3 ± 3,8 mode 13 26 median 15 22 several factors can influence the determination of students' initial listening level. one factor is the predisposition to the test and the result that the student may obtain. there is an internal struggle juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 81 between what the student thinks he/she knows and the test result. at the same time, it has been found that performing several tests throughout the academic process in order to strengthen, correct, and prevent various attitudes in favor of the student decreases that predisposition and favors learning (cortés, 2020). one of the reasons that explain the low level obtained in the diagnostic test is that students have had little contact with the language when they take the diagnostic test. in this sense, any kind of interaction (music, videos, podcast) might have a positive influence on cultural exchange and can therefore be described as a tool for achieving learning improvement (guerrero, 2020). use of randall's esl cyber listening lab in this part, students were asked to answer five multiple-choice questions that focused on the interpretation of the information provided by the audio. the audio interpretation questions obtained are shown in table 5. in these questions, the student had to extract and differentiate the information requested in the audio. the interpretation questions evaluate the comprehension and the information gathered that the student retains (for this case of the audio) whereas the students must select the pertinent and necessary information to answer appropriately. at the being of the strategy, low scores were obtained, whereas a notable improvement is visible at the end, when most of the students obtained higher scores. in this frame, it is important to mention that phonological features are considered as one of the reasons which difficult listening. the origin of this affectation can be attributed to the fact that native speakers not always articulated the words, which affect the produced sound and it is hard to understand for the listener (hamouda, 2013). for that reason, not only repeating the audios, but the relationship between listening and correlating could be considered as an appropriate strategy for improving listening skills. interpretation requires a level of analysis and is based on decoding vocabulary as well as on linking the text with its context. moreover, sociopragmatic features can be used for better understanding, such as nonverbal communication or paralinguistic aspects (jun, 2006; lynch & mendelsohn, 2013; widodo & cirocki, 2015). indeed, other researchers have reported that using audios have a positive impact in the overall listening skills as well as in pronunciation (gonulal, 2020). the analysis of the results obtained from both tests (sessions 1 and 3) showed a relevant improvement in the process of interpretation and pragmatics. this may be due to factors such as pronunciation, speed, unfamiliarity with words or terms, and limited listening. therefore, the use of material that students feel more comfortable with is desirable (erzad, 2020). table 5. results of session 1 and 3 students randall’s esl cyber listening lab session 1 (5 points) session 3 (5 points) average 1,7 ± 1,4 3,5 ± 1,1 mode 1 4 median 1 4 flipgrid a 10-minute english video about the importance of languages was chosen, a topic related to those studied in class. it has been established that videos are useful for improving oral expression and therefore, for having a conversation, since gestures and facial expressions allow learners to connect the audible and visual part of the speech. moreover, when audio is used without video or images, negative effects on comprehension are reported (escudero & kalashnikova, 2020). orality is an influential factor in communication since is not only about the production of sounds. oral production involves cognitive development and comprehension (álvarez correa, 2020). the effectiveness of the strategy depends on how comprehensive the questions are, and for this reason, it is important to research students´ level of familiarity with the platform (dinesh & karthikeyan, 2020). results were much higher compared to the previous sessions since the students had had previous experiences with the platform and with the type of questions asked. having sessions with the same methodology but different contexts generate an approach and an understanding of the process to be had by the students (dinesh & karthikeyan, 2020). juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 82 as can be seen in table 6, the strategy had three sessions with a similar methodology, watching a video and answering questions. within this frame, students should be able to understand the message and respond appropriately. these videos, when played at an appropriate speed, allow students to get used to typical and/or real conversations in which repeating the audio is not an option (escudero & kalashnikova, 2020). the scientific literature has reported the advantages that video could play in the listening abilities. for instance, video is an alternative instructional tool, that facilitates comprehension of pronunciation (related listening skills). moreover, video-based utilities are more appropriate than just audios because there are multiplying inputs that the student can perceive (djabbаrova, 2020; kaynar & sadik, 2021; woottipong, 2014). despite the lack of research using this platform, preliminary reports suggest that flipgrid might be considered as an effective educational tool, since it develops communication skills (mango, 2021). however, technical problems are mentioned as negative implications of its use (innes & others, 2020). nonetheless, it is important to mention that flipgrid can be effective by improving listening comprehension (guapisaca & garzón, 2022), because it involves cognitive development (alvarez, 2020). table 6. results of session 2, 4, and 6 students flipgrid session 2 session 4 session 6 average 2,5 ± 0,8 4,5 ± 0,5 4,6 ± 0,5 mode 3 4 5 median 3 4 5 lyrics training a song with an american accent was chosen for this activity. students listened the song and simultaneously fulfilled the lyrics on the training platform. the maximum score for this session was 41 points. each point corresponded to a word, which had to be selected in the corresponding order to complete the song. the result of this activity is shown in table 7. the most frequent number of correct answers for this activity was 16, which is not surprising due to the students’ listening level even though this methodology was new to the students, the result beyond the score indicates the importance and relevance of music and how it can improve students' listening skills. learning a new language through songs helps to increase vocabulary since it contains authentic language, helps the student to have a socio-cultural vision of english-speaking countries, and substantially helps to correctly develop pronunciation in a more didactic and attractive way (luque, 2020). these activities are considered as a useful for improving listening skills. the explanation might be found in the fact that the student is able to predict the word, and if not, they can listen the audio once more (djabborova, 2020; ebrahimi et al., 2021; milan et al., 2019). music has been a useful element of efl learning for students and teachers, as it allows for faster memorization of vocabulary. some authors emphasized that the needs of today's students are different from those of past students, and as such, mixing music with technology allows the effectiveness of learning to be greater and in turn motivates students to continue learning (al-efeshat & baniabdelrahman, 2020). table 7. results of session 5 results lyrics training average 22,0 ± 7,2 mode 16 median 23 the pedagogical use of various digital platforms can be considered as a successful strategy for strengthening the activity of listening in a second language. the results obtained in this research have shown a remarkable improvement in the participants in this aspect. the listening skill involves the ability to understand to others when expressed at a normal speed and requires an interaction between the sender and the receiver. this activity implies a highly elaborated cognitive process, which only occurs when there is a complete understanding of the message. thus, it is evident that the sample has been able to improve in the juliana leguizamon del portillo, andres bernal-ballen | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 83 comprehension of the received message, that it can interact significantly with the sender, and therefore, his or her listening ability has been enriched using the developed strategy. netflix party as it was mentioned, listening has been considered as a passive learning skill. however, too much attention is needed to pay in intonation and pronunciation (kavaliauskiene, 2008). for achieving an appropriate level of listening, the scientific literature has recently explored the use of audio and visual platforms in english teaching. in fact, it has been published that the new platforms are more effective for developing listening than other teaching media (ananda et al., 2021). in this research, the use of netflix party has shown positive results as can be seen in table 6. likewise, the platforms allowed transforming some daily actions or activities (songs, movies, etc.) into learning strategies. the activities with videos (talks, series, or movies) using flipgrid and netflix party were well received by the students, allowing them to obtain a better result in the analysis of the questions posed and in the result of their interpretation. this can be attributed to the fact that the images, expressions, and gestures allow them to understand the context of the video and relate what they were listening to what was happening in the videos. conclusion in recent years, educational sciences have understood the importance of relating research to classroom activities. for this reason, this research arises from how several authors have undertaken systematic work to achieve better learning of english as a foreign language, using information and communication technologies, mediated by research processes. in this context, this strategy demonstrated an improvement in the ability to listen to the english language, an objective set at the beginning of this research. on the other hand, as evidenced by the exit test, progress was obtained between the beginning of the strategy and the last session. this may be attributed to all the activities and platforms (the proposed strategy) that were aimed at strengthening the students' listening skills. even though the platforms were different, they had a specific purpose: to improve the student's listening skills. it is important to highlight the great variety of pedagogical and didactic resources that can be applied in classes to work on listening skills. it should be emphasized that listening is a process and a skill that should be worked on frequently in order to achieve a notable improvement in students. the activities with videos (lectures, series, or movies) were well received by the students, allowing them to obtain a better result in the analysis of the posed questions and in the result of their interpretation, thanks to the fact that the images, expressions, and gestures allow them to understand the context of the video and connect what they were listening to with what was happening in the videos. songs are useful tools that attract and capture the students' attention. with this strategy, positive results were obtained because an improvement in the students' listening skills was evidenced, thanks to the platforms, which were chosen thinking about the use of the tools they provided, the ease of acquisition, and their use. likewise, the platforms allowed some daily actions or activities (songs, movies, etc.) to be transformed into learning strategies. it is pertinent to highlight that as a consequence of the didactic strategy in this research, a significant improvement was demonstrated by the students of in the sample, as indicated by the results obtained in the entrance and exit tests. this can be interpreted to mean that, during the research process, listening skills improved, which indicates that students can perform better when they need to use the language in everyday contexts, which is 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(2020). types, purposes, and effectiveness of state-of-the-art technologies for second and foreign language learning. computer assisted language learning, 1–47. 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt interlanguage: grammatical errors on students’ recount texts (a case study of first year of man 2 banjarnegara in the academic year 2014/2015) isti nurhayati english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: grammatical errors, interlanguage, writing, and recount text. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ differences between indonesian and english language makes students often feel difficult in learning english especially in terms of grammar. those difficulties tend to lead students to make errors in building english sentences. however, errors are actually natural because they are regarded as developmental stage to gain english competence, and errors are result from the students’ efforts to find ways of solving their problems. those ways are called interlanguage. this study aims to find out the grammatical errors that students make in writing recount text and the interlanguage processes happen in it. the collecting data was done through writing recount text task to get kinds of errors data made by the students, and interview for getting interlanguage data happen to the students. the analysis steps started from identifying the errors, categorizing them into four categorizations of errors, and triangulating the errors with other supporting data. it reveals that students tend to make the errors omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. the interlanguage processes happened are systematicity, permeability, fossilization consisting of language transfer, transfer of training, strategy of second language learning, and overgeneralization. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: istinurhayati@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 isti nurhayati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction one of the challenges faced by indonesian students in learning english as a foreign language is ‘grammar’. flynn (1995), for example, states that language learners have some grammar, before they begin learning their second language which may not have any bearing on their prior linguistic knowledge. therefore, the learners will unconsciously apply their grammar while learning a new language. because of difference between indonesian and english grammar, many of the learners find it difficult to learn a new language, english. therefore, it makes them are afraid of making errors when they deal with grammar. nevertheless, making error is natural and actually necessary for language learners so that they achieve certain language competence (krashen, 1982: 74). therefore, errors are not regarded as a failure anymore, but it is considered as an important learning process that the students should experience for developing their competences. selinker (1972) calls this phenomenon as ‘interlanguage’. an il “can be defined as the language of the learner” (davies, 1989: 460), “a point on the way to a full natural language” (davies, 1989: 461); a development process involving the “learner’s systematic approximations toward the target language” “systematic approximations toward the target language” (davies, 1989: 448). wilkins as quoted by nunan (1991: 152) says that acquiring grammatical system of the target language is a central importance, because an inadequate knowledge of grammar would severely constrain linguistic creativity and limit the capacity for communication. for that statement, it is clear that when learners are not capable in acquiring grammatical system of language, they will not be able to achieve language competence. rajeev sinha (2003), states that there is a question asked “why is grammar so popular in certain schools and with certain teachers?” first, it is possible for a teacher to teach the grammar of a language although he has no real command over that language; second, grammar is so popular with examiner. it is difficult to test fluent speaking ability or writing ability grammar questions are easy to set and correct; third, directors of education demands grammar. they observe that the children in the schools speak and write ungrammatically and say, “therefore teach them more grammar”. the importance of grammar is not only for oral language, but also the writing language needs grammar. some linguists argue that fluency in writing is in paramount point that accuracy. writing skills is regarded as the highest level of language competence because it needs good performance of three other skills. writing is also known as a complex system because it needs more tools and skills. according to ramelan (1992: 42), writing is defined as a representative or symbol. it is not a usual symbol, but writing is a meaningful symbol. this study focuses on the discussion about grammatical errors made by students and the interlanguage process happens in it. interlanguage itself can be identified from the grammatical errors made by the students. as endang fauziati says in her journal entitled interlanguage and error fossilization: a study of indonesian students learning english as a foreign language, that the errors of the students become the source for studying the system of the learners’ l2 or interlanguage (il). furthermore, the writer will use the errors of the students especially the grammatical errors to find out the interlanguage process happens when the students learn english, especially in writing recount text. research methodology the writer aimed to find out the varieties of grammatical errors made by the students in order to be able to reveal the interlanguage happened behind the errors in that school. data used in this study were students” recount texts task, and interview. the task was given to 33 students of x7 of man 2 banjarnegara consisting of 16 boys and 17 girls. the interview was done to 16 students which represented the kinds of errors findings. the analysis technique of the data included isti nurhayati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 identifying the grammatical errors, categorizing them into four categorizations, and analyzing the interview data to find out the interlanguage process happened. in conducting this study, the writer came to the subject class and explained the material about recount text to refresh the students’ memory about it. then, the writer gave the students time to choose the topics given and make a free recount text consist of seven until ten sentences of the topic they chose. after getting their written text, the writer analyzed and described the errors made by the students. then, after knowing the students who made more grammatical errors than others and discussed with the teacher to select the subject of interview, after that the writer interviewed the selected students to find out the interlanguage process happened and categorized it based on the matrix of interlanguage. result and discussion the kinds of errors that the students often made were omitting some elements, adding, using wrong form or misinformation, and misordering the sentence structure. it was like corder said that errors are typically produced by people who do not yet fully command some institutionalize language systems. it happened to the students who did not yet fully understood about recount text and english sentence rule. moreover, from the errors we knew that the interlanguage process actually happened in it like systematicity, permeability, language transfer transfer of training, second language learning strategy, and overgeneralization as selinker explained. those interlanguage processes happened to the students when they faced some tasks relating to the english material and elements and they tried to solve that problem like; a. task of grammar most of the students felt difficult in grammar because the rule of grammar in indonesian and english is quite different like the rules of ‘to be’, gerund, and tenses including past and present tense. in indonesia, there is no such kind of those rules. the errors that the subjects often made such as using ‘to be’ in the sentences that actually did not need that, and they also often forgot to change the tenses that should be used. it was because they had not been familiar with english rule. those differences made students often used indonesian grammar when they wrote english sentence especially when they found difficulties in deciding the grammar that should be used. even though they already knew about the differences and english grammar, when they rarely exercised writing english sentence they would often forget about english rule. moreover, when they used inappropriate learning strategy, they would still found difficult in writing english text like they learned english by reading only and never practice writing. furthermore, if such kind of situations happened continuously, the subjects would find ways to solve those difficulties like construct their own rule by mixing the indonesian grammar and english grammar that they already knew. even they used indonesian grammar in all of their sentences because what they knew and remembered was all about indonesian. then, the interlanguage process happened to the students when such kind of situation above happened. b. task of vocabulary different language must have different vocabularies. this rule is applied for indonesian and english languages. most of the subjects felt difficult in finding the words that they wanted to use in their text while they did not know those words in english. when they faced such kind of situations, some of the subjects preferred to open the dictionary and some others liked asking to somebody like friends and teacher. those strategies were not wrong as long as when the subjects knew how to use the dictionary and also they knew the rule of asking. it became inappropriate strategy because the subjects used the dictionary without knowledge of how to use dictionary. they wrote what was in the dictionary directly without thinking the correct one. for example, some subjects used a dictionary to find a word ‘bermain’, and in the dictionary it was written ‘to play’. because of this, isti nurhayati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 those subjects directly wrote ‘to play’ in their texts and added word ‘to’ for all of the verbs in their texts like ‘to swim’. furthermore, asking to somebody also was not wrong as long as the subjects knew the rule. a case happened to the one of the subjects that preferred to ask to somebody when they did not know the english words. for example, one of subject wanted to say ‘jalan-jalan’, then, he asked to the teacher. the teacher said ‘go walk’ in which she pronounced /gəʊ wɔːk/, then without opening the dictionary he directly wrote what they already heard. actually what he wrote was not ‘go walk’ but ‘go wol’. this phenomenon happened when the subjects chose inappropriate learning strategy which became their habits, or when the subjects used a little thing about english and they thought that it was a correct thing and then they applied it in their texts. this situation showed us unconsciously that interlanguage was happening. other thing that happened relating to the difficulties in finding english words came to the condition of higher level confusion of the subjects that was the students used indonesian word in their texts. this happened to one of the subject that used the indonesian word ‘setelah itu’ in her text, it was because she did not know how to say it in english. the lack of knowledge relating to the english vocabularies which caused by lacking of reading habits made students came back to use indonesian words even when they had to produce english sentences. it was also how the interlanguage happened to the students. c. task of constructing sentences constructing sentences became the most difficult part that the students faced during the writing process. most of the students made misordering sentences in their recount texts. those errors more and less were because of the difference between indonesian and english structure especially in ordering its phrases and also an adjective used. for example, most of the students wrote ‘home grandmother’ instead of ‘grandmother’s home’. not only that, there were students who wrote ‘filed football’, ‘garden fruit’, and other phrases that had same constructions. based on the interview, the subjects who made that kind of errors did not know how to construct that phrases in english. because of that, they wrote it based on the indonesian structure, the structure that they already knew and were familiar with. besides, there were the subjects who actually already knew about the rule; however, when they made the text they forgot about it because they felt nervous. furthermore, there were the subjects who made sentences exactly same with indonesian structure that made the sentences was wrong. those subjects reasoned that they used indonesian structure because they felt confuse about the english structure. when such kind of situation happened, the interlanguage process happened to the students. they found a way in which they could resolve their problem in order to finish their texts. those ways they got from the knowledge that they already knew and made experiment with it. conclusions and suggestions conclusion based on the result and discussion related to the grammatical errors which the students of x7 man 2 banjarnegara made, it concluded that there were some conclusions: the kinds of errors made by the students in writing recount text were: a. omission in all of the grammatical features aspects of recount text include: 1) the omission of specific participant, the word that indicated the specific participant, and also the sign of plurality in the subject of specific participant. 2) the omission of verb that indicated material processes, the element of material processes like a morpheme, and the word that should complete a verb. 3) the omission of past verb, the morpheme of past tense –ed, ‘to be’ in past form, and the word that completed the past tense. 4) the omission of preposition in stating time and place, the article, and the sign of plurality. isti nurhayati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 5) the omission of temporal sequence words, the word that completed the temporal sequence word, and the letter of the word. b. addition in all of the grammatical features aspects of recount text include: 1) the addition of ‘to be’ on the specific participant and the adverb after subject. 2) the addition of word ‘to’ in the verb of material processes and the word that had meaning with the material processes used. 3) the addition of word ‘to’ after past verb which was not necessary, the word that had same meaning but different form. 4) the addition of plurality, the double preposition, and double morpheme in stating time and place. 5) the addition of a word in the phrase of temporal of sequence, the preposition ‘to’, and unimportant morpheme. c. misinformation of all of the grammatical features aspects of recount text include: 1) misinformation of using letter ‘s’ as plurality sign and the writing of number as a rank number. d. misordeiring of all of the grammatical features aspects of recount text. 1. the interlanguage process happens to the student during writing recount text are: a. systematicity the students constructed a sentence and grammar based on coherent rules which students constructed and selected in predictable ways such as taking a rule from the example that they saw. b. permeability the students constructed a sentence and rule from the rules that they knew and worked with their feeling to combine it. c. language of transfer the students often used indonesian language structure sentence to construct their english sentence. d. transfer of training the students constructed the sentence based on what they already did before. e. strategy of second language learning the students laid on the dictionary and asking to the friends while they constructing a sentence. f. overgeneralization the students used the tense and verb form that they already knew without knowing the context of the sentence. suggestions based on the conclusions of the result of the study, the writer recommended some suggestions to solve the errors made by the students and the interlanguage process happened to the students, among others were: 1. for the teachers the errors are not a failure that the students might not do that, so the teacher should analyze the error made by the students to know what the students need. 2. for the students the students are hoped can really understand about the difference between indonesian and english language and the students should find their strategies in learning english that can develop the four skills of english. 3. for the school the school should provide the facility that supports the english learning process especially in developing the students’ english skill. 4. for future researchers for future researchers especially those who work in language program who wants to resolve the problems of kinds of grammatical errors and interlanguage can use the result of this study as the background to decide the best method in learning english. bibliography arikunto, suharsimi. 2002. prosedur penelitian, suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: rineka cipta .2006. dasar-dasar evaluasi pendidikan. jakarta: bumi aksara brown, h. douglas. 2002. principle of language learning and teaching. new jersey: prentice hall, inc. 2007. 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speaking skill, interpersonal conversation, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ mostly students of junior high school have difficulties in their speaking skill, especially in interpersonal conversation. it is because they have to concern with the material and also the practice of the conversation itself. so, some techniques should be carried out to make speaking easier and interesting. one of the techniques to teach speaking is bamboo-dancing technique which is one of cooperative learning technique, in which students are placed in two lines to see each other and make conversation (suprijono (2009:98)). the aim of this study is to find out how bamboo-dancing technique can be implemented in improving students’ skill to master interpersonal conversation. in order to achieve the objectives, an action research was designed and carried out in this study. the participants of this study were 28 students of class vii b of smp it insan cendekia semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. questionnaires, observation guide, and speaking tests were used as the instruments for collecting the data. the analysis results of the first and second questionnaires showed that bamboo-dancing technique was useful to most of students of smp it insan cendekia semarang to improve their learning motivation and interesting in interpersonal conversation. their perception was changed positively after having the treatment. it meant that the use of bmboo-dancing technique could ease their problem in speaking in english especially interpersonal conversation. the results of the study showed significant improvement of the students’ achievement in mastering interpersonal conversation. it is proven by the average results in every test; pre cycle test (67), cycle 1 test (73), and post cycle test (79). moreover, the result of the observation guide showed that bamboo-dancing technique changed the students’ learning behaviour being better than before. based on the results of those research instruments, it can be concluded that the use of bamboo-dancing technique as learning technique gives the improvement of students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation in terms of motivation, attitude and mastery. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: linnaendah@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction speaking is regarded as a skill which is difficult to learn because people have to know how to pronounce, how to deliver the message of the speech when they speak to someone. besides, they have to know how to use the rules of speaking. speaking has some activities, and conversation is one of them. as we know, conversation is when two people or more talk to each other in a formal and informal situation. based on the current curriculum in our country that is 2013 curriculum especially for the seventh grader students of junior high school, they learn about one kind of conversation that is interpersonal conversation. in interpersonal conversation, the students learn how to socialize by using spoken language to interact with surrounding. brown (2001: 274) says that “interpersonal conversation is carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social relationships than for the transmission of facts and information”. interpersonal conversation includes the materials for example suggestions and offers, greeting and leave taking, asking and giving opinion, giving compliments and congratulations, etc. for this interpersonal conversation material, the students have to concentrate to the teacher explanation about the material and also the ways to practice it. in reality, the seventh graders students of junior high school get some problems in learning interpersonal conversation. there are two common problems faced by the students in doing interpersonal conversation. first is they don’t know the expressions used for stating, asking, giving, and also responding to the conversation, and the second they also get confused in the turn taking, when their turn to ask/ state and when their turn to answer/ give responses. the fact that students in the seventh graders get difficulties in interpersonal conversation is experienced by the researcher while doing teaching practice in the smp it insan cendekia semarang. when the researcher asked the students to practice interpersonal conversation in pairs by the theme introducing to others, the students did not know who started the conversation first, what should be said at the first time, and what expressions must be used. by seeing these problems, the teachers should find other techniques in teaching interpersonal conversation. as we know that in speaking activities it will make the students always practice the conversation, so to make them practice the conversation easily, it will be better to place the students in a group work/ pairs work as elaborated by cooperative learning technique in which students learn the material in a group work. related to the difficulties faced by the students in interpersonal conversation, we need a cooperative technique which will make students really active and participate in the learning process as stated by slavin (1995) that cooperative learning is an instructional method in which students are put in small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning. due to the reasons above, the writer intended to carry out a research on the use of bamboo-dancing technique to improve the students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation. the objectives of this study are, the first to describe how bamboo dancing technique applied in teaching interpersonal conversation material, and linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 the second, to describe how the students’ improvement in their speaking skill after bamboo-dancing had been applied. method of investigation the writer uses action research in this study. action research defines as a systematic study that combines action and reflection with the intention of improving practiced (ebbutt 1985:156 in cohen 1994:297). action research means the researcher does his or her research by teaching real students in the real class, using steps which were designed by him or herself. besides, one of the characteristic of action research is problem solving oriented. then, wallace (1998) said that action research is different from this in that it nearly always arises from some specific problem or issue arising out of our professional practiced, but it is very problem focused in its approach and every practical in its intended out comes. it means that researcher should discover something if he or she finds one or more problems in the learning activity in the class. in this action research there were four phases in one cycle for doing classroom, there were planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (hopkin1985:50). research design which will be done in this study will be applying two cycles. each cycle consists of two meetings. then, each meeting consists of four activities; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting as hopkin to said above. it means that if the target was not achieved yet in cycle 1, the next cycle must be conducted after revising plan. continuing the definition of action research, here, i apply the four components; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting in each cycle. then, this research has two cycles. linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 the description will be drawn in graphic below: figure 3.1: design of classroom action research (adapted from kemmis and mctaggart in arikunto, 2006) a. planning in this step, the writer explains about what, why, when, where, and how the action will be done. in planning step of the study, the writer prepares everything that will be needed and used in the study. the writer prepares such as the lesson plan, teaching material, attendance list, observation guide, exercises, and also scoring technique (scoring sheet). b. acting this step is the implementation of the planning. this step must follow the plant hat had been planned in the planning steps. the writer as the teacher may do modification but may not deviate from the planning. in this study, the writer conducts 2 cycles which each cycle consists of 4 meetings. the writer used the same technique of teaching interpersonal conversation that is using bamboo dancing technique for those cycles, but as stated before that the writer had to do modification in it when the writer conduct cycle 2. it purposes to improve the students’ achievement. c. observing observing is execution of observation which is done by the observer. in this study, the person who acts as the observers is the real teacher of the subject study. the observer had to note what is happened when the writer does the action. d. reflecting in this step, the observer had to reflect the action which had been done to the writer who acts as the teacher in this action research. if the result of the first cycle is not good enough, the writer should do the second cycle. to support the research, the writer used questionnaire and test to gather the data. hopefully, this research could be linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 conducted well and could achieve the objective of this research. in this study, the researcher used random sampling technique. as stated by huck, cormier, and bounds that the accuracy of the researcher’s inference depends on how representative the sample is. thus, to make the sample more representatives, most researchers select the sample from the population randomly. in random sample, each member of population that you were sampling had an equal chance or probability of being selected as a subject. in this study, the researcher took one class from two classes that became the member of population. it is done by the researcher because the school had applied the randomization in students’ acceptance. the learning experience background of the students is different between one and other students since they were from many different elementary schools. from the explanation above, that is why the writer does not need to hold the random sampling again, and the writer is brave enough to choose the class 7a as the sample of this study. the first instrument in this study used by the writer is a test based on murcia (2001) said that perhaps the most difficult aspect of spoken english was that it was almost always accomplished via interaction with at least one other speaker. there were three tests which had been conducted during research; they were pretest, treatment i test/ cycle1 test, and post test. the pre-test given by giving the researcher made some oral test; they were interaction test and comprehension test about interpersonal conversation. after doing pre-test, the writer did the cycle 1. in the end of cycle 1, students were given simple evaluation to check students’ improvement. the form of cycle 1 was the same with the pretest form. then the last test that had to be conducted was post-test. the form of posttest was just the same with pre-test and cycle 1 test. in this action research, the writer also used the second instrument that was observation guide as one of research instruments. the observation guide was filled by the writer to know the students’ behavior changes as used in 2013 curriculum when they were taught before and after using bamboodancing technique in interpersonal conversation competence. results of the study then, the result of each test showed that there was a good improvement of students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation competence. then, the improvement of them could be seen in the chart below: linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 the average score of pretest was only 67. it showed that the average in pretest was lower than the criterion of the passing assessment of smp it insan cendekia semarang that had high criterion or kkm that is 75. in pretest, almost of them were still confused in doing interpersonal conversation, especially about what response to give and the turn taking. in detail, the writer also found that almost students of 7b did not have good grammar, proper pronunciation, good comprehension, vocabularies, and fluency in speaking. then, in cycle 1 the average score was 73. although it showed that the average was still lower than the criterion of the passing assessment of smp it insan cendekia semarang which is 75, the writer found that many of the students got improvement in speaking skill in this first cycle. they seemed more confident, more talk active, and more attractive in practicing the conversation. the students who got improvement could be seen for example c-1. in the pretest c-1 got 68,75 and in the cycle 1 got 81,25. the other example c-21 who got significance score from 62,5 to 81,25. even though, in the first cycle we had been able to see the students’ improvement, the writer still had a responsibility to make some of students who still got lower score than 75 to pass the kkm. the average score of post test was 79. it showed that the average had passed the passing assessment of smp it insan cendekia semarang which is 75. the improvement from cycle 1 to cycle 2 was 6,0 and there were eleven students got 75 and 14 students got 81,25, and even though only three students got the highest score 87,5. it was a good improvement, and the average score of them was considered to be successful, and the comparison m pretest: m post test = 67 : 79. then, it showed that the use of bamboo-dancing technique gave a good contribution to improve students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation especially about spoken introduction, greeting and leave taking, and also apologizing material. the result of the post test also showed that using bamboo-dancing technique in teaching interpersonal conversation gave many good impacts. first, english speaking class being attractive, interesting, fun, and not boring. second, the students got easy to memorize and 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 pretest cycle 1 cycle 2 linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 understand the expressions used and the turn taking. third, the students seemed more active, more confidence, and attractive in practicing interpersonal conversation with their friends. test was not the only proof to say that the use of bamboodancing technique improved students’ speaking skill. there were also observation guides in this study. the observation guide (to know students’ learning behavior) showed that the students’ behavior from pretest, cycle 1, and post test had improved well. in pretest, the writer still found so many students were busy by themselves. most of them did not pay attention to the teacher when explained the materials, and friends who performed the dialog. in cycle 1 the students were more respect to the teacher and friends. the students liked to pay attention when the writer explained the material. then, when the writer asked them to practice the expression using bamboodancing technique they were very enthusiastic. not only improved their respect, applying bamboodancing technique in interpersonal conversation also improved their confidence, honesty, and responsibility. the improvement of students’ behavior changes also appeared in the cycle 2. in cycle 2, all students seemed to be nice and good students. they always paid attention to the teacher when the teacher explained the materials, they always did the task very well and on time, and they were much more active in questioning, active in answering questions, and confident in performing dialog in front of the class. the other proof which showed that using of bamboo-dancing technique in teaching interpersonal conversation gave a good contribution in interpersonal conversation competence was the result of questionnaire that was filled by the students as the subject of the study. this questionnaire had 8 questions based on certain categories; they were about students’ interest, the advantage of using bamboo-dancing technique in teaching leaning process, students’ motivation, the relevancy of using bamboodancing technique in teaching interpersonal conversation, and its sustainability. then, the result showed that the students thought that the use of bamboo-dancing technique in teaching learning process helped them very much. based on the result above, the writer concluded that the improvement of the students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversations not only proved by the result of the test, but also proved by the result of the observation guide that was done by the writer, and the result of the questionnaire. in short, the writer concluded that bamboo-dancing technique really gave a good contribution to improve students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation competence; besides, it also changed the students’ learning behavior to be better. conclussion then, the aim of this study was to investigate the use of bamboo-dancing technique in improving students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation at seventh grade students of smp it insan cendekia semarang. the students’ achievement could be seen from the analysis in the test including pre test, cycle 1 test, and post test. the result showed that the implementation of bamboo-dancing technique could improve students’ speaking skill, especially in interpersonal conversation competence. the students’ improvement in speaking skill is including some aspect of speaking (pronunciation, fluency, grammar, and vocabularies). the mean of students’ score from pre test to cycle 1 test was improved from 67 to 73. the next improvement was showed by the mean of the student’s result from cycle 1 to post test, which is 73 to 79. both cycles showed good result and positive progress which indicated that bamboo-dancing technique improved very much students’ speaking skill in interpersonal conversation competence at seventh grade students in smp it insan cendekia semarang. and the last aim of this study was to investigate the students’ learning behaviour before and after bamboo-dancing technique was linna endah nur wahyuni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 8 implemented. the first evidence could be seen from the questionnaire. from the questionnaire, the students showed what being expected in this study. based on the questionnaire, it showed that, the students’ interest in learning english was improved, bamboo-dancing technique improved the students’ motivation in learning interpersonal conversation materials, the use of bamboodancing technique helped the students very much to improve their interpersonal conversation, students felt many differences in their speaking ability before and after bamboo-dancing technique had been implemented, the technique was very important to the students so that they wanted it to be done continuously. second evidence, students’ behaviour changes was showed by the observation guide. students’ learning behaviour had been changed from pre test to cycle 1, and from cycle 1 to cycle 2/ posttest. the students’ behaviour had changed including their honesty, discipline, responsibility, and also their confidence. in pre test most of the students got c in their behaviour score, and in cycle 1, most of them improved their attitude in b score. not only in cycle 1, in cycle 2/ post test, students also showed their behaviour improvement from b to a score. the students’ behaviour improvement was concluded very good improvement. bibliography arikunto, suharsimi. 2006. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: pt asdi mahasatya. brown, h. douglas. 2001. teaching by principle: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (second edition). new york: longman. paul, d. 2007. teaching english to children in asia. hong kong: pearson education asia limited. bailey. 2005. practical english language teaching speaking. new york: mc. graw hill. design of classroom action research (adapted from kemmis and mctaggart in arikunto, 2006) suprijono.2009. cooperative learning. yogyakarta: pustaka bealajar. hopkins, d. 1985. a teachers guide to classroom research. philadelpia: open university press. brown, h. douglas. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. united states of america: pearson education, inc. celce, m dan murcia. 2001. teaching english as a second or foreign language (3rd ed). united states of america: heinle & heinle, a division of thomson, inc. http://pubs.cde.ca.gov/tcsii/documentlibrary/charac teristicsmg.aspx (accessed on 10 september 2014) http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/techni ques.html (accessed on 11 september 2014) http://area.dgidc.minedu.pt/gramatica/whatspeakingis.htm (accessed on 11 september 2014) http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/spe ak.html (accessed on 11 september 2014) florez.1999. improving adult english language learners’ speaking skill. eric diget.in http://www.ericdigests.org/20003/adult.htmf (accessed on 11 september 2014) normayulita, a.n. 2011. the use of puppets as media in teaching transactional and interpersonal conversation ( an action research at the eight graders of smp negeri 1 slawi in the academic year of 2010 / 2011 ). maharani, lutfiana tyas. 2014. improving students’ skill in writing descriptive text by using four square writing method (a classroom action research at grade viii students of smp negeri 1 alian in the academic year of 2014/2015). putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 1 elt forum 11(1) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt investigating the use of youtube as virtual teaching medium in elt among nonenglish students aprilian ria adisti1 1iain salatiga, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 29 july 2021 approved on 28 january 2022 published on 30 march 2022 ________________ keywords: youtube; medium; elt; non-english students ____________________ abstract ________________________________________________________________ since the covid-19 pandemic came up suddenly to this world, everything takes a drastic turn. the ministry of education and culture republic of indonesia reacted to this issue by making an online learning policy number 3 of 2020 on prevention of covid-19 in the education unit. many education institutions adopted this policy by creating online tools such as youtube as a resource of transition from face-toface learning to virtual learning since it is seen as a popular medium used in online classes. this research investigates the use of youtube as a medium in the english 1 course for non-english students at one of state islamic university in salatiga. youtube is an online learning platform that enables lecturers and students to upload, view, share, and even interact through the comments column in the learning videos. a descriptive qualitative method is used to achieve the objective of the research, which involved three classes from the early childhood islamic education study program, the islamic elementary school study program, and the islamic religious education study program as the objects in this research. the researcher limits the content of youtube from the channel "ar," while the materials are about degree of comparison and collocation. students' responses from those three classes in the youtube column have been analyzed to investigate the findings. the finding shows that youtube brings a good impact on non-english students in elt. this finding is supported by the result of the analysis answer sheet of the quiz from students, the survey on students’ perception, and other comments about the materials on the youtube comment column. finally, it can be concluded that youtube can be an effective virtual teaching medium in elt among non-english students at iain salatiga based on the result of survey by respondents.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 kampus 3 iain salatiga, ftik jalan lingkar selatan salatiga km 02, salatiga e-mail: aprilian@iainsalatiga.ac.id http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 2 introduction since the covid-19 pandemic came up suddenly to this world, everything takes a drastic turn. the impact of this pandemic is drastically changing the lives of people around the world. schools and universities must be closed. this situation, of course, made many universities have turned to remoteness learning as a means of continuing the teaching and learning process (amiruddin et al., 2021). the ministry of education and culture republic of indonesia reacted to this issue by making an online learning policy in the education sector. many education institutions adopted this policy. one adaptation is creating online tools as a resource of transition from face-to-face learning to virtual learning. online learning means distance education, where the learning is intentionally designed to be delivered fully online through the internet. unlike face-to-face learning, online learning builds a new perspective that teachers face the challenge of being a creator, a presenter, and a guide in the classroom (gjelaj et al., 2020). the school will use strategies to give instruction, deliver the material, create learning media, engage students, and create assessments specific to learning in a virtual environment. furthermore, online learning in this pandemic era influences the english students' proficiency level since it limits the interaction between teachers and students (astia & yunianti, 2020). then, of course, it will also bring effect to their motivation in learning english. meanwhile, one of the challenges in this pandemic is a readiness to change. the students have problems with wifi, hotspot, and distancing learning (armstrong-mensah et al., 2020). unicef has surveyed on may 18-29, 2020, and 5-8 june 2020 in 34 provinces in indonesia showed that as many as 66% of 60 million students at different levels of education in 34 provinces said they were unhappy studying at home during the covid-19 pandemic due to lack of guidance from teachers. hence, in this pandemic, teachers should face and adapt effectively to the new situation in which some problems commonly happen. on the contrary, one of the positive impacts of this situation is an opportunity to rethink how digital technologies can be used as valuable media to support the teaching and learning process (dennis, 2021). teachers should be familiar with digital technologies as the media in delivering the lessons so that online learning goals can be achieved well. english learning teaching at one f state islamic university in salatiga during the pandemic era also transitioned from offline learning to online learning. this fact also has an impact on all lecture activities that cannot be done face-to-face. consequently, lecturers must use digital media to support online learning success for students (alchamdani et al., 2020). for example, in the degree of comparison and collocation material, learning is carried out using youtube medium. those materials are part of the english 1 course. this course is taken by all teacher training and education faculty students in the first semester, both english and non-english majors. there are three non-english classes students in the academic year 2020/2021 taking this course: the early childhood islamic education study program, the islamic elementary school study program study program, and the islamic religious education study program. therefore, this research investigates how effective is youtube as a virtual medium in english 1 course according to non-english students at one of state islamic university in salatiga? some research revealed the use of youtube in the teaching and learning process. the study from shafwati et al. (2021), watkins and wilkins (2011), puspa (2016), and medoukali (2015) claimed that the use of youtube videos can give improvement towards students’ listening skills. these previous studies exposed that youtube provides both audio and visual to the students and allows them to figure out the speech or words they have heard from the youtube videos. then, the study from prastiyo et al. (2018) entitled “development of youtube integrated google classroombased e-learning media” showed that students who use the youtube integrated google classroom based e-learning media get significantly better achievement than students who use the internet to access the website without control. another research entitled “investigating the effectiveness of youtube as a learning tool among efl students at baghdad university” from abbas & qassim (2020) exposed that youtube has a significant impact on the learning process as the students will find the educational environment more encouraging and exciting. furthermore, the study from nasution (2019) entitled “youtube as a media in english language teaching (elt) context: teaching procedure text” showed that youttube helps reduce cognitive load on learners and appeals to multiple learning styles. in addition, the study entitled “the use of youtube video in teaching english for foreign language at vocational high school” from cahyana (2020) revealed that the students have a favorable opinion about the improvement aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 3 obtained in learning english. they argue that the implementation of youtube can decrease monotonous teaching and increase motivation in learning english. this study has a novelty compared to previous studies because this study analyzes youtube as a virtual medium for delivering english 1 course for three classes of non-english students at iain salatiga. actually, social media is also part of the new technology in digital media that becomes our daily lives. they can be integrated into english language teaching more naturally than ever, given how many students fit and are attuned. each social media platform offers many different ways to use it in the classroom. some of the most popular platforms in social media are youtube, facebook (and its associated facebook messenger), tiktok, wechat, instagram, twitter, telegram, whatsapp, line, snapchat, and more (voorveld et al., 2018; alhabash & ma, 2017). those social media platforms can be taken advantage of as learning tools in the classroom from the primary until university level. however, youtube is the most popular social media in indonesia today. youtube is mainly an online learning platform that offers dynamic opportunities because it allows the lecturer and students to upload, view, share, and even interact through the comments column in the learning videos (prastiyo et al., 2018). youtube allows the flexibility to learn procedurally, so the students can enjoy learning wherever they are. youtube is an effective medium because we can find many videos that can support us while teaching in a class (heriyanto, 2015; albantani & madkur, 2017; almurashi, 2016). this media can also increase students’ understanding of the material by watching the educational video uploaded on the youtube channel. furthermore, burke and snyder (2008) strengthen that students who watch learning videos on youtube will get a better understanding of the subject matter. in addition, youtube has the potential as a learning medium in digital era. there are some benefits of using youtube for english language teaching. kim and kim (2021) claimed that youtube could help expand students' perspectives on cross-cultural understanding. the use of youtube as a learning medium also encourages students to academic pursuits and engagement while studying abroad since youtube offers content that provides knowledge and skills materials in learning english. moreover, it enhances the students’ knowledge of english as a global language in the world by taking ownership. furthermore, youtube plays an essential role in supporting international students’ who study abroad for their academic and social progress in the transitional phase from their home to host countries. hence, youtube as one social media could be an alternative learning medium during the pandemic covid-19 era for effective multilingual and multicultural education. meanwhile, nofrika (2019) argued that youtube brings six advantages in enhancing learners’ english competencies, such as; giving flexibility and practicality for learners in the aspect of accessibility, helping the learners to learn and understand the topics, providing fun videos of learning, facilitating the learners especially for macro practice, encouraging the learners to improve their vocabulary, and providing the interaction in a real-life context. on the contrary, youtube also has the negative side as a learning medium. in accessing youtube, it is needed stable internet connection, so many students will look for wifi or mobile data to access it (gracella & rahman nur, 2020). the user of youtube should also consider which channel can be used as the reference in learning since the validity of video sources is not always guaranteed. some of the youtubers do not give the sources of the information on their videos. moreover, students have become addicted and engrossed in using youtube lately. therefore, it is crucial to investigate youtube, especially in learning english, to find out the impact on students. methods this research applied a descriptive qualitative research design. this research design has the goal of describing a phenomenon and its characteristics of something. furthermore, the descriptive qualitative research design is concerned with what happened rather than investigate how or why something happened (nassaji, 2015). in this study, observation and survey tools were used to gather data. in addition, qualitative research is more holistic. this research design often involves a rich collection of data from numerous sources to gain a deeper understanding of individual participants, including their beliefs, perspectives, attitudes, and opinions (ryan et al., 2009). this study involved three classes from the early childhood islamic education study program, the islamic elementary school study program, and the islamic religious education study program as the objects in this aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 4 research to get their deeper perspectives and opinions on the use of youtube as a medium in the english 1 course. additionally, this study limited the content of youtube from the channel "ar," while the materials were about degree of comparison and collocation. then, students' responses from those three classes in the youtube column and the perception of using youtube as their learning media had been analyzed to investigate the findings. systematically, the steps of the research also stated in figure 1 as follows: figure 1. the steps in conducting the research doing observation was the first step in conducting this study. this step did to get the information about using the medium in teaching the english 1 course for non-english students at teaching training and education faculty of state islamic university in salatiga. not only the medium of english language teaching but the materials also were investigated. the result showed that one of the media used in english language teaching for non-english students at teaching training and education faculty of one of state islamic university in salatiga is using youtube. then, it was also known that the materials for the english 1 course in the 2020/2021 academic year at the first semester were the degree of comparison and collocation. the second step in this study is doing field research. at this stage, an investigation was conducted to highlight the impact of using youtube on non-english students in english language teaching by analyzing the answer sheet of the quiz from students, students’ perception and others comment about the materials on the youtube comment column. the researcher limited analyzing comments on the youtube channel to only 3 classes who were respondents in this study. the observation process was carried out for 2 weeks with 2 different materials to obtain data that would be analyzed in the next process. after doing field research to get the findings, then the data have been collected and interpreted. the analysis was carried out by looking at the comments in the youtube column from the three classes who were respondents in this study. the analysis focused on the answers of the respondents and their comments on youtube. furthermore, to increase the credibility and validity of research findings, the researcher did theoretical triangulation by combining theories, methods, or observers in a research study. finally, creating a research report is the last step after the findings have been analyzed. findings and discussion the implementation of youtube as a medium in english language teaching the english language teaching for non-english students requires more effort than teaching for english students. in the english 1 course, two materials are delivered through youtube as a medium for lecturers to explain the material. three sub-topics are taught in the degrees of comparison material, namely positive, comparative, and superlative. based on the observations in the youtube video, the lecturer explained the theory first about degrees of comparison. then, to strengthen the explanation, the lecturer gave related examples of sentences about degrees of comparison through pictures. the lecturer also explained five different types of conditions that could explain the degrees of comparison, including consisting of 1 syllable, ends with -y, a vocal between consonants, consisting of 2 or more syllables, and irregular patterns. moreover, after explaining the theory and examples of degrees of comparison, the lecturer continued by giving examples of practice questions related to the material. not only giving examples, but the lecturer also provides a discussion on the examples of quiz that has been given. at the end of the video, the lecturer instructed students to create five sample sentences on degrees of comparison, posted in the youtube comments column at the appointed time. the total duration of the video is 14 minutes 45 seconds. creating research report doing observation doing field research interpreting the fact (field data) aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 5 after observing the elt video, this research analyzed students' answers in the youtube comments column. the investigation found that students from the three non-english study programs could distinguish degrees of comparison in a sentence. furthermore, students could also construct five sentences correctly according to the instructions given by the lecturer through youtube videos. however, some students still have difficulty distinguishing the degrees of comparison, and only a few from each class. below is an example of a video that has been uploaded and responded to by students in figure 2. figure 2. the screenshot of the youtube video on the other hand, the following video analyzed contains material about collocation. this video explains the meaning, pronounce, and use of collocation in the sentences. in this video, the lecturer explained some collocations and idioms such as; cope with, succeed in, look for, supposed to, leave something up to someone, rely on, hang out, in touch, and many others. in the end, the lecturer instructed the students to write five sentences containing collocations and idioms and their meanings. furthermore, after observing the video, this research analyzed students' answers in the youtube comments column. the investigation found that students from the three non-english study programs did the instruction very well. they could write five sentences of collocation and idiom with the meaning correctly. however, there are some errors in writing the sentences for some students related to the grammatical. figure 3 is an example of a video that has been uploaded and responded to by students in figure 3. the result of students’ perception on youtube in order to find out the perception of non-english students about english language teaching using youtube, a survey was conducted at the end of the semester. eight questions are given to students that consist of three options, agree, neutral and disagree. the survey results revealed that the students have a positive perception of the use of youtube as an elt medium. the survey on students’ perception of using youtube as a virtual medium in english 1 course is showed in figure 4. aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 6 figure 3. the screenshot of the youtube video 80% 7% 13% agree neutral disagree figure 4. percentage of students’ perception the diagram showed that 80% students agree that youtube videos significantly improve their understanding of the material degrees of comparison and collocation. only 13% students disagree, and 7% students are neutral to this. this finding also was in line with the study from (watkins & wilkins, 2011; gracella & rahman nur, 2020; abbas & qassim (2020) who exposed the significant impact of youtube towards encouraging students’ motivation in learning english. the result of virtual observation showed that videos of degres of comparison and collocation materials via youtube were very useful in building a learning atmosphere in elt online classes. this learning video was also more significant in increasing student participation when compared to using other types of media such as text-based learning media. the use of english videos through youtube could improve students' critical thinking skills. this video also allowed students to see real and more realistic learning objects. learning english through youtube could support learning effectiveness because it almost had the same instructions as face-to-face learning. furthermore, the availability of this learning video could be watched everytime by students. this is certainly more effective than traditional learning where all the information center and control of information delivery were only on the teacher. moreover, the result of the perception survey of 105 students were also triangulated through the youtube comments column to strengthen the survey results. based on the oservations, it showed that the students' comments have a positive tendency towards the videos posted about the theme of the related material. students are engaged in this learning material. this fact can be aprilian ria adisti | elt forum 11(1) (2022) 7 analyzed from their participation during learning. they participated and wrote some questions; of course, it described the virtual interactions in this situation. youtube is one of the many social networking sites that are being widely used today. the use of youtube as an online medium in teaching english is an attempt to integrate technology into teaching activities. the results showed that the use of youtube in the elt class received a positive perception from the respondents. content on youtube allows students to view learning videos, download videos that can be shared with others and provide space to interact virtually through the comments column. in addition, based on the perception, respondents claim that youtube is a video-sharing service that makes it easier for them to understand the material in audio-visual form. therefore, this study highlighted that youtube as a virtual media has a good impact on non-english students learning the english 1 course at iain salatiga. conclusion in this pandemic era, mastery of technology is the most crucial foundation in the education sector. this fact strengthens that by mastering technology, the goal of online learning can be successfully realized. students can still learn through digital media wherever and whenever they want without interacting face-to-face with the lecturers in the classroom. youtube is considered one of the media with great potential to improve the quality of online learning, especially in english language learning for non-english students. this medium can create freedom of expression and add experience in improving students' ability to understand learning materials through video content uploaded on the youtube channel. the investigation revealed that youtube could motivate non-english students in english language teaching. this fact was obtained from the analysis results of the answer sheets and comments in the youtube comment column. these results indicate a positive attitude of students towards the use of this media. from the three classes, non-english students seemed to understand the explanations, instructions, and exercises given through an explanation video uploaded on youtube on the degrees of comparison and collocation material. however, some students are late in posting their assignments due to signal problems. furthermore, most of the students from those three classes also posted the answer sheets on the youtube comment column. they also got excellent results from doing assignments based on the explanation from the youtube video. some comments also showed students’ positive feelings during focusing on lecturer’s explanation on the video. the survey on students’ perception of using youtube as a virtual medium in elt showed that 80% students agree that youtube videos significantly improve their understanding of the material degrees of comparison and collocation. only 13% students disagree, and 7% students are neutral to this. this investigation concludes that youtube could be an effective virtual teaching medium in elt among non-english students at iain salatiga. as a recommendation for further researchers, it is better to add a variable that not only focuses on reviewing youtube use in elt classes and respondents' perceptions, but also changes the research methodology to measure the effectiveness of youtube use on learning achievement in efl classes for non-english students. references abbas, n. f., & qassim tabarek ali. 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(2011). using youtube in the efl classroom. language education in asia, 2(1), 113–119. https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/11/v2/i1/a09/watkins_wilkins 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt accuracy of english-indonesian scanlation of detective conan manga as compared to its japanese-indonesian translation vina darissurayya english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: accuracy, translation, manga, scanlation. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ popularity of scanlated manga urged me to do this research. there are three main problems in this study: (1) to find out how the accuracy of english-indonesia manga scanlation, (2) to find out differences between online manga (scanlated manga), and printed manga (indonesian officially published manga) and (3) to find out which more accurate between both compared to original japanese manga. at the end, i found that that although the scanlation of detective conan manga is accurate but the printed manga was more accurate. still, further research needed to analyze scanlation more detail. as readers of manga, we should be smarter by reading printed manga rather than online manga. this way we will get the better translation and also we can give our appreciation toward the author. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: vinadaris@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction in the era of technology, translation is no longer exclusively owned by professionals. people become more concern with translation even they can produce their own works despite the fact that they are not expert in that field. this situation results in the existence of ‘unofficial’ translators. they work voluntarily, or unpaid. the works they chosen are often fictional, like movies and comics. this phenomenon makes me interested in analyzing a translation product of ‘unofficial’ translators. the product here is a japanese comic; or better known as manga. mangas are popular culture throughout the world. a news article by richard susilo (2013) mentioned that in a television program, ntv sekai banzuke (world’s rank), indonesia placed 2nd for the biggest manga readers in the world. unfortunately, although the popularity of manga keeps increasing, the industry itself is suffering. the cause is piracy. the existence of ‘unofficial’ translators interferes official industry of manga because fans of manga can easily read their desired manga via internet. readers prefer reading manga online than buying it officially because of two reasons: (1) reading manga online is free of charge, so it is cheaper than buying it, (2) online manga releases manga faster than the one officially published. larson (1984) states, that translation is basically a change of forms. the forms here refer to surface structure of a language, parts which are observable by human senses. the steps of translation are reading the source text as well as comprehending it. without translators’ knowledge and understanding of the source text, it will not be possible to produce a good translation. in translating, translators will also face another problem called translatability, the possibility of certain text to be translated. still, translators can make some adjustment as long as he or she understands what the purpose of the text is (munday and hatim, 2014). translation is an important process of replacing and reproducing the messages from a text in a source language into a target language. the most important point of translation is finding the equivalence. the process of scanlation is almost the same as common translation. the following chart summarizes the complete process of scanlation (ratti, 2013: 49). chart 1 the modules of the scanlating process cleaning translating typesettingediting quality checking scanning content content vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 my early observation, it is rare for indonesian scanlation group to scanlate from original japanese mangas. they usually take the work from english scanlated version and translate it into bahasa. it happens because many translators in the group do not understand japanese, so it is difficult for them to translate from original version. this circumstance shows that indonesian scanlation group does not have direct connection with japanese. this situation raises doubts on the accuracy of the translation. that is why i want to know the quality of english-indonesian scanlation of a manga, in this case is meitantei conan (detective conan), by indonesian fans. then, i also want to compare this scanlation with the official published one in order to know where the differences occur. the last, i would like to know the quality of those differences if it is compared to the original japanese version. method this study is a qualitative descriptive research. in this study, i investigate the accuracy of english-indonesian detective conan manga scanlation as well as how if it is compared to official translation of japaneseindonesian. i also want to know which one is more accurate if compared to japanese version. the data consisted of three languages, japanese, english and, bahasa and only simple sentences were used. the result of the analysis will be described to answer the problems stated in question statements. the object of the study is a manga entitled detective conan which was written by gosho aoyama. i chose 3 chapters from the manga, chapter 809-chapter 811. the data were taken from the english scanlation chapter 809-811 were taken from http://mangafox.me/manga/detective_conan/. the indonesian scanlation chapter 809-811 were taken from http://mangaku.web.id/detectiv-conan-bahasaindonesia-terbaru/. the original japanese manga volume 77 was taken from http://rawcs.net/3084.html. the printed version was taken from “detective conan” volume 77 published by elex media komputindo, gramedia group. to analyse the accuracy, i used accuracy indicators proposed by nababan et. al 2012. there are 3 categories, accurate, less accurate and inaccurate. i asked help from lecturers from english department and japanese department to rate englishindonesia scanlation and japanese-indonesian translation respectively. here is the instrument: table 1 instrument to rate translation accuracy scale indicators result 3 the meaning of words, phrases and clauses from source language are translated accurately into target language; without any distortion. accurate translation 2 some meanings of words, phrases, and clauses have been accurately translated into target language. however, there exist some meaning distortions which disturb message unity. less translation 1 the meanings of words, phrases and clauses from source language are not translated accurately into target language. inaccurate translation vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 results and discussion 1. the accuracy analysis of englishindonesian scanlation of detective conan manga case of froth steam and smoke a. accurate translation the first assessor, english department lecturer, found 428 dialogues belonged to this accurate group. it was 72,8% from the whole data while the second rater found 428 accurate data. it was 72,8% from the total data found. the translator mostly used literal translation method and literal technique of translation. in this scanlation accurate translations mostly came into being because the source texts’ grammatical pattern was similar to target texts’ grammatical pattern like the examples below: st file 809 traces of having been in the room tt file 809 jejak pernah berada di ruangan bt file 809 traces of having been in the room the first example was the chapter’s title. as can be seen, the form of both source text and target text were similar. the translator did not need to adjust anything, he only translated the words and phrases according to its functions, like the way literal translation method was. in the first example, the translator also translated tenses of st (source text) by adding the word “pernah” to replace the present perfect tenses. st you sure have a lot of them… tt kau punya banyak, ya… bt you have a lot, don’t you… the source text contained impressed feeling of the speaker with the use of “sure”. the translator successfully conveyed this feeling by replacing “sure” into “ya” at the end of the sentence. in addition he also removed “them”, referred to the keys owned by mr. sodesaki, from the translation. here he did not only use literal technique but also compensation and reduction. if the translator only used literal technique the translation would be “kamu sungguh punya kunci banyak. (you really have many keys)”, readers would not be able to get the feeling of the speaker. b. less accurate translation the first assessor found that 6,4% of the dialogues in this study were not translated accurately. there were 38 data belonged to this category. in addition, the second rater found 39 data belonged to inaccurate translation. it was 6,6% from the whole text. here is one of the examples: st it’s not like i’m a kid after all… tt sepertinya aku bukan anak kecil… bt it seemed i am not a little kid… the translation above belonged to inaccurate translation. text actually had the purpose to show that the speaker’s strong argument stating that she was not a kid. however, it was translated into “it seemed i am not a little kid” which was not filled with confidence of the speaker. the target text will be accurate if it was translated into “lagipula aku kan bukan anak kecil”. if “sepertinya aku bukan anak kecil” was translated into english, it would be “it seems that i am not a kid.” the message was not the same as the one stated in the source text. c. inaccurate translation in this category, the first rater found about 38 data or 6.4%. not much different, the vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 second rate found 39 dialogues or 6.6% from the whole data belonged to this category. the following is the example: st it went out… tt tidak mau keluar… bt it didn’t want to come out… the sentence above was translated inaccurately. “it went out” in this context belonged to a cigarette. the speaker, mr. sodesaki, was desperate because his lit cigarette had gone out so it would be difficult for him to proof his alibi. if it was translated into “tidak mau keluar” or “it didn’t want to come out” readers will not be able to understand the meaning behind the dialogue. the appropriate translation should be “sudah mati”, which meant that the cigarette went out, “rokoknya sudah mati (the cigarette went out”. it will be more correct in indonesian language. 2. the differences found in comparing the scanlated version and the official version of detective conan manga the second research problem in this study was how the difference between englishindonesian scanlation and official japaneseindonesian translation of detective conan manga is. from the 586 dialogues found in the english-indonesian scanlation version of detective conan manga, i found 120 dialogues different from the official indonesian version of the manga, it was 20.5% in total. in order to make it easier in addressing the comparison, i will call scanlated version as “online manga” while the officially published version as “printed manga”. the differences found in the sentences’ form, meaning and word chosen. these are some discussion of those differences: om akulah yang akan mengirimmu ke kuburanmu terlebih dahulu. i will send you to your grave first pm akan kubuat kau merasakan pembalasanku i will make you get my revenge in the first example, the sentence was found in an e-mail sent by the victim before he passed away. this e-mail contained a challenge to its reader. the preceding sentence in this e-mail was “if you can kill me, come and try it”. the message found in online manga was that the sender (president katsumoto) swearing that he would kill the one who dare trying to kill him while the published version implied that the sender want to take a revenge to the reader if he/she dare to do something to them. although generally the purpose of the sentences was to threaten its reader but the sentences were too different. sending to grave in om (online manga) meant to kill, so before the e-mail target can kill him, president katsumoto promised that he will kill him first. on the other hand, the sentence’s implication in pm (published manga) was president katsumoto would take action if the e-mail target indeed killed him. the situations were not the same. om karena aku yang melupakan sesuatu, akukan bisa pulang sendiri dan mengambilnya sendiri since i was the one who forgot thing, i can go back alone and take it alone. pm biar aku sendiri yang mengambil barangku yang ketinggalan let me alone who take my left good. vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 the keywords for the first example were left, alone, go back. in om the sentence was longer than the pm version. the sentence on om described in the detail the condition of the speaker at that time. she explained the reason why she had to go back by herself. the second sentence did not explain her reason but only her purpose of going back. in addition the om sentence did not ask for permission while the pm gave asking permission vibe. that was why those sentences were considered different even though it had same keywords. 3. the accuracy analysis of scanlated version and official version differences compare to its original japanese version in the last research problems, fifty dialogues from printed manga were rated accurate while only 22 dialogues from online manga were given the same score. the differences were more than 50%. moreover, the percentage of accurate translation found in printed manga was 41.7 % from all data. there was only one datum that was given the same 3 score by both raters, data number 78. oj 高木刑事 眠そうだ ね．．． you look sleepy detective keiji, don’t you? the dialogue occurred was said by conan after he saw detective takagi yawning. in original japanese, the meaning of the sentence was that conan was wondering if detective takagi was sleepy. if we translate ” 眠そう” (nemusou) literally, it will be “look sleepy”. in printed manga or indonesian publish version, it was translated literally but in online manga it was translated as “tired”. it was similar to the english scanlated version. according to both raters ”眠そう” can also be translated into tired, since both can be expressed to describe the reasons of detective takagi’s yawn. that was why both translations were accurate. unfortunately, this was the only dialogue that was given same scores despite its difference. although some data from online manga were more accurate than printed manga, the sentences were not so natural. in the following example the online manga was more accurate than printed manga, the sentences in printed manga were more natural. oj 彼女の所属事務所の関係者って 事で参列したんだけどね．．． however we came as people related to that woman’s agency om kami hadir sebagai orang yang berhubungan dengan manajemen perusahaanya… we came as people related to her management company… pm kami mengambil tempat di barisan orang-orang di kantor agensinya… we took place in the row of people in her agency company om paman takagi kelelahan, ya? uncle takagi tired, don’t you? pm kak takagi ngantuk? are you sleepy brother takagi? vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 from the original japanese’s back translation it contained the information that the three suspects, mr. ogino, mr. sodesaki and ms. tsukihara, went to the actress’ funeral hiding their identities. they even pretended to be the people from actress’ agency. in online manga translation the word “agency” was changed into “management company”. although it was translated into different word, the purpose was still the same. both words referred to a company which managed the activities of actors and actresses. in addition, the information delivered by the online manga version was the same as the original japanese version. on the other hand, in printed version was a less accurate translation. even though the translation of “agency” was correctly used, the whole sentence did not deliver the same message as the original japanese version. the printed manga version only explained that the three suspects sat next to people from the actress’ agency without stating the fact they were pretending to hide the fact they worked for the magazine which pushed the actress to suicide. another example was an accurate datum from printed manga: oj でも、興味があるのは殺しではな く謎解きの方がですけどね．．． online manga but, i am more interested not in the murder, but to solve the mystery… pm tetapi aku lebih tertarik pada pemecahan misterinya, bukan pembunuhan but, i am more interested in mystery solving, not in the murder om tetapi daripada pembunuhan, minantku yang sesungguhnya terletak pada pemecahan teka-teki… but rather than murder, my real interest was in the puzzle soving… subaru told the sentence to haibara. he meant to tell her that in spite of his well knowledge about murder, he was not interested in it. he did it only for the sake of his interest in solving mystery. using almost similar grammatical patter, the translation from printed manga successfully conveyed that message, no omission or addition of information. on the other hand, the translation from online manga was less accurate. the reason lied on the use of “tekateki (puzzle)” to replace ”謎解き(nazotoki)” or “mystery” in english. even though “謎 (nazo)” can also mean riddle or puzzle, in this context it was not a good idea to use those word. it was because what subaru meant was not only a piece of riddle but the accumulation of hints that found in the scene to solve a case so “mystery” would be more appropriate. conclusions in conclusion, even though the translation of online manga which is translated from english is accurate it is still less accurate than printed manga. moreover, even some online manga data are more accurate than printed manga, the language used in printed manga is more natural. there is the possibility that the translator of printed manga takes some consideration into naturalness of the language so he makes some adjustment in the translation which decreases its accuracy. printed comic which is officially published and translated from the original japanese version have more accurate data than the online comic if it is compared to original japanese version. i also have some suggestions to give for anyone who wants to use this study. the first suggestion is to do further analysis to vina darissurayya / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 8 investigate the accuracy of japanese-english scanlation of detective conan manga. the second one is to do the same analysis but with more raters to check if there will be any difference from this one and also what kind of techniques used in the translation process. at the end, the writer would like to suggest manga readers buying the original published version of manga rather than reading it online since online comics have many inaccuracies which make the messages of the manga itself gone. by reading online manga, you show your disrespect toward the original author. acknowledgment this research can be completed well because of the amount of support from many people. i would like to express my biggest thank to dr. issy yuliasri, m.pd. who has provided me with careful input, guidance, and feedbacks. furthermore, thanks to drs. laurentius elyas nugraha, ma., and seful bahri, s.pd., m.pd., who are my first and second examiners, for the meaningful corrections and suggestions. my special honor expressed to all my lecturers of english department who had helped me in various ways. thanks also to my friends who accompanied me in many situations. bibliography gosho, a. 1994. detective conan volume 77. translated by m. 2014, jakarta: elex media komputindo. hatim, b and munday, j. 2004. translation: an advance resource book. routledge abingdon. larson, m.1984. meaning-based translation: a guide to cross-language equivalence. boston : university press of america. nababan, m. 2012. pengembangan model penilaian kualitas terjemahan. kajian linguistik dan sastra. pp. 39-57. availablet at https://www.google.co.id/url?sa=t&rct=j &q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja &uact=8&ved=0ccaqfjaa&url=https% 3a%2f%2fpublikasiilmiah.ums.ac.id%2f bitstream%2fhandle%2f123456789%2f22 20%2f4.%2520mangatur%2520nab aban.pdf%3fsequence%3d1&ei=aa5g vbpaxz26blrvgcag&usg=afqjcnf8s toxkx4bk2cwqqkzvwbqlu2n9q&sig2=p g3n6rrptmzwjhhyxwi9q&bvm=bv.92291466,d.c2e [accessed: 20/02/2015] richard, s. 2013. indonesia peringkat ke-2 pembaca manga terbanyak di dunia. available at http://www.tribunnews.com/lifestyle/201 3/11/29/indonesia-peringkat-ke-2pembaca-manga-terbanyak-di-dunia [accessed: 20/10/2014] s. ratti.2013. scanlators as producers fan participatory practice online: free and affective manga produsage and distribution. thesis department of informatics and media uppsala university. available at www.divaportal.se/smash/get/diva2:625476/full text01.pdf [accessed: 10/11/2014] attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42235f571fef • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt developing quartet card games for teaching vocabulary (a case of the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015) lutfiana ilma annisa rohani, s.pd., m.a. english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: quartet card games, vocabulary, teaching media development. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ vocabulary is an important aspect of language development. teaching vocabulary is getting crucial nowadays especially in junior high school. however, some english teachers cannot provide appropriate english teaching media. commonly some english teachers taught vocabulary in random topics. the vocabulary teaching media was less interesting. this study has three aims. first, to explain the problems of the english teacher and the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang. second, to explain the needs vocabulary of the english teacher and the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang. third, to show how to develop effective quartet card games to enrich vocabulary. there are two subjects of the research. first, the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. second, the english teacher of smp islam al madina semarang. r&d (research and development) approach was adopted in this study. the study revealed that the problem faced by the english teacher was lack of media for teaching vocabulary. the students were bored of vocabulary learning. the need analysis showed that the students needed various vocabulary items. the english teacher believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. through the process of drafting, trying out, and refining the quartet card games it was found that some cards contained ambiguities. to avoid any ambiguity check (√) and cross (x) signs were added to some cards. it is suggested that the teacher choose appropriate vocabulary teaching media. it is also suggested that further research is conducted to gain better understanding of the vocabulary teaching media. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 introduction according to hatch & brown (1995) vocabulary is the list of words that speakers of a particular language use. a language, like english, has millions vocabulary that rise time after time. people who want to learn it, moreover nonnatives, have to master its vocabulary first, especially basic vocabulary, like nouns, verbs for daily activity, and common adjectives emotion because it is impossible for one to master a language without knowing any vocabulary of it. moreover, the number of one’s vocabulary will impact his study speed of particular language. for a second language teacher, to make students understand vocabulary is a very basic lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 task in language teaching, but sometimes difficult in practice. there should be such creative techniques in vocabulary teaching to help teacher’s explanation. there are some tips to teach vocabulary as what have been suggested by marry slattery and jane willis (2001) as follows: a. make class displays of pictures and other memory aids to support new vocabulary. b. prepare to teach new words and phrases in a meaningful way by linking with a topic that the students are familiar with. c. show the students how to play vocabulary games and give instruction in english while doing the games. d. use lots of different games but use the same vocabulary to help the students become familiar with it. e. need new words and phrases to be used a lot after introducing them so that the students learn to use them actively. according to those vocabulary teaching tips, a language classroom basically needs teaching media that support the english teaching and learning. the observation result that was done in the smp islam al madina semarang shows that the school does not have any vocabulary teaching media which is actually very important to enrich the students vocabulary and support the english teaching and learning. the only vocabulary teaching media provided by the school are word cards made by the english teacher in which the number is very limited. however, the word cards are still less effective to be used during the teaching and learning process because of some problems: (1) the word cards are made manually using carton and board marker, so that they are less interesting, too fragile and have a high risk of typo. (2) the word cards are too small and are in random topics. (3) the word cards are often misused by some students. once they get bored in guessing the meaning of the words, they use the word cards to play improperly. hence, the writer is interested in developing teaching media to enrich junior high school students’ vocabulary called quartet card games which contains a lot of picture cards with various topics and fun games possibilities. this will enable the students to learn new vocabulary repeatedly without feeling bored quickly. besides, this teaching media will be designed to be played in group to make the vocabulary learning more effective. this game combines picture cards with a game. by using quartet card games, it is hoped that the teacher will be able to motivate the students to learn and pay attention to the material well. it can also avoid student’s feeling of boredom. the writer’s considerations are supported by the statements suggested by finocchiaro (1974: 163) who said that the students understand and retain better when they have been shown or have touched some objects associated with it. using a variety of media will increase the probability that students will learn more, retain better what they learn, and improve their performance of the skills they are expected to develop. quartet card games can be used as one of many teaching media in which students are given a chance to learn english more fun and they will be more motivated. moreover, the students will have more chance to learn the vocabulary actively at their leisure time. methods of investigation this study used r&d (research and development) as the research design since the objective of the study was to develop vocabulary teaching media. the product that was developed in this study was material object. the designed material was hardware. the material was designed to meet the educational need. the objective of the material was based on the standard competence and basic competence in the curriculum. subject of the study the subject of the study was the students of eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. instrument of the study lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 this study used two kinds of instrument which were questionnaire and interview. stage of media development in this study, the researcher use the model of development research from borg & gall (2003: 775), which has been simplified into a simpler model of development, and become the foundation for this research. basically, the model can be seen from the diagram below. data analysis techniques the data which had been collected gave us a series of scores. to make them valuable, they must be computed and analyzed by means of certain techniques in accordance with the method used. the data to be analyzed in this study were taken from the questionnaire (students, teacher and expert lecturers), interview (teacher) and test or try-out (students). the method of data analysis used in this research was the qualitative descriptive method. this was a procedure to solve the research problem by describing the condition of the object factually at the present time. the data have to fulfill the requirements of students’ need in using vocabulary teaching media and the evaluation concerning with the draft of quartet card games for the eighth grade students. the paired-samples t test was used to determine whether the media was quiet significant or not to be used as the vocabulary teaching media for junior high school students. results the problems of teacher and the students in the vocabulary teaching and learning this study consists of two main parts, they are research and development. the research was done by having an interview and need analysis from the english teacher and the students about the vocabulary teaching and learning in the eighth grade of junior high school. after doing the research, the next step was developing the vocabulary teaching media based on the research done before and having an assessment, try-out (limited testing) and revision towards the media. the interview towards the english teacher as the beginning research was conducted on january 6th, 2015. seeing this fact, the english teacher had an expectation that her students would have vocabulary teaching media which has good quality, easy to use, and fun to be played inside the classroom. therefore, a new form of vocabulary teaching media which can meet the expectation of both the english teacher and also the students is really necessary. the interview was also done towards the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang to support this research. the main problems were that the teacher was lack of such a development in using the vocabulary teaching media. the students were actually interested in every meeting of the english teaching and learning, especially at the moment of having lots of chances to enrich their vocabulary. however, they were usually obstructed by the condition in which they had to learn lots of vocabulary in random topics and also played the word cards in group. some of the group members usually played the word cards properly, but some others got bored easily then separated themselves and played the word cards improperly. the other probems are; 1) the word cards are made 58 lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 manually using carton and board marker, so that they are less interesting, too fragile and have a high risk of typo. 2) the word cards are too small and are in random topics. 3) the word cards are often misused by some students. once they get bored in guessing the meaning of the words, they use the word cards to play improperly. due to this condition, the goal of the vocabulary teaching and learning in which to enrich the students’ vocabulary could not be achieved successfully. hence, the research and development of new vocabulary teaching media is needed and appropriate to be effective used in the classroom during the english teaching and learning process. the product which was proposed in this study was quartet card games; a compilation of some popular vocabularies teaching media used to teach english to the junior high school students. the needs vocabulary of the english teacher and the students after finding some problems faced by the english teacher and the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina semarang in the vocabulary teaching and learning process, the research was continued by having a need analysis of the product towards the subjects of the study. it was conducted on january 13th, 2015. the results of the need analysis and the explanation were as follows (see appendix for the details): 1) the first question showed that 73.7% of the students wanted to have vocabulary teaching media likes quartet card games. 2) the second question showed that 52.6% of the students agreed that vocabulary teaching media would support the teaching and learning process. 3) the third question showed that 78.9% of the students wanted the various vocabularies teaching media, it is not only the vocabulary based on the english curriculum (syllabus) for the eighth grade students of junior high school, but also the other vocabularies. 4) the forth question showed that 73.7% of the students wanted to have an interesting vocabulary teaching media with bright colours. 5) the fifth question showed that 63.2% of the students liked a medium size card of vocabulary teaching media. 6) the sixth question showed that 84.2% of the students believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be completed with pictures which are appropriate with the vocabulary. 7) the seventh question showed that 57.9% of the students believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be categorized based on its topic. 8) the eighth question showed that 89.5% of the students agreed that ivory is the most appropriate material for the cards of the vocabulary teaching media. 9) the ninth question showed that 57.9% of the students agreed that quartet card games is an interesting game for teaching vocabulary. 10) the tenth question showed that 89.5% of the students expected that the vocabulary teaching media quartet card games would be a teaching media which supports the english teaching and learning process. meanwhile, the need analysis result of the english teacher of smp islam al madina semarang was quite the same. some different points were only in vocabulary used and appearance of the vocabulary teaching media. the teacher thought that it would be better to have various vocabularies at once in order to enrich the students’ vocabulary. moreover, she suggested that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. those differences could be solved by mixing those things in order to be varied and giving the portion appropriate with the need. overall the students and teacher had the same idea about the vocabulary teaching media to be developed; quartet card games. the development of effective quartet card games lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 there were some important steps in developing quartet card games as a vocabulary teaching media. this process needed to be done systematically in order to get the significant result of the product. the writer had conducted and supervised the process of developing quartet card games starting from analysing the purpose of english learning process until doing the product validation and revision, so that the product could be valid and credible to be used in learning and enriching vocabulary for the eighth grade students of junior high school. the way to develop quartet card games was by following some systematic steps. it was started by observing and interviewing the english teacher of smp islam al madina semarang, citra isna norlaili, s.pd. about the problem faced on teaching and learning process recently. it was conducted on january 6th, 2015. after doing that, the process was continued by planning the data collecting instrument of vocabulary teaching media. the main consideration was based on the english curriculum (syllabus) of the eighth grade students of junior high school. moreover, the data collecting instrument was arranged into two main parts which included the need analysis of the students and english teacher of smp islam al madina semarang. the need analysis contained some points to be considered by the subjects of the study. those points were as follows: 1) the media-display of quartet card games including the colour composition, font type, the size of the card, the shape of the card, colour arrangement, picture choice, and the meaning of the pictures. 2) the content of quartet card games including the content suitability, vocabulary choice, grammar, the ability to motivate the students, and the ability to encourage the students. 3) the teaching and learning process of quartet card games including the student-centered action, the students’ participation, and the interactive communication. the above points were also used in the assessment form of quartet card games prototype. it was just added with the point essay of suggestion from the reviewers to improve the quality of the media and also as the criticism to revise it in order to be better and qualified. the further step was designing the prototype of quartet card games as a vocabulary teaching media to enrich junior high school students’ vocabulary. the vocabulary was taken from many sources, for example dictionaries and internet. there were thirteen topics in the quartet card games. they were clothes, classroom, stationary, size, height, description, adverb, notice, notice 2, notice 3, holiday, hobby and daily activities. the development process was then followed by other steps; product validation, tryout (limited testing) and revision of quartet card games. this was to get the review from the english teacher of smp islam al madina semarang and expert lecturer as a subject of product validation of this media and also to know whether this media was appropriate or not for the students. they were asked to give the review by fulfilling the assessment form about the prototype of quartet card games. after doing so, the review was determined as the consideration to revise the media, so the prototype could be used by the junior high school students, if the prototype is already valid, as soon as possible during the english teaching and learning process. to make the explanation clearer, the following pictures were the examples of the designs of quartet card games. it was designed like that in order to be more attractive and able to represent the essence of quartet card games. the analysis of the use of quartet card games to get the significant responses from the eighth grade students of junior high school towards the use of quartet card games in lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 vocabulary teaching and learning, researcher held a limited testing in the form of try-out. the data obtained from the pre-test and post-test are valid to be analyzed by using paired-samples t test. from the data above, it showed that the degree of freedom (df) = 17 with the 95% confidence interval of the difference based on the t-table results in t=1.740 which is smaller than t=9.696. therefore, it could be concluded that the media had significant effect towards the learning process of the students and could be used as the vocabulary teaching media.. the researcher asked the expert lecturer and the english teacher to be the evaluators of quartet card games. the score range was one up to five (1 = very less/vl, 2 = less/l, 3 = enough/e, 4 = good/g, 5 = very good/vg). meanwhile, the average score range was one up to ten (1-2 = very less/vl, 3-4 = less/l, 5-6 = enough/e, 7-8 = good/g, 9-10 = very good/vg). the points were as follows. the assessment of media-display showed that the product of quartet card games had a very good quality in the points of colour composition, font type, size of the card, shape of the card, colour arrangement, picture choice, and the meaning of the pictures. the average score for this part of assessment was 8 (good). the assessment of content showed that the product of quartet card games had a good quality in the points of the content suitability, vocabulary choice, grammar, the ability to motivate the students, and the ability to encourage the students. the average score for this part of assessment was 9 (very good). the assessment of games showed that the product of quartet card games had a good quality in the points of the student-centered action, the students’ participation, and the interactive communication. the average score for this part of assessment was 9 (very good). regarding the validation and assessment from the teacher and expert lecturer and also the limited testing done by the students, the product of quartet card games is valid to be used as the teaching media for the eighth grade students of junior high school, especially in terms of vocabulary as the main concern in this research and development. conclusion based on the analysis, the researcher makes some conclusions. firstly, there were some problems faced by the teacher and the eighth grade students of smp islam al madina in the vocabulary teaching and learning process. the current vocabulary teaching media used by the teacher are somehow fragile and quite boring. hence, the research and development of new vocabulary teaching media is needed and appropriate to be used inside the classroom during the english teaching and learning process. secondly, there were some needs of vocabulary. the need analysis showed that the students needed various vocabulary items. the english teacher believed that the vocabulary teaching media should be interesting and colorful. through the process of drafting, trying out, and refining the quartet card games it was found that some cards contained ambiguities. to avoid any ambiguity check (√) and cross (x) signs were added to some cards. thirdly, there were important steps to develop quartet card games as a vocabulary teaching media. it started from analysing the purpose of english learning process until doing the product validation and revision, so that the product could be valid and credible to be used in the vocabulary teaching and learning for junior high school students. lastly, to get the significant responses from the eighth grade students towards the use of quartet card games in the vocabulary teaching and learning, the writer held a limited testing in lutfiana ilma annisa / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 the form of try-out. besides, the assessment was given by the teacher and expert lecturer. therefore, it can be concluded that quartet card games has a good prospect to be used in the vocabulary teaching and learning for junior high school students. from the result of the research, the writer would like to offer some suggestions to be considered by the english teacher and future researchers. firstly, the english teachers should be able to choose appropriate vocabulary teaching media to be used in the english teaching and learning process. secondly, the future researchers should conduct the better research and development of vocabulary teaching media to enrich junior high school students’ vocabulary by improving the games and expressions used in the vocabulary teaching and learning process. references arikunto, suharsimi. 2010. prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktek. jakarta: pt. rineka cipta. borg, walter r. & gall, meredith d. 1983. educational research an introduction. new york: longman. brown, douglas. 2004. language assessment: principle and classroom practices. san francisco: san francisco state university. dobbs, jeannine. 2001. using the board in the language classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. ersöz, aydan. 2000. six games for the efl/esl classroom. the internet tesl journal, [on-line serial]: retrieved on 13-june-2015, at url: http://iteslj.org/lessons/ersoz-games.html. finocchiaro, mary. 1974. english as a second language: from theory to practice. london: regents publishing company. gay, lorraine. r. 1981. educational research: competencies for analysis & application. columbus: charles e. merrill publishing co. hatch, evelyn & brown, cheryl. 1995. vocabulary, semantics and language education. cambrigde: cambridge university press. hornby, albert s. 1995. oxford advanced learners dictionary of current english. london: oxford university press. joklová, kateřina. 2009. using pictures in teaching vocabulary. bachelor’s thesis. department of english language and literature faculty of education masaryk university. lee, william w., & owens, diana l. 2000. multimedia-based instructional design. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. lodico, m.g., spaulding, d.t., & voegtle k.n. 2006. methods in educational research from theory to practice. san fransisco, usa: john wiley & son. piskozub sick, gry i. 1994. zahacoyw nauczaniu jezykow obcych, warsawa: wsw. richard-amato, patricia 1988. making it happen: interaction in the second language classroom. new york: longman. . slattery, mary & willis, jane. 2001. english for primary teachers. china: oxford university press. thornbury, scott. 2002. how to teach vocabulary. london: pearson education limited. e-book. wallace, michael j. 1982. teaching vocabulary. london: biddles ltd, guildford. webster, merriam. 1993. new international dictionary. new york: longman attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or 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id: 7fbf422278b5206d • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt an error analysis on the use of english articles in students’ written descriptive texts a case of class x mia 1 of sma n 1 binangun, cilacap in the academic year 2014/2015 sekar bayu swasti english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: error analysis, english articles, descriptive text. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study is a case study which investigates errors on the use of english articles. it is focused on the errors made by tenth grade students of sma n 1 binangun, cilacap in their written descriptive texts. the total of 32 students of class x mia 1 became the subjects of this study and they were asked to write descriptive texts. the object of this study was errors in using english articles which occurred in their texts. the data were analyzed based on ellis’s error analysis procedure and normalization formula by pica. the result of this study from the highest to the lowest exposed errors are: indefinite a/an-for-zero errors (61.51%), zero-for-indefinite a/an errors (22.19%), definite the-for-indefinite a/an substitution error (5%), definite the-forzero substitution error (4.65%), zero-for-definite the substitution error (4.41%), and indefinite a/an-for-definite the substitution error (2.23%). based on the result gained from this study, the dominant error exposed by the students is grammatical error (indefinite a/an-for-zero). this condition shows that the students find difficulties to differentiate between countable and non-countable nouns. it is suggested that the teacher give more attention to this problem and start to improve his attitude in teaching grammar. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction background of the study as a prospective teacher of english, i have many experiences regarding english teaching. one of the experiences was the moment i did my ppl (praktik pengalaman lapangan) in one of vocational schools in ungaran, semarang. based on the 2013 curriculum, the students are required to master listening, speaking, reading, and writing aspects using scientific approach. besides that, the students also have to learn grammar in order to construct a good sentence. the curriculum, which requires students to solve their own problems while teachers most likely serve as an advisor, makes the students get difficulties in learning grammar. it is because the students do not get explicit explanation about grammar. in addition, based on my observation in classes, the students also tend to get anxious when it comes to learning grammar. it is supported by mekhlafi and nagartman’s research about students’ attitude towards grammar. they said that ‘within the classroom, any mention of grammar causes the student moments of discomfort and sometimes even terror’ (mekhlafi and nagartman, 2011:69). their being anxious is mostly caused by their teachers who teach grammar strictly and the material which are commonly about memorizing rules. talking about grammar, the common specific problem faced by the students is applying english articles. english articles are based on definiteness and indefiniteness evidently on the texts in the use of ‘the’ as definite article, ‘a/an’ as indefinite article, and zero or no article. on the other hand, the article system of indonesian does not classify into definite and indefinite articles. it is only similar with english in the function of use as determiners (koesnosoebroto, in kusumaningrum 2011: 1). hence, the students easily make errors in applying english articles. the condition in which the students easily make errors in applying english articles is limited on my experience as a ppl teacher. therefore, i am interested in doing a research about analyzing english articles errors in different school. i would like to know whether the problem faced by my students in ppl school is also become a problem for the students from different school. reasons for choosing the topic the reason why i choose this topic is that english article system is one of the important parts of english grammar. it is mostly seen as a trivial aspect. yet, it is very important to learn. barret and chen (2011:2) conclude that the use of articles supports an understanding between the writer and reader; enabling the reader to locate where a noun or noun phrase is as well as identify if it is already understood. furthermore, they also mention that ‘english article involves the integration of semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical functions, as no one-to-one formfunction mapping exists for each article, creating a large number of rules for students to be mastered’ (barret and chen 2011:3). the are many proofs showing that article system of standard english is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of the grammar to acquire, especially by learners whose language does not have articles (butler 2002; geng 2010; han, chodorow & leacock 2006; huebner 1985; ko et al. 2008; master 1997; parish 1987; robertson, 2000; robinson 2010; thomas 1989; whitman 1974; and others can be found in guillemin 2013:1). however, the allocation of its teaching is limited. in fact, in textbooks, english article system is not explained clearly. mostly, english teachers in indonesia more focus on teaching certain english material to prepare their students facing the final examination rather than prepare them to master english communicatively. meanwhile, english articles are important in the matter of communication. thus, english articles are not taught clearly by the teacher so the students may not acquire it well and make errors on its application. moreover, i am afraid that this condition will lead them to the fossilization which is even more difficult for them to make correction. the perspectives which see english articles as unimportant aspects to be taught make me encouraged to do this research. i expect to change teachers’ attitude towards english articles. i believe by holding an error analysis on the use of sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 english articles will open up the fact that students do not acquire english article system completely. thus, the teachers will aware of it and make changes in their teaching techniques. methodology of the research to meet the objectives of the study, i apply the following methodology which is partitioned into seven sections: (1) subject of the study, (2) object of the study, (3) instruments for collecting data, (4) procedures of collecting data, (5) procedures of analyzing data, (6) triangulation, and (7) research design. the descriptions of them can be seen as follows: subject of the study the subjects of this study are 32 students of class x mia 1 of sma n 1 binangun, cilacap. this class was chosen based on the english teacher’s suggestion. he considered the students of class x mia 1 to be the most motivated students in learning english. as this study is a case study, the result is only applicable to the students of class x mia 1 and cannot be generalized to the other classes. object of the study this study focuses on the english articles errors. thus, the object of this study is errors in using english articles which occurred in the students’ written descriptive texts. instrument for collecting the data the instrument of this study is a writing test. students will work individually to write a descriptive text during the given time. in order to trigger the students’ idea, i suggested some topics. the students can choose one of the topics and start writing. procedures of collecting the data in order to collect the data efficiently, i firstly did an observation at the school. before holding the writing test, i met the students of class x mia 1 to explain about my research and their role as the subjects of it. i also discussed the proper time to do the writing tests. the writing test was held for 90 minutes and the students were given certain topics to ease them. they were ordered to write 15 sentences at minimum so there will be wider range to collect the data (english article error identification). procedures of analyzing the data the data gained were analyzed to eventually determine the article distribution as has been done by barrett and chen in their research toward taiwanese college students’ efl writing. in analyzing the data, i use the procedures of error analysis by ellis as follows: 1. identifying errors counting english articles errors in each of students’ composition. 2. describing errors after the total of english articles errors in each of students’ composition are identified, they are classified into their types of error. 3. explaining errors in this step, the identified english articles errors are analyzed based on their source of error. 4. evaluating errors the identified english articles errors gained from previous steps are put into table to show their distribution and analyzed to know what students’ difficulties based on the most exposed errors. triangulation in order to ensure the validity of the result, i use triangulation for checking my data analysis. triangulation is ‘a kind of checking technique of the validity which uses something else out of the data’ (moeloeng, 2004:330). there are four kinds of triangulation: 1. data triangulation is the use of a variety of data sources in a study. 2. investigator triangulation is the use of several different researchers or evaluators. 3. theory triangulation is the use of multiple perspectives to interpret a single set of data. methodological triangulation is the use of multiple methods to study a single problem. (denzin in kusumaningrum 2008:28) sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 in this research, i use the investigator triangulation for checking the error identification. thus, there will be a second investigator to identify errors made by the students. then, the identified english articles errors by the second investigator are compared with my identification as the first investigator. research design in order to eventually gain the data of students’ error in using english articles, a case study is conducted as it enables me focusing on the case deeply. this has been emphasized by yin (2009:56) that ‘case study investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident.’ a case study proposing that there is a ‘case’ which is an object of this study and should be ‘a complex functioning unit, investigated in its natural context with a multitude of methods, and contemporary’ (johansson, 2003:2). therefore, i am conducting this error analysis study by using a case study to get an exact result of the case (errors in using english articles). different important aspect of case study methodology is validation. it is important that the data gained is valid by triangulation. triangulation provides an important way of ensuring the validity of case study research. normally, data collection methods are triangulated (many methods are combined), but in addition to this, data sources, theory, or investigators might also be triangulated (denzin in johansson 2003:8). a case study will be the research method of this study. the problem being investigated is errors made by the students in using english article system. data analysis this chapter covers the analysis and the presentation of the data. they are divided into three subchapters (description of the data, analysis of the data, and triangulation) which are elaborated as follows: description of the data the data analyzed in this study were the english article errors found in the students’ descriptive texts. there were 32 texts from 32 students as the subjects of the research. after the data were identified, it was found that all of the subjects made errors in the use of english articles in their texts. the examples of their errors are as follows: 1. ade roswikasari (my friend) 2. ari okti n. (destry, my best friend) sentences correction destry is (…) good person. destry is a good person. she always becomes (…) number one in the class. she always becomes the number one in the class. she also has (…) pet. she also has a pet. the pet is (…) goat. the pet is a goat. and she has (…) hobby, the hobby is eating. and she has a hobby, the hobby is eating. she likes a violet color. she likes violet color. she has (…) favorite drink that is orange juice. she has a favorite drink that is orange juice. 3. gilar wildan a. (my house) sentences correction sentences correction my friend is a beautiful. my friend is beautiful. she is (…) student in one of smp she is a student in one of smp. she is the clever children. she is a clever student. and like annoying the some friends. and like annoying some friends. sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 i have (…) small house but comfortable. i have a small house but comfortable. my house has two bathrooms, four bedrooms, and two kitchens which one of it has (…) hanging cupboard. my house has two bathrooms, four bedrooms, and two kitchens which one of it has a hanging cupboard. my bathroom has (…) shower, (…) closet, and (…) bathtub. my bathroom has a shower, a closet, and a bathtub. the room that i very like is my bedroom and (…) garage. the room that i very like is my bedroom and the garage. 4. lenny riyanti (my idol) 5. tri r. (my sweet bird) sentences correction i have (…) sweet bird. i have a sweaty bird. it is (…) beautiful bird. it is a beautiful bird. it has green fur with the small motif in its wings. it has green fur with a small motif in its wings. it has small legs with (…) ring in it legs. it has small legs with a ring in it legs. it lives in (…) wonderful bird cage with the yellow color. it lives in a wonderful bird cage with yellow color. sometimes, i put the new food to it. sometimes, i put new food in it. note: in the sentences column, the ‘(…)’ symbol means that the students missed one article, and the italicized article means the student made error by applying that article. analysis of the data based on the procedure of data analysis by ellis as described in the previous chapters, the data which had been identified then were classified into the types of error. there are seven types of error found in the subjects’ composition as follows: indefinite ‘a/an’ for zero substitution: 90 errors this error was identified when the students used zero article instead of indefinite article ‘a/an’ as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence destry is good person, the student made an error by using zero article proceeding ‘good person’. the correct form should have been destry is a good person because destry is a name of a person and indicates a singular noun. therefore, in this case, the students who made this kind of error show a lack of understanding in grammatical aspect (differentiating singular and plural or countable and non-countable nouns). zero for indefinite ‘a/an’ substitution: 27 errors this error was identified when the students used indefinite ‘a/an’ article instead of zero article as the correct form in their sentences. sentences correction i have a idol, his name is justin drew bieber. i have an idol. his name is justin drew bieber. he has straight hair, white skin, and (…) tattoo in his back. he has straight hair, white skin, and a tattoo on his back. he is a idol for all people with such a beautiful voice. he is an idol for all people with such a beautiful voice. he has a idol which name is usher he has an idol whose name is usher. he was inspired to be (…) singer from usher. he was inspired to be a singer by usher. he thinks usher is a best singer in the world. he thinks usher is the best singer in the world. he has (…) favorite color, it is violet. he has a favorite color, it is violet. sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 for example: in the sentence my yard has a two big tree, the student made an error by using indefinite article ‘a’ proceeding two big tree. the correct form of this sentence should have been my yard has two big trees because ‘two big trees’ is a plural noun phrase and cannot be proceeded by indefinite article ‘a/an’. therefore, the students who commited this kind of error actually have the same problem as the students showing the first type of error (problem in differentiating singular and plural or count and non-count nouns). zero for definite ‘the’ substitution: 7 errors this error identified when the students used definite ‘the’ article instead of zero article as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence and like annoying the some friends, the student made an error by using definite article ‘the’ before the noun phrase ‘some friends’. the correct form of it should have been and like annoying some friends. this sentence is found in the text written by ade roswikasari (see description of the data) and classified as new information. thus, the use of definite article ‘the’ is wrong and the students who made the same error have semantic issue of specificity as they overuse the definite article ‘the’ in the specific environment. definite ‘the’ for zero substitution: 6 errors this error was identified when students used zero article instead of definite ‘the’ article as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence the room that i very like is my bedroom and garage, the student made an error by not using any articles proceeding ‘garage’. the correct form of the sentence should have been the room that i very like is my bedroom and the garage. this sentence is found in the text by gilar wildan a. (see description of the data) and ‘garage’ is classified as a specific information according to his references about his house which he had already talked about. thus, he had to use definite article ‘the’ before the word ‘garage’. the students who showed the same error have problem in pragmatic aspect as they cannot identify clearly the hearer knowledge of the np. definite ‘the’ for indefinite ‘a/an’ substitution: 4 errors this error was identified when students used indefinite ‘a/an’ article instead of definite ‘the’ article as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence he thinks usher is a best singer in the world, the student made error by using indefinite article ‘a’ before the noun phrase ‘best singer’ instead of definite article ‘the’. the correct form of this sentence should have been he thinks usher is the best singer in the world. this sentence is found in the text written by lenny riyanti (see description of the data) and np ‘best singer’ is considered as specific information and should be preceded by definite article ‘the’. the students showing the same error have semantic problem as they have difficulties to identify the specific reference of the np. indefinite ‘a/an’ for definite ‘the’ substitution: 3 errors this error was identified when students used definite ‘the’ article instead of indefinite ‘a/an’ article as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence it has green fur with the small motif in its wings, the student made an error by using definite article ‘the’ to modify the np ‘small motif’ instead of indefinite article ‘a’. the correct form should have been it has green fur with a small motif on its wing. this sentence is found in the text written by tri r. (see description of the data) and the np small motif is considered as new information in form of a singular noun. thus, she had to use indefinite article ‘a’. the students who commited the same error show a pragmatic difficulty of understanding the hearer knowledge aspect in the sentence. indefinite ‘a’ for indefinite ‘an’ substitution: 3 errors this error was identified when students used indefinite ‘an’ article instead of indefinite ‘a’ article as the correct form in their sentences. for example: in the sentence i have a idol, the student made an error by using indefinite article ‘a’ instead of indefinite article ’an’. the correct form should have been i have an idol. this sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 7 sentence is found in the text written by lenny riyanti (see description of the data) and included into the grammatical error. based on the types of error explained above, the result can be drawn into a diagram as follows: after the data were classified, i used a formula proposed by pica in order to accurately analyze the error distribution. in order to be accurate, the data identified from the students’ written descriptive texts, which obviously various in lengths, need to be normalized. according to pica (in barret and chen 2011:11) ‘in a longer text, there are more opportunities for errors to occur, so ‘normalization’ is a formula that adjusts the raw frequency counts so texts of different lengths can be compared.’ before the application of the normalization formula, the mean of the text length had to be counted first. mean = 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑠 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑠 the total words of the students’ descriptive texts were 3484 words from the total of 32 texts. based on the formula previously explained, the mean can be determined as follow: mean = 3484 32 thus, the mean of the text length is 109 words per text then, i analyzed the error distribution by using pica’s normalization formula as follows: n= 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑤 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑥𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ (pica, in barret and chen 2011:12). finally, the accurate error distribution for the average of 109 words per text can be explained as follows: article the zero indefinite ‘a/an’ fre q % fre q % freq % the 6.3 4. 65 6.78 5 indefi nite ‘a/an’ 3.0 2 2. 2 3 83. 32 61 .5 1 zero 5.9 7 4. 4 1 30.0 7 22.1 9 the table above is read from left to right. the vertical axis indicates the article being substituted while the horizontal one shows the article substitution. for example, reading the table from left to right indicates 4.65% the-for-zero substitution errors occurred. the highest errors which were exposed by the students are indefinite a/an-for-zero substitution (61.51%). the number of zero-for-the errors and a-for-the errors are low at 5.97% and 2.23%, respectively, indicating that the frequency of definite article overuse is low. however, it seemed that the students underuse definite article for the result of the-for-zero and thefor-a are 4.65% and 5% showing lack of understanding in term of specificity in using english articles. the result shows 61.51% indefinite a/an-for-zero errors, and 22.19% zero-forindefinite a/an errors as the highest exposed error in the students’ compositions. based on the result, the students exposed more grammatical errors than pragmatic and semantic ones. grammatical errors are due to noun countability in which the students must assign the indefinite article to singular nouns and zero article for plural or non-countable nouns. triangulation the result shown in this research had already been triangulated to ensure the validity of the data analysis. in this case, i used investigator triangulation in order to check the validity of the error identification in the students’ compositions. at first, i identified the english articles errors 0 20 40 60 80 100 a/an for zero zero for a/an zero for the the for zero the for a/an a/an for the a for an sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 8 found in the students’ compositions. then, the second investigator who was the english teacher of class x mia 1 (sunaryo, s.pd) also identified the english articles errors found in the texts. lastly, i compared my errors identification result to his result. the data which had been compared then discussed as there were some differences between mine and the second investigator. however, they cannot be shown in the appendices for they do not affect the data analysis. the exact data result shown in the data analysis and the appendices were yielded after the discussion between me and the second investigator about the differences in our findings. conclusions and suggestions conclusions the main objective of this study is to determine the students’ acquisition of the use of english article system in their written descriptive text. based on the data in chapter iv, it is clearly defined that the students of class x mia 1 did make errors on the use of english articles in their texts. based on the result, the dominant error, indefinite a/an-for-zero substitution error, indicates that the students are apt to make errors in using english articles grammatically because they cannot differentiate appropriately between count/non-count nouns. besides that, the students also made errors in using definite article which could be classified as errors regarding to the acquisition of pragmatic and semantic function of english article. although the percentages of the errors are low, it is still concerned the errors might be led to the fossilization. the dominant error which shows the low mastery in understanding the differences between count/non-count nouns could affect the students’ learning in other aspects besides english article system. as we know, count/non-count is one of basic grammar features which the students have to master. therefore, if they do not clearly understand it, they might find difficulties in learning other english features such as composing sentences referring to singular or plural nouns, unable to catch the meaning of noun with two meanings (count and uncountable), etc. suggestions after conducting the research and measuring the students’ capability on using english article system in written descriptive texts, i suggest they pay more attention to the teaching and learning activities especially regarding to grammar. it is also best for them to increase their study towards english article system. for the teacher, i suggest that he should give more explicit explanation about the use of english article system. the teacher has to note that there is no rule such count/non-count in bahasa indonesia as the students’ first language that might become their difficulty in properly using english article system based on its noun countability. furthermore, in order to follow up the teaching, the teacher should give more exercises to the students to improve their acquisition of english article system and give extra attention to the students who get low scores in their exercises and give them remedial teaching. the population of this study is limited to the tenth grade students of class x mia 1 of sma n 1 binangun, cilacap in the academic year 2014/2015. thus, it is suggested that an error analysis in the use of other english features can be conducted at other instutions. in the end, we can see how the acquisition level of the students in indonesia and give the best treatment to overcome their difficulties. hopefully, the suggestions can help the students, the teachers, and the researchers to minimize the errors in using english articles and the teaching learning process will show a better result than before. references arikunto, s. 2002. prosedur penelitian: suatu pendekatan praktis edisi revisi v. yogyakarta: rineka cipta. barret, edward neil & chen, li-mei. 2011. english articles errors in taiwanese college students’ efl writing. computational linguistics and sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 9 chinese language processing, vol. 16, no. 3-4 (pp 1-20). department of foreign languages and literature, national cheng kung university 2011. boardman, cynthia a, and fryendberg, jia. 2001. writing to communicate: paragraph and essays second edition. new york: pearson education inc. brown, h. douglas. 2000. the principles of language learning and teaching, the fourth edition. new jersey: prentice hall inc. burges, j, and etherington. 2002. focus on grammatical form: explicit or implicit?. system:30 433-458. diaz-bedmar, maria belen, and silvia papp. 2008. the use of the english article system by chiese and spanish learners. http://www.academia.edu/7740743/the_use _of_the_english_article_system_by_chinese_a nd_spanish_learners (april, 15 2015) ellis, rod. 1997. second language acquisition. new york: oxford university press. ellis, rod. 2003. the study of second language acquisition. new york: oxford. goto-butler, y. 2002. second language learners’ theories on the use of english articles: an anlaysis of the meta-linguistics knowledge used by japanese students in acquiring the english article system. studies in second language acquisition, 24 (3), 451-480. guella, hakima & viviane deprez & petra sleeman. 2008. article choice parameters in l2. in proceedings of the 9th generative approaches to second language acquisition conference (gasla 2007), ed. roumyana slabakova et al., 57-69. somerville, ma: cascadilla proceedings project. guillemin, diana. 2013. english articles. http://www.grammarmatters.com/link/choice_of_article/ (march 5, 2015) huang, joanna. 2002. error analysis in english teaching: a review of studies. http://www.lib.csghs.tp.edu.tw (april 14, 2014) ionin, t. 2003. article semantics in second language acquisition. phd dissertation, mit. distributed by mit working papers in linguistics. johansson, rolf. 2013. case study methodology. a key note speech at the international conference “methodologies in housing research” organised by the royal institute of technology in cooperation with the international association of people– environment studies, stockholm, 22–24 september 2003. khansir, ali akbar. 2012. error analysis and second language acquisition. theory and practice in language studies vol. 2 no.5 pp. 1029-1032. finland: academy publisher. ko, heejong, alex provic, tania ionin, and ken wexler. 2008. semantic universals and variation in l2 article choice. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/gasla/9/paper1 631.pdf (april, 15 2015) kusumaningrum, ratih ayu. 2008. an error analysis on using the definite and indefinte articles in written narrative text (a case of the eleventh grade students of sma n 1 kendal). skripsi. semarang: fakultas bahasa dan seni unnes. lamb, martin. 2011. dreams and realities: developing countries and the engliah language. uk: british council. lindita, kacani. 2014. grammatical mistakes of albanian students in learning english as foreign language. mediterranean journal of social science vol. 5 no. 19 pp. 323-329 mekhlafi, abdu mohammad, and nagaratnam. 2011. difficulties in teaching and learning grammar in an english as foreign language context. international journal of instruction vol. 4 no. 2 pp. 69-92. moleong, lexy j. 2004. metodologi penelitian kualitatif. bandung: pt. remaja rosda karya. oshima, alice, & ann hogue. 1999. writing academic english. new york: addison weasly longman. sekar bayu swasti / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 10 pawlak, m. 2012. error correction in the foreign classroom: reconsidering the issues. new york: springer. rattar, wazir ali, & muhammad dilshad. 2010. pedagogical grammar in second/foreign language teaching studying learners’ perceptions and beliefs about grammar. the s.u. jour. of ed. vol.40, issue 2010-11, pp. 17 30. rattar, wazir ali. pedagogical grammar in second or foreign language teaching;studying learners’ perception about grammar. http://www.academia.edu/6884946/pedagog ical_grammar_in_second_foreign_language_te aching_studying_learners_perceptions_and_be liefs_about_grammar (march, 5 2015) tambunan, debora & gusti astika. the use of articles in sma textbooks. 2012. english edu vol. 10, no. 2 pp. 167-181. widayani, tutik. 2008. error analysis on students’ punctuation in writing dialogue (a case study on the second year students of sltp n 1 duplang, blora in 2007/2008 academic year). skripsi. semarang: fakultas bahasa dan seni unnes. yin, robert. 2009. case study research: design and methods. london: thousand oaks. website source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/error+analy sis (april, 15 2015) attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions 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this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf422359922055 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42232aaf2007 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of instagram writing compared to teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation (the case of eight grade students in smp kesatrian 1 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016) gisty listiani english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: instagram writing, recount text, students with high and low motivation. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is based on a study which attempts to examine the effectiveness of instagram writing compared to teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation of smp kesatrian 1 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. this final project has several objectives; to measure how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with high motivation, to measure how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with low motivation, to measure how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with high motivation, to measure how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with low motivation and to measure how effective instagram writing is compared to teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. this study was conducted by using experimental research with 40 students participated. those students were divided into experimental and control group. the experimental group was taught writing recount text by using instagram as a teaching technique, whereas the control was taught by using teacher centered writing. results indicated that the final average score of experimental group was 73. meanwhile, the control group got a lower average score with 67.15. after calculating the significance of the test, the result of the t-value was 2.210 and ttable was 2.002. with regard to the previous results, it can be concluded that teaching recount text using instagram resulted a better achievement. besides, the t-value of the post test was higher than the critical value which meant that the difference was statistically significant. thus, the higher achievement of experimental group indicated that the use of instagram promoted a better understanding for students with high and low motivation which improved the quality of their writing. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction language has four skills to be mastered. the four skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. those four skills are linked to each other, but many students argue that writing is the most difficult skill to be mastered because of its complexity. however, students must realize the essential role of writing skill. writing is used when the spoken communication cannot be done in a certain situation. writing communicates our thought or ideas to be understood by someone else. thus, in order to get others’ understanding, students must convey their ideas in a good concept and arrangement. it includes the combination of grammar, diction, vocabulary, and also the imagination of the students to make a good writing. in line with this, heaton (1975: 127) stated that “writing is a task which involves the writers in manipulating words in grammatical correct sentences, those sentences in form of writing which successfully communicates the writer’s thoughts and ideas on certain topic.” in classroom practice, students tend to be unenthusiastic when they are given a command to write and many of them neglect the important role of writing skill due to its complexity. therefore, as a future teacher, i realize that the problem above must be solved immediately. i got some experiences related to the evaluation of writing skills when i took language administration assessment course in the sixth semester. that subject required me to observe how the teacher compose a test and how students did the test. in this case, my concern is how the students did the test in writing skill. when students were asked to do the multiple choice, there was no problem because they just chose one of the provided options that was right. however, the problem rose when students were asked to answer the essay by making a text that tells about their past experiences. when students were working on their writing, they seemed not understand the structure and the language feature of the recount text. in addition, students also lack of knowledge in using correct grammar and the way of arranging a good recount text. the experience showed that writing skill is still ignored. the reality of this present situation is that writing is not a main aspect in a test. a test tends to use multiple choice form than essay form to measure deep comprehension on the lesson. perhaps, this is one of the reasons why students are not trained to develop their thought, to express their ideas, or even to practice using correct grammar. thus, writing should be a habit. students sould be taught to write something. they can open up their mind by writing, convey their opinion about something, or just tell the readers what they have experienced. the medium must be able to create fun situation in writing class. the point is, if teachers can develop writing as students’ habitual activity, students can find many interesting things inside their writing. to support this goal, i will use social media as a medium because it will provide several supporting aspects to enhance student’s writing ability. students need such a technology to mantain their attention during the lesson. according to mcgraw-hill, president of higher education, brian kibby, "studying effectively – and with the right type of technology – is one of the best ways to ensure that students succeed in class; however, focus is the key!” (belardi, 2013). therefore, instagram can be the solution to help students working on recount text. instagram is a social network based on sharing pictures and fifteen-second videos which can be posted to other social media sites. students can upload a picture, fill the caption (a description of the picture) in unlimited provided spaces, and give comment to others’ pictures. in addition, there will be a written communication between one student and the others in a limited topic based on the picture uploaded. starting from this point hopefully the combination between instagram and a good atmosphere of teaching learning process can lead students to the development of their motivation and their ability in writing recount text. gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 review of related literature there are a number of researchers who conducted the study concerned the method of teaching recount text. the first belongs to giyatno (2011) who conducted a study entitled improving students’ writing skill on recount text using questioning technique and facebook media. the objectives of the study are to identify to what extent questioning technique and facebook media improve the students’ writing skill on recount text and to describe the impovement of classroom situation of the students’ activities in the process of teaching and learning on recount text. the findings showed that the program of improving students’ writing skill using questioning technique and facebook media was successfull viewed from some dimensions: (1) the improvement of structure and vocabulary, (2) the improvement of organizing ideas, and (3) the improvement of using punctuation. then, the findings revealed that the classroom situation was also getting improved. then, a study was conducted by helmi (2012) entitled improving students skill in writing recount text by using personal letter. the objective of the study described the improvement of students’ writing skill after being taught by using a personal letter. the result showed that there was a significance differences between the test result during pre-cycle, cycle i, and cycle ii. students’ score in the pre-cycle test was 55.5, in the cycle i test was 65.7 and in the cycle ii test was 72.2. in line with this, the researcher concluded that the medium was very effective and useful to improve students’ skill in writing recount text. furthermore, the personal letter was also in good design and good theme, so students are more motivated and enjoyed in the learning process. another literature related to the use of instagram writing to teach recount text is a study conducted by indah (2010) in her thesis entitled improving writing recount text by using photographs. the findings of this study explained that photographs were able to improve the students’ ability in writing recount text because students got more motivation to develop their ideas, feeling, and opinion. besides, students were more interested in teaching learning process using photographs than using a conventional method, so that it affected the situation of the classroom to be more fun. some statements related to the use of teacher centered learning in language class were added by zohrabi, ali, and baybourdiani (2012) in their journal entitled teacher-centered and/or student-centered learning: english language in iran. the findings obtained in their research supported the implementation of teacher-centered process for the purpose of developing grammar learning in iranian efl learners. the data generated by this study suggested that implementing studentcentered activities within a communicative domain would be interesting to both teachers and learners, but could not fulfill the learners’ needs on english education in both communicative and traditional learning. tcl’s results in pre-test were low in comparison to scl, but there was a steady increase in post-test. motivation in learning english learning a new language is not an easy thing. it is necessary for students to have such motivation to maintain their interest in the process of understanding. the role of their family and school teacher will be so important to keep students’ motivation high. based on some researchers’ definition, there are some factors which affect the motivation of students in learning english as a foreign language such as parental involvement, teachers, classroom environment, and peers. in discussing the relation of motivation to second-language learning, nida (1956:16) argued that “motivation” should be conceptualized in terms of an interest in learning particular linguistic skills for specific purposes. he concluded that there are “two fundamental types of motivation which when present to any considerable degree tend to guarantee a high measure of success in language learning”, the first is desire to communicate and the second is sensitivity to the out-group. therefore, in gaining a good result of learning english, students must have a motivation to communicate in order to do an exchange of any ideas that will broaden their gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 knowledge. in addition, a sensitivity is needed to aware the social situation in which the students are able to keep up with the social standard. teacher-centered learning huba and freed (2000) described teachercentered learning as students passively receive information, emphasis is on acquisition of knowledge, and teacher’s role is to be primary information giver and primary and evaluator. there is no room for student’s personal growth. in teacher-centered classrooms, control is primary importance and “authority is transmitted hierarchically”, meaning the teacher exerts control over the students (dollard & christensen, 1996, p. 3). to help teachers maintain control over students, instructional methods that promote a focus on the teacher are frequently used, such as lectures, guided discussions, and demonstrations. these forms of instruction lead themselves to have the teacher stands in the front of the classroom while all students work on the same task. boston (1991) stated that the physical design of the classroom often promotes a focus on the teacher and limits student activity that disrupts that focus. in other words, rooms are often organized so that desks face toward the primary focal point, the teacher. in addition, teachers exert their control through a system of clearly defined rules, routines and punishments that are mandated rather than developed with the students. finally, in teacher-centered classrooms, teachers may rely on extrinsic motivation to influence student behavior. chance (1993) mentioned that completion of a task is seen as a prerequisite for obtaining something desirable such as social rewards (e.g. praise), activity rewards (e.g. free time, computer time) and tangible rewards (e.g. candy and stickers). to sum up, teacher-centered learning is the teaching technique where the teacher is a sole leader. teacher makes rule and takes responsibility for all paperwork and organization. this teaching technique can be applied in conducting a research of teacher centered writing to help students comprehend the recount text. therefore, in doing the research, teacher centered writing will use the teacher’s role in managing the class and teacher will be the centre of students’ attention during the lesson. in teacher centered writing, all instruction comes from the teacher including discussion and evaluation on students’ work. social media instagram instagram is a fun and quick way to share one’s life with his or her friends through a series of pictures, snap a photo with a mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. instagram was created by kevin systrom and mike krieger, and was launched in october 2010. the service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of april 2012 and over 300 million as of december 2014. instagram is impressive with its amazing features to support people’s purposes related to daily needs and education. moreover, instagram can be used as learning media due to its supporting features, such as: (1) photo sharing instagram allows the user to take pictures within the application or use photos that already exist in user’s camera roll. users can give their photo a title, which is helpful and fun. the title itself can make people curious about what is actually going on. (2) social instagram, like any other social network, is based on having friends or followers. on instagram, users ‘follow’ people. at the top of the profile (or anyone’s profile) the user will see the username, profile pic, how many photos have been uploaded, how many followers the account has, and how many they are following. when users follow someone, their photos show up in their stream. the other things people can do here are ‘like‘ photos and comment on them. both are appreciated. people ask questions in the comments, like “where was this taken” or “what app did you use for that?” it’s currently a very friendly community. (3) the community people’s experience on instagram has been extremely enjoyable. instagram connects people gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 around the world. it’s a very global community and has many advantages for students to express their feeling by writing something. it means when students are involved in a community they will try to make better move, in this case is their product in writing recount text. (4) an education on our shared humanity. those features of instagram are great opportunity to teach students writing skill. students involve in a good atmosphere of writing recount text because when working on their project they will get better insight from the picture uploaded. pictures make them think wider and will support them in arranging a text in provided space because what they write is based on their personal life’s experience. methods in this study the writer used the form of quasi experimental research. in this method the writer divided one group as the experimental group and another as the control group. both of experimental and control group consist of students with high and low motivation. the subject of the research were 40 students of eight graders of smp kesatrian 1 semarang in the academic year 2015/2016 randomly. twenty students as control group and 20 others as experimental group. in this research, the independent variable were instagram writing and teacher-centered writing. then the dependent variable was the ability in writing recount text of the students with high and low motivation. then, the writer used questionnaires and a writing test as an instrument. the questionnaire was used to collect data from students’ interest, relevance, advantage, students’ achievement, and sustainability during the teaching learning process. besides, the writer gave students a writing test so that the writer could observe the students’ writing ability in telling their past experience. the test consisted of two parts, pretest and post-test. pre-test and post-test were conducted in the beginning and end of the research by using writing test. meanwhile, the treatments were given given to the students before the post-test was conducted. the experimental group utilized instagram writing as the teaching technique and the control group taught using teacher-centered writing. both groups consist of students with high and low motivation. in the experimental group, students were asked to upload many pictures and then fill the caption or description related to the picture uploaded then they were required to give comment on their friends’ picture. after conducting treatment, post-test was given. i used spss program to calculate the data. findings and discussion the course of this study is to answer the research problems. generally, this reserach explains how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. the second is to find out how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. and the last is the comparison between instagram writing and teacher centered writing to teach recount text to high and low motivated students in the eight grade of smp kesatrian 1 semarang. in this study, questionnaire was used to group students into the category of students with high motivation and students with low motivation. the validity and reliability of questionnaire have been tested to students in another class. from the data tabulation, it was known that in the control group the high motivation level of students range from 67% up to 80%, and the rest of it had low motivation level that range from 48% up to 61.25%. meanwhile, in experimental group the range of high motivation level of students was between 67.5% and 90%, and the low motivation level took position between 51.25% and 61.25%. based on the questionnaire result, in general, it could be summarized that students with high motivation level were enthusiastic in learning english not only because english is an obligatory subject at school, but also due to its importance. they think that english will be an essential factor in getting a good job. they try any ways to improve their english skills, such as listen to the english song, try to use english in several gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 social media, even they feel worse when their score is not as good as their firends’. besides, in order to support their passion in learning english, they are open to any feedback of their works to have a better understanding. on the contrary, students with low motivation level assume that english is a difficult subject. thus, they find it hard to focus on the lesson during the english class. worse than that, they had no enthusiasm in doing their english assignments. many of them have the same thought with high motivated students that english is an important subject, but they had no enough effort to prove it. furthermore, pre-test as the first test that was conducted became a guidance to know how deep of students’ understanding in learning recount text. the time of doing pre-test was 80 minutes for each group. in pre-test, students were asked to compose a recount text based on their own experience in a student’s sheet. the scoring coloumn had also been provided at the back of it to make assessment easier. after finishing pretest, each of students’ work was collected to be assessed. it was corrected by using the rubric of brown and bailey. each aspect had range score between 5 to 20 and also had score category. from the scoring result, students in both groups had similarity in grammar errors and mechanism. the most mistake was produced from the use of grammar and followed by writing mechanism. in grammar aspect, students were not consistent in using past tense. meanwhile, in writing mechanism aspect, students made errors in spelling and punctuation. however, their ideas were well-developed eventhough the way they organize the text needed to be improved. the data tabulation showed that the students’ mean score in writing recount text either in control or experimental group was almost similar. the average score of control group was 62.6 and experimental group was 62.8. hence, there was no significant difference in students’ grade of achievement. after that, treatments were conducted both in control group and experimental group. control group taught using teacher centered writing, while experimental group used got treatment using instagram writing. after conducting the research, the writer found that students in experimental group seemd excited and interested in the use of instagram writing. consequently, they followed the teaching learning process enthusiastically. after conducting some treatments, both groups were tested once more to know how far their progress in understanding recount text after getting some treatments. the results of the test between control group and experimental group were compared to measure which one the most effective way to teach recount text to students with high motivation and low motivation. after calculating the score, it was indicated that the average score of both groups and both categories (high and low motivated students) were sharply increased, in which the control group got 67.15 and the experimental group got 73. the improvement of both groups were made by the progress of their writing. in post-test, students seemed more confidence in writing recount text. their ideas developed well, with good grammar using and also diction. however, there were several differences between the control group’s product and experimental group’s product. students in experimental group produced a better writing than students in control group. they were able to use uncommon phrases and succeed in developing their story to be more attractive. they also had many different topics and followed the right generic structure of recount text. meanwhile, in control group, students seemed too monotone in writing recount text. too many students wrote about holiday and still had several grammar errors. the use of expression was not as good as the experimental group. hence, from those results, it can be analyzed that after getting some treatments using instagram writing, the experimental group achieved better result than the control group which was taught using teacher centered writing. conclusion the main objective of this study was to determine whether there is any significant difference in improvement of students’ progress gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 7 in writing recount text between students who were taught using instagram writing and those who were taught using teacher centered writing. the progress can be proved by the sharp improvement of students’ ability which was explained by the scoring system of rubric brown and bailey. it includes the organization, ideas development, grammar, mechanism, and style of writing. in addition, their mastery in choosing appropriate words was better than before, so that it improved the quality of their writing. regarding to the final result, the comparation of the average score of post-test in experimental group and control group were significant different. the experimental group achieved higher mean score with 73, meanwhile, the control group only got 67.15. it meant that instagram writing was more effective than teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. furthermore, the t-test measurement obtained 3.251, for α = 5%, with dk = 20 + 20 – 2 = 38. the ttable score obtained 2.002. this meant that the t-test score was higher than the ttable score. since the t-test measurement was higher than ttable, it was indicated that the experimental group’s achievement in writing recount text was better than the control group’s achievement. suggestions based on the conclusions, the writer would like to offer some suggestions. first, english teachers have to be able to create new atmosphere during the teaching learning process in the classroom, so that students will be interested in learning english. english teachers have to be able to combine the materials with various media to attract students’ attention and to maintain their focus during the lesson. therefore, they will not get bored during teaching learning process. second, in order to improve students’ language mastery and writing skill, english teachers should encourage students to practice writing intensively. then, teachers should provide feedback on every students’ work so that students will have a better understanding on the lesson. thus, english teachers optionally could use instagram writing or another interesting media in order to make students more motivated and enthusiastic in learning english. third, for future researchers, they can use this study as a reference to guide them in conducting the next similar project. hopefully, the result of this study can help them to find out a new strategy about teaching recount to students with high and low motivation by using interesting strategies. references al-ali, s. 2014. embracing the selfie craze: exploring the possible use of instagram as a language learning tool. issues and trends in educational technology, volume 2 number 2. anvar m, m. k., fereidouni z, m., & ebrahimi a, m. 2006. teacher centered and student centered educational method. journal of medical education. bram, b. 1995. write well improving writing skills. yogyakarta: penerbit kanisius. brown, h. d. 2001. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. new york: pearson education. brown, h. d. 2004. language assessment: principle and classroom practice. new york: pearson education. brown, j. 1984. categorical instrument for scoring second language writing skills. language learning reasearch club: university of michigan. creswell, j. w. 2012. educational research (planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research). boston: pearson education. davis, l., & yin, l. r. 2011. the use of social networking tool twitter to improve college students' business writing class. issues in information system, 401-406. dewi, s. p. 2013. kemampuan menulis recount text dengan menggunakan teknik picture series pada kelas viii di smp angkasa kuta badung . denpasar: program pascasarjana universitas udayana. gisty listiani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 8 ellwand, o. 2015. instagram account shines a positive light on edmonton inner-city students. edmonton journal. giyatno. 2011. improving students’ writing skill on recount text using questionning technique and facebook media. tesis: universitas sebelas maret surakarta. harmer, j. 2004. how to teach writing. england: longman. hartono, r. 2005. genres of text. semarang : unnes. heaton, j. 1975. writing english langugae tests. london: longman. helmi, f. 2012. improving students skill in writing recount text by using personal letter. thesis: bachelor program of english language education of state institute for islamic studies walisongo (iain walisongo). hyland, k. 2004. genre and second language writing. the united state of america: the university of michigan press. indah, d. n. 2010. improving writing recount text by using photographs. semarang: ikip pgri semarang. larson-hall, j. 2010. a guide to doing statistics in second language research using spss. new york: routledge. lenneberg, e. 1967. biological foundations of language. wiley. m.a.k. halliday, &. r. 1984. language, context, and text: aspects of language in social-semiotic perspective . hongkong: oxford university press. mujiyanto, y. 2011. petunjuk penulisan skripsi. semarang: unnes press. nugraha, b. 2015. perilaku komunikasi pengguna aktif instagram. cisral. o’malley, j. m. 1996. authentic assessment for english language learners: practical approaches for teachers. ny: addison-wesley. rani, d. a., dewi rochsantiningsih, a., & pudjobroto, h. 2012. the use of facebook notes to improve students' skill in recount text writing. english education department. risa blair, tina m.serafini. 2014. integration of education: using social media networks to engage students. systemics. cybernetics, and informatics, volume 6 number 12. sushikaran. 2015. the use of multimedia in english language teaching. journal of technology for elt. zohrabi, m., torabi, m. a., & baybourdiani, p. 2012. teacher-centered and/or student-centered learning: english language in iran. canadian center of science and education, vol 2, no 3. http://ahmadyaniskm.blogspot.co.id/2013/07/carapenentuan-kriteria-obyektif.html [accessed on january 2th, 2016] attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4223ee9d20b5 • your ip: click to reveal 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protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4223e95ea607 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42231f472037 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt improving the students’ mastery in pronouncing consonants /f/ and /v/ nunung setiyo rini english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary, pronunciation, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this final project is concerned with the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary toward the students’ pronunciation of consonants [f] and [v]. the objective of this study is to improve the students’ pronunciation by using cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary. this study used action research design. there were two cycles of action in this study. this research started with an initial pre-test and ended with a final post-test. in each cycle there were pre-test, treatment, and post-test. the tests were used to collect the quantitative data. meanwhile, observation checklist and questionnaire were used to gather the qualitative data. thirty one students of class viii h of smp n 22 semarang were chosen as the subjects of this study. based on the data analyses, there was a significant improvement of the students’ achievement after the implementation of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary was given. this improvement was proved by the comparison between the result of initial pre-test and final post-test. this improvement was also supported by the results of observation checklists and questionnaire. based on the observation checklists, the students’ attendance and engagement in cycle 2 was better than their attendance and engagement in cycle 1. moreover, the result of questionnaire showed that the students gave positive perception towards the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary. with regard to the above results, it can be concluded that the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary successfully improves the students’ pronunciation of consonants [f] and [v]. therefore, the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in the teaching pronunciation, especially pronunciation of english words containing consonants [f] and [v] is recommended. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: nunungsetiyorini@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction during my observation on the teaching process in smp n 22 semarang three months ago, i found that the teacher gave less pronunciation practice to the students. during eighty minutes of teaching and learning process, the teacher only gave pronunciation practice for five to ten minutes. the rest of the time was spent on reading and writing practice, and also doing some tasks. in the beginning, the teacher pronounced a list of vocabulary and then she asked the students to pronounce those words. then, she randomly asked the students to pronounce those words. pronunciation error correction would come up when any of the students mispronounced any of those words. however, in daily interaction with the teacher during the teaching and learning process, the students often mispronounced other english words but the mispronunciation was not corrected. it seemed that the teacher gave less attention to the students’ pronunciation. the most interesting pronunciation problem i found during my observation was the failure of the students in pronouncing the words containing the sounds /f/ and /v/. they always pronounced the sound /v/ with /f/ but the teacher did not correct such a mistake. for example, the students pronounced the word love as [lɑːf ]. the students’ failure in pronouncing the words containing sounds /v/ might be caused by some possibilities. firstly, the teacher did not teach how to pronounce that sound explicitly. secondly, the teacher pronounced that sound correctly but the students failed to copy it correctly. based on my observation on the teaching process, the teacher still used conventional method in teaching pronunciation. her pronunciation became the sole model of pronunciation that should be followed by the students because there is no pronunciation model from media. therefore, the students was not interested in the learning process. as a matter of fact, there are many media that can be used in teaching pronunciation. they do not only make the pronunciation teaching and learning more interesting, but also become a good model of pronunciation. those teaching media are video, internet, flashcard, and dictionary. any of those media can be applied in smp n 22 semarang because the facilities in that school enable the teacher to use media in teaching pronounciation. the fact that the use of media in teaching pronunciation is still ignored may occur in the other classes of smp n 22 semarang. therefore, there is also a possibility that the students in those classes of that school mispronounce english sounds, especially the sound /v/ because they do not get a good model of pronunciation. in an effort to answer the problem above, i decided to conduct a research in that school. i decided to use cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in my teaching to prove whether or not it successfully improves the students’ pronunciation of english consonants [f] and [v]. cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary was choosen since it was practical and gave the audio form of pronunciation of english words. hopefully, with this research, the students will be more interested in learning pronunciation and they will have a good model of pronunciation of english words. review of related literature pronunciation dalton and seidholfer (1994:3) write their idea about pronunciation in general terms, as follows: pronunciation is the production of significant sounds in two senses. first, sound is significant because it is used as part of a code of a particular language. therefore, we can talk about the distinctive sounds of english, french, thai, and other languages. in this sense, we can talk about pronunciation as the production and reception of sounds of speech. second, sound is significant because it is used to achieve meaning in context of use. here the code combines with other factors to make communication possible. in this sense, we can talk about pronunciation with reference to acts of speaking. according to ramelan (2003: 22), there are two features that can be distinguished when a speaker produces an utterance. they are as follows. nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 1. segmental features, or just segmental which refer to sound unit arranged in a segmental order; and 2. suprasegmental features, or just suprasegmental which refer to such features as stress, pitch, length, intonation, and other features that always accompany that production of segmental. in this study, the main feature of pronunciation which will be focused is the segmental one. the segmental features are vowels, diphthongs, and consonants. according to ramelan (2003: 99-108), there are twenty five kinds of consonants; they are [p], [t], [k], [?], [b], [d], [ɡ], [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ], [r], [h], [tʃ], [dʒ], [m], [n], [ŋ], [l], [w], and [y]. among those consonants, there are only two that will be discussed. they are consonants [f] and [v]. therefore, the next sub-chapter will review pronunciation of english consonants [f] and [v]. pronunciation of english consonants [f] and [v] in producing [f], kelly (2000: 50) says, ‘the lower lip makes light contact with the upper teeth. the soft palate is raised. /f/ is unvoiced and fortis.’ meanwhile, in producing [v], kelly (2000: 50) states that ‘the lower lip makes light contact with the upper teeth. the soft palate is raised. /v/ is voiced and lenis. /v/ is devoiced at the end of a word.’ reasons for pronunciation problems since english is a foreign language in indonesia, there will be some pronunciation problems faced by indonesian students when they learn english. according to ramelan (2003: 5-7), pronunciation problems are caused by some reasons. they are: 1. transfer of linguistic habit; 2. different elements between native language and the target language; 3. the same phonetic feature in both language but differ in their distributions; 4. similar sounds in the two languages, which have different variants or allophones; and, 5. similar sounds in two languages which differ only slightly in their phonetic features. then, according to dalton (1997: 1), the main problem in learning a foreign language is learner’s reception. he states that ‘if the "english" sound is not clearly received, the brain of the learner converts it into the closest sound in their own language.’ from the statements above, it can be concluded that there are many reasons that cause the students’ failure in producing proper pronunciation of certain sounds. therefore, the teacher should include pronunciation in her teaching material in order to help the student able to pronounce the english sounds correctly. the next sub-section will explain further about teaching pronunciation. teaching pronunciation in mastering english as a foreign language, the students should learn english both in written form and oral form. in the spoken form, pronunciation is important because having bad pronunciation may lead to misunderstanding in communication although a speaker has a good command of grammar. therefore, teaching pronunciation to the students is considered important. the idea is in line with kelly (2000: 11) who states that it is important to include pronunciation teaching in the classroom because learners’ errors can cause misunderstanding and inhibit successful communication. from the statements above, it is obvious that the teacher should teach pronunciation to the students. however, non-native teacher may feel that his/her pronunciation will not meet the standard of the native english speaker, so he/she does not feel confident to teach pronunciation. in this case, teaching pronunciation by using media could be the solution to this problem. the medium which was used in this study was cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary. it will be discussed in the subchapter below. electronic dictionary in this modern era, teachers can use many technologies as tools in teaching english to achieve effectiveness in the class. one of the nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 media that can be used by means of technology in class is an electronic dictionary. there are several definitons of electronic dictionary. webster online dictionary (http://websteronlinedictionary.org/definitions /electronic%20dictionary) defines electronic dictionary as follows: an electronic dictionary is either a small handheld computer with integrated reference materials, or a pda or a smartphone with a dictionary program. electronic dictionaries are also programs that can be downloaded from the internet or purchased on a cd-rom or dvd and installed on a desktop computer or on a laptop. other electronic dictionaries can be searched and consulted online on the internet. the computer-installed dictionaries can often be consulted directly from within any application that uses editable text. the term may be used in a broader sense to refer to the features of a machine-readable dictionary or spell checker. based on the webster online dictionary’s definition above, there are several kinds of electronic dictionaries. they are: 1. a small handheld computer with integrated reference materials; 2. a smartphone with a dictionary program; 3. a program that can be downloaded from the internet or purchased on a cd-rom and should be installed on a computer; 4. online dictionaries; and, 5. spelling checker. in this study, i used cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary as a medium in teaching pronunciation. it belongs to the kind of electronic dictionaries in the third form. it provides meanings, phonetic transcriptions, and the audio of english word pronunciation. it can be easily downloaded from the internet and installed in a laptop/computer. action research since the research design that i used in this study was an action research, this sub-chapter would discuss action research according to some experts. there are several definitions of action research. harmer (2001: 344-345) states that ‘action research is the name given to a series of procedures teachers can engage in, either because they wish to improve aspects of their teaching, or because they wish to evaluate the success and/appropriacy of certain activities and procedures’. according to coats (2005:4) action research can be described as ‘any research into practice undertaken by those involved in that practice, with an aim to change and improve it. it is therefore, a process of enquiry by you as a practitioner into the effectiveness of your own teaching and your students’ learning.’ steps in action research burns (2010:8) states that there are four steps in action research. those steps are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. they would be explained below. 1. planning in this step, a problem is identified and a plan of action is developed in order to bring improvements in the research. 2. action it is a step where the plan which has been arranged is put into action in a period of time. 3. observation in the observing step, the data are collected and the effects of the action are observed. 4. reflection it is a step of evaluating and describing the effects of the action in order to make sense of what has happened and to understand the issue which have been explored. method this study was an action research with the students of viii h of smp n 22 semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016 as the subjects. this action research consisted of two cycles of four steps: planning, action, observation, and reflection. the object of the study was the students’ improvement of the students’ pronunciation of english words containing consonants [f] and [v]. therefore, the material of this study was the english words containing consonants [f] and [v] that were available in the students’ handout. nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 to collect those data, three instruments were used. the first was tests; they were used to record the students’ pronunciation. the second was questionnaires; they were used to record the students’ impression to the use of cambridge advance learner’s dictionary. the last was observation checklists; they were used to record the students’ attendance and engagement during the treatments. data analysis and reflection of findings result of the students’ pronunciation test scores initial pretest cycle 1 cycle 2 final post-test c1 pre-test c1 post-test c2 pre-test c2 post-test 42.39 70.05 85.64 14.24 48.70 66.45 the result of cycle 1 observation checklist the result of cycle 2 observation checklist indicators total point mean point criteria attendance 118 3.80 very good engagement 101.5 3.27 very engaged the result of questionnaire no. question number yes no  p  p 1. 1 31 100% 2. 2 29 93.54% 2 6.46% 3. 3 31 100% 4. 4 31 100% 5. 5 31 100% reflection of the research findings initial pre-test the classical mean score of the initial pretest (42.39) indicated that the students’ pronunciation was below the standard of mastery of learning score (75) set up by the school. in addition, individually, none of the students got score above the mastery of learning. therefore, i decided to give some treatments to the students in order to improve their pronunciation score. indicators total point mean point criteria attendance 95 3.06 good engagement 88.25 2.84 engaged nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 cycle 1 pre-test the result of cycle 1 pre-test showed that the students did not have difficulty in pronouncing the sound /f/. they were able to pronounce the sound /f/ correctly because this sound also existed in their mother tongue. however, both classical and individual mean score were still below the mastery of learning (75). in addition, the students had poor performance in pronouncing the other english sounds. this problem needed to be investigated by other researchers in order to know the cause of it because cycle 1 pre-test only focused on the students’ pronunciation of the sound /f/. since the classical and the individual mean score were still below the mastery of learning, the students needed to get a treatment in order to make their pronunciation reach the mastery of learning score. cycle 1 post-test the mean score of cycle 1 post-test (85.64) was higher than the mean score of cycle 1 pretest (70.05). according to the criteria of success that had been explained in chapter 3 (see page 32), this mean score fulfilled the first criteria. both classical and individual mean score reached the mastery of learning score. however, if we referred to the second criteria, the classical mean score did not fulfill it. the improvement of classical mean score did not reach 20 points. meanwhile, individually, there were only some students that made significant improvement. since both classical and individual mean score fulfilled the first criteria, cycle 2 could be conducted. cycle 2 pre-test by looking at the mean score of cycle 2 pre-test (14.24), both classical and individual mean score was below the mastery of learning score (75). i conclude that the students had difficulty in pronouncing the sound /v/ in the context of english words. they always pronounced the sound /v/ with /f/, for example the word leave was pronounced as [li:f]. therefore, the students needed to get a treatment in order to make their performance in pronouncing the sound /v/ in the context of english words better. cycle 2 post-test by looking at the first criteria of success, the classical mean of cycle 2 pos-test (48.70) did not fulfill the criteria. it was still below the mastery of learning score. meanwhile, individually, there were only some students whose the individual mean score fulfilled the first criteria. however, if we referred to the second criteria, both classical and individual mean score fulfilled the criteria. the improvement of classical mean score and individual mean score reached 20 points. since the objective of the second treatment had been reached, i decided to give the students final post-test. final post-test by looking at the first criteria of success, both classical and individual mean score did not fulfill the criteria. the classical and individual mean score were still below the mastery of learning score (75). however, by looking at the second criteria, the improvement of classical mean reached 24.06 point. meanwhile, the improvement of individual mean score reached about 24.05 points. it meant that the second criteria had been fulfilled. cycle 1 observation checklist the students’ attendance mean score (3.06) was classified as good. meanwhile, the students’ engagement mean score (2.84) was classified as being engaged. it indicated that they were interested to have a new way in learning pronunciation, so that they gave full attention to the teacher’s explanation, immediately responded to the teacher’s instruction, and actively asked and discussed the medium and the teaching material. those positive reactions might be caused by the fact that they had never been taught a pronunciation practice by using a medium. cycle 2 observation checklist in cycle 2 observation checklist, the students’ attendance mean score increased from nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 7 3.06 in the first treatment to 3.80 in the second treatment. meanwhile, the students’ engagement mean score increased from 2.84 to 3.27. by looking at the criterion of observation checklist assessment, the students’ attendance mean score was classified as very good. meanwhile, the students’ engagement mean score was classified as being very engaged. questionnaire the questionnaire was given to the students in order to find out the students’ interest in the use of media in pronunciation teaching, the relevancy of the materials to the curriculum, the level of the materials difficulty, the advantage of the use of media, and the sustainability of the use of media in pronunciation teaching. the result of this questionnaire showed that all of the students liked the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in pronunciation learning. they also agreed that the use of medium helped them pronounce the english words containing the sound /f/ and /v/. none of them had difficulty in pronouncing the english words containing the sound /f/ and /v/. they also said that the medium was very much needed to be employed in the pronunciation teaching and learning. there were only 2 students who said that the materials in this research were not appropriate with the curriculum. conclusion first, this study showed that the subjects of the study had problems in pronouncing the sound /v/ in the context of english words. it was proved by their poor mean score in the pre-test. second, the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in pronunciation teaching was able to improve the students’ performance in pronouncing the sound /v/ in the context of english words. it was proved by the significant improvement of both classical and individual mean score. third, the students showed positive reactions towards the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in pronunciation teaching. it was proved by the improvement of students’ attendance and engagement. moreover, based on the result of the questionnaire, the use of cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary in pronunciation teaching and learning was necessary. references ahmad, jameel. 2012. english language teaching (elt) and integration of media technology. online at www.sciencedirect.com [accessed on 17/09/2015]. burns, anne. 2010. doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york: routledge. coats, maggie. 2005. action research: a guide for associate lecturers. london: cobe. costello, patrick j. m. 2003. action research. new york: continuum. dalton, christiane and barbara seidlhofer. 1994. pronunciation. oxford: oxford university press. dalton, d.f. 1997. some techniques for teaching pronunciation. internet tesl journal, vol iii, no. 1. harmer, jeremy. 2001. the practice of english language teaching. london: longman. hornby, a.s. 2005. oxford advanced learners dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. indriana, heni. 2014. the use of bbc vodcast as a medium to improve the students pronunciation of vowels [ɛ] and [æ]. unpublished final project of unnes. jam, bashir., domakani, masood rahimi., and kasegari, zahra asghari. 2014. an intralingual analysis of iranian efl learner’s difficulties caused by the inconsistency between spelling and pronunciation. international journal of educational investigations, vol.1 no.1. kelly, gerald. 2000. how to teach pronunciation. malaysia: longman. motallebi, saeedeh and pourgharib, behzad. 2013. the impact of audio-stories (listening skills) on nunung setiyo rini / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 8 pronunciation of efl learners. journal of language sciences & linguistics, vol.1 no.1. nunan, david. 1992. research methods in language learning. cambridge: press syndicate of the university of cambridge. puspito, novinda dian. 2014. the application of audiovideo folk tale animation in pronunciation class. unpublished final project of unnes. ramelan. 2003. english phonetics. semarang: ikip press. setiadi, ag. bambang. 2006. teaching english as a foreign language. yogyakarta: graha ilmu. websites: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/electronic+dictio nary [accessed on 28/09/2015]. http://www.webstersonlinedictionary.org/definitions /electronic%20dictionary [accessed on 28/09/2015]. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421d6e4f2085 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 115 elt forum 11(2) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt efl students' perspectives on the use of wordwall.net as vocabulary learning media miftahul jannah1, syafryadin1 1english education postgraduate program, bengkulu university, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 4 june 2022 approved on 24 june 2022 published on 31 july 2022 ________________ keywords: students’ perspective, wordwall.net, vocabulary, media ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ using ict tools to teach vocabulary is a commonly researched topic in language teaching. many popular web tools, such as kahoot and quizizz, are used as experimental tools with learners to investigate how effectively they enhance learners' vocabulary. this study analyzed the students' perceptions of wordwall.net, a less known and researched game-based web tool, in their vocabulary learning. this study was conducted since there is still limited research conducted in indonesia that analyses the students' perception of using wordwall.net in english vocabulary learning. this research design was survey research with a sample of 29 8th-grade students at one of the junior high schools in bengkulu tengah. the data were collected using a close-ended questionnaire. it was analyzed quantitatively by implementing the likert scale. the result of this research found that most students' perception of the use of wodwall.net in their vocabulary learning was positive. their feeling about wordwall.net was great. they enjoyed the teamwork and competition; they perceived wordwall.net as an exciting, interesting, motivating & fun web tool to learn vocabulary. from the students' perceived effects of using wordwall.net, wordwall.net was a kind of awaited learning media for the students. in addition, wordwall.net also influenced the students' engagement with the web tool and the classroom. it indicated that the students paid more attention to the learning process. the researchers strongly recommended that teachers start using wordwall.net to learn vocabulary based on the results.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 english education postgraduate program, bengkulu university jl. wr. supratman, kandang limun, kec. muara bangka hulu, bengkulu 38371 e-mail: miftahulfaa@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 116 introduction at the middle and grade levels at school, curricular standards include vocabulary development as part of a comprehensive literacy program. according to (balla, 2018), teaching english in schools is essential academically and practically in several aspects of learning, such as using english for various purposes, not limited to business goals, communication, or literature reading. one of the expectations in english learning is understanding the meaning of the words, sentences, and text. good vocabulary development can reach it. susan. & dwyer (2009) defined vocabulary as words we must know to communicate effectively; words in speaking (expressive vocabulary) and words in listening (receptive vocabulary). while alqahtani (2015) defined vocabulary as the total number of words needed to communicate ideas and express the speakers' meaning. furthermore, nurdini et al. (2017) stated that vocabulary is the base component that students need to master four language skills. it means that vocabulary is a basic language component that has to be mastered by the students other than four language skills. from the definitions above, it can be concluded that vocabulary is words needed for communication both orally and verbally. indonesian students in the 21st-century are expected to be proficient in english, both in verbal and written forms. to achieve students' english proficiency, english must be taught as a compulsory subject at school in indonesia, especially in junior high school. however, such a fact does not guarantee that the students have mastered english well. indonesian students prefer their first language in daily activities because of their lack of vocabulary knowledge. even though students know the importance of vocabulary, they still learn vocabulary passively due to several factors. for instance, most english teachers still use the traditional teaching method and media. most english teachers still use memorizing strategy in learning vocabulary by using a dictionary as a fundamental step in learning english. in opposition to this, putra & priyatmojo (2021) claimed gamification was effective and fun to bring to the classroom learning. it engages students more, reduces boredom, and increases learning motivation. moreover, students' vocabulary mastery influences the students' understanding to achieve learning objectives in their various subjects. learning objective is a description of what the learner must be able to do upon completion of educational activity (chatterjee & corral, 2017). in this context, the students must perform complex tasks using new vocabulary, especially in a writing activity. the lack of mastery in english writing skills is affected by their vocabulary deficiency mastery and limited ability to use vocabulary effectively for communication purposes (ashrafzadeh & nimehchisalem, 2015). it was supported by pratiwi (2016), who stated that the students’ difficulties in writing english could be influenced by a lack of many vocabularies, grammar, lack of written exercises, and ideas. this condition is the imagery of a low-quality process of learning which can indicate a low quality of education. the low quality of education is due to the inappropriate method and media used, the inadequate evaluation tools, and the material provided not per students' level of thinking. the use of appropriate learning media will positively impact the learning process and increase student learning achievement. the use of educational games as learning tools or media is found to support the development of students’ cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social outlooks (papastergiou, 2009). demands for teachers can master various teaching media and determine which media are suitable for use in learning. teachers have to find another strategy for teaching vocabulary that provides a fun and enjoyable situation for that problem. it is agreed that if students learn in a fun and enjoyable situation, it will be easier to understand and absorb the material, especially for junior high school learners. sari et al. (2018) said that english teachers try to be able to integrate media technology in the elt class to increase student motivation, integrate language skills, and create an independent learning environment for students. it was related to ahmad (2012), who claimed that efl students’ response to media technology could improve accentual patterns of individual english words. based on those explanations, english teachers need to consider a tool or platform that supports vocabulary acquisition. one platform associated with vocabulary in the digital era is wordwall.net. it is a web tool that can be used as an online game in learning. daud et al. (2015) said that mobile learning is known to optimize the potential of mobile devices as learning tools in language learning environments. it is supported by wan azli et al. (2018), who said that online game facilitates the learning experience, and the use of online games in class is very beneficial for students. at present, ict (information and communication technology) in the education field has become famous (cahyono & mutiaraningrum, 2015). the internet and the development of ict affect the students’ learning, miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 117 interaction with their classmates and teachers, and how they deal with their life’s aspects. related to wordwall.net, which is categorized as an online game, çil (2021) stated that wordwall.net is an edutainment website in which there are multiple game choices. it is all played interactively or individually, such as information matching, picture matching, quiz, wheel of fortune, puzzles, etc., designed for vocabulary practice. wordwall.net provides features for creating interactive learning media that can be printed or used online. this web tool is a good quality platform because of its attractive user interface, various and complete features, and affordable pricing. in terms of the user interface, this website looks very simple. the menu display and its features are easy to find. game templates and instruction manuals are also available on the start page or home. besides, wordwall.net provides exclusive features, such as 1) create activity; 2) community; 3) my activities, and 4) my results. studies concerning web tools as many researchers have conducted the vocabulary learning media. çil (2021) investigated the effect of using wordwall.net in increasing vocabulary knowledge of 5th grade efl students. it was experimental research conducted in a state school in turkey. the results revealed significant differences between each group's test results yet an insignificant difference between groups' post-test results. while hasram et al. (2021) investigated pupils' motivation levels towards using wordwall online game (wow) interactive online games in vocabulary learning and examined the effects of wow interactive online games on pupils' vocabulary development. it was an experimental study that focused on pupils' perceptions. the sample consists of 121 year 5 pupils from a national primary school in negeri sembilan who are using the current syllabus for primary school, language curriculum for malaysian national primary schools (kssr). this study showed a moderate level of satisfaction, attention, relevance, confidence, and volition. in addition, a paired sample t-test indicates a significant improvement in the pupils' vocabulary scores after using wordwall (wow) as a vocabulary learning supplementary material. another research was done by fakhruddin et al. (2021) to find out the effectiveness of the wordwall.net application in increasing the mastery of arabic vocabulary. the results revealed there was a significant difference in terms of the pre-test score, which is smaller than the post-test score (45.63 < 77.50), (3) there was a difference in the average pre-test and post-test outcomes with a sig value of 0.000 (<0.05). last, bueno et al. (2022) also conducted a study related to the use of wordwall.net. it investigated two things: 1) how student participants evaluate google sites and wordwall.net as instructional materials for learning basic integration in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction; and 2) what modifications are needed for google sites and wordwall.net to become more effective, efficient, and sound instructional materials for online distance learning. the results of the usability scale showed that the learning contents, such as the discussions and lecture videos, are helpful to successfully achieving the objectives of the lesson. it also revealed that the online teaching tool is user-friendly since the respondents had no difficulty navigating the site even without the help of a technical expert. even though many research studies have explored the use of web tools related to vocabulary and students' perception of web tools mentioned above, there is a lack of research on students' perception of wordwall.net as the media in learning vocabulary. hence, the present study aims to know the students' perceptions of wordwall.net in their vocabulary learning. methods this study focused on students’ perspectives on the use of wordwall.net. a quantitative approach is applied to achieve the objective of the study. this research was survey research. dr. vladimir (1967) defined a survey as any data collection operation that gathers information from human respondents through a standardized questionnaire in which the interest is in aggregates rather than particular individuals. moreover, navarro-rivera & kosmin (2013) said that surveys are beneficial for nonexperimental descriptive designs that seek to describe reality. in short, a survey is a data collection technique that gathers information. the role of the researcher in this research is as a data collector and data analyst. the researcher collected students’ perceptions through a questionnaire as data collector. as the data analyst, the researcher analyzed the data on behalf of the research to conclude students’ perceptions of using wordwall.net. in selecting the subject, the researcher used simple random sampling. due to the limited number of students, all of the 8th-grade students in the research site were chosen as the research population. miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 118 the research site only had 71 students, 24 in the 7th, 29 in the 8th, and 18 in the 9th grade. in addition, the researcher chose the 8th-grade students as the sample because wordwall.net was used in that class. the research was done in the 2020/2021 academic year. during this time, the researcher conducted data collection by distributing questionnaire as the instrument to collect the data. roopa & rani (2012) defined a questionnaire as a series of questions asked to individuals to obtain statistically valid information about a given topic. the questionnaire was created to collect the students’ answer regarding their perception of wordwall.net. it was adapted from basuki & hidayati (2019), which consisted of 15 items which then are categorized by the researcher into three indicators: students’ perceived feeling, students’ perceived effects, and students’ perceived engagement. choices used are 'strongly disagree,' 'disagree,' ‘neutral’ 'agree,' and 'strongly agree.' the questionnaire was distributed to all participants on an online platform, and it was analyzed using the likert scale. in order to increase the consistency of the responses and make the tabulation easier and faster, the researcher used a close-ended questionnaire. there were fifteen close-ended items provided, covering all the information needed to answer the research problem. before analyzing the data, the researcher scored the data gained from the questionnaire result. the likert in the questionnaire scale consists of five statements; those are strongly agree (sa), agree (a), neutral (n disagree (d), and strongly disagree (sd). each statement has different points; 5 for sa, 4 for a, 3 for n, 2 for d, and 1 for sd. after that, the researcher calculated the score range for each questionnaire as follows: maximum score: 15 x 29 x 5 = 2.175, and minimum score: 15 x 29 x 1 = 435, and score range (r): 2175 – 435 = 1.744. then, the researcher determined the criteria of score interpretation of each questionnaire set. last, the researcher described the data in narrative form. the item and total score interpretation can be seen in the following table: table 1. total score interpretation score degree of agreement interpretation 1.741 – 2.175 strongly agree positive 1.306 – 1.740 agree positive 871 – 1.305 neutral neutral 436 – 870 disagree negative 435 strongly disagree negative figure 1. continuum diagram findings and discussion the findings and discussion should be written in no less than 60% of the manuscript (>3500 words). findings may be displayed in tables, graphs, verbal descriptions or the combination of the three. do not present too many figures in the manuscript. the findings should be followed by discussion either directly or separatedly. the discussion not only describe the findings, but also interpret them in accordance with the theories used and its relevance to previous studies. findings table 2 and figure 3 summarize the result of the students’ perceptions of wordwall.net on their vocabulary learning. from the questionnaire, it was revealed that students' perceptions toward wordwall.net in their vocabulary learning mainly agreed. it was obtained by interpreting the item score. the students' perception on fourteen of fifteen was agreed. in order to discuss further each item on the questionnaire, the researcher tried to categorize the items into two parts based on three indicators. the first indicator (items 1 – 5) discusses students' perceived feelings on the use of wordwall.net (see table 3), which is related to the theory of perception by montague (1997), which states that miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 119 perception what the students’ feel about a particular thing. at the same time, the second indicator (items 6 – 10) discusses the students’ perceived effects after learning vocabulary by using wordwall.net (see table 4). moreover, the last indicator (items 11 – 15) discusses the students’ perceived engagement (see table 5). table 2. students’ perceptions of wordwall.net on their vocabulary learning. item 1 (sd) 2 (d) 3 (n) 4 (a) 5 (sa) item score i students’ perceived feeling 1. i find wordwall.net exciting, interesting, motivating & fun. 3 8 13 4 106 p 2. i feel positive when playing wordwall.net. 1 4 5 10 9 109 p 3. i like the collaboration & competitiveness in wordwall.net sessions. 2 7 14 6 111 p 4. i am motivated to win all these wordwall.net sessions. 2 9 14 4 107 p 5. wordwall.net creates an energetic classroom atmosphere. 17 7 4 1 76 n students’ perceived effects 6. i look forward to playing wordwall.net. 4 6 12 7 109 p 7. i am eager to learn via wordwall.net. 3 6 16 4 108 p 8. i prepare better to win in the wordwall.net sessions. 3 11 13 2 101 p 9. i don't want to miss any wordwall.net sessions 1 4 8 14 2 99 p 10. wordwall.net must be used in the daily learning process. 1 3 4 15 6 109 p students’ perceived engagement 11. i focus on the questions in each wordwall.net session. 5 2 13 9 113 p 12. i respond to each question in each wordwall.net session. 1 3 6 14 5 106 p 13. i respond as quickly as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session. 4 6 13 7 111 p 14. i respond as accurately as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session. 1 2 11 9 6 104 p 15. i pay more attention during lectures because i hope to win in the wordwall.net sessions. 2 8 14 5 109 p total score 5 60 104 189 77 total score 𝒙 option value (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 5 120 312 756 385 total score wordwall.net 1.578 note: i = item score interpretation figure 2. continuum diagram of wordwall.net total score in the first statement shown in table 3, we found that none (0%) of the students chose strongly disagree, 3 students (10,34%) disagree, 8 students (27,5%) are neutral, 13 students (44,82%) agree, and 4 students (13,80%) strongly agree. according to the finding, the item score of this statement, 106, meant most students agreed that wordwall.net was exciting, interesting, motivating & fun. miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 120 table 3. students’ perceived feeling item 1 (sd) 2 (d) 3 (n) 4 (a) 5 (sa) item score i 1. i find wordwall.net exciting, interesting, motivating & fun. 3 8 13 4 106 p 2. i feel positive when playing wordwall.net. 1 4 5 10 9 109 p 3. i like the collaboration & competitiveness in wordwall.net sessions. 2 7 14 6 111 p 4. i am motivated to win all these wordwall.net sessions. 2 9 14 4 107 p 5. wordwall.net creates an energetic classroom atmosphere. 17 7 4 1 76 n the next result of the statement "i feel positive when playing wordwall.net" showed that one student (3,45%) chose strongly disagree, four students (13,80%) chose to disagree, five students (17,24%) students chose neutral, ten students (34,48%) students chose to agree, and nine students (31,03%) chose strongly agree. it indicated that there was a positive perception of wordwall.net. after that, the next statement, "i like the collaboration & competitiveness in wordwall.net sessions," got no students (0 %) to disagree strongly. followed by two students (6,89%) chose to disagree, seven students (24,14%) chose neutral, fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree, and six students (20,70 %) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 111, which indicated that most of the students had good teamwork and competitiveness. the following statement of the questionnaire was, "i am motivated to win all these wordwall.net sessions." the results of the data analysis showed that none (0 %) of the students chose strongly disagree, two students (6,89%) chose to disagree, nine students (31,03%) chose neutral, fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree, and four students (13,80%) chose strongly agree. the statement's item score implied that almost half of the students agreed they were motivated to win all these wordwall.net sessions. it was related to the previous statement where students showed a positive response in collaboration and competitiveness, which later resulted in satisfaction with the learning process. the number and percentage of the category with the highest score are identical, where fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree. the fifth statement is, "wordwall.net creates an energetic classroom atmosphere." explained that seventeen students (58,62 %) chose to disagree, seven students (24,14%) chose neutral, four students (13,80%) chose to agree, and only one student (3,45 %) chose strongly disagree. based on the finding, the item score of this statement was 76, which was the lowest among all statements. thus, more than half of the students disagreed that wordwall.net creates an energetic classroom atmosphere. the only statement was that results were dominated by students' negative responses (disagree). table 4. students’ perceived effects item 1 (sd) 2 (d) 3 (n) 4 (a) 5 (sa) item score i 6. i look forward to playing wordwall.net. 4 6 12 7 109 p 7. i am eager to learn via wordwall.net. 3 6 16 4 108 p 8. i prepare better to win in the wordwall.net sessions. 3 11 13 2 101 p 9. i don't want to miss any wordwall.net sessions 1 4 8 14 2 99 p 10. wordwall.net must be used in the daily learning process. 1 3 4 15 6 109 p the next statement, item 6, which reads “i look forward to playing wordwall.net” took 4 students (13,8%) disagree, 6 students (20,70%) neutral, 12 (41,37%) agree, and 7 students (24,14%) strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 109, which meant that almost half of the students agreed that they looked forward to playing wordwall.net in the next meeting. statement 7, which reads "i am eager to learn via wordwall.net." showed that three students (10,34%) chose to disagree, six students (20,70 %) chose neutral, sixteen students (55,17 %) chose to agree, and four students (13,80%) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 108, meaning most students agreed that they were eager to learn via wordwall.net. miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 121 statement 8, which reads "i prepare better to win in the wordwall.net sessions." found that three students (10,34%) chose to disagree, eleven students (37,93 %) chose neutral, thirteen students (44,82%) chose to agree, and two students (6,89%) chose strongly agree. in addition, the item score of this statement was 101. this result indicated that less than half of the students agreed that they made a better preparation to be the winner in the wordwall.net sessions. in statement nine, which says, "i do not want to miss any wordwall.net sessions." it is obtained that one student (3,45 %) chose strongly disagree, four students (13,80%) chose to disagree, eight students (27,59 %) chose neutral, fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree, and two students (6,89%) chose strongly agree. based on the finding, the item score for this statement was 99; the second-lowest item score gained among all the statements in the questionnaire. it indicated that almost half of the students did not want to miss any wordwall.net sessions in the classroom. the next statement, "wordwall.net must be used in the daily learning process." found that one student (3,45 %) chose strongly disagree, three students (10,34%) chose to disagree, four students (13,80%) chose neutral, fifteen students (51,72 %) chose to agree, and six students (20,70 %) chose strongly agree. based on the finding, the item score of this statement was 109. it indicated that most students recommended the use of wordwall.net their vocabulary learning. table 5. students’ perceived engagement item 1 (sd) 2 (d) 3 (n) 4 (a) 5 (sa) item score i 11. i focus on the questions in each wordwall.net session. 5 2 13 9 113 p 12. i respond to each question in each wordwall.net session. 1 3 6 14 5 106 p 13. i respond as quickly as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session. 4 6 13 7 111 p 14. i respond as accurately as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session. 1 2 11 9 6 104 p 15. i pay more attention during lectures because i hope to win in the wordwall.net sessions. 2 8 14 5 109 p the following statement is item 11, which reads, "i focus on the questions in each wordwall.net session" it found that none of the students (0%) chose firmly disagree, five students (17,24%) chose to disagree, two students (6,89%) chose neutral, 13 students (44,82%) chose to agree, and nine students (31,03%) chose strongly agree. it had the highest item score of all (113), which indicated that slightly almost 50% of the respondents paid attention to the questions in each wordwall.net session. it was in line with the following statement, which 14 out of 29 students agreed with the statement "i respond to each question in each wordwall.net session." the similarity of the result on items 11 and 12 showed that when the students focused on the questions, they would respond to each question without missing any single item. statement 12, which says "i respond to each question in each wordwall.net session," obtained the following results: one student (3,45 %) chose strongly disagree, three students (10,34 %) chose to disagree, six students (20,70 %) chose neutral, fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree, and five students (17,24 %) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 106, which meant most of the students answered each question in the wordwall.net session. the following statement states, "i respond as quickly as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session.". we found that none (0%) of the students chose strongly disagree, four students (13,80 %) chose to disagree, six students (20,70 %) chose neutral, thirteen students (44,82%) chose to agree, and seven students (24,14%) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 111, which implied that more than 50% of students responded to each question as quickly as possible. this result was in line with statement 3: "i like the collaboration & competitiveness in wordwall.net sessions. it indicated that most of the students answered the questions as quickly as possible to be the winner of the game. the other statement is, "i respond as accurately as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session." the data obtained one student (3,45 %) chose strongly disagree, two students (6,89%) chose to disagree, eleven students (37,93 %) chose neutral, nine students (31,03%) chose to agree, and six students (20,70 %) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement is miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 122 104. though most of the students showed neutral responses to the statement, it indicated that most were not afraid of their incorrect answers. the last statement discuss in this session is, "i pay more attention during lectures because i hope to win in wordwall.net sessions.". the results of the data analysis showed that none (0 %) of the students chose strongly disagree, two students (6,89%) chose to disagree, eight students (27,59 %) chose neutral, fourteen students (48,28 %) chose to agree, and five students (17,24 %) chose strongly agree. the item score of this statement was 109. the result indicated most of the students wanted to be the winner of the game. by referring to table 2 and figure 1, it is proven that wordwall.net as a web app in the students' vocabulary learning was effective. fortunately, the need for wordwall.net in the students' vocabulary was one point on which the students do agree. it resulted in a total score of 1.578 in the 'agree' range of the total score interpretation. from the given table, questionnaire item 11 got the most supportive response from the students (113, agree). it implied that the students stayed focused on answering each question on wordwall.net. it was followed by the questionnaire item 13 (111, agree) and 3 (111, agree) as the second-highest score, which said "i respond as quickly as possible to each question in each wordwall.net session" and "i like the collaboration & competitiveness in wordwall.net sessions." these results implied the students were challenged to compete by answering the questions as fast as possible to lead the leader board, which was supported by the third questionnaire item, as mentioned before. meanwhile, the lowest score was gained by the questionnaire item 5 (76, neutral), which said, "wordwall.net creates an energetic classroom atmosphere." the wordwall.net web-based application did not create an energetic classroom atmosphere. if it is seen from a broader point of view as the lowest score, it is related to the result of item 11, where the students focused on answering the questions in wordwall.net. discussion the students responded positively to wordwall.net as one of the web-based applications in their vocabulary learning. it can be seen from the total score of the questionnaire result. the total score was 1.578, which was interpreted as agree. the result of this study was similar to the previous study conducted by bueno et al. (2022) in that students responded positively to using wordwall.net as a learning media since the respondents had no difficulty navigating the site even without the help of a technical expert. in this research, the students positively responded to using wordwall.net as their vocabulary learning media regarding their feeling, effects, and engagement with the web tool. from the perspective of students' perceived feelings about using wordwall.net, it was found that the students enjoy teamwork and competition. the statement supported that they were motivated to win all sessions. although wordwall.net could not produce an energetic classroom atmosphere, using this web tool, most participants found that using wordwall.net was exciting, interesting, motivating & fun. this result is in line with the research conducted by bueno et al. (2022), which showed that students were satisfied with the use of wordwall.net since it helped them achieve the lesson's objectives. this research provided a different perspective on how wordwall.net influences students' perceived effects after using it. the result indicated that students look forward to playing wordwall.net in their daily vocabulary learning. this indicator focused on the consequences of using the web tool. students are perceived to prepare better to win the sessions, so they try to master the vocabulary to compete with other students in the classroom. wordwall.net influenced not only the effects on students' learning process but also students' engagement with the application. if research conducted by fakhruddin et al. (2021) showed that wordwall.net influenced students' learning scores, this research presented new findings regarding students' engagement. all five statements about students' perceived engagement with the use of wordwall.net (statements 11-15) obtained favourable results in which most students responded to the statements with "agree." based on the result of this indicator, wordwall.net influenced students' engagement with the web tool and the classroom. through wordwall.net, the students focused on the questions given, which indicated they also focused on the classroom learning process. from the data acquired from the questionnaire, it could be seen that the students showed good responses to the application. the total score result indicated 'agree' toward using wordwall.net, meaning that they experienced a positive perception of this web tool for their vocabulary learning. miftahul jannah, syafryadin | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 123 conclusion this study aimed to know the students' perspectives on using wordwall.net as vocabulary learning media. this study found that students' perceptions of using wordwall.net in vocabulary learning were good. of course, most students responded positively to using wordwall.net as their vocabulary learning media. it implied that students experienced and increased numerous beneficial outcomes in implementing wordwall.net in their vocabulary learning. their feeling about wordwall.net was great. they enjoyed the teamwork and competition; they perceived wordwall.net as an exciting, interesting, motivating & fun web tool to learn vocabulary. from the students' perceived effects using wordwall.net, it could be concluded that wordwall.net was a kind of awaited learning media for the students. in addition, wordwall.net also influences the students' engagement with the web tool and the classroom. it indicated that the students paid more attention to the learning process. the researchers suggest that wordwall.net in english vocabulary learning in the classroom. referring to the result obtained, the students feel that wordwall.net is enjoyable, collaborative, and competitive. therefore, english teachers need to be aware web tools and applications so that english learning (not only vocabulary) can be more interesting for students. funding statement this research received no specific grant from any funding agency. references ahmad, j. 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(2018). perception on the usage of mobile assisted language learning (mall) in english as a second language (esl) learning among vocational college students. creative education, 09(01), 84–98. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.91008 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421b9ba82055 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 134 elt forum 11(2) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the implementation of bichronous online learning: efl students’ perceptions and challenges dias tiara putri utomo1, finaty ahsanah1 1universitas muhammadiyah lamongan, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on 30 january 2022 approved on 25 july 2022 published on 31 july 2022 ________________ keywords: bichronous online learning; asynchronous and synchronous; edmodo; zoom; covid-19 pandemic ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the covid-19 pandemic has made online learning as a common instructional delivery today. since various methods, approaches, and technologies are involved, it is important to understand students’ perceptions for taking further decision in teaching. the current research aimed to investigate indonesian students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning along with the challenges in the level of higher education. bichronous online learning refers to the blending between asynchronous and synchronous online learning. in this study, asynchronous learning was carried out through edmodo while the synchronous mode was implemented via zoom. the participants were 57 first-year university students who experienced full bichronous online learning in the english for specific purposes class. this research applied explanatory sequential mixed-methods as suggested by creswell (2014). the quantitative data were obtained by likert-scale questionnaires while the qualitative data were acquired through interviews and observations. the results indicated that students had positive perceptions of bichronous online learning in terms of motivations, academic achievement, and communication and interactions. bichronous online learning promoted students’ engagement, active interaction, and feedback exchange which highly contributed to their learning outcome. however, technical issues such as poor internet connection and limited data plan were the biggest challenges faced by the students. it is expected that educators can adjust which online learning tools are convenient to use and cater to students’ needs.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 universitas muhammadiyah lamongan jalan raya plalangan km 2 plosowahyu, lamongan e-mail: diastiara@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 135 introduction the immersion of online learning has indeed taken part in the level of higher education in the past decade, but the covid-19 outbreak has made it a common instructional delivery today. online learning is a very broad term to define, and educators or researchers may have diverse ways to name it. however, martin & oyarzun (2018) have brought up explicit definitions about various online delivery methods including asynchronous and synchronous online learning. the first term enables students to participate in a course anywhere and anytime without real-time online face-to-face meetings. conversely, the second term is delivered through real-time online meetings and allows learners to get direct feedback. it is common for educators to integrate either asynchronous or synchronous online learning into face-to-face classroom meetings. this type of learning is called a blended mode or hybrid learning (el-husseini, 2017; martin & oyarzun, 2018; staker & horn, 2012; watson & murry, 2014). several studies about the integration of asynchronous learning into face-to-face meetings have been carried out and resulted in various findings. purnawarman et al., (2016) investigated edmodo as a learning platform used in a blended learning setting for teaching writing. the study indicated that edmodo promoted students’ cognitive engagement by providing them opportunities to work independently. besides, edmodo as an asynchronous learning platform facilitated students to interact with other students, provided meaningful tasks, and promoted students’ critical thinking skill. another research conducted by mindarta et al., (2020) measured the quality of asynchronous online learning using edmodo in electrical engineering students during the covid-19 pandemic. the results indicated that in terms of experts’ perspectives, asynchronous online learning using edmodo was categorized into “very high” while the students’ satisfaction was in the “high” category. asynchronous online learning offers students meaningful learning when it can facilitate students to actively communicate with the teacher or other participants (georgouli et al., 2006; pop, 2013; shams-abadi et al., 2015; yamagata-lynch, 2014). on the other hand, educators also have introduced synchronous online learning into their brick-and-mortar classrooms. perveen (2016) reported that synchronous sessions in e-language learning activities encouraged students to provide immediate response and aided instructors to discover how deep the learning process had taken place. furthermore, the findings suggested a blend of both asynchronous and synchronous to create an ideal teaching language. this is because blending asynchronous and synchronous could encompass all language teaching and learning methods. a study performed by guzacheva (2020) explored zoom as synchronous online learning tool. the study stated that zoom was beneficial to explore as well as to assess students’ four skills since it presented rich interaction between teachers and students. additionally, a feature named “shared screen” enables teachers to display teaching media such as power point presentations, videos, and articles (guzacheva, 2020) and makes it possible for students to give feedback to each other (rahayu, 2020). with the restriction of face-to-face meetings due to the pandemic, educators must rely on the implementation of a totally online mode. in the totally online mode, educators are completely engaged internet network to the learning process (algahtani, 2011; zeitoun, 2008). as a result, many educators incorporate various online learning tools into their educational systems (ambarita, 2021; mustakim, 2020; retnaningsih, 2020; utomo & ahsanah, 2020; yuliana, 2020) and apply bichronous learning (sambeka & rares, 2021). it was martin et al., (2020) who have brought the term bichronous learning to the fore. they define bichronous learning as “the blending of both asynchronous and synchronous online learning”, in which the materials or discussions are accessible for the students and instructors 24 hours per day during the asynchronous mode but then they can also participate in a real-time discussion during the synchronous part. unfortunately, the studies on bichronous learning are still uncommon because it is a brandnew term. however, some previous studies have actually explored the blending of asynchronous and synchronous online learning without addressing the term bichronous learning. duncan et al., (2012) examined the relationship between students’ performance and participation in two learning environments: synchronous forum through a chat room and asynchronous forum via a discussion board. the results revealed that high quality both asynchronous and synchronous forums could optimize students’ performance. another research conducted by papadima-sophocleous & loizides (2016) figured out that the participants showed a positive response to the curriculum development and evaluation module which was delivered asynchronously and synchronously. additionally, the dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 136 combination of those two delivery methods increased students’ clarity in understanding the lesson and developed a relaxing learning atmosphere. in addition, some recent publications and research projects related to the blending of asynchronous and synchronous online learning were carried out to discuss the impacts (peterson et al., 2018; sambeka & rares, 2021; shahabadi & uplane, 2015) and the effectiveness (riwayatiningsih & sulistyani, 2020). moreover, studies on the students’ perceptions were also conducted worldwide (malik et al., 2017; rehman & fatima, 2021; rigo & mikuš, 2021; simbolon, 2021; somenarain et al., 2010). while in indonesia, a study on bichronous learning was initiated by sambeka & rares (2021). the study examined college students’ achievement motivation in bichronous online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the findings revealed that students’ achievement motivation was in the sufficient category, which meant bichronous learning did not decrease students’ achievement motivation nor increased it. although many studies related to the blending of asynchronous and synchronous online learning has frequently been conducted, there are quite a few or no research that have been carried out to exactly determine university students’ perceptions of bichronous online learning amidst the pandemic situation in developing countries like indonesia. therefore, the current research intended to investigate efl students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous learning along with the challenges in the level of higher education during the covid-19 pandemic. asynchronous online learning due to the study-at-home policy during the pandemic, education must be taken place in a totally online mode. totally online mode is the most innovative mode that completely relies on the use of internet networks (algahtani, 2011; zeitoun, 2008). algahtani (2011) divides totally online mode into asynchronous and synchronous based on the application of optional timing of interaction. in the asynchronous mode, teachers and learners do not have to be online at the same time (algahtani, 2011), or called “pause and resume” learning. this mode enables students to participate in the online class from anywhere and for 24 hours a day, 7 days per week without having real-time online face-to-face meetings (duncan et al., 2012; martin et al., 2020). the main advantage of this mode is the flexibility. there will be no scheduling conflict because the mode is based on the students’ own schedule (martin et al., 2020). the frequent tools of this mode include pre-recorded videos or audios, self-guided modules, lecture notes, digital libraries, discussion boards, links to online sources, and assignments (rigo & mikuš, 2021). in their research, georgouli et al., (2006) asserted that asynchronous online learning had proven to be a useful, adaptable, as well as an influential platform that could facilitate many educational tasks. synchronous online learning unlike asynchronous online learning that occurs anytime, synchronous online learning happens in real-time. synchronous mode opens opportunities for students to communicate and discuss the lessons directly with both the instructors and peers over the internet (algahtani, 2011). as mentioned by martin et al., (2020), synchronous online learning offers considerable benefits for the learning process such as providing immediate feedback, enhancing interaction among participants, being a part of audio-visual communications, and increasing motivation on doing tasks. however, as it happens in real-time, there will be a problem related to time schedules. teachers and students require to set a specific time for having their online courses. in other words, this mode is possible to occur anywhere but not anytime (riwayatiningsih & sulistyani, 2020). frequent methods of synchronous online learning include video conference, teleconference, live chatting, and livestreaming lectures, and live chatting (rigo & mikuš, 2021). research conducted by rahayu (2020) indicated that more than 60% of the participants agreed synchronous e-learning provided good communication access between students-teachers and students-students. bichronous online learning the term bichronous online learning is initially introduced by martin et al., (2020), which means the blending of both asynchronous and synchronous online learning. figure 1 presents conceptual understanding of bichronous online learning as adapted from martin et al., (2020). dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 137 if blended/hybrid learning combines asynchronous or synchronous online learning with faceto-face meetings, bichronous online learning combines asynchronous online learning with synchronous online learning. bichronous learning enables students to participate in anytime and anywhere learning during the asynchronous mode and involve in real-time discussion during the synchronous mode. bichronous online learning benefits students in terms of immediate feedback and interaction and opportunity for audio-visual communication, yet there is a possibility of a scheduling conflict and technical issues (martin et al., 2020). perveen (2016) indicated that a blend of asynchronous and synchronous online learning is more preferred by english language learners and can be an ideal manner for teaching language because the blending can incorporate various methods of language teaching and learning. similarly, rehman & fatima (2021) revealed that the application of synchronous and asynchronous learning increased students’ engagement and created interactive learning. additionally, the students relished positive reinforcement from the facilitators. methods this research was carried out within a framework of mixed-method research, which integrates elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches (creswell, 2014). furthermore, the research applied explanatory sequential mixed-methods because it was initially conducted with quantitative data in the form of questionnaire results, and then supported by qualitative data in the form of students’ interview results and observation data from asynchronous and synchronous tools. the use of multi-method approaches considers being the appropriate method since it can support data analysis and data collection methods (mahbub, 2020). there were 57 first-year students, 10 males and 47 females aged 18-21 years, from the faculty of health in a private university in indonesia who participated in the research. most of the participants (77%) have been learning english for more than five years. they were attending english for specific purposes (esp) class in the odd semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. the participants’ demographic data can be perceived in table 1. table 1. participants’ demographic data category frequency percentage sex male 10 17.55% female 47 82.45% age 18 years 10 17.55% 19 years 23 40.4% 20 years 10 17.55% 21 years 14 24.6% length of learning english 1-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 13 16 28 22.8% 28.1% 49.1% the participants experienced full bichronous online learning in their second semester since the government called on the society to implement public activity restrictions in the first half of 2021. in this research, the participants implemented bichronous online learning asynchronously through edmodo and synchronously through zoom. edmodo was used because it had been proven to be an effective tool for either asynchronous online learning or blended learning (enriquez, 2014; figure 1. conceptual understanding of bichronous online learning dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 138 mindarta et al., 2020; pop, 2013; purnawarman et al., 2016; shams-abadi et al., 2015; sumardi & muamaroh, 2020). besides, the lecturers have been familiar with edmodo. before the pandemic, they utilized edmodo as a supporting tool for blending learning. zoom was selected as a synchronous online learning tool because it was facilitated and annually paid by the university. also, the questionnaire indicated that the majority of the students (82.5%) were accustomed to using zoom. there were three instruments used in this research: questionnaire sheets, interview guide, and observation sheets. the questionnaire was made electronically via google form to obtain the necessary data. it was prepared and modified from some relevant research (al-said, 2015; mahbub, 2020; simbolon, 2021). the modifications included number of items, the name of the learning tools (zoom and edmodo), and the use of “bichronous” term which shifted online learning or blended learning. statistical results of the validity and reliability of the questionnaire from the pilot study are presented in table 2. table 2. the results of validity and reliability tests statement r-pearson correlation score validity results cronbach’ alpha score reliability results 1 .656 valid .935 reliable 2 .912 valid 3 .865 valid 4 .858 valid 5 .830 valid 6 .934 valid 7 .672 valid 8 .630 valid 9 .730 valid 10 .848 valid the data on table 2 show that the correlation value of r count ranges from .630 to .934, and the r table value for 21 respondents at the 95% significance level is 0.413. since the value of r count was greater than r table value, the questionnaire was considered valid. besides, the results of cronbach’s alpha value in table 1 scored .935, or higher than 0.7, which indicated that the questionnaire was reliable. the questionnaire consisted of 2 main parts and was written in the participants’ national language, indonesian, to avoid any possible misunderstanding. the first part included open-ended questions to obtain students’ demographic data and the second part was closed-ended statements to determine students’ perceptions. the statements consisted of 3 items on students’ motivation, 4 items on academic achievement, and 3 items on communication and interactions. each item had four choices according to likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. the scores ranged from 1 to 4, and thus the mean of the perception scales was categorized into low (<2), average (≥2 <3), and high (≥3). the positive perceptions were indicated by high scores mean while the negative perceptions were indicated by low scores mean. the questionnaire link was distributed online via edmodo and filled individually by the students on august 13-14, 2021. the second instrument, the interview guide, was performed after the researchers obtained questionnaire results. the results of interview were part of qualitative data in explanatory sequential mixed-methods and as suggested by the previous research (enriquez, 2014; mahbub, 2020). fifteen students voluntarily participated in the interview. the interview was held on august 16, 2021 and delivered in indonesian to minimize miscommunication. there were 3 primary questions in the interview: 1) based on your experience, what are the overall advantages offered by bichronous online learning? 2) what are the challenges that you faced during bichronous online learning? and 3) would you like to continue to implement bichronous online learning? the interview was conducted online via zoom meeting so that the researchers could record the process. finally, the observation sheet was used to document students’ activities and interactions in the asynchronous mode via edmodo and during the synchronous online learning via zoom. the analysis was performed based on the available data. the quantitative data from the questionnaire were analysed statistically by using spss 23 to obtain the descriptive statistics. the results of descriptive statistics were used to identify students’ overall perception of bichronous online learning implementation. the qualitative data from interview and observation were analysed by dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 139 employing a framework of qualitative data analysis consisting of data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing (miles et al., 2014). for the interview data, the researchers watched the recordings and then wrote the transcripts from each respondent. during data display phase, the researchers classified respondents’ answers into three sections in accordance with the interview question (advantages, challenges, and the willingness to implement bichronous online learning) in the form of a table. meanwhile, data from observations were obtained by watching recorded meetings from zoom and analysing edmodo’s account of the lecturer which included class home page, assignment section, and messaging. the researchers took notes on any activities and interactions made by the students and categorized them into two main sections: 1) between students and peers and, 2) between students and their lecturer. to support the notes, the researchers also took some photos. finally, the data from the interview transcripts and observation notes were utilized to support the quantitative data. findings and discussion the research findings are divided into two main subsections including 1) students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning and 2) students’ challenges of the implementation of bichronous online learning. students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning there are three fields of students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning which include students’ motivation, academic achievement, and communication and interaction. the results of statistical analysis which displayed the means scores and standard deviations for the three fields can be perceived in table 3. table 3. mean and standard deviation of each field no. field n min max sum mean std. deviation 1. students’ motivation 57 1 4 173.33 3.04 .50815 2. academic achievement 57 1.25 4 182.50 3.20 .48743 3. communication and interaction 57 1.33 4 174.33 3.06 .51993 overall fields mean 3.11 as presented in table 3, it can be perceived that all fields are in the high-level category since the mean scores are above 3 (high: ≥3), and students’ perceptions of the academic achievement (m: 3.20) rank the highest among others. furthermore, the mean score of overall fields is 3.11, which belongs to the high-level range (high: ≥3). therefore, the results indicated that the students showed positive perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning especially in terms of academic achievement. in fact, students’ positive perceptions of bichronous online learning may be affected by various plausible reasons. the elaboration of each field can be seen below. students’ motivation data presented in table 4 indicate students’ motivation in learning english through bichronous online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. as presented in table 4, the majority of the participants (89.1%) strongly agreed/agreed that they felt more motivated in learning english during the covid-19 pandemic because of the implementation of bichronous online learning. the results also indicated that most participants (93%) enjoyed learning english from home during the pandemic. finally, almost all the participants (98.2%) were interested in exploring their knowledge and skills because the course was held through bichronous online learning. the above-mentioned findings are following the results of the interview. some students mentioned that they were motivated in learning because bichronous online learning was not a monotonous delivery method and provided various techniques in teaching. “[the learning process] is more interesting because it is not monotonous”. (student 15, male). “i can easily understand the lesson because it [bichronous online learning] offers a variety of activities such as face-to-face meeting in zoom or doing a survey and quiz in edmodo. sometimes, i draw comments on my friends’ work or simply like it”. (student 5, female). dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 140 table 4. students’ motivation in learning english through bichronous online learning no. statement option frequency percentage 1. i feel more motivated in learning english during the pandemic because the subject is taught by bichronous online learning. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 9 42 5 1 15.8% 73.7% 8.8% 1.8% 2. i enjoy learning english using bichronous online learning during study at home. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 9 44 3 1 15.8% 77.2% 5.3% 1.8% 3. i am interested in exploring my knowledge and skills in english subject since it is taught by bichronous online learning. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 19 37 0 1 33.3% 64.9% 0% 1.8% another reason why bichronous online learning can strengthen students’ motivation is that it encourages students’ interaction. during synchronous meetings via zoom, students could actively participate in a live discussion with the lecturers and friends, while in edmodo, students could communicate with them for 24 hours through message and comment features. “i like bichronous online learning because it makes easier for me to discuss and interact with my lecturer and classmates.” (student 3, female). “[bichronous online learning] improves classroom interactions so that the class is not boring. the interactions between i and my friends make me more motivated to learn english.” (student 1, female). some examples of students’ interactions with the lecturer and classmates in edmodo and zoom can be perceived in figures 1 and 2. data on the figure 1 show the interaction between two students in edmodo. fara (pseudonym name) gave constructive suggestions to angga (pseudonym name) for better content of his mind map. while in figure 2, group 7 presented their paper about past perfect tense. after the presentation, other students had opportunities to ask questions, give suggestions, or simply presented compliments. figure 2. students’ interaction in edmodo dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 141 figure 3. students’ interaction in zoom the results corroborate the findings of perveen (2016), rehman & fatima (2021), and rigo & mikuš (2021). in terms of a variety of teaching activities, perveen (2016), who analyzed 1,025 responses from the survey questionnaire, suggested a blend of asynchronous and synchronous as it can incorporate all techniques/methods in language teaching/learning. furthermore, a more recent study conducted by rehman & fatima (2021) indicated that an innovative model of asynchronous and synchronous learning used during a pandemic had supported students’ engagement. similarly, rigo & mikuš (2021) also highlighted the importance of interactivity between the teacher and the students in the combination of asynchronous and synchronous distance learning. thus, it is obvious that bichronous online learning has motivated and attracted students to learn english because of various teaching activities which can cater to students’ needs and the existence of interaction among students. academic achievement data on table 5 present students’ perceptions of their academic achievement when bichronous online learning is implemented in english learning during the covid-19 pandemic. table 5. students’ perceptions of academic achievement no. statement option frequency percentage 4. assignments, quizzes, and other online tasks given by the lecturer in edmodo and the online face-to-face meetings via zoom help me to improve my learning and comprehension skills about the course. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 19 37 1 0 33.3% 64.9% 1.8% 0% 5. the quality of my assignments, quizzes, and other online activities when learning english via bichronous online learning is improved because of the feedback given by the lecturer and fellow students. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 16 40 1 0 28.1% 70.2% 1.8% 0% 6. learning english through bichronous online learning contributes to the development of my overall outcomes. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 12 40 4 1 21.1% 70.2% 7% 0% 7. bichronous online learning develops my independent learning skills. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 13 40 4 0 22.8% 70.2% 7% 0% dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 142 data on table 5 indicate that almost all students (98.2%) believed online activities including assignments, quizzes, and face-to-face meeting via asynchronous and synchronous tools had helped them to improve their comprehension of the course. then, 56 out of 57 or 98.2% of the participants also revealed that the improvement was due to the feedback given by the lecturers and classmates. regarding the overall outcomes, the majority of the participants (91.3%) affirmed that learning english via bichronous online learning had made a great contribution. finally, only four (7%) participants did not agree that bichronous online learning had developed their independent learning skills, while the rest (93%) agreed. when the participants were asked about the overall advantages of bichronous online learning, some of them mentioned that it was an effective delivery method and helped them to get a better understanding of the materials. “it [bichronous online learning] is the most effective method [among others] and i think this method has contributed to the improvement of my knowledge in english subject.” (student 4, female). “learning english through bichronous online learning has helped me to increase my knowledge and understanding of english especially during the pandemic.” (student 2, female). furthermore, in terms of feedback, some participants explained that feedback from the lecturer and other students had taken part in their quality improvement in completing online activities. feedback was generally given after the students completed their tasks and posted them in edmodo. besides, they received feedback after asking questions either to the lecturer or other students who presented their papers. “through bichronous online learning, i can freely ask questions about the materials and also answer my friends’ questions or critics when my group presents my paper.” (student 12, male). “the use of edmodo has helped me a lot. i am usually too shy to ask questions. using edmodo massaging feature, i can ask questions to my english lecturer since it is more personal. sometimes, i also ask her to give feedback on my project before i submit it.” (student 11, female). “this semester, we must present our paper via zoom. the activity is so much fun because we can directly ask questions and have a live discussion. in fact, my friends’ feedback helps me to revise my paper before final submission.” (student 6, female). an example of students’ interaction with the lecturer through the edmodo messaging feature can be perceived in figure 3. the representative of the group showed their grammar comics to the lecturer for feedback before final submission. in addition, lecture’s direct feedback on how to pronounce words correctly during zoom meetings is perceived in figure 4. figure 4. a student sending a message to the lecturer via the edmodo messaging feature to obtain constructive feedback dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 143 figure 5. the lecturer opening an electronic dictionary as a feedback on student’s wrong pronunciation regarding independent learning skills, three participants agreed that bichronous online learning had thrived their ability in self-learning which leads to academic achievement. “i think one of the benefits of bichronous online learning is that i can learn english by myself either inside or outside the class.” (student 7, female). “bichronous online learning has increased my ability to learn independently. several days before the final test, i played zoom recordings from the previous meetings. i also checked the materials from lecturer and my friends that were posted in edmodo.” (student 8, male). “learning english using bichronous online learning is beneficial in terms of autonomy especially during the pandemic like today.” (student 10, male). the aforementioned findings align with several prior studies. in their study, duncan et al., (2012) revealed that synchronous and asynchronous online forums were an effective way in increasing students’ performance. similarly, coogle & floyd (2015) also pinpointed that students’ positive learning experience through their active interactions resulted in a better overall performance of information they obtained. the interactions included students’ participation in reading and field experience, reflecting, and responding to the materials. additionally, rehman & fatima (2021) assumed that the combination of synchronous and asynchronous online learning provided students with interactive learning as they received positive reinforcement and feedback from the lecturer. in respect of independent learning, students perceived independent assignments in the text or during a live session class as beneficial factors to enhance their learning quality (coogle & floyd, 2015). in this study, it is clear that students consider their academic achievement has improved because of assignments, quizzes, and tasks given by the lecturer well as feedback from either their lecturer or fellow students. furthermore, through bichronous online learning students have an opportunity to be independent learners. communication and interaction data on table 6 show students’ perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning in terms of communication and interaction. data on the table 6 indicate the majority of the participants (92.2%) strongly agreed/agreed that bichronous online learning removed the limitation of place and time. most of the participants, 54 out of 57, approved that bichronous online learning encouraged students’ interactions with the lecturer and peers. finally, only 10.2% of the participants did not agree if bichronous online learning supported social relations among students, while the rest, 89.8% concurred with the statement. concerning unlimited place and time settings, in the interview some participants mentioned “more efficient, practical, and flexible”. this is because bichronous online learning enables students to learn english anywhere and anytime especially in the pandemic, where students are obliged to dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 144 study at home. during the asynchronous mode, students can access the materials and interact with the lecturer or other students for 24 hours. this mode is considered flexible since it provides students with an excellent opportunity to learn at their own pace and time. in this case, edmodo as asynchronous learning tool plays a significant role in facilitating as well as enhancing the effectiveness of communication in learning (al-said, 2015). concerning practicality issues, synchronous mode gives students a good chance to attend face-to-face meetings although they are separated few thousand miles away from the lecturer (guzacheva, 2020). table 6. students perceptions of communication and interactions no. statement option frequency percentage 8. bichronous online learning removes the limitation of place and time. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 11 41 5 0 19.3% 71.9% 8.8% 0% 9. bichronous online learning encourages the interaction between lecturer and students. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 10 44 3 0 17.5% 77.3% 5.2% 0% 10. bichronous online learning supports stronger social relations among students when studying at home. strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 12 39 6 0 21.1% 68.4% 10.5% 0% in terms of effective interactions in a synchronous environment, coogle & floyd (2015) figured out two aspects which considered valuable by the students: instructions with the lecturer and interactions with peers. students appreciated the opportunity to ask questions, get direct answers, and hold face-to-face conversations. they were also delighted to listen to the lecturer’s life experiences and stories. in addition to interactions with the lecturer, students also perceived interactions with peers are worthy of notice. students enjoyed a live class discussion because it sharpened a sense of connectivity, improved concept comprehension, and facilitated information exchange. in a pandemic situation like today, combining asynchronous and synchronous online learning equips students with a safe, convenient, and user-friendly virtual setting. students’ challenges to the implementation of bichronous online learning data on the challenges faced by the students during the implementation of bichronous online learning were acquired from the results of the interviews and observations. three out of fifteen participants mentioned “no”, “nothing”, and “none”, which indicated that they did not face any major problems for the implementation of bichronous online learning during the pandemic. the findings are similar to rigo & mikuš (2021) research, which indicated that 66% of the respondents could not think of any disadvantages or weaknesses of using the combination of asynchronous and synchronous online tools in distance learning. besides the above-mentioned responses, students did not mention any challenges regarding the learning system. instead, most of the participants (12 out of 15) pointed out some technical problems related to networks such as poor internet connection and limited data plan. the results of observation revealed that during synchronous meetings, one or two students apologized to the lecturer for their internet connection problems. this had made them could not answer the lecturer’s questions or actively participated in a live discussion. bad internet connection also made students unable to upload assignment files to edmodo. some previous research which was conducted in respect of online learning, whether it is fully or blended, also resulted in similar challenges (coogle & floyd, 2015; rerung, 2018; rianto, 2020; sari & wahyudin, 2019). in his research, rianto (2020) investigated efl learners’ perceptions of blended learning using a university e-learning system. the results revealed that most of the students agreed on the advantages of online learning, but they considered internet connection as the biggest problem that hindered the learning process. furthermore, rerung (2018) who examined students’ perceptions on blended learning in listening and speaking class also asserted that most of the students rated technical issues in the “very difficult” category. similarly, sari & wahyudin (2019) dias tiara putri utomo, finaty ahsanah | elt forum 11(2) (2022) 145 also found out that internet connection and its speed as one of the problems hampered learning activities. as a result, inconvenient technology or internet network led to students’ experience in frustration and stress. conclusion from the findings, it is perceived that students have positive perceptions of the implementation of bichronous online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. specifically, the positive perceptions are represented by students’ motivation, academic achievement, and communication and interaction. bichronous online learning has increased students’ motivation since it is considered not monotonous and offers a variety of teaching methods/techniques. in terms of academic achievement, students’ engagement, active interaction, and feedback exchange have highly contributed to their learning outcomes. additionally, students consider that feedback and interactions are essential to improve the quality of online learning. the findings also highlight two primary problems related to technical issues including poor internet connections and limited data plan. finally, the researchers recommend educators apply bichronous online learning rather 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(2008). e-learning: concept, issues, application, evaluation. dar alsolateah publication. 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of journalist question technique to improve students’ writing skill in narrative text (an experimental study at eighth grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015) puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: journalist questions technique, writing, narrative text, experimental research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research is about using journalist question technique for teaching writing in junior high school. journalist question technique is a technique that can help the students to explore their idea in writing to cover the content of the narrative text. this research that aims to investigate the effectiveness of journalist questions technique to improve students’ writing skill in narrative text. the research design used was an experimental research. tests were used as the instruments to collect the data and information. before conducting the experiment, try out was given to 33 students of viii-b to make sure that they were valid and reliable. the researcher used class viii-d as the experimental group and viii-c as the control group. both classes were in the same level, background, and competence. the result of this research showed that the average score of the pre-test in the experimental group was 54.78 and the post-test was 66.42. the improvement on the experimental group was 11.64. while, on the control group, the average score of the pre-test was 53.69 and the post-test was 60.48. the improvement on the control group was 6,73. from the t-test computation of the post-test score, the t-value was higher than t-table (t-value > t-table = 2.083 > 1.998). therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the working hypothesis was accepted. it means that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. the results indicate that journalist question technique technique is effective in improving the writing skill at the eighth graders of smp negeri 19 semarang in the academic year of 2014/2015. it is suggested that the findings of this study could be applied regularly and continously or developed by the english teachers to have a better teaching writing. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: puspadewiayu@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction in learning english, there are four skills that have to be mastered by students. those skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. writing is considered as the most difficult skillif it is compared to the other skills. it becomes difficult because it needs many competencies including grammar, diction, cohesion, etc to express theideas or opinions. according to brown (2001:335), “the process of writing requires an entirely different set of competencies. written products are often the result of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that requires specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develop naturally.” the result of observation that the researcher conducted in smp n 19 semarang showed that writing is also the most difficult skill for students in junior high school. the students sometimes face many problems in learning english, especially in writing. they will face with many difficulties like expressing their idea, mastering the competencies, through the steps of writing. based on school based curriculum in junior high school, there are three kinds of text taught in the eight grade of senior high school, they are: descriptive, recount, and narrative. narrative text is considered as the difficult text to create because there are difficult things like the foreign words and the complicated cotent that have to be learned by the eighth grade students. the other texts like descriptive and recount are not too difficult for the students because it uses a simple words and the content is easier to be learned. in order to enable students to express their ideas in writing, therefore, the teacher will help the students by using many kinds of techniques so that the students will enjoy the teaching learning process. in addition, they will easier to learn about the subject taught by the teacher. one of the alternatives techniques is using journalist question technique which is developed by charles et. al. (1985:129). in this technique, there are six key questions (journalist questions) that journalism students are taught to answer somewhere in their news articles to make sure that they have covered the whole story. the journalist question technique is used to help the students in writing to cover the whole story in narrative text. literature review there have been a number of researchers conducted some studies related to the use of journalist question technique to improve students’ writing skill in narrative text such as octaviani, santi (2009), rokhayani, atik(2006), nurdwiansyah, denni (2013), kurniati(2015), and zulfida (2012). from the above previous research findings, the researcher would like to use journalists question technique in writing narrative text with the eighth grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year 2014/2015. the researcher would like to know whether it is an effective technique or not to use in teaching narrative text. the journalist question technique journalists question is one of the techniques to teach narrative text text. it consists of 6 words (who, what, where, when, why and how) which are use by reporters to ask interviewees. those words can stimulate the students to generate their ideas in writing narrative texts. based on urquhart and mciver (2005), "journalists' questions (who, what, where, when, why and how), or the questions that are referred to as the five ws and one h, have been the mainstay of newsrooms across the country. the first word is who. “who” is used to explore about the person in the news. the second word is what. “what” is used to explore about something happened in the news. the third word is when. “when” is used to explore about the time in the news. the fourth word is where. “where” is used to explore about the location of the news. the fifth word is why. “why” is used to explore about cause and result of the news. the sixth word is how. “how” is used to explore about how is something happened. the students can use that words to explore their idea in writing narrative text. it can help tem to explore their idea in covering the whole story of writing narrative text. puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 the general concept of writing based on meyers (2005: 2), “writing is a way to produce language you do naturally when you speak. writing is speaking to other on a paper or on a computer screen. writing is also an action, a process of discovering and organizing your ideas, putting them on a paper and reshaping and revising them”. according to white and arndt(1991:5) in harmer (2003) “writing is re-writing that revision, seeing with new eyes, has central role to play in the act of creating text”. in their model, process writing is in interrelated set of recursive stages which includes : drafting structuring (ordering informatin, experimenting with arrangements, etc) reviewing (checking context, connections, assessing impact, editing) focusing (that is making sure you are getting the message across you want to get across) generating ideas and evaluation (assessing the draft) one of the disadvantages of getting students to concentrate on the process of writing is that it takes time : time to brainstorm their ideas, time to draft a piece of writing andf then, with the teacher’s help perhaps, review it and edit it in various ways before, perhaps, changing the focus, generating more ideas, redrafting, reediting and so on. this cannot be done in fifteen minutes. therefore, writing is not an easy process for the students. it has several steps to be done by the students guiding b y the teacher. the teacher has a significant section in students steps of writing. methods of investigation in this study, the researcher decides to use an experimental research design with the use of non-equivalent control group design. best (1981:73) states that “the pre-test post-test nonequivalent groups design is often used in classroom experiments when experimental and control groups are such naturally assembled groups as intact classes which maybe similar”. the design of the pre-test-post-test nonequivalent group design can be described as the following: the pre-test-post-test non-equivalent group design o1 x o2 o1 o3=pre-tests o3 c o4 o2 o4=post-tests (best, 1981:73) where; x : treatment using journalist questions technique c : treatment without using journalist questions technique o1 : pre-test for experimental group o2 : post-test for experimental group o3 : pre-test for control group o4 : post-test for control group the population was eight classes of eighth grade students of smp n 19 semarang. it consisted of 258 students. the sample was viii-c as the experimental group and viii-d as the control group. the instrument of this research was test. before the test is used to collect the data, the try-out test was conducted to measure the validity and reliability of the test. the researcher used t-test based on arikunto (2002) to measure the significance of the pre-test and post-test of the both groups, research findings tryout the tryout test was conducted on may 15th, 2015 in class viii b. the index validity of number 1 (grammar) was 0,7848, it was found by calculated using pearson product moment. then from the table of critical r-value, the significant level 5% for n = 33 is 0.344. based on the data, the index validity of the item number 1 (grammar) was considered to be valid because the result of the computation was higher than critical r-value. the index validity of number 2 (vocabulary) was 0,861802 , number 3 (mechanics (spelling)) was 0,769964 , number 4 (fluency) was 0,88024, and number 5 (relevance (content)) was 0,88024 , it is all higher than rvalue which considered to be valid. based on the puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 result, the reliability of the test showed that the estimated r11 was 0.871772. then from the table of critical r-value with significant level 5% for n=32 is 0.349. it can be considered that the test was reliable because r11 was higher than r-value. pre-test a pre-test was given before doing the experiment. the pre-test of experimental group was conducted on may 18th, 2015 in class viiid and the pre-test of the control group was conducted on may 19th, 2015 in class viiic. the result of the pre-test find out that the average score of the experimental group was 54.78 and the control group was 53.69. the result of t-value was 0.374 and the result of t-table was 1.998. t-value was lower than t-table (0,374 < 1.998). it meant there is no significant difference between experimental and control groups, and it was relatively the same before the treatment was given. treatments in conducting the experiment, the treatment was given to the students after the pretest. the viii-c as the experimental group was taught by using journalist question technique as a technique to learn narrative text, meanwhile viiid as the control group was taught by discussion guided teaching. the first treatment for experimental group was done on may 20th, 2015 and the second meeting was on may 25th, 2015. on the other hand the treatments for control group were done on may 21st, 2015 and on may 26th, 2015. after doing the treatment, the researcher found that there were some advantages of using journalist question technique. the advantages of using journalist question technique are easy to learn and help the students in generating their ideas. besides the advantages of using journalist question technique, the researcher also found out the disadvantages of this technique. the teacher have to explain clearly about the key questions so that the students can understand well about the questions when they applied them to create a narrative text. post-test a post-test was given after doing the experiment. the post-test of experimental group was conducted on may 27th, 2015 in class viiid and the pre-test of the control group was conducted on may 28st, 2015 in class viiic. the result of the post-test find out that the average score of the experimental group was 66,42 and the control group was 60,48. the result of t-value was 2.49 and the result of t-table was 1.998. t-value was lower than t-table (2.49 < 1.998). it meant there is a significant difference between experimental and control groups. however, the improvement of students writing skill in experimental group was higher than in the control group. the significance difference of two tests the computation of the data was made after analyzing the sudents score. by comparing the difference means of those two groups is a way to identify the significant difference between the experimental and control groups. the data being compared were the difference between the two means of the pre-test and post-test because the data showed the result of the treatments. based on best (1981:225), the difference between the two means could be computed as follows : 𝑀 = ∑ 𝑋 𝑁 m1= ∑ 𝑋1 𝑁1 m2= ∑ 𝑋2 𝑁2 where; m = mean m1 = mean of experimental group m2 = mean of control group ∑= sum of x = scores in distribution n= number of scores the mean of the experimental group on the pre-test is: m1= ∑ 𝑋 𝑁 = 1808 33 = 54.78 the mean of the experimental group on the post-test is: m1= ∑ 𝑋 𝑁 = 2192 33 = 66.42 puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 the mean of the control group on the pretest is: m2= ∑ 𝑋 𝑁 = 1772 33 = 53.69 the mean of the control group on the posttest is: m2= ∑ 𝑋 𝑁 = 1996 33 = 60.48 based on the calculation above, it can be seen that the mean of the pre-test in the experimental group was 54,78 and the post-test was 66,42. the different meanfrom those score between pre-test and post-test in the experimental group was 11,64. while,on the control group, the mean of the pre-test was 53.69 and the posttestwas 60.48. the different meanfrom those score between pre-test and post-test on the control group was 6.73. it can be concluded that the different mean from the average score of the students in the experimental group was higher than the control group. conclusions the purpose of this research is to find out the improvement and the effectiveness of using journalist question technique at the eighth grade students of smp n 19 semarang in the academic year 2014/2015. based on the research that has been done, the researcher drew some conclusions. firstly, the computation of the students improvement showed that in the experimental group, the average score of the pre-test was 54.78 and the post-test was 66.42. the difference between the pre-test and post-test score was 11.64. the post-test score was higher than the pretest score, it meant that there is an improvement of students skill in writing narrative text. in addition, the improvement of students skill in writing narrative text can be seen at the t-test of the gain score between the pre-test and post-test of the experimental and the control groups. the t-test was 2.29, it was higher than t-table (1.998). it meant that there is a significant improvement of students skill in writing narrative text. secondly, the effectiveness of using journalist questions technique could be drawn by looking at the significant differences between the experimental and the control groups. the average score of the pre-test in the experimental group was 54.78 and the post-test was 66.42. the improvement of the experimental group was 11.64. while, in the control groups, the average score of the pre-test was 53.69 and the post-test was 60.48. the improvement in the control group was 6.73. the means of both groups increased in the post-test but the mean of the post-test in the experimental group was higher than the control group. the computation showed that the t-test value of the difference means between experimental and control group (2.083) was higher than t-table (1.998). it means that there is significant difference mean between experimental and control group. it can be concluded that it is more effective to teach writing narrative text by using journalist questions technique to improve students’ skill compared to teach writing narrative text without using it. references arikunto, s. 2002. dasar-dasar evaluasi pendidikan. jakarta: bumi aksara best, j.w. 1981. research in education. london: prentice-hall. brown, h douglas. 2001. teaching by principles. new york: longman. charles, m. et.al. 1985. exploring american english. new york: macmillan publishing company. harmer, jeremy. 2003. the practice of english language teaching. malaysia: cpm, cambridge. kurniati. 2015. journal of the effect of peer editing technique toward writing skill in narrative text of the first year students at sman 3 rambah hilir in the academic year of 2014/2015. online at http://ejournal.upp.ac.id/index.php/binggrisfkip/arti cle/view/300 (accessed 02/02/2016). meyers a. 2005. gateways to academics writing: effective sentences, paragraph and essay. new york: pearson education. http://e-journal.upp.ac.id/index.php/binggrisfkip/article/view/300 http://e-journal.upp.ac.id/index.php/binggrisfkip/article/view/300 http://e-journal.upp.ac.id/index.php/binggrisfkip/article/view/300 puspa dewi ayu kurniyasari / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 nurdwiansyah, denni. (2013). journal of teaching reading comprehension on narrative text by using powerpoint animations in the second year students of sma negeri 1 kembayan in academic year 2012/2013. online at http://jurnal.untan.ac.id/index.php/jpdpb/ar ticle/view/9180 (accessed 02/02/2016). octaviani, santi. 2009. a descriptive study on students’ ability in writing narrative text (the case of the ninth grade students of smp n 1 cepu in the academic year of 2007/2008). semarang: unnes. rokhayani, atik. 2006. error analysis of simple past tense in narrative text made by the 8th grade students of smp 1 jekulo kudus in the academic year 2005/2006”. semarang: unnes. sari saragih, zulfida. 2012. journal of improving students’ achievement in writing narrative text through think-pair-share technique at smp n 1 teluk mengkudu in the academic year of 2012/2013. online at http://jurnal.unimed.ac.id/2012/index.php/j elt/article/view/364 (accessed 02/02/2016). urquhart and mciver. 2005. teaching writing in the content areas. available online at http://www.kilibro.com/books/97814166017 15/teaching-writing-in-the-content-areas (accessed 11/02/2015). http://jurnal.untan.ac.id/index.php/jpdpb/article/view/9180 http://jurnal.untan.ac.id/index.php/jpdpb/article/view/9180 http://jurnal.unimed.ac.id/2012/index.php/jelt/article/view/364 http://jurnal.unimed.ac.id/2012/index.php/jelt/article/view/364 http://www.kilibro.com/books/9781416601715/teaching-writing-in-the-content-areas http://www.kilibro.com/books/9781416601715/teaching-writing-in-the-content-areas putri anggraeni, et al / journal of english language teaching 6 (1) (2017) 169 elt forum 11 (3) (2022) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt behind a spoken discourse: idiomatic expressions in ielts speaking test zwesty aridasarie1, sri endah tabiati1 1universitas brawijaya, indonesia article info ________________ article history: received on june 16, 2022 approved on november 25, 2022 published on november 30, 2022 ________________ keywords; idioms; ielts speaking; grammatical accuracy ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the performance of a wider range of vocabulary mastery in ielts speaking test is imperative to escalate the band score achievement. the present study sought to investigate the teaching of idioms in an ielts preparation program with regards to the kinds of idioms taught in the class, how the students used them during the mock post test, and whether the use of idioms interfere with the grammatical accuracy. the study was in urgency to be conducted with regards to the absence of the teaching of idioms for ielts at least in the past five years. the data were collected from the recorded speaking performance of five students at intermediate level of english, in both mock pretest and post test to see if there were some alterations in the predicted test score and a deep interview with one candidate to have strengthen the arguments. the results showed significant differences in the students’ performance of speaking in pretest and after they were taught idioms despite some less accurate grammar in the sentence productions. the findings of the study can have potential pedagocical implications for teachers of ielts preparation classes to incorporate the teaching of idioms in either speaking or vocabulary lessons.  correspondence address: p-issn 2252-6706 | e-issn 2721-4532 faculty of cultural studies a building 2jw6+wx8, jl. veteran malang, ketawanggede, kec. lowokwaru, kota malang, jawa timur 65145 e-mail: zwesty.zee@student.ub.ac.id tabiati@ub.ac.id or stabiati@gmail.com http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1333515478&1&& http://issn.pdii.lipi.go.id/issn.cgi?daftar&1576658845&1&& mailto:zwesty.zee@student.ub.ac.id mailto:tabiati@ub.ac.id zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 170 introduction idiomatic expressions constitute a salient feature in elevating the overall ielts speaking score. idioms, which belong to the lexical sophistication dimension, are one of the scoring criteria a test candidate has to comply with to meet the standard of band 7 and above (british council, 2014). along with the other lexical resources namely paraphrases, style and collocations, the use of idioms in performing ielts speaking test is imperative as it is the most noticeable expression the test examiners will orient to and reward with a high mark, even if the expressions are not delivered quite perfectly (seedhouse & satar, 2021). the vocabulary sophistication, including idiomatic vocabulary, has a strong connection with a test candidate’s communicative competence which refers to the knowledge of how to interact successfully with an interlocutor in a communicative exchange in an l2 (iwashita & vasquez, 2019). what is meant by interact successfully is that a test candidate should be able to use the knowledge of the language he or she has mastered and to adjust to the context of speaking. presenting in ielts speaking test is not only a matter of producing utterances fluently, but also with regards to the area of sociolinguistics which enables language users to create or comprehend language suitable to a specific context (abdulrahman & abu-ayyash, 2019). there are many topics in ielts test which are relevant to the daily communication and more serious topics, such as on politics, economy, education policy, and so forth that each test candidate should be able to make a pertinent response to. ielts speaking test entails a face to face interview between the candidate and an ielts trained examiner (ghaemi, 2022). the assessment of the test will be based on the four following criteria: fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation (idp ielts indonesia, n.d.). this present paper only investigated the area of lexical resource in the speaking assessment of ielts since the teaching of it was usually done as an integrated part with the other skill lesson in some ielts preparation programs. in addition to how the candidate should present in the test, there is also a kind of technical requirement in giving a clear presentation of the talk since it will be recorded for administrative and evaluation purposes. the candidate should be able to produce a clear pronunciation too since the test evaluation may have a double-rating system to establish the intra-rater reliability of live and audio-taped interviews (nakatsuhara et al., 2020). for speaking, the examiners rate candidates’ lexical resource on the range of vocabulary used and the precision with which meanings and attitudes can be expressed (smith, 2019). ielts speaking test, as a matter of fact, requires much of presenting immediate response to examiner’s questions with regards to stating relevant supporting answers in terms of examples and arguments to sustain the communicative exchange. in addition, there is a higher demand rather than just performing the fluency in responding to questions in the test that is the ability to speak with wider and advanced range of vocabulary skillfully. in doing so, the targeted high score of ielts speaking will not be out of reach. there have been some studies probing the vocabulary size including the lexical sophistication in making great accomplishment of second language acquisition and speaking intelligence (appel et al., 2019; kaneko, 2020; kim et al., 2018) to give emphasis on how the involvement of sophisticated words, such as idioms, will generate greater effect in excelling the speaking skill. the importance of learning idioms for classroom practices has been studied by qureshi et al. (2018) and the study revealed the efl idioms presented with etymological background make a lasting impact on the overall comprehension of language. orfan (2020) highlighted a better understanding of idioms is a requirement for english proficiency and accuracy despite some challenges in learning idioms in classroom context. in addition, the prominence of idioms comprehension for non-native speakers will lead to achieve more effective communication and higher proficiency level (vo & nguyen, 2020). ahmadi & zarei (2020) also investigated the effects of three verbal mnemonic tools (grouping, stories, and conceptual metaphor) on efl learners’ recognition and recall of english idioms. those studies aforementioned are to verify the urgency of learning idiomatic expressions to uphold the higher level of speaking competence achievement. they seem to emphasize the close connection between the use of idioms and the successful speaking, while the absence of the urgency of including idioms in the test preparation program is still apparent. in addition, in the past five years the term augmented reality in helping students understand idioms have gain better popularity. the augmented reality, mostly shortened by ar, has to deal zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 171 much with technology-based learning activities and gamifications. there have been some previous analyses on the inclusion of ar in learning idioms and how the participants or learners might have more enjoyment in acquiring the new vocabulary item from their devices (wu et al., 2021; santos et al., 2016; yang et al., 2018; chew et al., 2018; edyanto et al., 2021). one of the foremost investigations on this area of lexical sophistication of indonesian learners was carried out by failasofah (2018) in which she explored the learners’ word production by utilizing computational data. the result of the study unveiled an outstanding notion on how the low-level english participants could produce more lexically rich texts compared to higher level participants. the software used in the study was used to determine the vocabulary mastery students needed to function properly in foreign language. however, the study did not elaborate the specific test on idioms in isolation and did not have anything to do with ielts speaking test. it would have been great if there were some studies conducted using the same software to measure the lexical diversity of the indonesian candidates of ielts. many english schools providing the service of ielts programs design the lessons based on the available resources of textbooks and a collection of past test questions. the textbooks covering the speaking lessons give information on the strategies to best perform in the test and highlight some dos and don’ts during the official test. the assessment rubric is clearly shown to the participant, as a part of the syllabus design, but each item in the lexical resource element has never been studied separately for the sake of comprehensive mastery and practices. the teaching of idioms was mostly inserted in vocabulary section along with the other features of formulaic language, such as paraphrases, collocations, and style. thus, the learners may only have to recognize the idioms on the surface and not to comprehend them deeply and not to have the chance to elaborate the use of many useful idioms for the test. compared to the bulk of research on how salient the knowledge of idioms is in speaking skill and on the absence of the teaching of idioms as a separate lesson in the classroom, the present study proposes a novel inquiry to address the issues on uplifting lexical items of the indonesian candidates by using one type of formulaic language, that is idioms for ielts speaking test. there has been almost zero attempt in the last five years to investigate how the approach of teaching idioms can help the ielts speaking-test candidates to better equip themselves with proficient vocabulary mastery. now how would the ielts preparation program be successful in giving a robust assistance to score high in the test when the teaching of one crucial item of lexis, that is idioms, is not paid much attention of. shedding some light on the significance of idiomatic expressions for ielts speaking test, this current study aims to fill the void of addressing the detailed lexis assessment in ielts speaking test by further examining the candidates’ savvy of english idioms. thus, the research questions of the present study are formulated as follows: 1. how is the nature of the candidates’ speaking performance in ielts mock speaking test? 2. how does the learning of idioms during the course program upsurge the candidates’ oral fluency in performing the speaking post test? 3. to what extent does the utilization of idioms in speaking interfere with grammatical accuracy? methods the present study uses qualitative method to describe the problems faced by the indonesian candidates of ielts speaking test in presenting a large scale of lexical resources, more specifically the use of idioms. the theory of lexical sophistication by john read and paul nation (2002) which highlighted the point that the lexical superiority of the ielts candidates was shown not only by their use of individual words but also their mastery of colloquial or idiomatic expressions which were often composed of relatively high-frequency words was used as the outmost theory referred to in the whole discussion. the qualitative method was used in the study since it best describes detailed and complete understanding of an issue (creswell, 2014), not to mention the natural use of idioms when giving response to queries during the ielts test. this strength of qualitative method is used to improve the understanding of the kind of problems faced by the indonesian test-takers in using idioms, along with the alternative solution of the learning of idioms, in performing the speaking test. in order to investigate the first research question, the researcher conducted a closed observation on the mock pre-test of ielts speaking taking place in the first day of the candidates’ joining the course. the researcher took notes on important features of the candidates’ nature of presenting the talk on the test based on their individual prior knowledge and skill of english speaking. the notes zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 172 were then used as a reference to compare the candidates’ speaking fluency before and after joining the course. the researcher then collected 5 students’ recorded speaking performance in ielts simulated pre-test conducted in one of the most well-known english courses in malang in 2022. the reason behind the option of this informal school is because it has frequent entries of ielts classes and it offers quite a range of english competence levels, namely ielts for pre-intermediate students, ielts for intermediate students, and ielts for upper intermediate students. the data from the pre-intermediate students’ speaking mock pre-test were the major data used in the study on the basis of assumption that they do not possess ample mastery of using wide range of vocabulary to talk on varieties of topic and of using formulaic phrases in prior communication. additionally, to give deeper understanding about the issue, an interview with one of the candidates was also carried out to see from the student’s perspectives if the use of idioms could actually help him perform more confidently in the speaking mock test. these stages were performed to address the second research question. in addition to collecting the information for the second research question, the next type of data were the simulated post-tests of ielts speaking at the end of the preparation program to give some comparative information between the performance before they got the treatment of learning idioms and after they got the materials on idioms to see if they would ultimately make some progress in speaking skill or gain higher score. the data were then analyzed in terms of lexical resources in accordance with the components of idiomatic expressions. the data were analyzed following the model of interactive data analysis consisting of data reduction, display, and verification (miles & huberman, 2014). in data reduction stage, the recordings were selected based on the performance of the medium-level users of english, or at the cefr pre-intermediate level, presenting a full part of the speaking mock test (part 1, part 2, and part 3). the same idioms performed by different candidates were not selected to avoid some repetition. the next stage, the data were displayed to be elaborated further in the discussion section. the pre-selected audio recordings were carefully observed based on the nature of the lexical resources they produce during the speaking test, whether they were able to use any idiomatic expressions. in addition, the display of the use of idioms during the post test was also elaborated to see if there was some interference with the grammatical accuracy from the sentences the candidates produced using idioms. the displayed data were then verified to withdraw a conclusion by checking the final score the students got from the ielts mock post test taken place at the very end of the course program. the score on the lexical resources given by the examiner, or the class teacher, was used as a reference to verify if the students have made clear attempts of using the idioms skillfully so as to gain higher score compared to the one they had in the pretest. findings and discussion the nature of the candidates’ speaking performance in ielts mock speaking test the absence of idioms in pretest the first research question is intended to describe the nature of the candidates’ speaking performance before joining the program and the answer for the question was the absence of idioms during the test. only one out of five candidates used idioms in the simulated speaking pre test while the other candidates used none of any idioms. the response the candidates performed during the pretest was mostly general with regards to the the use of daily words and expressions without any attempt of using any word complexity. table 1. idioms used in ielts speaking pretest candidate no idoms meaning 1 none 2 none 3 rain cats and dogs rain heavily 4 none 5 none in the speaking pretest, the candidates were given a chance to fully perform their english mastery in answering many questions on a wide variety of topic, including the topic of ‘weather’ in speaking part one. the above data is the information of whether the candidates were familiar with zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 173 the use of idioms about weather. the question of the test was ‘how is the weather in your country recently?’ and most of the candidates seemed to not have any idea of considering the use of idioms about weather at all, and went on with giving some general response by saying more or less ‘it’s raining a lot for some days’ to suit with the empirical situation taking place at the moment of speaking. only one candidate was able to show his ability to use idiom appropriately by saying ‘it’s raining cats and dogs sometimes’ along with his natural expressions when saying this so the utterances he produced sounded native-speaker alike. the response consisting idiom of weather by candidate 3 is actually a good sign of vocabulary richness or sophistication a test taker could initially present. the expression ‘rain cats and dogs’ is quite commonly used to describe the heavy rain taking place closely around us, and candidate 3 might have said it often in his daily communication. it seems to be the most frequently used idiom when referring to the rainy season. candidate 3 had the ability to use the idiom naturally and fluently into the utterances because he might have heard the expression much and then had some chances to use it in many appropriate situations before, so when asked about weather in his speaking pretest, he did not hesitate to express it as his response to the question. this indicates that the exposure to idioms on daily communication is meaningful for the ielts test candidates to upsurge their vocabulary mastery and to score higher especially in the assessment of lexical resources of the test. in accordance with the assessment of lexical resources of ielts speaking test, the examiners of ielts tend to notice idioms and reward their use with a high mark even when they are not used accurately in context (seedhouse & satar, 2021). the examiners will easily capture the expressions as to distinguish the level of the candidates’ vocabulary mastery and they can refer to the specific band score, that is at least 7, which states where the feature of the idiomatic expression begins to be noticed. as a consequence, candidate 3 was at least within the range of band 7 in speaking due to his ability in generating an idiom and as his speaking performance went along, the examiner of the mock test could start to adjust whether the score would continue to rise or dip. compared to what happened to candidate 3 of the test, as the result indicated about the nature of the candidates’ speaking performance during the simulated ielts speaking pre-test, there was the absence of idioms as a part of lexical sophistication required in aiming for a higher range of score in ielts for the other four candidates. the four candidates were mostly unfamiliar with the use of less frequent expressions which can help them uplift the score of the speaking test in terms of vocabulary assessment. most of the candidates’ responses relied much on daily words to answer a wide range of topics in the test and this indeed avoided them to score high for their first test of speaking in ielts preparation course. when asked about weather, none of the four candidates used idioms in their response since they might not have had a lot of exposures to the use of idioms in their daily practices. it is quite likely that they once heard the idiom of raining cats and dogs, or maybe under the weather, but because they did not have many opportunities to practice saying them when the context was appropriate, then the expressions did not come easily from them during the pretest. to give more comprehensive and satisfying elaboration on the nature of the speaking before the candidates joined some lessons on idioms, one candidate was interviewed. candidate 2 was given a series of questions on how he did the speaking pre-test and his overall response was that he did not have any idea that sophisticated words would play important role in achieving high score in ielts speaking test. the only thing he knew was that he should be able to keep talking and present a lot of ideas into his talk without any hesitation. the knowledge of the importance of less frequently used expressions was out of his consideration at all. in addition to candidate 2’s prior knowledge on the use of idioms, he mentioned that he was once exposed to the use of idioms, such as it’s a piece of cake, break a leg, no pain no gain, etc, including the one about weather raining cats and dogs. however, he had never used the idioms much in his daily conversations, except break a leg since he used it quite often to transfer a positive outlook to motivate his classmates for the test or even himself whenever he bumped into some difficulties during college projects. during the pretest when asked about weather, the candidate did not have a single shot on any idioms to be presented. he further described that he had a mixed feelings during the pretest which were excited, nervous, and confused at the same time, and the feelings affected his initial performance in the test a lot. he could not think clearly of what he said and whether what he said was all relevant to the questions and he indeed had no idea if he could remember any idioms he could show off to the examiner during the test. another fact was revealed here, that the exposures of zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 174 the idioms in everyday communication is a crucial factor determining the ability of an ielts test taker to use the idiomatic expressions fluently and naturally as expected from band 7 and higher. the response by candidate 2 about the absence of the knowledge of using idioms strengthens the urgency of the teaching of idioms in a separate lesson in the classroom. as stated by one of the ielts teachers of the school, ms. octa, many schools were not able to provide the teaching of idioms in isolation because the school academic administrators believed that the lexical resources element in speaking has already covered all the candidate’s needs of scoring high in ielts test, while in the real classroom practice, idioms were never mentioned of. an upsurge in the candidates’ use of idioms the ielts preparation program lasted for about three months making some attempts to assist the ielts test candidates to grasp all important strategies to master for the sake of gaining the targeted score they had had in mind even before joining the class. the program covered all skills required for the test and the syllabus design was fixed by the academic coordinator to suit the course time allotment and skills coverage. however, there had not been any lessons on idioms taught separately for many years until some class instructors saw there was the urgency of teaching idioms to the students in the class to help them score high in vocabulary assessment. the lessons of idioms were then carried out separately from any other vocabulary focus and were included in the speaking practice dedicated to use idioms to give a talk on some relevant topics. the lessons on idioms were conducted three times in the preparation class where the students were given a list of useful idioms for ielts speaking test under some topics. the students were then asked to categorize them into different big themes, such as weather, feelings, life lesson, etc., and then the class had to agree on which topics to be discussed in the first, second, and third meeting on the specific timetable of the course. the students had the exposures to some choices of idioms they could use during the speaking test, so they could initially familiarize themselves to the type, the meaning, and the suitable contexts of the idioms they had at hand. each meeting of idioms lesson gave the participants a huge opportunity to practice using the idioms they have learned into a variety of classroom activities, such as in a role play, a speech, and a simulated interview of ielts. the purpose of having a variety of activities on idioms was to give the participants much exposure on how the idioms sound and finally they would be able to use them in the appropriate context or situation. the class instructor supervised the speaking practices in the classroom quite closely when the students were engaged in a pairwork to see if they were able to use the idioms naturally and whether the idioms fitted into the context. at every end of the lesson, the teacher would give the feedback focusing on the accuracy and appropriacy of using idioms during the practice, and in the following meeting they were asked to complete some mini quiz to check their better understanding of idioms. to add to the results of the second research question, the following table shows the kinds of idioms the candidates used mostly in post test after the lesson on idioms was delivered in the classroom based on the topics of questions asked by the examiner. table 2. idioms used in ielts speaking post test topic idoms meaning feelings over the moon extremely happy to be on cloud nine very happy or joyful get on my nerves (someone/something) makes you annoyed weather rain cats and dogs rain hard/heavily under the weather feeling unwell others every cloud has a silver lining believing that every bad situation eventually leads to something good better late than never it is better to do something late than not to try it at all keep an eye watch carefully once in a blue moon happening very rarely the information in table 2 presents how the candidates’ idioms were used in the appropriate context in relevance to the questions asked by the examiner during the test. the meaning of the idioms was given to check if the candidates’ idioms were in line with their overall response in zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 175 sentence production. most of the idioms stated by the candidates were on how to express their feelings, especially happiness about certain experiences they had in the past. additionally, there were two idioms about weather and more idioms on different context which cannot be categorized into a specific topic. the idioms displayed in table 2 were mostly used by the candidates during their speaking post test as a result of them joining the lessons of idioms which were delivered three times out of the whole meetings in the course. the candidates were given a list of idioms for them to use at any appropriate context in ielts speaking during the classroom practices and they were encouraged by the class tutors to use the idioms whenever there was a right timing. since the candidates had been familiar with many idioms presented in the classrooom, they were finally able to use them in the simulated post test successfully with regards to the relevance to the topic and questions raised by the examiner of the test. in terms of the type of idioms used by the candidates during the simulated speaking post test, the expressions to describe feelings were the most popular among the other idioms. the data presented the expressions of happiness such as to be on cloud nine and over the moon were in the replacement of the word ‘very happy’. some candidates used these idioms to describe their feelings on the questions about their past experiences on going abroad for the first time. the idioms were relevant in use because most people may share the same feelings of joy when they had the chance to visit another country. the candidates used the idioms to state that they were more than happy to see a foreign country and to stay there for a while for some purposes. the followings are the transcriptions of some examples of the expressions mentioned by the candidates: candidate 1: that was my first time going abroad so i was over the moon when i felt a different vibe from my country. the idiom i was over the moon above was to answer the question of the candidate’s first experience of going abroad in ielts speaking part 1. the response was relevant in terms of meaning and it was also supported with a clear reason of why the candidate was more than joyful to have such experience in another country. the candidate went on with giving more details on the statement of why he was happy by saying that the atmosphere he had abroad was different from the one he had in his original country, especially about the cleanliness of the surrounding and the less polluted air. this idiom was on point with regards to the accurate meaning and form at the same time. another example of the idiom used to express happiness was stated by candidate 4: i went to visit singapore the first time when i was in third … er … or maybe fourth semester. i was on cloud nine, for sure, because … um … i travelled far from malang and it is out of country. i see many beautiful places and there are also a chance for me to speak english with people there. it was exciting. the candidate used another idiom to show his feeling of joy i was on cloud nine when describing his first experience of going to another country in the past. he used the idiom accurately in a way that he used the expression in appropriate context and also in accurate grammatical structure. the idiom was also supported by reasons or examples behind his joy accordingly. instead of saying that he was basically happy with the experience, the candidate showed his knowledge of one idiom to share the same meaning as happy to make attempt for gaining higher score of vocabulary mastery. having known that some candidates used the idioms to describe feelings, especially happiness, there was actually an interference of the first lesson on idioms taught in the classroom. the students were given a list of the most common idioms to express feelings on a wide variety of topics they might encounter in ielts speaking test. this first lesson introduced the students to useful idioms to replace the word happy, interesting, exciting, and some other similar words and to the importance of idioms to score higher in the test. since these idioms were deemed flexible and ready to use to give response to many topics requiring the overall impression of any experiences, the students easily stored them in mind and finally picked them up during the test. to give a close look at how well the candidate performed the idiomatic expressions during the post test, candidate 2 shared his thoughts about this. his first impression towards his ability to use some idioms about weather and feelings was amazing. he was a bit surprised at first that he could remember to use appropriate idiomatic expressions when answering questions about the weather zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 176 and his past experience of first going abroad. he could use the idioms about feelings easily because he had expressed them during the classroom practices and he added more self-practice at home to make sure that he could express them naturally. he also shared the feedback given by his instructor upon the completion of the course that he developed his vocabulary mastery significantly and his predicted speaking band score levelled up. he felt that the teaching of idioms gave him more confidence to use some ‘cool’ vocabulary to sound a little like a native speaker of english. in accordance to what candidate 2 had shared about his speaking experience in post test using some idiomatic expressions, it is clear to see that the teaching of idioms separately from the other language focus in an ielts preparation class was way more than just important. by having much exposure on useful idioms for some topics discussed in ielts test, the candidates could gain their fluency of producing more sophisticated words into their talk. with more fluency of idioms which are relevant to the topic of discussion in ielts test, the candidates were also helped to gain the confidence in speaking because they have been able to widen their vocabulary range to attempt a higher score in the test. even though using idioms is not the only way to help students upsurge their confidence in performing their speaking skill in the test, since there are more items of evaluation to address, the element of idiomatic vocabulary is clearly stated in the area of lexical resources in the speaking rubric which the candidates could easily access from many sources. band score 7 and above requires the candidates to be able to use the idiomatic vocabulary skillfully, so the idea of teaching idioms in the ielts preparation class is urgent. the use of idioms in speaking interfering with grammatical accuracy while the candidates were able to use the idioms in their post test after joining some lessons and self practices, the use of idioms in their complete response was not always error-free. there were some inaccuracies in the candidates’ sentences even though, in terms of fluency, the content of idioms was already in coherent with the questions raised in the text. despite the fluency of using idioms in the speaking test, the candidates’ attempts to use them along with the other words in the responses were not always error-free. in other words, the fluency of using idioms was not hand in hand with the grammatical accuracy. since the candidates paid much attention to score high in terms of lexical resources, the accuracy was somehow neglected, as shown from one the candidates’ statement as follows: almost every house has a car and they drive wherever they like so it cause a traffic, very terrible, and it really disturbs me, like … it’s get my nerves, like that. in terms of sentence accuracy, the statement above consists of some errors that i scrutinized as follows: almost every house has a car and they drive wherever they like …. the sentence violated the pronoun reference where the subject ‘they’ in they drive did not refer to the correct subject, that is ‘house’ written in singular noun thing. also, the verb ‘drive’ attached to pronoun ‘they’ also did not support the accuracy of the statement since it was meaningless that the ‘house’ could drive. the clause should have been written more appropriately by almost every house has a car and its owner drives wherever he likes … . other errors detected in the response above were: … so it cause a traffic which should be replaced by so it causes a terrible traffic … it’s get my nerves which should be replaced by it gets on my nerves the samples above strengthened the argument that it was pretty challenging for the candidates to balance between the fluency of using idioms and the accuracy of the sentences. there should be more efforts committed by the candidates to perform well in both sections of lexical sophistication and grammatical awareness since they are all assessed carefully in the official ielts test. in giving response to whether the use of idioms could particularly interfere with grammatical accuracy, candidate 2 made a strong impression. he described his struggle with managing both fluency and accuracy in speaking skill even before he was introduced to idioms. he added that the suggested ideas of using idioms into his speaking performance in ielts test added up more loads zwesty aridasarie, sri endah tabiati | elt forum 11 (3) (2022) 177 on his shoulders in a way that he might have surrendered his grammar awareness and would pay more attention to the use of sophisticated vocabulary. one clear example is taken from the above grammatical mistakes in saying gets on my nerves by one of the candidates. there was a tendency for the candidates to memorize the main root word, such as get my nerves or get nerves, while the accuracy of the subject-verb agreement of the sentence was carelessly neglected. they wanted to show off their new skill of using the idioms into practice so they somehow memorized the expressions, but unfortunately they ignored the grammatical awareness. they did not adjust the idioms consisting verbs, for instance, because they thought they have produced the new sophisticated words. the candidates preparing for the ielts test might find the idiom lesson a new experience or it sounds intelligent when they are able to generate many of the idioms during the speaking test, so they will be very likely to feel overwhelmed in using them without a careful control of the sentence pattern. the example was quite an interesting response from the candidate as a matter of fact, since the candidates of ielts test should ideally have more or less equal english competence in both the fluency and the accuracy of the utterances they produce. however, it turned out to be not an easy task for each ielts test taker had to deal with in a preparation course for scoring high in both mastery, but still it is quite likely that by having more practices on the use of sophisticated words in speaking but with a strong supervision on grammatical accuracy. so, at the and the candidates preparing for the test would be equipped with a satisfying skill in performing both fluency and accuracy at the same time in the official ielts test conclusion idiomatic expressions were deemed novel by some students preparing for an ielts test. the nature of their speaking skill during the ielts mock pretest was more on the fluency of the talk without significant hesitation with less knowledge on the importance of using idioms. the maneuver of idioms by the candidates in ielts speaking test was two folds. as an attempt to perform a wider range of lexical sophistication required in attaining higher score, there was a strong drive from the candidates to master some expressions they learned earlier in the preparation program to put into practice in the test. the idioms they learned during the meeting in the class could help them perform better fluency and higher score in terms of lexical resource element of evaluation, as adjusted to the avaialbale scoring rubric. on the flip side, the use of idioms was not always in alignment with the accuracy of sentence production which could interfere with the evaluation of grammatical awareness. the candidates’ issue of not being able to modify the idiomatic expressions to suit the correct subject-verb agreement in the sentences were always present. in short, to score perfectly in ielts test, the candidates are highly expected to perform both language fluency and accuracy equally well. the present study was conducted with the scope limitation of an ielts preparation program for students of pre-intermediate level of english. should there be other researchers interested in developing the discussion of this subject matter, the analysis on a wider scope of students’ english competence is deemed necessary. observing the ielts preparation class with lower english competence, such as the elementary level, should bring meaningful contribution to the learning output of delivering the lesson of idioms in the classroom. in addition, the further study can also compare the learning output of idioms for all levels of english users preparing for ielts speaking test. funding statement the research is a non-funded study that it does not receive any fundings from any agencies or institutions references abdulrahman, n., & abu-ayyash, e. a. s. 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(2018). a study of augmented reality in learning, memory and learning motivation : a case study of practical writing in middle school life. 7th international congress on advanced applied informatics (iiai-aai), 3, 958–959. https://doi.org/10.1109/iiai-aai.2018.00200 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421a087a2085 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf4224591c2037 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the comparison between the second mid-term english tests for the seventh gradersmade by the state and private school certified english teachers (the case of test items analysis of smp n 1 semarang and smp kesatrian 2 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014) reza wisnu saputra english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: english mid-term test, state and private certified english teachers, item analysis, validity, reliability, item facility, item discrimination power. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ one of the teacher’s competencies is the ability in designing a good test. designing a test is not an easy task to be done. even for a certified teacher who has already had lot of experiences in teaching and learning process. through this study, the writer wanted to find out the quality of the second mid-term english tests for the seventh graders made by state and private school certified english teachers. the objective of this study was to compare those tests in term of (1) the validity, (2) the reliability, (3) the item facility, and (4) the item discrimination power. the method used in this study was comparative quantitative research. the tests were takenfrom the teachers of smp n 1 semarang as the state school and smp kesatrian 2 semarang as the private school.from the result of the analysis, it was found that the quality of both tests were not good enough. there were 42 items out of 50 items from the mid-term test of smp n 1 semarang which did not meet the requirement as a good test. meanwhile, from the mid-term test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang, there were 38 items out of 50 items which did not meet the requirements as good test. however, from this result, the mid-term test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang was much better than the mid-term test of smp n 1 semarang. in conclusion, the qualities of the second mid-term english tests made by the state and private school certified english teachers still need to be revised carefully. especially, from the view of validity, reliability, item facility, and item discrimination. in addition, from the classification of the item which can be used from those tests, there was a little number of items which can be used.consequently, the certified english teachers need to improve their knowledge and ability in designing a good test for their students. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: reza.wisnu@yahoo.com issn 2252-6706 reza wisnu saputra / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction the quality of education can be seen through the teacher competencies. teachers have an important role in improving education quality. they transfer the knowledge to their students to be well-educated person. since 2007, government has striven for improving the quality of teacher by designing a program which is called certification. the aim of certification is also to improve teachers’ prosperity. the teacher and lecturer constitution article 16 states that through certification, it is expected that there will be also significant improvement in education. certification program will also guarantee the quality of teacher since there will be an examination to get this certification program. besides, the government believes that this program may eliminate the deceit in education world. in fact, some teachers may not transfer their knowledge to their students very well. the students find it difficult to perceive what teacher teaches. that problem may be related to the competency of the teacher. according to the government regulation no 19 in the year of 2005, there are four competencies which should be possessed by a teacher. they are pedagogic competency, personality competency, professionalism competency, and social competency. one of the teacher’s competencies which are very important is pedagogic competence. it deals with the teacher’s ability to organize teaching and learning process, comprehend students’ character, design assessment, and develop students’ potential (rifa’i: 2010). so, the competency of the teacher could be seen from the ability to design assessment. assessment is given by the teacher to find out whether the students understand what they have perceived during learning process. one kind of assessments which can be found in the school is test. the forms of test itself are many and various. one of them is multiple choice tests. the use of multiple choice tests is due to its ease of being administered. that is why many teachers use this kind of tests. although multiple choice tests are easy to be administered, this is also a kind of test which is difficult to be designed. the writer got experiences when he did the teaching practice in a certain school. he found that, in designing a mid-term test, the certified teacher only took the items from the internet whose quality were not clear enough. in fact, in designing a test, the teacher should consider the items very well. mid-term test is a test which is fully made by a teacher, not a group of teachers. it will test the ability of a teacher in designing a test individually. consequently, the writer wanted to find out the quality of mid-term test made by the other certified teachers. he also wanted to see the difference between the midterm test made by the teacher of private and state school. some people believe that the quality of private school is not good enough if it compares with the quality of state school. after doing consideration, the writer chose a private and a state school to be used as the subject of the research. method of investigation in this study, the writer used comparative method. nazir (2005: 58) states that comparative research is a kind of descriptive research whose aim is to find out the fundamental answer about cause and effect by analyzing the factors which causes the occurrence of the phenomenon. through this research, the writer wanted to compare the quality of the tests made by a state school certified english teacher and a private school certified english teacher by describing the result of the analysis.as the result, the writer used descriptive comparative research design. the writer conducted the research by taking a set of second mid-term english test and students’ answer sheets from a class of different schools in the academic year of 2013/2014. the schools which have been chosen by the writer are a state school and aprivate school. the first school is smp n 1 semarang as the state school. meanwhile, the second school is smp kesatrian 2 semarang as the state school. the purpose of this study is to analyze the quality of each second mid-term english test from two different schools; they are smp n 1 reza wisnu saputra / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 semarang and smp kesatrian 2 semarang; by analyzing the students’ answer sheet of second mid-term english test. then, the sample of this study is taken from one of seventh grade classes of each school. the writer observed the classes which were taught by those teachers. from those classes, he observed the average achievement of each class. then, he found 2 classes which had the same average achievement. by using simple random sampling technique, the writer decided to choose one of those two classes to be used as the sample. the writer took thirty students’ answer sheets from vii g class at smp n 1 semarang. as the comparison, the writer also took thirty students’ answer sheets from vii d class at smp kesatrian 2 semarang. the writer analyzed the test by finding out the validity, reliability, item facility, and item discrimination of both tests. he used some certain formula to analyze the tests, such as pearson’s product moment formula and kuder richardson 20 formula. analysis and discussion based on the analysis made by the writer, he found that there were some items from both mid-term tests which did not fulfill the requirements as a good test item. the result of analysis of both mid-term tests was presented in the table below: analysis of the english mid-term test of smp n 1 semarang table 1 the analysis of the english mid-term test of smp n 1 semarang result validity out of 50 items, 13 items were valid and 37 items were invalid. the valid items were number 4, 11, 15, 22, 25, 29, 31, 33, 40, 41, 42, 46, and 49. reliability all of the items had r11 values of 0.632. meanwhile, the r table was 0.361. after consulting to the r table, it was found that r 11 > r table. from the computation of reliability, it was found that all items were reliable. difficulty level 31 items were easy, 15 items were moderate, and 4 items were difficult. discriminating power 40 items were poor, 7 items were satisfactory, 3 items were good reza wisnu saputra / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 analysis of the english mid-term test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang table 2 the analysis of the english mid-term test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang by using the gronlund’s criteria, the writer has classified the items which still can be used, can be used with several revision, and be discarded. from the second mid-term english test of smp n 1 semarang, there were 3 items which still can be used, 5 items which still can be used with several revisions, and 42 items which should be discarded. meanwhile, from the second midterm english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang, there were 8 items which still can be used, 4 items which still can be used with several revisions, and 38 items which should be discarded. conclusion and suggestion conclusion after doing the analysis, there were some conclusions the writer could draw from his research. those are: 1. from the second mid-term english test of smp n 1 semarang, in terms of the validity, there were only 13 valid test items. the mean of validity of this test was 0.266. 2. meanwhile, from the second mid-term english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang, there were only 21 valid test items and the mean of validity was 0.309. 3. in term of the reliability, the second midterm english test of smp n 1 semarang had the coefficient of reliability of 0.632, while the second mid-term english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang had the coefficient of reliability of 0.815 4. from the aspect of item facility of the test, the second mid-term english test of smp n 1 semarang had the mean of item facility of 0.775. by referring to the mean of item facility, this test was classified into an easy test. meanwhile, the second mid-term english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang had the mean of item facility of 0.799. it could be said that this test was classified into an easy test. 5. in term of the item discrimination power, the second mid-term english test of smp n 1 semarang in the academic year of 2013/2014 had the mean of item discrimination power of 0.121. meanwhile, the second mid-term english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang had the mean of item discrimination power of 0.181 result validity out of 50 items, 21 items were valid and 29 items were invalid. the valid items were number 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 33, 45, 47, and, 49. reliability all of the items had r11 values of 0.815. meanwhile, the r table was 0.361. after consulting to the r table, it was found that r 11 > r table. from the computation of reliability, it was found that all items were reliable. difficulty level 36 items were easy and 14 items were moderate. discriminating power 38 items were poor, 6 items were satisfactory, 4 items were good, and 2 items were excellent reza wisnu saputra / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 6. based on the classification made by the writer, from the second mid-term english test of smp n 1 semarang, there were 3 items which still can be used, 5 items which still can be used with several revisions, and 42 items which should be discarded. 7. meanwhile, from the second mid-term english test of smp kesatrian 2 semarang, there were 8 items which still can be used, 4 items which still can be used with several revisions, and 38 items which should be discarded. suggestion the writer will give some suggestions for the test maker, in this case is the teacher, to design a good test: 1. prepare the test well before it is used. 2. pay more attention to the item level of difficulty. 3. design the test based on the curriculum and the materials which wants to be measured. 4. minimize the use of obvious clues to avoid the ineffectiveness of an item or its option. 5. from the analysis done by the writer, the item which still can be used and revised should be saved by the test maker. they may be used in the next mid-term test. references azwar, ma, drs.saefudin, 1996.test prestasi.second edition. yogyakarta: pustakapelajar brown, h.d. 2004.language assessment: principles and classroom practices. london: longman pearson. gronlund, n. e. 1981. measurement and evaluation in teaching. new york: macmillan publishing co., inc. harris, p. 1969. testing english as a second language. new york: mcgraw hill. nuryulia, i.r. 2009. item analysis of achievement test for the seventh grade students of smp n 1moga, pemalang in the academic year 2008/2009. (final project semarang state university) parr, a.m. 2006. teacher made test reliability: a comparison of test score and student study habits from friday to monday in a high school biology class in monroe county ohio. thesis. ohio: marietta college. 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt improving students’ skill in writing recount text by using peer review technique (a classroom action research of the eighth grade students of smp n 4 batang year 2014/2015) candra arifiana english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: peer review technique, writing skill, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this study was conducted based on the fact that writing is the most difficult skill for students to master. students face difficulties in learning writing. they are not sure of how to arrange sentences into good paragraphs, how to develop their ideas, they have lack of vocabulary and tend to use only certain words they have known in writing. they also apply incorrect grammar in their writing. teacher considers that teaching writing is a difficult task. this final project is about teaching writing recount text by using peer review technique to the eighth graders students of junior high school 4 batang in the academic year of 2014/2015. the aim of this study is to find out how peer review technique can be implemented to improve students’ skill in writing recount text. in order to achieve the objectives, an action research was designed and carried out in this study. the participants of this study were 38 students of class viii d of smp n 4 batang in the academic year of 2014/2015. questionnaire, observation sheet, and writing tests were used as the instruments for collecting data. the results of the study showed significant improvement of the students’ achievement in writing recount text. it is proven by the average results in every test; pre test (63.00), formative test (74.29), and post test (79.50). the students’ writing skill (organization, content, grammar, punctuation, and style and quality of expression) in each test improved, too. moreover, the result of the observation sheet showed that peer review technique changed the students’ learning behavior being better than before. their enthusiasm during the learning process increased in each cycle. the analysis result of questionnaire showed that peer review technique was useful to most of students to improve their learning interest in writing recount text. their perception changed positively after having the treatment. it meant that the use of peer review technique could ease their problem in writing english especially recount text based on the results of those research instruments, it can be concluded that using peer review technique as a learning technique gives the improvement to students’ skill in writing recount text. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: candra1104@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction english as international language has an important role in the world. not only used in communication, but also in transferring information. there are four skills that students must be mastered in english they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. these skills have to be mastered by the students, especially writing skill, because, according to harmer (2004), “being able to write is a vital skill for ‘speakers’ of a foreign language as much as for everyone using their own first language” (p. 3). it means that writing is the basic skill to communicate. also, writing is used for a wide variety of purposes. it is produced in many different forms (harmer, 2004, p. 4). for examples, letter, book, etc. so, in everyday life, the people need to master writing. based on the school-based curriculum in junior high school, in english subject the students have to understand and create some short functional texts such as procedure, descriptive, recount, narrative, and report. in fact, students have many difficulties to write recount text. based on the researcher observation when the researcher had teaching practice in smp 4 batang class 8d, students find it difficult in writing . the students had some difficulties in organizing the paragraph and grammatical use. there were many mistakes in their writing in grammar, diction and also lack of vocabulary. the problem is they are not aware or do not know the mistakes that they have made. the students’ problem in writing is also caused by the difficulty of expressing ideas in writing. it is caused by their insufficient knowledge of language components such as vocabulary and grammar. besides the difficulties in writing itself, writing problems also exist because of the students’ reluctance in writing. harmer (2004:61) states that “the students are reluctant to write because they rarely write, even in their own language”. the lack of writing practice makes students perform poorly in writing. furthermore, they are bored and uninterested with the conventional strategy of teaching recount text which has been applied. because of that, the teacher should give some strategies to help students increase or even solve their difficulties. these strategies should be interesting in order to interest students to write. because basically, the students or children enjoy experimenting with writing and putting their ideas down on paper (linse, 2006, p. 99). based on linse’s statement, students actually have had basic interest to write. so, the teachers just need to give some motivation or direction to develop it. seeing those students’ difficulties in writing recount text and when their teacher corrects their writing, they often just throw it away or do not see or check it again. so, peer review is adequate technique to help students correct their work when there was something wrong in their writing; this gives the student the opportunity to reflect on their mistakes and make improvements to their writing. it also shows the teacher what the learners are able to do and what still remains difficult or unknown. peer review technique is an essential part of the writing process. it is utilized between the drafting and revision stages, considering the process of writing involves four elements: planning, drafting, editing, and final version. by peer review technique, students can get the four elements in the writing process. by applying peer review technique, it will help students to know what the strengths are and weaknesses or what are missing from their writing so they can revise and improve it. through this technique, students could exchange their writing with their partners to check the organization in writing. bartels (2003) states that in peer review students read each other papers and provide feedback to the researcher, usually answering specific questions that teacher has provided. so, through this technique, students got good feedback to evaluate their writing better and it was very useful for students. candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 in this research, the researcher would like to find out the students’ improvement in writing recount text after being taught by this technique. hopefully, the result of this study will give much benefit to the education world of indonesia and be able to offer some significant information dealing with the application of the games in language learning activity. literature review farid helmi in 2012 conducted a research entitled “improving students’ skill in writing recount text by using a personal letter”. he conducted a classroom action research to the tenth graders of mass proto pekalongan in the academic year of 2011/2012. writing according to sokolik in linse (2006), writing is a combination of process and product. the process refers to the act of gathering ideas and working with them until they are presented in a manner that is polished and comprehensible to readers (linse, 2006, p. 98). recount text according to anderson (1997: 48) a recount is speaking or writing about past events or a piece of text that retells past events, usually in the order which they happened. peer review technique peer review is one of techniques in teaching writing. it is very important in writing process. bartels (2003) states that peer review is also referred to as peer editing, peer response, peer evaluation, and peer feedback, in which students read each other's writing and provide feedback to the researcher. peer review is an activity in process of students’ writing to responding to each other’s writing. method of investigation a research method which is used in this study is action research, while the approach is qualitative. arikunto (2006: 2) also claims that action research is a kind of research done by someone who conducts the research on what he/she is really doing without changing its system. action research has some procedures. the steps above will be explained as follows: (1) planning planning is the first step in doing action research. (2) acting in this step, the researcher or teacher executes carefully the plan which is made before. this step is the main step of action research. (3) observing in observation, the researcher or teacher observes the collected data during the action step. the purpose of this step is to find out whether the improvement or the change has reached or not throughout the action. (4) reflecting in the last step, reflection, the research or the teacher evaluates the effect of action in order to make sense of what has happened and to understand the problem and also describe whether there is the positive or negative aspect for the study improvement. based on the reflection, the researcher revises the previous plan to go for the next cycle. the subjects of this research were students in the eighth grade of smp n 4 batang in class viii a in the academic year of 2013/2014. the researcher chose the eighth grade students of junior high school because the researcher found that the material was appropriate with the curriculum. moreover, it would help them to understand more about the material which was writing recount text. the instruments of this study were writing tests, observation checklists, and questionnaire. there were observation checklist for the students and observation checklist for the teacher. there were two candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 cycles in this research. in the first meeting before conducted the treatment, the researcher conducted the pre test. it was aimed to measure students’ ability in writing recount text before the researcher gave the treatment. in this research, the researcher introduced sentence race game as the treatment for the students to learn recount text. by playing sentence race game, the students knew how to write and construct a good sentence in english. in addition, they learnt grammar especially past tense and also vocabulary. in the last meeting, the researcher conducted the post-test. post-test was conducted to measure the students’ achievement after the treatments. the purpose of the post-test was to check the students’ improvement in writing recount text after they had been taught using sentence race game. result of the study general description this action research was conducted in class viii d of smp negeri 4 batang, in the academic year of 2014/2015. the research was conducted in five meetings started from march 23th, 2015 until april 11th, 2014. this action research consisted of three main activities. they were pre-test, first cycle and second cycle. each cycle consists of planning, action, observation and reflection. cycle 1 the first cycle consisted of two meetings. the first meeting was conducted on march 28th 2015 and the second meeting was conducted on march 30th 2015. all the students were present in the teaching and learning process in first cycle. in the first meeting, the students were introduced with peer review. the purpose of this meeting was to give the treatment related to recount text using peer review as the technique. in this cycle, the researcher started to do the first step of action research. first of all, the researcher greeted the students and checked students’ attendance. before peer review technique was introduced to the students, the researcher explained to them about recount text about generic structures and the language features of recount text. after that, the researcher explained about peer review technique. the researcher also gave an example of how to do peer review, how to analyze, correct others’ mistake, and give feedback to their friends’ work. the researchers asked the students to work in pairs and gave them an example of recount text with same mistakes and distribute the peer review guidelines and peer review sheet. when they had finished doing peer review training, the researcher asked them to write a recount text as the first draft. after they finished writing the first draft of recount text, i asked them to do peer review. the activity in the second meeting in this cycle was giving the material of simple past tense and held a formative test. the students were asked to make a recount text which theme was “study tour”. the researcher gave them time about 45 minutes to make their recount text. meanwhile, i recorded the students’ behavior by filling the observation checklist for the students. the english teacher of the class also filled the observation checklist to observe me. cycle 2 based on the first cycle evaluation, it could be seen that there were some mistakes were found in their writing product. most of the students were not able to express their idea using simple past tense, they used the same words to express their writing (repetition), and etc. in addition, the mean score of the students’ first cycle test result was unsatisfactory and under the kkm. that is why another treatment was necessary to be given to the students so that they were able to construct recount text using simple past tense. the second cycle was conducted on april 4th and april 11nd 2015. all the students joined the teaching and learning process. at candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 the end of the second cycle, the researcher handed out the questionnaire to the students. the first meeting of second cycle was conducted on april 4th 2015. the procedure of teaching and learning process was almost the same with the first cycle. before applying peer review technique, the students were given another example of recount text and exercise about past tense. they were asked to analyze and understand the text with their partner also done the exercises. then, the researcher asked them to make a short recount text related to their past activity. after they had finished it, the researcher asked some students to do peer review technique. the steps were the same with first cycle. in this meeting in cycle 2, the researcher allocated the time to review the material and gave the last test which was post-test. all of the students were present on that day. students were asked to make a recount text for about 45 minutes. the theme was about “my holiday”. at the end of the lesson, questionnaire was handed out to the students and they had to fill it. the students’ score improvement after knowing the result of every student, in order to find out further on the students’ achievement in detail, the researcher used the following formula to find out the average of the students’ achievement in pre-test. the average of the students’ score = the total of the students’ score the total number of the students the average of the students’ score = 2394 38 = 63 the average of the students’ score in pre-test was 63. according to the harris scoring system, it could be said that their score was in the level of fair. on the other hand, their score was still low. it was lower than the minimum score (kkm = kriteria ketuntasan minimal) of smp n 4 batang, especially in english subject which was 75.00. moreover, almost 75% of the students got less than 75.00. then, in calculating the average score of the students’ writing skill in formative-test, it was used the same formula: the average of the students’ score = the total of the students’ score the total number of the students the average of the students’ score = 2823 38 = 74.29 the average of the students’ score in formative-test was 74.29. it increased 11.29 points from pre-test. it meant that the treatment of teaching writing recount text using peer review was useful. it could improve the students’ writing skill and it could be seen from the improvement of their score in formative-test. although the score increased, their score was still fair. it was also still lower than the minimum score (kkm = kriteriaketuntasan minimal) of the smp n 4 batang. there were still students who got the score below 75.00. candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 here, in calculating the average of the students’ writing achievement in post-test, it was used the same formula below: the average of the students’ score = the total of the students’ score the total number of the students the average of the students’ score = 3021 38 = 79.50 the average of the students’ score in post-test was 79.50; it increased from the formative-test, what a good progress. initially their average in pre-test was 63, then it became 74.29 in formative-test, and finally their average score obtained 79.50 in post-test. it meant that the treatment of teaching writing using peer review as the technique was helpful. it was helpful to improve the students’ writing skill, especially writing recount text. it was proven by seeing their average score which passed the criterion of passing assessment (kkm = kriteriaketuntasan minimal) of the smp n 4 batang, especially in english subject which was 75.00. the result of each test showed improvements of the students’ skill in writing recount text. the average score are presented in the table below: no. test average score 1. pre-test 63 2. formative test (1st cycle) 74.29 3. post-test (2nd cycle) 79.50 table 1: students’ score improvement in the first cycle, the improvement of the result was increased 11.29 points. in the pre-test, the average score was 63 and in the formative test, the average score was 74.29. although the average score was lower than the criterion of passing assessment (kkm = kriteriaketuntasan minimal) of the smp n 4 batang, at least it shows an improvement from the pre-test. in the second cycle, the result of the post-test score also showed a good improvement. the students’ average score had increased better, from 74.29.9 to79.50. it was more than the criterion of passing assessment or kkm. from the diagram above, we can see that there is an increase of the students’ average score. it meant that the treatment of teaching writing using sentence race game was helpful. it was really helpful to improve the students’ writing skill, especially writing recount text. analysis of the result of observation checklist the researcher used observation checklists for this action research. the checklist for the students checked their behaviour and responses toward the teaching learning process. the observation checklist for was done by the english teacher of smp n 4 batang. observation checklist for the students was categorized in four categories ways, they are:(a) the students’ attention to the teacher’s explanation (b) the students’ active participation during the lesson (asking and answering questions, giving opinion, etc) (c) the students’ positive response toward peer review technique (d) the students’ seriousness in writing recount text.the observation sheet then be analyzed to see the students’ behavioral changes in the learning process. candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 overall, the result of observation sheet showed that the students’ seriousness in writing recount text increased from first cycle and second cycle analysis of the result of questionnaire the questionnaire was distributed to the students on april 11th, 2014 after the post-test was conducted. it was aimed to investigate students’ perception towards the use of peer review in teaching recount text. there were 10 items in the questionnaire which given in bahasa indonesia in order to help the students got the best understanding of each item.from the students’ responses of the questionnaire, the researcher could draw the interpretation as follows: item number 1 stated that students liked english subject. the result of the questionnaire showed that 24% of students strongly agreed, 71% of students agreed, and 5% of students disagreed that writing in english subject was likeable. none of them strongly disagreed with that statement. item number 2 stated that students liked writing in english subject. the result of the questionnaire showed that 21% of students strongly agreed, 68% of students agreed, and 11% of students disagreed that writing in english subject was likeable. none of them strongly disagreed with that statement. item number 3 stated that the learning activity in the school was interesting. from the questionnaire result, there were 24% of students or 9 students strongly agreed, 65% of students or 25 students agreed, 11 of students or 4 students disagreed, and 0% or none of them strongly disagreed with the statement. item number 4 stated thatwhether the students were excited about the technique use.. there were 42% of students strongly agreed, 58% of students agreed, and none of them disageed and strongly disagreed. it meant that they were interested in the technique i used. item number 5 stated that the students enjoyed learning through peer review. there were 42% of students strongly agreed, 58% of students agreed, and 0% of students disageed or strongly disagreed. it meant that the technique was enjoyable. item number 6 stated that the situation of the teaching learning process was enjoyable after being taught by peer review. there were 37% of students strongly agreed, 58% of students agreed, and 5% of students disagreed and none of them strongly disagreed. item number 7 statedpeer review technique could improve the students’ understanding of how to compose a good writing. it found that 37% of students \ strongly agreed, 60% of students agreed and 3% of students disagreed and none of students strongly disagreed. item number 8 stated peer review applied by the researcher in writing recount text could help the students improve their writing composition. there were 45% of students strongly agreed, 55% of students agreed, 0% or none of the students disagreed or strongly agreed. it could be seen on students’ improvement in aspects of writing in each test. item number 9 stated that peer review applied by the researcher in writing recount text could help the students improve their writing. item number 10 stated that writing practice by using peer review was necessary to be used continuously. based on the questionnaire analysis, it showed that peer review technique teaching helped the students to improve their writing skill especially recount text. it could be seen on the tests result, the students’ score in writing recount text was increasing. conclusion from the students’ achievements results, the writer draws some conclusions. they are: the students’ achievement of writing recount text of the eighth grade of students of smp n 4 batang in the academic year of 2014/2015 was improving after being taught by peer review. it was proved by the data shown that there is improvement in this research. the average of the students’ writing score in the pre-test was 63, and it increased candra arifiana / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 8 11.29 points become 74.29 in the formative test and become 79.50 in the post-test. students’ learning behavior had been changed from first cycle and second cycle. the students’ learning behavior got better and better including their active and also their confidence in giving constructive feedback to their partner draft of recount text. the result is based on the analysis from the observation checklist about students’ behaviour and also the analysis of the questionnaire. bibliography anderson, m. and kathy a. 1997. text types in english. australia: macmillan education australia pty ltd. bartels, nat. 2003. written peer response in l2 writing. english teaching forum. germany. 34-37 belcher, diane. 2007. genre and second language writing. united states of america: the university of michigan press. best, j. w. 1981. research in education. new jersey: prenticehall inc. burns, anne.. 2003. collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. brown, h. d. 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education. celce-murcia, m. 2001.teaching english as a second foreign language (third edition). usa: heinle&heinle. elliot, j. (1991) action research for educational change. buckingham: open university press. harmer, jeremy. 2004. how to teach writing. united kingdom: longman. helmi, farid. 2012. improving students’ skill in writing recount text by using a personal letter. thesis. semarang: iain walisongo. liu, j. and hansen, j. 2005. guiding principles for effective peer response.elt journal: oxford university press.59 (1). 31-38. attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421c4cb0a631 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a sql command or malformed data. what can i do to resolve this? you can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. please include what you were doing when this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf42239a30a637 • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 4 (1) (2015) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt improving students’ mastery of the simple past tense by using chinese whispers and group grid technique yenny dwi nugraheni english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang aticle info ________________ article history: received in juni 2015 approved in juli 2015 published in agustus 2015 ________________ keywords: teaching the simple past tense, chinese whispers, cooperative learning, group grid technique, action research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ the eleventh graders of pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga were obliged to master the simple past tense since one of the basic competences in school-based curriculum was about telling activities or works in the past and future work plans. unfortunately, they still possessed low mastery of grammar and experienced difficulties in learning it. a classroom action research about the use of chinese whispers and group grid technique aimed to resolve those emerging problems with the foci of the study to investigate how this method could be used in teaching the simple past tense, and how the use of it improved students’ mastery of the simple past tense. specifically, the subject of this study was 34 students of class xi d at pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga in the academic year of 2014/2015. this study was conducted in two cycles in a total of seven meetings. the instruments for obtaining the data were tests, observation sheet, and questionnaire. the observation sheet results showed that students’ behaviors and responses during the learning processes improved and became relatively good. furthermore, the questionnaire results indicated that students tended to show good judgment on the implementation of this teaching method. the final result of the study revealed that there was a significant improvement in students’ achievement. their average score in pre-test was 58.65, in formative test 1 was 76.97, in formative test 2 was 79.06, and in post-test was 83.56. referring to the overall results of the study, the combination of chinese whispers and group grid technique could be considered as one of alternative and effective teaching methods to improve students’ mastery of the simple past tense. © 2015 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: yenny.2201411073@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 2 introduction “the word language is applied to natural language as a system of human communication” (srijono, 2001:1). this can be interpreted that language is used to communicate with others, to convey thoughts, information, ideas, concepts, or feelings from person to person both in written or spoken form. it certainly consists of sounds, words, and grammatical structures. english as a dominant language of international communication is used around the world. it becomes a global language over time. this is in line with what crystal says (2003:4-5): the socio-cultural explanation looks at the way people all over the world, in many walks of life, have come to depend on english for their economic and social well-being. the language has penetrated deeply into the international domains of political life, business, safety, communication, entertainment, the media and education. given the importance of english, education in indonesia under the responsibility of the ministry of education and culture is obliged to contain english subject as a foreign language in the implementation of the school-based curriculum or the 2006 curriculum (ktsp). based on the applied curriculum, english language teaching in indonesia aims at mastering four basic language skills; those are listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. students are expected to master the four language skills so that they can use english effectively. language components such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation also have an important role in developing those four language skills. gerot and wignell (1994:3) state: why do we need to know about grammar? we need a theory of grammar or language which helps us understand how texts work. as teachers we need to know how texts work so we can explicitly help learners learn how to understand and produce texts—spoken and written in various contexts for various purposes. here, the existence of grammatical rules is very important in spoken and written language. students should be able to understand the theories of english grammar, as well as in practice, they also have to understand how to apply them either in oral or in written form. based on the writer’s observations during the teaching practicum (ppl) at pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga, it was found that many students faced difficulties in mastering several types of tenses, one of them is the simple past tense which is essential to be used for describing actions which happened before the present time and is no longer happening. they experienced difficulties in applying the correct form of this tense. sometimes, most of them were confused about when to use the simple past tense and when to use the simple present tense. in addition, they also made mistakes when changing some verbs into the past form of the verbs. moreover, english grammar over there is frequently taught in a conventional way, such as explaining it orally, and then giving students some exercises about the materials. this certainly will make them feel sick and tired of learning english grammar. it will be good if the english teachers could create alternative games, techniques, or media in teaching so that they are interested in what they are going to learn and to get rid of boredom. hence, the writer will focus on improving students’ mastery of the simple past tense by combining chinese whispers game with one of cooperative learning techniques called group yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 grid in their learning processes, so a good team work with active students’ participation is needed here. “chinese whispers (or telephone in the united states) is a game played around the world, in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group” (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/chinese_whispers). chinese whispers is chosen because when this game takes place in the classroom, all students will be assisted in mastering the simple past tense because they will be indirectly challenged to memorize the form of regular and irregular verbs, and learn about the formula of the simple past tense from the given sentences in this game. whereas, the group grid technique will be used as a means of carrying out the group tasks in order to check students’ understanding of the simple past tense. according to barkley, cross, and major (2005:211), “group grid is probably most useful in introductory-level courses where students are building basic schema, learning a large number of new terms, and trying to understand the categorization rules of the discipline”. hopefully, by ordering them to work collectively in groups, categorize any scrambled items, and play chinese whispers in the classroom, their mastery of the simple past tense will be improved. research methodology in an effort to resolve the emerging research problems, the researcher conducted a classroom action research as the research design in class xi d-ap at pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga which consisted of 34 students who still possessed low mastery of grammar. research design according to pollard and triggs (1997:65) “action research involves researchers, with teachers or other practitioners, in a cyclical process of planning, action, observation, and reflection before beginning the whole process all over again”. such cyclical process has become a noticeable characteristic of action research all this time. below is a model of stages in doing the action research by kemmis and mctaggart (burns, 1999:33). figure 1. action research spiral by kemmis and mctaggart in this research, the researcher applied the spiral of cycles of self-reflection illustrated by kemmis and mctaggart above which include planning, acting, observing, and yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 reflecting, also played important roles as a teacher who patiently taught the materials to the students and checked their mastery of the simple past tense through tests; as a data collector who collected all research data; and as a data analyzer who then analyzed the collected data in order to be able to draw any conclusions based on the end results. planning at this phase, the researcher planned a detailed set of decisions about how to take the action in the future and how to improve an action. what is the actual problem arises in the class? who will do the action? when will it happen? what are the proposed changes to the learning process? how does the researcher intend to apply my revised teaching methods? this is because it is so much important to find out if the plans are able to be done and to consider how students’ reactions to the implementation are. acting at this phase, the researcher implemented the arranged plan in the class. after answering questions at planning phase, the researcher tried to give the treatments to the students in the hope of improving their learning achievements. the researcher also had to make sure that any deviations from the plans had been recorded since reality sometimes could be unpredictable. observing observing phase ran along with acting phase. there was a detailed observation, monitoring, and recording during the treatments were given in the classroom. this was used by the researcher to assess how much the improvement of the action was. reflecting at this phase, the researcher reflected the overall learning process considering the results of the observations. by reflecting, the researcher could make a strong decision whether a replan for the next meetings or cycles was truly needed or not. procedures of analyzing data all instruments’ data were analyzed after being gathered. the researcher then was able to draw any conclusions of the study based on the outcomes of the analyzed data. the following were the methods for analyzing the research data. test (pre-test, formative-tests and post-test) the results of the pre-test, quiz 1, quiz 2, and the post-test were calculated by using specific formulas as follow: formula of the student’s score table 1. formula of student’s score student’s score = the number of right answers the number of questions x 100% formula of the mean of students’ scores table 2. formula of the mean of students’ scores = mean ∑ = summation sign x = student’s score n = number of scores yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 observation the observers of this study were the english teacher and three other observers. the researcher used the data from their observation sheets to determine how chinese whispers and group grid technique improve students’ learning behaviours and mastery of the simple past tense. questionnaire as soon as all questionnaires were filled in by the students, the researcher analyzed their answers to gather more information from the outcomes of the questionnaires. the data were used to infer the success or failure of the implemented method. chinese whispers tasks for chinese whispers task 1 and chinese whispers task 2, the scores were in the form of points which were added with extra points (5 pts, 10 pts, 15 pts, 20 pts, 25 pts, and 30 pts) based on the time they spent to complete each chinese whispers task. so, the final point was obtained from the obtained points of each task which had been added with the extra points. the formulas of chinese whispers’ scores could be seen in the following table. table 3. formula of chinese whispers’ scores task 1 of chinese whispers task 2 of chinese whispers final points = obtained points + extra points final points = obtained points + extra points yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 group grid task for group grid task 1, group grid task 2a, and group grid task 2b, the points obtained by each group were converted into scores. the formulas of group grid’s scores could be seen in the following table. table 4. formula of group grid’s scores task total points formula of group grid’s scores task 1 60 points group’s score = the obtained points the total points (60) x 100% task 2a 56 points group’s score = the obtained points the total points (56) x 100% task 2b 36 points group’s score = the obtained points the total points (36) x 100% mean of group grid’s score = mean ∑ = summation sign x = group grid’s score including task 1, task 2a, and task 2b n = number of scores (3 scores per group in each cycle) results and discussion test results the test results included the results of students’ pre-test, formative test 1, formative test 2, and post-test during the research from the date of march 18th, 2015 up to april 8th, 2015. those were presented as follows: pre-test before starting research activities in cycle 1, the pre-test which was used to measure students’ basic knowledge of the simple past tense was given to a total of thirty four students in class xi-d ap on march 18th, 2015. after collecting students’ pre-test score, the researcher calculated students’ average score by using the following formula: x ̅ = ∑x n = 1994 34 = 58.65 the result showed that the average of students’ pre-test score was only 58.65. it was obviously still unsatisfactory and hereafter needed to be improved in the next meetings. yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 formative test 1 the formative test 1 or quiz 1 was given in the last day of the first cycle of the research on march 31st, 2015 to monitor students’ progress in mastering the simple past tense after the treatments were given in cycle 1 and to recognize which students who needed extra assistance in learning simple past tense. students’ average score in formative test 1 was 76.97. it was gained from the calculation of the formula below: x ̅ = ∑x n = 2617 34 = 76.97 compared to the average of students’ pre-test score (58.65), the increasing point was 18.32. it was quite good. although this score improvement showed the success of the learning method to improve student mastery of the material simple past tense, the second cycle was needed for a better learning outcome since there were several unsatisfactory scores of chinese whispers tasks and group grid tasks gained by certain groups in cycle 1. formative test 2 the formative test 2 or quiz 2 was given sequentially with the post-test in the last day of the second cycle of the research on april 8th, 2015 to monitor students’ progress in mastering the simple past tense after all treatments had been given. the researcher calculated students’ average score in formative test 2 shortly thereafter using the following formula: x ̅ = ∑x n = 2688 34 = 79.06 the average of students’ formative test 2 score was 79.06. it increased by 20.41 point from the average of students’ pre-test score which was 58.65. post-test the final session of this classroom action research was to conduct a post-test for a total of 34 students immediately after correcting the formative test 2 with the students. this test was used to measure students’ learning achievement as a result of the given treatments. below was the formula for calculating the average of students’ posttest score: x ̅ = ∑x n = 2841 34 = 83.56 the result showed that the average of students’ post-test score was 83.56. it increased by 4.5 point from the average of students’ formative test 2 score which was 79.06. if it was compared to the average of students’ pretest score which was 58.65, the increasing point was very significant. it was 24.91 point. from those data, it was very satisfying to know that the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique was a success and very useful to improve students’ mastery of the simple past tense. up to the seventh meeting of the study, the writer decided not to continue the study in cycle 3 due to a satisfactory learning outcome acquired up to the second cycle. analysis of the improvement of students’ score the whole test results of this study ranging from cycle 1 to cycle 2 indicated the success of this method in achieving the learning objective to improve students’ mastery of the simple past tense. for more details, the test results during the research could be seen in table below: yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 8 table 5. the test results during the research the following chart clearly showed the average scores of all kind of students’ tests that had increased periodically during the research. it flushed the students with pleasure as they can prove to themselves and others that they were able to develop themselves to be better both in the field of achievement as well as attitude before and after the treatments were given. no. students’ code students’ scores pre-test quiz 1 quiz 2 post-test s-01 63 67 70 80 s-02 57 67 70 80 s-03 57 53 60 73 s-04 63 80 77 90 s-05 63 67 83 90 s-06 63 80 77 90 s-07 53 67 77 83 s-08 67 87 90 90 s-09 57 80 83 87 s-10 57 73 80 83 s-11 53 73 80 83 s-12 53 80 87 80 s-13 50 77 80 77 s-14 60 83 83 93 s-15 60 63 73 77 s-16 57 87 83 83 s-17 60 80 73 73 s-18 67 87 83 90 s-19 57 83 77 87 s-20 57 83 83 83 s-21 63 87 80 90 s-22 60 83 87 90 s-23 57 67 80 83 s-24 60 83 83 87 s-25 57 83 83 83 s-26 60 80 77 83 s-27 53 73 77 80 s-28 57 83 83 83 s-29 57 67 73 80 s-30 63 80 83 80 s-31 60 80 80 83 s-32 63 77 80 87 s-33 57 80 80 80 s-34 53 77 73 80 total 1994 2617 2688 2841 average 58.65 76.97 79.06 83.56 yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 9 figure 1. the improvement of students’ score observation sheet results the observation of the learning process in the classroom during the treatments was carried out by 4 observers; they were mr. yunus as the english teacher of class xi d-ap and three friends of mine. based on the observation data of students’ behaviors in cycle 1 from item number 1 to 6, items number 2 and 5 or 33.33% of all items were categorized into low, while items number 1, 3, 4, and 6 or 66.67% of all items were categorized into medium. no items belonged in high category. therefore, students’ behaviors during the treatments still needed to be improved in order to be even better in the next cycle as well as in the future, especially in terms of giving comments or questions about the teacher’s explanation and helping motivate their friends either when they did the group tasks or learned the materials together. henceforth, the writer had to be able to stimulate students to be more active in the classroom. in cycle 2, it could be viewed clearly on the following table that there were improvements in all items of students’ behaviors except for item number 3 about being enthusiastic with the teacher’s instructions which still categorized into medium, but this categorization was good enough to be achieved. all students strived to follow the instructions step by step because if they did not do that, they could not apply this learning method properly. the whole observation data of students’ behaviors in cycle 2 from item number 1 to 6 showed that no items belonged in low category. in addition, items number 2, 3, and 5 or 50% of all items were categorized into medium, while items number 1, 4, and 6 or 50% of all items were categorized into high. the percentage of both was balanced. their behaviors were socially acceptable so far. until the learning processes in cycle 2, the writer was able to teach them to behave in a better controlled way, and stimulate them to be more active and focused on their study. the final results of the classroom observation in cycle 1 and cycle 2 could be seen in the following table. 50 53 60 73 58,65 76,97 79,06 83,56 67 87 90 93 pre-test formative test 1 formative test 2 post-test the improvement of students’ score lowest score mean highest score yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 10 table 6. students’ behaviors during the learning process by using chinese whispers and group grid technique in cycle 1 and cycle 2 n no. number of items cycle 1 cycle 2 final category criteria final category criteria 1. giving attention to teacher’s explanation. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students pay attention to the teacher’s explanation about the lesson. high almost all students pay attention to the teacher’s explanation about the lesson. 2. giving comments or questions about the teacher’s explanation. low only several students give comments or questions about the teacher’s explanation. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students give comments or questions about the teacher’s explanation. 3. being enthusiastic with the teacher’s instructions. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students pays attention to the teacher’s instructions. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students pays attention to the teacher’s instructions. 4. doing their work according to the instruction. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students do their work according to the instruction. high almost all students do their work according to the instruction. 5. helping motivate their friends. low there are only few students who motivate their friends. medium there are some students who motivate their friends. 6. being enthusiastic with chinese whispers and group grid technique. medium almost (or) a half of the whole students enjoy doing chinese whispers and group grid technique. high almost all students enjoy doing chinese whispers and group grid technique. going to the next observation data of students’ responses during the treatments in cycle 1, it was proved that from item number 1 to 8, item number 2 or 12.5% of all items were categorized into low, items number 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 or 62.5% of all items were categorized into medium with one negative item in number 4 about making the classroom become noisy during chinese whispers game, while items number 1 and 5 or 25% of all items were categorized into high. the writer inferred that their responses in learning were less unsatisfactory as expected before. for the next cycle, the students should be better controlled to cultivate enthusiastic responses in any learning situations. in accomplishing chinese whispers tasks, everyone in each group truly helped each other because if it was not so, the game would not run smoothly and they could not get a lot of points. however, the writer should discipline them during the game in order to make the class become quieter and make the students become more serious in memorizing the words and sentences. the final results of the classroom observation in cycle 1 and cycle 2 could be seen in the table below. yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 11 table 7. students’ responses during the learning process by using chinese whispers and group grid technique in cycle 1 no. number of items cycle 1 cycle 2 final category criteria final category criteria 1. being enthusiastic in making a group for doing chinese whispers game and group grid technique. high all students have been in group of four less than three minutes. high all students have been in group of four less than three minutes. 2. being serious in memorizing the words and sentences during chinese whispers. low only several students seriously memorizing the words and sentences. medium almost (or) a half of students seriously memorizing the words and sentences. 3. interested in whispering the words and sentences. medium almost (or) a half of students are interested in whispering the words and sentences. high almost all students are interested in whispering the words and sentences 4. making the classroom become noisy during chinese whispers game. medium almost (or) a half of students make the classroom become noisy. low only several students make the classroom become noisy. 5. in group, helping each other to accomplish chinese whispers task. high all group members help each other to accomplish chinese whispers task. high all group members help each other to accomplish chinese whispers task. 6. in group, helping each other to accomplish group grid task. medium almost (or) a half of group members help each other to accomplish group grid task. high all group members help each other to accomplish group grid task. 7. filling in the blank cells of the grid cooperatively as a group project. medium almost (or) a half of group members fill in the blank cells of the grid cooperatively. high all group members fill in the blank cells of the grid cooperatively. 8. being active in discussing how the items should be sorted. medium almost (or) a half of group members actively discuss how the items should be sorted actively. medium almost (or) a half of group members actively discuss how the items should be sorted actively. yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 12 whereas, based on the observation data of students’ responses in cycle 2, only 1 item which was item number 4 about making the classroom become noisy during the game was categorized into low. it proved that the writer successfully disciplined them during the game so that they became more serious in memorizing the words or sentences and the class became quieter too. items number 2 and 8 or 25% of all items were categorized into medium, while items number 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7 or 62.5% of all items were categorized into high. in cycle 2 with the exception of item number 4 of students’ responses, there was no improvement for items number 1 and 8, but the rest of the items of students’ responses showed the improvements as expected. overall, these results were better than those in cycle questionnaire result after completing all research activities up to cycle 2, the researcher distributed the questionnaires to students on april 8th, 2015 and asked them to submit it no more than april 29th, 2015. the questionnaires were anonymous, given in indonesian to facilitate students in filling in all questions, and combined closed and open-ended items which would show how successful the implementation of chinese whispers game and group grid technique in improving students’ mastery of the simple past tense. there were 25 closed items in the section a of the questionnaire. the following was the percentage result of the section a: figure 2. the percentage result of the section a of the questionnaire based on the biggest percentage of each question in the section a of the questionnaire, it could be inferred that (1) 70.59% of students liked english, (2) 88.24% of students felt that english subject was important, (3) 67.65% of students felt uncertain whether or not english lesson all this time was easy to be understood, (4) 61.76% of students felt that english learning processes all this time were fun, (5) 58.82% of students felt that english learning processes all this time were not boring, (6) 64.71% of students felt uncertain whether or not they knew the meaning of the term ‘grammar’ in english, (7) 67.65% of students felt uncertain whether or not they knew the various forms of the english verbs, tenses, or sentence patterns, (8) 47.06% of students felt uncertain whether or not they were pleased to study the various forms of the english verbs, tenses, or sentence patterns, (9) 47.06% of students felt uncertain whether or not studying the various forms of the english verbs, tenses, or sentence patterns was difficult. furthermore, the result of the questions about chinese whispers game proved that (10) 41.18% of students did not know anything about chinese whispers game before, (11) 100% of students had already understood the procedures of playing chinese whispers game, (12) 35.29% of students experienced difficulties in playing chinese whispers with their friends in the classroom, (13) 85.29% of students felt that chinese whispers game was suitable to be applied in english learning q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 q7 q8 q9 q10 q11 q12 q13 q14 q15 q16 q17 q18 q19 q20 q21 q22 q23 q24 q25 no 5,88 2,94 26,5 0 58,8 8,82 0 14,7 8,82 41,2 0 32,4 0 29,4 0 26,5 0 0 0 5,88 0 0 0 0 0 uncertain 23,5 8,82 67,7 38,2 41,2 64,7 67,7 47,1 47,1 20,6 0 32,4 14,7 47,1 20,6 35,3 5,88 20,6 14,7 73,5 0 0 0 41,2 0 yes 70,6 88,2 5,88 61,8 0 26,5 32,4 38,2 44,1 38,2 100 35,3 85,3 23,5 79,4 38,2 94,1 79,4 85,3 20,6 100 100 100 58,8 100 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% p e r c e n ta g e the percentage result of the section a yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 13 processes. next, the result of the questions about group grid technique proved that (14) 47.06% of students felt uncertain whether or not they had already known anything about one of cooperative learning techniques called group grid technique before, (15) 79.41% of students had already understood the procedures of implementing group grid technique in english learning in the classroom, (16) 38.24% of students felt uncertain whether or not they experienced difficulties in implementing group grid technique in english learning in the classroom, (17) 94.12% of students felt that group grid technique was suitable to be applied in english learning processes. at last, the result of the questions regarding to the use of the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique in english learning processes proved that (18) 79.41% of students felt that the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique was suitable to be applied in english learning processes, (19) 85.29% of students enjoyed learning the simple past tense by using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique, (20) 73.53% of students felt uncertain whether or not they experienced difficulties during learning the simple past tense by using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique, (21) 100% of students felt that the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique helped them learning the grammatical structures of the simple past tense, (22) 100% of students felt that learning the simple past tense became more fun when the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique was applied in the classroom, (23) 100% of students felt that there was an improvement in understanding and using the simple past tense before and after applying the learning method in the classroom, (24) 58.82% of students felt that the learning method using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique should be applied in every english learning process, especially in learning english grammar, and (25) 100% of students felt that there were some benefits that they got during learning the simple past tense by using a combination of chinese whispers game and group grid technique. conclusion based on the analysis and discussion of the results of the whole research data in chapter four, the researcher eventually drew several conclusions. the first purpose of conducting this classroom action research in two cycles to the eleventh graders of pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga was to investigate how chinese whispers and group grid technique was integrated and then applied as an alternative method in teaching the simple past tense in the classroom. during the research, the combination of those was able to grab students’ attention, promote their engagement, and relieve their boredom and drowsiness in the learning processes. furthermore, this teaching method enhanced students’ spirit of learning english grammar since a good team work with active students’ participation was required during the treatments. indeed, teaching the students in unconventional way made them become interested in what they were going to learn and were motivated to achieve optimal academic performance. by reading, memorizing, whispering, and then writing the word, phrases, or sentences related to the simple past tense down on the provided paper in a fun learning experience; the students were indirectly encouraged to practice and internalize two types of past forms in english, the verbal and nominal sentence patterns of the simple past tense, and the use of the simple past tense. moreover, chinese whispers game trained students’ basic language skills; those are listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, including the internalization of english language components such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation which yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 14 were considered as essential components for developing their language skills. the implementation of group grid technique also offered the opportunity to learn actively based on group cooperation and developed students’ analytic and organizing skills when they analyzed the correct categorization of the scrambled items which covered all sub topics of the simple past tense. learning two types of past forms in english, nominal and verbal sentences, and the use of the simple past tense became more explicit when it was taught repeatedly through grids than just monotonously memorizing a list of regular and irregular verbs and the formula of nominal and verbal sentences. the second purpose of conducting this research was to investigate the improvement of students’ mastery of the simple past tense by using chinese whispers and group grid technique as well as students’ learning behaviors. as discussed in the previous chapter, this teaching method successfully improved students’ mastery of the simple past tense. it was proved by the improvement in students’ achievement after the treatments were given. students’ average score in pre-test was 58.65, in formative test 1 was 76.97, in formative test 2 was 79.06, and while in posttest was 83.56. moreover, the results of chinese whispers and group grid tasks which were ever-increasing from cycle 1 to cycle 2 indicated that they understood the lessons well through this method. referring to the questionnaire results, the students tended to agree that this method facilitated them to learn the lesson better and effectively improved their mastery of the simple past tense. in addition, the observation sheet results showed that students’ positive behaviors and responses during the learning processes improved to be relatively good. they were more active, attentive, enthusiastic, and more able to control themselves not to be noisy in certain situations in the classroom during the learning process. acknowledgments alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin, first and foremost, i would like to express my deepest gratitude to allah swt the almighty for the endless blessings and mercy, the health and the power given to me, so that i could maximally complete this final project and get my graduation this year. i would like to address my heartfelt gratitude to sri wahyuni, s.pd., m.pd., my one and only advisor, for her incredible advice, encouragement, guidance, patience, and suggestions so that i was able to finish this final project; prof. dr. dwi rukmini, m.pd. as the first examiner; and seful bahri, s.pd., m.pd. as the second examiner for their constructive advice which enhanced the completeness of this final project contents. i also take this opportunity to express my thankfulness profusely to the head of the english department and all lecturers of the english department of semarang state university for equipping me with lots of priceless knowledge and experiences since i entered this study program. i sincerely expressed my profound gratitude to the headmaster of pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga, heriyanta, s.pd., for his permission to conduct the research there; the english teacher of smk pgri 2 salatiga, mahmud yunus, s.pd., for his guidance and support during the research; and the students of class xi d-ap in the academic year of 2014/2015 for their great cooperation during the research. my special gratefulness beyond all disputes goes to my dearest father and mother, yudianto and samini; my beloved brother and sister, sandi apridiasto and yumna oktaviana; and wisnu adi nugroho for their extra patience, prayers, support, and unconditional love during my ups and downs all this time. finally, i am so grateful to all of my best and exceptional friends at the english department 2011; at kanaya house especially khuswatun, mawar, uchaida, dea, kamla, kholida, sayli, and resya; at home especially yenny dwi nugraheni / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 15 hera, lusi, alda, cahyani, resiana, andro, jerry, monica, maesya, and kharisma; my ppl team at pgri 2 private vocational school salatiga; and my kkn team at karangmalang, mijen, semarang, for all of their assistance, jokes, laughs, motivation, support, tears, and togetherness up to this point. you are all extremely amazing. i realize that a lot of shortcomings might be found in this final project. therefore, any suggestions and criticisms are always needed for betterment. at last, i really hope this final project will provide much benefit to all readers. references barkley, e. f., k. p. cross, and c. h. major. 2005. collaborative learning techniques: a handbook for college faculty. san francisco: jossey-bass. burns, a. 1999. collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. crystal, d. 2003. english as a global language (2nd ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. depdiknas. 2006. kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (ktsp) untuk smk. jakarta: depdiknas. gerot, l. and p. wignell. 1994. making sense of functional grammar. sydney: gerd stabler antipodean educational enterprises. pollard, a. and p. triggs. 1997. reflective teaching in secondary education: a handbook for schools and colleges. london: cassell. srijono, d. 2001. an introductory course of linguistics. surakarta: muhammadiyah university press. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/chinese_whispers [accessed on march 24, 2015] 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt word level equivalence in the indonesian translation of the dialogues in “the lightning thief” (a descriptive qualitative study in the novel “the lightning thief”) dewi maulud diati english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: word level equivalence, dialogues, utterances, the lightning thief. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this descriptive qualitative study mainly describes the word level equivalence found in the translated dialogues in the lightning thief. the final project mainly aims at identifying the word level equivalence strategy in translating the dialogues of the lightning thief from english into indonesian and identifying its word level equivalence meaning. the study focuses on the classification of word level equivalence offered by mona baker in her book in other words. the data obtained were analyzed by comparing both english and indonesian versions. words or phrases which contained any word level non-equivalence were analyzed further to find out the context in which it occured. then the data analyzed were evaluated its word level equivalent meaning. the evaluation involved some raters who are expert in their field.the finding show that: the strategies used by the translator to overcome the problems in translating the dialogue are translation by paraphrase using related word (24.11%), translation by a more specific word (18.43%), translation by paraphrase using unrelated word (14.89%), translation by a more general word (14.19%), translation by omission (13.48%),translation by more expressive or less neutral word (8.51%) and translation by using loan word or loan word plus explanation (6.39%). word level equivalence meaning in the strategies: translation by using loan word (92.59%) was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 3 (meaning is sufficiently renderred) by three raters, translation by a more general word (36.67%) was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 2 (meaning is insufficiently), and translation by omission was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 1 (59.65%). suggestion drawn from this study is that to transfer meaning of the source text into the target text accurately, the translator should decide to make choices in each word or phrases, and choose the most suitable strategies that can overcome problems and difficulties of translation, especially problems of non-equivalence at word level. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: mauludiadewi@ymail.com issn 2252-6706 dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction reading is one of interesting activity for some people, indeed some of them assume that reading is a need and hobby. many kinds of reading we can find in our daily life through several media, such as news paper, magazine, television, internet, and the book itself. people read something to get information. for some people who has a hobby of reading, they will read something because they are interested in reading. from various kind of reading, novel is one of the media of reading which has fascination for some people. novel is a long prose narrative that is normally in prose, which describes frictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story. many of story in novel have been filmed and watched by people. besides the plot of the story or the content of the story, one of the interesting thing is the dialogue in the novel. some of best popular novel are originally available in english, and to adapt it, the novel were translated into different languages, such as bahasa indonesia. translating the novel especially the dialogue of the novel from source language (english) into the target language (indonesian) is not an easy task. the translator must consider not only the word selection but also the message delivery. in this point, a question come up: does the target language (indonesian) novel, especially dialogues of the novel, deliver the same message as the source language (english) dialogue of the novel? therefore, it is interesting to find out whether the target language dialogues of the novel have delivered the same message as the source language dialogues of the novel or not. ultimately, the message transfers from source language to target language can be accomplished by several strategies and making sure of the word level equivalence between the two languages. from this reason, i conducted the research of translation equivalence in the dialogues of the novel entitled “the lightning thief” particularly in terms of word level equivalence. in this research, i use word level equivalence classification by baker (1992). discussion translation has various definitions which can be a broad or narrow one. the broad definition of translation is a change from one form to another, for exampletransforming a feeling into a poem or lyrics. it is also revealed by larson (1984:3) that translation consist of transferring meaning of source language into the receptor language. it means that the act of translation involves the change of form from the first language to the form of the second language; but the meaning is still constant. the form from which the translation is made will be called source language (sl) and the form into it is to be changed will be called the receptor language or target language (tl). translation contains a large number of values such as, culture, language, and so on. further, translation has a large of experts who reveal, research, and define all it one. catford (1965:1) explains that, ‘translation is the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent textual in another language (tl)”. next, nida (1969:12) defines that, translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the sourcelanguage message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style”. according to newmark (1988:7), on the other hand, “translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 3 language”. it is also revealed by bell (1991:1) that, ‘translation is an art or craft and therefore not amenable to objective, scientific description, ex[lanation. as quoted by hewson and martin (1991:38) steiner states that, “the role of the ranslation is determining in this process cultural cross-determination, since in translating the dialectic of unison and plurality is dramatically at work. from those definitions i can conclude that: (a) translation involves two languages, the source language (sl) and the target or recptor language (tl); (b) to translate means to reproduce or to replace the message of the sl text into that of the tl text; (c) every translator must find the equivalent of the tl; (d) translation is an art process of replacing the sl into another language (tl), involving cultural values. types of translation catford (1965:21-26) divides translation based on three criteria: the extent of translation (full translation vs. partial translation), the levels of language involved in translation (total translation vs. restricted translation), and the grammatical rankat which the translation equivalence is established (rank-bounded translation vs. unbounded translation). in a full translation, every part of the source language text is replaced by the target language text material, whereas in a partial translation, some part of parts of the source-language text are, left untranslated. in a total translation, the grammar, lexis, phonology or graphology of the sl are replaced by their equivalence in the tl. in contrast, a restricted translation only replaces limited textual materials of the sl with its equivalence in the tl, e.g. grammar and lexis. rank-bounded translation is normal total translation in which the selection of the target language equivalence is bounded or limited to a low rank or only a few ranks in the hierarchy of grammatical units, e.g. words or morphemes. in contrast, unbounded translation is normal total translation in which equivalence shift-freely up and down the rank scale the experts of translation mention the types of translation differently based on some points of view. generally, it is divided into literal translation and nonliteral translation. larson as quoted by simatupang (1999:6) divides the kinds of translation into two categories. one is meaning – based translation and yhe other is form – based translation. form – based translation attempts to folloe the form of the source language and is known as literal translation. on the other hand, meaning based translation is translation that emphasizes on meaning. nida and taber as cited by simatupang (1999) support this type of translation by dividing translation into literal translation and dynamic translation. basically, dynamic translation has the same characters with the meaning – based translation, taht is emphasis on the meaning rather than on the form. litearal translation is translation that emphasizes on the form. for example, ‘you must study alone here’ ‘anda harus belajar sendirian disini’. in the example, we can see that english and indonesian are related, which means that the general grammatical form may similar, so the literal translation can be understood. however, in some cases, we can find that literal translation will produce an unnatural, because the indonesian language uses different expression. equivalence in translation it discusses about the definition of equivalence by some professionals and experts. dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 4 definitions of equivalence catford (1965:21) notes that “the central problem of translation practice is that finding tl translation equivalence. a central task of translation theory is taht of defining the nature and condition of translation equivalence”. equivalence is the most appropriate meaning of source language in the target langauge. bell (1991:70) defines the term equivalence as the replacement of stretch of a source langauge (particularly idioms, cliches, provrb, greetings, etc,) and the like by its functional equivalent. baker (1992) acknowledges that equivalence can usually be obtained to some extent, but it is influenced by variety of linguistics and cultural factors and is therefore always relative. she outlines five types of translation equivalence; they are equivalence at word level, equivalence above word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence and pragmatic equivalence. problems of non-equivalence at word level based on types of lexical meaning above, there are some of the more common types of non-equivalence which often pose difficulties for the translator. nonequivalence at word level means that the target language has no direct equivalent for a word which occurs in the sourrce a) culture-specific concept in culture specific concepts, the problems emerges as a result of sourcelanguage that expresses a concept of word which is totally unknown in the target language culture. the concept may be abstract or concrete, for example: an english concept is the word privacy, which is understood by people from other culture. b) the source-language concepts is not lexicalized in the target language in this type of non-equivalence, the source-language expresses a word which easily understood by people from other culture but it is not lexicalized. for example, the word savoury has no equivalent in many languages, although its meaning is easy to understand. c) the source-language word is semantically complex in this type of non-equivalence, the source-language word is semantically complex, as quoted by bolinger and sears, baker (1992:22) stated that words do not have to be morphologically complex to be semantically complex. a single word which consists of a single morpheme can sometimes express a more complex set of meanings than a whole sentence. for example, a word arruacao, a brazilian word which means ‘clearing the ground under coffee trees and piling it in the middle of the row in order to aid in the recovery of beans dropped during harvesting’. d) the source and the target languages make different distinctions in meaning. in this type of non-equivalence, the target language may make more or fewer different distinctions in meaning than the source language. for example, the word going out in the rain makes two meaning in mindonesia (kehujanan dan hujan-hujanan), which are different in terms of going out in the rain without knowledge (kehujanan) and going out in the rain with the knowledge (hujan-hujanan) while english does not make this distinction. e) the target langauge lacks a superordinate in this type of non-equivalent, the target langauge may have specific words (hyponym) but no the general word. for example, russian has no equivalent for facilities, but it has several words which can be thought as types of facilities. dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 5 f) the target language lacks a specific term (hyphonym) usually, langauges tend to have general words (superordinate), but lack the specific ones (hyphonyms). engalish has a variety of hyphonyms which have equivalent in other languages. for example, english has many hyphonyms under the word house, such as cottage, hut villa, lodge, bungalow,etc. g) differences in physical or interpersonal perspective in this type of non-equivalence, physical or interpersonal perspective that has to do with where things or people are in relation to another or to a place may be more important in one language than in another. for example, japanese has six equivalence for give, depending on who gives to whom: yaru, ageru, morau, kureru, itadaku, and kudasaru (mc creary , 1986). h) differences in expressive meaning baker (1992:24) said that differences in expressive meaning are usually more difficult to handle when the target-language equivalent is more emotionally loaded than the source-langauge item. for example, the english word batter (as in child/wife battering) was rendered by the more neutral japanese word tataku, means ‘to beat’, plus an equivalent modifier such as ‘savagely’ or ‘ruthlessly’. i) differences in form in this type of non-equivalence, there is often no equivalent in the targetlanguage for a particular form in the source text. english has many couplets consist of such noun and suffixes or prefixes such as imployer/employee, trainer/trainee, steward/stewardess. arabic, has no ready mechanism for producing such forms and so they are often replaced by an appropriate paraphrase, depending on the meaning they convey. j) differences in frequency and purpose of using specific forms in this type of non-equivalence, english, for example, uses the continuous –ing form for binding clauses much more frequently than other languages. as a result, rendering every –ing from english to target langauge would make unnatural style. k) the use of loan words in ghe source text once a word is loaned into a particular langauge, we cannot control its development or its additional meaning. for example, average japanese translator is not likely to confuse an english feminist with a japanese feminist (feminist in japanese means a man who excessively soft with woman). strategies in non-equivalence problems of translation baker (1992:26) suggests some strategies to overcome the problems arising in the process of translation related to various types of non-equivalence. as this study is focused on word level equivalence, the strategies discussed are limited on that level of equivalence: a) translation by a more general word (superordinate) this strategy means that the translator may go up one level in a given semantic field to find a more general word that covers the core proportional meaning of the missing hyphonym in the receptor language. b) translation by a more neutral / less expressive word in this strategy, the translators may use the more / less expressive word if the source langauge has diffrences in expressive meaning which is more difficult to handle because the target language equivalent is more emotionally or less emotionally than the source-language item. c) translation by cultural subtitution dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 6 this strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item or expression with the target langauge item which does not have the same prportiona meaning but is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader. the advantages is the readers can identify a concept which familiar to the readers. d) translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation this strategy is particularly common in dealing with non-equivalent on culture specific concepts. one item may be not exist in the particular langauge because it depends on the environment culture. once explained, the loan word continually can be used on its own, the reader can undertsand without further lengthy explanation, because it is explained formerly. e) translation by paraphrase using a related word this strategy tends to be used when the concept expressed by the source item is lexicalized in the target lanaguge but in different form, and when the frequency which a certain form is used, the source text is significantly higher than would be natural in the target langauge (baker 1992: 37). f) translation by paraphrase using unrelated words in this strategy, the translators still can use the paraphrase strategy although the source text word is not lexicalized at all in the target langauge and it is semantically complex. the step is by modifying a superordinate or simply unpacking the meaning of the source item. the disadvantage of using this strategy is that it is awkward to use because it involves filling a one-item slot with an explanation consisting of several items. g) translation by omission in this strategy, the translators sometimes can simply omit translating the word from the source text because it is not vital enough to the development of the text. it does no harm compared to distract the reader with a lengthy insignificant explanation. h) translation by illustration this strategy offers an easy choice and it can be a useful option if the word which has no equivalent in the receptor langauge refers to a physical item which can be illustrated. i) translation by a more specific word (hyphonym) in addition, a strategy that is not mentioned by baker that is translation by a more specific word (hyphonym). in this strategy, the translator may go down one level in a given semantic field to find a more specific word that covers the core proportional meaning of the word in the source language. in other words, this strategy may be used to overcome a relative lack of superordinate in the target language. from the description above, the writer can conclude that there are many problems that may arise when one translates one word from one language to another language. the scholars found that the lack of non-equivalence words across languages may ignite the problems in translating one word across languages. therefore; the one who does translating must know the strategies to solve the problems. baker (1992) offers strategies to deal some problems of word level equivalence. in this study, the writer observes that the translator’s problem of non-equivalence at word level is a challenging problem to be solved. the writer decided to do the same research about word level equivalence in the indonesian translation dialogue in the lightning thief novel by using baker’s strategies. dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 7 from the explanation above, the problems of translating emerge because of some factors, such as: the culture specific concepts, the source language is not lexicalized in the target language, the source language word is semantically complex, the source and target languages make different distinction in meaning, the target language lacks a super ordinate, the target language lacks specific term (hyponym), teh differences in physical or interpersonal perspective, differences in expressive meaning, differences in frequency and purpose of using specific forms, and the use of loan words in thhe source text. most of them also become a real obstacle in translating the dialogue, especially at word level. as well as the problem of nonequivalence, the translators also have to give attention to the strategies to gain them. in dealing with this, baker (1992) proposed some strategies, such as: translation by a more general word, translation by a more/less expressive word, translation by cultural subtitution, translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation, translation by paraphrase using related word, translation by paraphrase using unrelated word translation by omission, and translation by illustration. as have been stated above, several strategies have been suggested by baker (1992) to gain the word level equivalence problems; translators sould be able to produce an acceptable translation. from this point, the writer intends to find out the strategies used by the translators of the dialogue to overcome non-lequivalence at word level and the equivalence meaning of the dialogue. findings there are two result of the studies according to the objective of the studies; results of the strategies used by the translator deal with the problems of nonequivalence at word level in the indonesian translation of the dialogues in rick riordan’s the lightning thief viewed from baker’s word level equivalence classification and result of the rating of word level equivalence meaning in the translated dialogues. strategies for word level equivalence table 4.1.1 strategies for word level equivalence as shown in the result above, there are seven baker’s (1992) translation strategies being applied in the indonesian translation of dialogues in the rick riordan’s the lightning thief. the most frequently used strategy was translation by paraphrase using related word and the least used strategies was translation using a loan n o . translation strategies freq uenc y perc enta ge 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . translation by paraphrase using a related word translation by a more specific word (subordinate) translation by paraphrase using unrelated word translation by a more general word (super ordinate) translation by omission translation by a more neutral/less expressive word translation by using a loan word or loan word plus explanation translation by illustration translation by cultural subtitution 34 26 21 20 19 12 9 24.1 1 % 18.4 3 % 14.8 9 % 14.1 9 % 13.4 8 % 8.51 % 6.39 % total 141 100 % dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 8 word or loan word plus explanation. the strategy of translation by illustration and cultural substitution were not found in this study. word level equivalence in the translated dialogues the further result is the rating of word level equivalence meaning of translated dialogues as shown in table below: table 4.1.2 recapitulation of word level equivalence rating of translated dialogues dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 9 note: no strategy total data score 3 percenta ge score 2 percenta ge score1 percenta ge 1st rater 2nd rater 3rd rater 1st rater 2nd rater 3rd rater 1st rater 2nd rater 3rd rater 1 translation by paraphrase using related word 34 14 30 29 71.57 % 10 4 5 18.63 % 10 9.80 % 2 translation by a more speficic word 26 14 17 15 58.98 % 5 7 8 25.64 % 7 2 3 15.38 % 3 translation by paraphrase using unrelated word 21 13 16 15 69.84 % 6 3 4 20.64 % 2 2 2 9.52 % 4 translation by a more general word 20 10 12 9 51.68 % 8 6 8 36.67 % 2 2 3 11.67% 5 translation by omission 19 14 3 2 33.33 % 4 7.02 % 1 16 17 59.65 % 6 translation by less neutral or more expressive word 12 1 7 8 44.45 % 4 4 3 30.56 % 7 1 1 24.99 % 7 translation using loan word or loan word plus explanation 9 7 9 9 92.59 % 2 7.41 % total 141 dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 10 score (3): meaning is sufficiently rendered (equivalent) score (2): meaning is insufficiently rendered (some loss of meaning) score (1): meaning is distorted (non-equivalent) dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 26 the table above shows the percentages of the results of the averages of rating of each scores by each raters. translation by paraphrase using related word is the highest strategy whose data reached 34 of 141 data, with percentage of average of the reslut of score 3 is 71.57 %, percentage of average of score 2 is 18.63 %, and score 1 is 9.80 %. the second highest strategy is translation by a more specific word which has 26 of 141 data with 58.98 % of the average of result of score 3, then, 25.64 % of score 2, and 15.38 % of score 1. there are 21 data were found in the translation by paraphrase using unrelated word which percentage of the average of score 3 reached 69.84%, 20.64 % of score 2, and 9.52 % of score 1. translation by a more general word has 20 of 141 data whose average of score 3 reached51.68 %, score 2 reached 36.67 %, and 11.67 % of score 1. translation by omisson is in the forth position which has 19 of total data with 33.33 % of the average of score 3, 7.02 % of score 2, and 59.65 % of score 1. translation by less neutral or more expressive word is under the translation by omission strategy with 12 of total data and 44.45 % of average of score 3, 30.56 % of score 2, and score 1 reached 24.99%. the last lowest strategy is translation by using loan word or loan word plus explanation which total data reached 9 of 141 data with 92.59 % of the average of score 3, 7.41% of score 2, and 0 % of score 1. translation by paraphrase using related word this strategy tends to be used when the concept expressed by the source item is lexicalized in the target language but in different form, and when the frequency with certain form is used in the source text is significantly higher than would be natural in the target language. datum 1 st: "not a scratch on this car, brain boy," tt: “jangan sampai tergores sedikitpun, anak jenius,” bt: “not a scratch on this car, genius boy," from the datum above, the word brain was translated to jenius. brain means the organ inside the head that controls thought, memory, feelings and activity (cambridge dictionary). if the translator used the phrase anak otak, it will be correct but the translation work would be very ordinary and flat. therefore, translation by paraphrase using related word was used in this case. translation by a more specific word in this strategy, the translator may go down one level in a given semantic field to find a more specific word that covers the core propositional meaning of the word in the source language. datum 2 st: "your dad, actually. don't you remember? medusa was poseidon's girlfriend. they decided to meet in my mother's temple. that's why athena turned her into a monster. medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. that's why medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. she's still sweet on your dad. you probably reminded her of him." tt: “sebenernya, berkat ayahmu. kau lupa ya?medusa itu pacar poseidon. mereka memutuskan untuk bertemu di kuil ibuku. itu sebabnya athena mengubahnya menjadi monster. medusa dan kedua saudarinya yang membantunya masuk ke kuil, mereka menjadi ketiga gorgon. itu sebabnya medusa ingin mencincangku, tetapi dia ingin mengabadikanmu sebagai patung yang bagus. dia masih naksir ayahmu. kau mungkin mengingatkan dia pada ayahmu.” bt: "your dad, actually. don't you remember? medusa was poseidon's girlfriend. they decided to meet in my mother's temple. that's why athena turned her into a monster. medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. that's why medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 27 statue. she's still like your dad. you probably reminded her of him." from the datum above, the word sweet was translated to naksir (back translation: like). if an emotion or event is sweet, it is very pleasant and satisfying (cambridge dictionary) that is the word sweet is described as. in this sample, the translator used the word naksir instead of manis since it sounds more natural. therefore, the translator try to specify the word manis to naksir. translation by paraphrase using unrelated word the paraphrase may based on modifying a super ordinate or simply on unpacking the meaning of the source item, particularly if the particular item or expression is not vital enough to the development of the text to justify distracting the reader with lenghty explanation, translators can and often do simply omit translating in question. datum 3 st: "he will drive you into the city, and, er, well, keep an eye on things." tt: “dia akan mengantarmu ke kota dan, eh, yah, pasang mata dengan keadaan sekitar.” bt: "he will drive you into the city, and, er, well, keep an eye on the condition around from the datum above, the word things was translated to keadaan sekitar (back translation: the condition around). thing is used to refer in an approximate way to an object or to avoid naming it (cambridge dictionary). the translator used the phrase keadaan sekitar since it is more suitable than the proper language. translation by a more general word in translation by a more general word, the translator may go up one level in a given semantic to find a more general word that covers the core propositional meaning of the missing hyponym in the receptor language. datum 4 st: “and gave kronos a rock to eat instead.” tt: dan menggantinya dengan batu untuk dimakan kronos.” bt: “and change kronos a rock to eat instead.” from datum above, the word gave was translated to menggantinya. the word gave is past form of the word give. cambridge dictionary defines this word as offering something to someone, or to provide them with it. the translator used the word menggantinya which is a more general according to the context of the dialogue. translation by omission if the meaning conveyed by particular item or expression is not vital enough to the development of the text to justify distracting the reader with lengthy explanation, translators can and often do simply omit translating the word or expression in question. datum 5 st: "like we're going to use this in real life.” tt: “memangnya pelajaran ini bakal kita pakai.” bt: “memangnya pelajaran ini bakal kita pakai dalam kehidupan nyata.” in the datum above, there are some words omitted in the target-language. in real life (back translation: dalam kehidupan nyata) was omitted by the translator. translation by less neutral/more expressive word translation by a more neutral/less expressive word means that the translator may use the more neutral/less expressive word if the source language has differences in expressive meaning, which is more difficult to handle because the target language equivalence is more emotionally or less emotionally than the source language item. datum 6 dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 28 st: "i should have seen her for what she was. now let's just worry about keeping percy alive until next fall-" tt: “semestinya saya menyadari apa sebenarnya bu dods itu. sekarang, kita berkosentrasi saja soal menjaga percy tetap hidup hingga musim gugur depan.” bt: "i should have seen her for what she was. now let's just concentrate about keeping percy alive until next fall-" from the datum above, the word worry was translated to berkosentrasi. worry means to think about problems or unpleasant things that might happen in a way that makes you feel unhappy and afraid (cambridge dictionary). it is possible to explain that the translator used the word berkosentrasi in the target language because it is most suitable. the proper translation of the word worry will be weird; therefore, the translator used a more neutral and communicable word. translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation in translation using loan word plus explanation, one item may not be exist in the particular language because it depends on the environment culture. once explained, the loan word continually can be used on its own; the reader can understand without further explanation. datum 7 st: "your dad, actually. don't you remember? medusa was poseidon's girlfriend. they decided to meet in my mother's temple. that's why athena turned her into a monster. medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. that's why medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. she's still sweet on your dad. you probably reminded her of him." tt: “sebenernya, berkat ayahmu. kau lupa ya?medusa itu pacar poseidon. mereka memutuskan untuk bertemu di kuil ibuku. itu sebabnya athena mengubahnya menjadi monster. medusa dan kedua saudarinya yang membantunya masuk ke kuil, mereka menjadi ketiga gorgon. itu sebabnya medusa ingin mencincangku, tetapi dia ingin mengabadikanmu sebagai patung yang bagus. dia masih naksir ayahmu. kau mungkin mengingatkan dia pada ayahmu.” bt: your dad, actually. don't you remember? medusa was poseidon's girlfriend. they decided to meet in my mother's temple. that's why athena turned her into a monster. medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. that's why medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. she's still sweet on your dad. you probably reminded her of him." from the datum above, the word gorgon was translated to the same word. according to cambridge dictionary, gorgon means a woman whose appearance and behavior causes fear. the translator used the same word as its target text since that word does not exist in the targetlanguage. therefore the translator used this strategy. conclusion out of the nine strategies proposed by baker , seven strategies were uesd. the most dominant was translation by paraphrase using related word which has 34 data (24.11%). this strategy got 71.57% of score 3, 18.63% of score 2, and 9.80% of score 1. the second dominant was translation by a more specific word which has 26 data (18.43%). this strategy got 58.98% of score 3, 25.64% of score 2, and 15.38% of score 1. translation by paraphrase using unrelated word which has 21 data (14.89%) was in third position with 69.84% of score 3, 20.64% of score 2, and 9.52% of score 1. the fourth position was translation by a more general word which has 20 data (14.19%) with the average of the result of score 3 was 51.68%, 36.67% of score 2, and 11.67% of score 1. translation by omission which has 19 data (13.48%) was in fifth position with 33.33% of score 3, 7.02% of score 2, and 59.65% of score 1. the next followed by translation by less dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 4 (1) (2015) 29 neutral or more expressive word which has 12 data (8.51%). this strategy got 44.45% of score 3, 30.56% of score 2, and 24.99% of score 1. the least strategy was translation using loan word or loan word plus explanation which has 9 data (6.39%). this strategy got 92.59% of score 3, 7.41% of score 2, and 0% of score 1. regarding the result of each strategy above, word level equivalence meaning of the data in the strategies: translation by using loan word (92.59%) was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 3 (meaning is sufficiently renderred) by three raters, translation by a more general word (36.67%) was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 2 (meaning is insufficiently), and translation by omission was the strategy whose data were got higher result of score 1 (59.65%). suggestions translating work is not an easy task. the product of translation must be able to render the meaning sufficiently to the reader. therefore, good and natural translation must be made. the analysis of the study shows that there were problems related to meaning equivalence. there were some data in some strategies which meaning equivalence is insufficiently renderred even distorted or non-equivalence. it is important for the translator to know the strategies to overcome the problems of non-equivalence especially at word level equivalence; therefore, the messages and the meanings of the source language can be transferred proportionally and appropriately into the target langauge. regarding the points above, it is suggested that to transfer meaning of the source text into the target text accurately, the translator should decide to make choices in each word or phrases, and choose the most suitable strategies that can overcome problems and difficulties of translation, especially problems of non-equivalence at word level. it is also offered a suggestion for the students, translating work needs an accuracy and carefulness, by reading source text and target text intensively, it will enrich vocabulary and understanding about translation, so it will helps students to find suitable translation strategy to solve the problems of word level equivalence. references baker, mona. 1992. in other words: a coursebook on translation. new york: routledge. bassnett, susan. 1991. translation studies. london and new york:routledge. bell, r.t. 1991. translation and translating: theory and practice. new york: longman. catford, j.c. 1965. a linguistic theory of translation. london: oxford, university press. hewson, l. dan j.martin. 1991. redefining translation : the variational approach. london:routledge larson, l.m 1984. meaning-based translation. a guide to cross language equivalence. lanham: uniersity press of america. machali, r. 1998. redefining textual equivalence in translation with special reference to indonesian-english. jakarta: the translation center. _________. 2000. pedoman bagi penerjemah. jakarta: pt grasindo. newmark, p 1998. a text book of translation. new york: prentice hall international english language teaching. nida, eugene. a. dan charles .r. taber. 1982. the theory and practice of translation. leiden: e.j. brill. simatupang, m.d.s. 1999. pengantar teori terjemahan. jakarta: direktorat jenderal pendidikan tinggi departemen pendidikan nasional dewi maulud diati / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 30 attention required! | cloudflare please enable cookies. sorry, you have been blocked you are unable to access unnes.ac.id why have i been blocked? this website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. the action you just performed triggered the security solution. there are several actions 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this page came up and the cloudflare ray id found at the bottom of this page. cloudflare ray id: 7fbf421acdcaa61f • your ip: click to reveal 129.74.145.123 • performance & security by cloudflare 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of using online newspaper in the learning of grammar an experimental study at eighth grade students of smp negeri 8 batang novita hartoyo; bambang purwanto english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: online newspaper, the learning media, grammar. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research was conducted because there is a possibility to introduce online newspaper to the students to improve their ability in grammar mastery due to the rapidity of technology development. online newspaper and grammar were chosen because online newspaper contains grammar which was written straightly correct because it will be read by all of people. the problem of this research is how effective the use of online newspaper in the learning of grammar is, and the purpose of this research is to find out whether it is effective or not. the subject of this research is eighth grade students of smp negeri 8 batang. they were chosen because i had been experienced in teach them and know their grammar mastery is still low. the research design is quasi-experimental design, with posttest pre-test experimental and control group. the result of this research shows that the gain of experimental group score is not as high as control group. so, it can be concluded that using online newspaper in the learning of grammar is not effective because the score gain of experimental group is lower than control group. it was caused by the level of vocabularies used in online newspaper is not common in students’ daily language and they have different interests in topic of the online newspaper’s passage. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: opinovita22@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 novita / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction based on my observation for three months in smp negeri 8 batang, eighth grade students’ mastery of grammar is still poor. it was shown when i asked them about little bit part of grammar. they often did mistake in answering test because they did not understand the grammar. for example when i gave them questions and they have to answer it using right preposition, most of them failed to answer it correctly. some of them also have not understood the different use of article. in addition, they did not understand what adjective and adverb are. they only knew noun and verb. it may be caused by some factors, one of them is the materials used in the learning. the textbook used in the class do not contain grammar materials explicitly, so that students cannot learn grammar optimally. many of them felt that grammar is a difficult thing to be understood, because it was not familiar to them. so, when i explain some elements of grammar they were confused and bored. therefore, i made up my mind to teach grammar to them in a joyful way. then, i decided to use a media that can interest them and help them to improve and enhance their grammar knowledge, and hold a study to improve their mastery of grammar. in this case, grammar is selected because it is inserted in the curriculum of ktsp which is used there. the learning of grammar may be more interesting through media, so that online newspaper is selected to teach grammar. “newspaper is a regularly printed document consisting of large sheets of paper that are folded together, or a website, containing news reports, articles, photographs, and advertisements” (cambridge online dictionary 2008). it is commonly distributed daily, so it is very close to the society. moreover, people can get it by buying it per day or per month, it can be bought in a store or even at their house with delivery service. it spreads the information to the world by carrying them in it. people usually read newspaper with drink a cup of tea in the morning or evening. due to the cheapness of newspaper’s price, everyone can buy it, even read it on the wrapper of food or something else. although it is not as interesting as video because there is no animation, according to danim (2010: 28) “reading passage (books, journals, newspapers, manual instruction, brochure, etc.) have more advantages because they can be read again and again and can be the sources in writing”. moreover, people can still receive news when they are on their way going for work or at outdoor area, whereas they cannot receive any information from electronic media, i.e., television and radio. however, in indonesia the reading interest is still poor. the central bureau of statistics (bps) shows that in 2012 the percentage of people who read newspaper or magazine is only 17.66 that is decrease from year to year. this number is contrast with the percentage of those who watch television which is increase from 2003 to 2012. it is possibly happen because of the development of technology. people commenced to leave reading, especially newspaper, because they have their own modern gadgets which provide a lot of entertainments. therefore, the change is needed to increase reading interest in indonesia. one of the ways is by introducing the source of reading like newspaper to the people especially to the young generation. subasini and kokilavani (2013: 57) stated that writing is a complex challenging activity for many students, so teachers should focus on the grammatical concepts that are essential for the clear communication of meaning. in addition, they stated that grammar is the most important thing when someone comes to learn english and the importance of it cannot be neglected. people are getting familiar with internet nowadays, even children. they use internet in many ways. adults use it to access news, and children use it to play game on the web or other entertainment, for instance. based on the data of bps, in central java, people over 5 years old who access the internet are 24.49 (2012). in addition, hartoyo (2012: 31) stated that “extensive and profitable use of internet as a medium of language learning is now being made by many language teachers.” this study combines the interest of people in using internet by introducing online newspaper to students, so they can use internet novita / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 not only for entertainment but also for looking for information and news. in addition, students can learn grammar through the passage in the online newspaper. finally, this study introduces technology to the students through media which are available surround them to help them in the learning of grammar. method in this research, i use quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest experimental control group. according to tuckman (1978: 136), it is not as adequate as the true experimental designs, but better than the pre-experimental designs, with regard to control of the treats to validity. quasi-experimental designs exist for situations in which complete experimental control is difficult or impossible.by this design, two groups are given a pretest, followed by treatments, and finally a posttest. pretest and posttest experimental control group design can be described as follows: 𝐸 01 𝑋 02 𝐶 03 𝑌 04 (arikunto, 2006: 86) in which: e : experimental group c : control group 01: pretest for the experimental group 02: posttest for the experimental group 03: pretest for the control group 04: posttest for the control group x : treatment using online newspaper y :treatment without using online newspaper (textbook) the research was conducted at smp negeri 8 batang located on jl. kyai sambong, batang. in this research, there was one group that was experimented and the other group was used to compare based on this design. therefore, i used three classes in collecting data, one class was for experiment, one class to compare, and the last class was used to measure the validity and reliability of the test that would be used in the class experimented. i chose class viii c for experimental group, viii d for comparison group, and viii e for try-out group. the population provided in this research is the eighth grade (academic year 2015/2016) students of smp negeri 8 batang located on jl. kyai sambong, batang. according to frankel (1993 in purwanto 2013) if the population is more than 100 persons, we may take 20-25 percent from the population. in this case, the number of eighth grade students of smp negeri 8 batang is 124 students. so, 20 percent of 124 are 24 students. i took one class as sample; it is class viii c which the number of students is 24. research finding the main goal of this research was to find out the effectiveness of using online newspaper in the learning of grammar of eighth grade students of smp negeri 8 batang. before collecting the data, the instruments were tried out to viii e at july 29th, 2015, and then they were analyzed to measure the validity and reliability. brown (1988: 101) said that “test validity is defined as the degree to which a test measures what it claims to be measuring.” i computed the item validity by using pearson product moment. the formula is as follows: on α = 5% with n= 25 it is obtained = 0,396. the item test is valid if rxy > rtabel. the total items were 40 items. after the validity was analyzed the 20 others item belong to be valid items, and the rests are invalid. the 20 invalid items could not be used in the pre-test. then, after eliminating 20 invalid items, the other 20 valid items which were used as pre-test consist of 15% easy items, 70% medium items, and 15% difficult items based on item facility. based on item discrimination, it consists of 65% moderate and 35% high discrimination items. tuckman (1978: 160) said that “test reliability means that a test is consistent.” before computing the reliability, the total variance must be computed first. })(}{()({( ))(( 2222 yynxxn yxxyn r xy    novita / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 the formula is as follows: 𝜎2 = ʃ𝑌 2− (ʃ𝑌)2 𝑁 𝑁 = 9994− (464)2 25 25 = 55.2864 the total variance of the test is 55.2864. after knowing the total variance, the reliability can be computed. to check whether the test that i used was good or not, i used k-r20 formula. the formula is as follows: 𝑟𝐾−𝑅20 = ( 𝑛 𝑛 − 1 ) ( 𝑆 2 − 𝛴𝑝𝑞 𝑆 2 ) = ( 40 40−1 ) ( 55.2864−6.07 55.2864 ) = 0.913 the result of interrater reliability of the try out test was 0.913. the test is reliable if rvalue > rtable. then, the result was consulted with rtable for α = 5% with n = 25 was 0.396. rvalue vs rtable = 0.913 > 0.396 since the results of rvalue > rtable , it can be concluded that the try out test was reliable and could be used as the pre test. after that, pre-test was given to the students in the experimental and the control group. based on the pre-test score, both the students of experimental and control group’s scores are low averagely. then they were given treatments. the special treatments were given to the experimental group in form of applying english online newspaper as media in the learning of grammar by me. in addition, the control group was given treatments without english online newspaper by the teacher. they were taught by textbook instead. each group was given treatments for 8 x 40 minutes which consisted of four meetings. in each meeting, the learning process was divided into three main parts, they were opening, main activity, and closing. after they were given treatments, posttest was conducted. the data were obtained from the students’ scores of multiple choices test. they were pretest and posttest scores from the experimental and the control groups. the total score for the experimental group were 790 for the pretest and 875 for the posttest. therefore, the score difference between the pretest and posttest for the experimental group was 85. while the total scores for the control group were 980 for the pretest and 1200 for the posttest. therefore, the difference of the total scores between the pretest and the posttest for the control group was 200. the following is the simple table for the pretest and posttest students’ scores: table 1 different score between experimental and control group group total score of pretest total score of post-test difference between pre-test and post-test experimental group 790 875 85 control group 980 1200 220 most of students of both groups understand the use of article, preposition, and the difference between adjective and adverb. it was shown by the result of the test because there are gains between the score of pretest and posttest. unfortunately, the use of online newspaper did not affect the test result because the control group which did not learn grammar through online newspaper got the better improvement rather than the experimental group. the result of the average score in pre-test, post-test of experiment and control group were presented in the chart below. novita / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 figure 1 the result of the average score in pretest and post-test of the experimental and control group the average pre test’s score of control group was 37.69 and experimental group was 32.91. from the score, it can be concluded that the two groups were homogenous because there was only slight difference in the pre-test result between the experimental group and the control group. after both groups received different treatments, the score of the experimental group was lower than the score of the control group. the average post test’s score of control group was 45.38, and the average post test’s score of experimental group was 33.65. it can be concluded that using online newspaper is not effective in the learning of grammar because there is no significant difference of the post-test result between the experimental group and the control group, and the score of control group is higher. therefore, ho (null hypothesis) was accepted, which meant “using online newspaper is not effective to teach grammar”. then ha (using online newspaper is effective to teach grammar) was rejected. and finally, based on the research that has been conducted, it was not proved that using english online newspaper in the learning of grammar is effective. the use of english online newspaper in improving students’ grammar is not more effective than using textbook. the measurement showed that the posttest score of the grammar achievement of the experimental group was lower than the control group’s. from this statement, it can be said that english online newspaper is not effective enough to be used in improving students’ grammar. however, the grammar improvement of the experimental group is lower than the control group. it may be caused by some factors. the first is the language level of english online newspaper and textbook is quite different. the language used in english online newspaper is more sophisticated than textbook, so that the students got difficulties in understanding the passage. vocabularies used in english online newspaper are general, whereas textbook’s vocabularies are agreed with students’ ability. the second reason is the different interests of the students. it causes their willingness to read are different. it is also caused by the interestingness of textbook is higher than english online newspaper. the third reason is different interest of students. according to asgari (2013) students who are updated by the newest issue enjoy learning through what they have known, whereas student who are not updated are not interested in the issue that is discussed in the class. the forth factor is i did not do difficulty level analysis in selecting passages from online newspaper that i gave to the students, so that it was possible the passages were too difficult for them. the passages should be analyzed the difficulty level by particular formula to match the difficulty level to the students level. the last factor is the media that i chose is not suitable for junior high school students. i chose jakarta post which is adults reading, so it was too heavy for 0 10 20 30 40 50 cont exp 45 34 pre test post test novita / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 junior high school students. online newspaper for kids should be chosen because it was suitable for children. in addition, based on the interview the students were not familiar with the learning media. most of them usually read indonesian reading. few of them were interested in english because they do not understand some vocabularies, so there were difficulties in catching the massage. many of them like reading indonesian novels and teen magazines, and they do not like read newspapers. they read novellas and magazines just for fun and entertainment, whereas they read newspaper if only there were school assignments and it needed newspaper as the source to finish. however they said that reading online newspaper has advantages because it can improve their skill in translating the sentences in the passage of online newspaper into indonesian. some of them also said that they understand english sentences and utterances by reading online newspaper. conclusion based on the detailed analysis and research findings discussed in previous section, the conclusion can be derived as follows. there was no significant difference of students’ achievement in grammar ability between the students who were taught by using english online newspaper and those who were taught by using textbook for the eight year students of smp negeri 8 batang in the academic year of 2015/2016. references arikunto, s. (2006). prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. jakarta: rineka cipta. asgari, majid. (2013). using current issues of interest in teaching grammar. international research journal of applied and basic sciences., (vol, 4 (2): 487-495), science explorer publications brown, d. h. (1988). understanding research in second language learning. cambridge: cup. brown, d. h. (2004). language assessment: priciples and classroom practices. new york: longman. danim, sudarman. 2010. media komunikasi pendidikan. jakarta: bumi aksara. devi, waikhom pinky. (july, 2013). inpui adverbs. international journal of english and education.volume 2, issue 3. halliday, m. a. k. (1994). an introduction of functional grammar. china: foreign language teaching and research press. hartoyo. (2012). ict in language learning. semarang: pelita insani semarang. murcia, m. c. (2007). rethinking the role of communicative competence. usa: university of california. purwanto, edy. (2013). metode penelitian kuantitatif. semarang: cv swadaya manunggal. subasini & kokilavani (2013, december). significance of grammar in technical english. academic research journals. vol. 1(3), 56-58 tuckman, b. w. (1978). conducting educational research. london: harcourt brace jacobovitz. 1 elt forum 5 (1) (2016) journal of english language teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt the effectiveness of using two stay two stray as a technique in improving students speaking ability (a quasi experimental research at the tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016) octavia puspaning maharani english department. faculty of languages and arts. state university of semarang. aticle info ________________ article history: received in february 2016 approved in march 2016 published in april 2016 ________________ keywords: two stay two stray, speaking, experimental research. ____________________ abstract ___________________________________________________________________ this research is about using two stay two stray technique for teaching speaking in senior high school. two stay two stray is an interactive technique that encourages the participants to be more creative and active in group work. this research aimed to find out whether or not two stay two stray technique is effective to teach speaking at the tenth graders of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. the research design used was quasi experimental research. tests and observation checklist were used as the instruments to collect the data and information. before conducting the experiment, try out was given to 30 students of x-7 to make sure that they were valid and reliable. the researcher used class x-1 as the experimental group and x-2 as the control group. both classes were in the same level, background, and competence. the result of the pre-test showed that the mean score of the experimental group was 62.27 and the mean score of the control group was 60.47. after the treatment, the mean score of experimental group was 83. 86 and the mean score of control group was 77.86. it could be seen that there was an improvement after the treatments dealing with their speaking ability. from the t-test computation of the post-test score, the t-value was higher than t-table (t-value > t-table = 4.167 > 2.750). therefore, the null hypothesis was rejected and the working hypothesis was accepted. it means that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group. the results indicate that two stay two stray technique is effective in improving the speaking ability at the tenth graders of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. it is suggested that the findings of this study could be applied regularly and continously or developed by the english teachers to have a better speaking teaching. © 2016 universitas negeri semarang  correspondent address: b3 building fbs unnes sekaran, gunungpati, semarang, 50229 e-mail: evergreenoctavia@gmail.com issn 2252-6706 octavia puspaning maharani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 introduction english is getting more and more important in communication world. it is used as a medium for communication among people all over the world in both spoken and written forms. english is the first foreign language in indonesia. it is taught in all levels of school in indonesia, including elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school. in senior high school, english teachers have to make their class interesting with various methods, techniques, instrument and material in order to stimulate students to learn language skills effectively, especially in speaking. the result of observation that the researcher conducted in sma taruna nusantara showed that speaking is also the most frustrating for students in senior high school. the students sometimes face many problems in learning english, especially in speaking. the preliminary observation revealed that: (1) the students, sometimes, know what they want to say but they are shy to speak, (2) the students have low motivation in learning english, (3) the students are less confident because of their low motivation, (4) the students are afraid of making mistake, (5) many students who want to speak to other usually face some troubles such as cannot produce their ideas, argument or feeling communicatively, and (6) they sometimes can understand what other say but cannot be able to communicate it. in teaching english as a foreign language, teachers should teach four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) particularly in order to make the students able to use english communicatively. teaching speaking is considered to be difficult among the four skills. chaney (1998) in kayi (2006) states that speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. learning to speak is obviously more difficult. it means that more effort is required by the students and various interesting activities are also required by the teacher. in order to enable students to express their ideas in speaking, teachers should apply creative methods and create various strategies. for example, in oral language class, the students should be taught with cooperative learning activity, so that, they can practice english communicatively. cooperative learning is a method of learning that involves students to work together in groups, obtain knowledge and enhance social skills. one of the alternatives techniques is using two stay two stray which is developed by kagan (1994). in this technique, there are four people in each group that will discuss a topic. then, two of them will stay as the expert and two others will stray to another group. the two stay two stray technique is used to encourage students to speak english communicatively. literature review there have been a number of researchers conducted some studies related to the use of two stay two stray technique in improving students’ speaking ability such as arsyanti (2014), fitriani (2014), zanwar (2014), tsou (2005), and temerova (2007). from the related of previous studies, i am inspired to do an experimental research on teaching speaking by using two stay two stray technique. however, this reseach is different from the studies above because this technique can give the students chances to express their ideas communicatively and creatively either in their own group or in the other group. they also should be active in teaching learning process and master the material they discussed because they have responsibility to deliver the material to the other group. general concept of two stay two stray technique there are many techniques in the cooperative learning. one of them is two stay two stray. two stay two stray is a teaching technique adopted from one stay three stray by spencer kagan (1994). the procedure of two stay two stray starts with forming groups of four. each group choose one topics or material that has been provided by the teacher. then, they discuss their topic. after that, they choose two members to octavia puspaning maharani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 stay as the expert of the topic or material that they have. the other two members stray, they leave their group individually, not as the pair, and sit down next to the person as stayers to find out what the other groups have done, the two stay two stray technique is used. the stayers explain their group’s topic or material that they have discussed before. the class discusses, first in groups and then as the whole class, how two stay two stray involves components of cooperative learning and how it can be used in other contexts. the general concept of speaking speaking is expressing ideas, opinions, or feelings to others by using words or sounds of articulation in order to inform, to persuade, to entertain and that all can be learned by using some teaching learning methodologies. speaking skill in a second or foreign language is not easy to be learned. thornburry (2005:1) states that speaking is a part of daily life that we take it for granted. the average person produces tens of thousands of words a day, although some people, like auctioneers or politicians, may produce even more than that. so natural that we forget how we once struggled to achieve this ability until we have to learn how to do it all over again in a foreign language. it is because foreign language involves other language elements, such as grammar, rhythm, fluency, pronunciation and intonation. furthermore, a speaker has to think about how to deliver the message in order to convey the right meaning to audience or listener. methods of investigation in this research, i used quasi-experimental research design with the use of non-equivalent control group design. this study involved two groups: an experimental group and a control group. this research used pre-test and post-test to obtain the data. table 1 research design pre-test treatment post-test experimental group o1 x o2 control group o3 o4 the population in this study was the tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara magelang in the academic year of 2015/2016. the number of the students was 360, which were divided into 12 classes. the sample was x-1 as the experimental group and x-2 as the control group. the instrument of this research was test and observation checklist. before the test is used to collect the data, the try-out test was conducted to measure the validity, reliability, discriminating power, and the difficulty level of the test. to measure the significance of the pre-test and posttest of the both groups, the researcher used t-test based on arikunto (2002). research findings tryout a try-out was given before doing the pretest because it was used to know the validity, reliability, difficulty level, and discriminating power of the rating aspects. the try-out was held on thursday, july 30th 2015. it was given to class x-7. the researcher did not use x-1 (the experimental group) or x-2 (the control group) as the subject in the try-out because the researcher wanted to know the quality of the rating scale that the researcher used before conducting the research. there were 30 students who did the test. the mean score was 60.99. the highest score was 86 and the lowest one was 34. the result showed that the items were valid and reliable. pre-test a pre-test was given before doing the experiment. it is aimed to measure their prior ability or knowledge before getting the treatments. the pre-test for x-1 as the experimental group was held on august 4th, 2015 and x-2 as the control group was held on august 5th, 2015. there were 60 students in both experimental and control groups who did the pretest. octavia puspaning maharani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 from the pre-test result, the average scores of the students were analyzed. the average score of experimental group was 62.27, while the average score of control group was 60.47. although the result of pre-test showed the difference between the score average of control and experimental groups, but it was not very significant. it meant that the prior ability between experimental and control groups was relatively the same before the treatment was given. treatments in conducting the experiment, the treatment was given to the students after the pretest. the x-1 as the experimental group was taught by using two stay two stray as a technique to learn descriptive text, meanwhile x-2 as the control group was taught by classical guided teaching. the first treatment for experimental group was done on august 11th, 2015 and the second meeting was on august 18th, 2015. on the other hand the treatments for control group were done on august 12th, 2015 and on august 19th, 2015. after doing the treatment, the researcher found that there were some advantages of using two stay two stray technique. the advantages of using two stay two stray technique are easy to learn, building an active teaching and learning process, developing students’ cooperation, and building the students’ self-confidence. besides the advantages of using two stay two stray technique, the researcher also found out the disadvantages of this technique. firstly, this technique needs a lot of time. it needs more efforts and good preparation. secondly, this technique also makes the class noisy when they do the presentation in each group. it needs a class management skill from the teacher, especially in terms of the seat arrangement. post-test post-test was done after the treatment was given to the experimental class, in which the students of experimental class were taught descriptive text about places using two stay two stray, whereas students of control class were taught by classical guided teaching. post-test was given to both experimental and control groups. it is aimed to measure their ability or knowledge after getting the treatments. the post-tests for x-1 as the experimental group was held on august 25th, 2015 and x-2 as the control group was held on august 26th, 2015. there are 60 students in both experimental and control classes who did the post-test. from the post-test result, the average scores of the students were analyzed. the average score of experimental class was 83.86, while the average score of control class was 77.86. it can be concluded that the achievement of the experimental class who were taught using two stay two stray was higher than the control class who were taught using classical guided teaching. the significance difference of two tests to know the significant difference of the experiment, t-test formula was used in this research. it was done by comparing the t-value and t-table. the t-value was found from the score differences between pre-test and post-test both in experimental and control groups, while the t-table was found by consulting to the critical value on the table column. the difference of the means of the experimental and control groups was classified to be significant if the t-test was higher than the ttable. to measure the significance of the two groups, this formula was used: 𝑡 = 𝑀𝑥 − 𝑀𝑦 √( ∑ 𝑥 2 + ∑ 𝑦2 𝑁𝑥 + 𝑁𝑦 − 2 ) ( 1 𝑁𝑥 + 1 𝑁𝑦 ) 𝑡 = 21.6 − 17.6 √( 227.2 + 579.2 30 + 30 − 2 ) ( 1 30 + 1 30 ) = 4.167 notes: t : t-value mx : difference gain of the experimental group students my : difference gain of the control group students ∑ 𝑥 2 : total standard deviation of the experimental group ∑ 𝑦2 : total standard deviation of the control group octavia puspaning maharani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 nx : the number of students of the experimental group ny : the number of students of the control group the t-table was 2.750. the obtained t-value was 4.167 so the t-value was higher than the critical value. it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups. this could reject the null hypothesis. therefore, based on the computation there was a significant difference between teaching speaking using two stay two stray and classical guided teaching. it could be seen from the result of the test, the students who were taught by two stay two stray got higher grades than the ones taught by classical guided teaching. conclusions the purpose of this research is to find out whether or not the use of two stay two stray is effective for teaching speaking at the tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara in the academic year of 2015/2016. based on the research that has been done, the researcher drew some conclusions. firstly, there was a significant difference between the students taught by using two stay two stray technique and those who were taught by using classical guided teaching. it was proven by the calculation of the mean of the post-test (83.86) that was higher than the mean of pre-test (62.27). the obtained t-value (4.167) was higher than the t-table (2.750) which meant that there was a significant difference of the post-test result between experimental and control groups. besides tests, the researcher also conducted an observation to know the students’ improvement during the teaching and learning process using two stay two stray technique. the students showed positive responses in learning spoken descriptive text using two stay two stray technique. the improvement of the students during the teaching and learning process using two stay two stray technique was significant. secondly, the use of two stay two stray for teaching speaking at the tenth grade students of sma taruna nusantara in the academic year of 2015/2016 is effective because there was improvement of the students’ speaking achievement. it helps the students in learning english independently, especially speaking skill, and develops social skill among students of senior high school. two stay two stray can be used as a technique in teaching speaking because it is effective, simple, and this technique gives the students new experience in improving their speaking skill. by applying this technique, the students were encouraged to be active and creative. they need to work in group and compete with the other groups to solve the problem. it gave them more motivation during the learning process. in addition, teaching speaking using two stay two stray was very helpful for the improvement of the students’ speaking ability because in this technique, the students did not just listen to the teacher but also communicated with the others to discuss the material. references arikunto, s. 2002. dasar-dasar evaluasi pendidikan. jakarta: bumi aksara arikunto, s. 2006 prosedur penelitian suatu pendekatan praktik. (rev vi). jakarta: rineka cipta. arsyanti, y. 2014. talking chip technique to improve students’ speaking ability and motivation (classroom action research at the eighth grade of smp negeri 6 pekalongan in the academic year 2013/2014). final project. english department, faculty of languages and arts, semarang state university fitriani, y. 2014. the use of two-stay-two-stray technique to improve students’ motivation in learning reading comprehention (experimental research of eight grade students of smp negeri 01 petarukan in the academic year of 2013/2014). final project. english department. the faculty of languages and arts of semarang state university kagan, s. 1994. cooperative learning. san clamente, ca: kagan publishing octavia puspaning maharani / journal of english language teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 temerová, l. 2007. how to improve students’ communicative skills. thesis. department of english language and literature, faculty of education, masaryk university brno thornbury, s. 2005. how to teach speaking. new york: longman tsou, w. 2005. ‘improving speaking skill through oral classroom participation’ foreign language annals vol. 38 no. 1, pp. 46-55 zanwar, s. 2014. the use of jigsaw technique to improve student’s speaking ability in junior high school (the case of the eighth grade students of “smp n” 1 tembarak in the academic year of 2013/ 2014). final project. english department. faculty of languages and arts. semarang state university