measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production teguh khaerudin center for language development, syarif hidayatullah state islamic university of jakarta t.khaerudin@uinjkt.ac.id abstract this paper aims at examining the influence of different tasks on the degree of task performance in a second language learner‟s oral production. the underlying assumption is that among the three aspects of language performance in l2, i.e. fluency, accuracy, and complexity, learners may prioritize only one of them (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005, p. 150) and that their decision to prioritize one particular area of language performance may be determined by the characteristics of the task given to the learners (skehan & foster, 1997). having a written record of an oral production, the writer focuses this study on determining the degree of complexity and accuracy, and analyzing whether the different tasks change the level of learner‟s oral performance. the results show that learner‟s accuracy from both tasks remains in the same level. however, both task conditions, which do not allow speech plan, result in no improvement in accuracy level and a minor improvement in the complexity level. key words: learner language, complexity, accuracy, oral production, task types abstrak artikel ini bertujuan untuk melihat bagaimana performa siswa dipengaruhi oleh penugasan berbahasa lisan yang berbeda. penelitian ini ditulis berdasarkan asumsi bahwa siswa mungkin akan memilih untuk memprioritaskan salah satu dari tiga aspek kemampuan bahasa asingnya, yaitu kelancaran, ketepatan, dan kompleksitas (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005, p. 150) dan bahwa pemilihan prioritas yang dilakukan oleh siswa ditentukan oleh karakteristik dari penugasan yang diberikan (skehan & foster, 1997). melalui catatan tertulis dari produksi lisan siswa, penulis memfokuskan penelitian ini untuk melihat tingkat ketepatan dan kompleksitas dari performa lisan siswa, dan menganalisa apakah penugasan berbahasa lisan yang berbeda menyebabkan perbedaan tingkat ketepatan dan kompleksitas dalam performa lisan siswa. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa siswa menunjukkan tingkat ketepatan yang sama meski dalam penugasan yang berbeda. sementara itu, dua penugasan berbahasa lisan yang diberikan, keduanya adalah penugasan berbahasa secara spontan, tidak memperbaiki performa lisan siswa dalam hal tingkat ketepatan dan sedikit saja meningkatkan kompleksitas bahasa lisan mereka. kata kunci: bahasa siswa, kompleksitas, ketepatan, bahasa lisan, jenis penugasan teguh khaerudin 190| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction there have been many different approaches used by linguists to examine the development of second language (l2) learning. until the late 1960‟s, examining l2 proficiency, especially in criticizing its imperfection compared to the native speaker level, was primarily performed by contrasting l2 to the learners‟ first language (l1). l1 became a very important source of l2 learner from which l2 learners would compare the new rules of l2 to a more familiar l1 rules. robert lado was among the first to give foundation to the comparative method, which was later known as contrastive analysis hypothesis, between second or target language and native language. in his most influential book, he expressed his belief that “in the comparison between native and foreign language lies the key to ease or difficulty in foreign language learning" (lado, 1957, pp. 1-2). furthermore, contrastive analysis hypothesis would see l2 speech as a deviated version of the target language (lightbown & spada, 1999). heavily influenced by structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, contrastive analysis claimed to be able to better prepare l2 learning materials by comparing the target language to the learners‟ l1. by the same procedure, this analysis also claimed to have the capability of predicting learners‟ behavior and possible difficulties in learning l2. however, due to its incapability of explaining many aspects of l2 learners‟ language, such as its incapability of truly predicting l2 learners‟ errors, and its overwhelming emphasis on the negative transfer of l1 to l2 when explaining learner errors, this view shifted in the late 1960‟s. as contrastive analysis hypothesis declined, another approach flourished in the late 1960s. the alternative theory, known as „error analysis‟, had different assumption about l2 learners‟ language. it assumes that l2 learners‟ language is a rulegoverned system of language and is predictable. error analysis sees that learners‟ making faulty inferences about l2 rules has been a major cause of errors, as contrasted to negative transfer from l1. however, like its predecessor theory, error analysis was a subject to a great number of critics especially regarding its problematic methodology. in 1972, larry selinker coined the term interlanguage to identify the learner‟s developing l2 knowledge (selinker, cited in lightbown & spada, 1999). this interlanguage has been a subject of many researches in the study of second language acquisition (sla) ever since. sla itself is a relatively new discipline as a sub-field of applied linguistics. it was born in early 1970s measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 191 resulted from the views concerning the „systematicity of learner‟s language‟ (larsen-freeman, 2000). unlike applied linguistics which focuses on language as its epicenter, second language acquisition studies the process in which people acquire a second language and its problems. sla, as larsen-freeman (2000, p. 165) puts it, “draws on multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical perspectives to address the specific issue of how people acquire a second language and the specific problem of why everyone does not do so successfully”. in other words, the main goals of sla are determining the level of interlanguage and its development (lakshmanan & selinker, 2001). the analysis of a learner language development in second language acquisition studies focuses on determining learner‟s language level of proficiency systematically and describing how aspects of the learner‟s l2 competence change over time (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005). l2 learners‟ language is generally analyzed in terms of its: 1. features: accuracy, complexity, and fluency; 2. forms: past tense –ed, articles, conventional indirectness; and 3. function: negation, temporality, aspect, request. these three aspects of language is examined both of oral and written production (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005). this paper, however, will only focus on assessing l2 learner‟s language in terms of its accuracy and complexity in l2 learner‟s oral production. accuracy is defined as ”how well the target language is produced in relation to the rule system of the target language” (skehan, cited in ellis & barkhuizen, 2005, p. 139). furthermore, ellis & barkhuizen (2005, p. 139) consider that "complexity is the extent to which learners produce elaborated language while fluency is the production of language in real time without undue pausing or hesitation.” different measures have been developed to analyze learner‟s oral production. generally, the measurement tools can be used to asses both oral and written productions in terms of their complexity and accuracy, but with different procedure for fluency (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005). in analyzing l2 oral production, researcher can use a transcribed speech data to be segmented into unit for further analysis (foster, tonkyn, & wigglesworth, 2000). teguh khaerudin 192| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 method research design this study reported in this paper examines the level of accuracy and complexity in an l2 learner‟s language. two transcriptions of an l2 learner‟s oral production in responding to two different tasks are analyzed. the two different tasks are: 1) free conversation, and 2) movie retelling. the accuracy level is determined by dividing the number of error-free clauses by total number of as-unit multiplied by 100% (pauline foster & skehan, 1996). an asunit is defined as “a single speaker‟s utterance consisting of an independent clause, or sub-clausal unit, together with any subordinate clause(s) associated with it” (p. foster et al., 2000, p. 365). then, the complexity level is determined by calculating the number of different verb forms used (yuan & ellis, 2003). participant the participant of this study is an italian native speaker, for the sake of privacy named vito, who migrates to an english speaking country. with all four language skills assessed as poor and very poor, vito represents those who survive living in foreign country with very little interaction with the target language. relatively poor performance in his oral production can be traced back as a result of lack of input and interaction between vito and the target language. this paper studies two excerpts of vito‟s oral production taken in december 6th, 1984, that is four years after his arrival in the target country. measures two excerpts of learner‟s oral production, lievi33a (free conversation) and lievi33i (movie retelling), are segmented into as-unit. the first excerpt is a transcription from one side of a cassette while the other is from two sides of a cassette. therefore, the writer uses only the first part of lievi33i (movie retelling) excerpt intending to have similar length of speech duration between two excerpts. findings and discussion in assessing spoken language performance of the participant, the writer segments the text into unit, namely as-unit. in the application of this analysis of speech unit (as-unit), foster et al. (2000) prescribe three levels of inclusiveness for different purposes of research and different types of spoken language data. as suggested, this study applies the level two considering its appropriateness to cope with interactional data. this level of inclusiveness excludes one word minor measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 193 utterance and verbatim echo responses (p. foster et al., 2000). using two excerpts of an l2 learner‟s oral production, the writer analyzed the learner‟s utterances by calculating the number of as-unit the learner can produce in each utterance. the calculation was divided into two categories based on the two different speaking tasks that the learner responded to. the calculation results in the following number of as-unit, as described in table 1. table 1. as-unit excerpt task type asunit lievi33a.1tr 1. conversation, anecdote about buying shoes 27 lievi33i.1tr 2. broken off film i.e. modern times 34 the data shows a remarkable difference of the number of as-unit in learner‟s production between two tasks. task type 2 results in more oral production by the learner in relatively same length of time. this can be understood as the movie provides the learner more information to report than an impromptu conversation does. these figures, however, are not the main concern in this paper for the reason that the writer focuses more on accuracy and complexity. in the subsequent analysis, the writer examines the learner‟s l2 proficiency by assessing the speech data in terms of its accuracy and complexity. accuracy some alternatives of measures have been used by researchers for determining accuracy. ellis & barkhuizen (2005) summarize them in the following table 2. table 2. measures of accuracy (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005, p. 150) measures definition study number of self-correction the number of self-corrections as a percentage of the total number of errors committed. wigglesworth (1997) percentage of error-free clauses the number of error-free clauses divided by the total number of independent clauses, sub-clausal units and subordinate clauses multiplied by 100. foster and skehan (1996) errors per 100 words the number of errors divided by the total number of words produced divided by 100. mehnert (1998) percentage of target-like verbal morphology the number of correct finite verb phrases divided by the total number of verb phrases multiplied by 100. wigglesworth (1997) percentage of target-like use of plurals the number of correctly used plurals divided by the number of obligatory occasions for plurals multiplied by 100. crookes (1989) target-like use of vocabulary the number of lexical errors divided by the total number of words in the text (excluding dysfluencies). skehan and foster (1997) teguh khaerudin 194| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 among others, percentage of error-free clauses along with errors per 100 words are frequently used (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005). using the framework from foster and skehan (1996), i.e. percentage of error-free clauses, the writer gets the following figures in table 3. table 3. accuracy table 3 shows that free conversation task (excerpt lievi33a.1tr) yielded very slightly lower accuracy (11%) than the movie retelling task (excerpt lievi33i.1tr), which could yield 11.7% accuracy. in movie retelling task, learner produce more extra error-free clause than the first task, however, this does not contribute much to the percentage as more error clauses are produced as well. this, however, shows that while the learner tried to produce more utterances, his low level of l2 vocabulary and grammar hindered him from producing accurate utterances. there seems to be a tradeoff phenomenon between the learner‟s complexity and accuracy in performing this task. complexity assessing the level of l2 complexity can be performed by several methods. furthermore, determining which method to be used would need to be based on what aspect of language a study intends to measure. ellis and barkhuizen (2005) summarize measures that have been used byresearcher in analyzing complexity. table 4 measures of complexity (ellis & barkhuizen, 2005, p. 154) measure definition study interactional duff (1986) 1. number of turns the total number of turns performed by each speaker is counted. this can be then be expressed as a proportion of the total turns in the interaction. alternatively, the average number of words for each speaker can be calculated. 2. mean turn length the total number of words (or pruned words) produced by a single speaker divided by this speaker's total number of turns. propositional 3. number of idea units the total number of (a) major and zaki and ellis (1999) excerpt errorfree clause percentage of error-free clause lievi33a.1tr 3 3/27 * 100% = 11% lievi33i.1tr 4 4/34 * 100% = 11.7% measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 195 measure definition study encoded (b) minor idea units in the text is counted. major and minor ideas are established with reference to a baseline performance of the message (e.g. by a native speaker). functional 4. frequency of some specific language function (e.g. hypothesizing) the total number of times a specific language function is performed by a learner is counted. this measure can be expressed as a raw frequency or relationally (e.g. in terms of total as-unit) brown (1991) grammatical 5. amount of subordination the total number of separate clauses divided by the total number of c(or as) units. foster and skehan (1996) 6. use of some specific linguistic feature (e.g. different verb forms) the number of different verb forms used. yuan and ellis (2003) 7. mean number of verb arguments the total number of verb arguments (subject, direct objects, indirect objects, adjectival complements, prepositional phrases) divided by the total number of finite verbs. bygate (1999) lexical 8. type-token ratio the total number of different words used (types) divided by the total number of words in the text (tokens). robinson (1995) in this study, the writer tried to measure the l2 learner‟s complexity by calculating the number of subordination he could produce in his utterances. however, measuring complexity by calculating the number of subordination in this excerpt would give too little information as the writer found only one subordination was produced in excerpt lievi33i.1tr and none in excerpt lievi33a.1tr. therefore, in this paper, the writer uses the grammatical measure proposed by yuan and ellis (2003) by counting the syntactical variety in learner‟s oral production. the number of verbs occupied by the learner is measured as follow. table 5. complexity excerpt verbs used number of verbs type-token ratio lievi33a.1tr know, is, want, speak, think, do, work, working, look, pick, like, say, try, match, keep, come back 15 15/36 = 0.42 teguh khaerudin 196| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 excerpt verbs used number of verbs type-token ratio lievi33i.1tr think, have, is, walking, walk, look, come back, keep, crush, run, tell, pick, took, speak, work, buy, did, say, do, come in 20 20/55 = 0.36 the type-token ratio analysis shows little complexity in vocabulary use as shown by the table above. the table shows that movie retelling task (excerpt lievi33i.1tr) could facilitate the learner to produce more verbs than the free conversation task (excerpt lievi33a.itr). within an approximately same length of time, 55 verbs were produced in movie retelling task compared to 36 verbs in free conversation task. this figure shows that the complexity in movie retelling task was somewhat improved in terms of the number of verbs. however, when the data was further analyzed using the measure of type-token ratio, the complexity level in movie retelling task is lower than that in the free conversation task. movie retelling task could motivate the learner to produce more utterances even though he had very limited vocabulary. however, because of the limited number of verbs produced, the type-token ratio of movie retelling task was lower than in the free conversation task. in the free conversation, on the contrary, l2 production was somewhat limited, but somehow it helped increase the typetoken ratio. conclusion and suggestions in this part of paper, the writer sums up the findings of the analysis in the following table 6. table 6. accuracy and complexity tas types accuracy complexity vocabul ary typetoken free conversation 11 % 15 0.42 movie retelling 11.7 % 20 0.36 the table shows that the level of accuracy yielded from the two tasks are very slightly different and insignificant, between 11% and 11.7%. the movie retelling task results in slightly more accurate oral production than the free conversation task does. provided that the percentage is separated only by .7%, it can be perceived that free conversation task and movie retelling task facilitate the same level of accuracy. whereas in the level of complexity, the writer identifies a slightly more complexity resulted from movie retelling task which is shown by the more number of verbs produced from the task. the writer does not take into account the type-token ratio, which measuring accuracy and complexity of an l2 learner’s oral production ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 197 shows the opposite result, as it is perceived merely caused by learner‟s lack of vocabulary. given the condition of both tasks as spontaneous speech or not allowing time for speech plan, the writer concludes that complexity is improved in movie retelling task but not accuracy even though the degree of difference is not so much significant. no extra time for planning the speech might be the case of this limited improvement even though learner has more information to share in different task. this finding corresponds to that of mehnert (2000) and correlates to that of yuan and ellis (2003). further research on how different tasks could facilitate l2 learners in terms of accuracy, complexity, and fluency will still be a valuable endeavor in the study of second language acquisition. the learner‟s low level of l2 proficiency has supposedly prevented this study from getting more accurate data of how movie retelling and free conversation tasks could facilitate l2 accuracy and complexity. for that reason, assessing more learners with more varied level of l2 proficiency will be more conclusive. furthermore, more extensive data as more proficient learners tend to produce could be more preferable in providing more convincing analysis. references ellis, r., & barkhuizen, g. (2005). analysing accuracy, complexity, and fluency analysing learner language (pp.139-164): oxford university press. foster, p., & skehan, p. (1996). the influence of planning and task type on second language performance. [143 reports: research; 080 journal articles]. studies in second language acquisition, 18(3), 299-323. foster, p., tonkyn, a., & wigglesworth, g. (2000). measuring spoken language: a unit for all reasons. applied linguistics, 21, 354-375. lado, r. (1957). linguistics across culture: ann arbor: university of michigan press. lakshmanan, u., & selinker, l. (2001). analysing interlanguage: how do we know what learners know? second language research, 17(4), 393420. doi: 10.1177/026765830101700406 teguh khaerudin 198| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 larsen-freeman, d. (2000). second language acquisition and applied linguistics. annual review of applied linguistics, 20(-1), 165-181. doi: 10.1017/ s026719050020010x. lightbown, p. m., & spada, n. (1999). learner language how languages are learned (2nd ed., pp. 71 90): oxford university press. mehnert, u. (2000). the effects of different lengths of time for planning on second language performance. studies in second language acquisition, 20(01), 83-108. doi:10.1017/ s0272263198001041 skehan, p., & foster, p. (1997). task type and task processing conditions as influences on foreign language performance. language teaching research, 1(3), 185-211. doi: 10.1177/136216889700100302 yuan, f., & ellis, r. (2003). the effects of pre-task planning and on-line planning on fluency, complexity and accuracy in l2 monologic oral production. applied linguistics, 24, 1-27. teaching writing throught dictogloss teaching writing throught dictogloss ratna sari dewi (ratnasaridewi.72@gmail.com) uin syarif hidaytullah jakarta abstract the objective of this study is to help students in developing their ideas in writing due to their difficulties to arrange ideas. although they do have ideas, they cannot structure their ideas well in their papers. several factors could cause this problem such as lack of vocabulary and knowledge or strategies in arranging ideas in papers. another factor is unclear explanation and insufficient guidance from the teachers. based on literature review, dictoglos can be a guide for students to develop their ideas in writing. it is a teaching technique which incorporates various activities such listening, taking notes, discussing, and reconstructing which have some standard procedures and variations. key words: teaching writing, dictogloss introduction english as an international language has been known all over the world. people cannot deny it, because many countries use and learn the language. the fact shows that the language is used as a second or a foreign language in each country in the world. many people learn it to get involved in the world globalization era, where english in written or oral form of communication is used. therefore, it is a must for people to learn english. whether they are students, worker, or other occupations that they belong to, mailto:ratnasaridewi.72@gmail.com ratna sari dewi 66| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 they must study english. it can be learned through learning at school, in a course, or in their own ways. people must learn the language skills in order to master english well. the journey of the learning could be similar to a child learning to walk where he may fall down to the floor and get up to stand again and learn to walk continuously so that he can walk well. it is also the same when we learn a language. we must start from listening, speaking, reading and writing. the four language skills should be learned continuously and patiently. writing as one of the language skill at any level of education that has to be mastered is rather difficult than other skills. students feel difficult to arrange their ideas in papers. actually they have ideas but it is hard for them to deliver it into their paper or they have many ideas but they cannot choose what ideas should be chosen to develop. it happens because they have lack of vocabulary, cannot arrange the ideas correctly, do not know how to develop their ideas. this could happen because there is no clear enough information from the teacher. it is also possible that the teacher do not teach well. in addition to teachers, it should be acknowledged that there are many other factors that cause the inability of students to write in english. because some problems above, the writer wants to give an alternative solution to overcome the problem that is an approach to teach writing. it is hoped that the students have ability to develop their ideas in writing. the approach is called dictogloss. in this approach students is trained to write their elaboration of one idea or improve simply an idea or a topic chosen by a teacher or they choose it freely from their own. the teaching of writing there are many definitions of writing according to some experts. hyland (2003) defines writing as a product constructed from the writer „s command of grammatical and lexical knowledge, and writing development is considered to be teaching writing throught dictogloss ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |67 the result of imitating and manipulating model provided by the teachers. it means that writing is a product of grammatical knowledge. it should be delivered by teachers by manipulating and giving example to their students. moreover, raymond (1980) describes that writing is a way of remembering and a way of thinking as well. writing makes words permanent, and thus expands the collective memory of human beings from the relatively small store that we can remember and pas on orally to the infinite capacity of a modern library. furthermore, nunan (1991) illustrates that writing can be viewed as involving a number of thinking processes which are drawn upon in varied and complex ways as an individual composes, transcribes, evaluates, and revises. he also states that writing has evolved in societies as a result of cultural changes creating communicative needs which cannot be readily met by the spoken language. raymond (1980) defines that writing needs a process of remembering and also thinking. besides, barnet and stubbs (1983) define writing as a physical act; it requires material and energy. and like most physical acts, to be performed fully, to bring pleasure, to both performer and audience. it means that in writing students need to prepare themselves physically in form of material and energy. in addition, axelrod and cooper (1985) said, writing is a complex process and such contains element of mystery and surprise. writing does still more, it contributes to personal development. as students write, they become more potential thinkers and active learners. from the explanation above, it can be concluded that writing appears as the result of cultural changes and needs memory to remember and think. in addition, it is also a long process which requires both time and energy. writing is also a unique and surprised process. ratna sari dewi 68| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 before students learn how to write well, they have to build and hone their competency into two broad areas. the first is writing mechanics, and second is writing process. each of the areas contains a number of sub skills. the areas will be discussed more in the following. writing mechanics involve spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation. it includes everything from physically producing text to spelling correctly and producing accurate grammar. in short, the explanation is as follow. first, students have to know graphemic realization of writing; the symbolic understanding (symbols have meaning), alphabetic principle (letters represent speech segments, and memory for letters. in the part of spelling students have to realize the visual discrimination, finemotor skills (handwriting and typing. second, the students should understand sound-symbol connect ions and patterns, memory for regularly and irregularly spelled words, linguistic comprehension, memory for words, recognition and understanding of grammatical patterns, memory for syntactically correct patterns, and understandi ng application of semantic conventions. while writing process needs generating and organizing information, of which planning and editing are part. in acquiring knowledge of the process of writing students should know the retrieve knowledge, how to plan text, construct the text, edit the text, and regulate the entire process of writing. to understand and practice the knowledge of how to write well they have to be trained and to be given the situation by teachers in applying a kind of approach called dictogloss . it will be described in the following discussion. dictogloss dictogloss is a teaching technique which incorporates various activities such as listening, taking notes, discussing, and teaching writing throught dictogloss ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |69 reconstructing. it is the same with the idea from jacobs (2003), he explains that text reconstruction task provides students with the opportunities to display both their knowledge of the content of the text as well as of the organizational structure and language features of the text. it means that dictogloss gives opportunities to the students to comprehend what they have heard in form of notes, discuss with their friends and teacher, and then rewrite what they have learned. it can be said that dictogloss is an activity in the classroom where students need to reconstruct a text given by teacher through listening, writing a note of key words which are then will be used as a base for new construction. moreover, wajnryb (1990) states that dictigloss is designed to draw the learners‟ attention to language form, it promotes negotiation of meaning as well as negotiation of form. in this case students can discuss the material with their friend whether in pair, group or other activities during the process of learning and teaching. in addition, murray (2001) adds that dictogloss is helping students to use their grammar resources to reconstruct a text and become aware of their shortcomings and needs. it can be described that dictogloss makes students to be more aware of their grammatical choice that they used to reconstruct their ideas about the text. furthermore, dictogloss is a language teaching technique that is used to teach grammatical structures, in which students form small groups and summarize a target-language text. from the statements above it can be concluded that dictogloss give students more opportunities to learn about grammatical rules of text and reconstruct the rules in a text and rebuild new vocabularies. dictogloss has multi functions such as to develop students listening, writing and speaking skills. it also builds new vocabulary for the students, enhance grammar and ratna sari dewi 70| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 discourse systems to complete the task. according to kidd (1992) there are four stage procedures in applying dictogloss. they are: (1) preparation, (2) dictation, (3) reconstruction, and (4) analysis and correction. in preparation stage, teacher introduces the topic of a passage interestingly and imaginatively which activates students‟ knowledge and their comprehension. after that students are organized into group of 4 or 5. the second stage is dictation. in this session students are read twice or three times at normal speed about the text. at this occasion students have three stages opportunity. the first they are not allowed to write anything except listen to the text from the teacher. in the next step, student jot important words and phrases in order that they can reconstruct the text. in the third stage, reconstructi on, students try to reconstruct a version of the text from their shared resources. both text interpretation and reconstruction depend heavily on cooperation among members in the group work. the last is analysis and correction. in this condition, different group text results are examined and compared to the target structure. it can be done in many ways, such as writing it on chalkboard. this will be led to understand the source of the errors. similarly, ellis (1992) states some procedures in dictogloss as following. first, the teacher reads the text to the students at normal speed while they take notes, second, students work in small groups to prepare a summary of their work using the correct grammatical structures, and finally each group presents their work to the rest of the class. the following is a real example of doing the procedures. students discuss a text about going to the zoo. the teacher then explains the task, and reads a short text about going to the zoo to the class. and then the teacher repeats reading the text again, and then students take teaching writing throught dictogloss ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |71 notes. then in group students reconstruct the text. the last activity is each group presents their works to other groups. to get more comprehension about dictogloss, here it will be explained some variations of dictogloss. the variations are based on wajnryb‟s classfication. teachers can use one or two variations in their teaching. they are negotiation, student-controlled dictation, student-student dictation, summaries, scrambled sentence, opinion, picture, and elaboration. negotiation. in this variation students discuss after each section of text has been read. the sections can be varied depend on the difficulty level of text to students‟ proficiency level. the steps in doing this are: first, students sit with a partner, face to face, students just listen to the text being read for the first time, students do not allow to write. during the second reading the teacher stops after each sentence or two. second, each members of the group writes the pair‟s reconstruction. and finally students compare their reconstruction with the original procedure in step 4 of the standard procedures. student-controlled dictation. firstly, in this variation students are free to ask the teacher to read and stop the text depend on their understanding of the text when the teacher read it for them. but it still needs consideration for the highest level students towards the lower level proficiency students. the class might want to have a rule that each student can only say “please stop” one time. it is to avoid over control from different level students. secondly, there is a partner conference. next, teacher asks them to bring in texts to use for dictation or nominate topics. student-students dictation. this variation can be done by students after they become familiar with the standard procedure of dictogloss. a text is probably longer than the usual one. the text is divided into four or five sections. some students have the same ratna sari dewi 72| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 sections and some student have different. each student read the section they have been given and try to understand it. after that the students with the same section can initially meet in groups of three or four to read and discuss the meaning. then in their original groups students take turns reading their section of the text as the teacher would for standard dictation while their group mates take notes. after that students work with their partner to reconstruct the text. every group members plays the role as a teacher. summary. in this variation students only focus on the key idea of the original text. step 1,2, and 3 are the same as in standard dictogloss. students work with their partner to summarize the key points of the text. it can provide visual aids (sketch, flow, chart, photo, mind map) that represent some elements of the text. moreover students can create their own visual aids to accompany their reconstruction as another means to demonstrate or promote a unique reconstruction. scrambled sentence. this employs to raise the difficulty level of dictogloss and to focus students‟ attention on how texts fit together. in this variation teacher jumbles the sentences of a text before reading it to the students. students reconstruct the text by creating what they have heard and then put it into logical order. when students analyze the reconstruction they will know that there is more than one possible correct order. elaboration. this variation of dictogloss is that students not only recreate a text but also to improve the text. in doing so, students have to elaborate or add adjectives and adverbs, examples, facts, personal experiences, and causes and effects. in this step students can work together whether in pair or group works consisted of more than two persons. in this activity students directly or indirectly can add their vocabulary. they can also change their works and share experiences. teaching writing throught dictogloss ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |73 students reconstruct the text. these can be factual, based on what students know about the topic of the text or research they do, or students can invent elaborations. in doing this step, students can develop and enhance their ideas. opinion. in this variation students give their opinion after they reconstruct the text. this opinion can be written down at various points in the text or at the end of the text. it seems to promote a kind of dialogue with the original authors of the text. picture. in this section students can complete a graphic organizer. the steps are: the teacher finds or writes a description of a drawing. the description is in detail, should include relevant vocabulary and concepts. students listen to the description and do a drawing based on what they hear, then compare drawings with their partners and make one composite drawing per pair, compare with the original one, and alternatively students can reconstruct the description text read by teacher and then make a drawing. based on the explanation above it can be known that the are many variations in dictogloss in helping students to write in english. some of the variations are dictogloss negotiation, student-student dictation, student-controlled dictation, dictogloss summaries, scrambled sentence dictogloss, elaboration dictogloss, and picture dictation. conclusion writing is one the skill that should be studied hardly by the students who learn english as a foreign or second language. in order that students can write well, teacher should know and apply approach, technique, method or strategy in their class. one of the techniques to be applied is dictogloss with some of its procedures and variations. there are four procedures in applying dictogloss. they are: (1) preparation, (2) dictation, (3) reconstruction, and (4) analysis and ratna sari dewi 74| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 correction. text reconstruction task provides students with the opportunities to display both their knowledge of the content of the text as well as of the organizational structure and language features of the text. by applying this approach in the writing, it is hoped that students can develop their ideas in writing a text. finally dictogloss has eight valuable variations in helping and experiencing students to learn english, especially writing. the variations are dictogloss negotiation, student-student dictation, student-controlled dictation, dictogloss summaries, scrambled sentence dictogloss, elaboration dictogloss, dictogloss opinion and picture dictation. it provides students to learn together with their friends and they can help each other in learning by doing reconstruction of a text after the teacher read it for the students. it also gives opportunities to the students to build up their new vocabularies. they know much about the grammatical structures. finally this technique can train students‟ english skills. references axelrod, rise b. and chooper, charles r. (1985). the st. martin’s guide to writing. new york: st martin‟s press, inc. barnet and stubbs‟s. (1983). practical guide to writing (4th ed). canada: brown company. ellis, rod. (1992). second language acquisition and language pedagogy. clevedon: multiling ual matters. hyland, ken. (2003). second language writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. jacobs (1), george. (2003). combining dictogloss and cooperative learning to promote language learning. the reading matrix 3:4. kidd, r. (1992). teaching esl grammar through dictation. tesl canada journal (10/1). mccutchen, d. (1988). functional automaticity in children’s writing. written communicati on. teaching writing throught dictogloss ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |75 murray, s. dictogloss. (2001). expanded. met journal, volume 10 no 3, july. nunan, david. (1991). language teaching methodology. new york: prentice hall. raymond, james. c. (1980). writing is an unnatural act. new york: harper and publisher. wajnryb, r. (1986). grammar workout: the dictogloss approach, listening text reconstruction analysis. sydney: melting pot press. ratna sari dewi 76| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 research project in language teaching and learning an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing the third person singular /s/ in speaking. fitriah (fitriahasad@yahoo.com) uin sunan ampel surabaya. abstract this study examined the ability of indonesian students in producing the third person /s/ in speaking. seven respondents were presented with two speaking tasks and questions related to their daily activity and picture descriptions. overall, results showed that the majority of the respondents were able to produce agreement in speaking, although only five respondents could produce agreement correctly above 30%. therefore, the study suggested that strategies other than speaking should be examined if they could better facilitate students’ production of the third person singular /s/. key words: subject-verb agreement, third person singular /s/, speaking introduction in the last decade, psycho linguistics has shown strong interest in the production of subject-verb agreement. several studies have identified the types of errors that most frequently occur in language production. these studies report observations on agreement errors in oral english (haskel & macdonald 2005; hartsuiker & barkhusyen 2006; johnson, villiers & seymour 2005; johnson 2005), written french (hupet, fayol & schelstraete 1998; fayol, hupet &largy 1999; largy & fayol 2001) and written german (hemforth & konieczny 2003). one example of a study which observed agreement errors in oral english was conducted by haskel and fitriah 30| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 macdonald (2005). they examined agreement with disjunctive subjects which contained plurality nouns (singular-plural noun and pluralsingular noun, e.g. have/has the president or the senators read the documents yet?). the research proved that in relation to agreement with disjunctions like „the president or the senators‟, english speakers tend to prefer a verb form that agrees with the nearer of the two nouns (haskel & macdonald, 2005). an investigation of working memory affecting the production of agreement errors in speaking was conducted by hartsuiker & barkhusyen (2006). to manipulate the availability of working memory, half of the participants had to remember the list of words while performing the primary (load condition) and half of the others performed the primary task without a memory load. all participants were given the speaking span test and had to perform under specific time constraints. the researchers assumed that agreement errors would occur more frequently in the load condition than in the no-load condition. in this study, there were 64 subjects from the university of nijmegen participating; they were all native speakers of dutch. in the presentation of the speaking span test in the load condition, the participants were presented with an adjective (e.g. large) that was followed by a sentence fragment (e.g. the cup for the winners). in the no-load condition, the adjective and sentence fragment were presented at the same time. then, the participants were instructed to repeat and complete each fragment so they had a full sentence, using the adjective (e.g. the cup for the winners was large) before the deadline. in this experiment, the result confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that agreement errors were more common in the load condition than in the no-load condition, and the errors occurred more frequently when the head noun was mismatched in the an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |31 number with the local noun (e.g. the colour on the canvasses). though there are many research studies on verb agreement, in my study, a different attempt was made to elicit the respondents’ ability in producing the third person /s/ in speaking. i chose not to use complex subjects (which have plurality of the head noun and the local noun). i preferred obvious subjects, for example, ‘she, he, the girl, the boy’ (from which the number of the subjects is clear). the goal of the study was to examine the ability of indonesian students to produce third person singular /s/ in speaking. i analyzed only the productive of agreement markers (there is /s/ inflection), such as, she walks, the girl works, he cleans. in conjunction with this stated purpose, the following research questions guide the current study: 1. do advanced learners produce third person /s/ in speaking? 2. how well do they produce the third person /s/ in speaking? theoretical framework in the traditional description, the rule of english subject-verb agreement is that a singular subject takes a singular verb (e.g. the girl walks home) and a plural subject takes a plural verb (e.g. the girls walk home) (huddleston & pullum, 2005). to implement the rule, people require the knowledge of three aspects, (1) how to mark number on verbs and nouns, (2) how to identify the number of a subject and (3) how to identify the subject of a verb (bock & miller, 1991). however, there are some nouns that are notionally singular but grammatically plural and take plural marking on the verb (e.g. trousers, binoculars, scissors), nouns which are uninflected for plurality (e.g. people, women, police, cattle), nouns which are notionally plural (though they are uninflected) and take singular fitriah 32| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 marking on the verb (e.g. team, committee) (bock & miller, 1991). these examples of nouns may lead to confusion in regard to number, specifically whether they belong to singular or plural. bearing this in mind, it seems that the placement of these nouns in sentences will cause errors in language production as learners may not be able to differentiate between them. pienemann (1998) pointed out that the implementation of subject-verb agreement procedures will be learned as one block if the subject and verb are not very complex lexically and morphologically in the interlanguage. with regard to this, learners will acquire subjectverb structures easily if the construction of subject and verb is simple and the position of the two remains fixed in the interlanguage. regarding subject-verb agreement, a series of experiments was carried out using complex subjects with the agreement of the copula (is, are, was, were) (fayol et al. 1999; largy and fayol 2001; hemforth & konieczny 2003; haskel & macdonald 2005; hartsuiker & barkhusyen 2006). in all of these experiments, an attempt was made to provoke agreement errors in an experimental setting. the researchers utilised plurality subjects (e.g. the hat of the woman or the gloves of the woman) to find out the probability of errors being made by the learners. in a study involving 17 native french second graders, fayol et al. (1999) discovered agreement errors presented more frequently when a large number of head nouns and the local nouns were mismatched. in this study, the experimental materials also included subject noun phrases with embedded prepositional phrase, but using varied head nouns (singular and plural, e.g. the gloves of the woman or the wheels of the wagons). the plurality of nouns was used in combination with lexical verbs (e.g. ‘the wheels of the wagons move’ or ‘the father of the children sings’) not with the copula as hartsuiker’s and barkhusyen’s study. in the previous study, the an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |33 subjects had to produce the fragment in speaking, but in this study, the participants had to transcribe or write it after hearing several sentences. in both studies it seems that memorizing is the main thing in producing agreement; the more students can memorize the better they can produce subject verb agreement. it would appear that the methodology used in both studies did not really test students’ understanding of subject-verb agreement, but instead, tested students’ memorization. in this case, the learners with high level of memorization would be able to produce subject-verb agreement well. similar results to those of fayol et al. (1999) and hartsuiker and barkhusyen (2006) have been reported by researchers studying german. a study by hemfort and konieczny (2003) investigated the effect of mismatch in noun phrase (np) and prepositional phrase (pp) constructions, and the experiments were conducted on german constructions. the study involved 62 native speakers of german. in this experiment, the subjects received a booklet with constructions missing and auxiliaries which they had to fill in (e.g. the colour on the canvasses …..dry or the colour on the canvas ……dry). the findings noted that the number of agreements increased when the head noun and the local noun were dissimilar. in this study, the researchers did not provide the copula in sentences (as an agreement marker) as in the previous research, but instead, the participants had to determine which copula suited the subject. in this task, students’ comprehension of subject-verb agreement is essential to complete stimuli questions. if the students are not able to distinguish the number between the head and the local nouns, it seems agreement errors will repeatedly appear. methods the subjects for this study were seven indonesian students who were doing various majors at the fitriah 34| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 university of canberra. they were categorized as advanced learners because their ielts scores were 6.0 and above. they were aware that the tasks were conducted for research purposes but they did not know the exact focus of the tasks. to collect the data on the production of third person singular /s/, the subjects were assigned two speaking tasks. in the first task, the questions related to participants’ daily activity as in the following examples. 1. what does your husband/wife/da ughter do every morning? 2. what does your husband/wife do on the weekend? 3. what does your daughter usually do after getting up? 4. how about your husband/wife/frie nd, does he/she have any special activity? before starting the main questions, the respondents were given question prompts (e.g. it seems that now you are happy because your husband is here, you can do something together with him. do you notice ‘what does your husband do every morning?’). the question prompts were different for each participant because some participants lived with their family and others shared a house with friends or lived in university residences. the aim of the question prompts was to create a natural context as well as a comfortable atmosphere. the second task was describing a picture. through the description of the picture, it was hoped that the participants would be able to generate agreement markers. if the participants could not describe the picture using the present tense, the researcher provided stimuli questions, as in the following examples: 1. what do they wear or what does the boy/the girl wear? 2. does the man/woman look happy? 3. what does she/he look like? 4. can you describe the girl’s/boy’s dress? an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |35 the tasks took about three to five minutes, depending on the participants’ responses. if they could produce agreement markers in their answers, the tasks lasted about three minutes. however, if they could not produce the third person /s/, the tasks took longer. all the participants’ responses were recorded using a tape recorder. from seven subjects participating in the study, the researcher included only seven participants in the data collection due to the recording problem. analysis of the data began by transcribing the participants’ responses in speaking tasks, followed by underlining in red the degree of agreement that the participants should be able to produce. after highlighting the entire agreement /s/ marker, the researcher calculated the correct agreement (if the respondents produced the same agreement, it was counted only once). findings and discussion table 1. calculation of the third person /s/ produced by respondents regarding the first research question whether advanced learners produce the third person /s/ in speaking, the findings revealed that from seven respondents, only five were able to generate the third person /s/ in speaking. two respondents, participants 2 and 3, could not produce /s/ marker in their responses as indicated in table 1. the table shows that participants 5 was the only one who was able to produce the third /s/ inflection correctly above 50% of the time. three participants (participants 1, 4 and 6) could generate agreement correctly more than 30% of the time, and participants total agreement that the subjects should be able to produce total correct agreement percentage 1 6 2 33% 2 7 0 0% 3 2 0 0% 4 5 2 40% 5 7 4 57% 6 8 3 37% 7 10 1 10% fitriah 36| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 participants 2 and 3 could not produce a single agreement in speaking. interestingly, although participant 7 produced more frequent production of the third person /s/ in context, she only got one agreement (10%) correct. thus, regarding the second question ‘how well do they produce the third person /s/ in speaking?’, it shows that the majority of the respondents produce the third person /s/ in their speaking less than 50% of the time and only one respondent could achieve the production of agreement marker above 50% (participant 5). compared with other studies which examine agreement errors both in speaking (hartsuiker & barkhusyen, 2006) and writing (fayol et al. 1999), for the most part errors occurred more frequently when the plurality of subjects (the head noun and the local noun) was dissimilar in number. agreement represents a classic case of syntactic dependency where information that controls the form of one element of a sentence may be separated from it (bock & miller, 1991). this is the case when in one sentence there are two subjects (the head noun and the local noun), specifically, if both subjects are mismatched in number. thus, agreement errors occur more frequently. however, in my study i did not use the plurality of subjects. nevertheless, most of the respondents could not produce correctly the third person /s/ inflection in their speaking more than 40% of the time. moreover, two respondents could not even generate a single agreement. haskell and macdonald (2003, cited in hartsuiker & barkhusyen, 2006) mentioned that the production of verb agreement is sensitive to many different types of information and it requires the simultaneous storage and processing of a relatively large amount of information. in spite of this, all the respondents were identified as advanced learners. therefore, it was predicted that when they were asked about their daily activity, (for instance, ‘what an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |37 does your husband/wife do every morning, what does your daughter usually do after getting up or what does your husband do on the weekend?’) they would answer using the present tense since the context was clear. interestingly, some respondents answered using the past tense, past continuous and future to express their daily activity, as in the following example: “my mom she was getting up at 5 o‟clock she was praying subuh she was reading koran and then she was watching indonesian program……” it seems that the respondents’ proficiency or spontaneity is not developed enough to answer the questions since they were not able to respond using the same tense as in the questions. another possible explanation for the results of this study is that the tasks designed were not effective for eliciting the production of agreement markers. it would seem that the tasks did not force the learners to produce the agreement, particularly in the second task ‘describing a picture’, the respondents might answer or respond using other tenses (not the present tense). however, in the previous studies the researchers could elicit agreement errors in their stimuli tasks constantly as they controlled the subjects. thus, the respondents could not use another tense (should use the present tense). this was the limitation of my study but should provide the basis for future research on subject-verb agreement to design the tasks which are more effective for eliciting the production of agreement marker. conclusion this study examined the ability of indonesian students in producing the third person /s/ in speaking. the result indicated that the majority of the respondents were able to produce agreement marker in their responses. however, only one respondent was able to generate the agreement correctly above 50% of the time, the rest could produce the agreement fitriah 38| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 marker 40% and below. from the results, it would seem that the use of speaking tasks is ineffective for eliciting the production of agreement marker and further research in this area is certainly justified. references bock, k. & miller, a. 1991. broken agreement. cognitive psychology, (23): 45-93. fayol, m., hupet, m. & largy, p. 1999. the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in written french: from novice to experts’ errors. reading and writing: an interdisplinary journal, (11): 153-174. huddleston, r., & pullum, g.k. 2005. a student‟s introduction to english grammar. cambridge university press: united kingdom. hartsuiker, r.j., &barkhuysen, p.n. 2006. language production and working memory: the case of subject-verb agreement. language and cognitive processes, (21): 181204. haskell, t.r., & macdonald, m.c. 2005. constituent structure and linear orden in language production: evidence from subject-verb agreement. journal of experimental psychology, (31): 891-904. hemforth, b. & koenieczny, l. 2003. proximity in agreement errors. proceeding of the conference of the cognitive science society in boston, july/august. hupet, m., fayol, m. & schelstraete, m. 1998. effect of semantic variables on subject verb agreement processes in writing. british journal of psychology, (89): 59-75. johnson, v.e. 2005. comprehension of third person singular /s/ in aae-speaking english. american speech-languagehearing association (36), 116124. johnson, v.e., villiers, j.g., & seymour, h.n. 2005. agreement without understanding? the case of third person singular /s/. sage journal online and highwires press platforms, (25): 317-330. largy, p., & fayol, m. 2001. oral cues improve subject-verb agreement in written french. international journal of psychology, 36 (2): 121-132. an investigation of indonesian students’ ability in producing… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |39 pienemann, m. 1998. language processing and second language development: processability theory. anu. fitriah 40| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 21-29 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students’ perception of the use of “english phrasal verb” videos to enhance students’ independent learning skill haryanti received: 6th march 2019; revised: 22th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract independent english language learning is very important to do by students, especially students in higher education level, because they are often required to read many english references and use english on many occasions, for example in writing essays. also, it is because the opportunity or time to learn english in the class is very limited. therefore, students badly need to learn english independently outside the classroom. this study was designed to investigate the students‟ perception of the use of “english phrasal verb” videos in enhancing their independent learning. there were six participants interviewed and observed to get information about the benefits of using “english phrasal verb” videos and the effectiveness of it in training the students to be independent learners. the study found that the students‟ pronunciation and vocabulary mastery had improved as well as their listening and writing skills due to the use of videos and assignment given. it also revealed that the use of videos had successfully been a trigger for the students to find other english learning videos and learn them independently outside the classroom. key words: english language; independent learning; phrasal verb; english skill abstrak belajar bahasa inggris secara mandiri sangat penting dilakukan oleh siswa, khususnya mahasiswa, karena mereka sering diminta untuk membaca banyak referensi berbahasa inggris dan untuk menggunakan bahasa inggris di banyak kesempatan, contohnya dalam menulis esai. selain itu, karena terbatasnya kesempatan atau waktu untuk belajar bahasa inggris di kelas, mahasiswa sangat dianjurkan untuk belajar bahasa inggris secara mandiri di luar kelas. penelitian ini didesain untuk menginvestigasi persepsi mahasiswa terhadap penggunaan video tentang frase kata kerja bahasa inggris (phrasal verbs videos) dalam meningkatkan kemampuan belajar mandiri mahasiswa. dalam penelitian ini, terdapat enam peserta yang diwawancarai dan diamati untuk mendapatkan informasi mengenai keuntungan menggunakan video dan keefektifan penggunaan video tersebut dalam melatih mereka menjadi pembelajar mandiri. penelitian ini menemukan bahwa penguasaan kosakata dan kemampuan pengucapan bahasa inggris mahasiswa meningkat begitu juga dengan kemampuan mendengar dan menulis mereka karena penggunaan video yang dimaksud dan tugas yang diberikan. selain itu, penelitian ini juga menemukan bahwa penggunaan video telah sukses mendorong mahasiswa untuk menemukan video-video belajar bahasa inggris lainnya dan untuk mempelajari video-video tersebut secara mandiri di luar kelas. kata kunci: bahasa inggris; belajar mandiri; frase kata kerja; keterampilan berbahasa inggris how to cite: haryanti. (2019). students‟ perception of the use of “english phrasal verb” videos to enhance students‟ independent learning skill. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 21-29. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 22-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction along with the development of technology, there are many innovations related to technology for teaching and learning english created. not only do these innovations bring positive impacts to the teaching and learning process in the classroom, but they also help students improve their english learning skills outside the classroom. ahmadi (2008) mentioned that the use of technology could promote activities for students to study independently outside the classroom. studying independently outside the classroom is considered important to do if the language mastery is the goal. moreover, the demands faced by the students in their real-life have increased more and more. students are required to use english on many occasions, such as in an international youth forum, in applying for a scholarship/ students exchange program, etc. they are also demanded to be able to effectively communicate in english both spoken and written. meanwhile, in-class learning which is hoped to help students master english seems to be inadequate because it provides students with very limited hours of learning, i.e. three till four hours a week (lamb, 2002; mattarima & hamdan, 2011; novera, 2004). therefore, students are suggested to do independent language learning or outof-class language learning (ocll, henceforth) to perfect their in-class learning. considering the importance of ocll towards the improvement of students‟ english ability, teachers‟ roles in supporting and enhancing the students‟ independent learning skills are badly needed. teachers are supposed to be good facilitators who support the students‟ efforts outside the classroom. there are many things that teachers can do, providing information or resources for learning, for example. besides, teachers can prepare a huge number of authentic materials for inclass learning, which then can stimulate students to do ocll (ahmadi, 2018). not only do students need to learn general english and basic grammar, but they also need to understand common expressions or words used by native speakers, phrasal verbs, for example, to be able to communicate in english actively. phrasal verb (pv or pvs, henceforth) is the mixture of a verb and a particle which has a different meaning from each word meaning (vasbieva, 2015). english phrasal verbs are necessary to be learned by students because they are very often used by native speakers in their spoken and written communication (ibid., mart, 2012). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 23-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license also, they are often regarded as complicated material to learn since they are so complex and varied (vasbieva, 2015; laufer and eliasson, 1993 in castillo, 2017; mart, 2012). castillo (2017) mentioned that commonly, teacher listed the pvs learned and asked students to memorize them. she also stated that the method used had made students feel doubt in using pvs and tend to evade employing them (ibid.). thus, the researcher of this study believes that the use of technology, in this case, is the use of phrasal verb videos taken from youtube, can be a solution. moreover, youtube is considered as a popular website for students. there has been some previous research conducted to investigate the benefits of using video or other technology in english teaching and learning process. almurashi (2016) reported that youtube is effective to help learners comprehend the english lessons, perform better, as well as enhance their english understanding. mustikawati (2013) also researched to examine the effectiveness of using video in teaching speaking and found that students who used video in learning english had better speaking ability than the ones who used textbook. besides, lin and yang (2011) also investigated the benefits of using wiki technology to enhance writing skills of the students. they found that the use of wiki technology had improved students‟ writing skills and made students learn „vocabulary, spelling, and sentence structure‟ from other students‟ work (ibid., p. 121). it is clear that english teaching and learning using technology bring positive effects for the students. furthermore, there are some other previous studies focusing on the benefits of using technology towards the students‟ independent learning skill. hennessy, deaney, and ruthven (2005) found that technology worked well in training students to be independent or autonomous learners. parvin and salam (2015) also reported that the use of technology had allowed students to learn the language in a context which is meaningful and to get understanding by themselves. both previous studies mentioned here obviously show that technology has a significant role in improving students‟ independent learning skills. in other words, the use of technology helps students learn and understand something on their own. it also allows students to practice what they have learned either in their real-life or in the digital world, like writing captions on twitter. concerning the importance of pvs understanding, research on pvs, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 24-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license especially the one focusing on the method of teaching and learning pvs, needs to be done. moreover, if the limited number of it has become a consideration, the research on this topic is badly required. this study was conducted to examine the students‟ perception of the use of phrasal verb videos in learning. it focused on investigating the benefits of using the videos and the effectiveness of using them in enhancing the students‟ independent language learning skills, using lecturer‟s observation sheet and written interview. to achieve the purposes of the research, two research questions were created to know the students‟ perception of the use of pvs videos, i.e.: 1)what are the benefits of using english phrasal verb videos in learning english?; 2) is the use of english phrasal verb videos effective to enhance students‟ independent language learning skills?;. method it is qualitative research in the form of a case study. it investigated the benefits of using english phrasal verb videos in learning english and the effectiveness of using the videos to improve students‟ independent language learning skills based on the students‟ perception. the participants in this study were chosen through a typical sampling procedure. the researcher selected participants who had experience which was similar to the focus of the research (dornyei, 2007). the participants involved were six second-semester students majoring in international relation at an indonesian university and taking general english course. they aged 19 to 20 years old and had intermediate-upper intermediate english proficiency levels. pseudonyms were used in this study to maintain the students‟ confidentiality. to collect the data, there were two instruments used in this study, those are observation sheet and written interview. the participants taken parts were given six videos taken from rachel‟s english youtube channel. they needed to watch, read, write, and understand the meaning of the phrasal verbs learned as well as the sentences provided in each video every single week, starting from week 2 till week 7. during these six weeks, the researcher observed and checked the students‟ work. then, in week 8, the participants were required to submit their notes and to answer the interview questions. there were 10 questions given in the interview. there were six themes used in the analysis process, i.e. improve the student‟s vocabulary mastery; improve the student‟s listening skill; enhance student‟s pronunciation; improve ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 25-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license student‟s writing skill; improve student‟s speaking skill; improve student‟s reading skill. also, two themes were used to check the effectiveness of using phrasal verb videos in training students to be independent learners, i.e. effective and ineffective. dornyei (2007) mentioned that to analyze qualitative data, a process called analytical process was needed. it included some activities, such as “transcribing the data, precoding and coding, growing ideas – memos, vignettes, profiles, and other forms of data display, and interpreting the data, and drawing conclusions” (p. 246). thus, all of the activities mentioned were used in this study, except for the transcribing the data as the interview answers had been given in the written form. findings and discussion findings benefits of using english phrasal verb videos there were six themes revealed about the benefits of using pvs videos (see table 1). improving students‟ vocabulary mastery came first with the percentage of 100%. it was then continued with enhancing student‟s pronunciation ability and improving student‟s listening skill with 67%. improving student‟s writing skill was the fourth benefit mentioned by three students participated in this study. at last, improving student‟s speaking and reading skills are considered as the least benefits that students got from the activities done using pvs videos. table 1. the benefit of using english phrasal verb videos no benefit students’ answers percentage 1. improve student‟s vocabulary mastery √√√√√√ = 6 100% 2. improve student‟s listening skill √√√√ = 4 67% 3. enhance student‟s pronunciation ability √√√√ = 4 67% 4. improve student‟s writing skill √√√ = 3 50% 5. improve student‟s speaking skill √ = 1 17% 6. improve student‟s reading skill √ = 1 17% is the use of english phrasal verb videos effective to enhance the student’s independent learning skill? there were two answers provided for students to choose, i.e. effective or ineffective (see table 2). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 26-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. the effectiveness of using english phrasal verb videos towards the improvement of independent learning skill no students effective/ineffective 1. rafi e 2. santi e 3. rara e 4. claudia e 5. jihan e 6. aqila e based on the analysis result, all students participated in this study agreed that the use of pvs videos had effectively trained them to be independent learners. the followings are students‟ answers when they are asked about the effectiveness of pvs activity to improve their independent learning skills. yes, i feel easy when i listening to podcast at home and also i feel my skills are improved. (jihan) yes, it is. it trains my independent learning. i still watch rachel‟s video sometimes and i‟m so thankful to my teacher to gave us a homework by watching the video. it really helps me. (aqila) yes, i hope i can do this activity regularly because to be very honest this activity has a lot of benefits. it helps us to practicing our skills, like listening and writing. (rara) most of the students agreed that the use of pvs videos and the task assigned had triggered them to find other videos. the followings are some students‟ answers when being asked whether they feel triggered to find other videos or not after doing the activity instructed by the lecturer. yes. my pronunciation has improved and i know lots of vocabulary that i never knew before because after i saw the video, i am triggered to looking for a new vocabulary. also, it triggered me to find another video. (rafi) yes, i do. (santi) yes, but i usually save the video first bcs i don‟t have time for it. (jihan) it was also revealed from the interview that they were motivated to do some other activities for learning english outside the classroom, for example by watching film, listening to the music, and so on. it was confirmed by the participants‟ comments in their interview. i sometimes read an english language book, i often listen to music or watch movies in english, and i also join competition like debate or speech in english to practice more. (rara) watching other english speakers‟ channel like oh no nina (college student who living in america) which related on my hobbies because it avoids me to feel bored while i learning via videos. (claudia) sometimes i read an article from cnn, time, etc. read a book which can relate to my major. watching film although use american or british spell. (santi) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 27-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion based on the analysis done, it is clear that the use of pvs videos has brought significant impacts to the improvement of the students‟ english ability. students reported that the three major benefits they had got after using pvs videos were their vocabulary mastery, pronunciation ability, and listening skill had improved. they also reported that their understanding of the meanings, the pronunciation, and the contexts in which the words should be used had been better than before. as a result, the students knew better how to use the pvs learned in the proper contexts. it was similar to the finding revealed by almurashi (2016) which showed that the use of video had significantly improved the students‟ understanding and performance. the result found in this study was also the same with the result mentioned by mustikawati (2013) in the case of students‟ better performance. she reported that students who learned using video spoke better than the ones who learned english only with a textbook. however, there is a little difference between this study result and mustikawati‟s result that the improvement of speaking ability was only the least benefit in this study, but it was the major benefit in mustikawati‟s study. it happens because this study used pvs videos focusing more on vocabulary, while mustikawati‟s study used conversation videos focusing on speaking skill. it was clear that the use of different videos potentially gave different results. furthermore, this study also showed that there was a quite significant improvement in the writing skill with the percentage of 50% due to the use of pvs video and the assignment given by the lecturer. students reported that their writing skills were trained during the process of pvs learning because they were required to write pvs found in the videos, the meaning of pvs and the examples of sentences. this writing skill improvement was also found in lin and yang‟s (2011) research. they revealed that the students‟ writing skill improved after using wiki technology. it is obvious that the use of technology, learning video, for example, seems to bring benefits for the students‟ english ability. regarding the effectiveness of using pvs videos in training students‟ independent learning, this study found that this method of teaching had successfully motivated students to do self-study outside the classroom. in other words, it trained students to be independent learners. it was similar to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 28-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the results revealed by henessy (2005) and parvin and salam (2015) in their studies. the students also reported that they were triggered to find other online sources for learning independently. in brief, the use of pvs videos is beneficial not only for improving students‟ independent learning skills but also triggering students to find more independent learning sources. the results of this study inform the students and teachers of english that the use of digital media, youtube video for example, in teaching and learning could be one of the solutions to create an exciting and effective atmosphere for learning english. students are wellinformed the recommended youtube channels or sources for their independent learning and they understand well that their independent learning can give significant impacts to their english ability. as a result, they will be more enthusiastic and confident in learning independently outside the classroom. it also gives english teachers information that the use of available digital media can help their works in helping students improve their english skills, which further gives them the insight to create a fun english lesson using various media available. this study is assumed to have two limitations which need improvement in the future. first, the number of participants which is only six (6) is considered too few. therefore, the more students participating in the next research are expected to give findings that are better. second, the result may be better if the researcher uses a mixedmethod in future research. the use of one method in this study seems to limit the researcher‟s opportunity to generalize the research findings. conclusion and suggestions to conclude, two major findings were revealed in this study. first, there were four main benefits that students get after doing the vocabulary enrichment activity, such as improving their vocabulary mastery, pronunciation ability, listening skills, and writing skills. second, students considered this activity has effectively triggered them to find new learning sources. it also improved their independent skills in learning english. another future research is badly needed to ensure another effectiveness of using phrasal verb videos in learning. one of the research topics which is interesting is the impact of using learning videos (phrasal verbs videos) towards the improvement of students‟ english ability. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 29-29 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12613 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references ahmadi, m., r. (2018). the use of technology in english language learning: a literature review. international journal of research in english education, 3(2), 115125 almurashi, w., a. (2016). the effective use of youtube videos for teaching english language in classrooms as supplementary material at taibah university in alula. international journal of english language and linguistics research, 4(3), 32-47. castillo, s., e. (2017). fostering conceptual metaphors in vocabulary teaching. phrasal verbs in spanish secondary education: a pedagogical implementation. (doctoral dissertation, university of la rioja, logrono, spain). retrieved from https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/tesi s?codigo=122752. dornyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. hennessy, s. deaney, r. & ruthven, k. (2005). emerging teacher strategies for supporting subject teaching and learning with ict. cambridge, uk: university of cambridge. lamb, m. (2002). explaining successful language learning in difficult circumstances. prospect, 17(2), 35-52. lin, w., & yang, s. (2011). exploring students‟ perception of integrating wiki technology and peer feedback into english writing courses. english teaching: practice and critique, 10(2), 88103. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej944900. mart, c., t. (2012). how to teach phrasal verbs. english language teaching, 5(6), 114-118. mattarima, k., & hamdan, a. r. (2011). the teaching constraints of english as a foreign language in indonesia: the context of school based curriculum. sosiohumanika, 4(2), 287-300. mustikawati, a. (2013). the effectiveness of using video in teaching speaking for the eighth grade students of smp n 1 manisrenggo (undergraduate thesis, yogyakarta state university, yogyakarta, indonesia). retrieved from https://eprints.uny.ac.id/25728/1/ar um%20mustikawati%2007202241067.p df. novera, i. a. (2004). indonesian postgraduate students studying in australia: an examination of their academic, social, and cultural experiences. international education journal, 5(4), 475-487. parvin, r. h., & salam, s., h. (2015). the effectiveness of using technology in english language classrooms in government primary schools in bangladesh. fire: forum for international research in education, 2(1), 47-59. vasbieva, d., g. (2015). teaching strategy on learning of english phrasal verbs by economics major students in rusia. xlinguae journal, 8(3), 57-65. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej944900 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 143-152 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee grammatical and discourse competence analysis in writing argumentation paragraph linda aprillianti received: 16th september 2019; revised: 24th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract writing is a form of embodiment of indirect communication. it is required to pay attention to the structure associated with the elements of writing so that readers can understand the message conveyed by the writer. this study is intended to identify the grammatical and discourse competence of the students in writing argumentative paragraphs. the research used was qualitative descriptive approach with analytical method. the data of this study were taken from the students‟ assignment papers related to writing argumentative paragraph in komunitas cerdas course. there were twenty task sheets resulting from students‟ writings. all of this data were analyzed in terms of grammar and discourse. the data collection techniques used was written tests. in analyzing the data, the writer used the theory of miles and huberman, so the form of study was given in short description. the results of the analysis showed that students already had sufficient competence in grammar or discourse, further, in general, the students already had grammatical competence and sufficient discourse competence. however, there were some aspects in grammar that needed to get more attentions, such as the ability of the students to arrange words into good sentences. key words: grammatical competence; discourse competence; writing skill; argumentatif paragraph abstrak menulis adalah bentuk perwujudan komunikasi tidak langsung. hal ini diperlukan untuk memperhatikan struktur yang terkait dengan unsur-unsur penulisan sehingga pembaca dapat memahami pesan yang disampaikan oleh penulis. penelitian ini dimaksudkan untuk mengidentifikasi kompetensi gramatikal dan wacana siswa dalam menulis paragraf argumentatif. penelitian ini juga memberikan koreksi kesalahan siswa dalam menulis paragraf argumentatif. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif kualitatif dengan metode analitik. data penelitian ini adalah kertas tugas siswa terkait dengan menulis paragraf argumentasi di kursus komunitas cerdas. ada dua puluh lembar tugas yang merupakan hasil tulisan siswa. semua data ini dianalisis dalam hal tata bahasa dan wacana. teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah tes tertulis. teknik analisis data, penulis menggunakan teori miles dan huberman, sehingga bentuk penelitian diberikan dalam deskripsi singkat. hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa siswa sudah memiliki kompetensi yang cukup dalam tata bahasa atau wacana. berdasarkan hasil analisis, secara umum siswa sudah memiliki kompetensi tata bahasa dan kompetensi wacana yang cukup. tetapi ada beberapa aspek dalam tata bahasa yang perlu mendapat perhatian lebih, sedangkan kompetensi wacana, kemampuan siswa untuk mengatur kata-kata menjadi kalimat yang baik masih perlu banyak peningkat. kata kunci: kompetensi tata bahasa; kompetensi wacana; keterampilan menulis; paragraf argumentasi how to cite: aprillianti,l. (2019). grammatical and discourse competence analysis in writing argumentation paragraph. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 133-142. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 144-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the basis of studying a language is broadly related to the components of the target language such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, which are the basis for mastering skills of language like reading, listening, speaking and writing. writing is one of the most complicated and difficult skills for students to master. students are asked to produce letters, words, and sentences that can be understood by the reader. in writing, students should be able to effectively select topics, to plan, and to organize ideas. some problems may occur because both esl and efl students do not have enough vocabulary, afraid of criticism, and want to avoid emotional confusion when they encounter empty topics and papers. the teaching process of writing requires more thought and consideration than the speaking teaching process. therefore, in the english department, writing teaching is done gradually. writing skills are said to be difficult because they involve aspects such as organization, grammar, vocabulary, technical writing and punctuation, and ideas or ideas to be exposed. in class practice, students often complain that writing assignments are very difficult. so that, this study is to provide an analysis on student‟s language errors in their writing skill. brown (2007, p.105) described that the error analysis is an analysis of the language errors of a student in either a foreign language, a second language, or a language in general. thus, it can be said that the definition of language error analysis is a process of work used by teachers and researchers of the language with the steps of data collection, identification of errors contained in the data, explanation of the error, the classification of errors based on the cause, and evaluate the level of seriousness of the error. in fact, mastery of the material is the basic purpose of teaching and learning process. mastery of the material is also often used as a primary consideration to measure the success of a lecturer in teaching. based on the above mentioned background, the writer wants to do a study related to writing competence. this study aims to assess and identify students' ability in writing argumentative paragraph. in this study, the author identified the student's writing skills in making argumentative paragraph by using english. the argumentative paragraph is a paragraph which main idea is developed by exposing the opinions, reviews, subject and personal ideas of the author. the purpose of the argumentative paragraph is to convince http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 145-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and influence the reader to have an opinion similar to the author's opinion. the writer obtained this data by assigning tasks to 20 students from komunitas cerdas course to make an argumentative paragraph according to the topics of articles below: 1. education for women 2. the influence of instagram for teenagers 3. the impact of gossip account in social media in this study, the writer tried to analyze the ability of the students in using tense and word order as a form of realization of their grammatical competence. besides, in discourse competence, the authors analyzed their ability to use coherence and cohesion, as well as unity and completeness. brown (1987, p.199-200) adds that communicative competence consists of four types of competence: grammatical competence, contextual (discourse) competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence). grammatical competence is the ability at the stage of a sentence. so this is related to the ability of students to be able to make / arrange the sentences properly and correctly in accordance with the rules. then, contextual or discourse competence relates to the ability of combining some sentences into a larger form, the paragraph. this study is expected to give practical contribution to the growth of knowledge in learning and teaching of english especially writing skill. so, the teacher will know the ability of students who can be used as one of the benchmarks to provide the appropriate, effective, and efficient teaching materials, . hence, the focus of this study is to assess and identify the competence of grammar and discourse in writing argumentative paragraphs. writing skill there are four important skills in english namely listening, reading, speaking and writing. to improve our english skill, the first step we should be taken is to listen, then to read, then to speak and the last is to write. by looking the arrangement of step in learning english, it can be said that writing skill is the most difficult skill in english. it is because, the learners cannot make writing without passing listening, reading and speaking stage first. in writing a sentence or a paragraph, the learners need to pay attention on this following conditions: 1) the use of capital letter at the beginning of sentence; 2) pay attention on punctuation; 3) spelling rules; 4) abbreviations; 5) sign and symbol. in addition, in writing a paragraph or even a paper, the writer should be http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 146-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license aware of some following points: 1) plagiarism; the writer should paraphrase the sentence in order to avoid plagiarism; 2) sentence varieties; a good writing should be able to attract the reader‟s attention. therefore, the writer needs to avoid boring sentences that all seem the same. argumentative paragraph an argumentative paragraph is a paragraph, which is written in order to persuade someone to agree with your writing. in another purpose, argumentative paragraph is used when we are arguing for claim or against something. argumentative paragraph is similar with expository paragraph. an argumentative paragraph consists of following points: 1) claim, it explains what to argue about the topic; 2) evidence deals with an example to support the claim; 3) link is used to explaining the evidence grammatical and discourse competence a person, who has a language competency, is a person who has language skills. language skills are the skills of a person using adequate language seen from the language system. canales and swain (1980, p.29), propose the theory of communicative competence which minimally includes three main competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competencies. grammatical competence is the ability to use language forms (sounds, words, and sentence structure). grammatical competence is the ability at the stage of a sentence. so this is related to the ability of students to be able to make / arrange the sentences properly and correctly in accordance with the rules. refinita (2014) has done the research related to grammatical problem. she has analyzed the university students‟ grammatical problem in writing simple paragraphs. based on her result, the lack of grammatical competency and language carelessness may academically give bad effects to the quality of sentence constructions written by efl learners, particularly in indonesian context. i fully agree with the result; however we cannot focus on grammatical competence only; discourse competence also needs to be noticed. then, the role of the teachers also greatly influence student‟s development. if canales and swain divided communicative competence into three categories, celce-murcia, dornyei and thurnell (1995) formulated communicative competence as a unity of competence consisting of five aspects of competence namely discourses, linguistic, socio-cultural, and strategic. in this model, discourse competence is a core competency that connects competence to other competencies. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 147-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discourse competence is the ability to understand and create longer forms of language from sentences, such as stories, conversations, or business letters. discourse competence includes understanding how specific examples of language use are built internally. the discourse competence also includes an understanding of how the text relates to the context or situation in which they are used. method the research used qualitative descriptive approach with analytical method. creswell (1994) said that qualitative research is descriptive because researchers are interested in the process, meaning, and understanding through words or images. the data of this study was students‟ assignment papers related to writing argumentative paragraph in komunitas cerdas course. there were twenty task sheets taken from the students‟ writings. the students are asked to write a paragraph argumentation by selecting one of the topics that have been provided by the writer. it conducted to find out and measure the initial skill of writing argumentation paragraphs. in analyzing data, the writer used analysis model of miles and huberman. miles and huberman (1994) argued that the activity in qualitative data analysis is done interactively and continuously to complete, so the data is saturated. the activities in data analysis namely: data reduction, display data, and draw conclusion. the first activity, the writer summarized, chose the essentials, focused on the important things, and discarded the unnecessary data. after the data were reduced, the writer displayed them. in the form of a brief description. after obtaining the results of reduction and data display, the writer made a tentative conclusion. then did the verification so that the results of the analysis can be accountable and lastly wrote the final conclusion. results and discussion grammatical competence in this study, the writer aims to measure students' discourse competence, by analyzing the students' ability to use correct grammar. from seven students the writer found many problems in the grammar they used when creating argumentative paragraphs. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 148-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license omission the results indicated that omission was the most common types of grammatical problems made by the students. some of the omission can be categorized as “silly mistakes.”. the followings are some examples of the omission: missing article: 1. error: _lot of gossip accounts that are not clear who the owner is. revised: a lot of gossip accounts that are not clear who the owner is. 2. error: _public figure who talking about feel dislike revised: a public figure who is talking about feel dislike 3. error: instagram is known as _ most popular social media platform nowadays. revised: instagram is known as the most popular social media platform nowadays. 4. error: instagram is_ application that you can share some photos to your followers. revised: instagram is an application that you can share some photos to your followers. missing be: 1. error: public figure who talking about feel dislike revise: a public figure who is talking about feel dislike 2. error: many people still thinking that woman does not need to get a good education revise: many people are still thinking that woman does not need to get a good education omission, in the form of omitting articles and be, was also frequently made by the university students. misplacement another type of grammatical problems made by the students in their argumentative paragraphs is misplacement. it may appear also as the grammatical interference of first language of the students. these are the examples of misplacement found in students „argumentative paragraphs. 1. error: account gossip does not fully have negative impact revised: gossip account does not fully have negative impact. 2. error: on instagram, we can also find pornographic photos or videos revised: on instagram, we also can find pornographic photos or videos addition is another type of grammatical problems, which was also frequently made by the students. it seems that this type of grammatical http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 149-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license problems was influenced by their language habits in using particular words. the followings are the examples of addition made by students in their writings. 1. error: instagram has a various content revised: instagram has many contents 2. error: they could get a new friend from following people all around the world revised: they could get new friends from following people all around the world miscellaneous the last type of grammatical problems made by the students in their simple paragraphs is miscellaneous. it seems that they thought in their own l1 then wrote in english with less attention to english grammar. the followings are some examples of miscellaneous types of grammatical problems. 1. error: teenagers will suffer, depression and started changing themselves becomes insecure person. revised: teenagers will suffer, depress and change them into insecure person. 2. error: when the teenagers have addicted playing instagram they will feeling lazy to interact directly. revised: when the teenagers have addicted to play instagram, they will feel lazy to interact directly. 3. error: instagram can also causes an impact that positive or negative. 4. revised: instagram also can give positive or negative impact. based on the results above, it can be argued that the students „grammatical problems were mostly caused by lack of grammatical competence and language awareness in english. consequently, the students could not write grammatically correct sentences as required; such kinds of ungrammatical sentences may come to problems in written english. in other words, it can be reasonably stated that the students were academically lack of grammatical competency. discourse competence to measure students ' discourse competence, the writer analyzes students' ability to use coherence, cohesion, unity, and completeness within their argumentation paragraphs. an example of this error can be seen in the following example: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 150-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license error: in instagram too, you can apply filters to your photos and many other interesting feature. the above sentences are not well structured, thus making the reader confused with the intent of the sentence. it should be like this: revised: through the instagram, you can add some filters and any other interesting features in your picture. based on the sentence above, it proves the lack of ability of students in using coherence. next cases are related to cohesion, the most common problem of cohesion of students in their writing is the error in using pronouns. this can be seen in the example as below: error: those accounts have a lot of followers, but it only discusses about gossip, facts, and the latest public figure activity in indonesia. `in the sentence above, we can see that the sentence uses wrong pronoun to replace the subject "those accounts". the correct sentence should be like this: revised: those accounts have a lot of followers, but they only discuss gossip, facts, and the latest public figure activity in indonesia. the subject “those account” must be replaced with pronouns “they” because it is plural. for completeness, the students already have sufficient capability, because there is no mistake in completing the paragraph they have written. the last problem that is faced by these university students in making argumentative paragraph is unity. for ability to use unity, the error that occurs is the absence of "topic sentence" and the use of unusual words. examples of such errors can be seen in the example of the following example: error: mother is the first teacher for her children. every woman wants to be a mother. the education is important because someday she will teach her children…... the topic that is selected entitled "the important of education for women", but the sentence did not contain the topic in accordance with the title selected. this proves that there are still some students who do not know how to write good and correct paragraphs. the example can be seen as follows: error: now, a lot of gossip accounts that are not clear who the owner suck netizen attention. from that sentence, there are so many unusual words to use. other than that the sentence structure is not arranged correctly and there are many other errors. so in my opinion, the sentence should read as follows: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 151-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license revised: now, there are many unknown gossip accounts is attracting the attention of social media users. in the sentence, the students used the word “suck” to explain that the gossip accounts have big influence to social media users. the word “suck” can be replaced with the word such as “attract or arrest.”. the for the word “netizen”, we can use the word “social media users” because the word is a slang word that not all people use. conclusion in general, the students in this study already have grammatical competence and sufficient discourse competence. but there are some aspects in grammar that need to get more attention, while the discourse competence, the ability of students to arrange words into good sentence still need a lot enhancement. another problem is that the limited vocabulary makes the students confused and difficult to choose which word is appropriate to be used in the context. learning english vocabulary mastery, especially verbs, is very important for communication both oral and written. references brown, h. d. 2007. principles of language learning and teaching. englewood cliffs, n. j: prentice-hall. canale, m and swain, m (1980) theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistic, 1, 1-47. celce-murcia, m., z. dornyei, s. thrurrel. 1995. communicative competence: a pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. in issues in applied linguistics, 6(2), pp 5-35. creswell, j. w. 1994. research design: qualitative and quantitative approaches london: sage publications. hymes, d (1971) on communicative competence in pride and holmes (eds) (1972) sociolinguistics. london: penguin miles, mb. & huberman, am. (1994). qualitative data analysis (2nd edition). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. refinita,lely (2014). “students‟ grammatical problems in writing simple paragraphs: lack of grammatical competency or language carelessness?” proceedings of iselt fbs universitas negeri padang vol 2 azar, betty schramfer. 2000 . “understanding and using english grammar 3rd edition”. clrc writing center. longman. hartanti, p. 2010. “analysis of grammatical errors in writing”. wikipedia (online), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/writin g/ht m. accessed on june 14, 2019 gay, l. r. 1987. “educational research : competencies for analysis and application. (3 th ed)”. ohio : merill publishing company http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=u4lu_-wj5qec&oi=fnd&pg=pr5&sig=1dfzv8ozmyjkbruayf2jgwg3loq&dq=qualitative+data+analysis&prev=http://scholar.google.com/scholar%3fq%3dqualitative%2bdata%2banalysis%26num%3d100%26hl%3den%26lr%3d ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 152-152 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.11944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license richards, cj and renandya, wa. 2002. “methodology in language teaching”. cambridge : cambridge university. https://mrwestrup.weebly.com/argument ative-paragraph.html (access on june 14th, 2019) https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skil ls (access on june 14th, 2019). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://mrwestrup.weebly.com/argumentative-paragraph.html https://mrwestrup.weebly.com/argumentative-paragraph.html https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 46-58 the role of camp in promoting the participants’ spoken english expression jalaluddin received: 09th march 2015; revised: 17th april 2015; accepted: 30th april 2015 abstract thestudy investigated the topics of participants’ spoken expressionin an english camp and how the topics were discussed.a case study was applied as the research design. data were gained from focus-group interviews, observation, and questionnaire. the results showed that the participants talked about various topics, which could be categorized into two types i.e. guided topics and situational topics. guided topics were discussed by the participants in guided conditions. on the other hand, situational topics appeared naturally with respect to the situation. the data also indicated that the activeness and confidence of the participants to talk in english gradually increased during the english camp. the findings suggested that english campsbeheld regularly as they can boost the participants’ english speaking skill. key words: english camp; spoken english expression abstrak studi ini bertujuan untuk melihat topik-topik percakapan bahasa inggris peserta english camp dan bagaimana topik-topik tersebut didiskusikan. studi kasus diterapkan dalam penelitian ini. data dikumpulkan melalui interview, observasi, dan angket. hasil penilitian menunjukkan bahwa peserta membicarakan beragam topik selama berada di english camp. topik-topik tersebut secara garis besar dapat dikategorikan menjadi dua jenis, yaitu guided topics dan situational topics. guided topics umumnya dibicarakan oleh peserta dalam kondisi yang sudah diatur. sedangkan situational topics dibicarakan oleh peserta secara alami berdasarkan kondisi ketika mereka sedang berbicara. data juga menunjukan bahwa keaktifan dan kepercayaan diri peserta untuk berbicara dalam bahasa inggris secara perlahan-lahan meningkat selama english camp. disarankan dari hasil penelitian ini agar english camp dapat diadakan secara berkala karena terbukti dapat meningkatan kemampuan berbicara bahasa inggris peserta. kata kunci: english camp; ungkapan berbicara bahasa inggris how to cite: jalaluddin. (2015). the role of camp in promoting the participants’ spoken english expression. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 45-57. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1433 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1433 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|47-58 introduction the use of modern communicative language teaching approaches in the language classroom and the widespread use of english have increased the demand to learn good communication skills (tanveer, 2007). in indonesia, although english is learntfrom the elementary up to the high school anduniversity levels, the ability of learners to master englishspecifically in communicative skills is still dissappointing. dardjowidjojo (2000) discovered that a high school graduate in indonesia is not able to communicate in english intelligibly. in other words, formal education is still unsuccessful to facilitate the students mastering english quite satisfactorily. some authors have offered their explanations and suggestions regarding the issue. moedjito (2008) argues that this issue has brought the pedagogical implication, i.e. the revision of the process and objective of teaching english as both a second language (esl) and as a foreign language (efl). salwa (2014) suggests that teaching english as a foreign language requires serious struggle because it is not used in the daily life. some other factors such as theteachers’ low level of competency, limited resources and the low motivation of students to learn english are assumed to also contribute to such condition (samuel, 2000). from a linguistic perspective, as stated by samuel (2000), the problem of english teaching and learning in indonesia is more specifically related to lexical and grammatical issues. lexical properties encompass not only phonological and meaning but also grammatical aspects. in connection with this, the exposure to english in natural setting gives more significant effects to the acquisition of lexicon compared to the formal instruction. the language input is very needed by the learners rather than learning the grammatical aspect. in this case, the teacher should serve as a facilitator in the process whereby the input of language is being acquired. in other words,it is suggested that teachers be responsible for creating a new environment,which will facilitate learners to get access to practice the target language at maximum. according to jazadi (2008), indonesia should apply learnercentered theoryin teaching english to cope with the learners’ failure. the theory proposes that the learners should be guided to become independent learners. in this way, they can benefit their time and use their environment as effective and efficient as possible to learn english. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 48-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 for the most part, to make learning a second or foreign language successful, the target language environment should be created for the learners and the teachersare responsible for creating such a situation. ismail and tahir (2011) argue that teaching and learning process involve both indoor and outdoor activities. in addition, they consider that any activity could be useful for students especially when they positively perceive and appreciate the content. therefore, the exposure to the target language is the most important factor in determining the success of studying a new language. in other words, the more learners are exposed to the target language, the more fluent they will be. in the effort to provide large exposure of english to the students, stkip paracendekia nw sumbawa (ntb) initiated an english camp program in 2013 to facilitate learners to communicate in english in all their time. this program is supported by a regulation, which obliges students not to speak other languages. hence, the natural exposure to english environment is provided in this program. the camp activities were categorized into two types i.e. semiformal activities and free activities. semi-formal activities were instructed by the assistant of english department. meanwhile, free activities run normally in respect of the participants’ routine. later on, this program becomesan annually mandated program for the english department. according to the syllabus, the camp aims at training the students to communicate effectively, be able to cooperate among themselves, and develop leadership skills. basically, the most emphasized point is the creation of spoken english atmosphere. generally, the existence of english camp is intended to create supportive milieu for studying english. as claimed by cho (2004), english camp program is designed to increase the opportunities for students to communicate one to another in english naturally, to promote self-confidence among the students to speak english, and to prepare students to live in global community. myeong and seong (2011) claim that the intensive english camp at home guided by the english teachers can create learning as well as supporting social environment. learning context leads the students to engage with language input and output as well as to involve them in language forms and the improvement of linguistic competence. similarly, supporting social environment contributes to the students’ wide use of second language (l2) as a tool of communication. in this condition, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|49-58 learners are guided to recognize the real function of the language in social context as well as the way of authentic interaction. by combining these two kinds of context, the learners are expected to have skillful competence in english. ellis (1986) stated that many evidences show the input of l2 can only happen as the learners have access to the l2. the form of input can be the learners’ exposure in a given setting or natural setting. in learning l2 in natural setting, the learners will use the language freely and spontaneously. this situation can make the learners’ enthusiasm increase in communication. as reported by wighting, nisbet, and tindall (2006) in their findings on investigating an english camp in china, the major advantage of english camp is that students show high motivation to speak english. by the same token, halvorsen (2005) considers that there are three main reasons why english camp is positively influential for the english learners. firstly, it is enjoyable for both the participants and organizers. the enjoyable condition is the main element to increase motivation and continue english study. in the second place, the organizers can focus on one aspect of language learning such as pronunciation, writing, or they can accommodate all four skill areas into one activity. thirdly, the informal camp atmosphere helps students relax. as they focus on communication, they are greatly encouraged to use english. wighting et al. (2006) claim that students in english camp have a large opportunity to practice english conversation one to others within various meaningful contexts, such as: 1. interaction in various setting (educational and social); 2. cooperative work with others (face-to-face, dyads, small or large groups); 3. enjoyable activities to do interaction (singing, sport, drama, games, and formal and informal conversation); 4. the process of english acquisition through direct teaching; and 5. establishing relationship via social interaction. the students’ interaction within the camp is divided into two types namely educational and social interaction. educational interaction is practiced under the process of classroom activities. the materials that students receive from their classrooms are implemented in their social interaction. hence, the students can internalize more deeply english spoken expression. the students are also ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 50-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 guided to be able to establish strong cooperation through group activities. as additional activities, the instructors commonly do singing, dancing, game, drama and so forth which are very enjoyable for the students. such conditions will lead the students to be motivated. during english camp, the students potentially show their improvement on their english acquisition. similarly, ismail and tahir (2011) emphasize that english camp focus on enhancing the participants’ essential english skills such as communicating effectively, cooperating among themselves and developing leadership ability, cultivating a sense of responsibilities, developing a sense of belongings, and promoting creativity and critical thinking. for the most part, english camp program is aligned with the concept of language immersion. a developmental report (pacific policy research center, 2010) states that language immersion is a concept of teaching language, usually a second language (l2), in which the target language is used as both curriculum content and media of instruction. the method in language immersion focuses on using the target language as a teaching tool, involving or "immersing" students in the l2 environment. in other words, the learners are involved in the situation where they feel that they can meet the target language around them. furthermore, rugasken and harris (2005) in their study claim that when talking about language immersion, the main concern is how to teach a second or foreign language to students by immersing them in the target language. they are positioned in contextual learning as they have experienced when acquiring their first language (l1). by applying the concept of language immersion, in-class activities in different subjects such as math, science, social studies, history, and those outside of the class such as meals or everyday tasks, are conducted in the target language. immersion programs can be grouped based on age and extent of immersion (mangubhai, 2005). in terms of age, learners are divided into three types. the first is early immersion, where the learners start learning the second language from age 5 or 6. the second is middle immersion, where learners start learning the second language from age 9 or 10. the last one is late immersion, where learners start learning the second language between ages 11 and 14. concerning extent, there are various types as described in the following. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|51-58 total immersion: 90 % of class time is used in the foreign language. subject materials are taught in foreign or target language. partial immersion: 50-75% of the class time is spent on learning subject matter in the foreign language. two-way immersion (dualor bilingual immersion): the population of learners encompasses speakers of two languages. another term for this kind of immersion program is called bilingual education. bilingual education can be categorized as the model of education involving two languages as media of instruction (christian & genesee, 2001). content-based foreign languages in elementary schools: approximately 15– 50% of class activities is spent in the foreign language and time is spent on learning language as well as learning subject matter in the foreign language. foreign languages in elementary schools (fles) programs: 5–15% of class activities is spent in the foreign language and time is spent learning it as well as learning subject matter in the foreign language. in foreign language experience (flex) programs, frequent and regular sessions over a short period or short and/or infrequent sessions over an extended period are provided in the second language. furthermore, supporting the idea of immersion, mangubhai (2005) also states that immersion is one of the most effective ways of learning a second language. marian, shook, and schroeder (2013) reported a comprehensive study on the effectiveness of two-way immersion programs on the elementary school students’ academic achievement. the result showed that two-way immersion programs benefit academic achievement in both minorityand majority-language students. similarly, according to dulay, burt & krashen (1982), the learning process of l2 is more effective in the natural situation than that in the formal setting. this claim is also supported by the behaviorist learning theory suggested by ellis (1986). in this theory, the environment has the most significant role in determining the success of the l2 learners. in the context of stkip paracendikia, this program is quite new. so far there has not yet any research that attempts to study this program. therefore this paper is intented to understand what really happens in the camp. to be more specific, the objectives of this paper are: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 52-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 1. to identify the topics of spoken expressionof participants; 2. to explore the conditions when participants express or present specific topics; 3. to investigate the process when participants practice english in the english camp. method the design of this research was a case study. singh (2006) contends that a case study is employed only for a specific case. it needs a deep personal observation and intensive study of a phenomenon. therefore, the field of research is commonly limited but contains deep investigation. in this research, the phenomenon of language immersion in an english camp was mainly explored. participants the participants in this research were 22 fourth-semester students of english department. they actively joined a three-day english camp in stkip paracendekia nw sumbawa. data collection the data were obtained through three methods. the first was questionnaire. faisal (1982) claims that questionnaire can be categorized into two types, close questionnaire and open questionnaire. close questionnaire is a list of questions that requires short answers from the respondents. on the other hand, open questionnaire requires unlimited answers from the respondents. open questionnaire was used in this study. the questionnaire consisted of 10 questions that focused on the learners’ experience regarding theirspoken topics during the english camp. all the questions required the participants’ explanations regarding the focus of the study. the language used in the questionnaire was settled simpler and shorter. it was because of the assumption that most of the participants of the camp were still lack of experience in facing such questionnaire. the questionnaire was given to all participants at the end of the camp. they were instructed not to put their name to guarantee the anonymity. the second was semi-structured interview. interview is a conversation between two or more people with a certain purpose (moleong, 2009). according to anderson(1998), interview can be used in all sides of the human beings’ life of very wide range of intention that requires deep care and skill from the researcher in using it. semi-structured interview refers to any interview that runs in semi formal situation that can be organized either at ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|53-58 the participants’ home, college, or anywhere relying on their preferences. in this study, the interview wasconductedseveral times until the data was considered enough.the interview consisted of 15 core questions that focused on unearthing the students’ experiences regarding their spoken topics in english camp. taking into account the limitation of the time, only 10 participants were selected as the interviewees. the interview was audio-recorded and noted, while the result of audio-recording was transcribed.the last method was observation. observation is an activity to look at the object of research directly (riduwan, 2007).in this study, the focus of the observation was the topic and the process of the discussion during the english camp. findings and discussion during observation, the participants’ primary topics of speaking were noted. the particular conditions in which each topic was spoken were also observed and noted. to increase the reliability of the data, similar concern was raised in the interview and questionnaire. the result is shown in table 1. table 1. topics of spoken expression no topics of spoken expression condition/activities 1 family free time 2 relationship free time 3 cloth free time 4 body and health free time 5 occupation free time 6 experience free time 7 feelings in semi-formal activity and free time 8 movie (entertainment) watching movie and free time 9 favorite things jogging, sport and in free time 10 game playing game 11 making plan semi-formal activity 12 food cooking and having meal 13 daily activities conversation in semi-formal activity and free time 14 expressing like and dislike cooking, having meal, and free time 15 transportation tools getting ready to go home 16 academic materials semi-formal activity and free time 17 sport when playing 18 joking mutual work, sport, and free time 19 environment free time the data shows that family related issues was commonly discussed by participants in the camp when they were in their free time. other topics ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 54-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 discussed very often by the participants in their free time were relationship, clothes, body and health, occupation, experience, environment, and feeling. in principle, the participants discussed the topics in accordance to the situation they were facing. for instance, the participants were talking about movie as they were watching or after they watched cinema. the data also indicated that they turned their topic to game when they were involved in game. when asked about food, the participants responded that they talked that topic while cooking and having meal. furthermore, it was found that the participants were talking about favorite things when they did jogging in the morning and also in their free time when they did not perform any particular activity. in semi-formal activities, the data showed that the participants talked about their daily life and their feeling, discussed learning materials and develop future plan. meanwhile, issues related to transportation tool appeared when the participants got ready to go home from the camp. the last topic was sport, which was commonly talked when the participants did some sportsin the camp. sometimes one topic was talked in more than one condition. as can be seen in the table 2, some topics appeared to be talked in more than one situations. those topics were feeling, movie, favorite things, food, daily activities, like and dislike, academic materials, and joking. to summarize, all topics appeared in the english camp can be categorized as guided topics and situational topics. guided topics in the english camp refer to the topics of spoken expression produced by participants under the guidance of an instructor. such topics have been predetermined in particular setting. situational topics refer to the topics that appear in reference to the situation or condition during the discussion. in the english camp, these kinds of topics were talked in particular conditions or situations. as shown in table 1, the participants talked about food very often when they were cooking and having meal. similarly, they talked about game as they were involved in game, about sport when they were having sport, about things related to movies when they were watching movies, and so forth. furthermore, as previously mentioned, the topics discussed in both guided and situational conditions are described in the following table 2. the table informs us that there were more topics discussed in situational condition than in guided context. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|55-58 table 2. topics of spoken expression according to the type of condition no topics type guided situational 1 family √ 2 relationship √ 3 cloth √ 4 body and health √ 5 occupation √ 6 experience √ 7 feelings √ √ 8 movie (entertainment) √ 9 favorite things √ 10 game √ 11 planning √ 12 food √ 13 daily activities √ 14 expressing like and dislike √ 15 transportation tools √ 16 academic materials √ 17 sport √ 18 joking √ 19 environment √ concerning the usefullness of the camp, the data gathered from questionnaire and interview revealed that participants responded positively the existance of the english camp. they considered that the english camp was helpful to improve their speaking skill. at first, they contended that english camp program was quite challenging and made them socked to start to communicate or express their daily routine in english.additionally, from the observation, it was found out that the participants were quite nervous to communicate in the beginning of the camp. they also found it difficult toproduce word by word even they claimed the words were in their mind. they confirmed that the main cause of such difficulty was so far because they merely used english in classroom activities and not in their daily activities. since the other languages besides english were not allowed to use during the english camp, the participants were forced to use english all the time. gradually, they began to enjoy the situation as they felt more fluent to speak. the enjoyment was resulted from their feeling of satisfaction as they could practice english in real communication. compared with the activities outside the camp, all participants ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 56-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 agreed that english camp could provide the milieu that enabled them to become active to speak more than in the other sites. moreover, it was difficult for the participants to find the other locations that could make them active to use english beside in english camp. examining the result of the study, three main points are worth mentioning here. first, all topics that generally found in the english camp were basically almost the same as those in natural setting. second, some typical topics appeared to be discussed by the participants. all in all, few topics were talked in guided condition and the rest appeared in situational context. the third point is regarding the participants’ treatment toward their speaking activity during the english camp. in the end of the camp, as shown in table 2, the findings inform us that there were more topics discussed in situational context than in guided one. this fact shows the students’ eagerness to practice their english in real context was more than that in set up atmosphere. it is also interesting to highlight from the findings of the study that the participants’ enthusiasm to speak english increased during the english camp. wighting et al. (2006) stated that students are highly motivated to speak english in the camp. firstly, the participants felt quite shock to start conversation in english with their friends. after some time, they were gradually able to talk freely in any condition with free and flowing topics. conclusion and suggestion as stated in the first chapter, the objectives of this study were to identify the participants’ topics of speaking, to explore the situation where the topics appeared and how the participants practiced their speaking skill during the english camp. based on the findings of the study, there are three conclusions that can be obtained. first, the topics of spoken expression generally found in english camp were various and basically similar to the issues discussed in the natural setting. second, all topics could be categorized as guided and situational topics. guided topics were talked within a guided condition, while situational topics were uttered naturally in the alignment with the situation. last, in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|57-58 terms of the process of conversational activities, the participants found it quite challenging and got shock to start communicating in english in the beginning of the camp. yet, the desire to apply their previous knowledge and skill they got in their regular class into real context resulted in their gradual increase of enthusiasm to communicate in english throughout the camp period. references anderson, g. (1998). fundamental of education research. london, uk: the falmer press. cho, m. (2004). a study on the immersion program through english camp in korea. kyungpook national university. retrieved april 27, 2012 from http://www.mendeley.com/rese arch/study-immersion-programthrough-english-camp-korea/. christian, d., & genesee, f. (2001). bilingual education: contexts and programs. in d. christian & f. genesee (eds), bilingual education (1-10). south washington: teachers of english to speakers of other languages, inc. dardjowidjojo, s. (2000). english teaching in indonesia. english australia journal winter,18(1), 2230. dulay, h., burt, m.,& krashen, s. (1982). language two. new york: oxford university press. ellis, r. (1986). understanding second language acquisation. new york: oxford university press. ismail, n. s., & tahir. i. m. (2011). english camp activities: a strategy to enhance students’ english proficiency. studies in literature and language 2(3). 61-72. jazadi, i. (2008). the politics of curriculum: an interpretive study of english language teaching and learning at high schools in indonesia. sumbawa, ntb: paracendekia nw press. mangubhai, f. (2005). what can efl teachers learn from immersion language teaching?. asian efl journal, 7(12), retrieved march 5, 2012 from http://www.asian-efljournal.com/december_05_fm.ph p. marian, v., shook, a., & schroeder, s. r. (2013).bilingual two-way immersion programs benefit academic achievement. bilingual http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/december_05_fm.php http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/december_05_fm.php http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/december_05_fm.php ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 58-58|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 research journal, 36, 167-186.doi: 10.1080/15235882.2013.818075. moedjito. (2009). a study on factors determining global intelligibility of efl learners’ speech. unpublished doctoral dessertation.hyogo university of teacher education, japan. moleong, l. j. (2009). metodologi penelitian kualitatif. bandung, indonesia. pt. remaja rosdakary. myeong, m., & seong, h. (2011). suggestions for the college intensive english camp program. paper presented at the 16th conference of pan-pacific association of applied linguistics conference program, the chinese university of hong kong, in 8th – 10th august. retrieved march 31, 2012 from http://www.paaljapan.org/confe rence2011/procnewest2011/pdf/ poster/ q-10.pdf. pacific policy research center. 2010. successful bilingual and immersion education models/programs. honolulu: kamehameha schools, research & evaluation division. riduwan. (2007). skala pengukuran variabel-variabel penelitian. bandung, indonesia: alfabeta. rugasken, k., & harris, j. (2005). english camp: a language immersion program in thailand. trar, 14(2), 43-51. salwa (2014). considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes: a narrative study of what efl teachers should do. indonesian journal of english education, 1(1), 95-105. samuel, m. (2000). problematizing globalization: implications for teaching global english. in h. w. kam & c. ward (eds). language in global context: implication for the language classroom (1-13). singapore: seameo regional language centre. sanafiah faisal. (1982). metodologi penelitian pendidikan.surabaya, indonesia: usaha nasional. singh, y. k. (2006). fundamental of research methodology and statistics. new delhi, india: new age international (p) limited, publishers. tanveer, m. (2007). investigation of the factors that cause language anxiety for efl/esl learners in learning speaking skills and influence it cost on communication in the target language. university of glassgow. retrieved july 17, 2011 from http://www.edb.utexas.edu/cscl student/dhsiao/theories. wighting, m. j., nisbet. d. l., & tindall, e. r. (2006). exploring a summer english language camp experience in china: a descriptive case study. asian efl journal, 9(1), 1-26. http://www.edb.utexas.edu/csclstudent/dhsiao/theories http://www.edb.utexas.edu/csclstudent/dhsiao/theories exlamations! : their socio-pragmatic use in australian english and bahsa indonesia the expressions of exclamation: a crosscultural analysis in australian english and bahasa indonesia adrefiza (adref64@yahoo.co.id) jambi university abstract this study investigated and compared exclamatory expressions performed by native speakers of australian english and bahasa indonesia. three different contexts and situations were selected as the prompts for the respondents to express their exclamations: (a) surprise; (b) enthusiasm; and (c) annoyance. based on data from 36 respondents of both languages, the findings revealed that both australian english and bahasa indonesia were likely to utilize different types of exclamatory words, phrases or expressions of surprise, enthusiastic and annoyance. te expressions seemed to be systematic in their constructions and the selection of words or phrases remained personal and indicated the speakers‟ feeling, attitude, and emotion. in expressing surprise and enthusiasm, in particular, the selection of words or phrases by both language communities tended to use positive and socially acceptable exclamatory expressions. however, when they turned to express annoyance, most of the words, phrases, or expressions used were often taboo and socially unacceptable. key words: exclamation, australian english, bahasa indonesia, cultural analysis introduction exclamation is inevitably frequent in our society. it is an evidence of a reflection of the speaker‟s emotion and feeling. its use and realization may differ considerably from language to language and from culture to culture, whether pragmatically or sociolinguistically. when there are differences and similarities across cultures in its use, they are often adrefiza 2| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 peculiar and unpredictable. it is, therefore, obvious when many pragmatic scholars claim that exclamation is a unique characteristic of a particular culture (see wierzbicka, 1991). a universal view, however, is that the consciousness of the use of exclamation is very much associated with personal character of the exclaimer as well as the context and situation in which it occurs. basically, in order for an exclamation to occur, the exclaimer must have something to feel or to want or at least something to share with the hearers. although there is likely no exact evidence to predict what one really feels through exclamation, psychological and pragmatic analysis may be helpful to do so. this research project paper, consequently, was trying to investigate the realization of exclamation in australian english and bahasa indonesia and see if there was any cultural relevance between them. the analysis focused on the use of exclamation or interjection in expressing surprise, enthusiasm, and annoyance. age and gender of the exclaimers were included to see if there were any differences in its use according to these aspects. theoretical framework concept of exclamation/interjec tion drazdauskiene (1981, p.56) points out, “stereotypically, exclamations express enthusiastic appreciation for something which the speaker presumed to be shared by the addressee. they often sound exaggerated and insincere, and they certainly don‟t sound dogmatic”. from drazdauskiene‟s point of view, it is apparent that exclamation occurs as a reflection of what one feels very enthusiastically and exaggeratedly. it does not express the speaker‟s belief or opinion. at the same time, the speaker attempts to share what s/he feels with the hearer. the terms exclamation and interjection have frequently been defined interchangeably. both refer the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |3 to linguistic signs which express a specifiable meaning. they both indicate and express a strong feeling or emotion of the speaker. wierzbicka (1991) distinguishes them in terms of complexity and felicity condition of the expressions. she views that exclamation is somewhat more felicitous and involves more complex expression, while interjection tend to be simpler. to make the distinction clear, she provides a few examples such as; oops!, ouch!, wow! (interjections) and how nice!, what a woman! (exclamations). it seems that from these examples, exclamation is more global and elaborate than interjection. it contains a longer construction involving more words or phrases. in more details, wierzbicka (1991, p.290) defines the concept of interjection as “a linguistic sign (1) which can be used as its own, (2) which expresses a specifiable meaning, (3) which does not include other signs (with a specifiable meaning), (4) which is not homophonous with another lexical item that would be perceived as semantically related to it, and (5) which refers to the speaker’s current mental state or mental act”. based on these characteristics, wierzbicka, then, suggests that exclamations such as good lord!, good heavens!, christ!, or hell! are not interjections, whereas those like gee, wow, oops, or ha are apart from above distinction. the present study, however, uses both combinations to mean the expressions of exclamation. the use of interjection/exclamation wierzbicka (1991) claims that interjections, in fact, require the combinations of culture-specific conventions and universal „laws of nature‟. generally speaking, acco rding to wierzbicka, interjections often show outstanding similarities across language and culture limits, but these similarities are often unpredictable and have to be learnt just as much as the differences. it may also be evident that there are adrefiza 4| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 no similarities across language and culture at all. the use of interjections is, in fact, unique. as suggested by wierzbicka (1991), it is hard to guess what they mean and how they are to be used. although dictionaries usually give information of the unpredictability and conventional characters of interjections, they could hardly clarify how to attach and use them in a normal life situation. ldotel (as cited in wierzbicka, 1991) provides the use of several interjections in english. according to ldotel, wow is used to express strong feeling such as pleasure and surprise, gee is used to express surprise or enthusiasm, ah is used to express delight, relief, regret, or contempt, and phew is used to express relief, amazement or exhaustion. however, in everyday life, it is obvious that such expressions are frequently used interchangeably and they often reveal no difference in their use at all. thus, as wierzbicka (1991) suggests, in order to have a better understanding of the use of interjections one should have prolonged immersion in the environment in which the language is spoken. lingustic forms of exclamations drazdauskiene (1981) asserts that exclamations can take a number of forms such as: affirmative, interrogative, negative, and negative-interrogative. in english, he claims, exclamations can take not only an affirmative and positive form, as in how nice!, but also an interrogative-negative one, as the utterance: isn’t it marvelous! or in the form of tag questions such as, terrible place, isn’t it? it is obvious that the tag question forms do not use interjection mark but question mark instead. this may be used simply to express the speaker‟s feeling and often to seek agreement or confirmation from the hearer or addressee about what is being exclaimed and shared by the exclaimer. to some extent, it can also be used as a strategy to open a the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |5 conversation as the expression requires the hearer to respond to it. when tag question forms are used, the speaker is, in fact, trying to be indirect in his/her remarks without reducing the importance of the meaning of the expressions. such expressions are frequently regarded as the language of feminism as they are commonly used by females in their conversations (see wardhaugh & drazdauskiene in wierzbicka, 1991). in terms of meanings conveyed by interjections, wierzbicka (1991) classifies interjections into three types. the classification is associated with the exact nature of the speaker‟s mental states when performing them. they are: (1) emotive (those which have in their meaning the component “i feel something “); (2) volitive (those which have in their meaning the component “i want something”); (3) cognitive (those which have in their meaning the component “i think something” or “i know something”) (see wierzbicka, 1991: 291). from this classification, however, such distinct meanings may be frequently interpreted interchangeably in their real use. here, context and situation as well as the topic of exclamation play an important role in interpreting what an interjection actually means. in addition, the intonation markers may frequently remain influential as well. expressions like “wow!” or “aha!”, for example, may represent emotive or volitive and cognitive depending on in which context or situation they are performed. pragmatically, they may mean many things but semantically, they may not mean anything. the choice of words in exclamations, to some extent, may indicate the speaker‟s attitude. some exclamatory words or expressions can have a strong connotation and a very sensitive meaning. these expressions occurs usually when the speaker is out of control or in a bad mode, such as in feeling annoyance, disgusted, stress, or a great anger. according to anderson & trudgill (1990), adrefiza 6| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 people swear (using bad or taboo expressions) when they are shocked or appalled. montagu (1967) claims that swearing words are frequently related to sensitive, excrement, or blasphemous notion like: damn!, christ!, bloody (hell)!, bugger!, shit!, damn it!, etc. in more details, he classifies the words and phrases used in expressing annoyance (swearing) as words which refer to: (a) names of supernatural or infernal power, of gods, angels, and devils (crist!, jesus! etc); (b) names connected to sacred matters of religion (god‟s blood!); and future life (heavens!, hell!, damn!,). methods sample the study was conducted in canberra involving 36 native speakers of australian english and bahasa indonesia. they were selected accidentally on the basis of mutual convenience between the researcher and the participants. the number of the sample and the way how they were selected accidentally rather than randomly, is merely subject to the limitation of the study such as the time constraints and the scope of the study. this follows yuan (2001), who claims that the selection of the participants should be based on researcher‟s personal judgment (judgment sampling method). this is supposed to maximize the validity of the study (johnson, cited in yuan 2001). this procedure has also been applied by milroy (cited in yuan, 2006). the following table summarizes the distribution of the sample. table 1 sample distribution age australians indonesians total male female male female < 25 3 3 3 3 12 26 35 3 3 3 3 12 > 36 3 3 3 3 12 total 9 9 9 9 36 data collection there has been a number of data collection techniques used in pragmatics studies. some of them, according to gollato (2003), include: naturally occurring the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |7 conversation recordings; discourse completion tasks (dcts); completion questionnair es; taped-role plays; field observations; and recall protocols. houck and gass (1996) assert that it is not yet precisely known to what extent differences in data collection methods account for differences in results. therefore, prior studies have attempted to employ variety of techniques in investigating a particular speech act (kohler 2008; tran 2008). it appears that each technique has its own strengths and drawbacks. thus, its selection should match the study types and aims. the present study employed a dcts in collecting data. for australians, questionnaire was written in english and for indonesians it was written in bahasa indonesia. ideally, the data collected should be natural by means of which the exclamations occur in natural situations spoken rather than written in questionnaire. however, again, based on the study limitation, such data was not feasible. dcts have been frequently used as an alternative technique in pragmatics studies. as suggested by wouk (2006), the majority of crosscultural pragmatic data have been based on a dct. she defines dct as a form of questionnaire in which situations are described and respondents are asked what they would say in those situations. tran (2008, p.2) remarks, “in a dct, a number of situations are described in writing with spaces for research participants to fill in what they would say in such situations”. although dcts have been criticized in terms of their authenticity due to their failure to represent natural speech data, they have long been employed successfully by many prominent socio-pragmatic scholars, including blum-kulka and olshtain (1989) in their ccsarp project. another significant advantage is simply concerned with the relatively high degree of control that the researchers can establish over a few selected social variables such age, adrefiza 8| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 gender, situation, role relationships, and power status of the interactants (tran, 2008; golato, 2003) and thus the study can easily be further replicated. the content of the questionnaire was divided into three sections: (a) expressing surprise, (b) expressing enthusiasm, and (c) expressing annoyance. each section consisted of 6 completion questions through which the speaker expressed the exclamations or interjections. the division of the sections (a), (b), and (c), and also the identified situations, were merely based on common social events in which the exclamations or interjections normally occur. age and gender of the participants were included in the questionnaire. data analysis all exclamatory expressions of surprise, enthusiasm, and annoyance were noted down, grouped, calculated, and analyzed according to gender and the age of the speakers. age variable was divided into three categories: (a) below 25, (b) 26 35, and (c) above 36. gender variable was included in the age category division thus, each category a, b, and c had both male and female divisions. this division was intended to see if there was any difference of the expressions or exclamatory words or phrases used according the above categories. basically, the study analyzed three main aspects; (1) exclamatory words/phrases/expressions; (2) le xical constructions (forms) of the expressions; and (3) pragmatic meaning of the expressions. findings and discussion it appeared that both australians and indonesians had different sets of exclamatory words/phrases/expressions. they occurred unpredictably but seemed to be systematic in their forms or constructions. both languages had several common exclamatory words most of them were not phonologically and semantically similar. however, there were a few exclamatory words which the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |9 appeared in both languages. these words were such as: “ah!”, “hei!”, “ha?”, “eh!”, and “hi!”. these words occurred mostly in expressing surprise, especially when someone met a friend whom she/he has never met for a long time. in expressing surprise, the words or phrases “great!” or “this is (just) great!”, “wow!”, “well done!”, appeared very frequently in australian english (15 times). in addition, “congratulations!”, “incre dible (unbelievable)!”, “marvellou s!”, and “fantastic!”, were also frequent. in general, there were no noticeable differences in the word selections according to gender of the speakers. however, phrases like: “well done!” and “fantastic!” seemed to be used more frequently by females. in addition, there were a few phrases which only occurred in females‟ expressions. such expressions were as: “gee!”, “what up dude!”, “oh my god!”, “yeaww!”, and “good heavens!”. the occurrence of these expressions seemed to be unpredictable. in other words, there were no reasons which accounted for their occurrence in females‟ expressions. quite often, in real situation, there were no indications of whether they were preferable to males or females only. in bahasa indonesia, on the other hand, the words or phrases “aduh!” or “duh!” or “waduh”, “masa (iya)?”, “hebat!”, and “luar biasa!” were very common in expressing surprise. most of the expressions were used by both males and females. “masa (iya)?” (really?) tended to appear more in males‟ expressions. furthermore, phrases like: “amboi!” (wow!) and “bukan main!” (incredible!”) did not occur in females‟ expressions. table 2 below provides information about the exclamatory words or phrases used in expressing surprise in both languages. adrefiza 10| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 table 2 exclamatory words or phrases used in expressing surprise it was also evident in the table above that there were expressions, either in australian english or in bahasa indonesia, which consisted of more than one exclamatory word. expressions such as “wow, incredible!” or “wow, well done!”, for example, occurred sometimes in australian english. while “waduh, hebat ya?” and “hebat, selamat ya?” occurred frequently in bahasa indonesia. these expressions were, basically, used when the speaker felt surprise to somebody who has done something good or something different from what s/he has usually done/had before. such expressions might also indicate the strong feeling of the speaker. they might also be used to strengthen the speaker‟s feeling or emotion. many of the above exclamatory words/phrases/expressions also occurred in expressing enthusiasm. as can be seen in table 3 below, words such as; “great!”, australian english freq.___ f: m : tot. bahasa indonesia ____freq.____ f : m : tot (this is) (just) great! wow! well done! congratulations! incredible! (unbelievable!) marvellous! fantastic! gee! wonderful! awesome! what up dude! oh my god! hi! (hey!) yeaww! good heavens! combination: wow! well done! wow, incredible! 8 6 6 4 3 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 6 2 3 3 3 1 1 1 2 2 1 15 8 7 6 5 4 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 3 2 aduh! (duh!) (waduh!) gila! masa (iya)! buset! ya ampun! amboi! hei! hebat (ya)! selamat (ya)! luar biasa! asyik! bukan main! ah (wah) (eh), tumben! combination: waduh, hebat ya? hebat, selamat ya? 6 5 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 3 2 7 3 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 3 1 2 2 2 3 13 3 6 3 2 1 3 5 4 4 2 2 5 3 5 note: freq: frequency; f: female; m: male; t: total the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |11 “incredible!”, “fantastic!”, and “marvellous!” were also used in expressing enthusiasm by australians. again, in general, there seemed to be no noticeable association in the word or phrase selections according to gender of the exclaimers, although “great! (i can’t wait) appeared more frequently in females‟ expressions. expressions like: “i’m really thrilled” and “well, what exciting things” only occurred in females‟ expressions. again, it was likely that, the occurrence of such expressions were unpredictable. it was also apparent that the word “thanks” occurred as exclamatory expressions of enthusiasm in australian english. this word occurred, basically, when the speaker received a good news and it made him/her very enthusiastic. thus, the word “thanks” was used to indicate the speaker‟s happiness and thankfulness. in bahasa indonesia, “nah!” or “nah (ini) gitu dong!”, “alhamdulillah”, “masa (iya)?” were often used in expressing enthusiasm. in general, there were no association in their use according to gender and the age of the speakers. however, phrases like: “betul juga perasaan saya” (that‟s what i thought), “asyik!” (no exact synonym in english) and “bukan main!” (incredible) occurred only in males‟ expressions. like “thanks” in australian english, the word “alhamdulillah” (religious words, means “prays to god” or “thanks godness”) was also used in bahasa indonesia. it was as an evidence of the speakers‟ thankfulness to the god or as a reflection of their happiness, especially when receiving good news. it appeared that, such a word was frequently used by the older exclaimers (mostly by the speakers of above 36 years old). the use of “alhamdulillah” could be seen as an evidence of the religious awareness of the indonesian society. table 3 below provides information about types and frequency of the exclamatory words/phrases /expr essions of enthusiasm in both languages. adrefiza 12| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 table 3 exclamatory words or phrases used in expressing enthusiasm as can be seen in table 3, there were a few phrases which occurred only in expressing enthusiasm but not in expressing surprise. in australian english, these phrases were such as: “(wow!) good news!”, “well, what exciting things”, “(great!), i can’t wait (to go). in bahasa indonesia, these were: “nah ini!” or “nah gitu dong!”, “wah dari dulu dong!”, and “duh! ini dia yang ditunggu-tunggu”. all these expressions shared one pragmatic meaning, that was to indicate one‟s enthusiastic feeling towards something she/he has been looking forwards to seeing/having/hear ing. exclamatory expressions of annoyance were interesting to analyze. again, both languages had different set of words or phrases in expressing this. it appeared that bahasa indonesia had more exclamatory words of annoyance than that of australian english. it can be seen in table 4 that phrases such as: “shit!” or “bulshit!” appeared most frequently in australian english most of them australian english __freq.__ f : m :tot bahasa indonesia ___freq.___ f : m : tot great! (i can‟t wait to go) incredible! (unbelievable!) i can‟ believe this! marvellous! fantastic! gee! thanks wonderful! (wow!) good news! (goodness) what a surprise! i‟m really thrilled! well, what exciting things. 5 3 2 2 3 3 2 1 1 1 2 3 3 2 2 1 2 1 3 2 8 6 4 4 4 5 3 4 3 1 2 nah (ini) (gitu dong)! wah, dari dulu dong! masa (iya)! duh! ini yang ditunggutunggu! ya ampun! hebat dong saya! ah, yang benar aja? betul juga perasaan saya! nggak disangka nih! alhamdulillah! kapan beritanya? asyik! bukan main! wah, tumben! 3 1 2 2 1 1 1 3 3 1 2 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 6 3 4 3 2 2 1 1 4 5 2 2 2 3 note: freq: frequency; f: female; m: male; t: total the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |13 appeared in males‟ expressions. “damn!” or “damn this (it)!” or “damnation!”, “hell!” or “bloody hell!”, “fuck!” or “fuck out!” were also frequent. there was a tendency for males to use words or phrases which were more sensitive in their meaning and use in society. these expressions were such as: “shit!” or “bulshit” and “fuck!” or “fuck out!”. such expressions appeared more frequently in the expressions of males of below 25 age category. the following table shows a detailed description of these words or phrases. table 4 in bahasa indonesia, “sial!” or “sialan” were most frequent in expressing annoyance (both males and females). the meaning of these words might be parallel to “damn” or “damnation”. it appeared that words or phrases which refer to the name of animals exclamatory words or phrases used in expressing annoyance australian english ___freq.___ f : m : tot bahasa indonesia ____freq.___ f : m : tot shit! or bulshit! damn (it) (this)!or damnation! hell! or bloody hell! fuck! or fuck out! christ! jesus! oh god! ghost! combination (hell & damna oh bugger! 5 7 4 3 2 1 1 3 11 3 4 6 2 2 2 1 2 16 10 8 6 5 4 3 2 5 sial(an)! brengsek! dasar! keparat! babi (ngepet)! anjing! kapok (aku)! huh! bangsat! kurang ajar! (wah) celaka (tiga belas)! ya allah! kacau nih! monyet! setan! pantek! penipu! sinting! 6 4 4 1 2 1 2 2 3 1 1 1 1 5 3 2 5 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 11 7 6 6 2 2 3 2 2 4 2 4 2 1 3 1 2 1 note: freq: frequency; f: female; m: male; t: total adrefiza 14| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 and which remain sensitive in their use and meaning, like “anjing!” (dog), “monyet!” (monkey), “bangsat!” (scoundrel) and “babi (ngepet)!” (pig), only appeared in males‟ expressions. at the same time, the word “keparat!” (swearing word which is identical with “shit”) which was socially insulting and offensive in their use, occurred more frequently in males‟ expressions than in females‟. there were also words or phrases which referred to the name of god found in the expressions of annoyance in both languages. obviously, they were not insulting and offensive at all in their use and meaning. they were probably used to release the speaker‟s stress by referring or saying the name of god. such expressions were as: “oh god!” and “ya allah!” (bahasa indonesia). another sensitive word which only occurred once in the data is “pantek”. in fact, this word is well known as a very taboo word in minang society only (people of west sumatera). however, the use of this word might have spread to other societies in indonesia. “pantek” is a word which refers to female genitalia and remains very sensitive, offensive and insulting, especially in minang society. conclusion the findings revealed that both australian english and bahasa indonesia had different types of exclamatory words, phrases in expressing surprise, enthusiastic and annoyance. they occurred unpredictably but seemed to be systematic in their constructions. the selection of words or phrases in exclamation remained personal and indicated the speakers‟ feeling, attitude and emotion. in expressing surprise and enthusiasm, in particular, the selection of words or phrases remained positive and socially acceptable in their use. however, in expressing annoyance, most of the words, phrases or expressions used were taboo and socially unacceptable. they have a relatively strong negative connotation and sensitive meaning. it appeared that the younger the the expressions of exclamation… ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |15 speakers, the more sensitive the words or phrases selected in expressing annoyance. referencess anderson, l. and p. trudgill. 1990. bad language. basil blackwell ltd., cambridge. blum kulka, s. et all. 1989. cross-cultural pragmatics. ablex, norwood new york. blum kulka, s. & e. olshtain. 1984. requests and apologies; a cross cultural study of speech act realization pattern (ccsarp). journal of applied linguistics, 5 (3): 196 – 212. drazdauskiene, m. 1981. “on stereotypes in conversation”. in conversational routine: explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech. coulmas (ed.). mouton, the hague. (p.55 68). golato, a. 2003. studying compliment responses: a comparison of dcts and recordings of naturally occurring talk. applied linguistics, 24 (1): 90-121. kohler, michael. 2008. refusals in english and greek: theoretical aspects and empirical study. zfal. vol 48 (pp. 75-104). ldotel. 1984. longman dictionary of the english language. (heather gay, brian o‟kill, katherine seed, janet whitcut, eds). longman, london. milroy, james and milroy, lesley. 1990. language in society: sociolinguistics. in collinge, n.e. (ed). encyclopedia of language. london: routledge. (pp.485-517). montagu, a. 1967. the anatomy of swearing. rapp & whiting, london. tran, giao quynh. 2008. the naturalized role-play: an innovative methodology in cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics research. reflection on english language teaching, 5 (2): 1-24. wardhaugh, r. 1992. an introduction to sociolinguistics. 2nd edn. balckwell, oxford. wierzbicka, anna. 1991. cross cultural pragmatics; the semantics of human interaction. mouton de gruyter, berlin. wouk, f. 2006. the language of apologizing in lombok, indonesia. journal of pragmatics, (38): 1457-1486. adrefiza 16| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 yuan, y. 2001. an inquiry into empirical pragmatics datagathering methods: written dcts, field notes, and natural conversations. journal of pragmatics, (33): 271292. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 165-175 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee what happened to novice efl teachers professional learning in pesantren based billingual program? evidence from an islamic boarding school in east lombok indonesia marham jupri hadi, mohammad rudiyanto, siti wahyu puji anggraini, lume received: 18th september 2018; revised: 15th october 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract this study investigated the practice of professional learning as experienced by novice english foreign language (efl) teachers especially those teaching at islamic boarding schools or pesantren which ran english and arabic language program. case study was employed by involving english teachers and a school headmaster. this study revealed efl teachers found it challenging to manage classroom. this is partly caused by the class size and their limited experiences and authority to manage class. they also suffered from intimidating lesson plans design. moreover, they found it daunting to encourage students to learning english, resulting in teachers' stress. further, barriers of novice efl teachers' professional learning were associasted with their attitude toward continous learning needs and limited programs to improve teachers' competency. it also revealed that this pesantren and the school where this study was carried out have yet to set tpd programs for its teachers. in fact, novice efl teachers were unlikely to get necessary supports from school and senior teachers despite the presence of informal supervision from senior teachers. keywords: novice teachers; efl; professional learning; pesantren; billingual program abstrak penelitian ini mengkaji praktik pembelajaran profesional guru bahasa inggris pemula, khususnya yang mengajar di pesantren yang menerapkan program bahasa inggris dan arab. penelitian dengan desain studi kasus ini melibatkan guru bahasa inggris dan kepala sekolah. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa guru-guru bahasa inggris tersebut menghadapi tantangan untuk mengelola kelas. hal ini disebabkan oleh besarnya jumlah siswa di dalam satu kelas serta minimnya pengalaman dan wewenang mereka mengelola kelas. mereka juga merasa terbebani oleh penyusunan rencana pelaksanaan pembelajaran. mereka juga merasa kesulitan untuk memotivasi siswa belajar bahasa inggris. semua hal tersebut membuat guru-guru bahasa inggris tersebut merasa tertekan. hasil penelitian ini juga menunjukkan bahwa faktor yang menghambat pembelajaran guru bahasa inggris pemula tersebut adalah sikap guru terhadap kebutuhan belajar secara berkesinambungan dan terbatasnya program peningkatan kompetensi guru. pesantren dan sekolah tempat penelitian ini dilakukan ternyata menetapkan program pengembangan profesi untuk guru-gurunya. selain itu, para guru bahasa inggris pemula tersebut tidak juga mendapatkan dukungan yang diperlukan dari sekolah dan guru senior meskipun telah ada supervisi informal dari guru senior. kata kunci: guru pemula; bahasa ingggris; pembelajaran professional; pesantren; program dua bahasa how to cite: hadi, m. j., rudiyanto, m., anggraini, s. w. p., lume. (2018). what happened to novice efl teachers professional learning in pesantren based billingual program? evidence from an islamic boarding school in east lombok indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 165-175. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 166-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction a large body of research revealed that students learning outcomes were greatly affected by how teachers’ performed their task particularly in classrooms. this obviously suggests that students' success in achieving the targeted competences is greatly dependent on how well teacher perform their tasks in class rooms. further, their teaching performances are determined by whether or not they keep improving their teaching knowledge and skills. another factor which affects teacher performance in their class is the context in which they are teaching. however, the context of indonesian education is apparently not supporting teachers' professional learning. yuwono and harbon (2010) postulate that indonesian education has created a context which is far from ideal and is characterised with a lot of complex realities, limitations and obstacles in its class room. with regard to efl teaching context in indonesia, yuwono (2005) further argues that english teachers in indonesia are forced to work in isolation and with inadequate support from policymakers and or other related stakeholders. despite the presence of a number of regulations and programs conducted to support english teacher professional growth, professionalism has yet to achieve. this is indicated from the very few of teachers who have been certified as professional teachers. an earlier study by dardjowdodjodjo (2000) revealed that english teachers in indonesia have not mastered the language they are teaching. this study also suggested that english teachers are highly dependent on text book and curriculum guidelines with inadequate understanding about the philosophy behind provided materials or methods. this current study aimed at investigating whether professional learning experienced by the english teachers in pesantren also contribute to the existing problems. given the facts about the problems and conditions existing in the classrooms which are closely linked to english teacher professionalism, hence, further investigation on english teacher professionalism (yuwono and harbon, 2010) particularly in pesantren or islamic boarding school is necessary. further, studies about the practice of efl teacher professional development at pesantren is hardly available. this study was expected to fill the research gap pertaining to teacher professional development. concept of professional development villegas-reimers (2003) defines teacher professional development (tpd) as the development of a person in his/her professional role, associated with professional learning experienced by teachers and it aims at promoting professional and personal growth of teachers. to put it in another word, tpd is assosiated with any effort which has ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 167-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license been done to ensure that teachers keep upgrading their skills and knowledge. darling-hammond (1998) suggests the tpd should be based on schools and closely related to that of teachers' and learners' daily activities. urgency of teacher professional development it is obvious that teachers play critical roles in classrooms. they are in charge to ensure that the classrooms are comfortable places to learn and to facilitate students to gain the targeted learning outcomes. due to the rapid development of sciences and technologies, teachers’ knowledge and skills are necessary to be refreshed and updated to be able to attract students to get engaged in learning (supriatna, n.d). however, it is likely that appropriate programs which cover the diverse needs, behaviours and teaching environment are hardly available. murray (2010) argues the absence of insightful feedback and regular supervision often make novice teachers feel frustrated, less effective and overwhelmed by bureaucracy might make that novice teachers sometimes feel overwhelmed. continous professsional development is expected to overcome some of these problematic issues (bailey, curtis, & nunan, 2001) because it is a way to improve teachers’ skills applicable to the teaching context and enable them to perform effectively within the school environment (bolam, 2000). in other words, teacher professional development can be seen as a key mechanism to promote better classroom instruction and students achievement. as for indonesian context, the in service education programs for teachers have yet to satisfy the need of all teachers, particularly those who are teaching in pesantren. this is clearly reflected by what supriana (n.d) argues that the current in service tpd at provincial level have yet to work well in that only a few teachers who the opportunity to refresh and update their knowledge and skills since their teaching appointment. supriana further claims that the "provincial office of education has not had systematic in-service teacher training yet". novice efl teachers farrel (2012) claimed that there has been no full agreement about the definition of novice teachers. however hubermen, as cited in farrel proposed that novice teachers were those who have been teaching for three years. farrel further define novice teachers as newly qualified teachers or those who commenced teaching english in an educational institution usually within 3 years of completing their teacher education program”. for the purpose of this study, we define a novice efl teacher as those who have been in service for three years as teachers in pesantren regardless their age. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 168-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license upon the completion of this study, it is expected that this study was able to reveal how efl novice teachers experienced professional learning in order to enhance their professional and personal capacity as english language teachers. it also aimed at investigating the difficulties when performing their tasks as novice teachers and the challenges to enhance their professionalism. it further sought to investigate the guidance provided for english teachers and strategies they employ to enhance their professional capacity. pesantren based education pesantren or islamic boarding schools are famous educational institutions across the country. it is mainly featured by the adoption of formal and informal education approach in its practices. normally, pesantren would run their informal educational programs in the afternoon and evening and follow the national (or formal) curriculum in the morning. another obvious feature of pesantren is that most of the students live in the dorm. this would enable high participation of students in all programs and to ensure that the stated learning outcomes could be optimally achieved. further characteristic of pesantren that we could observe that the subjects are mainly dominated by subjects related to islamic teachings and the implementation of bilingual program for instance english and arabic. students in pesantren are encouraged to communicate in both languages on daily basis. to support the bilingual program, pesantren normally hire teachers who have language skills either in english or arabic. despite these, there is one obvious issue that commonly found that the hired language teachers are not very well prepared to teach and do not receive specific in service induction to enhance their knowledge and skills. this is apparently the case in most pesantren in west nusa tenggara province, particularly in east lombok. this study aimed at capturing the comprehensive picture of how novice english teachers engaged in professional development. the overarching question of this study is to explore the practice of professional learning as experienced by novice efl teachers in pesantren. this question is then broken down into the following sub questions: 1) what teaching difficulties and professional development barriers encountered by novice efl teachers during their first years?; 2) what sorts of professional learning programs organized for these novice efl teachers in pesantren?; 3) how did they improve their teaching skills and knowledge as efl teachers?. method this study was qualitative in nature as our main objective was to gain deep understanding about the social ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 169-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license phenomena in the research site without giving any treatment. neither, we intended to generalize findings of this study although the results can be transferred to a context which has a number of similarities with the research site. we employed a case study as the research design as it is a comprehensive research which allowed us to understand a complex phenomenon and detailed interaction occurring within (yin, 1989; stake, 1995). it further enabled researchers to closely examine the data within a specific context (zainal, 2007). yin (1989) argues that data collection in case study research is conducted through interviews, observation, and document analysis. data will be mainly collected through in depth interviews and each participant will be interviewed for about half to an hour. other supporting data will be collected through participant observations and document analysis. for data analysis purposes, we will refer to research questions of this study as the guide. first of all, after each interviews and focus group discussion are conducted, we will transcribe the audiotaped conversations. transcripts will be coded into themes. data from observations (field notes) and document analysis will also be coded. this study was conducted at an islamic boarding school (for this study, the term pesantren was used) in east lombok, west nusa tenggara. four novice teachers serving in this pesantren were purposively selected as participants of this study. the other participants were school principals and leaders of this pesantren. this pesantren was selected based on some criteria. first, researchers had conducted initial observations about teachers’ professional development in this pesantren. however, the information collected was not deep, hence further investigation were needed. second, we found most of efl teachers in this pesantren were fresh graduate, or new teachers, and they met the criteria for being participants of this study. third, we thought that we could conduct research in this pesantren more easily in term of access to get data as we had been familiar to the teachers and leaders in this pesantren. findings and discussion the overarching objective addressed in this study was to uncover the practice of professional development of efl novice teacher at this pesantren. the findings of this study are presented based on the research questions. difficulties and barriers to professional development encountered by novice efl teachers during their first years as efl teachers teaching is both challenging and attractive although for some people who do not favour it would prefer to resign. it is always challenging as the class and the students that teachers deal with are dynamic and often time ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 170-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license present themselves with unpredictable behavior. this would require teachers to be more flexible and get prepared to deal with uncertain situation. teaching is also attractive as it allows the teachers to explore themselves and try to innovate in order to make the class more alive and to ensure that the students achieve the expected learning outcomes. despite these, teaching is demanding for teachers because there is an abundant of demand to fulfill, while they might not have sufficient time to accomplish their task and they might not be mentally prepared to do the tasks. even, teachers with a clear and strong commitment to becoming professional teachers would still encounter issues, particularly when teaching english as a foreign or a second language. as highlighted by kanno and stuart (2011) that those having clear commitment to be professional esl teachers found it hard to automatically translate their commitment and adopt teacher identity. the novice efl teachers in this study also experienced a number of difficulties during their early careers as efl teachers. most of the participants in this study reported that they encountered issues pertaining to classroom management, for instance disruption in class. this was mainly caused by the class size and they lack of experiences and more because they lacked teacher authority to manage class (kanno & stuart, 2011). they also mentioned that preparing the lesson plans as expected by the current curriculum is quite intimidating although they have learned this when they were having their pre-service education. others difficulties these teachers experienced were related to motivating students or making their students to feel encouraged learning english. most students were likely to prefer speaking in arabic to english. this is clearly reflected by what a participant reported: "we found it difficult to make student love english as our institution has strongly encouraged the students to communicate in other language…arabic language". reflecting from this excerpt, it is worth bearing in mind that school with bilingual program (english and arabic program) also creates challenges for the teachers and students as well. as reported by the participants of this study this pesantren had been running a bilingual program for quite long time; however, the emphasis of the program was likely on arabic language. further, teachers also found that the tight schedule that this pesantren set also affected the teaching and learning of english. students' had limited time to repeat what they had learned from the teachers. often time, this constraint made the students unable to attain the expected learning objectives. in line with these findings, the current problems that these teachers experienced led to teacher stress. teacher felt stress with burden that they encountered when teaching ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 171-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english. stress is also one of the major issues which teacher experienced at this pesantren. this was mainly caused by their inability to make students achieve the targeted learning outcomes which have been set in the school curriculum. this finding is also in line with kyriacou and sutcliffe's study (1978) which reported that approximately 20% of comprehensive school teachers in england found teaching to be very stressful or extremely stressful. speaking of barriers in professional learning, these teachers admitted that personal motivation appeared to be the major issue to improve their capacity or competency as english teachers. they were unlikely to upgrade their teaching competences. it is of vital importance that their attitude toward continuous learning needs more attention from the school leaders. teacher with high motivation to enhance their capacity would invest more time to improve their knowledge and skills. another issue which they encounter to enhance their teaching proficiency is the limited programs which the school, itself, has set to improve teachers' competency despite the presence of policy for this purpose. not only the shortage of the tpd programs, the existing programs were unlikely to meet the needs of the teachers. this finding is supported by badri's study (2016) which revealed that lack of suitable development opportunities were highly associated with the amount of professional development teachers enrolled in. professional learning programs organized for the novice efl teachers in pesantren based on the survey conducted by talis (2013), there were nine different choices of tpd program for teachers to participate in, namely courses/workshops, education conferences or seminars, qualification program, observation visits to other schools, participation in a network of teachers, individual or collaborative research on a topic, and mentoring and/or peer observation and coaching. from these programs, novice teachers would gain a number of benefits for their career development. one of the them is that teacher could get "the opportunities to discover new roles, develop new instructional techniques and methods of teaching, refine their practice and develop themselves both professionally and personally" (mahmoudi & ozkan, 2015). for this reason, school as teachers' employer need to design a learning environment where novice teacher could improve their competence and personality equally. it is also necessary to restructure the types of the tpd program which meet the teachers’ needs (badri, 2016), in order that the programs become effective. our interviews with the participants suggest that this pesantren was unlikely to have blueprint concerning teacher in-service education although they have the policy pertaining to this matter. most of the https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016662901 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 172-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license trainings that teachers involved in were organized by the government, in particular ministry of religion office. as reported by the vice curriculum of the senior high school in this pesantren, the induction program for teachers were in the form of regular meetings which are done monthly. these meetings were not specifically conducted to enhance teachers' capacity or competences; however, it is more to do with consolidation or coordination regarding teachers' discipline and or administrative works. therefore, we could regard that teachers' professional development has not been the major priority of this pesantren regardless its status as modern pesantren. the finding of this is in line with that of supriana (n.d) which highlight that the existing in-service teacher training in west java did not work well as most teachers have not had the opportunity to refresh and update their teaching knowledge and skills. slightly different view was expressed by an informant of this study, who had been teaching for about four years. he argued that the program for teacher induction was not that effective as the program is not carried out regularly, although the school had policy in regards to teacher professional development. he also mentioned that there was weekly meeting particularly for english teacher to evaluate the english language program that had been running. this meeting was mainly intended to identify any possible alternative to enhance teachers' performance which in turn would affect students' learning outcomes or english language skills improvement. the other teachers also provided similar information. novice teachers are in need of guidance from school so as to be able to adapt with new working atmosphere and to be able to perform their tasks. if they get sufficient supports it would be more easily for them to immerse in new working place. in this study, novice efl teachers were not likely to get necessary support from school and senior teachers. this was clearly reflected from the following finding. the vice principal curriculum reported that there was no specific guidance provided to novice teachers although supervision was carried out to monitor their performances in the classroom. the teachers were encouraged to explore the materials and to keep themselves updated with the current issues pertaining to language teaching media and methods. another support that school provided for beginning teachers was supervision from senior teachers. the supervision or guidance was done informally between senior and junior teachers. confirming what the vice principal of curriculum reports, we interviewed the efl teachers. they reported that they received informal feedbacks from senior teachers; however, they did not get these on regular basis as these ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 173-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license feedbacks were provided when they asked to or when they had the opportunity to meet the senior teachers. they further informed that they needed more intensive feedbacks in order to able to tackle their tasks and any occurring issue in their classrooms. novice efl teachers' strategies to improve their teaching skills and knowledge as previously mentioned, the teachers did weekly meetings to discuss a variety of issues pertaining to the teaching and learning of english in this pesantren. in these meetings the teacher would get feedbacks from other teachers, mostly from senior teachers. with this feedback they could learn and improve their teaching practices in the classrooms. the provision of feedback as part of continuous professional learning could help these novice teachers overcome some of these problematic issues (bailey, curtis, & nunan, 2001). efl teachers also took part in trainings organized by the ministry of religious affairs which enabled them to learn more about new curriculum implementation and administrative works that they have to deal with. teachers also involved in english teacher association meetings, conducted monthly. each english teacher in this pesantren had to participate in turn in the teachers' meeting. from this teacher association meeting, they could gain updated information about any issue pertaining to the english language teaching. conclusion and suggestion this case study aimed at capturing the practice of english teachers' professional development in a pesantren running a bilingual programarabic and english. the teaching difficulties experienced by the participants of this study included 1) classroom management which was mainly caused by the class size and the lack of experiences and authority to manage class; 2) intimidating lesson plans design; 3) motivating students to learning english as most students were likely to prefer speaking in arabic to english. these issues led to teacher stress. further, the barriers these efl teachers encountered to professional learning were related to their attitude toward continuous learning needs and limited programs to improve teachers' competency. this study also revealed that pesantren did not have a blueprint concerning with teacher in-service education although they have the policy pertaining to this matter and the existing tpd programs were not effective. also, tpd in this pesantren has not been the prioritized regardless its status as modern pesantren. other findings in this study showed that novice efl teachers were unlikely to get necessary support from school and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 174-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license senior teachers despite the presence of informal supervision or guidance from senior teachers. furthermore, it is found that teachers learned from the given feedback to improve their teaching practices in the classrooms. efl teachers took part in training organized by the ministry of religion as well as in regular english teacher association meetings to advance their knowledge and skills. as previously mentioned that there are limited studies which investigated the practice professional learning for novice efl teachers in pesantren context, thus this study would contribute to the existing literature from this context. the results of this study are also expected to inform the pesantren policy makers and other education stakeholders. as this study was conducted in a small scale with small number of participants; hence this study only reflected the reality of how novice efl teachers engaged with professional learning. for this reason, it is suggested that further investigation is carried out by involving more teachers from different schools to better understand the barriers of teacher professional development in pesantren context. future researchers could also develop strategies to foster english teacher competencies. references badri, m., alnuaimi, a., mohaidat, j., yang, g., & al rashedi, a. (2016). perception of teachers’ professional development needs, impacts, and barriers: the abu dhabi case. sage open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244 016662901. bolam, r. (2000). emerging policy-trends: some implications for continuing professional development. journal of in-service education, 26(2), 267-280. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/136745 80000200113. bailey, k. m., curtis, a., & nunan, d. (2001). pursuing professional development: the self as source. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. dardjowdodjodjo, s. (2000). english teaching in indonesia. ea journal, 18 (1), 22-30. darling-hammond, l. (1998). teachers and teaching: testing policy hypotheses from a national commission report. educational researcher, 27(1), 5-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x0 27001005. mahmoudi, f & özkan, y (2015) exploring experienced and novice teachers’ perceptions about professional development activities. procedia social and behavioral sciences 199, 57 – 64. murray, a. (2010). empowering teachers through professional development. english teaching forum, 48(1), 2-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016662901 https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016662901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674580000200113 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674580000200113 http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x027001005 http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x027001005 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 175-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10922 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license stake, r. e. (1995) the art of case study research. thousand oakes: sage. supriatna, a. (n.d) indonesia’s issues and challenges on teacher professional development. pp.29-42. villegas-reimers, e. (2003). teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. paris, fr: unesco, international institute for educational planning. kanno, y. & stuart, c (2011) learning to become asecond language teacher: identities-in-practice. the modern language journal, 95, ii, (2011) doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01178.x 0026-7902/11/236–252. kyriacou, c., & sutcliffe, j. (1978). teacher stress: prevalence, sources, and symptoms. british journal of educational psychology, 48, 2, 323-365. teaching and learning international survey . (2013). teaching and learning international survey: user’s guide to 2013 u.s. data files and database. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/20 16063_userguide.pdf. yin, r. k. (1989) case study research: design and methods. thousand oakes: sage. yuwono, g. i. (2005). english language teaching in decentralised indonesia: voices from the less privileged schools. paper presented at the australian association for research in education, international education research conference, the university of western sydney, parramatta. yuwono, g. i. & harbon, l. (2010) english teacher professionalism and professional development: some common issues in indonesia. the asian efl journal quarterly special issue on english language teacher education and development september 2010 volume 12, issue 3, 145-163. zainal, z. (2007) case study as a research method. jurnal kemanusiaan bil.9. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016063_userguide.pdf http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016063_userguide.pdf ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 119-132 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee using films to teach listening comprehension eka rizki amalia, nurulazizah ria kusrini, pungky ramadhani received: 14th june 2019; revised: 27th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract using films for classroom activities is often doubted as an appropriate and meaningful way to teach listening comprehension. since the film is authentic material and far from pedagogical instruction, its use has rarely been paid attention to. this paper aims to prove that using film can be an alternative and effective way to teach listening comprehension. the problems which are commonly faced by the students in film viewing for listening activities and the proposed techniques along with film viewing activities are discussed further in this paper. the result of the discussion shows that using film to teach listening comprehension is motivating, enhancing and appealing for the students. key words: films; listening comprehension; listening activities abstrak menggunakan film untuk kegiatan di kelas sering diragukan sebagai cara yang berarti dan sesuai untuk mengajarkan listening comprehension. karena film adalah materi otentik dan dianggap jauh dari konten pedagogik, penggunaan film jarang sekali diberi perhatian. artikel ini bertujuan untuk membuktikan bahwa menggunakan film untuk kegiatan pembelajaran dapat menjadi salah satu alternatif dan cara yang efektif untuk mengajarkan listening comprehension. artikel ini membahas masalah-masalah yang umum dihadapi oleh siswa dalam kegiatan pemutaran film, teknik-teknik untuk memutar film, dan kegiatan-kegiatan dalam pemutaran film untuk kegiatan listening di kelas. hasil pembahasan menunjukkan bahwa menggunakan film untuk mengajarkan listening comprehension sangat memotivasi, menggugah dan menarik bagi siswa. kata kunci: : film; pemahaman mendengarkan; kegiatan mendengarkan how to cite: amalia, e.r., kusrini, n. r., ramadhani, p.(2019). using films to teach listening comprehension . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 119-132. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 120-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teaching english by using films has gained attention in the efl classroom, including in indonesia. some lecturers and teachers choose to use films to introduce the class with the lesson that tends to illustrate real-life content. the use of films in the class is still related to curricular demand. while at the same time the material is delivered sufficiently, the attracting and engaging audiovisual aids of the film motivate and enhance the learners‟ willingness to study. when the learners are motivated to study, then the goal of teaching will be easily reached as the learners will encourage themselves to be actively involved in the learning process. there are many reasons behind the use of films in the teaching and learning activity. one of them is that the rich content of films introduces the learners to be exposed to a real-life situation and sometimes to the world of imagination. these audiovisual media lead the learners to use and optimize their sight and hearing to grasp the information delivered by the films. these two senses, sight and hearing, enable the learners to absorb the input more optimally. another reason for using films to teach english is that films offer opportunities for developing fluency. since the english films present the english language spoken by a native speaker of english, the learners as the audiences will notice and unconsciously learn how to speak and use the english language appropriately. the main purpose of using films in the classroom is generally because the lecturers or the teachers want to introduce and accustom their students to listen to english. this is the primary idea of teaching listening. while listening is not merely hearing but comprehending the spoken passage, the students are demanded to have listening comprehension skills for the listening activity. when the students can comprehend the spoken passage from the film, they will be able to catch the idea and the message implied and explicated from the films played. that is the goal of teaching listening comprehension. thus, the lecturers and the teachers should teach their students to master listening comprehension skills. despite its strengths, the use of films in the class activity has raised controversy among classroom teachers who have mandated curriculum to follow and the limited time allocated. this is because some teachers still perceive films as a medium of entertainment and not for the pedagogical setting. this opinion is not completely unacceptable since films are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 121-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license authentic materials and are not made for learning. films are naturally made for entertainment and pleasure purposes. when the films are utilized for the learning activity, they are mostly given outside the classroom setting as an assignment or project. then the question is, if the teachers want to use films to teach listening comprehension skill, then how should the teaching and learning activities be conducted and what level of students is the most appropriate to teach by using films. this paper describes the use of films to teach listening comprehension in the classroom. this paper aims to prove that film is an appropriate medium to teach listening comprehension skills for certain levels. this paper covers the following discussion: an overview of films as authentic material, techniques of using film in the classroom, criteria of selecting the film, using film in teaching listening comprehension, and classroom activities for film viewing. film as authentic material film as an authentic material often raises controversy to be used in classroom activities as it is considered to have many weaknesses and difficulties for both teachers and students. as authentic materials, films are not produced for pedagogical purposes. therefore, the content of the film may not be familiar enough for the students. mishan (2004, p.216) in ruusunen (2011) points out that film viewing can be rather challenging sometimes. it can cause boredom and passiveness for the students. to make the class enjoyable, relaxed, and watching the films as learning as well as entertaining experience, the teachers should plan activities and tasks. it can be done by introducing the topic and related vocabulary to the students initially. by knowing the topic and the vocabulary beforehand, students will be encouraged to follow the film viewing as they have already known, at least, some words that the characters in the films utter. this can make the students be more focused on the film and engaged in the learning activity. related to film as authentic material, gebhard (1996, p.89-109) points out some disadvantages of using authentic material. the first is that it is often difficult to access authentic material. however, today we can easily access and get authentic material like the film either by buying or downloading it from the internet. the second is that sometimes it is difficult to make authentic material comprehensible to the students. different cultural backgrounds and language barriers are mostly found. this can be overcome by explaining the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 122-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license cultural content and introducing some vocabulary and expressions to the students initially. the third is that some students may not accept and consider authentic material as a valuable learning source but take it simply as a kind of entertainment in between their boring class hours. the teacher can overcome this by stating the objectives of the film playing before it is played. the students must understand first that they have some activities or assignments to be completed while or after watching the film. by doing so, the students will concentrate and focus more not only on watching the film by purpose but also enjoying it. wilson (2011) mentions some obstacles in playing a film in the classroom. frequently, the language level of the film is too high for the students. as we know that all characters in english films speak real english as their daily language because they are native speakers of english. overlaps and interruptions between speakers are easily found. there are also incomplete sentences with false starts and hesitation, background noise and voices, loosely packed information, and so forth. all those are found in the film. another obstacle is, for the teacher, to design activity which correlates to the curricular content and the students‟ need and interest for film viewing sometimes takes time. there are not many teachers who have sufficient time to do that. thus, teaching english by using film can be challenging for some teachers. even though there are some negative aspects or disadvantages of using film in classroom activities, there are also some reasons and advantages of why using film in the efl classroom is appropriate. some of them are increasing motivation, developing intercultural communication (king, 2002), and preparing the learner for global citizenship (starkey, 2007). the use of film is also one of the key channels via in which learners can be exposed to what occurs in the real world (hayati and mohmedi, 2011). since the film can portray the real-life situation, students will indirectly experience what the characters in the film are experiencing. furthermore, films are a visual medium and a good starting point for learners to explore and experience another culture (pegrum, 2008). here is the role of the teacher to open students' minds and give an understanding of which culture is appropriate and which are not for their age, cultural background, and society. the teacher should filter the content which is not suitable for the students so that they will only obtain a meaningful and valuable message from the film rather than negative content. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 123-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license not all students have access to watch certain movies. the movie played by the teacher may be the first movie they watch. therefore, the teacher has to make sure that the students get a wonderful experience form watching the film. as they are motivated while and after the film viewing, as king (2002) mentions, it is possible that the motivation to learn a language could be enhanced through the incorporation of films into the language classroom. this is good for the students as they are motivated to learn english through fun activities. there are some reasons why using movies in efl teaching is considered a useful method and has several advantages compared to the more traditional teaching styles. the first is that films can be considered as authentic material and they provide the learners with genuine input (mishan (2004, p. 216) cited in ruusunen (2011)). the genuine input helps the students to understand that there is a connection between traditional classroom teaching and the real-world and that the foreign language, the english language, is used by the characters not only in the films but also in their daily lives. further, krashen (1985) in ruusunen (2011) points out, a natural input helps the learners to acquire language without necessarily even noticing that they are listening or reading a foreign language. when the students are watching the films, they are unconsciously acquiring the language spoken by the characters in the film and this activity is done without any conscious attempts of doing listening strategy. the students do not even notice or realize that they comprehend the spoken passage delivered by the characters in the film. this is the benefit of watching a film. in conventional listening activities, the students often feel under pressure when they are asked to listen to the spoken passage. they tend to catch every single word and sentence of the spoken passage. this is not a good strategy as when they miss one or more sentences, they will become stressed and feels like they fail to follow the listening activity. comprehension is the most important thing and this can be acquired by the students unconsciously by watching a film. the second benefit of using film is that it has been studied that films enhance english language skill development since they bring variety, reality, authenticity, and flexibility into the efl classroom and before anything, diversify the curriculum (stoller (1988, p.1) cited in ruusunen (2011)). the problem here is that in indonesia, where the whole content of the curriculum is from the government and every school and teachers should follow and apply it, it is sometimes difficult to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 124-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license create and implement our lesson plan. teachers are demanded to fulfill the curricular goals which some of them are overloaded. too many materials should be delivered and not much time to complete all. consequently, some teachers are in a rush to finish delivering the materials based on the standard and basic competence and some students may have not mastered all the materials yet. the solution to this problem is that the teacher does not necessarily teach all materials stated in the standard and basic competence of the syllabus. it is commonly known that the only purpose of teaching junior and senior high students in indonesia is to bring them to succeed in the national exam. teachers may focus only on indicators of graduate competency standards or known as skl (standard kompetensi lulusan). since the teachers cannot diversify the curriculum by themselves, they should modify and make variety and alternative of it, and film viewing is one of some alternatives. the third benefit of using film in the classroom is that films can motivate the students to study english and the visual of the film may also help the weaker students to understand since it offers another channel of understanding in addition to just listening to the language (champoux (1999) and stoller (1988) cited in ruusunen (2011)). unlike cassette and other audio aids, the film offers more entertaining content as it is rich in visual effects. the motion pictures of the film provide students another media to acquire and understand the spoken passage. when doing the listening activity by audio aids, the students sometimes get difficulty in catching the message delivered because they only use one sense, i.e. hearing. when watching a film, they optimize their sight and hearing to process to understand the message and the content of the film. this is also a fun activity as they will also enjoy the audio and visual effects of the film. techniques for using film in the classroom using film in the classroom cannot be implemented without an appropriate approach or strategy. we cannot simply play the film fully and ask the students to watch it. there are some strategies of film viewing so that the goal of using film can be optimally reached. king (2002) proposes some approach of film viewing as follow; 1. short sequence approach: a) equential approach; teaching scene-by-scene or one segment at a time; b) a single-scene approach; utilizing one scene or segment from the entire film; c) a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 125-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license selective approach; featuring only a few scenes from different parts of the film; d) a whole film approach; showing the film entirely in a single viewing. when selecting certain approaches, teachers must consider the teaching objectives and target groups. teachers must consider and plan what is the goal to be achieved whilst and after film viewing and its appropriateness to the students‟ level. for example, the two-hour film has a problem in its length and overloaded content for less advanced learners, therefore the teachers should not play the film one at a time. for mature and advanced learners, films should be chosen simply not only for entertainment value. 2. whole film approach: a whole film approach is an approach where the film is played entirely and studied as a whole. this usually takes one or two hours of film viewing. shea (1995) in king (2002) argues that playing a film in its entirety is a theoretically and empirically sound way of teaching english. he further says, "if i cut up the movie in fiveminute segments, focusing on the linguistic structure and the form of the language, the students might never have recognized the emotional force and narrative dynamic of the video (film) as a story about important things in the human experience, aesthetic and ethical things like dreams, imagination, and commitment; things that drive language and ultimately stimulate students to learn it in the first place". in line with this, king (2002) says that showing complete film enhances student motivation to such an extent that students are visibly impressed with how much english they can figure out. while watching the film, they can enjoy the visual motion pictures telling the story which they can understand. after the whole film is played, their confidence soars when they realize that understanding a movie is not as difficult as they had imagined before. so far, efl learners have limited listening input to learn the current usage of english. as efl learners do not listen to english directly as much as esl learners, they are lack of exposure to the real english usage by the native speakers. this limits their acquisition of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 126-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the english language. the whole film approach with abundant exposure to authentic listening not only facilitates learners' listening strategy training but also achieves awareness of pragmatics as an essential component of communicative competence (king, 2002). criteria for selecting the film when we want to use film as teaching aids, we cannot choose any film we like. as teachers, we have to follow the accepted standards of choosing a film, i.e. choosing the right film for a particular level of students. arcario (1992) in king (2002) suggests that comprehensibility is a major criterion in selecting video languagelearning purposes. some of the requirements in choosing an appropriate film are to choose scenes that balance in dialog with good visual support, appropriate speech delivery, clear picture and sound, and standard accent (king, 2002). sometimes the storyline is interesting and attractive to the students, but the enunciation, the speed, and accent make the story difficult to understand as the students are foreign language learners. as stated by dove (1998) in king (2002), if the teachers use the wrong film, it will result in students‟ frustration, confusion and may lead to their depression and they will feel sure that they will never understand the “real” english. viewing film can easily lead to students‟ frustration when they give up on trying considering film as stimulating aids for learning english. another consideration in choosing a film is the content and the comfort level of students. some films may contain explicit sex, violence, and excessive profanity. this kind of film should be ruled out. unfortunately, we cannot always find a film which is completely appropriate for the students. some films may still contain minor scenes of sex, violence, and profanity. thus the teachers should delete those scenes by cutting or fastforwarding the film whenever it may be considered offensive. another thing which should be taken into consideration is that the students‟ motivation and interest are important things to be concerned about. entertaining films are sometimes enjoyable and close to popular culture which now the students are very engaged in. films which full of dramatic tension and good acting will surely catch the students‟ attention but then it will make the students forget about the language and will focus more on the plot. another factor is that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 127-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license recently released films are much more appealing to students than classic ones. moreover, if the films succeed in box offices, then they will be more interesting and attracting the students. for college students, films which contain romances, romantic comedies, and less violent action will relatively simple plots and subplots are also good choices (king, 2002). the last but not the least consideration in choosing a film is that films should be appropriate and suitable for age and culture for both genders. since gender is a sensitive issue, we may not raise any sensitive things that may lead to misunderstanding. it is rarely found a film with sensitive talk about genders indeed. however, we must become a good filter and selective to choose the appropriate films for our students. the length of viewing the film in the whole-film approach is quite different from another approach. for advanced and more proficient students, it is better to show a two-hour film in two class periods (king, 2002). it serves the students as good intensive listening training. when the students are attracted and deeply engaged by the story, the will appreciate the continuity of the story as their teacher will give in the next meeting. for low-level students, it is better not to apply the whole film approach but short sequence one. teachers can choose the most suitable strategy which will lead to the student's understanding of the film. using film in teaching listening comprehension brown (2006) states that listening comprehension is not merely an act of hearing but deals with an interactive process. it is an active process in which individuals concentrate on selected aspects of aural input, form the meaning of passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge (gilakjani and ahmadi, 2011). the mastery of listening comprehension skills is a must for learners as they are demanded to understand and comprehend what the speakers are saying and not to exclude the language acquisition. listening comprehension skill is believed to help the students acquire the language they are learning and then associate it with other skill i.e. speaking. when the learners can comprehend the input they get, they will have a further understanding of what they are learning and thus will make it easier for them to master other skills. underwood (1989) in gilakjani and ahmadi (2011) mentions seven causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension; 1) listeners cannot ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 128-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license control the speed of delivery, 2) listeners cannot always have words repeated, 3) listeners have a limited vocabulary, 4) listeners may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point, 5) listeners might have lack of contextual knowledge, 6) it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language, and 7) students may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word. such obstacles need a strategy to solve as vandergrift (1999) in gilakjani and ahmadi (2011) states that strategy development is important for listening training because strategies are conscious means by which learners can guide and evaluate their comprehension and responses. some strategies in teaching listening comprehension are proposed by many experts. two of them are topdown and bottom-up strategies. some experts who suggest the use of bottomup and top-down processing strategies in listening are nunan (2002, p.239), brown (2000, p.260), vandergrift and goh (2009, p.399), and wilson (2008, p.15). the bottom-up model emphasizes the decoding of the smallest units – phonemes and syllables – to lead towards meaning, while the top-down model emphasizes the use of background knowledge to predict content (j. j. wilson, 2008, p.15). in the past time, only the bottom-up model was used to be applied. however, these days, it is generally that both models are necessary. in developing materials and lessons, it is important to teach not only bottom-up processing skills, such as using the information we get about sounds and word meanings but also to help our students use what they already know to understand what they hear (top-down model). besides teaching the students listening comprehension strategies, teachers are also demanded to conduct activities which will support the students' listening comprehension skill. the activities must be constructed in good sequence and each activity must be meaningful which consists of pre-, whileand post-listening activities. classroom activities wilson (2011) and gilakjani and ahmadi (2011) suggest three listening activities; pre-, while, and post-listening activity. while for using film in classroom activities, stoller (1988) cited in ruusunen (2011) proposes previewing, viewing and post-viewing activities. these steps are to ensure that the students stay focused and motivated throughout the lesson, and the goals of the lesson are clear for them. the nature and length of the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 129-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license activities depend on the film selected, the needs of the students, their age and proficiency level and instructional objectives. stoller (1988) cited in ruusunen (2011) emphasizes that pre-viewing activities prepare students for actual viewing. before playing the film, the teachers should prepare the students with activities that will make it easier for them to help the film viewing activity. some examples of this activity are student polls, interviews, problemsolving, discussion of the title of the film, introducing the topic and theme of the film, brainstorming activities, information gap exercises, dictionary or vocabulary exercise, and so forth. the teacher may also ask students to predict the storyline or what the characters are going to speak, based on their knowledge and information that they have already got. further, pre-viewing activities can have two primary goals: (a) to help to activate students‟ prior knowledge, building up their expectations for the coming storyline; and (b) to provide the necessary context for the specific film viewing task. previewing can make it easier for the weaker students to benefit from the film and its many beneficial aspects. the second activity is viewing activities. students as listeners, as well as audiences who participate actively in the viewing and listening experience, are more likely to construct clear and accurate meaning as they interpret the speaker's verbal message and nonverbal cues (gilakjani and ahmadi, 2011). as stoller (1988) cited in ruusunen (2011) points out, viewing activities during the film facilitate viewing of the film. the activities help students to deal with specific issues and focus on characters or storylines and also at junctures in the film. some examples in viewing activities are directed listening, information gathering, film interruptions, and second screening. for example, a film interruption helps the teacher to control whether students have understood what happens in the film. thus, these viewing activities are a simple way to keep the students focus on viewing despite the length of the film. the last is post-viewing activities. stoller (1988) in ruusunen (2011) highlights the importance of postviewing activities. they are meant to stimulate both written and oral use of the target language and information from the film. post-viewing activities should extract the main ideas and issues of the film since the small details of the film have been missed. postviewing activities are also essential to understand the main points of the film. post-viewing activities can be conducted, for instance by film ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 130-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license summaries, discussions, comparisons, speed writing, using notes for writing practice, role plays or debates. for listening comprehension skills, postviewing activities are important because they extend students„ listening skills. after-viewing activities are most effective when done immediately after the film viewing. well-planned afterviewing activities offer students opportunities to connect what they have watched to their ideas and experiences, and encourage interpretive and critical listening and reflective thinking. furthermore, post-viewing activities provide opportunities for teachers to assess and check students„ comprehension and clarify their understanding. different comprehension questions can be assigned for students to discuss after film viewing. in the end, in the discussion session, students can utter their interpretation as well as their opinion about the film. conclusion and suggestion along with the awareness of the importance of master listening comprehension skills for students, teachers are demanded to teach listening comprehension skills. not many teachers find it easy to conduct listening class which is fun, motivating, enhancing and appealing for the students. as listening skill is mostly considered as a difficult skill and it is indeed not easy, teachers must find alternative aids and media to teach listening comprehension skill. many printed textbook material is supposed to be considered as listening material. however, most of the materials do not fulfill the students‟ need for mastering listening comprehension skills as they are not the „real‟ spoken english because the material is pedagogically constructed for learning. on the opposite side of pedagogical material, there are also authentic materials that closely reflect the 'real' spoken english. one example of authentic material that is close to the real world of english is film. a film with its rich audio and visual content attracts its audiences and guide them to be involved in the storyline they are watching. but there is a problem, that the authenticity of the film is one of some reasons why it is considered too difficult for the students to comprehend the spoken passage. while listening is not merely hearing but there is the purpose behind that activity, the listeners, especially efl learners, are demanded to get full listening comprehension. when the film is used as the media to teach listening comprehension, then there are some requirements of how shall the films be played. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 131-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license top-down and bottom-up processing strategy make the listening comprehension activity more meaningful and straight to reach the objectives of the listening activity, that is, comprehends the spoken passage. whereas, to obtain the objectives of listening comprehension, there must be a well-planned and well-organized activity to conduct. pre-, while-, and post-viewing activities will benefit both teachers and students to follow viewing activities. one important thing is, listening and watching film provides an opportunity for students to hear the accurate pronunciation of words and sentences as they are spoken by the native english speakers. some teachers may get difficulties to fully leave traditional textbook where there are already exercises and texts available. some teachers may also get difficulties to combine authentic materials with the textbook. however, using films as authentic materials has many advantages and it can bring variety and flexibility to the classroom. it can motivate both students and the teacher and make learning english as a foreign language more enjoyable and fun. looking at the advantages of using film to teach listening comprehension, further research related to the use of film in classroom activities is necessary. while there are already some proofs of the effectiveness of using film to teach advanced and proficient learners, viewing the film for low-level learners is still in debates. it will be challenging for the further researcher to investigate the use of film to teach low-level students and it will be more challenging for teachers to combine film with the learning material which can fulfill the curricular demands which of course, by considering the students‟ need as well. references brown, h. douglas. 2000. teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. london: longman. brown, steven. 2006. teaching listening. cambridge: cambridge university press. gebhard. 1996. teaching english as a foreign or second language: a teacher selfdevelopment and methodology guide. ann arbor: university of michigan press. gilakjani, abbas pourhossein, and ahmadi, mohammad reza. 2011. a study of factors affecting efl learners' english listening comprehension and the strategies for improvement. language teaching and research vol. 2 no. 5, 977988. hayati, a, and mohmedi, f. 2011. the effect of films with and without subtitles on listening comprehension of efl learners. british journal of education technology vol. 42 no. 1, 181-192. king, jane. 2002. using dvd feature films in the efl classroom. computer assisted language learning vol. 15 no. 5, 509523. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 132-132 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14531 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license nunan, david. 2002. listening in language learning. in j. c. richards & w. a. renandya (eds.), methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice. pegrum, m. 2008. film, culture, and identity: critical intercultural literacies for the language classroom. language intercultural communication vol. 8 no. 2, 136-154. ruusunen, virve. (2011). using movies in efl teaching: the point of view of teachers. the university of jyvaskyla. starkey, h. 2007. language education, identities and citizenship: developing cosmopolitan perspectives. language intercultural communication vol. 7 no. 1, 56-71. vandergrift, larry, and goh, christine. 2009. teaching and testing listening comprehension. in m. h. long & c. j. doughty (eds.), the handbook of language teaching. massachusetts: wiley blackwell publishing ltd. wilson, j.j. 2008. how to teach listening. essex: pearson longman. wilson, jj. 2011. how to teach listening. essex: pearson longman. schema theory in reading class schema theory in reading class fahriany (fahriany@ymail.com) uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta abstract comprehension is making a sense out of text. it is a process of using reader’s existing knowledge (schemata) to interpret texts in order to construct meaning. many reading experts agree that the schema theory is one of the reasonable theories of human information processing. schemata, the plural of schema, are believed to be the building blocks of cognition. this paper discusses the role of readers’ preexisting knowledge on linguistics code as well as readers’ knowledge of the world (schema), which for the case of reading has similar importance of the printed words in the text. it is argued that the more non visual information the reader posses, the less visual information is needed. for teaching and learning, teachers are expected to use different strategies in order to deal with different students’ preexisting knowledge and schema to maximize students’ learning. key words: schema theory, reading class introduction schema theory is a theory about knowledge. it is a theory about how knowledge is represented and about how the representation facilitates the use of the knowledge in particular ways. according to the schema theory, all knowledge is packed into units, called schemata. in addition to knowledge itself, these packets of knowledge embedded information about how this knowledge is to be used. therefore, schemata are used by readers to make sense of text; the printed work evokes the reader’s experiences, as well as past and potential relationships. a schema has some characteristics (rummelhart, 1980, mailto:fahriany@ymail.com fahriany 18| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 p.25). first, it has variables. these variables can be associated with different environment instantiatio ns of schema. in a schema theory, variable constraints serve two important functions. they help the identification of various aspects of situations with the variable of the schema. they also help by serving as “default values” or initial guesses for variable whose values he/she has not yet observed. for example, if he/she observes a transaction to be one of buying but does not notice the money, he/she can infer that there is money. in this way, the schema can help making inferences about unobserved aspects of a situation. second, a schema needs to be instantiated. a schema is an instantiated whenever a particular configuration of values is to a bound to a particular moment in time. interpreting a situation to be an instance of some concepts involves that instantiation of an appropriate schema by associating various variables of the schema with various aspects of situation. such a schema is called an instantiated schema. it is believed that the irises of instantiated schemata serve as the basis of recollections. third, a schema is not a complete specification of every detail of situations. a schema allows room for irrelevant variation and creative interpretation. a schema is not so rigidly applied that no variation is allowed. the schema only provides the skeleton around which the situations is interpreted. fourth, a schema is much more abstract than the real situation. the buy schema is much more abstract that the actual buying event, and is applicable to any case of buying. a schema should be viewed as consisting of a configuration of sub-schema corresponding to the constituents of the concept being represented. fifth, schemata are like theories. schemata contain theories about the nature of reality that exist in mind. these theories are supposed to serve in the schema theory in reading class ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |19 construction of the interpretation of situation during the process of comprehending, which is viewed as hypothesis testing. in reading, the reader constantly evaluates hypothesis about the most possible interpretation of texts. sixth, schemata are active processes. schemata are like procedures. a schema should be viewed as a procedure the function of which is to determine whether and to what degree it accounts for the pattern of observation. this is because schemata underlies concepts, and hence a schema theory is both a prototype and procedural theory of meaning. finally, schemata are like parser. a parser is a device that determines whether a sequence of symbols forms the legal sentence, according to the rule of grammars, and if it does, determines the constituent structure of sentence. this means the parser determines which symbols in the sequence correspond to which constituents of the sentence. the process of finding and verifying appropriate schemata is a kind of parsing process that works with conceptual elements finding constituents and sub-constituents among the data being the processed. the schema theory in rea ding class most teaching as we know takes place in a classroom with thirty to forty or even more students. they have different abilities, interests, attitudes, and socio economic conditions. it adds up to the so called “background,” and “the background that each student brings to school constitutes a hidden curriculum of the student’s person, personal experience, and spirit” (harris & sipay, 1984, p.25). all these are not superficial differences, as every teacher knows. in conjunction with the students’ differences, teachers when teaching english reading are not trying to determine how to teach a student one-by-one. rather, they look for the most effective approach and strategies to use to meet the needs of students in fahriany 20| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 majority and create activities that can make the students become active-participant in the classroom. reading is a complex act requiring certain skills. several recognizable stages must be met and mastered along the way from the level of pre-reading to the level of purposeful reading. the learner must have many opportunities to pay attention, to listen, to perceive and discriminate forms and sounds, to understand directions, to move her eyes and her hands in a left-to-right direction, to add to her spoken vocabulary, and to experience success in the prereading activities, before a formal introduction to print (thonis, 1990). these basic skills must be revised and maintained in order to provide foundation for the building of the basic reading skills. the basic reading skills include the skill of developing vocabulary and the skill of comprehending what is read. developing vocabulary begins when the students are aware that the unfamiliar written symbols of print stand for the familiar oral symbols of speech and that these sounds, in term, represent objects, persons, or events about which he knows. she must learn to make many associations between these two sets of language symbols. some words are made up of letter, which represent consistently the sounds of the learner’s. many words in many languages do not have a regular sound-symbol correspondence. these words are usually called the sight words of a language because they are best learned through the memorizing of their visual appearance. some words are learned because the students are able to put two or more smaller words together to make the new word. this practice calls attention to the structures of words. developing vocabularies is also built through the use of meaning clues which may be applied to unknown words and which may help pupils discover a word in a specific context. pictures may give students clues to the discovery of schema theory in reading class ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |21 new words. one of the most useful techniques for recognizing words is the application of phonics skills. in theory, phonics skills help students sound out and pronounce words which are known to them in speech, but unknown or unfamiliar in print. each learner should be encouraged to build his/her reading vocabulary by applying the techniques, which work best for him./her comprehension or understand ing in every reading activity is an important part of each skill learning. however, additional comprehension skills must be added to the abilities to organize and to gain meaning from words or group of words if the reader is to grasp fully the significance of what a paragraph consisting of many sentences and select the one main idea to which all the sentences refer. after the reader is able to comprehend the most important thought is that he/she needs to be able to identify the details which support the main idea. he/she must also recognize the details of persons, places, events, and time of what he reads. he/she enriches his reading by becoming aware of the general feeling, mood, or emotional tone of stories. he/she must learn to appreciate motives and traits of people, to see the relationships between circumstances and actions, and gain greater insight into people and events. he/she must think about what he reads in order to interpret meaning as well as to get the factual information. in reading activity, it is not always necessary to read every word of a passage. too much time spent on individual words or corpuses can destroy ones’ understanding of a passage. the purpose for reading sometimes determines how closely we should read. according to grellet (1990), the reading techniques includes, skimming, scanning, intensive and extensive reading. skimming is a specific reading technique which is necessary for quick and efficient reading. once we know what our purpose is, skimming is a valuable fahriany 22| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 procedure. skimming through a passage involves reading very fast in order to recognize main ideas and supporting details. although skimming should never replace careful reading, it can save time in deciding what or what not to read, in getting the general content of a passage, and in finding the authors’ main point without having to deal with details. skimming is therefore a more through activity which requires an overall view of the text and implies a definite reading competence. some strategies to skim include: (1) making sure that you know what information you are looking for. ask yourself a question and look for a key word; (2) moving your eyes quickly from line to line and from sentence to sentence; (3) when you think you have found what you are looking for, stop; (4) read slowly the part of the line or sentence that tells you what you want to know; (5) think about the question you were trying to answer; (6) does the information you find answer the question? if not quickly read the passage again to look for the information you need and (7) read the answer to the question you have asked (wise, 1984). skimming which is aimed to find a specific piece of information such as a number or the answer of a question is called scanning. when scanning, we only try to locate specific information and often we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so. we simply let our eyes wonder over the text until we find what we are looking for, whether it is a name, a data, or less specific piece of information. scanning only means retrieving what information is relevant to our purpose. in reading shorter texts to extract specific information, the technique of intensive reading is needed. intensive reading usually involves approaching a certain text under the guidance of the teacher, or under the guidance of a task which forces the student to pay great attention to the text. the aim of this reading technique is to schema theory in reading class ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |23 arrive at a profound and detailed understanding of the text not only of what it means, but also of how the meaning is produced. according to nutall (1985), intensive reading should be done in the classroom. the text should be placed in front of the students and teacher assigns tasks that will help the students to understand the text, and then stand out of the way while the students get to grip with the text. extensive reading is reading longer texts, usually for ones’ own pleasure. this is a fluency activity, mainly involving global understanding. extensive reading is needed to activate reading out of class. nuttall (1985) also stated that extensive reading is an out of school work. class time is always in short supply and the amount of reading needed to achieve fluency and efficiency is very great, much greater than most students will undertake it left to them. in addition, nuttall (1985) considered that the materials for extensive reading should be appealing, easy, short and varied. extensive reading can be provided to students who have not acquired the reading habit and often daunted by books. moreover, as there is no absolute divide between intensive and extensive reading, the same text can usefully be employed for training in both, key passage from it being used for intensive study and in turn illuminating the book as a whole. in line with the perspective on the teaching, in this case, the teaching of english reading as mastering sets of skills or as involving students in a holistic process, it can be traced to the theories (models) of reading discussed above. the view of learning to read by mastering and integrating a series of word recognition and comprehension sub skills is based on the bottom up belief. on the other hand, the view of teaching reading as creating opportunities for the students to be involved in whole language is based on the top-down and strong interactive beliefs that students fahriany 24| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 learn to read through meaningful activities. dealing with the beliefs about reading and the theory of reading, the trend of teaching language, especially of teaching english in our country is compatible with topdown and interactive models of reading. this condition brings about the great impact on the application of the approach in the classroom, the so-called commun icative approach. this approach stresses the involvement of students in the teaching and learning activities. to activate the students, teacher must create suitable circumstances and apply strategies that can contribute the students to actively get involved in the activities. thus, the use of suitable approach and strategies will facilitate students in learning to read in the classroom. the heart of the instructional programs is the quality of the teaching. this implies that the success of instructional programs may much depend on the teachers’ ability to master and use suitable approach and strategies in implementing the teaching and learning activities in the classroom. rumelhart, mc neil, nuttal, and vacca (1987) indicates the strategies are the key to the teaching of reading; they are the hour-by-hour, day-by-day evidence of what is really happening in the classroom. this statement implies that strategies play a very important role in the teaching and learning process. the effective teachers should master a variety of strategies and techniques that they will adapt to fit the needs of their students. strategies and techniques are essential for every reading teacher especially of english reading. the mastery of strategies and techniques on the part of the teacher will make them easier conduct their instruction that in turn it will facilitate the students in learning to read. the teachers’ knowledge of strategies and techniques may reflect their beliefs about the teaching of reading. the teachers’ beliefs will influence their schema theory in reading class ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |25 strategies and activities in the classroom. it is in line with rumelhart, et al. (1987) who indicate that “beliefs about the teaching of reading are reflected in teachers’ strategies and actions in the classroom” (p.19). if teachers advocate students to talk as an important aspect of comprehensi on, because it brings the students’ background into what they are reading, his teaching activities will then reflect the top-down or interactive theory of reading. in the teaching of reading, especially of english reading, teachers can apply the bottom-up strategies as the basis of teaching strategies to beginning learners. in the case, teachers can begin by showing and introducing students the names and shapes of the letter of the alphabets. then, the students are introduced the combination of the letters in syllables and continued to words, phrases, and sentences. in teaching reading as such, the students are taught the sub-kills of reading in stages. the teaching of reading by these strategies is started “from the simple to the complex”. in the other words, the teaching of reading by applying bottom-up strategies triggers from identifying and decoding features of letters to comprehending the whole text. furthermore, the top-down strategies can also be applied as the basis of strategies to the teaching of reading. in using these strategies, teachers start by telling the students the story and asking them to memorize the whole story and later learn to deal with individual words. sub-skills are not taught because they are considered to fragmenting the process and making learning to read more abstract and difficult (goodman, 1992, p.13). the use of the topdown strategies as the underlying strategy for teaching reading appears in the teaching which applying pre-reading activities, during/whilst reading activities, and post-reading activities. in the case, teachers start by activating the students’ schemata and moving to see the words to check and confirm fahriany 26| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 their prediction and hypothesis made before. in the teaching of reading nowadays, especially of english reading, it is much more influenced by interactive strategies. in teaching reading, teachers teach skills directly, especially in the beginning, but they do not over do it. in the teaching-learning activities, teachers provide plenty of opportunities for the students to experience the holistic nature of reading activities by having them read whole books. giving more chances to the learners in reading activities is based on the principle of teaching reading that indicates reading should be thought in a way that allows each learner to the experience success. in other words, the success of teaching reading the learners must be given more opportunities to participate in reading activities. conclusion in conclusion, the success of instructional programs depends on the teaching-learning process in the classroom. in teaching of reading the teachers’ beliefs about reading are very essential. the mastery of strategies and techniques will facilitate teachers to implement their programs. in executing the teaching in the classroom, teachers can apply bottom-up, top-down and interactive strategies in order that the students can understand the text read. references beer, t. 1997. schematheoretic models of reading: humanizing the machine, reading research quarterly, 22 (3): 36-37. bolinger, dwigth. 1992. aspect of language. englewood cliffs: prentice hall. coady, james dan barkman, b. 1999. reading in a second languages. rowlet: newsbury house. goodman, k.s. 1967. reading: a psycholinguistic guessing gam es, journal of the reading specialist. grellet, f. 1990. developing reading skills: a practical guide to reading comprehension exerc schema theory in reading class ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |27 ise. cambridge: cambridge university press. harris, a.j., and sipay. 1984. e.r. how to increase reading ability, new york: longman. mcneil, john d. 1992. reading comprehension (3rd ed). new york: harpen collins publishers 3rd edition. nuttall, christine. 1985. teaching reading skill a foreign language. london: heinema nn educational books limited. rummelhart, d.e. 1980. schemata: the building block of cognition. spiro. in. r. j., bruce, b.c. and bsewer, b.f.(eds). technical issues in reading comprehension, persp ective from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificials intelegence, and education. hillsdale, new jersey : lowrence erlbaum associates publisher. thonis, e.w. 1990. teaching reading to non-english speakers. london: macmillan. rumelhart, d.e., mc neil, john d., nuttal, c., vacca, jo anne l. et al. 1987. reading and learning to read, illinois: scolt. foresman and company. wise, j.h. 1984. meaning in reading. new york : harcout brace and co. fahriany 28| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 119-126 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee a multimodal discourse analysis of the interpersonal meaning of a television advertisement in indonesia didin nuruddin hidayat, abrizal, alek received: 28th august 2018; revised: 17th september 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract this article attempts to investigate and explore the interpersonal meaning of you c1000 on indonesian television advertisements. this study was conducted qualitatively using case study to check how different semiotic and modes such as music, sound, speech, color, action, and image work together to build the interpersonal meaning. this study discusses the interpersonal meaning in speech and music, interpersonal meaning in movement and interpersonal meaning in image and color. the study aimed to give some contributions to social semiotics studies, television, or video advertisement. you c1000 advertisement is successful to attract audiences‟ attention. the election of miss universe advertisement star, bali as the shooting location, english as the language function and wedding ceremony as the activity are the significant factors to introduce the product to the market. in addition, its tagline is a successor factor as well. if people hear healthy inside and fresh outside, they will remember you c1000. keywords: multimodal discourse analysis; interpersonal meaning; social semiotic abstrak artikel ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi and menyelidiki makna interpersonal dari produk ‘you c1000’ pada iklan televisi indonesia. penelitian ini dilakukan secara kualitatif dengan menggunakan pendekatan studi kasus untuk mengetahui bagaimana semiotik dan moda yang berbeda seperti musik, suara, ucapan, warna, tindakan, dan gambar, dapat berjalan bersama-sama dalam membentuk makna interpersonal. penelitian ini mengulas makna interpersonal dalam ucapan dan musik, makna interpersonal dalam gerakan, dan makna interpersonal dalam gambar dan warna. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan kontribusi pada studi semiotika sosial, televisi, atau iklan video. iklan you c1000 berhasil menarik perhatian penonton. pemilihan bintang iklan miss universe, bali sebagai lokasi syuting, bahasa inggris sebagai fungsi bahasa dan upacara pernikahan sebagai aktivitasnya adalah faktor-faktor yang signifikan untuk memperkenalkan produk tersebut ke pasar. selain itu, ‘tagline’-nya juga merupakan faktor penting lainnya. jika orang-orang mendengar ‘healthy inside and fresh outside’, mereka akan mengingat you c1000. kata kunci: analisis wacana multimodal; makna interpersonal; semiotik sosial how to cite: hidayat, d. n.., abrizal., alek. (2018). a multimodal discourse analysis of the interpersonal meaning of a television advertisement in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 119-126. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 120-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction if people discuss about discourse, generally they will focus on words. words are identified as the representation of a discourse. however, actually there are many aspects talking about discourse. discourse can be discussed through games, movies, political speeches, news elements, fashions, musics, and all ways that interact with human being. semiotic resources and modes are communicated in discourse also. all these aspects can be studied or analysed using multi modal. in recent era, multimodality also applies in images, children books, match, television advertisement and so forth (gao, 2018; kress & van leeuwen, 1996; o‟ halloran, tan, & marissa, 2013). every aspect definitely provides the interpersonal meaning because they are created based on one purpose or goal. people mostly experience them fun, simply because it can be a style used in every aspect of life. however, every human being experiences them differently because the level of communication activities are formed by their ideologies and power relation. it means that combination of words and other modalities, such as video, picture, film, and sound construct a lot of reading texts, for example, the ways in which people reacted to event of 11 september for instance were very much affected by the image they saw on television as they were verbal reports of the events. therefore, multimodal discourse has a significant role in analyzing and creating the meaning of various modes. the multimodal use in discourse is as much a feature of print genres as it is of television genre. from social media semiotic, li (2016) explains that interpersonal meaning is defined as the subtitution of language clause which it is one of meta function of language. there are three the parts of language clause interacting to each other; those are speaker, audience, and writer. speaker and writer can be reperesented by advertisers and audiences may be represented by the consumers. the medium of interaction between speaker and audience is interpersonal meaning. the audience gain the meaning from a product or another semiotic resources. all attributes provide the interpersonal meaning for the audience. kress and leeuwen (1996, cited in yang, 2016) investigate more details to reveal the concept of interpersonal meaning based on multimodal prespective. it includes movement, image, sound, speech and music. this investigation result is claimed as the foundation of interpersonal meaning. interpersonal meaning is substituted and delivered by some meaning resources. it can be image duration and prespective, rhythm and action because there is a specific aspect in interpersonal meaning. in previous research about multimodal narratives in sia‟s ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 121-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license singapore girl tv advertisement (wang, 2016), it was found that how gendered representations of the singapore girl are manipulated in sia‟s advertisements. it also revealed how these gendered representations adopted by sia are joined with contemporary branding philosophies, which also work to cloak them in relation to the use of increasingly well-rounded narrative structure. in addition, another previous research entitled “a multimodal discourse analysis of glocalization and cultural identity in three indian tv commercials” (dash, patnaik, & suar, 2016) found that the commercials construct the global identity in several ways. in the knorr soups commercial, the melody of the title song is contemporary pop, whereas the delivery style and crooning are distinctively western. the language is predominantly hindi with depth use of selected english words. given the examples on how particular advertisements deliver hidden agenda and messages, the authors were of interest at you c100 advertisement which is delivered by 2017 miss universe as new discussion using multimodal analysis. in this case, the analysis explored the interpersonal meaning of the advertising which is published in indonesian television programs. the analysis was focused on revealing the way it interacts with the audience. there are some semiotic of language aspect in this research; those are, action, image, sound, colour, and music. these aspects work at once to build and increase the interpersonal meaning of the advertisement. image represents the color. it can be found in bottle or another medium. movement can be found in the advertisement process. generally, the movement is represented and conveyed by human being. the human being as the actor or actress should be selected well because moslty audiences focus and concentrate into movement. sound or music provide a vital influence in an advertisement to convey interpersonal meaning. dash, patnaik, and suar (2016) also describe that semiotic resources of this research refer to the image and colour. there are two aspects cxplored in image and colour: distance and perspective. the fundamental colour is categorized color semiotic resources which can be combined into one meaning. the orange colour in you c1000 bottle as dominant one shows some meanings. firstly, it can be as the representation of fruit or freshness. hence, the audiences are attracted to the bright colour. it means that colour can be one of the tools to communicate with the audiences because it could attract them. the advertiser should determine based on the purpose of advertisement. it must be synchronized to give good contribution. another key point that should be considered by advertiser is audiences view. indonesian people are known as a low readers so that mostly they focus to another view in a product. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 122-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in this case, the first indonesian audiences‟ view is image. they consider that image is able to represent the meaning of the product. rossolatos (2014) explains about kinestic meaning as the tool to build an interaction between the actors and the audiences. the kinestic expresses the message from the adverstisment. every movement in the advestisement should be managed carefully because it is very fundamental. morever, the audiences have different views and intrepretations for each movements. there are other considerations to create a movement, such as place, actor and actress. to get the interpersonal meaning of a movement, it should be matched with the goal of the product. if it talks about clothes, the movement should be related to clothes‟ movement or action. if it wants to present about drink, so the action or movement should refer to drink. the movement should not focus to one actor or actress. it needs another figure to represent the interpersonal meaning. however, the advertiser can use the actor or actress as the main focus. in relation with above explanations, helland (2018) agrees on the concept of interpersonal meaning in speech and sound. sound and speech have same and general signs. they represent the message of the advertisement. if speech, image and colour are combined, it would create an interesting meaning. these three parts support each other. the audience can see clear and right meaning. it will determine if the advertisement reaches success or not. there are some considerations in speech section in order to represent good interpersonal meaning, such as the actor or actress, intonation, dialect, and the interaction between one to another. helland (2018) also suggests a clearer information about the basic aim of advertisement. he explains that advertisement is aimed to engage the audience in order to attract the audience with the product. therefore, the development of advertisement should be perfomed carefully and thoroughly that frame the advertisement and several forms of positioning (mcvee & carse, 2016). the advertisers should consider some aspects, such as the culture, the situation, the interaction, and the population. the authors provide some questions to answer the interpersonal meaning of an advertisement. in this case, you c1000 is the advertising product. the questions are as follow: 1) how is the interpersonal meaning of speech and music conveyed and interacted in television advertising?; 2) how is the interpersonal meaning of movement conveyed and interacted in television advertising?; 3) how is the interpersonal meaning of image conveyed and interacted in television advertising? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 123-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method this study draws on those representative research on interpersonal meaning using multimodal analysis, more specifically of product related to movement, music, speech, and image. it is aimed to reveal how the interpersonal meaning is made in you c1000 video. the authors employed analytical qualitative procedures to obtain clearer findings. you c1000 is selected as the case study in this research. there are some considerations why it is important to be investigated. firstly, you c1000 is one of the most famous drinking brands in indonesia. the tagline “health inside, fresh outside” is admitted as the most popular lexis drink in indonesia. second, a multimodal analysis research study is relatively scarce in the indonesian context; thus, it is worth to investigate this context to enrich the pool of discussion regarding the multimodal analysis. findings and discussion interpersonal meaning in the speech and music it is important to understand the aim of speech in advertisement to know the information and goal of the advertisement. to get clearer information of the speech in you c1000, it can be checked through this speech text: "in indonesia, communities come together to help out the wedding celebration. as preparation of a special event can be physically and mentally exhausted for the happy couple, it is important for them to stay healthy. for the bride, her beauty starts from health. you c1000 keeps you stay healthy”. then, the soundtrack of music starts from medium tempo ,and it is accompanied by miss universe aiming to attract the attention of the audience. from the script above, it could be interpreted that the advertisement dominantly focuses on how staying healthy may lead to happiness and beauty. happiness is represented through the wedding celebration, while beauty is represented by the appearance of miss universe. the transition from wedding celebration to miss universe part clearly describes that drinking you c1000 can help the audience to stay healthy. besides, the music as the background for the advertisement also helps the audience visualize the happiness as the music engages audiences through its tempo (li, 2016). while the voice is only delivered by iris, the music could help audience to visualise happiness of the married couples and their surroundings. interpersonal meaning in movement the interpersonal meaning of the action comprises engagement, modality and affect. movement is a meaning-making semiotic resource by means of which participants in interactions relate to one another ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 124-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (baldry & thibault, 2006). engagement is interpersonal meaning by interaction of body and angle. modality is related to willingness and unwillingness, while affect is related to display of emotion. it can be seen from the gesture and facial expression of iris as miss universe in you c1000 shooting. during the video shooting, iris clearly keeps her smile all the time as to express happiness involving in an indonesian wedding celebration. besides, the movement expressed by the married couple also invites the audience into a happy situation while representing that staying healthy could lead them to happiness. moreover, the way iris stands together with the bride can also describe that the focus of the advertisement is more likely for the brides as to represent the word “beauty”. lastly, as to the closing of the advertisement, the transition from iris standing with the brides to the image of the product also describes smooth movement that healthy and happiness comes from drinking you c1000. interpersonal meaning in image there is a collaboration of color and image in interpersonal meaning of image. firsty, let us focus on the image of location. as for the setting, bali is chosen as the location for the shooting and depicts the image of a well-known tourism spot in the world. it should be clear that the choice of the shooting location could target global audience while it could also perform to introduce the local wedding tradition in bali and to invite visitors to come to bali. in this part, the advertisement may not only engage global target market, but also promote bali as a tourist destination. furthermore, the image of bottle represents two basic colours: orange and white in you c1000 bottles. the colour represents the taste and function and can spark, among others, excitement (kress & van leeuwen, 2002). orange colour represents the orange fruit as the basic taste. this way expresses the interpersonal meaning in which orange comprises of vitamin c. therefore, it can attract the audience to consume it. conclusion and suggestion this research is conducted to explore the interpersonal meaning of you c1000 advertisement. the authors investigated three semiotic resources in this research: speech, movement, and image. all of resources support and interact to each other and create a perfect meaning because each aspect could attract audiences‟ attention. in this research, you c1000 is selected as the case study. there are some reasons showing that you c1000 advertisement is successful to attract the audience. firstly, it is influenced by the speech of miss universe. next, the color of the bottle has a vital role to describe the taste. finally, the tagline “healthy inside and fresh inside” also affects the audiences‟ willingness to buy the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 125-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license product which is often claimed as one of the favorite beverages in indonesia. the audiences accept well interpersonal through image, color, music or sound and speech. based on the above explanation, it can be concluded that the interpersonal meaning of you c1000 is effective in influencing the audience to choose the product. the authors propose to continue further related research studies due to some limitations in this research. these limitations are expected to provide a research gap for other researchers interested in investigating more about this topic. hence, more information can be excavated. references baldry, a., & thibault, p. (2006). multimodal transcription and text analysis: a multimedia toolkit and coursebook. london: equinox. dash, a. k., patnaik, p., & suar, d. (2016). a multimodal discourse analysis of glocalization and cultural identity in three indian tv commercials. discourse & communication, 10(3), 209-234. gao, h. (2018). cross-cultural management strategies of mcdonald‟s in france-based on a multimodal discourse analysis of three print advertisements. international journal of advances in social sciences and humanities, 6(3), 1-10. helland, k. i. (2018). mona aka sad girl: a multilingual multimodal critical discourse analysis of music videos of a japanese chicana rap artist. discourse, context & media, 23, 25-40. kress, g., & van leeuwen, t. (2002). color as a semiotic mode: notes for a grammar of color. visual communication, 1(3), 343–368. kress, g., & van leeuwen, t. (1996) reading images: the grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). london: routledge. li, d. (2016). multimodal discourse analysis of the interpersonal meaning of tv advertisements. international journal of social science and humanity, 6(12), 934. mcvee, m. b., & carse, c. (2016). a multimodal analysis of storyline in „the chinese professor‟political advertisement: narrative construction and positioning in economic hard times. visual communication, 15(4), 403-427. o‟ halloran, k. l., tan, s., & marissa, k. l. e. (2013). „above all‟: the myth of „dreams‟ as advertising tool. the multimodal analysis of television commercials, 329-330. rossolatos, g. (2014). conducting multimodal rhetorical analysis of tv ads with atlas. multimodal communication, 3(1), 51-84. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 126-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license wang, j. (2016). multimodal narratives in sia's “singapore girl” tv advertisements–from branding with femininity to branding with provenance and authenticity?. social semiotics, 26(2), 208-225. yang, y. (2016). a social semiotic approach to multimodal discourse of the badge of xián jiaotong university. theory and practice in language studies, 6(8), 1596-1601. developing assessment for speaking developing assessment for speaking yenny rahmawati & ertin syarif hidayatullah state islamic university of jakarta yenny_uin@yahoo.com abstract recently there have been debates on assessing students’ performances on speaking since the cultural and subjective issues embedded in bringing awareness on how teachers construct their speaking assessment. the main focus of this paper is a way to design assessment for speaking suitable for the indonesian context at a university level. this paper stresses the criteria of effective assessment proposed by brown and abeywicrama which consists of a specific criterion, an appropriate task, a maximum output and practical and a reliable scoring procedure. it is recommended that teachers develop their speaking assessment which is appropriate and contextual. key words: assessment, effective assessment, speaking abstrak terdapat banyak perdebatan dalam hal menguji kemampuan speaking siswa, yang disebabkan adanya isu budaya dan subjektifitas dalam menyusun tes kemampuan speaking. fokus utama dari paper ini adalah mengembangkan sebuah cara untuk mendesain tes speaking yang sesuai dengan konteks indonesia untuk level universitas yang mengacu pada teori tentang kriteria penilaian yang dikembangkan oleh brown dan abeywicrama, yaitu: a specific criterion, an appropriate task, a maximum output and practical dan a reliable scoring procedure. paper ini juga merekomendasikan agar para pengajar mampu menyusun tes speaking mereka secara tepat dan kontekstual. kata kunci: penilaian, penilaian yang efektif , berbicara yenny rahmawati & ertin 200| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction the development of english as a global language has strengthened its position as a lingua franca. as a consequence, most countries in the world, especially non-english speaking countries, consider english as an important language to be learnt. this condition impacts on the educational system in many countries; some have english as a medium of instruction, while others have english as a compulsory subject at school. english occupies important position in indonesia educational system. as a foreign language, english is learnt and tested at indonesian schools. english teaching in indonesia aims primarily to serve the “instrumental function” (nababan, 1991, p.123), that is, to serve as future orientations to obtain jobs, to gain knowledge in the fields of science and technology, and most importantly, to build an open-minded attitude toward cultural differences. instead of assessing four basic skills, only writing skills are assessed in the public sector of educational institutions including universities in indonesia. the assessment of writing skills alone gives high grades and students work hard for mastery in writing excellent pieces. english speaking skills have rarely been assessed. as assessment becomes very powerful, therefore careful considerations should be taken into account to build a fair and a valid assessment. assessment is often considered as an important instructional step (bachman, 1990). the way learners are taught and activities carried out in the classroom are greatly influenced by assessment. further, fulcher (2003) said that the success of a learning program is commonly determined by the result of assessment. there are many challenges in the assessment of oral skills in a second– language including defining language proficiency, avoiding cultural biases, and attaining validity (sánchez, 2006). assessment of speaking skills often lags far behind the importance given to teaching those skills in the curriculum (knight, 1992). several factors also contribute to the low quality of speaking assessment, as some studies show that teachers are lacking of knowledge on how to assess their students due to the poor training conducted in indonesia. the teachers are either reluctant to test oral ability or lack of confidence in the validity of their assessments (knight, 1992). if the teachers are lack of knowledge on how to assess their students speaking performance, their competences in teaching are also far from effective. therefore, they need to know criteria to developing assessment for speaking ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 201 assess speaking performance. this paper suggests a speaking assessment for the university level on the basis of the criteria of effective assessment proposed by brown and abeywicrama, which include a specific criterion, an appropriate task, a maximum output and practical and a reliable scoring procedure. speaking types before assessing speaking, we need to acknowledge five basic types of speaking. brown and abeywickrama (2010, p. 184-185) propose five types of speaking as explained in the followinf. 1. imitative this type of speaking requires the test takers to copy a word, phrase, or a sentence. pronunciation is the main aspect of the assessment although grammar also takes part as the scoring criteria. what needs to be highlighted in imitative speaking is that the communicative competence of the language is not essential. they need to acquire some information, and then reproduce it orally without having to add extra explanation. what comes out from them is solely the information they hear. 2. intensive unlike imitative, intensive speaking does not emphasize on pronunciation or phonological aspect. understanding meaning is needed to respond certain tasks but the interaction with the counterpart is minimal. the activity sample is reading aloud, sentence and dialogue completion. 3. responsive authenticity in a conversation is important. therefore, the speaker is stimulated to speak promptly. to response a short conversation, making a simple request comment is a kind of activity that belongs to this type of speaking. 4. interactive the load and complexity of the sentences is the major different between responsive and interactive speaking. the number of the speakers also matter as sometimes it needs more than two people in the conversation. 5. extensive extensive speaking involves a wide range of speech production. also, the speaker will need to interact with the counter speakers, which could be answering question, making discussion. it can be said that extensive speaking is the ultimate speaking skill that requires strong language components. yenny rahmawati & ertin 202| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 assessment of speaking assessment on speaking can be a very judgmental issue, in which people tend to relate on native/nonnative speakers on the basis of pronunciation (luoma, 2004). additionally, nunan (1999) viewed that speaking requires someone to be linguistically competence in term of well articulating the sound, having sufficient vocabulary, and mastering structural or grammatical components. to speak also needs functional competence which means answering questions completely and logically. another competence is strategic competence in which the speaker is able to use repairing strategies when conversation breaks down. and the last one is sociolinguistic/cultural competence. it demands the speakers to use the language appropriately to the context. this theory then developed as the criteria of speaking test assessment. however, the design of speaking assessment may vary; depend on the types of speaking assessed. then, what should to be tested? (nunan, 1999). grammar test takers are assessed on how to control its usage within sentences, to construct, to use it appropriately and accurately and to avoid grammatical errors in speaking. vocabulary the range, precision, and the usage of vocabulary features in a conversation used by test takers indicate the level of how proficient they are. comprehension understanding the context of the conversation and able to give appropriate response according to the question. fluency the language fluency indicates that the production of speech in a conversation is well delivered. have confidence in delivering the speech and able to responds specific theme without many hesitation in choosing words. pronunciation pronunciation deals with how often errors in pronunciation occur and how the pronunciation aspect interfere the communication are the criteria of the assessment. task task deals with finishing the command given during the speaking test. like all test scores, speaking scores must be dependable, fair, and above all useful for the intended purposes (luoma, 2004). to ensure developing assessment for speaking ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 203 speaking skill assessment is trustworthy, there are factors that should come into consideration (hughes, 2003; luoma, 2004; nunan, 1999): 1. practicality the first principle of making language assessment is practicality. before deciding a test, we need to analyze how practical the test is to be used considering the time constraint of running and interpreting the scoring of the test, budget limitation, and facilities. 2. validity consistently accurate measurement must be provided to assign a valid test. it has to measure what should be measured by excluding all irrelevant variables to be tested. when speaking skill is tested, making essay is not a valid test as it fails to provide information of the test takers speech production. in result, it may not bring about the real test takers’ ability. in accordance to types of speaking, test designer should decide what kind of speaking types would be tested as it will influence the design of assessment. using interview test for imitative speaking may lead to invalidity of assessment. 3. reliability the need of consistent scoring measurement is very important to make a test reliable. in addition, clear rubric and scoring criteria is also a must. sometimes a reliable test may not be a valid test. however, a test designer should struggle to keep a reliable test as valid as possible. as a need of reliable scoring system is unavoidable in speaking test, before conducting speaking test, test takers must prepare a standard scoring system. the items on it should represent all aspects of what are to be assessed from the students. the weight of the score must be printed clearly on the form as well to make sure each student’s ability is well presented. during the test, the standard scoring system will be used to record students’ work. without a good scoring system, it is hardly possible to have a reliable result of the test. 4. authenticity it refers to a contextual language or language in use. students are asked to represent something related to their values. in that case, the language produced is authentic. one goal of language testing is its backwash effect. it tells both teacher and learners of the effect of the learning and teaching (hughes, 2003, p.53). as it is important, therefore, this issue should also be explored in designing a test. yenny rahmawati & ertin 204| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 developing assessment for speaking this section describes a proposed test made by the writers. it explores the usage of assessment, the assessment instruction, scoring assessment, and oral presentation criteria. the usage of assessment the assessment is designed to assess students’ extensive speaking skill. the result of the test will decide whether test takers pass or fail the subject (speaking subject). assessment instruction in this task, the instruction given is as follow: a) students are required to perform 10 minutes oral presentation which consists of 8 minutes of presentation and 2 minutes of discussion time. topic for presentation is free. students can pick any themes that interest them. during discussion time, presenter has to lead the discussion to make sure it is not out of topic. b) presentation is delivered by using power point or overhead projector. the media is provided but students need to prepare the materials. scoring criteria sheet is given to acknowledge students about the skills going to be assessed. c) due to a large number of students, the test will be held in two times meetings. students may choose to deliver their presentation on the first or second meeting. the turn is not based on alphabetical order but student’s willingness. scoring assessment brown and abeywickrama (2010) contend that to provide effective assessment, there are four rules that need to establish: specify criterion, give appropriate tasks, present maximum output, and set practical and reliable scoring procedures. for this assessment, the table on oral presentation criteria below is going to be used to evaluate students’ performance. each criterion is designed to ease teacher to score students’ presentation. it is also practical as teacher only needs to put ticks on the appropriate score presented in. the criteria used to evaluate students’ performance are based on those developed by brown (2007). he suggests there are at least are six criteria to assess speaking skill: pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, discourse feature, and task accomplishment. in addition, presentation skill checklist will be added to oral presentation assessment criteria. however, the point is not more than twenty percent of overall score to developing assessment for speaking ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 205 maintain the validity of assessment which focuses on speaking skill (table. 1). each rating criteria is worth some points. the table below shows the numbers. table 2. rating points initial criteria score e excellent 5 points vg very good 4 points g good 3 points s satisfactorily 2 points p poor 1 point table 1. oral presentation assessment criteria by brown & abeywickrama (2010) criteria e vg g s p comment speaking skills fluency and coherence  speaks fluently with only rare repetition or self-correction;  speaks coherently and develops topics fully and appropriately lexical resource and range  express with some flexibility and appropriateness, giving effective descriptions and expressing viewpoints on a variety of topics. grammatical range and accuracy  complex sentence use and minor grammatical occurrence. pronunciation  pronounce words correctly, articulate clearly, intonate appropriately interaction (listen and respond)  good contribution to other  active in conversation development task accomplishment presentation skills  presentation was organized, information was logical and presented in well sequencing.  the assignment was completed according to instruction provided.  presentation done within time allocation total comments:________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________ yenny rahmawati & ertin 206| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 assessement discussion to what extent is your assessment practical? brown and abeywickrama (2010) state that practical tests are not expensive, within time constrains limitation, easy to conduct, and procedure of scoring is specific and efficient in time. based on the factors above, it is unquestionable that the assessment designed for speaking fulfills brown and abeywickrama’s requirements. firstly, it does not need a lot of money to run the oral presentation. students are given freedom to choose their own topics. thus, the workload and the cost are up to students’ ability. test takers can choose the right media to deliver their presentation. extra proctor will not be needed as the teacher alone can handle the assessment. secondly, each student is assigned to have 10 minutes presentation and 2 minutes discussion time inclusive. with 35 students in class, the time needed to finish the test is 350 minutes or 4 hours and 10 minutes. thus, the test will be conducted in two meetings but still within the allotted time. thirdly, to conduct the test, it does not need complicated technique or media. the last reason, direct assessment scoring is used in the test. teacher does not have to listen to students’ recording which is very time-consuming as grade is given on the spot. moreover, criteria of scoring are clearly provided. to what extent is your assessment reliable? four components to assure test reliability are student-related reliability, rater ability, test administration reliability and test reliability (brown and abeywickrama). the assessment is done within two time meetings and test takers’ presentation turn is not based on alphabetical order name. two-meeting assessment also benefits test takers. if they miss the first meeting due to sickness, the test takers still have another opportunity to be tested. the turn arrangement should also increase student-related reliability. at this point, test takers are given opportunity to choose the right timing to undergo their assessment which helps them overcoming anxiousness. in conclusion, factors that might influence studentrelated reliability are anticipated to minimize the risk of unreliable test due to the rater factor in oral presentation test, clear and precise criteria of scoring are provided. rater is avoided from complicated technique scoring during the test which can lead developing assessment for speaking ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 207 to inconsistency and confusion marking. teacher or rater is only required to tick appropriate rating points. test administration reliability comes from the milieu where test is administered. to make sure test administration reliability does not contribute to unreliable factor, before the test teacher/rater should ensure all media (computer, overhead projector) are ready to use. classroom where test is held should also be prepared such as the seat arrangement. in addition, choosing classroom with minimum level of noise should be considered. test unreliability can be avoided by giving clear direction and instruction beforehand. time needed to accomplish the test also triggers test unreliability. however, since students are only assigned 10 minutes presentation, time will not be a problem. in addition, information regarding to the test has been notified long before the due, thus they have plenty of time to prepare. these two considerations should eliminate greater risk of the test being unreliable. to what extent is your assessment valid? validity means the assessment should measure the language skill being assessed. to test speaking, test takers should be given speaking test, not writing test. brown and abeywickrama (2010) divide validity into five types; content-related evidence, criterion-related evidence, construct-related evidence, consequential validity, and face validity. content-related evidence also refers to content validity whereas test content should measure what needs to be measured. in this case, the test designed is used to test students’ extensive speaking skills, where they need to produce monologue which involves complex extensive task. oral presentation is chosen to measure the skill as form of monologue. in conclusion, the content validity of the test is guaranteed. the scoring criteria of the test is designed based on the criteria developed by brown’s (2007) evaluation performance principles in assessing speaking skills. the consequence of taking this test is that test takers pass or fail the subject. meanwhile, for those who fail the test, they need to re-study the topic. therefore, consequence validity goal is clear. face validity refers to test takers fully understand that a test is established to assess their particular skills. to raise test takers awareness of what skill they are going to be tested, it yenny rahmawati & ertin 208| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 is important that rater/teacher gives clear instruction and direction. in this test, face validity seems to be fulfilled as direction and instruction are given. all information of the test is delivered as clear as possible. moreover, students will receive grading criteria so that they know exactly what language components are marked. to what extent is your assessment authentic? this oral presentation test involves a wide range of authentic factors. first, topics are chosen based on students’ interest. it means that they can take any materials from the real world perusals. in presenting the topics, test takers perform many language skills and components such as speaking, listening, writing, and reading, structure, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. at that point, language skills and language components are combined to the presentation to other people. they learn to use language as a whole, not isolated. oral presentation skill is needed in real-world situation. combining speaking skill with oral presentation definitely facilitates students to practice the skill that they need in the future. during discussion time, test takers and audience face real-life communication where questions and answers occur during the time are not based on scenarios. to say that the test contains very high language authenticity is true as the facts given are supported. will your assessment create positive wash back? how? why one benefit of having detail grading criteria is that students or test takers can really understand their strengths and weaknesses. therefore, they know which language skills or components have been mastered or need improvement. the grading sheet for this test is designed to give clear information of students’ performance so that students receive detail score of skills assessed in the test. in the grading sheet, comment part is provided, therefore rater can write generous and specific feedback as this can give intrinsic interest to the students which enhance positive wash back (brown, 2010). conclusion and suggestion as speaking assessment falls into subjective, careful considerations need to be taken into account when developing speaking assessment. the criteria developed by brown and abeywickrama, i.e. a specific criterion, an appropriate task, a maximum output and practical and a reliable scoring procedure, can be used as guidelines to build assessment for speaking. since developing assessment for speaking ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 209 teachers are the one who execute this type of assessment, they must be familiar with the issues on practicality, validity, reliability, authenticity and wash-back effect. in addition, for there may be many teachers who have limited knowledge on speaking assessment, it is then recommended that the related institutions and government can contribute to provide supports for teachers to develop their professionalism, for example in the form of trainings, workshops or seminars. reference bachman, l. f. (1990). fundamental considerations in language testing. oxford: oxford university press. brown, h. d. (2007). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (3rd ed.). new york: pearson education inc. brown, h. d. & abeywickrama, p. (2010). language assessment: principles and classroom practice (2nd ed.). new york: pearson education inc. fulcher, g. (2003). testing second language speaking. london: longman/pearson education. knight, b. (1992). assessing speaking skills: a workshop for teacher development. elt journal, 46(3), 294–302. luoma, sari. (2004). assessing speaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. nababan, p. w. j. (1991). language in education: the case of indonesia. international review of education, 37(1), 115131. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. usa: heinle. yenny rahmawati & ertin 210| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes: a narrative study of what efl teachers should do salwa (wawa.live@yahoo.co.id) kanjuruhan university of malang, indonesia abstract teaching classes in which there is a uniformity of learners‟ proficiency level is the most ideal environment in language classes since it enables teachers to apply appropriate teaching and learning strategies based on the individual student‟s level. however, in efl settings, most teachers especially in school environments have to teach classes in which the learners have multiple levels of ability, since at schools, there is no placement test on students‟ ability of english as is usually done in private language institutions. this paper provides some useful strategies which can be applied by teachers in teaching classes where true and false beginners are within the same class. applying these strategies is expected to assist weaker students to get benefit from interacting with stronger students without holding back the strong ones. key words : teaching strategies, large, multi-level classes, efl teachers. introduction teaching english in the efl context needs more efforts and persistence since the target language (tl) is not used in the daily conversation. in addition, it is common to find large and mixedability students in the efl contexts, which management is surely not easy. consequently, efl teachers often find both true and false beginners in a classroom. according to brown (2007) true beginners are students who do not have any knowledge of the target language, whereas false beginners are those who have previously studied the target language ( they salwa 96| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 have been familiar with alphabets, simple greetings, etc), but they remember only a little of what they have learned. due to the characteristics of beginners who still have a high dependency on their teachers as a role model , the most suitable approach to be applied in this kind of class is the teacher-centered classroom (brown, 2007). therefore, in this novice stage, teachers play a significant role in helping the lower level students to improve their language skills. since there are two levels of beginners in this kind of class, a good language teacher should apply some special techniques to successfully teach this mixed-ability class as teaching this kind of class needs more preparation and special techniques than teaching in placed or streamed classes .i am going to provide some strategies which can be applied in teaching true and false beginners within a class. task differenciation strategy firstly, teachers can use different tasks for individual students based on their levels. harmer (2007) argues that giving students a different content is the best way to know individual needs. however, teachers should first give clear instruction about the topic that is going to be discussed. for example if teachers plan to teach the tense form “future tense‟, teachers might give the true beginners a more simple task, for example by asking them to find some examples of the usage of the future form used in passages on magazines, whereas a more difficult task could be given to the stronger ones, such as asking them to create their own sentences using future form. in addition by giving different materials, using inappropriate tasks could be avoided, since if the task is too difficult, it may cause the true beginners to feel frustrated and demotivated, whereas if they are too considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |97 easy, they will cause the false beginner ones to feel unchallenged. however, some people have argued that this preparation is time consuming since teachers need to make special preparation (quynh, 2007). in addition, hamdan (2011) states that in indonesia, the ministry of of education has already chosen the text-book based materials, so teachers should use those books as the main teaching aid. nevertheless, nowadays, there is a significant increase in the use of authentic materials since they play beneficial role in increasing students‟ motivation and achievement as well. peacock (1997) argues that authentic materials are more motivating than constructed materials, even for the beginner level students. therefore, in providing the flexible tasks, teachers should use multiple textsreading materials which have different linguistic levels to suit learners‟ ability.. moreover, nowadays, there are various computer programs which offer both simple and complicated activities that both high and low level students can work with. my experience in applying this strategy was that i gave my student a gapfilling task. to students whom i considered as false beginners, i gave them more complicated lexical items, such as filling the noun clause or difficult vocabulary. conversely, for the true beginner ones, i asked them to use simpler vocabulary or structure, for example modals or verbs etc. this technique is beneficial and easy to use not only in terms of administering, but also in giving feedback. the task below is an example of task differenciation activities. a tiered task adapted from bowler and parminter ( 2002, p. 60 – 61 in pavlov, 2011) from a passage on the spirit of london exhibit at madame tussaud‟s wax museum in london. salwa 98| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 top tier task a (for weaker students : fully supported) 1. how much of london‟s history does the spirit of london show? 2. how do you go around it ? 3. what special effects does it have 4. what can you see in the modern-day section? answers a. light, sound, music, smells b. police, punks, and tourists c. more than 400 years d. in a taxi middle tier task b ( for midlevel students : partially supported) 1. how much of london‟s history does the spirit of london show? a. 400 years b. more than 400 years c. 399 years 2. how do you go around it ? a. in a taxi b. in a train c. on foot 3. what special effects does it have? a. lights b. sound and music c. smells 4. what can you see in the modernday section? a. police b. punks c..tourists madame tussaud’s london spirit of london taxi ride hop into one of london's infamous black cabs and take a journey through the capital's history. from the comfort of your taxi, witness the historical and cultural events that have shaped london into one of the greatest cities in the world. first, travel through tudor london, to the sound of pipes and minstrels before moving into a darker age, where london's streets are haunted by the plague! in the distance flames are spreading from the king's bakery, it's the great fire of london! burning mile after mile, the plague dies in the flames. then, hear the masons work around you on the infamous st paul's cathedral, before immersing yourself in the heart of a massive empire. queen victoria sits on her throne, with the wheels of a revolutionary industry turning behind her. another london character comes into view, it's nelson on his column! come faceto-face with this life-size recreation of the famous statue! next, the city is at war and the bombs of the blitz rain down. all is not lost, however, as you roll into the bright lights of the 1960s where mini-skirted figures dance around a zebra crossing against a psychedelic backdrop! finally, move into the 1980s and beyond... the sights, the sounds, the colours, and the joy of the spirit of london! considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |99 bottom tier task c ( for stronger students : unsupported) 1. how much of london‟s history does „the spirit of london” show? 2. how do you go around it? 3. what special effects does it have? 4. what can you see in the modern-day section? this kind of tasks are useful for students at all linguistic levels. the true beginners may give short answers whereas the high level ones may provide more detailed answers as a way to practice their syntactic knowledge. therefore, differentiating tasks is considered as an effective strategy for efl teachers dealing with increasingly diverse classrooms. another technique that could be used in mixed ability classes is to give more open-ended tasks since it is considered to be the best way to encourage all students to participate in class. instead of using multiple-choice tasks which only have a single right answer ( yes/no questions), it is better if teachers allow multiple right answers, so that teachers give opportunity for both true and false beginners to perform at their own level. for an example, teachers ask students to respond to a picture. true beginner learners may give short answer while the stronger ones may give extended answers as they have higher syntactic knowledge. according to prodromou (1995, as cited in pavlov & xanthou, 2001) , open ended tasks promote communicative language teaching because both higher and lower students can participate in using the target language in a more meaningful situation. the benefits of heteroge neous grouping heterogeneous grouping is another strategy which is considered very useful in a mixed ability class because by giving them cooperative tasks in a group will enable both true and false beginners to engage with the task. the teacher may give an issue to be discussed within a group and then salwa 100| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 ask them to make a group presentation. furthermore, it is beneficial since high level students can give guidance or help to the lower level ones. „in this classroom environment, advanced level students act as a bridge to facilitate the learning process and lower level classmates exhibit a willingness to cross that bridge. harmer (2007) also claims that group work can increase students‟ skills in negotiation and cooperation as well. however, some argue that homogeneous grouping is more advantageous since it is easier for teachers to give instructions based on the students‟ ability in the particular group. however, i believe that there are potential drawbacks in applying homogeneous grouping, because students will not improve their ability since they work with the same level students. furthermore, they are being stigmatized and feel stupid. matthew (1997, as cited in pavlov & xanthou, 2011) claims that „ability grouping may decrease the self-esteem and aspirations of low-ability children and therefore hold back their academic progress‟. another prominent strategy that could be applied in teaching true and false beginners within a class is that teachers should prepare contingency plan materials. these could be additional activities/exercises, for example providing a test of vocabulary which have learned that day, or they could be games/ quizzes, etc. preparing contingency plan materials is important since the false beginners might be the early finishers, therefore, although using a contingency plan is not compulsory, it is helpful to fill up the time while waiting for other students to finish their tasks. in addition, copur (2005) states that usually students who finish the tasks earlier will get bored and do inappropriate behaviours, because they get bored while waiting the others finishing the tasks. fortunately, recently, some of considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |101 textbooks have included contingency plans so that teachers can make use of them. active learning as an effective strategy based on those discussions above, efl teachers should apply instructional strategy which promotes active learning instead of direct teaching styles so that they could promote academic development of students having diverse background ability and knowledge. efl reachers may use quizzes, language games, story telling. the finding of a study conducted by pavlou (2002) showed that communicative and active learning such as word games, songs, and task differenciation can increase learners‟ language performance in the mixed ability class situation. a myriads of interesting strategies that could be used is to provide fun materials such as games, songs, quizzes, etc. we cannot deny that all learners regardless of what levels they are at enjoying fun materials. as prodromou (1995, as cited in xanthou, m., & pavlov, p, 2011) states that despite the differences in ability showed by mixed ability learners, they are all similar in enjoying pleasure. in addition, those materials, especially games are considered to be the most powerful tool in increasing learners‟ enthusiasm. uberman (1998), argues that games could facilitate the creation of a relaxing learning atmosphere. another significant strategy which can be applied is that teachers should focus on topics rather than on linguistic skills, because students at beginner level especially the true ones still have simple linguistic skill and do not have a wide range of vocabulary as well. therefore, it is still difficult for them to apply grammatical rules . the teacher might use simple authentic language of daily life such as greetings, asking for help, etc. emphasizing on the function of the language in real life, salwa 102| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 will keep the lower level students motivated in their learning process. therefore, schema activation by asking about students‟ experiences or prior knowledge is considered important. for example, before teaching a topic about holidays, teachers may ask the whole class tell about their experience on their holiday. by doing this, all students will feel that they get attention from their teacher. the big danger that could happen in a mixedability classes is if teachers give too much attention to the higher level students, the lower level ones may feel that they are being ignored, on the other hand, if we spend too much time helping the weaker students, the stronger ones may feel neglected. the last strategy that could be applied is to promote self learner autonomy by providing self access materials. teachers should give learners a choice since the students have different skills, needs, and interests as well. recently, some schools have been equipped with self-access centres, so, students can choose the topic or activities that they are interested in, for example by using video, films cassettes. these activities will increase students‟ motivation to learn , especially in learning a foreign language that needs more effort and persistence. nunan ( 1999, p. 193) believes that „ the effective language learner is the one who can make effective choices in terms of learning tasks and strategies‟. assessments in large multilevel classes in the large multilevel classes, particularly in the efl settings, teachers should apply the most appropriate assessment method which suit the learners‟ characteristics since teaching in such condition of class has more challenges both in the teaching and learning processes and the assessment type. there are some assessment methods which are considered beneficial to be applied in the large multiabilities efl classes. considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |103 furthermore, according to brown (2007) in today‟s classrooms, teachers are more engaged in the creation of their own tests/instruments based on their own classroom contexts. therefore, nowadays, the assessment method does not depend on paper and pencil single answer tests or only formal types of assessment which focuses only on the right answer, but nowadays, alternative assessment are most welcome, such as allowing students to have openended and more creative answers, free-response format, and continuous long-term assessment, such as in the forms of group projects, student portfolios, and open-ended problem solving tasks nunan (1999) states that in the contemporary trend assessment, it is not only apply the standardized test as it is widely used in most traditional type of assessment, in the recent time, students have more opportunities to asses their own learning progress. however, in applying an alternative assessment, efl teachers should consider the authenticity of the test as one of the language teaching principles (brown, 2007) since it encourages the use of language in more contextual meanings, so, the use of test is not only as formal assessment in which exercises are specifically designed to measure students‟ achievement, but teachers should apply the unplanned and incidental responses, such as if teachers compliment the students‟ work by saying „you have done a great job‟, „excellent‟. those feedbacks may increase learners‟ self-confidence and motivation in learning english, therefore the alternative assessment more fosters the intrinsic motivation of the students than in the traditional settings which focuses more on the extrinsic motivation self and peer assessments in the contemporary trend assessment, teachers may allow their students to record their own achievement as it has many benefits such as students may salwa 104| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 identify their own strengths and weaknesses. according to nunan (1999) by recording their own achievements, students develop skills in both self-assessment and self-evaluation. treko (2013) adds that such self-assessment can be put into the students‟ portfolios which is very useful for students continuous assessment because they are as the evidence of students; language achievement which has been reached over time. in addition, by applying this kind of assessment, students may learn how to become better language learner by applying the most appropriate strategy and using the strategy to improve their language skills outside the classroom peer assessment is also considered very useful to be applied in the large multilevel classes since the high level students may help the low level ones and teachers may apply a myriads of modeling activities by advanced learners who will give many benefits in helping the low level ones. a study conducted by xanthou and pavlov (2011) showed that the low level students have considerable advantages from the peer-feedback and modeling activities by the advanced ones. sean (2002, as stated in xanthou and pavlov, 2011) explains that the high achiever students could act as facilitators to bridge the learning process and this is expected to motivate the lower level classmates to exhibit a willingness to cross that bridge‟. in line with this, nunan (1999) points out that by encouring learners to work in groups, it will increase learners‟ intrapersonal skill and improve their language skills as well. conclusion all in all, teaching both true and false beginners within a class is more challenging and exhausting, yet, is rewarding and stimulating as well. this is because it can both increase teachers‟ skills in managing the class and students‟ intrapersonal skills as well. considerable strategies of teaching large multi-level classes ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |105 therefore, despite the challenges that mixed-ability teachers face in teaching mixed ability classes, as long as teachers apply the best strategies in teaching, they can overcome the problems, and the most important thing is that teachers should teach enthusiastically and creatively. references brown, h.d. 2007. teaching by principle: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (3 rd ed.). englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice hall regents. copur s.d,. 2005. coping with the problems of mixed ability classes. the internet tesl journal. 11(8). retrieved from http://itesl.org/techniques/ salli graves, k. 2000. designing language courses.: a guide for teachers. usa: heinle harmer, j. 2007. the practice of english language teaching. england: pearson. musthafa, b. 2001. communicative language teaching in indonesia: issue of theoritical assumptions and challenges in the classroom practice. teflin journal. 12(2). pp 114. nunan. 1999. second language teaching and learning. usa. heinle. nunan, d. 1988. the learnercentered curriculum. uk: cambridge university press. quynh, p.p,. 2007. some strategies for teaching english to multilevel adult esl learners: : a challenging experience in australia. teflin journal. 9(4). retrieved from http://www.asian-efljournal.com/dec_2007_ppqn. php treko, n. 2013. the big challenge. teaching large multilevel classes.. academic journal of interdisciplinary studies 2(4). xanthou, m., & pavlov, p. 2011. strategies of accommodating mixed ability classes in efl setting. retrieved from : http://www.infolizer.com/1 8tm1a79a130a1uk/strategiesof-accomodating-mixedability-classes-in-eflsettings.html. http://itesl.org/techniques/sallihttp://itesl.org/techniques/sallihttp://www.asian-efl-journal.com/dec_2007_ppqn.php http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/dec_2007_ppqn.php http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/dec_2007_ppqn.php http://www.infolizer.com/18tm1a79a130a1uk/strategies-of-accomodating-mixed-ability-classes-in-efl-settings.html http://www.infolizer.com/18tm1a79a130a1uk/strategies-of-accomodating-mixed-ability-classes-in-efl-settings.html http://www.infolizer.com/18tm1a79a130a1uk/strategies-of-accomodating-mixed-ability-classes-in-efl-settings.html http://www.infolizer.com/18tm1a79a130a1uk/strategies-of-accomodating-mixed-ability-classes-in-efl-settings.html http://www.infolizer.com/18tm1a79a130a1uk/strategies-of-accomodating-mixed-ability-classes-in-efl-settings.html salwa 106| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 79-90 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee discourse analysis of grammatical cohesion devices in college students’ academic essays writing yuliani trisnaningrum, alek, didin nuruddin hidayat received: 14th march 2019; revised: 27th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract the study was undertaken to investigate grammatical cohesion devices use in college students‟ academic writing essay as a part of discourse analysis. the study also explored to find out the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications in college students‟ academic writing essay. the researchers conducted this study with attention to know the college students‟ writing quality at tertiary education. further, the researchers employed halliday & hasan (1976) conceptual framework related to grammatical cohesion devices. the study was conducted to 42 college students enrolling on an online writing course. the researchers applied descriptive and analytical study by giving an assignment to assess grammatical cohesion devices use in college students‟ academic writing essay. data were collected from college students‟ academic writing essay. the findings revealed that 1048 grammatical cohesion devices were used in the essays. other findings indicated that the highest use of grammatical cohesion devices were reference with 53.53% and conjunction. the data also pointed out that the college students were more familiar with reference and conjunction use rather than substitution and ellipsis. the result also indicated that the lack of grammatical cohesion devices use in terms of comprehension, knowledge and ability in writing leads the college students use inappropriate grammatical cohesion devices. key words: discourse analysis; grammatical cohesion devices; college student essay abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan menginvestigasi penggunaan perangkat grammatical cohesive device/kohesi tata bahasa pada penulisan akademik esai mahasiswa. penelitian ini juga bermaksud untuk menggali jenis-jenis spesifikasi kohesi tata bahasa pada esai mereka. dalam penelitian ini, para peneliti ingin mengetahui kualitas penulisan esai mahasiswa di perguruan tinggi. untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut, para peneliti menggunakan kerangka konseptual dari halliday dan hasan (1976) terkait dengan kohesi tata bahasa. penelitian ini melibatkan 42 mahasiswa yang mengikuti kelas menulis via daring. penelitian menggunakan studi deskriptif dan analitik dengan menugaskan para mahasiswa menulis esai. temuan dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa terdapat 1048 kohesi tata bahasa yang dipergunakan dalam esai-esai tersebut. selanjutnya, temuan lain menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan kohesi tata bahasa tertinggi adalah referensi 53,53% dan kata penghubung 45,80%. temuan lainnya adalah mahasiswa lebih familiar terhadap dua aspek tersebut daripada substitusi dan elipsis. hasil penelitian juga menunjukkan bahwa kurangnya tata kohesi bahasa dalam hal pemahaman, pengetahuan, dan kemampuan dalam menulis menyebabkan para mahasiswa menggunakan tata bahasa kohesi yang kurang variatif. kata kunci: analisis wacana; perangkat kohesi gramatikal; esai mahasiswa how to cite: trisnaningrum, y., alek, hidayat, d. n. (2019). discourse analysis of grammatical cohesion devices in college students‟ academic writing essay . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 79-90. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 80-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction a discourse is complete unit of language formed from a series of sentences that are cohesive and coherent either written or oral (speech). in written discourse, it can be found in the form of a sentence or paragraph, but it can even be a phrase or word. the written discourse also can be the form of essay, novels, books, etc. the ideal discourse contains a set of propositions that are interconnected to produce a sense of cohesion. further, it also requires regularity or neatness of the arrangement that creates a sense of coherence. coherence and cohesion become the important factors in improving of discourse quality. regarding to written discourse, writing product in higher education is still considered in low level due to the less ability of college students in writing. most college students still find some obstacles and difficulties in writing, particularly the use of grammar. the low mastery of grammar will have an impact on the results of writing that is incoherent and not cohesive. in fact, most people sometimes lose the way to connect between ideas and even misuse of grammatical cohesion devices in writing. as a matter of fact, the lack of college students‟ knowledge and less ability in the use of grammatical cohesion devices becomes one of the greatest problems for college students‟ writing quality. in line with afrianto (2017), he noted that the lacking understanding and awareness about cohesion especially on grammatical cohesion devices leads the students to use inappropriate grammatical cohesion devices. therefore, studying and applying grammatical cohesion devices effectively will lead to cohesion and improvement of the writing‟s quality. based on that background, the researchers focused on the analysis of grammatical cohesion devices use in college students‟ academic writing essay. the selection of college students‟ academic writing essay was the reason for researchers to find out the level of comprehension, knowledge and ability of grammatical cohesion devices use at tertiary education level. this analysis examined the college students‟ essay with the topic of writing past experience or events. hence, the researchers conducted this analysis with the purpose to identify the grammatical cohesion devices use within the text and examine their role in affecting the student‟s written discourse quality. the previous study of abdurrahman (2013) examined the analysis of grammatical cohesion use in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 81-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students‟ thesis writing. his study was to find out the types of grammatical cohesion devices that were most widely used by students in their thesis writing and how grammatical cohesion devices created cohesive discourse. the result of this study was the majority of grammatical cohesion devices used by the student were referential cohesive devices and conjunctive cohesive devices. nasser (2017) investigated the different categories and the most frequent categories of errors in grammatical cohesive devices use in argumentative texts produced by students. the result of the study indicated the most frequent errors of grammatical cohesion devices as follows: reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis. another study was from bahaziq (2017) which defined and described the cohesive devices based on the work of halliday and hasan (1976). he analysed the students‟ essay writing of michigan english language assessment battery (melab). the results showed that the most commonly used grammatical cohesion devices were references and conjunctions. according to johnson (2017), writers are responsible for using cohesive devices to signal the connection between ideas. it can be done through the use of explicit grammar devices or vocabulary devices. in their work on cohesion in english, halliday and hasan (as cited in johnson, 2017) stated that writers often use cohesive devices to guide readers through a text. the devices can be classified as forms of grammatical cohesion or forms of lexical cohesion. abdalla (2017) argued that cohesion is built on the semantic relationship between lexical and grammatical items in a text. in addition, through the proper use of the lexical and grammatical cohesion devices will construct relevance between what was said, is being said, and will be said. moreover, parazaran & motahari (2015) explained that cohesion has a vital role in creating the unity of text and it is a regulator in a text. further, halliday and hassan (as cited in parazaran & motahari, 2015) stated that the concept of cohesion is a semantic concept; this refers to the relationship of meaning that exists in the text, and that defines it as text. halliday and hasan (as cited in jabeen, mehmood, & iqbal, 2013) stated that the types of grammatical cohesive devices are substitution, reference, ellipsis, and conjunction. almutairi (2017) explained that reference was used to refer something else for their interpretation. occurring when the reader has to retrieve the identity of what is being mentioned from either within or outside the text. reference ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 82-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license referred to the use of anaphoric, cataphoric and exophoric. she also stated that substitution which is when the word/phrase is substituted for another. substitutions can be nominal (same, one, and ones), verbal (do), and a clausal (not, so). moreover, jabeen, mehmood, & iqbal, (2013) explained ellipsis is the idea of omitting part of a sentence assuming that the previous sentence will clarify the meaning. then, the last device is conjunction referring to words, such as „and‟, „finally‟, ‟however‟, and „in conclusions‟ which combine phrases, clauses or parts of a text in such a way that they reveal a „logical-semantic‟ relationship between them (paltridge, 2016). from the explanation above, the researchers took the list of grammatical cohesion devices from halliday and hasan conceptual framework, cited in afrianto (2017), as a reference. the list is as follows table 1. table 1. the conceptual framework of halliday and hasan in grammatical cohesion devices ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 83-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license concerning to the explanation above, the researchers examined and analysed the result of college students‟ academic writing essay based on grammatical cohesion devices use. obviously, the grammatical cohesion devices became the importance point in developing a text of writing because they connect the related ideas, create a sense of connected discourse and allow a reader to interpret text easily. the findings from previous studies also ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 84-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license revealed that grammatical cohesion devices were one of influential features in assessing the quality of writing. therefore, this study was expected to answer the following questions: (1) what common grammatical cohesion devices types are frequently used in college students‟ academic writing essay? (2) what the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications are found in the college students‟ academic writing essay? based on research questions, the objectives of this study are: (1) to figure out what common grammatical cohesion devices types are frequently used in college students‟ academic writing essay. (2) to find out what the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications are found in the college students‟ academic writing essay. method the researchers used descriptive and analytical studies to analyse students‟ knowledge and abilities in using grammatical cohesion devices in written texts. the researchers applied halliday and hasan framework of grammatical cohesion devices to identify and analyse grammatical cohesion devices use in college students‟ academic writing essay. then, the college students‟ essays were examined to evaluate the writing‟s quality in terms of grammatical cohesion devices. the participants of this study were 42 college students taking an online writing course. demographic data was self-reported by the participants: 30 of the participants are female, and the remaining 12 participants are male. the data analysis was examined through the result of college students‟ essays by giving an assignment in writing past experience or events. the steps to analyse the data as follows: (1) collecting the college student‟s writing assignment data. (2) counting every cohesive device in college student‟ writing and inputting them based on classification in each table. (3) categorizing the cohesive devices with the formula: figure 1. percentage formula (4) assessing the correctness and incorrectness of cohesive devices in students‟ writing. the researchers also classified the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specification by inputting the examples of grammatical cohesion devices in college students‟ essays. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 85-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussions in this section, the data were used to answer the research problem stated. as a result, this section was divided into two parts. the first point was to answer the problem of what common grammatical cohesion devices types are frequently used in college students‟ academic writing essay. each device was categorized into its own division and showed in percentage related to its division as well. while, the second point was to answer what the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications are found in the college students‟ academic writing essay. this section displayed the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications. the most frequent use of grammatical cohesion devices this part mostly explains college students‟ production of grammatical cohesion devices. some explanations are given in order to show some devices are mostly used while some of them are not. here are the following results table 2. table 2. the most frequent use of grammatical cohesion devices types type of grammatical cohesion devices college students’ grammatical cohesion devices use n % references 561 53.53% substitution 7 0.67% ellipsis 0 0% conjunction 480 45.80% total 1048 100% from the table above, we can see that reference is the most dominant of grammatical cohesion devices used by college students with 53.53%. the second device is conjunction with 45.80%. on the other hand, we can see that the use of substitution and ellipsis has the low rank. the very small percentage can be assumed is that college students are not familiar with the use substitution (0.67%) and ellipsis (0%). the data shows that college students are very few to use those grammatical cohesion devices. this assumption points out that college students are likely not to have experience in using substitutions and ellipsis rather than reference and conjunction. another assumption also indicates that college students are still lack in the use of grammatical cohesion devices in the terms of comprehension, knowledge and ability in writing, particularly for substitutions and ellipsis. furthermore, this result is similar with abdurrahman (2013) which stated that reference was the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 86-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license most use with 82.25%, followed by conjunction with 17.12%, substitution with 0.24% and ellipsis with 0.39%. the researchers also show pie charts of the comparison on each grammatical cohesion devices type used by college students. there are three pie charts representing each type which consists of the use of reference, conjunction and substitution. in addition, each chart represents each sub-type, but due to unused device (ellipsis) with 0%, so there is no pie chart displayed for it. the pie charts are as follows figure 2. figure 2. the most frequent use of grammatical cohesion devices sub-types then, in the pie chart above, the displays show the result of the most dominant grammatical cohesion devices use compared to the others. in the frequent use of reference, we can see that sub type of personal reference is in the first position with 77%, followed by demonstrative with 22% and comparative with 1%. next, in the frequent use of conjunction, the first position is additive with 58%, followed by temporal 17%, causal with 16% and adversative with 9%. the last pie chart is the frequent use of substitution which nominal becomes the most frequent use with 71%, followed by verbial with 29%. the grammatical cohesion devices with the highest frequency of each type are personal reference with 77%; it is the same result with almutairi (2017) which personal references became the most dominant reference with 76%. this research finding also points out that the second position is nominal substitution with 71%, followed by additive conjunction with 58%. meanwhile, the other sub type of devices is few to use due to the lack of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 87-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license college students‟ mastery in grammatical cohesion devices‟ knowledge. the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specifications this part shows the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices use in college students‟ academic writing essay. here, the researchers pointed out the description of grammatical cohesion devices use in detail. the description can assume about the level of familiarity, knowledge, and comprehension of college students toward grammatical cohesion devices in writing. for more details, the description of grammatical cohesion device use can be shown as follows table 3. table 3. the description of grammatical cohesion devices specifications type of grammati cal cohesion devices sub type of grammatica l cohesion devices the kinds of grammati cal cohesion devices found in the college’s writing the number of grammati cal cohesion devices use % reference comparativ e other, so, same 7 1.24 % demonstrat ive this, that, there 122 21.63 % personal my, his, her, them, us, our, their, it 435 77.12 % ellipsis clausal 0 0% nominal 0 0% verbal 0 0% substituti on clausal so, not 0 0% nominal one, ones 5 71.42 % type of grammati cal cohesion devices sub type of grammatica l cohesion devices the kinds of grammati cal cohesion devices found in the college’s writing the number of grammati cal cohesion devices use % verbal do, did 2 28.58 % conjuncti on causal so, because 77 16.04 % temporal then, after, later, finally, last 84 17.5 % adversativ e however, even though, but 43 8.96 % additive and, furthermo re, moreover 276 57.5 % from the table above, the researchers classified the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices use into four types which are reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction. but, due to unused device (ellipsis) with 0%, so there is no explanation for it. the description of the table is as below: reference the researchers found 435 of personal references use by college students in their essays. the personal references used by college students such as my, his, her, them, us, our and it. regarding to the topic of writing past experience or events, they tell about their experiences certainly and include the other person (male/female), and object as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 88-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references. the finding also shows that college students use this, that, there as demonstrative reference with the total 122 and other, so, same as comparative reference with the total 7. thus, the results indicate that most college students just familiar to use the kinds of references as displayed above in their essay. substitution the researchers found 5 nominal substitutions in college students‟ essay such as one and ones. the following substitution sub type is do and did (verbal substitution) with the total 2 and 0 for clausal substitution. thus, the findings indicate that most college students are not really familiar with the use of substitution. we can see that the kinds of grammatical cohesion devices specification result are only 7 for nominal and verbal substitution. conjunction the researchers found 276 additive conjunctions such as and, furthermore, moreover. the following result is on temporal conjunction of then, after, later, finally, last with the total 84. further, causal conjunction of so, because with the total 77. the last is adversative conjunction of however, even though, but with the total 43. the finding also indicates that most college students just familiar with the kinds of conjunction as in the table 3. otherwise, there are so many conjunctions that can be used (as can be seen in table 1) but most college students just experience to use the familiar conjunction as in the result. conclusion and suggestions it can be concluded that the lack of comprehension, knowledge and ability of the use grammatical cohesion devices in college student‟s writing still become the obstacles at tertiary education. from the finding and discussion above, the result shows that reference becomes the most dominant device compared with others. conjunction takes the second place, followed by substitution and ellipsis. in the reference category, personal reference becomes the most dominant cohesive device use. meanwhile, in the conjunction category, additive is the most frequent use in the text and nominal for substitution category. the data also can be assumed that college students just familiar with some various sub types or kinds of grammatical cohesion devices. the level of familiarity, knowledge, and comprehension of college students toward grammatical cohesion devices use will impact on the writing quality. the more college students are familiar and use the kinds of grammatical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 89-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license cohesion devices, the more college students can integrate grammatical cohesion devices well in their writing. the researchers suggest to english tutors or lecturers to improve college students‟ knowledge, comprehension and ability of grammatical cohesion devices use. english tutors or lectures can encourage the college students to learn about various types of cohesion devices and ask them to always practice writing in many topics by using grammatical cohesion devices, then give feedback to their writing. for the syllabus makers, the researchers suggest to update, develop and increase the writing material related to grammatical cohesion devices use. thus, the explanation of grammatical cohesion devices use will be displayed in writing material. then for the college students, they must realize the importance of using grammatical cohesion devices in writing. so, they have to practice writing a lot by applying the use of grammatical cohesion devices. references abdalla, a. m., & mohammed, i. b. k. (2017). the impact of explicit teaching of lexical cohesive devices in english writing at sentence level. red sea university journal human science, 1, 726. abdurrahman, n. h. (2013). grammatical cohesion analysis of students thesis writing. jurnal pendidikan dan pembelajaran, 2(11). afrianto. (2017). grammatical cohesion in students‟ writing: a case at universitas teknorat indonesia. leksema: jurnal bahasa dan sastra, 2(2), 97-112. almutairi, n. d. (2017). discourse analysis of cohesive devices in saudi student‟s writing. world journal of education research, 4(4), 516-523. bahaziq, a. (2016). cohesive devices in written discourse: a discourse analysis of a student’s essay writing. english language teaching: canadian centre of science and education, 9(7), 112-119. halliday, m. a. k., & hasan, r. (1976). cohesion in english. london: longman. jabeen, i., mehmood, a., & iqbal, m. (2013). ellipsis, reference & substitution as cohesive devices the bear by anton chekhov. academic research international: savap, 4(6), 123-131. johnson, m. (2017). improving cohesion in l2 writing: a three-strand approach to building lexical cohesion. english teaching forum, 2-12. nasser, a. n. a. (2107). a study of errors in the use of grammatical cohesive devices in argumentative texts written by yemeni efl learners. international journal of applied research, 3(10), 172176. paltridge, b. (2016). discourse analysis: an introduction. london: continuum. parazaran, s., & motahari, s. m. (2015). investigating grammatical cohesive devices: shifts of cohesion in translating narrative text type. international journal of foreign language teaching & research, 3(10), 63-81. rahman, z. a. a. a. (2013). the use of cohesive devices in descriptive writing by omani student-teachers. sage publication, 1-10. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 90-90 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12502 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license appendix the followings are the examples of college students‟ academic writing essay name : putra purnama (pseudonym) task 2 : writing i my holiday last sunday my family and i went to ekalokasari in bogor. i heard that there was playing garden for kids there. that‟s why i brought my family to ekalokasari. i thought to myself it was very good place for my son to play there in order to he could learn socialization with the other children. my son‟s name is azfar. he is going to be 4 years old this month. when my son knew that i would bring him to the playing garden, he was very happy especially when i saw a picture of ball pool there. every sunday bogor is always traffic jam, therefore we left at 8 am to avoid it. the distance from my house to ekalokasari was about 1.5 hours. when we arrived there, my son quickly ran forward the playing garden but we had to register before entering the playing garden. inside my son held my wife‟s hand and mine and pulled us to the ball pool. he really liked to play the balls on the pool. he ran and threw the balls to me and my wife while smiling at us. after playing the ball pool. he asked us to the other games such as trampoline, pizza shop, ice cream shop, police station, puzzle area, gliding area, imagination sand, and so on. while my son and i were playing, my wife took a picture. we had a blast because our son was happy too. it was the quality time for my family. i could not say more about it. that was simple holiday but wonderful. thanks god! name : eka susanti (pseudonym) task 2 : writing i my holiday in flores i was so happy when i got some days for holiday. and i decided to go to flores. i curious to visit one of the most popular islands is comodo island! this is because comodo island was one of seven wonders in the world. when i wanted to go to flores, i started to fly from my town in yogyakarta to denpasar (there was still no flight from yogya to flores directly). from denpasar i flew to flores. i thought it needed for about a half hour to fly to flores. when i arrived at the airport in flores, i felt so glad because it was my first time to go to flores. the airport is not big but it just had been renovated by government and now it is getting better than before. from the airport, i took a public transport to go to the hotel where i stayed in, it needed for thirty minutes to go there. the hotel is very nice hotel because the view was very beautiful. i stayed at the room where i can see and enjoy the sea, so my room located in front of the sea. i could learn to swim there and i could enjoy the sunrise and the sunset, it was really wonderful scenery! i was really amazing the creation of god. comodo island from the hotel where i stayed in was so far, i had to go to harbour then i looked for the boat which can bring me to comodo island. then i went there by a motor boat, along the journey to comodo island was really nice, i saw the wide blue sea, there were a lot of small islands. i didn‟t have enough words to express how really beautiful the nature was! after i rode on the boat for about 3, 5 hours, finally i arrived at comodo island. the island was quiet and green because there were a lot of trees in the island. why we call comodo island, that‟s because most of animals who live there are comodos or we call with “comodo dragon”. comodo are wild and danger animal. so when i or the others visitors visit there, we cannot go there by ourselves, we must go with a ranger, they are people who are as guide us to explore the island, and they know comodo very well. for example: they know if the dragon will emerge, so we must be careful. and the most important thing is we feel comfort and safe when we go there with the rangers. and when i saw some comodos, some of them were big and old already, the ranger told me if the dragons are getting older, they were lazy to walk, they only lay down on the ground. the first i saw them, i was so scare, but then the ranger guided me, so i felt safe. then he took picture of me and comodos from safe place. i liked very much to be able to see them in real, before i only saw comodo on pictures or on tv. when i could go there, i felt very happy and it was my unforgettable experience. it was my sweet experience to see comodo. i am really impressed with this holiday. *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 87-96 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee a morphological error analysis of students’ written reports on indonesia’s 2014 presidential election soraya grabiella dinamika1*, elitaria b.a. siregar2 1 sekolah tinggi ilmu manajemen sukma, indonesia 2 universitas sumatera utara, indonesia (grabiella1993@gmail.com) received: 23th march 2020; revised: 24th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract this study, conducted at the department of english literature of universitas sumatera utara (usu), aimed to investigate the morphological errors made by university students in their report texts on indonesia’s presidential election in 2014. the objectives of this qualitative and descriptive study were to: a) find out the most predominant morphological errors made by the students; b) investigate the sources causing the errors; and c) suggest appropriate remediation for identified morphological errors. in analyzing the data, the error analysis theory, espoused by gass and selinker (2008), was applied as it provides six systematic procedures in overcoming l2 learning errors. results of the analysis revealed that the students respectively made significant morphological errors in: a) the use of derivational morphemes with 46 errors (51%); b) the use of inflectional morphemes with 43 errors (47%); and c) the use of affixes with two errors (2%). the morphological error made by the students was caused by two primary sources, the interlanguage and intralanguage errors. to address these problematic areas, the researchers have suggested several pedagogical remediations to follow up. key words: indonesia’s presidential election; report text; morphological error; error analysis abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kesalahan morfologi yang dibuat oleh mahasiswa departemen sastra inggris universitas sumatera utara, dalam teks laporan yang mereka tulis tentang pemilihan presiden tahun 2014. selain itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk; a) mencari tahu jenis kesalahan morfologi apa yang paling banyak terjadi; b) mencari tahu sumber penyebab kesalahan; dan c) memberikan langkahlangkah yang sesuai untuk mengatasi kesalahan morfologi. dalam menganalisis data, teori yang digunakan adalah teori analisis kesalahan yang digubah oleh gass & selinker pada tahun 2008, karena teori ini memuat enam prosedur lengkap dalam menangani masalah kesalahan pembelajaran bahasa kedua. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif kualitatif. hasil analisis data mengemukakan bahwa kesalahan yang paling banyak terjadi dalam penggunaan morfem derivasi dengan jumlah 46 kesalahan (51%), diikuti oleh penggunaan morfem infleksional dengan jumlah 43 kesalahan (47%), dan yang paling sedikit adalah penggunaan imbuhan dengan jumlah 2 kesalahan (2%). ada dua penyebab terjadinya kesalahan morfologi, yaitu kesalahan intrabahasa dan kesalahan interbahasa. selanjutnya, peneliti menyarankan sejumlah langkah remediasi pedagogik untuk mengatasi kesalahan morfologi. kata kunci: pemilihan presiden di indonesia; teks laporan; kesalahan morfologi; analisis kesalahan how to cite: dinamika, s. g., siregar, e. b.a.. (2020). a morphological error analysis of students’ written reports on indonesia’s 2014 presidential election. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 87-96. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 88-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction students, who are majoring in english literature, commonly are assumed to have mastered four foundational language skills, namely writing, reading, speaking, and listening. also, they are often assumed to possess exceptional skills related to the understanding of grammar, which is often considered pivotal as a starting line to learn the language. however, gass and selinker (2008) stated that the most fundamental of learning a second language (l2) grammar comes from the step of word formation called as the morphology (a linguistic branch which studies the formation of words). kolenchery (2015) defines morphology as the study of these meaning-bearing units and the rules governing them; the study of the structure of words. in other words, it performs as the foundation which a person could rely on for further stage of leaning a language, such as word modification. to make it clear, by mastering morphology, a person could understand how to change a word into a plural form, past participle form, present participle form, and so on. from this aspect as well, many tried to investigate how humans process the word formation and transformation. in relation to our context, we have seen how understanding the morphology is more essential for students majoring in english as it could identify which aspects in language learning need further development. nevertheless, the importance of learning morphology becomes emergent as findings showed that indonesian students still encountered some problems with morphological and grammatical aspects despite the length of their study of english. getting the data from students’ work, kusumawardhani (2018) and dinamika and hanafiah (2019) found that morphology errors were quite dominating in students’ work. kusumawardhani (2018) found that a group of participants made derivational morphology errors in their english narrative compositions, such as in verbs, nouns, gerunds, and other forms. moreover, dinamika and hanafiah (2019) found that even the students of the english literature department make many errors in their report text writings. besides, the research findings revealed that the most errors were in the use of the article ‘a/an/the’. while the errors themselves did not make confusion while reading students' work, the existence of such errors needs considering. another study (burhanuddin, 2020) also found that participants from the english department also made errors in fulfilling the open-ended questionnaire. he found that students make eleven ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 89-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license types of errors, which caused some ambiguities to the meaning of the sentences they wrote. morphological errors, however, did not only take place in indonesia but also in other countries as well. ramadan (2015) also found that jordanian tertiary students in their last year still had an issue with morphological errors due to overgeneralization and language interference. waelateh, boonsuk, ambele, and jeharsae (2019) also found that their participants (thai undergraduate students) had some issues with morphological errors, such as failing to put appropriate affixes and using certain affixes excessively due to overgeneralization. regarding those errors, several factors may cause such errors in language production, such as different grammatical structures between l1 and l2, language interference, and the lack of language competence. this issue might also be related to the status of english in indonesia as a foreign language which is only used for limited purposes (lauder, 2008). while many factors might affect students' errors, we viewed that it was necessary to rather identify their errors. once identified, these errors could then be treated as a learning opportunity for students majoring in english. therefore, in this study, we utilized one of the prominent approaches in analyzing students' errors, namely error analysis (ea). error analysis is part of the methodology of the psycholinguistic investigation of language learning (corder, 1981). it also plays a fundamental role in investigating, identifying, and describing second language learners’ errors and their causes. most importantly, ea can enable second language teachers to find out different sources of second language errors and take some pedagogical precautions towards them (al-khresheh, 2016). in other words, ea could help language teachers identify their students’ level of l2 learning and help them succeed in tackling the errors. this study was conducted to carry out the issue of morphological errors made by the students of the english literature department of universitas sumatera utara (usu) in their english report text writing. if any, the researcher intended to classify the types of errors and explain the sources of errors as well. furthermore, to define errors made by the students, contrasting l1 and l2 grammar was undertaken. then, the objectives of this study were formulated, as follows: a) to find out the most predominant morphological errors made by the students; b) to investigate the source that causes the errors; and c) to take out ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 90-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pedagogical remediation that suits the morphological errors found. method the qualitative descriptive approach was applied in this study. students’ l1 (bahasa) and l2 (english) were taken as the data source to analyze their morphological errors. besides, ea designed by gass & selinker (2008) was also utilized by following its six procedures, namely collecting data, identifying errors, classifying errors, quantifying errors, analyzing errors and remediation. the participants of this study were 20 undergraduate students of english literature department of fib-usu. they were in their sixth semester and have passed the mandatory subjects such as writing i to iv and english structure i to iv. moreover, these students were going to continue writing their final thesis to obtain their bachelor’s degree. in the data collection phase, the participants were instructed to write a topic-based report text on indonesia general election 2014. the length of the text was ranged between 150 up to 250 words. the writing sheets were distributed to each student. in the data analysis phase, the researchers applied the six procedures of ea adopted from gass and selinker (2008), as follows: 1)collection of data—the data was obtained from 20 students’ topic-based report text writing; 2) identification of error—the researchers identify the errors that the students make by marking them; 3) classification of error—the errors were classified into their morphological categories, namely the use of affixes, derivational, and inflectional morphemes; 4) quantification of error—the frequency of errors was counted and tabulated based on each category; 5) analysis of the source of error—the researchers analyzed the source of errors, namely, interlanguage error (indonesian negative interference) and intralanguage error (students’ incompetence in applying english grammar into their writing); 6) remediation—the researchers suggested some pedagogical remediation, particularly on english word formation. findings and discussion findings the complete procedures of error analysis were applied to 20 students’ writing sheets and generated several findings. though morphology is a basic linguistic branch of forming words, this study showed that students found it hard to avoid making errors in the real practice, primarily due to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 91-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license intralanguage error. the results of morphological error analysis were representatively presented, as follows: the use of affixes theoretically, there are several types of affixes in english word formation, but this research only adopts three kinds of affixes which commonly occur in english students’ report text writing namely; suffix, prefix, and circumfix. table 1. the use of affixes error init ial type of errors error form freque ncy of occurr ence source & cause correc t form at r prefix suffix persua tion1 1 intralang uage error persua sion1 circu mfix ap p prefix suffix actree s1 1 intralang uage error indeter minacy of the suffix use actres s1 circu mfix student ‘atr’ made an error in the suffix used, in which he wrote the word ‘persuation’ instead of ‘persuasion’. they sound quite similar to each other, yet it is different in wordformation. the word ‘persuasion’ is a noun, which is derived from the verb ‘persuade + ion’ then, it changes the word’s class as a noun. while the word persuation’ has no meaning at all. moreover, student ‘app’ wrote the word ‘actrees’ instead of ‘actress’. it is an error, as the wrong word has no meaning in english. the right word formation is ‘actress’ (noun), which is derived from the verb ‘act’. in the two samples above, it was found that the students still made errors in using affixes. the use of affixes occurs 2 times in 20 students’ report text writings. the use of affixes errors was only found in the use of suffixes. this result showed that the students made a small number of affixes errors. besides, all of the errors were caused by the intralanguage error. the use of derivational morpheme errors related to derivational morpheme were taken as the data and the results of our analysis were partially presented in the table below. student ‘aps’ made an error when using the word ‘democracy’ that precedes a noun; in which an adjective should precede a noun. therefore, the right word formation is ‘democratic’ country instead of ‘democracy’ country. moreover, he used the word ‘instrumental’ (which is an adjective) that precedes the phrase ‘of the presidential election’. meanwhile, if there is an ‘of + proper noun’, a noun should have preceded it. therefore, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 92-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license exact word to be used is ‘instrument’ instead. student ‘afn’ used the phrase ‘presidential indonesian’ instead of ‘the president of indonesia’, he put double adjectives in that phrase, for presidential and indonesian are both adjectives, which are ineligible in the english grammar. table 2. the use of derivational morpheme error ini tia l type of errors error form frequ ency of occur rence source & cause correc t form ap s the use of deriva tional morp heme …dem ocracy1 countr y 2 intralang uage error indetermi nacy of the use of derivatio nal morphem e …dem ocratic1 countr y …be the instru mental1 of the presid ential electio n intralang uage error indetermi nacy of the use of derivatio nal morphem e …be the instru ment1 of the presid ential electio n af n the use of deriva tional morp heme preside ntial indone sian1 2 interlang uage error overgene ralisation of the indonesia n’s rule of nouns formation indone sian preside nt1 the election preside ntial2 the preside ntial election 2 the same issue also happened in the second sample, ‘the election presidential’, he technically translated the phrase from bahasa indonesia into english. in contrast, the phrase should be ‘the presidential election’ instead. after having the entire derivational morpheme errors analyzed, the types of error occurred 46 times in 20 students’ report text writings. the derivational morpheme error is mostly caused by intralanguage errors for 32 times of occurrence. meanwhile, the interlanguage errors occur for 14 times. the use of inflectional morpheme beside the derivational morpheme, errors in the inflectional morpheme were also partially presented in the table below. student ‘aps’ made six inflectional morpheme errors caused by intralanguage error; he did not use the correct inflectional word-formation to indicate the number of the noun. as an example, he wrote ‘each parties’, whereas a singular noun should follow a phrase that is preceded by ‘each’; therefore, the correct form of that phrase should be ‘each party’. in another part, he wrote ‘the society vote’, it is undoubtedly an error of inflectional morpheme, because he did not use the singular verb that must have joined the singular subject. therefore, the correct form should be ‘the society votes’. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 93-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license student ‘dmm’ in the first issue writes ‘the two candidate’s team’, which is morphologically incorrect, as it has a plural subject, but what follows it is a singular noun. therefore, the correct form should be ‘the two candidate’s teams’. in another part, he wrote the phrase ‘their opinion’, clearly it shows that determiner ‘their’ indicates plural pronoun; therefore the noun following it should be plural too (‘their opinions’). table 3. the use of inflectional morpheme error initi al type of error s error form freq uenc y of occu rrenc e sourc e & cause corre ct form aps the use of inflec tiona l morp heme politica l strateg y of each parties1. .. 6 intral angua ge error16 politi cal strate gy of each party1 … as the represen tative2 of pdip, jokowi and jusuf kalla … as the repres entati ves2 of pdip, joko wi and jusuf kalla … prabo wo and hatta radjas a became the represen tative3 prab owo and hatta radja sa beca me the initi al type of error s error form freq uenc y of occu rrenc e sourc e & cause corre ct form of gerind ra party repres entati ves3 of gerin dra party …the society vote4 …the societ y votes4 even though there were several miscom municat ion5 betwee n the support er6 even thou gh there were severa l misco mmu nicati ons5 betw een the suppo rters6 dm m the use of infle ction al mor phe me the two candid ate’s team1.. 4 intrala nguag e error1,2 ,3,4 indete rminac y of the numbe r use the two candida te’s teams1.. they share free tees and mercha ndise2 they share free tees and merchan dises2 …their opinion3 …their opinions 3 …by their own way4 …by their own ways4 after analyzing the inflectional morpheme errors, we found that this ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 94-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license type of errors occurred for 43 times in 20 students’ report text writings. the fundamental error was caused by the intralanguage error for an account of 43 occurrences. it indicated that the students did not entirely acquire the rule of forming inflectional morpheme. from the thorough analysis, it was obtained that the total number of morphological errors found in english students’ report text writing was 91 occurrences which are mostly caused by intralanguage error with a total of 77 occurrences. furthermore, interlanguage error occurs for only 14 times. discussion following the findings of the study, the researchers suggested taking remediation as the last procedure of ea designed by gass and selinker (2008). in relation to the findings of affixes errors, the students were then suggested to pay more attention to attaching the suffix to a base, and be more aware of forming a word by using affixes. although attaching affixes to its base looks effortless, this study revealed that students need effort for word-formation by attaching affixes necessary in producing english words. by seeing the derivational morpheme error results, we suggested the students to learn more about the word classes, mainly to word forms having a similar base. the use of derivational morpheme also depends on its use in a sentence context. therefore, the students also need to recognize the sentence context while using the derivational morpheme. though it is assumed to be difficult for indonesian students, more practices perhaps will make them get used to forming derivational morphemes. moreover, inflectional morpheme cannot be separated from the properties marking it, such as tense, number, gender, case, and so on. the students should put enough awareness of such properties while producing an english sentence to avoid grammatical errors. besides, as the interference from l1 may also affect this type of morphological error, the students are suggested to learn more on properties forming inflectional morpheme. moreover, due to the findings that intralanguage errors mostly caused the errors, students were required to improve their basic language skills, particularly in terms of wordformation. conclusion and suggestion based on the result of morphological error analysis, we found that the participants still committed making errors in their report text ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 95-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writings. the students made errors morphologically, as follows: a) in the use of affixes (prefix, suffix, circumfix); b) the use of derivational morpheme; and c) inflectional morpheme. the results of the analysis revealed that intralanguage error caused the most occurring errors. it means that students remained to have inadequate competence in applying standardized english grammar into their writings. besides, the negative interference from bahasa indonesia does not affect the morphological errors they made. as the last stage in the application of ea procedure, remediation was carried out to enhance the students’ l2 competence, particularly in english word formation mastery. it was expected that they could avoid making consistent errors in their writing in the future. error analysis methods might differ in the process of implementation. however, the l2 teachers and students must do it in order to gain suitable teaching-learning strategies to be applied in related l2 classroom. because every l2 classroom probably have different issue in facing the l2 learning process. therefore, analysis of errors may go beyond the morphological aspects or even beyond the clause and discourse ones. this study is supposed to be referenced for another researcher, linguist, and educator, for their further study on error analysis in learning l2. references al-khresheh, m. h. (2016). a review study of error analysis theory. international journal of humanities and social science research, 2, 49-59. burhanuddin, a. (2020). error analysis of english sentences written by indonesian college students. jurnal ilmiah lingua idea, 11(1), 30—43. corder, s. p. (1981). error analysis and interlanguage. oxford: oxford university press. dinamika, s. g. & hanafiah, r. (2019). syntactical error analysis on report text. journal of applied linguistics and literature, 4(2), 120-129. gass, s. m., & selinker, l. (2008). second language acquisition: an introductory course. new york: routledge taylor and francis group. kolenchery, g. (2015). analytical components of morphology in linguistics. global english-oriented research journal, 1(1), 161-166. kusumawardhani, p. (2018). the error analysis of derivational morphology in efl’s english narrative composition. international journal of language education, 2(1), 22—30. lauder, a. (2008). the status and function of english in indonesia: a review of key factors. makara, sosial humaniora, 12(1), 9-20. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 96-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16978 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ramadan, s. (2015). morphological errors made by jordanian university students. romanian journal of english studies, 12 (1), 40-49. waelateh, b., boonsuk, y., ambele, e. a., & jeharsae, f. (2019). an analysis of the written errors of thai efl students’ essay writing in english. songklanakarin journal of social sciences and humanities, 25(3), 55-82. *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 48-62 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effect of the australasian parliamentary debate technique on students’ argumentative speaking ability intan qomariah*, syauki, zaharil anasy syarif hidayatullah state islamic university of jakarta, indonesia (intan.qomariah13@uinjkt.ac.id) received: 17th maret 2020; revised: 8th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract the goal of this research was to investigate whether the use of the australasian parliamentary debate had an impact on students’ argumentative speaking ability. the method was quantitative with a quasi-experimental design, and the participants of this research were sman 29 jakarta 10th grade social students in the academic year 2017/2018. they were x iis 2 as the experimental group and x iis 3 as the control group, consisting of 32 students for each group. convenience sampling was used to select the participants for this research, and the data were collected using an oral test. the argumentative speaking rubric was used to assess the students’ argumentative speaking ability in the preand post-tests. the results of statistical hypothesis testing, using independent sample t-test, found that the t-value was 2.23 on the significance level of 5 percent (α = 0.05), whereas the t table was 1.99 or tobserve > t table. h0 was therefore rejected and ha was accepted. this finding shows that the use of the australasian parliamentary debate has a positive effect on students’ ability to speak argumentatively. key words: argumentative speaking; australasian parliamentary debate; quasi-experimental abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menginvestigasi apakah penggunaan the australalasian parliamentary debate memiliki pengaruh positif terhadap kemampuan berbicara argumentatif siswa. metode yang digunakan adalah kuantitatif dengan quasi-experimental sebagai desain penelitian. partisipan peneliatian adalah siswa sman 29 jakarta kelas x ips di tahun akademik 2017/2018. mereka adalah x iis 2 sebagai kelas eksperimen dan x iis 3 sebagai kelas kontrol yang masing-masing kelas terdiri dari 32 siswa. convenience sampling adalah teknik pengambilan sampel yang digunakan untuk pengumpulan data. instrumen dalam penelitian ini menggunakan tes lisan dengan rubrik berbicara argumentatif untuk menguji kemampuan argumentasi siswa pada pretest dan posttest. hasil dari tes hipotesis statistika menggunakan uji tsampel independen menunjukkan bahwa pada degree of significance 5% % (α = 0.05), tvalue sebesar 2.23 sementara t table sebesar 1.99 atau tobserve > t table. maka dari itu, h0 ditolak dan ha diterima. hal ini membuktikan adanya pengaruh positif penggunaan teknik the australasian parliamentary debate pada kemampuan berbicara argumentatif siswa. kata kunci: berbicara argumentatif; australasian parliamentary debate; quasi-experimental how to cite: qomariah, i., syauki, anasy, z., e.f. (2020). the effect of the australasian parliamentary debate technique on students’ argumentative speaking ability. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 48-62. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 49-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction students need to learn english speaking as it is one of the basic language skills of english. it is a productive skill through which we produce utterances to express our feelings or ideas. therefore, speaking seems intuitively the most important skill to master. the success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing, receiving, and processing information (hasanah, 2012). in addition, she said that by improving speaking skills people can participate in conversations, express ideas and exchange information with others. there are, however, some barriers that students face in learning to speak. generally, students at the high school level are taught almost all english basic skill components of the english language, yet many of them remain unable to speak the language fluently. in addition, in the teaching and learning processes at this school level, students tend to lack exposure or role model and supportive english learning environments. meanwhile, supportive teaching and learning environments are of great importance to the success of english education at all levels. hans (2017) states that a supportive learning environment is needed to promote good and successful teaching and learning processes in the classroom. furthermore, people’s opinions sometimes can also be obstacles to using english. the position of english itself in indonesia is a foreign language. therefore, whenever a person is listening to someone who is speaking english with accented pronunciation, for example, they may respond to that accented speech negatively, and as a result that unfortunate situation may lead to the fact that english learners in this country tend to hesitate to speak english confidently. moreover, most students as efl learners tend to be passive and a lot of them are shy to use english in actual conversations. therefore, the majority of them do not use english in real and authentic communication activities. because of its position as a foreign language in indonesia, most students do not learn learn english outside the classroom let alone speaking the language in daily life (iman, 2017). one of the important aspects of speaking skills is being able to express the idea of causality. to express a causality event itself, students need to have a strong argumentative speaking skill. after all, the ease to make argumentation depends on students’ knowledge of the good language and how to apply the knowledge into the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 50-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license arguments, so that their critical thoughts are accessible to others. therefore, a teaching technique that integrates both strong speaking and critical thinking skills becomes extremely important. one of the speaking techniques that could be implemented by a teacher in the classroom is the technique of debating. debating can be applied in a speaking class because students are expected to express their ideas and to convince their claims to their audience. the debating activity itself has a number of advantages including to develop students’ argumentation skill since talking about the debate is about how they convince others with their arguments. johnson (2009) states that debating requires to convince their audience about the truth or falsity of the debate motion. therefore, in debating it is necessary to be able to show facts and figures of causality events. furthermore, debating also increases students’ critical thinking to solve problems in real life. according to scott (2008), the debate process combines critical thinking and a lot of other important skills including listening, researching, problem-solving, reasoning, questioning, and communicating. in addition, debating also offers a second advantage in that it enables educators to promote other important aspects of critical thinking, namely, social awareness and criticism (rear, 2018). in response to the problem described above, based on a preobservation of the researchers in sman 29 jakarta, there was a debate activity in the english club at the school and this school indeed has actively joined debate competitions. when the researcher served as the english teacher intern at the school, she had the opportunity to accompany a group of students of the school in a local debate competition. during her companion, the students complained about the interest of their junior participation in joining debating activities. they were worried their school team would lose its generation with a strong debating team. not to mention their tutors in debating activity rely mostly on their senior students. meanwhile, based on the experience of the researcher as a debater, students who actively join english debating clubs tend to show better abilities in speaking and to be more confident to speak in public occasions. this is because students who actively join debating communities are used to having more chances to demonstrate their speaking ability as well as their critical thinking through ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 51-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lessons and exercises during their argumentative activities. indeed, debating activity trains students to organize their speech well and to become more rational thinkers. thus, the researchers believe that there is a good connection between a debating technique and students’ argumentative speaking skill that can be developed inside or outside of the classroom. related to debating activities, there are a number of debating formats across the world, but some famous formats are american, british parliamentary, australasian parliamentary, and asian parliamentary debate styles. the american style is the format that is commonly used in the american settings only, while the asian parliamentary is an adoption of the australasian format with some modifications. the british parliamentary format is more suitable for university students, while the australasian style seems to be the best fit for high school students. although the last two debate formats above are originally from england and australia, their influences are around the worlds. therefore, australasian and british parliamentary styles are used as the combination for world schools format in some international-scaled competitions. world schools format is also used to choose high schools’ students in a national competition called national schools debating championship (nsdc) organized by the ministry of culture and education of the republic of indonesia. the selected students will be the next indonesian delegation for the world schools debating championship (wsdc). based on the rationale described above, it would be beneficial to implement the australasian parliamentary style of debating as one alternative of the english teaching techniques in the classroom. the researchers assume that this style can motivate students to be able to elegantly maintain their arguments or at least to be brave to speak. the students also make a better speech when they organize their arguments sequentially, chronologically, and thematically. based on the explanation above, therefore, the researchers are interested in conducting a study to examine whether the use of the australasian parliamentary debating technique has a an impact on the ability of argumentative speaking ability among sman 29 students. related the speaking term, there are various oral productions considered by bailey (2003). this involves oral ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 52-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license development in a wide variety of genres, including reciting poems, participating in debates, engaging in class discussions, and leaving messages on answering machines (bailey, 2003). furthermore, the nature of speaking as a productive skill and its spontaneity is needed to make the speaking attitude as natural as native. it has to be pointed out that speaking could be studied explicitly and empirically (brown, 2004). argumentative speech can be developed for debating participation. the argumentative speech is a convincing speech in which the speaker attempts to convince his or her audience to change their point of view on a controversial topic that has more than one side. the argumentative speech tries to fundamentally alter the views already held by the audience. the goal is to get to the truth of the matter by exploring all the details of the issue. this style of speech is extremely challenging; thus, the speaker should be careful to select a topic that he felt prepared to support with a clear statement (siquig, 2015). argumentative speeches typically answer issues that are being debated by society or existing problems of discord. such issues also emerge from political discussions and topics that are widely seen in the media. economic, political, social, or ethical problems are the focus chosen. the speakers need to convince their audience that they are reliable speakers by referring their claims and assertions to relevant studies and presenting reasonable arguments to support them by speaking articulately and argumentatively. the ability to use reason, logic, and facts are needed to show the audience why their side makes the most sense. argumentation requires specific vocabulary because the person that is engaged in argumentation should be able to make a statement, inference, or belief, to dispute something, to deny something, and so on. the specific terms and sentences for the execution of all those types of statements are usually needed to make them convincing to the audience. generally speaking, argumentation counts heavily on speaking mastery and any individual engaged in argumentation has to intentionally choose to use verbal means effectively and in a convincing way. to master speaking thoroughly, several goals of speaking components should be considered. they are called as functional intelligibility, functional communicability, enhanced selfconfidence, and speech-monitoring capabilities (romero, 2018). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 53-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license harris (1969) includes several other components that are related to the topic including comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. comprehension means students’ understanding of daily communication and frequent classroom discussions without difficulty. fluency refers to students’ speech in daily conversations and classroom discussions, which is articulate and tends to be effortless on the part of the speaker. vocabulary means using words or expressions of causality in argumentative speeches such as because/because of/due to, agree/disagree, that’s why, for this reason, the reason why, is caused by/is the effect of, in addition/moreover/not only-but also (grace, 2014). meanwhile, grammar refers to grammatical rules such as word order and structural patterns that are also based on contextual clues. finally, pronunciation means the way students say and articulate words including word stress and sentence intonation. as the argumentation has a close relation to the critical thinking processes including reasoning element, it plays an important role and permeates many areas of our lives. as lucas (2007) said, reasoning is simply the process of making a conclusion based on evidence. it is an important part of persuasive speaking (lucas, 2007). furthermore, lucas (2007) mentions four fundamental methods of reasoning and how to use them in our arguments: reasoning from concrete cases, reasoning from theory, causal reasoning, and analogical reasoning. the australasian parliamentary debate elements include chairperson, speaking time and timekeeper, motion, layout and venue, adjudicators, and speakers (quinn, 2009). a debate should be directed by a chairperson. a male chair is usually referred to as mr. chairman while a female chair as mrs. chair. debaters should always begin their speeches by remembering both the chair and the audience speaking time for debating depends on the regulation of the committee. however, the common standard is 5 to 7 minutes for substantive speech and 3 to 5 minutes for reply speech. there will be a person, called timekeeper, who makes time signals following the rules of the debating event. motion is the debate topic or resolution that contains a case or policy that must be solved by each debating team based on their speaking roles. motion typically starts with the expression, “this house believes that….”, “this house should….”, “this house regrets….”. the phrase “this house” could be defined as the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 54-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license government representatives, united nations, organizations, or anything that is going to be explained by the speaker based on the context of the case itself (quinn, 2009). the adjudicator is someone who carefully watches and follows the debate to agree on the outcome. adjudicators are not permitted to make random or arbitrary decisions. they must follow clear guidelines on what is good or is not good about a debate (quinn, 2009). the layout of debate venue can be seen in the following figure (adopted from world schools debating championship 2017): figure 1. layout of debate venue, australia-asian style in general, there are two benches in the debate: an affirmative and a negative. the first affirmative speaker opens the debate, followed by the first negative speaker. in the australia-asia style, each side consists of three speakers. each speaker talks for a set time, with a warning bell to give them a little time to sum up and to finish, then a final bell. every speaker has other roles to play while speaking (incorporated, debating sa, 2008). whereas, in the format of british parliamentary debate, there are four teams per round. two teams represent the government and the other two become the opposition teams. each team should consist of two speakers (summary of the four-team british parliamentary debate format, 2015). although there are some speaker variations of debate styles and formats, generally it is divided into two types, the substantive speaker and reply speaker. the explanations above are about the substantive speaker and the upcoming is about the reply speaker, an extra role of speaker in a team who is common in three on three debate. reply speaker is a speaker who delivers reply speeches from their team. it can be the first or second speaker to do, but not for the third speaker of a team. it is also worth noting that the order changes after the first three speeches of each side, so the opposition reply speaker gives their speech straight after the third opposition speaker and the proposition reply ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 55-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license speech is the final one to end the debate. the reply speech is intended to explain why their side has already won the debate. a reply speaker has a side position as "an adjudication from our side" and his speech is a summary of the key issues in the debate. as a general rule, a reply speaker who falls to the level of dealing with individual examples might not understand either the issues of the debate or the principles of a good argument. there is no time for a reply speaker to deal with small arguments or individual examples. the speaker will deal with two or three key topics in the debate on a global basis. they demonstrate how they support the speaker's team and work against the opposition team (erskine, 2017). scott (2008) reveals that debates in the classroom have been effective in increasing critical thinking by letting students connect as they learn subject knowledge. in their classes, 82% of students thought they understood the subject, and 85 % thought they learned something important. in addition, strategic problem solving, coordination, presentation, and team competence were enhanced by debating activity. moreover, the debate involves students in the research and analysis of a controversial topic. it means that this kind of situation urges the students to think fast and critically. on the contrary, debate tends to be dualistic, with dualism being defined as the division of something (conceptually) into two opposite or contrasting aspects, or the state of being so divided. in the classroom, this means that debate persuades students to consider the issue as having only two positions (yes or no) instead of allowing students to consider a multiplicity of perspectives. in this research, the researcher has performed a number of roles as a subsidiary english teacher, as an adjudicator, and a debate coach. she has not only practiced the australasian parliamentary debate but in teaching argumentation she also has another responsibility to boost students’ critical thinking. in addition, hooley (2007), suggests that teaching critical thinking skills is one of the most essential aspects of high school education, and no class has done this better than strategic debating. additionally, the activities and skills utilized in preparing for a debate punch the envelope out at the top of bloom's taxonomy with students synthesizing and evaluating research evidence. the australasian parliamentary debate is a natural fit for the course, as topics are linked to current events, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 56-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students are allowed to critically analyze a controversial topic while practicing other skills such as writing, presenting information, and higherlevel thinking (scott, 2008 ). it means that active learning is optimally exercised through debating activity. the course is more fun for both teachers and students, and, most importantly, it helps students to think critically (duron, limbach, & waugh, 2017). therefore, as willingham (2007) emphasizes, it is impossible to teach students factual content without giving them opportunities to practice using it as it is also impossible to teach students critical thinking without giving them chances to use factual content appropriately. method this research used a quantitative method with a quasi-experimental design. the main reason why the researchers prefer this design to experimental one is that the researchers cannot arbitrarily construct a category since it would interrupt classroom learning by randomly assigning students to the two classes. thus, the researchers used two existing classes as the experimental and the control groups. in the experimental group, the researchers performed a pretest, treatment using the australasian parliamentary debate, and then a posttest. meanwhile, in the control group, the researchers had only given a pretest and post-test without any treatment. the researchers used convenience sampling to measure the argumentative speaking ability. the availability of convenience sampling came after the researchers got permission from the school principal and english teacher. the research was conducted at the sman 29 jakarta. the research population was the tenthgrade sman 29 jakarta students in the 2017-2018 academic year. the students involved in this research were all in the same social science concentration in the same academic year, and they were taught by the same english teacher during the course of the research. two classes of social science participated as participants of this study, x iis 2 with 32 students as the experimental group and x iis 3 with 32 students as the control group. the researchers had four treatment meetings and two pretest and posttest meetings. it was conducted from april 14th up to june 5th 2018, and it was exactly in the second semester when the students were learning to express cause-effect and causality verbs in chapter 10 on the elective program of the english book. at the first meeting of treatments, the researchers introduced and explained the module of the australasian parliamentary debate, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 57-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license then prepared students by dividing them into six groups of three students per each, while the others play some roles as chairperson, timekeeper, adjudicators, and audiences, not to mention to choose the debate motion (topic) for each chamber. coming to the next meetings, they practiced the australasian parliamentary debate with the motions: 1) that early marriage brings more harm than good; 2) that smoking in public places should be banned; 3) that homework should be banned. these motions were chosen with the adaptation of students’ basic competence in the tenth grade in communicating causality event including consensus and disagreement in an argumentative manner. findings and discussion findings the findings of the mean scores of the both experimental and control groups are illustrated in the following figure2. figure 2. mean scores of experimental and control groups as for the posttest result in the experiment class, the mean of the posttest has improved to 83.06 from 44.37 and the mean of the gained score is 38.68. this means that, on average, students have passed the criterion or exceeded the minimum criterion. however, three students did not pass the minimum mastery criterion and the remaining 29 students met the minimum mastery criterion. in addition, the highest score for the posttest was 95 achieved by only one student and the lowest score for the posttest was 71 achieved by only one student. meanwhile, according to the result of the control class, the mean score of the posttest has also improved from 56.03 to 79.31 and the mean of the gained score is 23.28. however, five students did not meet the minimum mastery criterion and the remaining students met the minimum mastery criterion. not to mention the highest score for the posttest is 92 for two students and the lowest score for the posttest is 65 achieved by only one student. from the differences in students’ scores above, it can be seen that there is also an increase in students’ scores in learning english. however, the outcome of the posttest shows that some of the scores are still below the minimum mastery criterion ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 58-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license at sman 29 jakarta. thus, it is concluded that the class which was taught without using the australasian parliamentary debate technique still need efforts to meet the minimum mastery criterion. the outcome of normality test of the pretest shows that the significance level of the experimental class is 0.065 and 0.050 and the control level is 0.200 and 0.181. this means that the likelihood value (p) of both the experimental and control classes is higher than (>) the degree of significance 5 percent (α = 0.05). it is therefore concluded that all the experiment and control classes’ pretest data are normally distributed. the outcome of normality test of the posttest indicates that the significance level of the experimental class is 0.200 and 0.388 and the control level is 0.200 and 0.340. this indicates that the probability value (p) of both the experimental and control classes is higher than (>) the degree of significance 5 percent (α = 0.05). it is therefore concluded that both the experiment and control classes’ posttest data are normally distributed. the result of the levene statistical test for data homogeneity shows that the significance level or probability value (p) of the experimental and control class’ pretest data is 0.071 and 0.707. this indicates that the significance level or the probability value (p) of the data is greater than the significance level (α = 0.05). the result of the homogeneity test shows that the data from the sample have a homogenous variance. more importantly, the outcome of statistical analysis for hypothesis testing shows that the value of tvalue= 2.238 and the value of df (degree of freedom) of 62 for the value of 5 percent was 1.999 comparing tvalue = 2.238 with each value of the degree of significance or ttable = 1.999, this research has found that tvalue = 2.238 is higher than ttable = 1.999. thus, the null hypothesis (ho) is dismissed and the alternative hypothesis (ha) is accepted. the fact that the alternative hypothesis (ha) is accepted and the null hypothesis (ho) is dismissed actually means that the use of the australasian parliamentary debate has a beneficial impact on the students’ ability of argumentative speaking particularly that of causality expression. it also means that the australasian parliamentary debate has contributed a positive influence on students’ argumentative speaking of causality expressions at the tenth grade of sman 29 jakarta in the academic year 2017/2018. discussion ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 59-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reflecting on the findings of this study, the researchers discover two important points. first, the australasian parliamentary debate is an effective tool to teach argumentative speaking skills, as students can prepare for the discussion of important issues while also learning the skills required to succeed. linguistic emphasis can be given on the language of dialogue with agreement and disagreement functions (rear, 2018). those theories are similar to this research that indicates a positive result for the comparison of two comparable post-tests. it means that the students’ ability to express causality shows variations in both the experimental and control classes. as we can see at the beginning, both classes did not meet the minimum criterion in the pretest. subsequently, when compared to the posttest score, the mean of the experiment class was 83.06 and the mean of control class was 79.31 which meant that both the experiment and control classes passed the minimum criterion but the achievement of the experiment class was greater than the control class. furthermore, the mean of gained score from the pretest to the posttest of the experiment class was 38.68 which was 15.4 higher than that of the control class, 23.28. this means that the experimental class’ argumentative speaking ability exceeded that of the control class significantly. in addition, there is a similar study before this research on the australasian parliamentary debate by luthfiyyah (2014), entitled “risk-taking, speaking ability, and australasian parliamentary debate; do they appertain?.” the result of that study showed that there is a positive correlation between risktaking (x), speaking ability (x), and the australasian parliamentary debate (y). it means that the improvement of students’ risk-taking and speaking skill could be predicted by the improvement of australasian parliamentary debate. the difference between this study and the previously mentioned one is that whilst in luthfiyyah’s (2014) study the speaking variable is discussed in general terms, in this research it is particularly focused on students’ argumentative speaking ability. nevertheless, both studies have revealed the advantages of incorporating the australasian parliamentary debate style in teaching argumentative speaking skill. second, the australasian parliamentary debate style not only enhances students’ linguistic skills but also strengthens their critical thinking skill. generally speaking, students’ macro skills of english, such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 60-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license been encouraged by the incorporation of parliamentary debate in the teaching and learning process. (suhendra, 2015). he also states that the parliamentary debate contributes to the students’ critical thinking competence and selfconfidence. these kinds of competencies are perfectly shaped during the process of debate that requires students to speak in front of the class to defend their side of arguments, and to prove that their arguments are more convincing that those of the opponent team. in addition to providing meaningful listening, speaking and writing practice, the debate is also highly effective for developing argumentation skills for persuasive speech and writing (siebold, 2016). since debate does not happen smoothly without listening to each other, each debater also needs to listen to another side to successfully rebut their arguments. conclusion and suggestion the findings of this study suggest that the australasian parliamentary debate has a positive impact on students’ argumentative speaking ability. this is supported by the results of the statistical calculation in this study. in this regard, the researchers conclude that using australasian parliamentary debate has a beneficial effect on students’ argumentative speaking ability. in order to create student-centered activity during the teaching-learning process, the teacher should be more active in providing opportunities and creating an english environment among students either inside or outside the classroom. teachers as mentors and supervisors in this debate technique process play key roles to engage students in elaborating their arguments. it is predicted that conducting this debate style in the classroom would take a lot of time and energy. during the preparation itself, the teacher should guide students to build the case with valid facts and data. both students and teacher need to read a lot of resources and pick relevant data to support their arguments. whilst there is score improvement of students’ argumentative speaking skill in this research, the researchers are also aware that the quality of students’ speeches still do not meet the ideal speech yet. it can be seen from the duration of their speeches which were only in between 34 minutes by following the sentences on the module only. they would add their own arguments, but they were limited to what they found on the internet only. thus, they still needed more and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 61-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license exercise to elaborate their arguments in a smooth and natural manner. furthermore, the researchers faced lack of time as the limitation in undertaking this research. therefore, for any future researchers that are interested in investigating a similar issue, it is suggested that they consider sufficient time allotment for their research activities a whole as well as the number of their research participants. those suggestions hopefully can help teachers and students to teach and learn english in the classroom in more valuable and meaningful ways especially using this australasian parliamentary debate style as a teaching technique. references bailey, k. m. (2003). speaking. in d. nunan, practical english language teaching (pp. 48-60). singapore: mcgraw-hill education. brown, h. d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson education inc. erskine, c. (2017). notes for adjudicators. retrieved from http://www.uvm.edu/: http://www.uvm.edu/~debate/wat ch/wsdcdvd/text/wsdcjudgingguid elines.pdf grace, t. m. (2014). pathway to english for senior high school grade x elective programme. jakarta: erlangga. hans, m.e. (2017). classroom management is prerequisite for effective teaching. 6 (2) hasanah, u. (2012). the implementation of debate technique to tmprove the students' speaking skill. salatiga: stain salatiga. hooley, d. (2007). speaking my mind: the importance of high school debate. the english journal, vol. 96, no. 5, 18. iman, j. n. (2017). debate instruction in efl classroom: impacts on the critical thinking and speaking skill. international journal of instruction, vol.10, no.4, 96-104. incorporated, debating sa. (2008). debating: a brief introduction for beginners. retrieved from https://www.debatingsa.com: https://www.debatingsa.com.au/w pcontent/uploads/2017/07/debatingan-introduction-for-beginners.pdf johnson, s. l. (2009). winning debates: a guide to debating in the style of the world universities debating championships. new york: international debate education association. lucas, s. e. (2007). the art of public speaking. new york: mcgraw-hill. luthfiyyah, r. (2014). risk-taking, speaking ability, and australasian parliamentary debate: do they really appertain? journal of english language and learning, vol (2) number 1, 171178. harris, d. p. (1969). testing english as a second language. new york: mcgrawhill. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 62-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16973 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license quinn, s. (2009). debating in the world schools style: a guide. new york: international debate education association. rear, d. (2018). a systematic approach to teaching critical thinking through debate vol.2. retrieved from http://blog.nus.edu.sg/: http://blog.nus.edu.sg/eltwo/2010/ 02/19/a-systematic-approach-toteaching-critical-thinking-throughdebate/ romero, b. n. (2018). improving speaking skills. retrieved from http://www.encuentrojournal.org/: http://www.encuentrojournal.org/t extos/navarro.pdf/ scott, s. (2008). perceptions of students' learning critical thinking through debate in a technology classroom: a case study. the journal of technology studies, 40. siebold, d. k. (2016). teaching debate to esl students: a six-class unit. internet tesl journal, vol. xi, no. 2, 1. siquig, d. c. jr. (2015, september 30). argumentative speech. retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/: https://www.slideshare.net/iniwan nalangniyaakobastabasta/argumenta tive-speech-53353974 suhendra, e. (2015). the effect of the british parliamentary debate practices for english language classroom. malang: state university of malang summary of the four-team british parliamentary debate format. (2015). retrieved from http://pcte.edu.in: http://pcte.edu.in/wpcontent/uploads/sites/6/2016/10/r ules-of-debate.pdf willingham, d. t. (2007). critical thinking: why is it so hard to teach? retrieved from https://www.aft.org/: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/f iles/periodicals/crit_thinking.pdf http://www.encuentrojournal.org/textos/navarro.pdf/ http://www.encuentrojournal.org/textos/navarro.pdf/ teachers’ voices on 2013 curriculum for english instructional activities teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum for english instructional activities maulidia rachmawati nur ibn khaldun university, bogor, west java maulidia.rnur@gmail.com ahmad madkur stain jurai siwo metro, lampung madzkur_ahmad@yahoo.com abstract curriculum is undoubtedly an inseparable part of education. in indonesia, education curriculum has already undergone several changes. among others, the newly introduced and implemented one is called curriculum 2013 (k-13). involving a “scientific approach”, this curriculum is expected to answer both the needs and the challenges to improve the quality of education in indonesia. nevertheless, the implementation of this curriculum gives birth to some pros and cons. the present paper is aimed at providing a picture of challenges, opportunities and teachers’ perception on the use of this curriculum in english teaching. the data were collected through in-depth interview to six english teachers in six pilot schools in bogor and lampung. the analysis shows that most teachers accepted the curriculum. however, according to them, the curriculum should be evaluated and further developed. key words: 2013 curriculum, english teaching, teachers’ perceptions abstrak kurikulum merupakan bagian yang tidak terpisahkan dari pendidikan. di indonesia, kurikulum pendidikan telah mengalami beberapa perubahan, yang terbaru adalah kurikulum 2013 (k-13). menggunakan konsep “pendekatan ilmiah”, kurikulum ini diharapkan dapat menjawab kebutuhan dan tantangan untuk meningkatkan kualitas pendidikan di indonesia. akan tetapi, pelaksanaan kurikulum ini menimbulkan banyak pro dan kontra. tulisan ini bertujuan untuk memberikan gambaran singkat mengenai tantangan, peluang dan persepsi guru terhadap penggunaan kurikulum ini dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. data dikumpulkan melalui wawancara mendalam kepada 6 guru bahasa inggris di 6 sekolah percontohan (pilot school). hasil analisa menunjukkan bahwa hampir semua guru bisa menerima diberlakukannya kurikulum ini. meski demikian, menurut mereka, kurikulum 2013 ini perlu dievaluasi dan dikembangkan lebih lanjut. kata kunci: kurikulum 2013, pengajaran bahasa inggris, persepsi guru maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 120| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction curriculum is one of the main education components stated on the indonesia education act number 20/2003. the general statements of the constitution define curriculum as a set of plans and arrangements covering education goals, contents, learning materials, and learning methods intended to serve as the guidelines in implementing the teaching and learning process to achieve the goals that have been set. therefore, curriculum has a very important role in providing fundamental reference concerning what students should learn and achieve. to start the discussion, it is important to further clarify what we understand about curriculum. some experts consider that curriculum and syllabus are two interchangeable concept. however, some others distinguish curriculum from syllabus. yalden (1987, p. 18), for instance, stated: the curriculum includes the goals, objectives, content, processes, resources, and means of evaluation of all the learning experiences planned for pupils both in and out of school and community through classroom instruction and related program. in other words, curriculum is a set of instructional activities consisting of several important elements namely purpose, content, procedures, resources and tool of assessment. it does not only cover the planning of both school and out of school activities. this definition implies that curriculum is broader than a syllabus and that a syllabus is part of curriculum. dubin and olshtain (1986, p. 34-35) define a curriculum as “a broad description of general goals by indicating an overall educationalcultural philosophy which applies across subjects”, whereas a syllabus as “a more detailed and operational statement of teaching and learning elements, which translates the philosophy of the curriculum into a series of planned steps leading towards more narrowly defined objectives.”. in short, curriculum serves in the level of paradigm on which the educational practice is based. meanwhile, syllabus is focused on realizing what is designed in curriculum. therefore, it can be said that syllabus is a part of curriculum. the aforementioned notion is in line with krahnke (1987) who states that curriculum includes syllabus, but not vice versa. furthermore, according to celce-murcia (1991, p. 9), a syllabus is “an inventory of things the learner should master.” this inventory is sometimes presented in a recommended sequence and is made teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 121 use of in designing courses and teaching materials. the type of syllabus employed very often influences the type of approach and method adopted. similarly, the approach or method tends to change along with the revision of the syllabus (cahyono & widiati, 2011). content is usually considered as one of the important aspects in designing syllabus (krahnke, 1987). however, in practice some teaching syllabus generally includes behavioral or learning objectives for students, specifications of how the content will be taught and strategies to evaluate them. the content in this case concerns “which definition of language will be assumed by the instruction and what linguistic content will form the basis and organization for the instruction” (krahnke, ibid, p. 2). this means that in the making of syllabus, content, method, and assessment should be involved. related to the execution of curriculum, the teacher is the key point in the development of curriculum for teachers is the spearhead implementation on the ground. this is in line with murray print (1993) who views that teachers are required to implement the curriculum, to adapt the curriculum with school characteristics and local needs, to design curriculum and to conduct curriculum research. in other words, it could be considered that curriculum development starts from the class. therefore, teachers should have a creative idea and examine the curriculum in class as an important phase and as an element of the overall administrative support. due to the vital role of teachers in the execution of curriculum in classroom, it is urgent that their opinions, whether it is pro or con, is considered. various suggestions coming from different teachers can enrich and give us wider perspectives to see the real implementation of the 2013 curriculum. therefore, this paper is intended to investigate whether the teachers agree or disagree on the new curriculum and what are the challenges and opportunities based on the teachers’ perceptions. the development of the indonesian curricula in indonesian context, according to dit. psmp (direktorat pembinaan sekolah menengah pertama/ directorate of junior high school development, 2009), the indonesian government has officially issued different curricula. up to now there have been 10 curricula, which development will be explained in this section. the first curriculum, leer plan (rencana pelajaran) was issued in 1947. maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 122| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 the curriculum involved a political view to reject the implementation of the dutch curriculum. the principles of education was decided by pancasila. because the situation was still in revolution war, the curriculum had just been officially implemented in 1950. the leer plan only contained of two primary aspects, i.e. list of lesson with its indication of length of time and outlines of teaching. in 1952, this curriculum was then revised by the second curriculum called unraveled leer plans (rentjana pelajaran terurai) 1952. the curriculum concerned on how to relate the materials with everyday activities. in 1964, the government revised again the curriculum system with the so-called educational plan (rentjana pendidikan) 1964. the main focus of this curriculum was to equip indonesian people with academic knowledge since the level of elementary school. this curricululm preached pancawardhana, which included the development of creativity, sense, initiative, work and moral. the fourth was the 1968 curriculum, which belonged to separate-subject curriculum, whereby the subject content was logically and systematically sequenced, and each subject was separated from others. concerning the english instruction, the decree of the minister of education number 096/19679, stated that the language skills to be developed were reading, listening, writing, and speaking (huda, 1999). however more emphasis was given to the development of reading skill, whereas that of speaking skill was given the least priority. the above curriculum was revised through the establishment of the next curriculum, i.e. the 1975 curriculum. in this curriculum, the teaching of english was aimed both at developing the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). although the emphasis was still on reading skill development, the teaching of english was also aimed at equipping students with the language components (grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary), with more stress on grammar mastery (tjokrosujoso, et al., cited in cahyono & widiati, 2011). furthermore, this concept was revised with the 1984 curriculum, where the teaching of english aimed at putting back the true goals of learning english, which were to achieve, “meaningfulness and communicative functions” (the ministry of education and culture, cited in huda, 1999). in 1984, a curriculum intended to complete the 1975 curriculum was made. it was called student active learning/cara belajar siswa aktif (sal/cbsa) curriculum. this teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 123 curriculum made the students the subject of learning. it was oriented to instructional purpose, in which the limited time of teaching and learning in classroom should be able to provide learning opportunities for students. this was at the end intended to create effective and beneficial learning opportunities for all students. the next curriculum was the 1994 curriculum, which offered an idea that english syllabus should be developed by a team in order that adequate subject contents could be ensured in the development of the school curriculum (dit. psmp, 2009). the team should consist of specialists in teaching english as a foreign language (tefl), curriculum developer, practicing teachers, and school system authorities (huda, 1999). another feature of the 1994 english syllabus was that it consisted of several components. the first was national content, which was implemented nationally. in other words, all students throughout the country should at least achieve the goals in the national content. the second served as enrichment content, which was implemented to students who had achieved the national content. the last one was local content, which was intended to address the regional or local needs of the students in accordance with the local situation. it is apparent that global changes as well as science and technology advancement appear to influence the curriculum innovations. in line with this, responding to the implementation of the indonesian law number 22/1999 on regional autonomy, the government released competencebased curriulum (cbc) in 2004. the english curriculum, in particular, adopted the schematic representation of communicative competence introduced by celce-murcia et al. (as cited in agustien, 2003). cbc was generally criticized not to provide opportunity for teachers to get involved in the development of the curriculum. as a consequence, the government attempted to improve the curriculum through the establishment of school-based curriculum (sbc) or locally called kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (ktsp) in 2006. this curriculum was developed in response to global as well as local changes and learners’ needs, the diversity of indonesia, the advancement of technology, science, and arts, the need to enforce lifelong learning, and the balance of both the national and the local needs (cahyono & widiati, 2011). the above explanation on the development of the curriculum shows us that curriculum is not static. curriuclum could change in response to different conditions and needs. maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 124| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 curriculum should serve as one the solutions in addressing various problems that emerge from time to time. what has been done by the government needs to be appreciated even though some parts of the work should be seriously improved. the emergence of the 2013 curriculum in general, the emergence of the 2013 curriculum (later on in this paper is sometimes referred to as k-13 to avoid repetition) is the reaction to the fact that indonesia is following the respective years of global world and its problematic issues. indonesia is working towards the betterment of its education quality, following the competitive challenges of globalization. not to mention all, the upcoming asean free trade area (afta) implies the need for the global competition. for this reason, it is logical that the government improves the quality of the young generation so that they are ready to face both the positive and the negative effects of the globalization. in relation to the education quality, the study of pisa (program for international student assessment) and timss (trends in international mathematics and science study) show that indonesian students have low quality. the reports of both programs show that the students of indonesia are lack of critical, analytic, and procedural competences. this low competence is likely to be related to the previous curriculum, which focused too much on covering broad content and cognitive aspect, not on the essential aspects that will enable students to be critical and be able to participate in the global world to support indonesia in the upcoming years. additionally, the new curriculum also offer the building of character to prepare the students to face various opportunities, which could bring both positive and negative sides to students and society in general. character education gives the students the knowledge they need to know especially concerning the negative effects of the advancement of technology, science, and art and how they could deal with them properly. the 2013 curriculum in general have many similarities with its predecessor, ktsp curriculum. however, there are some new features in this curriculum. first, compared to ktsp, there is a concrete assessment in each aspect in the 2013 curriculum, in which indicators are provided to help teachers easily check their students’ achievement. then, specifically referring to the students of senior high school, in the previous curriculum, students select their major in the 11th grade, while in the 2013 curriculum, teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 125 they should select their major in the 10th grade. the next difference is thematic-integrative approach implemented in the level of elementary school. this approach facilitates the elementary students learn according to the theme, which can involve some subjects. furthermore, the other difference is the deletion of computer information technology or tik subject. the 2013 curriculum considers tik subject to be involved in all other subjects as learning media, not as a separate subject. due to some changes mentioned above, what is actually expected from this new curriculum? despite its controversy, curriculum 2013 contains innovations to create better learning practice, which is intended mainly to improve the quality of the students. different from the previous ktsp curriculum, teachers are not required to develop their syllabus anymore, and therefore they are expected to be more focus on studying and preparing the materials so that they can provide more quality learning opportunities for students. then, the thematic-integrative approach gives wider chance for the teachers to enrich the materials. additionally, the students can get broader knowledge. in a bigger paradigm, the curriculum changes which concern on character education are expected to be a new hope for the quality betterment of national education. furthermore, the character education is directed to give birth to generation with strong character, high integrity of moral and tough mentalspiritual behavior. english teaching in 2013 curriculum according to wachidah (2013), the 2013 english curriculum seems to be the reactions or correction of the previous curriculum and the reality that has happened. the reality shows that most high-school learners can hardly use english in the real world even for simple purposes. it is also far below the nationally set standards of english competence. a number of factors appear to account for the problems as the following: 1. students learn pronunciation, word stressing, and intonation, yet these elements are severely ignored. the coherence among different skills and language components is also untouched. the activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing are not integrated. 2. students learn too many expressions, not activities. 3. students focus on grammar and vocabulary, not the texts. 4. artificial texts are presented in several textbooks, not the real texts. maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 126| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 5. reading and writing exercises are given priority, not using the language. 6. the teaching and learning activities are text-book based, which consequently make students not to have maximum learning opportunity to make meanings for real communication purposes in almost all activities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks. 7. the learning process is teacher centered. students’ learning process depends on the teacher’s explanation and provision of, practice and homework. based on the problems of the previous curriculum, the 2013 english curriculum is seen much better as it is developed by following these principles: 1. the 2013 english curriculum is bringing back the true goal of english teaching, that is, “meaningfulness and communicative functions”. the final goal of english teaching is the development of communicative competence in the english language. clt (communicative language teaching) is adopted on the 2013 curriculum. 2. the 2013 english curriculum is expected to shift from very teachercentered to more student-centered. 3. students learn the social function, text structure, and lexicon grammar. topics are closely related to the students’ life at school, home and society. 4. students learn english by observing, questioning, exploring, associating, and communicating. the processes of observing, questioning, exploring, associating and communicating are expected to promote students to have critical, analytic, investigational, procedural and communicative competences. 5. the teacher plays as a model of language user and language learner. 6. students use authentic or nearauthentic texts, spoken and written from various sources, including english textbook and textbooks for other subjects. 7. students are empowered for the availability of texts. 8. students are expected to learn english interpersonal, transactional, functional communication. 9. students should learn attitude, knowledge, and skills. 10. the students learn english by activities, real texts, and using the language. teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 127 teacher’s role in curriculum implementation curriculum 2013 is basically a refinement of the previous curriculum. the target of curriculum change is none other than the teacher as the direct implementers in the classroom. while curriculum is the planned program, teachers are the actors that implement the program through teaching and learning process. this is the relationship between teachers, curriculum and learning. there are several roles that teachers should have in implementing the 2013 curriculum: 1. teacher as a learning designer as a professional teacher, he/she designs learning plan which will be conducted in the classroom. the study design is expected to be both structured and practical. 2. learning motivator one of the hardest roles of teacher is maintaining the willingness of students to explore the learning material as much as possible. motivation, as revealed in many studies, is a very potential factor to make students excited to learn optimally. 3. learning mediator the presence of teachers in the teaching and learning process could serve as an intermediary actor between the sources of learning and students. the teacher presents the subject matter to students' learning and students receive, examine, and discuss the matter so that it becomes theirs. as a mediator, the teacher lays the platform for the teaching and learning process. the teacher interposes something within the environment with which the students interact. 4. learning inspiration teachers become a major source of inspiration for students in managing the subject matter. thinking and strategy delivered by the teacher will encourage students to learn independently and creatively. method this research used qualitative approach. how english teachers conceive of the implementation of curriculum 2013 and its effect on english teaching was investigated. the participants were 6 english teachers coming from four pilot schools in bogor and two pilot schools in lampung. in each of those schools, one english teacher was selected randomly since all english teachers at those school have the same duty in implementing the 2013 curriculum. to gather this data, the participants were asked several questions through in-depth interview. from six types questions in the interview (patton, cited in fraenkel & wallen, 2008), the kinds of questions maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 128| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 raised in the interview were about insight, experience and attitude, opinion and assessment, and feeling. for example, “how do you conceive of curriculum 2013?”, “what are difficulties you face in implementing it in your classroom activities”, “what is your suggestion for the betterment of the curriculum?”, “do you actually agree or disagree on the curriculum change? why?”, and so forth. the result of interview were analyzed using miles and huberman model (miles & huberman 1994) by which the data were, reduced, displayed and verified. findings and discussion english teachers’ perception on the 2013 curriculum as previously explained, to get information about the k-13 implementation, interview was conducted to english teachers at 4 schools in bogor and 2 schools in lampung. this section will present each of teachers’ opinion about the curriculum. for ethical reason, their names and their schools are made anonymous. mrs. nr is an english teacher at state junior high school (smpn) in bogor. she is also one of the national instructors of the 2013 curriculum. she thinks that the 2013 curriculum is very good to be implemented. she considers that the concept of active learning, character building, and new paradigm of the 2013 curriculum is very relevant with the challenges faced by indonesia. she hopes that all the teachers, as the main players of the 2013 curriculum, could feel and read the messages of the emergence of 2013 curriculum, and actively participate to implement in their own field. the next participant is mrs. dr, who is an english teacher at a state senior high school (smun) in bogor. she argues that some teachers and schools do not have enough information about the implementation of the 2013 curriculum. in relation to the concept of the 2013 curriculum, she mentions that the process-oriented learning (observing, questioning, collecting information, associating, and communicating) promises the students of indonesia to be active learners who have critical thinking. she is optimistic in getting involved in the process of the implementation of the 2013 curriculum. she thinks that one of the challenges is to set the interesting learning sources for her students and scoring criteria. mr. ek, currently a senior english teacher at smkn in bogor, supports the 2013 curriculum to be implemented. however, according to him,the scoring criteria are rather complicated. specifically referring to the teaching of english subject in smk, he criticizes the teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 129 fact that that general english has been so far given more priority, not the english for specific purposes. in terms of the scoring criteria, mr. h, an english teacher at mtsn in bogor, and mrs. sd, an english teacher at man in bogor, argue that the 2013 curriculum is better. the scoring criteria do not only focus on cognitive aspect, but also the personality aspect. process-oriented in learning are given priority. different from the above positive opinion, mr. da, an english teacher at smkn 1 metro, lampung views the reduction of time allocation for english subject as a weakness. as an english teacher, he personally disagrees with the 2013 curriculum since it makes the time allocation of english is decreased. consequently, it automatically reduces english teachers’ teaching hours in some schools including in his school, which will have financial consequences. rather different from mr. da, mrs. dn who also comes rom lampung, feels that implementing the 2013 curriculum especially in english teaching in senior high school is not very problematic. when asked about the barriers she faces, she said that actually there is no any serious obstacles since the curriculum does not insist the teacher to create or produce as it did in the previous school-based curriculum. nevertheless, according to her, it is necessary to pay attention to the indicators that teachers must achieve. this is to emphasize that the main actor is teacher. although very small, this study has shown that more teachers have positive opinion towards the establishment of the 2013 curriculum. nearly all participating teachers agree to implement the curriculum. however, all of them suggest that the curriculum should be improved in both its conceptual and technical aspects. in terms of the concept, the so-called “scientific approach” adopted in the 2013 curriculum is only briefly explained and therefore it should be further elaborated. moreover, especially in teaching language, there has not been yet a method called scientific approach (richard, 2014). in terms of the technical aspect, the idea of integrating different lessons promoted in the curriculum seems to be a big burden for the teachers. they do not have clear ideas on how various lessons could be integrated. for students, this is also a demanding activity because it is not easy to do. in addition, concerning the evaluation, daily individual assessment to all students required by the curriculum also make the teachers exhausted. in summary, although the number of the teachers participating maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 130| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 this research is very small, this at least can give a picture about how teachers perceive the 2013 curriculum. in addition, since they are teaching in the piloting schools, which are highly selected by the government, their opinions are considered reasonable and good to be one of considerations. nearly all teachers interviewed in this study agree to the innovations offered by the new curriculum. nevertheless, according to them, there are numerous challenges which have to be faced as explained in the following. challenges and opportunities according to the teachers, the principles established as the basis to develop 2013 english curriculum reveal some challenges and opportunities when it is implemented. the challenge, among others, is that the curriculum is a textbook-driven curriculum. this will possibly make the teachers not creative whereas they are expected to be creative and innovative. the next is that today, the curriculum has been officially declared to be used in teaching the first year students. however, there is no enough information, which of course will cause teachers to face confusion in implementing the curriculum in the teaching and learning process. another challenge is the assessment, which is considered to be very demanding. most of teachers argue that the scoring criteria are complicated and very time consuming. the other problem raised is the reduction of english subject hours, which causes the teachers’ disappointment. referring to the certification program launched by the government, all certified teachers have to teach 24 hours. when the time allocation for english is reduced, their teaching hours will automatically be reduced and this will have some financial consequences. nevertheless, despite the complexity of the 2013 curriculum, there are also some opportunities which can positively influence the teaching and learning practice. first of all, the concept of active learning, character building, and new paradigm of the curriculum 2013 is very relevant with the challenges faced by indonesia. with this concept, it is expected that teachers are more creative and students enjoy the teaching and learning opportunities provided by the teachers. the next, even though very complex, the scoring criteria do not only focus on cognitive aspect, but also on personality aspect. hence, the teachers can know their students more specifically. in this respect, students are evaluated not only based on what they know but also on the way they behave. furthermore, the scientific approach promoted in the new teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 131 curriculum is expected to be able to encourage the development of students’ critical thinking. when the teaching and learning covers the process of questioning, observing, collecting information, associating and communicating, students’ critical thinking is likely to be more developed. concerning the teaching english, this kind of process is hoped tp facilitate students in producing ideas particularly while speaking english. furthermore, three learning models are adopted in this curriculum i.e. discovery learning, problem-based learning, and projectbased learning. the models are very appropriate to be employed in english classes. the mentioned opportunities can be seen as optimistic instruments to effectively implement the curriculum especially in english teaching. in short, as has been the case of the previous curriculum, the 2013 curriculum also brings both challenges and opportunities. teachers participating in this study agree to the ideas promoted in the 2013 curriculum. although small in terms of the number, their opinion should be considered because they come from pilot schools selected by the government. nevertheless, improvement is urgently needed. conclusion and suggestion this paper aims at understanding teachers’ voices on the implementation of the 2013 curriculum. the findings reveal that teachers positively perceive the changes offered in the new curriculum as an indication that the country is working towards the betterment of its education quality, following the continuously changing technology, science, and art. it is argued in the paper that teachers are the key actors of the curriculum implementation, and therefore they are expected to be open and innovate themselves in order to be able to provide better teacher and learning process. however, there are also some challenges that teachers face in implementing the curriculum. it is beneficial for both teachers and students when the government listen to teachers’ voices and address the their challenges accordingly. referring to the aforementioned challenges, some suggestions are offered. firstly, it is urgent for the government to better prepare the establishment of the new curriculum by providing sufficient training and supervision to teachers. secondly, it is worth analyzing the time allocation for english subject so that english teachers are not afraid to loose their teaching time, which has financial consequence. maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 132| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 thirdly, teachers themselves should be more adaptive, creative and innovative to create good learning atmosphere. finally, with respect to the assessment, scoring technique should to be simplified. references agustien, h.i.r. (2003) setting up new standards: a preview of indonesia’s new competencebased curriculum. a paper presented at the 51st teflin international conference, bandung, 21-23 october. cahyono, b.y., & widiati, u. (2011). the teaching of english as a foreign language in indonesia. state university of malang press. celce-murcia, m. (1991) teaching english as a second or foreign language. boston: heinle & heinle. dit. psmp (direktorat pembinaan sekolah menengah pertama/ directorate of junior high school development) (2009). perkembangan kurikulum smp (junior high school curriculum development 0. jakarta: directorate of junior high school development. dubin, f., & olshtain, e. (1986) course design: developing programs and materials for language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. fraenkel, jack r. dan norman e. wallen. (2008) how to design and evaluate research in education. united states: mc. graw hill. huda, n. (1999) language learning and teaching: issues and trends. malang: ikip malang publisher. krahnke, k. (1987) approaches to syllabus design in foreign language teaching. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. miles, b., m & huberman., a., m. (1994) qualitative data enalysis. 2nd edition. sage pblication. murray, p. (1993). curriculum development and designaustralia: allen and unwin. tjokrosujoso, h., antoro, s.d., & pantow, j.b.s. 2002. curriculum and material development. jakarta: open university publishing center. yalden, j. (1987). the communicative syllabus. englewood cliffs: prentice-hall. teachers’ voices on the 2013 curriculum ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 133 wachidah, s. (2013). 2013 english curriculum. paper presented at seminar and workshop on the 2013 english curriculum, bogor ibn khaldun university. maulidia r.n & ahmad madkur 134| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 127-142 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee do doctors need communication in their job places? (a case in indonesia) dwi poedjiastutie, ratih puspitasari received: 18th september 2018; revised: 25th november 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract the current study revealed the communication needs of medical students at universitas muhammadiyah malang (umm). three approaches of need analysis (na) were combined in this study; target situation analysis (tsa), presentation situation analysis (psa), and pedagogical need analysis (pna). the questionnaires were circulated to medical students. the findings discovered that communication skill was considered important in emp course. the medical students realized the importance of doctors‟ communication in order to enhance better performance in their professional settings. esp teachers are supposed to give a model of communication; students also expected that the materials should be authentic. the materials design should have clear and coherent objectives to help the students achieving the communication goals. moreover, students want esp teaching put them as close as possible to the workplace situation. keywords: needs analysis; english for medical purposes; communication needs; authentic classroom activities abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi kebutuhan materi pembelajaran bahasa inggris komunikasi pada mahasiswa kedokteran di universitas muhammadiyah malang. pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah gabungan antara target situation analysis (tsa), presentation situation analysis (psa), dan pedagogical need analysis (pna). dari data yang diperoleh dalam penelitian ini ditemukan bahwa mahasiwa kedokteran merasa mata kuliah emp (english for medical purposes) itu penting untuk menunjang karir dan profesi mereka. maka dari itu para pengajar mata kuliah esp (english for specific purposes) diharapkan bisa memberikan model-model materi pengajaran bahasa inggris untuk komunikasi yang otentik; yaitu materi yang tepat untuk mengasah ketrampilan mereka dalam komunikasi. bahkan, para mahasiswa kedokteran menginginkan adanya model-model pengajaran esp yang bisa membawa mereka ke situasi semirip mungkin dengan dunia kerja mereka di kemudian hari. kata kunci: analisa kebutuhan; bahasa inggris untuk kedokteran; kebutuhan materi pengajaran komunikasi yang autentik how to cite: poedjiastutie, d., puspitasari, r. (2018). do doctors need communication in their job places? (a case in indonesia). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 127-142. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 128-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction communication skill is the most demanded by the employers to increase their productivity in their workplaces. morreale & pearson (2008) argues that a person can represent him/herself in professional settings through good communication. this phenomena in language learning is triggered by the situation where nowadays countries cannot not stand alone in fulfilling their own human resources for some reasons.for example, due to the shortage of human resources south east asia (asean) has established mutual recognition arrangement (mra) focusing in eight professional services. the agreement facilitates mobility in professional or skilled labor in engineering; nursing; architectural; mutual recognition of surveying qualifications; medical and dental practitioners; accountancy; and tourism services. this agreement is expected to enhance cooperation amongst asean countries. as mentioned earlier.one of the professional sectors targeted for mobility is medical practitioners (mp). this is because the distribution of medical practitioners in some asean region is still disproportionate (arunanondchai & fink, 2006; supakankunti & herberholz, 2012). however, asean currently does not have one standard medical qualificationcompetence and curriculum. consequently, with a variety of standards and skills, accordingly limit the mobility of doctors around asean countries. one of the skills required for mobility according to mra is having a good command of english.the medical study has come into prominence which english is used as the primary means of communication in correspondences, conferences, and in the process of writing scientific articles (antic, 2007; milosavljević, vuletić, & jovković, 2015; and pavel, 2014). as a result, providing english for medical purposes (emp) for the future doctors come into considerations in several medical and healthcare institutions around the globe. for example, nowadays in saudi arabia and other middle east countries, the medical universities include emp as the part of their curriculum. the students have to complete emp courses in their first year academic (arani, 2014; fahad & alfehaid, 2011; faraj, 2015; and ibrahim, 2016). in similar vein, the ministry of public health in cuba takes full responsibility for all medical education, including english for medical undergraduates and postgraduates. the students need to take five years language course in total; three years of learning general english courses and 2 years of learning medical components (maclean, betancourt, & hunter, 2000). in china, several universities establish international classes for medical students. medical council in new zealand designs emp for overseas student doctors come from south east ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 129-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license asia, the middle east, and eastern europe. in this „bridging program‟ english is taught as the part of doctor professional development (basturkmen, 2010). the context of the study preparing medical students with emp has also been done by university muhammadiyah malang (umm) of indonesia. the medical faculty umm provides students with english subjectsintensively in their first year of study. the faculty cooperates withlanguage center (lc)as the unit that takes in charge of the english for specific purposes (esp) program. espat this university is offered to all freshmen enrolled at 38 departments at umm, including medical school. this program offers six credits in the first semester which cover intermediate esp reading (2 credits), intermediate esp speaking (2 credits), and intermediate esp listening course (2 credits). then, in the second semester, the students are still obliged to take another six credits learnings: advanced reading (2 credits), advanced speaking (2 credits), and advanced writing course (2 credits). the purpose is to improve the students‟ english proficiency and prepare them for future careers. so‟ud (2016) have found that the mismatch between students‟ needs and the course implementation led to graduates‟ and employers‟ disappointment. this is in line with long (2005) who argues that a one-size-fits-all approach does not make sense for esp course since learners have diverse needs in every domain. from the preliminary observation, several issues were found. the english materials for medical students (emp) focused more on general english and did not reflect on what doctor usually communicate for. as a result, the speaking materials were not relevant for medical students. furthermore, the teacher spent much time giving explanation and focusing on grammar. another issue, the number of students was too big (58 students) for communication. consequently, students have little opportunity to practice communication. this is exacerbated by the absence of systematic needs analysis (na) study. this practice is contradictive to what literature elsewhere recommended. for example, richards (2001) claims that the aims of the esp program should meet the specific needs of particular group of learners. needs analysis (na) is the approach to obtain valuable data to develop curricula fit with the learners‟ expectations (grier, 2005; hutchinson & waters, 1987; long, 2005; poedjiastutie & oliver, 2017). the data about the learners‟ needs can be a critical step to develop the appropriate syllabus and course design. in addition, the results of na can be used as decision making on the course intensity, the course duration, the syllabus content, the teaching and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 130-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning materials, and the teaching methodologies (richards, 2001). there are three different na approaches target situation analysis (tsa), present situation analysis (psa), and pedagogical needs analysis (pna) target situation analysis (tsa) robinson (1991) suggested tsa as “what did students need to be able to do” in english as a result of the course?” (p. 196). tsa was originally devised by munby (1978). he introduced communicative needs processor (cnp). cnp focused on the students‟ needs in the end of the language course and target level performance. munby (1978)proposed eight parameters which are considered as the variables in deciding learners‟ communication needs. the parameters are purposive domains, setting, interaction, instrumentality, dialect, communicative event, communicative key, and target level. following the cnp model, hutchinson & waters (1987) also proposed tsa which focused on the target situation and the language learners‟ attitudes towards the situations. they distinguished between target needs and learning needs. target needs deal with what the learner needs to do in the target situation. in identifying the target needs, the researchers have to be able to differentiate lacks, necessities, and wants. lacks refer to the gap between the existing proficiency by the learners and the target proficiency. necessities refer to types of needs which are determined by the demands of the target situation. wants refer to what the learners want to learn. on the other hand, learning needs deal with what the learner needs to do in order to learn. the typical questions asked for these needs are (a) why language is used? (b) how will the language be used? (c) what will the content areas be? (d) where will the language be used? and (e) when will the language be used? for example, atai & nazari (2011) and noori & mazdayasna(2014) conducted na using tsa approach in order to investigate the lack, necessities, and wants of iranian undergraduate students. the result of these studies drew attention of the students‟ needs that should have been taken into consideration by the institution in order to improve the students‟ communication skills. present situation analysis (psa) psa was proposed by richterich and chancerel (1980). the information is obtained from the students, the language teaching establishment, and the user institution. the data was collected by administering surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. the researchers are recommended to seek information regarding the students‟ perceived ability in learning english and the students‟ views on language ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 131-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching and learning. in addition, dudley-evans & john (1998) and robinson (1991) recommended to put society and culture into the consideration when analyzing the data. it includes the students‟ attitude towards the use of a foreign language. pedagogical need analysis (pna) as cited in songhori (2008), west proposed the pedagogical needs analysis as the umbrella of three kinds of needs analysis. they are deficiency needs analysis, strategy analysis, and means analysis. deficiency analysis refer to hutchinson & waters(1987)‟s explanation regarding lacks. the syllabus may be developed by collecting the students‟ gap between the existing proficiency and target proficiency. meanwhile, the pioneer of strategy needs analysis was west(1994). this approach focuses on the students‟ perception of their needs in their own terms. it is derived from the needs, lacks, and wants which was introduced by allwright (1982) and hutchinson & waters(1987). they agreed that this approach will identify the skill area and the students‟ preferred learning strategies. means analysis was proposed by holliday and cooke (1982)which emphasize on the context of learning, such as the teachers, teaching methodologies, students, and facilities. in order to examine the medical students‟ learning needs and their target needs, this study combined three approaches of na: tsa, psa, and pna; as described in the figure 1. tsa approach draws the target situation needs expected by the medical students in learning english. meanwhile, psa investigates the medical students‟ present level of english whether they are in elementary, intermediate or advanced level of english. the students‟ present level of english (psa) is used to inform the researcher how far the medical students need to spend their time studying english in order to achieve the target situation. the purpose of the questionnaire is to students‟ perceptions on determining their own needs (pna). the diagram below describes how the three na approaches is combined. the diagram below describes how the three na approaches is combined. figure 1. tsa, psa, and pna were implemented in this study abundant researches have been conducted in relation to communication needsat the differentworkplace settings. for example, the english courses for engineers should have been constructed based on the employer‟s daily basis communication which also include technical english terminologies (ghenghesh, 2013; gözüyeşil, 2014; psa ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 132-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license habbash & albakrawi, 2014; kim, 2013; & polyakova, 2015 ); english for tourism and hospitality industry (albakrawi, 2013; lin, wu, & huang, 2013; prachanant, 2012); business english (jeczelewski, 2016; juan, 2014; zhang & wang, 2015,); telecommunication services (unueshotse, (2017); economic science and technology (farida & asmaa, 2017); and computer science (ho, 2014). however, a few studies reveal the importance of communication for doctors‟ professional growth. for example, one study conducted by mubaraq (2017) just recently examine the students‟ english needs in two different institutions. the result showed that the medical students were unsatisfied with the current emp program due to unclear syllabus and materials. therefore, this study is intended to examine umm students‟ needs of emp. this study is significant in that it integrates several different approaches to na research for english language programs, and it seeks to do this in a country where such approaches have rarely hitherto been attempted. it has been carried out at a time when increasing importance is being attached to professionally-conducted na as educators respond to theory changes and research findings in second language acquisition (sla) and the emergence of analytic second language (l2) syllabus design. method this study is quantitative in nature and a survey research design is employed. this is the procedures in quantitative research in which the researchers administer survey to a sample or to entire population to describe attitude, opinion, behavior, or characteristic of population (creswell, 2015). he further asserts that there are two basic types of survey research: cross-sectional and longitudinal design. cross-sectional design was employed in this study. in cross-sectional design, the researcher collects data at one point in time. cross-sectional study can examine current attitudes, beliefs, opinions, or practices. attitudes, beliefs, and attitudes are ways in which individual thinks about issues, whereas practices are their actual behavior (ary, jacobs, razavieh, &sorensen, 2006). cresswell (2015) also demonstrates that cross-sectional survey can measure community needs of educational services as they relate to the programs and courses. since this study is looking for the answer of the umm medical students‟ needs of learning english, a cross-sectional survey was used in this study. closed-ended questionnaire were constructed based on the information that the researcher wanted to reveal from the students. therefore, a group of people consisting of six (three ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 133-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license researchers and threemedical students were involved to formulate the questionnaire items. there were four questions items of questionnaireswhich is important to reveal medical students‟ needs of emp. then, the questionnaires were circulated to bigger number of students. 125 out of 300 students of medical faculty of umm were willing to participate in survey. there were 74 male students and 51 female students. twenty out of 125 were alumni and 105 of the respondents were students who are still studying at medical faculty. at the time of data collection, most respondents were in the intermediate level of english because they had learnt english inhigh schools and had attended english courses fromone to two years. their age range were around 18 to 19 years old. almost all of them came from various part of java, while only few of them came from outside of java. one concern that should be taken into consideration was the issue of reliability and validity. reliability is the central concept in measurement and it basically means consistency. as punch (1998) states that if the same instrument were given to the same people, under the same circumstances but at different time, the extent to which they would get the same score, the measuring instrument is reliable. the second central concept of the measurement is validity. validity means the extent to which an instrument measures what is claimed to measure. punch (1998) argues that there is no foolproof procedure to establish validity. he further asserts that a valid inference occurs when there is no conflict between messages received as a result of the use a variety of different methodological procedures. each subject completed questionnaire individually at his or her own convenience. names and addresses were not required on the questionnaires in order to encourage the respondents to give sincere answers. however, they were asked to give personal information only such as: age, sex, and the academic year of the students‟ entrance. a plain language statement was also posted out together with the questionnaire. the low response rate may occur when the survey had to be conducted by mail since the researcher did not have any control over data collection in that situation. data from questionnaire are analyzed using simple descriptive statistics using percentage. dörnyei (2002) states that questionnaire was employed in order to obtain opinions from large number of respondents. this information is needed for policy makers especially the dean of medical faculty to make quick decisions of regarding to the future‟s syllabus deign. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 134-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion english skill priority the first question was intended to reveal english skill needed by the medical students. sixty-three or 50.4% considered speaking or communication the first skill they need to master. it showed that the students‟ priority of english learning is to be able to speak or to communicate. reading was on the second highest with 33 students or 26.4%. writing skill was the last skill that medical students were expected to master with the total number of 11 respondents or 8.8%. the summary of the english skills needed by medical students can be seen in table 1. table 1. english skills priority english skill rank number of students percentage (%) speaking 63 50.4 reading 33 26.4 listening 18 14.4 writing 11 8.8 total of the students 125 100 the purpose of english learning number two of the questionnaires was intended to disclose the purpose of the students learning english. the result showedthat most of the respondents learn english not only to enhance their professional skills, but also, they want to improve their interpersonal skills to communicate in english. the highest number showed that 21 students or 16.8%chose they learn english in order to become successful medical professional. secondly, eighteen students or 14.4% learnt english in order toenhance their academic performance. additionally, the results also showed that 16 students wanted to learn english because they want to travel abroad (1.8%). surprisingly, a few students (9 students or 4.8%) learnt english for scholarship or overseas trainings. table 2 below summarized the medical students‟ goal of english learning. table 2. the purpose of english learning items number of students percentage (%) it will help me to be a successful medical professional. 21 16.8 it will help me to increase my academic performance. 18 14.4 i need it when i travel abroad. 16 12.8 it is interesting and i enjoy it. 13 10.4 it will broaden my knowledge, perspective, and skills. 13 10.4 i will need it to build relationship/friendship with people from the other country. 9 7.2 i need it to help me to understand manual. 9 7.2 i need it for my daily entertainment e.g., reading english magazine, listening to music and songs 9 7.2 i am interested in various english cultures. 6 4.8 i need it for overseas collaboration e.g., scholarship and trainings. 6 4.8 it is compulsory subject. 3 2.4 total of the students 125 100.00 the goals of communication ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 135-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license since majority of students decided that speaking or communication skill needs to master in emp courses, the researcher felt that it is important to know the communication goals of the doctor. the highest number is both to able to speak to the patients and to give presentations chosen equally by 28 students or 22.4% of the respondents. giving instruction to the nurses and reporting the diagnose result in english to teamwork were chosen each by 26 students or 20.8% of the respondents. only ten students or 8% of the respondents think speaking is necessary for teamwork discussion. table 3 summarizesthe students‟ goals of being able to speak in emp courses. table 3. the goals of communication items import ant percentage (%) speaking to the patients 28 22.4 giving presentations 28 22.4 giving instruction to the nurses 26 20.8 reporting diagnose to teamwork 26 20.8 teamwork discussion 10 8 casual conversation 7 5.6 total of the students 125 100.00 the english communication needs in order to achieve students‟ communication needs, the researchers felt necessary to ask students some aspects that the lc umm or esp instructors need to improve. question number 4 in the questionnaires revealed the students‟ expectations. majority of the students (35 students or 28%) expected the teaching delivery should utilize real communication activity. interesting and authentic materials are expectedby 21 students or 16.8% as the second option. slightly higher than having smaller class which was expected20 students or 16% of the respondents. a complete summary of students‟ needs of emp speaking course is presented in the table below. table 4. the students‟ expectations of emp communication courses items number of students percenta ge (%) using real teaching delivery activity 35 28 using interesting and authentic materials 21 16.8 having smaller classes 20 16 providing follow-up english program 17 13.6 organizing proficiency-based class 17 13.6 providing continuous feedback 15 12 total of the students 125 100.00 in conclusion, communication skill was considered important in emp course. the medical students realized the importance of doctors‟ communication in order to enhance better performance in their professional settings. therefore, the students demanded that emp course at umm should use real and authentic activity and materials. discussion ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 136-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in medical settings at umm, medical students‟ expected communicationas the priority to master in order to build the relationship with the patient and colleagues. doctors who have good english communicationwill affect the competitiveness in healthcare industries. hence, the doctors need to be preparedwith advanced communication skills inserting into the emp curriculum. however, at the time of study, the researchers found several critical issues. first, the communication syllabuses for medical students at this university focus on ge and many times teachers didgrammatical correction during communication class. from the table above, it is also revealed that the communication goals that students want to master such as speaking to the patients, giving presentations, and giving instructions to the nurses. to enhance communication competence, umm is strongly adopted the model from shi, corcos, and storey, (2001). they conducted research focused-spoken communication for doctors-patients and doctors-to-doctors. based on the evaluation from the students, the course covered appropriate communication topics for medical students in order to be able to function effectively in their careers. therefore, the learning process should give the students‟ chance to speak as well. the second issue is having 85 students in communication class is considered unusual. students felt inconvenient with the class atmosphere. therefore, having smaller classes also need to be taken into account for emp. brown & lee (2015) stated that the goal of language class is to communicate each other so that the ideal number of students in the classroom should not more than 15 students. within this number, the teacher will also be at ease in handling the class (harmer, 2007). due to big number of students in communication class (80 students), the teacher spent most of the time giving oral explanation. as a result, the students missed the chance to speak. according to dudley-evans and john (1998), teaching esp should use different methodology from that of general english.in esp classrooms, activities should similar to what doctors do in their real jobs. for example, the types of communications which are commonly used by doctors in work setting focus on one-to one consultation between doctor and patient. therefore, esp teachers are supposed to give a model of communication such way. in addition to teaching delivery, students also expected that the materials should be authentic.according to antić (2008), good material should be based on various interesting texts and enable the students to implement their knowledge and skills. the materials design should have clear and coherent objectives to help the students achieving the communication goals. moreover, many researchers suggested that esp teaching should put the students as close as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 137-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license possible to the workplace situation (holliday, 1995; mavor & trayner, 2001; svendsen & krebs, 1984). conclusion and suggestion the findings discovered that communication skill was considered important in emp course. the medical students realized the importance of doctors‟ communication in order to enhance better performance in their professional settings. esp teachers are supposed to give a model of communication; students also expected that the materials should be authentic. the materials design should have clear and coherent objectives to help the students achieving the communication goals. moreover, students want esp teaching put them as close as possible to the workplace situation. the language centre can play a crucial role in improving the emp program at umm. especially in syllabuses design the implementation of one-size-fits-all approach need to be reconsidered. this approach has long been discredited by research findings (long, 2005), but is still practiced in many tertiary institutions including umm. language learners have a variety of reasons and learning goals which are shaped by a lot of factors including their previous and present learning experiences. therefore, this university should consider providing some alternatives to meet the different learning needs and take into account the different past experiences of the students. to create flexibility and to maximize students‟ learning a variety of goals need to be addressed in the program. the na procedure used in this study could help umm to develop and run appropriate professional development (pd) and other professional training useful for developing the teaching capacity of its staff. the findings of the present study suggest that teachers have a need for professional developmentdealing with a large class sizes, managing mixed ability groups. in addition, many teachers believe that learning occurs when both teacher and students meet in the class with teacher directing and explaining everything and students listening and taking notes. however, this belief has been proven ineffective in the students‟ language acquisition. designing learner-centered classes, which students have more freedom to decide which speaking materials they need to practice more and which part of communication they need to practice less, look simple in theory but complicated in practice. professional trainings on learner-centered types and aspects need to be included in teachers‟ pd. the emp teachers need to be provided with wider professional development opportunities and to be encouraged to participate in teaching workshops. such training should be scheduled and conducted in a continuous manner. from the findings ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 138-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of this study, despite their length of service in this institution, it is clear that many teachers are not at the level of teaching competence expected to lift up the doctors‟ communication competences. their teaching delivery (including teaching techniques, materials development, and language of instruction) were the main cause of classroom concerns. the example of syllabus developed from the above na study (see appendix). references albakrawi, h. t. m. 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(2015). english language usage pattern in china mainland doctors: ame survey-001 initial analysis results. quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery, 5(1), 174–181. https://doi.org/10.3978/j.issn.222 3-4292.2014.12.05. https://doi.org/10.2478/slgr-2014-0031 https://doi.org/10.2478/slgr-2014-0031 https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-2380(84)90026-x https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-2380(84)90026-x https://doi.org/10.5897/ijel2017.1040 https://doi.org/10.5897/ijel2017.1040 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444800007527 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444800007527 https://doi.org/10.3978/j.issn.2223-4292.2014.12.05 https://doi.org/10.3978/j.issn.2223-4292.2014.12.05 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 171-186 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee developing efl students’ writing skill through self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio moh. taufik, bambang yudi cahyono received: 28th august 2019; revised: 27th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract writing is one of the language skills that should be mastered by students of english as a foreign language (efl). in order to write well, efl students should understand the content of their writing. they should also be able to discover some writing errors they may have. therefore, it is necessary for the students to practice writing frequently and to be willing to review their writing products. this study aimed to develop efl students’ writing skill through self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio. it used action research design and it was conducted in a classroom consisting of 25 ten graders of islamic senior high school (madrasah aliyah negeri) at sumenep, east java. the findings showed that the students’ writing skill could be improved after the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio. it is suggested that efl teachers consider using self-assessment integrated with students’ e-portfolio to help improve efl students’ writing skill. key words: self-assessment; efl students; e-portfolio; writing competence abstrak menulis merupakan kemampuan berbahasa yang harus dimiliki oleh pelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl). dalam mengembangkan kemampuan menulis, pelajar dituntut untuk mengerti isi tulisan mereka dan mampu menemukan kesalahan-kesalahan yang mungkin terdapat dalam tulisan mereka. maka dari itu, pelajar dipandang perlu untuk sesering mungkin melatih kemampuan menulis, mengulas kembali dan merevisi karya mereka. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengembangkan kemampuan menulis siswa menggunakan self-assessment melalui elektronik portofolio. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas (ptk) dengan subjek 25 siswa kelas x man sumenep, jawa timur. penemuan penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa kemampuan menulis siswa membaik setelah penerapan self-assessment melalui elektorinik portofolio. dengan demikian, guru bahasa inggris disarankan untuk mempertimbangkan penerapan sefl-assessment melalui elektronik portfolio siswa untuk mengembangkan kemampuan menulis siswa. kata kunci: self-assessment; pelajar bahasa inggris; elektronik portofolio; kompetensi menulis how to cite: how to cite: taufik,m., cahyono, b. y. (2019). developing efl students’ writing skill through selfassessment integrated with e-portfolio. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 171-186. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 mailto:moh.taufik09.edu@gmail.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 172-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction one of the language skills that students of english as a foreign language (efl) need to master is writing. in the teaching of efl in indonesia, students were required to learn receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing). thus, writing skill development is always present in english classrooms along with the other three skills. however, when writing is not chosen to be the skill to focus on in the lesson plan, english teachers may assign the students to practice writing through a journal to be submitted regularly, for example, it is written after the completion of a lesson or a unit of a textbook (e.g. widiati, rohmah & furaidah, 2014). for some or many efl students, writing skill might be very complex. scrivener (2011) stated that writing requires learners to go through different kinds of mental process. they need more time to think, to reflect, to prepare, to rehearse, to make mistakes, and to find alternatives and better solution pertaining to what they write. the complexity of writing can also be seen from its use of language micro skills. cunningsworth (1995) pointed out that at least there are three language micro skills involved in writing, namely paragraphing, spelling and punctuation. these micro skills are considered difficult to master in a relatively short period of time. from a preliminary study conducted in a classroom of a public islamic senior high school (madrasah aliyah negeri) at sumenep, east java, it was found that most of the students have difficulties to use the correct grammatical forms and spelling. this can be seen from the students’ class average score of their writing of narrative texts. this score was derived from a writing test conducted in the preliminary study. it was revealed that their average score on grammar and spelling was 69.16, which was lower than the required passing grade which is 75. to deal with the problem, it was suggested that the students practice writing more intensively and know their progress in the process of developing their ideas for writing. allowing the students to know their progress in developing their writing enables them to grow their own awareness about the aspects of writing they need to improve. hence, selfassessment is used in the present study. the implementation of self-assessment in language learning, especially writing, has been found to contribute positively towards writing development. purwanti (2015) found that students showed positive attitudes towards the use of self-assessment in writing. they http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 173-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license believed that using self-assessment let them identify mistakes they made when writing. most of them were even encouraged to use self-assessment for future needs. furthermore, the practice of self-assessment might be used to measure students’ real english proficiency. students who scored themselves low in self-assessment mostly scored low in english proficiency test. in the same line, those who scored high in self-assessment also scored high in english proficiency test. in other words, students’ scores in selfassessment are reliable measures of their level of english proficiency (mistar, 2011). from the interview held with the english teacher during the prelimiminary study it was also known that self-assessment has been used in the teaching and learning process. however, the self-assessment was not used for the development of students’ writing skill. instead, self-assessment was used as a means of students’ reflection upon what they have learned through a certain period of time. in this study, self-assessment was used as it has been found to increase students’ direct involvement in learning, encouragement of autonomy, and leaning motivation (purwanti, 2015). more particularly, the present study applied an alternative assessment in the form of e-portfolio as a means to develop the students’ writing skill. implementing portfolio assessment encourages students to actively acquire language through classroom meeting with relatively limited time. in addition, it gives them more space to finish the assessment since they can continuously deal with their work in their leisure time outside school hours. a study conducted by syafei (2012) found that the students has positive views on the implementation of portfolio assessment. one of the benefits of portfolio is that it provides more chances for the students to develop their writing skill independently. students also stated that they had more possibility to explore their writing skill since they have more time available, longer than classroom hours. furthermore, another benefit is that portfolio allows studehts to know the track of their development. at the end of a semester, they can compare the final score they get with the portfolio they have kept. in relation to this, hammer (2007, cited in syafei, 2012) stated that judging students’ skill at one glance from a single test is risky. a single test does not give a complete picture of how students would perform if they were in a different situation. one of the challenges in implementing portfolio assessment is to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 174-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license have the students work organized. syafei (2012) found that some students were not happy to keep a portfolio because it was hard to keep their pieces of works together until the end of a semester. furthermore, money consuming is worth concerning. portfolio assessment requires students to write a single topic more than once, namely drafting and revising. a paperbased portfolio assessment is likely to burden students who have to prepare pieces of paper when they have to repeatedly revise their work (syafei, 2012). to deal with this problem, the current study used e-portfolio. by relying on the use of electronic protfolio (e-portfolio), students do not need to prepare pieces of paper to keep a portfolio with them. instead, they only need to submit and revise their work online using computer or mobile phone connected to the internet. ayan and seferoğlu (2011) found that using eportfolio enabled students to be more organized. it allowed them to quickly notice which one is the first draft and its revisions. in addition, e-portfolio gives opportunities for them to see the progress of their writing more easily than the paper-based portfolio since they might open and check their work anywhere and anytime with their mobile tools. the students’ e-portfolio was powered by google drive. in accordance with the background, the present study was aimed to develop students’ writing skill through self-assessment integrated with students’ e-portfolio. the research questions are formulated as follows: 1) how can self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio develop students writing skill?; 2) how are students’ opinions on the implementation of selfassessment integrated with e-portfolio?. method the research design used in this study was collaborative action research. according to burns (2010), action research is a one of research fields focusing on improving educational matters which involves educational participants, such as teachers, students, administrators, managers, and even parents. as it is aimed at educational improvement, action research always starts with problem identification to find a certain problem to solve. in this study the problem was identified during the preliminary study which revealed that the students had problems in writing. to solve the problem the first researcher acted as the teacher who applied the strategy, namely students’ self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio. this study was collaborative action research as the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 175-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english teacher of the school acted as an observer. this study was carried out in state islamic senior high school (madrasah aliyah negeri/man) at sumenep, east java, indonesia. it involved ten graders of science 1 (x mipa 1) class consisting of 25 students: 5 male and 20 female students. when the study was conducted, the students were in the second semester of their three-year secondary education. kemmis and mctaggart (1988, cited in burns, 2010) pointed out that action research consists of cycles. one cycle is proceeded and if it is successful to solve the problem, the cycle can be ended. however, if the first cycle has not succeeded in achieving the criteria of success, the next cycle should be conducted. there are four stages in one cycle of action research: planning, action, observation, and reflection. the four stages of this study are explained in the following part. planning in the planning stage of this study, the lessons for the teaching of writing were planned. to achieve the objectives of the instruction, the teaching and learning activities were determined to be performed in four sessions (which are explained further in the action stage). in addition, in this stage, the criteria of success were specified. the present study was considered successful if it met three criteria: 1) the implementation of the strategy improves the students’ achievement. more than 70% of the students attain scores at the minimum mastery level (75) or more; 2) the students are actively involved in the implementation of the strategy, and; 3) the students show positive opinion on the implementation of the strategy. action in order to implement the strategy, which is students’ self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio, the teaching and learning activities were held for four meetings as one cycle. since in a week english is taught in one meeting, the present research was completed in four weeks. this study was implemented in six steps. the first step was used to review and to develop students’ knowledge of narrative text. the activities included group and class discussions. the learning approach was discovery learning which covered five stages, namely questioning, collecting data, associating, concluding, and communicating. the activities of this first step were conducted in all of the meetings. in the second step, which also happened in the first meeting, the students were introduced to the use of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 176-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license self-assessment and e-portfolio through lecturing and simulation. in the lecture, the students were informed on what to do in self-assessment, and in the simulation, the students were provided with a narrative text containing errors that were initially set. then they were asked to examine the errors. after some errors were found, the students were guided to revise the text. the simulation was conducted twice to make sure that the students understand how to do self-assessment on their eportfolio. the third step was to assign students to write a narrative text. after writing the text, students were asked to revise their writing and compare their writing with the criteria in the narrative self-assessment rubric so that they know the quality of their writing. the revision might be completed outside the school hours. the fourth step was to give feedback in the students’ assignment in the areas they needed to improve. the students were also given a chance to ask questions or to inform their difficulties. in the fifth step, the teacher answered the students’ questions or provided students with assistance on their difficulties in working on selfassessment and e-portfolio. the fourth and the fifth steps were conducted from the first up to the fourth meeting. the last step of the study was scoring students’ writing products. the students’ progress in writing was examined by comparing one draft to another, from the first to the last draft. the summary of the teaching and learning activities in the six steps is shown in table 1. table 1. the steps of the teaching and learning activities steps activities classroom meetings outside school hours 1 2 3 4 1 reviewing and developing students’ knowledge of narrative texts √ √ √ √ 2 introducing selfassessment and eportfolio through lecturing and simulation √ 3 assigning students to write a narrative text. √ asking the students to revise the text focusing on aspects which need improvement outside the classroom √ 4 providing feedback on aspects that students need to improve and giving them a chance to ask questions or inform their difficulties. √ √ √ √ 5 responding to the students’ questions and difficulties √ √ √ √ http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 177-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license steps activities classroom meetings outside school hours 1 2 3 4 6 scoring the students’ drafts in the students’ eportfolio √ observation five instruments were used in this study. the first instrument was a narrative writing task. this instrument was used to know the students’ writing skill before the implementation of the strategy and examine the progress of their writing achievement throuh multiple revisions in self-assessment. the rubric for scoring narrative text was adapted from heilmann, miller, and dunaway (2010) and it consists of eight aspects: (1) introduction or orientation, (2) character development, (3) mental state, (4) referencing, (5) conflict and resolution, (6) cohesion, (7) grammar and spelling, and (8) conclusion. each aspect is scored in five scales. (1) excellent (90-100), (2) good (80-89), (3) fairly good (70-79), (4) poor (60-69), and (5) extremely poor (50-59). the students’ writing works were scored by the first researcher as the teacher in the study and the school teacher as the collaborator.the second instrument was self-assessment form to check the students’ drafts. this instrument has eight aspects which are the same as the aspects uswd in the rubric for scoring narrative texts. howeber, this instrument only has four scales with different values: excellent (4), good (3), fair (2), and poor (1). to help students decide which value choose, some descriptors were provided. the first and second instruments were used to achieve the first research criterion of success. the third and the fourth instruments were field notes and observation sheets, respectively. they were used to know students’ engagement and the researcher’s performance during teaching and learning activities. in other words, these two instruments were used to make sure the achievement of the second criterion of success. the field notes were written by the researcher while observation sheet was completed by the collaborator. the fifth instrument was questionnaire which was used to know students’ opinion on the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio. thus, this instrument was used to reveal whether or not the students have positive opinion on the implementation of the strategy. there were 15 items included in the questionnaire which covered three major cmponents, namely (1) students’ readiness towards online learning environment, (2) students’ http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 178-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opinion about the implementation of self-assessment, and (3) students’ opinion towards the implementation of e-portfolio. the questionnaire was disseminated to the students through their e-portfolio. there were four categories of answers that students had to choose to express their agreement with the statements: strongly agree (4), agree (3), disagree (2), and strongly disagree (1). the students are considered to have positive opinion on the implementation of the strategy if the average score of their responses fall into strongly agree or agree, while negative opinion is judged from their disagree and strongly disagree responses. reflection this stage of the study aimed to reflect on the results of the umplementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio based on the criteria of success. there are three criteria of success (1) improvement of the students’ writing achievement, (2) active involvement of the students, and (3) the students’ positive opinion on the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio. these results are presented in more detail in the following section. results and discussion results improvement of the students’ writing achievement the results of the analysis in the reflection stage show that after the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio, the students’ scores in their writing improved as shown in in table 2. table 2. students’ average scores before and after the strategy implementation phase average score number of students who scored above 75 before implementation 70.17 4 (16%) first draft 73.39 7 (28%) second draft 75.06 13 (52%) third draft 75.86 15 (60%) after implementation (the last draft) 76.81 18 (72%) table 2 shows that before the treatment was given, students’ average score was 70.17. after the study was conducted, the students’ average score was 76.81 (6.64 difference). moreover, the number of students who could score more than or equal to 75 was more than 70%, 18 students out of 25 students. apart from the score comparison between before and after the study implementation, there was gradual improvement in the scores http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 179-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from the first to the last draft, from 73.39, to 75.06, 75.86, and finally 76.81. to gain a further analysis of the draft-to-draft students’ average score improvement, each aspect of narrative text being assessed was analyzed. it covered 8 different aspects which were (1) introduction, (2) character development, (3) mental state, (4) referencing, (5) conflict and resolution, (6) cohesion, (7) grammar and spelling, and (8) conclusion. in general, the score of all aspects of narrative texts written by the students had reached 75 through the four drafts. the accumulative point of improvement showed that from the lowest to the highest was the cohesion aspect with 1.2 point, followed by the introduction and referencing aspects with 1.72 point, conflict and resolution aspects with 3.24 point, conclusion aspects with 3.32 point, mental state aspect with 3.6 point, character development aspect with 3.96 point, and grammar and spelling aspects with 8.56 point of improvement. active involvement of the stdents the next success criterion of the present research was that there should be active involvement of the students in the learning and teaching activities through the steps covered in the strategy. there were five steps conducted in implementing selfassessment integrated with e-portfolio. they were (1) checking students’ background knowledge and developing students’ comprehension on the narrative text; (2) introducing the idea of self-assessment and e-portfolio, and training students to use self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio; (3) assigning students to write a narrative text on the e-portfolio and revise it based on the self-assessment; (4) giving administrative feedback and chance to share ideas or deliver questions concerning the students’ progress in writing narrative text on the e-portfolio; and (5) responding to students’ ideas and questions. through the five steps included in the strategy, the students were actively involved in learning activities. the first consideration was the fact that most of the students were actively involved in learning activities. most students were actively involved in the group discussion and whole class discussion (in step 1). the next consideration was that the students were able to complete the multiple revisions by relying on the provided self-assessment on the eportfolio (in step 2).then, the students were willing to share opinions and complaints towards the implementation of self-assessment integrated with eportfolio during feedback session and in the teaching and learning activities (in step 3). some students were complaining about the absence of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 180-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sufficient tool to support their online assignment but this could be managed by asking other students to help their classmates (in step 4). finally, it is also suggested that the students review the learning material as a mean of confirming the quality of their writing (conducted by the teacher in step 5). the students’ opinion on selfassessment integrated with eportfolio the last success criterion was the presence of students’ positive opinion on the implementation of selfassessment integrated with e-portfolio. the results of analysis of the15-item questionnaire showed that, in general, the students had positive opinions about the implementation of the strategy in terms of three aspects: the students’ readiness on online learning (items 1-6), their attitude towards the implementation of self-assessment (items 7-10), and their attitude towards e-portfolio (items 11-15). in terms of the students’ readiness on online learning, many of the students thought that it was not easy to get access to the internet and to manage their study time effectively through online learning. they also felt the did not have enough understanding about technology to learn online. it is interesting to note that many of the students felt comfortable in composing text online and more than half of the students were motivated to learn online. surprisingly, more than half of the students think that online learning was more motivating than the regular school sessions. with regard to students’ attitude towards the implementation of selfassessment, many of the students enjoyed doing self-assessment and they agreed that self-assessment let them understand what they had written. in addition, more than half of the students believed that self-assessment helped them develop their writing, these students also agreed to the implementation of self-assessment for the present and the future learning. finally, dealing with questions on the students’ attitude to e-portfolio, most of the students liked the idea of eportfolio. however, many of them disagreed that e-portfolio let them learn better. more than half of the studets agreed that e-portfolio was likely to prevent them from making the same mistakes repeatedly. about half of the students thought that they planned to keep using e-portfolio. most of the students, thought hat e-portfolio was better than paper-based portfolio. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 181-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion among the four macro skills of english, writing is considered the most complex skill. to develop a single text, students need to go through at least three stages, namely planning, reviewing, and revising, before the text is finalized (weigle, 2007). the presence of self-assessment in this study helped students maximize the reviewing and revising stages. the self-assessment provided students with an indirect feedback on how the quality of their writing was expected to be. as a result, the students could improve their writing skill more independently. another cause that resulted in improvement on the students writing skill was that, through the selfassessment, the students were encountered with several expectations more than once that they were assigned to revise their work for three times at least. it is in line with ross et al, (1999, cited in bing, 2016), stating that the more the students understand how they are expected to perform, the closer they are to the expectation. finally, after several revisions, an improvement in students’ writing quality was noticeable despite the fact that it was little, confirming the study conducted by bing (2016) and alfallay (2004). more specifically on the narrative aspects, each student did not make an equal improvement even though through the final text revision, the students’ score could reach 75 points. it confirmed the study conducted by bing (2016) and purwanti (2015). one of possible explanations was that the students’ decision on which aspects they needed to revise was completely relied on their own judgment and language proficiency level; there was no teacher’s feedback given (lee & yoon, 2013). the most significant improvement was in spelling and grammatical aspects. what took a significant impact on that improvement was, possibly, the students’ previous learning experience (li, 2018; brown, dewey & cox, 2014). the students had been surrounded by statement or explanation that grammar is one of the most complex english micro skills. hence, what students concerned a lot when dealing with productive skills, namely writing and speaking, was grammar and spelling aspects. apart from self-assessment, the implementation of e-portfolio also helped the students improve their writing quality. the idea appeared when it was found that there were 28% students who could pass the passing grade in their first narrative draft, on which students had not been faced neither with self-assessment nor http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 182-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license revision. this number was 12% higher than that in the preliminary study which was 16%. the only possible explanation was that e-portfolio provides the students with more time to process the language compared to the one they had in regular in-class sessions. the burden on students to finish their writing as quickly as possible did not exist in e-portfolio. as result, they could use their language skill more effectively (banfi, 2003; syafei, 2012; khodadady & khodabakhshzade, 2012). the implementation of selfassessment integrated with e-portfolio was considered to have the students actively involved in learning activities, especially outside the classroom hours. it confirmed the study finding conducted by mak and wong (2017). the presence of the five steps in conducting the strategy was crucial to have the present study succeeded in reaching its objective. the first step which focused on reviewing and developing the students’ comprehension on the text was confirmed by scrivener (2011) to be the cause of an effective learning. through reviewing, the students prepared themselves to gain further knowledge of the subject being discussed. the next steps of the strategy were to introduce the idea of self-assessment and e-portfolio, to assign students to write a narrative text and revise it for at least three times based on the selfassessment, to give an administrative feedback and a chance to share ideas, and to respond to the students’ idea. in general, these steps dealt with guiding students’ progress in dealing with selfassessment and e-portfolio and were considered vital. it confirmed the study conducted by khodadady and khodabakhshzade (2012) especially for those who had not sufficiently experienced to encounter with selfassessment and to keep an e-portfolio. furthermore, it is stated that selfassessment required the development of students’ confidence in scoring themselves. according to syafei (2012), it might take a relatively long period of time and require the presence of frequent feedback. rather than focusing the feedback on students’ writing quality, the present study was determined to give the students administrative feedback alone. it was considered that focusing the feedback on administrative feedback rather than students’ writing quality would prevent students from being dependent on teachers’ direct feedback. furthermore, metacognitive feedback provided through the self-assessment was considerably enough to help students develop their writing quality. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), x (x), 2019 183-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license it confirmed the study conducted by mohammadi (2009). through the steps of the strategy, the students were also given the chance to share ideas or deliver questions concerning their progress on their assignment. giving students a space to share idea was considered effective to develop students’ learning autonomy as it is stated by marzano, marzano and pickering (2003). furthermore, the teacher’s response towards the students’ idea let the students feel noticed and more encouraged to be more actively involved in learning. over all, the students’ opinion on the implementation of self-assessment and e-portfolio was positive, confirming the study conducted by bing (2016), butler and lee (2010), dann (2014), and purwanti (2015). in terms of students’ readiness towards online learning, which was covered in six statements in the questionnaire, the students were not likely ready. even though they had enough understanding about technology, other elements of blended learning, such as the availability of online learning facility, time management, and students’ dependency on english regular class where the teacher was present to guide them, were the causes of reluctance to do online assignment. the students’ opinion on on the self-assessment was positive. some believed that self-assessment was enjoyable, let them understand better their writing, and improved their writing skill. hence, some others stated that they wanted to implement selfassessment for their future needs. unlike the self-assessment, a few students expressed negative perception towards e-portfolio. they were not sure that e-portfolio helped them learn better even though more of them believed that they had avoided making mistakes recorded on the e-portfolio. one possible reason was that, according to syafei (2012), to develop students’ skill to adjust themselves with portfolio assessment takes a relatively long period of time. indeed, students who had no experience keeping portfolio might see its presence as a burden. khodadady and khodabakhshzade (2012) suggested that when implementing a portfolio assessment, students need to clearly understand what it is for and how it may contribute to their learning, and to be constantly guided. the only aspect of e-portfolio to which students showed a higher positive opinion was its online-based assignment. they agreed that eportfolio was better than traditional portfolio, the paper-based portfolio. it confirmed a study conducted by ayan http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 184-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and seferoğlu (2011) that e-portfolio is more flexible than the paper-based portfolio. it opens possibility for students to evaluate their work wherever and whenever they wanted. conclusions and suggestions the present study aimed to develop students’ writing skill through self-assessment integrated with eportfolio. the results showed that there was an improvement on students’ writing skill due to the implementation of the strategy. apart from students’ score improvement, this study succeeded to encourage students to be actively involved in learning and teaching activities which were conducted in five steps. furthermore, many of the students had positive opinions on aspects related to online learning, self-assessment, and eportfolio. most of the students enjoyed doing self-assessment and keeping eportfolio in spite of some difficulties faced during the completion of the assignment. in addition to it, some students were willing to remain doing self-assessment and keeping e-portfolio for their learning needs. the implementation of selfassessment and e-portfolio encouraged learners to be aware of fairly independent learning. teacher’s motivational impulse on the students may have an important role in developing students’ willingness in doing self-assessment and e-portfolio. this study was conducted in a relatively short period of time; therefore, it is suggested that the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-portfolio take a longer time to achieve a significant development on students’ writing skill. it als also suggested that future researchers investigate texts of various types to find out the effect of the implementation of self-assessment integrated with e-postfolio. references alfallay, i. 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(2012). backwash effects of portfolio assessment in academic writing classes. teflin journal, 23(2), 206 -221. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 186-186 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.12019 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tan, h. k. k., teo, t. c., & shen, c. (2011). variation in students’ conceptions of self-assessment and standards. education research international, 2011(1), 1-9. doi:10.1155/2011/487130. weigle, s. c. (2007). teaching writing teachers about assessment. journal of second language writing, 16(2017), 194-209. widiati, u., rohmah, z., & furaidah. (2014). bahasa inggris; sma/ma/smk kelas x semester 1 [englosh for 10 graders of senior high schools, islamic senior high schools, and vocational high schools]. jakarta: pusat kurikulum dan perbukuan, balitbang, kemdikbud. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 32-47 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the benefits of gamification in the english learning context eka fajar rahmani received: 24th maret 2020; revised: 7th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract this study aims at displaying the results of reviewing research-based articles about gamification in the context of learning english. the concept of games has changed from a self-entertainment into an edutainment through adjustments and modifications. this notion is adapted by teachers in big countries such as poland, china, and the us to enhance their english class with surprisingly ensuing positive results (rothwell & shaffer, 2019). these results have triggered the writer to find out more about the benefits of gamification and to conduct qualitative research through the review process. the writer collected and analyzed thirteen relevant articles from journals and websites. the results indicated that gamification indeed brought benefits to students. the foremost results included motivation improvement, promoting positive attitudes and better performances, fostering 21st-century skills and better cognitive achievements, encouraging social interaction and independencies, and improving competitiveness among students during the learning process. key words: english learning; gamification; teaching abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan hasil dari telaah artikel berbasis riset tentang gamifikasi pada konteks pembelajaran bahasa inggris. konsep permainan telah berubah dari hiburan mandiri menjadi edutainment melalui penyesuaian dan modifikasi. konsep ini, terutama permainan online, diadaptasi oleh para guru di negara-negara besar seperti polandia, china, dan us untuk meningkatkan aktifitas kelas bahasa inggris mereka dengan yang hasil positif yang mengejutkan (rothwell & shaffer, 2019). hasil ini menjadi motivasi penulis untuk menggali lebih dalam tentang manfaat gamifikasi dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris sehingga penulis melakukan penelitian kualitatif melalui proses review. penulis telah mengumpulkan dan menganalisa tiga belas artikel yang relevan dari jurnal dan situs web. hasil analisa menunjukkan bahwa gamifikasi memang bermanfaat bagi siswa. manfaat yang paling utama yaitu meningkatkan motivasi dan penampilan yang baik, mengembangkan keterampilan abad 21, mendorong interaksi social dan kebebasan, serta meningkatkan daya saing antar siswa selama pembelajaran. kata kunci: pembelajaran bahasa inggris; gamifikasi; pengajaran how to cite: rahmani, e.f. (2020). the benefits of gamification in the english learning context. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 32-47. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 33-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction today's learners are very close to technology. they even are labeled as digital natives because they get along very well and cannot be separated from it (kriyakova, yordanova, & angelova, 2014). the product of technology that is most frequently used by students is games. one study conducted by basler & dostal (2015) mentioned that students at the age of teenagers spent averagely eight to ten hours in a day playing games, either online or offline. it can be learned from the study that there is a close relationship between students and the games that they spent most of their days playing them. this would bring great effects on the aspects of their lives, not to exclude their school lives. if teachers are not aware of this, there will be a wide gap that can cause conflicts between teachers and students in learning. one of the ways to bridge this phenomenon is that the teachers have to embrace games in the learning process, and implementing gamification is the most promising one. in the educational world, educators consider gamification as a new method. nevertheless, principally, it was introduced firstly in 2002 and was applied in 2005 by bunchball company to motivate its employees to work more passionately and effectively though designing some gamified products, namely dunder mifflin infinity in and chore wars (christians, 2018). the results were convincing that then in 2009, the company developed quest to learn, a game to gamify learning environment for sixth graders with the purpose to see if the product could foster the children's skill in preserving information. from this to these days, gamification has now developed, researched, reviewed, and implemented more often in academic areas. experts define gamification as an innovation in learning which integrates the game features to non-game environments (deterding, khaled, nacke, & dixon, 2011; kriyakova, yordanova, & angelova, 2014; healey, 2018). gamification employs a welldesigned digital and non-digital games to stimulate learners' language, which includes elements of games or play into the learning environment to boost engagement and participation (maloney, 2019). the nature of gamification itself is expected to increase the students' motivation and commitment, as well as to bring positive and competitive behavior to them (marczewski, 2013). it refers and is in line with what has been suggested by healey (2018) in her report that gamification is designed initially based on psychological perspectives. she further mentioned ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 34-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that gamification had intrinsic and extrinsic motivation delineated the desire to act, such as learning content, as well as to respond or to expect for specific rewards which came from self – determination theory (sdt) proposed by ryan and deci in 1985 (2018, p. 5). in sdt viewpoint, motivation in its three basic needs, so-called (1) autonomy or the feeling of being in control, (2) competence or the sense of building skills and developing mastery, and (3) relatedness or connection to others, can lead motivated people to have more interest, excitement, and confidence manifesting to enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity which are needed by learners (ryan & deci, 2000; healey, 2018). in its implementation, gamification or game-based learning adapts game elements to engage learners to take part in learning to build learners' problemsolving skills (kapp, 2012). in countries with high educational rank, such as ukraine, poland, us, china, and netherland, gamification has been familiarized and used by teachers, including english teachers that showed substantial results (glowacki, kriukova, & avshenyuk, 2018; rothwell & shaffer, 2019; antonaci, klemke, & specht, 2019). in indonesian contexts, gamification is started to get familiarized, as well, despite its limited researches. studies done by yanfi, udjaja, & sari (2017) and mufidah (2016) are evidence. although these two pieces of research had different foci and were conducted to or indifferent research subjects, the results similarly emphasized that the implementation of gamification was a success in both enhancing learners' interests and motivation in learning, as well as promoting their learning achievements. moreover, the most surprising result from these researches was gamification did motivate low-achiever learners that they would take part in learning activities actively without hesitation, even in speaking (mufidah, 2016; yanfi, udjaja, & sari, 2017). there is one similar study conducted by dehghanzadeh et al. (2019) entitled using gamification to support learning english as a second language: a systematic review. this study was a review of 22 articles about gamification in the esl context. the results of the study mainly talked about the researches of gamification implementation in esl, including methodologies employed, types of game applications most used by teachers, and discussion about the impacts of gamifications on students’ achievements. this study and the writer’s research are similar in terms of its methodology that the writer also employed a reviewing technique in gathering and analyzing the most ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 35-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license relevant articles. however, there is a respective gap between the writer’s research and dehghanzadeh’s et al. that is the focus of the study. the writer in this research was concerned more about finding out what kinds of benefits that could be obtained by the students after the english teachers implemented gamification in the class. following the aforementioned background, aimed at displaying and describing the benefits of gamification, the writer would present the analysis results focusing on the benefits of gamification discussed by the most relevant articles gathered. the writer expects that the results of the study can be helpful to accommodate english teachers who are not familiar with or curious about gamification. also, the study is expected to give broader viewpoints of other possible approaches to conventional teachers to be more innovative and creative to promote their students’ learning. method since this paper's purpose is to present the result of analyzing the content of the articles, a qualitative methodology is employed in which document analysis was used in gathering the intended data. according to bowen (2009), document analysis was a systematic procedure for reviewing or evaluating documents both printed and electronic (computerbased and internet-transmitted) material as a means of examination and interpretation of the data to elicit meaning, gain understanding, and develop empirical knowledge. there are thirteen most relevant articles in total, ranging from 2015 to 2019. in details, the writer conducted three steps of reviewing as being suggested by bowen (2009), which include: selecting the related articles. this is the first step in which the researcher selected articles about gamification in the english learning context from electronic sources (journals and websites) ranging from 2015 – 2019. there are thirteen articles selected: six from journals namely (1) digital education review journal in 2015, (2) international journal of computer science and mobile computing in 2018, (3) pertanika journal of social science and humanities in 2018, (4) british journal of humanities and social sciences in 2018, (5) journal of information technology education: research in 2019, and (6) computer assisted language learning journal in 2019; one thesis from university repository that is widya mandala catholic university surabaya repository in 2016; four articles from proceedings namely (1) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 36-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license celc symposium in 2016, (2) proceedings of the ivus international conference on information technology in 2018, (3) international conference on computer and information sciences (iccis) inn 2019, and (4) proceeding of 1st conference of english language and literature (cell) in 2019; and two articles from teachers’ websites namely (1) medium in 2017, and (2) english for asia – tesol in 2019. analyzing the content in this step, the writer reviewed the contents of the articles. the writer analyzed the contents through comparison and interpretation. the writer highlighted how gamification was implemented in each article, its benefits to improve english skills and students' profiles, and its drawbacks (if any) by highlighting the contents. communicating the results this is the last step of the review. here the writer wrote the results of the article review in the form of a table and description, which can be seen in the finding and discussion section of this paper. findings and discussion findings this section presents and elaborates on the focus of the study, which congregates the benefits of gamification implemented in the english learning context obtained from journals and websites. the details are presented in the following explanations: using gamification to enhance second language learning this is a paper published in the digital education review journal in 2015 by jorge francisco figueroa flores. this paper is a review of using gamification in the esl context. the paper presents the implementation of six products or games in motivating and promoting learners to learn a second language, namely duolingo, class dojo, edmodo, zondle socrative, and brainscape. the paper also displays the results of reviewing several pieces of research related to the implementation of gamification in esl in which one of them bravely to claim that students' grades improved 9%, and the number of students who failed the course decreased by 16%. last but not least, it discusses motivational implications between gamification and esl from psychological perspectives. the writer stated that learners would get motivated as the teachers implemented gamification in their teaching-learning that could be seen holistically in its trait involving ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 37-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license behavioristic learning, cognitive, self – determination, interest, and emotion. the effect of gamification on english language anxiety and grammar achievement this paper is written by nuria mufidah, published in the widya mandala catholic university surabaya repository in 2016. this is a thesis that focuses on finding out whether digital game-based learning would reduce foreign language anxiety and promote grammar achievement amongst students of stikes surabaya who were preparing for an english proficiency test. significantly, the result of the research indicated that gamified learning brought positive impacts to the learners. the researcher mentioned that the gamified learning activities that she used were effective in promoting students' grammar achievements, as well as to enhance students' engagement in the preparation class. their anxiety was seemingly reduced based on the five-points of foreign language anxiety suggested by young. use of gamification in vocabulary learning: a case study in macau this article was written by sze lui lam, presented and published in the celc symposium in 2016. this article focused on finding out the use of web 2.0 games, namely fling the teacher and jeopardy, in vocabulary learning amongst students in a tertiary institution in macau. the results indicated that students preferred both of these games because they were fun and exciting. students said that the games could facilitate their vocabulary retention. the results of this study had shown that gamification could help build up students' competitive spirits and can increase their cognitive and social growth. moreover, gamification implementation improved students' attitudes towards language learning. it confirmed the appropriateness of gamification was believed to enhance learning. gamified efl instruction: an overview of the most recent research trends this paper, written by vilma mikašytė, was presented and published in proceedings of the ivus international conference on information technology (ivus 2018) in kaunas, lithuania, on april 27, 2018. this article provided an overview of six gamified learning environments, namely the conference interpreter, near east university children's story teller (neucst), problem-based english listening game, task-based learning ar educational game and selfdirected learning ar educational game, happy english learning system, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 38-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opensimulator project-cliliop (content and language integrated learning in opensimulator project) which were developed for teaching english as a foreign language (efl) published in top scientific journals in 2017. the results revealed that students who played those educational games obtained significantly better results than those who received conventional efl instruction. in gamified learning, the number of instruction was reduced; and there was more emphasis on selfregulated learning. the result was the six educational games that conformed with the student-centered educational paradigm had been successfully empowering learners to control their learning process. it also had improved 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, innovation, media literacy, ict literacy, flexibility, initiative, and self-direction. development of a gamification based english vocabulary mobile learning system this paper is written by olutayo boyinbode, published in the international journal of computer science and mobile computing (ijcsmc journal) in 2018. this paper was presenting the result of the english performance amongst undergraduate students of nigeria, especially their vocabulary mastery, improved after gamification was applied. the overall result indicated that the use of gamification based english vocabulary learning technique had successfully motivated and encouraged learners to continue learning english vocabularies effectively. in details, the students responded to "agree" response to all the positive statements, and "disagree" to the weaknesses or negative comments. from the data, it can be learned that the games had increased students' performances in all aspects, particularly in the elements of encouraging students to interact and communicate with an average of 9.57; and motivating environment with the proportion of 9.1. these numbers proved that gamified learning was compelling to help boost students' learning. kahoot! it: gamification in higher education this paper is written by debbita tan ai lin, ganapathy, and m. manjet kaur, published in the pertanika journal of social science and humanities in 2018. this paper focused on investigating kahoot! as the gamified product to boost the learning environment among english learners in higher education in malaysia. the result indicated that the students found kahoot! beneficial in inducing motivation and engagement, as well as fostering and reinforcing learning for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 39-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license both theoretical and practical aspects. the results reflected the respondents' attitudes towards kahoot! was notably positive, with a percentage of 100%. they experienced that kahoot! could bring effectiveness in their academic context. 98% of them found that kahoot! interesting, fun, and enjoyable; meanwhile, 96% answered that kahoot! brought the atmosphere of competitiveness that they were triggered to do each kahoot! session. the impact of using games on developing saudi female efl students’ speaking skills this paper is written by wafa k. alfulaih, published in the british journal of humanities and social sciences in 2018. this paper was a research-based study that investigated the efficacy of students' speaking ability using gamification teaching style in saudi english foreign language (efl) female speaking classes. it was a classroom action research (car) that involved 50 participants of saudi female efl students at saudi electronic university (seu). the results of the study indicated that gamification was advantageous to improve students' speaking skills, respectively. it was mentioned that students' attitudes and motivation to speak english enhanced by 20% from 60% to 80% after implementing gamification. not only that, but the students' satisfaction also showed similar results; it grew 48% from 30% to 78% after gamification was used. additionally, the students' scores in pre-test and post-test increased, as well, and the problems found in pretests such as mispronunciation, grammar error, fluency, speed, and limited conversations, were minimized significantly. the role of gamification techniques in promoting student learning: a review and synthesis this paper is written by islam alomari, hosam al-samarraie, and reem yousef, published in the journal of information technology education: research in 2019. this article was a review of 40 previous studies on the role of gamification techniques in promoting students' learning. the results indicated that gamification techniques differently shaped students' learning. the data analyses were presented in the form of a bar chart that displayed the gamification techniques, including points, badges, leaderboards, levels, rewards, progress bar challenges, feedbacks, and avatars. in detail, there were the top three techniques that gained the highest percentages. the most one went to points (75%) in which the studies suggested that the point-based system ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 40-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license could help motivate students to engage in a sharing network that was accepted by the other group members enthusiastically. the second was badges (68%), which could increase the social interaction amongst students because they spent more time and devoted more effort to solving cases by exchanging ideas that could promote positive attitudes in their performance. the last was leaderboards (38%). leaderboards expanded students' achievements by building a sense of competition amongst them, creating a social comparison among the learners, which motivated them to increase their contribution rate; and based on the spirit of reputation they might attain when they got a higher rank as compared with others. even though the rest of the gamification techniques was less utilized in promoting students' performance in learning english, they still had a contribution to motivate students to learn. using gamification and serious games for english language learning this article is written by nacim yanes, and ikram bououd, presented and published in conference: 2019 international conference on computer and information sciences (iccis) in 2019. the paper presented the results of utilizing gamification and a serious game for english language learning a swot analysis with 49 participants in total. the results, which were divided into three parts (strengths, opportunities, and weaknesses), showed that both gamified learning and serious games would create a joyful ambiance, as well as a pleasant and relaxed place for learning. students who were involved in these two learning contexts were attracted to learn and felt better involved in the classroom. they enhanced their confidence in english skills, especially speaking one. by using high technologies as learning material, the students formed a framework that language courses were following the technological frame which better fit their own needs causing them to foster creativity and led to discover their motivation to learn. from the three parts of the data display, strengths got the highest points, followed by opportunities. there were weaknesses of gamified and serious games, but they could be overcome in such a way that could be considered as a no significant deal aspect. using gamification to support learning english as a second language: a systematic review this paper is written by hojjat dehghanzadeh, hashem fardanesh, javad hatami, ebrahim talaee, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 41-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license omid noroozi, published in computer assisted language learning journal in 2019. this paper is a systematic review that analyzed 22 publications dating from 2008 to 2019. the results of the study indicated that none of the articles or publications talked about the negative impacts or weaknesses of implementing gamification. being enjoyable, engaging, motivating, and fun were the behaviors exposed to gamified lesl environments. the learning outcomes were targeted to meet content language learning, engagement, motivation, and satisfaction. there presented various gamified learning instructions and products from the 22 articles being reviewed. among all publications, 13 articles reported that the learning experiences of learners for gamified lesl were positive, particularly the content language learning such as vocabularies (15 papers), grammar (5 publications), pronunciation (4 papers), speaking (5 papers), writing (3 papers), listening (4 papers). gamification to improve students’ engagement in learning english this paper is written by hadirotun nikmah, published in proceeding of 1st conference of english language and literature (cell) in 2019. the research focused on describing students' attitudes and perceptions towards kahoot it! as the learning platform for students. the writer mentioned that while kahoot it! was being used by the teachers, the students were highly motivated to engage in the learning activity. they were triggered to take part in all learning sections, including quizzes actively. this result was supported by previous researches that also indicated similar results. how to gamify your english class: teaching teens in the 21st century this article is written by elena persada in her blog named medium, published on march 31, 2017. elena was an english teacher who was dealing with teenagers. she found out that it was not easy to control students' behavior when they disliked the learning environment. they mostly became hyperactive or misbehavior when they did not feel like to engage with conventional activities. then, the teacher applied gamification in her classroom after reading many threads and articles about the power of gamification to boost students' performances and achievements in learning. in her article, she wrote that she experienced positive results after implementing gamified learning. the students' behavior was constantly changing. the students started working ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 42-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hard and even asked for extra assignments. moreover, the weaker ones gained confidence and improved their performance. the writer noted that even parents got the ambiance that they were happy since their children were highly motivated to do their english homework. this article also provided steps on how to gamify the english classes and explained how the elements of games (e.g., points, badges, levels, and leaderboards) were effectively used in her class. gamification in english language teaching: more than child's play this article is written by sharon maloney, published in english for asia – tesol blog on july 2, 2019. this article was a thread from a teacher who had implemented gamification in her english class. she experienced quite similar situations with other teachers that her students were demotivated, stultifying, and bored during the course. she mentioned that a well – designed game could be more potent than any other teaching strategies. "traditional methods of education no longer work because they are designed for students to be fundamentally passive," she said. this statement was against the nature of children, which was playful, cheerful, and active. she, furthermore, emphasized that if the students failed, probably the teaching or the learning environment was not supportive enough to make them successful. after implementing gamification, she bravely claimed that digital games were excellent catalysts for collaborative work and sharing experiences. in her article, the writer also provided some steps to gamify learning without digital actions to support the teachers who probably were not supported by digital equipment. the analysis of the articles above indicated there are four main benefits of gamifications in english learning. the first and foremost benefit that gamification has brought to students is related to motivation. it is found out 75% or nine out of thirteen articles being analyzed indicated that gamified learning is propitious to motivate students to learn english (flores, 2015; mufida, 2016; peresada, 2017; boyinbode, 2018; lin, ganapathy & kaur, 2018; dehghanzadeh et al., 2019; yanes & bououd, 2019; alomari, alsamarraie & yousef, 2019; alfulaih, 2019). the second benefit is in line with the positive attitudes and better performance of the students during the class. the gamified activities leaped the barrier between active and passive learners so that the learners were no ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 43-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license more anxious to engage in the learning process (alfulaih, 2019; lin, ganapathy & kaur, 2018; mufidah, 2016). the number of active learners had improved significantly (yanes & bououd, 2019; alomari, al-samarraie, & yousef, 2019; peresada, 2017;). they also devoted more effort to participating in the activities to succeed (alomari, al-samarraie, & yousef, 2019). nevertheless, they showed decent attitudes and good responses when gamified learning was being implemented (mufidah, 2016; mikasyte, 2018; samarrie & yousef, 2019; dehghanzadeh et al., 2019). the third one is related to 21stcentury skills and better cognitive achievements. the skills which included critical thinking, problemsolving, creativity, innovation, media literacy, ict literacy, flexibility, initiative, and self-direction were found in the gamified activities (mikasyte, 2018; persada; 2017). these skills foster practical and theoretical aspects of learning (academic) such as better scores and performance in grammar, vocabulary, speaking skill (including fluency, mispronunciation, speed, and limited conversation), reading, writing, and in using technology to assist learning (flores, 2015; mufidah, 2016; lam, 2016; mikasyte, 2018; boyinbode, 2018; lin, ganapathy & kaur, 2018; dehghanzadeh et al., 2019; alfulaih, 2019). the fourth benefit is gamification promotes social interaction and independencies, as well as increases competitive spirit. the elements of gamification are the factors that could empower students’ social skill because they were given opportunities to solve given cases through exchanging ideas that forced them to interact actively and use prior knowledge to accomplish the tasks that led them finally to be more competent and independent in learning english (lam, 2016; lin, ganapathy, & kaur, 2018; alomari, al-samarraie & yousef, 2019). discussion since bunchball company introduced and published the success of quest to learn, a game to gamify learning environment for sixth graders, the gamification approach started to be known widely in education (christian, 2018). its potency to promote learning achievement, especially in english acquisition, is indisputable (kriyakova, yordanova, & angelova, 2014). english, which is considered boring and difficult to be acquired by foreign learners, turned out to be more exciting. the thirteen articles analyzed in this paper have demonstrated and confirmed the benefits of gamification in english acquisition. although the participants, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 44-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interests, and the setting are different, the articles shared comparable advantages of gamification that are summed up into four main benefits: improving motivation, promoting positive attitudes and better performances, promoting 21st-century skills and better cognitive achievements, and encouraging social interaction, independencies, and competitive spirits. according to the findings above, the students who did not find learning interesting at first turned out to gain much interest in every exercise, tasks, or projects; and they even asked for extra assignments to do (peresada, 2017) while the gamified learning being implemented. this behavior change indicated an improvement in the intrinsic motivation amongst students. they developed fully self-regulated learning (independence in learning) to engage in activities out of interest, as well as to experience a sense of volition (ferreira, cardoso, & abrantes, 2011). the results also emphasized that motivated learners would react positively to psychological aspects such as behavioristic learning cognitive, selfdetermination, interest, and positive emotion (flores, 2015). moreover, in terms of attitudes and classroom performances, the class where gamifications were implemented tended to be much livelier. during the activities, there were no gaps between high english achievers and low english achiever students. all the students engaged in the activities, and no one was anxious to take part in the class (alfulaih, 2019; lin, ganapathy & kaur, 2018; mufidah, 2016). they spoke english much more often than before gamification was implemented flores, 2015; mufidah, 2016; lam, 2016). besides that, the badges used in the games have helped improving social interaction and competitive spirit among students. as a result, the students had higher opportunities to enhance social competence shown by seamless interactions, as well as to improve english competencies proven by better scores and performance in grammar, vocabulary, speaking skill (including fluency, mispronunciation, speed, and limited conversation), reading, writing, and in using technology to assist learning (flores, 2015; mufidah, 2016; lam, 2016; mikasyte, 2018; boyinbode, 2018; lin, ganapathy, & kaur, 2018; dehghanzadeh et al., 2019; alfulaih, 2019). conclusion this study has confirmed that gamification is indeed beneficial for students in the english class. it appears to be the solution for an unsuccessful ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 45-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and passive learning environment as it is beneficial to assist teachers in creating a more exciting and meaningful learning experience for students. a livelier learning environment, more active engagement, better english skills (especially speaking skill), and improved cognitive achievements (proven by good scores) are the indicators of successful implementation of gamification in the english class. therefore, it is highly recommended for the english teachers who have problems with their class, especially in terms of activeness and english skills, to apply gamification in their classes. references alfulaih, w. k. 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(2019, desember 8). how to gamify your english class. retrieved from https://medium.com/@peresada/ho w-to-gamify-your-english-class-step1-b6b64d80b59e rothwell, g., & shaffer, m. (2019). esports in k-12 and post-secondary schools. education sciences, 9(2) 1-10. doi.org/10.3390/educsci9020105 ryan, r. m., & deci, e. l. 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(2019). using gamification and serious games for english language learning. 2019 international conference on computer and information sciences (2019 iccis). al jouf, saudi arabia: ieee. yanfi, udjaja, y., & sari, a. c. (2017). a gamification interactive typing for primary school visually impaired children in indonesia. 2nd international conference on computer science and computational intelligence 2017 (iccsci 2017). bali, indonesia: iccsci. . the effect of collaborative strategic reading copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 17-27 the effect of collaborative strategic reading on grade six students’ reading achievement carolin diana sari siti tamah received: 09th april 2015; revised: 05th may 2015; accepted: 25th may 2015 abstract one of the language skills to master by indonesian efl learners is reading. in order to assist learners comprehend reading texts, teachers are challenged to apply various teaching strategies. as this paper focuses on teaching reading, two teaching strategies dealing with reading instruction are compared. to be specific, in this paper the writers conduct a study to find the difference between collaborative strategic reading (csr) and teacher-centered teaching strategy (by applying skimming and scanning). this study was a quasi experimental, which was conducted upon the sixth graders of an elementary school. the finding showed that reading achievements of the students who are taught using csr and teacher-centered teaching strategy are not significantly different. nevertheless, this study using cohen‟s d formula finds that csr gave a small effect on students‟ reading achievement. key words: collaborative strategic reading; reading achievement abstrak salah satu kemampuan bahasa yang harus dikuasai oleh pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing di indonesia adalah membaca. untuk membantu pembelajar memahami bacaan, guru-guru ditantang untuk menerapkan berbagai strategi mengajar. karena artikel ini berfokus pada mengajar membaca, dua strategi mengajar membaca dibandingkan. secara lebih spesifik, penulis melakukan penelitian untuk melihat perbedaan antara collaborative strategic reading (csr) dan teacher-centered teaching strategy (dengan menerapkan skimming dan scanning). penelitian ini termasuk jenis kuasi eksperimen yang dilaksanakan kepada siswa-siswi kelas enam sekolah dasar. hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa hasil membaca dari siswa-siswi yang diajar dengan menggunakan csr dan teacher-centered teaching strategy tidak berbeda. meskipun demikian, analisis cohen’s d menunjukkan adanya efek yang kecil dari csr terhadap kemampuan membaca. kata kunci: collaborative strategic reading, hasil belajar membaca how to cite: sari, c., d. & tamah, s. (2015). the effect of collaborative strategic reading on grade six students‟ reading achievement. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 17-26. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1501 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1501 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 18-27|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction people do not automatically learn how to read. reading has to be learned and taught intentionally (iftanti, 2012). this has been argued earlier by nunan (1999) pointing out that reading is not something individually learned. it is even argued that teachers spend more time teaching reading than teaching any other skills (nunan, 1999, p. 249). it is then good to know that various techniques for teaching reading have been created to assist students in reading, which have been claimed to be very advantageous not only in offering the fun or entertainment in the classroom but also in improving students‟ academic performance. marzano, pickering and pollock (2001) found nine categories of instructional strategies that have a strong effect on student achievement in all subject areas at all grade levels. one of them is cooperative learning. implicit is that cooperative learning strategy can be implemented as early as possible for elementary school students. this group work-based instruction or the one which falls within the more general category of “grouping” strategies (marzano, pickering & pollock, 2001, p. 85) has its extensively claimed merits, such as increasing student talking time, encouraging cooperation and allowing students to work on various tasks (harmer, 2012). as efl learners, elementary school students are given english subject to enable them read texts at their level. similarly argued, reading instruction to efl young learners is not only aimed at introducing literacy to them but also aimed at, more crucially, assisting them in learning and acquiring english. conventionally the teaching of reading is a teacher-centered instruction. this typical whole class teacher directed instruction is, harmer (2007) argued, still the most common teacher-student interaction in many cultures. this whole class teaching is not without its own merits. it helps, among others, build class spirit, the feeling that every student is involved (harmer, 2012). as this teachercentered instruction forces students to do the same thing at the time and at the same pace (harmer, 2007), teachers are encouraged to shift to the learnercentered instruction, where small groups are frequently formed enabling the students to, among others as found by tamah (2011), provide the opportunity for the students to come up with a better formulated main idea when discussing a text. not all students at school like reading. some students show ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|19-27 enthusiasm when they meet reading texts. however, some students show „rejection‟. therefore, various strategies for teaching reading should be introduced. in this study, the writers examine the difference between collaborative strategic reading (csr) and teacher centered teaching strategy (by applying skimming and scanning). to be more specific, this study investigates the effect of collaborative strategic reading on students‟ reading achievement. the writers have determined two research questions. the first is whether there is a significant difference between students who are taught using collaborative strategic reading and students who are taught using teacher centered teaching strategy in their reading achievement with regard to knowledge and comprehension levels. the second is whether collaborative strategic reading gives a big effect to the students in the experimental group. collaborative strategic reading is a reading comprehension strategy found by klingner and vaughn in 1987. this strategy combines modification of reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning strategy (abidin & riswanto, 2012). furthermore, klingner and vaughn (1998) state that collaborative strategic reading is a strategy in teaching by engaging students to work cooperatively. collaborative strategic reading is a teaching strategy which consists of four steps, namely preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up. ‟preview‟ is done before the reading. the teacher asks the students to predict what they are going to read based on the topic or title given. „click and clunk‟ and „get the gist‟ are the steps the students do during reading. the students and the teacher discuss difficult parts of the text and find important aspects of the text. finally, „wrap up‟ is done after reading. the teacher gives questions to know the students‟ understanding about the text. three phases of this particular strategy instruction include modeling phase, teacher-assisted phase, and independent phase (klingner, 1998). in modeling phase, the teacher presents each of the strategies (preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up) to the whole class while the students watch the teacher‟s demonstration. in teacherassisted phase, the teacher guides the students through the strategy in union or in small groups. the students try to apply preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up under teacher guidance. in independent phase, the students complete the strategies (preview, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap up) as well as apply the roles which have been ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 20-27|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 assigned to each member of the group (leader, clunk expert, gist expert, questions expert, encourager, and time keeper). as it is expected to be an independent phase for the students, the teacher‟s guidance becomes less intense. backiel (2009) considers that in a teacher-centered strategy the teacher‟s role is to transfer knowledge to be learned. the teacher is the center who dominates the teaching learning processes. the teacher takes most part of the processes and the students have limited access. furthermore, the teacher gives the same pattern of questions for the students as what slavin (as cited in tamah, 2011, p.1) argues that grammar point is prevalently explained using the same instructional pace. similarly, huba and fred (2000) consider that in teacher-centered teaching strategy, students receive information passively and the teacher is the primary information giver as well as evaluator, the classroom tends to be quiet, and the culture tends to be competitive and individualistic. they add that this approach reflects teacher‟s anxiety and distrusts students‟ ability to work independently. as a result, this approach gives negative impact toward classroom behavior. this conventional mode of instruction is then to be employed in the control group and compared to csr in the experimental group as described in the method section. method this was a quasi-experimental study employing a preand post-test design. the population of this study was 72 grade six students of „z‟ elementary school in their second semester of 2013-2014 academic year. the writers chose the sixth graders because of some reasons. first, one of the writers taught them. even though the treatment was done by the other english teachers, it was helpful in adjusting the school materials with the time. second, mohammed et al. (2010) says that csr works in classroom from the third grade through middle school. this study was held in the sixth grade. the writers took two classes which became the control group and experimental group. they were randomly taken from two out of the three classes available. there were 24 students in the experimental group and also 24 students in the control group. to obtain the data, the writers used a reading test that consisted of three texts and 30 questions of multiple choice type. the questions consisted of five knowledge and five comprehension questions for each text. the average length of the text was about 290 words. the texts were of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|21-27 narrative genre. the reading test was used as the pretest and posttest. the same test was given to the students in both groups. the total score of the test was 30. the topics which were used during treatments were the same as the topics taught in the classroom. the english teacher who was assigned to teach in both groups were provided with the lesson plans prepared by the writers. both groups got the same reading texts, but some exercises were different. for example, when the text entitled fresh painting was discussed, the students in the experimental group got five comprehension questions in the form of answering questions, while students in control group got them in the form of completing sentences. even though they were not the same, the aim was the same that is to measure students‟ achievement in knowledge and comprehension levels. before the pretest was used in the actual study, the writers did the try-out. in the first try-out the reliability was good enough, but the result of the level of difficulty and item discrimination were not satisfying. the second try-out was held and a better result with regard to item difficulty and item discrimination was revealed. the test reliability of 0.82 was obtained. the treatment was done twelve times in each of the experimental and control groups with the time limitation of 40 minutes at „z‟ elementary school in surabaya from january 6, 2014 to january 30, 2014. there was a pretest before the treatments and a posttest after the treatments in both groups. the treatments between experimental group and control group were not the same. the technique used in the experimental group was collaborative strategic reading which had three phases i.e. modeling phase, teacher assisted phase and independent phase. those phases took three meetings. meanwhile, the technique which was used in the control group was skimming and scanning. as a conventional technique, it did not have particular phases to be introduced to the students. the treatments in the control group was designed to accommodate teacher centered teaching strategy. to test the first hypothesis, which states if there is a significant difference between students who are taught using collaborative strategic reading and those who are taught using teacher centered teaching strategy in mastering knowledge and comprehension level, the writers employed a t-test. hatch and lazaraton (as cited in tamah, 2000) argue that it is important to check the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 22-27|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 normality of the distribution when t-test is used. therefore, the pretest as well as the post-test scores were checked for their normal distribution and equal variances. when normal distribution and equal variances were not met, nonparametric tests would be employed. the pretest scores of the experimental group computed using kolmogorov-smirnov test and shapirowilk test showed p = .200 and .227 respectively. since p = .200 and .227 were greater than .05 (the level of significance determined), the data were considered taken from normally distributed population. similarly, the pretest scores of the control group were also checked for their distribution using kolmogorovsmirnov test and shapiro-wilk test. the findings showed the significance level was at p = .200 and .351 respectively. since p = .200 and .351 were greater than .05 (the level of significance determined), the data were considered taken from normally distributed population. in summary, the pretest scores of both groups were then proved to be normally distributed. to test the second hypothesis, which assumes that there is an effect of collaborative strategic reading on students‟ achievement in the experimental group, the writers applied cohen d formula. findings and discussion the calculation on the pretest of both groups indicated that the variance estimate for experimental group was 26.34 and control group was 29.93. then the f-ratio obtained was .880. the df for mean squares was 23 (f table of 2.19 is required at .05 level of significance). since the obtained f was smaller than f value shown in the table, the homogeneity of the variance was confirmed. in brief, the data were of equal variance. since the data were normally distributed and had equal variances, the t-test for independent samples was used to find whether the two groups had equal reading ability before the treatment was given. table 1. the result of the t-test for the pretest scores of the experimental and control groups and control group variables me an obtai ned t d f t tabl e conclus ion experime ntal group control group 20.5 19.2 5 .008 4 6 2.02 3 (α=0 .5) not signific ant table 1 showed that the mean for experimental group was 20.5 while for control group was 19.25 and the obtained t was .008. at .05 level of significance (df = 46) the t table showed ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|23-27 the value of 2.023 as the critical value to decide the difference. since the obtained t (.008) was less than 2.023 (the t table), it is concluded that the pretest mean score of both groups were not significantly different. therefore, an important condition for an experimental study, i.e. the same background knowledge of both experimental and control groups is met in this study. the posttest scores of the experimental group computed using kolmogorov-smirnov test and shapirowilk test showed p = .038 and .010 respectively. since p = .038 and .010 were not greater than .05 (the level of significance determined), the data were not considered taken from normally distributed population. the posttest scores of the control group computed using kolmogorovsmirnov test and shapiro-wilk test showed p= .087 and .046 respectively. since p= .087 was greater than .05 and .046 was not greater than .05 (the level of significance determined), the data were considered taken from normally distributed population. the calculation on the posttest scores of both groups indicated that the variance estimates for the experimental group and the control group were 12.89 and 27.94 respectively. the f-ratio obtained was .461. the df for mean squares was 23. (in f distribution table, the f table of 2.19 is required for significance at .05 level). since the obtained f was smaller than f value shown in the table, the homogeneity of the variance was confirmed. in brief, the data were of equal variance. the data above showed that posttest scores of both groups were not normally distributed, but they were of equal variances. instead of the t-test for independent samples, the nonparametric test (mann-whitney u) was then used to estimate the difference between the experimental group and the control group in their posttest scores. table 2. calculation of nonparametric test (mann-whitney u) of the posttest scores between experimental and control group test statisticsa posttest mann-whitney u 197.500 wilcoxon w 497.500 z -1.879 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) .060 a. grouping variable: group the analysis as shown in the above table 2 reports that significance level was at p = .060, which was greater than .05. this findings mean that there was no significant difference between the post test scores of the experimental group and the control group. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 24-27|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 consequently, the first hypothesis proposed in this study is rejected. the next question raised in this study was whether csr gives an effect to students‟ achievement in reading comprehension, which analysis is described in table 3. in addition to the cohen‟s d analysis, the percentage of the gain score was also calculated.as seen in table 3, there was 15.85% of improvement in the experimental group from their pretest scores to their posttest scores. table 3 also shows that the improvement of the control group was lesser, which was only 9.71%. table 3. tendency of csr to be more helpful mean gain pretest posttest experimenta l group 20.5 23.75 15.8% control group 14.25 21.12 9.71% although the amount of the improvement of the experimental group was bigger than that of the control groups , concerning the effect, the cohen‟s d formula showed that the effect of the experimental group was only d=0.24, which means that the effect is small. therefore, the second hypothesis of the study was also rejected. to guide the study, the writers have proposed two main research questions. the questions of the study are determined to see if there is a significant difference between students who are taught using collaborative strategic reading and students who are taught using teacher centered teaching strategy in their reading achievement with regard to knowledge and comprehension levels. the second question of the study concern the effect of collaborative strategic reading on students‟ achievement in the experimental group. to provide a tentative answer to those research questions, the writers formulated two alternative hypotheses, which were 1) there was a significant difference between reading achievement of the students who are taught using collaborative strategic reading and those who are taught using teacher centered teaching strategy in mastering knowledge and comprehension level, and 2) collaborative strategic reading gave a big effect to the students in the experimental group. after the statistical analysis on the pretest scores was carried out, it was found that both experimental and control groups had equal reading ability before the treatment. in the experimental group, the treatment was planned to let the students engaged most of the time in doing csr. it was clear that the students comprehended the text by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|25-27 having discussion in group based on their roles. on the other hand, in the control group the treatment was planned to maintain teacher centered teaching strategy, the traditional way of teaching reading by allowing the students to comprehend the text using skimming and scanning techniques individually. the result of the posttest scores calculated using mann whitney u test indicated that the formulated hypothesis was rejected. this present study revealed that the csr technique did not show significantly higher result than teacher centered teaching strategy. the present study then suggests that for comprehending a text, there is no significant difference between the implementation of csr and the teacher centered teaching strategy in assisting students to comprehend reading texts at the levels of knowledge and comprehension. the posttest scores performed by the students applying csr was more or less the same as that performed by the students taught by teacher centered teaching strategy. concerning the effect, the pretest mean score of the experimental group was 20.5 while the posttest mean score was 23.75. the pretest mean score of the control group was 19.25 while the posttest mean score was 21.12. from these numbers, the gain score of the experimental group (15.85%) was greater than that of the control group (9.71%). this fingding could be used to assume that csr helped the students to improve their comprehension more. nevertheless, the result of the cohen‟s d analysis revealed that the effect was limited to d=0.24. cohen as cited by morzano et.al (2001) considered that an effect size of .20 can be considered as small, while an effect sizes .50 and .80 are considered medium and large respectively. therefore, the effect size of the use of csr in improving students‟ reading comprehension was small. some possible explanation for this finding might the fact that the students did not have good ability in reading as in listening, speaking, and writing. moreover, the students were getting bored after several meeting continuously with the reading class. as the result they answered the comprehension questions just as their obligation in order to fulfill teacher‟s instructions. conclusion and suggestion this study has found that there is no significant difference between the students who are taught using collaborative strategic reading and the students who are taught using teacher centered teaching strategy in their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 26-27|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 reading achievement with regard to knowledge and comprehension levels. it is also found that collaborative strategic reading gives a small effect to the students in the experimental group. as this study was conducted in an elementary school where the type of reading text is limited, future study might be held in higher levels of education which allow various types of reading texts. references abidin, m. j.z., & riswanto. (2012). collaborative strategic reading (csr) within cognitive and metacognitive strategies perspective. european journal of business and management, 4, 61-69. backiel. (2009). teacher-centered strategies. retrieved from https://prezi.com/4ua0anbnwwj v/teacher-centered-strategies/ harmer, j. (2012). essential teacher knowledge: core concepts in english language teaching. pearson edu. limited. huba, m. e. & fred, j. e. (2000). learnercentered assessment on college campuses. retrieved fromhttp://assessment.uconn/do cs/teachercenteredvslearnerce nteredparadigms.pdf. iftanti, e. (2012). a survey of the english reading habits of efl students in indonesia. teflin journal,23(2), 149-164. klingner, j. k., & vaughn, s. (1998). using collaborative strategic reading. teaching exceptional children, 32-37. retrieved from http://www.utexas.edu/cola/ce nters/tlc/_files/conferences/new medianewmaterials/using_collab orative.pdf. marzano, r. j., pickering, d. j., & pollock, j. e. (2001). classroom instruction that works: researchbased strategies for increasing student achievement. alexandria: association for supervision and curriculum development. mohammed, s. s., swanson, e., roberts, g., vaughn, s., klingner, j. k., & boardman, a. g. (2010). the effects of collaborative strategic reading instruction on the reading comprehension of middle school students. sree conference abstract template, 1-5. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. http://assessment.uco/ http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/tlc/_files/conferences/newmedianewmaterials/using_collaborative.pdf http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/tlc/_files/conferences/newmedianewmaterials/using_collaborative.pdf http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/tlc/_files/conferences/newmedianewmaterials/using_collaborative.pdf http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/tlc/_files/conferences/newmedianewmaterials/using_collaborative.pdf ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|27-27 tamah, s.m. (2000). the effect of in-class proofreading on students' composition. (unpublished thesis). universitas negeri surabaya, indonesia. tamah, s. m. (2011). student interaction in the implementation of the jigsaw technique in language teaching. (published doctoral thesis). the university of groningen, groningen, the netherlands. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 204-218 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 11193 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee examining the role of video-recorded speaking task in enhancing students’ oral productive skill siti nurul azkiyah1, rahmi rahayu2 received: 07th sepetember 2018; revised: 16th october 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract the teaching of speaking in indonesian schools faces some problems such as limited amount of practice and feedback and students’ anxiety. addressing this issue, therefore, this study was aimed at examining the role of video-recorded speaking task in improving students’ oral productive skill measured through a speaking test and understand students’ response on the use of the task through a questionnaire. it was a quasi-experimental study, the sample of which was 87 tenth grade students of one senior high selected through a purposive sampling technique and randomly assigned into experimental and controlled classes. the test served as a pretest administered at the beginning and as a posttest distributed at the end of the treatment, which data were analyzed using t-test. the effectiveness of the treatment was analyzed from the posttest and gained scores, which findings revealed higher achievements of the experimental group. in addition, students were happy to do this task. these findings mean that video-recorded speaking task play roles in enhancing students’ oral productive skill and support previous studies on the effectiveness of video-recorded speaking tasks. keywords: speaking; the teaching of speaking; teaching instruction; video-recorded speaking task; quasi-experimental design abstrak pengajaran berbicara di banyak sekolah di indonesia menghadapi berbagai masalah, diantaranya terbatasnya waktu untuk praktik keterampilan berbicara dan feedback oleh guru serta keengganan siswa untuk berlatih. untuk menjawab tantangan, studi ini ditujukan untuk menguji peran tugas berbicara yang divideokan dan pendapat siswa terhadap diberlakukannya tugas ini. studi ini menggunakan desain kuasi-experiment dengan purposive sampling yang kemudian secara acak dibagi menjadi kelas eksperimen dan kelas kontrol. tes dilakukan 2 kali sebagai pretest dan posttest, di mana data posttest dan gain score dianalisis menggunaan uji t-test. hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa nilai keterampilan berbicara kelas eksperimen secara signifikan lebih tinggi. selain itu, siswa juga senang mengerjakan tugas ini. temuan ini menunjukkan bahwa pemberian tugas berbicara dengan divideokan bisa meningkatkan kemampuan produktif secara oral dan mendukung temuan terdahulu terkait efektifitas tugas berbicara yang divideokan. kata kunci: keterampilan berbicara; pengajaran keterampilan berbicara; pembelajaran; tugas berbicara dengan divideokan; desain kuasi-eksperimen how to cite: azkiyah, s. n., rahayu, r. (2018). examining the role of video-recorded speaking task in enhancing students’ oral productive skill. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 204-218. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 11193. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 205-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction there has been an argument that speaking is a very important skill in english language learning since english has a powerful position as a means of international communication (crystal, 2003). speaking is also often considered to greatly contribute to one’s image of language competence (pishkar, moinzadeh, & dabaghi, 2017). furthermore, some studies have showed significant roles of speaking ability on students’ personal, academic, and professional success (gunn, 2007; morreale & pearson, 2008). however, speaking ability has been widely considered to be a more stressful language skill to acquire compared to other skills (young, 1992; liu, 2009; öztürk and gürbüz, 2014) especially for countries where learners share one common language of instruction and have little exposure to the target language. this could due to the fact that speaking requires interaction among the speakers and the listeners so that communication can take place smoothly. when interacting with others, in addition to verbal communication, paralinguistic elements of speech such as stress, pitch and intonation are other important aspects should be taken into account (fulcher, 2003). similarly, speakers also need to acquire communicative competence which relates to the knowledge of language use, language discourse, strategic competence, and sociolinguistic competence (harmer, 1991; canale & swain, 1980, richard & rodgers, 2001). finally, speakers need to combine and activate those elements in the speaking in order to attain the purpose of communication. as a result, many students have been reported to be under pressure and anxious once they are asked to communicate in english even in the classroom (oxford, 2002). research has indicated that the fear of speaking is a common phobia among students. an old study conducted by richmond and mccroskey (1998) revealed that around 70% students experienced anxiety in speaking while a more recent study found the percentage was closer to 61% (dwyer & davidson, 2012). indonesia as the context of the study also faces similar problem. the status of english as a foreign language (efl) in indonesia contributes the problem of limited opportunities to practice spoken english in both inside and outside the classroom. most of the time, students only have the opportunity to communicate in english inside the classroom, which normally accommodates more than 35 students during 2 x 45 minutes per week. the large size of most indonesian classes has worsened the situation because teachers have less focus on students’ speaking skill at once during the teaching and learning process. furthermore, the demand of learning speaking is not obvious because most students especially in rural areas live in environment where english is not really ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 206-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license necessary yet. despite the fact that asean economic community has come, it seems that both teachers and students in indonesia do not yet have a strong reason to train their speaking ability in english. in addition, the national exam in indonesia also focuses more on reading, which leads to the less attention paid to speaking by both teachers and students. consequently, as has been argued by gebhard ( 2006), some students only study english as one of the requisites to complete their study. the next important problems come from some constraints of speaking english. according to hammer (2007), some learners often cannot figure out what they should orally state, do not have sufficient time to prepare and may underestimate their own ability due to much shyness and worries. these constraints are considered to be the factors of foreign language anxiety (marwan, 2008), which consequently require necessary actions from the teachers to motivate and engage students in classroom activities to provide learning opportunities for the students to practice their oral productive skill, namely speaking. in this case, the role of teacher is certainly necessary. this is because teacher is the most important actor in facilitating and implementing any innovation in the classroom (azkiyah, doolaard, creemers, & van der werf, 2014, azkiyah, 2017). referring to the proponents of education standards, teachers are expected to seek appropriate classroom instruction to enable all students regardless of their background to achieve the minimum goals as stated in the standards (chambers & dean, 2000; dowson, mcinerney, & van etten, 2007). considering the problems of teaching speaking and the important roles of teachers, it is therefore urgent for teachers to find an appropriate technique to provide better learning opportunity for students to develop their speaking ability. based on the literature review, some techniques such as video-recorded speaking tasks (dal, 2012), role play (liu, 2013; cheng & han-yin, 2008; sturiale & ann, 2013), small group discussion (yarahmadi, bonyadi & rimaninikou, 2015), brainstorming (ali, mohammad & jamal, 2015) and game (leon & cely, 2010) have been used to enhance students’ speaking ability. among these techniques, the one integrated with technology is considered to be more appropriate since it can promote fun and joyful learning. currently, most students have had easy access to technology, such as mobile phone, internet, and computer, which have even been integral parts of their life and therefore makes the immersion of technology for language teaching possible. moreover, a study conducted by shahsavar and hoon (2011) has proved that using technology for learning gives positive impact to the learners and could serve as an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 207-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license alternative form of language learning process. in this context, mobile phone can be used as the devise to video-record the speaking tasks, in which students can review and improve their own performances without any hesitation since they can do it themselves. the effectiveness of mobile phones for language learning has been investigated by some such as review conducted by jeng, huang, & tang (2010) and experimental studies carried out by chen and hsu (2008), and tai (2012). the features and programs available in mobile phones have been considered to be able to facilitate language learning in the areas of vocabulary, grammar, phonetics, speaking and reading comprehension (miangah & nezarat, 2012). in this paper, video-recorded speaking task, which combines both face-to-face teaching and learning process and technology, is preferred because they address the aferomentioned prolems in speaking classroom in efl context especially the limited amount of practice and students’ anxiety. in addition, since most students own mobile phones, they can learn anywhere and anytime using their mobile. video-recorded speaking task provides the extension of learning speaking and decreases students’ anxiety in speaking (dal, 2012). utilizing camera in mobile phones, teachers can use task-based language learning as the approach, in which teacher can offer concrete actions to develop students’ speaking ability by asking students to produce video-recorded speaking tasks and providing individual feedback and meaningful communication. a number of studies has been conducted to examine the effectiveness of video-recorded speaking tasks which findings reveal that the activities work well and result in the improvement of students’ performance (castaneda & gonzales, 2011; gromik, 2013; karasic & vedantham, 2015) furthermore, dal (2012) argues that the use of video recording supports the principles of teaching a foreign language. in addition, harmer (2007) adds some more advantageous of using video in speaking such as the freedom and the authentic setting for the students to deliver their thoughts, feelings, and views without any hesitation since they can do it on their own and repeat it any time they like. also, it provides more time to expose speaking which is limited in the classroom teaching and learning process. in indonesian context where english is taught only in two-90 minute meeting per week for all four skills, the use of video recording is considered to be more appropriate because it allows individual students to have additional practice and receive feedback for improvement, which then is expected to improve students’ performance. it is therefore hypothesized in this study ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 208-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that video-recorded speaking task plays effective roles in enhancing students’ oral productive skill ability. in addition, it is also considered important to understand students’ responses on the use of video-recorded speaking task because they can serve as the feedback for better implementation of video-recorded speaking task. hence, students’ opinion on the tasks is collected. method this research was a pretest posttest quasi-experimental study intended to examine the role of one variable on another variable by isolating, controlling, and manipulating the variable in real world setting (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2000). in this study, as has been indicated, the effectiveness of video-recorded tasks in improving students’ speaking ability was examined. in the pretest, students were required to tell a story of their past experience based on the topics provided by the teacher according to the material they learned in the class i.e. video-recorded speaking tasks have combined both face-to-face teaching and learning process and technology, which can address the aforementioned problems in speaking classroom in efl context because it provides the extension of learning speaking and decreases students’ anxiety in speaking (dal, 2012). the t-test result of the pretest, t(85)=0.25, p=0.18, revealed no significant difference between the experimental (m=77.15, sd=3.24) and control (m=76.99, sd=2.73) groups. thus, both groups had equal ability before the treatment, which was an important condition for an experimental study. the treatment took place for 2 months (8 meetings including the pretest and posttest), in which students in the experimental group produced three video-recorded speaking tasks, each lasted for two to three minutes. each video production was followed by individual feedback to improve students’ speaking performance, which was given in written form and delivered to the students two days after collecting the videos. only students in the experimental group used video-recorded speaking task and the other group used regular teaching method. in order to measure the role of video-recorded speaking task, the post-test was administered to both groups. in assessing both the pretest and posttest, scoring rubric proposed by harris (1969) was used as the guideline. the rubric was arranged in rating scale for five criteria of the elements of speaking skill. they are pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. furthermore, a questionnaire, consisted of five open-ended questions, was also used as the instrument to ask students’ views of the use of video-recorded speaking task. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 209-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in order to examine the effectiveness of the experiment, both the gain and posttest scores were analyzed using t-test. preliminary analysis were previously carried out to check the normality (kolmogorov-smirnov) and homogeneity (levene) of the data, which results showed that the data were both normally distributed and homogeneous. the significance level accepted in this study was p = .05. the data from student questionnaire was descriptively analyzed to understand students’ opinion on the use of video-recorded speaking task. the study was conducted in in one senior high school in one district in banten province, indonesia. senior high school students were selected as the sample of the study due to the reason that they have been learning english for at least 5 years and were assumed to own mobile phones. referring to the permission of the school, two classes of the tenth grade students (87 students, 55 girls and 32 boys) were selected as the participants of this study. the classes were randomly assigned into the control class (44 students) and the experimental class (43 students). findings and discussions findings the pretest, posttest, and gain scores: a comparison both the row scores of pretest and posttest were classified into three categories: low, middle, and high. the low scores were those lower than 70, which meant that students did not achieve the minimum standards as set in the curriculum. the middle scores ranged from 70 to 80, and the high scores were 81 and above. the classification of the score could be seen in the table 1. table 1. the score of pre-test score experimental class controlled class freq. % freq. % *< 70 2 4.65 2 4.54 70-80 32 74.42 36 81.82 81-90 9 20.93 6 13.64 mean score 77.15 (3.24) 76.99 (2.73) note: (*)below the standard of minimum completeness table 1 clearly presents that in the pretest score, both the experimental and control groups had two students who scored below the standards of completeness. there were more students in the control group (82%) than in the experimental group (74%) who fell in the middle score. however, the experimental group (21%) had higher percentage of students who scored high than the control group (13%). furthermore, the most important information from table 1 is that students in both the experimental and control groups achieved nearly the same in average: the mean score of the experimental group is 77.15 while that of the control group is 76.99. as previously indicated, the t-test result revealed that both classes did not have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 210-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license statistically significant difference. this finding indicates that both the experimental and control groups started from the same point. in other words, they had the same characteristic in terms of the ability before the treatment, which was an important condition in any type of experimental design, including quasi experimental one. table 2. the score of post-test score experimental class controlled class freq. % freq. % *< 70 0 0 70-80 22 51.16 31 70.45 81-90 21 48.84 13 29.55 mean score 80.19 (3.82) 78.57 (2.77) note: (*) below the standard of minimum completeness after the treatment finished, as indicated in table 2, there were no students in both the experimental and control groups who did not reach the minimum standards set in the curriculum. differences between the two groups were observed in the percentage of students in the middle and high scores. there were more students in the experimental group who scored high whereas more students in the control group scored medium. nearly 50% of students in the experimental group achieved between 81 – 90, while 70% of students in the control group reached between 71 80. in average, the mean score of the experimental group was 80.19 while that of the control group was 78.57. furthermore, gained score was also analyzed, in which differences between the experimental and control groups were also observed, as shown in table 3. in this table, four categories were presented in order to show the gain score in more detail. table 3. the gained score gained score experimental class controlled class freq. % freq. % < 0 3 7 6 14 0-2 18 42 30 68 3-5 19 44 8 18 6-8 3 7 0 0 mean 3 1.5 table 3 informs that there were students in both the experimental and control groups who did not improve at all, and therefore did not have any gain. it is important to highlight here that most students in the experimental groups gained from 0 – 5: 42% of them gained 0 – 2 and 44% gained 3 – 5. in addition, 7% of them gained 6 – 8. different from this, 68% of students in the control group gained 0 – 2 and only 18% gained 3 – 5. furthermore, no students in the control group gained 6 – 8. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 211-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4 . the areas of improvement concerning the areas of improvement, it is clearly observed that pronunciation (23.89%), fluency (23.74%), and comprehension (25.57%) were the areas where the experimental group improved the most. on the other hand, the control class enhanced the most only in two areas namely pronunciation (32.76%) and grammar (23.56%). these findings seem to indicate that there was an effective role of video-recorded tasks in improving students’ oral productive skill, which will be examined in the following section. the role of video-recorded tasks this research was intended to measure the role of video-recorded speaking tasks in improving students’ oral productive skill at the tenth grade of one senior high school. for this purpose, the scores of posttest of the experimental and control groups were compared using t-test. in addition, the gain scores were also calculated in order to compare the improvement rate of both groups. table 5. independent sample test of gained score 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 2.38 .13 3.90 85 .000 1.46 .37 .71 2.20 equal variances not assumed 3.90 81.88 .000 1.46 .37 .71 2.20 speaking elements experimental class controlled class gained score % gained score % pronunci ation 156 23.8 9 114 32.7 6 gramma r 82 12.5 6 82 23.5 6 vocabul ary 93 14.2 4 48 13.7 9 fluency 155 23.7 4 64 18.3 9 compre hension 167 25.5 7 40 11.4 9 mean score 3.04 (1.88) 1.58 (1.58) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 212-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license as previously stated, both the experimental and control groups did not have any difference in their pretest scores. after the treatment, the t-test of the post-test scores, t(85)=0.27, p=0.03, showed that the experimental groups achieved significantly higher (m=80.19, sd=3.82) and control group (m=78.57, sd=2.77). similarly, the analysis of the gain scores, t(85)=3.90, p=0.00, also depicted that the experimental group (m=3.04, sd=1.88) had significantly higher score compared to the control group (m=1.58, sd=1.58). in short, both the post-test and gain scores displayed higher achievement of the experimental group. thus, the study proves that video-recorded speaking task has an effective role in enhancing students’ oral productive skill. students’ views of the use of video-recorded speaking task the questionnaire was distributed to understand students’ views on the use of video-recorded speaking task. table 6 illustrates the data which are categorized into positive and negative responses. responding the first question, most students (36 students out of 43) viewed that the task was positive by stating that it was new, beneficial, and fascinating making students not easily bored. it also provided them opportunities to have more exercises to train their oral productive skill, learn new vocabularies and how to pronounce these vocabularies, develop their ideas, and let students experience new ways of learning english. in addition, they also considered that producing the video enabled them develop their confidence in speaking and develop their discipline, moreover in collecting the video. nonetheless, there were also other learners who considered that this task was not easy to carry out, took quite long time to finalize as it involved both preparation and revision, and sometimes confusing. those stating good responses also admitted that they faced some problems when finishing their tasks, which merely due to their personal problems such as being lazy, which caused them submit their work late. table 6. the result of questionnaire no . questionnaire positive response s negative response s 1 what is your opinion of the using video-recorded speaking task? 36 students 7 students 2 what did you like in the using video-recorded speaking task? 40 students 3 students 3 what advantage(s) did you get from the using of video recorded-speakin g task? 43 students 0 student 4 how is your impression after doing video-recorded speaking task? 40 students 3 students ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 213-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license additionally, the students also mentioned what they like in following this new type of lesson. some of them contended that they had the opportunity to develop their oral productive skill without hesitation and that they could have sufficient time to analyze and revise their performance when made mistakes. what was more important according to them was that they could learn expressing their ideas orally and confidently. however, they did not like making the video because they had a lot of work and the video creation took a long time especially they also had to revise when they made mistakes. consequently, they had to edit and reproduce the video, which they said they did not really like doing. in addition, according to the students, the duration of the video was too long, which made them less motivated to complete the task on time. other problems they complained were related to expenses of internet quota and camera quality affecting the production of the video. discussion this study shows that video-recorded speaking task played an effective role in improving students’ oral productive skill as evidences from the significantly higher scores of the experimental group in both the post-test and gain scores. thus, the findings have confirmed the hypothesis assumed in the study that video-recorded speaking tasks would enhance students’ oral productive skill. at the same time, the results also strengthen some relevant previous studies such as those carried out by gromik (2013) and castaneda and gonzales (2011) on the effectiveness of video-recorded speaking tasks in improving students’ oral productive skill. resembling the abovementioned previous studies, this study also used video recording as a way to enhance students’ oral productive skill. yet, of course there were some differences especially in terms of the design and the sample. that of castaneda and gonzales (2011) for instance involved only 9 students in an intermediate conversational class because the study was a qualitative one and hence there was no control class. in other words, all of them joined the intervention. however, the design of this study was quasi-experimental, which involved both the experimental and control groups. there was an intervention in the experimental group while the control one attended regular teaching and learning process. furthermore, concerning the analysis, only descriptive statistics analysis was used in analyzing the data in the above previous studies while this study combined both descriptive and statistical analyses of students’ scores in pretest and post-test for testing the hypothesis. the descriptive findings showed that there was an improvement in both the experimental and control groups. as expected, nonetheless, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 214-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license statistical analysis (t-test) highlighted that only the improvement in the experimental class was significant indicating the effective role on video-recorded speaking tasks in enhancing students’ oral productive skill. furthermore, in this study, student questionnaire was also used to know what students view about the use of video-recorded speaking tasks. another similar study conducted by karasic and vedantham (2015) also collected the data of not only students’ but also faculty members’ views as well as reflections through observations and interviews to understand their perspective on the roles of video in language learning experience. nevertheless, in this paper, the data coming from students’ questionnaire were perceived as secondary intended to provide additional information to the results of the statistical analysis students’ scores. as previously mentioned, most students considered that the task was different from their previous tasks and therefore they were motivated to do the task. they also admitted that the tasks provided more learning opportunities to develop their oral productive skills. this finding is in line to the findings of karasic and vedantham (2015) which revealed that the use of video was useful in training speaking skill. furthermore, the students stated that this kind of practice helped them build their confidence as they could practice expressing their ideas orally without any hesitation. as has been argued by dal (2015), video-recorded speaking task can provide sufficient opportunity for students to express their ideas with good arrangement of material and vocabulary due to available time for preparation. in addition, students can easily improve their confidence because they are able to revise their videos when they find mistake (castaneda & gonzales, 2011). moreover, the findings coming from students’ questionnaire could provide further explanation why students in the experimental group were able to enhance their oral productive skill. students were facilitated to have more opportunities to build their speaking ability in their own time. this is in line with the idea offered by gebhard (2006) that the limited practice available in the classroom could be responded by the use of video-recorded speaking task. in addition to providing sufficient time to practice, it has been argued as well that this type of task can build students’ confidence as they can previously prepare and revise when there are mistakes, which means that language anxiety could be addressed appropriately (harmer, 2007). however, it is also important to note that video-recorded speaking task is not exempt from weaknesses. as has been acknowledged by gromik (2013), most students viewed this task to be quite complicated. the participants of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 215-218 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.11193 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this study also reported various complains such as limited internet connection, compatibility of their mobiles, and other demanding school assignments with short available time. conclusion this study was intended to measure the role of video-recorded speaking task in enhancing students’ oral productive skill. the statistical analysis of the post-test and gain scores clearly revealed that students in the experimental group achieved significantly higher speaking score indicating the effective role of video-recorded speaking task. beside distributing test, this study also disseminated students’ questionnaire to ask students’ views about the task, which findings further explained that the task was effective to improve students’ oral productive skill. the students considered that this kind of practice gave them more opportunities to speak confidently, assisted them deliver better speaking materials and ideas, and provided unique and joyful experience in developing speaking ability. yet, few of them also recognized the complexity of the task amidst other heavy school assignments. finally, further research may conduct a deeper investigation by employing a mixed method in order to have a thorough understanding the use of video-recorded speaking task and its effects on speaking skill in indonesian context. references azkiyah, s.n., doolaard, s., creemers, b.p.m., & van der werf, m.p.c. 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(2015).the effect of discussion-based activities on the speaking ability of iranian intermediate efl female english learners. modern journal of language teaching methods, 5(2), 412-413. http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/indexinglinkhandler/sng/au/sturiale,+kimberly+ann/$n?accountid=172684 http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/indexinglinkhandler/sng/au/yarahmadi,+sohrab/$n?accountid=172684 http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/indexinglinkhandler/sng/au/bonyadi,+alireza/$n?accountid=172684 http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/indexinglinkhandler/sng/au/rimaninikou,+farahnaz/$n?accountid=172684 http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/pubidlinkhandler/sng/pubtitle/modern+journal+of+language+teaching+methods/$n/1316368/pagepdf/1779889133/fulltextpdf/107a5c437ffd4791pq/3?accountid=172684 http://search.proquest.com.vlib.interchange.at/pubidlinkhandler/sng/pubtitle/modern+journal+of+language+teaching+methods/$n/1316368/pagepdf/1779889133/fulltextpdf/107a5c437ffd4791pq/3?accountid=172684 *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 22-31 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the implementation of kwl (know, want to know, and learned) to improve students’ reading comprehension agus sholeh*, novita elok rosalina, riza weganofa received: 14th april 2020; revised: 17th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract this study focused on enhancing students’ reading comprehension through the implementation of k-w-l (know, want to know, and learned) strategy at the secondary level. the purpose of k-w-l strategy is to offer construction for stimulating and building students’ schemata, to create a determination of their reading, and to conclude what they acknowledged before. this research applied classroom action research based on the model suggested by taggart and kemmis (1998), consisting of five stages: preliminary study, planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. the students were asked what they know about the topic, what they wanted to know about the topic and then what they learned from the text after they had read the written text. based on the findings of the study, this k-w-l strategy trained students to be brave to present in front of the class to share their ideas with their friends, and it also assured other students to keep on listening and appreciating their friends’ comprehension of the text being studied. it is, therefore, strongly suggested that the english teachers at junior high school use the k-w-l strategy to improve students’ reading comprehension. key words: lexical approach;, vocabulary items; grammar items; efl textbook evaluation abstrak penelitian ini berfokus pada peningkatan pemahaman membaca siswa melalui pengimplementasian strategi kwl (know, want to know, and learned). tujuan dari strategi kwl ini adalah untuk menstimulasi dan membangun skemata siswa, menciptakan determinasi dalam membaca, dan menggunakan informasi yang telah mereka miliki sebelumnya. penelitian ini menggunakan penelitian tindakan kelas berdasarkan model yang disarankan oleh taggart dan kemmis, yang terdiri darilima tahap, yakni, studi pendahuluan, perencanaan, pengimplementasian, pengobservasian, dan refleksi. para siswa diberi pertanyaan terkait apa yang mereka ketahui tentang topik tersebut, apa yang mereka ingin ketahui terkait topik tersebut, dan apa yang telah mereka peroleh setelah mereka membaca teks yang diberi. berdasarkan hasil penelitian, strategi kwl ini melatih siswa untuk memiliki keberanian dalam berekspresi di depan kelas dan membagikan ide dan opini mereka kepada teman-temannya. selain itu, strategi ini juga melatih siswa untuk mengapresiasi pemahaman yang dimiliki oleh teman yang sedang melakukan presentasi di depan kelas. oleh karena itu, peneliti menyarankan guru bahasa inggris di tingkat sekoah menengah pertama untuk menerapkan strategi kwl untuk meningkatkan pemahaman membaca siswa. kata kunci: pemahaman membaca; strategi k-w-l; teks deskriptif how to cite: sholeh, a., rosalina, n. e., weganofa, r. (2020). the implementation of kwl (know, want to know, and learned) to improve students’ reading comprehension. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 22-31. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 23-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english is the language of science and education, and mastery of the english language will give students greater access to knowledge because they can read it. reading involves both the reader’s literacy context and the ability to make cognitive and affective leaps based on a synthesis of old and new information. by reading, people get more skills to increase their knowledge, and people can learn about the process too. kinzer and leu (1997) argued that reading is a developmental, interactive, and global process that involves learned skills. this process, in particular, combines and can be influenced positively and negatively by internal and external nonlinguistic variables or factors. tarigan (2008) stated that reading is a process carried out by a reader to obtain a message expressed by a writer through words that can be seen and comprehended by readers. the purpose of reading is to achieve an optimal level of understanding of meaning because this activity provides many advantages for someone to get more information after reading. they can share the information obtained from reading with others, and this information can enrich their knowledge. students must understand the text to find out its meaning. by understanding the text, they can achieve the correct information and knowledge. reading has a different meaning from understanding; for example, a student said that he could not understand the meaning of the text; it implied that he or she does not read. however, he or she decodes written signs into a verbal language (ur, 2012). in other words, reading comprehension could be defined as the understanding process of messages written in the text related to readers’ previous knowledge and experience and mental images in the retention of the text (kintsch, 1980). reading is fundamentally an act of constructing meaning from messages carried through written signs. as the procedure, the reader assimilates or related evidence, messages in script with the information or familiarity of the reader. besides, another definition of comprehension is the action of constructing logic of words, sentences and associated text. also, the understanding of text comes from the interaction between the written words and how they activate knowledge, vocabulary, grammatical of knowledge, experience with text and other strategies to help them understand the provided passage by teachers (pang et al, 2003). thus, we may say that reading comprehension is the progression of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 24-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license making sense of a particular text. in other words, the final objective is to gain a complete appreciation of what is designated in the text rather than to obtain meaning from lonely words or sentences without context in the paragraphs or surrounding sentences. the common fact in indonesia is that most students undergo low mastery of english competence as efl, especially comprehension of reading written texts. they often found themselves fail when they read english texts and become underachievers in this subject. it happens because they get direct learning to do exercises only on textbooks in class, do not have enough reading time freely outside the classroom. indeed, this condition often makes them frustrated with getting monotonous learning activities. the literary problem in indonesia, especially in comprehending written texts, independent reading or reading interest and reading habits, cannot be solved simply by providing courses offered as intra-curriculum. however, it demands activities and strategies that ultimately promote students’ reading interest and habit. that is why, researches on reading comprehension are highly recommended because of the low proficiency in english reading as a foreign language (efl) due to several factors, more specifically, learning strategies that are still teacher-centred and content-oriented (jacobs & renandya, 2015). also, teachers are suggested to apply some various models and strategies that give language experience and enthusiasm for language learners (alshumaimeri, 2017). by applying these strategies, learners may grow self-governing abilities in grasping, comprising and knowing the meaning of the targeted passage. k-w-l strategy assists learners to involve with texts in thoughtful and determined behaviours. in the first phase k (know), learners activate schemata. the next steps are that learners predict what additional information they are likely to need w (want to know), develop a plan to meet that evidence and the last phase l (learned), reproduce the new knowledge created or recovered the executed plan (paris, 1987). besides, this strategy may also promote the students’ intellectual activation in their reading process (ogle, 1986), even it contributes them to explore things, to gaze and to make them recite what they read. as students established their determination for reading, they are more driven and vigorous readers. we may take granted that every student has a schema, or framework for how they view the world. retrieving a student’s previous ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 25-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knowledge is the first step in assimilating new notions into their current representation. k-w-l help learners to achieve contextual knowledge and offer an occasion for students to set their educational purposes. table 1. kwl instructional scheme k (what i know) w (what i want to learn) l (what i learned) learners list what they think about the topic of the study learners communicate what they want to know about the topic students, they list what they have learned and check the w column to see which questions were answered and which were left this strategy determines to offer construction for initiating and edifying prior knowledge, establishing a drive for reading and summarizing what they learnt. the strategy can assist students in reproducing and appraising their learning familiarity, as well as serve as a useful valuation device for instructors. the method of k-w-l strategy comprises three phases; first, teachers provide learners with the chance to breakthrough activities and list the ideas in the k items and specifies that they already distinguish about a topic. then, they appraise the topic over and deliberate what they need to see. next, learners list these matters in the w section of the graph. items should be listed as inquiry statements. the last, as they read or after they read, students enhance facts that they have erudite while reading. they list these items in the l section of the diagram. based on the previous illustration in the paragraph above, it shows that this research was done to assist learners in exploring their comprehension of descriptive texts which makes this study differ from other previous studies. wahyuni (2014) conducted a study on using k-w-l technique for narrative texts. she found that the students were enthusiastic in learning reading comprehension, and also they seemed to understand the texts easily. also, their reading comprehension competence got better. astiti (2014) also researched improving reading comprehension through k-w-l strategy focusing on story series. the result showed that that the use of k-w-l was made students interested and helped them in comprehending the reading text well. thus, this research was designed to investigate how k-w-l strategy could improve students’ reading comprehension, specifically on descriptive texts. method classroom action research design by taggart and kemmis (1998) was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 26-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license used as the method of the study. it comprises five stages: initial study, planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. the data of this study were taken from the eighth-grade students of mts jawharot al muzakky sukosari gondanglegi. there were two kinds of data, namely, qualitative and quantitative data. the qualitative data were gained through giving questionnaire and doing observation during the teaching and learning process; the english teacher acted as a collaborator helping the researchers to observe the students during the implementation stage. there were 10 points to be observed. they were: 1) students’ preparation themselves to learn the lesson; 2) students’ attention and response when teachers question or call; 3) students’ attention to the explanation about a descriptive text as the topic in reading texts; 4) students’ attention when the teacher is explaining the material or topics; 5) students’ attention to the enforcement of reading descriptive texts using the k-w-l strategy; 6) students’ involvement in asking the questions; 7) students’ enthusiasm when the teachers answer and give an opinion; 8) students’ chance to ask the questions; 9) students’ enthusiasm responding to the answers; 10) students’ conclusions of the material or topic being discussed. the quantitative data were gathered from a reading comprehension test of multiple-choice questions. the test was given at the end of cycle 1 to know whether there is an improvement in students reading comprehension or not. the researchers did some steps in collecting the data: first, the researchers did a preliminary study or observation. second, the researchers design the first cycle and take a field note on what is happening during this cycle. third, the researchers gave a post-test and questionnaire to the students at the last meeting of cycle 1. data analysis is also an important aspect that is why the researchers used the formula of the average score of each student. findings and discussion findings in the preliminary study, the researchers observed that the teacher was mostly attentive on textbooks during the classroom activities. the teaching media were not accessible as students did reading activities; they read the text stridently after the teacher. some students appeared to be uninterested and not excited to get intricate learning process. from the teacher’s grade record, the researchers got the data that eighteen students did not pass the minimum criteria of success (kkm) as their mean scores ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 27-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were below 75. the percentage of teacher’s grade score is described as follows table 2. table 2. percentage of teacher’s grade score record no score students % 1 less than 50 2 51-63 7 32% 3 64-74 11 50% 4 75-85 3 13% 5 86-96 1 5% 6 97-100 total 22 100% the average score, as shown in table 2 above, was 70.16. four students or 18% of students passed the minimum criteria of success, and 18 of 22 students got score less than the minimum criteria of success. after the researchers found out the student’s problem in reading, especially in reading descriptive text, the researchers chose to use the k-w-l strategy to teach reading. the researchers believed that the k-w-l strategy helps the students to learn reading in a much fun way. the researchers then gave a reading test at the end of cycle 1 to know the students’ improvement in reading. the researchers calculated the mean score of the reading test by using the following formula: m = notes: m: mean : the total score of the students n: the total number of students mean = = 91.36 the researchers found out that the mean score of reading post-test 1 was 91.36. meanwhile, the students mean score of the reading test before being taught by kwl strategy was 70.16. this means that there is an improvement in students reading comprehension test after being taught by kwl strategy. the second step is to know the percentage of students who pass the kkm which showed that 90.90 % of students passed the passing grade in the cycle i. it means that 20 students passed the passing grade, and two students are enough the kkm in cycle 1. it means the criteria for success has been achieved. discussion based on the result of this study, it is proved that the k-w-l strategy improved students’ reading comprehension of descriptive text. furthermore, the different score of preliminary study and the reading test after using the k-w-l strategy also ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 28-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license showed that the k-w-l strategy was sufficient to improve students’ reading comprehension. the mean score of the preliminary study was 70.18, while the mean score of the reading test was 91.36, which mean that it was higher than the mean score of the preliminary study. it can be summarized that this strategy enhanced students’ reading comprehension in descriptive texts. according to hamdan (2014), k-w-l plus technique was useful and practical for students in improving their reading experiences. they accomplished more in summarizing reading passages, drawing the main ideas, and comprehending the text. applying the k-w-l strategy in teaching reading comprehension made the students grasp the text well. during the teaching and learning process, this strategy made students more courageous to present ideas and knowledge from what they have read in front of the class. they were not terrified to share their ideas or views with their friends. the other students also kept on listening when their friends were expressing their understanding of the text being studied. the students were asked what they knew about the topic, what they wanted to know about the topic, and eventually learned something from the text after they had read the passage. they felt proud of themselves as they wrote what they knew, what they wanted to know, and what they had learned and then all of them were given a chance to stick a letter on the whiteboard. based on the observation result, the researchers conducted all of preteaching such as salutation, checking students’ attendance, reviewing the preceding lesson. it was essential to do because the entirely pre-teaching would give a positive approach which influenced gaining a good teaching and learning process. all the data were taken from students’ reading test score, observation checklist and also field notes. also, the students show positive attitude when they were taught by using k-w-l strategy. the students were observed in daily meetings with a collaborator. it was found that they are more motivated and engage actively in the teaching and learning process. the result of the students’ reading test is also improved in cycle 1. there were 22 students in the class. about 90.9% of students were successful and got a score above 75, and 9% of students got 75. it means that all of the success and did not need the next cycle. the result from the observation checklist was done adequately in cycle i. in cycle i, there was about 20-22 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 29-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students who paid attention to the explanation. there were about 18-20 students who answered the question, discussed the material, and involved enthusiastically on the teachinglearning process. in comparison, for the students who asked the question, there were about 18-20 students. so, it could be concluded that it was done successfully. the result of researchers’ observation during the implementation process showed that students like to read the descriptive text, paid attention to the teaching-learning activities and the condition of the class was very conducive in the discussion section. most students gave active participation in the discussion section and paid attention to the explanation given by the researchers. they were also very active to ask questions if they did not understand that made them understand better the material given by the teacher, and that is why their reading comprehension increased. the teacher and the researchers concluded that the student’s reading comprehension was better after the treatment than before the treatment. based on the discussion of the research result above, k-w-l strategy can be used as an appropriate strategy in teaching and learning reading since it helps students to be active scholars while they read (ogle, 1986). it gives them specific information to look for and makes them replicate what they have read. when students set their determinations for reading, they are more inspired and vigorous as readers. each student’s prior knowledge is the first step in assimilating new concepts into their existing background of knowledge. it also helps to stimulate background knowledge and offers a chance for students to set their own learning definitive goal. conclusion this k-w-l technique promotes students’ ultimate goal in reading text because students were instructed to fill the w column with the things they want to know about the topic given. by filling the column, the students have set their reasons unconsciously why they should read the provided text. fulfilling the column is also beneficial to assist the students’ understanding of the reading text. the students were required to fill in the k column with the information they have already grasped about the topic. in the w activities, students were instructed to write any information they wanted to know about the topic. it can be concluded that using k-w-l strategy can boost students’ reading comprehension in descriptive text. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 30-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license they could reach the targeted standard of success because they felt that this strategy was interesting for them. as proof, the result of students’ reading test improved. there were 22 students on the class, in cycle i and after given the reading test there were about 90.9% of successful students and got above 75, and 9% of students got 75, mean that all of them was successful and did not need next cycle. moreover, in the teaching and learning activity by using k-w-l strategy as a strategy for teachinglearning, all of the students had full participation. for each meeting, they were more enthusiastic and active involvement in the english teaching and learning process conducted by the researchers. based on the finding in previous chapters, many students were active in having interaction with other students in every meeting. this study assured teachers that kw-l strategy could also empower students’ involvement in the teachinglearning process, made students engaged and interested in reading activities. this strategy led the students to use their prior knowledge as well as set their purposes, find their curiosity about the text. this strategy implies that the students’ prior knowledge of the reading text is similarly needed. it requires the students to use their prior knowledge in filling the k column. kw-l finally enables the teacher to create an exciting lesson. the last suggestion is to apply k-w-l, and the teacher may create a lesson plan, project, and even task that create students’ appreciation, provision and interest. references alshumaimeri, y. (2017). the effects of reading method on the comprehension performance of saudi efl students. international electronic journal of elementary education, 4(1), 185-195. astiti, n. n. k. (2014). improving reading comprehension through kwl strategy at the eighth-grade students of smpn 2 selat in academic year 2013/2014. denpasar: mahasaraswati press. hamdan, m. h. (2014). kwl-plus effectiveness on improving reading comprehension of tenth graders of jordanian male students. theory & practice in language studies, 4(11), 2278-2288 jacobs, g. m., & renandya, w. a. (2015). making extensive reading even more centered. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 4(2), 102–112. kintsch, w. (1980). learning from text, levels of comprehension, or: why anyone would read a story anyway. poetics, 9(1-3), 87-98. kinzer, c., & leu, d. j. (1997). focus on research: the challenge of change: exploring literacy and learning in electronic environments. language arts, 74(2), 126-136. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 31-31 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15541 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ogle, d. m. (1986). kwl: a teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. the reading teacher, 39(6), 564-570. pang, e. s., muaka, a., bernhardt, e. b., & kamil, m. l. (2003). teaching reading. brussels: international academy of education. paris, s. g. (1987). reading and thinking strategies. lexington: dc heath and company. sholeh, a. (2019). self-regulated learners in voluntary reading: the effects and implications on efl reading classes. journal for the education of gifted young scientists, 7, 867-883. sholeh, a., setyosari, p., & cahyono, b. y. (2019). effects of scaffolded voluntary reading on efl students' reading comprehension. international journal of instruction, 12(4), 297-312. taggart, k. m., & kemmis, r. (1998). the action research planner. victoria: deakin university. tarigan, h. g. (2008). membaca: sebagai suatu keterampilan berbahasa. bandung: penerbit angkasa. ur, p. (2012). a completely revised and updated edition of a course in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. wahyuni, d. (2014). improving students’ reading comprehension ability in recount text by using kwl (know, want, and learned). jurnal bahasa lingua scientia, 6(1), 99-107. relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions nida husna syarif hidayatullah state islamic university of jakarta nieda5772@gmail.com abstract when people use language as a tool to communicate, the meaning that is conveyed or received will be more than what is heard from the explicit utterances. it is believed that the language we use as the code can be interpreted in any meaning, which interpretation becomes part of pragmatics. grammar ability and pragmatic competence should work together to create good communication and avoid misunderstanding. this paper presents three aspects. the first aspect is the kinds of pragmatic knowledge that the efl learners may have about their foreign language they are learning. the second aspect is how the efl learners use their foreign linguistic expressions in a contextually appropriate manner within their daily communication. the last one is to what extent the efl learners understand the implicit messages of expressions. key words: pragmatics, pragmatic expression, efl learners, grammar and pragmatic competence abstrak ketika orang menggunakan bahasa sebagai alat untuk berkomunikasi, makna yang ingin disampaikan atau diterima akan melebihi dari apa yang terdengar dari kalimat yang secara eksplisit disampaikan. hal ini disebabkan bahasa yang kita gunakan sebagai kode dapat diinterpretasikan dalam berbagai makna, dimana interpretasi menjadi bagian dari pragmatik. kemampuan tata bahasa dan pragmatik harus berjalan seiring untuk dapat menciptakan komunikasi yang baik dan menghindari kesalahpahaman. artikel ini akan menjelaskan 3 aspek. pertama adalah jenis pengetahuan pragmatik bahasa asing yang dipelajari dan mungkin dipahami oleh siswa. kedua bagaimana siswa menggunakan ungkapan linguistik bahasa asing mereka secara tepat dalam kehidupan sehari-hari mereka. terkhir adalah sejauh mana mereka memahami pesan implisit yang terdapat dalam berbagai ungkapan. kata kunci: pragmatik, ungkapan pragmatik, pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl), tata bahasa dan kompetensi prakmatik nida husna 136| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction when people use language as a tool to communicate, the meaning that is conveyed or received will be more than what is heard from the explicit utterances. their body language, intonation, expression, will influence the way the speaker talks to send a message and add other implicit information within the message. time, location, and background of both interactants also play important roles in making the communication run well. a person is considered to have good ability in using the language when he or she can use some linguistic competence in the language within communication properly. the ability to pronounce the words well including the use of stress in the sentence, to use varied diction and expressions, and to use excellent grammatical structure are considered as a guarantee that a person can communicate properly within the community. however, it is also important to know what to say in what condition and how to say it because it will influence the hearer’s reception and the result of the communication. the study of how language is used in human communication, which is determined by the condition of the society, is called pragmatics (mey, 2001). to show that the ability to use proper stress in an utterance is important to understand a particular condition, let us take this simple example (the small capital words show the stress within the sentence): 1) a. hania hates basketball b. hania hates basketball both utterances use the same form of grammar with the same words. however, in 1a, by raising the intonation in the verb of the sentence, the speaker is telling the hearer about hania’s feeling toward basketball. it is emphasizing the feeling that hania does not like basketball at all. therefore, the probability to ask her to play basketball does not seem to be the best response. while in 1b, the speaker intends to tell the hearer that it is basketball that hania does not like, not other games, by raising the intonation on basketball. it is believed that the language we use as the code to exchange our conversation can be interpreted in any meaning we intend to. to infer or to interpret the utterances becomes the part of pragmatics. understanding grammar well is not enough to communicate effectively. therefore both grammar and pragmatics should go together to create effective communication (ariel, 2008). relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 137 another example shows how grammar can influence the pragmatic intention: 2) a. the result may be different from our expectation b. the result might be different from our expectation both utterances explicitly give prediction about difference result probability. grammatically, both sentences are correct. however, those two sentences are different in the degree of probability. the sentence 2a has a higher probability than the sentence 2b. in the production and perception of a language, pragmatic competences play a significant role, including for the efl learners. having enough knowledge in pragmatic will be helpful for them to produce and to perceive the appropriate meaning and to know what the intention within the speech acts based on the situation. however, the difficulties in understanding pragmatic sentences with their intended meaning seems natural within the learning process of non-native speakers. this could happen due to different social and cultural background with those of the target language speakers. meanwhile, based on the field observations during the teaching practice of several students from the department of english education in several schools around south jakarta and south tangerang, from year to year, pragmatic competence is not taught implicitly in the teaching of grammar nor explicitly in the teaching of speaking. it is important to relate pragmatic competence with other competences explicitly. in this study, the importance of relating the teaching of grammar with pragmatic competence is presented. this is because grammar ability and pragmatic competence should work together to create good communication and avoid misunderstanding. supporting this idea, ariel (2008, p.17) wrote that “while grammar is responsible for what we express explicitly, pragmatics explains how we infer additional meanings”. living as part of a community will require us to communicate based on the agreed premises. there are patterns or rules of language use that should be well acknowledged if we want to be accepted as part of the community. some kinds of pragmatic knowledge that the efl learners may have about their foreign language they are learning will be presented in this paper. related to linguistic competence, i also would like to know how the efl learners use their foreign linguistic expressions in a contextually appropriate manner within their daily nida husna 138| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 communication. furthermore, i would like to know to what extent the efl learners understand the implicit messages of expressions. in order to make the discussion clearer, here i would like to divide the structure of my paper into several sections. the first one is introduction and the second one is literature review on linguistic pragmatic knowledge, in which speech acts and implicature are discussed. then, in the third section i discuss the findings of the study on how the efl learners use their grammar ability to support their pragmatic competence. finally, conclusion will end this paper. linguistic pragmatic knowledge as a linguistic concept, pragmatics is concerned with communicative activity and anything related to it including the context, the actions, the people involved, the environment when the action takes place, and what is expected from the utterances production (fetzer, 2011). pragmatic knowledge of both speaker and hearer plays a very significant role in the production and the perception of a language during communication activity. furthermore, fetzer (ibid) explains that linguistic pragmatics, which is defined as the science of language use, focuses more on pragmatic principles, mechanism, universals and their immediate act of use in language and in language use. to be able to produce and to perceive the appropriate meaning and know the intention within the speech acts based on the situation, it is important for both interactants to have several kinds of pragmatic knowledge in their language. here i would like to give a brief explanation about speech act and implicature in pragmatic knowledge that we need to have in order to be able to use them in our communicative activities. in addition, this section will also explain the interaction between pragmatic competence and grammar competence. speech acts the definition or explanation about speech acts here is mostly based on austin’s lectures at harvard university in 1955. austin (as cited in cutting, 2002) said that the actions performed when we produce the utterances are called speech acts. in addition, austin (as cited in degand, 2009) considered that language is used not only to say or to make statement but also to perform actions. furthermore, austin (as cited in degand, ibid) contrasted two types of utterances, constatives and performatives, both of which are declarative. relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 139 according to degand (2009), even though its proposition can be either true or false, constative sentences are statements that are used to describe events, processes, or state of affairs such as: 3) a. i’m sleeping on my bed b. i have several new books c. i am waiting for my husband from the examples we can see that one of them is not true even though it is grammatically correct. the state of sleeping (3a) shows that at that time of utterance production, the speaker is actually not sleeping yet. so it is hard to prove that this sentence is true. on the other hand, degand (2009) stated that even though they have no truth conditions, performative sentences are sentences used to show some performances or actions, which should be issued in an appropriate situation. in other words, it must meet the condition required for the performance of the utterance. for example: 4) a. i warn you not to meet my daughter again b. i name my new baby “thareeq” c. i promise to come on time later the three examples above are grammatically correct. however, inappropriate situation or wrong intonation of the speaker may result in an unexpected condition. therefore, referring to degan (2009), it can be concluded that constative and performative differ in at least two aspects. while performative sentences are “used to do something or create new facts” (degand, ibid, p. 1010), constative sentences are used to make statements and assertions. in addition, performative sentences cannot be said to be true or false as constative sentences can. furthermore, if the speaker cannot meet the requirement of the conditions to produce certain utterances, there is a probability that the utterance may cause “unhappy situation” or “infelicitous”. degand (2009) stated that there are two ways that can make unhappy utterances. the first is the inappropriate circumstances or conditions when the utterances are produced, which could result in unsuccessful utterances. the second one is insincere production of utterances, where the act is achieved but the procedure is violated. an example for the first one is sentence 4c, where it is possible that the hearer cannot believe in the speaker because the speaker keeps violating the promise to come on time. another probability is the speaker has a vital role in the occasion, but he/she comes very late, and the event does not run well as it is expected. sentence 4a can be an example for the second one, where it is possible that a parent does not like her nida husna 140| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 daughter’s friend to meet her. the probability of the result is either the relationship between a daughter and her friend gets worse or gets better in inappropriate meaning because of the utterance. implicature implicature is a derivation from the verb “to imply” which means folding something within something else (mey, 1993). horn (2006) defined implicature as an aspect within speaker’s utterance that conveys the actual meaning. therefore, when we use implicature within our conversation, it means there is something within our utterances, which meaning is made implicit in the actual language we use. in other words, we do not use our language to directly say our intention. in addition, implicature is not solely about the production of utterances, because signs and gestures can also manifest and attribute the meaning (mey, 1993). body language, face expression, and intonation will influence the way the speaker utter his or her sentence based on his or her intention. in this case, any component of the speakers, including grammar forms, can contribute to the intended meaning of the speakers without explicitly saying it because the speakers’ intention is more than just what is explicitly said (horn, 2006). to understand what people say, we must be able to interpret what they say, however understanding what people mean when they use the language is not easy. leech (as cited in mey, 1993) considered that interpretation of what others utter involved guessing or forming hypothesis. consequently, the probability to misinterpret what the speaker said is not zero. however, it does not mean that the conversation will not run smoothly because pauses often take place during conversation, during which we attempt to understand the real meaning of the utterances. mey (1993) differenciates implicature into conversational implicature and conventional implicature. the first one is directly related to what our utterances are within the conversation. this is to say that the implication is derived on the basis of conversational principles and assumptions, relying on more than the lingustic meaning of the sentence. therefore, the response to the sentence is not always as what we may expect. example: 5) a. is there anything i can have for the dinner? b. there is a 24 hour restaurant near here. relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 141 from the example we can see that the answer for 5a is neither yes (there is) nor no (there is not). the speaker (5a) does not ask whether there is any restaurant or not. however, the hearer (5b) informs the speaker about a restaurant, where the speaker can go instead of telling the availability of food for his/her dinner. from this conversation, it can be implied that there is no more food to eat so the hearer suggests going to the restaurant rather than answers yes or no. another possibility is that the hearer produced his or her utterance unpleasantly because the speaker came too late. therefore, it is crucial to know the context of our conversation in order to be able to interprete the real meaning of utterances. in addition, depending on strict semantic and logical criteria only will not help us in interpreting the utterances. it is also very natural that we expect people to response to our question or request. however their response will depend on their ability in interpreting our language production. the interaction between pragmatic competence and grammar competence grammar is also a product of pragmatics due to frequent use of several expressions within pragmatic context. when these expressions are accepted to be part of the ways to communicate within community, they may come into the processes of grammaticization and semanticization, which make those expressions become grammatical conventions (ariel, 2008). furthermore, ariel (ibid) explained that those expressions are mostly collected as corpus and then become parts of standardized language we use as descriptive grammar. therefore, it is not quite right to strictly separate grammar from pragmatics in teaching the language. as it is mentioned before, grammar is one product of pragmatic convention and pragmatics can also be influenced by the use of grammatical components. when we want to communicate with our interlocutors, we need a string of words that are attached properly to each other so it can convey our message as we intend to. the hearer of our spoken language will also need several abilities to be able to interpret the message, explicitly and implicitly. both speaker and listener process their procedures, which may be different from each other so that the communication can run well. the speaker will deal with how to encode the message and how to trigger the hearer’s response, while the hearer will deal with the ability to decode the message and to draw the right inference from the decoded message (ariel, 2008). nida husna 142| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 the message delivered by both the speaker and the hearer needs to be well constructed. in this case, forming the constructions of the message requires acceptable rules, which is exactly the role of grammar. fried and ostman (2005) view that grammar could be considered as a set of abstract structure to guide the construction of messages so that they are accepted. from grammar construction, the speaker delivers the message in a certain way that is, hopefully, will be understood by the hearer. in indonesia, based on some observations and interview with some english teachers, pragmatic competence is rarely taught. therefore, for efl learners in indonesia, the use of proper sentence structure or grammatically correct sentence become the primary concern for promoting students’ ability to communicate. this is because using correct grammar will help the speakers to deliver the real message or to show his or her understanding of the condition. example: 6) would you like some bread and cake or something? have you eaten anything? the example 6 is intended to offer the hearer something to eat, which based on the speaker’s observation, the hearer seems to be hungry or even starving. the present perfect tense is used to show that the speaker seriously concerns the condition of the hearer and wonders; whether the hearer has eaten something yet on the day the conversation takes place, even though grammatically means something like “have you ever eaten anything in your life?” (ariel, 2008). method this paper used qualitative approach, in which the data were gathered through in-depth interview. previously, observation was conducted to several classrooms to get preliminary information concerning the english teaching and learning process. in the interview sheet, 5 short conversations and 5 discourse contexts were provided. the conversation part required the participants to give the expression based on the utterances from the speaker and the hearer. the discourse part required the participants to perform actions according to the given situation, which could be raising a question, giving a command or request. there were 10 students (5 male and 5 female) from 5 different schools around jakarta. they were selected because they have more or less the same level of ability based on their teachers’ observation. the data were analyzed descriptively while possible reasons for the responses provided by the participants were presented based relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 143 on some relevant reference. in addition, triangulation was also conducted through unstructured interview with the teacher and some of the students. findings and discussion concerning the conversation part, in the first question, the speaker asked “how are you?”. from 10 efl learners, 4 of them answered by explaining their condition and asking the speaker back (i’m fine/good/very well, and you?). only two of them answered based on what their teacher taught them (i’m fine thank you, and you?). the previous response is not wrong, and is not considered as impolite either. however, saying “thank you” shows our gratitude directly to someone who care about how we are and it is likely that the speaker will feel how good our manner is. the other four students responded “great, thanks; splendid, you?; i am extra ordinary; i’m not fine”, which probably because they refer the speaker as their close acquaintance. again those answers cannot be considered as impolite, because it depends on the context or situation given. following the principles of grammar, saying i’m fine, which is a complete sentence will show a better condition compared to saying only fine. the speaker, as the hearer of such response (fine), will probably think one of two probabilities. first, the speaker may believe that the hearer is really fine. second, the speaker may feel that something wrong is happening behind the short answer as if the listener does not want to be bothered by other questions. telling the learners the differences between full sentence and one word will be beneficial for them so they can use any of them accordingly. in the second question in the conversation part, the instruction was to ask them to ask their friend to turn on the air conditioner because the weather was hot. two of them directly said, “turn on the ac, please”, which is not grammatically wrong. pragmatically, it is also considered quite polite because even though they use imperative, they still use the polite marker, please. moreover they ask their friends, who are supposed to be close to each other. however, different interaction situation or different interlocutor can have different interpretation because judging polite behavior is a subjective matter (holmes, 2009). for instance, within our cultural context, it may be awkward if we ask a stranger or older people using imperative sentence. furthermore, one of the students said “can you turn on the ac?” which is grammatically correct. yet, the hearer is likely to feel more appreciated if the speaker add a polite marker. the nida husna 144| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 absence of a polite marker in that sentence can also has different impression, because the use of can also refer to ability or potentiality (lock, 1996). in other words, in that sentence, someone can have an impression that the speaker is questioning the interlocutor’s ability to turn on the ac. another student gave a grammatically correct command rather than giving a request, turn on the ac. the hearer, even though cannot be generalized, may feel that he or she is less appreciated by that imperative utterance. the need to use polite marker to show politeness is to express our appreciation because we concern to save people’s face (brown & levinson, 1987) and is important to keep a harmonious relationship. the rest of the students seemed to understand how to make polite request by adding the polite marker please or would/could such as “would/could you turn on the ac, please?”. the use of would or could will make the expression or the request less direct and more polite (lock, 1996), and the combination with another politeness marker (please) can soften the directive intention from the speakers (holmes, 2009). however, one of the participants seemed to misunderstand the instruction. she responded in a way to offer rather than to request by saying “would you like to turn the ac, please”. it is grammatically correct, yet based on context, it is not a request. therefore, based on the students’ responses, teaching pragmatic competence (politeness) embedded in grammar teaching (modal expressions) is crucial to avoid losing face of the hearer. in the third question, the efl learners were asked to make a request to borrow a pen from their friends. two of them used a complete request form based on modal expressions that their teacher has taught them such as “may/can i borrow your pen, please?”. of course, there may be some arguments about the degree of politeness in using modal may, can, and could (lock, 1996). however, due to the context given, the request was considered polite. seven other students also used may and can as their request marker (can/may i borrow your pen?) but they do not add please. the degree of request between may and can as a request marker is different, where may is considered to be more polite rather than can. the different degree of politeness of both modal expressions may due to their different degree of likelihood where the word may have lower degree of likelihood (possibility) rather than the word can (potentiality) (lock, ibid). the last student gave a kind of exaggerating request ,which could be influenced by friendship context by saying “would you mind if i borrow your pen for the rest of the relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 145 semester”. he seemed not to be serious in giving the request although the sentence cannot be considered as grammatically or pragmatically wrong. moving to the next part, which is discourse, one of the contexts was the presence of assistance in doing math homework and the question concerned the way to thank. one of the students only said, “thanks,” which is actually a correct manner to thank to someone. however, the degree of difficulty of the action, which is more difficult than just passing the sugar from another friend across the table, requires more than just standard gratitude. it is important for us to be able to use appropriate expressions in thanking based on the discourse. inappropriate utterances to show our appreciation will result in negative social consequences and damage the relationship (liao, 2013). efl teachers should teach their students which expressions to show or to deliver in which situations. the ability to show that we are grateful is crucial to maintain the solidarity among interlocutors and to promote social contact within the community (liao, 2013). the use of the expressions definitely will depend on who our interlocutors are, and how the expressions are used is based on the community or social convention (held, 1999). therefore, the degree of politeness in expressing thanking between friends will somehow be different from expressing thanking to strangers (liao, 2013). in this study, two of the students gave a well form gratitude which is only suitable for informal condition between friends, where one of them said “you’re my savior, thanks so so so so much”. this expression can be said exaggerating, yet when it is between close friends, it sounds alright. other than the overuse of the adverb “so”, the other parts are grammatically accepted. another one said “thanks a lot, man, i owe you big time” which is acceptable between friends. nevertheless, the second part, “i owe you big time” is rather awkward to be in this sentence. instead, he could say, “i owe you a big favor”, which may be more suitable for this context. six other students showed a correct manner for this situation by saying “thank you for your help”. adding the sentence with “i really appreciate it” will likely make their friends who helped them feel more appreciated, which was indeed done by two of the participants. the first one said “thank you for your help, i’m really suck at math”, which showed how he did not like math or how happy he was to get help on the subject that he considered difficult. the second one said “thank you very much, i hope you get the highest score”, which possibly would make the helper smile. nida husna 146| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 from those expressions responded by the students, we can see how the relationship between the speaker and the hearer influence the way we produce our spoken language. real life acts of speech usually involve interpersonal relations. a speaker does something with respect to an audience by saying certain words to that audience (sadock, 2006). this gives another reason that pragmatic expressions should be taught implicitly or explicitly within the grammar teaching. when we relate the pragmatic to grammar knowledge, we can take speech acts as an example to show the relationship (deppermann, 2011). performative sentences usually require the existence of a first person subject and a performative verb (degand, 2009). it is also stated that performative sentences tend to use the simple present tense and are indicative because they are pronounced for the purpose of acting on a real situation (degand, ibid). therefore, performative sentences are usually not intended to say something that refers to the past events. in addition, degand (ibid) also stated that the use of performative in a passive form is quite common. there are five classes of performative verbs even though the distinction among them cannot clearly be stated (austin, 1975). those classes are 1) verdictives (give a finding or verdict by someone who has the authority in doing something such as sentencing, pleading, judging, or pronouncing); 2) exercitives (the utterance given by someone who is exercising his or her power, right, or influence by giving sentence in appointing, advising, voting, ordering, etc.); 3) commissives (the sentence that requires us to do the action as we declared or as we intend such declaring, promising, announcing, etc.); 4) behabitives (the sentence that is related to social behavior like apologizing, challenging, congratulating, etc), and 5) expositives (where the utterances are intended to fit in a certain conversations or arguments). the verb of action in utterances will need proper grammar forms so it will help the hearer to understand the speaker’s intention better. this kind of speech acts is locutionary acts, which is “the act of using words to form sentences, those wording making sense in a language with correct grammar and pronunciation” (degand, 2009). however, a locutionary acts is not necessarily a part, for it is actually a dimension within speech acts that cannot perform in isolation. a good or proper speech acts will require the use of linguistic ability (locution) in combination with communicative ability (illocution) and understanding relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 147 how to make the hearer understand the message (perlocution). therefore, for efl learners, proper grammar sentence still become a reliable and an appropriate way to communicate properly. it is because grammar is still a main source in efl learning to perform a recognizable social action (deppermann, 2011) however, it does not mean that pragmatic competence cannot be taught. it can be embedded as the teacher teaches modal expressions or tenses. conclusion and suggestion the findings show that most of the participants were familiar with some types of pragmatic knowledge related to the expressions in greetings, command and request, and thanking, which are embedded within speaking activity and grammar teaching material. there is no such explicit statement that they learn pragmatics, yet they are asked to practice such utterances in proper way, both grammatically and politely. they learn some polite markers such as the use of please, can you, could you, etc., in their grammar learning. when it is related to linguistic competence, it seems that when efl learners are required to produce some pragmatic expression in daily communication, they are also suggested by their teachers to consider their interlocutors.. when they are given some situations that require them to express some utterances, some of them are able to use english linguistic expressions in appropriate manner, using polite marker or modal expressions. most of efl learners still rely on the use of modal auxiliary to show the degree of politeness within their expressions. the second forms of modal is usually used to show a higher degree of politeness (would, could, might). the ability of efl learners to use the proper expressions does not come from the teaching of pragmatics, but mostly from their grammar learning or from role play activities in the speaking part. therefore, it can be concluded that with proper understanding of grammar use, to some extent, efl learners can produce polite utterances properly in given situation. this study gives some evidence that grammar teaching in efl context can help the learners to produce communicative utterances. the teacher can also give the examples about how sentences, even though grammatically correct, can bring negative results if they are used in different conditions. however, to know a further relationship between grammar ability and pragmatic competence in efl nida husna 148| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 context, it is necessary to conduct a deeper and more thorough research including a bigger scale participants and more advance research design. references ariel, m. (2008). pragmatics and grammar. cambridge: cambridge university press. austin, j. l. (1975). how to do things with words. oxford: oxford university press. brown, p., & levinson, s. (1987). universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. cutting, j. (2002). pragmatics and discourse. new york: routledge. degand, l. (2009). speech acts and grammar. in j. l. mey, concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (pp. 1009-1015). oxford: elsevier, ltd. deppermann, a. (2011). pragmatics and grammar. in w. bublitz, & n. r. norrick, foundations of pragmatics (pp. 425-460). boston: de gruyter mouton. fetzer, a. (2011). prgamatics as lingusitic concept. in w. bublitz, & n. r. norrick, foundations of pragmatics (pp. 2350). berlin: de gruyter mouton. fried, m., & ostman, j. o. (2005). construction grammar and spoken language: the case of pragmatic particles. journal of pragmatics, 37(11), 1752-1778. held, g. (1999). submission strategies as an expression of the ideology of politeness: reflections on the verbalization of social power relations. pragmatics, 9 , 21-36. holmes, j. (2009). politeness strategies as linguistic variables. in j. l. mey, concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (pp. 711-723). oxford: elsevier. horn, l. r. (2006). implicature. in l. r. horn, & g. ward, the handbook of pragmatics (pp. 328). oxford: blackwell publishers. liao, b. (2013). on appropriacy of thanking: dynamic compensation and adaptation. english language teaching, 6(5). lock, g. (1996). functional english grammar. cambridge: cambridge university press. mey, j. l. (1993). pragmatics: an introduction. oxford: blackwell publishers. relating efl learners’ grammar knowledge to their use of pragmatic expressions ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 149 mey, j. l. (2001). pragmatics, an introduction. oxford: blackwell publishing. sadock, j. (2006). speech acts. in l. l. horn, & g. ward, the handbook of pragmatics, (pp. 5373). oxford: blackwell publishing. nida husna 150| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 a study of errors in 3rd singular pronouns of simple present tense by using interlanguage analysis as an approach. a study of errors in the third singular pronouns of simple present tense by using interlanguage analysis as an approach. a case study salmon pandarangga (spsumba@gmail.com) stie kriswina sumba abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze factors contributing to errors made in learning english as a target language (tl). employing a case study research, the participant was interviewed for approximately 30 minutes about daily activities and experiences in learning english. this research focuses in analysing the participant‟s use of third singular pronoun in simple present tense. the findings revealed that errors made by tl learners are mainly influenced by some factors related to their tl‟s and native language‟s (nl) knowledge, systems and rules. these factors are coexisted and interconnected in tl learners‟ minds. this is against robert lado‟s argument which mentioned that learner made errors in tl learning because of the interference from nl. the study provides pedagogical implications that tl teachers should perceive errors made by the learners as a sign of language learning and development; therefore they should not be discouraged to learn. also, tl teachers should be aware of their very important roles to help, to guide and to lead the learners‟ progress in learning the tl. the future subsequent studies should consider of involving more sample size over a longer period of time as to obtain to a more generalized finding. key words: errors, interference, interlanguage introduction target language (tl) learning is often challenging for learners. this is because of the vast differences between their native language and the tl in terms of rules, forms and knowledge. some learners find learning fun while mailto:spsumba@gmail.com salmon pandarangga 78| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 others find it frustrating. learners exert considerable effort to become competent speakers or even to emulate native speakers. for example, they strive for perfect pronunciation. in their efforts to learn the tl, learners usually make errors. some teachers strongly believe making mistakes is an important part of the learning process and that it enables learners to improve their tl skills. other teachers perceive errors negatively as obstacles in learning, and therefore believe errors need to be eliminated. these teachers have limited tolerance with learners who make errors. other teachers might ignore errors, or they simply do not know how to address them. it is widely assumed that errors occur because of the interference of nl and the degree of difference between tl and nl. it appears that learners transfer rules, forms and knowledge of nl to tl. for example, learners in indonesia might believe that the rules, forms and knowledge of bahasa indonesia are similar to english. some theorists consider errors as a learning process. it demonstrates the mind‟s ability to adapt, transform and restructure nl and tl language systems to a new language system. these theorists also believe that errors are reflections of the learner‟s efforts to comprehend the tl systems and knowledge. in other words, the errors are reflections of a new language system being constructed. this new system combines elements of both the nl and the tl. therefore, it is strongly argued that tl learners make errors as efforts to construct a new language system which is somehow different from the system of nl and tl and not interference of nl to tl. this paper is intended to analyze factors contributing to errors made in learning english as a foreign language. theoretical framework this theoretical framework will be divided into two sections. while the first section discusses the errors, types of errors and the reasons to make errors; the second discusses the theoretical approaches e.g. contrastive analysis (ca), error analysis (ea) and interlanguage analysis (ia). the ca and ea have important role to explain the process of interference from nl to tl. also the ca and ea, at some point, have significantly contributed to establish and emerge an integrated theory, that is, interlanguage a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |79 theory (mizuno, 1991). hance, it is thought that to have a clear understanding about the interlanguage process, it is important to put into consideration the ca and ea theories. definition of errors, types of errors and reasons to make errors what are errors? according to ellis (2003) “errors reflects gaps in learner‟s knowledge; this occur because the learner does not know what is correct.” (p.17). he further stated that if the learner in his or her performances of tl language consistently kept using the deviated words, then it would be considered as a little knowledge of the tl. moreover, it is believed that there are three kinds of errors based on their systematics (corder, 1974 as cited in ellis, 1994, p. 56): 1. pre-systematic errors occur when the tl learners are not aware of the existence of a certain system in the tl. 2. systematic errors occur when the tl learners constructed and use a system; however the system is not the right one. 3. post-systematic errors occur when the tl learners understand and know the correct system but fail to use it consistently. it seems that the errors occur because a learner has not yet fully understood and applied the system of tl (ellis, ibid). source of errors according to ellis (2003) there are three sources of errors, which are transfer, overgeneralization and omission. in transfer errors, the learners tend to use their nl knowledge to the tl. in overgeneralization errors, the learners appear to overgeneralise forms of the tl e.g. the use of „drinked‟ for „drank‟. however, in omission errors, the learners tend to simplify the forms of the tl, for example, „three apple‟ instead of „three apples‟. why people make errors? according to lado (as cited in steilen, 2005) errors are made salmon pandarangga 80| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 because the learners are influenced by the nl knowledge in which the learners just simply transfer the nl systems and knowledge to tl. however, some theorists (ellis, 1994; ellis, 2003; lightbown & spada, 1993; mizuno, 1991) considered errors as learners‟ efforts to systematically construct and establish new systems of a language in which the new systems are someway different either from the tl or nl. moreover, corder (1967) suggested that errors are important evidence that the tl learners are in a process of acquiring tl. in other words, errors reflect the stage of systematic language development that the tl learners have reached (ellis, 2003). theoretical approaches: contras tive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage analysis this research discusses three theories to determine whether the errors occurs a way of transferring knowledge from nl to fl or as a part of constructing a new system of language. these theories can help to answer how and why the errors occur. contrastive analysis (ca) and error analysis (ea) before 1970, most of the theorists relied on ca to investigate the errors made by the tl learners. even though, ca was first introduced by lado, it was an impetus of behaviourist theory. ca was used on the basis of identifying habit formation (vanpatten & benati, 2010), for example, similarities and differences of nl and tl. moreover, ca also predicted the potential errors in tl produced by the learners (lightbown & spada, 1993). by predicting the potential errors in tl, the learners might be able to identify the error patterns in tl (lado, 1957 as cited in steilen, 2005; hyltenstam & pienemann, 1985). also, lado (as cited in gass, m.s., & selinker, l., 2009) stated clearly that “individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |81 and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture-both productively” (p.2). it can be said that the learners transfer directly the rules of nl to tl. for example, indonesian speakers might express „i sleep‟ in english as this expression translated directly in indonesian, „saya tidur‟. in other words, at some extent, these two languages have some similarities on the basis of language knowledge for example, verbs always come after subjects. however, if there are differences between nl and tl, there would be possibility of tl learners to make the errors (lightbown & spada, 1993). lightbown and spada gave example of the differences of english speakers who learn french or french speakers who learn english might possibly lead to errors on the basis of parallel linguistic features. they illustrated clearly that in english, direct objects whether noun or pronoun, follow the verb e.g. “the cat eats the cookie, the cat eats it”. in french, nouns of direct objects come after the verb e.g. “le chat mange le biscuit”-literally, “the cat eats the biscuit. however, pronouns of direct objects come before the verb, for example, “le chat le mange”literally, “the cat it eats”. it is thus ca would predict that the speakers of french who learn english might say: “the cat it eats” while the english speakers might say: “le chat mange le”. the ca is based on three general assumptions (mizuno, 1991; gass & selinker, 2009): 1. it is claimed that language is a matter of habit, then; learning of tl is an effort to establish a new set of habits. 2. the interference of nl to tl is the main cause of errors and difficulties in the production and/ or reception of learning the tl. 3. the degree of learning difficulties of tl may determine a number of errors produced by the learners. in other words, the smaller the salmon pandarangga 82| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 differences, the less the errors may occur. even though, the ca has some limitations the fact that it just predicts the learning difficulties in tl, it provides some contribution to tl learning by providing some guidelines instruction to deal with difficulties by errors in tl (mizuno, 1991). after 1970, some theorists raised concerned thoughts whether the errors made by the learners were merely transferring the knowledge of nl to tl or trying to construct a new system of language. another concerned thought was that the adult learners of tl and the young learners of nl had remarkably similar kinds of errors. for example, both learners would tend to add –ed of past tense in irregular verbs e.g. writed instead of wrote. in other words, when the learners of tl used writed instead of wrote, actually, the learners tried to construct their own system of language which would be different from the nl and tl. in order to have more effective method to investigate the errors, some theorists introduced a new method, errors analysis (ea). ea approach emphasised on how to identify and analyse different kinds of errors as efforts to understand how and why the errors occurred (lightbown & spada, 1993). they clearly stated that “ errors analysis was based on the assumption that the speech of second language learners is a system in its own right-one which is rule-governed and predictable and very much like the system of young first language learners” (55). they further claimed that these errors reflected the learners‟ efforts to comprehend the tl system. similarly, susan and selinker (2001) believed that ea more focused on detailed description and analysis of different kinds of errors produced by the tl learners. they further stated that the errors made by the learners in tl were compared with the form of tl itself. like susan and selinker, mizuno (1991) also believed that ea emphasised on a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |83 errors production such as sounds and sentences produced by the tl learners. however, as mizuno continued, ea and also ca tended to neglect the internal process of learning tl, for example, how and why the errors occurred. the similarities and differences between these two theories are obvious. ca and ea had similarity on the basis of production but difference on errors investigation. both theories investigated and analysed the errors the learners made on the basis of production. however, while in ca tended to compare the errors between the nl and tl forms, ea tended to compare the errors the tl learners made with the forms of tl. it can be seen that even though both ca and ea had different approaches to investigate the errors, both theories shared similarities as they focused on the errors production rather that internal process of errors. inter-language theory in order to know and understand how and why the errors occurred internally, larry selinker (1972) proposed interlanguage theory. unlike ca and ea theories, interlanguage theory emphasised on the process of how and why human beings make errors internally. it can be said that the focus of this theory is predominantly about human cognition, the knowledge of language and the process of acquiring the language (langacker, 1987& newson, 2007). moreover, cook (1988) believed that there are systematic and internal structures in human minds that make them able to construct, articulate and use the languages. in other words, the construction and use of language reflects the internal structure of human mind (cook, 1993; ellis, 2003; lyons, 1977; pienemann, 2003). in addition, it is argued that in the nl speakers‟ minds, they know subconsciously rather than consciously the knowledge of their own nl systems (radford, 2004). in other words, this subconscious knowledge of language systems are salmon pandarangga 84| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 “not learnt but already present in the mind” (cook, 1988, p. 170). chomsky (as cited in radford 2004) called the subconscious language systems in speakers‟ minds as internalized linguistic systems. chomsky further argued that the internalized linguistic systems “are humanly accessible under normal condition or can be acquired by human beings” (p.3) regardless of their languages, sexes or status. it can be said that, through this internalized linguistic systems, all human beings including those who learn another language have the ability to learn one or more language(s). some theorists such as ellis (2003) claimed that the internalized linguistic systems become the basic knowledge of nl learners when they start learning the tl. in other words, there is an internal mental process in tl learners‟ minds in which the tl learners subconsciously recall and use previously acquired knowledge of nl systems to relate and acquire new knowledge of tl systems (bochner, duchesne, krause, & mcmauch, 2010). it also showed the ability of humans‟ minds to “adapt to the new language and restructure their language systems” (bowden, sanz & stafford, 2005, p.125) and the capability of problemsolving in learning the tl (vroman, 1989) including the ability of self-correction of tl errors. based on the cognitive approach above, selinker (1972) as cited in ellis (2003) believed that, after transforming process between the previous knowledge of nl and knowledge of tl system, the tl learners constructed cognitively a new knowledge of language system on the basis of their nl system. however, as selinker continued, the new language system was somehow different either from the system of nl or tl. in other words, the new language system consists of some elements from nl and tl (gass & selinker, 2008) and some of the elements are not likely to have come from the nl and tl systems (white, 2003). similarly, it is also argued that “the a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |85 learners are not fully distorting the nl system but inventing a system of their own” (cook, 2001, p.16) so in some ways the new system is still based on the nl systems (white, 2003). this new language system is called as interlanguage (il). the il proposed by selinker (as cited in ellis, 2003) can be explained in this simple diagram below. this diagram simply explains how the il closely related to both nl and tl. selinker (1972) suggested that, even though. il is closely related to nl and tl, il has its own independent system as a language. as an independent language system, it seems that, as shown in the diagram above, il becomes a connector between nl and tl. however, cook (as cited in cook 2001) argued that the tl learners, on the one hand, have the knowledge of their nl; on the other, their il knowledge in tl. cook further claimed that the knowledge of both nl and il of tl coexist in the learners‟ minds or “the knowledge of two languages in the same mind: one person knows both languages” (p.16). the combined knowledge of both nl and il of tl in the same mind as viewed by cook is called multicompetence. the following diagram described by cook as the multicompetence: it is clear that the learners have already had the previous knowledge of nl as a very basic foundation to construct a new form and independent language system or il when learning the tl. for instance, when non-english learners make errors without adding –s to the third singular verb of present tense e.g. “she speak english” instead of speaks, the learners built their own independent il system. this sentence describes clearly and salmon pandarangga 86| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 vividly the tl learning process in learners‟ internal structure minds and how the learners construct their own temporary knowledge of english as tl (cook, 1993). cook also argued that one of the reasons why some people see errors in tl as wrong is because the errors are measured against tl system. it is thus important, as cook further argued, that the tl learners should not be assessed or judged their language acquisition like the tl speakers but as a sign of acquiring of their own il. in addition, errors in il should be considered either as an evidence of language development (nicholas, lightbow n, and spada, 2001) or as a trialand-error nature (mizuno, 1991) which the later also lead to the tl learners‟ progress. mizuno further added that the process of tl acquisition is pretty similar to the nl acquisition (young learners) as a trial-and-error nature. there is thus no right or wrong about the interlanguage errors (gass and selinker, 2008). it is believed that tl learners employ various learning strategies to cope with their interlanguages errors (coder, 1967& ellis, 1994). in other words, the different kinds of errors learners make, actually reflect different strategies of learning the tl. one of the strategies is omission. according to ellis (1994, 2003) omission is a way of simplifying the learning task by ignoring grammatical features that they are not ready to process. another thing, skehan ( as cited in han 2004) also found out that tl learners usually have natural tendency to emphasise on content, not on form. in addition, the omission was considered as an evidence of internal processing of the tl (ellis, 2003) in order to construct their own language systems. methods this section presents the methods used in this study. it gives all detailed information about the participant, language feature, materials, data collection, data a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |87 analysis and interpretation (gass & mackey, 2005). it also includes how the procedure and analysis conducted in this research. in other words, all processes of this research will be briefly discussed in this section. participant one participant is involved in this study. the participant is an indonesian male (almost 31 years old). he has been in australia for one and a half years accompanying his wife, who is completing a master degree at a university in australia. he started learning english when he was almost 12 year-old in indonesia in his junior high school. however, he admitted that he did not have any interest nor motivation to learn english because it was difficult for him to learn english grammar. for example, he found it confusing to distinguish the english tenses such as simple present, future or continuous tense. as a result of this, he usually had difficulties to make good construction of sentences in english. at this moment, he lives in australia. he has been living in australia for almost one and a half years. nevertheless, he is not happy with his english progress. he still has the same issues as he experienced in smp such as english grammar and vocabulary. he has difficulty speaking a sentence in english for two reasons; firstly, he has to listen carefully and nervously to what people have just said in english and, secondly, he has to think and translate to indonesian language in his mind before he replies in english. he also shares that he feels differently when he speaks in english. in his native language, he used to speak fast and feel confident. unlike when using his native language, he has to speak slowly and listen carefully and nervously in english. in other words, it is believed that he feels like a stranger when he speaks and listens in english. salmon pandarangga 88| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 language feature this research analyses the participant‟s use of the 3rd singular pronoun in simple present tense. in simple present tense, the third singular pronoun e.g. he, she, it, maria, john and etc. indicates repeated activities or durative verbs again until it becomes habitual (evans & teschner, 2007). evans and tescher further explained that, in simple present tense, the third singular pronoun comes after verb. according to radford (2004) the verb for the third singular person in simple present must be added with suffix –s, -ss or –es. for example, the uninflected base form of verb –eat is added with –s e.g. she eats two bananas every morning. another example, “maria goes to coles every sunday”. the verb go is modified with –es. moreover, the reason to choose and use 3rd singular pronoun in this research is that tl learners tend to omit –s, -ss or –es in the 3rd singular verbs of simple present tense (ellis, 2003). for example, “she eat banana” without adding –s to the verb eat. some theorists believed that omission of –s in the verb eat is a way to construct a new language system (cook, 1993; lightbown & spada, 1993; gass & selinker, 2009). it is thus assumed that the participant in this study would omit –s, -ss, or -se in the 3rd singular verbs. unlike english, in bahasa indonesia there are no rules to add suffix –s, -ss or –es to the 3rd person singular verbs. in other words, the different rules of two different languages would lead to errors. procedures first of all, the purpose of the study was briefly explained to the participant. after he demonstrated his understanding of the study, he would be given a brief instruction on how to answer the questions. he was instructed to use the third singular person e.g. she or my wife in simple present tense. after he clearly understood the instructions, he would be asked, with some questions previously prepared a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |89 about his wife‟s daily activities. in his response, he was expected to use the third singular person e.g. she or my wife and simple present verbs e.g. cooks. it was also expected that the participant would answer the questions in complete sentences. for example, the question “what does she cook every night?” should be answered “she cooks rice” instead of just “rice”. the main reason that he answered the questions in a complete sentence was to see whether the participant would add -s, -ss or –es to the verbs. he was also asked for his permission to record the interview for data analysis. he was interviewed for 30 minutes about his wife‟s daily activities and his experience learning english. analysis as the main focus of this research is il analysis, it will first list and describe the il patterns of simple present tense of third singular usage. gass and selinker (2008) categorized the il patterns produced by tl learners as english-like and non-english-like (errors) patterns of simple present of third singular usage. while the english-like refers to the structure of tl, non-english-like refers to il. the first step is to identify the sentences produced by the participants based on the criteria of english-like and non-english-like. after identification, the second step is to analyse the kinds of language features (third singular of simple present tense) that are non-englishlike produced by the participant. findings and discussion in this section, the findings are presented with verbal descriptions of data. as can be seen in the interview transcript, in lines number 20 (she does), 40 (she does), 62 (he does) the boldface sentences are clear. these sentences are english-like because the have an – es on the verb of 3rd person singular. it is assumed that the participant knows the rules of adding suffix –es to the verb of 3rd person (radford, 2004). however, in lines number 10 (she wake up; she salmon pandarangga 90| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 clean; she breastfeed), 14 (she make), 18 (she put), 24 (she like), 26 (she buy), 36 (she like), 44 (she cook), 46 (she cook), 52 (she always check), 56 (baby wake up), 60 (he drink), 62 (he need), 64 (he need) the participant does not add suffix –s to the verbs. these sentences are non-englishlike (errors) because there is no –s on the verbs. the participant knows the correct rules the 3rd person singular (in line 172 “ah…actually i know but ah …mostly i forgot to use in conversation”) but fail to use it consistently (ellis, 1994). even though, as he admitted, he knew the 3rd singular rules, he forgot to use the correct systems in conversation (line 172). he further admitted that he did not know why he forgot the systems (line 178). the participant seems to simplify the rules and forms of the language he learnt. in other words, he omits the suffix –s of 3rd singular verbs e.g. in line 14 “she make” instead of “she makes”. it is likely that the participant transfers the nl rules, systems, and knowledge to tl (lado, 1957 as cited in steilen (2005). in other words, it seems that nl (bahasa indonesia) and tl (english) share the same rules. however, it is strongly believed that the participant made errors because he was constructing a new language system. the new system consists of some elements of nl and tl. it is also believed that the participant used the nl knowledge as a basic foundation to construct a new system when learning the tl. in other words, the knowledge of nl and tl coexist in the participant‟s mind. when the participant produces a sentence “she make”, baby wake up or she cook” without adding the suffix-s, it shows the internal process of constructing a new system in the participant‟s mind. cook believed that these sentences describe the temporary knowledge of english as tl. the participant tended to omit –s e.g. she cook which is against the tl systems. omission is one of the strategies to simplify the tl systems. according to ellis (2004) a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |91 the participant ignored the correct grammatical rules because the participant is not ready to process the correct rules. ellis also considered that omission is a strong evidence of inventing a new language system. one of the reasons why the participant omitted the –s because he had to think what to say in english and sometimes he needed to translate, in his mind, from bahasa indonesia to english or vice-versa (in line 148 …”but mostly to translate english to indonesian uh...or indonesian to english”). it is believed that the knowledge of bahasa indonesia and english coexist in the participant‟s mind. there is a strong possibility that the participant mixed the rules of both languages. the sentence e.g. “he drink” the participant produced is different from bahasa indonesia or english in terms of rules. conclusion in conclusion, it is now believed that tl learners make errors due to some factors related to their tl and nl knowledge, systems and rules. these factors are coexist and interconnected in tl learners‟ minds. when the tl learners produce a tl sentence, the sentence which is called as errors is different from the tl and nl in terms of knowledge, system and rule. these errors reflect the ongoing process of the learners‟ minds. for instance, when a tl learner says “she play badminton every saturday in sport centre”, without suffix –s in play, it describes a new structure of language construction in the tl speaker‟s mind. it is also similar to those who speak spanish, chinese or arabic as their tl. in other words, it is the learners‟ efforts to construct their own new language construction (il) which dissimilar either from nl or tlit can therefore be seen that interference is not the main reason why the tl learners make errors. however, to some extent, interference still contributes indirectly when the learners make errors. for example, learners might possibly identify the salmon pandarangga 92| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 error pattern when learning the tl. it is believed that by identifying the error patterns would help the learners to develop and master the tl. when discussing these conclusions, it is always important to keep in mind the obvious limitations of this study. the study was conducted with a very small sample size (1 participant) over a very relatively short time scale (30 minutes). therefore, data in this study may be unreliable. in order to have reliable data and also wider relevance conclusions, the study should be expanded to have more sample size over longer period of time. having more samples and more time, it may possibly avoid perpetuating bias. finally, it is recommended that tl teachers should perceive errors made by the learners as a sign of language learning and development and therefore should not be discouraged. also, tl learners should not be assessed or judged their tl language ability like the tl speakers. also, it is strongly believed that tl teachers have very important role to help, guide and lead the learners‟ progress in learning the tl. therefore, when the learners make errors, it means that the tl learners are trying to figure out and comprehend the rules of tl. references bochner, s., duchesne, s., krause, k.,& mcmauch, a., (2010). educational psychology for learning & teaching (3rd ed). china: china translation & printing services. bowden, h., sanz, c., & stafford, a. (2005). individual differences: age, sex, working memory and prior knowledge. in cristina, sanz (ed.), mind and context in adult second language acquisition (pp. 105-140). washington dc: georgetown university press. cook, v.(1988). chomsky’s universal grammar: an introduction. great britain: page bros, ltd. cook, v. (1993). linguistic and second language acquisition: modern linguistic. london: the macmillan press ltd. cook, v. (2001). second language learning and language teaching. (3 rd ed). london: arnold a study of errors in the third singular pronouns ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |93 cook, v., and newson, m. (2007). chomsky’s universal grammar: an introduction (3 rd ed). australia: blackwell publishing ltd. corder, p. (1967). the significance of learner’s errors. international review of applied linguistics 5, 161-170. ellis, r. (1994). the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. ellis, r. (2003). second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. evan, e., & teschner, r. (2007). analysing the grammar of english (3 rd ed.). washington, dc: georgetown university press. gass, m.s., & selinker, l. (2001). second language acquisition: an introductory course (2 nd ed). london: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc., publisher. retrieved: http://books.google.com.au/ books?id=f77n3pjswdoc&pg. gass, m.s., & selinker, l. (2008). second language acquisition: an introductory course (3 rd ed. usa: sheridan books, inc. han, z. (2004). fossilization in adult second language acquisition. great britain: cromwell press ltd. hytelstam, m & pienemann, m (1985). introduction. in hytelstam, m & pienemann. modelling and assessing second language acquisition. great britain: short run press, ltd. retrieved from: http://books.google.com.au/book s?id=8uxbeevdsksc&pg=pa6 &dq#v=onepage&q&f=false langacker, r.w. (1987). foundations of cognitive grammar: theoretical prerequisites. standford, california: stanford university press. lightbown, p., & spada, n. (1993). how language are learned. oxford: oxford university press. lyons, j. (1977). chomsky. great britain: harvester press limited. mackey, a., & gass, s. (2005). second language research: methodology and design. usa: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. mizuno, h. (1991). how to analyze interlanguage errors. japan: kanagawa university. nicholas, h, lightbown, p,. & spada, n. (2001). recast as feedback to language learners. language learning 51(4), 719758. pienemann, m. (2003). language processing capacity. in catherine, j. and michael, l (eds). the handbook of second http://books.google.com.au/books?id=f77n3pjswdoc&pg http://books.google.com.au/books?id=f77n3pjswdoc&pg http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8uxbeevdsksc&pg=pa6&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8uxbeevdsksc&pg=pa6&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8uxbeevdsksc&pg=pa6&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false salmon pandarangga 94| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 language acquisition (pp. 679714). oxford: blackwell. retr ieved from: http://eric.ed. gov/pdfs/ed374655.pdf radford, a. (2004). english syntax: an introduction. united kindom: cambridge university press. selinker, l.(1972). interlanguage. international review of applied linguistic 10, 209-231. steilan, a. (2005). the influence of consonants on native and nonnative vowel production: a cross linguistic study. germany: druck and verarbeitung llprint. retrieved: http://bo oks.google.com.au/books?id= x2gonu-nfdic&pg=pa32& dq. vanpatten, b., & benati, a. (2010). key terms in second language acquisition. great britain: mpg books group. retrieved from: http://books.google.com.au/ books?id=ko-zdi_lpyic&pg =pa82&dqe#v=onepage&q&f =false vroman, r. (1989). what is the logical problem of foreign language learning?. usa: cambridge university press. white, l. (2003). second language acquisition and universal grammar. united kingdom: cambridge university press. http://eric/ http://bo/ http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ko-zdi_lpyic&pg http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ko-zdi_lpyic&pg ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 109-118 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee understanding corruptors’ imagination concerning money through their metaphors dhuha hadiyansyah & didin nuruddin hidayat received: 8th july 2019; revised: 13th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract this study illustrates the imagination of corrupt politicians from the prosperous justice party (pks) about money through observing the metaphors they use to replace the word "money" when conducting cell phone conversations revealed in court. the discussion focuses on the metaphorical expressions of two pks politicians, in the case of bribery by commissioner of pt cahaya mas perkasa, so kok seng, related to road reconstruction projects in maluku and north maluku in 2017. the conceptual metaphor theory is used to uncover the semantic fields of the metaphors they create. thus, the corruptor's imagination can be revealed. it was found that through metaphors they think of money as a sacred object like the holy book. key words: metaphors; imagination; corruptor; linguistics abstrak studi ini menganalisa imajinasi politisi korup dari partai keadilan sejahtera (pks) tentang uang dengan mengamati metafora yang mereka gunakan untuk mengganti kata "uang" ketika melakukan percakapan telepon seluler yang diungkapkan di pengadilan. penelitian ini berfokus pada ekspresi metaforis dari dua politisi pks, dalam kasus suap oleh komisaris pt cahaya mas perkasa, so kok seng, terkait dengan proyek rekonstruksi jalan di maluku dan maluku utara pada tahun 2017. teori metafor konseptual digunakan untuk mengungkap bidang semantik dari metafora yang mereka buat. dengan demikian, imajinasi koruptor dapat terungkap. melalui metafora mereka menganggap uang sebagai objek suci seperti kitab suci. kata kunci: metaphors; imagination; corruptor; linguistics how to cite: hadiyansyah, d., hidayat, d.n. (2019). understanding corruptors‟ imagination concerning money through their metaphors. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 109-118. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 110-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in dictionary, imagination is often defined as the power to think (in dreams) or create images (paintings, composition, etc.) of events based on one's reality or experience (kbbi, 2007). hence, imagination comes from the creative ability in the mind greatly influenced by what people face in their daily life. meanwhile, in psychology, imagination is considered as an innate ability and process to create a partial or complete personal nature of the elements derived from the perception of the world being faced. psychology makes imagination a more complex object of study. however, there is something to be noted that imagination is the result of mental synthesis. the imagination created by someone is the result of observing one's mind about something (egan, 1992). children, for example, often practice their imagination through fairy tales and fiction. when children develop their fantasies, they play on two levels: first, they use role play to realize what they have developed with their imagination, and at the second level they play once again with a situation that makes them believe by acting as if what they have developed is a reality. however, imagination is not the monopoly of children. this is because humans always need new images that they have not experienced before. however, this new imagination still needs help from a combination of previous experiences. because corruptors are human, they must have certain imaginations. this corruptors' imagination is of course closely related with their view of money, which is why they cheat by dumping the law and the sense of justice. the corruptors' imagination about money can be captured by observing the language they use. the linguistic relativity holds a hypothesis that the structure of language influences the speaker's perspective and cognition. this hypothesis became widely known as the sapir-whorf hypothesis, or whorfianism. when elaborated further, language is not merely an instrument for voicing ideas, but language itself is forming ideas, a kind of program and guidance for what its speakers do. in a more radical interpretation, language determines the mind, not merely influencing it (knowles & moon, 2006). further, when someone has a choice, he uses metaphors to express what he thinks or how he feels something; to explain the uniqueness of an object; to express meaning more attractively or creatively. through metaphors, concepts and meanings are lexicalized or expressed in words. in relation to discourse, the creation of metaphors is important because it functions to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 111-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license explain, clarify, describe, evaluate, entertain, and express ideas (knowles & moon, 2006). when talking about money, a number of corruptors revealed in court creatively create unique symbolic metaphors and language; some even made it difficult for the corruption eradication commission (kpk) investigation team to track its target domain. this was once stated by the chairman of the kpk ethics committee, abdullah hehamahua. furthermore, he suggested that a corruption dictionary be written, which contained argots used by corruptors. the present study aims to reveal the imagination of corruptors from the prosperous justice party (pks) through the use of their metaphors in relation to money by explaining the meaning behind the metaphors they created. literature review simply stated, a metaphor can be said as a transfer of a conceptual unit to another conceptual unit. traditionally, to prove an expression is metaphorical or not, knowles and moon (2006) require three elements that must be considered in order for identification to be acceptable, (1) vehicle, (2) topic, and (3) ground. vehicle is an element of language that can be in the form of words, phrases or sentences that are thought to contain metaphorical meanings. topic is the desired meaning, in a sense not a denotative meaning. in other words, the word or phrase has changed from its basic meaning. a word, phrase or sentence falls into the category of metaphor when it changes meaning. this can be observed by looking at the context in an utterance. meanwhile, ground is the relationship or the point of similarity between the basic meaning with the metaphorical meaning. however, that is not enough for danesi and perron (1999). based on lakoff and johnson's theory, they define metaphor as the ability of the human brain to transfer experience to abstraction through mapping the source realm of the target domain to produce abstract concepts. in short, every cognitive process that involves mapping from the source domain to the target domain is classified as a metaphor. conversely, the cognitive processes that do not involve mapping from the source to the target domain cannot be classified as a metaphor. looking at the function of metaphors in daily life, danesi and perron (1999) refer to humans as homo metaphoricus. representation in the source domain is factual and truthful; on the contrary in the target domain, the representation is considered as a fiction. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 112-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license according to nida (1975), the domain is a field of cultural experiences realized by a group of related and explainable terms; explanatory in the domain is represented by a general component of the meaning of the term in the domain. nida added that the domain can also be referred to as a semantic meaning. based on this understanding, it can be explained that the domain is a group of terms, each of which contains the same general component so that the meaning is related. thus, terms in a particular field can be entered into a certain domain. metaphor is the basic mapping of an experience in one domain to an experience in another domain. so, metaphorical expressions are language expressions (words, phrases, or sentences) which are outward manifestations across domains. stern (2000) says that "metaphors are not linguistic expressions (or interpretations) but cross-domain mappings in the conceptual system". thus, a metaphor is a cross-domain mapping in a conceptual system. this means that the metaphor works between two domains, the source domain and the target domain. for danesi and perron (1999), the source domain is the vehicle (or the source of metaphorical concepts), while the target domain is the topic. they agree with lakoff and johnson's conceptual metaphorical theory that, in metaphors, abstract concepts are built systematically from concrete concepts through metaphorical reasoning. in this conceptual metaphor, general abstract concepts form the basis for specific abstract concepts. they make the example "the professor is a snake", which is a derivative of a more general concept, namely, people are animals. danesi and perron (1999) also mentioned the image scheme theory which states that the source domain in the delivery of an abstract topic, at first, is not taken arbitrarily but is drawn from various experiences. the form of conceptual metaphors, therefore, is the result of the induction of experience. this causes metaphors to often produce aesthetic and synthesis effects, and this also results in easier to remember metaphorical utterances. lakoff and johnson (in danesi and perron 1999) mention three types of image schemes. first the image scheme of the source domain involves mental orientation. for this reason, concepts are derived from the orientation of physical experience, for example high vs. low, front vs. back, far vs. near. for example, you may not think too far; you have to look back. the second type involves ontological thinking. it produces a conceptual metaphor in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 113-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license which activities, emotions, ideas and others are associated with a substance: for example, the mind is a container as in the sentence "my life is full of sweet memories." the third type is the elaboration of the two previous types, which producing structural metaphors (structural metaphors). structural metaphors expand the concept of orientation and ontological: for example, time is the source built from time is the source and time is the amount, as in "my time is money." according to danesi and perron (1999), metaphors form a strong outlook on life, because metaphors are easily understood. metaphors make the way of thinking easier. metaphors are automatic, easy, and are built on mutual agreement (community consensus). metaphors are often even a clue to past cultures. in this regard, danesi and perron (1999) agree with lakoff and johnson about the cultural model in metaphors. in this cultural model, the target domain is associated with a number of source domains (orientational, ontological and structural). speakers choose their own perspective on something, including in producing metaphors. lakoff and johnson (2003) state that metaphorical concepts help one to focus on what is being paid attention to. meanwhile, the orientation of metaphor production is never arbitrary, but has a basis in one's experience. therefore, they said that metaphors are structural. hence, it can be said that revealing what is in someone's mind can be done by looking at the metaphors he or she creates. method research method and data collection this research is a qualitative study characterized by the use of verbal descriptions in presenting its findings, not numbers. qualitative research is also useful for revealing details of certain phenomenon that is difficult to be revealed by quantitative research (strauss & corbin, 1990). the technique of data collection was conducted by the observation method, which is a way of obtaining data by observing the use of language. the use of the language can be oral or written. furthermore, the technique used is a free and involved conversation, i.e. the researchers acted as observers. hence, the researchers did not participate in determining the formation and appearance of prospective data. in this research, this technique was done through a study of transcripts of talks conducted by corruptors revealed in court reported by an online media. after that, the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 114-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license researchera recorded the data (mahsun, 2007). sources and techniques of data processing the data source of this researchwas the transcript of the conversation conducted by the corruptors revealed in court, obtained from the online media kompas.com and detik.com. the research question was answered through two stages of analysis, namely: identifying linguistic elements that contain metaphorical meaning and describing the conceptual relationship between the source and target domains in accordance with what lakoff and johnson (1980) expressed. conceptual metaphors see the 'mapping' and correspondence among the elements in the source and target domains (knowles & moon, 2006). in this way, the imagination of corruptors about money will be more clearly seen after unpacking the meaning fields of the metaphors they have created. limitation this research is limited to metaphorical words or phrases related to money and its units. the discussion is focused on the metaphorical expressions of two pks politicians, in the case of bribery by commissioner of pt cahaya mas perkasa, so kok seng alias aseng related to road reconstruction projects in maluku and north maluku in 2017. because the analysis is limited to words related to money and its units, the quoted text will not be displayed in its entirety, without releasing the unanimity and unity of a text. findings and discussions in a corruption case involving two pks politicians, yudi widiana adia (former deputy chairman of commission v of the house of representative, dpr) and muhammad kurniawan (member of the bekasi city regional people's representative council, dprd), there is source domain of “juz”, chapter in the alquran. this case arose in the case of bribery by commissioner of pt cahaya mas perkasa, so kok seng alias aseng related to road reconstruction projects in maluku and north maluku. yudi and kurniawan use the word "juz" to replace the word "billion". this was revealed in the kpk indictment against aseng on may 22, 2017. initially kurniawan reported handing over the commitment fee money from aseng to yudi, by sending a message saying, “semalam sdh liqo dengan asp ya (last night, already liqo with asp, didn't you)." liqo’ is arabic word meaning „meeting‟, commonly used among pks http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 115-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license activists to refer their regular meeting as a regeneration process. meanwhile, asp is initial of a person. then yudi replied by saying, "na'am, brp juz?" (yes, how many “juz‟?). na'am itself is an arabic word that means 'yes', often used among islamic clerics. then kurniawan answered, “sekitar 4 juz lebih campuran.” (about 4 “juz” more, mixed). the money currency is mixed between rupiah and dollar. for some people, the metaphor of “juz” to replace billion used by yudi is quite intriguing. however, for those who understand that metaphors are closely related to the context and address of their creators, metaphors like this are common. let's look at the target domain or abstract concept and the source domain (concrete concept) target domain source domain billion ← juz the association between money and alquran in yudi's mind is certainly cognitive, based on certain cultural practices or imaginations about the value of money in his life. for yudi, money is as vital in life as the scriptures for religious people. as a cadre of religious-based parties, yudi must be close with alquran because pks has a cadre pattern in the form of regular meetings (liqo‟) every week. in some internal party administrators, a person is not considered to be holistically religious (kaffah) before joining this liqo’, one of the main activities of which is to recite alquran. this kind of ritual gives yudi cognition about the importance of the function of the scriptures in his daily life, which provides peace, tranquility and even can lead him to become a member of the house. functions like this, by yudi, are then transferred to money, so the word juz appears to replace billion. although there are other units in the koran such as verse or ayat (consisting of 6236), surah (114), and ruku‟ (558), juz is the largest unit — the koran consists of 30 juz. yudi did not use verses or surah because he considered the billion unit is the largest number he could corrupt. he had not imagined that he would get black money in trillions rupiah. in prototype theory, there is psychological evidence that a concept is considered more substantive than another concept. in this case, saeed (1999) concluded that apples are more typical as fruit than coconut. in this case, for yudi and kurniawan and perhaps most indonesians, juz is more substantive used to refer to a large unit, in this case "billion". mapping of the relationship between concrete concepts as source for the abstract metaphorical concept http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 116-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license above, will be clearer with the following diagram: through the unit of money metaphor made by yudi, we can project how sacred money is to him. in yudi and kurniawan's imagination, money is parallel to its function with aquran, which is a guideline for muslims. thus, money for yudi can serve as a guide and way of life. the imagination is not without basis, especially if we look at the facts at the trial. when asked by the kpk prosecutor about the metaphor, kurniawan admitted that he spontaneously threw it. "actually there is no special purpose, it just flows. there is no agreement about the word, just spontaneous," he said while testifying to the defendant so kok seng alias aseng in the corruption court on thursday, 8th june 2017. something that is expressed spontaneously is closely related to what the person has been struggling with. because yudi and kurniawan are accustomed to recitation, what appears are words that are collocated or associated with it. if we map out how yudi created the metaphor for the word "billion" affirmed by kurniawan, the results can be described as in the table below: structural metaphor something sacred = holy book target domain source domain imagination miliar ← juz ₌ alquran/holy book the use of metaphor by yudi and kurniawan is of course not solely to obscure the content of talks from others—as politicians‟ cell phones are most likely to be tapped by the kpk. however, the metaphor is also intended as a justification for their behavior. danesi and peron's (1999) explanation about the relationship between the source domain and target domain can be concluded as follows: source domain (vehicle) target  factual and truthful fiction  drawn from various experiences (a clue to past cultures)  mental orientation  ontological thinking  structural hence, by using the source domain "juz", the word "billion" becomes fiction, and then the bribery in the form of rupiah and dollars is fabricated because the factual one is “juz” which is part of the alquran. thus, receiving the “4 juz” can be justified. in other cases, the use of metaphors as justifications can be seen in in indonesian society. for example, when http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 117-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indonesians give petty bribes, they will say, “ini uang rokoknya” (here‟s for buying cigarettes)", and so on. by using metaphors like this, corruptors feel relieved. so, at this stage, metaphor is not merely a style of language, but has changed its function as a pacifier for corrupt behavior. it is very natural to say that we cannot live without metaphors, which lakof and johnson name as "metaphor we live by". anders (2007) looks at this as anthropological legalization of corruption, which is common in indonesia. conclusions and suggestions what can be observed from the disclosure of the corruptor's imagination related to money is the uniformity of viewpoints that money which was made as a medium of exchange has turned into something very important, enjoyable and even sacred. with projections like this, it's not too surprising they are willing to do despicable behavior to realize what they want. every action is always driven by what is in someone's mind. through uncovering the imagination of convicted corruption cases about money, there is a starting point that can be used to help eradicate corruption, namely by rectifying the perspective of the state apparatus about money. this is a kind of contribution from linguistics to then be continued by other branches of knowledge. references anders. g. (2018). corruption and the secret of law: a legal anthropological perspective. oxfordshire: routledge. danesi, m., & peron, p. (1999). analyzing cultures: an introduction & handbook. bloomington/indianapolis: indiana university press. departemen pendidikan nasional. (2007). kamus besar bahasa indonesia (kbbi). jakarta: balai pustaka. egan, k. (1992). imagination in teaching and learning. chicago: university of chicago press. http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2017/05/ 22/20460521/politisi.pks.gunakan.bah asa.arab.saat.bicarakan.uang.suap. (accessed 15 august 2019). https://news.detik.com/berita/d3524535/gunakan-liqo-dan-juz-untukkode-korupsi-ini-alasan-politikus-pks. (accessed 15 august 2019). https://nasional.tempo.co/read/news/2017/ 03/21/063858065/10-kode-dan-sandidalam-kasus-kasus-korupsi. (accessed 15 august 2019). knowles, m., & moon, r. (2006). introducing metaphor. london/new york: routledge. lakoff, g., & johnson, m. (1980). metaphore we live by. chicago: the university of chicago press. mahsun, m. s. (2007). metode penelitian bahasa: tahapan strategi, metode, dan tekniknya. jakarta: rajagrafindo persada. nida, e. a. (1975). language structure and translation: essays. california: stanford university press. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2017/05/22/20460521/politisi.pks.gunakan.bahasa.arab.saat.bicarakan.uang.suap http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2017/05/22/20460521/politisi.pks.gunakan.bahasa.arab.saat.bicarakan.uang.suap http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2017/05/22/20460521/politisi.pks.gunakan.bahasa.arab.saat.bicarakan.uang.suap https://news.detik.com/berita/d-3524535/gunakan-liqo-dan-juz-untuk-kode-korupsi-ini-alasan-politikus-pks https://news.detik.com/berita/d-3524535/gunakan-liqo-dan-juz-untuk-kode-korupsi-ini-alasan-politikus-pks https://news.detik.com/berita/d-3524535/gunakan-liqo-dan-juz-untuk-kode-korupsi-ini-alasan-politikus-pks https://nasional.tempo.co/read/news/2017/03/21/063858065/10-kode-dan-sandi-dalam-kasus-kasus-korupsi https://nasional.tempo.co/read/news/2017/03/21/063858065/10-kode-dan-sandi-dalam-kasus-kasus-korupsi https://nasional.tempo.co/read/news/2017/03/21/063858065/10-kode-dan-sandi-dalam-kasus-kasus-korupsi ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 118-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15465 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license saeed, j. i. (1997). semantics. massachusetts: blackwell publishers. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. washington: san jose state university press. stern, j. (2000). metaphor in context. cambridge: mit press. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee register analysis of the conversations register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers (a case study at pt. dimas utama) siti nurani university of indraprasta pgri nurani_city@yahoo.com abstract this present research aims at identifying register used in the conversations among petroleum engineers by examining the linguistic feature which is viewed from the aspect of the field, the tenor and the mode of discourse of the systemic functional linguistics (sfl) approach. findings show that in the field of discourse, all terms of register found in the experiential domain analysis function as technical terms, of which the two major forms of nouns and verbs (i.e., single-word and compound/phrasal word forms) are the most frequent categories identified among other kinds of technical terms. the goal orientation appears to have both short and long term while the social activity results in exchanges among participants. in the tenor of discourse, the agentive role is said to be equal and the social role is considered as non-hierarchic. the social distance within the interaction is said to be minimal which is excessively characterized by the use of informal form of expressions. in the mode of discourse, the language role exists equally of both constitutive and ancillary identified by the use of present simple tense and non-present tenses, that is, future simple, past simple and present perfect. the channel is in phonic form. the medium is in spoken with visual contact as it is largely characterized by the use of endophoric reference as well as pronouns. key words: sfl, register, conversation, discourse abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengidentifikasi penggunaan istilah khusus di dalam percakapan-percakapan insinyur perminyakan dengan melihat karakteristik linguistik melalui aspek “field”, “tenor”, dan “mode of discourse” dari pendekatan linguistik fungsional sistemik (sfl). hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa di dalam wacana, semua istilah yang dipakai di lapangan berfungsi sebagai bahasa teknis yang didominasi oleh dua bentuk kata benda dan kata kerja (bentuk tunggal maupun jamak). orientasi tujuan penggunaan istilah khusus mencakup orientasi jangka pendek dan jangka panjang dimana aktivitas sosial bahasa merupakan komunikasi dua arah. pada aspek “tenor of discourse”, hubungan komunikasi dan peranan sosial antar partisipan dianggap setara yang ditunjukkan dengan penggunaan bahasa informal. pada aspek “mode of discourse”, penggunaan istilah khusus memiliki dua fungsi, yaitu fungsi utama dan fungsi tambahan yang ditunjukkan melalui penggunaan tata bahasa dalam bentuk “present simple” dan dalam bentuk “non-present tenses”, antara lain future simple, past simple dan present perfect. kanal bahasa yang digunakan adalah bentuk fonik. media yang digunakan adalah media lisan (percakapan) dengan interaksi visual yang ditandai dengan penggunaan kata endoforik dan kata ganti. kata kunci: sfl, istilah khusus, percakapan, wacana siti nurani 168| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction no two groups of people communicate exactly alike. they express their thoughts, ideas or other purposes differently. language varies “according to its uses as well as its users, where it is used and to whom, and who is using it” (holmes, 2007, p. 235). people who have different social, education, profession, and cultural background commonly communicate with each other in different ways. they tend to automatically choose a variety of language when they meet a particular group or social background that is appropriate to the situation or context. in different situations, groups of people in a particular field use different forms of language. they provide a specific variety to convey messages which is generally known as register or jargon. register is identified as a variety according to its use. it is “what you are speaking at the time, depending on what you are doing and the nature of the activity in which the language is functioning” (halliday, 1989, p. 41). register thus refers to an arrangement of words and phrases that is typically associated with a specific situational arrangement of the field, the tenor and the mode of discourse (halliday, 1978; halliday & hasan, 1989). similarly, bell (1976) defines register as a variety of language associated with particular groups of people of the same interests in a particular circumstance. the use of register in this sense tends to be caused by the use to which the individual is putting the language in the specific circumstance, rather than by the relatively permanent characteristics of the user such as age, education, and also social class membership of a language. some other linguists prefer to restrict the domain of the term register to describe specific vocabulary (which one might commonly calls jargon) which is associated with particular groups in a certain situation. wardhaugh (1997) emphasizes the term register as a set of vocabulary items associated with occupational groups. it is certainly true that a number of studies have focused on the register used by specific groups in such particular discussions, for example, parents talking baby talk (ferguson, 1977), sports announcers (ferguson, 1983), students (reppen, 2001), researchers (conrad, 2001), and so forth. also, trudgill (1996) and stojicic (2004) prefer to restrict the term jargon as a particular language used by the members of particular profession or interest. register is viewed as an occupational language of a group of specialists which functions as technical words used in the discussion about register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 169 their specialty that is shaped by the work environment. most speakers employ register which they use in different situations. in a certain respect, the use of register is intended to meet communication needs among specialists in the field as register represents a variety of language that is based on its function for specific purposes. in petroleum field, the engineers use register as technical terms which are specific to their field. for example, the term „spaghetti‟ (general field) refers to pasta in narrow long rods compared to „spaghetti‟ (petroleum field) which refers to any kind of tubing or pipe with a very small diameter. only insiders (i.e., petroleum engineers) know the meaning of those terms. on the contrary, outsiders (i.e., common people) would find it difficult to understand the terms as they do not have sufficient knowledge about the meaning of those specialized terms. from the above case, we know that the register tends to be associated and can be understood only by a particular group of people in a certain situation. the example above indicates different functions of their uses as the terms are spoken in different settings and are also addressed to different speakers. although studies on register have been greatly conducted in such particular discussions, there is not much analysis on register used by particular group of people and profession in a specific field, such as in the petroleum field. therefore, the writer is interested in identifying the register which is commonly used in the conversations among petroleum engineers (indonesian engineers and their foreign clients). this present research aims at identifying the register used in the conversations among petroleum engineers by examining the lexical and grammatical variations which are viewed from the aspects of the field, the tenor and the mode of discourse. the register analysis in this present research will be based on the framework of systemic functional linguistics (sfl) as developed by halliday and hasan (1989), who identify three variables of situations that affect the way people use register, namely: the field of discourse, the tenor of discourse, and the mode of discourse. the data will be analyzed as follows: 1. the field of discourse includes the analysis of an experiential domain, a goal orientation (short term vs. long term), and a social activity. 2. the tenor of discourse involves the role relationships among the participants which varies according to an agentive role, a siti nurani 170| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 social role (hierarchic vs. nonhierarchic), and a social distance (minimal vs. maximal). 3. the mode of discourse consists of three main concepts, such as a language role (ancillary vs. constitutive), a channel (graphic vs. phonic), and a medium (spoken vs. written). method research design the register analysis in this present research employed a qualitative descriptive analysis. the descriptive analysis dealt with the examination of lexical and grammatical variations of the register. the data was a face-to-face recorded interaction among petroleum engineers engaging in the conversations. participant the participants were seventeen petroleum engineers, of which nine indonesian engineers and eight foreign engineers of supplier companies as business clients. the participants are coming from various ethnicities in indonesia (i.e., javanese, manado and palembang), various countries (i.e, china, korea, the philiphines, and singapore), as well as various backgrounds of education (i.e., master degree of petroleum/mechanical engineering and petroleum industry, and bachelor degree of technical/mechanical engineering). the average age of participants is around 30 to 50 years old. measures and data analysis the data was collected through several procedures, namely: 1) data recording, 2) data transcription, 3) data codification, 4) data analysis, and 5) conclusion. in the stage of data recording, the writer took the recordings of face-to-face interaction among petroleum engineers engaging in the conversations by using an audio device of sony dsc-w270. the recorded conversations were taken directly at their work place (at the head office and at the warehouse) for all members of participants together discussing their specialty in the meetings with various topic discussions of drilling operation. in total, the length of time of the recordings was ten hours from fourteen audio recordings, of which six recordings were taken in the meetings at the head office and eight recordings were taken in the meetings at the warehouse. once the recordings were taken, the writer herself transcribed the data of the conversations by describing the presentation of transcription conventions into several steps, namely: a) numbered every example to refer to register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 171 specific lines as the readers could easily find the examples and check the context they require. this process of numbering was an effort to ease the writer to indicate the interaction orderly, b) used transcription conventions to transcribe a stretch of speech relied in the interaction. the transcription conventions were aimed to capture the situation of talk as well as to inform readers of what situation happened in the interaction, and c) abbreviated every participant‟s names of the research as it is beneficial for readers to know the participants who involve in the interaction in each recording. for the sake of privacy, the writer identified the names of every participant (indonesian and foreign engineers) by mentioning their initials. in coding the data, the writer described and marked the data by giving the codes to make the classification of each data which comprised of several remarks, such as the names of the recordings on every topic discussed, the length of time for each recording, the topic discussions being held in the conversations, and the types of contexts of speech being used in the conversations. the data was analyzed to see the three parameters of register (the field, the tenor, and the mode of discourse) play their role in the situation of talk. the field of discourse was focused on the lexical analysis (i.e., nouns, verbs, object referential, and acronyms). the tenor of discourse was focused on the role relationships among the participants. the mode of discourse was focused on the grammatical analysis. in the last stage, the writer drew a conclusion which was presented in tables. findings the field of discourse the field of discourse refers to the topic of the linguistic exchange and comprises three main discussions, such as an experiential domain, a goal orientation, and a social activity. experiential domain the main focus of this experiential domain analysis is only on the recurrent specific lexis used in the petroleum field. this lexis discussion consists of four types of word classes, that is, nouns and verbs (specifically single-word and compound/phrasalword forms), object referential lexis, and acronym. example (1) is given to illustrate how the field of discourse describes the context of situation. there are two chinese engineers (i.e., l and h), and one indonesian engineer (i.e., ds) talking about low floss measurement in their meeting. siti nurani 172| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 r2/36:08/lowfloss_measurement/mt g-whs ds: [[= but before we must clean the connection of rathole and mousehole from fish. actually it‟s so difficult because the hole full of mud cake, so that spaghetti of the pig will break out = l: [[well, don‟t worry, change the spaghetti then check it because= ds: we see if there‟s no more cement = l: [[yeah, in the connection of rathole and mousehole = h: we see it from the connection of christmas tree = ds: [[= from the hole, rathole and mousehole, there is low floss right? = l: [[= christmas tree set per line then ask derrickman to draw it = ds: = i know that we only cut a little for the spaghetti. = l: [[yeah i know (.) we need focus to handle = ds: pak ilyas has found the expert to control the system = l: [[ok, well that‟s good (.) so you only have to prepare the line = ds: i have, drilling line, drilling pipe and drill collar is fine. = ((two chinese are discussing)) ds: [[= i already power the bit and shirttail use new spaghetti on the body, the neck and also the shoulder but i am not sure if deadline = note:  underline indicates the nouns designating the parts of physical structures.  bold indicates the nouns designating the nature.  italic indicates the nouns designating the animals. in the category of single-word nouns, the high frequency of nouns identified in example (1) represents the names of nature which could mislead in meaning if the words are interpreted in two distinct concepts, that is, in general concept compared to the oil field concept. the term „line‟, in general is referred to the length of thread, rope, or wire, while in oil field the term „line‟ is defined as any length of pipe through which liquid or gas flows. another example, the term „spaghetti‟ is described as pasta in narrow long rods as people assume in common. on the other hand, the petroleum engineers interpret that term as any kind of tubing or pipe with a very small diameter. the number of nouns provided in the example above also represent the names of animals of which the meaning register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 173 is quite different to be interpreted in general concept compared to the oil field concept. in general concept, the terms „fish‟ and „pig‟ refer to the animals of fish and pig. common people know that the term „fish‟ refers to a cold blooded animal living wholly in water, while the term „pig‟ refers to an animal without fur that does not chew grass. meanwhile, in oil field, the engineers describe the former term as any kind of object that is left in the wellbore during drilling or work-over operations and that must be recovered before work can proceed, while the latter term is referred to a device that is inserted into a pipeline for the purpose of cleaning. accordingly, the names of nouns in this category of single-word form also designate the names of parts of physical structures. the meaning of these features could create misinterpretation for outsiders who are not directly involved to the subject matter of the oil field. for outsiders, the terms „body‟, „neck‟, and „shoulder‟ is assumed as parts of physical structures of a human being or animal. in contrast, insiders define all these terms as parts of drill pipe. the term „body‟, for instance, is indicated as part of a drill pipe which runs from the outer corners of the cutting lips to the shank or neck. the term „neck‟ is referred to part of a furnace of a drill pipe where the flame is contracted before reaching the stack. the following term, „shoulder‟, is defined as the flat portion machined on the base of the bit shank that meets the shoulder of the drill collar. the table below shows the number of specific nouns in the singleword form which designate the nature, the animals, and the parts of physical structures. table 1. single-word nouns single-word nouns designating the nature line, spaghetti designating the animals fish, pig designating the parts of physical structures body, neck, shoulder illustration (2) is also given to describe how the field of discourse plays its role in defining register within the context of situation being used. there are three speakers participating in the exchange, namely: one is from the philiphine (i.e., g), and two other speakers are from indonesia (i.e., lh and ff). in this situation, the speakers are talking about spare parts for drilling. r13/29:02/spare parts for drilling/mtg-whs (2)ff: [[= the gooseneck sling attached to christmas tree, = lh: yeah gerald, past for this branded, its pattern will slightly have a leak and banana peel around the siti nurani 174| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 metals of the horsehead pumping connection. = i‟m not sure the bits and the shirttail ready = g: yeah (.) i think we need more davisiter and dessander = ff: i see (.) the rings are already set and calibrated = g: = 80% of the mud cakes will be disappeared = ff: = you said that the deadline need more rings right? g: = we can use all the things = we can run the christmas tree = lh: = the deadline cannot draw such load, because the deadman also don‟t work. g:= for sure, i will stand by in the drawworks, looking at the system. = in the category of compound nouns, the vast majority of nouns found in the analyzed data also represent the names of nature. the meaning of each feature is distinctively interpreted by two different communities (i.e., common people vs. oil community) as those two communities have their own interpretation. the term „christmas tree‟, in general concept refers to a tree which commonly used for christmas celebration, while in the oil field, that term refers to the conbul valve and chokes assembled at the top of a well to control the flow of oil and gas after the well has been drilled. accordingly, the word „shirttail‟ is defined as under part of shirt as people thought in common, while oil community identifies the word as part of a drilling bit on which the cone is anchored. another example, the word „drawworks‟ is identified as an action of drawing something as people thought in general, while the oil community specifically describes the term as part of drilling house where the driller controls drilling machine operation. for people in common, the word „deadline‟ is defined as fixed date for finishing (doing) something, while oil community finds it as the drilling line from the crown block sheaves to the anchor. the name is so called because it does not move. also, the word „deadman‟ is generally referred to as person who is no longer living as people thought in common. meanwhile, in oil field, the word is translated into a buried plate, wall, or block attached at some distance from and forming an anchorage for a retaining wall. the words „mud cake‟ and „banana peel‟ are another instances of unique register found in this category. the words tend to be similar in meaning to something that can be eaten as common people usually interpret. the meaning of the word „mud cake‟ is often confusing as the final word „cake‟ of „mud cake‟ reflects an unclear concept since there is no such cake made from register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 175 „mud‟ to be eaten in common. on the other hand, the oil community distinctively refers the word to the sheath of mud solids that forms on the wall of the hole when liquid from mud filters into the formation. similarly, the word „banana peel‟, could also mislead in meaning. in the oil field, the word refers to a thin sheet of steel created when a wash-over pipe's rotary shoe grinds into the casing. and of course, common people mislead in meaning as they commonly know that „banana peel‟ is a peel of the fruit “banana”. instance (3) is also examined to show how the field of discourse is used to analyze the context of situation in which it is used. the participants consist of two indonesian engineers (i.e., ff and lh), and one engineer coming from the philippine (i.e., g). in this situation, the participants have a meeting in the discussion about drilling rig safety. r10/21:03/drilling rig safety/mt-gwhs (3) g: i see now as the (.) the safety for running the operation, then we will monitor the doghouse and warehouse as a whole = you know like horsehead unit, cat cracker unit is very sling connection = lh: yeah mr. gerald, i also ask crew don‟t draw much load to the up side of monkey board, i‟m worried the deadline and deadman will brek out. catline seems not ok in the unit 4 of cat cracker (.) yeah you know the cathead may fell off. = g: [[ = you start calibrating and testing the sling of gooseneck = ff: i think i will add 10 inch per line of each connection. g: [[yeah it‟s better, because we don‟t know catline still work or not if the cathead feel off (.) it will damage the cat cracker = ff: [[ok mr. gerald, i will make the schedule of monitoring the rig area. ((two indonesians are discussing)) g: the degree of temperature on rathole and mousehole = the units and equipments, traveling block, catline, pulley the cathead that complete for running the operation. lh: i have to clarify to migas and pertamina, we can clarify all technical = g: [[= so that we don‟t find any leak on the rathole or mousehole connection and power the deadman = lh: the capacity of the rig may not maximum = siti nurani 176| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 ff: [[yeah, so that‟s the maximum in single line for 1 ton lh: [[hmmm (.) yeah we add more single line. ((two indonesians are discussing)) g: = the chief man and apv team should explain this to all crew. ff : [[we already add the crew to monitor the safety in drilling rig area. lh: [[so i am just trying to draw the hand tools to the monkey board then leave it on the catwalk as the unit running straight down = the amount of nouns found in the category of compound nouns also represents the names of animals. those nouns are often confusing as their meaning could mislead when they are interpreted in two distinct concepts. in general concept, the terms „cat cracker‟, „cathead‟, „catline‟ and „catwalk‟ are generally known as the things that are related to the animal „cat‟ as common people interpret. the relation could be reflected on its physical shape, its name, and so forth. the first term „cat cracker‟, for example, commonly refers to thin biscuit (as eaten with cheese) for cat. the second term, „cathead‟, is generally identified as the head of the animal „cat‟. meanwhile, the third term „catline‟ tends to be meaningless if common people translate or transfer the meaning literally since the word cat followed by other word (i.e., line) is not clearly defined as people don‟t know which „line‟ is meant. the fourth term, „catwalk‟, is identified generally as a pathway and it seems to be also confusing when common people interpret the expression as it is describing the cat that is walking around. on the other hand, in the oil field concept, the engineers identify those above terms in quite distinct concepts of description. the term „cat cracker‟ is identified as a refinery unit where catalytic cracking is done. the other term, „cathead‟, refers to a spoolshaped attachment on the end of the cat-shaft, around which rope for hoisting and moving heavy equipment on or near the rig floor is wound. also, the term „catline‟ is described as a hoisting or pulling line powered by the cathead and used to lift heavy equipment on the rig. lastly, the term „catwalk‟ is interpreted as the ramp at the side of the drilling rig where pipe is laid to be lifted to the derrick floor by the catline. other instances, the terms „gooseneck‟ and „horsehead‟ are said to be unique since their names are similar to the parts of physical structures of the animals, that is, the neck of „goose‟ and the head of „horse‟ as the meaning is frequently thought by common people. register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 177 in the oil field concept, the terms are transferred contrastively to those in general concept. the former term refers to a pipe or other device between the rotary hose and the swivel which having a curved or bent shape resembling that of the neck of goose, while the latter term refers to the generally horse head shaped steel piece at the front of the beam of a pumping unit to which the bridle is attached in sucker rod pumping. outsiders may interpret the terms „mousehole‟ and „rathole‟ as holes of the animals „mouse‟ and „rat‟ as the openings for these animals to enter. both terms refer to the same animal, that is, “mouse” and “big mouse” (i.e., rat) which the difference is relied only on its size. the term „mousehole‟ is then identified as the hole which is smaller than „rathole‟. meanwhile, insiders contrastively describe the term „mousehole‟ as an opening in the rig floor, usually lined with pipe, into which a length of drill pipe is placed temporarily for later connection to the drill string, whereas the term „rathole‟ refers to as a hole in the rig floor, some 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 metres) deep. generally, outsiders assume the word „doghouse‟ as a house for dog to stay, whereas insiders specifically find the word as a small enclosure on the rig floor used as an office for the driller and as a storehouse for small objects. similarly, the word „monkey board‟ is commonly assumed as a board of the animal „monkey‟ if it is translated literally that would be meaningless since the word „board‟ is not clearly identified. meanwhile, petroleum engineers find the word as the derrickhand's working platform as pipe is run into or out of the hole. the table below shows the numbers of nouns in the compound form of which the names are related to nature and related to animals. table 2. compound nouns compound nouns designating the nature christmas tree, mud cake, deadline, deadman, drawworks, shirttail, banana peel designating the animals cat cracker, cathead, catline, doghouse, horsehead, gooseneck, rathole, mousehole, monkey board example (4) is given to illustrate how the field of discourse is used to analyze the context of situation. the participants consist of two indonesians (i.e., he and sr), and one singaporean (i.e., dt). in this situation, the participants have a meeting in the discussion about down hole camera. r8/36:47/down hole camera/mt-gho (4) he: [[= watch the water or gasoline produced run wide. sr: from formation? dt: from the formation = what i‟m drawing for next = siti nurani 178| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 he: for chevron? dt: [[yup, that the cable, the tools, of the fiber optics = he: [[ya, ya, okay. dt: i don‟t wanna get i don‟t wanna compete with fishing tool company users, you guys are not my bad. = then what we could have done is going to small : : : of fishing, = sr: [[ya ya ya (.) okay. dt: = we can run the dts, alright, see it guys, the dts that we can run to give my good reservoir analysis = sr: [[ok for the next job change of star energy magma = dt: [[well (.) if you guys have the motor conductor cable here. sr: [[yes i have 3.16. is it enough to your tool with ((pause)) dt: = i need to look at electro pocket to restrict the 3.16, = sr: david, to know one roller 3.16, and one roller 5.16? dt: 5.16 is work great but how what kind of pressure on the well? = ((two indonesians are discussing)) sr: pressure because we want to kill the well first, = in the category of single-word verbs, the high frequency of the specific recurrent verbs largely indicating the technical action process. for example, the term „running‟, in general concept contains two assumptions. first, the term is defined as the act of moving with quick steps, faster than when walking. second, the term is identified as the act of managing a business. meanwhile, in the oil field, the term „run‟ is defined as the act for starting the work or operation. the term commonly collocates with some nouns as known in the oil scopes of work, namely, „oil tools‟ (such as gooseneck, horsehead, pig, christmas tree, etc), „connection‟, „panel‟, „engine‟ and „system‟. in general concept, common people interpret the term „drill‟ as the act of training something or someone by means of drills, while the term „trip‟ is identified as the act of having a journey. in the oil field, the engineers find the term „drill‟ as the act to bore a hole in the earth to find and remove subsurface fluids such as oil and gas. meanwhile, the term „trip‟ refers to the act of hoisting the drill stem and returning it to the wellbore. as known in the oil field, the term „drill‟ usually collocates with some nouns, such as „well‟, „pipe‟, „hole‟ and „hole connection‟ (the connection of mousehole and rathole), while the term „trip‟ commonly collocates with some nouns, such as „pipe‟, „pipe lines‟ and „well‟. generally, common people define the verb „draw‟ as the act of drawing register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 179 something, while the verb „fishing‟ refers to the act of catching the animal „fish‟ on the sea. specifically, petroleum engineers indicate those two terms in different concepts. in the oil field, the former verb is defined as the act of hauling a load, while the latter verb is referred to the procedure of recovering lost or stuck equipment in the wellbore during drilling or work-over operations. the verb „draw‟ usually collocates with such words as known in the oil field, namely „fiber‟, „fluid‟ and „load‟. meanwhile, the verb „fishing‟ commonly collocates with the word „hole‟ in such topic discussions in oil field. accordingly, the verb „kill‟ is indicated as the act of putting (person or animal) to death as common people frequently assume, while petroleum engineers identify it as the act of stopping a well from producing oil and gas so that reconditioning of the well can proceed. from the description, we notify that the verb seems familiar with the act of stopping something with the difference is relied only on the objects. the object related in oil field concept is about to stop the operation of well bore which is distinctively described by people in common. this verb frequently collocates with the word „well‟ in such particular discussions in the oil scopes of work. illustration (5) is also given to describe how the field of discourse plays its role in identifying the register within the context of situation being used. there are three speakers involved in the exchange, namely: one is from the indonesia (i.e., ds), and two other speakers are from chinese (i.e., l and h). in this situation, the speakers are talking about down hole camera. r1/22:36/down hole camera/mtgwhs (5) ds: with fishing tool company users, they have a lot of fishing hole so that a bunch of wells were not shut in. this was actually going of wireline system. like petronas in malaysia, bunch of wells were run in, only a little…yeah, maybe only (.) one or two were shut in there. = no engine are shut down, check everything especially to your camera in a hole. = l: that‟s good. pertamina will provide infocus so that the fiber = ds: i see. and which unit we run for mbd? l: mbd (.) actually, they still not have received it yet. = ds: which one? l: for the connection (.) the connection of christmas tree = ds: [[ya, we will make sure the connection. = siti nurani 180| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 l: sure, but it‟s before banana peel on the socket? ds: the issue of the pumping system in the horsehead will be renewed = h: wow, very soon. how do you know? ds: = slings up to the horsehead and other pumping units before we run in the well. all must ok for the rig up. = ((two koreans are discussing)) in the category of phrasal-word verbs, the vast majority of verbs found in the data are also largely indicating the technical action process. in general concept, the term „rig up‟ refers to the act of providing (a person) with necessary clothes, while in the oil field, the term „rig up‟ refers to as the act of preparing the drilling rig for making hole, that is, to install tools and machinery before drilling is started. as known in the oil field, the term usually collocates with some words, such as „system‟ (pumping system, etc), „construction‟ (choke manifold, etc), „unit‟ (such as slick line, cat cracker, horsehead, etc.) and „oil tools‟ (such as crown block, traveling block, catline, cathead, etc.). outsiders define the term „shut down‟ as the act to stop working (of a factory, etc), whereas insiders find the term as the act to stop work temporarily or to stop a machine or operation. the term usually collocates with the word „engine‟ in such particular topics in the oil field. another instances, the term ‟run in‟ and „shut in‟ also contain different meaning viewed in two quite distinct concepts. generally, the former term refers to the act of taking (usually a violator) into the jail as common people assume. meanwhile, petroleum engineers specifically describe the term as the act of opening the well by going into the hole with tubing. accordingly, people in common identify the latter term as the act of covering something (gas, etc) while petroleum engineers describe it as the act of closing the valves on the well so that well stops producing. in the oil field, both terms are specifically used in relation to the act towards the well as the object of the verbs (i.e., opening and closing) not in relation to those of people thought in common. those two terms frequently collocate with the word „well‟ as known in the oil field. the table below shows the number of verbs in the category of single-word and phrasal form of verbs. table 3. verbs verbs single-word verbs running, drill, trip, draw, fishing, kill phrasal-word verbs rig up, shut down, run in, shut in register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 181 other feature in the register also appears in the domain of object referential words which recur in the conversations of petroleum engineers. the speakers have the same interpretation in defining the objectreferential words, such as „popular‟, „time‟, „shepherd‟, and „cameron‟ which refer to the brands of oil tools especially for blow out preventer unit; and „caroline‟ which refers to the pumping system. acronyms are other instances of feature found in the register which all speakers share the same frame of reference of pointing the objects they involve with. the speakers know the definition of the acronyms as known in the oil field, such as „bop‟ and „pdsa‟ which refer to the oil tools connections; „dts‟ and „mbd‟ which refer to the reservoir connections; „hp‟ which refers to the power capacity of unit; „apv‟ which refers to the drilling inspection; and „pps‟ which refers to the low floss measurement. goal orientation the purpose of doing the technical action process in such operations of the petroleum field is considered high since the operations needs an immediate attention to overcome. therefore, the purpose of giving instructions and technical commands is also considered high in order to make the technical process is well completed. meanwhile, the purpose of giving the technical information is considered low happened when there are some particular conditions or situations needs to be reported. thus, the goal orientation is considered as both a short and a long term goal orientation. the illustration below shows the connection among those three goal orientation of language associated by petroleum engineers in doing their job. the illustration is taken from the conversation among indonesian engineers (i.e., mk, ag and sw) and their client from korea (i.e., w) when they are discussing about drilling rig safety in a meeting. r9/26:17/drilling rig safety/mtgwhs (6)w: last night another crew surveyed direct already, the generator and drawbox is ok = check everything, maybe you left something = ag: something? w: something you left in the derrick, you check and check again and you check all the sling goes back, maybe at night the light not good = ag: so the stop still 30.000 (.) maybe we plan to send to truck = siti nurani 182| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 w: = you send you tell the real of use an email to citic. right now, the fuel tank the level is too low. sw: ok ya ya (.) 5 thousands is still, maybe more than ten thousands = ag: still can to (.) but but ok ok. w: so this morning we hope you can (.) we need stabilize (.) yesterday i turned a reel yesterday in here = note:  underline indicates the technical information.  bold indicates the technical commands.  italic indicates the technical action process. social activity all participants in this analysis are involved in the exchange of the conversations when they discuss such particular topic discussions of petroleum field in their meetings. all the activities socially represent the communicative need from each conversation of petroleum engineers (i.e. to give the technical information, technical commands, as well as the technical action process). the tenor of discourse the tenor of discourse refers to the role relationship between the participants. the tenor of discourse analysis in this present study involves several discussions, such as agentive role, social role, and social distance. agentive role the agentive role among the participants is said to be equal as they are business clients between supplier and customer. all participants share the same reference of words that are specific to the field which function as technical terms used as their communicative tool, such as the use of nouns, verbs, object referential lexis, and acronyms. social role in this social role analysis, the attention is given to the level of expertise discussion as one of the important factors in determining the participants select the language. illustration (7) shows how the tenor of discourse plays its role in defining register within the context of situation. there are three engineers talking about drilling rig safety in their meeting, that is, one is from the philippines (i.e., g), and two others are from indonesia (i.e., lh and ff). r10/21:03/drilling rig safety/mt-gwhs (7) g: = crew who is smoking please not to smoke in the rig area because it‟s dangerous to the pressure of temperature register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 183 especially from the biggest connection, you know like horsehead unit = lh: yeah mr. gerald, i also ask crew don‟t draw much load to the up side of monkey board, i‟m worried the deadline and deadman will brek out. catline seems not ok in the unit 4 of cat cracker = g: [[ = we better test dan retest to make the connection become powerful (.) or you start calibrating and testing the sling of gooseneck = ff: i think i will add 10 inch per line of each connection. g: [[yeah it‟s better, because we don‟t know catline still work or not if the cathead feel off (.) it will damage the cat cracker so the the maybe will impact the deadline and deadman not running well. ff: [[ok mr. gerald, i will make the schedule of monitoring the rig area. ((two indonesians are discussing)) note:  underline indicates the use of politeness marker.  bold indicates the use of formal address form. in this situation, two participants are managers, i.e., „g‟ (45) and „lh‟ (41). they have the same level of education background, that is, master‟s degree in petroleum and mechanical engineering while the other one is as a chief operator i.e., „ff‟ (33) who has lower position than manager position and was graduated from bachelor degree of technical engineering. therefore, the level of their expertise is different. two participants (g and lh) seem to be dominant in doing the exchange within the conversation and can be said more knowledgeable as they have more experience rather than (ff) who seems to be less knowledgeable as ff has not had much experience in the oil field scopes of work so that ff does not dominantly speak in the exchange of conversation. the more knowledgeable speakers (i.e., g and lh) tend to do the exchange by giving detailed explanation and response over the discussion in a long turn taking, whereas the less knowledgeable speaker (i.e., ff) tends to do the exchange by only giving concise feedback in a short turn taking. instance (8) is also given to show how the tenor of discourse is used to analyze the context of situation. there are two indonesians (i.e., he and sr), and one singaporean (i.e., dt) discussing about down hole camera in their meeting. siti nurani 184| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 r8/36:47/down hole camera/mt-gho (8) dt: [[= so, then i‟d like send the cd together, send it to you guys, and you guys look all the data. = he: [[ya, ya, okay. dt: i don‟t wanna get i don‟t wanna compete with fishing tool company users, you guys are not my bad. = sr: [[ya ya ya (.) okay. dt: = see it guys, the dts that we can run to give my reservoir analysis = sr: [[ok for the next job change of star energy magma, david, you want to use motor conductor or no, either fiber optic cable for your camera? dt: [[well (.) if you guys have the motor conductor cable here. sr: [[yes i have 3.16. is it enough to your tool with ((pause)) dt: = i need to look at electro pocket to restrict the 3.16, = sr: david, to know one roller 3.16, and one roller 5.16? note:  underline indicates the use of vernacular form of pronoun.  bold indicates the use of vernacular form of verb.  italic indicates the use of nick name. in this situation, all participants are managers coming from various backgrounds, namely: one singaporean „dt‟ (48), and two indonesians „sr‟ (48) & „he‟ (52). everyone participating in this exchange has undergone such experiences in the oil scopes of works, especially in drilling operations. the participants also have the same level of education background, that is, master degree in petroleum engineering and petroleum industry. from their background of education and experience, all participants are said as the experts in the oil scopes of works. therefore, they seem to have the same level of petroleum knowledge as it is noted that each speaker has a balance long turn taking in every stretch of speech in the conversation, which means that all participants are dominants in doing the exchange in the interaction. social distance the social distance of participants in the interaction is considered minimal which is highly characterized by the use of informal form of expressions, for example, the use of vernacular form of verb „want‟ which is pronounced by „wanna‟; the use of vernacular form of pronoun „guys‟; and also the use of nick name „david‟ from the full one „david twitt‟. besides, the less use of formal register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 185 expression is also found in the data as it is influenced by the un-equality of the level of education background, age, job position as well as experience of the speakers, for instance, the use of formal address form „mr.‟ and the use of politeness marker “please”. the mode of discourse the mode of discourse refers to the way in which the exchange is transmitted. the mode of discourse analysis includes three main discussions, that is, language role, channel, and medium. language role the attention given to this language role analysis is on the occurrences of tense. as far as tense is concerned, present tense is regarded as the unmarked form of the analysis, as it represents a high frequency of all the occurrences of verbs marked for tense. the non-present tenses such as past simple, present perfect and future simple are occurred in both active and passive sentence. example (9) shows how the mode of discourse describes the register within the context of situation being used. there are three speakers involved, namely: one is from the indonesia (i.e., ds), and two other speakers are from china (i.e., l and h). in this situation, the speakers are talking about down hole camera. r1/22:36/down hole camera/mt-gwhs (9) ds: mmm (.) we have elevated new types of tools and new process. l: dts, fiber optic camera is available = ds: with fishing tool company users, they have a lot of fishing hole so that a bunch of wells were not shut in. this was actually going of wireline system. like petronas in malaysia, bunch of wells were run in, only a little (.) yeah, maybe only (.) one or two were shut in there. = no engine are shut down, check everything especially to your camera in a hole. = l: that‟s good. anyway, pertamina will provide infocus so that the fiber optic can run. and there are many data sheets for 4.25 our cable stock. the engineer will tell you later. ds: i see. and which unit we run for mbd? l: mbd (.) actually, they still not have received it yet. = note:  underline indicates the past simple.  bold indicates the present perfect.  italic indicates the future simple. channel the channel used in this present siti nurani 186| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 study is all in the spoken mode (phonic) with visual contact which is then recorded and transcribed. the spoken mode of the register is from the meetings of such discussions in particular topics as known in the oil field. medium for the purpose of this study, the writer does not discuss the types of cohesion occurring in the data because many of the participants speak ungrammatically. the attention of this medium analysis is only focused on the use of endophoric reference and pronouns. as illustrated in many examples given, the medium of the register of the conversations among petroleum engineers is excessively characterized by the use of endophoric reference (this, the connection, the camera, the procedure, the engineer, the process, the pumping system, and it); and the use of pronouns (i, you, we and they). discussion it is observed that one‟s speech used in communicating among others not only reflects and expresses the aspects of identity, such as age and addressee, but also indicates the context in which the language is used. with respect to the field of discourse, findings show that in the experiential domain analysis, all terms of register which are commonly used in the oil field function as technical terms used in discussing their specialty. there are six types of technical terms found in the analysis, namely: 1) the single-word nouns; 2) the compound nouns; 3) the singleword verbs; 4) the phrasal-word verbs; 5) the object-referential words; and 6) the acronyms. the goal orientation is considered as both short and long term goal orientation which appears in three major kinds of technical matters, that is, the technical action process, technical command, and technical information. the social activity is exchange. interestingly, the features of terms in the category of nouns are mostly said to be unique as they could mislead in meaning viewed from two distinct concepts, that is, in general concept compared to the oil field concept. the uniqueness of the features is largely found in the category of single-word form and compound form of nouns which is related to nature (line, spaghetti, christmas tree, mud cake, banana peel, deadman, shirttail, etc), related to animal (fish, pig, cathead, catline, doghouse, horsehead, mousehole, monkey board, etc), and related to parts of physical structures (body, neck and shoulder). with respect to the tenor of discourse, the agentive role among the speakers is said to be equal as they are business clients between supplier and register analysis of the conversations among petroleum engineers ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 187 customer. the social role among participants is considered nonhierarchic. there are two kinds of level of expertise of the speakers defined in this social role analysis, that is, more knowledgeable speakers (experts) and less knowledgeable speakers (nonexperts). the more knowledgeable speakers (w, ds, l, is, sr, gr, g, lh, he, dt, y, & c) were graduated from master degree in petroleum/mechanical engineer-ing as well as petroleum industry and have the same job position as managers in their workplace. those speakers tend to do short pauses in a long turn taking, give detailed explanation in answering the questions, give detailed feedback or response, and also use the terms of register more frequently in the interaction. in short, they are dominant to do the exchange in the conversations. meanwhile, the less knowledgeable speakers (ff, ag, h, mk, & sw) were graduated from bachelor degree in technical/mechanical engineering and have the same job position as chief operators in their workplace. those speakers often do long pauses in a short turn taking, give brief questions, give concise feedback, and also do not use the terms of register frequently during the interaction. in short, they are not dominant to do the exchange with other participants in the interaction. the findings show that the use of a large number of register is found in the utterances of more knowledgeable speakers rather than in the utterances of less knowledgeable speakers which may be due to several factors, the include the level of their background of education, their level of expertise, age, job positions, and their experience in the oil scopes of works. the social distance among participants tends to be minimal which is excessively characterized by the use of informal expressions. findings also show that most of the speakers involved in the exchange (indonesian and foreign engineers) speak ungrammatically, except the one who is native speaker of english, that is, the singaporean. with respect to the mode of discourse, the language role exists equally of both constitutive and ancillary which appears in the three major forms of non-present tenses, that is, future simple, past simple, and present perfect. the channel in this present study is all in the spoken mode (phonic) with visual contact which is then recorded and transcribed. the spoken mode of the register is from the meetings of such discussions in particular topics as known in oil field. the medium is excessively characterized by the use of endophoric reference (this, the connection, the camera, the procedure, the engineer, the process, the siti nurani 188| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 pumping system, and it) and the use of pronouns (i, you, we and they). conclusion and suggestion the results of the study are expected to be as a contribution to the development of language education particularly of the vocabulary improvement. the results are also expected to give an important insight and valuable information for educational practitioners in investigating the theoretical underpinnings of language variations. this present research deals with the identification of register where the lexical and grammatical features analysis is as its main focus. once the analysis is investigated and made in journal, the arrangement of dictionary is prior as its output of the lexical and the grammatical features themselves as its database. this present research deals with the sociolinguistics approach where the descriptive grammar is used to describe the phenomena in the discourse level. thus, such approaches might be also linked to several other perspectives of disciplines, such as esp and corpus-based approach to foster educational practitioners in increasing the innovation in teaching and learning process mainly of vocabulary usage in the classroom context. references bell, r.t. (1976). sociolinguistics. london: b.t. batsford. halliday, m.a.k. (1978). language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. london: edward arnold. halliday, m.a.k. & hasan, r. (1989). language, context and text: aspects of language in a socialsemiotic perspective. london: oxford university press. holmes, j. (2007). an introduction to sociolinguistics. london: longman. stojicic, v. (2004). sociolinguistic stimuli to development of the english lexicon–language contact and social need. linguistics and literature, 3(1), 29-36. trudgill, p. (1996). sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society. harmondsworth: penguin. wardhaugh, r. (1997). introduction to sociolinguistics. oxford: blackwell publishers. introduction the role of technology in efl classroom fahri haswani universitas negeri medan fahrihaswani@yahoo.com abstract in response to an appeal from indonesia’s ministry of education and culture to all universities and colleges to improve the quality of tertiary education toward regional and international standard, language institutions are making great efforts to further promote the foreign language learning process. in the last few years there have been dramatic changes in the ways that languages are taught by communicative approach and the introduction of technological tools. in recent years, the use of technological aids, especially those related to computers, has increasingly become a common feature of the classroom. there is no doubt that computer based instruction will occupy a more central role in the foreign language classroom in the future. information technology has drawn the interest of teachers of english as a second or foreign language in non-english speaking countries. the technology integration into the curriculum is not a single concept which is generated from one single theory nor does it give full guidelines for the implementation in practical situation. this issue constitutes ideas from many different theories. this paper discusses the issue of technology contributions in efl classroom. the question raised in this paper is how technology facilitates the attainment of course goals. the answer of the question will help english teachers to clarify the real problems of the initiative so that the innovation and possible changes can be aligned with the need of the students. however, this literature review only covers limited issues related with the role of technology in efl classroom. further discussion from other different points of view is still needed to create more complete description of conceptual foundation of the innovation. key words : technology, efl, classroom abstrak lembagalembaga bahasa secara serus menerus mempromosikan peningkatan kualitas pengajaran bahasa sebagai respon terhadap keputusan kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan. beberapa tahun belakangan ini telah terjadi perubahan yang cukup drastis dalam pengajaran bahasa dalam menggunakan pendekatan komunikatif dan teknologi di kelas. penggunaan teknologi, khususnya yang berkaitan dengan komputer telah banyak digunakan di sekolah-sekolah, sehingga di masa yang akan datang teknologi akan memainkan peranan yang sangat penting dalam pengajaran bahasa asing. teknologi informasi telah menarik minat guru bahasa inggris diberbagai negara yang bahasa pertamanya bukan bahasa inggris. pengintegrasian teknologi kedalam kurikulum bukan berasal dari konsep tunggal yang diambil melalui satu teori dan tidak memberikan petunjuk yang jelas untuk pelaksanaannya di kelas. oleh karena itu, paper ini mencoba menjawab pertanyaan bagaimana teknologi berperan dalam meraih tujuan dari pengajaran bahasa inggris. pembahasan pada artikel ini diharapkan membantu guru bahasa inggris untuk mengatasi masalah terkait penggunaan teknologi yang disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan siswa. namun kajian dalam artkel ini hanya terbatas pada hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan peranan teknologi (ict) dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris di kelas, untuk itu diperlukan pembahasan yang lebih mendalam yang meliputi deskripsi terhadap dasar pemikiran pada inovasi pengajaran bahasa. kata kunci: teknologi, pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl), kelas fahri haswani 108| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction nowadays, information and communication technology (ict) have developed vastly. in this globalization era, the use of ict in education is rapidly expanding in many countries, and is now seen worldwide as both necessity and opportunity. they develop due to challenges that are faced by human beings all this time. there are always situations where people are encouraged to think, produce and be creative to particular condition (mutansyir, 2013). this vast development provides challenges and opportunities to aspects of life including education. in educational field, especially in english teaching and learning, the advancement of the use of ict provides a strong demand to bring into reality its applications in classroom teaching. the use of ict for communicating with those not physically present in the classroom can add a new dimension to literacy work. ict opens new possibilities for young writers, enriches the curricular emphasis on genres and forms, and expands children’s horizons by encouraging them to write in new ways for new audiences. in learning english students should know four languages skills and components. writing is one of the four language skills. it is very important for students to be able to write in english for their future life. to learn to write, students can start with informal writing, for example, writing in a diary. ict can be used as an effective medium to accommodate this. one of the ways that can be applied to enhance in a multi learning environment using ict systems, particularly in the teaching of writing, is the use of blog (a short term for weblog). a blog is a frequently updated website that often resembles an online journal. having a blog is having online diary where students can write anything they are interested in, edit and publish as often as they would like to, and share their writing with others. in addition, writing in blogs provides a real audience for students’ writing. usually, teacher is the only person who reads students’ writing. with blog, students can find themselves writing for real audiences apart from their teacher, e.g. their peers, students from other classes, or even other countries, their parents, and potentially anyone with the internet. this will encourage them to produce better and effective piece of writing. information and communication technology (ict) since its vast development, ict has become a very important the role of technology in efl classroom ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 109 component, which is now seen as both a necessity and an opportunity. even unesco, stated in the dakar framework for action in april 2000, has identified the use of ict as one of the main strategies for achieving the efa (education for all) goals (unesco-ck.htm, 2005). the simultaneous impact of globalization, the spread of english and technological development have transformed learning and teaching english as a lingua franca in an unprecedented way (warschauer and healey, 1988). as a result, both english and ict have become essential literacy skills for a growing number of non-native speakers of english to ensure full participation in the information society (jung, 2006). the use of ict in and for education is expanding rapidly in many countries. in addition, merchant (2003) states that the use of ict can add a new dimension to literacy work when applied in the classroom teaching and learning. it may open new possibilities for young writers, enriching the curricular emphasis on genres and forms, and expanding children’s horizons by encouraging them to write in new ways for new audiences. in relation to the use of ict in teaching, zhu and kaplan (2001) propose a model for teaching with technology that can be viewed in figure 1. the figure explains that from a system approach, teaching with technology involves four major components, namely the students, the instructor, course content, and technology tools. figure 1. a model of teaching with technology an examination of each component raises a set of issues that the teachers need to consider in order to make technology integrations successful. for example, content can be examined in terms of learning outcomes and the discipline being taught. teachers can think of their own experience with technology by having their amount of time for planning. they also can expose an access to technology as well as their preferred learning styles. finally, they can turn to the fahri haswani 110| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 technology itself and analyze it according to its functions. this approach to teaching and learning with technology assumes that the four components are integrated and that changes in one part will require adjustments to the other three in order to achieve the same goals (zhu & kaplan, 2001). the importance and the significance of ict are believed to be able to help students learn better. pelgrum (1996) further states that ict:  encourages pupils to collaborate with one another and take responsibility for their own learning;  helps to nurture individual talent, independence and a strong sense of self worth and a strong sense of self worth and confidence;  encourages pupils to use their imaginations and promotes creativity; and  develops inquiry and communication skills and creates appropriate contexts for critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving activities. in the teaching of english, ict can be integrated with the four skills namely speaking, listening, reading, and writing as well as other language components. it enhances interactive teaching and learning styles. it also extends pupils ability to work independently and make connections between their work in english and in other subjects. for the students, pelgrum (1996) states that ict can help them to:  use a wide range of strategies to explore contrast, comparisons and connections dynamically;  annotate text in innovative ways,  enrich or broaden the context of literary study;  see texts in alternative versions;  use a wide range of analytical and critical techniques;  sort and process text and data quickly and efficiently;  order and arrange text and data experimentally, using combinations of word, image sound and hypertext;  save, record, edit and adapt their work quickly and efficiently;  retain evidence of the editing process so that it can be examined;  change the organizational structure and qualities of texts to suit different audiences and purposes;  compose multi-authored texts;  select from a wider range of audiences, throughout the world; and;  exercise choice of medium and design while composing. the role of technology in efl classroom ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 111 many schools recognize the power of ict to promote learning, both in improving their current practice, and responding to developing awareness as to how, and at what pace pupils learn, and the skill they need for effective learning. there is an increasing evidence that by increasing the pace of learning and motivation among pupils and teachers, the use of ict also contributes to raise standards of achievement (jager & lokman, 1999). additionally, writing with a computer and making use of ict can increase the amount of writing that students could perform, the extent to which students can edit their writing. because of that, students can write and express their experiences and thoughts freely and creatively. the role of technology in efl classroom computer technology is identified to have the power of generating effective learning activities in a second or a foreign language. the development of computer networking results in an expansion of the range of computer mediated communication to help students participate in the negotiation of meanings (kern & warschauer, 2008). this is relevant to the needs of interaction as the basic requirement of second and foreign language learning. most writers on educational technology argue that computer technology in english language learning has created environments for promoting student participation, as well as generating authentic contexts for interaction and the negotiation of meaning. the computer technology has given facilities to esl/efl teachers to present individualized instructions. call (computer assisted language learning) has been utilized for presenting self-contained, programmed applications such as tutorials, drills, simulations, instructional games, test practice and so on. some esl/efl teachers have also tried to use such general applications as word processors and presentation programs. in the present situation, network based language learning has also gained important attention (kern & warschauer, 2008). network based language learning involves the use of computers connected to one another in either local or global networks. recent articles and studies focus on the value of using computermediated communication as a tool for facilitating foreign language learning. lai and zhao (2006) examined the relationship between noticing and textbased synchronous discussion. they claim that computer mediated communication increases the rate at fahri haswani 112| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 which students notice their own linguistic mistakes and generates explicit forms of negotiation of meaning. moreover, computermediated instruction has been identified to promote dialogic interaction (communication strategies in chat). kim and rissel (2008) report that instructors’ belief about language teaching, instructors’ role and the interaction role in computer-based foreign language teaching influence the instructional process. in addition, marshall (2007) shows that engagement model of computer integrationist effective in the design, implementation, and outcomes of the website associated with the course. engagement in foreign language learning learning engagement has become a crucial element in foreign language learning. generally speaking, students develop their language competence through engaging in communicative activities in esl/efl classes. kearsley and shneiderman (1998) introduced a concept regarding learning engagement in computerbased instruction, engagement theory. they claim that engagement theory has similar features with constructivist and problem-based learning approaches. they believe that technology can facilitate engagement in way which are difficult to achieve otherwise (kearsley and shneiderman, 1998). however, technology does not in itself bring about improvement in learning. although it may bring positive impacts on students’ motivation, the improvement of learning will depend on how the technology is utilized in the real application of learning experiences. engagement theory emphasizes meaningful learning so that it is very consistent with constructivist approaches which assume that “individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning that is their own personal understanding, from their experience (william and burden, 1997). moreover, engagement theory emphasizes collaboration among peers and a community of learners. it can be aligned with situated learning theories. learning collaboratively with others has been suggested by theories in sociocognitivism which emphasizes that the involvement of other people in learner’s life significantly influences his mental development (vygotsky, 1978). other people help learners to enhance learning by selecting and shaping the learning experiences presented to them. the basic principle of engagement theory is related with the collaborative learning model. the role of technology in efl classroom ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 113 engagement theory comprises three components: 1. relating: learning activities that occur in a group context. 2. creating: learning activities that are project-based. 3. donating: learning activities that have an outside (authentic) focus. in relation with this, collaborative work encourages students to clarify and verbalize their problem, thereby facilitating solutions (kearsley and shneiderman, 1998). creating involves student participation in the development of their assessment tasks: students have to define the project and focus their efforts on application of ideas to a specific context (kearsley and shneiderman, ibid). donating stresses the value of making a useful contribution while learning (kearsley and shneiderman, 1998), a feature that motivates learners because they are engaged with an activity they value. some studies have used the framework provided by the engagement theory and give critical contribution on the application of this theory in efl instruction. marshal (2007) used a case study in which website is used in an academic writing course. the study analyzed how effective engagement theory has been in the design, implementation and outcomes of the website associated with the course. marshal claims that engagement theory was deemed relevant and useful to the aim of providing an authentic experience of the writing process. reich and daccord (2009) used the modification of engagement theory in a case study to investigate how the collect-relatecreate-donate (crdr) framework shaped the development of the “day in the life of a teenage hobo project”. the project used engagement theory to describe whether the personal response system (prs) was effective for engaging students in acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to conduct research. communicative approach to language teaching the use of engagement theory as the basic concept of computer integration into the efl curriculum is relevant with the implementation of communicative language teaching principles. communicative language teaching emphasizes on student engagement with authentic, meaningful, contextualized discourse and achievement in the second language. william and burden (1997) argue that “individuals acquire a foreign language through the process of interacting, negotiating and conveying meanings in the language in purposeful situations” (william and burden: 1997, p. 168). they continue to claim that fahri haswani 114| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 students’ learning engagement in language learning activities will have positive impacts on the increase of second and foreign language competencies. in addition, language learners’ engagement in meaningful, motivated communication activity using the target language is considered the best route to becoming both literate and fluent in that language (stevick, 1980; brown, 1994). since 1980s cognitively oriented perspectives on language acquisition has gained popularity. dell hymes, an american sociolinguist, and michael halliday, a british linguist, argue that language is not just a private, “in the head” affair, but rather a socially constructed phenomenon.” there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless” (hymes, 1971, p . 10). hymes continues to claim that syntax and language forms were best understood not as autonomous, a contextual structures. consequently, they should be used as meaning resources in particular conventional ways in particular speech communities. in the practice of communicative language teaching, meaningful interaction has been the central element in second language pedagogy. studies in second language teaching fields show that it is insufficient for the teacher to teach only linguistic competence. they claim that the teaching and learning process should include sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence (canale, 1983; canale and swain, 1980). furthermore, communicative processes become as important as linguistic product, and instruction become more learnercentered and less structurally driven. therefore, interaction in the process of language learning is put as the central position in esl/efl learning context. the design of computer in efl classroom the design of computer integration in language classroom will determine the effectiveness of the computer technology in the language classroom to provide language learning environment. kern and warchauer (2000) argue that the computer does not in and of itself bring about the improvement of learning so that the effective integration of computer technology depends upon how the computer technology is used in order to encourage students to engage in learning. research indicates that teachers have the most impact for technology use in schools. the teachers become the central actor to determine the instruction that takes place inside the classroom. research studies on the computer use in the classroom indicate that teachers’ perception, belief and the role of technology in efl classroom ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 115 philosophies become crucial factors in creating constructive classroom practice using computer technology. gorder (2008) argues that computer integration is more about the teacher’s effective use of technology that makes a difference in reforming the school. the teacher becomes the crucial person to transform the way they teach in the traditional classroom in order to generate the improvement of student learning. therefore, the teacher’s technology – integration decisions will determine the effective nature of classroom environment that facilitates students to engagement in meaningful learning processes. in foreign language classroom, teacher can develop some strategies in teaching integrated language skills such as watching conversation video from youtube, applying writing electronic letter by using email, answering questions on line, and giving comments in social media. these learning activities are based on dryden and vos (1994) that electronics now provides the tools to communicate instantly with almost any person on earth. the first nation to fully realize that power and link it with new learning techniques could lead the world in education. teacher can ask students to watch their favorite video in youtube. this activity can motivate students to browse some videos which give model how to speak english naturally and how to pronounce words like a native speaker. after watching the video, students can be instructed to practice or tell what they watch. before watching activity is begun, teacher must explain that they have to watch educational video. for students in senior high school, teacher can create writing activity by email. students have to send a letter to their teachers or their friends by email. before this activity is conducted, teacher should prepare students by explaining theory and strategy how to write a letter in email. this activity encourages students to be more creative in using computer. answering question on line also should be applied in the classroom as one of variations in giving test. this strategy can be applied in two alternative ways. teacher can design a new program or use an already existing program in the internet. if teachers have programming skill, they can design a program which contains some interesting quizzes and tests. this strategy will not only motivate students to learn language but also will inspire students to be more creative in using computer. the problem is the number of teachers with programming skill is very little but it does not mean online test cannot be conducted. teachers can use some learning quiz software in fahri haswani 116| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 internet. they just need to browse and download the materials for students. nowadays is social media era. teachers also can use social media such as facebook and twitter to learn language. teachers can write his or her writing on facebook or twitter to get their students’ comments. best comment will be discussed again in classroom and this interaction will build nice experience for students in learning foreign language. conclusion and suggestion language learning engagement becomes very crucial in computerbased language learning. computer technology have the capacity to facilitate people to access to other people as well as to information and data (kern & warchauher, 2000) so that it can serve as medium for local and global communication and provide accesses to authentic materials. moreover, computer interactions are also potential to enhance communication skill to strengthen language through computer support group interactions (bourdon, 1999). instructors or curriculum developers in efl need to be consistent with the use of communicative language teaching to develop effective integration of computer technology into the curriculum. engagement model for developing efl curriculum design gives an effective framework for designing learning activities. in other words, communicative language teaching principles and engagement model of learning may serve as a guide for designing effective technology integration into language teaching. the two pillars will ensure that the foreign language lesson will give students opportunities to explore and interact in meaningful learning experience, and the language learning activities will consists of collaborative, creative, and purposeful experiences. references bitner, n., & bitner, j. (2002). integrating technology into the classroom : eight keys to success. journals of technology and teacher education,10, 95100. bourdon (1999). principles and practice in technology. pergamon, oxford. brown, h. (1994). principles of language learning and teaching. englewood cliff, nj: prentince hall regents. canale, m. (1983). from communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. language and communication. in j. c. richard & r. w. schmidt the role of technology in efl classroom ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 117 (eds.). language and communication. new york: longman. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, 1(1), 1-47. dryden and vos (1994). the learning revolution, rolling hills estates, california, usa. gorder, l. m. 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(2008). network‐based language teaching encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 1374-1385): springer. kim, h. k., & rissel, d. (2008). instructors' integration of computer technology: examining the role of interaction. foreign language annals, 41(1), 61-80. lai, c., & zhao, y. (2006). noticing and text-based chat. language learning & technology, 10(3), 102-120. marshall (2007). engagement theory, web ct, and academic writing in australia. international journal of education and development using information and communication technology (ijedict), 3 (2), 109 115. http://home/ fahri haswani 118| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 merchant, g. (2003). e-mail me your thoughts: digital communication and narrative writing. reading, 37(3), 104-110. doi: 10.1046/j.00340472.2003.037030 03. pelgrum and plomp (1997). new approaches for teaching, learning and using information and communication technologies in education. prospect; volume xxvii, no.3. september 1997, springer. netherland. reich and daccord (2011). best ideas for teaching with technology. m.e. sharpe inc. new york. stevick, e. (1980). teaching languages: a way and ways. rowley, ma: newbury house. vygotsky (1978). interaction betweeen learning and development. www.psy.com.edu-siegler/vy gotsky78.pdf. warschauer and healey (2012). technology in language learning 2012. wilis and webquest, www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/ cceia/ images/stories/pdf/tefl /carolyn.pdf. warschauer, m., & kern, r. g. (2000). network-based language teaching: concepts and practice: cambridge university press. william and burden (2009). motivation in second and foreign language learning and development. www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy gotsky78.pdf. zhu and kaplan (2001). a model for teaching with technology. www.crltumich.edu/inst/mod el. http://www.psy.com.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.psy.com.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/ http://www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.crltumich.edu/inst/model http://www.crltumich.edu/inst/model *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 63-71 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effect of the lost twin game on students' pronunciation performance rabi'ah*, achmad baidawi, wahab syakhirul alim state islamic institute of madura, indonesia (robiah_43@yahoo.com) received: 20th march 2020; revised: 17th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract the objective of this study was to examine whether the use of the lost twin game in teaching pronunciation affects students' pronunciation and how significant the effect is on their pronunciation performance. this research was motivated by the phenomenon that there are various obstacles to teaching pronunciation at the school level including those related to students’ personal characteristics and teachers’ instructional methods. the participants of this study were eighth grade students of mts nasrul ulum bagandan pamekasan, consisting of 20 students. this research is pre-experimental utilizing a pretest and posttest, and the data for this study were analyzed statistically using a t-test with spss 20. the results of this study show that the t-value 0.000 is lower than 0.05 which means that there is a significant effect of the treatment on the students’ pronunciation performance, and the treatment also accounts for the students' score increase by about 25%. it is, thus, concluded that the incorporation of the lost twin game in teaching pronunciation is effective in improving students' pronunciation performance. key words: effect; lost twin game; students' pronunciation performance abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menguji apakah penggunaan lost twin game dalam pengajaran pelafalan mempengaruhi pelafalan siswa dan seberapa signifikan pengaruhnya terhadap kinerja pelafalan mereka. penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh fenomena adanya berbagai kendala dalam pembelajaran pengucapan di tingkat sekolah termasuk yang berkaitan dengan karakteristik pribadi siswa dan metode pembelajaran guru. partisipan dalam penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas viii mts nasrul ulum bagandan pamekasan yang berjumlah 20 orang. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian praeksperimental dengan menggunakan pretest dan posttest, dan data untuk penelitian ini dianalisis secara statistik menggunakan uji-t dengan spss 20. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa t-value 0,000 lebih kecil dari 0,05 yang berarti ada pengaruh yang signifikan dari perlakuan terhadap kinerja pengucapan siswa, dan perlakuan tersebut juga menyebabkan peningkatan nilai siswa sekitar 25%. dengan demikian, disimpulkan bahwa penggunaan lost twin game dalam pengajaran pengucapan efektif dalam meningkatkan kinerja pengucapan siswa. kata kunci: dampak; lost twin game; kinerja pengucapan siswa how to cite: rabi'ah, baidawi, a., alim, w. s. (2020). the effect of the lost twin game on students' pronunciation performance. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 63-73. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 64-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in the teaching and learning process in the classroom, teachers usually focus on teaching english skills, namely writing, reading, speaking, and listening. they often give a little portion of teaching pronunciation. indeed, they do not give much chance to the learners in learning pronunciation, because they do not have adequate knowledge and capacity of teaching pronunciation. in line with this case, harmer (2007) states that many teachers do not pay enough attention to english pronunciation. one of the reasons is that they are not aware of explicit instruction or teaching techniques for pronunciation. in english books of junior and senior high schools, we often find that instruction for pronunciation skill only has a little portion. it just focuses on giving some words provided with phonetic transcriptions. as stated earlier, pronunciation is one of the linguistic aspects less emphasized by the teachers in the classroom. it consequently leads to the fact that the students are low in their pronunciation ability. one of the reasons why the teachers seldom teach pronunciation is that they do not have various and relevant techniques for teaching pronunciation. meanwhile, to make teaching and learning run well, classroom teachers need to make some efforts to solve the problems. one way to overcome the problems is to apply relevant and effective teaching techniques such as games, video presentation, and others. hidayatullah (2018) states that the teacher plays a very active role in finding techniques and media that can be applied in the classroom to enhance students' pronunciation skills in a way that is not boring to them. the use of appropriate methods for suitable material will make it easier for students to understand the material being taught. moreover, the instructional material of pronunciation needs to be taught in various ways to make students interested in learning and get as much knowledge and skills as possible. improving students’ pronunciation ability is indeed one of the teachers' duties. according to fraser (2000), teachers should be provided with courses and materials that help them to improve their pronunciation instruction. correspondingly, harmer (2007) stated that the lack of quality, appropriate teaching and learning materials, and the lack of time to practice pronunciation are the main reasons why teachers do not pay enough attention to english pronunciation. the teachers are used to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 65-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching pronunciation by asking the learners to imitate what the teacher says. these activities make the learner feel bored in learning pronunciation. consequently, this condition makes the learners have a little knowledge about pronunciation. this statement is also supported by the findings of a study by gilakjani, ahmadi, & ahmadi (2011). they found that in many english classrooms, the teaching of pronunciation is one of the linguistic aspects that are least paid attention or are not taught much. there are a number of potential causes which lead to students’ poor pronunciation skills. one of them is teachers’ inability to teach their students` pronunciation well. in other words, teachers are always expected to use effective teaching techniques including games to help them teach their students’ pronunciation better. meanwhile, many studies have been conducted as an effort to overcome the difficulties of students in pronouncing english vocabulary, but in the reality of junior high school students in english, pronunciation has not been appropriately overcome (sartika, 2019). most of the studies in improving students' pronunciation are by using media. nevertheless, in this research, the researchers investigated the issue in question focusing on the teaching technique aspect because of the unavailability of teaching media for the teachers to use in the school. since pronunciation is important for indonesian learners in learning english, teachers should look for a fun technique to teach pronunciation. applying an encouraging technique in teaching pronunciation would make learners enthusiastic in taking part in the teaching and learning process. the lost twin game is one of the games that treats students in exciting conditions to learn english, especially in acquiring correct pronunciation. the lost twin game offers a challenge that will encourage the students to look for the word that has a similar pronunciation. besides, the lost twin game is a kind of game that makes the teaching and learning process more attractive to students. the students feel pleased and relaxed when following pronunciation lessons. another reason why pronunciation is less emphasized in indonesia is that there are many elements to the teaching of pronunciation such as sound, stress, intonation, and rhythm. incorporating the lost twin game in increasing students' pronunciation ability is one of the efforts that can be done by the teacher. sánchez, morfín, and campos (2007) state that the lost twin game is one of the interactive games that can be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 66-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license used in the teaching and learning process of a foreign language. according to wright, betteridge, and buckby (2006), the lost twin game is a matching word pair's game which includes rhyming words, phonetic pair and phonemic script. in short, the students will suit the word that has a similar sound, which is suitable for teaching pronunciation. a previous study conducted by rahmawati and amri (2013) found that the lost twin game created a lively and enjoyable classroom activity while learning pronunciation. according to otlowski (1998), pronunciation is the way of uttering a word in an accepted manner. from this definition, we can say that pronunciation is the way of saying or producing the sound correctly, whereas according to richard (as cited in rippell, 2012) pronunciation is the act or manner of speaking a word. furthermore, cook as cited in gilakjani (2016) defined pronunciation as the production of english sounds. learning pronunciation is very important for students of english as a foreign language, including indonesian learners. this is because english and indonesian have different systems in the pronunciation of words. accurate pronunciation is vital to good communication with others, although they are not native speakers. according to louma (2004), pronunciation includes many features of the speech stream, such as individual sounds, pitch, volume, speed, pausing, stress, and intonation. the different pronunciation may lead to different interpretations or meanings of the utterances. the speaker should put the features in a proper place to avoid misinterpretation by the listeners. an indonesian english teacher, therefore, should consider this in his or her english classes. learning pronunciation does not only make students understand and know how to produce the correct pronunciation, but also improve their speaking significantly. this is because pronunciation leads to concentrating on sound, showing where they are made in the mouth, making students aware of where words should be stressed. in many cases, indonesian learners face difficulties to change their pronunciation ability because they are so accustomed to mispronouncing the word and they think that studying pronunciation is a boring activity. based on the researchers’ observation in some schools, teaching pronunciation is less emphasized. the old method is used to explain the pronunciation lessons, which involves imitation drills and reading aloud. it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 67-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license often occurs in pronunciation class; the teacher only reads and then asks the students to imitate what the teacher said. another option to present pronunciation lesson is by asking the students to read the word loudly without guidance from the teachers. teachers should use various methods to develop the students` performance in pronunciation. one of the techniques or methods to teach pronunciation is the use of the lost twin game. the lost twin game is one game that encourages students to learn pronunciation actively. nurhayati (2015) states that gaming is an activity in which participants follow prescribed rules that differ from those of real-life as they strive to attain a challenging goal. there are some advantages of games in the teaching and learning process; (1) the game played with others involves interpersonal intelligence, (2) the game involving drawing connects with visual or spatial intelligence, (3) the game often has a hands-on element, such as cards, spinners, or pieces that connect with bodily/ kinesthetic intelligence (altan & gardner, 2002). in line with this, philips (1997) also stated that games in language classrooms help children to see learning english as an enjoyable and rewarding activity. playing a game in the classroom develops students’ cooperation with the other students. learning pronunciation by playing in the game will help the students memorize new sounds unconsciously. they learn it in enjoyable conditions. games are very helpful for students in a country that english is a second or foreign language. carrier (1980) mentions some of the advantages of games such as providing various benefits to facilitate the teaching-learning process. in other words, the teacher can utilize the game because it is one of the complementary tasks of the syllabus and with which students can further develop their learning strategies. secondly, games are flexible, which means that they can be used to teach any aspect of language. one game can even be used to teach two or three features or language skills simultaneously. in other words, the teacher is required to be creative in presenting material in the class, especially if the material is related to foreign languages which students sometimes find it difficult to learn one of them, for example, english pronunciation material. it means that one game can be used for more than one or two linguistic aspects and skills in english. it depends on the need of the students and the situation. in this case, the lost twin game can be used ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 68-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to teach not only pronunciation but also vocabulary. thirdly, games make lessons not monotonous and boring" because they do various class activities that help encourage students' motivation and interest in learning a foreign language. by implementing games in the teaching and learning process focusing on learning pronunciation, students will enjoy the process of getting lessons without a lot of thinking. with games, students can enjoy their learning so much and may not be aware that they are learning. finally, the last twin game can help students understand english. it means that the students learn every aspect of the language, while, at the same time, they focus their attention on playing. in other words, students produce language without worrying they are doing right or wrong; they just learn and reach learning goals easily. philip (as cited in wafi, 2019) approved that playing relevant games in the class can develop students’ ability to work together, to finish without being aggressive. furthermore, sultanova (as cited in wafi, 2019) also outlined the benefits of using games in language learning activities: (1) the use of games can reduce anxious feelings in students while learning; (2) games are very encouraging and help students to be more active in the class to express their ideas and feelings during the learning process. with the use of games, the teacher can create various contexts in which students have to use the language to communicate, exchange information, and express their own opinion (trang, 2015); (3) games can help students to gain new experiences in the language; (4) games can increase the shift to regular classroom activities, break the ice and introduce new ideas; (5) games can increase student retention through a relaxed atmosphere on the game; (6 ) grammar games are an excellent way to practice the language (wafi, 2019). the same research has already been conducted by rahmawati and amri (2013). they found that the lost twin game is a game that can be used to improve students' pronunciation as part of speaking skills while learning english. based on the phenomena and the previous studies above, the researchers are interested in conducting the research, which has two main objectives. the first is whether there is any effect of the lost twin game on students' pronunciation performance, and the second is how significant the lost twin game is in effecting the students' pronunciation performance. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 69-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method this study was conducted using a quantitative research method. it is a systematic study of phenomena by gathering data in the form of numbers that can be measured statistically and mathematically using computational techniques in analyzing the data (questionpro, 2018). in short, quantitative research is a kind of research method which collects the numeric data and analyze it by using the statistical analysis. the participants of this study were 20 students of eighth grade at mts nasrul ulum bagandan pamekasan. the research design of this study is experimental. sugiyono (2006) classifies three types of experimental: preexperiment, quasi-experiment, and true experiment. in this case, the researcher used pre-experimental with one group of participants for a pretest and posttest (seel, 2012). it means that there is no election in determining the participants because there is no access for the researchers to randomize the participants. the following pattern is the model of the pre-experimental design proposed by sugiyono: 01: pretest x: treatment 02: posttest the primary instrument for this research is the test. a test or quiz is used to measure someone's knowledge of something to determine what he or she knows or has learned. testing measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached (differences between testing, assessment, and evaluation, 2017). related with sugiyono's model above, the treatment is the lost twin game. before giving treatment, the pretest was conducted. after giving treatment, the posttest was given. in other words, the participants get a pretest before the teacher implement the lost twin game. the research was conducted in four meetings. at the first meeting, the researcher gave the pretest. the test was a pronunciation test. in the pretest, the researcher provided 50 words, then asked the participants to pronounce the words. each word had 2 points. if the participants could pronounce the words correctly, they got 2 points for every word. at the second meeting, the researcher gave the treatment by using the lost twin game to teach pronunciation in which the teacher divided the students into pairs to make all the students take part in the activity. here are the steps in the activity of the first treatment: 1) the researchers divided the students to become two or three groups; 2) the researchers gave each group some words that have the 01 x 02 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 70-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license same pronunciation with other group words; 3) then, the researchers asked each student in the group to match the word by looking for the other group which has a similar sound with his or her own. after they found his or her twin sound, they sit together and then pronounce the words together. in the second meeting of the treatment, the researchers implemented the lost twin game as follows; the researchers wrote some words on the whiteboard. then, similar words are put in the box. the words have similar pronunciation with the words on the whiteboard. the next, the teacher asked the students to come forward to match the words on the whiteboard and words in the box. the last activity is to ask the other students to pronounce the word together by showing the words. in the fourth meeting, the researchers conducted the posttest to measure the effect of the treatment. the test is the same pronunciation test given in the pretest. the results of the pretest and post were analyzed using t-test in spss 20 to know the differences. findings and discussion findings table 1. paired samples correlations n correlation sig. pair 1 pretest posttest 20 .505 .023 from the table 1, the correlation is 0.505, suggesting a linear regression model of 25%, which means that the lost twin game contributes 25% to the improvement of students' pronunciation performance. table 2. paired samples test paired differences t df sig. (2tailed) mean std. dev. std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pair 1 pretest posttest -10.200 9.105 2.036 -14.461 -5.939 -5.010 19 .000 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 71-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based on the table 2, we know that there is a significant difference (twotailed at 0.000) showing that the lost twin game gives effect on students’ prnounciation. it means that the alternative hypothesis (ha) is accepted, and the null hypothesis (ho) is rejected. in other words, there is a significant difference in the students` pronunciation performance after getting treatment and before getting treatment. the mean score of the pretest was 64.30 while after getting treatment, the mean score increased to 74.50 as can be seen in the following table 3. table 3. paired samples statistics mean n std. dev. std. error mean pair 1 pretest 64.30 20 10.367 2.318 posttest 74.50 20 6.924 1.548 thus, there is a significant effect of the use of lost twin game on students' pronunciation performance. furthermore, teaching pronunciation by using this game is effective since it can contribute up to 25% on students' pronunciation performance. discussion from the point of view above, the lost twin game is recommended as a classroom activity to facilitate the development of students' pronunciation ability. by applying a proper method in teaching pronunciation, the teachers can reach the goal of teaching english. the lost twin game not only promotes the students` ability in pronunciation but also offers a joyful learning environment. the finding of this study supports previous research done by rahmawati and amri (2013) who found that the lost twin game could improve students’ pronunciation performance as part of speaking skill. they further explained the advantages of using the lost twin game to give a variety of tools to facilitate the teachinglearning activity, to be flexible and make lesson less monotonous, to familiarize english to students and finally to stimulate students' participation and give them confidence. moreover, the students will be confident with their performance in pronouncing english words. in line with those advantages, the result of this study also contributes to the students' pronunciation performance. it is proven that before getting treatment, the score of the pretest is lower than the score of the posttest after getting the treatment. conclusion and suggestion based on the research finding, the researcher concluded some points concerning the effect of the lost twin game on students’ pronunciation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 72-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ability. first, there was a significant effect of the lost twin game on students` pronunciation ability. it is proven by the significant increase of the mean score in the posttest. the second, the result of the t-test analysis showed that the score of the posttest was significantly higher than that of the pretest. based on the description above, it could be concluded that the lost twin game can improve students' pronunciation performance effectively. so, the researchers suggested that the teachers use the lost twin game in teaching pronunciation. this method can make the students feel joyful, relaxed, and cheerful in the process of learning and acquiring pronunciation skill. references altan, m., & gardner, h. (2002). intelligence reframed: multiple intelligences for the 21st century. tesol quarterly, 35, 204. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587873 carrier, m. (1980). take 5: games and activities for the language learners (2nd ed.). nelson. differences between testing, assessment, and evaluation. (2017, 8 august). [online learning tutorials for essential college skills]. study for success! http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/testi ng/testing2.html fraser, h. (2000). coordinating improvements in pronunciation teaching for adult learners of english as a second language. canberra: detya (anta innovative project) gilakjani, a. p., ahmadi, s., & ahmadi, m. (2011). why is pronunciation so difficult to learn? english language teaching, 4(3), 74. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v4n3p74 gilakjani, a. p. (2016). english pronunciation instruction: a literature review. international journal of research in english education, 1(1), 6. harmer, j. (2007). the practice of english language teaching (4th ed.). pearson longman. hidayatullah, m. s. (2018). improving students' pronunciation through western movie media. al-lisan, 3(1), 93–111. https://doi.org/10.30603/al.v3i1.381 luoma, s. (2004). assessing speaking. cambridge university press. nurhayati, d. a. w. (2015). improving students' english pronunciation ability through go fish game and maze game. dinamika ilmu, 15, 19. otlowski, m. (1998). pronunciation: what are the expectations? (tesl/tefl). retrieved 17 august 2020, from http://iteslj.org/articles/otlowskipronunciation.html rippell, m. (2012). the "pronounce for spelling" technique. retrieved 15 february 2020, from https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.c om/pronounce-for-spelling/ https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/pronounce-for-spelling/ https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/pronounce-for-spelling/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 73-73 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16995 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license questionpro. (2018). quantitative research: definition, methods, types and examples. retrieved from https://www.questionpro.com/blog /quantitative-research/ rahmawati, s., & amri, z. (2013). using the lost twin game to improve pronunciation of junior high school students. 1(2), 9. sánchez, m. m., morfín, a. p., & campos, v. e. (2007). interactive games in the teaching—learning process of a foreign language. teoría y praxis, 3(4), 47–66. https://doi.org/10.22403/uqroom x/typ04/04 sartika, d. (2019). analysis of students' proficiency in english pronunciation using youtube-based video media. 10. seel, n. m. (2012). experimental and quasiexperimental designs for research on learning. in n. m. seel (ed.), encyclopedia of the sciences of learning (pp. 1223–1229). springer us. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-44191428-6_716 trang, n. t. h. (2015). using games to improve pronunciation of the second year non-english significant students at hanoi university of business and technology, internet-zhurnal «mir nauki» 387, 1-9. wafi, a. (2019). using games to improve students' active involvement in the learning of english syntax at iain madura: an autonomous learning. okara: jurnal bahasa dan sastra, 13(1), 107. https://doi.org/10.19105/ojbs.v13i1. 2256 wright, a., betteridge, d., & buckby, m. (2006). games for language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 63-71 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students' metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension of narrative texts rosnaeni, muhammad zuhri dj.*, hasriati nur institut agama islam negeri bone, indonesia (zuhristaindije@gmail.com) received: 20th march 2020; revised: 17th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract this study aims to describe the relationship of students' metacognitive awareness and their reading comprehension of narrative texts by employing a correlational study design. the participants of this study were students of ips 3 class of sman 3 bone, south sulawesi, consisting of 25 students. they were selected as participants for this study using cluster sampling. the researchers used a questionnaire and test to collect the data from participants. the questionnaire was used to determine the students' metacognitive awareness, while the test was used to assess their reading comprehension of narrative texts. pearson product moment and regression analyses were conducted to find out the correlation between the two variables. results of this study show a significant correlation between metacognitive awareness and students' reading comprehension of narrative texts with r 0.786 > r table 3.961. this research could have implications for the english teacher, students, and next researchers. key words: metacognitive awareness; reading comprehension; narrative text abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan hubungan antara kesadaran metakognitif siswa dengan pemahaman bacaan mereka dalam teks naratif. penelitian korelasional digunakan dalam penelitian ini. sampel penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas xi ips 3 sman 3 bone. mereka dipilih dengan menggunakan cluster random sampling yang terdiri dari 25 siswa. peneliti menggunakan angket dan tes untuk mengumpulkan data dari sampel. angket digunakan untuk mengetahui metakognitif siswa dan tes digunakan untuk mengetahui pemahaman bacaan siswa dalam teks naratif. product moment pearson dan analisis regresi digunakan untuk mengetahui korelasi antara dua variabel. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat hubungan yang signifikan antara kesadaran metakognitif dengan kemampuan membaca siswa dalam teks naratif dengan r 0,786> r tabel 3,961. penelitian ini dapat berimplikasi pada guru bahasa inggris, siswa, dan peneliti selanjutnya. kata kunci: kesadaran metakognitif; pemahaman membaca; teks naratif how to cite: rosnaeni, dj. m. zuhri , nur, h. (2020). students' metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension of narrative texts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 74-86. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1. 17027 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 75-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading is a language competency that has an essential role. the students' ability in reading determines student achievement in the teaching-learning process in school. in acquiring knowledge, the fact is that most of the knowledge is in written form, so it requires students to read. therefore, in teaching, reading learning has a strategic position. reading skills are essential in life, but many students have difficulties in reading subject. when there is an obligation to read the text, there will be various student responses, including indifference, lack of seriousness, ignorance, and even mistakes in learning processes and outcomes. for example, the material on a narrative text in practice has not been applied maximally. it can be seen from the learning outcomes. based on the writer observations with one of the english teacher in sma 3 bone, there were some problems that researcher found, such as difficulties in understanding the text, the difficulty to find out the main idea, lack of vocabulary, the problem of finding the generic structure and making conclusions and still confused in doing the reading task. the low learning outcomes of these students indicate a poor understanding of reading. during this time, the approach and method used are also insufficient to support students' reading comprehension. as a facilitator in learning, even the teacher often ignores the cognitive and mental processes that occur within the student. in the process of a reading lesson, the teachers' role is excellent in providing understanding to learners. according to korabiak, mete, and moursund (2004) assumed that the teachers teach the students in improving the phonological and phonics base, integrating the structure, and reading for comprehension. on the other hand, harvey (2012) also said that one of the most critical skills is reading comprehension. reading comprehension involves the readers to know and understand what they are reading. without understanding the text that has been read, they have fallen short of reading. knowing and understanding what is being read is instrumental in comprehensive reading. reading comprehension, according to van de broek and espin (2012), is the complex interaction between automatic and strategic cognitive processes facilitating the reader in creating a mental representation of the text. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 76-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students will be able to make mistakes in learning, both in-process and learning outcomes. it is related to the non-achievement of goals targeted students; students' attitudes will differ. however, students who have plans and try to manage the process they do will try to reflect so that errors will be smaller in the next task. students' learning success can be achieved if students are consciously able to control their cognitive processes and lead to improving their metacognitive knowledge. cubukçu (2008) assumed that metacognition concerns knowledge, awareness, and control of learning. according to wilson and clarke (2004) as cited in akturk and sahin (2011), knowledge and awareness have one of their thinking processes and strategies and the capacity of evaluating and regulating one's thought processes. metacognitive activity happens when students consciously manage and adjust their thinking strategies when solving problems and thinking about a goal. when students feel conscious of the goals and techniques, they will implement to achieve specific goals, the students will try to manage themselves, knowledge, and experience to accomplish that goal. according to chauhan and singh (2014), metacognitive is the process of linking new information to existing knowledge, creatively selecting thinking strategies, and planning, monitoring, and evaluating thought processes. the students who lack metacognitive and control of reading strategies often have difficulties coping with academic reading such as textbook because metacognitive ability can make students skilled at reading comprehension. according to mokhtari and sheorey (2002), the development of students’ metacognitive awareness can be trained to choose the best strategy in selecting, remembering, re-recognizing, organizing the information it captures and solving problems related to reading passages. the awareness of metacognitive reading strategy affects learners' comprehension as it controls the ways learners interact with the context and their effective use of strategies in their reading comprehension. the aforementioned statement is supported by nofyan’s (2017) study which found that there is a strong association between metacognitive reading technique, mastery of vocabulary, and student reading awareness of mtsn surakarta 1 eighth grade students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 77-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based on the above explanation, the researchers formulate the problem statement: do the students of sman 3 bone have any vital connection between the metacognitive knowledge of the students and their reading understanding in the narrative text? from the above issue, this research aims to identify the relationship between students' metacognitive knowledge and their understanding of reading. metacognitive awareness according to baker and brown (1980), metacognition deals with "meta" meaning beyond, and "cognition" meaning mental actions or process of achieving knowledge and understanding through experience, thought and the senses. the definition of metacognition itself refers to how someone aims their cognition dealing with strategy and previous knowledge. additionally, metacognition is the awareness of a person to manage and control their mental cognition process. costa (1984) explains metacognition as the ability to understand what someone knows and what someone does not know, to be aware of the strategies and mental operations while solving the problems, to assess and to meditate on our intellectual products. metacognitive awareness is an individual's knowledge of their metacognitive strategies and metacognitive knowledge. according to wilson and clarke (2004) as cited in akturk and sahin (2011), metacognition is the knowledge and awareness that one has of their thought processes and strategies and the ability to evaluate and regulate their thought processes. as applied in reading, this metacognitive strategy requires the goal of reading, planning how the text will be read, and taking actions when something goes wrong if understanding is not achieved. reading comprehension snow (2002) defined reading comprehension as the process of extracting and constructing meaning through constant interactions and engagements with written language. it is supported by klingner, vaughn, and boardman (2015) who state that reading comprehension is the process of constructing the meaning by coordinating several complex processes that include word reading, word, and world knowledge, and fluency. therefore, the competence of comprehending the text depends on the readers' skill to interpret or construct what they read. this is in line with lapp and fisher (2011) who say that skilled readers are those who actively ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 78-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and constantly construct meaning as they read; they are self-motivated and self-directed; and they monitor their understanding by questioning, reviewing, revising, and rereading to enhance their overall comprehension. from the above explanation, it can be said that reading comprehension is an interactive process among text, readers, and strategies. thus, the interactive process includes utilizing, understanding and evaluating the critical message that the author tries to convey. continuously, readers intertwine all that information with their knowledge background to extract the meaning of the written material. narrative text according utami (2017), narrative is a type of text that tells a story and, in doing so, entertains or informs the reader or listener. the narrative is a text that describes a story using a sequence of events in which each genre has its social goal. gerot and wignell (1995) argue that the narrative's social function is to entertain, amuse and deal with the real-life experience in various ways. according to rahmawati (2010), a narrative is a form of a text intended to retell action or past event to narrate and resolve the problems, to entertain or amuse the readers, and sometimes to offer morality. it typically has a variety of recurring occurrences and an issue that the characters need to solve. the correlation between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension have a sustainable relationship. metacognitive techniques are essential for efficient reading as with any form of learning and are at work at both the micro and macro processing stages. pressley (2002) stresses that the use of metacognitive techniques enumerates professional metacognitive readers' features. he also describes the metacognitively advanced reader is excellent at asking questions while engaged in reading, visualizing what is being read, and understanding how to summarize the text. accordingly, a reader knows that he can come across some confusing sections in the text. thus, he deliberately adopts some basic methods to deal with the uncertainty. it means that metacognition plays a vital role in reading. throughout the reading, metacognitive processing can be expressed throughout strategies, such as the procedural, the purposeful, the effortful, the willful, the essential, and the facilitative. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 79-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method this research employed quantitative research with a correlational design to assess metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension relationship in narrative text. this research applied two variables, the independent and dependent variable. the independent variable was metacognitive awareness symbolized as "x", and the dependent variable was reading comprehension in narrative text symbolized as "y". in this research, the writer used a cluster random sampling to select the participants. the class of xi ips 3, which consists of 25 students, has been chosen randomly to be the sample for this study. a questionnaire and test were used as the research instruments of this study. a questionnaire, which consists of 52 items, was used to collect data about students’ metacognitive awareness. this questionnaire includes several subscales assessing cognition (declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, conditional knowledge) and regulation of knowledge (planning, information management strategies, monitoring, debugging strategies and evaluation). then, the researcher used the likert scale. according to croasmun and ostrom (2011), likert scales provide a range of responses to a statement or series of statements. usually, five response categories range from 5 = strongly true to 1 = strongly false. the questionnaires given to the students were to obtain their metacognitive awareness. at the same time, tests are assessment instruments that pose problems for students to solve. then, to get the students' reading comprehension, the researchers used multiple-choice in a reading comprehension test. there were 20 questions of multiple choices in narrative text. in data analysis, the researchers analyzed two data sets. they were the results of the questionnaire and test. more specifically, the following steps are explored below. analysis of students’ metacognitive awareness the questionnaire determining the students' metacognitive awareness in reading was checked manually. the samples were asked to checklist the statements based on how well the statements describe them. the scoring of the likert scale is described in the table 1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 80-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1. likert scale for questionnaires category score strongly true 5 true 4 neutral 3 false 2 strongly false 1 the researcher categorized the interval of metacognitive awareness. according to sugiyono (2005), a considerable interval from the highest score minus the lowest score is obtained and then divided by the number of questions. the interval of metacognitive awareness was calculated by the formula below: i = where: i = interval hs= the highest score ls = the lowest score k = total number of categories therefore, students' metacognitive awareness classified as table 2. table 2. the categories of metacognitive awareness score categories 220 – 260 very good 178 – 219 good 136 – 177 fair 94 135 poor 52 – 93 very poor analysis of reading comprehension the narrative text data for reading comprehension is graded by the formula below: s = x 100% where: s = individual score f = number of correct answer n = number of item table 3. the categories of reading comprehension score category 93 – 100 excellent 84 – 92 very good 75 – 83 good 66 – 74 average 56 – 65 poor < 55 very poor (source: staff administration of sma 3 bone 2018) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 81-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license analysis of the correlation between students metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension the relationship in the narrative text between students' metacognitive knowledge and their understanding of reading was analyzed using statistical calculation through spss. then, based on the sugioyo (2005), he divided the interpretation of the correlation coefficient values in the following table 4. table 4. interpretation of correlational coefficient coefficient interval level of correlation 0,00 0,199 the relations are very low 0,20 0,399 the relations are low 0,40 0,599 the relations are medium 0,60 0,799 the relations are strong 0,80 1,000 the relations are very strong findings and discussion findings the result of student's metacognitive awareness the total active students in the eleventh grade, especially in the xi ips 3 of sman 3 bone class, were 25 students. the 52 items of metacognitive awareness inventory (mai) were used to analyze the students' metacognitive consciousness. the data was taken from the questionnaire will answer the first research question about the student's metacognitive awareness. the researchers analyzed the data by spss 25.00 versions. as for the data of students' metacognitive awareness result can be explained as follows table 5. table 5. distribution of students' metacognitive awareness score freq. (f) percentage (%) categories 220 260 3 12% very good 178 219 13 52% good 136 177 9 36% fair 94 135 0 0 poor 52 93 0 0 very poor total 25 100% based on the table 5, there are five classes of interval. at the interval score 52-93, there are 0 students. at the interval 94-135, there are 0 students. at the interval 136-177, there are nine students. at the interval 178-219, there are 13 students, and at the interval 220260, there are three students. it can be seen that the highest frequency is 13 in 52%, and the lowest frequency is 0 in 0%. the result of students' reading comprehension in narrative text the outcome of reading comprehension was calculated by giving the students a reading comprehension test, and the total number of questions for each category ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 82-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was 20 items. the effect of students reading comprehension in the narrative text was represented in the table 6. table 6. distributive frequency of students' reading comprehension in narrative text category the table 6, presented the frequency of students' reading comprehension scores. the interval classes are 6. at the interval score <55 there are six students. at 56-65 there are 0 students. at the interval 66-74, there are five students. at the interval 75-83, there are seven students. at the interval 84-92, there are six students, and at the interval 93-100, there is one student. the highest frequency is 7 in 28%, and the lowest frequency is 0 in 4%. in short, most students had a good score in their reading comprehension skills. the correlation between students' metacognitive understanding and their reading comprehension in narrative text this section discusses the first research issue by evaluating the mai questionnaire’s descriptive statistics and reading comprehension findings. based on the pearson product moment correlation coefficient, the result showed a strong correlation between metacognitive knowledge and reading understanding in narrative text. table 7. the result of correlation analysis between metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension in narrative text based on the analysis, the correlation coefficient for metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension is 0.759 ≥ 0.3961. it implies that there is a clear connection between students' metacognitive understanding and reading comprehension at sig.000. since the significance is less than 0.05, this means that the first hypothesis is accepted. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 83-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion first, from the results of data collection through questionnaire instruments for knowing the level of metacognitive awareness of secondgrade students of sman 3 bone, then after being analyzed using descriptive statistics, it can be stated that of the 25 students who were used as research samples, the highest scores were obtained amounting to 240, and the lowest value was 152. the average score (mean) was 190.60, and the standard deviation was 24.587. when viewed from these data, the level of metacognitive awareness of students was in a suitable category. it can be seen from the average value of 190.60 in the interval 178-219, with a percentage of 58.4%. thus, it can be concluded that metacognition awareness was in a suitable category. it was found that the students were able to regulate their metacognitive. a right level of metacognitive awareness is related to students' ability to plan, monitor, and evaluate thinking processes. as a result, if students already have an interest, desire to learn, participate in understanding the material, and be responsible for their learning, they become aware of their metacognitive. good metacognitive awareness will learn better than those without metacognitive awareness. then, in this research, the researcher gave a reading test to collect students' reading comprehension data. from 25 students as the research sample, the highest value was 95, the lowest value was 20, the mean score was 74.40, and the standard deviation was 14.136. when viewed from these data, the students' reading comprehension was in a low category. it is shown that the data was in the interval 66-74 with a percentage of 24%, it can be assumed that students' reading understanding was in the average category. it means that the students should enhance their comprehension of reading to be better than before. the result of this study was also strengthened by nugroho (2017). in his study, he found a strong association between metacognitive reading techniques, vocabulary mastery, and student's understanding of reading. he said that enhancing students' metacognitive reading approach would improve their reading comprehension. the need for a metacognitive reading technique is essential for reading comprehension. the higher students' metacognitive reading strategies are, the higher their reading comprehension is. on the other hand, based on the pearson product-moment correlations, it was found that there was a strong ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 84-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and robust correlation between student metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension in narrative text. it was found that r-obtained 0.759 ≥ 0, 3961, and p-output (sig. 2tailed) 0000 ≤ 0,05it means there was a correlation between metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension. students were aware of reading comprehension in such a way that they used reading techniques to get a positive outcome in their reading comprehension. this finding is in line with a previous study by urfa (2017) which indicates that good readers use metacognitive reading strategy is to think about and have control over their reading. it means reasonable control of students' metacognitive reading strategy use will be better to help them easy to understand the text. in reality, metacognitive helps students to have a strategy and specific goals. they prepare how to read well to find the text's primary meaning, the essential purposes of the text, and try to understand the text easily. students often have specific goals that can decide any reading aspect, the main idea, supporting detail, reference, vocabulary, cause, and conclusion. also, most students' metacognitive knowledge was categorized at an acceptable level, and the students' reading comprehension was also categorized at an average level. it means that students are only aware of the strategies, although they do not follow the procedure while reading. students who typically use reading strategies may be better in reading comprehension, and students who seldom or never use reading strategies have been weak in reading comprehension. in this analysis, the correlation coefficient was defined as a significant correlation. conclusion and suggestion based on the findings, the researcher concluded that there was a significant correlation between metacognitive knowledge and student reading comprehension in the narrative text at the eleventh-grade students' of sman 3 bone since the correlation coefficient (0.759) was higher than rtable (0.3961), and p (.000) was lower than (.05) the category of correlation was strong. the present result also has consequences for students that the more excellent knowledge of metacognitive reading, the greater their understanding of reading will be. based on the explanation above, the researcher acknowledges that this ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 85-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license study's outcome is still far from perfect. there are also many drawbacks in dealing with the theory or the other due to the researcher's limited knowledge. the researcher also acknowledges that this research paper only makes a minor contribution to teaching reading. the other researchers are expected to expand this study with their content and use different relevant approaches for students to make new contributions to the field of english education. references akturk, a. o., & sahin, i. (2011). literature review on metacognition and its measurement. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 15, 3731-3736. baker, l., & brown, a. l. (1980). metacognitive skills and reading. technical report no. 188. chauhan, a., & singh, n. (2014). metacognition: a conceptual framework. international journal of education and psychological research (ijepr), 3(3), 21-22. costa, a. l. (1984). mediating the metacognitive. educational leadership, 42(3), 57-62 croasmun, j. t., & ostrom, l. (2011). using likert-type scales in the social sciences. journal of adult education, 40(1), 19-22. cubukçu, f. (2008). enhancing vocabulary development and reading comprehension through metacognitive strategies. issues in educational research, 18(1), 1-11. gerot, l., & wignell, p. (1995). making sense of functional grammar sydney: antipodean educational enterpress. harvey, m. (2012). reading comprehension: strategies for elementary and secondary school students. lynchburg college johnson. klingner, j. k., vaughn, s., & boardman, a. (2015). teaching reading comprehension to students with learning difficulties. new york: guilford publications. korabiak, k., mete, n., & d moursund, d. (2004). ict in the discipline of reading. retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/scholar? cluster=4950212016643272651&hl=en &as_sdt=0,5 lapp, d., & fisher, d. (eds.). (2011). handbook of research on teaching the english language arts: co-sponsored by the international reading association and the national council of teachers of english. london: routledge. mokhtari, k., & sheorey, r. (2002). measuring esl students' awareness of reading strategies. journal of developmental education, 25(3), 2-11. nofyan, a. n. (2017). the correlation between metacognitive reading strategy, vocabulary mastery and students' reading comprehension the eighth-grade students of mtsn surakarta 1 in the academic year of 2016/2017 (unpublished, undergraduate thesis). iain surakarta, sukoharjo. pressley, m. (2002). metacognition and selfregulated comprehension. what research has to say about reading instruction, 3, 291-309. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=4950212016643272651&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=4950212016643272651&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=4950212016643272651&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 86-86 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17027 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license rahmawati, f. (2010). using picture stories to improve the student's reading comprehension (unpublished undergraduate thesis). universitas sebelas maret surakarta, surakarta. snow, c. (2002). reading for understanding: toward a research and development program in reading comprehension. santa monica: rand education. sugiyono, s. (2016) metode penelitian pendidikan pendekatan kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan r&d. bandung: alfabeta. urfa, s. (2017). multiple correlations between students’ vocabulary mastery and metacognitive reading strategy toward reading comprehension at the tenth-grade students of sma muhammadiyah 1 palangka raya. (unpublished doctoral thesis). iain palangkaraya, palangkaraya. utami, i. p. (2017). the effectiveness of prequestioning technique to teach reading comprehension of narrative text. journal of english language teaching, 6(1), 59-68. van den broek, p., & espin, c. a. (2012). connecting cognitive theory and assessment: measuring individual differences in reading comprehension. school psychology review, 41(3), 315-325. wilson, j. & clarke d. 2004. towards the modelling of mathematical metacognition. mathematics education research journal., 16(2), 25-48. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 147-162 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee an analysis of students’ reading interest during learning from home amidst the covid-19 pandemic sri utami*, jumaidi nur received: 31st august 2020; revised: 18th february 2021; accepted: 29th june 2021 abstract this study aimed to analyze students’ reading interest during the learning-from-home policy in the covid-19 pandemic time, and it was conducted at the english department of the university of kutai kartanegara in tenggarong. this descriptive study employed a qualitative approach with a survey design that involved 79 students from the second, fourth, and sixth semesters as participants. the data were obtained through a questionnaire and interview, and they were then analyzed descriptively. results of this study showed that during the learning-from-home policy students liked to read anything but lecture materials. they argued that reading was tedious and difficult. they preferred reading fiction to reading non-fiction and preferred reading online to reading offline. they read 15-30 minutes a day and only read 1-3 books within five months of learning from home. their reading materials came from online and offline sources, from websites, and print books by using smartphones. the type of material that was mostly read was novels especially romantic ones. this study suggests that teachers should present lecture materials in such a way that students would be interested in reading them for certain reasons academically or personally. key words: reading interest; analysis; learning from home; covid-19 pandemic time abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis minat baca siswa selama belajar dari rumah pada waktu pandemi covid-19, dan dilakukan di jurusan bahasa inggris universitas kutai kartanegara di tenggarong. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan menggunakan studi deskriptif jenis survei yang melibatkan 79 mahasiswa semester dua, empat, dan enam sebagai partisipan. data diperoleh melalui angket dan wawancara, kemudian dianalisis secara deskriptif dan disajikan dalam bentuk tabulasi frekuensi dan persentase, serta dalam bentuk naratif. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa siswa suka membaca apa saja kecuali materi perkuliahan selama belajar dari rumah. mereka berpendapat bahwa membaca itu membosankan dan sulit. mereka lebih suka membaca fiksi daripada membaca non-fiksi dan lebih suka membaca online daripada membaca offline. mereka membaca 15-30 menit sehari dan hanya membaca 1-3 buku dalam waktu lima bulan belajar dari rumah. sumber bacaan mereka berasal dari online dan offline, dari website dan buku cetak dengan menggunakan smartphone. jenis materi yang paling banyak dibaca adalah novel terutama novel romance. studi ini menunjukkan bahwa terdapat berbagai alasan mengapa fenomena tersebut terjadi. kata kunci: minat membaca; analisis; belajar dari rumah; masa pandemic covid-19 how to cite: utami, s., nur, j. (2021). an analysis of students’ reading interest during learning from home amidst the covid-19 pandemic. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 147162. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 148-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction learning independently and staying at home for a long time during the covid-19 pandemic have led to students’ boredom and loss of effort. regarding students’ loss of efforts during learning from home, students in our english department experienced some obstacles and problems in the home learning process, such as distractions when learning at home. since everyone was required to do remote learning, it could be noisy if there were people in their house who were also doing similar activities. how could the students concentrate on their lessons? the online mode of the university had been a stressful process for many students. for those living in an area where internet access and wi-fi are inaccessible, they are stressed and worried if they could join online classes and do the lecturers' assignments. therefore, remote learning has been difficult for some students. besides, they have encountered obstacles such as slow internet and feelings of isolation from their friends. while technology does allow them to interact with each other somewhat effectively, it could not replace face to face interactions. they often had to work for quite a long time, like at least five hours a day on all the assignments. based on the above situation, the authors were curious on how and what it would be when the students feel bored, how their reading interest during this situation would be, and how they read academic references to complete their assignments. meanwhile, reading becomes one of the keys to accomplishing the assignments given in individual learning. alshumaimeri (2011) supported that reading is a crucial skill in learning and communication. however, enjoying to reading process, students need to be firstly interested in it. it is also supported by hidi (2001), who argued that students’ interest has a vital role in the reading process. however, based on unesco data in 2012, the reading interest index for indonesians only reached 0.001, which means that out of every 1,000 indonesians, only one person is interested in reading. referring to this phenomenon, the government must take some steps to cope with this problem. teachers and lecturers should also stimulate their students' interest since it promotes active engagement in the learning process. in regular times, the condition of the indonesian people’s interest in reading is indeed quite apprehensive. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 149-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the results of the 2016 study of the world’s most literate nations (wmln) indicated that the reading rank of indonesians is the 60th out of 61 countries studied. the study, dubbed world’s most literate nations, puts indonesia below thailand in 59th and above botswana in 61st position, even though in terms of infrastructure to support reading, the archipelago ranks above some european countries (miller & mckenna, 2016). reading interest is a feeling that accompanies or causes special attention to reading. the students may actively read if they are interested in reading. reading interest can make them consider the reading activity as a habitual activity for them. generally speaking, interest is a motivational variable that involves not only the emotions but also the intellect, making it a powerful energizer indeed (hidi, renninger, & krapp, 2004). interest is the set of attending, the tendency to give selective attention to something. interest arises through the interaction of basic needs and the means used to satisfy them. the students interested in reading satisfy the basic needs of personal adequacy or self-esteem, others’ esteem, curiosity, or success. much research was conducted to deal with reading interest from the lowest education level until the highest level (e.g. rumainah, 2018; muhamad et al., 2019). ali (2017), for example, found that students’ reading interest in universitas sembilanbelas november kolaka at usn’s library was relatively low. 70 students, 60 students visited the library only once a week, eight students 2-3 times a week, two students never visited the library, and no students who visited every day of work. next, a descriptive study at the psychology faculty of the university of diponegoro first semester students found that the participants mostly had a reading novel habit. their habits of playing an online game and watching tv much could get their reading interest (siswati, 2010). yusof (2010) stated that family factors strongly and positively influence pupils reading habits and interests. of all those studies, the authors saw a research gap that majorities of the research about reading interest were conducted before the covid-19 pandemic when the university operated normally. based on the above discussion, the authors were interested in conducting a study on reading interest during pandemic, especially to answer the following research questions: 1) how was the students’ reading interest during learning from home?; 2) why did the phenomena related to the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 150-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading interest of the students happen?. method research design this research employed descriptive design in the type of survey. groves in adiyanta (2019) states that surveys produce information that is statistically in nature. survey research asks respondents about their trust, opinion, characteristics, and attitude that had happened or are happening. this research aimed to describe the students’ reading interest phenomena during learning from home in march 2020 until july 2020. quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to analyze the data. research site and participants this research was conducted at the english department at the university of kutai kartanegara, tenggarong. the participants were taken from the second, fourth, and sixth semester in 2019/2020. actually, from 115 active english education department students, only 79 students were willing to fill out the questionnaire because filling out this questionnaire was voluntary, so not all students participated in this research. 79 students who filled out the questionnaire, it consisted of 18 males and 61 females. their ages were between 19 and 24 years old. most of them lived in the downtown of tenggarong, only a few of them lived in rural areas. data collection and analysis to collect the data in this research, the researchers utilized the questionnaire and interview. the questionnaire questions were adapted from some sources (e.g. mudjito, 2000; hardianto, 2011; siswati, 2012; donal, 2015; ali, 2017) and were adopted by the researchers themselves. both questionnaires and interview were conducted online. questionnaires were distributed to the participants by using google form. the link of google form was shared to the participants through students’ whatsapp groups. the questionnaire consisted of 21 closed-ended questions which were divided into five categories, namely: 1) feelings towards reading: 5 questions; 2) reading preferences: 5 questions; 3)time for reading and some books: 6 questions; 4)reading sources: 4 questions; 5) types of reading materials: 1 question. after the questionnaire results had been collected, the researchers did some interview with ten students chosen as the samples of an interview to support the data. the interview was conducted http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 151-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by using whatsapp video call. for the interview, the researchers asked ten questions related to the reasons the students chose the answers provided in the questionnaire. the data obtained were analyzed using descriptive analysis. the data from questionnaire were analyzed as well as presented in frequency and percentage tabulation, while the data from the interview were presented in narrative form. findings and discussion findings the results in this study were presented in frequency and percentage tables and narrative form. the data were collected to answer the research questions related to (1) students’ reading interest of the students during pandemic; and (2) the reasons why those phenomena happened. students’ reading interest from the results of quantitative calculations, the following descriptions were obtained: table 1. feelings towards reading no. statements/answers/number of responses 1. i… reading at home during learning from home. very liked liked less liked so disliked 9 (11.4%) 41 (51.9%) 26 (32.9%) 3 (3.8%) 2. i … reading anything during learning from no. statements/answers/number of responses home. very liked liked less liked so disliked 9 (11.4%) 45 (57%) 22 (27.8%) 3 (3.8%) 3. i… reading academic books/lecture materials given by the lecturers during learning from home. very liked liked less liked so disliked 5 (6.3%) 16 (20.3%) 52 (65.8%) 6 (7.6%) 4. reading academic books/lecture materials was boring yes sometimes no 10 (12.7%) 54 (68.4%) 15 (19%) 5. reading was hard for me yes sometimes no 18 (22.8%) 48 (60.8%) 13 (16.4%) table 2. reading preferences no. statements/answers/number of responses 1. did you like to read in your spare time? yes sometimes no 30 (38%) 45 (57%) 4 (5%) 2. what did you prefer to read? fiction non fiction 52 (65.8%) 27 (34.2%) 3. during learning from home, what did you prefer to read? academic books/lecture materials others 18 (23.1%) 60 (76.9%) 4. where did you prefer reading from? online offline 54 (70.1%) 23 (29.9%) 5. what is your most favorite reading? romance/novel adventure humorous academic books/lesson materials history science fiction biographies mystery horrors news 21 (26.6%) 7 (8.9%) 6 (7.6%) 4 (5.1%) 9 (11.3%) 4 (5.1%) 3 (3.8%) 17 (21.5%) 5 (6.3%) 3 (3.8%) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 152-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3. time for reading and number of books no. statements/answers/number of responses 1. how many hours did you read in a day during learning from home? more than 1 hour 30 minutes – 1 hour 15 – 30 minutes i don’t read, unless forced to none 7 (9%) 8 (10%) 59 (74.7%) 3 (3.8%) 2 (2.5%) 2. how often did you read in a week during learning from home? every day 5 – 6 days 3 – 4 days 1 – 2 days never 11 (13.9%) 3 (3.8%) 26 (32.9%) 38 (48.1%) 1 (1.3%) 3. how many hours per day could you spend reading for college assignments? more than 1 hour 30 minutes – 1 hour 15 – 30 minutes none 2 (2.5%) 21 (26.6%) 53 (67.1%) 3 (3.8%) 4. how many hours per day could you spend reading for pleasure? more than 1 hour 30 minutes – 1 hour 15 – 30 minutes none 45 (57%) 20 (25.3%) 11 (13.9%) 3 (3.8%) 5. how many reading materials (book chapter/lesson materials/parts of literature/etc.) did you read in a day? more than 20 pages 11 – 20 pages 1 – 10 pages none 8 (10.1%) 13 (16.5%) 55 (69.6%) 3 (3.8%) 6. how many books did you read this semester (during learning from home, from march 2020 – july 2020)? more than 10 books 7 – 9 books 4 – 6 books 1 – 3 books none 7 (8.9%) 5 (6.3%) 15 (19%) 47 (59.5%) 5 (6.3%) table 4. reading sources no statements/answers/number of responses 1. from where did you get the reading materials during learning from home? online offline both 30 (38%) 5 (6.3%) 44 (55.7%) 2. if you get the reading materials through online, from what application did you get the reading? (choose all that is applicable) facebook instagram twitter website google classroom podcast news portal whatsapp others 15 (19.2%) 18 (22.8%) 16 (20.5%) 40 (50.6%) 35 (44.9%) 7 (9%) 6 (7.7%) 26 (33.3%) 15 (19.2%) 3. if you get the reading materials through offline, from where did you get the reading materials? (choose all that is applicable) print books magazines newspaper journals academic books/copy of lecture materials others 41 (52.6%) 10 (12.8%) 7 (9%) 5 (6.4%) 31 (39.7%) 27 (34.6%) 4. please rank (1 – 4) the following in order of interest: reading from print media. reading from a tablet (android/ipad/kindle, etc.). reading from a computer. reading from a smartphone. 14 (17.7%) 25 (31.7%) 8 (10.1%) 32 (40.5%) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 153-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 5. types of reading materials no. statements/answers/number of responses 1. what types of reading materials did you read during lfh in this semester? (choose all that is applicable) manga/comics/humor magazines/newspaper/in formative news horror/mysteries biographies/true stories textbooks/academic books/lecture materials novel/romance poetry adventure/action stories sports news 28 (35.4%) 19 (24.1%) 20 (25.3%) 25 (31.6%) 20 (25.3%) 53 (67.1%) 11 (13.9%) 14 (17.7%) 13 (16.4%) reasons why those phenomena happened from the interview results, the researchers found why the phenomena on reading interest of the students happened, and those became the causes of the low interest in reading. some of the reasons are as follows: 1. the students said that reading was hard for them because there were too many difficult words and sentences that made them slow to understand, especially in a foreign language, it is difficult for them to concentrate, needed extra focus, and were rarely and lazy to read. 2. the students did not like reading the lecturers’ materials during learning from home because the materials were boring to read, too long and the language was difficult to understand, not exciting, and had to be read many times and needed a long time to understand. 3. the students felt that reading lecture materials were boring because the materials were too long and many, monotone and the language was too standard, not interesting, challenging to understand, the students had to read many times and had to think extra hard to understand the materials. 4. the students preferred to read anything else instead of reading lecture materials during learning from home because other readings were more interesting than lecturers’ materials; there was no need to think extra, according to the heart’s desire. 5. the students preferred to read fiction because it was more interesting, entertaining, no need to think extra, to increase imagination and creativity. 6. the students preferred to read from online sources because there were many reading choices to read, more interesting, always available, could be got anytime, efficient and straightforward, more comfortable to access and vary, easier to find reading that fit their wishes, they could not go to campus and district http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 154-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license libraries in the covid-19 pandemic time. 7. the students spent just 15-30 minutes a day to read during learning from home because they were busy helped their parents to get extra income or to help their younger brothers/sisters to study online at home, they had no free time, it is difficult to share time with other activities, no need a long time to read to make it useful and avoid boredom and got headache. 8. the students could read only a few books (1-2 books) while learning from home because they did not have much time to read, spent more time on a gadget, did not have many books at home, did not find interesting books to read. 9. there were no fixed times to read. students read anytime they wanted during learning from home, not necessarily every day depended on the situation, and had spare times. 10. in their spare times, they liked to open their social media and sometimes read when they found exciting readings, watch tv, sell online, learn cooking, help their siblings to finish their school tasks, play online games, take a rest and gather with family. discussion feelings towards reading based on table 1, related with the first indicator of reading interest, feelings towards reading seemed that the students still had enthusiasm in reading, it was shown that 63.3% of students liked to read at home during learning from home. as much as 68.4% of students liked to read anything. according to nathanson, pruslow and levitt (2008) as cited in siswati (2012, p. 130) this favorite is related to enthusiasm. as an enthusiast, individuals who claim to like reading mean having a pleasant experience while doing these reading activities. for the first two questions, the students just said they liked reading at home and liked to read anything during learning from home, but they did not prove their reading activities in the next questions. unfortunately, 73.4% of the students did not like reading academic books or lecture materials that mostly written in english given by their lecturers during learning from home and 81.1% of the students said it was boring. they had some reasons for this. it is because the materials were not attractive, too many and long materials, boring to read; it is difficult to understand the language, especially in english, they had to read over and over until they had understood and of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 155-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license course, it needed extra think and spent much time and finally, they got bored. it is in line with the result of a research done by khairuddin (2013) that the participants in this study were the form four students in sekolah menengah kebangsaan belara (smk belara) kuala terengganu had a relatively low interest in reading english materials. in addition to that, there were a tiny number of students who read english reading materials. the students still also had a negative mindset that reading was hard for them. 83.6% of students stated it. because the reading contained many unfamiliar and challenging words or sentences, mostly english text, they should think harder and full of concentration, besides that their laziness to read makes them into trouble and made them think that reading is difficult or challenging. attitude plays a vital role in reading. more or less attitude influences someone’s reading interest. dislike feeling, think hard, feel bored are negative mindset. their perception about reading which then made them lazy in reading. much research examined relationships between pupils’ attitudes toward reading and the development of reading skills have already been explored (martinez et al., 2008; petscher, 2009). reading attitude significantly predicted reading achievement. reading preferences from table 2, during learning from home, the students preferred to read fiction because it was entertaining, more interesting, could increase imagination and creativity and they no need to think extra hard to read fiction readings. reading fiction, like romance/novel and mystery, could release stress and boredom because the participant in this research was mostly dominated by female students, 61 female students, and no wonder if their favorite reading was romance or novel. the finding of this study is also similar to a study conducted by sapiah (1987) as cited in khairudin (2013) who mentioned a significant difference in terms of the choice of genres based on gender. female students tended to choose romance, for example, novel as their most favorite reading. it was also supported with siswati (2012) research that the first semester students of psychology faculty at university of diponegoro consisted of 92 students, 71 females and 21 males, 61 students chose the novel their favorite reading and 34 students chose romance. from table 2 number 4, the students also preferred reading from online sources. this is in line with the study by ansari (2018) who also found http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 156-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that most respondents (88%) indicated that reading on the internet improves their professional skills. 80% of respondents perceived reading on the internet improve their language skills. ajayi, shorunke, and aboyade (2014) studied the influence of electronic resources on reading culture and reading pattern of the students of adeleke university. the research discloses e-resources influence reading culture. most of the respondents answered that it increases their reading habit; it makes reading further enjoyable and enhances their reading possibility and independent lifelong reading skills. by looking at the data in table 2 number 5, the researchers assumed that the students’ reading interest on lecture materials given by the lecturers during learning from home was very low. from 79 students, only 18 of students preferred reading lecture materials during learning from home. this is unfortunate because the students’ knowledge of certain learning materials will not increase optimally if the students do not have a high reading interest in reading the learning materials, which will affect their academic achievement. of course, this still needs further research to prove it. however, many research pieces had proven that there was a significant influence between reading interest and learning achievement of the students. one of them was research conducted by permadani and latifah (2016). there was an effect of reading interest on economic learning achievement by 12.11% of sma negeri kendal's tenthgrade students in the 2014/2015 school year. time for reading and number of books as stated in table 3 about time for reading and the number of books, it was found that the duration of time used to read during learning from home was relatively low. 74.7% of students answered that the time set aside for reading each day was between 15 to 30 minutes, while 10% answered 30 minutes to 1 hour per day and only 9% spent more than 1 hour to read each day. even 3.8% did not read unless they were forced to read, and 2.5% of students did not read at all. meanwhile, the duration for reading in a week during learning from home was also low. only 13.9% of students could read every day, 3.8% 5-6 days, 32.9% 3-4 days in a week. the most were 48.1% or 38 students who read 1-2 days a week. there was 1.3% of student who never read in a week during learning from home. this analysis results were the same as the results carried out by donal (2015) who found that 79% of fkip of university of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 157-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pasir pangaraian students spent their time not more than 1 hour for reading. in contrast, 20% of students spent 2-3 hours each day of their time to read. when the students were asked about why the duration of time for reading each day and each week during learning from home was too short, they said those because they had to accompany and help their younger siblings study at home through online. they were busy helping their parents get extra money because, in this covid19 pandemic time, many sectors of works were affected, many students whose parents lost their jobs and income. others argued that they had no free time; it is hard to split the time with other activities. there was a student who did it purposively. she did not read for a long time to make it useful and avoid got headache and boredom. still, about time spent on reading, it was found that 67.1% of students of english education department mostly spend only 15-30 minutes to read for college assignment per day. according to their answers in table 1, question number 3 and 4, 73.4% did not like to read lecturers' materials during learning from home because 77.2% thought that reading lecture materials were boring. in contrast, 57% of students could spend more than 1 hour per day reading for pleasure. it is appropriate with their answers in table 2, question number 3, that they preferred to read other reading materials rather than reading lecture materials. from these data, the researchers analyzed that the habit of reading every day, which only ranged from 15 minutes to 1 hour, and every week was only about 1 to 4 days, is considered insufficient when it is seen from the demands of campus assignments. it supposed that the students could have more time for reading to fulfil their campus assignments. the biggest obstacle to reading habits could not be done longer because they also spend much time on other activities, such as helping their parents get money and helping their siblings do homework, and so on. unfortunately, the students also could not use their spare time to read. in their free time, they liked to open their social media mostly not to read something useful but to sell online, play online games, update status, or check someone’s status in their timeline to help their siblings learn online. they also watched tv, learnt cooking, took a rest and gathered with their family in their spare time during learning from home. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 158-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussed the number of books the students read during learning from home in table 2, question number 5 and 6, there were 69.6% of students who read 1-10 pages of book chapter//lecture materials/parts of literature in a day, 16.5% read 11-20 pages and only 10.1% who could read more than 20 pages in a day. what is even more concerning is that 6.3% of students not reading any books, 59.5% of students were only able to read 1-3 books during five months of learning from home, 19% of students could read 4-6 books, 6.3% 7-9 books, and only 8.9% who could read more than ten books during learning from home started from march until july 2020. however, most of the students' books were fiction books in the form of novels and romances and not academic books. when they were asked why they only read few books during learning from home, they reasoned that they had no time to read, spent more time using a gadget, did not find interesting books to read, and did not have many books at home. this study's results seem to confirm further the statement made by sri sulastri (2013) that the indonesian people today are less fond of reading. reading sources based on table 4, 55.7% of students got reading materials from both online and offline, 38% from online and only 6.3% form offline during learning from home. online sources that the most widely used were from a website (50.6%), followed by google classroom (44.9%) and whatsapp (33.3%). some students chose instagram, twitter, facebook, podcast, news portal, and others to get reading materials online. meanwhile, offline sources mostly used by students to obtain readings was from print books (52.6%), followed by academic books or copy of lecture materials (39.7%), others (34.6%), magazines (12.8%), newspapers (9%) and journals (6.4%). the exciting thing from the data above is that the students' journal should be read last. 6.4% or only five students chose the journal as their reading source. it seemed that the students did not like reading journals. this result was the same as hardianto (2011) research that only 3.65% or 3 out of 82 students of fakultas ilmu pendidikan universitas negeri yogyakarta chose journal as an exciting reading. the others seemed dislike to read the journal with various reasons, such as journal was challenging to get, and the language used was boring. then, for the medium used in the reading activity, the students ranked based on the order of their interest, as follow: reading from a smartphone (40.5%), reading from a tablet (31.7%), http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 159-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading from print media (17.7%) and the last was reading from a computer (10.1%). the use of gadgets in today’s technological advances is commonplace, especially during covid19 pandemic where gadgets are essential tools for the learning process from home, although not all learning processes from home must use gadgets. almost all students have gadgets, either smartphones or androids, so it is not surprising that students do many reading activities from their gadgets. types of reading materials from data in table 5, it was found that the types of reading materials read by the students during learning from home this semester were varied. the type of reading materials that the most read by the students during learning from home were novel/romance (67.1%), while the next three types selected were manga/ comics/ humor/ biographies/ true stories/ horrors/ mysteries and textbooks/ lecture materials, and the less read by the students was poetry (13.9%). the most read types of reading are novels/romances. the topic of love is the most exciting part to read. this is probably because most of the participants are women, according to croston (2005) as cited in siswati (2012, p. 131), female research subjects are more interested in romantic topics rather than humor, adventure, sports, news and others. conclusion and suggestion based on the results of data analysis and discussion of research results, the following conclusions can be drawn: first, about feelings toward reading, it seemed that the students still had enthusiasm in reading, more than half of the students liked to read and liked to read anything at home during learning from home. unfortunately, 73.4% of the students did not like reading academic books or lecture materials that were mostly written in english given by their lecturers while learning from home because it was boring. second, regarding reading preferences, the students preferred to read fiction read from online sources, their most favorite reading was romance/novel; they preferred reading others than reading lecture materials. third, related to time for reading and number of books, during learning from home they read 15-30 minutes a day, 12 days a week, they could spend more than 1-hour reading for pleasure, but only could spend 15-30 minutes reading for a college assignment. they read 1-10 pages of reading materials in a day and only could read 1-3 books during learning from home from march until july 2020. fourth, their reading sources were from both online and offline. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 160-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license trough online, they got the reading materials mostly from a website, while through offline print books became their first source. according to their interest, they put reading from a smartphone on the top of the rank. fifth, types of reading materials that the students read during learning from home were varied. novel/romance was the most read by the students. many reasons why those phenomena happened, but broadly it can be concluded that those were due to the presence of information technology which can have a positive or negative impact on students’ reading interest, then due to the lack of awareness of students to read for reasons of not having the time and supporting facilities for reading activities. suggestions are delivered to the students of english department of the university of kutai kartanegara to be more aware to the need of reading for their future, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, which is uncertain when it will end, in which students will continue learning from home. students should further improve reading activities, especially to read more their academic books and journals related to their field of study. suggestions are also given to the lecturers at english department and generally the university of kutai kartanegara. adopting a reading habit development strategy (siregar, 2008), the researchers suggest that each lecturer selects and recommends reading materials that the students must read in one semester. the lecturer assigns the students to read all or part of the recommended reading then the students make a report on the analysis of the book they read. by doing this strategy, it is hoped that the students will read many books or reading materials related to their academic needs, whether they want it or not. references adiyanta, f. s. 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(2018). undergraduate students' reading interest and reading comprehension achievement in a state islamic university. ta'dib: journal of islamic education, 23(1), 54-64. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1753 https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/1753 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 162-162 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17157 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license siswati, s. (2012). minat membaca pada mahasiswa: studi deskriptif pada mahasiswa fakultas psikologi undip semester i. jurnal psikologi, 8(2), 124-134. siregar, a.r. (2008). strategi mengembangkan kebiasaan membaca mahasiswa. retrieved from http://repository.usu.ac.id/bitstr eam/123456789/1802/1/08e0051 9.pdf yusof, n. m. (2010). influence of family factors on reading habits and interest among level 2 pupils in national primary schools in malaysia. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 5, 1160-1165. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 153-170 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee investigating learners’ beliefs in learning english: a case study luluk iswati received: 6th july 2019; revised: 14th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract the purpose of this study was to investigate the beliefs of english as a foreign language (efl) learners in a mixed-ability class of a private university in yogyakarta. having 30 respondents who took an english class at the language training centre of the university, this study mostly employed a quantitative research design, through which data were taken using the balli questionnaire consisting of 35 question items. to support the quantitative data, interview were conducted. the quantitative data were analyzed using a 5-point likert-scale, while the qualitative data were verbally described. the results show that learners‘ self-efficacy and expectation about learning english is low (3.20); learners‘ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english is fair (3.76); learners‘ beliefs about foreign language aptitude is low (3.11); learners‘ beliefs in formal structural studies (3.11) is also low. therefore, it is suggested that teachers evaluate their teaching approach and strategy in order to increase students‘ motivation, confidence, and interest in learning english which can eventually promote learners‘ success in learning english as a foreign language. key words: : learners‘ beliefs; english as a foreign language abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menyelidiki keyakinan bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl) pada kelas dengan kemampuan campuran di universitas swasta di yogyakarta. dengan 30 responden yang mengambil kelas bahasa inggris di pusat pelatihan bahasa universitas tersebut, penelitian ini menggunakan metode kuantitatif, dimana data diambil menggunakan kuesioner balli yang terdiri dari 35 buah pertanyaan. untuk mendukung data kuantitatif, wawancara dilakukan. data kuantitatif dianalisis menggunakan skala likert 5 poin, sedangkan data kualitatif dijelaskan secara verbal. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: efikasi diri dan harapan mahasiswa dalam belajar bahasa inggris rendah (3,20); nilai yang dirasakan mahasiswa dan sifat alamiah dalam belajar bahasa inggris secara lisan adalah cukup (3,76); keyakinan mahasiswa tentang bakat dalam belajar bahasa asing rendah (3,11); dan keyakinan mahasiswa dalam studi struktural formal rendah (3,11). oleh karena itu, disarankan agar dosen mengevaluasi pendekatan dan strategi pengajaran mereka untuk meningkatkan motivasi, keyakinan diri, dan minat mahasiswa dalam belajar bahasa inggris yang pada akhirnya dapat mendukung keberhasilan mereka dalam belajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing. kata kunci: keyakinan mahasiswa; bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing how to cite: iswati,l. (2019). investigating learners‘ beliefs in learning english: a case study. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 153-170. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 154-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction beliefs are not only influential in one‘s life, but also one‘s process of learning (fazilatfar, harsej, & heirati, 2014). in learning a foreign language, the role of beliefs in every individual learner is pivotal because they can affect the learning direction and, provided that they are properly treated, beliefs will facilitate learning process. the process and result of learning are affected by learners‘ beliefs (ellis, 2008). ultimately, it will contribute to the success of learning the target language. in indonesia, english that has been considered as a language for international communication is learned as a foreign language and in a lot of contexts, particularly tertiary education, non-english department students have to take english as a compulsory subject, whether they like it or not. therefore, it is common to see problems that usually occur during the teaching-learning process of a foreign language. students‘ lack of motivation, enthusiasm, and low english proficiency are among the most frequent problematic issues that teachers have to deal with. teachers should not ignore these facts and do nothing to investigate the source of those obstacles in the process of teaching and learning. many studies had been conducted to reveal learners‘ beliefs in learning a foreign language by using hortwitz‘s (1987) balli (beliefs about language learning inventory) questionnaire, based on which data were reported quantitatively (ariogul, unal, & onusal, 2009; aslan & thompson, 2018; fujiwara, 2018; loewen, li, fei, thompson, nakatsukasa, ahn, & chen, 2009; ren & bai, 2016; zare-ee & salami, 2014). however, the data using the balli questionnaire were not explored more deeply, as learners were not interviewed to gain a more thorough understanding of their beliefs. in language learning, beliefs are seen as an individual variable that is neither ability nor trait-like tendency (ellis, 2008). studying learners‘ beliefs cannot be separated from the selfefficacy theory. self-efficacy is how people perceive their ability to set a certain degree of performance on events that influence their life (bandura, 1998). according to bandura (2011), efficacy beliefs that consist of cognitive, motivational, emotional, and decisional processes play a big role in a way that they can affect people‘s behavior, whether they will become pessimist or optimist, in self-improving or selfundermining ways. furthermore, bandura (2011) urged that self-efficacy beliefs are influential to people‘s commitment, as well as their determined desires and challenges. they also affect how people see http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 155-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opportunities and challenges. it can be said that people with high self-efficacy view challenges as positive opportunities. meanwhile, shea & bidjerano (2010) cited bandura that selfefficacy is subjective in a way that one judges the degree of his or her competence to perform particulars conducts or to achieve future goals. therefore, self-efficacy does not measure one‘s actual competence. people with a high level of self-efficacy are usually confident that they will reach high achievement (mizumoto, 2013). regarding learning a foreign language, when learners have high selfefficacy, they are motivated and have high confidence that they will be able to achieve success based on their desired goal in learning a foreign language. other factors that are influential in language learning are motivation and attitude (oroujlou & vahedi, 2011). motivation plays a crucial role in the process of learning a second or foreign language because it affects the success of learning the target language (dörnyei, 1998; tremblay & gardner, 1995). furthermore, dörnyei (1998) added that motivation functions as a driving force for continuous learning to take place. however, true motivation cannot solely be seen from learners‘ desire and satisfaction in learning the target language. motivation to learn a foreign language needs to be accompanied by effort (tremblay & gardner, 1995). it can be said that effort represents learners‘ positive attitude. meanwhile, learners see teachers as influencers of their attitude, meaning that teachers can shape learners‘ attitudes (wright, 1999). similarly, bower (2017) stated that learners‘ motivation is closely related to the learning context, meaning that learners‘ motivation and the learning context affect each other. meanwhile, motivation is temporary as ellis (2008) urged that motivation can change during the process of learning a second language due to learners‘ evaluation and explanation of their progress or setback. language aptitude refers to the individual ability in learning a foreign language in a short time and without great efforts (parry & stansfield, 1990). it means learners with high language aptitude can demonstrate the ability to learn a certain foreign language in a short time and do not encounter serious obstacles. language aptitude has been known as one of the most significant factors that can contribute to the success of l2 learning (ma, yao, & zhang, 2018). furthermore, it is stated that cross-linguistic difference is found in learners‘ language aptitude and their ability in learning vocabulary and that there are benefits that l3 learners can take from various components of the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 156-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license measurement of language aptitude (ma et al., 2018). meanwhile, parry & stansfield, (1990) suggested that there are four components of foreign language aptitude: phonetic coding ability, grammatical sensibility, memory abilities, and inductive language learning abilities. according to yalçın, çeçen, & erçetin (2016), language aptitude and working memory capacity are two variables in individual differences that may have crucial roles in the learning process in different situations. furthermore, (yalçın et al., 2016) stated that in memorizing every item and processing the correlation among them, the capacity to remember and operate verbal information in working memory is important. learners‘ beliefs about learning a foreign language have been investigated for decades, as language learning is often seen as merely involving translating, grammar learning, and vocabulary learning (horwitz, 1985b). a lot of studies that investigate learners‘ beliefs have been widely conducted and they highlight various findings. mercer (2011) investigated the beliefs of two expert language learners, and the findings revealed that the systems of learners‘ beliefs are very complicated, interconnected, and dynamic. mercer (2011) added that learners‘ beliefs possibly change depending on context and learners‘ private experience. that is to say that the environment in which learners live and learn as well as their personal experiences contribute to change their belief in learning a foreign language. meanwhile, some studies on how anxiety takes place in the process of learning a foreign language were also conducted (aslan & thompson, 2018; marwan, 2016). marwan‘s study (2016) revealed strategies used by learners in overcoming their anxiety, while aslan & thompson‘s findings in their study (2018) suggested evidence of the correlation between belief constructs and anxiety that is present in efl learning. it can be said that anxiety is a crucial factor that should not be neglected in the process of learning a foreign language as it can be an impeding factor if it is not properly managed. meanwhile, bernat & gvozdenko's study on learner beliefs (2005) urged that cognitive and personality psychology can be used as a basis for a possible connection between learner beliefs and personality, and stressed the need for further study and a solid conceptual base before attempts are made to alter the beliefs of language learners in the context of the classroom. bernat & gvozdenko (2005) found cognitive and personality psychology http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 157-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license as two prominent aspects for further investigation of how learners‘ beliefs can change in the classroom during their efl learning process. a study carried out by zare-ee & salami (2014) examined the correlation among learners‘ beliefs in learning english, english proficiency, and language learners strategies used among esp learners. it was revealed that the most preferred learning strategies used by the learners rank from metacognitive strategy, compensatory strategy, and affective strategies (zare-ee & salami, 2014). in addition, zare-ee & salami's study (2014) reported that not only do the beliefs of learners about language learning influence their use of learning strategy, but their level of english skills also affect the frequency of use and learning strategies choices. a similar study examining learners‘ beliefs by using the balli questionnaire and tem4 score was done by ren & bai (2016) to find out how learners‘ beliefs correlate with learners‘ achievement in learning a foreign language. the result showed that learning belief generally affects learning achievement, but not foundational (ren & bai, 2016). in other words, learners‘ belief is not the sole factor of the success of language learning, but to a certain degree, it affects learners‘ achievement along with other contributing factors. balli questionnaire was also used to investigate learners‘ beliefs about grammar instruction and error correction (loewen et al., 2009). the results showed learners‘ various perspectives on grammar instruction many saw grammar instruction as a useful, positive thing, while others viewed it as a negative thing and preferred focus on communication to focus on grammar (loewen et al., 2009). another study to find out whether or not learners‘ beliefs about learning english as a foreign language change over a period of time was carried out in iran (fazilatfar et al., 2014). the result of the study was suggested as a consideration in employing a certain approach in teaching english as a foreign language. this study aimed to investigate learners‘ beliefs in learning english as a foreign language by using balli questionnaire as the instrument to collect primary data. since the context is specific, there are no attempts to generalize the findings of this study, although they may serve as a basis for considering the use of certain approaches, methods, and strategies in teaching english. method this study employed primarily a quantitative method, through which http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 158-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data were mostly collected quantitatively. the quantitative data were gathered from balli questionnaire. to strengthen the quantitative data and to gain richer information, interviews were conducted. participants since this study is a case study, the number of participants was limited so that it can focus on investigating the case of the intended context. there were 30 students of semester 4 taking part in this study who participated by responding to question items provided in the questionnaire. the students were the first semester students of the international relations department who were enrolled in an english class at the language training centre of universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta. to gain more comprehensive data, two participants were selected for semi-structured interviews. instruments to gain quantitative data, this study used the balli questionnaire. the questionnaire was developed by horwitz (1985). horwitz‘s balli questionnaire was used because this questionnaire has been widely used in a lot of research on learners‘ beliefs (abdolahzadeh & rajaee nia, 2014; ariogul et al., 2009; aslan & thompson, 2018; bagherzadeh, 2012; cephe & yalcin, 2015; fujiwara, 2011; horwitz, 1985; ren & bai, 2016), so its validity is high. in addition to its popularity, hortwitz‘s balli questionnaire covers 4 crucial factors which contribute to learners‘ belief in language learning: (1) self-efficacy and expectation about learning english; (2) perceived value and nature of learning spoken english; (3) beliefs about foreign language aptitude; (4) beliefs about formal structural studies. to strengthen the quantitative data and to explore learners‘ beliefs on language learning more comprehensively, semi-structured interviews were conducted. an interview guideline was used during the interviews. data analysis procedure the quantitative data gained through questionnaire were analyzed using a five-point likert scale: strongly agree (5), agree (4), neither disagree nor agree (3), disagree (2), and strongly disagree (1). after the quantitative data were analyzed, the data from interviews were transcribed then verbally described. the qualitative data from interviews were analyzed to strengthen the data gained through the questionnaire. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 159-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license results and discussion the data gained through the balli questionnaire are categorized into four main factors and the question items which belong to each factor will be analyzed. the results of analyzing the questionnaire using a measurement of the five-point likert scale are categorized into the following criteria in table 1. table 1. scoring criteria no criteria score 1 very high 4.40 – 5.00 2 high 4.00 – 4.39 3 fair 3.50 – 3.99 4 low 2.50 – 3.49 5 poor 0.00 – 2.49 as shown in table 1 above, in general, the scoring criteria for each item are measured under very high, high, fair, low, and poor. learners’ self-efficacy and expectation about learning english (3.20) the result of questioning learners‘ self-efficacy and expectation about learning english is shown in the following table, in which the respondents respond to the five statements, it is shown in the following table 2. table 2. self-efficacy and expectation about learning english n o item descriptio n 51 4 3 2 1 mea n factor 1-self efficacy and expectation about learning english 1 i have a special ability for learning foreign languages 1 5 4 0 4 5 2 0 3.4 2 i believe that i will learn to speak english very well 4 5 6 8 9 0 0 4.06 3 i feel timid speaking english with other people 1 0 2 4 3 0 1 1 1 2.53 4 english is (difficulty scale)2 0 2 4 3 0 0 2 2.63 5 i enjoy practicing english with americans i meet 1 0 4 8 4 5 0 0 3.43 6 people from my country are good at learning foreign languages 3 0 2 8 3 0 8 0 3.2 based on the questionnaire scoring, the students‘ self-efficacy and expectation about learning english are generally low (3.20). the highest score is on the second statement: i believe that http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 160-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license i will learn to speak english very well (4.06). most of the respondents (17) agree on that statement and only three of them who neither agree nor disagree. interestingly, none of them disagree nor strongly disagree. in response to the first statement—i have a special ability for learning foreign languages—most of the students (15) neither agree nor disagree about their ability to learn to speak english very well. the score on that is the highest (45). there is only 1 student who does not agree on this. regarding the third statement (i feel timid speaking english with other people) most of the students do not agree nor disagree (10). surprisingly, only 1 student who does not agree on this. regarding difficulty in english, most of the students agree that english is an easy language (14). so, it is not surprising that a lot of them enjoy practicing english with americans they meet. twelve students agree on this, yet the number is almost the same as those who neither disagree nor agree on this. in fact, 15 students are neutral about this statement. concerning the last statement (people from my country are good at learning foreign languages), most of the students (10) neither agree nor disagree on it. only six students agree, and, surprisingly, four students disagree. they do not think that indonesians are good at learning foreign languages. in short, students‘ have low self-efficacy and expectations about learning english. meanwhile, the data gained through interviews show contrasting findings. the two students who were interviewed claimed that they are confident in learning english. one participant confessed that because her hobby is listening to english songs, it boosts her level of confidence in learning english. meanwhile, another participant said that her certainty in learning english is due to her willingness to learn english. question: are you sure that you will be able to learn english well? why or why not? sure, because i have the willingness to learn (int.1a) yes, because i am accustomed to listening to english songs (int.2a) as seen in the interviews above, it can be seen that learners‘ positive habit listening to english songs can contribute to learners‘ self-efficacy in learning a foreign language. it is in line with vandergrift & goh (as cited in yabukoshi, 2018) who retained that developing habits is a strategy to improve self-regulated learning. in other words, developing habits are consciously done as an employed strategy in learning a foreign language. another factor that can contribute to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 161-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license self-efficacy is learners‘ attitude about english. in this context, english is learned as a foreign language. the following excerpts of the interview show how learners perceive english affects how they are certain regarding their ability in learning english. question: what do you think about english? it is fun because i always think that english is not difficult. (int. 1b) it is quite different from the indonesian language. for example, in indonesian, there are affixes (“me“ and “–kan”), but in english, there is no such thing. (int.2b) as stated in the excerpt above, one participant expressed that english is not difficult because it is fun. when english is perceived as a subject which is not difficult, it implies that the learner‘s attitude toward english learning is positive, which means that she has good self-efficacy. another participant compared l1 with l2 and uttered that l2 is not as complicated as l1 as it does not have linguistic attributes such as affixes, which are present in l1. learners’ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english (3.76) the second factor to be analyzed is learners‘ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english. it is shown in the following table 3. table 3. perceived value and nature of learning spoken english n o item description 5 4 3 2 1 mea n 7 i want to learn to speak english well. 10 5 2 8 6 0 0 4.63 8 it is important to repeat and practice a lot. 10 0 2 8 6 0 0 4.46 9 people in my country feel that it is important to speak english. 50 4 0 2 1 1 0 3.73 10 it is best to learn english in an englishspeaking country. 8 3 2 3 9 8 0 2.9 11 i would like to have american friends. 35 2 4 4 5 2 0 3.53 12 it is important to speak english with excellent pronunciation . 55 3 2 2 7 3 0 3.86 13 everyone can learn to speak a foreign language. 65 4 0 1 5 0 0 4 14 if i learn english very well, i will have better opportunities for a good job. 85 2 4 1 8 0 0 4.23 15 you shouldn‘t say anything in english until you can say it correctly. 5 0 1 8 2 8 8 2.23 16 it is important to practice with cassettes or tapes. 25 5 6 3 0 8 1 4 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 162-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license regarding learners‘ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english, the highest score is on the first statement—i want to learn to speak english well (4.63). the score is very significant (105) as there are 21 students who strongly agree. only six students who neither disagree nor disagree with it. no students agree nor strongly disagree with this. the total scoring on the first statement is almost as much as the scoring on the second statement. most students (20) also strongly agree that it is important to repeat and practice a lot and there are six students who are neutral. no one disagrees nor strongly disagrees with this. the total score on this statement is 4.46. regarding the third statement, people in my country feel that it is important to speak english, most of the students (10) strongly agree with this and 10 agree. however, there is one student who disagrees with it. in the fourth statement (it is best to learn english in an english-speaking country) 13 students neither agree nor disagree. the score is the highest (39). only four students agree with this. the next statement (i would like to have american friends) also has the highest score on ‗neither agree nor disagree.‘ there are 15 students who are not sure about this. however, seven students strongly agree and six students agree with the statement about having american friends. in the next statement—it is important to speak english with excellent pronunciation—most students (11) strongly agree and 8 students agree with it. only one student disagrees. the positive result is on the statement: everyone can learn to speak a foreign language. 13 students strongly agree, and no one disagrees nor strongly disagrees. a very high score is gained on their belief about better opportunities for a good job if they learn english well. 17 students strongly agree and no students disagree nor disagree. the contrary result is found in the following statement: you shouldn't say anything in english until you can say it correctly. 14 students disagree and 8 students strongly disagree. only one student agrees. in the last statement—it is important to practice with cassettes or tapes, 14 students agree, and 10 students are neutral. from the explanation above, it can be concluded that students‘ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english is fair (3.76). the findings from the interview show that concerning learners‘ perceived value and nature of learning a spoken language (english), the two participants believed that doing a lot of practice is important. when being asked further about the best way to learn english, the participants stated the following: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 163-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license often practice speaking, writing, watching movies, etc. the point is learning through fun ways. otherwise, learning english will be difficult. (int.3a) visiting a country where english is spoken. by so doing, we can practice speaking for 24 hours. (int.3b) the two responses from the two participants above imply that they are aware of the strategy used in learning the target language. according to griffith (as cited in afshar & movassagh, 2017), language learning strategies refer to learners‘ conscious activities to regulate their own process of learning a language. linck et al. (as cited in ma et al. , 2018) asserted that meaningful practice in learning a foreign language can boost learners‘ associative memory. in addition to learners‘ conscious awareness about the need to practice the target language, they were also interviewed to find out their perception about making errors. the two participants uttered different point of views on errors in language learning: it‟s fine. when we make mistakes, we can correct them. we learn by doing. (int.4a) no. i‟d rather keep silent than making mistakes when speaking (int.4b) as shown in the excerpts above, one participant confessed that error is seen as a normal process of learning. this is in line with papangkorn (2015) who stated that error is useful for language teachers because it informs the teachers about learners‘ learning process and their accuracy. on the other hand, the second participant would rather avoid errors because he is afraid that he will be humiliated. this finding supports a previous study carried out by papangkorn (2015) who found out that most students felt reluctant to have their errors‘ corrected by the teacher because it will affect their feelings. learners’ beliefs about foreign language aptitude (3.11) the third factor to be analyzed is learners‘ beliefs about foreign language aptitude. the result can be seen in table 4. table 4. beliefs about foreign language aptitude n o item description 5 4 3 2 1 mea n 17 people who speak more than one language are very intelligent. 0 2 8 4 2 1 4 0 2.8 18 some people have a special ability for learning foreign languages. 2 5 5 6 3 0 0 0 3 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 164-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license n o item description 5 4 3 2 1 mea n 19 women are better than men at learning foreign languages. 5 8 4 8 1 4 3 3 20 people who are good at mathematic s or science are not good at learning foreign languages. 0 8 2 7 3 0 3 3 21 it is easier for someone who already speaks a foreign language to learn another one. 5 4 8 3 6 8 0 3.23 22 it is necessary to know about englishspeaking cultures in order to speak english. 1 0 2 4 3 9 1 6 0 2.96 23 i would like to learn english so that i can get to know americans better. 1 0 2 0 4 8 1 0 1 2.96 24 it is easier for children than adults to learn a foreign 3 5 1 2 4 2 1 2 0 3.36 n o item description 5 4 3 2 1 mea n language. 25 some languages are easier to learn than others. 3 5 3 2 3 0 1 2 0 3.63 26 if someone spent one hour a day learning a language, how long would it take him/ her to become fluent?1 2 0 4 4 1 8 1 2 1 3.16 as displayed in table 4, the highest score is on the statement—some languages are easier to learn than others (3.63). most students (10) are neutral and 7 of them strongly agree on this. however, only two students disagree with it. the other quite high score is on their belief whether ―it is easier for children than adults to learn a foreign language” (3.23). the highest score is on ―strongly agree‖ (35). 14 students neither disagree nor disagree and six of them strongly disagree. the scores for ‗it is necessary to know about englishspeaking cultures in order to speak english‟ and ‗it is necessary to know about englishspeaking cultures in order to speak english‟ are the same. it is 2.96 each. most students are neutral regarding those statements. a slightly higher score is obtained from the statement, „it is easier http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 165-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for someone who already speaks a foreign language to learn another one‟ (3.23). most students agree with the statement (12) and the number is the same as those who neither disagree nor agree (12). then, about the length of the period that someone spent in learning english, many of them (11) believe that it takes six to 10 years to become fluent in english if they spend one hour a day learning it. students mostly agree that „some people have a special ability for learning foreign languages‟ (14). however, only one student who agrees that ‗women are better than men at learning foreign languages.‟ 16 of them are neutral, seven of them disagree, and three of them strongly disagree. so, most students believe that gender has nothing to do with achievement in learning a language. an interesting fact is found related to whether ‗people who are good at mathematics or science are not good at learning foreign languages.‟ no one strongly agrees (0), two agree, nine are neutral, 15 do not agree, and three of them strongly disagree. the total score of that statement is three or low. so, most students disagree that the ability in mathematics does not influence the ability to learn foreign languages. a positive result is in the statement: ‗some people have a special ability for learning foreign languages.‟ most of them agree (14 students), 10 of them are neutral, five of them agree, and no one agrees. and the last, no one strongly agrees that „people who speak more than one language are very intelligent,‟ there are seven students who agree, 14 are neutral, and seven disagree on it. the total score for this statement is 2.8 or low. so, in general, students do not consider that the ability to speak more than one language determines someone‘s intelligence. to sum up, learners‘ have a low belief about foreign language aptitude. the data from the interviews show that both participants do not correlate the success or failure of learning a foreign language with gender. question: do you agree that women are better at learning english than men? why/why not? fifty-fifty. ability is not seen from sex. quality is not judged by gender. (int.5a) no. it‟s just the same. it just depends on the intention. (int.5b) the two participants‘ belief about how language proficiency is affected by gender seems to contradict a previous study conducted by wen & johnson (as cited in abdolahzadeh & rajaee nia, 2014) who stated that gender is one of the factors that have directly correlated with language proficiency. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 166-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learners’ beliefs in formal structural studies (3.11) the next factor to be analyzed is learners‘ beliefs in formal structural studies. it is shown in the following table 5. table 5 beliefs in formal structural studies n o item description 5 4 3 2 1 mea n 27 the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning the grammar. 1 5 4 8 2 7 1 0 1 3.36 28 the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning vocabulary words. 3 5 6 0 1 5 1 0 1 4.03 29 the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning how to translate from my native language. 1 0 4 8 3 0 4 0 3.06 30 language learning involves a lot of memorizatio n. 1 5 2 8 3 6 8 0 2.9 31 it is easier to read and write english than to speak and understand it. 3 5 1 2 4 2 1 2 0 3.36 32 if beginning students are permitted to make errors in english without correction, it will be difficult for them to speak correctly later on. 1 0 3 2 3 0 1 2 0 2.8 33 it is easier to speak than understand a foreign language. 2 0 2 0 4 8 4 1 3.1 34 it‘s ok to guess if you don‘t know a word in english. 5 2 0 4 8 4 1 2.6 35 learning a foreign language is different from learning other academic subjects. 1 0 4 0 3 6 0 0 2.86 as shown in the table above, the highest score is shown from the statement: „the most important part of learning a foreign language is learning vocabulary words‟ (4.03). it means, most students agree that learning vocabulary is the most important aspect of learning http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 167-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english. the number is quite significant (12 students), yet there are nine students who are neutral and five who disagree. the total number of those who agree with that statement is slightly above the total score about the importance of learning grammar and translating words into the native language. many students agree on those statements (12 students). yet, nine students disagree about the importance of grammar, and four students disagree about the role of translating english into bahasa indonesia. however, some students agree that it is easier to read and write english than to speak and understand it (seven students). others are neutral (14) and disagree (12). related to learners‘ belief about memorization in learning language, most students are neutral (12), seven students agree, three students strongly agree, and four disagree. a few students agree that it is easier to speak than understand a foreign language (4), but most of them neither agree nor disagree (14). very few students strongly agree that ‗learning a foreign language is different from learning other academic subjects‟, while most students agree (10), and 12 students neither agree nor disagree. most students neither agree nor disagree (16) related to guessing words in english. only two who disagree, but there are five who agree. the last is about treating errors. most students (8) agree that permitting students to make errors without correction will result in difficulty to speak accurately. however, six students disagree with it. in this section, the statement with the highest score is the importance of learning vocabulary (4.03). the data gained from the interviews support the result as reported above, especially about the importance of learning vocabulary. both participants agreed that vocabulary mastery is crucial because having a lack of vocabulary will impede their ability in learning the language. one participant added: learning a foreign language is not only about learning vocabulary. we must focus on the 4 skills. (int.6a) the importance of vocabulary in foreign language acquisition had been highlighted in mizumoto's study (2013) who stated that vocabulary is related to self-efficacy, as higher self-efficacy will lead to more knowledge of vocabulary. conclusion and suggestions based on this study, there are three factors that are in low category: learners‘ self-efficacy and expectation about learning english, their beliefs about foreign language attitude, and their beliefs in formal structural studies. meanwhile, one factor is in the fair http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 168-170 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.14362 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license category, that is learners‘ perceived value and nature of learning spoken english. it can be concluded that learners need to be motivated in order to increase their self-efficacy and attitude in learning english. therefore, teachers need to be more aware of this reality and action must be taken, i.e., employing a more motivating approach, strategy, or technique in teaching english, so that eventually it can enhance learners‘ motivation, confidence, and interest in learning english. references abdolahzadeh, e., & nia, m. r. 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(2014). a close study of the effects of esp learners‘ beliefs on the choice of language learning strategies. international journal of learning, teaching and educational research, 7(1), 119–130. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee understanding and reflection of issues in language education research understanding and reflection of issues in language education research iwan jazadi (iwanjazadi@gmail.com) stkip paracendekia nw sumbawa abstract this article discusses issues in social sciences research which serve as an introductory framework of understanding and reflection especially for beginning researchers in the field of english language education. it commences by addressing choices, decisions and factors involved when doing research. these include such variables as power relations, ethical issues, research design, claims to truth in research, and methodological considerations in research. the article ends with the reflection on these issues for carrying out research in indonesian english language teaching context. keywords: power relations, ethical issues, claims to truth, methodological orientations introduction as future researchers, can students and practitioners in language education just enter an actual research project without adequate theoretical understanding of it. can they expect that they would understand it while doing the research. if not, what sorts of understanding should they possess. in other words, are there several issues which should be addressed in order that they are well informed about how and what to carry out research satisfactorily. the answer to this last question is „yes‟, even not only addressed to students, but also to school teachers and lecturers or the academic community at large. this is because theoretical understanding should continue to be developed and refreshed. consequently, before embarking on a research project, one iwan jazadi 42| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 should understand some key updated issues which develop around her/his field of specialization, both global and local issues. global issues involve the development of new or popular trends in social sciences and particularly in language educational research. in addition the intertextual relations of research in the field and other related fields, the interconnection between and among researchers and other stakeholders should be taken into consideration. the local issues include the possibilities of carrying out research in a certain context which may differ depending on the contexts, the means available as well as the constraints which influence the research implementation. all these informing issues are of high contribution for making decisions about doing research. the discussion is compelling because, as a matter of fact, literature in english language teaching (e.g., articles in teflin journal, „indonesian linguistic journal‟, and many open access national and international journals) has not given a comprehensive attention on how stakeholders in research should manage each of their power, how ethical issues should be dealt with properly, and how trustworthiness is particularly addressed. generally informed by social sciences research literature and relevant elt references, the author highlights the major decisions which researchers are faced with, in relation to power, ethics, truth claims and methodological considerations in research. based on the highlights, the author then reflects on the issues for carrying out research in indonesian english language teaching contexts as informed by his professional experience and observation. power relations power relations are a very controversial construct because it is omnipresent, changeable, reversible, and instable (obiorah, olibie, & wenceslaus, 2010). foucault (1980, cited in obiorah et al., 2010), connecting power and knowledge, stated that the relation between power and knowledge is discursive: „the more power, the more understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |43 knowledge; the more knowledge, the more power‟. similarly, roussel (2005) defines knowledge as a bunch of relations in which power is strongly embedded. in other words, power and knowledge constitute one another. that is, knowledge is not separable from the individuals holding it, but a product of their power relationships. as such, power is persistently negotiated and constructed between participants who may at one time feel powerful and at another time less powerful. when a participant is in a powerful position, he controls and constrains the less powerful counterpart (anyan, 2013). research as a process of constructing new knowledge involves various stakeholders, such as researchers, subjects, previous researchers, researcher‟s institution, and research consumers. in particular, the interplay of power is predominantly essential to consider especially for research that involves human participants as sources of data (heap 1995, lather, 1986). thus, the intensity of power relation in language education research is determined by the choices of research relational orientations and the decisions that have to be made in all stages of the research process. in terms of orientations, cameron, frase, harvey, rampton, & richardson (1993) offer three choices of power relations a researcher can decide before embarking on research: „research on‟, „research on and for‟, and „research on, for and with‟. the use of the prepositions (on, for and with) indicates the preferred relation of the researcher to his/her subjects. „research on‟, also called „ethical research‟, assumes the subjects as having no interests. the research serves the interest of a mainstream group which the researcher represents. this type of research may bring about negative effects to the researched; therefore, the researcher is strongly recommended to forestall such potential danger. it is worth noting the choice of the term „ethical research‟ for the equivalence of „research on‟ which seems to bring a paradox to what „research on‟ actually means. perhaps, this choice is to remind researchers of forestalling potential dangerous consequences of such type of iwan jazadi 44| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 research. „research on and for‟, also labeled as „advocacy research‟, defends the interest of the subjects. in this case, their voice is represented by the researcher as the expert. last, „research on, for and with‟ which is also called „empowerment research‟ takes into account the personal dignity of the subjects. this means that the research is not only done on and for them, but most importantly with them, by which the researcher addresses their agendas, in addition to the researcher‟s. in a similar vein, zeni (1998) categorizes the researched into four types. first, a „subject‟ is observed and no active participation from her/him is needed by a researcher. second, an „informant‟ is aware of giving information to the researcher. third, a „participant‟ is more involved whereby her/his perspective is considered in research. last, a „collaborator‟ is fully involved in planning, implementation and interpretation of data research. the researched as „subject‟ or „informant‟ as perceived here seems to correspond to „research on‟. the researched as „participant‟ suits „research on and for‟, while the researched as „collaborator‟ corresponds to „research on, for, and with‟ as explained by cameron et al. (1993) above. zhang (2009) argues that language education should develop empowering research because it not only benefits the researcher, but also the teacher and students as they are taken equally as collaborators. furthermore, after a researcher decides the research relational orientation, and especially when the empowering research is taken, he/she is inevitable from the permutation of power that occurs in all stages of research process: participant recruitment, data collection, data analysis, validation, and reporting (karnieli-miller, strier & pessach, 2009; das, 2010). first, karnieli-miller et al. (2009) explain that in the initial stage of participant recruitment the researcher has control over the research process, by deciding how to introduce the research to potential participants, how to describe the research goals, and how to disclose institutional affiliations to maximize understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |45 cooperation. however, with potentially vulnerable participants, a researcher may face serious challenges. for example, das (2010), to finally recruit 21 participants, had applied many methods to find ways to advertise the study and elicit participation, including visiting community centers, social organizations, advertising the study in various locales, colleges in and around the city, posting various blogs and discussion posts in a variety of sites aimed at the target audience, and directly approaching many people in the community to obtain help for recruitment. these activities were geared towards building relationships in the community. in other words, das had experienced some sense of powerlessness during the recruitment stage, especially regarding whether she would be able to recruit participants for her research or not. similarly, to facilitate acceptance by participants (i.e., teachers and/or students) based in an institution such as schools, a researcher should have written recommendations, support and permission from various agencies required by law or convention. in indonesian context, these gatekeepers include the office of social and political affairs, the development planning board, the education office, and the school principal. such written support adds power to the researcher and positions her/him as one who deserves acceptance within the system (jazadi, 2008). next, in data collection stage, the research success seems to be entirely dependent on the participants‟ willingness to take part and to share their knowledge with the researcher. to allow for the collection of data with expected quantity and quality, it is argued that the researcher develops strong relationships or rapport with the participants. there are various rapport-building tactics that can be applied by a researcher, but they should be applied with care to prevent them from being interpreted as some type of manipulation to obtain the data needed for the study, while resulting in exposing vulnerabilities not only on the part of the researched but also iwan jazadi 46| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 the researcher (karnieli-miller et al., 2009; das, 2010). when faced with such circumstances, researchers should find ways to cope with. for example, ackerly & true (2008), from feminist-informed ethical perspective, describe a researcher who began interviewing vulnerable participants, but stopped doing so when they expressed feelings of insecurity in exposing experiences that if published might lead to their further social marginalization and their own fury at how their previous experience of telling their stories had been used by the authorities. as a result of her pondering on her relationship to her research participants and the impact of her research on them, the researcher changed her research question so that personal interviews with vulnerable women were no longer her main source of data. in her revised research design government officials became more important participants of study. the other example is das (2010), who had shared with participants her stories and experiences if they wished to hear them, aiming at reciprocating the vulnerability and level of the power between the participant and researcher and be able to emphasize with the participant‟s narrative to express understanding. nonetheless, the researcher later reconsidered her naive position of self-disclosure, her rights to confidentiality and anonymity, and right to keep personal information, and adjusted her position. accordingly, the researcher responded to personal questions in a much more controlled way and only encouraged it before or after the interview. in the stage of data analysis and production of the report, formal control and power over the data returns to the researcher (gitlin & russell, 1994; karnieli-miller et al., 2009). there are some choices she/he can consider. first, as usually applied in common research reporting, the concern is on research variables. the participants are made invisible, as if there were no power relations. the wordings seem very certainly definitive. most expressions are made in passive forms. yet, recently many social and humanities understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |47 researchers have started to apply a more interactive reporting style. the research process, such as how a researcher interacts with her/his subjects, is made explicit. the expressions used are also made more tentative, relative to the understanding of the researcher. such a style is also indicated by the dominant use of active forms and pronouns (hertz, 1996; jones 1992; gitlin & russell, 1994). in addition, power relation is more intensified in teacher research which has gained prominence since the last two decades (zeni, 1998; stocker, 2012). teacher research refers to teachers as the agents who conduct the study involving their own students, despite the different orientations taken (stocker, 2012). in such a research context, students are usually identified as „vulnerable – especially if their families have little money or education‟ (zeni, 1998), a „relatively captive population‟ (moreno, 1998) „people of a lower social status‟ (erickson, 2006), those who „feel under pressure to give up their free time and take part in an activity that may potentially make them feel uncomfortable‟ (taber (2007), and those who are in „the dynamic mix of personal ties and multiple social roles, statuses, and purposes‟ with the teacher who are also the researcher (stocker, 2012: 55). thus, although a teacher researcher can pass all research stages successfully, the power relation complexity must be fully taken into account. though less discussed, the other salient, form of power relation is between researcher(s) and previous researchers/authors. as can always be discovered in any scholarly paper, even in this one, experts‟ words have always taken a top-down relation, used to legitimate what the current researcher is claiming. however, there is another option; jones (1992), from a feminist educational research perspective for instance, argues that other theorists‟ account can only function as other points of view, not superior to what the researcher discovers. ethical issues ethical issues constitute further implications of power relations iwan jazadi 48| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 discussed above. the origins of concerns about research ethics are originally found in medical research, but this has broadened to include all research with human subjects (gallagher, 2005). these issues are related to how researchers ethically treat their subjects and others. hammersley and traianou (2012) identify four commonly recognized principles of research ethics, including minimizing harm, respecting autonomy, protecting privacy, offering reciprocity, and treating people with equity. banister (2007) suggests some key ethical elements when evaluating a research design. first, the researched must be able to provide „informed consent‟, meaning that they have been supplied necessary facts to determine if their participation in the study is safe and useful. second, they must be able to withdraw from the study at any time, without fear of punishments. third, researchers must ensure to eliminate unnecessary risks in planning their research. last, the benefits of participants and public in general must outweigh the potential risks of the study. however, cocklin (1992) and borg (2010) observe that while in theory ethical principles are very clearly delineated, in practice researchers often face dilemmas about what to do and which pose ethical questions. these have to do with the choice of research orientations, participants and contexts. with regards to research orientations, in „research on‟ or „ethical research‟ whereby the researched is assumed to have no interest, ethical issues have to be given a prime consideration as „human subjects deserve special ethical consideration‟ (cameron et al., 1993). one example of such research is experimental research where the subjects are divided into two groups: the experimental and the control groups. while the experimental group is treated with benefits of new ideas or innovation, the control group is treated with socalled old ordinary practices, therefore receiving no benefits. to overcome the dilemma, drew (2007) suggests that after the research is complete, the researchers could provide the new innovation program understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |49 to the participants in the control group if it is a more effective program. ethical issues have also to be addressed in „advocacy‟ or even „empowerment‟ (cameron et al., 1993) qualitative research, whereby the participant researcher may directly look into many aspects of the lifestyle of the participants, thus potentially pervading privacy of the researched (drew, 2007). in this case, personal, sensitive and research data shall be differentiated. personal data consist of information through which an individual could be identified. „sensitive data‟ means personal data comprising such information the racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other beliefs, physical or mental condition, and sexual life of the participants. research data are the aggregates collected as part of the research and only by which a participant cannot be identified. in addition, due to the nature of participant observation, all these kinds of data may be included in the data collected such as via audio or visual recording (banister, 2007) although they may not be the main data needed by the researcher. thus, the researcher has to be able to sort out research data from personal or sensitive data that are not needed in the research. personal or sensitive data may also be research data and so only those pertinent to the research that may be kept for further use with proper codification to ensure anonymity and confidentiality (university of nottingham, 2013). with regards to research participants, ethical issues appear in research involving children under 18 (a beginning legal age in many countries). when the participants are children, the research should obtain informed consent first from the parents or guardians, and when the child has reached the age of 7 or over, an informed assent must be obtained separately from her/him and that the objection of a child at any age should be adhered to unless the intervention being tested brings an important direct benefit to the child‟s health (leanai & olge, 2012). in relation to research contexts, some ethical questions emerge in teacher research and cross-cultural research. first, to highlight the ethical iwan jazadi 50| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 challenges faced by researchers who recruit their students as research participants, stocker (2012) reported a case study about how to get informed consent from her own students in an esp foreign language classroom in taiwan. she found that it is appropriate to follow some steps in obtaining students‟ consent. as a first step, complete information is provided orally and in writing to the participants. then, allow the students are allowed for delaying consent so that they have time to consider their choices under non-coercive environment. normally, oral consent about the teacher research general agenda should be obtained first. afterwards, they may discuss and reflect how each of them may consider herself or himself to participate or not. finally, when written consent to participate is pursued or submitted, it is recommended that a setting without teacher-student face-to-face contact is used, such as email or postal exchanges. while this method may lower participation rate, it certainly addresses the ethical dilemmas. second, in cross cultural research contexts, marshall and batten (2003) observe that generally minority groups have come across bad experiences such as prejudice and stereotyping, socioeconomic and career blockage; and struggling to maintain their own ethnic identity while adapting to life in the dominant culture. the academic perspective, despite some theoretical grounding in diversity, remains an extension of the dominant culture‟s base of largely european western values, ethics, and norms. therefore, marshall and batten (2003) recommend participatory action research (par) be used as the methodology in researching crosscultural community as it aims to improve the participants‟ well-being, promote knowledge, and to improve par practice through a critical scrutiny of the collaborative process. in addition, one last issue that often has less attention is „research deception‟ (drew, 2007), „occluded research‟ or „covert research‟ (university of nottingham, 2013). this issue pertains to an intentional misrepresentation of information understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |51 related to the aim, characteristics, or repercussions of an investigation (drew, ibid). the code of ethics at the university of nottingham (ibid.) states that the “withholding of information from participants should only occur when the researcher is clear that the aims and objectives of the research cannot be achieved by any other means and that the welfare of the participants is assured.” researchers‟ professional judgments should work to anticipate critical moments while they continue to consult the issues with the research ethic authority in their institution. truth claims and method ological considerations the last consideration which informs decision making in doing research has to do with various views on the essence of truth or the status claims of knowledge and the conceptualization of “validity‟ and „reliability‟ or „trustworthiness‟. views on the essence of truth are related to the kind of research „paradigms‟ a researcher embraces. in research literature, paradigms have captured a lot of definitions, which morgan (2007: 51-54) have categorized into four, from the broadest to the most specific. the broadest definition views paradigms as worldviews, i.e. the researchers‟ thoughts as a basic set of assumptions forming the nature of research and guiding their inquiries. in other words, paradigms as worldviews refer to the influence of individual researchers‟ awareness or knowledge on topics researchers chosen to be investigated. thus, in real life, people may claim truth based on the empirical reality as well logical and normative considerations. in this regard, heap (1995) proposes two claims of truth in human sciences which differ from „empirical inquiries‟. the first is termed „logical claims‟, indicating a necessary relation of at least two conceptual elements in a proposition. the second claim is called „normative claims‟ which rely for their truth on knowledge agreed upon in a particular community or context. a normative claim, therefore, is a contingent relation which is not a necessary one, as expressed in a logical claim. these two claims of truth are labeled as „a priori ones‟. iwan jazadi 52| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 the second definition views paradigms as the best known epistemologies (including realism and constructivism) as separate belief systems that affect how a researcher asks and answers questions. this version assumes that research intrinsically draws in epistemological issues about the nature of knowledge and knowing. specifically, treating post-positivism and constructivism as paradigms leads to fundamental differences in social scientists‟ assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the proper ways of producing such knowledge (morgan, 2007). kilpatrick (1988) describes three research trends related to different epistemological paradigms which educational practices have applied. the first trend is a quantitybased „empirical analytical science‟ which is adopted from natural sciences and has served educational agenda since more than a century ago. it focuses on unpacking „lawlike regularities‟ that allow one to explain, predict, or control phenomena. despite its continued domination in social and educational research, quantity-based research has failed in explaining complex phenomena (mende, 2005). for example, woods (2013) finds that a typical statistics-based research offers a fuzzy and obvious hypothesis and ignores a lot of information and so he recommends the use of qualitative research, such as case studies, as an alternative or supplement to explain complex social phenomena. the second trend is called qualitatively „interpretive understanding‟ which has entered educational research since the 1980s. it attempts to illuminate educational activities by describing them in ways that would make sense to the participants. the last trend in educational research is a „critical approach‟, which argues that „both school and society need to be freed from manipulation, repression and domination and that the researcher should play an active role in helping to achieve that freedom‟ (kilpatrick, 1988: 22). these second and last trends have contributed significantly in language education research within the last two decades as shown in many international professional journals and understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |53 publications in the field (richards, 2009). the third definition treats an aspect of paradigms as shared beliefs within a community of researchers who agree about which questions are most significant and which procedures are most appropriate to answer the questions. a community of researchers may be defined as that comprising „practitioners of a scientific specialty‟ devoted in the same technical literature (morgan, 2007: 53). for example, in english language teaching, one community of researchers may focus on comprehensively describing of the linguistic nature of language, cognition, and discourse as a basis for informing curriculum contents (cumming, 1994), while the other research community focuses on the pedagogic aspects including the application of communicative language teaching, classroom dynamics, teacher talks and learner interactivity aiming at optimizing students‟ mastery of the target language (richards, 2009). finally, paradigms are viewed as model examples that function as „paradigmatic exemplars‟ for how research is carried out in a certain field. in fact, there are many books and articles in social sciences that count on concrete examples in illustrating the broader principles they propose. the use of research projects as case studies serving as paradigmatic examples is especially common in descriptions of designs that mix different methods (morgan, 2007: 54). with the availability of information technology, one can easily find a plethora of research reports from undergraduate to doctoral theses, books and journal articles from universities and publishers around the world. practically, a lot of researchers would use the examples as resources to form their nature of research and guide their research processes. they would generally stick to particular epistemological stances, but would pragmatically adopt the epistemology examples that match their research needs. after understanding the various definitions of paradigms and their derivations to claims of truth, one has to consider ways to achieve iwan jazadi 54| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 reliability and validity or trustworthiness in research. in quantitative empirical research, reliability refers to the replicability or repeatability of results or observations, while validity refers to the construct as the beginning concept, notion, problem or hypothesis that arranges which data is to be collected and how it is to be collected (golafshani, 2003). however, these notions of validity and reliability do not apply in qualitative social research, and so qualitative research experts have developed a set of criteria to achieve „trustworthiness‟. lincoln & guba‟s (1985, cited in and added by loh, 2013) have developed trustworthiness criteria and techniques for establishing them, as shown in table 1. table 1 criteria and techniques for achieving trustworthiness in qualitative research criteria techniques credibility (internal validity)  prolonged engagement  persistent observation  triangulation (sources, methods, investigators) peer debriefing  negative case analysis  referential adequacy (archiving of data)  member checks  peer validation  user validation transferability (external validity)  thick description dependability (reliability)  overlap methods (triangulation of methods)  dependability audit (examining the process of the inquiry; how data was collected and kept) confirmability (objectivity)  confirmability audit (examining the product to attest that the findings, interpretations and recommendations are supported by data). all criteria above  a reflexive journal (about self & method) these criteria and techniques have appeared to be a consensus up to the present as they continue to be mentioned mainstream qualitative literature (e.g., creswell, 2009; creswell & miller, 2000; patton, 2002; maxwell, 2005; maxwell, 2009; merriam, 2009; yin, 2011; as cited in loh, 2013). reflection: doing langua ge education research in indonesia having gone through the series of literature, i now describe some issues in carrying out research in indonesian regional contexts, by understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |55 using the english language education context of west nusa tenggara province as a sample which i have adequately observed for more than 10 years in my position as an english lecturer and researcher. people involved in language education research would include university lecturers, postgraduate students, school teachers and completing undergraduate students whose disciplinary background is language or language education. university lecturers would do research as part of their regular career development. school teachers used to be obliged to do research as part of their career promotion to senior teacher position of iv/b, but are beginning to be obliged to include their action research report or publications in every proposal of their rank promotion. postgraduate students, who are still small in number in the region, are obliged to write theses for completing their masters studies, and undergraduate students who form the majority of university student population in west nusa tenggara are required to write theses before graduating. it is important to mention all these potential researchers as they are the ones the targets of this article. however, this reflection is not comprehensive, but is generally represented by a typical case in each of some salient issues of global and national research trends, power relations, ethical issues and claims to truth in research. first, potential researchers should follow global and national trends in language education research. though west nusa tenggara is relatively far from centers of world publications, with the availability of the internet, potential researchers can access latest findings and research through online academic journals, such as elt journal (oxford university press), tesol journal quarterly (tesol org.), english teaching forum (us embassy), tesl-ej, internet-tesl journal, asian efl journal quarterly, tesol journal, asian esp journal, linguistics journal, and foreign national journals including philippines esl journal, iranian efl journal, language in india and chinese efl journal – all of them published by times taylor international or its iwan jazadi 56| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 sister publishers, besides relc journal and anthology series (seameo relc). in addition, online e-books and research reports from british council are also very useful resources for researchers in west nusa tenggara. at the national level, accredited journals such as teflin journal (teflin.org), indonesian journal of english language teaching (unika atma jaya), and indonesian linguistic journal (mli) are representative resources, in addition to many newly emerging open access university-based journals. all these publications are generally available online free of charge, by covering issues even more than the last ten years. therefore, trends of language education research can easily be mapped. what needs to be done is to inform potential researchers in the region about the importance of accessing these resources and for educational institutions to have secure internet connections. it should be noted that the cost of internet connection is getting more competitive following the success of indonesian telecom company in installing fiber optic cables along all national roads in the region, as well as private cellular phone companies that allow even isolated areas in the region to have internet connections. from the various resources, for example, we can see that there is a trend in language teaching in the world, though it has been frowned upon at the national level since recently, about internationalization of schools whereby english is used as the medium of instruction for math, sciences and some other subjects (e.g., see coleman 2011; bax 2010; hadisantosa 2010). this entails that english learning should be targeted not only to english teacher trainees but also other teachers and teacher trainees specializing in other subjects. moreover, due to the high demand english-competent graduates and the status of english as a global language, english teaching and learning should be oriented to reallife-based mastery of english whereby students learn english through a variety of exposure including using the internet for meeting international friends and other resources, building networks with tourist resorts and centers, and understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |57 being committed to joining english camps or living temporarily in english villages that require english as the language of interaction (jazadi et al., 2012; solihin, 2012; jalaluddin, 2012). in other words, english language, which is traditionally a rote-learnt subject, has emerged as a living language used as a tool of daily communication and interaction in places usually associated with english as a foreign language. second, regarding the issue of power relations, researchers in west nusa tenggara are still generally dominated by a traditional view of power relations that the stakeholder having the only power in research is the researcher. consequently, although a lot of the researchers are involved in classroom action research as it is obliged especially for school teachers, the research is simplified as „research on‟ whereby teachers do the research because they need it for their job promotion (so they feel powerless in front of the government); they do it without proportional consent and involvement of the students. generally the action research projects undertaken involve pre-testing and post-testing through which students‟ scores can be manipulated to satisfy the expectations of supervisors and superiors. thus, the so-called action research becomes tastelessly empiricist and numerical, far from being „research on, for, and with‟, which is emancipatory. therefore, the teachers, as well as many university lecturers, should be awakened to fully comprehend the core mission of classroom action research, that is: “...to identify problematic situations or issues considered by participants to be worthy of investigation in order to bring about critically informed changes in practice. action research is underpinned by democratic principles in that the ownership of change is invested in those who conduct the research (burns 2009: 20)”. in other words, there is a complex issue of power relations among education authorities, teachers as researchers and students. that is, teachers who should share their power with their research participants (i.e., students) fail to do iwan jazadi 58| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 so, while they release all their power to the education authorities whom they are supposed to report administratively, rather than profess ionally. thus, the strengthening of teachers‟ position as valued professionals is an important agenda prior to their involvement as researchers. third, ethical issues are never addressed explicitly in education research projects in the region. i observe that no university or college has included ethical issues in their research policies and guidebooks. several researchers with doctorates and who hold important positions in the regional colleges and universities mainly specialize in pure or applied linguistics and so they are not fully conversant with humanity research. on the other hand, it is inevitable that most of their students, generally those doing undergraduate research, focus on educational research with school students or parents as participants. for this reason, socialization about the urgency of the consideration of ethical issues in research involving human participants such as students should be taken as an institutional policy by colleges, universities, as well as education offices that oversee teachers‟ research. more importantly, the ministry of education and culture, especially the directorate general of higher education, would need to revise the „implementation guide of research and community service in higher education‟ (2013) to include a section of ethical standards that should be followed by researchers in higher education institutions. fourth, pertaining to claims to truth in research, most researchers still tend to see their research as part of their job requirement that has no real contribution to knowledge. every teacher is required to produce action research, every lecturer produces research reports regularly, every university student writes a thesis before graduating, but almost none of them are published nor even fully critically read by the supervisor or the examiner. thousands of the academic works are kept in the respective college or university libraries, generally not treated as sources of valued truth or understanding and reflection of issues ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 |59 knowledge, but as sources of plagiarizing. that is, many students copy, paste and edit some parts of previous theses of other researchers to be presented as their own. hence, research validity and reliability that are tested generally statistically serve as sweeteners in the generally quantitative-oriented research. this practice should be cut by promoting qualitative research whereby the tendency for manipulation can be minimized. furthermore, lecturers, university students, and even school teachers should collaborate in handling qualitative research that responds to the need for improving educational quality. each of the researchers takes a relevant angle of the research to meet their respective needs such as writing a thesis or a research report for a sponsor and a supervisor. more importantly, every research work should be published at least electronically, which is efficient. with the taking effect of the circular letter of the director general of higher education (2012), that every student (undergraduate, master or doctorate) has to publish her or his work in a journal prior to graduation, there should be no more reason for higher education institutions not to facilitate their students to publish their research. one of its ways is by condensing their thesis into a journal article format so it can be published at least in the respective institution electronic journals (especially for the undergraduates whereby accreditation status of the journals does not matter). a lot of (but not all) big education universities in indonesian have begun to do this, let alone the smaller ones, but the prospect is promising. such electronic publications are likely to bring a very positive effect to the dissemination and promotion of knowledge and to the prevention of plagiarism. indonesian education minister‟s decree on prevention of plagiarism in academic practices can be upheld through observing the publications. conclusion the author has discussed choices, decisions and related factors which face researchers in coping with a research agenda. some different viewpoints on the methodological iwan jazadi 60| ijee, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014 aspects have also been reviewed. therefore, it is expected that language education researchers in indonesia have sufficient shared awareness which enables them to strengthen their research agenda, by figuring out their position as a stakeholder and the position of the research within the national and international trends. the writer‟s reflection about conducting research in indonesia, especially in west nusa tenggara educational context, is admittedly not thorough yet, but shows the complexity of the challenges for doing research that responds to the need for improving educational quality in the region. it may still be a long way for most researchers in the region to produce credible research. however, with the availability of the information technology or the internet and the requirement for university graduates to publish their academic work in journals in conjunction with the strengthening of anti-plagiarism regulation, the development of the humanity and action-based research to the right track is believed to meet its momentum in a foreseeable future. references ackerly, b. & true, j. 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(2009). on power relation in the design of language research project and the analysis of data. english language teaching, 2(3), 171-174, available online www.ccsenet. org/journal.htm, accessed 24/ 05/2014. http://www2/ http://www/ http://www.ccsenet/ to whom it may concern copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 73-85 understanding discourse competence in translation masduki received: 24th march 2015; revised: 26th april 2015; accepted: 29th may 2015 abstract discourse as a communication event is influenced by topic being communicated, interpersonal relationship between the communicants, and communication channel used in context. whatever senses created by the communicants is fully related to culture and situation being involved. participating in conversation, reading, writing, and translating, activates discourse competence, which requires the use of a set of strategy to realize or mobilize all declarative knowledge in the real context of communication. further, this article highlights the discourse competence and how it is culturally implemented in translation as an activity of transferring messages. the discussion covers the overview of discourse competence, discourse approach, and discourse competence in translation. key words: competence; discourse; translation abstrak wacana sebagai sebuah peristiwa komunikasi dipengaruhi oleh topik yang dikomunikasikan, hubungan interpersonal pihak yang terlibat dalam komunikasi, dan jalur komunikasi yang digunakan dalam suatu konteks. makna apapun yang diciptakan oleh penutur dalam komunikasi selalu terkait dengan budaya dan situasi yang melingkupinya. berpartisipasi dalam percakapan, membaca, menulis, dan menerjemahkan, berarti mengaktifkan kompetensi wacana, yang memerlukan penggunaan seperangkat strategi untuk merealisasikan atau memobilisasi semua pengetahuan deklaratif ke dalam konteks komunikasi yang berlangsung. lebih lanjut, artikel ini mengupas mengenai kompetensi wacana dan bagaimana kompetensi wacana tersebut diterapkan di dalam penerjemahan sebagai suatu kegiatan menyampaikan pesan. pembahasan dalam artikel ini meliputi pemahaman umum mengenai kompetensi wacana, pendekatan wacana, dan kompetensi wacana dalam penerjemahan. kata kunci: kompetens;, wacana; penerjemahan how to cite: masduki. (2015). understanding discourse competence in translation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 76-88. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1499 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1499 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 74-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction translation as a process of transferring a message involves two different languages, the source language (sl) and the target language (tl). the translation also involves two different sociocultural context associated with sl and tl. therefore, the translation cannot be seen simply as an effort to replace the text of one language into another language. another factor that is needed in a translation process is a discourse competence to produce a syntactically correct and socially acceptable translation. nida and taber (1974, p. 12) mention that the translation "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." it means that translation is an effort to reveal the return message from one language into another language. the phrase receptor language shows that the translation is an activity that is intended for communication and hence the translation is based on whom it is intended and for what purposes it is done. discourse competence discourse competence is one element of communicative competence (celce-murcia et al., 1995, p. 10). the discourse of communication is an event that is affected by the topic being communicated, interpersonal relationships of the parties involved in the communication, and communication channels used in one cultural context. if a person communicates using spoken or written language, he is engaged in a discourse. any meaning he obtained and created during the communication process is always linked to the cultural context and the context of circumstances. participating in the conversation, reading, writing, and translating automatically activates the discourse competence and therefore uses a set of strategies or procedures to realize the rules existed in the elements of language in interpreting and expresses the meaning. discourse competence can only be acquired if other competencies are obtained. those competences involve linguistic competence, speech acts competence for spoken language or rhetoric competence for written language (actional competence), sociocultural competence, and strategic competence. discourse competence refers to the strategy to procedure or 'mobilize' all over declarative knowledge in the context of real communication to create meaning in communication. this capability is ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|75-85 commonly called procedural knowledge which means that language cannot be broken down into saparated competence (linguistic, actional, sociocutural, strategic, discourse) but is directed toward the acquisition of discourse competence. acquiring competence in discourse is inseparable from the existence of a context. when one thinks of the language, there are at least three important aspects that must be taken into account, i.e. the context, text, and language system. language occurs in a context that can be expressed in such a way that influences, determines, and is linked to the choices of words when creating and interpreting texts. in any context, people use language to perform three main functions namely (1) ideational function which is used to express or construct ideas or information; (2) interpersonal function, which enables people to interact with others; and (3) textual function, the function that regulates how the text is constructed to be cohesive and coherent. there are two kinds of context i.e. the cultural context and context of the situation. a cultural context 'gives birth' to many kinds of text which is known and accepted by the community members because the arrangement and the language used is to support the communicative purpose of the text. for example, when someone heard the word 'recipe' he/she would imagine the composition of the text and the language commonly used in the recipes. likewise, if he/she heard the word 'short story' he/she would imagine the composition of the text and the language that is different from the recipes. this text type is called a prose. in short, a cultural context spawned many genres. when someone learns a foreign language, he/she is involved in the creation and interpretation of various types of text using lexical contents and structure different from those that are produced in his own language system. there are three factors that influence one's language choice, which include the topic (field), interpersonal relationships between the language users (tenor), and lines of communication (mode). these three factors determine whether a person chooses to speak formally or informally. the emphasis on context evolved into an emphasis on discourse. it should be understood that the discourse is more extensive than the text. in translation, it can be said that discourse is the text with all factors that affect meanings, both as a source text and target text. discourse is the text of the entire context and situation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 76-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 there are various types of discourse, which, among others, can be seen from the communication media and exposure discourse. based on the communication media, the discourse can be distinguished as oral discourse and written discourse. referring to the exposure, discourse can be distinguished into several categories, which are discourse as a text, discourse as a genre, discourse as a professional, and discourse as a social practice (bhatia, 2004, p. 18). discourse as a text refers to the use of language that is associated with the level of discourse property. this type of discourse includes formal and functional aspects of a discourse, which are phonology, lexico-grammar, semantics, and other aspects of the structure of the text (for example themes and rheme). this discourse does not refer strictly to the context but solely on a co-text. although basically a discourse is always associated with a context, discourse as a text often neglects its role in context. discourse as a text only operates in a textual space where knowledge of language structure and function is being exploited for this. the emphasis on the level of discourse as a text is actually more on the property associated with the textual construction of products rather than interpretation or use of a variety of products. discourse as a genre refers to the use of textual products associated with a context, in a broader sense of the text, regarding both how texts are constructed and how it is interpreted and built, and exploited in the context of a particular professional or institutional to achieve certain goals. thus, this type of discourse is not only concerned with the linguistic features but also socio-cognitive and ethnographic aspects. this framework is sometimes referred to as genre-based theory. knowledge of genre includes not only textual knowledge but also awareness and understanding of professional practices and community discourse (swales, 1990). a genre often works on practical space which encourages members of the discourse community to exploit the generic resources to respond to the situational context that is happening. the actual concept of this approach is the discourse as a professional practice, which is basically an extension of the idea of the use of genre related to professional activities. to be able to work effectively at this level, one needs to have professional knowledge and experience of professional practice, and also knowledge of the genre. the workspace of all is the professional space. discourse as a social practice refers to the level of interaction with the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|77-85 broader social context, where the focus shifted significantly from product to the textual context features, such as changes in participants' identity, social structures or professional relationships, in which a genre needs to be maintained or replaced, and the gain or loss of a genre that brought on a particular reader. therefore, the discourse as a social practice in the social space requires a person to have a social and pragmatic knowledge in order to work effectively. communication is difficult to implement in the absence of discourse relations (a relationship between sentences) and without context (brown, 1994, p. 235). furthermore, brown argues that through discourse a person can greet one to another, ask, criticize, and forgive, and so on. stubb (1983, p. 1) states that the discourse is the language settings above sentences or clauses, such as the exchange of conversation or written texts. consequently, the use of discourse at the time notices the language used in a social context and in particular the interaction of speakers. brown and yule (1996, p. 1) state that discourse is a complete record of the events of linguistic communication. communications can use spoken language and written language. discourse can be transactional and interactional. in this relation, it is explained that the function of language to reveal the contents being described is mentioned as transactional and language functions involved in the disclosure of social relations and personal attitudes described as interactional. discourse approach discourse can be analyzed from several approaches i.e. speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, communicative ethnography, pragmatics, analytical conversations, and analysis of variance (hatch, 1992). approach of speech acts sees not only the language used to describe the world but also undertakes a number of activities that can be expressed by performance in the speech itself. interactional sociolinguistic approach in discourse is by looking at the relationships that exist between the social meaning and linguistic meaning. ethnographic approach involves cultural interpretation in communication. pragmatic approach involves the meaning of the speaker related to its purpose and the principles of communicative. analytical conversations uses ethnometodology to look for patterns of uniformity in the context of speech and different social behavior. variance approach in discourse deals with formal patterns in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 78-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the text, especially narrative and how the patterns are restricted in the text. beaugrande and dressler (1981) developed an approach to discourse using what is called integrative approach. it incorporates various parts of different approaches to jointly look at how the text function in the interaction. thus, this approach analyzes the text in a more holistic and continuous perspective. broadly speaking, integrative approach is to analyze whether a text is quite communicative, and to be a communicative, text needs to have textuality consisting of cohesion, coherence, intention, acceptability, informativeness, and situation. cohesion the presence of discourse cannot be seperated from the context. discourse context consists of various elements such as situations, the speaker, the listener, time, place, scene, topics, events, channel, code, and forms of message. the elements are closely related to the elements in any proposed language communication (hymes, 1972) which covers the background, the results / objectives, message, tones, norms, forms, and a variety of languages. in written discourse, the context is very important to consider. that is because the meaning of a text or its parts are often determined by the sense given by other text. it can be either speech text, paragraphs, or discourse. in addition to the context, discourse is determined by the relationship between elements (cohesion). halliday and hasan (1992, p. 65) explains that cohesion is a set of source language as part of the textual metafunction to link one piece of text with other parts. meanwhile, according to gutwinski (1976, p. 26), cohesion is the relationship between sentences and between clauses in a text, either in the grammatical level and lexical level. there are various types of devices cohesion. halliday and hasan (1976, p. 5-6) mentions five kinds of cohesion, which are (1) reference, (2) substitution, (3) ellipse, (4) conjunction, and (5) lexical cohesion. hatch (1992) explains that the cohesion associated with the connection of components of the text that can be seen or heard. these components are the forms and conventions of lexicon and grammar. in closer relation units such as phrases, clauses, and sentences, grammatical relationships formed because of cohesion. however, in the longer text cohesion formed by the repetition of the same word or phrase, repetition of part or the use of two words that have the same root but different word classes, parallelism, or use the same form but ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|79-85 filled with different expressions, paraphrasing or repetition fill with different expressions, the use of deixis, ellipsis, and conjunction. coherence most discourses show the surface forms cohesively with the use of cohesion devices above. however, it is important to note that the surface form of cohesion is not only expressed by simply cohesion but also implies coherence namely the semantic relationships that underlie the discourse. thus the most important one is the coherence and not merely cohesion. in a discourse, coherence or integrity can be achieved because the author or translator only develops one main idea. each main idea is expressed by a topic sentence. furthermore, the topic sentence is often explained by the explanatory sentences. explanatory sentences do not add new ideas in paragraphs but explained that the idea is summed up in a sentence stub. intention in contrast to the cohesion and coherence, intentions relate to the attitude of producers who seek to create a cohesive and coherent text so that the goal can be achieved. the ability of this intention can be measured according to the cooperative principles i.e. the maxim of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner. maxim of quantity assumes that one would give the right amount of information required and would not exceed the required information. maxim of quality assumes that one should contribute correct information or should not say anything doubtful. maxim of relevance assumes that one would express the relevance of an existing information to avoid vague and full of ambiguity. whereas maxim of manner assumes that one would give expression that can be understood by others. acceptability acceptability relates to the attitude of the recipient, the recipient's willingness to participate actively in giving meaning to the discourse to achieve a common goal. giving meaning means that the involvement of reference and inference is important. reference of a word or sentence is determined by the speaker or writer. reference is the relationship between phrases in the text and the form of the entity. the term reference is used together with the meanings to discuss the lexical meaning. in that sense, lyons (as cited in brown & yule, 1996, p. 203) suggested that the term can be replaced by the term of denotation. halliday and hasan (1976, p. 37-39) distinguish references on personal ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 80-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 references, designation reference, and comparative reference. in addition to the division above, reference can be distinguished by endophoric reference (textual, or in the text) and exophoric reference (which is situational, or outside the text). endophoric reference distinguishes anaphoric reference and cataphoric reference (halliday, 1976, p. 33). anaphoric reference directs the reader to the form, process, or circumstances previously mentioned. cataphoric reference directs the reader to the next text to identify the elements designated by the reference point. exophoric reference has a relationship with the interpretation of the word through the situation (circumstances, events, and processes). unlike the reference, inference is a process that must be done by the listener or reader to understand the meaning which is literally not included in the discourse expressed by the speaker or writer. in other words, the inference is the process of understanding the intention of the speaker or writer. informativeness informativeness deals with the extent to which the contents of a text are already expected. the informativeness of text should not exceed so that the text becomes too complicated and conversely the informativeness of text should also not be so low that the text results in boredom. informativeness of text makes the text covers many new things. thus boredom can be avoided and the rejection of a text can also be avoided. situation the situation is related to the factors that make a text relevant to a situation. the situation in which the text is exchanged influences the comprehensiveness of the text. situation can affect the means of cohesion. it means that less cohesive text may be more appropriate than more cohesive text depending on the situation. therefore, in such a matter, economical use of text is more effective and appropriate than a fully cohesive text. discourse competence in translation hatim and mason (1997, p. 1) define translation as "an act of communication that attempts to relay, across cultural and linguistic boundaries, another act of communication (which may have been intended for different purposes and different readers/hearers)." translator in this case is the recipient of the message in the source language and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|81-85 when he translates then he acted as a messenger in the target language. if what is pursued by a translator is the disclosure of the source language in the target language, then the target text must be textually equal to the source text. in the theory of translation, two texts are equal if the contents are similarly understood by the receiver (reader) respectively in the source language and the target language. therefore, nida and taber (1974, p. 174) argue that the best textual translation is "dynamic equivalence" and that the form of source text may be different but having similar meaning, namely that the recipient understands the target text similar to the source text that is understood by the recipient in the source language. furthermore, newmark (1988, p. 4) suggests that how a translation involves the source text and target text at two opposite poles. on the one hand, the source text is mainly influenced by factors namely text-producer, the norm in the source language, culture, and the format of the source language. on the other hand, the target text is also influenced by the same factors namely target text reader, the norm in the target language, culture, and the format of the target language. thus, an understanding of the text is determined by the context, both in the source language and the target language. this process is called the "dynamics of translation". seeing the two different orientations (the source language and the target language), we can see the purpose of translation in a broader perspective. hoed (2004, p. 1-16) speaks of "foreignizing translation" (which is oriented to the source language) and "domesticating translation" (which is oriented to the target language). in foreignizing translation, the translator is fully under the control of the source language text writer, so that the translator becomes invisible. here, the role of the author is dominant and the translated text given to the reader is an aspect of "foreign" culture expressed in the language of the reader. in domesticating translation, translator determines what is needed so that the translation is not perceived as the work of "foreign" to the reader. in this case the translator becomes more visible because of his work is considered as a "derivative" even as a sort of "adaptation." foreignization and domestication can be said to constitute a kind of perspective in translation. it depends on the purpose of translating. even if this perspective is for making policy in terms of translation of texts, it can be called as ideology. this trend is known as the "skopos" (masduki, 2011). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 82-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 one example of that is about the title of mr., mrs., mom, and dad as a foreign colored. those words, for the adherents of foreignizing translation, are not translated into indonesian by the reason that the words are no longer alien to indonesian readers. similarly, the word sandwich, hotdogs, etc. are not transferred into the target language. it is a concept of foreignizing translation or transference to shift cultural values of the source language into the target language. meanwhile, for the adherents of domesticating translation, foreign words, including greetings such as mr., mrs., uncle, aunt, and so on should be translated into the target language so that the whole translation comes as part of the target language. similarly, the adaptation of animal story (in which foreign animal figures and natural environment are replaced with animal figures and nature) exists in the target language. the truth of both ideological tendencies cannot be expressed as an absolute. both have a function in the cultural life of a society. newmark (1988, p. 20) argues that the terms of reference for the process of translation is based on the language and cultural issues addressed by involving the context factors that are ultimately followed by the selection of translation procedures. the reference frame is used as the basis of thinking in the translation process, as in the following chart: the framework above shows that the factor of context is a way out of the problems arising from the differences between the two languages involved in the translation process. it means that the target language elements that are equivalent to the elements of the source language can be found through the context. so, what is translated is not a formal meaning, but the contextual meaning. in terms of translation by this discourse, newmark (1988) gives a translation model based on the characteristics that striking in a text, among others, coherence, cohesion, theme, rheme, enumeration, opposition, conjunction, substitution, comparison, punctuation, and rhetoric. this model also pays attention to the tone, intent, text functions, and pragmatic features in a text. meanwhile, hatim and mason language/culture cases contexts procedures ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|83-85 (1997) consider translation as a creation and therefore every part of the translated text should be seen as part of the text processing and rhetorical function at a higher level. this means that the translation is something dynamic. with reference to the model of newmark, hatim and mason, as well as the approach developed by beaugrande and dressler, then the source language text can be analyzed or homologized by looking at the sixth aspects of textuality; i.e. cohesion, coherence, intention, acceptability, informativeness, and situation. let us take the example text in the source language (english language) as follows: go straight ahead then take the first right. cohesion in the text above is built using deixis. basically there are five kinds of deixis markers namely, person, place, time, discourse, and social (hatch, 1992) and one of the deixis markers can be found in the text above is deixis of place. this deixis of place explains where the path is: turn right or turn left. coherence is associated with the concepts and relationships. concepts is related to the configuration of knowledge, while the relationship is the link between the concepts that appear in the text. coherence describes the characteristics of the text as a human activity. a text may not be able to make sense in the absence of interaction between the knowledge conveyed by the text and also human knowledge about the world. coherence can be built with causality, possibility, reason, time, and location. the text above shows that there is coherence of time and location of the building. the readers, the drivers in this case, understand that he / she should go straight ahead and after the first turn or block, he / she must turn right directly. intention in the above text can be viewed based on cooperative principles, namely in terms of quantity and manner. in terms of the quantity, the intention is shown by providing the right information needed by drivers. in terms of manner, the intention is to give expression that can be understood by the drivers. acceptability in the text above is to show directions to the driver or other road users before the direction is enacted and the recipients participate in giving meaning to the direction to achieve a common goal. that is, the text as a whole has been able to create a context to provoke the imagination of readers. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 84-85|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 informativeness in the text indicated by the emergence of a new mental set. in target language (bahasa indonesia), the emergence of the new mental set is that the indonesian people rarely see a direction that says if we want to turn, then we must immediately take our turn at first right without following the instructions of traffic signs. this seems strange or even is considered as violating the rules when we drive a car and then turn right directly. the situation is indicated by factors relating to the condition, in which the situation of the direction is not addressed and even not properly directed in the target language. however, the equivalent translation of the text above is an analogy of the direction to take our turn at first left directly in the road in indonesia, due to the mental set that the allowed turn is on the left. conclusion and suggestion from the description above, it can be summarized that the competence of discourse in translation becomes an important aspect to be possessed by the translator. to understand a discourse is not only to understand the meaning of words, the meaning of the syntactic structures, and semantics in general, but also to understand the social and cultural context of the relevant communities where the language is used. the overview of theoretical issues of discourse competence in translation hopefully provide perspectives to translators on how to transfer messages in viewpoint of discourse competence. references beaugrande, r. a. de and dressler, w. u. 1981. introduction to text linguistics. london: longman. bhatia, v. k. 2004. world of written discourse. advances in applied linguistics. london: continuum. brown, h. douglas. 1994. principles of language learning and teaching. english cliffts, new jersey: prentice hall. gutwinski, walderman. 1976. cohesion in literary texts. a study of some grammatical and lexical features of english disocurse. the hague mouton. halliday, m.a.k & r. hasan. 1976. cohesion in english. london. longman group ltd. ----------------. 1992. bahasa, konteks, dan teks. aspek-aspek bahasa dalam pandangan semiotik sosial. translation by asrouddin barori tou. yogyakarta. ugm pres. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|85-85 hatch, e. 1992. discourse and language education. new york: cambridge university press. hatim, b. dan i. mason. 1997. the translator as communicator. london/new york: routledge. hoed, benny h. 2004 “ideologi dalam penerjemahan”, in journal of linguistik bahasa, vol.2 no. 1, 2004. pps uns. hymes, dell. 1972. model interaction of language and social direction in sosiolinguistics. new york: holt, reinhart and winston inc masduki. 2011 “konsep skopos dan aspek fungsionalnya dalam penerjemahan”, in journal of bahasa dan seni, no. 2, 2011. um. newmark, peter. 1988. a textbook of translation. uk: prentice hall international. nida, e.a., dan ch. rtaber. 1974. the theory and practice of translation. helps for translators. den haag: brill. stubbs. michael. 1983. discourse analysis: the sociolinguistic analysis of natural language. oxford: basil blackwel pub ltd. swales, j.m. 1990. genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 86-100 learners' language needs analysis of english subject in azkia integrated islamic primary school neneng sunengsih, ahmad fahrurrozi received: 04th april 2015; revised: 25th april 2015; accepted: 20th may 2015 abstract in this paper, the writer analyzed the objective of english learning at azkia integrated islamic primary school and the pupils‟ needs in learning english. the paper described pupils‟ needs, which are divided into the target needs and the learning needs. the study employed qualitative method, which used phenomenology approach. the data were collected from classroom observations, interviews, and documentary analysis, and then were analyzed and classified into the target needs and the learning needs. the findings showed that the pupils‟ needs to be fulfilled in learning english are introducing english at the early stage, coping english language in the classroom and the daily lives, emphasizing vocabulary building and its development, applying recognizable topics to support vocabulary mastery, giving a wide range of instruments which stimulates the pupils using english in their daily lives. further, learning english can be easier for the pupils when the concrete objects are utilized well and visual aids are made available. key words: needs analysis; teaching english for young learners; pupils needs; target needs; learning needs abstrak dalam artikei ini, penulis menganalisa tujuan pembelajaran bahasa inggris di sekolah dasar islam terpadu azkia dan kebutuhan siswa dalam belajar bahasa inggris. artikel ini menggambarkan kebutuhan siswa, yang dikelompokkan dalam target needs dan learning needs. penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif, dengan pendekatan fenomeonologi. data diperoleh dari observasi kelas, wawancara dan analisis dokumntasi, yang kemudian dianalisis dan diklasifikaskan ke dalam target needs dan learning needs. hasil temuan menunjukan bahwa kebutuhan siswa yang harus dipenuhi dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris adalah memperkenalkan bahasa inggris pada usia dini, menggunakan bahasa inggris dalam kelas dan kehidupan sehari-hari, menekankan pembentukan kosa kata dan perkembangannya, menerapkan topik yang familiar demi mendukung pemahaman kosa kata, memperbanyak alat yang mendorong siswa menggunakan bahasa inggris dalam kehidupan seharihari. kemudian, pembelajaran bahasa inggris dapat lebih mudah jika benda-benda konkrit dimanfaatkan dengan baik dan di lengkapi dengan bantuan visual. kata kunci: : analisis kebutuhan; pembelajaran bahasa inggris untuk usia dini; kebutuhan siswa; tujuan kebutuhan pembelajaran; kebutuhan pembelajaran how to cite: sunengsih. n. (2015). learners' language needs analysis of english subject in azkia integrated islamic primary school. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 89-103. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1483 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1483 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|87-100 introduction english subject in primary schools in indonesia acts as a localcontent subject, which according to huda (1999), is intended to develop abilities to understand simple oral and written expressions. according to permendiknas no. 22/2006 on content standards, it is explained that the purpose of learning english in indonesia is directed for pupils in order to: 1. have an ability to develop competencies in the form of limited verbal communication to accompany the action in the context of school; 2. have awareness on the nature and the importance of english to increase the nation‟s competitiveness in global society; and 3. develop students‟ understanding about the relevance between language and culture. meanwhile, the reality has shown that the competencies established in permendiknas no. 22/2006 on content standards cannot be achieved optimally. consequently, the competency of english language possessed by primary school pupils is still far from the expectations. this fact has raised several problems that impede the process of english language teaching in primary schools. according to the result of a preliminary study conducted by the writers, the main problem mostly found in the classroom is lack of pupils‟ motivation in participating in the english learning process in the classroom. the english teaching method mostly found in the classroom is socalled the conventional method. it means that teachers have not fully implemented creative and innovative learning. teachers usually teach only with conventional method in delivering materials such as writing down the material on the white/black board and explain it to the pupils and ask them to write on their notebook or memorize it. consequently, pupils‟ skill to communicate in verbal and written form of english is very limited. furthermore, this method causes pupils to be bored and lack of motivation in participating in the english learning process in the classroom. to solve these problems, teachers need to have a good understanding about selecting appropriate teaching materials and methods, children learning characteristics, and how they learn languages. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 88-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 there are many considerations on selecting appropriate teaching materials and methods. according to richards, one of the basic assumptions of the curriculum development is that a sound educational program should be based on an analysis of learners‟ needs (2001). it can be assumed that one of the basic assumptions in selecting appropriate teaching materials and methods is based on an analysis of pupils‟ needs. needs analysis or needs assessment is the first step to identify pupils‟ language needs in selecting appropriate teaching materials and methods based on pupils‟ needs. richard et al. (as cited in jordan, 1997) defined needs analysis as an essential method of carrying out research prior to design and evaluate materials or syllabus and it helps draw a profile of students or course in order to determine the needs for which students require english. by conducting needs analysis, teachers can teach suitable materials to their pupils with suitable methods which can increase pupils‟ motivation in participating in the english learning process in the classroom. in other words, needs analysis is a method used to determine learners‟ language needs. hutchinson and waters (1987) offer „learning-centered approach‟ to complete „target-situation analysis approach‟ proposed by munby in conducting needs analysis. they involved learning as “a process of negotiation between individuals and society (which includes teaching, syllabus, methods, materials, etc.)”. besides, they also compare „target needs‟ (what the learner needs to do in the target situation) with „learning needs‟ (what the learner needs to do in order to learn). furthermore, hutchinson and waters (1987) compare target needs (what the learner needs to do in the target situation) and learning needs (what the learner needs to do in order to learn). then, they sub-divide target needs into necessities, lacks, and wants. the analysis framework of a target situation includes: (1)why is the language needed? (for study, work, training, combination of these, or some other reasons, e.q. status, examination, promotion); (2) how will the language be used? (medium: speaking, writing, reading, etc; channel: e.g. telephone, face to face; type of text or discourse: e.g. academic text, lectures, informal conversations, etc.); (3) what will the content areas be (subjects: medicine, biology, daily lives, shipping, etc; level: e.g. technician, postgraduate, secondary school); (4) who will the learner use the language with? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|89-100 (native speakers or non-native; level of knowledge of receiver: e.g. expert, student, beginner; relationship: e.g. colleague, teacher, customer, subordinate, etc); (5) where will the language be used? (physical setting: e.g. office, school, workshop, library; human context: e.g. alone, meetings, demonstrations, on telephone, dialogue; linguistic context: e.g. in own country, abroad). (6) when will the language be used? (concurrently with the esp course or subsequently; and frequently, seldom, in small amounts, in large chunks). (hutchinson and waters, 1987, pp.55-56) on the other hand, according to hutchinson and water (1987, p. 60), learning needs refer to “knowledge and abilities that the learners require in order to be able to perform to the required degree of competence in the target situation (p. 60). similarly, they also compiled a simple framework for analyzing learning needs. the framework includes: (1) why are the learners taking the course? (compulsory or optional; apparent need or not; are status, money, promotion involved?; what do learners think they will achieve?; what is their attitude toward the esp course? ; do they want to improve their english or do they resent the time they have to spend on it?); (2) how do the learners learn? (what is their learning background?; what is their concept of teaching and learning?; what methodology will appeal to them; what sorts of techniques are likely to bore/alienate them?); (3) what resources are available? (number and professional competence of teachers; attitude of teachers to esp; teachers‟ knowledge of and attitude to the subject content; material; aids; opportunities for out-of-class activities); (4) who are the learners? (age/sex/nationality; what do they know already about english?; what subject knowledge do they have?; what are their interests?; what is their socio-cultural background?; what teaching styles are they used to?; what is their attitude to english or the cultures of the englishspeaking world?); (5) where will the esp course take place? (are the surroundings pleasant, dull, noisy, cold, etc?); (6) when will the esp course take place? (time of day; everyday/once a week; fulltime/part-time; concurrent with need or pre-need). (hutchinson and waters, 1987, pp.59-60) in this study, this learning – centered approach is used to find out ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 90-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 learners‟ language needs on english subject in primary school based on their target needs and learning needs. furthermore, the writer adapted the target needs based on its classification (necessities, want, lack) and the framework in analyzing target situation (target needs) and developed it into five themes. the themes are the objective of teaching english in primary school, the situations needed in learning english, the contents/materials that need to be taught in learning english for primary school, the wants in learning english for primary school, and the difficulties that need to be overcome in teaching and learning english in primary school. relating to children learning characteristics, it is clearly observed that children are often more enthusiastic as learners. moreover, they will be interested in an activity even though they may not fully understand why and how they do that. however, they cannot keep their motivation on tasks that they find difficult and they also lose their interest rapidly. corsaro proposed, as cited in musthafa (2010), that children do differently from that of adults. consequently, children should be treated and appreciated appropriately in their own right. the theories from piaget and vygotsky on children cognitive development can give descriptions related on how children learn, and it is also used as basic assumptions on teaching english to young learners. piaget (1954) postulates, as cited in santrock (2011), that children construct their understanding of the world around them. the children are seen as continually solving their problems that are presented by the environment. children‟s thought develop from derived action then action is carried out in the mind mentally or internalized. according to piagetian psychology, as cited in cameron (2001), a result of activity, which development can take place is divided into two ways namely assimilation and accommodation. when action takes place without any change to the child, it is called assimilation, whereas accommodation involves the child adjusting to features of the environment in some way. beside piaget, vygotsky also believes that children construct their knowledge actively. however, vygotsky concerns on culture and social interaction aspects in cognitive development. according to santrock (2011, p. 50), vygotsky used “zone of proximal development” (zpd) as “the term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more skilled ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|91-100 children”. he added that the lower limit of the zpd is the level of skill reached by the child working independently and the upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor. in other words, the zpd captures the child‟s cognitive skills that are in the maturing process and can be accomplished only with the assistance of a more-skilled person. in vygotsky‟s perspective, language takes an important part in children development. according to vygotsky (as cited in cameron, 2001, p. 5), “language provides the children with a new tool and opens up new opportunities for doing things and organizing information through the use of words as symbols.” in other words, children use spoken language not only for social communication, but also to help them solve tasks. furthermore, vygotsky (as cited in santrock, 2011, p. 53), argued that “young children use language to plan, guide, and monitor their behavior”. all children in the world acquire their native language without formal drill, and there are some theories related to the language acquisition process. chomsky (1959) believed, as cited in mcclosley (2002), that every child has an innate ability to learn and use a language. on the other hand, bruner (as cited in cameron, 2001), proposed a term “language acquisition support system”, which popularly known as “scaffolding”, to explain adults‟ or peers‟ helps using language in the form of talk to mediate the world for children and help them to solve problems around them. by using scaffolding, children can understand their tasks easily because helps come from adults and peers are formed in fine-tuned helps. moreover, good scaffolding is tuned to the needs of the children and adjusted as the children become more competent. from the background above, the writers attempt to find out the empirical evidence of language needs of azkia integrated islamic primary school pupils, which is needed to fulfill their target needs and learning needs in learning english. in addition, it is also deemed necessary to study whether these needs are in line witht the objectives of learning english. method the location of the study this study was conducted at azkia integrated islamic primary ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 92-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 school (aiips) from 11 november – 6 december 2013. the first week of this study was used for documentary research analysis, and the last three weeks was used for classroom observation and interviews. azkia integrated islamic primary school is located at duren mekar village, bojong sari, sawangan, depok. the school is established and operated in 2010, and there are eight classes registered from the first grade until the fourth grade. english subject is taught from the first grade until the fourth grade as a local-content subject, and it has time allotment two contact hours in a week. in determining the subjects of this study, the researchers used a purposeful sampling in order to help the researcher understanding the central phenomenon. according to creswell (2012), purposeful sampling was aimed to learn or understand the central phenomenon by selecting individuals and sites intentionally. the subjects of the study were teachers, pupils, and parents of pupils in the third and the fourth grade of azkia integrated islamic primary school. the researchers‟ reason choosing them as the subjects of this study was the pupils got the experience on both the foreign language week program and english course provided by the school. the design of the study this study employed a qualitative method by phenomenology approach, which aims at finding out numerous views of specific phenomenon in a limited population. this study focused on pupils needs on developing their english competencies in the form of limited verbal communication to accompany the action in the school context as the bounded subject of the study. data sources and data collection techniques the data were collected by using three techniques. they were observation, interview, and documentary analysis. observation in this case, the observation was conducted by observing target needs to compile a profile of learners‟ language needs, and learning needs such as teaching methods and techniques used by teachers, and teaching and learning process in the classrooms of the third and the fourth grade where english subject was taught. moreover, observation in this study was used to find out the relevancy of the syllabus ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|93-100 and the lesson plans used during teaching and learning process. interview the interviewees were a teacher and four parents of aiips students and the interview was conducted by using interviewing guide and was held in one of classrooms on aiips. this interview aimed at getting information related to the target and the learning needs of english subject and teaching english for young learners. documentary analysis for this study, the english subject syllabus and its lesson plans for the primary school were collected. after the data were collected, the content of the syllabus and the lesson plan were comprehensively compared and analyzed. the enhancement of documentary analysis was done by comparing the content of standard competence and basic competence with the syllabus. data analysis techniques and the validity of data after collecting the data using documentation, observation, and interview, then the researchers prepared for data analysis by reading and identifying them. the data were coded for description and themes used in the research finding. the process of data analysis explained previously was referred to the qualitative process of data analysis made by cresswell (2012). after analyzing the obtained data, the triangulation strategy was used to check the validation of the data. findings and dicussion concerning the target needs, there are five points needed to fulfill the target needs of the pupils in learning english. they are introducing english at the early stage, coping english language in the classroom and the daily lives, emphasizing vocabulary building and its development, applying recognizable topics to support vocabulary mastery, giving a wide range of instruments which stimulate the pupils using english in their daily lives. in terms of the learning needs, there are several points to fulfill the learning needs of the pupils in learning english. firstly, english can be easier for the pupils when the concrete objects are utilized well. secondly, visual aids should be made available to facilitate better teaching and learning process. in addition, teaching methods should vary and emphasize the use of visual illustration and physical movement to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 94-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 create more attractive learning environment. the discussion is divided into two parts, namely target needs and learning needs. the target needs concern the objective of teaching english in primary school, the situation needed in learning english, the content or materials to be taught, the wants in learning english and the difficulties in learning english. the learning needs discuss the ways pupils learn english, the pupils‟ learning styles, the learning resources and the teaching method.; target needs the objective of teaching english in primary school the objective of teaching english in primary school is to introduce english from early age. it was concluded from the result of the interview with the five respondents of this research. the four of pupils‟ parents similarly argued that the objective of teaching english in primary school is introducing english to the pupils. besides, the teacher thought that the objective of teaching english is developing the pupils‟ competence on simple communication in english orally in the school context. what the teacher thought was similar to one of the objectives of teaching english in primary school established by the government on permendiknas no. 22/2006. nonetheless, the objective established by the government is implicitly aimed to introduce english in elementary level. the situations needed in learning english based on the interviews, there are two situations that the pupils learn and use english language. the first is they learn and use english during english subject class, and the second is they learn and use english when they face the english language in their daily lives such as watching television, playing video games, etc. the finding is supported by the result of observation that the pupils learn and use english during english subject class. for example, a pupil asked to borrow an eraser to another pupil using english language by saying “can i borrow your eraser?”. the contents/materials that need to be taught in learning english for primary school related to the contents or materials that need to be taught in learning english for primary school, the teacher and most of pupils‟ parents stated that the topics should be related to pupils‟ life such as home, school, their daily activities, etc. these topic are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|95-100 expected to facilitate the pupils in recognizing english language from the early ages. this finding is supported by the result of documentary analysis that the topics used in learning english are related to the world around pupils. likewise, it is also reinforced from piaget‟s argument that children construct their understanding of the world around them. in this case, introducing english language to the pupils through the topics related to their lives and world around them can facilitate them to learn english easier. the wants in learning english there were various responses related to the wants in learning english for primary school. based on the result of the interviews, half of the respondents from the pupils‟ parents said that the pupils should comprehend english vocabulary as much as possible in order to prepare them in learning english in the high schools level. another respondent argued that the primary school should attach an english proficiency program such as toefl, toeic, etc. to the english syllabus and apply the english language usage in the school environment. however, the teacher argued that the pupils should first comprehend english vocabularies related to their daily lives before they study for other purposes. besides, they also should be able to communicate with english language orally by using simple utterances, and read and write simple english words and sentences. the difficulties in learning and teaching english there are three difficulties revealed from this research. the first difficulty concerns the fact that many students are less-familiar with english words. secondly, many students have difficulties in differentiating between spoken english and written english. finally, students have difficulties to use english orally. in addition, there were some pupils who were less-motivated in learning english. according to the teacher, some pupils were lessmotivated due to their perception about english, which is also influenced by their environment. for example, one of pupils lives in an environment that considers learning english language is difficult, complicated, and so forth; this situation has made the pupil has similar perception toward english and consequently it makes him or her become less-motivated. furthermore, the result of observation showed that there are also some pupils who really need special ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 96-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 attention in their study. for instance, there were some pupils who cannot understand teacher‟s explanation in learning simple utterances which have explained several timed even though the teacher had explained it more than twice. to solve this problem, the teacher, based on the interview, created fun activities during teaching-learning process while occasionally giving more attention to pupils who need to be given special attention. learning needs the ways of pupils learn english the pupils learn, in this case learning english, through the concrete and real things. from the result of the interview, all of the respondents have the same idea that children learn english from the concrete and real things around them. the teacher added that the pupils were difficult to imagine the concrete things if she did not show the illustration about them. the pupils’ learning style regarding to the learning styles used by the pupils in learning english, according to the teacher, many pupils in this school used visual learning style and the others used kinesthetic and audio learning style. it was supported by the result of classroom observation that many pupils used visual learning style rather than audio or kinesthetic learning style during english language class. the learning resources according to the teacher, the available sources in teaching english in this school are english language textbook, cd audio, and english material complements from internet. it is supported by the finding on the syllabuses and the lesson plans that the sources used in teaching english are english language textbook, cd audio, and english material complements from internet. the teaching method based on the classroom observation, the pupils were more interested to learn when they were presented with physical movement and visual illustration. it was reinforced by the argument from the teacher that using visualization and physical movement in explaining the english material is the interesting teaching method for the pupils. however, from the syllabuses and the lesson plans used by the english teacher, it shows that english teaching in this school employs conventional teaching method in its implementation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|97-100 level. nevertheless, based on the finding of the classroom observation, the teacher used the integrated skill approach in teaching english. when teaching vocabulary, the teacher began to write the topic on the white board then discussed what would be taught with the pupils. after the pupils understood the topic that they would learn, the teacher prepared a laptop and cd contained voices related to the vocabulary that would be taught on the class then played a track of the cd using the laptop. the track was played three times in order to train the pupils listening and understanding english words and its utterances. after that, the teacher wrote down the english vocabularies on the white board and gave the meaning of the words by giving clues through body language and clue sentences in english or indonesian language. next, she asked the pupils chorally and then individually to repeat the word that she had said. when she felt that the pupils can pronounce the words well, she asked them to write down the vocabularies written on the white board. at the same time, the pupils learnt how to read the vocabularies written on the white board when they were writing the vocabularies on their notebooks. after the pupils finished their writing, she checked the pupils‟ writing and corrected the writings if she found the mistakes from the pupils‟ writing. the similar approach applied with some modifications when the teacher taught language competencies. in addition, the result the of classroom observation showed that the teacher developed her teaching procedures in the classroom. it was described when the differences appeared between what was written on the lesson plans made by the teacher and how she taught the subject in the classroom. she clarified this finding by arguing that what was written in lesson plans was used as the basic guidelines in teaching english, so she tried to develop the lesson plans during teaching learning process in the classroom. according to the teacher, lack of variety in teaching english and the explanation without giving concrete examples are the teaching techniques that need to be avoided during english subject class. these findings are reinforced by the results of observation which is showed that the pupils began to feel bored when teacher was too long in one activity and when she did not use concrete examples in her explanation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 98-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 conclusion and suggestion needs analysis is a systematic procedure that is performed to collect information about learners‟ needs and it is used as the basis for developing curriculum in order to meet learners‟ needs. the result of the study showed that there are two kinds of needs that should be fulfilled in order to develop the pupils‟ competencies in the form of limited verbal communication to accompany the action in the context of school. they are target needs and learning needs. in the target needs, there are five aspects that have to be fulfilled in teaching english in primary school. the first is the need to introduce english in early age. the second is the need to manage the learning activities so that they represent pupils‟ daily activities such as watching television, playing video games, etc. in other words, there is a need to create learning environment that resembles students‟ daily life. the third is the need to use familiar topics while the fourth is the need to focus the teaching and learning on vocabulary building. this is important to support the pupils in developing english language competencies such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. the last is the need to provide a wide range of tools that enable the pupils to meet the english language in their daily lives such as providing vocabulary list with illustrations and creating various fun activities. these are expected to overcome the difficulties found in teaching and learning english in primary school. similarly, there are also five aspects that have to be fulfilled in teaching english in primary school related to the learning needs. the first concerns the need to use concrete objects available around pupils‟ environment or to visualize those objects. the second is the use of visual aids optimally to facilitate the pupils to learn english easier, especially because many pupils in this school are visual learners. the third is the need to use various materials including audio video and other supplementary materials from internet. the fourth deals with teaching methods, which fingdings of this study suggest the use of visual illustration and physical movement while explaining the english material (total physical respond). the last one suggests that teachers should not explain to the pupils without giving any concrete examples the use of various teaching methods and techniques and visual illustration or concrete objects can increase the pupils‟ motivation in learning english. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|99-100 based on the conclusion above, the researcher would like to offer suggestion to english teachers, parents and curriculum designers. firstly, the english teacher should consider five points related to this study. first, the english teacher has to remember that the purpose of teaching english in primary school is to develop competencies in the form of limited verbal communication to accompany the action in the context of school. besides, he or she has to apply the objectives on the syllabus, lesson plans, and teachinglearning process in the classroom. second, the teacher has to help the pupils to overcome their difficulties in learning english. third, the teacher has to teach the materials that the pupils need to facilitate the use of english on the relevant situations such as in the school context. fourth, the teacher has to use various methods and techniques to avoid the pupils getting bored during english subject class. the last, the teacher has to understand how the pupils learn a language, in this case english, because it can facilitate both the teacher and the pupils to create an effective english teaching and learning. concerning parents, the findings of this study suggest that parents as adults should give guidance and supports to encourage the pupils in learning english. when the pupils have guidance and supports from their parents they will learn english with high motivation that encourages them to master english well. finally, with regards the curriculum designers, the findings of the study are expected to give valuable contribution to english curriculum designers as a basis of improving, developing, and evaluating the existing curriculum. references cameron, lynne.(2001). teaching languages to young learners. cambridge: cambridge university press. creswell, john w.(2012). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research, fourth edition. boston: pearson education, inc. huda, nuril. (1999). language learning and teaching: issues and trends. malang: ikip malang publisher. hutchinson, tom and waters, alan. (1987). english for specific purposes: a learning-centred approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. jordan, r. r. (1997). english for academic purposes: a guide and resource book for teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. kemendiknas, permendiknas no. 22/2006, unpublished. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 100-100|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 mccloskey, mary lou. (2013, october 30). “seven instructional principles for teaching young learners of english”, http://bit.ly/19v1x3a. musthafa, bachrudin. (2010).teaching english to young learners in indonesia: essential requirement. educationist. 4. richards, jack c. (2001).curriculum development in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. santrock, john w. (2011a). life-span development: thirteenth edition. new york: the mc graw-hill companies. http://bit.ly/19v1x3a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 10-20 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the learning strategies used by efl students in learning english dinda hartina mega sartika, asih santihastuti, eka wahjuningsih received: 12th april 2019; revised: 28th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract this research was aimed to focus on the most frequently used strategy by the successful and unsuccessful senior high school students and describe the difference of strategy used by them. this was a survey design with a questionnaire as the instrument. the participants were 40 students consisting of 20 successful students and 20 unsuccessful students of tenth grade in sman 2 jember. the writer distributed sill questionnaires to observe their language learning strategy (lls) based on oxford (1990), which covers six categorizes of strategies namely cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective, and social. the statistical analysis showed that metacognitive became the most frequently learning strategy used by successful students in scale of high use, while the unsuccessful students were medium users of cognitive strategy. it also indicated successful learners employed all six categorizes of strategies in a highly frequencies than the unsuccessful ones. this makes the assumption that successful students have the ability to plan clear goals, control, review, and evaluate their learning rather than unsuccessful students who focus more on the way they think, memorize, summarize, and repeat the learning. key words: language learning strategy; efl learners; sill questionnaire abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk fokus pada strategi yang paling sering digunakan oleh siswa sma yang sukses dan kurang sukses serta menggambarkan perbedaan strategi yang digunakan oleh mereka. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian survey dengan instrument berupa kuesioner, sedangkan tanggapan siswa dalam memilih strategi dibahas secara deskriptif. partisipan adalah 40 siswa yang terdiri dari 20 siswa yang sukses dan 20 siswa yang tidak sukses dari kelas sepuluh di sman 2 jember. penulis membagikan kuesioner sill untuk mengamati language learning strategy (lls) atau strategi pembelajaran bahasa mereka berdasarkan teori oxford (1990, yang dikategorikan menjadi enam macam strategi, yaitu kognitif, metakognitif, memori, kompensatori, afektif, dan sosial. menurut hasil statistic metacognitive menjadi strategi pembelajaran yang paling sering digunakan oleh siswa yang sukses dalam skala tinggi, sedangkan siswa yang kurang sukses adalah pengguna menengah dari strategi kognitif. ini juga menunjukkan bahwa siswa yang sukses menggunakan keenam kategori strategi dalam frekuensi yang sangat tinggi daripada yang kurang sukses. ini membuat asumsi bahwa siswa yang sukses memiliki kemampuan untuk merencanakan tujuan yang jelas, mengendalikan, meninjau, dan mengevaluasi pembelajaran mereka daripada siswa yang kurang sukses, yang lebih fokus pada cara mereka berpikir, menghafal, merangkum, dan mengulangi pembelajaran. kata kunci: strategi pembelajaran bahasa; peserta didik efl; kuesioner sill how to cite: sartika, d. h. m., santihastuti, a., wahjuningsih, e. (2019). the learning strategies used by efl students in learning english. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 10-20. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 11-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction on the field of learning strategy, language learning strategy (lls) plays an important role in learning process. in language research recently, learning strategies are conscious, teachable, intentional, self-chosen, and self-regulated thoughts and actions for learning the target culture and language (oxford, 2017). earlier than that, more definition were added by o’malley and chamot, which (1993) described learning strategies as “the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information”. simply it is found that lls is what students think and act to accomplish a learning goal in learning process. they can select the activity based on their preference in order to make learning becomes more enjoyable. for example, some students practice english with friends at schools and some practice english with people who can speak english outside the classroom. some students also practice english by reading english text and some by listening to music in english. various strategies are performed by learners in order to improve their english and help them achieve their goal in learning. moreover, applying learning strategies influence students in terms of their independency and where they learn how to manage their learning in such various ways. o'malley & chamot (1990) stated that language learning strategies are applied by language learners as a means to acquire and to use information acquired, stored or recalled by the learners, and can also promote autonomy learning. this happened because language learning strategy indirectly guides the students to become active learners that can provide their own needs and choose their preference in learning the language. briefly, we can say that, the more students are able to apply strategies, the more they become successful learners, because they know their goal and find any ways to achieve it. this makes an assumption that successful learners use more strategies than unsuccessful learners, due to their capability in applying strategies better as they know their needs in learning. drawing to the attention, the results of li (2009) in his study also was in line with the idea that successful learners are more in favor of using more learning strategies to learn rather than unsuccessful learners. he found in his study that successful learners are more aware in learning as they know how importance it is, that it also motivated them to become successful through applying more strategies often to get more benefits than usual. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 12-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9667 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license earlier, it was also observed that successful learners are capable of using various learning strategy properly compared with the unsuccessful learners (oxford, 1996). in brief, we can assume that there is a strong comparison of strategy learning used between the successful and unsuccessful learners. therefore, it is interesting to know what strategies that successful and unsuccessful learners do in learning english so that it gives some information or the teacher, especially to help students learn better. oxford (1990) categorized language learning strategies (lls) into six aspects; cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective, and social, in which it represents both in direct and indirect toward learners’ behavior and activities. cognitive strategy enables the learner to produce new language materials in direct ways, for examples by doing reasoning, analysis, notetaking, summarizing, practicing structures and sounds formally. metacognitive strategy is a strategy that is much more related to planning, arranging organizing, and evaluating the materials. memory-related strategies help learners to learn and retrieve information in remembering through sound, word, images, acronym, rhyming, gestures, and combination from some of them. compensatory strategy is a strategy where students are guessing from the context they have in listening and reading. affective strategies cover the activities of understanding learners’ mood and anxiety level. social strategies reveal students’ interaction with others. these six categories are intentionally used and controlled by the learner themselves. to identify this, oxford has developed a model of questionnaire, which is popular as sill (strategy inventory for language learning). its function is to investigate the types of lls by giving range for certain behaviors representing students in learning english. sill has been widely used by lots of researchers as a part of empirical tool in the success of worldwide language learning, for examples, in korea, the result reported that metacognitive and cognitive strategies were frequently mentioned as effective strategies represented by successful colleges learners in university level (lee, j., & heinz, m. 2016), as well as another study that was conducted in spain (dmintreko, v. 2016), also found that adults learners tend to use metacognitive and cognitive strategies too. in iranian, the investigation showed that successful learners, in which it categorized as a group of students with high grade of toefl and got mean score more than ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 13-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 3.5 in sill questionnaire, used wider range of metacognitive strategies while unsuccessful learners preferred to use surface level cognitive strategies (gerami, h., & baighlou, s., 2011). this present study focused on the most frequently used strategy by the successful and unsuccessful senior high school students and describe the difference of strategy used by them. in addition, the result of this study can hopefully provide a benefit that covers a facilitation to enhance teaching and learning quality by knowing the students’ strategy choice as it can help them to become more active, creative, and autonomous. for the teachers, this study could give some insight on the facts that some students are having difficulty in their learning because they are unable to adjust their learning into different kinds of strategy variations. by knowing this, teachers could reflect on their teaching by creating and accustoming various approach and techniques during the teaching and learning process for the students to be familiar with any activity that represent the strategies that the students could employed by themselves later on. method this present study was conducted by using survey design. the present study was conducted in a public senior high school sman 2 jember. this school is included in the second place as the most preferable school in jember regency (as cited in radarjember, 2018). specifically, there were 40 students consisting of 20 successful students and 20 unsuccessful students. the criteria for categorization was students’ grade point average in the odd semester, in which, according to the school rules, successful students are identified as those who had passed the score 86 in the odd semester, whereas unsuccessful students are identified as those whose score were less than 86. the data collection method in this research was in the form of questionnaire. the research instrument used to collect the data was sill (strategy inventory for language learning) version 7.0 (esl/efl) developed by oxford (1990). the questionnaire was in the form of likert/scoring data, and was translated into bahasa indonesia to avoid misinterpretation. the questionnaires were distributed to all selected participants in the school that had been put together into one classroom. the researcher accompanied the process of filling up the questionnaires, as well as was the guide for students who wanted to propose the questions related to the questionnaires. the data analysis resulted in a number of quantitative and qualitative findings which gave the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 14-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9667 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license researcher a better understanding of what they might have contributed in strategy language learning. all data was calculated by using statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 17.0 and revealed successful and unsuccessful specific strategies that they employed the most in efl learning. in addition, the writer analyzed how well the strategies affected students by the scale they were categorized. there are three scales, according to oxford (1990), that represent how frequently the students used the strategies by determining from the average of scores students choose in each item of question which is ranging from 1-5, which are; a. highly used (mean score (m) between 3.5 to 5.0 indicates that all six of learning strategies are the most frequently used by the participants) b. medium used (m between 2.5 to 3.4 indicates that all six of learning strategies are normally used by the participants) c. low used (m smaller than 2.4 indicates all six of learning strategies are rarely used by the participants. findings and discussion the result according learning strategy used by both type of students can be seen from tables 1. table 1. lls used by successful and unsuccessful tenth grade of senior high school students. from table above, it can be concluded that all successful and unsuccessful tenth grade senior high school students were medium users of oxford’s six learning strategies, with the more detail statements are reported in the remaining tables below. table 2. lls based on oxford’s category used by successful students strategy category m sd ra nk metacognitive compensation social cognitive memory affective 4,04 (high use) 3,87 (high use) 3,76 (high use) 3,70 (high use) 3,17 (medium use) 3,01 (medium use) 0,79 0,82 0,79 0,83 0,98 1,19 1 2 3 4 5 6 in the table 2 shows that each learning strategy has m that represents how frequently they were used by the students. metacognitive strategy, that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 15-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was placed in rank 1, with m of 4,04 was reported as the most frequently used learning strategies by all participants, and followed by compensation strategy (m 3,87), cognitive strategy (m 3,70), social strategy (m 3,76), memory strategy (m 3,17), and the last was affective strategy (m 3,01). the result shows that metacognitive, compensation, cognitive, and social strategy were used by successful students in scale of high use. meanwhile, the strategies including memory and affective strategy were used by successful students in scale of medium use. although the frequency is not the same for each strategy, the result shows that all strategies were employed by the successful students, it can be concluded that all successful students employed all six strategies in learning english, even though the scale for each strategy was different. moreover, table 4.3 below shows the average use of learning strategy performed by unsuccessful students. on the other hand, as we can see from table 3, cognitive strategy (m 2,62) was reported as the most frequently learning strategies used by all participants of the unsuccessful, followed by compensation strategy (m 2,60), metacognitive strategy (m 2,54), social strategy (m 2,52), memory strategy (m 2,50), and the last was affective strategy (m 2,34). the result also shows that memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, and social strategies were used by unsuccessful students in scale of medium use, which this can be concluded that unsuccessful students were commonly used this strategy even though it was not always used. meanwhile, the affective strategy was reported as strategy that was rarely used by the students. table 3. lls based on oxford’s category used by unsuccessful students strategy category mean sd ra nk cognitive compensation metacognitive social memory affective 2,62 (medium use) 2,60 (medium use) 2,54 (medium use) 2,52 (medium use) 2,50 (medium use) 2,34 (low use) 0,84 0,81 0,82 0,67 0,76 0,65 1 2 3 4 5 6 discussion as it was found from the result of the questionnaire, the successful students tend to use metacognitive strategy among the other strategies. these strategies cover the activity of planning, arranging, managing, and evaluating. this finding was in line with the other previous studies (ketabi & mohammadi, 2012; simsek & balaban, 2008; lee and heinz, 2016; ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 16-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9667 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sheorey, 1999; liu, 2004; lee and heinz, 2016). on the other hand, cognitive strategy which covers the activities of practicing in repeating, rehearsing, and imitating the language was the most frequent strategy used by unsuccessful students. in relation with previous study, it also found that regular university students are more favorable in using cognitive strategy (khoshima, 2015; bobanovic & ambrosi, 2006). however, it seems that the present study produced more contrary since the subject in this study was unsuccessful senior high school students, even though a few research found that senior high school students reported using cognitive (alfian, 2016). basically, there must be a difference in strategy used because regular university students are higher in level than unsuccessful senior high school students. this is possibly because the participants used in this study was chosen purposively as students in sman 2 jember, in which the school is placed as the top two of the most high reputable in jember regency. this might become the reason why, as there are many factors that influence the use of certain learning strategy besides their language competence achievement, they were still medium users of cognitive strategy. furthermore, another difference found between the strategy used by successful and unsuccessful students. from the results, metacognitive, which became the most highly used strategy by successful students, was instead moderately applied by unsuccessful students. this makes the assumption that successful students have the ability to plan clear goals, control, review, and evaluate their learning rather than unsuccessful students who focus more on the way they think, memorize, summarize, and repeat the learning. even though some strategies might seem more effective than the others (indicating that successful students like to use metacognitive strategies and unsuccessful students refer to use cognitive strategies), in fact, there is no exact theories claim that certain strategies are superior, because there are a lot of researches out there that reported different results of strategies used by students. however, every strategy stands to its own capability in managing the learning. one of the factors that makes them difference is the learners mental thinking themselves. this assumption is derived from the theory of oxford (1994) who emphasized that, it is important to examine the learner themselves as a whole person, not simply focusing on intellectual aspects of strategies. it means that if learners can choose which strategies are appropriate for them, then it will be very helpful for their learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 17-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12111 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license there are certain characteristics of learners can be found from the result. successful learners employed all six categorizes of strategies in a highly frequencies rather than unsuccessful learners, which indicated that successful learners were more aware of strategies needs for themselves rather than unsuccessful learners. this is in line with the statement of chamot and kupper (1989) who found in their finding that successful students used learning strategies more often, more appropriately, with greater variety, and in ways that helped them complete the task successfully rather than unsuccessful students. moreover, simsek & balaban, (2010) also stated that successful students used overall strategies significantly more frequently than the unsuccessful students. nyikos (1987), also defined characteristics as unsuccessful students that often involve non communicative behavior such as translation with heavy use of dictionaries, rote memorization, folding papers into columns to create vocabulary self-tests, and uncreative forms of repetition. this echoes the writer’s findings that show unsuccessful learners tend to use cognitive strategies which focus on repeating, rehearsing, and imitating the language. even though there might have not enough prove in writers’ findings, still, it can be considered as factors that become the weakness of unsuccessful students in learning. the findings of this study provide a guide for english teachers and learners, especially for teaching and learning process. oxford (1898) stated that appropriate learning strategies help explain the performance of good language learners. it is important for teachers to manage appropriate strategies for students. as what lee and heinz (2016) stated in their study, teachers should be aware of strategies that are applied by students by giving the strategy instruction that focus on how to utilize the six strategies as well. it will cause the problem if students use strategies inappropriately, because vann and abraham (1990) reported in their study that unsuccessful language learners emerged as active users but they often applied strategies inappropriately. as such, teachers may manage classroom activities and encourage students to apply appropriate strategy. conclusion and suggestions it can be concluded from the study that language learning strategy is one of the important factors that determine whether the students can be an effective learners and help them to become an ultimate success in language learning. to enhancing students’ language learning strategy, it required to practice ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 18-20 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9667 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license more about how to use the learning strategy itself. however, due to the limited of time the writer had, this study only focused their participants’ factor in stage of learning, which was senior high school, so this might not enough to add attention in the domain of language learning strategy. moreover, the instrument in this study was only questionnaire, in which it happened when distributing the questionnaires, the writer found weakness that students might not remember the strategies they had used in the past or might claim to use strategies that in fact they did not use. for future researchers, this study may guide other researcher reviews further, critical, and comprehensive studies which are related to these investigations in order to reveal many aspects in enhancing teaching and learning quality. however, this present study only revealed students’ lls depended on their factors like stage of learning and rate of success, so this might not enough to put the attention in the domain of language learning strategy. there are still lots of factors influence the strategy choice of students like gender, motivation, attitude, learning style; career orientation or field of specialization, national origin, aptitude; language teaching methods, task requirements, and, if relevant, type of strategy training. perhaps in the future research other writers can conduct the observation towards language learning strategies and select their participants’ factors like that has been mentioned before. moreover, as chamot (2004) said that there are many kinds of methods to observe students’ language learning strategies, such as through retrospective interviews, stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, written diaries and journals, and think-aloud protocols concurrent with a learning task. each of these methods has limitations, but each provides important insights into unobservable learning strategies. perhaps in the future research, the writers can reduce this weakness by conducting research not only by giving questionnaire but also adding more various observations so the data will be more specific. references alfian. 2016. the application of language learning strategies of high school students in indonesia. indonesian journal of english education 3 (2), 140157. bobanovic & ambrosi. 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(1990). language learning strategies: what every teacher should know. boston: heinle & heinle publishers. oxford, r. l. & nyikos, m. (1989). variables affecting choice of language learning strategies by university students. the modern language journal, 73 (3), 291300. oxford, r.l. (1996). language learning strategy around the world: cross cultural perspective. manoa, hi: second language teaching and curriculum center, university of hawai. pannak & chiramanee. (2011). language learning strategies used by first year students at thaksin university, songkhla campus, thailand. factors affecting english language teaching and learning 3(1), 1-12. qingquan, n., chatupote, m., teo, a. (2008). a deep look into learning strategy use by successful and unsuccessful students in the chinese efl learning context. relc journal (39), 338-357. doi: 10.1177/0033688208096845. simsek, a. & balaban, j. (2010). learning strategies of successful and unsuccessful university students. contemporary educational technology, 1(1), 36-45. vann, r.j., & abraham, r.g., (1990). strategies of unsuccessful language learners. tesol, quartely, 25(2), 177193. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 189-200 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17321 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee enhancing efl learners’ motivation through songs reza anggriyashati adara*, muhammad taufik received: 11th sept 2020; revised: 09th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract improving learners’ motivation is an essential task for teachers because it can maintain learners’ interest in learning. this is why teachers employ numerous motivational strategies in order to enhance learners’ motivation. one of the strategies that can enhance learners’ motivation is using songs in english classrooms. the present study aims to analyse the effects of using songs in efl classrooms on efl learners’ motivation. the study used an experimental method by dividing the respondents into two groups: the experimental and control classes. while the control class was taught english conventionally, the experimental class lessons were integrated with english songs. furthermore, a set of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were administered in order to obtain the data. the findings suggest that songs seem to have positive effects on efl learners’ motivation. besides, using songs in efl classrooms helps learners absorb new vocabulary and make english lessons more engaging. thus, english teachers need to consider using english songs in their classrooms to improve learners’ motivation. nevertheless, songs need to be suited to the learners’ level of english, age, and characteristics of the lessons. key words: efl; learners’ motivation; motivational strategies; songs abstrak meningkatkan motivasi siswa adalah tugas penting bagi guru karena hal itu bisa meningkatkan minat siswa dalam belajar. hal itu yang membuat guru menerapkan berbagai strategi motivasional demi meningkatkan motivasi siswa. salah satu strategi yang dapat digunakan untuk meningkatkan motivasi siswa adalah menggunakan lagu-lagu di kelas-kelas bahasa inggris. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis efek-efek lagu dalam peningkatan motivasi di kelas-kelas bahasa inggris. penelitian ini menggunakan metode eksperimental dengan membagi responden ke dalam dua grup: eksperimental dan kontrol. kelas kontrol belajar bahasa inggris secara konvensional sedangkan kelas eksperimental belajar bahasa inggris dengan pelajaran yang diintegrasikan dengan lagu. selain itu penelitian ini menggunakan kuesioner dan wawancara semi terstruktur untuk mendapatkan hasilnya. penelitian ini mengindikasikan lagu dapat memotivasi siswa untuk belajar bahasa inggris dan mendapatkan kosakata baru. oleh karena itu, guru harus mempertimbangkan penggunaan lagu dalam kelaskelas bahasa inggris untuk meningkatkan motivasi siswa. namun, penggunaan lagu perlu disesuaikan dengan level kemampuan bahasa inggris, usia dan karakteristik pelajaran. kata kunci: efl; lagu; strategi motivasi; motivasi siswa how to cite: adara reza a., taufik m. (2020). enhancing efl learners’ motivation through songs. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 189-200. doi:10.17321/ijee.v7i2.17321 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 190-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the mastery of the english language is undoubtedly vital in indonesia due to the position of english as a global language. crystal (2003) argues that english has been used by people from various socio-economic, education, and cultures. besides, karyanto (2019) remarks that there are 400 million native english speakers and 2 million english language learners who study it either as a second or foreign language. the rapidly changing world makes it essential for people to adopt english to communicate with people from different countries (adara, 2019; graddol, 2006). mastering english may help people communicate with people from different countries, resulting in better communication in various fields such as economy, politics, education, etc. as part of global citizenship, indonesians need to be able to communicate in english. furthermore, coleman (2011) reported that the ministry of education of indonesia had introduced english as a medium of instruction in several school subjects in indonesia due to its importance. similarly, it has been reported that english is one of the field studies in indonesian schools (jalal & musthafa, 2001). the above points suggest the importance of the english language in indonesia because it is used by many people globally and helps communication in the global arena. related to the above paragraph, maintaining learners’ motivation is vital in language learning processes. in this regard, motivation can be defined as an internal need that makes someone eager to achieve something (harmer, 2001; huang, 2007). motivation helps to maintain learners ’interest during the language learning process (dörnyei, 2005; dornyei & csizér, 2002). motivation can construe either the success or the failure of any complex task (brown & lee, 2015). in this sense, motivation can be regarded as an important factor determining the success of learners’ language learning process. thus, analysing motivation seems imperative because it will provide more information on sustaining learners’ interests (carrió-pastor & mestre, 2014). the above points suggest the importance of motivation in the language learning process. teachers can use motivational strategies to improve learners’ motivation. one of the crucial factors that can affect learners’ motivation is a teacher. in his study on motivation of a group of junior high school students in indonesia’s rural area, lamb (2007) showed that teachers could affect learners’ motivation. several studies also found similar results (khazaie & http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 191-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mesbah, 2014; poornima et al., 2016). teachers could influence learners’ motivation through motivational strategies that refer to teachers’ techniques to develop positive attitudes toward language learning (dörnyei, 2001; 2003). teachers’ provision of motivational strategies is important for language learning processes (chambers, 1999; cheng & dörnyei, 2007; fives & manning, 2005). teachers can provide meaningful tasks or activities as motivational strategies for their students. numerous studies have shown a positive correlation between tasks and students’ motivation (cheng & dörnyei, 2007; dornyei & csizér, 2002). people are more motivated to do something if they are interested in it (cheng & dörnyei, 2007). thus, it seems crucial for teachers to provide exciting activities or tasks that can be suitable motivational strategies for their students. one of the motivational strategies that teachers can do in language classrooms is using songs. faliyanti (2017) remarks that songs can be an alternative medium to create an engaging learning atmosphere. in this sense, songs may minimise the boredom in the language classroom because it gives learners a rest from textbooks or exercise books. furthermore, white (2007) states that using songs in the class will improve learners’ musical aptitude and improve learning processes as a whole. a study by chen and chen (2009) investigated the effects of songs on motivation and competency of a group of learners in china and found that songs positively impact the participants’ motivation. nevertheless, a lack of studies specifically investigates the effects of a song in efl classrooms in the indonesian context. analysing the effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation will help provide knowledge regarding factors that affect learners’ motivation. thus, the present study aims to analyse the effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation. the present study is guided by the following research question: what are the effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation?. method research design the present study applied an experimental method as it gives treatment to the respondents for six sessions in three consecutive weeks. the sampling method was convenience sampling. the respondents of the present study were 66 junior high school students in cibarusah, indonesia. the respondents were divided into two groups: experimental and control classes. while the control http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 192-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license class was given a conventional teaching method, the experimental class lessons were integrated with songs. each lesson in the experimental class started with a song that the students watched through a projector. next, the experimental class students were encouraged to discuss the meanings of lyrics with their classmates. the use of a dictionary was also encouraged. the songs were usually related to individual lessons. before the class ended, teachers played another song that needed to be discussed by students. data collection and analysis the present study used a mixedmethod approach. the present study used a set of questionnaires adapted from zafarghandi and jodai’s (2012) study on the attitudes and motivation of a group of english learners in an iranian university. the questionnaire consists of 18 items with a fourresponse likert scale (totally agree, agree, disagree, totally disagree). the questionnaires aimed to measure four variables; learners’ attitudes toward the english language, learners’ attitudes toward english speaking communities, instrumentality, and learners’ attitudes toward english language learning. the questionnaires are written in bahasa indonesia so that the respondents will understand them better. to ensure the questionnaires’ validity, a pilot study was conducted and resulted in cronbach alpha>0, 65. the questionnaires are distributed before and after the treatment of both classes. in addition to the questionnaires, the present study conducted interviews with four respondents to provide more insights into the effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation. due to the nature of the present study, data were analysed differently. while the quantitative data was analysed using spss (statistical package for the social science), the qualitative data was analysed through coding. the interview results were transcribed before coded into several categories. thus, obtained data were triangulated with existing theories and results of related prior studies. findings and discussion findings to provide a better organisation, the findings are discussed based on four variables in the questionnaire. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 193-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1. learners’ attitudes toward the english language. before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 1. i wish i can watch english speaking movies without subtitles or dubbing. 2.93 1 2.43 0.97 3.16 0.87 2.73 1 2. i wish i can understand english songs. 3.43 0.56 3.43 0.85 3.73 0.44 3.53 0.57 3. if i have a chance, i want to study in a university where english is the medium language. 3.33 0.66 3.26 0.82 3.46 0.57 3.1 0.88 4. i want to read english books without they are being translated. 3.16 0.91 3.1 1 3.66 0.54 3.16 1 the table 1 shows that the majority of items in the experimental class experience increases after the treatment. an item that experiences the highest increase after the treatment is item 2 regarding the respondents’ wish to understand english songs. besides, the above table shows that more respondents want to read english books after the treatment. it can be said that after the treatment, the respondents have better attitudes toward the english language. on the other hand, the control class experiences a decrease in most items. table 2. learners’ attitudes toward english speaking communities. before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 5. i like someone who can speak english. 3.2 0.66 3.36 0.8 3.53 0.62 3.16 0.94 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 194-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 6. i want to improve my english skills to communicate with foreigners who cannot speak indonesian. 3.53 0.57 3.4 0.89 3.9 0.3 3.7 0.53 7. i want to live or visit english speaking countries. 3.36 0.71 3.46 0.86 3.76 0.56 3.23 0.72 8. if i meet a foreigner, i will try to speak english. 3.13 0.57 3.06 0.86 3.46 0.62 4 0.67 the table 2 shows that the majority of items in the experimental class experience increases after the treatment. an item that experiences the most salient item in the experimental class after the treatment is item 6. it shows that most experimental class respondents are more motivated to improve their english skills after the treatment. a similar phenomenon happens to the control class, which increases item 6 and item 8 after the treatment. nevertheless, the table shows item 5 and item 7 in the control class experience decreases after the treatment. the above table indicates that although both classes seem to have positive attitudes toward english speaking communities, the experimental class show more improvements. table 3. instrumentality before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 9. i want to learn english to get a better job opportunity. 3.43 0.62 3.36 0.85 3.76 0.43 3.66 0.54 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 195-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 10. english skills will provide me with a better salary. 2.83 0.69 3.26 0.87 3.33 0.66 3.16 0.87 11. i want to learn english because i want to have better scores in the exams. 3.36 0.76 3.5 0.77 3.76 0.62 3.56 0.72 12. i want to learn english because i want to communicate with english speaking people. 3.3 0.59 3.2 0.76 3.76 0.5 3.6 0.56 the table 3 indicates that experience increases after the treatment in most items, both in the experimental and control classes. however, the experimental class shows more improvements than the control class. the most salient items in the experimental class after the treatment are item 11 and 12. in this regard, the experimental class respondents seem to know more about the merits of mastering english than the control class after the treatment. table 4. learners’ attitudes toward english language learning before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 13. i like to learn english at school. 3.43 0.67 3.2 0.8 3.5 0.62 3.6 0.49 14. i want to learn english outside of school. 3.2 0.55 2.86 0.81 3.33 0.71 2.93 0.9 15. i like to do english homework. 3.9 0.88 2.93 0.78 3.13 0.68 3.3 0.79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 196-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license before treatment after treatment experimental class control class experimental class control class items mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev mean std. dev 16. i don’t like to learn english (mixed code). 1.8 0.66 1.8 0.88 1.63 0.71 1.36 0.55 17. i don’t like to look for english language materials outside of school (mixed code). 2.13 0.73 2.03 0.88 1.8 0.8 2.13 0.93 18. i don’t like to do english homework (mixed code). 1.66 0.6 2 0.87 1.66 0.71 1.66 0.71 item 13 to 15 measure positive attitudes, while item 16-18 measure learners’ negative attitudes toward the english language. the above table indicates that the experimental class seems to be more motivated to english after the treatment (item 13 and item 14). nevertheless, the experimental class seems less inclined to do english homework after the treatment as the table shows a decrease in item 15. the above table also shows that the control class gains a significant increase in item 13. they are also less inclined to study english outside of school, as item 14 experiences a decrease after the treatment. however, the control class seems to be more motivated to do english homework. in regards to negative attitudes, both classes show lesser negative attitudes after the treatment. however, the control class is shown to be less inclined to look for english language materials outside of school. following are comments from respondents regarding their opinions on songs in english lessons: “i personally think [songs] make me more motivated [to learn english] and more interested in studying during school hours. because in my opinion, songs increase motivation as it makes [english lessons] feel more fun and the atmosphere more enjoyable.” respondent 1. “[learning english with songs] are very effective because when we listen to the popular songs, we can understand the words there. it’s simpler than listening to the films [because it’s quite long].” respondent 2 the above comment shows that the respondents seem to find english songs to make the english more motivating http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 197-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and fun. also, using songs can make the whole school period fun for students. the weight of evidence suggests the merits of songs in english language classrooms. discussion the previous subsection indicates that the experimental class seems more motivated to learn english and show more positive attitudes than the control class after the treatment. the results also show that the experimental class is more motivated to understand english songs after the treatment. it may be attributed to songs that are integrated into their lessons during the treatment. related to the above findings, several studies also find that songs can influence learners’ motivation positively. the findings of chen and chen’s (2009) study on the effects of english popular songs on learners’ motivation and achievements suggest that the majority of students in the experimental class seem to be more motivated when songs are used in their english lessons as lesson materials. a study of dzanic and pejić (2016) on the effects of songs on students’ motivation also suggests positive effects of songs toward students’ motivation. also, dzanic and pejic’s (2016) study on the effects of english songs on young learners and motivation shows that young learners are more motivated to learn english and enjoy the learning process when songs are incorporated into the lessons. regarding the latter study, millington (2011) confirms that songs can improve listening skills and pronunciation. besides that, songs are useful in vocabulary teaching and sentence structures. similarly, a study by faliyanti (2017) on vocabulary mastery and motivation shows that the respondents seem to enjoy and obtain new vocabulary when songs are incorporated in efl classrooms. the results of the above studies show that songs have positive effects on learners’ motivation. however, despite the positive effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation, teachers need to consider several aspects before using songs in efl classrooms. the present study’s findings show that some respondents may be apprehensive about using songs in efl classrooms because they do not understand the lyrics' words. the results of paul’s (1998) also show a similar conclusion with the point mentioned above. to minimise students’ apprehension toward songs in efl classrooms, teachers need to consider students’ level of english, age, and lessons before they use certain songs in their classroom. for instance, nadera (2015) suggests that teachers can adapt existing children’s songs to suit their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 198-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching contexts. adopting the songs with the lessons will make learning more relatable to students and minimise students’ apprehension. besides, songs need to be conducted effectively by integrating the songs into meaningful classroom activities. aiming to design a curriculum and practical activities that combine efl learning and popular english songs, oh (2015) proposes several activities that can boost learners’ motivation and competence. firstly, teachers can repeat the songs multiple times to get exposed to the english language to improve their pronunciation skills. secondly, teachers can use technology such as a video maker to make videos relating to songs that they learn at school. conclusion and suggestion motivation is an important factor that needs to be improved to sustain learners’ interests in language learning. to improve learners’ motivation, teachers need to perform strategies or motivational strategies. one of the strategies that can be conducted by teachers is using songs in efl classrooms. thus, the present study aims to analyse the effects of songs on efl learners’ motivation. the present study uses an experimental method by dividing the respondents into two classes; experimental and control classes. while the control class was taught using a conventional method, the experimental class lessons were integrated with songs. due to the nature of findings, quantitative data were analysed using spss, whereas qualitative data were coded into several categories. the findings of the present study show that songs have positive effects on efl learners’ motivation. nevertheless, the songs need to be suited to learners’ english, age, and lessons to achieve optimal results. the present study is not without limitation. firstly, the present study can provide more insightful results that reflect the population if conducted toward a larger number of respondents. secondly, the present study may gain more in-depth information if it is equipped with more diverse research instruments such as classroom observation, students’ journals, or teacher’s journals that record teachers and students’ statements after the treatment. thirdly, the present study may gain more insights if it is conducted in a more extended period. nevertheless, the present study still has some merits. it can be a milestone for similar studies on the effects of audiovisual materials such as songs or films on efl learners’ motivation. further studies can compare the differences in the effects of songs and films on efl learners’ motivation. also, a study of the differences in vocabulary http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 199-200 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17321 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license retention of songs and films can provide deeper insights into audiovisual materials' effects. besides that, further study can analyse the effects of songs on efl learners’ demotivation. references adara, r. a. 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(2007). the effects of background music in the classroom on the productivity, motivation, and behavior of fourth grade students (master thesis). columbia college. zafarghandi, a. m., & jodai, h. (2012). attitudes toward english & english learning at an iranian military university: a preliminary survey. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed528150. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/11/v2/i1/a11/millington https://doi.org/10.5746/leia/11/v2/i1/a11/millington https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.520 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.520 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 133-142 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee language learner autonomy: the beliefs of english language students istanti hermagustiana, dian anggriyani received: 26th august 2019; revised: 14th november 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract this study aims at investigating: (1) levels of autonomous learning from three groups of students with different periods of study, (2) efl students’ beliefs towards learner autonomy and their lecturers’ roles in promoting learner autonomy. the participants of this study were three groups of efl students at english department in their second, fourth, and sixth semesters. the data were obtained through questionnaire surveying autonomous learning scale to find out the students’ levels of autonomy and interview to figure out their beliefs about learner autonomy and the roles of lecturers to promote autonomous learning. this study revealed that all group of students were classified as being in the mediate level of autonomy. from the interviews conducted to nine participants representing each group, it was found that to become autonomous, learners need to develop the ability to evaluate their own learning. moreover, out-of-class activities were believed to enhance learner autonomy since the activities will provide students with self-responsibility to manage the tasks. last, in terms of the lecturers’ roles in the classroom, most participants perceived that the lecturers still had a dominant role in controlling teaching and learning, particularly in the classroom context. this dominant role eventually led students to become less autonomous circumstances, both inside and outside classrooms. key words: learner autonomy; students’ beliefs; autonomous learning; efl context abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui: (1) tingkat pembelajaran mandiri dari tiga kelompok mahasiswa bahasa inggris dengan periode studi yang berbeda, dan (2) keyakinan mahasiswa bahasa inggris terhadap pembelajaran mandiri dan peran para dosen pengajar dalam mendukung pembelajaran mandiri di kelas. para partisipan penelitian ini adalah tiga kelompok mahasiswa yang belajar di jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris di semester kedua, keempat, dan keenam. data diperoleh melalui angket survei autonomous learning scale untuk mengetahui tingkat pembelajaran mandiri mahasiswa dan melalui wawancara untuk mengetahui pandangan mereka tentang pembelajaran mandiri dan peran dosen pengajar untuk mempromosikan pembelajaran mandiri. hasil yang didapat dari penelitian ini adalah bahwa semua kelompok siswa dari tiga periode studi yang berbeda diklasifikasikan dalam pembelajaran mandiri tingkat menengah. dari wawancara yang dilakukan kepada sembilan peserta yang mewakili setiap kelompok, diketahui bahwa untuk menjadi mandiri, mahasiswa perlu mengembangkan kemampuan untuk mengevaluasi pembelajaran mereka sendiri. selain itu, kegiatan di luar kelas diyakini dapat meningkatkan pembelajaran mandiri karena kegiatan tersebut akan mengembangkan tanggung jawab dalam mengelola tugas. begitu pun dalam hal peran dosen di ruang kelas, sebagian besar mahasiswa merasa bahwa dosen masih memiliki peran dominan dalam mengendalikan proses belajar mengajar, terutama di dalam kelas. peran dominan dosen ini pada akhirnya menyebabkan mahasiswa menjadi kurang mandiri baik di dalam maupun di luar kelas. kata kunci: pelajar mandiri; keyakinan siswa; pembelajaran mandiri; konteks efl how to cite: hermagustiana, i., anggriyani, d. (2019). language learner autonomy: the beliefs of english language students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 133-142. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 134-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in the field of foreign language learning and teaching, the importance of supporting students in becoming more autonomous has become one of the most prominent themes. the majority of theorists, researchers, and methodologists have been stressing the need for making learners capable of taking responsibility for their own learning (cakici, 2017; chan, 2016; henri, morrell, & scott, 2018; liu, 2011; mutlu & eroz-tuga, 2013; nguyen, 2014; rungwaraphong, 2012; salehi, ebrahimi, sattar, & shojaee, 2015). in addition, autonomy is currently viewed as a prerequisite for success in language learning. learner autonomy has been a major area of interest in foreign language teaching for some 30 years. according to borg and al-busaidi (2012), it has been claimed that learner autonomy improves the quality of language learning, promotes democratic societies, prepares individuals for life-long learning, and allows learners to make the best use of learning opportunities in and out of the classroom. holec (1981), who is considered as the father of autonomous learning, defines it as the ability to control one’s learning. likewise, little (1991) asserts that “autonomous learners are cast in a new perspective, have a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, and decision making, take independent actions and are expected to assume greater responsibility for and take charge of their own learning” (p. 4). holec (1981) and little’s (1991) definitions of learner autonomy are strongly echoed by littlewood (1996) who defines an autonomous learner as someone who has an independent capacity to make and carry out the choices which govern his or her actions. a number of research on learner autonomy from efl context show that despite efl students are considered to be passive and less autonomous to some extent, some others are found to understand the concept of learner autonomy, thus have responsibility and ability in their own learning as part of autonomous learning (balcikanli, 2010; gamble, aliponga, koshiyama, yoshida, ando, & wilkins, 2011; karababa, eker, & arik, 2010; szocs & college, 2017; sakai, takagi, & chu, 2010; xhaferi & xhaferi, 2011). however, students’ dependence on teachers in the classroom can still be found in efl classroom setting. based on the researchers’ experience in their classroom practice, english students tend to follow what the lecturers’ instructions. in terms of assessment, the lecturers show their power over the classroom by carrying out written tests merely in the middle and at the end of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 135-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the semester. this often turns out a problem to achieve student-centered approach (aslan & reigeluth, 2015) based on the phenomena above, this study is going to investigate university students’ beliefs about the importance of learner autonomy and lecturers’ roles in promoting autonomous learning in efl context as well as the factors which constrain the students from being autonomous. therefore, this study seeks to find out: (1) what is the level of students’ autonomous learning from three groups of efl students with different lengths of study at a university? and (2) what beliefs do the efl students hold about learner autonomy and their lecturers’ roles to promote learner autonomy? method this is a mixed method study which focuses on both quantitative and qualitative data. the study started with a quantitative survey, which was administered to 60 english students. the second phase was qualitative design where the researchers selected a few participants identified from the survey result to be interviewees. three groups of young adult students were purposively selected based on their length of study or batch: students at second, fourth, and sixth semesters. their ages range from 18 to 20 years old. they learn not only english skills and knowledge but also teaching skills in order to teach english to primary and secondary school students. each group was represented by 20 students. as a consequence, there were 60 participants getting involved in this study. learner autonomy questionnaires developed by macaskill and taylor (2010) were distributed to 60 participants. after the quantitative phase, nine participants who were categorized as the high, middle, and low autonomous learners based on the result of the questionnaire were selected to be part of focus group discussion (fgd). the researchers utilized two research instruments to collect the data, namely autonomous learning scale (als) and an fgd. the als consists of 21 questions with respondents rating themselves on a 5-point likert scale. for analysis, the responses are always weighted such that a higher value corresponds to greater autonomy. subsequently, some interview questions were asked to nine participants with the highest level of learner autonomy form each batch identified from the survey result. an fgd was employed since it was useful to obtain detailed information about both personal and group beliefs about http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 136-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learner autonomy and to provide a broader range of information concerning the focused topic. moreover, it was used to save time. the researchers analyzed the results gained through questionnaires and interviews. for the results of the questionnaire, the researchers calculated the results of the questionnaire by using five-point likert scale. the students were required to choose among the options for the statements: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree with the conversion scores: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 respectively. the students with high scores were considered having high level of autonomous learning, and those with low scores were regarded as having low level of autonomous learning as shown from the table below. table 1. learner autonomy level category score range high level of autonomy 84-105 mediate level of autonomy 43-83 low level of autonomy 21-42 the analysis of the interview results began by transcribing the students’ interviews. the researcher made some codes based on the students’ interview transcripts. following this, similar codes of information were applied to develop a small number of categories which were used to build main themes. results and discussion results based on the findings from the questionnaire, all of the students from three groups are in the mediate level of learner autonomy. it was shown from the mean score of each group. the overall scores of learner autonomy revealed from group 1 (second semester), group 2 (fourth semester), and group 3 (sixth semester) are 72, 75, and 72 respectively. when converted into the table of learner autonomy level, it shows that all groups belong to the mediate level of learner autonomy. in other words, the students are both autonomous and less autonomous in some ways. based on the questionnaire results, their autonomous learning behavior is cultivated in a number of situations, such as: when they meet an assessment deadline for their work; when they have to find their own resources for learning, such as through internet; and when they have responsibility for their learning experiences. on the other hand, the participants’ learning autonomy is hampered in the following http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 137-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license situations: when they have to arrange their time management, particularly to study and review the learned materials; when they meet a challenge in the classroom; and when they have to stimulate their interest in language learning. student beliefs about learner autonomy most of the participants demonstrated different understandings towards learner autonomy concept. most of the participants were not quite aware of being autonomous in their learning activities. however, they understood that being autonomous in learning resulted in the students’ liberty to select how they want to acquire knowledge. moreover, they affirmed that learner autonomy would benefit the students with high confidence level since those students confidently learned english even though they were not guided by teachers. they also argued that to become autonomous, the students needed to get some chances to develop their ability in evaluating their own learning. it means that having been able to judge their own strengths and weaknesses, the students would notice other materials that they still need to enhance and materials they have already mastered. this would lead to students’ independence in selecting as well as analyzing the material content appropriate for their level of english. in addition to developing learner autonomy through students’ evaluation skills, motivation is another aspect the students need to own to develop learner autonomy. furthermore, they believed that students with autonomy in learning could be categorized as effective learners. all in, they all believed that learner autonomy means students’ freedom about how they manage their learning. in other words, they are free to choose any materials and activities they want to have. all of the participants agreed that out-of-class activities assigned by the lecturers would stimulate their learning autonomy. in addition, libraries are also considered a good place to enhance their autonomy while learning english. this is because they can search any kind materials they don’t have, particularly when they have some assignments from the lecturers. additionally, self-confidence and motivation play important roles to promote learner autonomy since confident as well as motivated students would not be reluctant and reckless to be responsible for their own learning. they understand that learning means responsibility. therefore, the development of learner autonomy can be achieved through those aspects. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 138-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the roles of lecturers in the classroom most of the participants revealed that they still considered their lecturers played an important role in classroom practices. from several aspects of learning activities, the lecturers dominated some of the responsibilities, such as cultivating their learning interests, determining learning objectives of the course and learning materials simultaneously. in spite of the dominant roles the lecturers have, both lecturers and students are responsible for the following learning and teaching process in the classroom, such as monitoring learning progress in and outside the classrooms, selecting appropriate learning activities for classroom practice, determining time allotment, and evaluating students’ work and performance. from the interview, it was found out that the participants had responsibility for managing their own learning progress outside the classroom. additionally, the other two participants stated that it was their responsibility to manage their own learning inside the classroom. in other words, they believed that their own learning progress was their own responsibility, not the lecturers’. discussion the results of this present study is aligned with some previous studies which demonstrate that efl learners, particularly asian have a mediate level of autonomous learning (nguyen, 2014; rungwaraphong, 2012). in order to be more autonomous, learners need to be aware of language, language use and language learning while also conscious of affective factors that influence their relationship with language and language learning (mcdevitt, 1997). only when learners are explicitly aware of the language learning process and the roles they play in it, may it be well for them to fully involve themselves in the language learning. then, learners need to be aware that they should share the responsibility with their teachers. they must realize that a lot of responsibility and knowledge will be transferred from the teacher to them (jacobs & farrell, 2001). when the students are being autonomous, it does not necessarily mean that they do everything (benson & voller, 1997; littlewood, 1996), but rather, that situation is supposed to lead students to be interdependence. teachers may provide cooperative learning in providing students chances to be responsible for their own learning (liu, 2011). therefore, teachers have a job to manage cooperative group http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 139-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license activities in the classroom such as group discussion, pair work, open questions, etc. by doing so, learner autonomy can be promoted along with the participation, self-confidence, and motivation of the students. in terms of teacher’s roles, this present study reveals that the decision to promote learner autonomy comes usually from the teacher, and the success of attempts to empower learners to become actively involved in their learning depends to a large extent on the teacher’s ability to redefine their roles. this is in line with the previous studies which shows the dominant roles of teachers towards their students (borg & al busaidi, 2012; cakici, 2017). the traditional efl teaching model in indonesia is a transmission model emphasizing the importance of teachers and their functions. teachers serve as transmitters of cultural heritage, knowledge and skills. they impart knowledge for students to absorb. students should show their respect for their teachers by obeying and cooperating with their teachers. they should listen to lectures attentively and follow their teachers’ instructions in class. the relationship between the teacher and students is based on students’ respect for the teacher and his knowledge as an authority (jacobs & farrell, 2001) as a result of the paradigm shift towards learner-centered education, efforts should be made to teach students how to learn and encourage them to be more autonomous. teachers should help them form a good habit of learning in the autonomous learning process, rather than impart knowledge to students. the shift of responsibility from teachers to learners in language teaching process does not necessarily mean a complete rejection of teachers and normal classroom teaching is redundant. instead, the teacher will find his role becomes more varied rather than curtailed, strengthened rather than weakened (not in terms of authority but in terms of competence) and much greater demands will be made on his creativity than on his highly developed knowledge of teaching techniques (holec, 1981). the teacher still should be the guide of the whole autonomous learning process. learners need a great deal of guidance and feedback from the teacher in order to learn to organize their work on their own. in classroom situations the teachers in autonomous learning functions as facilitators, helpers or counselors. they are more of a resource person or consultant than an authority; they are facilitators of classroom activities who concerned with their own sensitivity to the diversities of learner beliefs about language learning http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 140-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and their individual differences in learning styles; above all they are to help learners to depend on themselves to learn. more exactly speaking, the teacher will help learners plan and carry out their independent language learning by means of need analysis (both learning and language needs), objective setting (both shortand longterm, achievable), work planning, selecting materials and organizing interactions; help learners evaluate themselves (assessing initial proficiency, monitoring progress, and selfand peer-assessment); help learners acquire the skills and knowledge needed to implement learner autonomy. no matter how well the language teachers have performed in fulfilling their roles, it is students themselves who comprise the determining factor in their ultimate learning outcomes, especially in the learner-centered teaching context. therefore, language learning requires autonomy on the part of learners. conclusion and suggestions efl students in this study believed that learner autonomy took place mostly outside the classroom when they were assigned to do out-of-class activities which supported their in-class activities. moreover, even though outof-class activities are believed to enhance students’ autonomous learning, teachers/lecturers have an important role in guiding the students to be independent learners. teachers/lecturers are perceived to have a dominant role in the classroom; therefore, it is quite hard for the students to reach 100% autonomy in their english learning. however, some of the participants argued that they had full responsibility for monitoring their learning progress either inside or outside the classroom. in addition, both students and lecturers also shared responsibilities in the process of teaching and learning including determining learning materials and activities. this study focuses on students’ level of learning autonomy and their beliefs about learner autonomy as well as their perceptions on teacher’s roles in the classroom. some pedagogical implications came up to provide efl teachers important insights for better classroom practices. first, due to the dominant roles of teachers/lecturers in the classroom, teachers could provide more out-of-class activities for students in order to enhance learner autonomy. second, by making the students get used to being autonomous, teachers would indirectly teach them about the concept of learner autonomy since their conceptual perspectives about learner http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 141-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license autonomy would support their practical experience in carrying out autonomous learning. third, teachers can start reducing their responsibilities in managing students’ learning progress since it is very important to get the students involved in decision making process in the classroom. fourth, the use of cooperative learning may help efl students enhance their learning autonomy since that method focuses more on student-centered rather than teacher-centered. references aslan, s. and reigeluth, c. m. (2015). examining the challenges of learnercentered education. the phi delta kappan 97(4): 63-68. balcikanli, c. (2010). learner autonomy in language learning: student teachers’ beliefs. australian journal of teacher education 35(01): 90-103. benson, p. and voller, p. (1997). introduction: autonomy and independence in language learning. in p. benson & p.voller (eds.), autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 112). london: longman. borg, s. & al-busaidi, s. (2012). learner autonomy: english language teachers’ beliefs and practices. elt research paper 12(07): 2-34. cakici, d. (2017). an investigation of learner autonomy in turkish efl context. international journal of higher education 6(2): 89-99. chan, h. w. (2016). popular culture, english out-of-class activities, and learner autonomy among highly proficient secondary students in hong kong. universal journal of educational research 4(8): 1918-1923. gamble, c., aliponga, j., koshiyama, y., yoshida, k., ando, s., and wilkins, m. (2011). examining learner autonomy dimensions: students’ perceptions of their responsibility and ability. in jalt conference proceedings 263-272. henri, d. c., morrell, l.j., and scott, g. w. (2018). student perceptions of their autonomy at university. higher education 75: 507-516. holec, h. (1981). autonomy in foreign language learning. oxford: oxford university press. jacobs, g. m., and farrell, t. s. c. (2001). paradigm shift: understanding and implementing change in second language education. tesl-ej 5(1). karababa, z. c., eker, d. n., and arik, r. s. (2010). despcriptive study of learner’s level of autonomy: voices from the turkish language classes. procedia social and behavioral sciences 9: 16921698. little, d. (1991). learner autonomy. i: definition, issues and problems. dublin: authentik. littlewood, w. (1996). autonomy: an anatomy and framework. system 24(4): 427-435. littlewood,w. (1999). defining and developing learner autonomy in east asian contexts. applied linguistics 20(1): 71-94. liu, y. (2011). a study on learners’ beliefs about learner autonomy in english language learning. education and educational technology 108: 725-732. macaskill, a., and taylor, e. (2010). the development of a brief measure of learner autonomy in university students. studies in higher education 35(3): 351-359. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 142-142 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15467 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mcdevitt, b. (1997). learner autonomy and the need for learner training. language learning journal 16: 34-39. mutlu, a., and eroz-tuga, b. (2013). the role of computer-asisted language learning (call) in promoting learner autonomy. eurasian journal of educational research 51:107-122. nguyen, t. n. (2014). learner autonomy in language learning: teachers’ beliefs. phd dissertation, queensland unversity of technology. rungwaraphong, p. (2012). the promotion of learner autonomy in thailand tertiary education: lecturers’ perspectives and practices. phd dissertation, victoria university. sakai, a., takagi, a., and chu, m. (2010). promoting learner autonomy: student perceptions of responsibilities in a language classroom in east asia. educational perspectives 43(1/2): 12-27. salehi, h., ebrahimi, m., sattar, s., and shojaee, m. (2015). relationship between efl learners’ autonomy and speaking strategies they use in conversation classes. advances in language and literary studies 6(2): 37-43. szocs, k., and college, e. j. (2017). teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about language learning autonomy and its implications in the classroom: a mixed method study. journal of applied language studies 11(2): 125-145. xhaferi, b. and xhaferi, g. (2011). developing learner autonomy in higher education in macedonia. procedia social and behavioral sciences 11: 150-154. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 65-78 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee teachers’ voices on the challenges of the implementation of communicative approach in regards to the 2013 curriculum yenny rahmawati received: 8th march 2019; revised: 7th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract the indonesian elt current curriculum (the 2013 curriculum) adopts communicative approach (ca) as its basis foundation. despite the fact that this approach has been adopted for some years, some research studies showed that it does not bring any significant improvement to the learner’s outcome. there are several reasons underpinning the failures of the implementation of ca in regards to the 2013 curriculum. this study is, therefore, aimed at investigating the efl indonesian teachers’ perspectives on the challenges they faced in the implementation of communicative approach in their classrooms along with the 2013 curriculum. four participants were involved in this study that were given questionnaires and interviewed for data collection. qualitative design by case study was used in this study and the results indicated that all teachers in this study encountered challenges when implementing the concept of ca along with the 2013 curriculum, i.e. students’ low motivations, the teachers’ role, the class size, the teachers’ income, and the availability of english materials. key words: communicative approach; teachers‟ perception; challenges; 2013 curriculum abstrak kurikulum bahasa inggrisdi indonesia saat ini (kurikulum 2013) mengadopsi pendekatan komunikatif (ca) sebagai landasan dasarnya. terlepas dari kenyataan bahwa pendekatan ini telah diadopsi selama beberapa tahun, beberapa penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pendekatan komunikatif tidak membawa dampak yang signifikan terhadap hasil pelajar. ada beberapa alasan yang mendasari kegagalan implementasi ca tersebut terkait kurikulum 2013. oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan mengeksplorasi perspektif guru bahasa inggris di indonesia tentang tantangan yang mereka hadapi dalam menerapkan pendekatan komunikatif di ruang kelas mereka dalam kerangka kurikulum 2013. empat peserta terlibat dalam penelitian ini yang diberi kuesioner dan diwawancarai untuk pengumpulan data. penelitian ini menggunakan desain kualitatif dengan studi kasus dan hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa semua guru dalam penelitian ini menghadapi tantangan ketika menerapkan konsep ca bersama dengan kurikulum 2013, yaitu motivasi siswa, peran guru, 'konten asing' , dan ketersediaan materi bahasa inggris. kata kunci: pendekatan komunikatif; persepsi guru; tantangan; kurikulum 2013 how to cite: rahmawati, y. (2019). teachers‟ voices on the challenges of the implementation of communicative approach in regards to the 2013 curriculum. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 65-78. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 66-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the development of english as a global language has strengthened its position as a lingua franca. as a consequence, most countries in the world – especially non-english speaking countries consider english as an important language to be learnt. this condition impacts on the educational system in many countries; some have english as a medium of instruction, while others have english as a compulsory subject at school. where english is a second or a foreign language in their counties, many teachers try to adopt teaching approaches suggested by the west. as musthafa (2001) argues, english is believed to belong to the west, therefore the teaching approaches should be based on the „owners‟ of the language. one of the most popular teaching approaches, clt, is based on the understanding of what constitutes a goal which is widely adopted by teachers in asian countries (li, 2000). the more current notion of communicative competence was first introduced by hymes in the mid-1960s (berns, 1990; brown, 2007; trosborg, 1986) and subsequently greatly influenced language teaching. hymes (1979) states that communicative competence is interrelated with the knowledge of language and the ability to use that knowledge appropriately. he proposed the idea that “there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless” (1979, p.15). by this, he emphasized that there are other important elements to be mastered besides grammatical rules. communicative competence sees language as a whole, not as an isolated system. it connects the language to the “nature of communication” (trosborg, 1986, p.7). in addition, canale (1983) stresses that “communicative competence refers both to knowledge and skills using this knowledge when interacting in actual communication” (p.5). in other words, competence does not only include grammatical competence but also social competence to interact with the community or culture. communicative competence has several components. these components were first specified by canale and swain (1980), later to be revised by canale (1983). the first component is grammatical competence; this competence deals with the ability to know the form and meaning of the language, which involves the knowledge of grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary. second, the component of sociolinguistic competence includes the ability to use the linguistic competence properly in communication in different sociolinguistic contexts. the third ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 67-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license component, discourse competence comprises the ability to integrate grammatical competence and meanings into oral and written form. strategic competence, the fourth component is the ability to sustain conversation by using communication strategies such as risktaking, negotiating and reduction strategy. all of the aforementioned competencies are essential elements in communication. by knowing the context and the culture of the interlocutor, it would be easier to get into a conversation and to minimize misunderstandings during the conversation. communicative language teaching (clt) as the application of communicative competence in the classroom has also been accorded great attention from the educational world. i, once, thought that the approaches suggested by the west must be appropriate and suitable in every context. however, i found myself „trapped‟ in the maze of myriad promotions of the concept. i tried to implement this concept in my classroom, but often found myself referring back to my „traditional‟ method of teaching, which i believed my students were most comfortable with. as an example, at that time, i had my students work in groups, as clt suggests that group work is beneficial in the classroom to achieve the intended learning objective (richards, 2005). however, in my context it was hard to implement this concept. i had about 40 students in my class and grouping students was not easy. it took time to organise the group, and the classroom became very noisy. i found myself becoming frustrated at my vain attempts to make the students listen to me, and i also received a complaint from the teacher next door because of the noise. this is what dardjowidjojo (1997, as cited in jazadi 2004, p.4) called the “pragmatic constraint” that big classes have, which could prevent a teacher from performing well. since indonesia got its independence, the educational curriculum has already changed for several times: (1) 1945‟s grammar translation-based curriculum, (2) 1958‟s audio-lingual based-curriculum, (3) 1975‟s revised audio-lingual basedcurriculum, (4) 1984‟s structure-based communicative curriculum, (5) 1994‟s meaning-based communicative curriculum, (6) 2004‟s competencybased curriculum, (7) 2006 ktsp competency-based curriculum, (8) 2013 curriculum competency-based curriculum (sahirudin, 2013). the current elt curriculum in indonesian schools adopts communicative curriculum which is actually similar to that of used in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 68-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license previous ones. this curriculum is actually aimed at answering problems faced by the previous curriculum, which focuses on the competency-based curriculum with improving students‟ characters formation. the promotion of the concept of communicative through elt materials has spread widely throughout the country. the popularity of this concept keeps increasing as many teachers apply the concepts in their classroom. however, the use of communicative approach has also brought some concerns for teachers in their classroom practice. some problems are related to the readiness of indonesian teachers to implement the concept (suwandi & bharati, 2007), while others concern about teachers‟ lack of confidence, students‟ motivation, the lack of availability of authentic materials and the issues of authentic assessments (dardjowidjojo, 2002; musthafa, 2001). in indonesia, clt is probably seen as appropriate to respond to the dissatisfaction of the previous methods. however, it appears that in practice the communicative approach has never really been applied. this is because the “guidelines given by the government were very structural” (dardjowidjojo, 2000, p.25). a research study on english teachers in secondary schools in java island by hamied (1997, as cited in rudianto, 2007) indicates that only 19.6% of teachers stated that they used the communicative approach. this is because the teachers encountered some constraints in the implementation, such as lack of facilities, students‟ ability and authentic materials. indonesia has experienced changes in relation to its national curriculum. the school curriculum is designed and developed centrally by the ministry of national education-curriculum centre of the ministry‟s office of research and development (ministry of national education republic of indonesia, 2003). since its independence, indonesia has changed its curriculum seven times using three different approaches. lie (2007) summarises the curriculum applied in indonesia as follows table 1. table 1. indonesian elt curriculum starting year name of curriculum approach 1945 unknown grammartranslation 1968 oral approach audio-lingual 1975 oral approach audio-lingual 1984 communicative approach communicative 1994 meaning-based curriculum communicative 2004 competencebased curriculum communicative 2006 ktsp (kurrikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan-the school level curriculum) communicative 2013 2013 curriculum communicative ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 69-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the latest curriculum is the 2013 curriculum created as the development of ktsp and an answer of some dissatisfaction of the previous curricula, one of which is not answering the 21st century needs or knowledge-based society. the competencies to achieve are spiritual, social, knowledge and skill. it is designed by the ministry of national education and culture at the beginning of 2013 or in the academic year of 2013/2014. as one of the centralized curricula, this new curriculum tries to balance the hardskills and the soft-skills by using learning scientific approach aimed at producing productive, creative, innovative, and affective indonesian people through the integration of knowledge, skills, and attitude (paparan wamendik, 2014). these integrations is based on the indonesia rank at timss (trends in international mathematics and science study) study and pisa (program for international student assessment), in which in 2011 indonesia only achieved level 3 out from the 6 levels in a cognitive area related to the level of critical thinking (2014). however, the implementation of this centralized curriculum is problematic for some teachers. a research study conducted by suparman (2007) in one secondary school in lampung, indonesia, reveals that the teachers in his research encountered a number of challenges in implementing this centralized curriculum. these challenges relate to (1) teachers‟ qualifications (some of the teachers had not graduated from an english education major), (2) teachers‟ understandings and knowledge of the curriculum, and (3) the teacher-student ratio, with only four teachers for 24 classes with 45-50 students in each class. in addition, lie (2007, p.6-7) argues that “a one-size-fits-all curriculum would simply not work for the indonesian setting”. indonesia is a big country with many different cultures. therefore, one centralized curriculum will not fit all regions of indonesia. i believe some research have been conducted in indonesia under the topic of clt. however, i found it difficult to find these research studies, especially at the primary and university levels. this might be because research publication in indonesia is still limited; on-line journals are also difficult to get. for this reason, i do not have any data related to the implementation of clt at the primary and university levels. for these reasons, it is worthwhile to observe and analyze the practice of communicative approach in regards to the implementation of the 2013 curriculum seen from the teachers‟ perspectives. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 70-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method this research aimed at revealing the challenges faced by the four english teachers (two females and two males) at secondary schools in tangerang selatan when implementing the concept of communicative approach along with the practice of the 2013 curriculum. the participants were selected on the criteria: 1) the teachers should have at least 2 years of experience of teaching efl setting, 2) they indicated that they have experiences dealing with communicative approach in their classrooms, and 3) they should have willingness to get involved in the study. this study is qualitative in nature by case study; the data were gained through interviews, and questionnaire. the questionnaire was used to gain a general understanding from the teachers about english teaching in indonesia and the concept of clt as well as to develop the interview questions. the questionnaire was divided into three parts with sixteen questions in total. part 1 sought personal information. it consisted of six questions and was designed to gain general information about the participants‟ personal and educational background. part 2 was designed to obtain the participants‟ perceptions toward clt. the participants were asked to put a tick(s) in the appropriate column(s) that corresponded to their answers and to write comments regarding the answers. part 3 contains open-ended questions and was designed to further explore the participants‟ perceptions of elt and the concept of clt. nineteen questions were generated for the interviews. all of the interviews were then transcribed in preparation for identifying descriptive data and conducting analysis. the places of interviews were chosen by the participants themselves, and the interviews were audio-taped. each interview took about one hour perparticipant. in these interviews, i allowed my participants to choose whether the interviews would be conducted in english or in bahasa indonesia. the main reasons i gave them this choice were to give the participants the freedom to choose the language they felt most comfortable with and to reduce the language barrier in conveying the meaning. after in-depth interviews had been conducted, all data were transcribed for analysis. while reading all the data, subthemes were created corresponding to the research questions. in this process, the data were modified and reduced the potential subthemes until similar general subthemes that conformed to the research questions ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 71-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were found. the data from the questionnaire and interviews were used to triangulate the findings. in addition, extracts from the questionnaire and interviews were used to support the findings. findings and discussions there are several challenges in the implementation of the communicative approach along with the practice of the 2013 curriculum. all the teachers in the study share similar ideas on the problems they faced. students’ motivations the data revealed that all teachers in the study were concerned with their students‟ motivation in learning english. they mentioned that the students often had low motivation in learning english. the students are not motivated to memorize the vocabulary and to learn english... (teacher a, public junior high school) it is really hard to give them motivation... most of them come to the english class because there is a schedule for that. (teacher b, private junior high school) they do not participate [in the discussion] because some of them have low motivation to learn english. (teacher c) the teachers explained that most students seem to lack the awareness of the importance of english. this might be caused by the status of english as a foreign language in the country. they stated that, as a foreign language, english was a compulsory subject and was tested in the examination; it appears that the students learned english for these purposes only. this perception is similar to what has been explained by some researchers (li, 2000; segovia & hardison, 2009; yu, 2004), who contend that their students lack interest in learning english as it is not their language. furthermore, dardjowidjojo (2002, p.123) identifies the reason for some indonesian students having low motivation in learning english as being because “they learn english because they have to, not because they want to”. in fact, in most areas in indonesia, english is considered as a difficult subject – even more difficult than maths. due to the above reasons, many students tend to lack the motivation to learn english. as a consequence of being a foreign language in indonesia, english is rarely used for daily needs (musthafa, 2001). bahasa indonesia has a strong position as it is used as a national and official language; therefore, the students tend to prefer ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 72-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license using bahasa indonesia to english in class activities. nevertheless, all of the teachers in this study contended that the students needed to be introduced to english, as it is the language commonly used in the global arena. at this point, it appears that the teachers were aware of the status of english as a global language, where english acts as the language of business, information, and technology. i acknowledge there may be some other factors that cause students‟ low motivation to learn english, which could be related to the teachers themselves. however, i do not have any data regarding this, as i only sought the perceptions of the teachers. the teachers’ role the participants shared a similar view regarding the role of the teacher in the classroom. they confirmed that in their classes, the teacher was seen as a „god‟, the one who knows everything. as a figure, they felt that teachers were treated as very special; everything they said would directly be accepted by the students. these conditions, they said, often happened across all levels of education in indonesia, even at the university level, where the students are paradoxically expected to be critical and analytical. indonesia is one of the countries that has high levels of power distance and collectivism (kameo, 2007). in this type of country, the students are normally taught to be dependent on others, especially on older people or people with a higher position, such as parents and teachers. parents and teachers are seen as the most respected people in the community, children or students have been taught to obey them. due to the high status of the teacher, students are often seen as having a lack of initiative in the class activities (kameo, 2007). the teachers also added that being quiet is a part of being polite in the students‟ local culture. as a result, many students considered being quiet as a sign of respect for the teacher. some students are shy and quiet. i think... it is a part of the national culture in which the teacher teaches while the students obey everything [what the teacher says], keep silent, only listen and rarely ask a question. (teacher c, public senior high school) from the interviews, the teachers in this study seem to agree with the above notion of cultural values. they indicated that good students were those who were quiet and respectful toward the teacher. additionally, they stated that the students tended to depend on ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 73-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the teacher to provide them with the english materials and english environment/exposure. the first component of this view is quite the contrary to the concept of the role of the teacher in the 2013 curriculum and ca developed by many researchers. the 2013 curriculum urges teacher to actively involve students in the activities during teaching and learning processes. school is part of society which gives well planned educational experience where students can implement what they get from school into real society and utilize society as a learning resource (the ministry of national education and culture, 2013). therefore, teachers should implement activities that sharpen their critical thinking. the teachers need to create activities that involve the process of scientific approach with based the students as the center of the teaching and learning processes. further, the concept of ca suggests the teacher performs as a facilitator (harmer, 2001; richards, 2005), rather than the source of information, to assist students in the learning processes. these teachers‟ perceptions, however, corroborates ellis‟ (1996) view that, in efl settings, teachers act as a source of information as they provide the english environment for the students. in addition, a study in bangladesh by chowdhury and phan le ha (2008) reveals that, in this context, some teachers are more comfortable with their role as a source of information and enjoy gaining respect from the students. furthermore, in indonesia, “a guru (teacher) is culturally to be digugu (trusted) and ditiru (imitated)” (dardjowidjojo, 2002, p.122). therefore, shifting the role to a facilitator may be seen negatively by many teachers. the class size the sitting arrangement in our schools, it is hard moving the chairs. so, it is bit difficult... too many students here... i have around 40 students in one class, it is really hard, i prefer having 15-20 students in a class. (teacher d, private senior high) all of the participants explained that working in groups was not always a good idea, since indonesia still had a common problem, which were big classes. the average number of students in most indonesian schools is 40 students in each class. the seats are arranged so that students sit in rows and the teacher sits at the front of the class. this condition causes difficulty in making small groups, because the benches or the chairs are difficult to move. i assume that this situation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 74-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license influences the teachers‟ choices of activity to apply in their classrooms. from the questionnaire and interview, the teachers mentioned that pair-works, teacher-questions and student-answers and lectures were the types of activities that were most commonly applied in the. according to them, these activities were considered as the most possible and easiest ones to apply. the teachers also added that because there were too many students in the class, it was hard for them to monitor the students. sometimes, they assumed that all of the students understood the lesson by just asking questions to one or two students as representatives to check their understandings. dardjowidjojo (1997, as cited in jazadi 2004; 2002) calls this a “pragmatic constraint” where big classes potentially restrict the teacher from performing well in the classroom. all of the teachers in this study also admitted that cheating and depending on one participant only arose when students did the classroom activities. there are always only few students who give active participations in class, that’s why i often have to ask them to participate in the class activities. (teacher c, private senior high school) the teachers stated that this was because they could not check each student individually, due to the large number of students in the class. it seems that the teachers were fully aware that big classes potentially caused problems for them in managing their classrooms. this problem is similar to what fietchner and davies (1992) state, namely that a large class which allows six or more students in a group will create a situation where students do not participate fully. however, the teachers realised that they could not do anything regarding the classroom size. i assume this is because indonesia is the third most populous country in the world, hence, many young people study at school. a governmental report in 2008 revealed that there were 52,188,520 students in total studying at primary, secondary and university levels in indonesia with the average number of 38 students in one class (badan penelitian dan pengembangan – research and development department, 2008). this statistic reflects that it is very difficult for both the government and the schools to reduce the number of students in one class. the teachers’ income another concern found from the public institution teachers (teacher a and teacher d) is their income. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 75-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers mentioned that their salary was not enough to earn a living. this fact has been one of the problems in indonesia‟s education system. generally, teaching is still regarded to be a poorly paid profession compared to other government employees‟ professions. therefore, they explicitly suggested that the government provide a higher salary to the teachers: the government should give higher salary to the teachers to motivate them; if you can motivate the teachers then the teachers can motivate the students... (laughing). (teacher d, public senior high school) salaries for public teachers appointed by the government are allocated in the national budget; therefore, their salaries depend heavily on the country‟s financial resources. as for private teachers, the salary is managed by the institutions themselves, and is usually higher than the salary of the public teachers. it seems that the insufficient salary affected the teachers‟ teaching performance, as they said that to overcome this problem they had to teach at two or three different places. the teachers admitted that working in more than one place requires much energy, which influenced the preparation for teaching, such as preparing the materials. dardjowidjojo (2002) states that by working in more than one place, the teachers have little time to do academic and extracurricular work, such as preparing the materials and giving attention to each individual student. the availability of english materials all of the teachers complained about the lack of english resources in their schools. we don’t have a lot of english reading materials in this school. most students in indonesia come from medium to low-level society, so the price of the books is too expensive for them. (teacher a, public junior high school) in the interview, these teachers indicated that they relied on particular textbooks for teaching, those prescribed by the government. however, the textbooks cost the students a large amount of money, thus, not all of the students could afford them. as a consequence, a number of students studied without textbooks. this condition, according to these teachers, caused difficulty for them in delivering the materials, because these students would disturb other students to share their books or allow them to borrow the textbooks. while some students did not have access to textbooks, the teachers, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 76-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the students, in general, also had difficulty obtaining books written in english. they added that their libraries were not equipped with sufficient english reading books and cassettes for listening activities. this might be because it is very difficult to find books written in english by local publishers. imported books, on the other hand, are usually available only in big cities, and with high prices; thus, only schools with sufficient funding resources can obtain them. another concern remarked by the teachers is the absence of a language laboratory. the secondary school teacher, admitted that her school did not even have this facility, though the rest of the public school teachers said that they did have a language laboratory. however, these teachers stated that the language laboratory did not function well. when i interviewed the senior school teacher at the public school, i had the opportunity to observe their facilities, including the language laboratory. i found that the school had only one language laboratory to be used for 32 classes. it follows that not all of the students had the opportunity to have listening activities in the laboratory. it should be acknowledged that such facilities significantly help both teachers and students to achieve the learning aims. i believe having these facilities would make it easier for the teachers to implement the concepts of clt and to have effective and efficient teaching and learning processes. the language lab or audio-visual devices will likely help students practise their english skills. the library should provide students with information related to the teaching materials, the use of which is expected to improve their language skills. this perspective, the importance of facilities, is often neglected when talking about clt. it might be because theories of clt emerged from developed countries, where sufficient facilities are taken for granted in their schools. because of the quality and scarcity of teaching/learning facilities, in developing countries, such as indonesia, clt seems very hard to implement. these problems, by contrast, were not found in the private schools. they explained that their schools had more than one library and language laboratories, which can be used any time they wanted. one teacher, who teaches at a private primary school, stated that her school has sufficient reading materials in english and good support facilities. as for the senior high school teacher, the school also had adequate english resources and facilities. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 77-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.12761 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in the case study presented, there seems to be a gap between private and public schools. this might be because private institutions are allowed to request funding from students/parents to cover conclusions the data revealed that all of the teachers in this study encountered some difficulties in implementing the concepts of ca in regards to the 2013 curriculum in their classrooms. the teachers from all levels of education indicated that they encountered challenges in the following aspects: students’ motivation, the role of the teacher, and the availability of the english resources. the concept of the teacher as a facilitator has also been challenged by the school teachers in this study. they argued that the role of the teacher in the classroom was a source of information, as in efl settings the teacher was the only one to provide an english environment for the students. meanwhile, the availability of authentic materials is one aspect that tends to be overlooked. the participants of the study argued that authentic materials are a crucial component for ensuring the effectiveness of teaching and learning process. this study has revealed some critiques of the implementation of ca in indonesian education. while the study can only represent the participants‟ views, it may indeed reflect the views of many other teachers, whose experiences would need to be addressed through professional development. whether or not these perceptions are widespread would need to be tested in a largerscaled study. references berns, m. 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(2009). implementing education reform: efl teachers' perspectives. elt journal, 63(2), pp.154-162 suparman, u. (2007). the implementation of competence based curriculum at one of favorite schools in lampung: a case study. english edu: journal of language teaching and research, 7(1), pp.53-70 suwandi, & bharati, d. a. l. (2007). an insight of the teachers' readiness in the ktsp implementation: an overview of the teacher trainer. paper presented at the teflin international conference, jakarta yu, l. (2004). communicative language teaching in china: progress and resistance. elt journal, 58(2), pp.194198. *corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 95-108 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee increasing efl students’ writing skill using jigsaw and online searching strategy yofita christy isgiarno*, bambang yudi cahyono, hasti rahmaningtyas universitas negeri malang, indonesia, indonesia (yofita.christy@gmail.com) received: 24th april 2020; revised: 17th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract writing is the practice of reaching out to one's mind and exploring it creatively. in writing activity, the writer should have accurate information, strong arguments, and good knowledge of organization and mechanics before delivering their ideas. however, in schools, writing is commonly considered as the most difficult skill to learn by the students of english as a foreign language (efl). the problems of efl students’ writing could refer to the five aspects of writing: content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics. this research aimed to increase the quality of the teaching and learning process in the classroom in order to improve efl students’ writing skills by using the jigsaw and online searching strategy (joss). it used action research as the research design and was conducted in the tenth grade of ilmu bahasa dan budaya (language and culture) class of public senior high school (sma negeri) 2 in malang, east java, indonesia, which consisted of 22 students. the result showed that all of the students have passed the criteria of success and given good responses to the implementation of joss. therefore, it is suggested that english teachers consider using joss as a teaching strategy to improve tenth-grade students’ writing skills. key words: efl students; jigsaw; online searching strategy (joss); writing skill abstrak menulis merupakan aktivitas menjangkau pikiran seseorang dan menyampaikannya secara kreatif. di dalam aktivitas menulis, penulis perlu mempunyai informasi yang akurat, argumen yang kuat, serta pengetahuan yang baik mengenai struktur teks dan mekanik dalam menulis sebelum menyampaikan ide-idenya. namun, di sekolahsekolah, menulis dipandang sebagai kemampuan yang paling sulit untuk dikuasai oleh para siswa yang mempelajari bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing. masalah dalam menulis dapat ditemukan dalam lima aspek tulisan yaitu isi, struktur teks, tata bahasa, kosakata, dan mekanik dalam menulis. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kualitas dalam proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran dalam kelas untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis siswa dalam belajar bahasa inggris dengan menggunakan jigsaw dan pencarian informasi secara daring. penelitian ini adalah penelitian tindakan. penelitian ini dilakukan di sma negeri 2 malang, jawa timur, indonesia, pada kelas sepuluh ilmu bahasa dan budaya yang terdiri atas 22 siswa. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa semua siswa telah mencapai kriteria kesuksesan dan memberikan respon yang baik mengenai penerapan strategi jigsaw dan pencarian informasi secara daring. oleh sebab itu, guru bahasa inggris disarankan untuk menggunakan strategi tersebut sebagai salah satu upaya untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis siswa kelas sepuluh. kata kunci: siswa; jigsaw; pencarian informasi secara daring; kemampuan menulis how to cite: isgiarno, y. c., cahyono, b.y., rahmaningtyas, h. (2020). increasing efl students’ writing skill using jigsaw and online searching strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 97-110. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 98-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing is the practice of reaching out to one's mind and exploring it creatively. the writer’s process and purpose of writing should be clear. besides, the writer needs to deliver ideas communicatively and clearly. when writing, a writer usually follows a process of drafting, shaping, rereading, revising, and editing the text. because of these activities, writing is called as a creative activity. harmer (2004) described writing as a complex skill. this is because efl students should have accurate information, strong arguments, and good knowledge of writing organization and mechanics before delivering ideas in their writing. however, generally, writing is hard for many efl students. improving writing skills in the classroom setting is more challenging than other language skills. it has previously been observed that writing is the most challenging skill to learn in the language classroom (mukminatien, 1997). at school, it has also been noted that students have difficulties in meeting the writing criteria due to language proficiency. students commonly have inadequate knowledge of english grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, and spelling. this may lead to a lack of interest in writing among students. the result of a study showed that students were frustrated, uninspired, and spent much time before they could start writing exercises (basuni, 2004). it can be understood that the teaching and learning of writing poses some problems. the problems in writing among efl students are not only on their low proficiency but also on the strategy in the teaching of writing. according to ariyanti and fitriana (2017), efl students had trouble in using grammar, cohesion, coherence, paragraph organization, diction, and spelling errors in essay writing. additionally, hasan and marzuki (2017) analyzed the efl students’ ability in writing by asking the students to do writing tasks in a determined time. their findings showed that the grammatical problems covering using plural forms, articles, verb forms, clauses, passive voice, and preposition existed on the students’ writing. one of the methods of teaching is cooperative learning, which is based on the nature of human beings who need to cooperate with other people. cooperative learning has been found to be successful in increasing not only students’ language skill but also their social skills. moreover, cooperative learning provides student-student full chances of contact with meaningful input and output in a friendly environment (ahangari & samadian, 2014). in cooperative learning group ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 99-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license work, each member of a group is not only responsible for learning what is taught but also for helping each other in the group to learn and achieve good work. it can be said that students learn when they collaborate cooperatively. this notion is supported by slavin (1980), who stated that students get many benefits from exchanging experiences while they function as a collective rather than alone. similarly, yusuf, jusoh, and yusuf (2019) state that the students got better results in the post-test than in the pre-test of narrative essay writing after the cooperative learning was introduced in the classroom. not only did the students improve their writing scores, but they also showed good progress in the five writing components. the content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics are the components of writing an essay (jacob et al, 1981). since cooperative learning is also known to provide positive interdependence among students on their group work in enhancing their writing skills, the researchers of the present research were interested in applying one of the cooperative learning techniques, which is a jigsaw. according to mengduo and xiaoling (2010), the jigsaw is an activity which creates interaction by providing students with an opportunity to help each other build comprehension actively. by using jigsaw, students are encouraged to communicate and accomplish the idea of the task given by the teacher, together with their group members actively. the result of research conducted by hosseni, maleki, and mehrizi (2014) showed that the students were very active in discussing the task together with their jigsaw group, and they also learned in a supportive environment. that is because students played the role of a teacher in the class. quinn (2006) also stated that by using jigsaw technique, most students enjoyed working with a partner, and this gave them the motivation to do their work. jigsaw also includes a procedure whereby students share information they have gathered with their groupmates and with the mates from other groups in class (slavin, 1995). the procedures in jigsaw were broken down into several steps. first, students were divided into several groups called the jigsaw groups or homegroups. members of each group should identify themselves as member 1, member 2, member 3, and member 4 (if each group consists of 4 members). in this jigsaw group, they were given a different part of the text. students who have the same number ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 100-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (for example, member 1) should get the same text (part 1 of the text). second, the students with the same number in the groups or the same part of the text were gathered. this was called the expert group. in their new group, they read and tried to understand the part of the text. they can discuss the content with members of the same group and agree on what the text is about. if there are questions about the part of the text, they can answer them together so that they can fully understand the text. third, they go back to the jigsaw group with the information that they had from the expert group. in the jigsaw group, they shared the information that they got to all the group members. in this step, they got complete information about the text through exchanging and sharing information. through these jigsaw technique activities, students would be able to exchange the ideas within the group. at the end of these activities, they would be able to gather the information and ideas they got from the expert and jigsaw group in the final writing test. a preliminary study was conducted to find out the problems in writing faced by a class of the tenthgrade students of public senior high school 2 at malang city, east java, indonesia. in the preliminary study, the students were given a writing test, asking them to write a short biography of president joko widodo based on a timeline. the result of the test shows that students’ writing skill was low as the mean was only 53.8, whereas the minimum passing grade was 75. the preliminary study also showed that the teacher has never used a jigsaw for teaching writing, therefore, in this study, the researchers used jigsaw as the strategy to solve the problem in learning to write a recount text, particularly biography, faced by tenth-grade students of the school. however, unlike in the common jigsaw studies, online searching activity was included and conducted by the students in the expert group (or the second step of the jigsaw and online searching strategy). online searching is the activity that is done to gain information through the website using the internet search engines. according to bull and ma (2001), technology and online sources provide and offer unlimited resources to language learners. by using technology, especially the internet, the students can adjust their learning process by choosing the information they need that their teachers are not able to provide (gilakjani & sabouri, 2017). it means that through ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 101-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technology, especially the internet, students can have broader knowledge than through manual sources. with the inclusion of online searching, the strategy in this study was called jigsaw and online searching strategy (joss). a recount text, particularly biography, is one of the texts that senior high school students should study. the selection of the text was based on basic competence number 4.5, which was aimed to help students to understand the contextual meaning (4.5.1) and to construct contextual meaning (4.5.2) related to the social function, generic structure, and language features, especially biography, of eminent people either orally or in a written form. based on the background, the problem of the research is formulated as follows: how can jigsaw and online searching strategy (joss) increase tenth-grade students’ writing skills? more particularly, the research aimed to answer three questions: 1) can joss be used to improve the students writing skills?; 2) how is joss implemented in the classroom?; 3) do the students have good responses towards the application of joss? method this research was action research which was conducted in a classroom setting. action research which is conducted in a classroom setting is aimed to solve problems faced by a teacher in the classroom (burns, 1999). from the preliminary study, it was known that the students’ problem dealt with how to improve their skill in writing a recount text, particularly biography. this study was conducted at state senior high school 2 at malang, east java. in this study, the subjects of the research were the students of the tenth grade of language and culture study program at the 2019/2020 academic year. there were 32 students in the class. however, 10 students did not join the preliminary study session. in the analysis, only 22 students were involved. according to kemmis and mctaggart (1998), action research is represented through spiral cycles. in action research, four stages must be conducted in each cycle. the stages are planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting on the observation. the four stages of this study are explained in the following parts. planning the action in this stage, the researchers prepared joss to improve the tenthgrade students’ writing skills. unlike in the common jigsaw, in joss, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 102-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students are involved in the information searching in the expert group. then, they return on their jigsaw group after having complete information from online searching and the summary of part of the text. they present and share their part of the text in the jigsaw group order to get the whole story. the last step is that students are asked to write the complete text individually. the first researcher acted as the teacher who applied joss. to run joss, she divided the students into eight groups consisting of four students in each group. the general planning of the study consisted of preparing a lesson plan for four meetings, materials, and media of recount text, particularly biography, research instrument (test, questionnaire, and interview guide), and the criteria of success. the implementation was considered to be successful when 80% or 18 out of 22 students achieved the passing grade, which was 75 in the total score. implementing the action in this stage, the teacher implemented the jigsaw and online searching, which had been planned. the researcher divided the writing process into five steps. the description of activities could be seen in table 1. the five steps should be done orderly. table 1 the description of activities stage description of activity core activity 1. building knowledge students were given the example of recount text (biography) for them to read. reading recount text (biography). identifying the structure of biography text through doing exercise. 2.grouping students were divided into several groups, and each group consisted of 4 students, called the jigsaw group. contributing work in the jigsaw group. each member of the group got a different part of the text. 3.building ideas and knowledge with the expert group students with the same part gathered and discussed the blank information using online searching with their group members. this is called the expert group. filling blank information through online searching and discuss it together with other members of their expert group. 4.summari zing ideas with jigsaw group students went back to their jigsaw group and exchanging information with each other. exchanging information summarizing complete information. 5. writing a recount text, particularly biography (post-test) after having a complete event, students were asked to write the complete recount text, particularly biography individually. writing activity (individually). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 103-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license observing the action according to latief (2015), an observation is focused on the data related to the criteria of success stated. it means that the researchers had to observe whether or not the implementation of joss could affect the students’ skill in writing. the instruments to collect data included the test, questionnaire, interview guide, and scoring rubric. the observation of the action was divided into two categories. the first category was the main data, which were collected from the students’ writing test. to see the students’ writing score, the researchers used a scoring rubric, including five aspects of writing. they are content. organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics. each aspect had a different proportion of scores. the proportions were content (30%), organization (20%), language use (25%), vocabulary (20%), and mechanics (5%) (jacobs et al. 1981) that were relevant to the scoring rubric for recount text particularly biography. moreover, two raters in this study scored the students’ result of writing. they were the english teacher of senior high school 2 at malang and one of the researchers of this study. the average scores from two raters were used quantitative data in the analysis. the second category was the supporting data that were obtained from the result of the questionnaire and interview in order to get qualitative data. the questionnaire was aimed to know the students’ opinion about learning to write a recount text, particularly biography, by using joss. the questionnaire items required the students to give responses to the use of media and the learning activities. there were eight items with four options: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. in the administration of the questionnaire, the indonesian version was used to enable the students to understand the messages fully. the english version of the questionnaire is included in the appendix. for the interview, the researchers used some questions directed to the students. the first question was about the use of joss for teaching recount text, particularly biography. the second question was about the media that the teacher used to teach recount text, particularly biography. reflecting the action the reflecting stage covered the analysis of the data, which were collected from the observing stage. in this stage, the data from the implementation of the strategy were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. the quantitative data ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 104-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were obtained through the preliminary writing test and the final writing test. the qualitative data were obtained from the students’ questionnaires. the data from the chosen instruments were evaluated to know the students’ responses toward the use of media. the criteria for success were used to determine whether the implementation of joss was successful or not. findings and discussion findings improvement of students’ writing skill the researchers got the data from students’ writing scores in the fourth meeting. the comparison of the students’ improvement from the preliminary test and the final test was shown in figure 1. figure 1. improvement of the writing skill as shown in figure 1, the students’ writing skills improved when compared to the result of the preliminary study (53.90). the mean of the post-test (77.40) exceeds the minimum passing grade (75). additionally, the means the writing components, which are content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics, also improved (see table 2). table 2. improvement of the means of writing components components preliminary study posttest content 17.5 25.9 organization 11.2 16.9 language use 11.1 15.6 vocabulary 11.1 15.6 mechanics 3 3.4 total 53.80 77.40 the improvement of the students’ means in each component of the total mean indicated that the students’ achievement in writing recount text by using joss had met the criteria of success. it was found that there was no significant difference between the students’ scores from rater 1 and rater 2. the mean from the rater 1 was 78.50, while the mean from the rater 2 was 79.40. the mean score that is used by the researchers was the average scores from raters 1 and 2, which was 77.40. it could be concluded that the students’ scores were reliable, and this research was successful. therefore, the researchers did not need to continue to cycle 2. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 105-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the implementation of joss in this study, the learning process using a cooperative learning approach, the jigsaw technique, and online searching as the media was divided into five steps. there were four meetings in one cycle to implement the steps. the first step was building knowledge. this step was done in the first meeting. the students were helped by the teacher to understand the social function, generic structure, and language features of recount text, particularly biography. to help students for better understanding, they were given an example of a biography and did an exercise with their chair mates. the second step was grouping, which was in the second meeting. in this step, the students were divided into 8 jigsaw groups, each of which consisted of 4 students. in the jigsaw group, each member of the group was given one specific part of the text, which contained blank information. everyone in the group had different parts, namely orientation (member 1), event 1 (member 2), event 2 (member 3), and reorientation (member 4). students were told to pay attention to their written part and guessed what sequence or event might happen related to the part with blank information that they got. the third step was building ideas and knowledge within the expert group. this step was also done in the second meeting. students with the same part were gathered and discussed the blank information with members of their expert group. in their expert group, students tried to find information through online searching to fill the blank information according to the part of the organization of the text. they built their ideas and summarized the events according to the information that they got through online searching. the fourth step was summarizing ideas with the jigsaw group. this step was done in the third meeting. in this step, students went back to their jigsaw group after having complete information or a summary of one part of the text. they presented and shared the part of the text in their jigsaw group in order to get the whole story. the students also made summaries of the discussion that they did with the members of the jigsaw group. the fifth step was doing the writing post-test. this step was done in the fourth meeting, which was the last meeting. students were asked to write a complete recount text individually from the information that they had already got in the expert and the jigsaw group ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 106-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion. the five steps were done in four meetings orderly. students’ responses to the implementation of joss twenty two students were involved in the steps of jigsaw and online searching strategy completely. in the last meeting, the researchers distributed the questionnaire after they had finished working on the post-test. the analysis of responses showed that all the students (100%) liked learning english by using joss (item 1), agreed that using joss made them easier to understand the material of writing recount text, particularly biography (item 2), and agreed that joss helped them increase their writing skill (item 3). it was proven by the average of the students’ scores from the preliminary study and from the final writing test, which showed some improvement. it means that the students can understand the material of recount text better using joss. when asked about whether they had difficulties in writing (item 4), 20 students (90%) stated that they did not have any difficulties when they learned in their jigsaw group. however, 2 students (10%) stated that they had difficulties when they learned in their jigsaw group. these two students were confused about receiving information from the members of the jigsaw group because their explanation was not clear enough. all of the students (100%) agreed that using joss helped them arrange the words in order to make sentences in the text (item 5), agreed that using joss made writing easier because they could learn from each other in the jigsaw group (item 6), agreed that joss was interesting (item 7), and agreed that joss could support the process of learning to write (item 8). it was also proven by the jigsaw activities that have been done by the students. they were active in exchanging ideas and information related to the topic that was given by the researchers. from the interview, it was revealed that most students gave positive responses to the use of joss. they said that in the jigsaw group, they could help each other and learned from group members conveniently. therefore, the implementation of joss helped them to write recount text, particularly biography better. discussion the improvement of the students’ skill in writing based on the result of the study, the students improved their skill in writing recount text, particularly biography, following the application of joss. all of the students (100%) reached the criteria ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 107-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of success. in addition, the use of joss improved the five components of writing: content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics. the students could develop their ideas into paragraphs well from the result of exchanging ideas from the expert group to the jigsaw group. this is in line with the finding of mengduo and xiaoling (2010), who stated that the students could have the opportunity to help each other for better comprehension by discussing actively through jigsaw activity. by using jigsaw, students could communicate and accomplish the task with their group members actively. therefore, they could organize content orderly. most of the students completed the generic structure of the recount text, which were orientation, events, and reorientation. another writing component reinforced was language use and vocabulary. the students’ average score in language use and vocabulary improved. through group discussion and online searching, the students could write using good language and good diction. it is also in line with gilakjani and sabouri (2017). they stated that by using technology and the internet, students could adjust their learning process by choosing the information they need when their teacher cannot provide it completely. the students’ average score on mechanics was also elevated from 3 to 3.4. they made fewer errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing. it is also in line with the finding of yusuf, jusoh, and yusuf (2019), who stated that in their study, the students’ post-test scores were better than their pre-test scores by using cooperative learning (jigsaw technique). the implementation of joss in this study, the researchers used joss in four meetings with five steps of learning. the learning was done as planned. the students gave a positive attitude while they were learning and discussing in their jigsaw group. they were also enthusiastic in paying attention to the teacher’s explanation of their jigsaw and expert groups. some students also tried to help their group members who did not understand the topic very well. they were active in discussing and searching the information through online searching on their jigsaw and expert groups, respectively. this is in line with the finding by hosseni et al (2014). they stated that the students were very active and enthusiastic in sharing experiences and discussing materials within their jigsaw group to accomplish group work together. the use of jigsaw and online searching strategy made students more ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 108-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license active in a writing activity. moreover, they could cooperate in a group and work actively. it is in line with ahangari and samadian (2014), who stated that by using cooperative learning, students not only can improve their language skills but also social skills because they have chances to interact with other students actively. in cooperative learning, each student within the group should help each member of the group to learn and complete the task in order to create a good teamwork achievement. therefore, it can be said that students learn effectively when they work cooperatively. in addition, the researchers divided the writing process into five workable steps: (1) building students’ knowledge about social function, generic structure, and language features of recount text, particularly biography; (2) grouping the students into a jigsaw group, (3) asking the students to develop ideas in the expert group about the specific part of their text through online searching, (4) asking the students to summarize ideas in the jigsaw group so that they could exchange information that they brought from the expert group in order to build complete recount text, particularly biography, and (5) asking the students to do a test of writing a recount text, particularly biography. the students’ responses toward the implementation of joss from the result of the students’ response in the questionnaire it showed that most of the students considered that joss was good to help them organize their ideas for writing. moreover, they were happy to be able to share their ideas with their jigsaw group. it is in line with mengduo and xiaoling (2010), who stated that jigsaw is an activity that creates interaction by providing students with an opportunity to help each other build comprehension actively. in addition, by using the jigsaw, students can be motivated to communicate and accomplish the idea of the task that will be given by the teacher, together with their group members actively. it is also in line with aranson (1978), who stated that the advantage of the jigsaw technique is that students interact with others in getting full information, and it increases their social skills in communicating and delivering their ideas to other members of the group. conclusion and suggestion based on the result of this study, it can be concluded that the application of joss improved students’ skills in writing recount text, particularly biography. the students were ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 109-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license successful in generating and developing ideas, selecting more appropriate tense and vocabulary, and using correct spelling and punctuation. the result of this study has reached the criteria for success. this was proven by the fact that 100% of the students passed the minimum passing grade (kriteria ketuntasan minimal/kkm). furthermore, the majority of the students gave positive responses to the implementation of joss. the results of this research provide some benefits and give some information to the english teachers about the use of joss in efl students’ writing skills. accordingly, it is recommended that english teachers consider using joss in order to improve the teaching-learning process, especially for recount text. for future researchers, the result of this study can be used as a reference to conduct research about improving students’ skills in writing. future researchers can also examine the use of joss for other skills such as listening, speaking, or reading. references ahangari, s., & samadian, z. (2014). the effect of cooperative learning activities on the writing skills of iranian efl learners. linguistics and literature studies, 2(4), 121-130. aranson, e. (1978). implementing jigsaw in the language classroom. in c. kessler (ed)., cooperative language learner: a teacher resource book. new jersey: practice hall. ariyanti, a., & fitriana, r. (2017). efl students’ difficulties and needs in essay writing. advances in social science, education and humanities research (assehr), 158, 111-121. basuni. (2004). using questioning technique to improve the ability of the second year students of sltp negeri 1 haruai in writing paragraph (unpublished master thesis). malang: universitas negeri malang. baron, r. (2019). employing jigsaw in english academic writing: an action research in an efl class in indonesia. research and innovation in language learning, 2(3), 233-234. bull, s., & ma, y. (2001). raising learner awareness of language learning strategies in situations of limited recourses. interactive learning environments, 9(2), 171-200. burns, a. (1999). collaborative action research for english language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. gilakjani, a. p., & sabouri, n. b. (2014). role of iranian efl teachers about using pronunciation power software in the instruction of english pronunciation. english language teaching, 7(1), 139-148. harmer, j. (2004). how to teach writing. essex: pearson education. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 110-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hasan, j., & marzuki, m. (2017). an analysis of student’s ability in writing at riau university pekanbaru. theory and practice in language studies, 7(5), 380388. hosseni, s. m., maleki, r., & mehrizi, a. a. h. (2014). on the impact of using jigsaw ii technique on the development of writing performance of iranian intermediate efl learners. international journal of language learning and applied linguistics world, 11(4), 198-215. jacobs, h. l., zingraf, s. a., wormuth, d.r. hartfiel, v. f., & hughey, j. b. (1981). teaching esl composition: a practical approach. london: newbury house publishers. kemmis, s., & mctaggart, r. (1998). the action research planner (3rd ed.). deakin university, australia: deakin university press. latief, m. a. (2015). research method on language learning: an introduction. malang: state university of malang press. mengduo, q., & xiaoling, j. (2010). jigsaw strategy as a cooperative learning technique: focusing on the language learners. chinese journal of applied linguistics, 33(4), 113-125. mukminatien, n. (1997).the difference of students’ writing achievement across different courses levels (unpublished dissertation). malang: universitas negeri malang. quinn, p. (2006). cooperative learning and student motivation. education and human development master's theses, the college at brockport. state university of new york. slavin, r. e. (1980). cooperative learning. review of educational research. boston: allyn & bacon. retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/a bs/10.3102/00346543050002315 slavin, r. e. (1995). cooperative learning: theory, research and practice (2nd ed.). boston: allyn & bacon. yusuf, q., jusoh, z., &yusuf, y. (2019). cooperative learning strategy to enhance writing skills among second language learners. international journal and instruction, 12(1), 20-32. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 2-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.16383 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license appendix: the questionnaire instruction. respond to the questionnaire by ticking (v) one of the available options: sa: strongly agree a: agree d: disagree sd: strongly disagree no item sa a d sd 1 i like to learn english by using cooperative learning, especially jigsaw and online searching strategy. 2 the use of the jigsaw and online searching strategy made me easier to understand the material of writing recount text, particularly biography. 3 the use of jigsaw and online searching strategy helped me increase my writing skill. 4 i have difficulties in writing in cooperative learning when the teacher used jigsaw and online searching strategy 5 the use of cooperative learning with jigsaw and online searching strategy helped me arrange the words in order to make sentences in the recount text because i was helped by other group members, 6 the use of jigsaw and online searching strategy made writing easier because i could learn from each other in the jigsaw group 7 in my opinion, it is interesting to use jigsaw and online searching strategy. 8 in my opinion, the use of jigsaw and online searching strategy supported me in the process of learning to write in the classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 101-118 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee reflecting critical incident as a form of english teachers’ professional development: an indonesian narrative inquiry research alberik ryan tendy wijaya, paulus kuswandono received: 18th july 2018; revised: 25th october 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract amidst the rapid development of english teaching, teacher‟s professional development (tpd) is crucial for english teachers. it has been discussed in the tesol summit 2018 in jakarta that the teachers demanded a tpd approach which facilitates them in sharing professional experiences with other teachers. this qualitative research would like to investigate the effectiveness of reflection with critical incident theory (cit) framework as a form of tpd which many studies have found effective to fulfil that demand and yet, rarely discussed in the context of indonesia. based on the reviewed literature, this research applied guided reflection and interview to gather the data. the gathered data were then analysed using open-, axial-, and selective coding. from the triangulated data, five themes related to tpd were extracted. one theme is dedicated to discussing two unique cases. overall, by reflecting their critical incidents, all of the participants could understand their experience deeper and thus, making it meaningful. therefore, this research suggests that the utilization of reflection using cit framework must be investigated further in a bigger scope with bigger participants and more frequencies of reflection. keywords: teacher‟s professional development; reflection; critical incident abstrak di tengah pesatnya perkembangan pengajaran bahasa inggris, pengembangan profesionalisme guru (tpd) penting bagi guru bahasa inggris. telah didiskusikan dalam tesol summit 2018 di jakarta bahwa para guru menginginkan sebuah pendekatan tpd yang memfasilitasi mereka untuk berbagi pengalaman profesional dengan guru lainnya. penelitian kualitatif ini ingin menginvestigasi keefektifan refleksi dengan kerangka teori peristiwa kritis (cit) sebagai bentuk tpd yang mana banyak studi telah menemukan keefektifan untuk memenuhi permintaan tersebut, akan tetapi jarang didiskusikan di dalam konteks indonesia. berdasarkan tinjauan pustaka, penelitian ini mengaplikasikan refleksi terpandu dan wawancara untuk mengumpulkan data. data yang telah terkumpul dianalisis dengan menggunakan open-, axial-, dan selective coding. dari data yang telah ditriangulasi, terekstrak lima tema terkait tpd. satu tema didedikasikan untuk mendiskusikan dua kasus unik. secara keseluruhan, dengan merefleksikan peristiwa kritis, semua partisipan mampu memahami pengalaman mereka secara lebih mendalam dan oleh karenanya, membuat pengalaman tersebut bermakna. maka dari itu, penelitian ini menganjurkan agar penggunaan refleksi dengan kerangka cit diinvestigasi lebih lanjut dalam skala yang lebih besar dengan lebih banyak partisipan dan frekuensi refleksi yang dilakukan. kata kunci: pengembangan profesionalisme guru; refleksi; peristiwa kritis how to cite: wijaya, alberik r. t., kuswandono, p. (2018). reflecting critical incident as a form of english teachers‟ professional development: an indonesian narrative inquiry research. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 101-118. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 102-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teacher‟s professional development (tpd) has become a trending topic amidst international researchers (körkkö, kyrö-ämmälä, & turunen, 2016; nauman, 2017) because teachers are seen as the foundation of education (varghese, morgan, johnston, & johnson, 2005). developing teachers means developing education (körkkö et al., 2016; putri & imaniyati, 2017). however, the challenge is that tpd is affected by many aspects, such as personal, policy, and cultural aspects. furthermore, education itself is dynamically reforming and for teachers to keep pace with the reform is of paramount importance (nauman, 2017); this notion emphasises the critical need of a contextual professional development. therefore, even though many researchers have explored it, continuous research on the tpd in various contexts is needed (nauman, 2017). acknowledging the importance of this particular topic, some indonesian researchers have contributed to this topic by bringing tpd to indonesian context (e.g. mustofa, 2007; putri & imaniyati, 2017; rahman, 2016; widodo & riandi, 2013; yuwono & harbon, 2010). in 2007, mustofa laid some important aspects of tpd in indonesia and also problems surrounding it. one of the key points he argued is that teachers must be more independent in developing themselves professionally. this notion is supported by widodo and riandi's (2013) statement in which “teachers are unlikely to participate in tpd unless it is formally required and financial support is provided” (p. 389). on the other hand, yuwono and harbon (2010, p. 147) pointed out that teachers in indonesia were working alone with little support from the government and even colleagues themselves. support from the government and/ or colleagues is as important as the teacher's own willingness in ensuring the effectiveness of tpd. the combination of both is crucial for indonesian english teachers as they need to keep themselves relevant to the relatively dynamic development of english curriculum in indonesia (hawanti, 2014; marcellino, 2008; wiyono, 2017). however, the conventional ways of tpd provided in indonesia (sari, 2012) do not exactly contribute positively to these problematic challenges. it has been discussed further by english teachers in tesol summit jakarta which was held on 4 february 2018 that most of the time, tpd in indonesia is not based on english teacher‟s needs as it is using the conventional top-down approach. therefore, during the summit, several types of tpd based on english teachers' needs were identified by the english teachers themselves. one of those types that are perceived as effective is sharing professional experiences. those types – according to empirical studies – can be facilitated ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 103-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license through reflection (kelly & cherkowski, 2015; sari, 2012), especially by the use of critical incident theory (cit) as a framework (farrell, 2013; hall & townsend, 2017). cit invites the teachers to tell about and reflect on their most memorable experiences, both positive and negative (farrell, 2013). by telling those stories and reflecting on their experiences with other people, teachers can acquire a deeper, more meaningful understanding of those experiences which ultimately could develop them even farther. yet, as good as it might sound, reflection itself is not yet exhaustively explored in the context of indonesia, let alone the cit framework. accordingly, indonesian tpd and reflection must first be reviewed, followed by reflection using cit framework. tpd is prominent for teachers, especially english teachers, in developing themselves to reduce the gap between them and the dynamic curriculum in education (nauman, 2017; patton, parker, & pratt, 2013). this is because tpd itself can be seen as “teachers‟ learning, how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupil learning” (postholm, 2012, p. 406). in order to be a professional teacher, one must learn to develop one‟s professional capital. this is further explained by patton, parker and pratt (2013) that as it is “composed of a combination of human, social, and decisional capital, professional capital is the asset of teachers making decisions in complex situations with collective responsibility, openness to feedback, and a willing transparency” (p. 441). this asset is very important for teachers to have and develop as it is the most important element to adapt efficiently to dynamic changes and challenges in education. not only do the teachers need to have knowledge and ability, but they must be able to adapt – willing to forget their prior, old knowledge and learn new, actual knowledge. as teachers adapt to the educational needs, tpd itself is shifting its focus to not just highlight teachers‟ cognition, but also their emotion (golombek & doran, 2014). teachers‟ emotion – or feeling – is now considered to have a strong impact on teaching and learning processes in a classroom and also the development of the teachers themselves (golombek & doran, 2014). all of this is in line with the needs of indonesian english teachers, which are to chat and share the experience with people – not just from a cognitive perspective but also from an emotional perspective. one that is certain is that people need to talk to and to be heard and noticed by other people; this is one of the basic needs of humans – including teachers. thus, many tpd tools are developed to accommodate this need; one of them is the reflection. as a mean of tpd, reflection has gained its popularity (curtis et al., 2015; golombek & doran, 2014; killeavy & moloney, 2010). reflection itself can be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 104-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license defined as a tool of elaborating one‟s experience (killeavy & moloney, 2010). they give further corroboration in which “reflection can be understood as a process of internal dialogue facilitated by thinking or writing and through an external dialogue and reflection together with others” (killeavy & moloney, 2010, p. 1071). this method is powerful not only because it is a very effective technique of sharing and gathering experience, but it is also making the experience meaningful (kuswandono, 2014). by reflecting on their experience, people will be able to use the internalised experience to guide them through difficult times. furthermore, it is also teacher-centred as it comes from within the teachers themselves – comes from their experience; like what teachers need (patton et al., 2013). as seen from those notions, many things can be achieved through reflection when it is used for tpd, like stabilizing teacher‟s cognition, emotion, and activity (golombek & doran, 2014), understanding teacher‟s experience to reduce gaps in education (kelly & cherkowski, 2015), and most importantly, making the experience meaningful which develops teacher professionally (killeavy & moloney, 2010). thus, it can be inferred that reflection is one of the most effective tools in developing teacher professionally. however, most of the researches of tpd using reflection were done outside indonesia. in indonesia, there are several pieces of research carried out in the scope of using reflection as tpd (kuswandono, 2014; sari, 2012). yet, most of them focus on pre-service teachers. it is found to be a very effective tool in developing pre-service english teachers professionally. thus, why not using it for in-service english teachers? as it has been described, english teachers in indonesia are seeking for a tool that can accommodate the chatting and sharing of experience; reflection is one of the possible answers to it. still, one question remains: what type of reflection? cit framework is one of the considered frameworks of reflection (flanagan, 1954; kain, 2003). it can be traced back to flanagan (1954) in which he defined it as “a set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behaviour in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles” (para. 2). kain (2003) further corroborates flanagan‟s idea as “the critical incident technique provides a systematic means of gathering the significances others attach to events, analysing the emerging patterns, and laying out tentative conclusions for the reader‟s consideration” (p. 85). this framework focuses on the incident which happens on one‟s experience and “the meanings individuals make of events in their lives” (kain, 2003). thus, incident is a pivotal element in this framework in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 105-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license which it can be defined as an action and/or event that happens in one‟s life which brings either good or bad impact to one‟s life (curtis et al., 2015; flanagan, 1954; hall & townsend, 2017; kain, 2003). this incident can be critical if one reflects on it deeply as an effort to make it meaningful to one‟s life – a turning point (flanagan, 1954; hall & townsend, 2017). when it is critically reflected, it can and will become one‟s cornerstone which provides foundational footing for that someone for the rest of his/her life; which is the final aim of cit framework. for english teachers in indonesia, this foundational footing will be very helpful for them in providing „shelter‟ amidst the ever-changing english curriculum. furthermore, this framework would help english teachers to internalize their own experience as most of the times, an experience would just be a mere experience if it is not internalized (curtis et al., 2015). when it is internalized, though, an experience can strengthen and develop one‟s life meaningfully (hall & townsend, 2017). this framework itself has been proven to be effective in developing english teachers professionally by many researchers (e.g. chien, 2016; hall & townsend, 2017). however, this framework is – according to the researchers‟ searches – not yet researched in the indonesian context, especially for indonesian english teachers. in short, based on the background and literature above, this research intends to investigate reflection as a form of tpd in indonesia. the reflection itself is based on cit framework to incite the teachers‟ meaningful experiences. by using this framework, sharing professional experiences to elicit the meaningfulness within could be better facilitated. this framework has been found effective by a number of researchers (e.g. bruster & peterson, 2013; chien, 2016; farrell, 2013; hall & townsend, 2017). the researchers want to see whether using this framework for indonesian english teachers would share similar strengths and effectiveness as its international counterpart. the research‟s objectives can be summarised into two research questions as follows: 1) what were the positive and negative cis identified from the teachers‟ experience?; 2) how did those cis develop teachers professionally? thus, this research invited six english teachers of a private school in cirebon, indonesia to critically reflect and share their most memorable incidents to make those incidents more meaningful and internalized for them. method research design this research used narrative inquiry as the underlying method to accommodate the teachers‟ cit reflection. the reasoning behind this is because human‟s life is composed by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 106-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license narratives and by inquiring narratives, social practice can be extracted (alsup, 2006). it will be very powerful for teachers if the teachers can inquire about the narratives from within and reflect on them. this is corroborated by farrell (2013) as "by telling their stories, teachers can not only reflect on specific incidents within their teaching world but also feel a sense of cathartic relief and it offers an outlet for tensions, feelings and frustrations about teaching" (p. 81). this method will accommodate the teachers to both vents their emotion (chien, 2016) to others and reflect critically on their incidents (farrell, 2013). setting and participants the participants for this research were six english teachers from a private school located in cirebon, indonesia. these teachers consisted of two kindergartens (anggi and brie), two elementary (ellis and friska), and two junior high teachers (castiel and drini) and their demographic data are presented in table 1. the consideration for this purposive sampling to choose all the english teachers in this school is to ensure the richness of the data. the six participants would show the varying cis experienced by them and the effects of those cis to their professional development as a teacher. table 1.participant‟s demographic data pseudon ym age gender years in teaching anggi 20-29 f 3 brie 30-39 f 12 castiel 40-49 m 12 drini 30-39 f 6 ellis 30-39 f 20 friska 40-49 f 21 data collection and analysis hughes (2007) states that one of the preferred data collection techniques for this cit framework is an individual interview. nevertheless, flanagan (1954) emphasizes that cit framework‟s data collection technique is not rigid; it must adapt to a certain context. in this research context, according to the initial data that the researcher gathered from informally talking to the participants, they did not understand about the critical incident. thus, while the interview was still the main data collection technique, the researcher gave a pre-interview reflection that included the explanation of cit and guiding questions to incite the participants‟ critical incident and for them to reflect on. the guiding questions were not obligatory for the participants to answer but they were welcome to do so. included in the guiding questions were whquestions adapted from farrell (2013) as he found that they were effective in inciting teacher‟s critical incident. after the researcher piloted the questionnaire and got a satisfying result, the researcher gave the questionnaire to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 107-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license each participant and explained it a bit. after that, a one-week period was given to the participants for them to reflect on their most critical incident as an incident can only be critical if it is reflected (flanagan, 1954). in the next phase, the researcher interviewed the participants individually to explore the incidents and the effect of those incidents in developing the participants professionally, making those incidents critical. from both the reflection and interview, two forms of teachers‟ critical incidents were gathered: the highest and lowest points of teaching. while the reflection tried to incite the teachers‟ critical incidents, the interview tried to delve into the depth of teachers‟ critical incident (flanagan, 1954), especially in terms of the effects of the cis to the teachers. from the interview, triangulated with the reflection, the researcher coded the data to find out the effects of cis to them using open-, axial-, and selective coding. findings and discussion findings of the teachers’ cis in this research, the participants shared their two most memorable cis (positive and negative) during their teaching career that changed their view about teaching and learning processes through guided reflection and interview. nevertheless, life is composed of many incidents (körkkö et al., 2016). one that must be highlighted is that a teacher‟s ci might be influenced by other cis that he or she experienced (farrell, 2013). just like making sense of the narratives in one‟s life, cis cannot be viewed as a separate entity. these cis happened in one‟s life must be interwoven into a single, structured framework of life to make the most meaning of them. one of the examples in this research is from ellis. she experienced her negative ci because of her positive ci. as she found that her talent was in teaching from the positive ci, she wanted to develop it even further. this led to her working in that private education institution and experiencing that negative ci. the meaningfulness of both cis would be lower if viewed individually. therefore, in the discussion of the teachers‟ critical incident, the researcher did not limit it to only two critical incidents (positive and negative) from each participant. other supportive critical incidents mentioned by the participants were used to corroborate and make sense of their main critical incidents. this led to a more fruitful and meaningful discussion between the researcher and the participants about the cis and the process existed behind those cis. teachers’ professional development as seen through their critical incident reflection from their cis, discussion, and elaboration during the interview, five ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 108-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license substantial themes were identified. the identification itself was based on the effect of the cis to their life, especially on how they viewed themselves as a professional teacher. four of those themes are teacher as a calling, teacher as a lifelong learner, teacher as a facilitator, and encouraging learning environment. the fifth theme is a special theme discussing the two most meaningful critical incidents identified from this research which ultimately changing oneself. teacher as a calling one of the most notable excerpts for this part is “at that moment i felt that my choice to become a teacher was right” that drini mentioned passionately when asked about her feeling in experiencing her positive ci. her ci strengthened her will in being a teacher (bruster & peterson, 2013). this theme is what was extracted from all participants in reflecting their cis. anggi, the youngest teacher in this research, believed that being a teacher meant being passionate and doing it by heart. this is corroborated by drini in which she told that “teaching must be enjoyed”. thus, their cis developed their teaching beliefs which in turn strengthened themselves in being a teacher. while anggi and drini focused on the process of being a teacher, brie, castiel, and friska focused on the result that a teacher would get. brie mentioned that “my personal satisfaction was that i had touched the students‟ life”. this expression, according to bruster and peterson (2013, p. 177), is the final phase of the reflection in which the teacher contemplate on a deeper level – moral and ethical issues – and view teaching as a calling. for brie, seeing her students succeeded in their life satisfied her and became the reason for her in continuing to be a teacher. friska also had the same belief as brie as “sometimes i felt proud, even though i was not the only factor”. she shared that several students and parents thanked her personally because of the guidance. this became her motivation to keep being a teacher even after teaching for 21 years. after all, as castiel mentioned, “teacher is a human, when we successfully direct, guide our students, it would increase teacher‟s confidence”. by focusing on the concrete results in their students that happened because of them, they became more convinced in their choice to be a teacher (palmer, 1998). for ellis in particular, she also mentioned almost the same thing as drini in which “after several times teaching in a sunday school, i finally realized that my talent was in teaching”. even though the effect ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 109-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was the same, both did not share the same ci. drini got a letter that strengthened her will in being a teacher while for ellis, her positive ci was the starting point for her in becoming a teacher. ellis felt something different from her previous jobs; she felt the excitement that she could not find in her previous job. ellis even mentioned that if she did not reflect on that incident critically, she would not be a teacher today. this finding is in line with what farrell (2013) found. in his research, the participant became more aware of herself as a teacher and her teaching through reflecting ci; this strengthened her will in being a teacher. thus, a well-reflected ci could show meaningfulness in being a teacher and make the teachers view their career as a calling. teacher as a lifelong learner in their reflection of their cis, brie and ellis mentioned that in the beginning, they never thought of being a teacher. yet, now they became a good teacher. the reason behind it is because both of them, just like the other participants, believed that a teacher is a lifelong learner (körkkö et al., 2016, p. 204). in the case of brie, when she was a novice teacher, she did not know about the theories thoroughly, she only used her instinct. she was teaching and learning at the same time. though, by learning through her ups and downs – experience and observation – and by feeling it by herself, she was shaped into what she was now (bruster & peterson, 2013). drini was also as inexperienced as brie during her novice teaching. she tried to overcome it by teaching using the books provided. yet, when she saw the results, she was not satisfied at all. from there, she learned to use several different methods that “in my opinion, at that moment, those methods were appropriate with the class' psychology". this shows her improvement in her teaching method. by always reflecting when she was teaching, she could learn to be a better teacher (palmer, 1998). this is emphasised by castiel as “teaching means learning…the point is lifelong study, do not be satisfied quickly with what we have achieved now”. anggi further corroborates this as “i need to keep learning as a teacher no matter what”. both castiel and anggi emphasised heavily that when someone wants to be a teacher, he/she must also want to learn. this is because teaching is a complicated process that is ever-changing according to the era and a teacher is required to always keep up with it (wiyono, 2017). yet, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 110-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a teacher is not an omnipotent being (palmer, 1998). friska stated that “i realized that i was not smart, but i would always keep trying to enable myself”. she showed deliberate metacognitive thinking (spruce & bol, 2015) which urged her to always learn and develop herself. this is a must-have quality for a teacher (mansor et al., 2012; postholm, 2012); not always being perfect, but being humble enough to know that he/she still needs to learn every single day. this is further illustrated by palmer (1998, pp. 9–10) as he says that he is both a veteran and amateur teacher when entering a new class. it means that even though he already taught for thirty years, he always needed to learn strategies to cope with a new class; therefore, being a lifelong learner. in the end, as ellis believed, “it is better for our students to learn from moving water than stagnant water”; affirming the importance of lifelong learning for a teacher. teacher as a facilitator teaching now is more than just lecturing, it is about facilitating (harden & crosby, 2000). this is corroborated by farrell's (2016) finding in which the participants' beliefs were mainly about learner-centred growth in which a teacher must support and facilitate his/her students. this notion was critically reflected by all of the participants. anggi and drini showed a strong tendency towards this belief as “now, a teacher is a facilitator” and “a teacher is not the omnipotent, a teacher is not the source of everything, my function is just a facilitator” respectively. friska also supported this as she mentioned that “we can only become a facilitator; directing them, developing their character”. she pointed out that her use of the personal approach to her students was effective as it could strengthen the teacher-student bond and develop the students‟ character. students‟ character becomes a major element to be developed by the teachers. this is strongly believed by drini as “school is about developing character, if the students‟ character cannot be developed, going to school would be in vain”. this is further corroborated by friska as she mentioned that “a professional teacher not only transfers knowledge but also develops the students‟ character”. furthermore, teacher as a facilitator means that “teaching is not just merely about giving knowledge anymore, it is more about giving the motivation” (castiel). he mentioned that a teacher must be able to develop students‟ confidence by always giving them motivation. this is further corroborated by brie and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 111-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ellis as they tried to motivate their students to love english and always be curious about it. after all, the students would govern their own life and learning; a teacher could only do so much to support them to achieve that level. thus, it is essential for a teacher to facilitate students‟ character development and eventually, their willingness and enthusiasm to learn. this notion is supported by top, liew, and luo (2016) as they found that focusing on students‟ character development would increase their behaviours and also their academic achievement. after all, the students are humans. they need someone who can embrace and support them (ellis). this is, ultimately, what a teacher as a facilitator is (farrell, 2016; grasha, 1994). to conclude, some of the participants have taught for over 10 years, two even have taught for over 20 years. for them to be able to change their perception to follow the era is not an easy task. yet, through critically reflecting from their past experiences, they could change themselves and develop this very important quality. this finding emphasises the importance of reflecting one's cis. encouraging learning environment the last theme extracted from the participants‟ cis, especially from the cis of brie, castiel, drini, and ellis is engaging more in making an encouraging learning environment. one of the possible ways of making this kind of environment, according to castiel, is making the students feel secure in the class so that they would not be afraid. he further elaborated that “the students‟ ability in understanding learning material varies. the teachers need emotional stability to overcome that”. by having a stable emotion, a teacher would be able to encourage students to practice more and learn from their mistakes. the encouragement for the students to practice more and not to be afraid of making mistakes is critically needed, especially in the language class (al azri & al-rashdi, 2014). this is what brie and castiel believed as they gave more space to the students to practice. brie pointed out that “the portion for the students to speak must be higher than structure and writing”. castiel agreed with brie‟s point as he stated that “the point is the balance between theories and practice, that is what i prioritize”. one of the underlying reasons for him to do this is that during his school time, he observed that the students who could achieve high scores also demonstrated good speaking skills. he then recalled his experience during the english day occurring two times a week. it was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 112-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a day in which the students must speak english throughout the day. as he reflected critically, he concluded that it was because of practice, those students were able to attain a good level in speaking. therefore, he focused on developing an environment that could nurture his students‟ confidence in speaking english; essentially, a place for his students to practice and make a mistake. the importance of practice is highlighted by al azri and al-rashdi (2014) as they believe that accommodating the students with the authentic environment for the students to practice would increase the students‟ ability significantly. another kind of encouragement that the teachers gave is motivation. brie was startled as when she gave positive feedback to one of her students, that student became more focused on the teaching and learning processes and more confident in himself. drini and ellis also experienced this. when they motivated their students, the students showed a substantial improvement, especially in their willingness to learn english. in the end, the teachers are the foundation in the making of an encouraging learning environment. the teachers must first be able to regulate themselves. drini supported this as she believed that a teacher must first enjoy the teaching and learning process. if not, “stressful teachers tend to create stressful students” (drini). this is corroborated by castiel as he believed that a teacher must be able to create a comfortable environment for the students to learn and enjoy the class. becoming the true-self: unique cases besides those five themes identified, there are two unique cases needed to be scrutinized without any name mentioned. the first case occurred when a parent misunderstood the teacher's classroom management treatment as the students' detention. this is a traumatizing event for the teacher since the children's parents could not tolerate the treatment even though it was given for the good of the children. this traumatic event was still imprinted in this teacher‟s memory until now. thus, the teacher did a more preventive measure to not let this event happen again. while preventive measure might be helpful, the teacher was also aware that there was a small tendency to play safe and stay aloof from the students who were misbehaving. another case from one of the teachers is because of a traumatizing event, the teacher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 113-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license changed drastically. in the beginning, the teacher wanted to please everyone. however, because of a sudden traumatizing incident, the teacher changed. even the closest people believed that this teacher underwent a total change. this teacher became more confident and assertive. while this was a good change, there was a small tendency that this teacher became disinterested with other‟s opinion. it is apparent that the accumulation of one‟s cis, either positive or negative, would change his/her behaviour in his/her daily life. as seen from both cases, the negative cis in the form of a traumatizing event would have a stronger effect in changing one's life, albeit a somewhat negative effect. this has been researched by mcgarr and mccormack (2016) in which they found that the participants tended to focus on negative cis and made counterfactual thinking. this shows that personal bias might exist in reflecting own cis. hence, the moral support from other people is needed to ensure the change is a positive one (farrell, 2013) as „two heads are better than one‟. having a place for them to share their stories would lead to a different change in their life. other people's opinion would help them in deciding what to do next; this is the importance of sharing one‟s cis. furthermore, by reflecting one‟s cis, the teachers are invited to make sense of their experiences using language and share them with other people. this notion is summed up in bahk‟s (2018) powerful statement in which “using language to represent stress, and conflict, and anger, and joy, and finding the deeper meaning underlying those experiences which is, i think, one of the most powerful ways that we find happiness” (00:18:50 00:19:03). thus, making sense of one‟s cis and life through words with either oneself or others would lead to a wholesome life. conclusion and suggestion as seen through the discussion, cis gathered from the teachers had an impact on their lives, especially their teaching career. five impacts are coded from the teacher‟s reflection and interview: teacher as a calling, teacher as a lifelong learner, teacher as a facilitator, the importance of communication and students‟ character development, and encouraging learning environment. it can be inferred that as those cis happened, particularly for the positive cis, the teachers became more convinced in being a teacher and developing themselves to be a good teacher. if those cis are reflected well, especially like in ellis‟ case, cis can become a major life-changing force. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 114-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license nevertheless, negative cis must also be acknowledged. as seen through the special cases, if negative cis are reflected only from one‟s perspective, it might be falsely interpreted. thus, it is very crucial for the cis to be shared and scrutinized together with other people. all in all, reflecting cis is very important as those cis would become a strong foundation for someone‟s life – make or break one‟s life. the reason is that by telling and reflecting cis, a more in-depth understanding of one's life could be achieved. through a deep understanding of one's life, the teachers would be able to develop themselves to the fullest. thus, reflecting cis is an integral part of one‟s life. as both positive and negative cis can be a double-edged sword when viewed from only one‟s perspective, other people‟s perspective must also be invited and acknowledged to make the cis neutral and meaningful. furthermore, all the people have reflected on their experience to a certain degree. yet, each person has a different ability in reflection. therefore, the reflection of the cis is best to be done with colleagues to avoid personal bias; this is called critical friendship. this notion needs further investigation, especially in the context of indonesia. additionally, there are two research limitations acknowledged. the first limitation is that the researcher only gathered the teachers‟ cis without giving meaningful feedback to the teachers due to the researcher‟s position. the second one is the teachers only reflected their cis once. therefore, it is suggested that future researchers must be in the position to guide the teachers in reflecting their cis for several times personally and in a group. references al azri, r. h., & al-rashdi, m. h. 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(2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity and education, 4(1), 21–44. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 118-118 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2. 10923 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532770 1jlie0401 widodo, a., & riandi. (2013). dual-mode teacher professional development: challenges and re-visioning future tpd in indonesia. teacher development, 17(3), 380–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/1366453 0.2013.813757 wiyono, s. (2017). the 21st century: the turning point of the english language teaching in indonesia. kne social sciences, 1(3), 303. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v1i 3.750 yuwono, g. i., & harbon, l. (2010). english teacher professionalism and professional development: some common issues in indonesia. asian efl journal, 12(3), 145–163. retrieved from http://ezproxy.scu.edu.au/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh& an=56441736&site=ehost-live. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 30-47 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee examining the effect of task-based language teaching on university business students in bangkok matthew rudd received: 9th april 2019; revised: 23th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract the purpose of this study was to introduce task-based language teaching in a bid to energise stagnant english language performances among second-year business students (n = 81), studying a private university in the peripheral areas of bangkok. students followed a tblt learning environment for one semester (16 weeks), and subsequent end-of-term performances were compared with prior attainments achieved under tradition forms of instruction using t-tests (0.05). overall, tbtl proved to positively influence performance outcomes when compared to the traditional method (tblt: 60.9 = grade c+; trad: 54.93 = grade c; p [0.0195] = sig <0.05). nonetheless, the majority of progress derived from enhancements in speaking skills, as assessments in this domain improved significantly, whereas no significant difference was observed in formal examinations. further to this however, variability analyses highlighted that upper quartile students significantly improved in both speaking and formal examinations, while the lower quartile cluster failed to show noteworthy forms of progress in speaking, and, formal examination scores exacerbated entirely; concluding therefore that learners’ response to tblt is governed by their linguistic potential. the recommendation therefore would be to arrange two separate groupings based on ability for two reasons: (1) assist accelerated acquisition of more proficient students who thrive in a tblt environment, and, (2) to provide curricular support for struggling students for whom tblt is not (yet) developmentally appropriate. key words: english; task; tblt; language; performance abstrak tujuan dari penelitian untuk memperkenalkan pengajaran bahasa berbasis tugas dalam memberi energi pada kinerja bahasa inggris yang stagnan pada mahasiswa bisnis tahun kedua (n = 81) yang sedang belajar di sebuah universitas swasta di daerah pinggiran bangkok. siswa mengikuti lproses belajar menggunakan tblt selama satu semester (16 minggu), dan kinerja akhir semester berikutnya dibandingkan dengan pencapaian sebelumnya yang dicapai dalam bentuk pengajaran tradisional menggunakan uji-t (0,05).secara keseluruhan, tbtl terbukti secara positif mempengaruhi hasil kinerja bila dibandingkan dengan metode tradisional (tblt: 60,9 = grade c +; trad: 54,93 = grade c; p [0,0195] = sig <0,05). meskipun demikian, sebagian besar kemajuan berasal dari peningkatan keterampilan berbicara, karena penilaian dalam domain ini meningkat secara signifikan, sedangkan tidak ada perbedaan signifikan yang diamati dalam ujian formal. analisis variabilitas menyoroti bahwa siswa kuartil atas secara signifikan meningkat baik dalam ujian berbicara maupun formal, sedangkan cluster kuartil yang lebih rendah gagal menunjukkan bentuk kemajuan penting dalam berbicara, dan, skor ujian formal lebih rendah; oleh karena itu tanggapan pelajar terhadap tblt diatur oleh potensi linguistik mereka.karenanya rekomendasi dibagi kedalam dua kelompok terpisah berdasarkan kemampuan karena dua alasan: (1) membantu percepatan akuisisi siswa yang lebih mahir yang berkembang di lingkungan tblt, dan, (2) untuk memberikan dukungan kurikuler bagi siswa yang berjuang yang menjadi tblt dimana belum dikembangkan dengan baik. kata kunci: bahasa inggris; tugas; tblt; bahasa; kinerja how to cite: rudd, m. (2019). examining the effect of task-based language teaching on university business students in bangkok. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 30-47. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 31-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the present study examines the instructional impact of task-based language teaching on a sample of 81 university business students. given the timid level of descriptive details provided in prior literature, this paper comprehensively presents details of tblt research design and lesson structures, and successively, the results from are analysed by a multitude of cross-sectional analyses, supported by in-depth discussion to determine the effectiveness of tblt on learners of all proficiency levels. the fundamental research questions this paper aimed to address the impact of tblt on students‟ overall english attainments, and whether tblt can contribute to improving both speaking skills and formal assessments among both male and female students of all ability levels. task-based language teaching tblt has its origins in dewey‟s view that learning occurs through experiences that relate to the interests of the learner (samuda & bygate, 2008), as an alternative to traditional educational settings, in which most of the opportunities for language use are taken by the teacher (willis, 1996). learners feel the need “to add physical action to their learning … to experience the new knowledge in ways that involve them better (lightbown & spada, 1993), and the concept of task-based language teaching has been touted to maximise student involvement and language use, as tasks themselves also remove teacher domination (willis, 1996). nunan (1989) defines a task as a “a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form”. for which, ellis (2003) established a set of criteria that must be met for an activity to constitute a task, where language serves as a tool for communicating and students move away from being language learners and are positioned to become „language users‟ (ellis 2001). first of all, as mentioned by nunan (1989), the focus must be centred on meaning, as opposed to specific linguistic forms. secondly, acquisition is optimised when learners encounter a „gap‟ (ellis, 2009), which is a situation that necessitates conveying meaning in the form of an opinion, a contribution, an argument or to impart information. this nature of negotiation forces learners to stretch their interlanguage (nunan, 1989), and incites individuals to take risks in experimenting with new language structures; increasing pushed ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 32-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license output (ellis, 2009). thirdly, students must resort to their own linguistic and non-linguistic resources to accomplish the task; and (fourthly), there is a specific outcome separate from the use of language, as the language serves as a means for achieving that outcome, rather than an end product. educators may misinterpret a task as a form of situational grammar exercise given the degree of overlap, although both concepts are clearly separable and the latter does not require the learner to negotiate meaning, but rather demonstrate a correct understanding of a given linguistic feature. furthermore, the learners are explicitly made aware of the language-related objective of the situational-grammar exercise, whereas in a task they are not (ellis, 2009). this does not stipulate that tasks cannot focus on certain grammatical structures; they can, provided that all four afore-mentioned criteria are satisfied. tasks that are more grammar orientated are referred to as „focused‟ task, the clear distinction however is that learners are not explicitly informed of the linguistic feature that will form the basis of the task, this remains „hidden‟ (ellis, 2009). a syllabus comprising unfocused tasks however constitutes a range of tasks to be completed (prabhu, 1987), rather than forms to mastered. an additional distinctive feature is that tasks can be „input-providing‟, involving reading and listening skills, or, tasks can be „output-prompting‟, which engages students in speaking and writing (ellis, 2009); although most tasks tend to be integrative, involving two or more skills. with respect to the structure of tasks, there is no single rigid paradigm to which tblt practitioners must adhere. the vital component of a task-based lesson is the main-task phase, although additional phases may be included in the form of pre-task and post-task activities. task methodology (pre-task, main task and post-task): pre-tasks typically take one of four forms: (1) performing a task similar to that of the main task; (2) observing a model to help understand how to perform the task; (3) creating non-task activities to prepare learners for the task; or (4) setting a time limit allowing participants to strategically plan for the main task. in the first instance, students may participate in the initial task as an interactive class-based activity (phrabu, 1987) before being required to complete the task individually or in groups. secondly, merely observing others perform a task as an introductory model can help reduce the cognitive ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 33-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license load on the learner (skehan, 1996; willis, 1996). and thirdly, non-task activities contribute to activating learners‟ content schemata, and when familiar with the requirements of the task, more processing space becomes available for formulating the language needed to express ideas, also contributing to enhancing fluency and complexity of language used. this is manifested in newton‟s (2001) argument that such activities will „prevent the struggle with new words overtaking other important goals such as fluency or content learning‟; such activities may constitute brainstorming or mind-maps (willis, 1996). lastly, teachers may allow students to strategically plan their approach to a given task, for which skehan (1998) proposes that 10 minutes is optimal. main tasks entail both taskperformance and process options to optimally manage task implementation. the former comprises options relating to how the task is planned by the teacher, who may wish to impose a time pressure placing the emphasis on fluency, whereas, the absence of time restrictions will help enhance accuracy. the second task performance option may involve allowing students to access the input designated for task-related activities, which will naturally reflect in greater accuracy than if such input was not made available (ellis, 2009). thirdly, the teacher may contemplate adding a surprise element into the lesson; such spontaneity will force students to reformulate ideas and language use. on the other hand, process options involve live decision making in the handling of tasks, especially with respect to corrective feedback. this could be achieved by addressing errors during task time where the teacher pauses the task momentarily to attend to form (ellis, basturkmen and loewen 2001), or in-task correction may occur incidentally (prabhu, 1987), and is addressed when appropriate, intervening to support a process initiated by the learner, possibly in the form of a recast or metalingual comments, a technique referred to as nudging (lynch, 1997). post-tasks encompass three major pedagogic goals. firstly, to provide an opportunity to repeat the task either under identical or modified conditions to reinforce mastery. or secondly, students are invited to reflect on task performance to discuss communication related difficulties and problem-solving issues in order to enrich subsequent performances, for this allwright (1984) coined the term uptake. thirdly, the teacher may allocate attention to forms ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 34-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that were problematic during in-task performance that they failed to use naturally (loshcky & bley vroman, 1993). tblt methodology in practice: skehan (1998) introduces a pre-task phase prior to the main task, which is allocated to more explicit instruction and form correction. however, in this model tasks are entirely unfocused and do not integrate post-task activities. long (1985) on the other hand incorporates both focused and nonfocused tasks and also provides corrective feedback when required, but does not include a pre-task or post-task phase; whereas willis (1996) proposes that attention to form best reserved for the post-task phase. ellis (2003) alludes to the inclusion of all three components and paying attention to form during all phases of the task. similar to long, ellis introduces both focused and unfocused tasks, but dissimilar to both long and skehan, ellis does not necessarily reject the ideology of traditional forms of instruction to supplement understanding (2009). nonetheless, despite this variability, all three versions of tblt bear five essential similarities: (1) all three variations provide natural opportunities for language use, (2) they are learner centred, (3) tasks are either focused or unfocused, (4) attention is paid to form is when considered appropriate, and (5), all approaches reject traditional forms of instruction (as a central ideology). the structure of tblt utilised in this paper will be detailed in the methodology section. criticisms of tblt widdowson (2003) claimed to identify the structural weakness of tblt on the grounds that criteria is too loosely formulated and that tasks are not distinguishable from more traditional classroom activities, and, that tasks neglect semantic meaning. seedhouse (1999) argues more explicitly that a task is not a valid construct for language learning, asserting that tblt will only result in the production of impoverished language samples of minimal acquisitional value (pidginised language), and that the over-reliance of context will promote fossilization. seedhouse (2005) also added that the actual production of language that arises from a task is very unpredictable and disparate to the intended language. sheen (2003) accused the tblt of not possessing a grammar syllabus, and swan (2005) was more condemning with his comments, claiming that tblt „outlaws‟ grammar in its syllabus. however, in response to these claims, ellis (2009; 2005) points out that the criticisms proposed thus far have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 35-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license not accounted for the fact that tblt can comprise both input-prompting and output-providing tasks, which also exposes students to high quality input (through text or audio). in addition, as discussed a priori, not all tasks are unfocussed, a misconception on which these criticisms must have been founded. with careful planning, focused tasks can ensure a close match between the intended language features selected, and those that learners process when performing the task. a task-based syllabus is not mandated to solely comprise a pure task structure, a hybrid of both focused and unfocused tasks can be considered. ellis (2009) acknowledges the use of traditional forms of teaching if implemented carefully and sparingly alongside tblt, primarily in the form of conscious raising tasks which target and address confusing structures to rectify misunderstandings and reinforce accuracy. below is a compilation of studies published relatively recently and derived from more truthful sources, emanating from three separate countries active in efl; cyprus, albania and indonesia. eastern mediterranean university cyprus (analysed students’ reactions to tblt) the leading study for discussion was published in the asian efl journal (volume 9, issue 4, 2007) and was conducted at the eastern mediterranean university in the turkish republic of northern cyprus. the study looked to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing tblt to ascertain the students‟ reaction to tblt and their respective opinions in comparison to traditional forms of instruction. the study included 54 first-year students from two separate classes at the elt department of the university. the groups were demographically diverse and came from six nations, including turkey, turkish republic of northern cyprus, jordan, israel, kuwait and pakistan; and were aged between 17-23 years. to generate data, a mixed methods technique was used consisting of questionnaires, interviews and diaries. while questionnaires were distributed to all students, interviews and diaries however only involved four select students. questionnaires comprised a total of 26 questions utilizing a 5-point scale. the first ten questions related to traditional syllabus and the following 16 questions asked students to rate the experiences of tblt. the means of the two sets of questions were cross-compared via tijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 36-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tests for significance testing and to obtain descriptive statistics. the results indicated greater levels of engagement and enjoyment during the tblt phase compared to that of a traditional setting. the diaries, recorded by students a, b, c and d (held in anonymity), helped to identify common perceptions and supported reasoning. the diaries apparently revealed “great satisfaction” on the grounds that students enjoyed receiving and giving presentations, as well as the variety of tasks introduced to them, offering more opportunities to speak. the same four participants in the interviews expressed their dissatisfaction with traditional style lessons due to their limited role as a listener, and the teacher was hijacking the vast majority of the talk-time. they also stated that the course book was not pertinent to their interests and the exercises were of disinterest, as most of the content constituted lengthy passages followed by a repeatedly identical nature of exercises. south east european university albania (evaluated the impact of tblt on speaking skills) an alike study was conducted at the south east european university (albania) and examined the effectiveness of task-based learning in developing students‟ speaking skills in an efl setting. in line with the study above, the paper also investigated students‟ and teachers‟ reaction to the implementation of tblt style lessons. the research projects comprised 60 undergraduate students between the ages 18-25 who were working at preintermediate / intermediate level; six members of the teaching staff also took part. all participants, teachers and students, received questionnaires with a likert scale format ranging from 1-5 (strongly disagree to strongly agree). the students were divided into two groups, a control group was taught conventionally, and the experiential group received tblt instruction for a total of 8 weeks in the winter semester of 2012. a pre-test was conducted to ascertain the students‟ current level of spoken english, consisting of a 3minute presentation in which they introduced themselves to the class and discussed their interests. subsequently, after the task-based programme, students were subject to a post-test to ascertain the effectiveness of the taskbased approach. the findings indicated that the students responded positively to talk-based learning on the grounds that their attention is focused on tasks, which optimises their potential to learn. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 37-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ganesha university – indonesia (introduced tblt to improve speaking skills) more locally to asia, in 2010 a research project was conducted by the ganesha university of education (indonesia) to assess the effect of taskbased learning on speaking achievements among university students. the study also adopted a mixed methods research approach which included the collation of quantitative data through speaking test scores (post-test), and qualitative data was acquired via interviews and field notes. the purpose of the study was founded on the observation that, despite many years of learning and demonstrating a reasonable knowledge of grammatical structures, the problem remains that students appear timid, lacking in fluency and unable to communicate in real-life scenarios. this study sought to introduce a method of teaching that would equip students with the confidence and skills needed to communicate effectively in true-tolife situations; putting more emphasis on meaning more so than form. out of a total of 68 students on the programme, 40 participated in this study, selected through random sampling. the teacher talk-time was mostly allocated to brainstorming ideas, and not to introducing a topic through monologue. the teacher proceeded to monitor progress and to ensure the target language was being utilised to discuss ideas within and between groups during jigsaw activities, roleplay or presentation preparation time. the qualitative data also suggested that students‟ higher levels of performance were owed to a more relaxed and collaborative atmosphere, and also because tasks were pertinent to practical situations; such as, greeting friends, asking / giving information, agreeing and disagreeing, asking / giving suggestions and describing people. the 40 students taught by taskbased learning were reported to have shown a significant improvement in terms of their speaking skills compared to the 28 that did not. the mean score of the tblt group was 79.18, which was considered to be significantly superior than those taught conventionally (74.22). the research papers hitherto discussed tend to lack fundamental detail. first of all, in all forms of research, findings centred purely on speaking skills, which were reported to have significantly improved as a result of task-based learning, nonetheless, the issue that remains is the lack of statistical instruments, reporting and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 38-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tabulated data to clarify the extent of the impact of tblt. secondly, the studies that conducted qualitative data did not appear to have any specific algorithm in place to code responses and interpret data, rather the results were imparted and concluded in anecdotal form. thirdly, very little data was displayed in relation to performance variations within the parameter of demographic profiles, or according to ability level. fourthly, the descriptions regarding the tasks that were implemented in this trial were seemingly vague; a key design feature that was not sufficiently explicated. based on the review of related theory and prior studies, within the context of the current study, tblt is expected to significantly improve students‟ performance in both forms of english language assessment (speaking and formal examination); irrespective of gender or ability. method this study examined the impact of task-based language teaching methodologies on 81 second-year business studies students, by comparing students‟ formal examination results as a result of this tblt trial vis-à-vis attainments of their previous course, obtained under traditional instruction. research design virtually all activities prescribed in the existing curriculum focused on lower order skills, such as choosing correct answers, identifying irregularities and correcting structures; which was considered pertinent to the current level of the students (elementary / pre-intermediate). this trial revamped the syllabus to promote, develop and sustain interactive language use. below is an example of unit 1 from the standard format of the syllabus. original content for unit 1: introductions and holidays: grammar drills for auxiliary verbs (gap fill and word select) present and past tenses (gaps and blanks) reading comprehension exercises (family, and, origins of the word “holiday”) past tense conversation script (multiple choice blanks for grammar and vocabulary) scrambled sentences (requiring reorganisation of words into correct order) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 39-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the example below illustrates the structural changes that were made to unit one, demonstrating the ways in which the syllabus was renovated to resemble a tblt ideology appropriate for 2 hour classes. pre-task phase within this curricular remodelling, reading activities were not omitted form the syllabus, but were converted into „read and do‟ tasks (ellis, 2009), and the conversion into an interactive task involved three steps. first of all, as a warm-up, students were presented with the text and answered the conventional true, false, ng response format. when finished, answers were discussed as a whole-class activity followed by unexpected extension questions (which required full sentence structures); these were read out by the teacher. formed into small groups, students‟ listening and speaking skills were brought into use as they were required to understand the questions, search for the answers embedded in the text, and reply independently in full sentences. for struggling groups, the teacher could write the extension questions on the board and allow students time to transcribe their responses. main task based on the theme of text discussed, the teacher introduced a series of questions to initiate and sustain a conversation relative to holiday experiences, eliciting answers from groups and coaching students to respond on in full sentences, encouraging peers to collaborate and help struggling classmates. the questions were in the present simple tense the first two were discussed as a class: how often do you go on holiday? where do you like to go? subsequently, the following questions were introduced and based on which, students were asked to create a roleplay: who do you usually go with? why do you enjoy going there? how do you get there? how long do you stay there? what do you normally buy? how much does it cost? what bad experiences can you have on holiday? students could modify, add o remove questions, whilst the teacher visited the groups individually to monitor the progress and facilitate participation. the grammatical content of the unit (auxiliaries, connecting words, present and past simple tenses) were not explicitly presented to the students in a traditional sense, and remained „hidden‟ (ellis, 2009). when completed, students were instructed to project their dialogues into the past. to clarify ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 40-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understanding, the teacher modelled the initial two questions interactively with the class (when did you last go on holiday? where did you go?). students were free to utilise both past simple and present perfect forms, amend or add further questions to render the conversation as free and natural as possible. during the task, the teacher checked students‟ progress and understanding to verify use of tenses, correct usage of auxiliaries, connecting words question tags and vocabulary items. depending on the nature of the unit and the teacher‟s discretion, this second part of the main task could be performed privately in groups, in front of the class, or as part of an informal speaking assessment. an additional section of the main task involved a discussion in pairs or groups to review several city profiles and decide which destination interests them the most, and why, while also stating reasons for discarding the less appealing locations. post-task phase the grammar intensive exercises were not forsaken altogether, given potential instructional value if used appropriately and kept to a minimum (ellis 2001). in this case, they served as a consolidation phase to reinforce the students‟ understanding of regular and irregular verbs and auxiliaries in present and past forms and successfully employed in the context of a full sentence. time allocated to this phase of the lesson was typically 20 minutes, but varied depending on the completion time of the main task. participants the participants included in this study consisted of 81 second-year business students, which were relatively well-balanced demographically (females = 48, males = 33). business students were invited to partake in this trial given the importance of english to their academic discipline. the assortment of students into groups was entirely at random and were not categorised according to any particular criteria. given the nondiscriminatory sorting process, english attainments across groups were not analysed individually. furthermore, prior attainments were the control element of the experiment, thus the inclusion of specific control groups was not deemed appropriate. measures the formal assessment criteria of the university‟s english language courses consist of one speaking test (40%) and two formal assessments (60%); mid-term tests (20%) and final examinations (40%). formal examinations encompass multipleijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 41-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license choice grammar and vocabulary focused questions, reading comprehension, and a small writing section. letter grades for overall english attainments are awarded according to the following grading scheme: data analysis this study used t-test significance testing (0.05) to compare current performances achieved under a tblt methodology with prior attainments achieved in a traditional setting. in addition, standard deviation was also analysed to ascertain the degree of consistency in both performances. further to which, variability analyses were carried out to ascertain the extent to which all tiers of students respond to tblt; (q1: top 20 students; q 2 & 3: 41 mid-tier students; q4: 20 lowest performing students). findings and discussion the opening set of research questions concerned the general impact of tblt on elementary / preintermediate business students‟ language attainments, and, whether tblt can help improve performances in both speaking and formal examinations. table 1 shows that tbtl generally had a positive impact on performance outcomes when compared to the traditional form of instruction (60.9: grade c+ vs. 54.93: grade c; p 0.0195 = sig <0.05). nonetheless, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the majority of progress originated from developments in speaking skills, as assessments in this domain improved significantly (p = <0.01) compared to formal examinations, where no significant difference was observed (p = .324). furthermore, higher levels of standard deviation were also noted in the tblt results, inferring greater variance in language attainments. table 1. measuring the instructional impact of tblt across n (=81) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 42-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2: performance variations according to gender gender method overall p speaking p exams p tblt 61.83 29.02 32.81 female 0.0795 (not sig) 0.0007 (sig) .391 (not sig) trad 56.29 24.21 32.08 tblt 59.55 28.09 31.45 male .0611 (not sig) .0004 (sig) .350 (not sig) trad 52.94 22.61 30.33 table 3: analysing the variability of english language attainments the second research question in this paper was to analyse performance variations on the basis of gender. the results presented in table 2 imply that neither gender technically responded significantly to tblt, despite the results displayed in the previous table. although, male students‟ improvements did reach near statistical significance given that the value of „p‟ (.0611) almost fell below the 0.05 threshold. furthermore, akin to table 1, both genders showed more progress speaking skills than in formal examinations, and, higher achievements among male students in a tblt environment contributed to narrowing the achievement gap between genders. the analyses of the following data set will examine the variability in english language performance to ascertain whether tblt benefits both above and below average learners. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 43-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the inferential relationship observed in table 3 is that the most capable students represented in the upper quartile performed significantly better in the tblt trial in both forms of assessment: speaking (p = <.01) and formal examinations (p = .002). conversely, the lower achievers (q4) performed significantly worse as a result of tblt (overall: 35.55 vs. 40.5; p = .0139), as speaking skills did not demonstrate noteworthy improvement (p = .313), and formal examination results significantly deteriorated (p = 0 <.001). however, mid-tier students‟ language performance (q2 & q3) was more varied. the overall performances improved significantly (p = .004), especially in speaking (p = <.001), but formal examinations did not show significant signs of progress (p = .137). discussion the implementation structure of tblt in this trial aimed to increase students‟ fluency, confidence (especially with risk-taking), and eventual improvements in the accuracy of language produced. to this end, the trial based lessons on textual input (reading), which was followed by communicative extension activities and consolidation exercises. most students responded well to the introduction of tasks, especially the more proficient students. nonetheless, lower achieving students‟ attainments exacerbated in a tblt environment, which, (within the context of the lower performing group), partly validates seedhouse‟s (1999) supposition that tblt will only result in the production of impoverished language samples, promoting fossilization. the shortfall among the lower achievers also gainsays the claim that in collaborative environments, senior students assist struggling peers to reduce imbalances, the core construct of a theory known as the more knowledgeable other (vygotsky, 1978). the purpose of this discussion is to identify solutions that may benefit both more capable and less responsive students in the context of efl. owing to the limited levels of english proficiency of q4 students, compounded with a lack of familiarity with tblt, struggling learners may require more support from the instructor seeing as their level of progress declined during the tblt trial. therefore, the first suggestion may consist of dividing students into two separate groups (group one: q1 & 2; group two: q 3 & 4). the central justification for this proposal is based on the observation that considerable class time was allocated to the constant rectification of misunderstandings among embattled students, which ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 44-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license inevitably diverted attention from more responsive students and compromising the taskness of the activities. taking into account the limitation of pedagogical resources, a case could also be made that two separate classes of a shorter duration tailored to each group would be more productive than one single class comprising mixed ability students working at different paces. the division into groupings would enable higher achievers to work on tasks freely and thrive under the autonomy, while q3 and q4 students may profit more from task-supported learning from worked examples and greater teacher intervention. the second element of this suggestion directly relates to sweller et al.‟s findings (2012) that discoverybased learning is not productive for novice learners, resulting in the discovery often being missed. sweller (1985) proposed that individuals learn by studied examples, (worked-example effect), and gradually transition to a more autonomous learning environment (guidance-fading effect). this also reduces the cognitive load during skill acquisition and enhances the learning process; (this) "is one of the earliest and probably the best known cognitive load reducing technique" (paas et al., 2003). subsequently, with gradual guidance removal, learners increase their possession of schemas or partial schemas to be applied in problem-solution based tasks introduced at a later stage (kalyuga, chandler, ayres and sweller 2003). furthermore, the separation of classes into separate groups would also address an additional limitation noted in this study, which was the relatively large class sizes (20 students on average), and in relation to which ellis (2009) highlights that tblt is not easily implemented in large classes, an unfavourable structural feature typical of many educational settings. conclusion and suggestions the results in this trial largely support the idea that tblt lessons help to promote fluency, owing to the creation of more opportunities to practice verbal output and the resulting increased levels of confidence. inconveniently however, sweller‟s (1985) remark that novice or less-able learners often fail to make the discovery also holds true. therefore, the primary inferential relationship highlighted in this study is that the students‟ linguistic potential appears to govern the likely level of progress made in tblt learning environments. in response to this observation, the central recommendation would suggest arranging students into two separate ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 45-47 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11564 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license groupings according to ability for two reasons: (1) to assist accelerated acquisition of more proficient students who thrive in a tblt environment, and, (2) to provide curricular support for struggling students for whom tblt is not (yet) developmentally appropriate. successive research may wish to contemplate analysing the effect of a variety of methodologies of tblt structures across a large number of groups as an experiential project. the groupings could be formed as follows: group 1: traditional instruction or ppp group 2: long‟s (1985) tblt model consisting purely of a main task (focused). group 3: long‟s model comprising purely unfocused tasks. group 4: skehan‟s (1998) method of a pre-task to support the following main task group 5: ellis‟s (2003) suggestion of implementing all three phases the first cycle of the experiment (comprising all groups) could consist of mixed ability groupings, and the second cycle could test the five separate models on high performing students and lower achievers separately. this would help confirm which method of implementation (including traditional instruction) is most effective for all tiers of ability. extending the scope of research to encompass more universities in thailand, and more importantly, universities in other countries active in efl would enrich findings, also helping to identify and compare the influence of cultural settings on the productiveness of tblt learning structures. references allwright, d. 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(1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. harvard university press. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b135/6ca160feebdd3ee71dfa2d5dbce20b96e9a7.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b135/6ca160feebdd3ee71dfa2d5dbce20b96e9a7.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b135/6ca160feebdd3ee71dfa2d5dbce20b96e9a7.pdf https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/clark.pdf https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/clark.pdf https://www.academia.edu/11696134/a_framework_for_task-based_learning https://www.academia.edu/11696134/a_framework_for_task-based_learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020, 1-21 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee evaluating ninth graders’ efl textbook in the ethiopian efl context: vocabulary and grammar in focus addisu sewbihon getie received: 14th march 2020; revised: 27th may 2020; accepted: 28th june 2020 abstract this study was conducted to evaluate the ninth graders‘ efl textbook in the ethiopian efl context from the perspective of lexical approach. to examine whether the principles of lexical approach designed by lewis (1993, 2000, and 2008) were applied in the textbook, its vocabulary and grammar sections were critically evaluated, and to assess the teachability of the two skills in line with the contemporary literature on the lexical theory, the researcher selected vocabulary and grammar items from the entire textbook. the researcher included grade nine efl teachers as participants because of their extensive efl teaching experience at this level. the research data were collected employing documents and interviews as instruments and were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. findings of this study show that vocabulary and grammar skills are not presented lexically in this efl textbook. in addition, these skills are neither presented in unison in the textbook nor are treated non-dichotomously. overall, this study's findings indicate that the efl textbook under study is not suitable for teaching vocabulary and grammar lexically. the researcher, therefore, recommends that extensive research be conducted to explore the impacts of the lexical approach on learners' competence of english as a foreign language in this efl context. key words: lexical approach;, vocabulary items; grammar items; efl textbook evaluation abstrak penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengevaluasi buku teks efl siswa kelas sembilan dari perspektif pendekatan leksikal. untuk menguji apakah prinsip-prinsip pendekatan leksikal yang dirancang oleh lewis (1993, 2000, dan 2008) diterapkan dalam buku teks efl dalam konteks sistem pendidikan ethiopia, aspek-aspek kosakata dan tata bahasa dari buku teks tersebut dievaluasi secara kritis. untuk menilai kemampuan mengajar dua keterampilan tersebut apakah sejalan dengan literatur kontemporer tentang teori leksikal, peneliti memilih aspek kosakata dan tata bahasa dari buku teks tersebut. peneliti memasukkan guru efl kelas sembilan sebagai responden studi karena mereka telah mengajar siswa efl di kelas ini selama beberapa tahun. data penelitian ini dikumpulkan dengan dokumen dan wawancara dan dianalisis secara kuantitatif dan kualitatif. temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa kosakata dan keterampilan tata bahasa tidak disajikan secara leksikal dalam buku teks efl siswa kelas sembilan. selain itu, keterampilan ini juga tidak disajikan secara serempak dalam buku teks atau diperlakukan secara non-dikotomis. secara keseluruhan, temuan penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa buku teks dalam konteks efl ini tidak sesuai untuk mengajarkan kosakata dan tata bahasa secara leksikal. peneliti merekomendasikan agar dilakukan penelitian ekstensif untuk mengeksplorasi dampak pendekatan leksikal dalam mengembangkan semua aspek kompetensi bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing peserta didik dalam konteks efl ini. kata kunci: pendekatan leksikal; item kosakata; item tata bahasa; evaluasi buku teks efl how to cite: getie, a. s. (2020). evaluating ninth graders‘ efl textbook in the ethiopian efl context: vocabulary and grammar in focus. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(1), 1-21. doi:10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 2-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in chomskyan tradition, grammar was considered as the prerequisite for effective communication. it was given more emphasis than lexis because chomsky and his followers believe that grammar carries meaning, and grammatical errors become the cause for communication breakdowns. from this traditional method perspective, vocabulary and grammar are considered as two discrete segments of language, i.e. there is the dichotomy of these two sub-skills in efl/esl teaching. however, after the advance of computerized language data i.e. corpora in 1980s and 1990s and the publications of michael lewis‘s books (1993, 2000, 2008) on language use, many language experts departed from the chomskyan beliefs and became the proponents of the notion which says that language consists of grammaticalized lexis rather than lexicalized grammar (lewis, 1993, 2008). advocates of lexical chunks, and/or lexical approach, in general, argue that the english language should be taught lexically, or the traditional way of teaching english language (i.e. chomskyan tradition of generative grammar) should be balanced with the fair distribution of lexical emphasis (treatment) in english language teaching world (pawley & syder, 1983; willis, 1990; sinclair, 1991; nattinger & decarrico, 1992; hill, 2000; wray, 2000; decarrico, 2001; schmitt & carter, 2004; lewis, 2008; timmis, 2008; selivan, 2018). according to these experts, we teach lexis not grammar and vocabulary in the sense that treating these two language skills separately affects the nature of language itself since our mental lexicon does not consist of individual words but chunks. these language scholars hold the argument that the basis of language is lexis, not grammar, and lexis should be the organizing principle of language syllabus (e.g. lexical syllabus) so that target language teachers should teach vocabulary and grammar together (i.e. word combinations, chunks whether they are grammatical or ungrammatical). more recently, selivan (2018) claims that chunks and patterns can straddle the border between vocabulary and grammar; more specifically, chunks can also be structures that have traditionally been associated with grammar. they can include stems that can be used to build various sentences in english, according to this expert. literature and previous research work clearly show that teaching grammar and/or vocabulary by using the present-practice-produce paradigm is less effective than using the observeijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 3-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hypothesize-experiment paradigm (e.g. lewis, 1993; scrivener, 1996; skehan, 1996; willis, 1990; meisam & mahsan, 2015). by considering modern analyses of real data, lewis (2008) indicates ―we are much less original in using language than we like to believe‖ (p.11). he holds the debate that this paradigm (ppp) is a deductive method which is based on the behavioristic approach and vocabulary and grammar are taught with teacher-dominated classrooms whereas, by referring to different pieces of evidence, michael lewis indicates an alternative paradigm i.e. observe-hypothesis-experiment with which the vocabulary and grammar elements are taught by providing students with much enough opportunities to explore the essential lexical and grammatical expressions/ chunks. this method (i.e., ohe) allows students to identify and reuse the referred elements by themselves with the efl teachers' facilitative role in the classrooms. impliedly, it does mean that the observe-hypothesisexperiment paradigm, which was founded from the inductive method, is much of student-centered. teaching the english language depends on the coursebook, which is beneficial for the teachers and students in different ways. for instance, it helps achieve consistency and continuation; it again gives learners a sense of system, cohesion, and progress (mcgrath, 2002; garinger, 2010). thus, textbook evaluation is necessary to know its weaknesses and strengths to take measures. there are rational justifications for evaluating the student textbook from the lexical approach perspective from an ethiopian context. firstly, the study is done to create a kind of awareness for efl teachers and learners to enable them to think that it is essential to see and view language through the lens of lexis since these days it is claimed that the focus of both teachers and students should be on lexis in language teaching. secondly, doing such an evaluation study would be advantageous for the present researcher himself if the findings of the study might lead him to carry out another extensive research. after critically evaluating the textbook's vocabulary and grammar skills from the lexical approach view, the researcher would like to proceed to do extensive work. however, this would be practical if the findings show him the grade nine student textbook does not meet the criteria set to evaluate it from the lexical approach point of view. thirdly, no textbook will be ideal for a particular group of students or class (ur, 1999), so the researcher wants to study the textbook's suitability to teach vocabulary and grammar skills lexically. furthermore, from a corpus ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 4-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license linguistics point of view, from which the lexical approach is grounded, the vocabulary and grammar skills are interfaced and should be taught in unison (romer & schulze, 2009); therefore, the researcher believes that it needs to assess the textbook from this insight. yet again, waters (2012) as cited in norman (2017) argues in his general review of efl methodology that the analysis of elt coursebooks gives a reasonable indication of the extent to which any new approach has become part of standard methods. regarding the lexical approach, smith (2005) stresses that for lewis, the father of the lexical approach, language is composed of "chunks" of words, and the fluent speaker is one who has a vast number of these chunks stored in memory and can recall them as needed and combine them appropriately. according to smith, the main classroom job is to get as many of these "ready-made" chunks into the learner's long-term memory as possible; the language learning aims to become so familiar with likely and probable combinations of and between chunks that one can produce them effortlessly. the mind stores and processes lexical chunks as individual wholes, and it is capable of storing large amounts of information in long-term memory, but the short-term memory (working memory) is much more limited in producing language (e.g., in speech) (newell, 1990; schmitt, 2000). therefore, it is suggested that it be more beneficial and efficient for our memory to recall chunks of the english language as if they were one piece of information. psycholinguistics theory also directly mirrors such an assumption. again, lewis (1993; 2000; 2008) presents that learning a language in chunk forms reduces the amount of time that learners exert; he calls this cognitive economy. lewis states such an expression from a psycholinguistic point of view. thus, what schmitt and lewis proposed seems to be compatible with the cognitive theories. it impliedly shows that the lexical and grammatical elements are better taught from the cognitive theories perspective since such theories are claimed to be cognitive-load reducing, i.e., reducing both the efforts and time of students. the theory of language that informs the lexical approach is the socalled psychological theory of semantic priming (hoey, 2014). according to him, in this theory, the target words are more quickly recognized when people are "primed" by being shown a related word first. hoey (2005) asserts that classical theory holds the view that grammar is generated first and words are then dropped into the opportunities thus created. therefore, his idea of lexical priming reverses the roles of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 5-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lexis and grammar, arguing that lexis is complexly and systematically structured and that grammar is an outcome of this lexical structure. in line with this, lewis (1993; 2000; 2008) proposes that lexis should be prioritized; grammar is subordinate to lexis. on the other hand, leo (2018) states that the lexical approach has a basis on corpus linguistics. in his view, this approach developed after the behavior of words/phrases had been studied by using computer-based pieces of evidence. the next question to address is: what do materials look like in the lexical approach? lewis argues that input-rich classrooms are essential. he states that "plodding through a coursebook unit by the unit is dispiriting for the learner; a supposedly tailor-made course can easily be disorienting" (lewis, 1993 p. 180). he suggests the following materials be utilized in efl/esl language teaching and learning: the first resources are dictionaries which play significant roles in providing efl/esl learners as well as teachers with the lexical and grammatical information about a certain word/phrase (lewis, 1993; knight, 1994; laufer & hill, 2000; chen, 2011). particularly, lewis states that a good dictionary means the one from the cobuild range—which helps with meaning, stress, collocational range, and archetypical examples since it (cobuild range) conveniently and helpfully blurs the distinction between dictionary and grammar books. the second rich materials that lewis suggests are grammar practices that must fulfill the criteria such as natural co-text, supra-sentential practice, and well-chosen archetypical examples. thirdly, working through a coursebook--perhaps, omitting bits, and almost certainly supplementing it—is almost always better than working entirely without a coursebook. the selective use and supplementing of a coursebook is more likely to be effective than a totally open approach (lewis, 1993). coursebooks usually involve different kinds of material, as lewis shows, worthy of suggestion: texts, archetypical examples, explanations, activities and exercise, learner training, and awareness-raising. the fourth helpful material type that michael lewis suggests is real materials like printed texts, songs, videos, and tv (lewis, 1993; nunan, 1999). the last but not least helpful material type suggested for english language teaching purposes is the recording formats (1993). he demonstrates that collocations, the patterning of de-lexical words, institutionalized sentences, and sentence heads all suggest that one of the most important pieces of material the language student should have is a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 6-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license large well-formatted ‗file‘ in which new language can be recorded, organized, and if necessary reorganized. in this study, the researcher intends to answer the following questions:1) to what extent is ninth-graders‘ efl textbook suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically?; 2) what do grade nine efl teachers view about the suitability of the textbook for teaching vocabulary and grammar from the lexical point of view?. method research design the researcher used a descriptive case study design to undertake this research. the study aimed at describing the extent to which an ethiopian grade nine efl student textbook is suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar from the lexical approach point of view. sampling technique the researcher employed a purposive sampling technique to select the vocabulary and grammar tasks, activities, exercises, etc., occurring in the twelve units, to undertake the textbook analysis. therefore, he deliberately took a look at all the sections containing only the vocabulary and grammar items based on the principles and perspectives of the lexical approach. although some experts, for instance, mcdonough and shaw (2003), point out that a close investigation of at least two units of a textbook is possible in order for an effective internal inspection to take place, the researcher preferred to check all the units of the student textbook. in this manner, he believes, to have a broader picture of the work, it is necessary to take all vocabulary and grammar sections from each of the twelve units of the textbook. likewise, he employed this sampling technique (purposive) to select teacher participants for the study. the total number of efl teachers at grade nine level at fasilo secondary and preparatory school is nine. from this total population, the researcher purposely selected three sample teachers based on their teaching experiences. research instruments the researcher employed document analysis and an interview to gather data for the study. he utilized document analysis by adapting a standardized evaluation checklist designed by tomlinson and masuhara (2013). tomlinson and masuhara‘s evaluation checklist incorporated about 15 criteria. however, the researcher systematically adapted and collapsed the number of the criteria into 10. following, he evaluated the vocabulary ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 7-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and grammar tasks and exercises occurring in the textbook and the english language syllabus for grade nine from the lexical approach perspective. more briefly, he assessed the textbook whether or not chunking strategies and lexically-based strategies were presented in it to teach vocabulary and grammar in unison. besides this, he analyzed the syllabus to see whether the lexical and grammatical contents were given special attention in the lexical approach point of view. the other research instrument that the researcher utilized to gather data was a semi-structured interview. the researcher employed this tool to gather data from efl teachers. he interviewed them about the ethiopian grade nine efl student textbook's suitability to teach lexical and grammatical elements from the lexical approach perspective. even though efl teachers, who teach grade nine students, may not be familiar with the concepts of lexical approach and lexical teaching, they were interviewed implicitly which means that the interview questions were based on the features of lexical approach rather than explicitly and directly requiring ideas from them. data analysis the researcher used both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the collected data. in order to analyze data collected through document analysis, he employed the quantitative method. based on the scales (ratings) developed by tomlinson and masuhara (2013), he assessed each of the items under the criteria to see the extent at which they (vocabulary and grammar elements) are presented lexically in the student textbook. according to these experts, the rating is 1-3, with 1 indicating ‗unlikely to be effective in facilitating long term acquisition‘, 2 indicating ‗likely to be partially effective in facilitating long-term acquisition‘, and 3 indicating ‗likely to be effective in facilitating long-term acquisition‘. then, the mean of the scores for each of the items under 10 criteria was calculated. on the other hand, the data gathered through an interview were analyzed qualitatively. the researcher used qualitative data narrating and thematizing techniques. findings and discussion findings analysis of vocabulary and grammar tasks and activities the data gathered through document analysis were analyzed item by item. the researcher adapted and utilized the checklist developed by tomlinson and masuhara (2013) in their general survey of six adult coursebooks. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 8-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license despite the fact that these experts designed the criteria for coursebook evaluation at adult stage, the criteria were general and could be suitable for every grade level student coursebooks/textbooks. of course, the current researcher considered the levels of students while systematically adapting the criteria. their criteria rest on the extent to which the coursebooks are likely to be effective in facilitating long term acquisition in general. considering the students in an efl context like the norm, culture, level, interest etc., he modified the criteria for evaluating the textbook. besides, he adapted the evaluation checklist from norman (2017) to make it lexicallynurtured. therefore, for the purpose of this study, the researcher critically and painstakingly contextualized the checklist to scrutinize the data based on the criteria. like norman (2017) who adapted and designed ten criteria based on tomlinson and masuhara‘s (2013) checklist, the current researcher also did apply these criteria. therefore, the current researcher adapted the criteria which is lexically-emphasized from norman (2017) and tomlinson and masuhara (2013) which is theoretically standardized. particularly, as in tomlinson and masuhara (2013), this checklist employs a rating system of 1-3 to show the extent to which grade nine student efl textbook reflects the criteria (i.e. with 1 meaning to little or no extent, 2 meaning to an extent and 3 meaning to a great extent) and an additional column for comments to explain the rating. for the sake of being reasonable for each of the extent, providing sufficient evidence for the criterion was necessary. thus, comments were given as indicated blow. in order to answer the first research question plainly, the evaluation checklist was utilized. therefore, the first research question of this investigation is: to what extent is ninthgraders‘ efl textbook suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically? 1. to what extent are lexis and grammar used as an organizing principle of the syllabus? rating: 1 comments:  grammar activities are given priority  vocabulary is subordinate to grammar  there is no way to show the integration of these two skills ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 9-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 2. to what extent is there an overall focus on different types of meaning as opposed to purely fixed meanings? rating: 2 comments: • context is ignored to look for the meanings of words— context-free (e.g. p. 10). the meanings of words are not based on contexts (e.g. find out the meaning of the following words and write them in your vocabulary book. words like recommend, monastery, medieval, panels…. (unit one, p. 20), etc. are listed in the book • a little bit, different meanings are provided to show usages of modals. e.g. have to, need to, must, should, must, etc. (p. 13). • looking for synonyms and antonyms for single words not in chunk forms. alternative ways to talk about future (about one meaning): the present continuous: going to, will / won‘t (p. 130) • matching one word with different definitions to make students aware of homonyms. for example, she can play tennis (is an auxiliary verb showing ability). i‘d like a can of beans to please (a noun, a kind of container). 3. to what extent is special attention paid to collocation and other lexical phrases across the syllabus? rating: 1 comments: • only one example-phrases/sentences with do/make (e.g. do business, do good with somebody, do a favor for somebody/ i made a cake, let‘s make a plan, make the decision, make an offer, etc.). • lexical phrases to express an indefinite point in time in the past (e.g. a long time ago, a week ago, three years ago, a minute ago, etc.) but have structural nature, • the intention is not on lexis; it is rather on structure 4. to what extent is there an attempt to raise general language awareness, not only discrete grammar points? rating: 2 comments: • form and meaning seem to be treated together. for example, ‗the will future is often used to describe a sudden spontaneous decision which was unplanned.‘ (p. 17). ‗it is very hot and airless ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 10-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in this room. i will open the window‘ (unit one, p. 17). • adjectives and prepositions are focused although not in a chunk form. • adverbs are explained without contexts. e.g. adverbs of frequency are explained prescriptively. • word finding creativity (e.g. ‗find ten food words in the following grid. write them in your exercise book. (p. 70) • verb and verb patterns are treated unnaturally since they are context-free explanations, not explorations. 5. to what extent are texts authentic and of a range of types and lengths? rating: 2 comments: • very short texts are utilized, and some of them are local in nature like ‗the media in ethiopia‘ (p. 102), ‗watching television‘ (p. 12), true personal (about ethiopian women) stories (pp. 113-14, 135), songs i.e. ‗a proud old man‘ (pp. 125-6) incorporating some awarenessraising questions about similes, metaphors, imagery, repetition, alliteration; • listening text about local topics like addis ababa, an ethiopian entrepreneur (p. 145) and questions about what students listened to. however, there is no focus on chunks/lexis. • a short reading text about ‗how technologies make our lives easy‘ and finding keywords from the reading. • comprehending short written text about ‗festival in ghana‘ and comparing this with ethiopian traditional festival, interviews taken from local people… • articles (pp. 165-7) which emphasize on ‗the whirling dervishes in turkey‘, ‗the japanese tea ceremony‘, and mexico – the day of the dead • extracts from papers (p. 219) 6. to what extent are example sentences natural and do they contain lexical phrases, not just archetypical examples of structure? rating: 1 comments: • only some example sentences are natural to show patterns including i like swimming, i enjoy reading, i like doing exercises, etc. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 11-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license • the traditional method seems to be used to treat ‗if sentences‘ (e.g. unit four and eight) are provided. • simple past tense and zero conditionals are prescriptively treated; grammar-based methods seem to be presented in this regard (pp. 78, 194). modal verbs are treated from structure perspective; (unit five, pp. 86-7). • treating tenses (e.g. future, simple present, simple past, present perfect, present perfect continuous etc. like closed sentences (sentence-level but not text grammar or suprasentential features) that exist in isolation as opposed to having a sense of how they operate on a discoursal level. • sentence-based (not text-based) examples of sentence types are provided. as they are contextfree, they are artificially explained (p. 104). 7. to what extent are grammar explanations used mainly for students to check their own ideas against? rating: 1 comments: • learners are requested to work with their partners to describe how to make ethiopian coffee. the focus is on the simple present tense and presents passive forms. for instance, it says ‗one person gives an active sentence, and the other turns it into a passive sentence.‘(unit for p. 75). • no references are indicated to check their answers to the questions. only dictionaries are preferred to check the definitions of words in different units. • some words which are taken from reading are defined in the pre-reading phase, then, students are requested to work with their partners to use the words to construct their own sentences. 8. to what extent do tasks raise awareness of common language chunks? rating: 2 comments: • words are presented in isolation but not in chunk forms. • some words/phrases are provided/listed (a cake, business, a plan, an offer, favor, arrangements, good, a decision, harm an effort) for students to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 12-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license make sentences by using ‗do/make‘ (unit three, p. 41). • collocation examples are provided. awareness-raising questions (e.g. do you know any other collocations for words related to hobbies?) are raised for learners (unit three, p. 47). • chunks like okay, but, on the other hand …, but then again, look at it this way, even so … etc. are emphasized to introduce another idea (p. 122) • awareness-raising tasks like ‗imagine you were in a bank and wanted to withdraw some money from your account. what words or phrases would you use when talking to the cashier?‘ (p. 137) • only how to use sequencing words and expressions to join parts of a text together is explained. • funs with words with only words in isolation • words and/or chunks like to, so as to, in order to, so that, for are used to express purpose but are viewed as structural functions (p. 216). • linking words/discourse markers are explained in the form of sentence close examples but not at discoursal level (p. 220). 9. to what extent do exercises include learner training which encourages students not to translate word for word and promotes the use of dictionaries and/or concordance software? rating: 1 comments: • words are only defined by using explanations, and the phonetic transcription is also presented (p. 38, 189). • students are requested to discuss ways of classifying words to remember semantic relations. • students are advised to check dictionaries for definitions of food adjectives like bitter, sour, greasy, juicy, salty, tasty (p. 79). but, no collocation dictionaries and concordances are utilized. • students are requested to look up lists of words about hiv from dictionaries (but not collocation dictionary (unit five, p. 92). • matching words with their definitions by using word for word translation, and no ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 13-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license collocation dictionaries are used. (p. 123) 10. to what extent are activities and tasks based on communicative outcomes and not purely on linguistic outcomes and accuracy? rating: 2 comments: • matching countries with their flags by looking at the map (p. 6); winning word games (p. 18); requesting learners to show distances from maps (pp. 23-24); word funs (unit three, p. 49); songs of the potter (p. 54); naming goods in the market with the pictures (p. 76). • words connected to cities, towns, and villages are provided for the groups in order to classify those (words) to their headings like transport, building, population, etc. the group with large entries will win. • completing the table with the correct form of adjectives and adverbs (but has a linguistic outcome) • completing a table with the correct form of the verb (but has a linguistic outcome) (p. 184) • however, some tasks appear to be incorporating both linguistic and communicative outcomes. analysis of teachers’ interviews efl teachers were interviewed in order to know their views about the suitability of the textbook to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically. of course, there is similarity in the concept on the content of the evaluation checklist and teachers‘ interviews, but the latter one was used to triangulate the data obtained from document analysis of the textbook. as shown in the research question part of this study, the second research question was: what do grade nine efl teachers view about the suitability of the textbook for teaching vocabulary and grammar from the lexical point of view? teachers were asked whether they use materials like collocational dictionaries, grammar reference, practice books, coursebooks, real materials (printed texts, songs, videos, tv etc.), and recording formats, and said ‗yes‘ but they made sure that they use only dictionaries (e.g. oxford dictionary of english and oxford advanced learner‘s dictionary as t2 responded), grammar references, coursebooks, and practice books which they think help to teach the english language. again, all three teachers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 14-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license replied that they use songs. however, they are not even aware of collocation dictionaries, printed texts, videos, and recording materials. all these show that teachers may probably depend on grammar-oriented books rather than chunks/collocations. it is possible to infer from this that english language teachers at grade nine stick with grammar-based methods. they were asked what techniques they use in teaching vocabulary: teaching words in isolation or teaching them with chunks and t1 said that he uses word for word translation, guessing meanings from the contexts, dictionary, etc., but he again said that he teaches words in phrase forms if the textbook invites him. however, teaching words in phrase forms is rare, he said. besides, t2 replied that he teaches words in isolation; unfortunately, he is not aware of the chunks. t3 said that he does not know the so-called lexical chunks. thus, it can be deduced that there are no opportunities to practice the teaching of words with chunks. for the question ‗how do you raise the awareness of your students while teaching vocabulary and grammar (what strategies)?‘ t1 replied that he requests his students to read a text and look for synonyms and antonyms for the words found in the texts. however, he replied that he does not request them to identify how a certain language structure functions in a text as the textbook itself does not contain such tasks. t2 replied that he asks his students to get the meaning of some words from the reading passage, and he requests them to construct sentences with such words. t3 again replied that he asks his students vocabulary and grammar questions depending on a context (e.g. sport) since such a question helps him to know whether they are clear or not, as he replied. as to him, this technique helps him remind his students about the previous sections taught. from these responses, the researcher can presume that there is no one best technique. therefore, all the awareness-raising methods that teachers use might be helpful, but the researcher has reservations in this regard. t1 and t2 are in line with what the state of the arts recommends but t3 is not. the researcher believes that context-free vocabulary and grammar teaching is outdated as stated by one respondent (e.g.t3). they were also asked whether lexical chunks and their associated grammars should be taught, and t1 replied that it depends on the instruction presented in the textbook. t2 replied again ‗yes‘, they should be taught in an integrated way. however, the intention of this respondent is not ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 15-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from the lexical point of view. the last respondent, t3 replied that he is not aware of teaching chunks and their structures. there is no intention to focus on chunks in the textbook, he replied. thus, the researcher can infer from these replies that teachers do not understand the notion of teaching vocabulary and grammar in unison or what is called lexicogrammar so that it is unlikely to expect them to internalize it. the fifth question was ―do you use lexical awareness-raising tasks during english language classrooms? in what way?‖ t1 replied ―no‖ and he revealed that such tasks are not provided in the textbook. however, t2 responded ‗yes‖, and he witnessed that such tasks are presented in the textbooks. comparatively, he said, more emphasis is given for single words, not chunks. t3 said ―yes‖ and elaborated it as follows: i try to inform or tell my students about the contextual meanings of words in a reading passage, but i do not emphasize the rules that govern words used in the reading. there is no such direction in the textbook. besides, the textbook requests students to translate some words found in the reading into students‘ mother tongue with the help of me. however, there is no opportunity provided to students to translate chunk-for-chunk translation in the textbook, so i do not apply it too. therefore, it is possible to say that their understandings regarding the lexical chunk awareness-raising tasks are too different. whatever the case, generally, their responses show that there is no means for teaching language lexically in this regard. not only lexical awareness-raising tasks but also the contents themselves are not given deliberate attention in and out of the efl classroom settings. this might have been occurred because of the lack of lexical syllabus in ethiopian english language teaching contexts. the last question, "have you ever used corpus-based materials to teach the english language? how?", and all t1, t2, and t3 replied "no". they said that there are no opportunities provided for teachers about corpusbased materials to practice the english language. hence, the researcher supposes that the teaching practices of efl teachers to the current researcher's context is outdated. it means that although the state of the art recommends that teachers, teacher trainers, and practitioners use authentic materials like the collections of written and spoken texts (corpora), teachers to the current researcher‘s context are not aware of them let alone implementing them. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 16-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion under this section, the results obtained from the analysis/evaluation checklist and interviews were discussed concisely and compared with the previous studies. one of the purposes of this study was to answer the research question ―to what extent is ninthgraders‘ efl textbook suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically?‖ after critically analyzing the textbook and the syllabus by using the 10 criteria or principles, the researcher came across the following mean score and its implications. table 1. efl textbook evaluation mean score criteria textbook evaluation mean score (m) extent based on the 10 principles which are essential for promoting longterm acquisition (see list of findings above). 1.5 there is little or no extent (i.e. unlikely to be effective in facilitating long term acquisition) as can be seen in the above table, the mean score of the textbook evaluation is 1.5. like tomlinson and masuhara (2013), the researcher used the rating system of 1-3 to show the extent to which the nine graders efl textbook reflects the criteria (i.e. with 1 meaning to little or no extent, 2 meaning to an extent and 3 meaning to a great extent). more elaborately, these experts explained the meaning of the rating system as 1 indicating ‗unlikely to be effective in facilitating long term acquisition‘, 2 indicating ‗likely to be partially effective in facilitating longterm acquisition‘, and 3 indicating ‗likely to be effective in facilitating long-term acquisition‘. therefore, the mean score (i.e. 1.5) of the textbook evaluation of this study is under the rating system of ‗unlikely to be effective in facilitating long term acquisition‘. the results obtained from the analysis of teachers‘ interviews also show that the textbook is not suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically. mainly their responses indicate that grammar-based methods seem to be applied more rather than the lexical approach-based ones. the nature of the items listed in the evaluation checklist and interview questions are mainly on content and methodology. in one way or in another way, such items and interview questions had a similarity. therefore, as their responses to these questions show, the textbook did not present the vocabulary and grammar lessons in a lexical way. with another expression, chunking strategies did not seem to be presented in the textbook so that teachers were not applying them. generally, their responses informed the researcher that teachers were not aware of making use of the collocations, lexical chunks, and lexical grammar. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 17-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license furthermore, teachers‘ responses (e.g. interview question no.6) show that they do not use corpus-based materials/concordance software programs to teach the word patterns in their english language classrooms. this conforms to item no. 9 in the criteria (evaluation checklist), let alone the textbook, teachers did not hear about corpus linguistics from other experts, trainers, etc., as their responses show. their responses to the interview question no. 1 and the analysis for criteria no.9 showed that collocation dictionaries were not used by teachers themselves and students. according to teachers‘ responses, the textbook invites them to use dictionaries to translate unfamiliar words from target language to students‘ mother tongue, but not in collocational forms. generally, the analyses of textbook evaluation and teachers‘ interview responses show that the textbook is not suitable to teach vocabulary grammatically and to teach grammar lexically as per the lexical approach postulates. there are a lot of studies conducted on the evaluation of vocabulary and grammar tasks and exercises both locally and internationally. nevertheless, the focus of the studies was not from the lexical approach. thus, the current researcher reviewed and synthesized some selected studies which are directly and indirectly connected with this study. the findings of this study were compared with the findings of other relevant studies which emphasized, in one way or another way, on the evaluation and analysis of vocabulary and grammar elements from tge lexical point of view. němcová (2011), for instance, carried out a study on the analysis of business english vocabulary within the lexical approach. the textbooks that the analysis emphasized on were called business vocabulary in use (designed for intermediate and upperintermediate job-experienced), business matters (suitable for intermediate or upper-intermediate business english learners), and financial english (designed for learners who are planning to start a career in the field of finance). this researcher found that even though the evaluated textbooks focus on different vocabulary fields and each textbook provides learners with different language items from the business sphere, the lexical principles are in a certain extent applied in all of them. however, the findings of this study were not in congruent with the findings of the present study. furthermore, afshar and bagherieh (2014) conducted their study on the evaluation of grammar and vocabulary consciousness-raising activities in current elt materials. they focused on the efl learners who ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 18-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were at intermediate, high-intermediate and advanced levels and their teachers. after doing the analysis, they found out that although the five elt books used different kinds of grammar and vocabulary activities, they did not include some of the major grammar and vocabulary consciousness-raising activities (e.g. making generalizations, cross-referencing, reconstructing, etc.). indeed, the findings of this study were in line with the findings of the current study which means that findings of both the previous studies and the present study indicated that the vocabulary and grammar elements were not adequately presented in the textbooks, so these elements were not suitable to teach for the students in their respective grade levels. moreover, the findings of this study were in line with the findings of previous studies conducted by arslan and erarslan (2019) and kasuya (2000) focusing on the lexical analysis of textbooks at the 8th grade learners of english attending secondary schools in turkey and japanese high school respectively. the findings of both studies (present and previous) showed that the exercises appear to be unsatisfactorily created, do not encourage learners to examine them, and do not appear to raise learners' consciousness of the significance of the lexical elements. generally, the present study attempted to evaluate the vocabulary and grammar elements from the lexical approach point of view. it aimed at assessing the ninth graders' efl textbook, whether it presents both skills based on the principles of the lexical approach. the attempt was to see if vocabulary and grammar tasks and exercises were suitably presented in the textbook so that the efl teachers could apply or implement them without difficulties. the context, in which this study was done, makes a difference. therefore, what makes this study unique is its perspective on language and language teaching. this insight would be presumed as a contribution to the field in general. conclusion and suggestion conclusion based on the analyses of results obtained from document analysis and teachers‘ interviews, the following conclusions are drawn: firstly, nine grader efl textbook is not suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically. this means that it does not apply the lexical approach. both document analysis and teachers' interview results also show that the lexicalized grammar (grammar-based method) seems to be practiced. indirectly, as the results indicate, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (1), 2020 19-21 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.15738 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grammaticalized lexis is not yet given deliberate attention in the textbook and by the teachers. secondly, the findings from document analysis and teachers' views show that it is possible to say that all the vocabulary and grammar activities and exercises found in the textbook do not target on multiword lexical phrases or lexical chunks in general. this, in one way or another, does not provide both the students and the teachers with the opportunities to be aware of at least the types of chunks and their functions in english language teaching, let alone applying them in and outside of the classrooms. impliedly, to the present researcher's context, unless the lexical teaching and learning is paid attention in language teaching, there will not be a culture of adopting or adapting lexically-based instruction. suggestion as this textbook evaluation is a case study, it is difficult to generalize the results/findings. thus, extensive research should be conducted to know the impacts of the lexical approach on students‘ english language skills and competences. then, because the textbook is not suitable to teach vocabulary and grammar lexically, as the findings show, the ethiopian ministry of education should add the contents on collocations, lexical chunks, lexical grammar, etc. in the english language syllabus. as the textbook is being utilized in grade nine level throughout ethiopia, the government should give opportunities for english language teachers to participate in training too, at least, to raise their awareness about lexical chunks and lexically-based strategies to teach vocabulary and grammar. references afshar, h.s. & bagherieh, m. 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(2008). implementing the lexical approach: putting theory into practice. hove: language teaching publications. laufer, b., & hill, m. (2000). what lexical information do l2 learners select in a call dictionary and how does it affect word retention? language learning & technology, 3(2), 58-76. retrieved on july 29, 2019, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol3num2/l aufer-hill/index mcdonough, j., & shaw, c. (2003). materials and methods in elt: a teacher's guide. wileyblackwell. mcgrath, i. (2002). materials evaluation and design for language teaching. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. meisam & mahsan (2015). the effect of observe-hypothesize-experiment method versus presentation practice-production method on reducing pragmatic failure: the case of refusal speech act. journal of language sciences & linguistics. vol., 3 (8), 071-07. nattinger, j. and decarrico, j. (1992). lexical phrases in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press němcová, m. 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(1983). two puzzles for linguistic theory: nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. richards, j. c. & schmidt, r. w. (eds.), language and communication. london: longman. romer, u., &schulze, r. (eds.) (2009). exploring the lexis-grammar interface. netherlands: john benjamins publishing company. schmitt, n. (2000). vocabulary in language teaching. cambridge: cup. schmitt, n., & carter, r. (2004). formulaic sequences in action: an introduction. in n. schmitt (ed.), formulaic sequences: acquisition, processing, and use (pp. 1–23). amsterdam, the netherlands: john benjamins. doi:10.1075/lllt.9.02sch scrivener, j. (1996). arc: a descriptive model for classroom work on language. in j. willis, & d. willis, (eds.), challenge and change in language teaching (pp. 79-92). oxford: macmillan heinemann english language teaching. selivan, l. (2018). lexical grammar: activities for teaching chunks and exploring patterns. cambridge: cambridge university press sinclair, j. (1991) corpus, concordance, collocation. oxford: oxford university press skehan, p. (1996). second language acquisition research and task-based instruction. in j. willis & d. willis (eds.), challenge and change in language teaching (pp. 17–30). oxford: heinemann. smith, c. (2005). the lexical approach. the edna l. sterling collection. 1. https://cedar.wwu.edu/sterling_colle ction/1 timmis, i. (2008). the lexical approach is dead: long live the lexical dimension! modern english teacher 7 (3). retrieved on july 18, 2019, from http://www.onlinemet.com/ tomlinson, b & masuhara, m (2013). adult course books. english language teaching journal, 67 (2): 233-249 ur, p. (1999). a course in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. willis, d. (1990). the lexical syllabus. london: harper collins. wray, a. (2000). formulaic sequences in second language teaching: principle and practice. applied linguistic, 21:4, 463-489. https://cedar.wwu.edu/sterling_collection/1 https://cedar.wwu.edu/sterling_collection/1 http://www.onlinemet.com/ error analysis on it students’ sentence writing assignments error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments rentauli mariah silalahi institut teknologi del, sumut, indonesia rentaulisilalahi@gmail.com abstract students‟ error analysis is very important for helping efl teachers to develop their teaching materials, assessments and methods. however, it takes much time and effort from the teachers to do such an error analysis towards their students‟ language. this study seeks to identify the common errors made by 1 class of 28 freshmen students studying english in their first semester in an it university. the data is collected from their writing assignments for eight consecutive weeks. the errors found were classified into 24 types and the top ten most common errors committed by the students were article, preposition, spelling, word choice, subject-verb agreement, auxiliary verb, plural form, verb form, capital letter, and meaningless sentences. the findings about the students‟ frequency of committing errors were, then, contrasted to their midterm test result and in order to find out the reasons behind the error recurrence; the students were given some questions to answer in a questionnaire format. most of the students admitted that careless was the major reason for their errors and lack understanding came next. this study suggests efl teachers to devote their time to continuously check the students‟ language by giving corrections so that the students can learn from their errors and stop committing the same errors. key words: error, error analysis, efl, type of error, interlingual error, intralingual error abstrak analisis terhadap kesalahan mahasiswa dalam bahasa inggris merupakan hal yang penting untuk guru bahasa inggris sebagai sumber untuk meningkatkan pengajarannya yang meliputi materi, penilaian dan metode. proses analisis tersebut membutuhkan waktu yang lama dan usaha yang gigih dari si pengajar. penelitian ini mengidentifikasi kesalahan-kesalahan umum yang terjadi pada kelas bahasa inggris tingkat 1 yang terdiri dari 28 mahasiswa baru di suatu perguruan tinggi yang bergerak dibidang it (informasi dan teknologi). data dikumpulkan dari tugas-tugas menulis mahasiswa selama delapan minggu berturut-turut. dari data yang dikumpulkan, kesalahankesalahan umum mahasiswa dalam tugas menulisnya dikategorikan menjadi 24 tipe, dan yang menempati 10 tipe teratas kesalahan yang terjadi adalah pada penggunaan ‘article’, ‘preposition’, ‘spelling’, ‘word choice’, ‘subject-verb agreement’, ‘auxiliary verb’, ‘plural form’, ‘verb form’, ‘capital letter’, dan ‘meaningless sentences’. temuan ini kemudian dibandingkan dengan hasil ujian tengah semester mereka. dan untuk mengetahui penyebab dari seringnya terjadi kesalahan tersebut, mahasiswa diminta untuk menjawab pertanyaan yang diberikan dalam bentuk kuesioner. kebanyakan mahasiswa menyebutkan 2 alasan utama sebagai penyebab terjadinya kesalahan tersebut. alasan yang pertama adalah karena kurang cermat dalam penggunaannya dan yang kedua adalah karena tidak mengerti cara penggunaannya. dari hasil studi ini, diharapkan para guru bahasa inggris akan mengalokasikan waktu yang lebih banyak untuk memeriksa tulisan para pelajarnya dan memberikan koreksi/masukan sehingga mereka dapat belajar dari kesalahannya dan tidak mengulangi kesalahan yang sama. kata kunci: kesalahan, analisis kesalahan, pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl), tipe kesalahan, kesalahan interlingual, kesalahan intralingual rentauli mariah silalahi 152| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 introduction writing is a medium of communication that represents language through the inscription of signs and symbols (writing, 2014). generally, there is one message delivered whenever someone is writing a text. the message can only be understandable if the writing comprises vocabulary, grammar and semantics (writing, 2014). unfortunately, for efl (english as a foreign language) students, english is not innate but they have to do lots of efforts/practices to write something in english correctly and very often there are some errors in their written text. these errors could be very precious sources for teaching. klassen (1994) did research that used the students‟ errors in writing as resources to teach the students. the research seemed to be successful that students most willingly learnt from their errors. limited knowledge of the grammatical rules and very rare occasions using the language in daily life conversation or interaction make efl students find writing in english is more difficult than writing in their first language. because of the limited knowledge, the efl students often committed errors in their pieces of writings. yet, many researchers have acknowledged that making errors in producing english in speaking and writing is a common issue for all students learning english whose mother tongue is other than english (hussain, hanif, asif & rehman, 2013; gustilo & magno, 2012; yahya, ishak, zainal, faghat & yahaya, 2012; yang, 2010). there are two kinds of errors in language learning i.e. interlingual errors (l1) and intrallingual errors (l2) (bryant, 1984). interlingual errors were errors resulted from one‟s mother tongue‟s intrusion; while intralingual errors were errors resulted from one‟s misinterpretation or overgeneralization of english grammar rules. bryant (1984) found that the japanese esl students mostly made errors by the interference of their mother tongue or generally called l1 errors. while errors that resulted from l2 were only about the incorrect use of s-genitive and verb tense. however, the most dominant factor would not always be the same for every country. silalahi (2013) found that l2 was the greatest cause for indonesian students‟ errors in their spoken english while l1 contributed only very little amount. there are some definitions of error analysis, yet all derived from james‟ definition (james, cited in gustilo & magno, 2012; james, cited in sarfraz, 2011, p. 31) who considered error analysis as “the study of linguistic ignorance, the investigation of what error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 153 people do not know and how they attempt to cope with their ignorance.” dulay, burt, and krashen (1982, cited in gustilo & magno, 2012, p. 98) strongly emphasized the definition of error analysis as “flawed side of learner speech or writing that deviates from selected norm of mature language performance”. gustilo and magno (2012, p. 98) then simplified the definition of errors as “alterations of the rules of the accepted norm and are termed as surface errors which may be further classified as omission errors, addition errors, misinformation errors, wrong order, spelling errors, systems error, and the like”. hussain et al. (2013) even made research on an error analysis to suggest changes in teaching curriculum in pakistan. he argued that learners could commit errors in their language “due to memory lapses; physical states such as tiredness and psychological such as strong emotions” (p. 829). ellis (cited in wang, 2008, p. 185) presented some steps in analyzing errors including “collection of a sample of learner language, identification of errors, description of errors, explanation of errors, and error evaluation.” knowing so many errors occurred in efl students‟ language throughout the world encouraged the writer to do an error analysis towards her students‟ writings in order to find some ways to help them improve their skills and avoid committing the same errors. this study was carried out by implementing the steps introduced by rod ellis. method this study presents descriptive data which identified and analyzed errors in efl students‟ writings. this study is aimed at determining the types of errors made by 28 freshmen students majoring in it in their english writing assignments which were collected and marked for 8 consecutive weeks during their first half semester studying at the university. the writing assignments were given every week after a completion of one topic about tenses. the writing assignments were to write sentences using the tense learnt before. the tenses taught to students were: present simple (pr s), present continuous tense (pr c t), past simple (ps s), past continuous tense (ps c t), present perfect (pr pf), present perfect continuous tense (pr pf c t), simple future (s ft), and future continuous tense (ft c t). during the writing assignments‟ collection time, the author made an experiment in which she collected the students‟ writing tasks and checked their language for grammatical errors and also gave mark. the author then made possible corrections for the students‟ errors by rentauli mariah silalahi 154| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 explicitly pointing the errors and published them for the students to read and learn from their errors. the research was continued by collecting the students‟ midterm test result by the end of week 8 to be contrasted with the students‟ frequency of committing errors in the writing assignments to see the correlation between them. after getting the required data, it was analyzed and calculated in terms of percentage. the findings were then discussed and explained in terms of factors influencing the occurrence of errors in writing by giving questionnaires to the 28 students. the analysis steps follow ellis‟ (cited in sarfraz, 2011), which consist of collection of samples of learner language (writing assignments), identification of errors, description of errors, and evaluation of errors. these steps can be found under the discussion on the types of errors. findings and discussion types of errors: collection of samples of learner writing assignments in the half semester; 8 weeks, the students had learnt 8 tenses: present simple, present continuous tenses, past simple, past continuous tense, present perfect, present perfect continuous tense, simple future, and past future. the class meeting for every topic was held twice in a week for a total of 3 hours. every time finishing the topic, the author, who was also the one teaching the students in the 8 weeks, asked the students to write sentences in english by using the formulas of the tenses learnt in positive, negative, and interrogative using a question word and auxiliary verb. the students wrote at least 8 sentences and at most 22 sentences for the tense writing assignments. the students were only to write their own sentences by following the patterns that the teacher had given them in the classroom. the author then collected all of the students‟ sentences for analysis. identification of errors the 28 students collected their writing assignments every week for the class-teacher to mark and make some notes. the notes were about the students‟ errors and possible corrections to the errors. usually, the students‟ errors were not about the wrong application of patterns learnt but other grammatical issues such as the improper use of article, preposition, and the like. it was not that hard to identify the errors as it was in the spoken language because the errors could explicitly be observed on the students‟ paper as yang (2010) also error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 155 claimed that error detection was easier with written text. description and evaluation of errors from the data, the students‟ original sentences, there are a total of 387 errors occurred during the writing assignments for all tenses as shown on table 1. table 1. list of students‟ errors and their frequency of occurrence no errors pr s pr c t ps s ps c t pr pf pr pf c t s ft ft c t 1 article 23 10 6 6 3 3 6 0 2 sentence structure 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 l1 interference 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 word choice 22 9 4 0 1 0 0 0 5 verb form 3 2 9 0 2 1 0 0 6 plural form 12 1 0 2 3 0 0 0 7 phrasal verb 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 meaningless 14 7 7 1 6 2 0 0 9 spelling 13 15 8 1 2 0 0 0 10 preposition 21 4 9 1 10 8 0 0 11 conjunction 6 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 12 capital letter 10 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 13 subject-verb agreement 23 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 14 auxiliary verb 7 3 0 1 2 6 8 0 15 tense agreement 3 1 3 0 0 0 1 2 16 uncountable noun 3 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 17 word order 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 18 redundancy 3 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 19 missing object/sbuject 1 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 20 apostrophe 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 21 missing verb 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 22 adverb 1 1 3 0 1 0 2 0 23 noun form 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 24 missing noun 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 total 177 60 55 13 30 23 27 2 rentauli mariah silalahi 156| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 there are 24 numbers of common errors the students frequently made in their english writing including article, sentence structure, l1 interference, word choice, verb form, plural form, phrasal verb, spelling, preposition, conjunction, capital letter, subject-verb agreement, auxiliary verb, tense agreement, uncountable noun, word order, redundancy, missing object, apostrophe, missing verb, adverb, noun form, missing noun, and meaningless. from table 1, it can be seen that there had been decreases in numbers of errors regularly from the first to the fourth tenses; from 177 to 13 errors only. however, the number increased for present perfect before it fell for present perfect continuous and increased again for simple future before it fell drastically for past future to only 2 times errors. it was worth noted that it was a huge improvement that the students‟ errors in the second assignment were more than half less than theirs in the first assignment. the shock therapy that the author applied to mark the students‟ writing assignments seemed to be successful. through this, the students learned from their errors which were highlighted by the author with provided possible corrections. during the observation weeks, the author hardly made any effort to explain the students‟ errors in the classroom. she only explained the errors once after the announcement of the students‟ first assignment and barely on the next coming weeks. for the rest, the students did grasp the idea and made fewer errors in their later assignments. below are students‟ sample sentences with errors for every tenses. the errors are indicated by an underline. table 2. students‟ sample sentences tenses sentence type of error pr s dony change clothes and eat. subject-verb agreement pr c t who is drink a cup of coffee? verb form ps s i gone to church in balige last sunday. verb form ps c t sandy looked smart. he was responsing to all the lecture‟s question. spelling pr pf i have red the magazines for 45 minutes. spelling pr pf c t she has been thinking the boy with red hat. missing preposition missing article s ft they will be here next an hour. adverb phrase ft c t i will get best report last day but i got sick. auxiliary/verb form article noun form the table above only presented one example of error for each tense. however from the data collected there were some findings that most errors that the students made did not automatically related to tenses forms but other grammatical issues or topics error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 157 as already mentioned before (24 types of errors). below are students‟ sample sentences in which the author had made corrections to and were published on the academic site in which all students had access to and therefore they were able to read and learn from the teacher‟s correction to their sentences. the author did the same strategy in marking the students‟ writing assignment for 8 consecutive weeks. this method of correcting students‟ errors could initiate a comfortable learning environment for students because they did not only get scores but also comments from the teacher in the form of possible corrections. the errors are indicated by underline and possible corrections to the errors are indicated by italic. table 3. students‟ sample sentences with possible corrections from the teacher student sentence possible correction type of error sky cloudy. it is going to rain today. the sky is cloudy. it is going to rain today. article who are they playing football in the garden? who are playing football in the garden? sentence structure how do they get high ipk? how do they get high gpa (grade point average)? l1 interference i‟ll punch you if you come there. i‟ll punch you if you go there. word choice look at the windows. they are going to broke. look at the windows. they are going to break. verb form the range of our mark are getting worse. the range of our marks are getting worse. plural form i‟m waiting my friend in entrance hall just about 15 minutes. i‟m waiting for my friend in the entrance hall for about 15 minutes. phrasal verb (article, preposition) the moon only apears in the night. the moon only appears in the night. spelling have he and his wife been living their house for a long time? have he and his wife been living in their house for a long time? preposition i think daniel will watch the match of ac milan and barcelona fc because he likes ac milan. i think daniel will watch the match between ac milan and barcelona fc because he likes ac milan. conjunction my mother goes to the market every tuesday. my mother goes to the market every tuesday. capital letter andre hope you‟ll visit him in his home one day. andre hopes you‟ll visit him in his home one day. subject-verb agreement where is she buy a pen? where does she buy a pen? auxiliary verb i‟m thinking about you when i saw agnes on tv. i was thinking about you when i saw agnes on tv. tense agreement i‟m buying a food. i‟m buying some food. uncountable noun rentauli mariah silalahi 158| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 student sentence possible correction type of error i understand the language of program computer now. i understand the language of computer program now. word order i promise to keep study hard. i promise to study hard. redundancy where have gotten this book? where have you gotten this book? missing object/subject it del location is on the sitoluama, laguboti. it del’s location is on sitoluama, laguboti. apostrophe (article) we always breakfast at 7 o‟clock every morning. we always have breakfast at 7 o‟clock every morning. missing verb did she find the book tomorrow? did she find the book yesterday? adverb noun form she will give me a special present for my sweet seventeenth. she will give me a special present for my sweet seventeenth birthday. missing noun i was catching the first take off place this morning. meaningless unlike the findings found by bryant (1984) in his research, this study found out that l1 interference was only a minor factor in causing errors in the students‟ writing. the l1 interference occurred only five times on the data analyzed. after collecting the questionnaire from the students, the author found out that the l1 intrusion occurred because of the students‟ limited vocabulary and they did not make any attempt to consult dictionary. moreover, it happened because of the students‟ strong confidence that they had written the words correctly and the words were really english words while in fact, they‟re totally wrong. for instance the student (student 8) who wrote “blender” instead of “blend” answered the question in the questionnaire saying “because i think blender in english is blender, not blend.” her original sentence in the exercise was: “if you want to get a fresh juice, you must buy a fresh fruit and you must blender a fresh fruit soon.” the student used a noun instead of a verb for her sentence and that made her sentence incorrect. however, the student admitted her unfamiliarity with the verb form of “blend” for the noun “blender”. the word “blender” was actually a common word in bahasa indonesia for it was an adopted word and had generally been used to refer to a tool people used to blend fruits and the like. in her sentence, student 8 actually produced some other errors in which she used article “a” for uncountable noun. looking at the frequency of errors‟ occurrence on table 1, it is worth reported that the top ten most common errors students produced in their writings from the highest to the lowest number of occurrence are as presented in table 4. error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 159 table 4. the top ten students‟ most common errors no type of error number of frequency 1 article 57 2 preposition 53 3 spelling 39 4 meaningless 37 5 word choice 36 6 subject-verb agreement 28 7 auxiliary verb 27 8 plural form 18 9 verb form 17 10 capital letter 14 the biggest number of occurrence on “article” indicated that the topic was the most difficult grammatical issue for students and the table showed that “article” and “preposition” were the hardest topics for students to understand and apply in their sentences. with these findings, the teacher should have given some time to explain the topics to the students so that the students saw the corrections not only to their error sentences but also to understand the theory really well. however, the teacher did not allocate time for that but planned to make the two topics as part of the topics to be taught in the second semester for the students. relation between students’ midterm test result and frequency committing errors in writing assignments the students sat a midterm test by the end of week 8. it meant that the test was held after the students had learnt all of the tenses in the previous weeks. the midterm test was designed by the teacher who taught the students about the tenses. the midterm test tested the students for all 8 tenses they already learnt and no other than those. however, when observing the relation between the students‟ midterm test results to the frequency of errors students made in every writing assignment, a quite interesting finding indicating discrepancies is worth reported. the discrepancies are highlighted as follows: table 5. students‟ midterm test result and their frequency of errors in writing assignment no student number of errors in writing assignments for tenses midterm test score no student number of errors in writing assignments for tenses midterm test score 1 student 1 4 40 15 student 15 3 39.16 2 student 2 4 54.16 16 student 16 3 57.5 3 student 3 4 51.66 17 student 17 2 67.5 4 student 4 4 60.83 18 student 18 2 47.5 5 student 5 3 53.33 19 student 19 2 64.16 rentauli mariah silalahi 160| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 no student number of errors in writing assignments for tenses midterm test score no student number of errors in writing assignments for tenses midterm test score 6 student 6 3 43.33 20 student 20 2 58.33 7 student 7 3 53.33 21 student 21 2 37.5 8 student 8 3 66.66 22 student 22 2 57.5 9 student 9 3 55.83 23 student 23 2 45 10 student 10 3 56.66 24 student 24 2 66.66 11 student 11 3 42.5 25 student 25 1 58.33 12 student 12 3 36.66 26 student 26 1 30.83 13 student 13 3 49.16 27 student 27 1 49.16 14 student 14 3 49.16 28 student 28 1 40.83 the author made an assumption that making errors every time during the writing assignment for tenses will certainly mean that the students most probably get low marks in the midterm test and vice versa. however, there are some interesting findings in which students who made errors on every assignment could get high scores in the midterm test as for students number 4 and 8 in which both got scores 60.83 and 66.66 consecutively. likewise, an unusual finding occurred when 9 students who did well during the writing assignments in which they did errors only two or even once during the assignments collections ended up with low scores in their midterm test. these 9 students could only get scores ranging from 30.83 to 58.33 and only 3 students showed relevancy between their good achievement at writing assignments and their midterm test scores. from the data found, the author could withdraw conclusion that making good progress in assignments did not necessarily ensure that the students would make good scores in the test but making good progress in assignments indicated that the students would make good preparation for the test. that was initially because the students did not know what the test would be like and the test was not all about writing sentences. factors influencing the occurrence of errors in students’ writing assignments schachter (1974) did an analysis towards the learners‟ recurring errors in order to discover the reasons why the errors occur. however, for this study, in order to find concrete reasons for the error occurrence, the author collected the students‟ opinions by having them error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 161 answer some questions through a questionnaire. through the questionnaire, the author discovered 14 general reasons for the students to create errors and there were two very outstanding reasons among them. as it was an open ended question, the students could give more than one reason for their answer. the author made a tally counting for the students‟ errors and found out that 29.16% of the students mentioned “being careless” was the major reasons of their errors and 20.83% of the students mentioned “lack of understanding towards the lessons” as a major cause of their errors. below are the complete 15 reasons the students mentioned as the causes of their errors: 1. was careless 2. lack of understanding towards the lessons 3. was rushing in doing the exercises 4. was impatient 5. very often forgot the lessons 6. lack of vocabulary 7. forgot to use articles 8. lack of understanding in translation 9. forgot to use preposition 10. forgot to use auxiliary verbs 11. less practice 12. did not notice the instruction well 13. the questions were confusing 14. could not memorize formulas when asked whether the teacher‟s corrections were useful or not, all of the students agreed upon one answer by saying „yes‟. the students gave some reasons to their positive response and 67.85% of their answers, in their own words, implied that the teachers‟ corrections were very useful in helping them to know their mistakes and helped them not to do the same mistakes in the following assignments. further, the questionnaire presented the students with a table consisted of 9 types of errors. they were asked to rank the errors from the most difficult topic to the least one. the topics were about article, preposition, spelling, word choice, subject-verb agreement, auxiliary verb, plural form, verb form, and capital letter. in order to analyze the data, the author calculated the average percentage of students‟ choices to each type of error and chose the biggest percentage for each type of error and the rank it referred to, to be reported. most of the students chose “article” and “word choice” as the most difficult topics and prioritized them as number one, and “auxiliary verb” as the second most difficult topic. both “subject-verb agreement” and “spelling” positioned on the third place with “preposition” came next. interestingly, the majority students voted for capital letter as the least difficult one as 66.66% of them put number 9 on the column for capital rentauli mariah silalahi 162| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 letter. the data below will show clearer percentages among the topics. table 6. the highest percentage for each type of error and its rank topic percentage (highest) rank chosen article 25.92% 1 word-choice 22.22% 1 auxiliary verb 29.62% 2 spelling 18.51% 3 preposition 22.22% 4 subject-verb agreement 22.22% 5 verb form 25.92% 7 plural form 22.22% 8 capital letter 66.66% 9 having the data for which students thought to be the most difficult topics for them from the top 9 common errors students made on their writing assignments, the author then compared the ranks between those the author found out from the students‟ writing assignments and the students‟ responses to the questionnaire. table 7. the types of errors according to the students‟ questionnaire and writing assignments no type of error rank based on students’ writing assignment rank based on students’ answer on questionnaire 1 article 1 1 2 preposition 2 4 3 spelling 3 3 5 word choice 4 1 6 subject-verb agreement 5 5 7 auxiliary verb 6 2 8 plural form 7 8 no type of error rank based on students’ writing assignment rank based on students’ answer on questionnaire 9 verb form 8 7 10 capital letter 9 9 it is worth noted that although there were four similarities on the ranking between the findings from the students‟ writing assignments and the students‟ responses, there are some other significant discrepancies in which the students thought preposition was much less difficult topic than auxiliary verb, but in the real exercises, the students did most errors in terms of preposition than auxiliary verb. it would suggest that the teacher needed to take the topic “auxiliary verb” seriously as well and also taught the students more about preposition because it seemed that the students had little consciousness of their lacking understanding about preposition. the final question in the questionnaire was to ask the students if the writing assignments were helpful in preparing them to sit the midterm test. 99% of the students answered “yes” and mentioned some reasons to their positive attitude. however, quite unexpectedly, 1 of the students answered “no” to the question because she said she needed the kind of questions that would be potential to appear on the midterm test. error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 163 after analyzing the students‟ answers to the last question, the author was interested to compare the midterm test class average score between this observed class and the other two classes who were not given correction errors for their writing assignments. from the data collected, the author found out that this class average score was much higher from one class but a bit lower from the other one. this observed class average score in the midterm test was 52.19, while the other two were 47.58 and 54.67 respectively. this would suggest that the class teacher needed to see further whether the class observed consisted of students who were majority weak in english as it was 2.48 lower than the other class who had no treatment for error correction to their writing assignment. conclusion and suggestion writing in english is not an easy task for efl learners because it involves not only the logic in thinking to put the ideas in order and meaningful but also have enough vocabulary to use understand english sentence structures and tenses. when it comes into written texts, the teacher should encourage students to be aware of grammar or language accuracy. from the errors on the students‟ writing assignments, the majority of the students had problems with articles and prepositions, though the students categorized auxiliary verb as more difficult than preposition. these findings were quite similar with research conducted in other schools or universities around the world whose students speak english as a second or foreign language. some conclusions could be worth noted and worth considered from this study as recommendation to the lecturers to improve their teaching practices to help the students learn better and in a long run to make the students as active learners and to enable them to use english fluently and grammatically correct. the pointed top ten errors students made should be considered as precious findings that the lecturer should put more emphasis on in teaching the current students and the future freshmen students. in order to avoid l1 interference, the lecturer should recommend the students to own and bring their dictionaries in english classes and use them as often as possible as it was found that the students hardly consult their dictionaries for unfamiliar words. one big concern is that the lecturer should warn the students of their common error because there is possibility that the students did not know that they made errors. in addition, they might think that their rentauli mariah silalahi 164| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 works were correct as people mostly ignore the repeated errors, rather due to lack of linguistic competence. poeple in generall are sometimes unable to identify them as errors and “this leads to the social acceptance of an error” (sarfaz, 2011, p. 38). therefore, continuous efforts from the lecturers are highly needed in order to spend time to check students‟ language and give correction and comment on their errors. in china, wang (2008) claimed that teachers were given a primary responsibility to analyze students‟ errors because they were worth studying in order to help students learned more comfortably and without pressures of being marked wrong but being encouraged for the positive comments they got from their teachers. another suggestion to the lecturer is to give students more time to practice their lessons. practice makes perfect and with more drills and directions, the students can master their lesson well. this effort will avoid students making errors as sarfaz (2011, p. 37) claimed “in the absence of sufficient practice, the learners produce the language system which deviates from the system of tl.” references bryant, william h. (1984). typical errors in english made by japanese esl students. jalt journal, 6, 1-18. gustilo, l. & magno, c. (2012). learners‟ errors and their evaluation: the case of filipino esl writers. philippine esl journal, 8, 96-113. hussain, z., hanif, m., asif, s.i., and rehman, a.u. (2013). an error analysis of l2 writing at higher secondary level in multan, pakistan. interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business, 4(11), 828844. klassen, johanna. (1994). using student errors for teaching. creative english teaching forum (134142). sarfaz, s. (2011). error analysis of the written english essays of pakistani undergraduate students: a case study. asian transactions on basic & applied sciences (atbas), 1(3), 29-51. schachter, j. (1974). an error analysis in error analysis. language learning, 24, 205-214. silalahi, rentauli m. (2013). common grammatical errors in spoken english of university students in an it university. polyglot, 8, 16-29. error analysis on information and technology students’ sentence writing assignments ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014| 165 wang, ping. (2008). exploring errors in target language learning and use: practice meets theory. english language teaching, 1(2), 182-187. yahya, a., ishak, h.b.t., zainal, z., faghat, l. j., yahaya, n. (2012). error analysis of l2 learners‟ writings, a case study: proceedings of the 2012 international conference on language, medias and culture ipedr, 33 (2012) © (2012) iacsit press, singapore, pp. 114-118. yang, wefen. (2010). a tentative analysis of errors in language learning and use. journal of language teaching and research, 1(3), 266-268. writing. (n.d.). in wikipedia. retrieved january 19, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /writing. rentauli mariah silalahi 166| ijee, vol. 1, no. 2, 2014 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 1-16 the representation of culture in english textbooks prescribed for high schools in indonesia arnis silvia received: 08th march 2015; revised: 05th april 2015; accepted: 16th april 2015 abstract this study investigated the culture representation of two prescribed english textbooks suggested by the indonesian curriculum and publishing centre (puskurbuk) used in high schools in indonesia. its aim was to investigate whether the representation of culture supported the main goal of english as a foreign language (efl) teaching, which is intercultural communicative competence (icc). for this purpose, culture was classified as source, target, and international target culture (cortazzi & jin, 1990). a classification on the level of icc was also conducted to these textbooks. it was found that the prescribed english textbooks portrayed the culture of local (indonesia), the culture of target countries (american and british), and the culture of other international countries in a quantitatively similar portion. however, qualitatively, the presented culture tended to be artificial instead of substantial. comparison and contrast among cultures were not found, therefore, intercultural competence was not achieved. key words: culture representation; english textbooks; intercultural communicative competence abstrak penelitian ini menganalisis pemaparan elemen budaya dalam buku bahasa inggris yang direkomendasikan oleh puskurbuk untuk sekolah menengah di indonesia. penelitian bertujuan untuk mengevaluasi apakah representasi budaya dalam buku ajar bisa mendukung tujuan utama pengajaran bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing, yakni kompetensi komunikasi interkultural (intercultural communicative competence). penelitian membagi budaya dalam tiga jenis, yaitu source, target, dan international target culture (cortazzi & jin, 1990) serta mengklasifikasikan tingkat kompetensi interkultural yang ditampilkan dalam buku ajar. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa dalam buku ajar bahasa inggris ditampilkan budaya indonesia, budaya barat (amerika dan inggris), dan budaya dari negara lain dalam porsi yang sama besar. namun, secara kualitatif, budaya yang ditampilkan cenderung berkisar pada aspek artifisial daripada substansial. representasi budaya tidak memaparkan perbandingan dan perbedaan antara budaya sehingga kompetensi interkultural belum bisa dicapai. kata kunci: representasi budaya; buku teks bahasa inggris; kompetensi komunikasi interkultural how to cite: silvia, a. (2015). the representation of culture in english textbooks prescribed for high schools in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 1-16. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1432 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.1432 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 2-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction since the goal of efl teaching is the intercultural communicative competence, ―learning a foreign language becomes a kind of enculturation, where one acquires new cultural frames of reference and a new world view, reflecting those of the target language culture and its speakers‖ (alptekin, 2002, p. 58). in this context, efl materials should contain not only the target culture, but also the the other cultures (i.e. source culture or local culture and the international target culture). the cultural representation does not limit to the names of traditional arts, for instance, but also to the intercultural information to the efl users (students). in this case, culture can be represented by its products (tangible objects), persons (figures or famous people), practices (ceremonies, life style, et cetera.), or perspectives (way of thinking, stereotypes). while efl textbooks are generally expected to contain elements of target culture where english is introduced, a large number of studies suggest that target language is not always presented and the information in language textbooks is generally fragmented and highly generalized, indicating only the norms of behavior (aliakbari, 2012). culture, by its nature, cannot be separated from language as language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality. language determines thoughts and culture; language influences thought and culture; culture influences people‘s language; and language and culture influence each other (wardhaugh, 2002, p. 219-220). mitchell and myles (2004, p. 235) supported this notion as ‗language and culture are not separate, but are acquired together, with each providing support for the development of the other. therefore, it is unavoidable that ‗the person who learns language without learning culture risks becoming a fluent fool‘ (bennet, bennet & allen, 2003, p. 237). therefore, foreign language should employ an integrative view of both language, text, discourse and (the rest of) culture and society (risager, 2005). as language and culture are not two different teaching subjects, foreign language learning is at the same time cultural learning. kramsch (1993, p. 1) emphasized that ‗culture in language learning is always in the background in classrooms when language learners are looking for a good communicative competence and challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them.‘ further, adaskou, britten and fahsi (1990, p. 3-10) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|3-16 mentioned four senses of culture that language teaching may involve several senses as described in the following. the aesthetic sense aesthetic sense relates to the socalled ‗big c‘ which means the culture that commonly becomes the main reasons for language teaching/ learning, including the media, the cinema, music (either serious or popular) and literature. the sociological sense sociological sense includes culture with ‗small c‘ such as the organization of a family, a home life, interpersonal relations, material conditions, work and leisure, customs and institutions. culture in this term is a vast area, which only some parts can ever be selected by the learners. the semantic sense semantic sense associates with the concepts, perceptions, or thought towards the culture. the pragmatic sense pragmatics sense deals with the background knowledge, social and paralinguistic skills and language code, which are necessary for successful communication, including: the ability to use appropriate exponents of the various communicative functions; the ability to use appropriate intonation patterns; the ability to conform to norms of politeness, where different from the learners‘ culture, including taboo avoidance; awareness of conventions governing interpersonal relations – questions of status, obligation, license, where different from the learners‘ culture; andfamiliarity with the main rhetorical conventions in different written genres, e.g. different types of letters and messages, form-filling, advertisements. later, yuen (2011) mentions some cultural components in four ps namely ―products, practices, perspectives, and persons‖. products refer to tangible culture objects, such as: movies, tv programs, food, merchandise, prints, travel destinations, etc. practices relate to customs, daily life, sports, school life, and celebrations. perspectives are about inspirations, values, myths, world views, beliefs, etc. lastly, persons are about famous individuals (fictitious or real), figures, characters, etc. the four senses are employed in this study to classify the culture presented in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 4-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 investigated textbooks. additionally, the four ps are used to explain the cultural components the textbooks contain. concerning the representation of culture in english textbook, according to cortazzi and jin‘sclassification (1990), efl materials could be analyzed in terms of source cultures, target culture, and international target culture. these three categories of culture suggest that efl materials can load three types of information. first, source culture materials refer to the materials which present language learners‘ own culture, such as textbooks produced at national level. second, target culture materials usually focus on the culture of united kingdom or united states. third, international target culture materials involve the culture of english speaking countries where english is their international language, such as some african countries, some asian countries, and european countries. beside containing information on source culture, target culture, and international target culture, efl materials also contain four elements of culture i.e. products, persons, practices and perspectives. in the efl materials, products are indicated by some form like pictures, illustration or realia, which show tangible cultural objects like foods, movies, songs, news or fashion. here is an example of an efl material section that contains products of culture. the second element, persons, refers to figures, publicists, and other famous people either real or fictitious, which are included in the culture. it could be popular artists, movie actors, pop singers, characters in a movie, comedians, et cetera. the third element of culture, practices, refers to the real life activities, which are inherited to a particular group of community and passed from generation to generation. lastly, the fourth element of culture, perspectives, reflect the way of certain group of people see some aspects of life, like family relationships, friendships, concepts about money, time, and so on. additionally, there are also senses of culture that can be carried out by efl materials, namely aesthetic sense, sociological sense, semantic sense, and pragmatic sense. aesthetic sense of culture in efl materials refers to elements of products and persons, which usually attract the learners‘ two senses (hearing and sought). this sense is usually presented in the forms of movies, tv programs, pop songs, novels, comics, and so on. secondly, sociological sense in efl materials commonly expresses about family life, work and leisure, neighborhood, and such. thirdly, semantic sense of culture reflects the concepts, perceptions, or ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|5-16 thought towards culture. this can be in the forms of opinion, general belief, norms, and such. lastly, pragmatic sense of culture covers background knowledge, paralinguistic skill, social skill and conventions. in efl materials, this sense is usually presented in the forms of intonation patterns, norms of politeness, writing conventions in various forms, and notes on taboo avoidance. the abovementioned types of culture (source culture, target culture and international target culture), elements of culture (products, persons, practices, perspectives), and senses of culture (aesthetic, sociological, semantics, pragmatics) are conveyed by so-called cultural information. this information takes some forms, such as 1) informative texts, 2) texts presenting foreign attitudes and opinions, 3) dialogues about everyday life, 4) contextualized writing tasks, 5) idioms and collocations, 6) realia, 7) visual illustrations, or sound recordings (adaskou, britten & fahsi, 1990, p. 5). moving to intercultural communicative competence, byram (as cited in baker, 2012, p. 66) defined intercultural awareness as ―a conscious understanding of the role culturally based forms, practices, and frames of understanding can have in intercultural communication, and an ability to put these conceptions into practices in a flexible and context specific manner in real time communication‖. savignon (as cited in xiao, 2010) called this as intercultural communicative competence (icc), which refers to the complex ability needed to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself. this intercultural communicative competence is developed through some stages namely basic cultural awareness, advanced cultural awareness, and intercultural awareness. to better comprehend these features of intercultural awareness, each stage is presented below. table 1. level of intercultural competence (byram, as cited in baker, 2012, p. 66) level description level 1 basic cultural awareness an awareness of: 1. culture as a set of shared behaviours, beliefs, and values; 2. the role culture and context play in any interpretation of meaning; 3. our own culturally induced behaviours, values, and beliefs and the ability to articulate them; ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 6-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 level description 4. others‘ culturally induced behaviours, values, and beliefs and the ability to compare them with our own culturally induced behaviour, values, and beliefs level 2 advanced cultural awareness an awareness of: 5. the relative nature of cultural norms; 6. cultural understanding as provisional and open to revision; 7. multiple voices or perspectives within any cultural grouping; 8. individuals as members of many social groupings including cultural ones; 9. common ground between specific cultures as well as an awareness of possibilities for mismatch and miscommunication between specific cultures. level 3 intercultural awareness an awareness of: 10. culturally based frames of reference, forms, and communicative practices as being related both to specific cultures and also as emergent and hybrid in intercultural communication; 11. initial interaction in intercultural communication as possibly based on cultural stereotypes or generalizations but an ability to move beyond these through 12. a capacity to negotiate and mediate between different emergent socio-culturally grounded communication modes and frames of reference based on the above understanding of culture in intercultural communication. the present study aimed at examining to what extent the representation of culture in english textbooks prescribed for high schools in indonesia support the students‘ intercultural communicative competence. the concept of culture and its role in efl teaching was firstly reviewed. then, the content of culture in the two series of english textbooks was analyzed, and the implication of the representation was discussed. method to obtain the textbook titles, a survey was conducted to fourty two madrasahs in dki jakarta region. by convenient sampling, twenty six responses were recorded and the english textbooks used by these schools are presented as follows. table 2.english textbooks in mts negeri in dki jakarta (preliminary survey) title year frequency english in focus 2008 11 english on sky 2007 8 scaffolding 2008 5 real time 2008 3 flying start 2007 3 contextual teaching and learning 2007 1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|7-16 two titles of english textbook namely english in focus and english on sky were then chosen as the objects of analysis. these books are written by indonesian authors and consist of three books in each series, book 1 for grade vii, book 2 for grade viii, and book 3 for grade ix. english in focus was the prescribed english textbooks published by the government (puskurbuk), while the english on sky was published by a commercial publisher. both books claimed that they comply with the current curriculum and using communicative approach. the data related to culture representation are taken from descriptive texts, dialogue scripts, idioms, visual illustrations (photographs, drawings, and sketches), audio recordings, or realia. these data are then categorized into checklists, as described in the following, which details are provided in the appendices. 1) checklist a: types of cultural information (using adaskou, britten and fahsi‘s framework). 2) checklist b: types of culture (using cortazzi and jin‘s framework). 3) checklist c: senses of culture (adaskou, britten and fahsi‘s framework). 4) checklist d: elements of culture (yuen‘s framework). 5) checklist e: level of intercultural competence (byram‘s framework). textbooks are classified as containing culture when they mention about particular culture in the form of products, persons, practices, and perspectives. a mere mention of "eiffel tower", for instance, is an input for "international target culture" under the category of "products". a mention of "bruno mars" is an input for "target culture" under the category of "persons", and so on. findings and discussion types of cultural information the following sub-section describes the frequency of each type of cultural information in the two selected books, i.e. english on sky (eos) and english in focus (eif). chart 1.types of cultural information in both books furthermore, the cultural information is analyzed according to the types of texts or tasks in the text as described in chart 1. as seen in this ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 8-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 chart, the alphabetical order of ―a – h‖ represents a) informative text, b) texts presenting foreign attitudes and opinions, c) dialogues about daily life, d) contextualized writing tasks, e) idioms and collocations, f) realia or pseudo realia, g) visual illustration, and h) sound recording. visual illustrations make the highest frequency compared to dialogues, texts, and sound recordings. whereas other media containing social sense of culture such as dialogues about daily life, idioms and collocations, and texts presenting other cultures are not presented. the visual illustration presents both ―products‖ and ―persons‖ elements. one surprising finding is that there is only a small number of occurrences of descriptive texts depicting cultures (source culture, target culture, or international target culture). on the other hand, information in descriptive texts is potentially rich in presenting cultures. when discussing about school, for instance, a descriptive text about school holidays in london, los angeles, and tokyo are good resources for intercultural information. additionally, when discussing about animals, some descriptive texts about festivals in madura (karapan sapi) and bull race in spain are also culturally rich in facilitating the intercultural information. above all, the types of cultural information in both books (except songs and pictures) are less explicit in referring to cultures. this issue is in line with hatoss (2004, p. 27) who argue that ‗a common problem in language textbooks is that learners are expected to pick up the cultural differences automatically without any conscious effort on the part of teachers to encourage them to reflect on the cultural knowledge, and without raising their awareness of their own culture‘. in line with this, mckay (2002) adds that teaching materials should be designed with the aim of encouraging the students to reflect their own culture in relation to others, thus helping them to establish a sense of intercultural communication (2002). it implies that the cultural information should catch the learners‘ attention. giving specific section is an instance. by putting the cultural values in separated and explicit sections such as ―cultural note‖, ―do you know?‖, ―new horizon‖, ―culture point‖ and so on, it raises the learners‘ cultural awareness – of their own culture and others. thus, in the ―cultural note‖, if there are any suggestions of comparing the way people address others by calling their first name or last name, for instance, it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|9-16 would be a very good opportunity to improve the learners‘ ability to reflect on both target culture and source culture. what can be inferred from these types of cultural information is that, there are a lot more media that need to be explored to introduce culture, such as idioms and collocations, texts presenting foreign attitudes, realia, authentic materials (newspaper, novel excerpt, and movie script excerpts), and authentic pictures (instead of illustrated ones). types of culture the overall occurrence of cultural information suggests a balance presentation amongst culture. relatively, source culture is the most prominently presented in the textbooks, followed by target culture, culture-free, and international target culture materials. the prominent presence of source culture is similar to english textbooks studied by abdullah & chandran (2009) in malaysia, rajabi & ketabi (2012) in iran, mahmood, asghar & husein in pakistan (2012) and also adaskou, britten & fahsi (1990) in morocco. this research is also similar to abdullah & chandran‘s study in term of local references that often appeared in english textbooks. the presentation of local culture helps the learners to activate their local knowledge, i.e. familiarity with customs and preoccupations of their community (widdowson, 1998; munandar & ulwiyah, 2012). this means that language learners can raise their own cultural awareness while learning the target language (kilickaya, 2013). chart 2. types of cultures in textbooks however, the presentation of this culture tends to be ―surface culture‖ instead of ―deep culture‖. this is in accordance with paige, et. al (as cited in yuen, 2011), in their review of the literature on culture learning in language education, which note that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 10-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 language textbooks often represent cultures by taking a ‗tourist‘s perspective‘, that focuses on topics such as ‗food‘ and ‗transport‘. referring to the aforementioned four aspects of culture, they could be categorized as the products and the practices. according to paige et al (as cited in yuen, 2011), the information in language textbooks is generally fragmented and highly generalized, indicating only the norms of behavior. without actual experience of the culture or being alerted to individual differences, textbook users may assume that the information about, for example, the way some individuals behave, applies to the culture as a whole, which easily gives rise to prejudice or stereotype. consequently, textbooks‘ cultural presentation less supports selfawareness and self-understanding towards local culture, and understanding on the values of other cultures. senses of culture in terms of the senses of culture, aesthetic sense appears most frequently on both textbooks. arts, pop culture, buildings, and food are some of the theme. sociological sense appears less than aesthetic sense, which focuses on the source culture (indonesian culture). pragmatic sense is also presented explicitly as the grammar section, pronunciation section, vocabulary section, and speech act sections. pragmatic sense only appears in target culture. lastly, there is no presence (at least, explicitly) of semantic sense in both textbooks. chart 3. senses of culture in the textbooks the predominant appearance of aesthetic sense in this study is inconsistent with the findings of hermawan & nurkhasana (2012) and abdullah & chandran (2012), which report that sociological sense is the most prominent dimension of cultural content in the textbooks. on the other hand, semantic sense that deals with perceptions and thought processes, which differentiate between ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|11-16 one culture to the others is not presented in the textbooks. for instance, there is no information about how native speakers think about giving present to their teachers. in addition, there is no explicit section describing this semantic sense in both books. according to corbett (2003), learners may not want to adopt the practices or beliefs of the target culture, but they should be able to understand them if they want to achieve a high proficiency in the target language. elements of culture chart 4. elements of culture in english textbooks chart 4 describes the elements of culture, from which it is clearly seen that products are dominant in almost the whole culture presentation in english in focus series (93%). similarly, products also has the highest percentage, which accounts to 65% of the whole cultural presentation in english on sky series. this findings imply that culture is mainly shown by products instead of practices and perspectives. products are shown by foods (sandwich, sushi, kebab); landmarks (spinx, borobudur, merlion statue, great wall); arts and crafts (woodcraft, batik, sculpture); dances (tari piring, tari janger, tari jaipong). practices are shown by target culture celebrations (halloween, valentine day, suprise party, baby shower). lastly, persons are shown by famous figures of source culture, target culture and international target culture (krisdayanti, nidji, thomas alva edison, pasteur). perspective is not presented explicitly in both books. this dominant presence of product element is in line with kramsch‘s survey showing that in many language classes, culture was frequently reduced to ―the four fs‖, which means ―foods, fairs, folklores and statistic facts‖ (kramch, 1993, p. 218). similarly, it also supports yuen (2011)‘s study which shows that products relating to entertainment appear most frequently, followed by practices (celebrations like halloween, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 12-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 thanksgiving, sapporo festival), perspectives (presented in myths, stories, folklores), and lastly persons (au sung kyii and stephen hawking). level of intercultural communicative competence by looking at the types of culture, elements of culture, and senses of culture presented in the two english textbooks, it can be concluded that the intercultural competence is on level 1 (the lowest level). though the researcher decides that the intercultural competence is in level 1, the real presentation on the textbooks do not comply all the criteria mentioned by byram in level 1 (basic cultural awareness). the results of textbook analysis is summarized in table 1. table 2. the level of intercultural competence of the textbooks criteria of basic cultural awareness (level 1) status of the textbooks under study note 1. culture as a set of shared behaviours, beliefs, and values; not mentioned there is no comparisons among culture and there is no information about culture-related behaviors, beliefs, and values (which is explisit and noticable for the students) 2. the role culture and context play in any interpretation of meaning; mentioned there are some texts about family life and jobs in target culture which is different from source culture 3. our own culturally induced behaviour, values, and beliefs and the ability to articulate this; mentioned this is mentioned in the form of contextualized writing task (writing a letter/ email to a pen pal in melbourne) 4. others’ culturally induced behaviour, values, and beliefs and the ability to compare this with our own culturally induced behaviour, values, and beliefs. not mentioned there is no information nor comparisons and contrast among cultures. from the table above, it can be inferred that intercultural competence should be more facilitated by 1) promoting behaviors, values, and beliefs of different cultures. 2) describing own culture to other speakers, 3) promoting the awareness on the similarities and difference among cultures. conclusion and suggestion the study has found that the english textbooks portray cultures mainly in the form of visual ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|13-16 illustrations, thus cultures are represented mostly by their products and persons. on the other hands, other media of cultural representation, such as descriptive texts, idioms, collocation, and texts presenting foreign opinions which contain more practices and perspectives are minimally found. subsequently, source culture, target culture and international target culture are found in a balance proportion where source culture is more dominant than target culture and international target culture. this finding supports kramch & sullivan (1996) and alptekin (2002)‘s theories that the efl pedagogy should prepare learners to be both global and local speakers of english. later on, the study also points out that the textbooks represent more ―surface culture‖ compared to ―deep culture‖. aesthetic sense and pragmatic sense are presented more frequently than sociological sense and semantic sense. cultures are mainly represented by people names, food, landmarks, dances (products) and language forms (expressions of showing sympathy, asking for opinion, et cetera). on the contrary, values, opinions, and perspectives among cultures are not represented. lastly, the study concludes that the examined textbooks do not support intercultural communicative competence as the cultural content is at the level 1 of byram‘s classification (basic cultural awareness). it implies that the textbooks provide the various existence of culture which enable the learners to be aware other culture than theirs. level 1 also means that comparison and contrast among cultures are not found, therefore intercultural competence is not facilitated. concerning the suggestions, the imbalance selection of english textbooks should be addressed by all relevant parties, which include the centre of curriculum and publishing (puskurbuk), board of national standard for education (bsnp), publishers, authors, and teachers. in this case, bsnp and puskurbuk have a major role in socializing the standard of criteria for english textbooks to the publishers and the prospective authors. at the same time, bsnp and puskurbuk should select the authors of english textbooks based on their experience in curriculum and material development, cross-cultural understanding, and publishing records. this is aimed at producing high quality english textbooks for indonesian schools. as the users in the classroom, english teachers should be aware of cultural knowledge, which needs to be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 14-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 addressed beside the english teaching materials such as grammar and reading text. equipping themselves with information of other cultures (gained from the magazine, newspapers, tv programs, or internet) is a good solution in balancing the artificial culture representation in the textbooks, which lead to stereotypes. if possible, teachers can provide video reports about the practices or perspectives of other countries' culture taken from educational websites (such as kangguru, national geographic channel, history channel, et cetera.) references abdullah, n., & chandran, s.k. (2012). cultural elements in a malaysian english language textbook retrieved from ddms.usim.edu.my/handle/1234 56789/713. adaskou, k, et al. (2002). design decisions on the cultural content of a secondary english course for morocco in elt journal volume 44/1, 3—10. alptekin, c. (2002). towards intercultural communicative competence in elt. elt journal volume 56/1, 67—64. aliakbari, m. (2004). the place of culture in the iranian elt textbooks in high school level. paal japan 17th conference proceedings, 1—14. retrieved from http://www.paaljapan.org/resou rces/proceedings/2004/aliakbari .pdf. badan standar nasional pendidikan (bsnp). (2006). panduan penyusunan kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan jenjang pendidikan dasar dan menengah. retrieved from http://bsnpindonesia.org/id/wpcontent/uploads/kompetensi/pa nduan_umum_ktsp.pdf. badan standar nasional pendidikan (bsnp). (2011). instrumen penilaian buku teks bahasa inggris tingkat smp/mts tahun 2011. retrieved from http://bsnpindonesia.org/id/?p=734. baker, w. (2012). from cultural awareness to intercultural awareness: culture in elt. elt journal volume 66/1, 62—70. bennett, j., bennett, m., & allen, w. (2003). developing intercultural competence in the language classroom. usa: information age publishing. byram, m., gribkova, b., & starkey, h. (2002). developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: a http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/2004/aliakbari.pdf. http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/2004/aliakbari.pdf. http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/2004/aliakbari.pdf. http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/wp-content/uploads/kompetensi/panduan_umum_ktsp.pdf http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/wp-content/uploads/kompetensi/panduan_umum_ktsp.pdf http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/wp-content/uploads/kompetensi/panduan_umum_ktsp.pdf http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/wp-content/uploads/kompetensi/panduan_umum_ktsp.pdf http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/?p=734 http://bsnp-indonesia.org/id/?p=734 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|15-16 practical introduction for teachers strasbourg: council of europe. byram, m. (1993). language and culture learning: the need for integration in byram, michael (ed.) germany, its representation in textbooks for teaching german in great britain. frankfurt am main: diestered. byram, m. (1989).cultural studies in foreign language education. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. canale, m. (1980). theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. applied linguistics, 1, 135. cortazzi, m., & jin, l. (1999). cultural mirrors, materials and method in the efl classroom in hinkel, culture in second language teaching and learning cambridge: cambridge university press. hinkel, e. (2005). culture in second language teaching and learning. shanghai: shanghai foreign language education press. kramsch, c., & sullivan, p. (1996). appropriate pedagogy. elt journal volume 50/3, 199-212. kramsch, c. (1993). context and culture in language teaching. london: oxford university press. liddicoat, a.j. (2002). static and dynamic views of culture and intercultural language acquisition. babel, v.36, no.3, 4-11. liddicoat, a.j., et al. (2003). report on intercultural language learning. canberra act: commonwealth of australia. lund, r. (2006). questions of culture and context in english language textbooks: a study of textbooks for the teaching of english in norway. a dissertation in universitet i bergen 1—350. mckay, s.l. (2004). western culture and the teaching of english as an international language. english teaching forum. 42,2, 10-15. mckay, s.l. (2002). teaching english as an international language: rethinking goals and approaches. oxford: oxford university press. mitchell, r., & myles, f. (2004). second language learning theories 2nd edition. london: arnold. munandar, m.i., & and ulwiyah, i. (2012). intercultural approaches to the cultural content of indonesia‘s high school elt textbooks. cs canada crossijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 16-16|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 cultural communication vol. 8, no. 5, 67-73. rajabi, s., &ketabi, s. (2012). aspects of cultural elements in prominent english textbooks for efl setting.theory and practice in language studies, vol. 2, no. 4, 705712. risager, k. (2007). language and culture pedagogy. clevedon: multilingual matters. rohmah, z. (2009). efl materials in madrasah tsanawiyah: what do they really need?. teflin journal, volume 20, number 1,104117. shannon, p. (2010). textbook development and selection. international encyclopedia of education (third edition), 397-402. tomlinson, b. (2005). the future for elt materials in asia. electronic journal of foreign language teaching, vol. 2, no. 2, 5-13. wardhaugh, r. (2002). an introduction to sociolinguistics 4th edition. sussex: wiley-blackwell publishing. widdowson, h.g. (1998). context, community, and authentic language. tesol quarterly vol 32, no. 4, 705-716. yuen, k.m. (2011). the representation of foreign cultures in english textbooks. elt journal advance access, march 2011, 1-9. zakaria & hashim. (2010). local cultural aspects in the kbsm english language materials. universiti teknologi malaysia journal, 2010, 1-10. cited english textbooks bates, n. (2007). real time. jakarta: erlangga. -------(2009). contemporary college english for listening. china: foreign languge teaching and research press. richards, j.c., hull, j. & proctor, s. (2010) interchange (series). cambridge: cambridge university press. liz &soars, j. (2010). headway. oxford: oxford university press. mukarto, et.al. (2002). english on sky1. jakarta: erlangga. wardiman, a., jahur, m., &djusma, m. (2008). english in focus. jakarta: puskurbuk. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 201-215 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17182 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the impact of teacher's indirect written corrective feedback on eleventh graders' ability in writing explanation texts septia tri gunawan, ratna sari dewi, zaharil an'asy received: 31th aug 2020; revised: 15th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract this study is intended to acquire empirical evidence regarding the impact of the teacher's indirect written corrective feedback on students' writing ability of explanation texts. fifty six students enrolling at a high school in jakarta were selected as the sample. they were separately distributed in the experimental class and the control class that respectively contained 28 students. purposive sampling was utilized to recognize who the research subjects were and what level of their competence was for inclusion in this study. a quasi-experimental design, which is a subpart of a quantitative method, was employed. the data were assembled by running a writing test in the pre-test and post-test sections, whose results were followed by normality and homogeneity tests. the findings showed that the experimental class’ post-test outcome was 64.71, while the control class’ post-test was 58.25. since the t-value surpasses the t-table (2.502>1.675), it indicates that the teacher's indirect written corrective feedback has a significant effect on improving students' writing explanation texts. key words: explanation text; indirect written corrective feedback; writing ability abstrak studi ini bertujuan untuk memperoleh bukti riil terkait pengaruh dari umpan balik tertulis tidak langsung oleh guru terhadap kemampuan siswa dalam menulis teks eksplanasi. 56 siswa yang bersekolah di sebuah sekolah menengah atas terpilih sebagai sampel. siswa tersebut terbagi dalam kelas eksperimen dan kelas kontrol, yang masing-masing kelas berisikan 28 orang. oleh karenanya, purposive sampling diterapkan karena peneliti sudah mengetahui siapa saja subjek penelitian dan kompetensi apa saja yang dimiliki. desain kuasi-eksperimen yang merupakan sub-bagian dari metode kuantitatif digunakan oleh peneliti. data diperoleh dengan mengadakan ujian tes tulis yang terdapat pada pra-tes dan pasca-tes yang diikuti dengna uji normalitas dan uji homogenitas. hasil temuan menunjukkan bahwa rata-rata hasil pasca-tes yang diraih oleh siswa di kelas eksperimen sebesar 64.71, sedangkan 58.25 adalah hasil dari siswa kelas kontrol. karena nilai t hitung melampaui nilai t tabel (2.502>1.675), maka hal tersebut menandakan umpan balik tertulis tidak langsung oleh guru memiliki dampak yang signifikan dalam meningkatkan kemampuan menulis siswa menulis teks eksplanasi. kata kunci: umpan balik tertulis tidak langsung oleh guru; kemampuan menulis; teks eksplanasi how to cite: gunawan septia. dewi r., an’asy z. (2020). the impact of teacher's indirect written corrective feedback on eleventh graders' ability in writing explanation texts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 201-215. doi:10.17182/ijee.v7i2.17182 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 202-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing is one of the mandatory skills in english learning and teaching field. it is inevitable as every student necessarily confronts with writing skill in their english study. the students are demanded to deliver their ideas in a typewritten form. accordingly, they need to pay attention to cohesion and coherence in their writing to reach the best possible outcome. karadeniz (2017) believes cohesion associates with semantical features, such as synonymic, antonymic, and polysemic. likewise, coherence refers to constructing an appropriate context in easing the meaning of messages. thus, both cohesion and coherence specifically bridge the writers to breed a good writing result. despite its fundamental needs, writing is believed to be the most challenging efl students' ability (richards & renandya, 2002). it occurs as many complicated requirements involve the writing process, such as planning and organizing ideas; and determining spelling, grammar, punctuation, and diction. learners are expected to develop some writing capacities, such as understanding writing steps, enriching vocabulary usage comprehension, and language grammatical features. the interpretation of ideas demands a lengthy series of actions to achieve the result (dewi, 2014). thus, writing ability is a fertile proficiency to deliver thoughts in a written arrangement. it is the performance of producing messages or revealing emotions in a manuscript and necessitates some actual activities to grow derived knowledge. learners are allowed to manage it as a tool to express their beliefs. students, who are interested in writing, need to be aware of writing purposes. according to whitaker (2009), writing purposes consist of persuasive, analytical, and informative. persuasive purposes imply an author persuades readers to embrace his/her thoughts. this intends to change their mind, laying a question with clear justification and evidence included in a topic. the statements and comprehensive report seem to be like purposeful composition. second, analytical purposes scrutinize motives, discuss consequences, assess efficacy and ways of clarifying problems, discover connections between different concepts, or interpret others' thoughts. the aims are to clarify and compare alternative solutions to the writer's query after everything is put in and then pick the best answers that may return based on the writers' requirements. this style of writing can be seen in critical reviews http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 203-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and scientific papers. on the contrary, informative purposes differ from the critical one. a writer focuses more on broadening the readers' viewpoints than pushing the writer's opinions against the readers. in the contextual matter, the writer discusses the potential answers to the inquest in the informational ambience, granting the readers new knowledge of issues. speaking about indonesia, the ministry of education and culture regulates inquiries in curriculum 2013 that students must arrange educational texts; one of them is an explanation text. the text prevails in the second semester for eleventh graders, in which they are entailed to portray an occurrence that happens in the universe. doddy, sugeng, and effendi (2008) believe a social-cultural admixture takes part to draw illustrations of how the human realm runs in the text. this condition, subsequently, contributes to creating both technical and scientific writing nuances. moreover, several factors, such as internally and externally, may also affect students' ability to write explanation texts. the internal consideration consists of individuals' motivation, interest, target language components, and other factors relating to the mind. sulisworo, rahayu, and akhsan’s (2016) study found that indonesian people are dominantly inclined toward oral instead of written forms. this causality leads students to have difficulties transmitting ideas from their native language to the legible target-language (ariyanti, 2016). for that reason, the students have to be competent enough in transfiguring the essence of the context from one language to a specific language to be universally understandable by other people. on the contrary, the external aspects are learning media, school equipment, and teachers' capability. one of the factors caused by teacher competence is providing feedback. feedback is yet missing sometimes from a teacher when assessing in a class. as a result, the students have erudition droughts from their learning. feedback has long been recognized as one of the main facets of developing writing ability, both in terms of its learning ability and student encouragement. in process-based, learner-centred classrooms, for instance, it is regarded as a fundamentally developmental means that stimulates learners within multiple proposals for the ability to express themselves powerfully. hyland and hyland (2006) viewed feedback as an effective means of ascertaining the reader's importance on forming http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 204-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interpretation. feedback then focuses on the work contents by compiling, stipulating, and depicting their features. the feedback suppliers may use language concerning feelings and intuition or expression, which does not involve words, for instance, facial motions, and body language, to grant students either credits or criticism (bijami, kashef, & nejad, 2013). it is thus furnished to students as all postresponse information to notify them of their substantial study or success (narciss, 2008). understanding the necessity of feedback, l2 teachers have arranged in a particular great effort into determining how to manipulate it and how to heighten its efficiency by providing written corrective feedback (wcf). the two most generally known approaches applied by many l2 teachers are direct written correction and indirect written correction. the foremost factor characterizing these two types of wcf is the learner's participation in the revision process. albeit direct wcf consists of an error clue and the identical correct linguistic form, indirect wcf only symbolizes that an error has been made. indirect wcf obliges teachers only to signal a particular erroneousness outwardly presenting the correct form. bitchener and knoch (2008) claim that indirect wcf is the teacher's implication by carrying the mistakes or presenting the symbols for the errors. on this occasion, the teachers establish hints addressing learners to warn their mistakes by giving a signal, such as crosses, marks, or some preferable codes to grant clues in the essay. it remains more to the learner to correct his errors than the teacher providing the target form. indirect correction methods can play diverse forms that vary in their explicitness by marking errors (bitchener & knoch, 2008). the effectiveness of teacher's wcf has been a long debate. chandler (2003) believes the indirect technique might be unsuccessful since indirect wcf helps learners lack information to find an answer for through reasoning of syntactic errors. he adds that direct wcf facilitates students to find the correction as granted by their teacher spontaneously. the students, whose errors are adjusted indirectly, cannot know if their indicative corrections are right. the pause in the destination organization's entrance might surface out the potential advantage of the additional cognitive effort incorporated with indirect wcf. bitchener and knoch (2010) claim that direct wcf alone poses students the sort of specific erudition needed for examining assumptions regarding the destination language. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 205-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, there is research evidence to convey that indirect wcf yields more benefits to students' lengthy writing development than direct feedback (ferris, 2003). ferris (2011) suggests that implicit feedback is generally more appropriate and fruitful than direct feedback. direct feedback may cause a teacher to misdescribe students' understanding and put words into their mouths. he thus claims direct wcf is suitable (1) for beginner students; (2) when errors are untreatable; errors that are unable to handle by self-correction such as sentence construction and word selection; and (3) when teachers want to render students' awareness to other error patterns which involve student correction. similarly, in the study, jati (2018) found that indirect wcf was beneficial for students to boost their writing ability. the students felt confident and had less face-threaten from the teacher. in other words, the wcf value is vital, although it is debatable. it still has a noteworthy contribution to the development of students' writing performance. on the other hand, there is a particular occasion when a teacher appears frustrated to notice that students still have quandaries in writing even though they have received feedback. this study's problems may lie in whether the teacher has provided appropriate feedback on their writing, whether the teacher has supplied feedback based on the students' preference, and has also implemented feedback on the aspects of writing that require solemn consideration. therefore, the current study attempted to present a different approach related to writing ability. as a result, it narrowed the research concerns about the impact of teachers' indirect wcf technique on senior high school efl students' writing ability. before the problem above, this study undertakes by formulating two research questions: (1) is there any significant difference between students who receive the treatment and those who are not? (2) does the researchers' indirect wcf technique have any impact on students' writing ability of explanation text?. method research design the present research arranged to have a quantitative method to conduct the high school study in jakarta. the method proposes obtaining information that can be examined statistically, preliminary test hypotheses, and generate comprehensive results (daniel, 2016). the study also was organized by a quasi-experimental method. white and sabarwal (2014) argue that quasiexperimental designs are purposed to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 206-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license compare groups with typical features to the treatment groups. a total of 56 eleventh graders were included as the participants. the research’s motive to participate the second-year students in a senior high school was as they were considered to have adequate knowledge and capability in composing readable paragraphs in explanation texts. thus, purposive sampling was employed to gain information from people who are supposed to be capable of certain competence (etikan, musa, & alkassim, 2016). several series of actions for gathering data were shown in table 1. table 1. research design groups pretest treatment posttest experimental group (xi mipa 3) controlled group (xi mipa 1) × data collection and analysis the primary instrument of this study was a test. this implement ran in the pre-test and post-test for both xi mipa 3 labelled as the experimental group and xi mipi 1 as the controlled group. the pre-test was provided in the two classes that each class had 28 members to perceive the students' writing outcomes. after being given such a test, the experimental class members earned the indirect wcf treatment for every five meetings from the researchers who took a role as a teacher by rectifying their responsibility task with granting zero clear answers. the students in the controlled class somehow undergo no similar treatment. a couple of classes were required to redraft and produce a few new writing texts before encountering the post-test. the post-test was conducted to infer whether the teacher's indirect wcf impacted students' writing of explanation text. students were told to compose an explanation essay containing 150-200 words from given themes throughout the study section and were handed 60 minutes to finish the task. different topics were presented for both pre-test and posttest. in scrutinizing data, it assigned the t-test, normality test, and homogeneity test. the t-test was used to measure the disparity in pre-test and post-test outcomes in experimental and controlled classes. overall, both classes' scores for the pre-test and post-test were comparable. the normality test was thus calculated to identify if the results were no abnormally distributed, while the homogeneity test was for the sample's uniformity. the last was to ascertain the independent variable http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 207-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license significance to the dependent variable by computing the independent sample of the t-test. both measurements have been calculated utilizing spss (special program for social sciences) tools. findings and discussion findings score dispersion of experimental and control classes the students' results in both classes were recorded in a range of 0-100. they were assessed based on a writing scoring rubric that scrutinized content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. the following data showed in graphic 1 and 2 related to pre-test and post-test results in two classes. graphic 1. pre-test and post-test scores of experimental class regarding graphic 1, the pre-test's highest score was 73, and 39 as the lowest one. otherwise, the post-test mean score from the exact number of members was 64.71, adhered to 86 as the best tally and 45 as the poor one. almost all students consequently had improvement, and few got a downturn with the average score growth combined for 9.67 points. thereupon, it can be assumed that indirect wcf given by a teacher had a forwardlooking effect on stimulating students' ability to write explanation texts. graphic 2. pre-test and post-test scores of control class in graphic 2, the pre-test result of the maximum score a student had achieved was 71, and 35 was the minimum. otherwise, in the post-test section, 74 was the uppermost score a student can afford, and 40 was the bottommost. the average score in this test segment was 58.25. to conclude, all students nearly had increments, and some got decrements with the mean surplus combined with the two tests by 2.21 points. it indicated that the conventional learning approach offered a slight improvement to the students' writing ability of explanation text. 0 50 100 150 200 1 3 5 7 9 111315171921232527 number of students pre-test 0 50 100 150 200 1 3 5 7 9 111315171921232527 number of students pre-test post-test http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 208-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license normality and homogeneity data calculation a normality test is one of the sundry procedures to be exerted in administering the t-test. it is intended to discern whether the data in the experimental and controlled groups were normally allocated. the analysis referred to the shapiro-wilk as each class had n <50 (mishra, pandey, singh, gupta, sahu, & keshri, 2019). for that, table 2 and 3 unveiled the normality test of the pre-test and post-test. table 2. the normality test of pre-test tests of normality class kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. score experimental class .117 28 .200* .970 28 .584 control class .107 28 .200* .970 28 .586 table 3. the normality test of post-test tests of normality class kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. score experimental class .095 28 .200* .966 28 .490 control class .120 28 .200* .981 28 .869 table 2 showed that the pre-test exhibited the experimental test significance was 0.584 and the controlled was 0.586. if the significanceresult is above α = 0.05, the data thus is normally distributed. besides, the posttest significance result in table 3 was markedly 0.490 and 0.869. since both classes' significances in the two tests were over 0.05, the data distribution was considered normal. table 4. the homogeneity test of pre-test test of homogeneity of variances levene statistic df1 df2 sig. .010 1 54 .920 table 5. the homogeneity test of post-test test of homogeneity of variances levene statistic df1 df2 sig. 5.630 1 54 .021 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 209-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license moreover, the homogeneity test is the following measurement to be made after determining the normality test. this set of tests is set sights on examining whether the samples amid the experimental class and the controlled class are alike. notably, the data is considerably homogenous if the significance value is above 0.05. accordingly, based on the obtained result in table 4, the pre-test's significance between the two classes was 0.920. meanwhile, the significance of the post-test, referring to the data in table 5, was 0.021. based on the test criteria, it can be presumed that the whole significance value merged with two groups in both pre-test and posttest was homogenous. t-test and independent sample test computation t-test and independent sample test are regarded as some of the measurements to examine the hypothesis. the hypothesis examination is required to verify whether the treatments addressed to the experimental class participants produce a meaningful impact on the post-test. it proposes to compare with the students who had not accepted any treatment, particularly in the controlled class. what is more, examining in contrast to the means of post-test from the two groups using independentsamples t-test was employed to measure the test. the alpha or the significance value (0.05) was verified as a prerequisite. thus, the t-test result is shown table 6. table 6. t-test result of post-test group statistics class n mea n std. deviati on std. error mean scor e experime ntal class 2 8 64.7 1 11.45 2.163 83 control class 2 8 58.2 5 7.47 1.411 99 in table 6 above, it can be found a code n meaning each class incorporating 28 people. the experimental class's mean was 64.71, which had excelled the controlled class's score, resulting in 58.25 points. the statistical hypothesis is presented in table 7. it can be viewed as the data in table 7 that the two-way significance of the t-test resulted in 0.015 points. the result was considered smaller than the firmed significance (0.05). the degree of freedom (df) was then spotted in 54 or 1.675 if it was turned into t-table in the exact before-mentioned significance. the data also yielded the t-value of 2.502 points. accordingly, the alternative hypothesis is approved while the null hypothesis is denied as the t-value is preponderant to the ttable (2.502>1.675). this means indirect http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 210-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license wcf addressed by the researchers significantly affected eleventh graders' ability in writing explanation text. table 7. independent samples test levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed ) mean differenc e std. error differenc e 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper scor e equal variance s assumed 5.63 0 .02 1 2.50 2 54 .015 6.46429 2.58377 1.2841 3 11.6444 4 equal variance s not assumed 2.50 2 46.46 5 .016 6.46429 2.58377 1.2648 2 11.6637 5 discussion some considerations come to an extent, based on the findings above. there was a sight of improvement in students in the controlled group and experimental group. the control group members had a small additional posttest score tally─if we see it from the pre-test result─for 2.21. this group received no particular treatment as the researchers managed the class by lecturing. on the other hand, the posttest result in the experimental class had grown by 9.67 points before the pre-test one. this situation occurred since the experimental members received indirect wcf from the teacher. therefore, the experimental group overtook the controlled group as the best classes in this study. furthermore, this present study aimed to examine whether indirect wcf could increase students’ writing explanation text ability. the result proved that the students who received indirect wcf and did a revision on their task during the evaluation had better outcomes than those who did not. several findings supported the evidence. suzuki, nassaji, and sato (2019) conducted a study participating 88 japanese university students. the researchers found that the writing accuracy of the students had significantly escalated. the students were able to put indefinite articles and use past perfect accurately. in addition to that, imaniar (2020) claimed that indirect wcf could boost students' interest in grammatical aspects. the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 211-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technique leads the students to a new experience in apprehending englishwriting form. besides, this type of feedback could help students diminish writing errors (rahma, fitriani, & syafitri, 2020). it can be clarified that l2 students could make development in cautiousness by acknowledging implicit errors indication made by the teacher, as they can indulge in a deeper treatment in order to recognize the correct forms. some reports confirmed this assumption: (karim & nassaji, 2018; ji, 2015; ellis, 2008; liu, 2008; ferris & roberts, 2001). for instance, ji's research on chinese learners, aiming at seven treatable errors, showed that the participants with indirect wcf exceeded their score of post-test selfcorrecting and current post-test writing by a decrease in morphological errors. the result may mean that it resulted in the longer-term usefulness and precision of indirect error correction as teachers indicated the errors and included error codes. this, hence, contradicted a claim proposed by some scholars (fazio, 2001; truscott & hsu, 2008; hashemnezhad & mohammadnejad, 2012; niu & you, 2020) that indirect wcf resulted in no effect on long-term writing accuracy of l2 learners. based on the explanation above, it can be reasonable to assume that indirect wcf was beneficial for students in learning and comprehending writing essays, especially the explanation. indirect wcf obliged students to critically deal with their errors by identifying the meaning behind the teachers' correction signals or marks. the students were also encouraged to write some paragraphs correctly, making a satisfying result in the assessment. conclusion and suggestion writing is a means of providing language rather than sustaining it. individuals can seemingly assume that writing requires exchanging a message to utter by addressing up on-page. someone needs preparation to reach it. however, since english as an l2 may confront various quandaries resulting from the differences between l2 and l1 linguistics rules, it is common for efl learners to present errors during the learning process. students' obstacles may not be on the cogitation that wants to state on their writing, but specifically in the usual manner in delivering it. they struggle with some puzzles on composing letters and words and align certain aspects collectively to produce messages, sentences, or a group of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 212-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sentences that connect to convey the dispatch. to solve this, teachers can elevate students' morale by giving feedback indirectly. as such, the teachers may give attractive signals or clear answers to their mistakes. a writing test and a quasiexperimental design that is part of a quantitative method were handled in the data assignment. the findings led to substantiation that the students' average score of the pre-test in the experimental group before being engaged by the teacher's indirect wcf was 55.04. after achieving the five-time treatment, the same class's post-test mean score grew 9.67 points, implying the cumulative score was 64.71. besides, the result of t-value was bigger than ttable, pinpointing its impact was significant. it is reasonable to assume that indirect wcf was a proper approach to guide eleventh graders at sma negeri 85 jakarta in writing explanation essays. moreover, the researcher seemed to suggest some thoughts that the teachers are expected to manage this approach properly as a part of the teaching and learning process to enhance students' writing ability. it is fundamental for educators to understand its application. this situation contributes to boosting students' motivation. if teachers successfully employ this technique, the students will be informed of errors they have made in their task, and assuredly will not redo them in forthcoming. teachers also need to be aware of each student's limitations in the class. some of them are probably promising in english, and others are not. a skill distinction among students is necessarily inevitable. the teachers hopefully look more for formulating other application forms of this technique for the low-proficiency learners. the students are advised to heighten the grammatical features, notably when writing essays outside the class. it will be more manageable for pupils to yield ideas by forming them in word composition if they are proficient in english principles. after obtaining the treatment, the students bear it in mind by taking notes of provided answers from the presented feedback. this intent is to keep students away from such repeatable mistakes in the future. as indirect wcf includes a twoway conversation, the students and teachers are supposed to create proper circumstances to maintain or drive the relationship to get better. if both parties successfully build this situation, the students' opportunities to consult materials they do not know about with less class intimidation or to subtly http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 213-215 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17182 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license exchange information of materials by the teachers are widely accessible. the researcher realizes that this study somehow possessed multiple limitations. the present study only utilized a single approach and instrument, making it inadequate to cover up the fundamental factors that can cause bias. therefore, advanced investigations related to feedback must get a comprehensive understanding of certain abilities, especially writing. further research might take into account this issue from different perspectives 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(2014). quasiexperimental design and methods. methodological briefs: impact evaluation, 8, 1-16. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 48-64 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee analysis of a research instrument to map english teachers’ proficiency siti mina tamah, anita lie received: 28th march 2019; revised: 27th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract teachers‘ english proficiency can be measured by designing a research instrument in a form of test. the devised test must fulfill the requirement of a good test. this article is aimed at discussing item analysis centering on multiple choice questions used to measure the proficiency of indonesian high school teachers involved in english instruction. the first set of syllabus oriented test is tried out to 20 subjects, and the second set – general english oriented – to 28 subjects. the test analysis indicates the item difficulty indices range from .20 to 1 for the first set and .07 to .89 for the second set. with regard to item discrimination analysis, the study finds the d values range from -0.33 to 1.0 for the first set, and -0.11 to .78 for the second set. it is found that the whole test has ‗average‘ level of difficulty and is ‗good‘ at discriminating between high and low achieving test takers; to be used for the actual research, a revision of the test is done to eliminate the ‗bad‘ items. key words: item analysis; test; difficulty level; discrimination power; english proficiency; teacher abstrak kecakapan bahasa inggris guru dapat diukur dengan merancang instrumen penelitian dalam bentuk tes. tes yang dirancang harus memenuhi persyaratan tes yang baik. artikel ini bertujuan membahas analisis soal yang berpusat pada pertanyaan pilihan ganda yang digunakan untuk mengukur kemahiran guru-guru sma indonesia yang terlibat dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. tes set kesatu yang berorientasi silabus diujicobakan pada 20 subjek. set kedua berorientasi bahasa inggris umum diujicobakan ke 28 subjek. analisis tes menunjukkan bahwa indeks kesulitan soal berkisar dari .20 hingga 1 untuk set pertama dan .07 hingga .89 untuk set kedua. terkait analisis diskriminasi item, studi ini menemukan bahwa nilai d berkisar dari -0,33 ke 1,0 untuk set pertama, dan -0,11 hingga 0,78 untuk set kedua. ditemukan bahwa keseluruhan tes memiliki tingkat kesulitan 'rata-rata' dan 'baik' dalam membedakan antara peserta tes berprestasi tinggi dan rendah. untuk digunakan dalam penelitian aktual, revisi tes dilakukan dengan menghilangkan soal 'buruk'. kata kunci: analisis soal; uji; tingkat kesulitan; kekuatan diskriminasi; kemahiran bahasa inggris; guru how to cite: tamah, s. m., lie, a. (2019). analysis of a research instrument to map english teachers‘ proficiency. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 48-64. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 49-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teachers‘ subject matter mastery and teaching competence will affect the attainment of instructional objectives. their skills and knowledge have been highlighted as a key component associated with clear objectives for student learning and accomplished teaching (oecd, 2005 cited in caena, 2011). teacher quality is in fact the key to enhance students‘ achievement (barber & mourshed, 2007; chetty, 2011; rasmussen & holm, 2012; harjanto et al., 2017). it is, therefore, crucial that research on teacher competence be conducted. with the increasing importance of english as a language of global communication, the quality of english instruction in schools has drawn research interest particularly in countries where english is not the lingua franca. a number of studies on teachers‘ english proficiency have been conducted. author (20xx) urged that to set advanced competencies in the english curriculum, indonesian teachers‘ english proficiency first had to be improved. tsang (2011) investigated to what extent 20 primary school english teachers in hong kong were aware of english metalanguage and found the need for regular or systematic use of metalanguage among school teachers. sharif (2013) was concerned that limited english proficiency of teachers distorted students‘ understanding of the content taught. othman and nordin (2013) studied the correlation between the malaysian university english test (muet) and academic performance of english teacher education students. earlier, lee (2004) criticized the use of the high-stake muet as a driver to improve english proficiency and suspected that the very traditional approach to teaching reading with the focus on discreet skills may have been the result of teachers‘ preoccupation with getting their students to pass muet. more recently, nair and arshad (2018) examined the discursive construction of malaysian english language teachers in relation to the malaysian education blueprint action plan from 2013 to 2015 and argued for ways to help teachers achieve the desired proficiency and make changes to existing classroom practices that are aligned with the government agenda. the competence of indonesian teachers of english has also been the focus of a number of studies. a study (lengkanawati, 2005) examining the english proficiency of teachers in west java used a toefl-equivalent test and found that the majority of the teachers did not demonstrate a satisfactory proficiency level. aniroh (2009) discussed the need for esp teachers to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 50-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license have a set of qualities, one of which is proficiency in english but she did not further elaborate on the proficiency issue. anugerahwati and saukah (2010) studied professional competence of english teachers in indonesia and presented a profile of exemplary teachers based on qualitative descriptions of the four research subjects. they argued that satisfactory competence in english ―may seem to be taken for granted by many people other than the english teachers themselves. they tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to excel in the subject matter. actually this competence is already guaranteed by the requirement that a teacher has to have an s1 or d-iv degree qualification, and as such, it is understandable that other people view subject matter competence as something given by their formal education (p. 55).‖ the guarantee of subject matter competence through the teachers‘ formal education is still very much debatable as graduate competence standards are still yet to be established and enforced in english teacher education. assessing english teachers‘ competence remains a salient issue. soepriyatna (2012) investigated and assessed competence of high school teachers of english in indonesia and set three dimensions of english language competence domain (language skills, linguistic, and sociocultural), two dimensions of content knowledge domain (text types and grammar points), and seven dimensions of teaching skills domain (objectives, material development, learning management, teaching techniques, learning styles, learning strategies, and qualities of an engaging teacher). he developed performance tasks to assess the twelve competence dimensions. the language proficiency covered in the first two domains is addressed in performance indicators statements such as ―uses vocabulary correctly and appropriately‖ and ―maintains grammatical accuracy.‖ soepriyatna did not address how those indicators can be determined reliably. a test specifically constructed to assess the english proficiency of high school teachers is yet to be developed in indonesia. the ministry of education has been administering annual teacher competency test for all teachers as part of the certification process. the online test comprises of subject area and pedagogy items. therefore, it does not specifically address language proficiency. furthermore, there have been concerns that the test was not adequately constructed (prasetyo, 2017; putra, 2017). in line with these concerns, it is reported that of the eight ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 51-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license national education standards, three standards—teacher standard, learning resources and facilities standard, and graduate competence standard—are the weakest. toni toharudin, chair of the national school accreditation council, urges that the government should play a more concrete role in enhancing teacher competence and distributing high-quality teachers equally in the regions (eln, 2018). an essential requirement for a test to be employed especially for conveying teachers‘ proficiency is that the test should be a good one for a research instrument. the test devised ought to be valid and reliable. one extensively used way to perform as the step to fulfill this requirement is analyzing the test items—gronlund (1982:101) simply puts it ―studying the students‘ responses to each item‖. plakans and gebril (2015) assert that item analysis is a checking procedure to see that test questions are at the right level of difficulty. it is also a procedural entity to check that test questions distinguish test takers appropriately. test item analysis based on classical measurement theory functions as an analysis tool to measure item difficulty index, item discrimination index, and distractor effectiveness (hughes, 1989). classical test theory has less demand on the number of test takers whose answers will be the ones to analyze. this theory is consequently more practical since no formal training is needed prior to analysis undertaking. the item analysis is more easily performed manually—by taking, for instance, a calculator-assisted analysis or by using a simple program in a computer. the weakness of this theory is that there is an interdependency between test takers and item difficulty level. item response theory appears as a response to the weakness of classical measurement theory. based on this item response theory – also called ―rasch analysis‖ (hughes, 1989: 163), test item difficulty is ideally constant, taking no notice of whichever group is being tested. this theory performs item analysis by calculating difficulty index only (commonly termed as a oneparameter logistic model), item difficulty index and item discriminating index (prevalently termed as a twoparameter logistic model), and difficulty index, discriminating power, and speculation element (labelled a three-parameter logistic model). the more elements to be analysed, the more test takers will be engaged for their answers to analyse. in conclusion, classical test theory is more practical than item response theory. classical test theory is more easily conducted as it does not require lots of test takers. it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 52-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license can be applied more effortlessly by teachers or researchers. this article presents the result of test item analysis. the analysis is delimited to item difficulty and item discrimination. the analysis is carried out to contribute to revealing the reliability of an instrument to measure high school teachers‘ english proficiency. difficulty level is most often paired with other terms having the same meaning like difficulty index, index of item difficulty, or facility value as used by hughes (1989), brown (2004), brown and abeywickrama (2010), or item facility as used by brown (1996). they all refer to the same construct. difficulty index is a score indicating whether a test item is difficult or easy. the level of item difficulty can be explained by the percentage of the test takers who answer a test item correctly. gronlund (1982) points out that it is the percentage of answering the items correctly. brown (1996: 64-65) similarly asserts that it is ―a statistical index used to examine the percentage of students who correctly answer a given item.‖ therefore, difficulty index which is symbolized as p value is one which is obtained after a measurement has been done on students who are able to answer the item correctly. the difficulty index functions as an indicator for test makers to know the quality of their test by determining whether the test is difficult or easy. difficulty item analysis will reveal students‘ ability to the problem being analyzed. with regard to good p value, the majority of test analysts would argue for the level of ‗sufficient‘ or ‗medium‘ (p value of 0.50) for a good test. meanwhile, hughes (1989: 162) claims, ―there can be no strict rule about what range of facility values are to be regarded as satisfactory. it depends on what the purpose of the test is … the best advice … is to consider the level of difficulty of the complete test.‖ discriminating power also has several terms like discrimination index, item discrimination, level of discriminating, and index of discriminating. they all refer to the same construct. some literature labels index of item discriminating power with the letter ‗d‘, while some others use two letters ‗di‘. this d value or di value reveals the discrimination power of a test item. to be more specific, it indicates ―the degree to which an item separates the students who performed well from those who performed poorly‖ (brown, 1996: 68) therefore it allows test developer to contrast the performance of the high achievers and low achievers. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 53-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license an item discrimination index of 1.00 is considered ―very good as it indicates the maximum contrast between the upper group and lower groups of students—that is, all the high-scoring students answered correctly and all the low-scoring students answered correctly.‖ (brown, 1996: 68). in light of the need for better quality of english instruction in indonesia, our research team identified the research gap of mapping the content knowledge competence of english language teachers in indonesia high schools and assessing their english proficiency. this study is a part of a bigger research project funded in 2018 by the indonesian ministry of research, technology and higher education to conduct a mapping of high school teachers of english. this article presents the construction of a test to assess their english proficiency as a preliminary step before assessing their english language teaching competences. method as previously mentioned in the background, the test constructed by the research team will be used as a research instrument to map the english proficiency of high school teachers in indonesia. design this study which centers on item analysis is quantitative in nature. the statistical formula prevalently employed include the difficulty and discriminating power values. in order for the test to be an accurate measure of what it is supposed to measure, and also more importantly in order that the test does not result in ―a harmful backwash effect‖ (hughes, 1989: 22-23), or in order for a test to be an effective strategy to determine the content of multiple choice questions (plakans & gebril, 2015), a test specification is prepared. a test specification is responsible for ―the construct framework for operationalizing the test design through subsequent item development‖ (kopriva, 2008: 65). despite the counterargument stating that multiple choice questions do not adequately simulate how language is used in real life, multiple choice questions occasionally provide better coverage of content than the nowadays performance based assessment (plakans & gebril, 2015). furthermore, in spite of its drawbacks, multiple choice format offers efficiency of administration, particularly when it involves a large number of test-takers. these particular reasons lead the research team to include multiple choice type. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 54-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license subjects there were 20 and 28 subjects involved in the first and second tests respectively. some subjects consisted of pre-service teachers/fresh graduates of english department of teacher training faculty; they were not involved in the teaching field yet. some other subjects were completing their last semester at the english department of teacher training faculty; they were finishing their thesis writing. the tryout subjects excluded those teachers who would be engaged in the following research. instrument the test was developed to cover three main categories: the syllabusoriented, the general english (grammar and reading comprehension), and essay. there were three test types utilized: multiple choice, cloze test, and writing. all together 65 items were developed. this paper presents only the analysis of 50 multiple choice items (the other test types – cloze test amounting to 15 items and writing test – are not analysed). among the seven multiple choice formats (haladyna, downing, & rodriguez, 2002), the one used in this study was conventional mc. the first test set which consists of 30 items is presented in table 1. the test specification guiding the construction of the 30 items in the first test set is taken from the currently used 2013 english curriculum for high school in indonesia. the second test set which is general english consists of 20 items covering 10 grammar and 10 reading comprehension items as presented in table 2 and table 3 respectively. table 1. table of test specification (syllabus oriented) basic competence items prepared 1. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking personal (family and relative) information based on the appropriate context (focus on pronoun: subjective, objective, possessive). 1. my mother‘s brother in-law is my … aunt / uncle / cousin / grandfather 2. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to future intention based on the appropriate context (focus on be going to, would like to). 2. shinta … married next year. is going to get / would like to get / got / are getting 3. doni … a new job. getting / would like to get / have got / are getting ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 55-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license basic competence items prepared 3. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to famous historical building based on the appropriate context (focus on e.g. adverbs quite, very). 4. borobudur temple is … beautiful. quite / quiet / quitely / quietly 4. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to past event based on the appropriate context (focus on e.g. simple past tense vs present perfect tense). 5. he … his leg in a car accident last year. is breaking / broke / has broken / breaks 6. i left home at 7 a.m. and i … here at 1 p.m. am getting / got / has gotten / get 7. i cannot go out because i … my work yet. am not finishing / didn’t finish / haven’t finished / don’t finish 5. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving recount texts based on the appropriate context (focus on e.g. transitional words like first, then, after that, before, when, at last. 8. … the movie ends, we head out for a late night snack. before / then / after that / when 6. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving narrative texts based on the appropriate context (focus on e.g. simple past tense, past continuous). 9. once upon a time, there was a little boy, who was poor, dirty, and smelly, … into a little village. comes / is coming / coming / was coming 10. kancil … quick-witted, so that every time his life was threatened, he managed to escape. was / were / is / be 7. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to suggestion and offering based on appropriate context (focus on e.g. model auxiliary should and can). 11. giving suggestion: can i help you? / i can walk that far. / i should go. / you should study harder. 12. offering something: should i go to your house tonight? / can i help you? / you can do it. / he should go to the doctor today. 8. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to giving opinion based on appropriate context (focus on e.g. i think, i suppose). 13. giving opinion: in my opinion, she’s pretty. / can you give me your opinion? / he is thinking about her everyday. / he should go. 9. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving actual issues based on the appropriate context (focus on transitional words like therefore, consequently). 14. madeline is rich, …, her cousin is poor. however / otherwise / so / therefore 15. the students didn‘t study. …, they failed the course. however / otherwise / so / therefore ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 56-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license basic competence items prepared 10. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to events or activities with the focus not on the doers based on appropriate context (focus on e.g. passive voice). 16. what is the passive voice of this sentence: somebody stole my pen. my pen has been stolen. / my pen was stolen. / my pen had stolen by somebody. / my pen is stolen. 17. what is the passive voice of this sentence: have you finished the report? has the report been finished? has the report finished? / has the report finished by you? has the report been finish? 18. this experience will never … by me. forget / forgot / be forgot / be forgotten 19. the girl … by the boy. was tease / tease / was teased / teases 20. choose the correct sentence: her duty done by her. / was her duty done by her? / did she done her duty? / she was done her duty. 11. implement social function, text structure, and language feature … involving giving and asking information related to cause-effect based on appropriate context (focus on e.g. because of, due to). 21. his defeat was … the lottery issue. due to / because / since / thanked to 22. the crash occurred … the erratic nature of the other driver. due / because / because of / thanked to 12. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving nature or social issues based on the appropriate context (focus on transitional words like if –then, so, as a consequence, since, and passive voice). 23. the snowfall came … the effects of el nino. as a consequence / due / since / because of 24. serious threats … by genetic engineering. is posed / will be posed / can be posed / pose 25. deforestation … some rainforest ecosystems.has been destroyed / have been destroyed /has destroyed / have destroyed 13. distinguish social function, text structure, and language feature … involving news based on the appropriate context (focus on tenses like past tense, present perfect tense, future tense, passive voice, direct-indirect speech, preposition). 26. president joko widodo … to depart for surakarta, central java, on tuesday evening to pay his last respects to his in-law, didit supriyadi, who passed away in the morning. set / sets / is set / are set 27. he asked her … him a cup of water. give / giving / to give / gave 28. she told the boys … on the grass. not to play / don’t play / not play / doesn’t play 29. who are you waiting … by / in / for / at 30. where‘s martin? is he … work today? for / on / in / at table 2 table of test specification (general english; grammar) grammar category items prepared 1. verb; tense (past tense) your niece used to help you quite often, … ? didn‘t she / wouldn‘t she / doesn‘t she / hadn‘t she 2. verb; tense (future tense) if anton . . . with us, he would have had a good time. would join / had joined / would have join / joined 3. verb; subjunctive honestly, i‘d rather you … anything about it for the time being. do / don‘t / didn‘t do / didn‘t 4. verb; since he isn‘t answering his telephone, he . . . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 57-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grammar category items prepared modal auxiliary must have left / need have left / should have left / can have left 5. verb; tense (perfect tense) we were hurrying because we thought that the taxi . . . had already came / had already come / has already came / have already coming 6. pronoun (object pronoun) let you and … agree to straighten out our own problems. i / me / myself / my 7. pronoun (relative pronoun) if you had told us earlier … he was, we could have introduced him at the meeting. who / whom / which / whoever 8. pronoun (relative pronoun) the notebooks … ben had lost at the bus station were returned to him. what / which / who / whose 9. pronoun (as object of a sentence) they didn‘t seem to mind … tv while they were trying to study. my watching / me watching / that i watch / me to watch 10. verb; tense (passive voice) my pictures … until next week. won‘t develop / don‘t develop / aren‘t developing / won‘t be developed table 3 table of test specification (general english-reading comprehension) barret taxonomy items prepared reorganization 1. which of the following is the best title for this passage? what the eye can see in the sky / bernard‘s star / planetary movement / the ever-moving stars inferential comprehension 2. the expression ―naked eye‖ in line 1 most probably refers to … a telescope / a scientific method of observing stars / unassisted vision / a camera with a powerful lens literal comprehension 3. according to the passage, the distances between the stars and earth are … barely perceptible / huge / fixed / moderate inferential comprehension 4. the word ―perceptible‖ in line 5 is closest in meaning to which of the following? noticeable / persuasive / conceivable / astonishing inferential comprehension 5. in line 6, a ―misconception‖ is closest in meaning to a(n) … idea / proven fact / erroneous belief / theory literal comprehension 6. the passage states that in 200 years bernard‘s star can move … around earth‘s moon / next to earth‘s moon / a distance equal to the distance from earth to moon / a distance seemingly equal to the diameter of the moon inferential comprehension 7. the passage implies that from earth it appears that the planets … are fixed in the sky / move more slowly than the stars / show approximately the same amount of movement as the stars / travel through the sky considerably more rapidly than the stars inferential comprehension 8. the word ―negligible‖ in line 8 could most easily be replaced by … negative / insignificant / rapid / distant ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 58-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license barret taxonomy items prepared inferential comprehension 9. which of the following is not true according to the passage? stars do not appear to the eye to move. / the large distances between stars and the earth tend to magnify movement to the eye. / bernard‘s star moves quickly in comparison with other stars. / although stars move, they seem to be fixed. inferential comprehension 10. the paragraph following the passage most probably discusses … the movement of the planets / bernard‘s star / c. the distance from earth to the moon / why stars are always moving data collection the test was tried out using two ways of administration: on-line version (making use of google form) and offline version commonly known as paper-based test. a week period of test administration was given to the subjects who did the timed on-line version. a 60-minute classroom session at a university in nusa tenggara timur province in east indonesia was administered off-line due to the poor internet connection. data analysis procedure the result of the test try out having been collected is analysed quantitatively using two types of statistical formula. the first prevalently employed formula to find difficulty level is taken from gronlund (1982). p= r/t where p = the percentage who answered the item correctly r = the number who answered correctly t = the total number who tried the item the second employed formula to calculate the index of discriminating power is taken from brown (1996). d= if upper – if lower where d = item discrimination power for an individual item if upper = item facility or p value for the upper group on the whole test if lower = item facility or p value for the lower group on the whole test findins and discussion the analysis on the first set of test indicates that the item difficulty indices (p value) range from .75 to 1.00 for easy items which amounts to 33.3%, .35 to .70 for average items amounting to 56.7%, and .20 to .25 for difficult items reaching only 10%, the smallest percentage (see figure 1). it is revealed that the average items occupy the highest percentage rank. calculating the average percentages of difficulty level for the test with regard to the syllabus oriented test – the first test set, the writer finds it to be .64 revealing average level of difficulty. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 59-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1. item difficulty of syllabusoriented items meanwhile as displayed in figure 2 below, the indices of discriminating power range from -0.33 to 1.0. having d value of .83 – 1, seven (23.3%) items are ‗very good‘ at discriminating between the high achieving test takers and the low ones. having d value of .5 to .67), nine (30%) items are ‗good‘ at discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. five (16.7%) items have the d value of .33 indicating they are ‗sufficient‘ in discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. nine (30%) items belong to ‗bad‘ ones they cannot distinguish between the two groups well. one of those nine items has negative value (0.33). the average index of discriminating power for the test with regard to the syllabus oriented test – the first test set – is .43 indicating ‗good‘ discriminating power). figure 2. discriminating power of syllabusoriented items the analysis to the second set of test – as seen in figure 3 – indicates that the item difficulty indices (p value) range from .79 to .89 for easy items which amount to 15%, and .68 to .32 for average items amounting to 75%. the item difficulty indices (p value) range from .07 to .29 for difficult items reaching 10%, the smallest percentage of the total. it is explicitly revealed that the average items occupy the highest percentage rank. calculating the average percentages of difficulty level for the test with regard to the general english oriented test – the second test set, the writer finds it to be .55 revealing average level of difficulty. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 60-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 3. item difficulty of general englishoriented items meanwhile as seen in figure 4 the indices of discriminating power range from -0.11 to .78 having d value of .78, only one (5%) item is ‗very good‘ at discriminating between the high achieving test takers and the low ones. having d value of .44 .67, ten (50%) items are ‗good‘ at discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. five (25%) items have d value of .22 .33 indicating they are ‗sufficient‘ in discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. four (20%) items are found to be ‗bad‘ ones. they cannot distinguish between the two groups well. one of those four items has negative value (-0.11). the average index of discriminating power for the test with regard to the general english oriented test – the second test set – is .39. this d value indicates ‗sufficient‘ discriminating power. figure 4. discriminating power of general english items when all 50 items are combined and analysed for their p value and d value, it is found – as seen in figure 5 below – that 13 (26%) items belong to easy category (ranging from .75 to 1), 32 (64%) items belong to average category (ranging from .32 to .7), and 5 (10%) items belong to difficult category (ranging from .07 to .29). figure 5. item difficulty of all items it is also found – as seen in figure 6 – that 8 (16%) items belong to the category of ‗very good‘ at discriminating test takers (d value ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 61-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ranges from .83 to 1), 19 items belong to the category of ‗good‘ at discriminating test takers (d value ranges from .44 to .66), 10 items belong to the category of ‗sufficient‘ at discriminating test takers (d value ranges from .33 to .22), and 13 items belonged to the category of ‗bad‘ at discriminating test takers (d value ranges from -.33 to 0). two of these 13 items have negative values (-.33 and .11). figure 6. discriminating power of all items having combined the detailed calculation of the two test sets – covering syllabus oriented and general english test, the writer finds that the average p value equals to .60 and the d value equals to .41. this finding makes it evident that the devised test has reached the category of average level of item difficulty and the classification of good at discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. this particular finding of the study is congruent with sim and rasiah‘s (2006) stating that mcq items that demonstrate good discrimination index tend to be average items for their item difficulty. they further claim that items that are in the moderately difficult to very difficult range are more likely to show negative discrimination. nevertheless, as it found that nine and four bad items appear in the first and second test sets respectively, the test devised for inclusion in the actual research should be reassessed. the bad items can simply be eliminated or improved by developing some more items. the items kept for inclusion in the actual research instrument should— following boopathiraj and chellamani (2013)‘s suggestion – be arranged in such a way that items of higher indices of difficulty, of moderate indices of difficulty, and of lower indices of difficulty are organized in a balanced composition. conclusion and suggestions this article is a report on test item analysis centering on multiple choice questions used to measure the proficiency of indonesian high school teachers involved in english instruction. restricted to the analyses of item difficulty and item discrimination, the study has found that with regard to the whole test (covering syllabus oriented and general english oriented ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 62-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license items) the average p value equals to .60 and the d value equals to .41. it is evident that the devised test has reached the category of average level of item difficulty and the classification of good at discriminating between the high and low achieving test takers. the complete test should, however, be improved for the actual research since some items—slightly above three quarters—are indicated as ‗bad‘ at discriminating test takers. the result of item analysis to the devised test in this study can hopefully become a section in a good item bank for the decision makers dealing with teacher professional development. another suggestion might be for test developers to consider the need of 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(2006). relationship between item difficulty and discrimination indices in true/false type multiple choice questions of a para-clinical multidisciplinary paper. annals academy of medicine. 35(2), 6771. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2017.1415515 https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2017.1415515 https://www.jawapos.com/pendidikan/02/07/2017/uji-kompetensi-guru-tes-sesuaikan-kompetensi-guru https://www.jawapos.com/pendidikan/02/07/2017/uji-kompetensi-guru-tes-sesuaikan-kompetensi-guru https://www.jawapos.com/pendidikan/02/07/2017/uji-kompetensi-guru-tes-sesuaikan-kompetensi-guru https://www.kompasiana.com/indra-yahdi/59afb95aa32cdd1bae7721d3/pretest-ukg-ujian-kompetensi-guru-ini-ujian-apa-yaaa https://www.kompasiana.com/indra-yahdi/59afb95aa32cdd1bae7721d3/pretest-ukg-ujian-kompetensi-guru-ini-ujian-apa-yaaa https://www.kompasiana.com/indra-yahdi/59afb95aa32cdd1bae7721d3/pretest-ukg-ujian-kompetensi-guru-ini-ujian-apa-yaaa https://www.kompasiana.com/indra-yahdi/59afb95aa32cdd1bae7721d3/pretest-ukg-ujian-kompetensi-guru-ini-ujian-apa-yaaa ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 64-64 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.11888 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license soepriyatna. (2012). investigating and assessing competence of high school teachers of english in indonesia. malaysian journal of elt research. 8(2), 38-49. tsang, w. l. (2011) english metalanguage awareness among primary school teachers in hong kong. gema online® journal of language studies. 11(1), 1-16.. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019, 91-108 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee introvert learners’ need analysis of english-speaking activity dinda amalia, nida husna received: 18th july 2019; revised: 23th october 2019; accepted: 28th december 2019 abstract the objective of this research was to reveal the introvert learner’s necessities, lacks, wants and learning needs in english speaking activity. this research was conducted at three state islamic junior high schools in south jakarta in order to solve the introvert learners’ problems deals with self-confidence and social interaction in english speaking activity. it was presented in a mixed-method research and used the explanatory sequential strategy. the participants in this research were 106 introvert learners on the eighth grade for quantitative data meanwhile nine introvert learners and four english teachers for qualitative data. the data of the study were collected through questionnaire and interview. the quantitative data were analysed using simple descriptive statistic while the qualitative data were analysed using creswell’s theory. the study showed that introvert learners learn english speaking skill in order to communicate properly in english and facilitate their learning in other skills. since the difficult learning material and the lack of vocabulary were the main obstacles for introvert learners, the english teacher can give them keywords and examples, then teach based on their interest in speaking activity to support the learning process. in this regard, the introvert learners like to discuss dialogues and experience topics by pairs, watching english movies, and listening to english songs. by identifying the necessities, lacks, wants, and learning needs, the teacher can facilitate the learning process through a friendly atmosphere. key words: need analysis; introvert learners; english speaking activity abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkapkan tujuan, kekurangan, minat, dan kebutuhan belajar siswa introvert dalam aktivitas berbahasa inggris. penelitian ini dilasanakan di tiga mts negeri di jakarta selatan dengan tujuan untuk menyelesaikan masalah siswa introvert terkait kepercayaan diri dan interaksi sosial dalam kegiatan berbahasa inggris. penelitian ini disajikan dalam penelitian metode campuran dan menggunakan strategi sekuensial penjelasan. peserta dari penelitian ini adalah 106 siswa introvert di kelas delapan untuk data kuantitatif dan sembilan perwakilan siswa introvert dan empat guru bahasa inggris untuk data kualitatif. data penelitian dikumpulkan melalui angket dan wawancara. data kuantitatif dianalisis menggunakan statistik deskriptif sederhana sedangkan data kualitatif dianalisis menggunakan teori creswell. studi ini mengungkapkan bahwa siswa introvert mempelajari keterampilan berbahasa inggris untuk berkomunikasi dengan baik dalam bahasa inggris dan memfasilitasi pembelajaran mereka di kemampuan lainnya. karena materi pembelajaran yang sulit dan kurangnya kosa kata adalah hambatan utama bagi siswa introvert, guru bahasa inggris dapat memberi mereka kata kunci dan contoh, kemudian mengajar berdasarkan minat mereka dalam kegiatan berbicara untuk mendukung proses pembelajaran. dalam hal ini, siswa introvert suka mendiskusikan dialog dan topik pengalaman secara berpasangan, menonton film berbahasa inggris, dan mendengarkan lagu-lagu bahasa inggris. dengan mengidentifikasi kebutuhan, kekurangan, minat, dan kebutuhan belajar, guru dapat memfasilitasi proses pembelajaran melalui suasana yang bersahabat. kata kunci: analisis kebutuhan; siswa introvert; aktivitas berbahasa inggris how to cite: amalia, d., husna, n. (2019). introvert learners’ need analysis of english-speaking activity. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(2), 91-108. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 92-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction speaking is someone's ability to express himself/herself orally in a given meaningful context. it is one of the four language skills that play a crucial role in communication. generally, speaking skill requires several components. it is more than knowing its vocabulary and grammar. someone has to comprehend the language itself afterwards learn how to use the language fluently and appropriately. as a result, al hosni (2014) considered speaking as an essential skill because the success of language learning is based on the learner’s capacity to engage in oral activities. it is in line with bergil (2016) who clarified the aim of language learning is able to use target language communicatively in accordance with an education, occupation, travelling and the other field. this indicates learners who learn a language are expected to be able to speak the target language. however, in order to be able to speak the target languages properly including english, there are many individual differences that influence the learners’ success in language learning such as language aptitude and motivation (dörnyei, 2005). besides those factors, he also pointed out that personality affects the learners’ success in language learning. this could happen because personality influences someone's behaviour in communication. the learners who have different personality probably attach different verbal and interactive behaviours, which will give an effect on their speaking performance in classroom activities or daily activities (abali, 2006). for instance, verbal behaviour can refer to someone's behaviour in talking whether he/she fills much pause and repetitive words in his/her talk or can speak fluently without having hesitation. meanwhile, interactive behaviour can refer to someone's behaviour in responding to people's utterance, whether he/she can respond directly or ask for repetition and clarification. therefore, different personality represents different behaviours as well. generally, personality is categorized into extrovert and introvert. according to altunel (2015), individuals who inclined toward extrovert personality, give and get energy from outside sources by connecting with other individuals and environment. as a result, extrovert people are sociable and expressive. on the other hand, individuals who lean toward introvert personality are progressively concerned with the inward universe of thoughts and experiences. introvert people get their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 93-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license energy through reflection and shelter be private. in other words, both of this personality is contradictory. relating these two personalities to english speaking activity, extrovert and introvert learners have a different response. the extrovert learners involve themselves actively in classroom speaking activities. it is in line with omar (2015), who believed that the extrovert learners have more opportunities to interact with other learners. this could happen because extrovert learners are sociable people. they likely involve in oral activities and improve language-use opportunities. however, introvert learners tend to have problems in terms of selfconfidence and social interaction. as elfiza (2017) expressed that introvert learners are progressively keen on their own considerations or emotions than in things outside themselves. they are frequently timid and reluctant to talk in front of the class. similarly, hakim (2017) showed that learners who have an introvert personality feel embarrassed and talk less during classroom activities. in line with those researchers, the researcher's investigation in preliminary observation revealed that the introvert learners feel anxiety and unconfident to share their ideas among their friends. they prefer to be a listener and quite persons in english speaking activity. as a result, english teachers face difficulty in teaching speaking to introvert learners. furthermore, they have lower achievement in english speaking performance in the class. this statement is proven by dörnyei (2005), who reported that the introvert learners' speech was slow down, they tend to make errors regularly, and they are unfit to deliver the speech with incredible length. based on those reasons, the researcher is interested in investigating the introvert learners in the present study. as the issue of introvert learners has received considerable critical attention, there have been some studies concerning introvert learners. to begin with, hakim (2015) examined efl teachers' challenges in teaching speaking for introvert learners. the main problems faced by the teachers were the learners’ less motivation in speaking class and the irrelevant teaching instruction (material and syllabus). davidson & pelletier (2015) informed that introvert learners have higher stress levels than the extrovert learners, and they also have lower evaluations concerning with the interpersonal behaviour. hiouani (2016) then reported that introvert learners face difficulty when performing tasks orally. they require more time to understand the information and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 94-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license construct any ideas before sharing them to their friends or teacher in the class. similarly, wen (2017) argued that introvert learners have an obstacle to adapt and involve themselves in classroom english speaking activities. thus, these studies show that introvert learners need to be examined in order to solve their problems in speaking activities. due to the facts that the introvert learners face difficulties in the speaking activities, teachers and educators are demanded to analyze their learners' need in the learning process. need analysis is an indispensable key in language learning. need analysis can be characterized as a fundamental part of gathering detailed information that will serve as a premise in educational plan improvement as well as in determination and assessment of instructing exercises (poedjiastutie & oliver, 2017). it implies that need analysis enables the teachers to decide whether the current learning addresses the needs of learners or to perceive a gap between what students can do and what they should certainly do. also, it involves doing some kinds of activity with learners in order to discover the needs of a particular group, because a good understanding of learners can contribute to successful learning. in this case, the researcher assumed that introvert learners as a particular group of learners. therefore, need analysis is reasonable for introvert learners because they have a particular need in english speaking activity. based on the related studies, it can be found that need analysis is a vital and necessary element in order to achieve the learning outcomes. it helps the teachers to aware the needs of a particular group and to find out what language points their learners needed to study. need analysis also helps the teachers to solve the problem related to poor outcomes and evaluate whether the learning process run well or not. relating to the introvert learners as a particular group in the present study, there has been no previous study of need analysis which dealt with the introvert learners. therefore, the researcher attempts to present a different account of need analysis related to the introvert learners and english speaking activity. in view of all that has been mentioned so far, the main objective of this study is to reveal the introvert learner's necessities, lacks, wants and learning needs in english speaking activity based on the methodology of need analysis. accordingly, the researcher applied mixed-method research which qualitative and quantitative data are required in conducting the present study. to obtain http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 95-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a deep study of introvert learners in english speaking activities, this study then was conducted at three state islamic junior high schools at south jakarta. moreover, the second-year learners which categorize as teenagers are considered to be the appropriate level to be examined. thus, the result of this study, hopefully, will be valuable for teachers in teaching speaking for introvert learners. method the present research was conducted at mts negeri 03 jakarta, mts negeri 13 jakarta, and mts negeri19 jakarta. in this mixed-method research, the participants were 106 introvert learners on the eighth grade for quantitative data meanwhile nine introvert learners and four english teachers for qualitative data. the researcher used the mixed method because the researcher collected two different data which they were quantitative and qualitative data in order to gain very comprehensive and sufficient information related to the needs of introvert learners. additionally, the explanatory sequential strategy has been used in presenting the answers to the research questions. this strategy was initialled by collecting the quantitative data firstly and then collecting the qualitative data to support and explain the quantitative results. there were three instruments which have been used by the researcher. first of all, the researcher classified the learners into extrovert and introvert learners using eysenck's personality questionnaire (epq) adopted from francis et al. (2006). the participants were administered the indonesian version of the epq test, and they answered the test by marking either "yes" or "no" for each question. moreover, the learners who were signified as the introvert learners became the following participants in the research. second, the researcher used a questionnaire (quantitative data) to obtain information related to introvert learners' need analysis. the indonesian questionnaires which consist of 20 multiple choices were administered to introvert learners at three state islamic junior high schools. third, the researcher used the interview (qualitative data) to obtain information related to the introvert learners' needs based on the perspective of english teachers and the representative of introvert learners who have the highest score in personality test in each school. the total numbers of questions in the interview are 13 questions for english teachers and 11 questions for the representative of introvert learners in each school. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 96-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in analysing the data, the quantitative data were analysed using simple descriptive statistic (frequency and percentage) and the qualitative data were analysed using creswell’s theory. the researcher used content validity to the need analysis questionnaire. as a result, the researcher has compiled the blueprint of need analysis questionnaire from several sources and used the assessment of expert judges adopted form ihsan (2015). likewise, the researcher used methodology triangulation and theory triangulation in order to get a validity and credibility for qualitative data. results and discussion results the prior participants for a personality inventory test in three schools were 366 learners. based on the analysis of personality test, it was found that there were 106 introvert learners in this research. the detail information is presented in the table 1. moreover, the result of need analysis at three state islamic junior high schools in south jakarta has been organized based on the introvert learners’ necessities, lacks, wants, and learning needs in order to answer the research questions. table 1. total of introvert learners no schoo l total of students introvert learners percentage 1. mts n 03 135 36 27% 2. mts n 13 129 41 32% 3. mts n 19 102 29 28% total 366 106 29% first of all, necessities refer to the demands of the target situation. the finding revealed that the introvert learners learn speaking skill in order to communicate properly and facilitate their learning in other skills. moreover, they considered vocabulary as the most important speaking aspect which the introvert learners need to learn in english speaking activity. second, the learners’ lack concerns with the introvert learners’ problems in english speaking activity. the finding showed that the difficult learning material and lack of vocabulary as the main lacks for introvert learners in english speaking activity. third, wants refer to the learners’ interest in english speaking activity. the finding reported that the introvert learners felt excited and interested when they discuss the interesting topics concerning with own experience, watching english videos with subtitle, and learning dialogue materials in english speaking activity. fourth, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 97-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning needs indicates the route how the learners are able to make progress from the starting point (lacks) to the destination (necessities). the finding pointed out that receiving keywords and examples when they experience the difficulties in learning was the teachers' role and input that they need. as a result, listening to the teacher' explanation was the introvert learners’ role while learning to speak. the finding also showed that listening english song as their learning style, pairs as the effective work dynamics and translation as the effective learning technique. hence, the information about the introvert learners’ need analysis in three schools was summarized in the table 2 (see appendix a). discussion following the subsections in findings, the researcher concluded some important findings. first, there are two necessities become the main concern in the present study. the first necessity concerns with the introvert learners' goal in learning english speaking skill. based on the findings, it can be concluded that the introvert learners have two strong reasons why they need to learn english speaking skill. it was proven from the finding which had the same number of percentages in two objectives. the introvert learners' objectives in learning english speaking skill are in order to communicate properly in english and also facilitate their learning in other skills such as listening, writing, and reading. accordingly, the first goal is in line with bergil (2006), who stated that the purpose of language learning is able to use the target language communicatively. the second goal is related to qutob (2018), who pointed out that speaking is a practice of interactions, which includes sending and delivering information to convey meaningful interactions. it is indicated that there is a collaboration among four language skills in social interaction (mundhe, 2015). this shows that the learners who learn a language want to be able to speak the language, including the introvert learners. the second necessity focussed on the speaking aspect which the learners need to learn. based on the finding, it can be concluded that the prominent aspect which the introvert learners need to learn in the eighth grade was vocabulary. the english teachers in interview session also have some idea about it. additionally, a previous study which conducted by swanson et al. (2016) has recognized the importance of vocabulary learning to learners' http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 98-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license comprehension in middle and high school. alqahtani (2015) further explained that vocabulary learning is considered as the important part for all language learners including introvert learners because the meanings of new words are very often emphasized and developed whether in books or in classrooms. he also explained that there is a complementary relationship between vocabulary and language use: vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in language use, and language use leads to an increase in vocabulary knowledge. that is to say, all learners including the introvert learners, require vocabulary knowledge to engage in speaking activities. second, there are two introvert learners' lacks being discussed in the present research. the first lack deals with the introvert learners' problem in english speaking activity. based on the findings, the introvert learners' problem in speaking activities was because of the difficult learning material. according to salam (2017), the learning material can be difficult if it is not based on the needs of learners and teachers. he revealed that good learning materials should be determined by the environment, the development of information technology, and the culture of the community in which education takes place. related to the present study, this shows that the introvert learners face difficulties to understand and perform the learning materials orally (hiouani, 2016). one of the introvert learners told in an interview session that the learning material is difficult because they do not understand the meaning of words in the material. furthermore, graves (2000) pointed out several considerations in developing material based on the needs of learners. he stated, "the material should be made relevant to their experience and background, the material must be relevant to their target needs (outside the classrooms), and the material should be relevant to their affective needs" (p.156). as a result, hakim (2018) attempted to design a speaking module for introvert learners based on cooperative learning to facilitate the introverts to be more active. the module consists of book mapping, explanation about the topics and materials, examples related to the materials, conversation practice, and colourful photographs. according to him, the learning material should contain more activities and represents the competence of cooperative learning to improve the learners' interaction. therefore, developing supplementary learning material based on cooperative learning for introvert learners is suggested to support the learning process. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 99-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the second lack in the research concerns with the most difficult speaking aspect for introvert learners. the finding revealed that vocabulary is indicated as the most difficult speaking aspect for introvert learners in the eighth grade at three state islamic junior high schools. this result is also similar to the speaking aspect which they need to learn. this finding is in line with alqahtani (2015), who realised that the lack of vocabulary knowledge was the largest and the main problem for all second language learners to overcome. according to him, vocabulary can be problematic because many english teachers are not confident about best practice in vocabulary teaching, and they do not know where to begin to form an instructional emphasis on word learning. cahyono & widiati (2015) then presented two major ideas concerning with vocabulary teaching and learning. he remarked in his research that the teachers do not know whether vocabulary teaching should be done directly or vocabulary acquisition should take place through exposure. in addition, the vocabulary can be the most difficult aspect is because there is no rule in vocabulary learning (alqahtani, 2015). he considered vocabulary as the most sizeable and unmanageable component in language learning. the language learners do not have ideas about what kind of rules apply or which vocabulary items should be learned first by them. as a result, the lack of vocabulary knowledge affects their four language skills, including speaking skill. however, introvert learners have a more complex problem than extrovert learners related to the lack of vocabulary. hakim (2017) further clarified the differences between them when they have problems in a speaking activity. according to him, all foreign language learners feel nervous and confused in arranging the words and choosing which words should be spoken. nonetheless, the problems can sometimes be overcome by the extrovert learners who are easy to have a conversation with other people and highly love to speak even when their speech is wrong (yulmiastri, atmowardoyo, & salija, 2019). due to the fact that the extrovert learners are sociable people, they likely involve in oral activities and improve languageuse opportunities (kristo, 2012). whereas, for introvert learners, the problems become more intense when fear of making a mistake and lack of self-confidence dominate their feelings. because introvert learners are uncomfortable in social situations, they tend to be listeners and rarely practice their vocabulary knowledge in the environments such as classroom, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 100-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license neighbourhood or home (wen, 2017). these factors make the introvert learners do not have a range of vocabulary and reluctant to participate in speaking activities. in other words, the introvert learners have fewer opportunities for himself/herself to deal with interaction with other people rather than extrovert learners. third, there are five wants to become the main concern in this research. the first want concerns with the favourite english speaking activity and the second want focus on the learners' interest in a speaking activity. based on the same findings for both of them, it can be concluded that introvert learners like to discuss the interesting topics in a speaking activity. according to wu & hou (2015), the discussion can be a favourite english speaking activity because it helps the teachers to activate and engage the learners in the speaking activity. it also helps the learners to get a more in-depth understanding of the topic. they added that discussion generally could be implemented by dividing the learners into pairs or groups. in line with wu & hou, li & lam (2013) stated that discussion encourages the members to learn and motivate them to help each other in the learning process. by conducting the discussion activity, the introvert learners are assigned to give a solution, opinion, or responsibility regarding the topic comfortably and delightfully. similarly, hakim (2017) in his research highlighted that sharing an idea about an event or finding a solution in a discussion group is an appropriate way to encourage the introvert learners to speak up and interact with other learners. in this way, each group works on each topic for a certain period of time and presents the result in front of the class. as a result, the learners who had been felt shy to speak then began to share their opinion courageously with their friends. the third want in the present study is learners' interest in pronunciation activity. the findings showed that introvert learners like to watch a video with english subtitle, write the unknown words and recite them in pronunciation activity. isazadeh, makui, & ansarian (2016) explained that both authentic video materials and instructional videos materials give positive effects for all language learners. in line with the previous researchers, sari & sugandi (2015) pointed out that watching native speakers in a movie or video helps the learners to hear how the words are pronounced. he also added that the learners could know where to put intonation and stress on certain words or sentences after watching. they can http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 101-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license also differentiate and compare the different accents such as british and american style when the actors are talking in the movies. pratiwi (2010) also revealed that english movies or videos could affect the learners, including introvert learners, to comprehend the pronunciation. besides feeling enjoyed, introvert learners can improve their pronunciation skill. the fourth want refers to interesting topics. based on the findings, it can be revealed that experience is an interesting topic for the introvert learners in the eighth grade. it is obviously in line with recount text as their learning material in the eighth grade. recount text is a text which tells about someone experience or events that occurred in the past (autila, 2017). it is one of text that helps the learners to develop and tell their experience into written text or spoken dialogue. according to her, the experience can be an interesting topic because the learners can explore and develop their ideas from real life experience or personal record. in line with autila, hakim (2017) proposed that real life topics are very suitable for introvert learners. moreover, ihsan & ardhityawan (2016) proposed diary writing as another method in recount text. the learners can write or share their thoughts, feeling, and response about their experience and something happened in their real life. that is why the introvert learners considered experience as interesting topics in speaking activities. in addition, the fifth want concerns with the favourite speaking material. the finding revealed that dialogue was the introvert learners' favourite speaking material in the eighth grade rather than a monologue. it is in line with the recent research conducted by michelene, seokmi, & david (2016). according to them, the learners can learn more from dialogue than monologue. the dialogue contains many moves that are absent in monologue. davies (2019) in his research "the shifting from a monologue to a dialogue" also reported that the dialogic teaching contains several interactions between a teacher and a learner or group of learners in a context of collaboration and mutual support. it allows the learners, including the introvert learners, to have a range of responses before the teacher provides feedback or judgement. lastly, there are five introvert learners' learning needs being discussed in the present research. the first learning need refers to the teacher's role in the learning process. the role of the teacher is very important because it will affect the learning success. hakim (2017) further presented several strategies which the teachers can use to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 102-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teach and improve the introvert learners' speaking skill. the strategies cover improving student discussion, forming role play, creating storytelling, and training interview. these four strategies significantly improve introvert learners' speaking skill. in the end, they dare to speak, although there still make errors in their speech. based on the finding, it showed that the introvert learners need the teacher who give them keywords when they experience difficulties in the speaking activities. as zack (2010) stated that the introvert learners usually fill more pause before responding or initiating the interactions. they usually respond to something based on careful consideration and tend to need several times to think before saying something. moreover, those whom introverts feel embarrassed and talk less during speaking activity. therefore, giving introvert learners a keyword will help them to participate in a speaking activity. in addition, the second learning needs also talks about the role, especially the learners' role. based on the findings, listening to their teacher's explanation was their role while learning the speaking skill. it is in line with uzer (2018), who pointed out that the introvert learners tend to enjoy listening to others talk about a topic while privately processing the information. this statement is in line with the finding related to the introvert learning style. the introvert learners are indicated as the auditory learners who are good at listening. kayalar & kayalar (2017) pointed out that auditory learners are good at understanding and remembering what they hear as they learn information through auditory representation. moreover, introvert learners also enjoy lectures, written work, and reading rather than speaking up in the class (uzer, 2018). therefore, regarding first learning needs, giving them a keyword will help them to participate and interact with other learners in a speaking activity. the third learning need is about the work dynamic. work dynamic or setting refers to the classroom or student arrangements which applied in the learning process (nunan, 2004). the finding revealed that pairs were the effective work dynamics for introvert learners in a speaking activity. it is line with nilsson & hay (2016) who reported that pairs were the most common group size that the teachers use when working with the group work. working in pairs provide each of learners a lot of speaking time. they also have more confidence and motivation to complete the task than doing individually. similarly, page & stoneburgh (2019) considered pair work as the appropriate work dynamic http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 103-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for successful conversation in the esl classroom. fortunately, the extrovert learners also enjoy to study in pair and group rather than learning alone (yulmiastri, atmowardoyo, & salija, 2019). related to the study, pair work is good for the introvert learners in practising the dialogue or conversation, completing worksheets, and discussing the interesting topics. the fourth learning need focusses on the learning technique. the finding showed that translation was an effective learning technique based on the introvert learners' perspective. according to jiménez et al. (2015), learners can display the cultural and linguistic understandings during the translation activity in english learning. however, they also added that the communicate purposes are not developed in translation activity. the different idea also comes from teachers in an interview session that role play was the effective learning technique than translation for the introvert learners in a speaking activity. this statement is supported by alharbi (2015), who said that role play encourages shy learners to participate and discuss their opinion with their partners. similarly, hakim (2017) presented the same idea related to roleplay activity for introvert learners. the roleplay activity turns out to be an interesting learning technique because they find the elements of art and entertaining acting. nevertheless, the researcher considered that these two techniques, whether translation and role-play, are a good activity for the introvert learners to improve their speaking skill. the fifth learning needs is learning input. input refers to the spoken, written and visual data that the learners get in the learning process (nunan, 2004). he added that the data could be provided by a teacher, a textbook, or other sources. the finding indicated that receiving an example from the teacher was the learning input that the introvert learners' need. this finding is obviously in line with the first learning needs. according to gelbreg (2008), introvert learner's process information more slowly and longer. after catching up in the long pathways of their thoughts, they do not realize that they have not communicated them out load. therefore, receiving an example from their teacher will help them to follow and understand the learning material. they will have an opportunity to involve in oral activities and improve language use. the last learning needs deals with introvert learners' learning style. when the learners know his/her learning style, they will utilize it in the learning process so they will learn more easily http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 104-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and successfully. according to knoll, otani, skeel & van horn (2017), learning style is defined as the individual's preference for how learning material is presented. based on the findings, listening to english music or song was their usual learning style for introvert learners. almutairi & shukri (2016) presented the reason why learners like to listen to songs. according to them, the learners love song because they enjoy singing. in addition, songs help the learners to imitate and remember the words. conclusion and suggestion the study revealed that the learners’ necessities in english speaking activity based on the quantitative and qualitative data are in order to communicate properly in english and facilitate their learning in other skills such as listening, writing, and reading. moreover, the difficult learning material and the lack of vocabulary were considered as the main lacks for the introvert learners in english speaking activity. they have more complex problem related to learning material and vocabulary because fear of making a mistake and lack of selfconfidence dominate their feelings. these factors make the introvert learners rarely improve the language use opportunities, tend to be listeners, and are uncomfortable in social situations. in order to overcome the introvert learners’ problems in english speaking activity, the english teacher plays an important role in choosing the appropriate learning needs for the learners. based on the fact that there are extrovert and introvert learners in one classroom, the english teacher can offer the activities which are corresponding for all learners in english speaking activity. in this regard, the introvert and extrovert learners like to discuss the interesting topics, watching an english movie or video, and listening english song. the finding showed that introvert learners' interesting topic focuses on the experience which is in line with their learning material. experience can be an interesting topic because the introvert learners can explore and develop their ideas from real life experience or personal record. the introverts also considered pair work as the effective work dynamics since it provides each of learners a lot of speaking time, motivation and more confidence to complete the task than doing individually. as the introvert learners usually fill more pause and tend to need several times to think before saying something, the teacher can give them keywords and examples in order to help them in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 105-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license participating a speaking activity. in addition, providing english songs in the learning process will help the introvert learners to imitate and remember a range of vocabulary. the songs promote not only their speaking skill but also listening skill, vocabulary and pronunciation. by identifying the necessities, lacks, wants, and learning needs, the teacher can decide what kind of activities, learning materials, techniques, and learning input are preferred and needed by the learners. moreover, several limitations of the present study need to be considered in the following research. further researchers who are interested in carrying out the similar issues should evaluate the study and dig more detail information deals with introvert learner's necessities, lack, wants, and learning needs qualitatively. likewise, the researcher in the present study only 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(2017). a study on teaching strategies for introvert learners in chinese elementary school. master thesis, university of wisconsin, platteville. wu, s. y., & hou, h. t. (2015). how cognitive styles affect the learning behaviors of online problem-solving based discussion activity: a lag sequential analysis. journal of educational computing research, 52(2): 277-298. yulmiastri, atmowardoyo, h., & salija, k. (2019). the learning styles of students and their problems in speaking english at the second grade of man pangkep. doctoral dissertation, state university of makassar, makassar http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (2), 2019 108-108 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i2.15466 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license zack, d. (2010). networking for people who hate networking: a field guide for introverts, the overwhelmed and the under connected. san francisco: berrett-koehler publishers. table 2. appendix the followings are the examples of college students’ academic writing essay no need analysis criteria result 1. necessities goal the introvert learners learn speaking skill in order to communicate properly in english and facilitate their learning in other skills the most important speaking aspect vocabulary 2. lacks learners’ problem the learning material is too difficult the most difficult speaking aspect vocabulary 3. wants the favourite english-speaking activity discussing the interesting topics learners' interest in a speaking activity discussing the interesting topics learners’ interest in pronunciation activity watching a video with the english subtitle, writing the unknown words and reciting them the interesting topic experience the favourite speaking material dialogue 4. learning needs teacher’s role giving keyword when they experience the difficulties learners’ role listening to their teacher' explanation the effective work dynamics pairs the effective technique translation the learning input receiving examples from the teacher learning style listening to english song http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 145-158 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17785 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the benefits of backward design in the english as a foreign language context carlos l. alvarez llerena received: 16th oct 2020; revised: 10th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract the backward design model (bdm) is a curriculum approach in language teaching, which begins with the specification of learning outcomes that are the basis for developing instructional processes and input (richards, 2013). this study aims to display a theoretical analysis of how the integration of the bdm has impacted english as a foreign language class. thus, this study provides the results of reviewing research-based articles about how the integration of the bdm has benefited efl teachers and students. these benefits are related to the main elements of the bdm, namely, designing learning to provide enduring understandings, assessing students’ performance based on acceptable evidence, and planning learning experiences and instructions based on desirable outcomes. the results indicated that the bdm indeed brought benefits to efl teachers and students, revealing that this model's efficient application can help (a) teachers better understand the procedural knowledge of learning and (b) students improve their english language skills. key words: backward design; efl; english learning; curriculum design abstrak backward design model merupakan pendekatan kurikulum dalam pengajaran bahasa yang diawali dengan spesifikasi hasil belajar yang menjadi dasar untuk pegembangan proses dan masukan pembelajaran (richards, 2013). penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menampilkan analisis teoritis tentang bagaimana integrasi backward design model (bdm) berdampak pada kelas bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing. penelitian ini merupakan hasil dari telaah artikel berbasis penelitian tentang bagaimana integrasi bdm bermanfaat bagi para guru dan siswa efl. manfaat ini berkaitan dengan elemen utama bdm yaitu merancang pembelajaran untuk pemahaman yang bertahan lama, penilaian kinerja siswa berdasarkan bukti yang dapat diterima, dan merencanakan pengalaman dan instruksi pembelajaran berdasarkan hasil yang diinginkan. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa bdm memang membawa manfaat bagi para guru dan siswa. hasil penelitian juga mengungkapkan bahwa penerapan model yang efisien ini membantu para guru untuk memiliki pemahaman yang lebih baik tentang pengetahuan prosedural pembelajaran dan juga membantu siswa untuk meningkatkan kemampuan berbahasa inggris mereka. kata kunci: backward design; efl; pembelajaran bahasa inggris; desain kurikulum how to cite: llerena c. (2020). the benefits of backward design in the english as a foreign language context. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 145-158. doi:10.17785/ijee.v7i2.17785 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 146-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction during the last decades, curriculum design has been addressed as one of the fundamental pillars of language learning. alsubaie (2016) stated that an effective curriculum design involves teaching aspects such as goals, objectives, learning experiences, instructional resources, and assessment for a specific educational program. however, language teachers have been experiencing a top-down curriculum change where teachers’ and students’ needs and wants are not considered when developing a new curriculum (rahimi & alavi, 2017). concerning the efl curriculum, designing and implementing the curriculum at the school level have remained a problematic issue (pérez, rey, & rosado, 2019). due to this matter, the present study provides an alternative for english language teachers to narrow down the bridge between the language national curriculum policies and the teachinglearning process according to each school’s reality. richards (2013) stated that forward, central, and backward design are the three curriculum models applied in language teaching. the author also explained that each curriculum model differs concerning how the input, process, and outcomes are addressed to achieve students’ learning outcomes. wiggins and mctighe (2005) introduced the backward design model (bdm) as an approach to curriculum development, where the learning outcomes are the foremost aspects of planning. the researchers also stated that bdm refers to planning by thinking backward by establishing the desired results or learning outcomes before choosing the forms of assessment and instructional methodologies to be applied in the learning process. aiming to provide a better explanation of the principal purpose of the bdm, researchers have applied various analogies such as planning the purchase of a house or going on vacation (clayton, 2011; fox & doherty, 2012). through these analogies, the researchers linked the backward design planning with people’s experiences, where, to achieve those big goals, they have to start with the big idea first before thinking about how they will accomplish those aims. therefore, bdm advocates teachers should begin planning based on the desired results or learning outcomes they expect from their students before thinking about the activities and learning experiences they will apply in their teaching instruction. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 147-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license wiggins and mctighe (1998) established three stages when planning backward. the first stage deals with identifying the desired results or big ideas based on skills, understandings, and knowledge teachers want their students to achieve. these desired results are based on performance tasks defined as authentic tasks where students demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, and skills by performing real or simulated tasks to an identified audience (wiggins & mctighe, 2005). the second stage focuses on determining assessment evidence to validate and check if students have acquired enough knowledge and understandings to achieve the desired results established in stage one. this stage deals with integrating different instruments to assess students’ performance during the process of learning. finally, the third stage emphasizes learning experiences and instruction that teachers will apply to lead students to achieve the desired results. in this stage, teachers prioritize the content to be taught and choose the learning experiences that students will do during the unit or course to develop the performance tasks. planning the bdm is based on designing unit plans. yurtseven and altun (2017) explained that unit plans are templates that cover the three main stages of the bdm. wiggins and mctighe (2005) indicated that the first part of the unit plan focuses on the desired results based on students’ knowledge in new learning and authentic situations. moreover, concepts of knowledge, understanding, and essential questions are integrated into this stage's main aspects. the second part of the unit plan is called evidence. in this stage, the performance task and other assessment aspects are integrated to check students’ progress during learning. finally, the third stage is called the learning plan. in this stage, the teachers decided which content, strategies, techniques, materials, and learning experiences will be applied during the learning process to assist students in achieving desired results. these desired results deal with applying the performance task to transfer their knowledge to new contexts; thus, transferability is considered one of the main foundations of the bdm. childre, sands, and pope (2009) explained that transferring knowledge into the bdm focuses on how students show their long-term understanding by using their knowledge and skills to achieve the desired results established in the unit plan. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 148-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this paper focuses on answering the following question: what benefits teachers and students obtain by applying the backward design model in english as foreign language contexts? henceforward, this study explores research carried out in the primary, secondary, and university education to connect and delineate the benefits teachers and students have acquired by integrating the backward design model in the efl teaching-learning process. method this study proposes a theoretical analysis of the content of empirical articles that focused on applying the bdm in efl contexts. mccusker and gunaydin (2014) stated that qualitative research aims to understand social life, and its methods generate words as data for analysis. hence, this proposed study focused on a qualitative methodology based on document analysis of the gathered anticipated data. according to wach and ward (2013), document analysis is a qualitative research method that analyses rigorously and systematically the content of written documents. bowen (2009) stated that the document analysis focuses on reviewing or evaluating printed and electronic documents to understand or develop empirical knowledge based on this analysis. in this study, ten articles in total, ranging from 2015 to 2020, were chosen to be analyzed. the process of examining documents followed the six steps suggested by wach and ward (2013) that include: setting inclusion criteria of documents the requirements established for selecting articles were based on three aspects. firstly, the chosen articles had to be related to the application of the bdm in efl contexts. secondly, the papers had to be part of electronic educational sources that belong to indexed journals. thirdly, the date of the articles selected had to range from 2015 to 2020. collecting documents eleven articles that accomplished the established requirements were chosen. all of them from educational and linguistics journals specifically (1) journal of educational sciences: theory & practice, (2) international journal of linguistics, (3) sage journals, procedia social and behavioral sciences, (4) nectel review: a journal for k-16+ foreign language educators, (5) international journal of instruction, (6) journal of applied linguistics and language research, journal of education and training studies, (7) journal of education and training studies, (8) journal of college http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 149-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license education, (9) perfusion journal, (10) asia pacific journal of educational research, and (11) new waves educational research & development. articulating key areas of analysis in this step, the chosen articles were shown to articulate two main themes: integrating the bdm to assist efl teachers’ procedural knowledge of learning and improving students’ english skills. analysis of the content the eleven studies were coded and shared with another researcher who verified the documents’ consistency. the author analyzed the data from the eleven studies through comparison and interpretation to determine themes based on the benefits of integrating the bdm model into efl contexts. findings from this process are presented in the next section. findings and discussion findings this section presents and explains the outcomes of this study that collects the benefits of integrating the bdm in efl contexts. findings from the electronic sources, mentioned in the methods parts, were gathered into themes, and they are detailed in the following explanation: the backward design model in efl education curriculum design is one of the fundamental pillars of education. in language teaching programs, richards (2013) stated that curriculum design is branched into three approaches: forward, central, and backward design. the researcher also indicated that each curriculum differs from how the syllabus is addressed in connection with input and methodology to achieve students’ learning outcomes: figure 1. the backward desing process (richards, 2013) whitehouse (2014) indicated that bdm in language learning provides a framework for curriculum planning that can be applied at the unit, course, or school level. in the same way, mctighe and thomas (2003) emphasized the importance of using the bdm to help teachers develop unit plans or course designs that focused mainly on the learning outcomes that they expect from their students’ learning process. during the last decade, much empirical research has been conducted http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 150-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to discover how the integration of the backward design model benefits efl teachers and students. benefits of applying the backward design model in efl teaching in efl teaching, wiggins and mctighe (1998) indicated that the backward design model supports teachers to establish curricular priorities and syllabus expectations. furthermore, siddeg (2016) manifested that bdm is a useful model that provides teachers with the opportunity to craft learning outcomes by designing a flexible and easy unit plan or course plan template. in terms of pedagogical instruction, brown (2004) claimed that a successful implementation of the backward design model could support teachers in enhancing their instructional activities, promoting students’ understanding, and expanding the range of assessments to monitor students’ achievements. likewise, the bdm allows teachers to reflect on their pedagogical practices to be aware of which aspects of the unit plan were efficient applied, which elements need to be improved, and which ones have to be changed in futures contexts (whitehouse, 2014; fox & doherty, 2012). backward design model in foreign language curriculum development korotchenko et al. (2015) conducted this study in a polytechnic university in russia to students of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th years of education in 2015. this study focused on applying the backward design model and its principal characteristic stages of finding advantages and difficulties that may occur during this implementation. the results indicated that the backward design model helped foreign language teachers build massive bridges between state educational standards, students’ needs, learning outcomes, and curriculum content. besides, the research indicated that applying the backward design model was a successful experience for teachers and students because it reduced negative aspects that impede students’ academic progress in foreign language acquisition. backward design unit plan to enhance instructional activities as mentioned before, designing unit plans based on the backward design model template is crucial. in 2017, jennifer eddy wrote an article called unpacking the standards for transfer: intercultural competency by design. her study focused on describing language curriculum articulation with performance transfer http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 151-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tasks based on applying the bdm. the researcher indicated that the unit plan is based on the integration of the three central aspects of the backward design model, namely (1) identify desired results, (2) determine acceptable evidence, and (3) learning experiences and instructions. thus, the researcher stated that designing a unit plan helps teachers and instructional leaders follow and maintain articulation on the planning goals and the transfer tasks that students will develop during the learning process. backward design to develop servicelearning in preparation jozwik, lin, and cuenca-carlino wrote this article in 2017. it aimed at reporting the effectiveness of the application of the bdm to develop and implement a service-learning project. thirty-seven teachers participated in this action research that was carried out in the united states of america. this study focused on the teachers’ application of the bdm principles to design a unit plan. the teachers’ unit plans' principal components were: focus on the project: literacy tutoring, goals of the project and desired outcomes, assessment of students’ growth and leaning, project activities and implementation plan, and demonstration and celebration. upon the completion of the servicelearning project, the researchers stated three main benefits. first, designing unit plans based on the bdm allowed teachers to fulfil the established goals. second, by applying the bdm unit plans, teachers could reflect on their teaching practices' weaknesses and strengths. finally, with the integration of the bdm, teachers and community stakeholders reported satisfaction with the projects’ goals, procedures, and outcomes. backward design model: teachers’ professional development yurtseven and altun wrote understanding by design (ubd) in efl teaching in 2017. it focused on investigating the change the bdm made on teachers’ professional development and students’ achievements. this action research was conducted with ten teachers and 436 students from a state university in turkey. this study showed that implementing the backward design model had a positive impact on teachers’ professional development. first, the researchers mentioned that designing the unit plan based on the bdm allowed teachers to improve their pedagogical instructions by having a clear idea of how the instruction will be conducted. second, by implementing the unit plan, teachers could improve http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 152-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their time management, prioritize content to be covered, and provide enriching materials and activities to help students achieve the desired results. benefits of applying the backward design model in efl learning in the english as a foreign language learning setting, performance tasks based on the unit plan from the bdm have been applied to efficiently integrate students’ knowledge into reallife situations (manzano, 1992). by developing performance tasks, students interact, collaborate, and create final products based on the desired results established for each unit plan (daughtery, 2006). impact of bdm on improving learners’ writing ability this paper was written by hossein hossein, azizeh chalak, and biria in 2019. this study's main focus was to determine whether the integration of the bdm significantly improves iranian efl learners’ writing ability. one hundred students participated in this research, divided into control and experimental groups. the control group received writing instruction through the forward or traditional design during the experimental group through the integration of the bdm. after comparing the preand posttask of the control and experimental groups, the researchers indicated that the bdm was pedagogically superior to the traditional model in improving iranian efl learners’ writing ability. in terms of enhancing writing abilities, the researchers stated that the experimental group learners experienced significant improvements in their pre and post-test scores, which indicate the effectiveness of the bdm in boosting efl learners’ writing abilities. effect of the bdm on l2 reading comprehension maryam hodaeian and reza biria conducted this study in 2015. this study determined whether the application of the bdm significantly affects intermediate efl learners’ reading comprehension. the investigation was conducted in iran with 150 efl students from a private institute. control and experimental groups were assigned to this study. the researchers indicated a significant increase between the experimental group’s pre and post-test based on the comparison between the control group's pre and post-test. thus, efl learners from the experimental group obtained better results, which indicates that they were more successful in reading comprehension by implementing the bdm. furthermore, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 153-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the researchers stated that the application of the bdm provided opportunities to achieve a deep understanding of texts and outcomes in real contexts. finally, the researchers indicated that future research could be replicated with other groups in other skills such as listening and speaking in view of these benefits observed in this study. using performance tasks based on the bdm for developing efl listening skills this study was conducted by osama mohamed abd el ghany, salem mahmoud, magdy amin, and abdelatif el shazly yousif in 2019. it focused on investigating the effects of using performance tasks on developing efl listening comprehension skills. the participants were sixty students from an egyptian preparatory school. thirty students were assigned to be part of the experimental group, while the other thirty belonged to the control group. the experimental group received instruction using performance tasks, whereas the control group was continued having the same learning procedures. results from this study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control group. the experimental group obtained better results in their listening comprehension skills. furthermore, the researchers indicated that the performance tasks’ effectiveness could be attributed to authentic materials, the integration of updated information about the topic, and monitoring their own progress in the topic. the researchers recommended that teachers should be trained to use performance tasks to provide students with more opportunities to practice listening comprehension skills in a friendly and supportive learning environment. students’ foreign language motivation and views of applying the bdm nihal yurtseven and sertel altun conducted this study in 2016. it aimed to investigate students’ language learning motivation and teachers’ views about integrating the bdm into their lessons. ten teachers and 436 students from turkey participated in this action research; students were divided into treatment and control groups while teachers were trained about the bdm. findings display some benefits of the application of the bdm in foreign language learning. first, the study indicated that bdm implementation increased students’ foreign language learning motivation. moreover, the bdm provided an opportunity for going beyond the traditional http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 154-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license coursebook coverage, which had a positive influence on students’ motivation. finally, the researchers stated that integrating performance tasks allowed students to develop their speaking skills. 3.5 integrating the bdm to improve 21st century capabilities in 2018, susan drake and johanne reid published research that provides different integrated curriculum models and the backward design planning process to create rich learning situations where students can improve their 21st century competencies. the researchers indicated that curriculum integration offers an effective way to teach 21stcentury competencies such as critical thinking, creative thinking, citizenship, and communication transcend disciplines. they also stated that the bdm is a design process that helps teachers and curriculum designers make this curricular integration easier by focusing on big ideas or desired results that students must achieve at the end of the unit or course. findings from this study indicated that the bdm, specifically the use of performance tasks, allows students to increase their 21st century competencies by working collaboratively to develop real-life projects to apply their creativity, problem-solving skills, and metacognition abilities. discussion this study's main objective was to analyze the benefits of applying the bdm in teaching english as a foreign language. the central purpose was to prove that the integration of the bdm can assist efl teachers and students in improving their teaching instruction and english language skills, respectively. in terms of efl teachers’ planning, the backward design model is a simple and flexible model that allows teachers to establish curricular priorities of the national curriculum and educational standards based on the desired results they want to achieve from their students at the end of the unit or course. as stated by wiggins and mctighe (2005), the bdm refers to planning backward in three essential stages: first, based on the desired results teachers want to achieve at the end of the unit or course; second in evidencing students’ improvements; and third, in instructional activities teachers will apply to fulfill students’ outcomes to avoid using content and instructional activities without any specific purpose. the researchers also emphasized that using a unit plan supports teachers’ staying focused on connecting these three stages of the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 155-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license backward design model. these unit plans help teachers guide and continuously evaluate the content and learning outcomes to be achieved during each unit (yurtseven & altun, 2017). furthermore, the findings of this study revealed that integrating the bdm positively impacts english as a foreign language teachers and students (drake & reid, 2018; yurtseven & altun, 2017). by focusing on teachers’ professional development, the backward design assisted teachers in three essential aspects. first, by applying the bdm, teachers can have a clear idea and a better understanding of how the unit or course should be developed. second, by focusing on the teaching strategies to be applied to achieve desired results based on performance tasks. third, by enhancing their teaching and assessment practices based on authentic materials and activities. concerning efl students, findings from the studies analyzed indicate that the bdm provides various positive effects on improving students’ english language skills. the analyzed studies showed that students could improve their english skills by developing performance tasks. the primary english skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking; as well as students’ motivation improve through the application of the bdm in efl contexts (hodaeian & biria, 2015; el ghany et al., 2019; hossein, chalak, & biria, 2019; yurtseven & altun, 2017). conclusion and suggestion this study confirmed that integrating the bdm in efl instructions provides a number of different benefits for teachers and students. regarding efl teachers, the bdm helps teachers have a structured and systematic unit plan whose main purpose is to achieve students’ learning outcomes by connecting the formative assessment and using authentic materials and activities based on real-life situations. thus, teachers avoid textbook coverage or activity-oriented teaching with no precise purpose. furthermore, the bdm helps teachers to become instructional designers of the process of learning. through planning the entire course or unit designs and developing authentic materials and activities based on the bdm, teachers can have the opportunity to improve their pedagogical practices, self-efficacy skills and to promote and motivate students to improve their english learning. teachers may become facilitators for developing students’ knowledge by creating authentic http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 156-158 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17785 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opportunities to transfer their knowledge and skills into real contexts. regarding efl students, the integration of performance tasks based on the bdm provides them with different english language benefits. performance tasks based on bdm encourage students to work collaboratively to solve problems based on real situations. moreover, it motivates students to improve their creativity, problem-solving skills, and metacognition skills. finally, bdm helps efl learners improve their writing, reading, listening, and speaking skills. despite the described bdm benefits described in this study, the implication of this study turns to the application of the bdm in different educational levels. all the articles analyzed were based on empirical studies conducted at secondary and university levels, leaving apart primary level education. in light of the findings and the result of the study, the following suggestions can be made for future studies: 1. it is necessary to provide a better explanation of how the bdm is linked to the national curriculum, schools’ policies, and efl teachers’ practices. 2. designing unit plans and creating performance tasks can be explained better in future studies to enlighten teachers through the effective integration of the bdm in their efl classes. 3. future studies can focus more on the integration of the bdm at the primary education level. future studies can carry out indepth interviews with teachers and students to better understand the integration of the bdm in efl classrooms. references alsubaie, m. a. 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(2015). understanding by design (ubd) in efl teaching: the investigation of students’ foreign language learning motivation and views. journal of education and training studies, 4(3), 51-62. https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v4i3.12 04. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v4i3.1204 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v4i3.1204 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 130-144 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17496 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee incorporating 9gag memes to develop efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate budi eko pranoto*, suprayogi received: 26th sept 2020; revised: 27th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract this research aimed at examining whether employing 9gag humorous memes as elt materials is effective in developing efl learners’ speaking ability and their willingness to speak english. a group of indonesian intermediate efl learners were selected as respondents for this study and a series of pre-test was conducted to indicate their initial speaking ability and willingness to communicate before the incorporation of 9gag humorous memes. the group then learned and practiced speaking skills using their routine topics but complemented with humorous materials adopted from the 9gag application. ten teaching and learning sessions were held and were followed by post-test to measure participants’ learning achievements as to speaking ability and willingness to speak. a spss software was used to calculate samples t-test to make comparisons between the pre-test and post-test of group’s test scores. the results indicated that using 9gag humorous memes resulting in laughter is impactful in creating a relaxed atmosphere for efl learners during learning sessions. students' attention, retention, creativity, and critical thinking are also maintained and increased. it is concluded that humorous materials in language classes are effectively applicable in increasing learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate. key words: 9gag; humour; speaking ability; willingness to communicate abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji apakah penggunaan meme humor 9gag sebagai materi elt efektif dalam mengembangkan kemampuan berbicara dan kemauan siswa efl untuk berbicara bahasa inggris. sekelompok pelajar efl menengah indonesia dipilih sebagai responden untuk penelitian ini dan serangkaian tes awal dilakukan untuk menunjukkan kemampuan berbicara awal mereka dan kemauan untuk berkomunikasi sebelum penggabungan meme lucu 9gag. kelompok tersebut kemudian belajar dan mempraktekkan keterampilan berbicara menggunakan topik rutin mereka tetapi dilengkapi dengan materi humor yang diadopsi dari aplikasi 9gag. sepuluh sesi belajar mengajar diadakan dan dilanjutkan dengan post test untuk mengukur prestasi belajar peserta dalam hal kemampuan berbicara dan kemauan berbicara. software spss digunakan untuk menghitung sample t-test untuk membuat perbandingan antara nilai tes awal dan tes akhir kelompok. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan meme humor 9gag yang menghasilkan tawa berdampak dalam menciptakan suasana santai bagi peserta didik efl selama sesi pembelajaran. perhatian, retensi, kreativitas, dan pemikiran kritis siswa juga dijaga dan ditingkatkan. oleh karena itu, dapat disimpulkan bahwa materi humor di kelas bahasa dapat diterapkan secara efektif dalam meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara dan kemauan siswa untuk berkomunikasi. kata kunci: 9gag; humour; kemampuan berbicara; kemauan untuk berkomunikasi how to cite: pranoto b.e., suprayogi. (2020). incorporating 9gag memes to develop efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 130-144. doi:10.17496 /ijee.v7i2.17496 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 131-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in teaching language, teachers always prepare creative ways to attract learners’ attention in order for them to focus on the lesson given (farahani & abdollahi, 2018). ineffective aspects possessed by teachers might lead to learners’ negative attitude, which significantly determines the success or failure of learning activities (hibatullah & ardlillah, 2019). learners’ attention is one of the key aspects which is difficult to be attracted and maintained during teaching-learning activities due to the existence of the internet and other entertainment media. consequently, teachers need to provide contextually related materials, performing relevant association and interpret high-order thinking (gurtler, 2002), and making them understand the lesson and the learning goal is achieved. in reality, many teachers hope that learners enjoy their time in the class so that they not only study the lesson but also learn the lesson given. in some cases, people may study something, but they are not learning it. for example, the sentence “he studied javanese” may mean he took javanese classes, or maybe he attempted to teach himself through an app, or other platforms providing lessons on javanese. nevertheless, during the process, he faced constraint and difficulty and still cannot grasp and understand the language; he still does not know how to speak the language. this happens due to several reasons; one of them lies on its pedagogical approach. in order for the students to learn when they are studying, effective pedagogical measures must be set to make learners interested and motivated. one of the ways to do it is by creating a real-life situation for students which can efficiently assist them in learning language (farahani & abdollahi, 2018). many teachers are unaware of factor that can create that setting. that factor is called humour. using humour in the classroom is impactful in escalating class’ atmosphere into a relaxing, comforting, and tension-reducing setting. furthermore, it is not only maintain/increase learners’ interest and mood, the teacher image is also humanely maintained (al-duleimi & aziz, 2016; fata, komariah, & irfandy, 2018; phakiti, 2006; algafar, 2017; wagner & urios-aparisi, 2011). unfortunately, teachers are scared of using humour in the class because they believe they may be losing their authority; therefore, it needs to be put away (azizinezhad & hashemi, 2011). stroud (2013) in hibatullah and ardlillah (2019) investigated that giving an overdosed joke/humour leads to a lack of seriousness of learning http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 132-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license atmosphere. on the other hand, this finding is in contrast with findings from other studies. recently, many researchers concluded that humour could be one of the effective approaches in creating a lively classroom situation (hibatullah & ardlillah, 2019; tunnisa, mahmud, & salija, 2019). therefore, this research is conducted in order to further confirm the effectiveness of humorous materials in transforming the classroom setting, which assists the students in learning english. humour is described as the intensity with which an individual produces smiles, laughs, and otherwise displays amusement in a variety of condition (martin & lefcourt, 1984). moreover, provine (2001, in azizinezhad & hashemi, 2011) indicated that “laughter is a form of communication, probably the first one in the human race, which later evolved, with the liberation of voice from walking and breathing, into human language”. this can be seen that humour resulting in laughter is not just a not meaningfully cracking voice yet as part of mechanism to maintain a conversation. in the context of education, humour, as part of pedagogical measures used in a language class, can result in a miracle; it is called named laughter. researchers revealed that the use of humour in language class could help students to be more interested and motivated (azizinezhad & hashemi, 2011). humour, resulting in laughter, can also help less-sociable students to mingle, and include themselves to the group, join class activities and group tasks without feeling scared or stressed. by that, the interaction between all participants in language class is achieved. according to banks (2014) and soares (2015), good interactions among class participants (teacher and learners) contribute significantly to the positive environment in the class. interaction also means participation which is crucially important in the communicative (speaking) classroom where the emphasis is on real oral communication, group task, and interaction. humour can be one way to involve students, who generally feel worried and nervous, in class activities to express their thoughts in a foreign language (provine, 2002). kristmanson (2000) emphasizes the need to create a friendly atmosphere for language learning. humour is perhaps one of the most original and universal speech act in human discourse (askildson, 2005). as a consequence, the use of humour in the context of efl pedagogy offers significant advantages for language teachers and learners in speaking classes under efl context. however, in higher education, humour has not been http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 133-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license fully maximized by the lecturers as a fun learning strategy to support communicative activities in the classroom. therefore, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the integration of 9gag's humour as teaching materials in the efl classroom. using humour in language class can also be considered as the innovation of learning strategy. a learning strategy should be aimed at creating a theoretical and practical perspective to change behaviour and capacities (huda, 2013), to support the creation of effectiveness and efficiency of the learning process (darmansyah, 2012), to achieve teaching goals and to achieve certain goals including specific learning approaches, models, methods and techniques (sanjaya, 2007). humour can replicate a real-life situation during learning, and this is crucial to the development of contextual understanding of learners upon the language. contextual teaching-learning is essentially beneficial because it links learning material with real-world situations, by encouraging students to link their knowledge with its application in their daily lives. 9gag contents (memes) are mainly voicing the current affairs around the world from politics, sports, economy, social, to education, and romantic issues. therefore, these memes are considered contextual, which are strategic to be delivered using contextual learning technique (ctl). philosophically, the ctl approach refers to the philosophy of constructivism; learning should ideally not only memorize but must construct knowledge in their own minds, because knowledge is inseparable and also reflects applicable skills. thus, the acquisition of one's experience is obtained from the process of assimilation and accommodation so that the experience is embedded in one's mind (zulaiha, 2016). s elliot once said "humour is also a way of saying serious things". this needs to be maximized in the realm of learning in tertiary institutions to create a pleasant learning atmosphere. according to sheinowizt as quoted by darmansyah (2012), "humour is a funny quality of someone ridiculous and entertaining." according to darmansyah (2012), there are five benefits of humour in learning, namely: (1) humour as a student's attention grabber; (2) humour helps reduce boredom in learning; (3) humour helps relieve tension in the classroom; (4) humour helps overcome physical and mental fatigue in learning; and (5) humour facilitates communication and interaction. there are many studies on the effectiveness of using humour in the efl classroom, such as research on the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 134-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license use of humour by efl teachers in the class that had been conducted in indonesia (tunnisa et al., 2019). they investigated kinds of humour utilized by efl teachers and its effectiveness in creating an effective learning setting. this research also examined the relationship between efl learners` perception of their teachers. the results showed six types of humour employed by teachers in efl classroom, and they were proven to be an effective measure to mediate an effective interaction between teacher and learners of efl in indonesia. this finding is also confirmed by jatiyasa (2019), who examined 85 students’ perception towards the use of humour in efl context. the findings supported the claim that humour is good for the classroom atmosphere and can maintain a smooth relation between teachers and learners. furthermore, farahani and abdollahi (2018) investigated the role of humour to develop iranian efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to speak. the subjects were divided into the controlled and experimental group. the analyses of data indicated that humour is believed to be an effective tool to develop speaking ability and willingness to speak by a significant number of 95% and 99%. this research is a breakthrough in the area of humour as part of a pedagogical measure. hibatullah and ardlillah (2019) conducted qualitative research to investigate students’ perception of humour incorporated in english material. they also aimed to observe the engagement of teachers and learners in the efl classroom. the findings reveal that the majority of learners affirm that humour delivered by the teacher could prevent them from stress during english learning process, assist them to learn and understand the lesson better, and make them more active. moreover, the humour also develops a better relationship between learners and teacher. the assumption that humour may degrade a teacher’s authority is proven to be inaccurate in this research. students claim that teachers with a sense of humour are friendly and full of energy, and they totally respect them. azizinezhad and hashemi (2011) summarized experts’ judgement on the impact/s of employing humour and laughter in language class. the paper confirmed that humour and laughter have psychological, pedagogical, and cognitive benefits for learners, their learning process, and teacher-learners relationship. this is mainly because humour and laughter escalate class’ atmosphere into a relaxing, comforting, and tension-reducing setting. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 135-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license several researchers have conducted the incorporation of 9gag memes. listiyaningsih, rukmini, and sutopo (2020) conducted a research aiming at analysing students’ response toward humorous, fearing, annoying, pitiful, and confusing memes taken from 9gag apps. this research found out that students as the readers successfully experienced both reading activity, efferent reading and aesthetic reading. it is also clearly identified that humorous memes meet the readers understanding of the message implied. furthermore, putri (2008) did research which aimed to analyse memes in the area of receptive skill by using the reception theory. the results shown the acceptance and rejection of the lecturers towards the memes given. those studies cited above mainly concerned on the teachers and students’ response toward humour given in language class. two studies utilize 9gag memes to reveal learners’ understanding of the level of reading. therefore, this research aimed at investigating the effectiveness of incorporating humour taken from 9gag apps to specifically develop efl learners’ speaking ability and their willingness to speak. 9gag is a social media that contains humorous contents on various issues such as politics, sports, social, music, and others. 9gag content is written in english, so it is relevant to efl speaking class in this research. the majority of 9gag's content, around 70 percent, is memes. a meme is content that requires the same insight between its creators and its readers, an aspect that makes memes universal. it is the universal elements contained in a meme that make it funny. memes, uploaded by creators on 9gag, are written in english because english also supports the universal element in these memes. based on the results of the analysis of instagram @9gag account data, the three most prominent types of humour are universality, logic, and analogy. the three types of humour, which are manifested in many memes using english, will certainly be a good stimulus for english learners. hypotheses – this research is initiated with the hypothesis that incorporating humorous contents taken from 9gag apps results a significant difference on developing efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate. this hypothesis is tested by comparing the score (post-test and pre-test) between the two groups statistically. method this research employed 30 participants of adult efl learners who were taking english study program in universities in bandar lampung. for http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 136-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the purpose of the study, the participants were grouped into two, consisting of 15 participants each. several stages of test are conducted in order to place efl learners homogenously to each group. the first test participated by the learners is oxford placement test; the participants are examined through grammar test. furthermore, the participant joined toefl based speaking test and magoosh speaking assessment test (www.magoosh.com) to measure the initial level of speaking ability of both groups. their willingness to communicate pre-test was also administrated to draw the initial level of willingness to communicate with both groups. this test is administrated using a tool for measuring the interrelationships between l2 willingness to communicate and confidence, beliefs, motivation, and context designed by mystkowskawiertelak, and pawlak (2016, in ayersglassey & macintyre, 2019). after these stages of pre-test, the control group (group 1) received their routine material talking about their personal identity, hobby, appearance, daily routine, and other topic related with english for daily conversation. on the other hand, the experimental group (group 2), other than receiving those routine topics, they also received supplementary lesson in the form of humorous memes taken from 9gag. these materials are given through numerous activities such as telling stories, experiences, asking students to tell a joke and other relevant activities. at the end of the tenth session, all participants participated in a test to measure their progress both in terms of speaking ability and their motivation to speak. this research employed quantitative and qualitative approaches. after all the needed data had been collected, they were automatically calculated using spss software. the result, descriptive statistics, consisting of group’s means, standard deviations, and frequency, were then explained qualitatively. using t-test, the comparisons between the first and the second group were made to reveal the significance. findings and discussion findings this section presents the researcher’s analytical calculation to answer the problem of the research. the calculation is made using spss software. the detailed results of the calculation are provided below. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://www.magoosh.com/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 137-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the comparison between pre-test and post-test score of speaking ability of group 1 table 1 descriptive statistics, test of normality, group 1 score group 1 pre-test post-test mea n standard deviatio n mea n standard deviatio n speakin g ability 82.67 4.53 86.73 3.91 the descriptive statistics above shows the distribution of the data. it indicates that the mean score of pretests of group 1 is 82.67, and the standard deviation is 4.53. the post-test score shows an increase of mean by 86.73. meanwhile, the standard deviation is 3.91. the test of normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. table 2 tests of normality of group 1 score group 1 kolmogorovsmirnov shapiro-wilk statis tic d f sig statis tic d f sig sco re pre test 0.158 1 5 0.2 00 0.961 1 5 0.7 08 pos ttest 0.111 1 5 0.2 00 0.972 1 5 0.8 91 as observed in table 2, the distribution of pre-test score calculated using kolmogorov-smirnov is 0.200 > 0.05, which means normal. the distribution of post-test score shows the same result with 0.200 > 0.05 that means normal. this step is the continued with the test of homogeneity of variance. based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of group 1 score is 0.566 which is higher than 0.05. the score indicates that group 1 is homogenous. the final step in this part is independent t-test to measure the significance of both scores difference. table 3 independent t-test of group 1 score levene’s test for equality of variance 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 score equal variances assumed 0.338 0.566 -2.630 28 0.014 -4.06667 1.54653 -7.23458 -.89875 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 138-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3 shows the result of independent t-test, and the score is 0.014 < 0.05. it means that the difference between pre-test and post-test score of group 1 is significant (mean: 82.667 x 86.7333). group 1 is the group that did not receive supplementary humorous material taken from 9gag. nevertheless, based on the calculation of its score, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. the findings implicate that without giving supplementary humorous material, the efl learners shows significant progress on their speaking ability. the comparison between pre-test and post-test score of speaking ability of group 2 table 4 mean, and standard deviation of speaking ability of group 2 score group 1 pre-test post-test mea n standard deviatio n mea n standard deviatio n speakin g ability 82.8 4.41 89.67 2.79 the descriptive statistics above shows the distribution of the data. it indicates that the mean score of pretests of group 2 is 82.8, and the standard deviation is 4.41. the post-test score shows an increase of mean to 89.67. meanwhile, the standard deviation is 2.79. the test of normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. table 5 tests of normality of group 1 score group 1 kolmogorovsmirnov shapiro-wilk statis tic d f sig statis tic d f sig sco re pre test 0.215 1 5 0.0 60 0.917 1 5 0.1 74 pos ttest 0.131 1 5 0.2 00 0.942 1 5 0.4 02 as observed in table 5 above, the distribution of pre-test score calculated using kolmogorov-smirnov is 0.060 > 0.05, which means normal. the distribution of post-test score shows the same result with 0.200 > 0.05 that means normal. this step is then continued with the test of homogeneity of variance. based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of group 2 score is 0.281 which is higher than 0.05. the score indicates that group 2 is homogenous. the final step in this part is independent t test to measure the significance of both scores difference. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 139-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 6 independent t-test of group 2 score levene’s test for equality of variance 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 score equal variances assumed 1.210 0.281 5.093 28 0.000 -6.86667 1.34825 9.62843 4.10490 table 6 shows the result of independent t-test, and the score is 0.000 < 0.05. it means that the difference between pre-test and post-test score of group 2 is significant (mean: 82.8000 x 89.6667). group 2 is the group that receive supplementary humorous material taken from 9gag. based on the calculation of its score, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. the findings suggest that efl learners who only received routine topics without supplementary humorous memes material taken from 9gag still show a progress on their speaking ability. based on the score of the t test, the (sig <0.05) level is considered significant, but later in the comparison, in can be interpreted that there is a significance between the final score of the two groups. the mean scores of group 2 that received supplementary humorous material show a higher level in speaking ability. compared to group 1, the difference between pre-test and post-test score on speaking ability of group 2 is higher. the findings indicate that giving supplementary humorous memes taken from 9gag resulted from a more significant improvement of efl learners’ speaking ability. the comparison of post-test score of speaking ability between group 1 and group 2 the comparison is made to see the degree of significance of the post-test score. this is made to answer the question whether giving supplementary humorous material can significantly improve efl learners speaking ability. the first step made is calculating the normality of the data. as calculated using kolmogorov-smirnov, the result is 0.200 > 0.05 which means normal. this step is then continued with the test of homogeneity of variance. based on mean score, the score of homogeneity of both scores (post-test of group 1 and 2) is 0.275 which is higher than 0.05. therefore, the distribution of the data is homogenous. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 140-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the final step in this part is independent t test to measure the significance of both scores difference. the result of independent t-test, the score is 0.025 < 0.05. it means that the difference between post-test of group 1 and group 2 is significant (mean: 86.7333 x 89.6667). group 2 received supplementary humorous material taken from 9gag, meanwhile group 1 did not. based on the calculation, it shows a significant development of speaking ability. the findings implicate that without giving supplementary humorous material, the efl learners shows significant progress on their speaking ability better (gap 2.9337) than by not receiving humorous material. based on the score of the t-test, the (sig <0.05) level is considered significant, but when the achieved score of group 1, and group 2 are compared, in can be interpreted that there is a significance between the final score of the two groups. because according to the mean scores of group 2 that received supplementary humorous material show a higher score in speaking ability. compared to group 1, the difference between pre-test and post-test score on speaking ability of group 2 is higher. the findings indicate that giving supplementary humorous memes taken from 9gag resulted in a more significant improvement of efl learners’ speaking ability. the willingness to communicate score of group 1 and group 2 this part is made to calculate the impact of giving supplementary humorous material taken from 9gag can improve the motivation to communicate of efl learners. table 7 mean, and standard deviation of willingness to communicate of group 1 and group 2 score group 1 group 2 mea n standar d deviati on mea n standar d deviati on willingnes s to communic ate 2.93 1.38 3.86 0.99 table 7 shows the distribution of the data. the scale of the willingness to communicate score is 1-5. it indicates that the mean score of group 1 is 2.93, and the standard deviation is 1.38. meanwhile, the mean score of group 2 is 3.86, and the standard deviation is 0.99. the test of normality then follows this calculation to measure the distribution of the data. table 8 tests of normality of willingness to communicate group kolmogorovsmirnov shapiro-wilk statist ic d f sig statist ic d f sig scor e 1 0.216 1 5 0.05 8 0.895 1 5 0.07 9 2 0.209 1 5 0.07 6 0.861 1 5 0.02 5 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 141-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the test of normality indicates that the distribution score of group 1 is normal by 0.079 > 0.05. meanwhile, the distribution of group 2 score is not normal because it is smaller than 0.05 (0.025 < 0.05). since the distribution of the data is not normal, the calculation is then continued by using npar test: mann-whitney to measure the significant difference of both data. table 9 npar test: mann-whitney score mann-whitney u 66.500 wilcoxon w 186.500 z -1.961 asymp. sig. (2-tailed) 0.050 exact sig. [2*(1-tailed sig.)] .056 table 9 indicates that score is 0.050 = 0.050. it shows that group 2 shows significant improvement of participants’ willingness to communicate. therefore, it can be derived that giving supplementary humorous material taken from 9gag can improve elf learners’ willingness to communicate in the class. discussion regarding to the elaboration in the findings section, the researcher concluded handful important findings. the results of this study are comparable with the results of the previous studies reviewed in this study. this comparison necessarily made to provide insight of incorporating specific genre of universal humour to develop elf learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate. previous studies generally examined the effect of humour on learning a second/foreign language, the students’ perception of humour, and types of humour implemented by teachers in efl classroom. there is only one research that measures the willingness to communicate. meanwhile, this research employed a specific type of humour taken from a single source named 9gag. compared to tunnisa, et al. (2019) and jatiyasa (2019), this research confirmed the findings. their research affirmed that utilizing humour in efl classroom is effective to create an effective learning setting, which is good for the classroom atmosphere, and smooth relation between teachers and learners. this type of setting can lead to achievement of learning goal, the learners’ improvement. meanwhile, the result of this present research shows a more significant development of speaking ability and willingness to communicate of efl learners compared to the group that did not receive a supplementary humorous material, which is an improvement. this significance improvement implicates that humour taken from 9gag can also lead to an effective learning setting. therefore, the results of this research http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 142-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license are in accordance with tunnisa et al. (2019) and jatiyasa (2019) findings. furthermore, hibatullah and ardlillah (2019) pointed that the majority of learners affirm that humour delivered by the teacher could prevent them from stress during english learning process, assist them to learn and understand the lesson better, and make them more active. moreover, the humour also develops a better relationship between learners and the teacher. regarding the results of hibatullah and ardlillah (2019)’s research, it can be noted that the findings of this research add new insights. this research took into consideration of humorous material to improve l2 students` speaking ability and willingness to communicate. therefore, these two studies can fulfil the complementary role. farahani and abdollahi (2018) investigated the role of humour to develop iranian efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to speak. this current research shares the same objectives and methods though this research employed 9gag apps as the source of the material. based on the findings, this research indicates the same result that giving humorous material to efl learners can improve both speaking ability and willingness to communicate significantly. based on the finding on both variables, farahani and abdollahi's (2018) research is comparable with this present research. in the indonesian context, there were not previous studies that discuss the incorporation of 9gag humorous meme in relation to the development of english-speaking skills and learners’ willingness to communicate. two studies discussing 9gag memes conducted by listiyaningsih et al. (2020) and putri (2008) were mainly focused on reading skill by analysing the students’ response regarding their understanding on the implied meaning of memes given. this research provided a new finding to fill the existing gap; that by giving supplementary humorous material to efl learners, both english-speaking skill and willingness to communicate is developed higher than those who did not receive supplementary humorous material. all of the findings reveal that humorous material is an effective pedagogical resource since when supplementary humorous material is given to efl learners, it results in a higher improvement in term of speaking ability and willingness to communicate of efl learners compared to those who did not receive it. these findings confirmed azizinezhad and hashemi's (2011) claim on the miracle http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 143-144 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17496 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of humour as pedagogical tools for language learners. moreover, the findings and discussion answer the hypothesis stated at the introduction of the research that incorporating humorous contents taken from 9gag apps results in a significant difference on developing efl learners’ speaking ability and willingness to communicate. conclusion and suggestion this research revealed the effectiveness of incorporating humorous material into efl classroom to develop learners’ speaking ability and willingness to speak. based on the statistical calculation provided in this research, it is revealed that there is a significant difference in the level of certainty between the efl learners’ scores in group 2 which incorporated humorous content taken from 9gag apps in efl classrooms and the efl learners in group 1 which did not incorporate humorous content taken from 9gag apps in terms of speaking ability. the findings discussed in this study can provide some implications for policy makers, english teachers, and efl learners. references al-duleimi, a. d. d., & aziz, r. n. 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(2011). the use of humor in the foreign language classroom: funny and effective? humor, 24(4), 399–434. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.201 1.024 zulaiha, s. (2016). pendekatan contextual teaching and learning (ctl) dan implementasinya dalam rencana pembelajaran pai mi. belajea: jurnal pendidikan islam, 1(1), 41-60. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee submission guidelines submission guidelines indonesian journal of english education (ijee) 1. indonesian journal of english education (ijee) accepts articles, both research paper and non-research paper, on english language teaching and learning which have not been published elsewhere. 2. to be considered for publication, manuscript should be typed in ms word .doc format, using 12 size times new roman fonts, double-spaced on quarto or a4-size paper. 3. articles will be reviewed by subject reviewers, while the editors reserve the right to edit articles for format consistency without altering the substance. 4. to be considered for a review, both research and non-research papers should consist of 3000-6000 words excluding references. 5. non-research paper should include: (a) title; (b) full name of contributor(s) without titles; (c) abstract (max.150 words); (d) key words; (e) introduction without subheading; (f) body text; and (g) references. 6. research paper should contain: (a) title; (b) full name of contributor(s) without title(s); (c) abstract (max. 200 words); (d) key words; (e) introduction without heading, which includes review of related literature and research purpose; (f) methods; (g) findings; (h) discussion of the findings; (i) conclusions and suggestions; (j) references; and (k) appendix, if any. 7. papers are to be written in essay style, which outline is provided in the following page. 8. citing sources and listing references should comply with the apa 6 th edition referencing styles. 9. manuscript, as well as contributors' brief cv, is to be sent online to our website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee. the manuscript could also be emailed to eltijournal@uinjkt.ac.id. 10. an article contributor is entitled to two offprint editions of the current issue. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee outlines for paper to be published in ijee 1. outline for research paper introduction (level 1: times new roman, 12pt, all caps, bold) should include research background, literature review, and research question(s) and / or objective(s), but not mentioned as subheadings. method (level 1: times new roman, 12pt, all caps, bold) should include research design, participants, measures, and data analysis, may or may not be mentioned as subheadings. when they are mentioned as separate subheadings, they should be written using in level 2: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, bold. findings and discussion findings (level 2: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, bold) subheading (level 3: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, italic) discussion (should include relevant literature reviews) subheading (level 3: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, italic) conclusion and suggestion references 2. outline for non-research paper: introduction (level 1: times new roman, 12pt, all caps, bold) should include research background, literature review, and research question(s) and / or objective(s), but not mentioned as subheadings. topic level 1 sub topic (level 2: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, bold) sub topic level 3 (level 3: times new roman, 12 pt, small caps, italic) conclusion and suggestion references * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 17-30 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students’ voices on lecturers’ written corrective feedback (wcf) in their writing tasks adrefiza1*, didin nuruddin hidayat2, fortunasari3 received: 12nd october 2020; revised: 17th may 2021; accepted: 29th june 2021 abstract although studies on written corrective feedback (wcf, hereafter) have been increasingly prevalent in the last few years, inquiries on how advisory students perceive the lecturers’ feedback on their writing tasks have been likely scarce, especially in indonesian higher education institutions (heis) contexts. this study examines the students’ perception and evaluation of the lecturers’ wcf in response to errors and inaccuracies in their academic writing tasks. through an online survey questionnaire distributed to 46 respondents via email, the results show that the majority of students appreciated any forms of feedback from the lecturers. their writing skills in four aspects (grammar, vocabulary, organization, and mechanics) also improved significantly through an enhancement of their self-directed learning. following the analysis model by one of previous studies, the results showed that the students preferred direct wcf to the indirect one (58.7 %: 15.2 %), while the “praise” category was given the highest rate with an average score of (4.06). “criticism”, on the other hand, was the lowest one with an average score of only (2.3) in the evaluation. it is recommended that lecturers always avoid unclear, vague, aggressive, thoughtless, and inappropriate feedback to improve students’ writing skills and performance. key words: direct and indirect feedback; indonesian higher education institutions; writing tasks; written corrective feedback; students’ voices abstrak meskipun studi tentang umpan balik korektif tertulis (wcf, selanjutnya) semakin lazim dalam beberapa tahun terakhir, namun, diskusi tentang penilaian mahasiswa terhadap umpan balik dosen terkait tugas menulis mereka sangat terbatas, terutama dalam konteks lembaga pendidikan tinggi indonesia (pt). penelitian ini mengkaji persepsi dan evaluasi mahasiswa terhadap wcf dosen dalam merespon kesalahan dan ketidaktepatan dalam tugas menulis akademik mahasiswa. melalui kuesioner survei online yang dibagikan kepada 46 responden melalui email, hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa mayoritas mahasiswa mengapresiasi segala bentuk umpan balik dari dosen. keterampilan menulis mereka dalam empat aspek (tata bahasa, kosakata, organisasi, dan mekanik) juga meningkat secara signifikan melalui peningkatan pembelajaran mandiri mereka. mengacu kepada model analysis dari salah satu penelitian terdahulu, ditemukan bahwa penggunaan wcf langsung lebih disukai oleh siswa daripada penggunaan tidak langsung (58,7%: 15,2%), sedangkan kategori “pujian” diberikan nilai tertinggi dengan nilai rata-rata (4,06). sementara, “kritik” adalah yang paling rendah dengan skor rata-rata hanya (2,3) dalam evaluasi. disarankan agar dosen selalu memberikan semangat, namun hindari umpan balik yang tidak jelas, kabur, agresif, ceroboh, dan tidak tepat untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis dan prestasi mahasiswa. kata kunci: umpan balik langsung dan tidak langsung; perguruan tinggi indonesia; tugas menulis; umpan balik korektif tertulis, suara siswa how to cite: adrefiza., hidayat, d.n. (2021). students’ voices on lecturers’ written corrective feedback (wcf) in their writing tasks. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 17-30. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 18-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction there has been a growing interest in studying written corrective feedback (wcf) provided by lecturers on students’ writing tasks in the last several years (bitchener, 2008; bitchener & knoch, 2009; kumar & stracke, 2007; adrefiza & fortunasari, 2020). although its efficacy and effectiveness remain controversial (truscott, 1996; bitchener, 2008), studies have suggested that wcf plays a significant role in developing students’ self-regulatory learning (stracke and kumar, 2010) and significantly accelerates the students’ writing skills and performance. wcf has also been claimed to boost students’ autonomous learning in writing (adrefiza & fortunasari, 2020). it strengthens and facilitates students’ self-regulatory learning through an engagement process in which they become accustomed to handling their errors and inaccuracies from lecturers’ feedback. such an essential improvement in the students’ skills may be regarded as more effective than that obtained from the formal teaching of writing itself. wcf is also believed to support and maintain the advisory students' psychological and personal relationships and the lecturers (kumar & stracke, 2007). this happens simply because both students and supervisors are actively engaged in distant communication through queries, clarifications, suggestions, and instructions over the students’ writing problems and inaccuracies. inappropriate feedback and responses within the communication, to some extent, may result in student’s discouragement and even a personal conflict between the two parties, causing students’ neglection and disappointment, especially when the feedback and responses are not carefully and wisely addressed. unclear, vague, ambiguous, inappropriate forms, aggressive, impulsive, and ineffective wcf provisions from the lecturers may depress and demotivate students in many ways, and this is possible to account for adverse effects on students’ learning. this study attempts to look at students’ perceptions and evaluation of the lecturers’ wcf and see how it should be carefully provided and handled by the lecturers. the negative impacts on students’ learning can be thoughtfully anticipated and minimised. these research results are expected to provide a critical evaluation of student-lecturer supervisory practices at local indonesian heis and hopefully contribute to an appropriate, effective, and workable method in assessing the lecturers’ wcf in the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 19-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students’ academic writing assignments at english education department fkip jambi university. studies on wcf provided by lecturers on students’ writing tasks have been increasingly predominant in the last several years (kang & han, 2015; storch, 2010). although studies, such as those from kumar and stracke (2007), hyland and hyland (2006), and stracke and kumar (2010) confirm that lecturers’ wcf encourages students’ self-directed learning (srl), especially in improving second or foreign language learners’ writing skills. however, storch (2010) claims that the findings are still unsettled and suggest further robust directions and practical studies to address their shortcomings. this is likely to be evident since the results tend to be controversial and uncertain. bitchener (2008) claims that studies on wcf have long been debatable due to their controversial design and efficacy, pointing to an issue that they often produce conflicting results which are, in fact, potentially affected by various aspects, such as the means of research methods used in the studies and the contexts in which the studies are conducted. wcf is often linked to srl, known as a platform of academic learning which gained prominence in the mid of 1980s (stracke & kumar, 2010; kang & han, 2015). this kind of learning gives rise to individual attempts, based on their concentration and interest, to coordinate and manage their learning. zimmermann (2001) argues that in this mechanism, the individual students set up their own learning experience and strategies that fit their goals through active metacognitive, motivation, and behaviour to self-generate thoughts, feelings, and actions to achieve their proposed and predetermined learning goals. this active involvement is said to be an essential characteristic of srl (zimmermann, 2001 in stracke & kumar, 2010), that is why srl is also seen as a contributing factor in successful learning and academic achievement as students independently determine what to do and learn from other people without any external influences. according to zimmermann (2001), through srl, the students develop a dynamic process and transferability to keep moving and never stand static. this type of learning is believed to go in line with the context of thesis supervisory practices or writing supervisions at heis, in which the student is required to seek information actively and perform necessary tasks to address all wcf addressed by the supervisors, and this certainly requires extra efforts and time to do (boekaerts, 1999). in this platform, srl serves a function as self-directed http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 20-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning (sdl) for which wcf plays a role as an indispensable substance (butler & winne, 1995) and to university students, according to stracke and kumar (2010), wcf in this context, lies at the heart of the srl experience for them. the practice of srl by providing wcf in the students’ academic writing is likely uncommon in most local indonesian heis (adrefiza & fortunasari, 2020). they claim that studies on how wcf affects students' learning and motivation have been almost absent in academic atmospheres and students rarely receive enough and meaningful feedback from the lecturers to enhance their srl. at the same time, related studies have often been mainly focused and world-widely on western esl or efl contexts. this has resulted in an unbalanced concentration of the investigation, causing an extensive gap in wcf studies in western and eastern contexts. as a result, there is still a limited investigation of wcf in the countries where english is studied either as a second or foreign language exists. simultaneously, the absence of wcf in the students’ academic writing tasks makes the students' learning ineffective. students do not learn much from the lecturers’ feedback. neither do they understand their errors and inaccuracies in their writing as the communication with the lectures is near to absence? with its srl nuance, wcf encourages collaboration and personal networking between both students and supervisors. mullins and kiley (1998, as cited in kumar & stracke, 2007) claim that communication and collaboration are practically necessary for university student-supervisory practices. without intensive care of these two aspects, the students cannot optimally improve their writing skills, nor do they effectively develop their academic and interpersonal communication with the lecturers. it is further stressed that these two generic skills are considered imperative and workable in the student academic writing supervisions. they are believed to play a vital role in the students’ educational development process and even ultimately serve a notable function as professional dexterity in higher education outcomes (philips & pugh, 2005). wcf is seen as a reflection of the lecturers' feedback and instructions about the students' work, guiding them to specific points that they need to address and explain. to make appropriate changes to the lecturers' wcf, learners need to take serious care and attention. overall, wcf and students' responses form a personal communication between students and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 21-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lecturers, promoting self-regulated learning (stracke & kumar, 2010) as the interaction facilitates critical thought, study, and exploration critical in the academic growth of students in higher education. nevertheless, in many local english education programs in indonesian tertiary education, such a mechanism is probably not apparent. wcf illustrates the communication between lecturer and student as though the lecturer communicates his thoughts and ideas in a face-to-face atmosphere regarding the student's writing duties. it also reveals the lecturer's emotions and thoughts, expressed in the content and quality of the student's writing. wcf is also expressed by unique written symbols such as interjection (!), question mark (?), and emoticons, unlike in actual face-to-face interaction. it mimics and other non-verbal gestures. frequently, by the repeating number of symbols used, the force of the emotion is shown. the more symbols are used in wcf, the more significant or more serious the writer's concern. to sum up, wcf's use illustrates the teacher or lecturer's personal and psychological status over the writing mistakes and inaccuracies of the student. holmes’ (2008) model of speech act function classification has been used in a few wcf studies. kumar and stracke (2007) and stracke and kumar (2010), for example, bring this categorisation to investigate wcf's provision in its relation to this classification. their studies categorise wcf into three main speech act categories (referential, directive, and expressive). subcategories for each main category are provided in the table 1. table 1. wcf and speech acts categorization referential editorial please get rid of spaces. organisation this does not belong in the literature review. content are you sure you can make such a claim? directive suggestion maybe this is not necessary. question whose term is this? instruction please clarify. expressive praise good, nice example. criticism this table…does not add to the text. opinion i would be interested in exploring what triggered this (kumar & stracke, 2007: 464) ellis (2010) proposes several ways in which wcf can be formulated. in general, wcf can be expressed in two basic types, direct and indirect. the former is usually represented by providing the correct forms over the errors or inaccuracies before marking the incorrect forms with other remarks such as underlines, question marks, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 22-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license crosses, removals, and symbols. on the other hand, the latter is often formulated through various markings such as queries, questions, asking for confirmation, directions, and many other forms of expressions both in the forms of linguistic expressions and nonlinguistic features. according to ellis (2010), metalinguistic feedback is also prominent and frequent in the lecturers’ wcf. this type of feedback is usually represented through prompts and cues to indicate the students' writing errors and inaccuracies. students are required to analyse the meanings and directions of the feedback so that they need to respond appropriately and accordingly. see an example: example of direct wcf: a dog stole (a) bone from (a) butcher. he escaped with having (the) bone. when the dog was going (over)through the bridge over (a) the river, he (saw a) found dog in the river. in the above example, the feedback is noted by crossing out the incorrect or unnecessary words, phrases, or morphemes. it may be done by inserting a missing or expected word and providing the correct linguistic form above or near the error. according to ellis (2009), such a type benefits students effectively as it delivers explicit information about the right answer. indirect feedback is another type of wcf provided by lecturers in which the correct forms are not written directly. instead, the lecturers indicate or mark the errors' location (ferris & roberts, 2001). this type is intended to make the students aware that they have an error in their writing. the errors can be noted using a few symbols, such as an underline, a circle, a code, a mark, or a highlight. here is an example below: example of indirect wcf: a dog stole x bone from x butcher. he escaped with xhavingx xbone. when the dog was going xthroughx x bridge over xthex river, he found x dog in the river. x= missing word x__x = wrong word apart from its weak advantages, this type of wcf is said to have a few strengths. according to lalande (1982), the students tend to be more alert and creative in responding and making the corrections, as they get themselves engaged actively so that they learn with a good reflection, which can lead to long-term memory. however, some researchers argue that indirect corrective feedback is less beneficial to lower proficiency levels because they lack the meta-linguistic awareness http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 23-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license needed to correct their mistake (ferris, 2004; hyland, 2006). this research investigates the students’ perception and evaluation of the wcf provided by the lecturers in their writing tasks. the results are expected to be useful for better wcf provisions by lecturers in responding to the students' errors and inaccuracies in their academic writing tasks to improve the students’ self-directed learning and, in turn, increase the students’ writing skills and performance. three research questions were posed: (1) what type of wcf is best preferred by the students? (2) how do the students perceive the lecturers’ wcf on their academic writing tasks? moreover, (3) how do the students learn from the wcf? method this is a quantitative study with descriptive analysis, aiming at exploring students’ perception and evaluation of lecturers’ wcf provided on their academic writing tasks at english study program, the faculty of education, jambi university. it involved 46 randomly selected students (23 males and 23 females), both from s1 (undergraduate) and s2 (postgraduate) levels, who were in their final semester and the process of thesis supervision. the data were gathered through a closed-ended questionnaire (using a likert scale model), sent via email. the respondents were required to provide their evaluation and evaluation on the wcf provided by the lecturers on their academic writing tasks. the questionnaire comprises some items which embrace the students’ responses on four main issues: (a) students’ preferences on types of lecturers’ wcf – direct versus indirect; (b) students’ evaluation on wcf types according to speech acts functions – editorial, referential, and expressive; (c) students’ evaluation on the use of non-linguistic features on the lecturers’ wcf; and (d) students’ writing improvements through the lecturers’ wcf. following kumar and stracke (2007) and stracke and kumar (2010), the responses were tabulated and categorised based on their rates and categorisations. findings and discussion findings students’ preference for direct and indirect wcf students’ preference for the lecturers’ wcf shows an interesting phenomenon. as shown in table 2 below, the disparity between two continuums, direct and indirect, is relatively high. many of the students prefer the direct to the indirect type. see the following table for details. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 24-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. students’ preference for lecturers’ wcf table 2 shows the students’ preference for lecturers’ wcf. more than 50 % of the students prefer direct to indirect type (27:7) or (58.7 %: 15.2 %). there are twelve (26 %) students who like the combination of both direct and indirect types. this preference might be based on the students’ experience in dealing with lecturers on their writing tasks, especially in their attempts to respond and understand the real messages or corrections that the lecturers try to deliver in their wcf. in direct wcf, the lecturers usually provide direct correction or replacement over the students’ errors or mistakes. simultaneously, in the indirect one, the correct forms are not given but only addressed with clues or prompt that guide the students to the correct forms. the distribution reflects that direct wcf was preferred most by the students, and they were not happy with the indirect one. students’ evaluation of lecturers’ wcf types table 3 shows the students’ evaluation of the types of wcf provided in their academic writing. as all wcf is classified into nine categories based on three main categories of speech act functions (referential, directive, and expressive), the evaluation seems varied according to each type. the scores' distribution looks disperse, showing an unpredictable trend, as shown in table 3. table 3. students’ evaluation of lecturers’ wcf types regarding the detailed types on wcf according to speech act classifications, as shown in table 3, the distribution shows an interesting phenomenon. the highest rate is given to “praise” with an average score (4.06), while “criticism” receives the lowest proportion with only (2.3) on average. at the same time, “suggestion”, “opinion”, and “editorial” remain relatively high, reaching over 3.0 on http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 25-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license average in the students’ evaluation. other types that receive a relatively low evaluation from the students are “instruction”, “organization”, “content”, and “question”. these categories are rated lower than 3.0 on average in the evaluation. students’ evaluation on the use of non-linguistic features in the lecturers’ wcf students’ evaluation of the use of non-linguistic features on the lecturers’ wcf shows an interesting phenomenon. as shown in table 4 below, three types of features are dispersedly scored. table 4. students’ evaluation on the use of non-linguistics wcf regarding the use of non-linguistic features in the lecturers’ wcf, it appears that the use of arrows, circles, underlines, cross, ticks, and these sorts of things are mostly preferred with the average rate of 3.04. the other two categories (question mark and interjection) are not highly appreciated and rated only at 2.24 and 2.32. students’ evaluation on their writing improvement from the lecturers’ wcf students writing improvement lies in four aspects as the result of the lecturers’ wcf. as shown in table 5 below, the four aspects are scored dispersedly. table 5. students’ evaluation on their writing improvement through the lecturers’ wcf as shown in table 5, through the lecturers’ wcf, students’ writing improves in four areas (grammar, vocabulary, organisation, and mechanics). grammar and vocabulary are the two rated high in the students’ evaluation concerning the improvement of the lecturers’ wcf. it was evident in the table that the two skills received a high rate with the average scores of (3.43) for both. “organisation”, on the other hand, the other two skills http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 26-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (organization and mechanics) were rated low, with only 2.97 and 3.17 on the students’ evaluation, respectively. discussion the students’ appreciation of the lecturers’ wcf it is evident in the study that the students appreciated any form of feedback provided by the lecturers in their academic writing tasks. stracke and kumar (2010) suggested that wcf encourages students’ self-regulatory learning since they are forced to respond to any queries, questions, and corrections from the lecturers. the feedback directs the students to revise their writing for improvement, which is usually undetectable for many students. the students often put the corrections in their memory to become alert in the next writing, which develops and accelerates the students’ writing skills and performance. through wcf, students are aware of their inaccuracies and errors, which increases students’ autonomous learning in writing (adrefiza & fortunasari, 2020). students learn a lot from the wcf since it forms a process in which they become accustomed to handling their errors and inaccuracies from the lecturers’ feedback. this is often believed to more effective compared with that obtained from the formal teaching of writing itself. another essential benefit of wcf is maintaining the advisory students' psychological and personal relationships and the lecturers. this is supported by kumar and stracke (2007) since wcf enhances an active engagement between students and the lecturers through a distant communication practice. however, such communication may lead to conflicts, especially when the feedback and responses are not appropriately and wisely addressed. some students may be sensitive and become discouraged from the lecturers’ wcf. hence, vague, ambiguous, inappropriate forms, aggressive, and impulsive wcf may be discouraging and depress the students in many ways so that they should be avoided. the students’ preferences on the lecturers’ wcf types the fact that many students prefer direct to indirect feedback is interesting to note. the results, at least, unfold two apparent phenomena. first, through direct wcf, the students get direct corrections from the lecturers either through direct replacements or suggested changes over the incorrect forms in the students’ writing. students do not have to spend extra time, though, and energy to revise the writing with this type, as every correction has been made clear to them. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 27-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license second, such a feedback model does not cause any psychological and mental burden to students since the response to the inaccuracies can be done effortlessly. this does not work for the indirect type. students will have to interpret the feedback before they revise the incorrect forms critically – and sometimes this is time consuming and discouraging. this is so as ellis (2010) states that the indirect wcf is often formulated through various markings such as queries, questions, asking for confirmation, directions, and many other forms of expressions both in the forms of linguistic expressions and non-linguistic features. according to ellis (2010), this type of feedback frequently uses metalinguistic features that are usually represented through prompts and cues to indicate the errors and inaccuracies in the students’ writing. it is also apparent that students best prefer wcf categories of “praise” and “suggestion”. this is interesting because it reflects students' primary character, where the two positive rewards are highly appreciated. the students perceive them as motivating and encouraging feedback, but they usually perceive them as a psychological release and relaxation. simultaneously, categories of “criticism” and “instruction” come out as the least preferred type of wcf among the respondents. these two categories may be perceived as a negative reward and bring a high psychological burden to them. with these two types of feedback, students will have to work hard to respond and revise the writing, resulting in a psychological burden. this is in line with what kumar and stracke (2007) suggest that wcf links to both the advisory students and the lecturers' psychological state and personal relationship. conclusion and suggestion in general, the students have a positive perception and evaluation of the lecturers’ wcf since it improves their writing skills in several ways. they appreciate all forms of wcf provided by the lecturers on their academic writing tasks. the highest rate of the responses indicates this addressed to positive categories in the questionnaires. the students claim that with lecturers’ feedback, students learn from their errors and inaccuracies in their writing and anticipate the same errors in the future. to the same extent, this practice is believed to be more effective than formal learning of the writing itself. the majority of the students prefer a direct type of wcf from the lecturers rather than the indirect one. they find it http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 28-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license much easier to analyse and respond to direct feedback simply because they do not need to have rigid interpretations over the meaning and direction of the feedback as they usually do with the indirect type. the categories of “praise”, “suggestion”, and “opinion” are the three types of wcf that are more preferred by many of the students. these categories were highly rated by the students. other categories, such as: “criticism”, “instruction”, and “organization”, are less preferred to students as they put higher pressure on them. overall, through the lecturers’ wcf, students learn and improve their writing in four main skills. they cover: (a) grammar; (b) vocabulary; (c) organization of ideas; and (d) mechanicals. among the four aspects, students find that grammar was the highest one that improves significantly from the lecturers’ wcf, followed by vocabulary, organisation of ideas, and mechanicals. the students learned independently and autonomously much more through lecturers’ wcf than through other practice, including formal learning in the classroom. students’ errors should be wisely and carefully treated through effective wcf so that students’ self-regulated learning is enhanced, and the students are not discouraged. references adrefiza & fortunasari. 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(1999). self-regulated learning: where we are today? international journal of education research, 31, 445–457. butler, d. l., & winne, p. h. (1995). feedback and self-regulated http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 29-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning: a theoretical synthesis, review of educational research, 65, 245–281. ellis, r. (2010). a framework for investigating oral and written corrective feedback. studies in second language acquisition, 32(2), 335-349. ellis, r. (2009). a typology of written corrective feedback types. english language teaching journal, 63(2), 97-107. ene, e., & upton, t. (2014). learner uptake of teacher electronic feedback in esl composition. system, 46, 80-95. available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.syste m.2014.07.011 ferris, d. r. 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(2010). feedback and self-regulated learning: insights from supervisors’ and phd examiners’ report. reflective practice, 11(1), 19–32. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.07.011 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 30-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17701 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license zimmermann, b. j. (2001). theories of self-regulated learning and academic achievement: an overview and analysis. in b. j. zimmermann and d. h. schunk (eds.), self-regulated learning and academic achievement: theoretical perspectives, (2nd ed.), 1– 37. lawrence erlbaum. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 198-212 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee efl learners’ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond classroom arif nugroho*, yunika triana received: 23th february 2021; revised: 29th may 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract the present-day english language learning is characterized by educational potentials of digital technology for informal learning context. however, research examining efl learners‟ characteristics on self-directed use of digital devices for language learning remains a paucity of evidence. addressing this current issue, the present study aims to shed some light on english language learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond classroom. a total of 117 indonesian efl learners participated in this study through a 5point likert-scale survey and semi-structured interview. the results revealed the disparity between the efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english. these efl learners surely believed that informal digital learning activities could significantly enhance the target language skills, but they slightly engaged in digital learning activities beyond the classroom schedule. the results of semi-structured interviews further delineated that use of native languages in their social circle relationships and limitations of the digital devices used became particular reasons for this circumstance. the results contribute to the realm of english language teaching to reach the possible synchronicity between teacher-designed in-class and out-class digital learning activities and students‟ language learning styles and preferences to achieve the success of target language learning. key words: autonomous learning; informal digital learning of english; learners‟ beliefs; learners‟ practices abstrak pembelajaran bahasa inggris masa kini bercirikan potensi pendidikan teknologi digital untuk konteks pembelajaran informal. namun, penelitian yang meneliti karakteristik pelajar efl tentang penggunaan perangkat digital secara mandiri untuk pembelajaran bahasa masih tetap kekurangan bukti. mengatasi masalah saat ini, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan keyakinan dan praktik pembelajar bahasa inggris tentang pembelajaran digital informal bahasa inggris di luar kelas. sebanyak 117 pelajar efl indonesia berpartisipasi dalam penelitian ini melalui survei skala likert 5 poin dan wawancara semi terstruktur. hasilnya mengungkapkan perbedaan antara keyakinan dan praktik pelajar efl pada pembelajaran digital informal bahasa inggris. pembelajar efl ini pasti percaya bahwa kegiatan pembelajaran digital informal dapat secara signifikan meningkatkan keterampilan bahasa target, tetapi mereka sedikit terlibat dalam kegiatan pembelajaran digital di luar jadwal kelas. hasil wawancara semi-terstruktur lebih lanjut menggambarkan bahwa penggunaan bahasa asli dari hubungan lingkaran sosial mereka dan keterbatasan perangkat digital yang digunakan menjadi alasan khusus untuk keadaan ini. hasilnya berkontribusi pada ranah pengajaran bahasa inggris untuk mencapai kemungkinan sinkronisitas antara kegiatan pembelajaran digital di dalam dan di luar kelas yang dirancang guru dan gaya dan preferensi belajar bahasa siswa untuk mencapai keberhasilan pembelajaran bahasa target. kata kunci: belajar mandiri; pembelajaran bahasa inggris digital informal; keyakinan peserta didik; praktik peserta didik how to cite: nugroho, a., & triana, y. (2021). efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 198-212. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 199-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the twenty-first century english language teaching witnessed advanced information communication and technology (ict). the availability and affordances of online resources, digital devices, and social networking sites characterize the present-day teaching and learning of english as a second or foreign language (klimova, 2019; salehi & salehi, 2012). with this digital environment, fostering the potential use of technology for language learning is highly necessary, particularly for language learners (lee, 2020; nugroho & atmojo, 2020). using a range of digital devices, language learners are equipped with ample opportunities to perform autonomous learning and create personalized learning ecologies (lai et al., 2015). therefore, promoting learners‟ autonomy for out-of-class language learning becomes a crucial effort to gain the maximum inputs of language acquisition in this digital era. nowadays, elt scholars have begun to acknowledge how language learners are involved in various language learning activities using digital devices in their daily life (sundqvist, 2019). lee (2020) mentions the phenomenon of autonomous learning beyond the formal classroom as informal digital learning of english. it is defined as language learning activities carried out by learners outside the classroom using digital devices such as computers, smartphones, tablets, or laptops (lee, 2020). in an informal digital learning context, language learners are encountered with a situation where they have to independently select the most convenient digital learning activity to enhance their language skills, both receptive and productive (lai, wang, et al., 2016; webb & doman, 2020). since language learners today are at the center of the digital learning environment; hence, examining their beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english is crucial as a consistent attempt to develop their language skills and abilities. research on learners‟ perspectives about digital technology for language learning has been conducted for years from various points of view (dashtestani, 2016; lai & zheng, 2018). previous studies have revealed the significant contribution of digital technology to the development of learners‟ english skills in the pedagogical classroom through the use of social networking sites, internet resources, and learning management systems (alberth et al., 2018; khalil, 2018; nugroho & rahmawati, 2020; slim & hafedh, 2019). in an informal context, it was shown that language learners gained positive concerns on the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 200-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license use of technology for independent learning but had hesitations on the absence of help and supports from teachers (isbell, 2018; lee & dressman, 2018; naghdipour, 2017). studies have further revealed that language learners preferred using digital devices to practice receptive skills of english (e.g., reading news, listening and watching videos, looking for vocabulary meaning) than to perform productive english skills and build social connectivity (cole & vanderplank, 2016; zainuddin & perera, 2019). results of previous studies have also shown that english learners positively perceived the involvement of social media to enhance their language competence, such as instagram (anggraeni, 2017), facebook (islam, 2016), whatsapp (ahmed, 2019), and youtube (fakhruddin et al., 2020). these results indicate that digital technology plays a significant role in developing language learners‟ skills in the present-day digital learning environment (goria et al., 2019; yurdagül & öz, 2018). having highlighted the results of previous studies, it is evident that digital technology is a promising pathway to achieve language learning success. previous research has yielded significant roles of technology and language learners‟ concerns on digital learning activities. however, research examining english as a foreign language (efl) learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english remain a paucity of evidence. as the informal learning context has educational potentials, how efl learners are involved in a range of digital learning activities beyond the formal classroom. the present study is at the cutting edge of closing the gap by examining efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on the self-directed use of digital devices for language learning. an in-depth delineation of how efl learners believe and practice informal digital learning of english activities is crucial to reach possible synchronicity between teachers‟ designed digital learning activities and learners‟ preferences. such an understanding contributes fruitful insights for teachers on how to develop technology-based learning activities. the research questions posited in this study are “what are efl learners‟ beliefs on informal digital learning of english?” and “how do efl learners practice digital learning of english beyond the classroom?” the answers to these questions are expected to shed more light on the nature and characteristics of efl learners‟ digital learning activities in informal settings. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 201-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method research design this study aims to explore efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond the formal classroom. to this end, descriptive research was adopted by employing a survey design to depict how efl learners‟ view or value out-ofclass language learning activities (fraenkel & wallen, 2009; willis, 2018). following the survey, semi-structured interviews were conducted to jump into a more in-depth understanding of the participants‟ responses in the survey about their beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english. participants a total of 117 undergraduate students (83 females and 34 male) in english language teaching and linguistics from several universities in surakarta, indonesia, were conveniently recruited for this study. they studied english as a foreign language and were native indonesian speakers. their age was between 18 and 23, and the average age was 19. most of the participants were juniors (n = 54; 46.15%) followed by sophomores (n = 29; 24.78%), seniors (n = 21; 17.94%), and freshman (n = 13; 11.11%). sixtyfive (55.55%) of them considered themselves as having beginning proficiency level, forty-one (35.04%) in medium proficiency level, and only eleven (9.40%) self-rated themselves as of advanced proficiency level. instruments and data collection the primary instrument used in this study was the 5-point likert-scale survey directed to explore the participants‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english. the survey was adapted from kearney et al's. (2012) pedagogical frameworks of digital learning environment. the survey comprised 16 items and was divided into three parts. the first part sought participants‟ demographic information. the second part elicited participants‟ beliefs about informal digital learning of english. the last part dealt with participants‟ practices on self-directed use of digital devices for language learning beyond the classroom. in addition, semi-structured interviews were administered with 8 participants (namely p1–p8) to add their views, values, and perspectives on digital learning activities in informal settings. the interviews were conducted through video calls for 15-20 minutes per participant and administered in indonesian and english, depending on the participants‟ preferences. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 202-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data analysis to understand the participants‟ beliefs and practices about informal digital learning of english, statistical analysis in the form of mean (m) and standard deviation (sd) was conducted using spss. to ensure the validity and reliability of the instrument, data, and the whole research, one of the researchers, developed the survey items. the other researcher checked the instrument and data to perform content-related evidence (fraenkel & wallen, 2009). the participants‟ interview responses were independently read, coded, and classified into emerging trends and themes according to the research questions by the first researcher and an inter-rater who is a senior lecturer and earned a ph.d degree in english language teaching. stages of discussion on the differences were further conducted to reach a complete agreement and consensus of the final results. findings and discussion this section presents the results of data analyses regarding the two main themes as limited in the research questions, i.e., efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond the classroom. interpretation and implication of the results are further highlighted in the discussion. the participants‟ representative responses of semistructured interviews are quoted to support the delineation of the findings. findings efl learners’ beliefs on informal digital learning of english concerning the first research question, the survey results about efl learners‟ beliefs on informal digital learning of english are presented in table 1. table 1. learners‟ beliefs on informal digital learning of english no items m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 informal digital learning gives significant support to my language development. informal digital learning allows me to develop my language skills at any time and any place. informal digital learning offers me an alternative to practice language skills beyond the classroom. informal digital learning helps me perform self-paced and personalized english learning outside the classroom. the flexibility of informal digital learning enables me to gain maximum language inputs without time and space limitations. informal digital learning assists me in expanding my language learning experiences. 4.30 4.10 3.85 3.60 3.25 4.05 0.86 0.91 0.73 1.04 0.96 0.74 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 203-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license no items m sd 7 8 informal language learning allows me to perform learning activities based on my own interests. informal digital learning enhances my autonomous and independent learning of english. 4.15 4.10 1.07 1.06 notes: the value was based on 5 point-likert scales with 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neutral), 4 (agree), and 5 (strongly agree) as depicted in table 1, efl learners agreed to all item statements in the survey as indicated by the mean scores above 3 (neutral) in all items. the statement of “informal digital learning gives significant support to my language development” (item 1) received the highest score of 4.30. although item 5 (the flexibility of informal digital learning enables me to gain maximum language inputs without time and space limitations) had the lowest mean score of 3.25, it still indicates an agreement from the efl learners that informal digital learning of english is flexible since it enables them to practice language learning activities in informal settings. it was also found that efl learners agreed that informal digital learning outside the classroom became an alternative to practice english skills and perform self-paced learning (item 3 and 4). table 1 further revealed efl learners‟ agreement that informal digital learning of english could enhance their autonomous and independent learning, develop their interests, and expand their language experiences across time and spaces beyond the classroom (item 2, 6, 7, and 8). the survey‟s results were echoed in the semi-structured interview responses. the interview participants positively perceived that informal digital learning of english could significantly support the development of their language skills at any time and any place. they believed that this flexibility enabled them to perform autonomous learning and gain maximum english skills inputs based on their language activity preferences and interests. moreover, some participants in semi-structured interviews also believed that informal digital learning of english could expand their language knowledge and acquisition beyond what their teachers taught in the classroom. as some participants in semi-structured interviews said: “….. and i one hundred percent believe that our digital activities in daily life such as online chatting, reading news, looking for vocabulary meaning, and watching english-content videos contribute to enhancing our english skills” (p7. int) “yes, i surely believe this kind of informal digital learning can improve my ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 204-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english skills and knowledge intentionally” (p1. int) “informal learning using digital devices is flexible, and we can perform it at any time and any place we want. this flexibility gives us the opportunity to learn and practice language skills according to our preferences” (p4. int) “although i have learned teaching materials in campus, informal learning that i do in my leisure time such as chatting and sharing in my social media can improve my english ability, even though i do not aware of it” (p6. int) efl learners’ practices on informal digital learning of english regarding the second research question, the results of the survey about the learners‟ practices on informal digital learning of english are demonstrated in table 2. table 2. learners‟ practices on informal digital learning of english no items m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 i use digital devices (e.g., laptops, mobile phones, and tablets) to perform informal english learning activities in my leisure time outside the classroom. i regularly perform informal digital learning activities in my daily life out of doing my school assignments. i often read english news online to gain new information and improve my reading skills beyond the classroom. i often make use of online dictionaries to look for the particular meaning of english words and improve my vocabulary mastery beyond my formal classroom. i often watch english videos, movies, or dramas with the aim of enhancing my language skills beyond my formal classroom. i often chat with others in english via social media (e.g., facebook, instagram, whatsapp, line). i often use technology to share english content online via several platforms (e.g., personal blogs, social media, youtube videos, etc.). i often use technology to connect with both native (e.g., american, british, australian) and non-native speakers (japanese, chinese, arabian) of english all over the world. 2.15 1.95 2.65 3.15 2.90 1.75 2.05 1.95 1.10 0.74 0.87 0.91 1.02 0.84 1.04 0.98 notes: the value was based on 5 point-likert scales with 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neutral), 4 (agree), and 5 (strongly agree) unlike the results of table 1, table 2 demonstrates that efl learners disagreed with most of the item statements about their practices on informal digital learning of english. the only statement agreed by the learners and reached mean score above 3 (3.15) was item 4 (i often make use of online dictionary to look for particular meaning of english words and improve my vocabulary mastery beyond my formal classroom). it was also found that the participants ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 205-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were slightly involved in a range of digital activities in informal settings both to enhance their receptive skills and productive skills (item 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8). in short, table 2 showed that the participants were acknowledged not to regularly carry out informal learning activities using digital devices beyond the formal classroom (item 1 and 2). the results of semi-structured interviews confirmed the findings of the survey about efl learners‟ practices on informal digital learning of english. the results of survey showed although efl learners believe that informal digital learning of english could significantly support their language development; however, they slightly practiced digital learning activities beyond the formal classroom. this was a crucial finding, and the researchers tried to investigate this issue through semi-structured interviews. more than half of the interview participants confessed to not performing digital learning activities in the target language because their social circles were in their native indonesian language. it was also mentioned that sharing posts and ideas in social networking sites in english was considered strange to the existent social circles and could potentially disrupt social relationships. it was further revealed that most of the participants preferred to use a mobile phone. its limitation, such as small screens and limited internet connections, kept the efl learners from optimizing the potentials of smartphones for improving their language skills in an informal context. as some participants said: “of course, i believe that digital learning beyond the classroom will improve my english, but i am aware that i cannot do it consistently because of some reasons such as most of my friends in social media are using indonesian and i feel shy if i use english” (p2. int) “hmmmm… i often used my smartphone to carry out digital learning including joining an online class. but i face some constraints such as small screens and limited internet connections” (p8. int) “it was tiring to watch videos, read long texts, and listen to songs online using my smartphone because of the small screens, and it was also difficult to concentrate for a long time” (p2. int) discussion the present study explored efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english beyond the classroom and found apparent discrepancies between their beliefs and practices. on the one hand, the efl learners surely believed that informal digital learning of english could significantly enhance their english skills. however, on the other ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 206-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hand, they slightly practiced digital learning activities in informal settings beyond the classroom because of some reasons such as interrupting the social circles, limitations of digital devices, and limited internet connections. there are several interpretations of these findings. first of all, the findings indicate that efl learners are positively concerned about digital learning of english in informal settings. these positive perceptions confirm the current research findings that language learners preferably use affordances of digital devices, especially smartphones, to practice language skills flexibly without time and space limitations (dashtestani, 2016; lee & drajati, 2019; nugroho & atmojo, 2020). this finding further suggests that motivating efl learners to be involved in informal digital learning of english activities consistently is a promising key to achieving language learning success. educators can augment the educational potentials of technology by focusing on strengthening teacher-designed activities that suit learners‟ characteristics and interests (lai et al., 2015; lai et al., 2016; lai & zheng, 2018). various efforts should be made to foster efl learners‟ engagement in informal digital learning of english beyond the classroom, particularly by teachers. educational mediation and teacher assistance are necessary to enhance learners‟ awareness and motivation to engage in informal digital learning activities (ahmed, 2019; hembrough & jordan, 2020; xodabande, 2018). for instance, teachers can create community programs such as informal social groups of students across social backgrounds and levels of english proficiency. it is to facilitate learners develop their confidence in social communities and practice target language skills in a relatively supportive environment. moreover, teachers can design a digital classroom environment reflected by the frequent use of online resources such as social media and internet sites to assist classroom learning activities. previous research studies have depicted that teachers‟ in-class use of digital technology affected students‟ selfinitiated use of technology to engage in informal learning outside the classroom (nugroho & mutiaraningrum, 2020; webb & doman, 2020). regarding the second research problem, this study demonstrated that efl learners slightly practiced learning activities using digital technology beyond the classroom. this finding was astonishing since they were fully aware of the educational potentials of informal digital learning activities as depicted in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 207-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the results of the first research problem. the particular reasons for this circumstance are the native language use of their existent social circles and the limitations of digital devices. this finding is similar to the result of the study conducted by lai and zheng (2018) that efl learners tended to avoid using target language because their social circles were in their native languages. moreover, studies of güneş and ortaçtepe (2019), krishan et al. (2020), and mutiaraningrum and nugroho (2020) have acknowledged that the limitations of digital devices became particular reasons for language learners to practice digital learning beyond classroom schedule. this finding is truthfully confirmed by this study‟s result that small screens and slow internet connections became certain reasons for the efl learners not to engage in informal digital learning of english activities frequently. above all, this study‟s results have several implications for english language teaching. first, english teachers and educators can use the results of this study to understand how language learners believe and practice informal digital learning of english activities. it becomes a continuous effort for language educators to consistently assist language learners in gaining the target language's paramount inputs (atmojo & nugroho, 2020; lam et al., 2018). previous studies have concluded that the role of teachers in promoting learners' autonomy is crucial (lyddon, 2016; zainuddin & perera, 2019). second, the results of this study can be used as a reference for school authorities and policymakers to design a learning policy that is suitable to the characteristics of twenty-first digital learning. it will significantly support english teachers in designing technology-based in-class and out-class learning activities that suit learners‟ interests and preferences. we have outreached the era of technological advancement, and running away from this digitalization is almost impossible. therefore, english language teaching stakeholders should see this circumstance as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, and promoting informal digital learning of english activities is a promising way to achieve language learning success. conclusions and suggestion this study aims to shed more light on efl learners‟ beliefs and practices on informal digital learning of english. the results demonstrate an apparent disparity between their beliefs and actual practices in the daily digital learning beyond the formal classroom. they believe that informal digital learning of english activities can enhance their language development. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 208-212 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.19843 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, another result of this study shows that their practices on informal digital learning of english activities are not as strong as their beliefs. the particular reasons for this disparity as scrutinized in semi-structured interviews were the native languages' use of their social circle relationships and limitations of digital devices they frequently used. these results provide empirical contribution for elt stakeholders to reach possible synchronicity between teacherdesigned learning activities and learners‟ language preferences to achieve the success of language teaching. apart from these compelling results, several limitations are acknowledged in this study. first, this study was conducted in english as a foreign language learning by involving more than half of participants who selfrated themselves to have a beginning english proficiency level. the results might be biased and potentially show different findings if the study was conducted in english as a second language context. moreover, this study was conducted in the indonesian efl context. learners from other sociocultural backgrounds and other countries with different internet facilities might indicate different results. hence, the authors suggest that future research may conduct a further inquiry on a similar topic by involving more heterogeneous participants across social backgrounds and proficiency levels. references ahmed, s. t. s. 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(2019). exploring students‟ competence, autonomy and relatedness in the flipped classroom pedagogical model. journal of further and higher education, 43(1), 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877 x.2017.1356916. https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.1007%2f978-3-319-54395-6_14?_sg%5b0%5d=2bkqgw9qjqnckivrljgreedavgqo-9sh6_rkmmkwzjwcfenbzko-g8qvh3kzf4ubj2ug-mccfml2z0lwg5dqsqr9ug.dkkwwaci87eextcc2nchsgnag6em_vtmsdtcwk0hstoyugtemvoe-_jqn91ahne3qpspvmvxk39qeoa9gz2jra https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030142 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030142 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 247-258 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee strategy preference in listening: a profile of efl students to answer toefl test ika hidayanti*, alfan zuhairi, kurniasih received: 28th july 2021; revised: 08th november 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract measuring students‟ english ability in most universities would be counted from their passing grade on the test of english as a foreign language (toefl). listening to natives is considered a complicated section to answer among the three sections. thus, efl learners should focus on attainment strategies to answer the toefl preparation test. the current study examines students‟ profile of attainment strategy use and how usage of this strategy differs by gender. the sixth english semester students, faculty of education at universitas islam malang, were required to fill out the questionnaire of strategies used to answer the toefl. utilizing the descriptive and independent t-test, the findings reveal that students deployed the strategies at a moderate level. further, female students used all the strategies more often and significantly differently than their counterparts. this implies that the use of strategies could ease them in obtaining good scores in listening. key words: toefl strategies profile; listening; gender abstrak mengukur ketrampilan bahasa inggris mahasiswa di sebagian besar universitas akan dihitung dari nilai kelulusan mereka pada tes toefl (test of english as a foreign language). diantara ketiga bagian pada tes toefl, tes pada bagian i (listening) dianggap sebagai tes yang sulit untuk dijawab. sehingga, mahasiswa diharapkan bisa fokus dan bisa menggunakan strategi tepat ketika menjawab tes toefl. penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengetahui bagaimana profil penggunaan strategi menjawab tes toefl dan mengidentifikasi perbedaan penggunaaan oleh mahasiswa laki-laki dan perempuan. mahasiswa semester enam jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris fakultas pendidikan, universitas islam malang dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini dan mereka diminta mengisi kuesioner strategi menjawab tes toefl. dengan menggunakan analisis dan uji t-tes, temuan menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa menggunakan strategi dalam kategori sedang. hasil selanjutnya mengindikasikan bahwa mahasiswa perempuan sering menggunakan strategi dan berbeda secara signifikan dari mahasiswa laki-laki. hal ini berarti bahwa penggunaan strategi dapat memudahkan mahasiswa tersebut untuk mendapatkan nilai bagus. kata kunci: profil strategi toefl; menyimak; gender how to cite: hidayanti, i., zuhairi, a., & kurniasih. (2021). strategy preference in listening: a profile of efl students to answer toefl test. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 247-258. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 248-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction “test of english as a foreign language (toefl) is a test to measure the english proficiency of nonnative speakers of english” (phillips: 2004). as it says, by joining the toefl test, students could be categorized as successful or not successful english learners. furthermore, universities, institutions, scholarship programs, or even secondary levels put this test as a passing requirement for graduation. specifically, the toefl conducted at universitas islam malang is regulated as a paper-based toefl test and labeled as toefl preparation or test of english proficiency (tep). as its name, the test and the treatments were held in offline meetings several years ago. however, during the covid pandemic, all activities for tep have been arranged virtually. the test application used safe exam browser (seb), and the treatments were in the form of synchronous learning. related to the online learning situation, different language learners would likely face some constraints for the supporting environment and media, even direct touch from the instructors (jonsdottir et al., 2021). they further argue that this condition leads to such barriers, although the online system is a „flexible schedule‟ setting. thus, universitas islam malang adapts the online system to facilitate the students to take the toefl preparation test. although it is conducted virtually, the toefl preparation program has adapted the paper-based test and consists of some sections of listening, structure and written expression, and reading (phillips: 2004). further, each section has a different total of questions and time allotment. section 1 (listening) consists of 50 questions, section 2 (structure and written expression) has 40 items, reading (section 3) focuses on 50 questions. all sections are arranged with learning strategies to comprehend the english context and the questions easily. however, among the three sections, listening is considered as a difficult section that students need some „strategy training‟ when they get the aural input from natives (madina, 2016). moreover, most students face a challenge to focus on the listening text as it is only played once (silviyanti, rahmadhani, & samad, 2020). “listening performance is the invisible, inaudible process of internalizing meaning from the auditory signals being transmitted to the ear and brain (brown, 2004, p. 118). listening to english as a foreign language, students need to implement the learning strategies so that they can easily comprehend and get the main ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 249-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license idea (klatzky, 1980; cahyono & widiati, 2011: 16), moreover, relate with their background knowledge to guess the meaning from the aural texts (o‟malley, chamot, & kupper, 1989). brown (2007: 312) also states that one of the principles in teaching listening is to “encourage the development of listening strategies”. thus, the learning strategies deployment is essential to cope with the problems while listening. listening requires the microskills (brown, 2007) of realizing the pattern structure, stressed words, rhetorical aspect of the words and word structure, predicting and guessing the words or topic, generalizing and differentiating the literal meaning and cohesion, and using the nonverbal clues to comprehend the aural texts. listening ability refers to attaining language points that students get on the toefl preparation. it relates to understanding the context from the recording that is further used in communication and interaction with others (cambridge assessment english, 2020). concerning listening to toefl, to gain a good score from the test, students must apply their knowledge about english and use appropriate strategies (nurhayati & nehe, 2016). the toefl book by phillips (2004) has provided clear facilities and a division of strategy to be implemented while taking the test. brown (2007:312) suggests in one of the principles of teaching listening that the process of learning should facilitate learners with the strategies attainment so that students, like foreign language learners, could succeed. further, language learners need to focus on identifying the keywords, guessing for meaning, predicting for the context, and so forth. numerous studies have investigated the toefl strategy deployments in the test time both for all and each section. however, during the pandemic covid, there are still few studies on the online toefl program adapted to the paper-based toefl test. thus, the current study is formulated to investigate the following questions: 1) what is the profile of strategies used by students to answer the listening section in the toefl preparation test?; 2) is there any significant difference in the use of listening strategies in the toefl preparation test by female and male students?. virtual meetings and test the online meetings are also described as „distance learning‟ and virtual education‟. both instructors and students are not gathered in the physical surroundings and are connected to the internet setting (keegan, 1988 cited in hassan et al., ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 250-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 2014). thus, physical learning experiences are limited due to the online network. further, hassan et al. argue that an online system will be beneficial for shy and „self-esteem‟ students to express their ideas using a virtual setting. for toefl preparation, the students have been regulated to join the virtual meetings using some platforms. thus, they are also trained to be familiar with and adapt the use of strategies in doing the test. the foreign language development center (fldc) unisma has sequenced the activities of the toefl preparation test or labeled it as the test of english proficiency. the test is addressed to all students, and the certificate is used to measure their english and as a pre-requisite document before graduation time. it was conducted through face-to-face class meetings and used a paper-based test for several years. however, since the pandemic situation, the test and the treatments have been made to virtual settings. the test has used the safe exam browser (seb) application, and the meetings have been regulated virtually for an hour and a half in six days. the use of the application is aimed to ensure a more secured „eassessment‟ for the test. as it limits other functions of computers connected to the internet, the students are hoped not to access some sources while doing the test (piendl & ashford, 2010). longman toefl toefl is one of the tests to measure foreign language learners‟ english. higher education students need to take the toefl test to know their english ability. universitas islam malang annually holds the tep program for all seventh-semester students, and it is a paper-based test form. joining the tep, the students obtain the sequenced activities from attending pretest, treatments, and posttest sessions. the obtained score in the pretest is known as the initial ability. in opposite, the posttest score is the measurement of their success. the students will be categorized passed if they achieve a minimum of 450 for nonenglish students and 500 for english department students. recently, the program has been shifted to online sessions during the pandemic covid. the program starts by giving an overview of the tep and test application, followed by having pretest, treatments, and posttest. the treatments are intended to train the students to select and maintain good test strategies. there are three sections covered in the test: listening, structure and written expression, and reading comprehension. however, the current study focuses on the listening section ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 251-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and is adapted from longman toefl by phillips (2004) offers some strategies as follows: part a  focusing on the last line. part a is a short dialogue between two people, and it has two lines of conversation. this type of strategy suggests that students are getting the idea more on the second line that the answers are most often (but not always) found in the second speaker.  choosing answers with synonyms. while students are concerned about the second line of a short conversation, they should find the keywords' synonyms or restatements in the second/last line of the dialogue.  avoiding similar sounds. these similar sounds refer to some distractions. if students do not listen and identify the spoken words, they probably choose the sound they think is the best answer. part b & part c  before listening. students should anticipate the topics and anticipate the questions by looking at the options of answers.  while listening. students are required to determine the topic, draw conclusions about who, what, when, or where, and listen for the answers in order. some difficulties in listening listening to english as a foreign language would create some challenges for some learners as they are required to comprehend and obtain the messages. on some occasions, they will have difficulties with different speech rates, intonations, and limited knowledge of english and its vocabs. milliner & dimoski (2021) addressed their study to investigate the metacognitive strategies for lowerproficient learners in japan. they found that some efl learners obtain difficulties for different speakers' accents and intonation. thus, they enhanced the learners with explicit training and materials for listening activities. they found out the strategybased instruction could benefit their efl students to comprehend the aural passages and their “self-efficacy” and self-independence. other factors refer to students‟ familiarity with the english natives and content. being accustomed to the language and its content will ease them comprehending the aural texts. chou (2012) has revealed that by using „visual ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 252-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license aids‟ and having a well-understanding of the course content, the students could tackle some difficulties on the native sources. relevant previous studies a lot of studies have investigated and focused on the toefl. one of them is madina (2016) entitled the effect of metacognitive strategy on improving toefl listening performance of senior students in the “noon regular” english department of mataram university. she focused on knowing the effect of metacognitive strategy training on the students listening in toefl. taking the subject of seventh-semester students and applied purposive sampling, there were 40 students enrolled in the experimental and control group. the experimental group received five meetings using cognitive academic language learning (calla). utilizing the t-test to analyze the pretest and posttest and the questionnaire from the metacognitive awareness language questionnaire (mlaq), it was found that there was a significant effect on the use of metacognitive strategies. the second study was conducted by nurhayati and nehe (2016), who focused on describing the types of toefl questions that the students in all sections mostly face, the strategies implemented, and the score by the eighth-semester students in stkip setia budhi rangkasbitung. the result of utilizing the instruments of questionnaire, test, and interview showed that understanding idiom in listening, the question of noun forms in structure and written expressions, and reference question in reading are the most complicated questions. meanwhile, the strategy deployment was used in various ways, and the toefl score was low. next, silviyanti, rahmadhani, and samad (2020) investigated the use of strategies in answering the toefl test through the use of interview, questionnaire, and test score as the instruments similarly. having the purposive sampling technique, 30 english major students at universitas syiah kuala, banda aceh were chosen. this study found that the students deployed the strategies for answering parts b and c in the majority and more complicated parts than part a. in terms of listening section part a, razmalia and dani (2017) found that the students sometimes deployed the strategies to get the answers. it is undeniable that some factors are affecting the toefl scores. the preceding paragraphs have presented the use of strategies in doing the test. meanwhile, the terms of gender would also correlate to the result. bacon‟s ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 253-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license study (1992b) in macaro and cohen (2007, p. 172) found differences in the use of strategy deployment by males and females. further, females applied more often on the „comprehension monitoring‟ than males as they translated the listening to their first language to comprehend the different texts. however, the distinguished use was slightly different between the two groups. in a similar line, vandergrift (1997b) in macaro and cohen (2007, p. 172) also revealed the result that the use of strategies was insignificantly different by both groups. another study also revealed that female students tend to use more strategies than males. however, the attainment of strategies was not significantly different between the two groups of gender (hidayanti & umamah, 2019). method research design the research design utilized the quantitative approach with descriptive and independent t-test. the descriptive analysis was intended to know the strategies used in listening for toefl. meanwhile, the independent t-test was used to gain the differences in the use of strategies by a different gender. research participants this research was conducted in universitas islam malang. more specifically, it was addressed to the english department students, faculty of education. the population was the english students in the sixth semester who are taking toefl class. this semester the students must take the toefl class facilitated by the foreign language development center (fldc), and the certificate would be the required document before they graduate. toefl is a prediction test labeled as the test of english proficiency (tep) conducted by fldc universitas islam malang. however, the test items and the sources were adapted from toefl. data collection and analysis the data was attained from the questionnaire about the strategies in listening toefl (phillips, 2004). after the students obtained the online toefl preparation test, they were required to fill out the strategy questionnaire via google form. this questionnaire is specifically referred to in the listening section. there were 9 strategy items addressed to part a, part b, and part c in the listening section. part a was concerned with items number 1, number 2, and number 3. meanwhile, part b and c were put on numbers 4, 5, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 254-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 6, 7, 8, 9, which comprised pre and whilst listening. using spss 20 for the statistical program, the first data analysis used descriptive analysis to gain the profile of the learning strategies on listening for toefl. further to interpreting the profile use, it shows high if the mean score of use is between 3.45 and 5.00, medium if it is between 2.45 and 3.44, and low if it is between 1.00 and 2.44 (oxford, 1990). then the result was also analyzed using a t-test to see whether there is a significant difference in the use of learning strategies by male and female students. findings and discussion research problem 1: how intensively do the students implement the use of strategies in answering the toefl preparation test? the following table shows the profile of students on how frequently they deployed the use of strategies in gaining the answers from the online test of english proficiency. among 9 strategies, most of the students deployed strategy 9 at a higher rank, followed by strategy 1, strategy 3, and strategy 4. in opposite, they are concerned about strategy 6 at the lowest level of use. this implies that they focus on looking at answers and guessing the topics while listening to parts b and c, and sometimes getting the idea from the second line and avoiding the similar sounds of words for part a. in contrast, they rarely focused on listening to the first line of the conversation or talk. overall, the finding shows that the intensity of strategies was at a moderate level; thus, this implies that the students sometimes deployed the strategies to answer the toefl preparation test. table 1. the frequency of use of strategies for answering tep strategy item mean frequency of use rank of use strategy 1 2.72 moderate 2 strategy 2 2.50 moderate 4 strategy 3 2.53 moderate 3 strategy 4 2.53 moderate 3 strategy 5 2.43 low 5 strategy 6 2.11 low 8 strategy 7 2.24 low 7 strategy 8 2.31 low 6 strategy 9 2.69 moderate 1 overall 2.45 moderate research problem 2: is there any significant difference in the use of strategies for answering toefl preparation tests by female and male students? having been analyzed using spss 20, the attached is table 2, which presents the information of the different strategy deployment by male and female students. females gain a higher mean for all strategy attainment in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 255-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license doing the test than males. the highest difference is in strategy 2, highlighting the keywords and their synonyms to determine the answers for part a. meanwhile, male learners used to get the main point of the topic for part b and part c. this finding implies that female students applied the strategies significantly different and effectively to get the intended score. table 2: the difference in the use of strategies of answering toefl preparation test by the female (n=62) and male learners (n=12) strategy item groups mean (s.d) mean difference strategy 1 female male 2.71 (.52) 2.42 (.79) .29 strategy 2 female male 2.47 (.70) 2.00 (.74) .47 strategy 3 female male 2.37 (.81) 2.25 (.75) .12 strategy 4 female male 2.52 (.70) 2.17 (.58) .35 strategy 5 female male 2.37 (.68) 2.17 (.58) .20 strategy 6 female male 1.66 (.72) 1.42 (.90) .24 strategy 7 female male 2.16 (.66) 1.75 (.75) .41 strategy 8 female male 2.23 (.61) 1.92 (.79) .31 strategy 9 female male 2.73 (.45) 2.42 (.67) .31 discussion as presented in the preceding section, the research results reveal that the english students deployed the learning strategies at a moderate level for overall strategies. the females account for a higher mean for all strategies than their counterparts. thus, the students prefer to use the toefl preparation test strategies. the first finding shows that the students used the strategies at the “sometimes” level of use. in particular use of part a, the efl learners tend to focus on the second line of the dialogue and avoid choosing similar words. the current result confirms the study from razmalia and dani (2017) that the students sometimes deployed the strategies to answer the listening section. in contrast, nurhayati & nehe (2017) revealed that the efl learners got idiomatic expressions as the most difficult questions, and they seldom used the strategies in answering the listening section. moreover, the students attained and highly focused on using strategy item 9, which refers to focusing on the option of the answers while listening to a long conversation and talk, followed by the use of strategy 4 for part b & c. this implies that listening to natives, the students highlighted the keywords or guessed the answers by looking at the answer choices. beforehand, they tried to guess the topic and questions. on the contrary, they seldom realized about focusing on the first line of speakers when they answered the questions for part b and c in the listening section. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 256-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the result of moderate use is also not in line with the study conducted by silviyanti, rahmadhani, and samad (2020), who found that their students attained more strategies on part b and c than part a. the reasons were that the first two parts have the most difficult questions that they need to apply the strategies. the possible reasons being at this moderate level could be the lack of awareness on the strategy attainment by the students. then they also need to be given more time to practice the listening from natives so that they are familiar with different contexts. concerning the distinguished use of strategies, while answering the toefl preparation test, females deployed them more significantly than the males. for part a, female students employed and focused more on finding the clues and synonyms to get the answers on short dialogues. meanwhile, they were concerned about getting the main idea and determining the topic while listening to the aural passages in the toefl preparation test for part b and c. however, the current result does not confirm the previous related study from hidayanti and umamah (2019). they found no significant difference in the use of strategies in listening by the two groups of gender. further, female learners were likely to feel more aware of accounting for the strategy choice and often use them to cope with listening to english natives (hidayanti, suhartoyo, & kurniasih, 2020). in short, the present study indicates that the students sometimes deployed the strategies of answering the tests. the most frequently used strategy was put on whilst listening activity to focus on the answers. besides, it is obviously presented that efl female learners obtained a higher mean for all strategy choices, and it was significantly different from males. females tend to concern about the use of strategies on doing the test. the probable reasons for the moderate level of strategy use are due to the limited time and the signal barrier, so that the students could not maintain the focus on the use of strategies for each part. besides, the different backgrounds of english vocabs affected the students' understanding of the passages. conclusions and suggestion being adapted to the online system, the program of tep has been sequenced and set through the use of seb for the test application. it ensures that the testtakers will not cheat and take advantage of using computer-adapted internet settings, and it is purposed to obtain more valid results. to investigate the use of strategy choices ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 257-258 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license while doing the test, the present study revealed that the students applied the strategies to answer the toefl preparation test at a moderate level. the female students attained a higher mean than their counterparts. while doing the listening test, the students focused most intensively on guessing the answers on the options and least frequently on getting the first line on part b and c. in addition, female learners significantly deployed finding keywords on the second line of the short conversation in part a. conversely, males did not focus and select the strategies in all parts. concerning the test tool, as presented earlier, the students seem to get difficulties with the time allotment and the signal that they are difficult to manage the strategies. thus, future research might ensure that the students are well-trained on the online toefl test to be familiar with the system and maintain the strategies. meanwhile, the distinguished result between male and female learners suggests further research to gain balance participants for both females and males. references brown, h. d. 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(http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/siele/arti cle/view/13007, accessed on 08 november 2020). http://eprints.unram.ac.id/194/accessed http://eprints.unram.ac.id/194/accessed https://safeexambrowser.org/alliance/council.html https://safeexambrowser.org/alliance/council.html https://safeexambrowser.org/alliance/council.html http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/siele/article/view/13007 http://jurnal.unsyiah.ac.id/siele/article/view/13007 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 26-34 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee politeness: cultural dimensions of linguistic choice fitriah1, didin nuruddin hidayat2 received: 15th march 2018; revised: 25th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract language has a social function to make connection between human beings. without language, people seem to be impossible to interact with others in their daily communication. in order to sustain the communication well, speakers should be able to choose strategies to have polite conversation. often politeness strategies are affected by cultural convention, which is based on community‟s social values. however, every society operates a normative notion of their own politeness, which is not the same for all interlocutors, situations and cultures. in javanese norm, for instance, the linguistic choice is often influenced by the addressee‟s age, status, position, relationship, social constraints and gender. this essay will first summarize and comment on some of the salient aspects in coulmas‟ article entitled „politeness: cultural dimension of linguistic choice‟, part of his book chapters in „sociolinguistics: the study of speakers’ choices‟ (2013). as an english teacher, we should be aware of this difference so that we could introduce the politeness strategies in the target culture to the students. key words: politeness strategies; linguistic choice; communication abstrak bahasa memiliki fungsi sosial dalam menjaga hubungan dengan sesama individu. tanpa bahasa, seseorang tidak akan mampu berinteraksi dengan orang lain dalam komunikasi sehari-hari. untuk mempertahankan komunikasi dengan baik, pembicara harus dapat memilih strategi yang tepat dalam melakukan percakapan yang sopan. seringkali norma-norma kesopanan yang ada dipengaruhi oleh konvensi budaya, yang didasarkan dari nilai-nilai social kemasyarakatan. namun, setiap kelompok masyarakat memiliki nilai kesopanan tersendiri yang didasarkan dari norma kesopanan yang mereka percayai, dan norma kesopanan tersebut tidak sama bagi semua lawan bicara, situasi dan budaya. dalam norma jawa, misalnya, pemilihan linguistik atau kata sering dipengaruhi oleh usia, status, posisi, hubungan, pertimbangan sosial dan gender si penerima. artikel ini akan mengidentifikasi dan mengomentari beberapa aspek yang penting dari tulisannya coulmas yang berjudul 'kesopanan: dimensi budaya pilihan linguistik', bagian dari bab dari bukunya coulmas yang berjudul: 'sosiolinguistik: studi tentang pilihan pembicara' (2013). sebagai guru bahasa inggris, kita harus menyadari perbedaan penggunaaan kata atau pilihan linguistic sehingga kita bisa memperkenalkan strategi kesopanan dalam budaya tertentu kepada siswa. kata kunci: strategi kesopanan, pilihan linguistik, komunikasi how to cite: fitrah., hidayat. d. n. (2018). politeness: cultural dimensions of linguistic choice. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 26-34. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 27-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction people can express politeness in a number of ways when they interact with each other; the addressee‟s age, status, position, relationship, social constraints, gender, and so on. in some occasions, those variables of personal background even could influence the linguistic choices and attitudes in conversation. for example, when younger people talk to the older ones, it will be different when they talk to their peers, either in the way they communicate or in the way they behave. it has been common thing that people in the society would engage in that behavior as “to ensure that everyone feels affirmed in a social interaction” (foley, 1997, p. 270). given the importance of politeness strategies in the society, this essay will summarize and analyze some of the salient aspects in florian coulmas‟ chapter entitled „politeness: cultural dimension of linguistic choice‟. the article is part of the book chapters in „sociolinguistics: the study of speakers’ choices‟ (coulmas, 2013). in this chapter, coulmas (2013) defined the term politeness as based on politeness theory as well as cultural conventions. in a theoretical description, the notion of politeness should be culturally neutral and suitable for politeness differentiation. coulmas (2013) further stated that “[politeness] is a non-normative theoretical construct designed to compare various standards used in different societies for the assessment of speech behavior” (p. 85). a cultural convention of politeness refers to judgment of people‟s speech behaviour on the basis of the community‟s social values. it seems that a cultural convention originates from a particular sociocultural system, so understanding this notion is a prerequisite to behaving competently in that community. however, any theoretical notion of politeness has to recognize the fact that every society operates a normative notion of their own politeness, which is not the same for all interlocutors, situations and cultures. some researchers offer a general approach to politeness, for example, brown and levinson (1987) proposed the influential model of politeness, which focuses on rationality and face. face in brown and levinson‟s terminology, has a positive and a negative aspect. positive face is the desire to be accepted or liked by others, and negative face is the need to be independent and not be imposed on by others. earlier before the „two faces‟ models, leech (1983) also offered four different categories according to the inherent functions of communication acts: a) the convivial function of politeness, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 28-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license when illocutionary and social communication aim coincide, as in when interactants are greeting, offering, inviting, etc.; b) the collaborative function, where the illocutionary and the social aim are independent of one another, when speakers declare, assert, report, announce, etc.,; c) the competitive function of politeness, where the illocutionary goal competes with the social goal and speakers, order, ask, demand, beg, etc., and; d) the conflicting function, entails a conflict between the illocutionary and the social goal and occurs when speakers threaten, accuse and, in general, express negative feelings and reactions. moreover, one model after brown and levinson‟s (1987) model was the fraser‟s (1990, cited in kedveš, 2013) perspective on politeness, namely; a) the social-norm view, which sees politeness as socially appropriate behavior, pleasant towards others, b) the conversational-contract view, where politeness is seen within the frames of conversational contract between the interlocutors and suggests its dependency on correct context interpretation; c) the conversationalmaxim view, which is relevant to grice‟s (1975) cooperative principles which assume cooperation between the interlocutors, and; d) the face-saving view, which sees politeness as a linguistic behavior with the objective of preserving and/or enhancing one‟s face. coulmas (2013) pointed out that balancing these desires while considering every speaker‟s positive and negative needs is not easy. this is the art of politeness. he said that “[politeness is] the art of not committing face-threatening acts and protecting oneself again such acts” (p. 86). it is a complex art because every society is built on inequality. again, speech expressions vary along a politeness scale, and speakers can be more or less polite. this concern is influenced by the common dimensions of sex, age, class, power and wealth of the addressee. for example, „you may go outside now‟ is polite when offering an opportunity to a child, but inappropriate when used for someone who is in the position of authority over the speaker. in this case, it is not the term itself that is or is not polite, yet its selection in a given situation. he also noted that the interrelationship between speaker politeness and expression politeness is not the same for all languages and speech communities. some language have richer lexical and grammatical encoding of politeness than others; for example, korean encodes social relations by means of distinctly different speech levels which mark the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 29-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license different degrees of formality, distance and deference the speaker shows to the addressee. therefore, it will be hard for speakers to be polite if they are not able to bring together the linguistic means and the social norms of appropriate conduct in a particular context. aspects of politeness before commenting on some particular aspects of coulmas‟ article, we would like to state the reasons for choosing this article. firstly, our background is indonesian and in that culture, hierarchy of the language as coulmas (2013) illustrations is quite similar with korean. in comparison, english seems to be more egalitarian. secondly, since politeness strategies are important element for sustaining communication in our culture, it will be very useful for me as a teacher of english to be aware of this difference so that we could introduce politeness strategies in the target culture to our students. as spradley (1980) stated, language classroom should become an extension of culture learning process. therefore, students should understand the culture itself in three fundamental aspects that has been proposed by spradley (1980); what people do (culture behavior); what people know (cultural knowledge); what things people make and use (cultural artifacts). thirdly, politeness strategies are also important due to its scope in the society. as indonesia has so many different cultures which may also share different ways of politeness strategies, this topic would also be beneficial to be included in the classroom, so that students could see intercultural differences in humans‟ life or what kramsch (1998) named as „sphere of interculturality‟ where people could learn from how target culture and students‟ culture are contrasted. in that case, this chapter could be beneficial for indonesian context as it reflects how politeness strategies could be different depending on each context. for non-native speakers to perceive and teach politeness in english seems hard because politeness level in english are only subtly different from one another. for example, in a study by rinnert and kobayashi (1999), polite forms are used by japanese speakers more frequently than by native english speakers. however, does that mean english speakers are impolite? the answer should be a „no‟ as the degree of politeness itself might be different. taking another example, in english there is only one pronominal form of address „you‟ for all interlocutors. therefore, the speakers do not have choices for differentiating the degrees of formality and informality, respect and intimacy. hence, it can be hard to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 30-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license identify differences between speakers in terms of distribution of wealth, power, respect, intimacy and social distance in english-speaking societies. however, in the indonesian culture, the choices of address terms are richer and often determined by family relationship, social relationship, age, gender and status between speakers and addressees. in javanese culture, for instance, there are three ways to say „you‟ i.e. awakmu, sampeyan and panjenengan. awakmu is used when we speak with friends or younger people, sampeyan is used between two people of the same age who do not know each other or people to address older siblings, and panjenengan is used to address older people or those who have higher status than the speaker. another example, sundanese culture also has different ways only to express „you‟. when sundanese people talk to someone they really respect, they will use anjeun as to reflect higher social status or formality of situation. it will also be different when they talk to peers or younger people as they will use maneh to reflect casualty of situation and equal social status such as friendship and senior to junior. lastly, sundanese will also use different word like siya as to express the impoliteness and hatred to other people. those words are definitely important to see how the status of the interlocutors or how people see us in such conversation. the use of different forms of address is applied to express, formality, informality, intimacy and respect. the society values these rules governing politeness, and as a member of a social group we have to obey these rules to be considered polite. kramsch (1998) said that language is a system of signs that is seen as a cultural value. avoiding the use of its signs may be perceived as a rejection of the social group and their culture. this is due to the function of politeness itself as to maintain social relationship, so that people are required to act appropriately in specific situation. meier (1995) also supported that being appropriate in a specific society is a key success of a person to maintain social relationships, politeness. depending on the culture, however, politeness is indicated in different ways and perceived with different meanings. meier (1995) stated that “every society has some sort of norms for appropriate behavior, although these norms will vary” (p. 388). coulmas (2013) pointed that politeness is identified as cultural conventions based on the community‟s social values, which seems true in the case of javanese. what is inappropriate according to the society‟s judgment will be regarded as impolite. most politeness expressions in javanese are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 31-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from social values. the words themselves (e.g. awakmu, sampeyan and panjenengan) do not express rudeness but will be labeled impolite if they are applied improperly. for example, if we use „awakmu‟ to an elder, that elder will be offended and think that we do not know how to behave politely. fraser and nolen, cited in watts, ide and ehlich (1992), suggested that politeness is the result of a conversational contract by the participant in an effort to maintain socio-communicative interaction, which is free of conflict. in indonesian context, for instance, aziz (2000, as cited in chojimah, 2015) mentioned four values in the principle of mutual consideration, namely a) harm and favor potential, which reminds us to be careful in uttering expressions since they are potentially either to harm or favor others; b) shared-feeling principle, which reminds us that our addressee has the same feeling as we do; c) prima facie principle, which stresses the importance of impression in the first sight since it is the point at which our addressee evaluates our politeness manner, and; d) continuity principle, which suggests that the continuity of our communication is dependent on the present communication. this article does not say much about the linguistic choices used in english but gives more examples of politeness levels in other languages. for example, the writer states that the statement „you may go out‟ is inappropriate when used towards a person who has authority over the speaker, but gives no example of way to express the same thing. for non-native english speaker, this would be confusing and may cause misunderstanding. this should be justifiable because it seems important for us as non-native speakers to see how exactly native speakers do it in their culture. in other words, we understand that different culture may share different ways to express it, but in this case, non-native readers may need some explicit examples to gain better understanding about that topic. coulmas (2013) mentioned that there is a correlation between indirectness and politeness. indirectness can be used as a technique of maintaining face and conflict avoidance. for example, a request in the form of an interrogative sentence (could you have this done by three o’clock) is more polite than declarative (i need this by three o’clock this afternoon). the effect of indirectness is to decrease the risk and soften the threat by lowering obligation and providing more options to continue the conversation. however, in the indonesian culture, culture the use of a declarative sentence, as in „i need this by three o’clock this afternoon‟, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 32-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license does not mean less polite in a particular circumstances. for example, if this statement is spoken by addressee‟s boss. in this case, the speaker has power to say this to his/her employee, and this is the employee‟s job to do what his/her boss wants. another example is the conversation between a seller and a buyer. the buyer often says „i want to buy a kilo of meat‟ instead of „can i get a kilo of meat please‟. in this case, we can use declarative sentence since we are the one who pays the seller, so we have power to do this. there is an assumption in the indonesian culture that a buyer is exemplified as a “king” and the seller has to please them as a part of service. i notice that australians do not use declarative sentence when buying something. they will say „can i get a kilo of meat‟ instead of „i want to buy a kilo of meat‟. this difference may lead to misunderstanding if a non-native english speaker does not know the culture of the target language. to provide another example, the way indonesians and australians express apology has been clearly significant in various situation. for example, expressing apology or saying „sorry’ is often related to confession of mistakes and/ or asking for forgiveness in a very serious context where it needs to be done in a private manner like two persons talking together. however, this is definitely different when i noticed how australians are so easily saying „i am sorry‟ to other people even though they did not make the mistake. for example, when i was standing on the bus with some australians and our bags bumped to each other incidentally, they directly said „sorry’ as soon as possible. at the first time, i always thought that it was totally fine and nothing serious happened there. sooner, i asked myself why they said sorry all the time so easily. then, i realized that australia tended to say „sorry’ to reduce tension as soon as possible, especially for strangers. coulmas (2013) statement that indirectness strategy is used to minimize the acts, which can threaten the addressee‟s face and reduce the speaker‟s face at risk seems true. in javanese culture, it is very sensitive to give orders or advice, to show one‟s dislike of the addressee, to express criticism and show disagreement. these acts are even more sensitive if they are done by younger people toward elders. according to javanese cultural norm, younger people are not expected to give orders, advice and express criticism. if, however, they have to give advice, they have to express it in a very polite way by using indirect language. the speakers cannot express explicitly what they want or what they feel, but they are expected to say something else in such a way that the addressee can ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 33-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understand what the speakers really want him to do (smith-hefner, 1989). this strategy has also been proposed by brown and levinson (1987) in their offrecord strategy. they also listed some strategies that are probably related to javanese‟s culture, such as giving hints, giving association clues, presupposing, understating or saying less than is required, overstating or giving information more than what is needed, using tautologies (uttering patent and necessary truth), using contradictions, being ironic, using metaphor, using rhetorical questions that do not require any answer, being ambiguous, being vague, overgeneralizing and not naming the hearer or addressing him directly, displacing, being incomplete by using ellipsis. conclusion and suggestion to sum up, it seems to be clear that as each culture has their own values that may differ one from the others, politeness strategies are one of important subjects in language teaching and learning. the objective is not limited to only understand others‟ culture, but also understand why we are different, how we should react to the difference, how we should be proud of our own values, and how we should respect to the differences. what is highly valued in one culture may not be appreciated in another culture and some politeness strategies may not be easy to be accepted. some people may think that, perhaps, it would be easy the speaker and the addressee are from the same culture. however, not even a society, each person itself may have different cultures depending on how their view is shaped in their community. with all the differences, it should be clear that reaching one agreement in the society is the only way that humans beings should do to maintain harmony. using appropriate linguistic choices in one culture, for example, would be one way to show appropriate politeness strategies. to do so, in the context of teaching and learning of target culture, language teachers, therefore, have responsibility to accommodate the concept of politeness strategies. in the future, it is expected that students could minimize misunderstanding in communicating to people from other cultures. references brown, p. & levinson, c. s. (1987). politeness: some universals of language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. chojimah, n. (2015). refusal and politeness strategies in relation to social status: a case of faceijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 34-34 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license threatening act among indonesian university students. theory and practice in language studies, 5(5), 906-918. coulmas, f. (2013). sociolinguistic: the study of speakers’ choices. cambridge: cambridge university press. foley, w. (1997). anthropological linguistics: an introduction. oxford: basil blackwell. fraser, b. (1983). the domain of pragmatics, in j. richards and r. schmidt (eds.), language and communication (pp. 29-59). new york: longman. kedveš, a. (2013). face threatening acts and politeness strategies in summer school applications calls. jezikoslovlje, 14(2), 431-444. kramsch, c. (1998). language and culture. oxford: oxford university press. leech, g. n. (1983). principles of pragmatics. england: longman group limited. meier, a. j. (1995). passages of politeness. journal of pragmatics, 24(4), 381-392. rinnert, c., & kobayashi, h. (1999). requestive hints in japanese and english. journal of pragmatics, 31(9), 1173-1201. smith-hefner, j. n. (1989). a social history of language change in highland east java. journal of asian studies, 48(2), 256-273. spradley, j. p., & mccurdy, d. w. (1980). anthropology: the cultural perspective. john wiley & sons. watt, j. r., ide, s., & ehlich, k. (1992). politeness in language: studies in its history, theory and practice. new york: mouton de gruyter. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 216-237 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17690 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee narrative study: diary of a digital immigrant efl teacher in myanmar yam saroh*, khin wint war htun received: 09th oct 2020; revised: 16th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract teachers, mainly digital immigrants, find challenges to chase technology to integrate digital learning in the classroom. the previous studies revealed that some digital immigrant teachers, the newcomers of the digital age, lacked the confidence to integrate technology during teaching since they were aware of the fact that their students were more proficient than they were. this study depicts the struggles of a digital immigrant efl teacher-educator to engage with technology that aims at improving the english teaching performance. a digital immigrant efl teacher from a high-quality education college in myanmar was invited to be the research participant. openended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with both the research participant and students were applied to collect the data. the triangulation data revealed that the digital immigrant efl teacher found difficulties in creating her digital learning media and improving her teaching technology integration competence due to her insufficient knowledge and it skills. it also revealed that integrating technology improved the teacher's teaching performance; however, it destructed the objectives of the teaching due to technology deviation on students' attention. key words: digital learner; digital immigrant teacher; efl teaching; technology integration abstrak guru, terutama yang imigran digital, mengalami tantangan besar dalam mengejar ketertinggalan mereka terhadap teknologi yang bertujuan mengintegrasikan pembelajaran digital di kelas. studi sebelumnya mengungkapkan bahwa beberapa guru imigran digital, pendatang baru di era digital, kurang percaya diri untuk mengintegrasikan teknologi selama mengajar karena mereka menyadari fakta bahwa siswanya lebih mahir. penelitian ini menggambarkan seorang guru-pendidik efl imigran digital untuk terlibat dengan teknologi yang bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kinerja pengajaran bahasa inggris. seorang guru efl imigran digital dari perguruan tinggi pendidikan berkualitas di myanmar diundang untuk menjadi peserta penelitian. kuesioner terbuka dan wawancara semi terstruktur untuk peserta penelitian dan mahasiswa digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data. triangulasi data mengungkapkan bahwa guru efl imigran digital mengalami kesulitan dalam media pembelajaran digital dan meningkatkan kompetensi integrasi teknologi karena pengetahuan dan keterampilannya yang kurang di bidang teknologi informasi. ia juga mengungkapkan bahwa mengintegrasikan teknologi meningkatkan kinerja mengajar guru. namun, hal itu merusak tujuan pembelajaran karena adanya penyimpangan teknologi yang menjadi perhatian siswa. kata kunci: pembelajar digital; guru imigran digital; pengajaran efl integrasi teknologi how to cite: saroh yam., htun khin w. (2020). narrative study: diary of a digital immigrant efl teacher in myanmar. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 216-237. doi:10.17690 /ijee.v7i2.17690 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 217-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction technology plays a vital role in today's everyday life of people. from setting the alarm in the morning to wake up to arranging the work schedule, learning, communicating, travelling to staying up to date with the world's news in the evening, we survive every day with the use of technology. thus, no one can deny that it is of paramount importance for everyone to use technology in the 21st century, including in the education field. even the use of technology has been promoted to be integrated into the class functioned as digital teaching media. the use of technology in myanmar has become an essential and necessary tool in conducting effective teaching. as an example of the case is english class. english is taught as a compulsory and foreign language from the primary level to the upper secondary level. teachers who teach english are expected to have more than enough proficiency for their teaching level. that is why teachertrainees at the education colleges are taught english as a compulsory subject to having a good proficiency in teaching their students once they become teachers. the education colleges must provide time, effort, and resources to teach english that can be taught not as a subject but as a language. teacher educators have to use different teaching methodologies in order to cater to different learning styles. here, technology functions as a significant and beneficial teaching media in conducting an active english language classroom. in the term „technology‟, communication methods for language teaching in which the personal computer plays a central role is included (davies & hewer, 2012; nomass, 2013). with advancements in technology, we now have many other technological tools like overhead projectors, electronic whiteboards, and mobile phones besides computers. using technology to help efl teaching and learning is not a new practice. khaerudin (2010) stated in his article that there had been attempts to bring technology into the language classroom since the 1960s. it is commonly believed that different generations have different capabilities in the use of advanced technology. while the teacher-trainees (as newer generations) in education colleges are well-equipped to use the technological tools, the teachereducators (as older generations) are more resistant and uncomfortable to use the new forms of technology. with the reform of the curriculum in myanmar since 2017, teachers, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 218-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license especially teacher educators, are required to adapt to the new and innovative teaching strategies, including the use of digital equipment in the classroom. therefore, the myanmar moe has asked the efl teacher-educators to take the courses on the use of technology in respective universities and colleges. however, it is still not very common and convenient to use technology in the classroom for digital immigrant teacher-educators in myanmar. due to this fact, the researchers are interested in scrutinizing the process of a digital immigrant efl teachereducator in myanmar to engage with technology. this study is significant for other myanmar efl teacher-educators to get more insights and suggestions on integrating technology into their efl teaching. besides, it will also benefit the efl practitioners and policymakers to understand the real challenges faced by most digital immigrant efl teachereducators in myanmar in implementing technology in the class. future researchers may also get research inspiration to organize further and more in-depth study involving a lot more teachers to trace the digital immigrant efl teacher‟s knowledge and skill. therefore, it is essential to research this issue since it can depict the digital age gap experienced by digital immigrant teachers and digital native students. considering the digital age gap, the world today was unlike the world four decades ago. an infant born at this age is familiar with the rapid growth of technology such as smartphones, computers, laptops, and other technological devices. the toddlers are even fluent in using video games and game applications on a smartphone. in contrast, the generation from four decades ago was born in an era of limited access to sophisticated technology. they acknowledged technology in the form of cable phone, television, and facsimile. even when they grew up to be teenagers, they found a limited number of mobile phones. noting the disparity of technological growth between these two generations, guo and petrina (2008) state, "there is a gap between young students and their elders, including their teachers, respecting their competencies with technologies." it is noteworthy that technological fluency between the young and the elder instigates the gap. the young born in the rapid growth of sophisticated technology is fluent enough using technology. at the same time, the elders tend to be new learners http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 219-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license struggling to understand technological languages, terms, and functions. regarding this context, prensky (2001), therefore, calls these both generations in two different classifications; 'digital native' and 'digital immigrant.' in short, the digital immigrant teachers are those who start learning, using, and engaging with technology when they have already been an adult. in contrast, digital immigrant students are the netgeneration who have been familiar with digital tools. digital native learners are the generations born into a ubiquitous digital media environment called millennials or net generation, altering the conventional cognitive and information processing to be the digital base (bittman, rutherford, & unsworth, 2011; prensky, 2001; howe & strauss, 2000; tapscott, 1998). it infers that the generation born within the growth of technology, such as digital media as this current age, is a so-called digital native. referring to the elaboration mentioned above, it implies that today's youth or students are pondered to pin as digital native since they are fluent enough to function technology to assist their mobilization and communication in their daily activities. nowadays, some of the digital natives are even familiar with the use of technology as a means of productivity and marketing purposes for their future career and business. in terms of education, students are accustomed to signifying technology as the primary tool to complete their learning assignments. for example, to complete a paper, they will, undoubtedly, prefer surfing the internet, find and download the materials or books they need instead of searching the materials from the paperbook in the library. some of them have already been acquainted with using interactive applications, such as kahoot, edmodo, smart draw, quipper, star chart, and youtube, with understanding the material explained quickly. it implies that digital native students benefit from technology to improve their academic performance and attain their learning goals. it is undeniable that technology contributes to the significance and becomes the primary assisted tool for digital natives to improve their learning performance and achieve their learning objectives. digital immigrants indicate a newcomer to the digital age. they are called digital immigrants since they start acquiring, learning, and struggling to engage with technological tools and media when they grow up as adults. in other words, it infers that they are not familiar with the use of technological tools and media since they were born. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 220-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license according to prensky (2001) and guo and petrina (2008), digital immigrants grow up during the development of digital media. consequently, when it comes to using technology, they are still learning new technological language and struggle to engage with the new digital devices and explore online. in the case of education, mcnaught et al. (2009) state that digital immigrants are possibly a group that contains most academic teachers and/or teacher educators possessing less digital skill and using less digital tools and media in their teachinglearning activity either inside or outside the class. in their daily teachinglearning, they ponder on applying traditional literacy. hague and williamson (2009) elucidate that this literacy emphasizes reading and writing in the shared knowledge and information of culture. resources used are commonly paper-based. in short, it implies that digital immigrants likely function as conventional teaching materials and tools to develop the students' learning performance. judson (2006), and chaaban and ellili-cherif (2016) state that educational technology integration means using technology as teaching tools or media to develop students' problem-solving and critical thinking skills. for teachers categorized as digital immigrants, using technology during the teaching-learning process requires skills, knowledge, efforts, and willingness. effort and willingness sometimes become the critical factor of digital immigrant efl teachers integrating technology in their teaching since they are not accustomed to functioning technological devices as a means of teaching-learning purposes. the willingness of digital immigrant efl teachers to engage with technology is frequently confronted with barriers. factors emerge: some potential barriers in educational technology integration in efl teaching are classified into internal and external factors (chaaban & ellilicherif, 2016). based on the internal factors, the obstacles emerged due to lack of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, lack of understanding of the usage of the digital devices, and limited time to prepare the technologyintegrated lesson. in terms of lacking technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, digital immigrant efl teachers generally have limited knowledge of integrating technology into the teaching and learning activity. therefore, angeli and valanides (2009) suggest first obtaining and deepening knowledge on applying educational technology integration into the teaching and learning of the specific subject matter. to conquer the second internal http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 221-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license factor, hew and brush (2006) advise teachers to select appropriate resources, evaluate students' learning, manage their classroom, and resolve a simple technical issue. regarding the last internal factor, digital immigrant efl teachers require having proper time management. this challenge generally emerges due to efl teachers' limited knowledge and skills towards educational technology integration. therefore, they are obliged to forgo their time to learn and prepare the technology-integration, yet they have many duties and responsibilities out of teaching-learning. this makes them have limited time to learn and prepare the technology-integration; hence, they are infrequent to integrate technology into their efl teaching-learning activities. the other factor influencing the barrier in educational technology integration is the so-called external factor. this factor emerges mostly caused by the environment, such as limited access, less training, and support from the surroundings (mueller et al., 2008; chaaban & ellilicherif, 2016). it is common to find out that education institutions provide limited technology facilities, such as a limited number of computers, lcd projectors, the internet, and other technological tools. the other paramount importance factor getting less attention, either the government or educational institution, is digital training or workshop. it is essential to assist digital immigrant efl teachers to cope with the challenges and barriers in functioning technological tools and application in their teaching-learning process. therefore, to conquer this barrier, there must be good collaborative teamwork among efl teacher-educators, the educational institution, and the government, both local and central, to provide practical training or workshop on how to implement technology effectively in teaching. method research design a qualitative method in terms of narrative study is applied to construct inductive interpretation and analysis in this study. this design allows the researchers to tell the story experienced by the research participant in coping with technology integration challenges in the class. thus, it is essential to clearly understand the topic/issue and listen carefully to the participant's story so that the researchers can tell the story in both academic and simple narration, which enables the readers to understand the point of the story easily. the psychological approach in this study concentrates on the personal, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 222-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license including thoughts and motivations (merriam & tisdell, 2016), which aims at attaining the research objectives; obtaining a profound understanding of how digital immigrant teacher coping the digital age, uncovering the challenges confronted, interpreting the intended willingness and construing solution towards the obstacles emerged. research site and participants the research participant in this study is a teacher educator lecturing in a well-known education college in myanmar. she ponders to be the participant in this study since she meets the criteria of digital immigrant proposed by prensky (2001), guo and petrina (2008), and mcnaught, lam, and ho (2009). in detail, she was born in an era in which digital technology was not developed yet in her country. therefore, she was growing up at the same time with the development of digital media. consequently, when it comes to using technology, she is still learning a new technological language and struggles to engage with the new digital devices and exploring online. it is proven by the participant‟s statement in the open-ended questionnaire and a series of semi-structured interviews, in which she always convinces that she is not fluent enough in learning new technological devices and applications. she states that she even gets challenges in making powerpoint for teaching in the class. further criteria make her the most appropriate research participant in this study because she is pondered as a senior teacher educator in myanmar who has experienced teaching english for years. she joined the it course to improve her technology integration as mandated by the myanmar moe. also, she became a role model in her college due to her intense willingness to engage with technology. in general, she represented the real portray of efl digital immigrant teachers in myanmar today. data collection and analysis there are two instruments applied in this study; they are an open-ended questionnaire and a series of semistructured interviews. the open-ended questionnaire was given only to the participant (the teacher-educator). at the same time, the semi-structured interviews were done not only with the participant but also with the participant‟s students. it is of paramount importance to interview the participant‟s students since it is beneficial to get more insight and information about what the participant had informed. besides, information taken from the third party is also beneficial for triangulating the data so http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 223-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that the participants' consistency during the process of answering the openended questionnaire and the semistructured interviews can be checked. it aims to keep the validity of the research result. then, to be effectively analyzing the research data, the maxqda application was used to assist the researcher in organizing and archiving the data. besides, it is also very beneficial to help in coding the data before. finally, the researchers did the analysis. the data collection obtained firstly input into maxqda application. then, the researchers discussed to make the codes related to the focus of the study. after coding the data, the researchers could easily depict the raw portrayal of the open-ended questionnaire results and the interviews. the data gained from the open-ended questionnaire, interviews with the participant, and interviews with the participant's students were triangulated to check and measure the consistency of the participant's responses to obtain a valid result. findings and discussion findings based on the results of scrutinizing and verifying the aggregate research data gained from the open-ended questionnaire and interviews, there were three significant points noted from the participant‟s experience in adapting and integrating ict in her efl teaching. the three major points are: 1. efl teacher‟s motives for technology integration. 2. challenges in acquiring ict competence. 3. the solution to overcome the challenges. discussion efl teacher’s motive for technology integration based on the participant‟s initial response to the open-ended questionnaire, she said that her father was the one who bought the laptop so that she could also have the chance to engage with computers and the internet. “i got my first laptop in 2012 as my father bought me so that i could start learning computer basic and the internet”. (the participant #equestionnaire) it implies that the participant got support from his father to start learning the use of computers and the internet. this support, then, triggers the participant‟s willingness to learn more about computer software and the internet use. the digital facility she got http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 224-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from her father was her initial external motive to push herself to explore technology use for her efl teaching. besides her father, she got additional support from her sister. “i learned from my sister and colleagues to be able to use a computer.” (the participant #interview-2) it shows that she got full support from her family to engage with technology. her father facilitated her with the technological tool, while her sister guided and taught her to explore and learn the specialized software and application for efl teaching. in this case, it is noticed that family contribution plays a vital role in the participant's learning technology process. besides family, the participant‟s students and colleagues also play a significant role as an external motivator during her process to engage with technology as a means of teaching purposes. during the interview, she told her students and colleagues at her workplace for some digital terms and languages that she did not know. when she was asked how she could learn and engage with technology, especially for efl teaching purposes, she explained that the people surrounding her were the best support system. she had students and colleagues who were helpful to her. they were younger and more fluent in operating technology than she was. “i sometimes ask my students when i do not understand something or some application in using a computer.” (the participant #e-questionnaire) “whenever i found some difficulties in making ppt, i asked my colleagues or friend for help because some of my colleagues and students are very good at using technology than me.” (the participant #interview-2) then, her students were invited in the interview and asked about the participant‟s ict skill in teaching to validate the participant's response. “i think my teacher ict skill is just fair because she often asks students in the class to help her with ict tools during her teaching.” (student-1 #interview) it is noted that the participant had not only a sound support system from family, students, and colleagues but also a strong self-efficacy within herself. it is reflected in her attitude, willingness to learn from her students during the class. as a senior efl teacher-educator in her college, the participant was not reluctant to ask for help in learning technological tools and applications from her colleges or students who were away younger than http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 225-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license her. she put away her pride as a senior efl teacher-educator. she did believe that the younger might be more fluent than she was. through her attitude, she convinced that her pride as a senior efl teacher-educator would not be dropped down because of learning new things from the juniors. most asian people, including burmese, would consider pride if they have to ask, moreover learn, from the juniors. another motive that can be noted from the participant's process in engaging with technology is a positive attitude towards technology use. “technology is so much helpful in teaching.” (the participant #equestionnaire) "i learned that there are paramount benefits of using it (technology) in the classroom, and i am encouraged by that fact." (the participant #interview-4) regarding the statements as mentioned above, it infers that the participant had a positive attitude towards the use of technology in efl teaching and a strong belief that technology is beneficial for her efl teaching improvement. she was willing to learn and experience new things, though she knew that she would face some difficulties. she did not give up on the limitation that she could not readily recognize and memorize the technological terms. she tried her best to encounter her limitation by asking and learning from her juniors and students. besides, she has strong motivation within herself to apply ict tools in the class. the core motive that makes her struggle to use ict in her teaching is to draw her students‟ attention on what she explained during the lesson. "i use technology in teaching english, as it can attract students' attention." (the participant #openended questionnaire) “i believe it (technology) will help me. teaching by using technology can attract students‟ learning to an extent.” (the participant #interview-1) "i try (as much as) i can integrate technology into my teaching" (the participant #interview-1) having an internal motive to integrate technology in the efl class, the participant was willing to spend her leisure time to learn digital terms and application for efl teaching purposes. the internal motivation within herself empowered her to upgrade her knowledge in using technology in order to be able to implement technology integration in her class. besides the abovementioned motives, the participant also informed that the college's policy also triggered http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 226-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license her to apply technology in her teaching. further, she explained that her department's head mandated all the efl teacher-educators to integrate technology during a teaching in the class. due to this regulation, all efl teacher-educators are facilitated to get computer courses to assist them in engaging with technology for efl teaching purposes. “as a teacher in education college, we have to take a computer course for teachers twice a week. moreover, the heads of our department also encourage us to use it." (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) "i took that (ict) course for four months last year, and i retake it this year." (the participant #interview-2) the college‟s policy had become influential external factors to all the digital immigrant efl teachereducators, primarily the participant to engage easily with technology. in the initial stage, the participant might feel that taking the course was only a compulsory program. however, she felt that she got the beneficial knowledge in terms of technology implementation for her teaching. for example, she learned how to create her blog from the course that can be helpful as one of her digital teaching media. she, therefore, decides to retake the ict course this year. further, the participant explained that the course inspired her to learn more about technology use outside of the class. “sometimes, we teachers share some useful apps for teaching english and discuss how to use them effectively.” (the participants #interview-1) “i watch some useful teaching techniques or search for videos for my teaching.” (the participant #interview2) the interview results infer that the compulsory program of ict courses provided by the college for the teachereducators significantly influences the digital immigrant efl teachereducators to have more discussion and share a section with their colleagues about digital tools for teaching. it means that college's policy as the external factor has a significant effect on the improvement of digital immigrant teachers' knowledge and competence. regarding the above research results, there were two classifications of factors influencing technology integration done by digital immigrant efl teacher-educator, including internal motive and external motive. ertmer, addison, and lane (1999), ertmer and ottenbreit-lefwich (2010), hew and brush (2006), liu, lin, & http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 227-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license zhang (2017), mumtaz (2000), and yang and chun (2018) also state that group of factors influencing technology integration is classified into two categories; external motive and internal motive. while the external motive is support factors that are external to the efl teacher-educator that commonly are in the form of resources and professional training, the internal motive is support factors that are internal to the teacher-educator. in other words, the internal motive is noted as factors that come out of the teacher-educator‟s individuality. these factors are generally in the form of knowledge and skills, attitudes, and beliefs. in conclusion, this narrative found that two powerful motives were encouraging the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator to engage with technology integration as a means of teaching purposes. the two motives were external and internal motives. the external motives that the participant had to integrate technology into her teaching are; 1) family support, 2) students support, 3) colleague support, and 4) college policy. then, the internal motives empowering her to engage with technology integration as a means of teaching purposes are; 1) belief, 2) positive attitude toward the use of technology, 3) self-motivation, and 4) self-efficacy. both the external and internal motives significantly impact the teacher-educator‟s technology integration improvement in efl teaching. these two motives' combined role results in progressive improvement for the teacher-educator‟s technology integration competence in her efl teaching practice. therefore, it notices that internal motives and external motives are paramount essential to encourage a digital immigrant teachereducator to move on to be a digital native. considering the balance power of both internal and external motives gives the best results to construct a supportive digital learning environment for the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator. challenges in acquiring technology integration competence during the process of data collection both through open-ended questionnaire and a series of the interview, the participant shared a bunch of crucial information about the obstacles she used to face and should encounter in the process of learning and integrating technology as a means of efl teaching purposes. one of the challenges she had to encounter all the time is having a lack of time. she informed us that as an efl teachereducator, she had to handle many works out teaching responsibilities. sometimes she also had to deal with her http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 228-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license duty from the college during her break time. "i do not have a particular free time, i mean, even on weekends, i can be called upon duty from my department." (the participant #interview-4) workloads seemed to be a crucial challenge for the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator to encounter. on one side, the efl teacher-educator might be willing to learn and practice technological devices and applications. while on the other side, there is only limited time to cope with the effort to learn the use of digital devices and terms. kopcha (2012) states that time factor frequently becomes the most cited obstacle discouraging digital immigrant teachers, including teachereducators, from learning technology integration beyond the low levels. the result of this study also revealed the same thing that time had become a complex challenge for the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator since the workload seemed to be neverending. thus, it took almost most of the working time. the next challenge faced by the participant in this study is a lack of technological knowledge and skills as she was born in an era of technology that did not grow well. she firstly engaged and immersed herself with technology in the form of a personal computer (pc) was in 2012 when she got her first laptop from her father. she used to utilize a mobile phone only for a means of communication, texting, and calling. therefore, during the interview process, the participant convinced her that she had a deficient technology integration standard. "i am not very good at making powerpoint and other things on the laptop." (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) “i found some difficulties in making ppt.” (the participant #interview-2) “i need to ask the ict teacher, or my colleagues or students and try to memorize them (technological knowledge) again and again.” (the participant #interview-2) “i learned from my sister and colleagues to be able to use a computer.” (the participant #interview-2) “i am not very familiar with them (technological terms).” (the participant #interview-4) the participant‟s above statements infers that a digital immigrant efl teacher-educator finds a hard time coping with technology integration. besides, the capability to learn the technology is different from the digital http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 229-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license native who has been engaged with technology since childhood. hew and brush (2006), hughes (2005), and wang et al. (2014) convinced that teachereducator‟s knowledge in using technology to facilitate students‟ efl learning and their technical skills had been identified as the main barriers of technology integration. this fact made digital immigrant efl teacher-educator found it challenging to improve their technology integration competence. while angeli and valanides (2009), hughes (2005), hew and brush (2006), wang et al. (2014), and chaaban and ellili-cherif (2016) convince that in order to use technology in class, teachers need to know how to implement technology integration into the teaching and learning of specific subject matter; often referred to as technological, pedagogical, content knowledge. thus, the lack of technological knowledge and skills in this study revealed a complex challenge to encounter to engage with technology integration for teaching purposes. the following challenge is the lack of technology integration teaching strategies. kay (2006), lambert and gong (2010), and chaaban and ellilicherif (2016) stated that advocating full integration strategies, including technology integration, is urgently needed to prepare future teachers adequately. however, the participant found it challenging to attain effective technology integration teaching strategies in the efl class. she did not find an efficient formula yet to balance the use of technology and the teaching objectives. “my weakness in using technology, it is hard for me to achieve the objectives of my teaching.” (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) the participant said that if she used technology in her teaching, it was difficult for her to accomplish the learning objective as the students focused more on technological tools. this fact, then, became the reason for the digital immigrant efl teachereducator to be stuck on the conventional efl teaching method. while, tondeur et al. (2012), and chaaban and ellili-cherif (2016) convinced that pre-service teachers are not adequately prepared to teach with technology, and most of them graduate using technologies they could already use. hence, this challenge also becomes a crucial factor that needs to be an encounter to find a practical solution to assist the digital immigrant teachereducator in coping with technology integration in efl teaching. another challenge that profoundly influences digital immigrant efl teacher-educator's performance in this http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 230-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license study to integrate technology is the lack of access to technology sources. it was noticed that the college mandated a policy that all the efl teachereducators must join the ict course provided by the college. however, it was not in line with the fact that the college provided limited access to technology resources for the efl teacher-educators. “in college, we have only two ohp and no computer in the classrooms.” (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) the situation in this study is aligned with chaaban and ellili-cherif (2016). they stated that the constant advancement of technological tools and their need for ongoing maintenance change the nature of environmental barriers that teachers may encounter. the same condition the participant experience in having lack of access to technology becomes a typical case found in different context and condition of an educational institution. it means this challenge has become a shared issue in any context of the education situation and condition. technology destruction is, then, to be another issue that should be encountered by the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator in this study. the participant said that most students got destructed by the technology. they did not focus on the material, and they just paid more on the technology used in the class. in the end, they still did not catch what was explained to them. “students‟ attention is paid more to the technology than to the lesson.” (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) the other challenge found is the lack of standardized technology integration training and workshop. though the college's digital immigrant efl teacher-educators got ict courses, they never got such training or workshop about technology integration for efl teaching purposes. the ict course they got in the college only assisted how to use and operate some applications and websites, such as powerpoint, blogspot, and the others. “before the course, i only know how to use microsoft, and now (after the course) i have learned how to make slides very well in powerpoint and search for the teaching material not only from google but also from other useful websites too.” (the participant #interview-1) it infers that the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator's technological knowledge and skill in this study learn from the ict course provided by her college is the basic or low level. therefore, she did not have significant http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 231-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license improvement in integrating technology for her efl teaching purposes. mueller et al. (2008) explained that environmental factors, including access, training, and support, had been extensively investigated as they represent initial concerns towards any form of technology use in schools. li (2014), and salleh and laxman (2014) explained that numerous challenges are determining the complexity of integrating technology in teaching. the same thing also revealed in this study that there were many challenging issues experienced by the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator. to sum up, the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator has two categories of challenges in this study. the categories are external and internal challenges. in the internal challenges, the participant had to encounter some issues, such as a lack of time, a lack of technological knowledge and skills, and a lack of technology integration teaching strategies. meanwhile, the external challenges revealed in this study are a lack of access to technology resources, technology destruction, and a lack of standardized technology integration training and workshop. the proposed solution to overcome the challenges the above discussion about challenges revealed that some issues emerged in the process of the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator engaged with technology for teaching purposes. the participant shared that she could encounter only a few of the challenges, while she could not handle the others and let it be without being solved. thus, this section discusses the proposed solution applied by the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator in this study. the possible solution taken the previous studies for the unsolved solution this study. the first proposed solution taken from the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator experience is encountering technology destruction in teaching. the researcher asked the participant how she got the students‟ attention back when the students‟ attention destructed. to reduce the destruction of students‟ technology integration in her teaching, the participant said that drawing the students‟ attention back by asking questions is helpful. when asking a question does not work to get the students‟ attention back, asking some students to demonstrate the lesson they have just discussed is quietly effective. participant: i try to draw their attention back by asking questions or asking some students to do some demonstration about the lesson i have been teaching.” (interview with the participant #phase-2) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 232-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the second proposed solution is to combat a lack of technological knowledge and skills and the lack of technology integration teaching strategies. to overcome these two internal challenges, the participant in this narrative study convinced that she encouraged and forced herself to engage with technology as much as possible. “whenever i found some difficulties in making ppt, i asked my college or friend for help because some of my colleagues and students are very good at using technology than me.” (the participant #interview-2) “mainly, i learned (technology use) from my colleagues and social media. then i try to practice by myself in my free time.” (the participant #interview2) “i need to ask the ict teacher, or my colleagues or students and try to memorize them again and again.” (the participant #interview-2) “i understand that teaching nowadays cannot be apart from technology. i want to be an effective teacher, and i need technology to conduct effective teaching in the classroom. therefore, i always encourage and force myself to follow the trends of technology as much as i can.” (the participant #interview-2) due to all the participant's responses, belief in technology use, positive attitude toward the use of technology, self-motivation, and selfefficacy play a crucial role in conquering the two challenges; the lack of technological knowledge and skills and the lack of technology integration teaching strategies. without having those four internal motives, it would be very challenging for digital immigrant efl teacher-educator to cope with technology integration in efl teaching. so, the following proposed solution is that digital immigrant efl teachereducators should grow motivation, selfefficacy, belief, and positive attitude towards technology integration for efl teaching purposes inside of themselves. the complicated issue about a lack of time seems impossible to conquer due to the workload and tight teaching schedule. moreover, most digital immigrant efl teacher-educators are seniors; hence, they highly possible have a vital position in their workplace. “i do not have a particular free time, i mean, even on weekends, i can be called upon duty from my department.” (the participant #interview-4) there must be a wise solution from the college or institution to give spare time for the digital immigrant efl teacher-educators to learn technology http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 233-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license integration. demanding the digital immigrant efl teacher-educators to be fluent in applying technology integration in efl teaching without giving them space and time to learn is inept. though the college mandates a policy regarding technology integration as a compulsory teaching program, it will be unworkable if the digital immigrant efl teacher-educators do not get a chance in terms of spare time to learn technology intensively. the workloads will always destruct their focus and ignore the importance of sharpening their technology integration competence. therefore, the only recommended solution is that giving them a reliable teaching schedule and lessen their workload so that they can focus a while on sharpening and developing their technology integration competence. then solution for the external challenge, a lack of access to technology resources, needs further material support from the college where the participant works, and the government to provide sufficient technology facilities for technology integration as a means of efl teaching purposes. “in college, we have only two ohp and no computer in the classrooms.” (the participant #open-ended questionnaire) in this highly technological era, it is quite surprising to find the fact that a well-known education college in a developing country does not have an adequate standard of technological devices to support the teaching and learning in the college. besides, the use of ohp now is patchy since most education institutions; moreover, a college has already used at least a computer and lcd projector in the class. the urgent proposed solution towards this issue is asking the college to finance the technology-facilities in the college. if the college could not afford it, there must be excellent communication to the government to provide national funding to provide digital facilities since the college is one of the most well-known colleges in the country. good collaborative work between the college and the government in financing the digital facilities in education college will relieve digital immigrant efl teachereducators in education college to integrate technology in efl teaching to develop a better national education. regarding the college's ict course, the participant said that during the course, she got knowledge and skill on how to make slides very well in powerpoint and search for the teaching material from digital platforms and websites. ertmer and ottenbreitleftwich (2010), and chaaban and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 234-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license cherif (2016) state that technology integration that supports conventional teaching, teacher-directed instruction (such as using presentation tools, searching the internet for information), is so-called low-level. in contrast, highlevel use to engage students in the construction of in-depth and connected knowledge. during the ict course that the participant attended, she did not get knowledge and skill for teaching strategy on how to integrate technology in efl teaching. besides, the ict course attended by the digital immigrant efl teacher-educator gave only basic knowledge of using technology. therefore, completing the course, the digital immigrant efl teachereducators got only low-level technology integration for efl teaching purposes. to encounter this issue, thus, the final proposed solution to encounter the technology destruction and the lack of standardized technology integration training and workshop is tpack (technological pedagogical and content knowledge). mishra and koehler (2006) and kivunja (2013) recommend tpack as a helpful tool to assist the digital immigrant efl teacher to understand how digital immigrant efl teachers can be effective teachers in a digital classroom. this strategy can help encounter the participant‟s challenges in adapting and integrating ict in her teaching. conclusion and suggestion in struggling to engage with technology, the digital immigrant efl teacher in this study showed that she has two powerful motives; external and internal motives. the external motives include family support, students support, colleague support, and college policy. in contrast, the internal motives cover belief, a positive attitude towards the use of technology, self-motivation, and self-efficacy. both the external and internal motives have an essential role in technology integration improvement for her efl teaching. the digital immigrant efl teacher faced two categories of challenges: external and internal challenges. internal challenges cover lack of time, lack of technological knowledge and skills, and lack of technology integration teaching strategies. the external challenges include lack of access to technology resources, technology destruction, and lack of standardized technology integration training and workshop. the challenges emerged; it is noticed that digital immigrant efl teachers need an organized tool to provide guidelines on integrating technology in teaching. thus, it is highly proposed to apply tpack (technological pedagogical and content knowledge) to encounter technology destruction and the lack of standardized technology integration training and workshop. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 235-237 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17690 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license regarding the study results, the researchers would recommend that having positive attitudes and supporting systems are the most essential factors to engage with the digital age. a positive attitude will lead digital immigrant teachers to be curious and never give up on learning new things related to technology integration. it will also keep our internal motivation and self-efficacy to overcome resistance and to cope with challenges. a support system from surroundings, family, colleague, students, college, and government, will help digital immigrant teachers learn technology integration. furthermore, the government, on the other hand, needs to organize better access to technology equipment in the classrooms and implement effective training on integrating technology into teaching for teachers. references angeli, c., & valanides, n. 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(2018). technology integration into the language classroom: developmental trajectory of beginning teachers. front. edu. china, 13(1), 1-27. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 281-296 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee investigation on gender and learner-centered teaching strategies toward learners' writing performance nursamsu received: 27st may 2021; revised: 13th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract this research investigated the interaction effects between gender and learner-centered teaching strategies toward learners' writing performance. the study was a quasi-experiment using tests as the research instrument. the participants were 72 learners of the english department at a state institution consisting of 34 males and 38 females. the class was classified into two parts: experiment groups consisting of self-directed learning class (sdl), discovery learning class (dl), and small group discussion class (sgd); and a control group: lecturing class (l). a two-way anova was used for data analysis. the findings confirmed a significant difference by gender (f=10.629. sig. 0.002<0.05); and learner-centered teaching strategies f=20.658. sig. 0.000<0.050) on the learners' writing performance. it also indicated that females (means score 73.46) were higher than males (means score 64.45). in contrast, no interaction effect simultaneously occurred among gender and the learner-centered teaching strategies (f 2.70) = 2.301. sig. 0.086>0.050). both of them did not contribute simultaneously to writing performance. lastly, the r squared was 0.574 indicating a high correlation of teaching strategies and gender (57%). the teachers were suggested to apply learner-centered teaching strategies in an l2 writing class at a higher education level. keywords: gender; learners-centered teaching strategies, writing performance abstrak penelitian ini menyelidiki pengaruh interaksi antara gender dan strategi pengajaran terpusat pada peserta didik terhadap kinerja menulis peserta didik. jenis penelitian ini adalah kuasi eksperimen dengan instrument yang digunakan adalah tes. partisipan berjumlah 72 mahasiswa jurusan bahasa inggris di sebuah universitas negeri yang terdiri dari 34 laki-laki dan 38 perempuan. kelas diklasifikasikan menjadi dua bagian: kelompok eksperimen yang terdiri dari kelas self-directed learning (sdl), kelas discovery learning (dl), ; kelas diskusi kelompok kecil (sgd); dan kelompok kontrol: kelas kuliah (l). anova dua jalur digunakan pada analisis data. temuan mengkonfirmasi perbedaan yang signifikan terjadi untuk jenis kelamin (f = 10,629. sig. 0,002 <0,05); dan strategi pengajaran terpusat pada peserta didik f=20.658. sig. 0,000<0,050) terhadap kemampuan menulis siswa. hal ini juga menunjukkan bahwa perempuan (rata-rata skor 73,46) lebih tinggi daripada laki-laki (rata-rata skor 64,45). sebaliknya, tidak ada efek interaksi yang terjadi secara simultan antara gender dan strategi pengajaran terpusat pada peserta didik (f 2,70) = 2,301. tanda tangan. 0,086>0,050). keduanya tidak berkontribusi secara bersamaan pada kinerja menulis. terakhir, nilai r kuadrat adalah 0,574 yang menunjukkan korelasi tinggi antara strategi pengajaran dan gender (57%). para guru disarankan untuk menerapkan strategi pengajaran yang berpusat pada peserta didik di kelas menulis l2 di pendidikan tinggi. kata kunci: gender; strategi mengajar berfokus ke siswa; kemampuan menulis how to cite: nursamsu. (2021). investigation on gender and learners-centered teaching strategies toward learners' writing performance. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 281-296. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 282-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction although many studies have been on learner-centered learning in recent years, further research is still needed to fulfill higher education demand in the millennial era. the teaching strategy is lesson preparation, including arrangement, instructional goals, and an outline to implement the teaching strategy (issac, 2010). commonly, the professor spent most of the time lecturing in class; the students only watched and listened to the lesson. this is the typical model of lecturing class. the learners study individually in class, and working together is discouraged. traditionally, teachers focused on lecturing in the classroom setting. this is called teacher-centered learning. in teacher-centered learning, teachers were dominant in the classroom setting. teachers are information sources to monitor learners (zohrabi et al., 2012). according to acat and dönmez (2009), teachers usually use particular textbooks, which are mostly grammar oriented and to compare the language structures of native and target languages. in teacher-centered learning, the questions were responded to directly by teachers without learners' involvement. the teachers control every learning experience (nagaraju et al., 2013). in traditional teaching, teachers work harder than learners. learners have less time to practice. meanwhile, teachers have much time to practice. in contrast to teacher-centered learning, learner-centered learning changes the classroom atmosphere from teacher to student. in this case, learners-centered learning becomes a pioneer of developing the learning paradigm. here, learners' activities are essential indicators in the learning process (zohrabi et al., 2012). this learning was connected with flexible, experiential, and self-directed learning (acat & dönmez, 2009). additionally. karamustafaoglu (2009) also states that learner-centered methods involve learning models participating in the classroom setting. in learner-centered teaching, learners move from passive participants to active participants. a teaching model positioned the learner at the epicentrum of classroom activity. the teacher has to motivate and facilitate learners in learning. learner-centered teaching employs various teaching methods. this model focuses on shifting the teachers' duty from information givers to facilitators and motivators in student learning. learner-centered teaching strategies cover active learning, cooperative learning, and inductive learning. nunan (2004, p. 8) stated that a learnercentered class involves students in the classroom setting in the learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 283-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license process. there are some reasons to take a learner-centered approach. it assists learners to study in their way. it put learning responsibility at learners and is seen as best practice internationally. teaching will have a solid foundation to develop learning skills. the teachers' duty is as a facilitator in the classroom setting. cheang (2009) studies on the related topic. the study revealed that the learner-centered method effectively improved motivation and learning strategies. in the present study, the study was restricted to three models of learner-centered teaching strategies, namely self-directed learning (sdl); discovery learning (dl); and group discussion (sgd). sdl is a learning model in which learners have the initiative to diagnose the needs of learning, determine objectives, choose learning materials, apply suitable learning methods, and make an assessment (knowles, 1975, p. 18). sdl is a learning model when students formulate the goals (fisher et al., 2001). teachers provide scaffolding, mentoring, advising. most sdl studies reveal that sdl can increase learners' self-assessment and motivation (bourner, 2003; dynan et al., 2008; schmenk, 2005). previous studies confirm that sdl deals with graduate education (acar, 2014; fisher et al., 2001; fox, 2011; sarmasoglu & görgülü, 2014; williamson, 2007). the findings confirmed that instructional environments have to be designed to improve learners' self-control skills. edmondson et al. (2012) believed that learners using sdl effectively have more benefits than others. ilhanbeyaztaş (2014) also confirmed that successful learners become effective learners by determining goals, providing a learning atmosphere, and monitoring their studying. in addition, karasakaloglu and saracaloglu (2009) confirm that female students performed better in academic self-design than male students. the finding of relevant researches revealed that sdl is in congruent level thinking skills. discovery learning (dl) is a learning method providing learners to conclude. it means that learners were problem solvers in the learning process (balım, 2009, p. 2). this idea is supported by abrahamson and kapur (2018), stating that discovery learning is a learning process that occurs when students are not presented with final lessons but are expected to organize themselves. meanwhile, wenning (2010) stated that dl is a learning model that enables learners to acquire knowledge. small group discussion (sgd) is a cooperative learning method giving more chances to learners to collect ideas and knowledge. sgd is a group of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 284-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students working corporately to achieve specific goals (brown, 2001). moreover, slavin (2006, p. 234) states that in sgd, learners work in four to six member groups to talk about a specific theme. it was stated that it is a situation in which students exchange and share information with their group to find the solution to the task given. wu (2008) confirms that sgd improves learners' participation in constructing knowledge. anggraini and soesatyo (2016) study the effect of sgd to improve students' scores in learning english for senior high school. the finding revealed that small group discussion successfully had a significant effect in improving students' results in learning and making students active during the learning process. next, putri et al. (2015) revealed that sgd performed better than the others in reading. last, juan (2014) shows that group discussion increases learners to train the four language skills. besides, sgd helps build the confidence and sense of participating in the classroom. moreover, some investigations evidenced that gender differences contributed to writing achievement. therefore, gender differences are another variable that contributed to this study. the current investigation revealed that men and women have differences in structures and function in the brain. for example, there are differences in the male and female cerebral cortex (rabinowicz et al., 2002). brains are more asymmetric in men but not in women (frederikse, 1999). this data motivates the researcher to validate the previous findings. therefore, the present study explores the interaction effects between gender and learner-centered teaching strategies toward writing ability. this study involved gender difference as a potential factor influencing learners' writing achievement. based on the facts above, the questions were: (a) how does gender significantly affect the learners' writing performance? (b) how does learner-centered teaching strategy significantly affect the learners' writing performance? (c) is there any interaction between gender and learnercentered teaching strategy to the learners' writing performance? the aim is to investigate whether gender and learner-centered teaching strategies are simultaneous to the learners' writing performance? the distinction is that the study involves gender and learnercentered teaching strategy as variables that influence the learners' writing accuracy. method the quasi-experimental design using factorial design was employed (ary et al., 2010, p. 641). the design is suitable since it examined two ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 285-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license categorical variables. the participants involved were 72 learners of the english department, consisting of 34 males and 38 females. the class was divided into two groups: experiment groups consisting of sdl class; dl class, sgd class; and a control group: lecturing class. the study applied a two-way analysis of variance to analyze data. the participants were self-directed learning (13) consisted of 8 males and five females; discovery learning (19) consisted of 8 males and 11 female; small group discussion (22) consisted of 12 males and ten female; and lecturing class (18) consisted of 6 males and 12 female, as illustrated in table 1. table 1. the participants of the study types of teaching strategies gender total male female sdl 8 5 13 dl 8 11 19 sgd 12 10 22 lecturing 6 12 18 total 34 38 72 the first step to do the research was divided into two groups: experiment groups consisting of experiment 1, experiment 2, experiment 3, and a control class. each class was given by the teacher a different treatment. experiment class 1 was treated using self-directed learning (sdl); experiment class 2 was treated using discovery learning (dl); experiment class 3 was treated using small group discussion (sgd), and a control class was taught using lecturing (l). the instrument was a writing test. after being given treatment, the participants were assigned to write an essay of about 450-500 words on the selected topic. before analyzing the data, the assumption tests were conducted before analyzing the data, such as testing the normality using the kolmogorov smirnoff test (sig.0.200 > p. 0.050, and testing homogeneity using levene's test of equality of error variances (sig. 0.870 > p.0.050 (pallant, 2000, p. 2). the output revealed that the data were normally distributed and did not violate the homogeneity. the null hypotheses were: (a) l2 learners with different gender did not significantly differ in their writing performance; (b) l2 learners with different types of learner-centered teaching strategies did not significantly differ in their writing performance? (c) l2 learners with different gender and learner-centered teaching strategies did not significantly differ in their writing performance. a two-way analysis of variance was employed to analyze data on the effect of gender and learnercentered teaching strategies on learners' writing performance. finally, interpretation of the result was made to see whether there was an effect or not gender and learner-centered teaching ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 286-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license strategies simultaneously on the learners' writing performance. findings and discussion findings the test was followed by 72 participants consisting of 34 males and 38 females, as seen in table 2. table 2. participant classification value label n teaching strategies 1. sdl 13 2 dl 19 3 sgd 22 4 lecturing 18 gender 1 male 34 2 female 38 the participants were self-directed learning (13) consisted of 8 males and five females; discovery learning (19) consisted of 8 males and 11 females; small group discussion (22) consisted of 12 males and ten females, and lecturing class (18) consisted of 6 males and 12 female. the learners' writing performance was described in table 2. table 3. the learners' writing performance teaching strategies gender mean std. deviation n selfdirected learning male 73.3750 6.27780 8 female 84.8000 5.76194 5 total 77.7692 8.21740 13 discovery learning male 59.3750 22.64596 8 female 77.7273 10.72465 11 total 70.0000 18.70829 19 small male 68.3333 6.31497 12 teaching strategies gender mean std. deviation n group discussion female 77.3000 7.93095 10 total 72.4091 8.29032 22 lecturing male 56.8333 11.75443 6 female 54.0000 10.18019 12 total 54.9444 10.46828 18 total male 65.3824 13.85863 34 female 71.0526 14.98097 38 total 68.3750 14.64071 72 figure 1. the learners' writing performance the output showed the summary of descriptive statistics from the analyzed data. it covered the means score, standard deviation, and the number of participants. this revealed that means score for learners’ writing performance based on gender and teaching strategies were: self-directed learning (male, 73.38; female 84.80; total 77.77); discovery learning (male, 59.38; female 77.73; total 70.00); small group discussion (male, 68.33; female 77.30; total 72.41); lecturing (male, 56.83; female 54.00; total 56.91). the learners' ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 287-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing performance was described in figure 1. testing statistical hypothesis to respond to the research questions, the two-way anova table is described as illustrated in table 3. table 3. the two-way anova: test between subjects source type iii sum of squares df mean square f sig. corrected model 6541.543a 7 934.506 12.311 .000 intercept 321453.213 1 321453.213 4.235e3 .000 teaching strategies 4704.190 3 1568.063 20.658 .000 gender 806.776 1 806.776 10.629 .002 teaching strategies * gender 524.053 3 174.684 2.301 .086 error 4857.957 64 75.906 total 356680.000 72 corrected total 11399.500 71 a. r squared = ,574 (adjusted r squared = ,527) the output showed the data to test the hypothesis. the first column showed the factors to be discussed in the study. the second column showed the total square. the third column showed the degrees of freedom (df). the fourth column showed the means squared. the fifth column showed the f value. the sixth column showed the significance value. the result of the anova test indicated that the corrected model was (f=12.311, p. 0.000<0.050). the model was valid to be investigated using a two-way analysis of variance. the intercept indicated (f=4.235e3, p. 0.000<0.050). the intercept was significant. the effect of teaching strategies toward writing accuracy was (f(3.71)=20.658. sig. 0.000<0.050). since it was smaller than 0.05, it was said that teaching strategies contributed to writing performance. then, the effect of gender on the learners' writing performance was (f=1.71)=10.629. sig. 0.002<0.05). since it was lower than 0.05, it was said that gender also contributed to writing accuracy. however, the interaction effect between teaching strategies and gender on learners' writing performance was (f (3.71)= 2.301. sig. 0.086>0.050). since it was more significant than 0.05, it was said that gender and teaching strategies did not contribute to writing performance. there was no interaction between gender and teaching strategies to learners' writing performance. the error value was 75.906; it was categorized as minor: the smaller, the better of the model. in addition, the r squared was 0.574. it indicated a high correlation. the variability of teaching strategies and gender learners' writing performance was 57%. a further explanation was explained: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 288-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license gender did not affect writing performance to respond to the first research question: "(a) does gender significantly affect the learners' writing performance?" the two-way analysis of variance table explained the answer, as explained in table 3 above. the output indicated that the f value of gender was (f=10.629. sig. 0.002<0.05). it was said that there was a difference in writing performance because of gender factors. in this case, female was higher than male in their writing performance. the average male score was 66.45, and female was 73.46, as illustrated in table 4. table 4. gender factor gender mean std. error 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound male 66.448 1.540 63.371 69.525 female 73.457 1.500 70.460 76.453 the output showed the difference in means score on learners' writing performance between males and females. it indicated that the means score of male was 64.45 and female was 73.46. then, the pairwise comparison table revealed that the mean difference was 8.978* and p. 0.002. there was a significant difference among males and females on writing performance (f=10.629, p.0. 002<0.05)., as illustrated in table 5. table 5. pairwise comparisons analysis (i) gend er (j) gend er mean differen ce (i-j) std. erro r sig. a 95% confidence interval for differencea lowe r boun d uppe r boun d m f -8.978* 2.75 6 .00 2 14.48 4 3.472 f m 8.978* 2.75 6 .00 2 3.472 14.48 4 teaching strategies did not affect writing performance. table 3 also indicated that the effect of learner-centered teaching strategies on the learners' writing performance was (f=20.658. sig. 0.000<0.050). since it was lower than 0.05, it was said that learner-centered teaching strategies affected learners' writing performance. the null hypothesis expressing that learnercentered teaching strategies did not contribute to writing performance was rejected, and the alternative hypothesis expressing that learner-centered teaching strategies significantly affected the learners' writing performance was accepted. then, it was concluded that there was a difference in writing performance bacause of the learnerijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 289-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license centered teaching strategy factor. sdl, dl, and sgd differed significantly in their writing performance. the mean score of self-directed learning/ sdl (79.09), discovery learning/ dl (72.49), small group discussion/sgd (72.82) compared with lecturing (55.42), as explained in table 6. table 6. learner-centered teaching strategies (dependent variable: writing performance) learnercentered teaching strategies mean std. error 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound self directed learning (sdl) 79.088 2.483 74.126 84.049 discovery learning (dl) 72.489 2.024 68.445 76.532 small group discussion (sgd) 72.817 1.865 69.090 76.543 lecturing (l) 55.417 2.178 51.065 59.768 the output showed the difference in means scores on learners' writing performance among sdl, dl, sgd, and lecturing. it indicated that the means score of experiment groups: sdl (79.09), dl (72.49), sgd (72.82), performed better than the control group: lecturing (55.42). it was said that learner-centered teaching strategies performed better than teacher-centered teaching strategies. efl learners with different gender and learner-centered teaching strategies do not differ significantly in their writing performance. the output of table 3 also indicated that the f value of gender and learner-centered teaching strategies was (f=2.301. p. 0.086>0.050). this meant no interaction between gender and learnercentered teaching strategy to the learners' writing performance. it meant that both gender and learner-centered teaching strategy did not simultaneously affect their writing performance, as explained in table 7. table 7. teaching strategies * gender teaching strategies gender mean std. error 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound (sdl) male 73.375 3.080 67.221 79.529 female 84.800 3.896 77.016 92.584 (dl) male 67.250 3.080 61.096 73.404 female 77.727 2.627 72.479 82.975 (sgd) male 68.333 2.515 63.309 73.358 female 77.300 2.755 71.796 82.804 (l) male 56.833 3.557 49.728 63.939 female 54.000 2.515 48.976 59.024 this indicated that all independent variables (gender and learner-centered teaching strategies) did not contribute simultaneously to writing performance. then, the r squared was 0.574. it indicated a high correlation. next, a post hoc test was employed to see the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 290-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license difference among variables, as described in table 8. table 8. multiple comparisons of writing performance (i) teaching strategie s (j) teaching strategie s mean differenc e (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lowe r boun d uppe r boun d (sdl) dl 4.4534 3.1359 1 .49 2 -3.8186 12.725 5 sgd 5.3601 3.0478 1 .30 3 -2.6795 13.399 8 l 22.8248* 3.1711 0 .00 0 14.459 9 31.189 6 (dl) sdl -4.4534 3.1359 1 .49 2 12.725 5 3.8186 sgd .9067 2.7286 0 .98 7 -6.2909 8.1043 l 18.3713* 2.8656 6 .00 0 10.812 2 25.930 5 (sgd) sdl -5.3601 3.0478 1 .30 3 13.399 8 2.6795 dl -.9067 2.7286 0 .98 7 -8.1043 6.2909 l 17.4646* 2.7689 8 .00 0 10.160 5 24.768 8 (l) sdl -22.8248* 3.1711 0 .00 0 31.189 6 14.459 9 dl -18.3713* 2.8656 6 .00 0 25.930 5 10.812 2 sgd -17.4646* 2.7689 8 .00 0 24.768 8 10.160 5 the output showed the mean (md) difference between sdl and dl was 4.4534 (sig. 0.492) > p.0.05. it meant there was no difference between self directed learning (sdl) and discovery learning (dl) to writing performance. then, the md between sdl and sgd was 5.3601 (sig. 0.303) >0.05. it meant that there was no difference between self directed learning (sdl) and small group discussion (sgd) to writing performance. on the contrary, the md between sdl and lecturing was 22.8248* (sig. 0.000) <p=0.05; dl and lecturing was 18.3713* (sig. 0.000) <p=0.05; sgd and lecturing was 17.4646* (sig. 0.000) <0.05; there was statistically difference among sdl, dl, and sgd with lecturing. in this case, sdl, dl, and sgd performed better than lecturing to writing performance. the plot diagram indicated no interaction effect among variables, as described in figure 2. figure 2. the interaction effect among variables discussion the finding dealt with the three research questions as follows: (a) "how does gender give significant effect to the learners' writing performance? (b) how does learner-centered teaching strategy significantly affect the learners' ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 291-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing performance? (c) is there any interaction effect between gender and learner-centered teaching strategy to the learners' writing performance?" the analysis confirmed a significant difference for gender (f=10.629. sig. 0.002<0.05); and learners-centered teaching strategies f=20.658. sig. 0.000<0.050) on the learners' writing performance. it also indicated that females (means score 73.46) were higher than males (means score 64.45) on writing performance. on the contrary, there was no interaction effect simultaneously between gender and the learnerscentered teaching strategies (f=2.301. sig. 0.086>0.050). both of them did not contribute simultaneously to writing performance. lastly, the r squared was 0. 574 indicating a high correlation, and the variability of teaching strategies and gender was 57%. this finding was in accordance with lu et al. (2008), anggraini and soesatyo (2016), putri et al., (2015) juan (2014), balım (2009), schmenk (2005), fox (2011); sabarun and tazkiyatunnafs (2020), nursamsu (2021), edmondson et al. (2012), ilhan-beyaztaş (2014), karasakaloglu and saracaloglu (2009), saban (2008), and demirtaş and özer (2007). the finding confirmed that learnerscentered teaching strategies outperformed better than teachers centered learning. the finding also followed cheang (2009), mentioning that the learner-centered method effectively improved motivation and learning strategies. this was also in line with several investigations (indrianti, 2012; kidwell & triyoko, 2012). this was possible due to some factors. first, learnerscentered teaching method assisted learners to study in their way. it put learning responsibility at learners. second, learnerscentered teaching method gave a solid foundation to develop learning skills. the teachers' duty was as a facilitator in the classroom setting. third, it provided an insightful overview of learners' learning needs as input to syllabus design, material planning, and classroom instruction practice. the finding suggested that learnerscentered teaching methods should be applied in l2 writing classes. teachers should use learners centered learning methods appropriately based on the materials discussed. this finding accurately described the importance of gender difference and learner-centered teaching strategies in l2 writing. based on the results, some recommendations were proposed. first, learner-centered teaching strategies could be the alternative method in l2 writing class. therefore, writing teachers should use various methods using learners' centered teaching in the classroom setting. second, writing teachers should consider the gender difference in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 292-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license arousing learners' motivation to write better. this was also an essential part of the writing process. some elements affecting the learners' achievement in learning writing include aspirations of the soul, learners' ability, the condition of learners, environmental conditions of learners, dynamic elements in learning writing, and teachers' efforts in learning writing. other researchers and academicians can conduct similar research to a more significant number of samples with different academic levels or use other elements that may affect learning writing outcomes. since this study limited the learning outcomes to students' writing tests, future researchers may also expand to a broader definition of learning outcomes to investigate the following research profoundly. it was also recommended that the other researchers conduct similar research studies in different levels of education, perspective, and paradigm. the limitations of the present study leave gaps for future investigators to fill in through further investigations. references abrahamson, d., & kapur, m. 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(2008). effective activities for teaching english idioms to efl learners. http://iteslj.org/ techniques/wuteachingidioms.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 296-296 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20793 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license zohrabi, m., torabi, m. a., & baybourdiani, p. (2012). teachercentered and/or student-centered learning: english language in iran. english language and literature studies, 2(3). copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 28-45 designing reading materials for the faculty of social and political sciences at uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta devi yusnita received: 23th march 2015; revised: 25th april 2015; accepted: 25th may 2015 abstract this research is aimed to design reading materials for the faculty of social and political sciences, uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, due to the absence of such specific materials in the market. to produce satisfactory teaching materials, the researcher did some steps i.e. doing needs analysis, reviewing the principles of materials design and reading strategies, designing course framework, designing syllabus, designing the reading materials, and implementing the sample lessons. the needs analysis was intended to find out what the students needed and to find out the subjects the students learned from the institution in order to produce adequate reading materials. based on the needs analysis, the researcher then identified the global aims of the course, thereby, the writer designed course framework. this course framework contained general points of reading themes and topics, information of classroom activities that followed up reading, the length of study session, the number of the course meetings, and the number of participants. the course framework became the basis to write the syllabus. finally the syllabus became the basis for designing reading materials. key words: social and political sciences; material design; syllabus; textbook abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan menyusun materi membaca (reading) pada matakuliah bahasa inggris untuk fakultas ilmu sosial dan politik (fisip), uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta dikarenakan sulitnya mencari materi sejenis bagi mahasiswa fisip. untuk menghasilkan materi pengajaran yang baik, peneliti melakukan beberapa langkah, yaitu melakukan analisa kebutuhan, mempelajari prinsip-prinsip penyusunan materi dan strategi reading, menyusun kerangka matakuliah, menyusun silabus, menyusun materi reading, dan mengimplementasikan contoh materi di kelas. analisa kebutuhan bertujuan untuk mengetahui kebutuhan mahasiswa dan matakuliah yang dipelajari dari fakultas terkait agar materi reading yang disusun sesuai dengan kebutuhan mahasiswa. berdasarkan hasil analisa kebutuhan, peneliti mengidentifikasi tujuan utama perkuliahan bahasa inggris di fisip yang kemudian digunakan untuk menyusun kerangka matakuliah. kerangka matakuliah ini berisi poin-poin umum seperti tema dan topic reading, informasi tentang aktifitas lanjutan setelah kegiatan membaca, waktu pembelajaran, dan jumlah mahasiswa. kerangka matakuliah ini menjadi dasar untuk penyusunan silabus yang akan digunakan untuk menyusun materi reading. kata kunci: ilmu sosial dan politik; desain material; silabus; buku pelajaran how to cite: yusnita, d. (2015). designing reading materials for the faculty of social and political sciences at uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 27-44. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.2002 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.2002 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|29-45 introduction to master english, one needs to be good at the four language skills i.e. reading, writing, listening, and speaking. reading, for example, is one of the crucial language skills since there are a lot of advantages students can obtain from this skill. they can improve their vocabularies and expand their knowledge. komiyama (2009, p. 32) says that "reading is an important skill for english language learners in today's world; it supports the development of overall proficiency and provides access to crucial information at work and in school”. at the university level, reading in english as a foreign language is taught mostly for the purpose of making students able to read textbooks written in english. this happens to the institutions where the researcher teaches. to be able to support their research when writing a thesis or doing a final project as one of the requirements to finish their education, they need to read more books or scientific journals to find the underlying theory. in this step they usually start to realize that english is actually very important. a number of ready-made english textbooks that focus on reading are a lot. some big publishers such as longman, cambridge, and pearson have published english books for most fields of study, ranging from economics to engineering. english lecturers do not have to worry about framework since most english textbooks are written by the experts, and ready-made textbooks usually provide very clear framework. one of the advantages of using readymade material is practicality. crawford (in jack c. richards and willy a. renandya, 2002) mentions that "readymade textbooks save teachers' time, enabling teachers to devote time to teaching rather than materials production (p.66)". apart from their advantages, ready-made materials also have drawbacks. one of the drawbacks of rigidly using commercial materials is they do not always fulfill english learners need. as we know, the english proficiency of learners is diverse. mostly ready-made or commercial materials are not capable of catering this diversity. this is similar to what nunan (1995) says that "one of the major concerns is that any given course book will be incapable of catering for the diversity of needs which exists in most language classrooms (p. 206)”. in the field of english for specific purposes (esp), the problems are similar. commercial textbooks are mostly incapable of catering the learners' need. very often the content of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 30-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 commercial esp textbooks does not match certain conditions such as the needs of students and the level of difficulty. bouzidi (2009) states that "an important component of an effective esp course is a textbook that contains job-related english lessons. however, there is often a mismatch between the content of esp textbooks and actual workplace language demands (p.10)”. teaching reading to students majoring in social and political sciences needs the materials. ideally, the materials can equip the students to make them able to read the textbooks for the sake of their study and professional development. unfortunately, such materials are scant in the market. using commercial materials for teaching-learning process that are not really related to the field of study seems to be ineffective. this is actually what ur (2000) says concerning commercial materials that, "the topics dealt in the course book may not necessarily be relevant or interesting for your class. every class, in fact, every learner has their own learning needs: no one course book can possibly supply these satisfactorily (p. 185)". therefore, the researcher feels challenged to design reading materials that fulfill the needs of the students majoring in social and political sciences. the reading materials are expected to be able to provide the students studying social and political sciences with sufficient vocabularies and skills in reading english textbooks. tomlinson (2008) states that "materials could obviously be cassettes, videos, cd-roms, dictionaries, grammar books, readers, workbooks or photocopied exercises. they could also be newspapers, food packages, photographs, live talks by invited native speakers, instructions given by a teacher, tasks written on cards or discussions between learners. in other words, they can be anything which is deliberately used to increase the learners' knowledge and/or experience of the language (p. 2)”. in designing the course material, it is of course necessary to look at curriculum as one of the main references in the material development. curriculum is a broader concept that includes not only what pupils learn, but how they learn it, and how teachers help them learn, using what supporting materials, styles and methods of assessment, and in what kind of facilities (rodgers, 1994). the development of materials must be preceded by program framework (program blueprint) and course syllabus, which should refer to the curriculum. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|31-45 there are some assumptions underlying early approaches to syllabus design, which serve as the guideline for materials design and development. the first assumption is that the basic units of language are vocabulary and grammar. this traditional approach to english language teaching prioritizes vocabulary and grammar as the main building blocks of language development (richards, 2007). the second underlying assumption sees that learners everywhere have the same needs. it was believed that the core vocabulary of english, combined with grammatical syllabus, would serve as the basis for almost all language courses. the third assumption is that learners' needs are identified exclusively in terms of language needs. syllabus design is solely based on language needs of learners. the fourth assumption is that the process of learning a language is largely determined by textbook. as the primary input for learners to get from the language learning process, the selection and gradation as the ways of controlling the textbooks' context and facilitating the language learners are deemed important. the fifth assumption is regarding to the context of teaching english as a foreign language. this underlying assumption of syllabus design is similar to the condition in indonesia. as a foreign language, english is rarely spoken among indonesians. therefore, this factor should be taken into account in designing the syllabus. compared to curriculum, syllabus nowadays becomes the central point of teaching-learning activities. rodger (1994, p.25) states that "at the heart of the educational enterprise is the educational program offered. until fairly recently most educational authorities have considered the syllabus to be the educational program. it has been the syllabus, which has received the most attention in educational design and implementation. it has been syllabus reform, which has been seen as central to educational reform. when new educational goals are sought or old goals are felt to have been inadequately realized, specification of a new syllabus has been the typically favored solution." to sum up, syllabus is part of curriculum. in designing a syllabus in the field of esp, there must be needs analysis. because the researcher designs reading materials for social and political sciences that is categorized as english for specific purpose (esp), then it is necessary to also discuss about esp and course material design. syllabus in esp is developed from the needs analysis of the target learners. esp, according to dudley-evan and st john (2002), has two distinctive ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 32-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 characteristics, i.e. absolute and variable characteristics. the absolute characteristics of esp are that esp is designed to meet specific needs of the learner, makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves, and is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, register), skills, discourse and genres appropriate to these activities. on the other hand, the variable characteristics of esp are that esp may be related to or designed for a specific discipline, may use, in specific teaching situation, a different methodology from that of general english, is likely to be designed for adult learners, either at a tertiary level institution or in a professional work situation, and is generally designed for intermediate or advanced students. in esp, needs analysis is the key in the course design. today's concept of needs analysis, according to dudleyevans and st. john (2002), includes some aspects. the first aspect is professional information about the learners. this is to find out the task and activities learners are/will be using english for. the second aspect is personal information about the learners. this is to see factors, which may affect the way learners learn. those factors encompass previous learning experiences, cultural information reasons for attending the course and expectation of it, and attitude to english. the third aspect is english language information about the learners. this is important to find out what learners' current skills and language use are. the fourth aspect is language learning information. this is done to find out the effective ways of learning the skills and language. the fifth aspect is professional communication information about knowledge of how language and skills are used in the target situation. the sixth aspect is to find out what is wanted from the course, and the final aspect is information about the environment in which the course will be run. graves (2000, p. 100) proposes the process of needs assessment. she states that "the process of needs assessment involves a set of decisions, actions, and reflections that are cyclical in nature. the cyclical process starts from deciding what information to gather and why, deciding the best way to gather it: when, how and from whom, gathering the information, acting on information, evaluating the effect and effectiveness of the action, and formally back to number one to decide on further or new information to gather." the questions appearing now is who provides the data and how? dudley evans and st john (2002) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|33-45 suggest that for needs analysis the main sources to collect are the learners, people working or studying in the field, ex-students, documents relevant to the field, clients, employers, colleagues, and esp research in the field. to collect the data, the methods may include questionnaires, analysis of authentic spoken and written texts, discussions, structured interviews, observations, and assessments. due to the characteristics of esp which is focusing on specialist subjects, and due to unavailable commercial materials, very often esp teachers need to design or develop the materials themselves. in fact, there are some advantages of creating our own teaching materials. richard (2007) mentioned that teacher-made materials are: 1) directly relevant to students' and institutional needs; 2) help develop expertise among staff; 3) enhance the reputation of the institution; 4) offer greater flexibility than a commercial course book for the institution to revise and adapt. almost similar to what richards says, howard and major also (2010) state the advantages of why english language teachers may choose to design their own materials. the first advantage, according to howard and major, is contextualization. for many teachers, designing their own teaching materials enables them to take into account their particular learning environment and to overcome the lack of 'fit' of the commercial course book. the second advantage concerns individual needs. howard and major (ibid) assert that identifying individual needs of students are increasingly promoted in the teaching and learning process so that teachers are responsive to the heterogeneity inherent in the classroom. it can be concluded that by designing our own materials, we can cater more students, especially in the class having students with various background. the third advantage is personalization. according to block (in howard and major, 2010), 'home-made' materials add personal touch to teaching that students appreciate. the last advantage why english language teachers may choose to design their own materials, according to howard and major, is timeless. it means that teachers designing their own materials can respond to local and international events with up to date and relevant topics. howard and major (2010) also suggest some guidelines for designing effective english teaching materials. the first is that english language teaching materials should be contextualized. materials should link explicitly to what the learners already ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 34-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 know, to their first language and cultures, and very importantly, should alert learners to any areas of significant cultural difference. in addition, materials should be contextualized to topics and themes that provide meaningful as well as purposeful uses for target language. the second is that materials should stimulate interaction and be generative in terms of language. the third is that english language teaching materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies. it is impossible for a teacher to teach his students all the languages they need to know in the short time. it is essential that language teaching materials also teach their target learners how to learn and help them to take advantage of language learning opportunities outside the classroom. finally, english language teaching materials should be flexible and authentic. it is imperative for second language learners to be regularly exposed in the classroom to real, unscripted language-to passages that have not been produced specifically for language learning purposes. in terms of authentic materials, fathi (2010) states that authenticity is a very important concept that should be considered as part of teaching/learning process. similarly, richard (2007) argues that authentic materials are preferred over created materials, because they contain authentic language and reflect real-world uses of language compared with the contrived content of much created material. several authors such as phillips and shettlesworth (1978), clarke (1989), and peacock (1997) in richards (2007) have identified some advantages of using authentic material in materials design.. according to them, authentic materials have a positive effect on learner motivation, provide authentic cultural information about the target culture, provide exposure to real language, relate more closely to learners' needs, and support a more creative approach to teaching. to sum up, in designing teaching materials, there are some points as previously mentioned that should be taken into account. one important aspect is using authentic materials. since the researcher would like to design reading materials for social and political sciences, and the information of this subject is mostly written in english, using authentic materials taken from real sources such as textbooks, internet articles, journals, and newspaper articles are worth trying. furthermore, considering students especially university students must have sufficient level of reading skills, it is necessary to facilitate them ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|35-45 with reading skills. therefore, it is essential to look into some principles of reading in a foreign language in order that the materials the researcher design have the underlying theories and be useful for the learners. there are some approaches regarding teaching reading in a foreign language. they are bottomup approach, top-down approach, and interactive approach. bottom-up approach in reading can be illustrated as a person who tries to understand an area by discovering every part and checking what is inside. after roaming the whole area, he/she will understand what it looks like. top-down approach is the contrary of bottom-up approach. top-down approach can be illustrated as a person who tries to understand an area from the air. he or she could be described as a person getting on balloon flying around in the sky. he or she will understand the nature of the area by getting a picture of it. interactive approach is the combination of those two approaches. nuttal (2000, p. 18) states that "in practice a reader continually shifts from one focus to another, now adopting a top-down approach to predict the probable meaning, then moving to the bottom-up approach to check whether that is really what the writer says. this has become known as interactive reading." it is clear that the combination of bottom-up and top-down approach will give more benefit to the students. therefore, the reading materials the researcher designs adopt the interactive approach. considering interactive approach, axbey (cited in mcgrath, (2006, p. 146) proposes standard reading exercises. axbey's framework is divided into three stages i.e. pre-reading, while reading, and post reading. pre-reading activities include drawing upon existing knowledge, exploiting areas of interest, and encouraging prediction of content, language and function. whilereading activities can consist of two stages: 1) confirming and checking, and understanding global meaning and shape, and 2) understanding main points, dealing with vocabulary, and being aware of writer's purpose. in post reading activities, the students can be asked to give a personal response and encourage self-awareness of difficulties. similar to axbey, grabe (1986) and seright and thomson (2010) also suggest some activities pertaining to reading skills and strategies to enable students to develop skills or strategies which facilitate reading comprehension. the strategies are guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words through the use of context clues and analysis of component parts (stems and affixes), locating core elements in long, complex ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 36-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 sentences, understanding cohesive devices such as pronoun reference and logical connectors, identifying the main idea and supporting details, determining the sequence of steps or events, predicting text content, skimming, scanning for specific facts, making inferences, and distinguishing between fact and opinion or supposition. to summarize, there are some strategies and techniques in order to facilitate reading in a foreign language. the concepts of the strategies and approaches above will be the researcher's consideration in designing the reading materials. so, the finished product that is in the form of course book will be more beneficial for the learners. considering the absence of learning materials and the principles of developing learning materials as presented in this section, the researcher therefore proposes a study intended to answer the following research questions: 1. what are the students’ needs according to the stakeholders (students, alumni, and institution)?; 2. what are the principles of materials design in language teaching?; 3. what are the processes of designing reading materials? there are three points of significance by doing this study. first, this research is expected to be beneficial for english lecturers teaching reading to students majoring in social and political sciences. second, the materials can equip the students to be able to read and understand the textbooks of their field of study. by having sufficient reading skills, together with linguistic concepts, the students can develop their knowledge to grasp the development of social and political sciences. third, the study is expected to give valuable contribution for those who are interested in designing teaching materials of english for specific purposes. since job specialization keeps increasing, people need to equip them with english needed in their field of job. in the future, english materials specializing in certain profession are very much needed. method the goal of this research was designing reading materials for social and political sciences that would be used at the faculty of social and political sciences (fisip) of uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. the final product of the research was reading materials in the form of a conventional material or course book. the research applied qualitative inquiry. referring to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|37-45 conceptual theory of a case study, the researcher conducted four steps in order to produce reading materials. the steps were doing needs analysis, designing course framework, designing syllabus, designing reading materials, and implementing (piloting) the sample lessons. in the needs analysis, a questionnaire was distributed to the students of fisip (30 students, randomly selected from three majors of the faculty), the alumni of the institution (5 persons, who happened to come to the meeting organized by the researcher), and the institution itself (represented by the head of the three departments of the faculty). the main purpose was to find out what they really needed with respect to reading materials design and english lesson. the research activities stemmed from administering questionnaires for students, alumni, stakeholders, analyzing the data from those questionnaires, designing course framework, designing syllabus, designing reading materials, and implementing sample lessons. concerning the course framework, referring to the results of the need analysis, the researcher then identified the global aims of the course, namely enhancing reading skills and introducing the elements of linguistic input and subject input. this course framework contained general points of reading themes and topics, information of classroom activities that followed up reading, the length of study session, the number of the course meetings, and the number of participants. the course framework became the basis to write the syllabus, which outlined course book in detail concerning reading texts and classroom activities and strategies. the syllabus also acted as guidance for producing reading materials. in developing materials, the researcher put texts taken from internet, newspaper, and textbook by adapting and adopting. the researcher preferred adopting to adapting the texts since the researcher wanted to keep the authenticity of the texts. the researcher only adapted the texts when they were suited to the reading activities. in the implementation stage, the researcher piloted the sample unit, which was intended to find out the responses of the students toward the materials designed. the researcher distributed the questionnaires after implementing certain lesson. the points of questionnaires were whether the material was suitable to the students' field of study or not, whether the material was understandable or not, whether the material was interesting for the students or not, whether, in general, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 38-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the material was satisfactory or not, and comments for material improvement (if there is any). findings and discussion this section discusses the important findings of the research, which will be divided according the three research questions. what are the students’ needs? the research shows that the students need firstly to learn english since they still find difficulty in using the language. secondly, they need to learn the four skills with the emphasis on reading and speaking. nevertheless, the students think that the four language skills are important for their success in study and career. that indirectly concludes that the students are aware of the importance of english for both their education and their future career. thirdly, they need reading texts taken from textbooks, newspaper, and internet to broaden their knowledge. finally, they need to know and understand reading strategies such as skimming, scanning, guessing word meaning from context, finding word referent, and making inferences. the strategies are important to help them read english texts. the difficulty faced by the students becomes the focus of attention by the researcher. in designing the teaching materials, even though the focus is on reading the researcher also put speaking and writing activities. in the reading materials, by the end of each lesson, the researcher put 'expansion'. the expansion consists of speaking and writing activities. for speaking, the activities are mostly discussion and presentation while the writing activities are mostly report and essay writing. concerning the reading texts, the students want to read journal articles, internet articles, newspaper articles, and textbooks although they recognize the difficulty of reading such texts. this provides important information on the types of reading texts that should be included in the design. besides, all the passages are related to the subject the students are learning. this is done to expose the students with various kinds of text, and make them accustomed to the text genre. another point that should be considered is the fact that the students are not quite accustomed to the reading strategies or skills in understanding reading texts. this could be one of the reasons why they think texts are difficult. they do not know the strategies to attack reading texts to get the information needed. in fact, the institution also complains that the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|39-45 students do not have adequate underlying theories when writing their final project. knowing this, the researcher includes some reading strategies that are mostly used by experience readers. those strategies are skimming, scanning, guessing meaning from context, pronoun referent, and making inferences. these strategies are worth including in all reading activities, and that is what the researcher applies in the reading materials. with respect to vocabulary, the researcher put the exercise for developing vocabulary in each lesson. the exercises are not only words in general but also specific words related to the terms found in the field of social and political sciences. in short, what the students need from reading materials designs has been fulfilled. the course book caters what the students expect to learn, and it also pays attention to the reading strategies proposed by experts in understanding passages. this research also reveals that the alumni need english in their job. they need to understand the four skills well because all four skills in english are important for their success in their job. yet, they emphasize the importance of especially speaking. that is why in designing reading materials, the researcher includes speaking and writing activities. furthermore, the institution needs its students have a good ability in reading english texts since most books in social and political sciences are written in english. in terms of difficulties, most alumni find are they are not sure how to pronounce words correctly, have difficulty in starting and expressing ideas, feel nervous to start conversation, and think that they lack vocabularies to express their opinion. to overcome this problem, the researcher spares vocabulary exercises in the reading materials. in writing, the difficulties include not knowing how to use words concisely and grammar correctly. as a result, they often use and follow indonesian patterns in writing because they do not know how to arrange words for sentences, they do not know the spelling, and finally they lack english vocabulary. therefore, the reading materials the researcher designs include writing activities, which focus on essay writing and report writing. in terms of reading, half of the alumni inform that they have difficulties to understand texts because accordidng to them they lack vocabularies. those two problems are the reasons why they think reading is difficult. this gives the researcher an idea of incorporating reading strategies ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 40-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 -as previously written -to equip the students to have sufficient skills in reading in a foreign language. furthermore, from the questionnaire for the institution, the research finds some purposes of giving english lesson focusing on reading. firstly, it is to make students have the ability to read and comprehend textbooks especially those that related to the theory of social and issues of social and political sciences. secondly, it is to encourage students to read english textbook a lot and pleased to read english resources. thirdly, it is as a trade mark of english teaching-learning process in fisip. clearly, this gives information to the researcher that the institution expects the students to be able to read english textbooks and passages related to the subject of social and political sciences. the skill is very important for the students to expand their knowledge and to base their theory when reading english textbooks. it is also hoped that by exposing students to reading texts, they can improve their speaking and writing skills. regarding the reading texts to be taught in the classroom, the institution expected that the students be taught english texts taken from journals, newspaper articles, internet articles, and textbooks. that is why the researcher includes such texts in the reading materials. to conclude, both the alumni and institution put forward ideas that english is important. three skills that are emphasized include reading, writing, and speaking. however, it is also clear that reading becomes the most emphasized skill of the the institution. therefore, the researcher focuses on designing reading materials by supplementing the materials with speaking and writing activities. what are the principles of materials design in language teaching? brown (1995, p. 138) states that everything contributing to classroom teaching can be categorized as materials, therefore it is not restricted to course book. as a matter of fact, the researcher limits the materials design in this research only to a paper-based concept. the researcher designs reading materials to be used in the classroom by the students majoring in social and political sciences. why are materials important in teaching-learning context? as previously mentioned, there are four reasons. first, they function as a source of language. second, they function as a learning support. third, they function as motivation and stimulation. fourth, they function as a reference. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|41-45 the research finds out that there are also five advantages of creating our own teaching materials. among advantage are materials can be produced thatare directly relevant to students' and institutional needs, materials can help develop expertise among staff, materials can enhance the reputation of the institution, and materials produced within the institution can be revised or adapted as needed. therefore, it is more flexible than commercial course books, and finally for many teachers, designing their own teaching materials enables them to consider their particular learning environment so as to overcomes the lack of commercial course books. the literature research finds that there are some principles of designing teaching materials. firstly, english language teaching materials should be contextualized. it means that materials should link explicitly to what the learners/students already know, their first language and cultures. in addition, materialsshould be able to alert the learners to any areas of significant cultural difference by providing contextualized topics and themes that provide meaningful and purposeful uses of the target language. secondly, materials should stimulate interaction and be generative in terms of language. it means that materials can be the media for the interaction between students and students, and between students and the teacher. thirdly, english language teaching materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies. it is impossible for teachers to teach their learners all the language they need to know in the short time. it is essential that language teaching materials also teach their target learners how to learn and help them to take advantage of language learning opportunities outside the classroom. fourthly, english language teaching materials should be authentic. it is beneficial for second language learners to be regularly exposed in the classroom to real and unscripted languages and texts that have not been produced specifically for language learning purposes. authentic materials have a positive effect on learner motivation, provide authentic cultural information about the target culture, provide exposure to real language, relate more closely to learners' needs, and support a more creative approach to teaching. from the above-mentioned points, the researcher relates the principles of teaching materials design to reading materials the researcher designs. in designing reading materials, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 42-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the researcher includes authentic texts. all texts are taken from textbook, internet articles, and newspaper articles. in some lessons, the texts are adapted to the questions the researcher makes. referring to the second principle that materials should stimulate interaction, the researcher put prereading activities in the form of questions. after that, by the end of the lesson, the researcher put 'expansion' for speaking and writing activities. speaking activities can be in the form of presentation and debate that surely can stimulate interaction among students. reading strategies and skills that exist in the reading materials that the researcher designs prove that the materials fulfill the third principle of designing teaching materials. the principle says that english language teaching materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies. it is hoped that the students can develop the strategies and skills outside the classroom. to conclude, the reading materials the researcher design have fulfilled the principles of designing teaching material that cover authentic texts, interaction, and strategies. the reading materials have also been implemented with satisfying comments and responses from the students. therefore, they are ready to use. what are the processes of designing reading materials? there are some steps the researcher does in designing reading materials for social and political sciences. those steps are doing needs analysis, designing course framework, designing a syllabus, designing the materials, and implementing (piloting) sample unit. needs analysis is done to three parties i.e. students, alumni, and institution. needs analysis for students is done to find out what the students need and to find out the subjects the students learn from the institution in order to produce adequate reading materials. finding out the subject matters is important since the content of reading materials is about social and political sciences, and the researcher needs to know what the students are learning before making the teaching materials. the needs analysis for alumni and institution is done to find out what alumni and institution want from english lesson. it could benefit in designing the teaching materials. at least the researcher knows the expectation of other parties apart from the students themselves and could ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|43-45 cater that expectation. some purposes of doing the needs analysis are collecting information about particular information and problem learners are experiencing and identifying a gap between what students are able to do and what they need to be able to do. in summary, there are some steps to do to design teaching materials. the step starts from finding what the students and institution need, designing course framework, designing the syllabus, designing the material, and implementing the material (sample lessons). conclusion and suggestion based on the findings and discussions, the researcher draws some points in conclusions. first of all, the students of fisip need to learn the four language skills with the emphasis on reading and speaking. then, they need to read english texts taken from textbooks, internet, and newspaper. finally, they need reading skills and strategies to understand english texts. second, the institution needs its students to be able to read and understand english textbooks, while the alumni consider that the four language skills are important in their job. the alumni also emphasize the importance of speaking compared to the other skills and vocabulary mastery to support the attainment of the skills to cummunicate and read. third, concerning the development of materials, there are some principles that should be considered. the first principle is that materials should be contextualized. then, materials should stimulate interaction. the interaction includes students and students as well as students and the teacher. next, materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies. and finally materials should be authentic. fourth, in designing framework, there are some points to be taken into account. those points cover the global aims of the course, general points of reading themes and topics, information of classroom activities, the length of study session, the number of the course meetings, and the number of participants. the information can surely contribute to the making of syllabus. fifth, syllabus design is another step that is crucial enough in designing teaching materials. the syllabus outlines teaching materials in detail concerning reading texts, topics, and classroom activities and strategies. in designing the teaching materials, the syllabus must be the reference and guidance. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 44-45|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 sixth, the last step in designing teaching materials is implementation. implementation is piloting the sample unit. this is to know whether the materials we have designed successful or not. besides, this is done to see the comments and responses from the students. after all, they are the ones who will learn from that teaching material. references bouzidi, hassan. 2009. between the esp classroom and the workplace: bridging the gap. english teaching forum 47. brown, j.d. 1995. the element of language curriculum. boston: heinle and heinle publishers. eskey, david e. 1986. teaching second language reading for academic purposes. the usa: addisonwesley publishing company, inc. grabe, william. 1986. the transition from theory to practice in teaching reading. in eskey, david e (ed). teaching second language readingfor academic purpose. the usa: addisonwesley publishing company, inc. howard, jocelyn and major, jae. 'guidelines for designing effective english language teaching materials'. http://www. paaljapan.org/resources/ proceeding/paal9/pdf. (accessed february 6, 2010) 95. hudson, thorn. 2007. teaching second language reading. oxford: oxford university press. kathleen graves. 2000. designing language course: a guide for teachers. canada: heinle & heinle publishers. keith johnson, robert. 1994. the second language curriculum. cambridge: press syndicate of the university of cambridge. komiyama, reiko. 2009. "car: a means for motivating students to read": english teaching forum. volume 47 number 3, 2009. mcgrath, ian. 2006. materials evaluation and designfor language teaching. edinburgh: edinburgh university press ltd. nunan, david. 1995. language teaching methodology: a textbook/or teachers. maryland: phoenix el t. nuttal, christine. 2000. teaching reading skills in a foreign language. uk: macmillan education. richards, jack c and renandya, willy a (eds.). 2002. methodology in language teaching: an anthology o/current practice. united kingdom: cambridge. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|45-45 richards, jack c. 2007. curriculum development in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. seright, linda and thompson, joan. developing reading materials for advanced esl learners. http://www.teslcanadajourna1.c o/index.php/tesllarticie (accessed february 3, 2010). theodore s. rodgers. 1994. syllabus design, curriculum deveopment and polity determination. in robert keith johnson (ed.) the second language curriculum. cambridge: press syndicate of the university of cambridge. tomlinson, brian. 2008. materials development in language teaching. united kingdom: cambridge university press. tony dudley-evans and maggie jo st john. 2002. developments in esp: a multi-disciplinary approach. cambridge: the press syndicate of the university of cambridge. ur, penny. 2000. a course in language teaching: practice and theory. united kingdom: cambridge. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 108-126 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17886 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee english teachers’ perspectives on challenges, suggestions, and materials of online teaching amidst the global pandemic novrika nartiningrum1*, arif nugroho2 received: 23th october 2020; revised: 5th may 2021; accepted: 28th june 2021 abstract maintaining undisrupted learning during this pandemic becomes a challenge for teachers all over the world. in indonesia, the practices of open online learning are not yet to be implemented. online learning in secondary school year 7-9 level goes as far as internet-assisted learning or blended learning. thus, previous research has not examined teachers' perspectives on full online learning as implemented during the covid-19 pandemic. considering this situation, efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers’ perspectives, as one of the essential aspects of online learning, lack investigation. therefore, the present study offers 20 efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers’ insights regarding challenges, suggestions, and teaching materials needed during the covid-19 outbreak. drawing on qualitative data collected by means of self-written reflections and semi-structured interviews, the findings informed that poor internet signal disrupts the teaching process. thus, the teachers suggest that maintaining a stable internet connection should become a priority. then, easy access to online applications and websites is deemed necessary by teachers as material sources for online teaching. the results of this study contribute to the literature of english language teaching in response to the present-day phenomenon about online learning, particularly in secondary school year 7-9 level. key words: digital learning; online teaching; teachers’ challenges; teachers’ perspectives; teachers’ suggestions abstrak mempertahankan pembelajaran tanpa gangguan selama pandemic ini menjadi tantangan bagi para guru di seluruh dunia. di indonesia, praktik pembelajaran online terbuka masih belum diterapkan. pembelajaran online di sekolah menengah tingkat 7-9 masih sejauh pembelajaran dengan bantuan internet atau pembelajaran campuran. dengan demikian, penelitian sebelumnya belum mengkaji perspektif guru tentang full online learning sepertin yang diterapkan selama pandemi covid-19. mempertimbangkan situasi ini, perspektif guru efl sekolah menengah kelas 7-9, sebagai salah satu aspek penting dari pembelajaran online, belum diselidiki. oleh karena itu, penelitian ini menawarkan perspektif dari 20 guru 20 efl sekolah menengah kelas 7-9 tentang tantangan, saran dan bahan pengajaran yang dibutuhkan selama wabah covid-19. berdasarkan data kualitatif yang dikumpulkan melalui refleksi yang ditulis sendiri dan wawancara semi-terstruktur interviews, temuan menginformasikan bahwa sinyal internet yang buruk mengganggu proses pengajaran. oleh karena itu, para guru menyarankan bahwa menjaga koneksi internet yang stabil harus menjadi prioritas. kemudian, aplikasi dan website online yang mudah diakses dianggap dibutuhkan oleh guru sebagai sumber materi pembelajaran online. hasil penelitian ini berkontribusi pada literatur pengajaran bahasa inggris dalam menanggapi fenomena pembelajaran online saat ini, khususnya di tingkat sekolah menengah kelas 7-9. kata kunci: pembelajaran digital; pengajaran online; perspektif guru; saran guru; tantangan guru how to cite: nartiningrum, n., nugroho, a. (2021). english teachers’ perspectives on challenges, suggestions, and materials of online teaching amidst the global pandemic. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 108-126. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.17886 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 109-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the covid-19 pandemic that happens globally brings challenges in almost every aspect of people’s lives, including education. in indonesia, online learning is unavoidable due to closed schools and universities caused by the covid-19 outbreak. teachers must adjust their teaching plans from the face-to-face classroom into fully online learning outside the classroom (atmojo & nugroho, 2020). this becomes an interesting topic to discuss since teachers may have different views about online teaching, especially in teaching secondary school year 7-9 students. considering the characteristics of teachers and students in the indonesian education context, the sudden full shift to online learning could affect students’ learnings. meanwhile, teachers could also experience challenges in adapting to the full online teaching. therefore, secondary school ear 7-9 teachers’ perspectives on these matters are compelling to be investigated. learning english is compulsory in indonesian schools starting from the junior high school level. hence, teachers are expected to have an essential role in the teaching-learning process (alwehaibi, 2015; nugroho & nartiningrum, 2020). although some primary schools in indonesia are still giving english materials as additional courses, the english proficiency levels of primary students in indonesia are varied due to the absence of elt national standard for primary level. consequently, secondary school year 79 english teachers might face challenges in teaching students with different proficiency levels. moreover, the sudden shift of learning situation possibly adds to secondary school year 7-9 efl teachers’ challenges in teaching english. as a result, adding to exploring teachers’ challenges, the present study also focuses on teachers’ suggestions in implementing full online teaching. the fact that english teaching practice in secondary school year 7-9 must follow the ministry of national education and culture curriculum becomes an interesting topic to discuss since the present curriculum does not accommodate the sudden alteration to full online teaching. as mentioned by intansari (2013), the curriculum has been considered the main guidelines and components of teaching processes to achieve the objectives of teaching activities. these circumstances might lead to confusion among teachers, especially those used to rely on the curriculum. teachers would probably face many challenges in translating the curriculum into online teaching practices in this relatively short time. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 110-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license consequently, research on teachers’ challenges amid online teaching needs to be done more extensively. suggestions and needed teaching materials related to the teaching practice amidst the covid-19 pandemic are crucial now that effective teachers should meet learning objectives, as pointed by (virgiyanti, widiati, & suharmanto, 2016). overall, in response to the current situation, the present study aims to uncover the challenges, suggestions, and teaching materials needed by efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers in indonesia regarding implementing the english online classes. hence, to ensure the objectives, the present study is guided by three research questions: (1) what kind of challenges experienced by indonesian efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers during online learning? (2) what are teachers’ suggestions toward the challenges they encountered in online learning? and (3) what do indonesian efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers need regarding the teaching materials in online learning? in order to provide empirical answers to these research questions, a written reflection questionnaire and semistructured interviews were utilized to obtain the required data from 20 english teachers teaching at secondary school year 7-9 in indonesia. the results will provide insights for english language teaching practitioners (e.g., teachers, students, school administrators, and school authorities) to enhance the efficacy of teaching english online in the indonesian context, particularly in secondary school year 7-9 level. online learning is more than presentation and materials distribution using the web. bazan (2016) also stated that online education starts when faculty move to the online classroom from the traditional one. online teachers have the role of guiding students through online learning experiences. the experiences are often planned and designed long before starting the course. online learning could feel lonely without intentional efforts to build a positive social environment. therefore, when teaching online, a teacher must encourage the students to create a positive online learning environment and help students to have conversations with their peers. during online learning, the important roles of a teacher encourage the present study to examine teachers’ perspectives on fully online learning implementation. hughes (2005) explained the definition of perspectives. in an interpretative sense, perspectives include “a view or prospect”, “a particular way of regarding http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 111-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license something,” or “an understanding of the relative importance of things”. this definition is employed in the present study. the teachers’ challenges explored in the present study cover the situations faced by teachers’ that require great physical and mental efforts in implementing full online learning. investigating these challenges would be useful to provide insights into the implementation of online learning. meanwhile, suggestion means plan, action, or idea that is suggested or the act of suggesting it. therefore, teachers’ suggestions in the present study refer to ideas, actions, or plans shared by teachers to support the online learning implementation. several studies on online learning and blended learning have been conducted for years. kebritchi, lipschuetz, & santiague, 2017) synthesized previous studies and provided an overview of issues found in online courses. the data were collected from peer-reviewed journals ranging from 1990 to 2015. the issues were related to online instructors, learners, and content development. from 104 articles, it was revealed that instructors-related issues included changing faculty roles, the transition from face-to-face to online, teaching styles, and time management. learners’-related issues included learners’ identity, readiness, expectation, and participation in online courses. issues related to content included content development, integration of multimedia in content, the role of instructional strategies in developing content, and instructors’ role in content development. this study concluded that higher education institutions need to provide training for learners, professional development for instructors, and technical support for developing content. alberth et al. (2018) presented the myth, reality, and promise of online learning. according to the us department of education, there are nine benefits of online learning: broadening access to quality education, engaging students in active learning, improving learning efficiency, building on students’ interest, enabling teachers to focus on high-value activities, increasing students’ learning rate, and reducing face-to-face schools’ facilities costs. the paper also suggested finding ways to make affordable and available online access for all students and teachers. the authors believed that online learning is matched to the learning goals for us students. singh (2016) focused on the challenges faced by indian teachers http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 112-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license who implemented e-learning. the article also attempted to provide suggestions regarding e-learning. the first challenge is the need for basic infrastructural requirements to make adequate provision of ict. secondly, it was important for teachers to be ict literate. the teachers also needed to develop their capacity to make use of various icts in different situations efficiently. the suggestions found were that teachers could become comfortable using technology, select and evaluate digital resources, and develop a positive attitude towards ict to be interested in learning about it. also, teacher discussion forums could be created to discuss ict usages in their classes and learn from each other in the process. teachers may also lms (learning management system) that would engage learners. a recent study by abbasi, ayoob, malik, & memon (2020) investigated students’ perceptions of e-learning during the lockdown caused by the spread of covid-19. a self-administered questionnaire was sent by email to the participants. overall, from the total of 382 responses, 77% of students had negative perceptions towards elearning. the study concludes that students preferred face-to-face teaching over e-teaching during the lockdown situation. another study in the same year by kumi-yeboah (2013) investigated the benefits, obstacles, and possible solutions of blended and online learning in k-12 schools in the united states. some mentioned advantages are; students could contact the teacher for assistance after the online section, shy students might gain confidence by participating in the online discussions, and efficient data collection from assessments can be achieved. however, major challenges of blended learning were also brought up, such as teacher training, lack of social interaction among students, and possible access to unsuitable sites. then, some solutions proposed are redesigning traditional classroom approaches, offering professional online education training, and providing equal access to online education. another study on using online learning platforms in indonesian efl classrooms was done by cakrawati (2017). she focused her study on students’ perceptions about the use of online learning platforms in efl classrooms. from the questionnaires and interviews given to junior and high school students, the majority of the respondents considered the use of online learning platforms was efficient and effective in terms of time. however, there was also a challenge found in the study, which was the slowhttp://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 113-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license speed internet. on the other hand, students also agreed that online learning platforms could help them acquire new vocabularies, practice language skills, and improve their understanding of the lesson’s contents. the aforementioned previous research has given some information on implementing online learning in indonesian and foreign contexts. the benefits, challenges, and suggestions regarding the practice of online learning have been mentioned. however, the application of online learning in the previous studies was consciously planned by the government, not suddenly done because of the covid-19, and most of those earlier studies were, in fact, still included in blended, not full-time online learning. thus, sudden and fully online learning performance at this time in indonesia remains a lack of evidence. therefore, the present study intends to examine the challenges faced by indonesian efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers during online learning in the covid-19 outbreak. furthermore, teachers’ suggestions and teaching materials needed are also explored since the teaching process during the full online learning changes unexpectedly. the teacher needs to adjust their teaching plans almost immediately. insights on these matters are crucial because online learning is one of the most critical issues in education during the covid-19 outbreak. method research design the in-hand study aimed to examine english teachers’ perspectives on challenges, suggestions, and online learning materials. in order to address the issue, a qualitative design employing written reflections and semistructured interviews was adopted. qualitative research enables researchers to portray, summarize, and depict an in-depth understanding of an ongoing phenomenon (yin, 2015). in the context of the present study, the views and insights of indonesian efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers were revealed by following this approach. as in qualitative research, contextualization of the data is a crucial aspect (harding, 2018). this study does not focus on generalizing but concerns the accuracy of the phenomenon studied in this paper. therefore, the data were only interpreted in the context of indonesian efl teaching, where the authors collected the data. research site and participants this study was conducted in english language teaching for secondary school year 7-9 level in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 114-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indonesia, in which english is considered a foreign language. hence, the most available place where students could obtain a large amount of exposure to english was in the classroom (nugroho & rekha, 2020). the participants were 20 indonesian teachers (6 males, 14 females) teaching at secondary school year 7-9 in some provinces: east java, central java, and west java. they voluntarily participated in this study upon invitation and selected based on two primary criteria, (1) experiencing distance teaching during the global pandemic and (2) having experience of teaching english at least for three years. the participants’ age ranged between 24 and 35, with the average was 27. all the teachers earned professional training through an undergraduate program in english language teaching from several universities in indonesia. their teaching experience ranged from 3 to 7 years. data collection and analysis the present study employed written reflection and semi-structured interviews as a means of data collection. first, written reflection, a written story template consisting of a set of instructions (barkhuizen, 2014), was administered to reveal the participants’ perceptions about challenges, suggestions, and materials during the online teaching. it was completed with a blank space where the participants wrote their responses. the main advantage of this data collection tool was for participants to freely produce an intelligible answer and response based on their own experiences and reflections (onwuegbuzie et al., 2010). in the context of this study, the written reflection consists of six items examining the participants’ views about challenges, suggestions, and materials needed during the online teaching and learning. the written reflection was administered to the participants online in google forms from whatsapp, the most frequently used social media in indonesia. second, semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand about the participants’ challenges, suggestions, and needed materials. there were seven participants in the semi-structured interview (namely, ana, ella, dina, angga, yanti, imah, and tiwi) who were conveniently selected based on the responses provided in the written reflection. this method of inquiry was open, allowing new ideas and questions to come up during the interview (harding, 2018). the benefit of this method was that the researchers brought guidance in hands, but still possible to extend the guidance if a new issue was raised during the dialogue (nugroho et al., 2020). because of the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 115-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license global pandemic, the interviews were conducted online using phone calls for 15 to 30 minutes each. considering the benefits and practicality, written reflection and semi-structured interviews were selected as data collection instruments in this study. the data gathered through written reflection and semi-structured interviews were analyzed by following some procedures of a sequential explanatory strategy developed by creswell (2009). first, the data from the 20 participants, both from written reflection and semi-structured interviews, were tabulated. second, the data were coded based on several themes referring to the research questions (e.g., teachers’ challenges, suggestions, and needed materials). third, the researchers reviewed, analyzed, and integrated the emerging themes as reflected from the 20 participants, which led to data analysis and conclusion drawing. to maintain the validity and reliability of the data in this study, the two authors coded and reviewed the data from both written reflection and semi-structured interviews independently. after that, several stages of discussion were conducted to achieve a consensus on the final results. the most relevant excerpts as the empirical answers to the research questions in this study were presented in the result section. findings and discussion findings efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers’ challenges amidst online teaching table 1. teachers’ challenges amidst online teaching types of challenges percentage cannot see my students 33.3 no direct response internet connection teaching plan 25.6 23.1 7.7 in general, teachers have difficulties delivering the lesson since they cannot face their students’ directly as in traditional classrooms. for instance, fitri shared her challenges in teaching an online class. fitri (written reflection) the main difficulty in delivering the lesson is that we can’t see the students directly. i often think about whether my students can follow my teaching activities. during online learning, few minutes are wasted since many students are late to join the class. agus (written reflection) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 116-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license i need to wait for a long time because sometimes the students don’t respond. another problem experienced by some teachers, especially teachers who teach in small cities, is the unstable internet signal. this situation hinders the effectiveness of teaching activities. teacher imah (interview) the first problem that i encounter when teaching online is the poor internet connection. i teach in a small city where the internet signal is not as good as in big cities. this situation concerns me since my teaching becomes less effective. few teachers also mentioned that they need to adjust their lesson plans for the rest of the semester since the online learning is implemented completely. teachers’ ability to adapt during the sudden change in the teaching environment is put to the test. teacher angga (interview) the problem i experienced during online classes is that i had to rearrange my teaching plans since i could not meet my students face to face anymore. it is quite challenging for me as i have to make myself used to this sudden situation too. in summary, teachers’ challenges in online learning are difficulties in delivering the lesson, slow responses from students, and poor internet signals. adapting lesson plans also becomes one of the teachers’ challenges in teaching online since they have quite a short amount of time to adjust. efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers’ suggestions for online teaching table 2. teachers’ suggestions for online teaching types of suggestions percentage internet 41.9 online platforms webinar chatting apps visitation 34.9 18.6 2.3 2.3 the teachers also shared their suggestions for maintaining fun and meaningful online classes. most recommendations are related to internet signals. many teachers believe that a stable internet signal is important for teachers and students to support video calls without any distractions. nana (written reflection) conducting online teaching and learning needs a stable internet connection both in the teachers’ and students’ sides. the internet should be stable and supporting condition (calm without any distraction) for both parties. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 117-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers in big cities have a good internet connection, so they often suggest using various learning platforms such as google classroom or edmodo and ask fellow teachers to seek more interesting learning platforms. teacher ella (interview) i encourage fellow teachers to use online learning platforms such as google classroom or edmodo. as a matter of fact, i have used some online platforms in teaching. however, i have never implemented it completely. my teaching is often blended, so maybe it will be good if other teachers look for other online platforms that can be used to support online learning. many teachers also suggest the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology administer training for teachers, such as webinars which enable teachers to attain information about adapting to the full online teaching that has been done for months now. the webinars will also allow teachers to share their experiences during online learning and propose good solutions to each problem in online classes. bayu (written response) i think it will be good if the ministry of national education holds webinars to help teachers who have difficulties adapting their former teaching practices into full online teaching. teachers will have opportunities to share their problems in class and ask for solutions from fellow teachers. then, one suggestion proposed for teachers who teach in places with unstable internet connections is to minimize video calls in teaching. the teachers can use chatting applications or assign students to study independently by sending links to educational websites when the internet signal is poor. teacher ana (interview) for me, teaching online doesn’t have to be in the form of the video conference. it would be quite ineffective, especially for teachers who work in a rural area. my advice would be using chatting apps or sending links to educational websites for students so that they can learn by themselves at times. it can be a solution when the internet signal is happened to be bad. the students would be able to learn the materials instead of trying to connect to the internet for a long time. a fascinating suggestion was proposed by teacher 13. when absolute online teaching seems difficult due to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 118-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technical issues, he is willing to visit his students’ houses and deliver the learning materials or quizzes. then, the students will send the assignments or the answers to the quizzes online. when the students do not submit the assignments during the given time, the teacher can collect them in the next visitations. teacher yanti (interview) teaching online in a small city is quite challenging. my students’ access to a stable internet connection is limited. since i have only a few students in my class, i am happy to visit my students’ houses to deliver learning materials and quizzes. i will also ask them to work on some problems such as assignments or quizzes, and i will ask them to send the answers later when the internet signal is available. if it is still not possible, i can collect their assignments later, when i visit them again. efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers’ needed materials for online teaching table 3. teachers’ needed materials for online teaching types of suggestions percentage engaging materials 37.2 video conferencing songs/movies games 27.9 18.6 9.3 assessment materials independent learning materials 4.7 4.7 after sharing the suggestions for challenges in teaching online, the teachers also give their insights on what other teachers possibly need teaching materials. most teachers believe that more interactive and engaging teaching materials can make students more active. novi (written reflection) i need more interactive and engaging materials which can make the students be more active. not only just by doing a worksheet. some teachers also mentioned that they need information on videoconferencing application that can accommodate many students and are safe and easy to operate. budi (written reflection) i need information about applications that enable me to have video conferencing sessions with my students. after hearing the rumor that the zoom application is not safe, some of my students asked me to use other applications. since many students ask for fun activities during online learning, such as movies and songs, teachers said they would appreciate creative ideas http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 119-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license utilizing movies, songs, or other fun materials. teacher tiwi (interview) probably due to staying at home for a long time, my students complain that they feel bored and suggest watching movies or listening to songs during classes. however, i think it must be followed by fun and educative activities, so i need ideas on accommodating movies and songs in my classes without neglecting the learning process. some teachers say that their students are greatly interested in games. even during online learning, the students still ask for games. this situation leads to the teachers’ needs for online english educational games or games instructions that can be applied during online learning, which both meaningful and fun. teacher dina (interview) my students are always asking for games. normally i do games in my offline classes in order to grab my students’ attention. but i find it quite difficult to do games during online learning. i guess i need resources of fun and meaningful online games that still make my students learn, or probably instructions to do games, but online, if there is any. the administration of assessments during online learning is also challenging. therefore, teachers need to find solutions for this matter. malik (written reflection) sometimes i conduct interviews or ask my students to do performances such as drama to assess their ability to use english. yet, the implementation of online classes makes it quite difficult for us to do such assessments. most of the participants argue that secondary school year 7-9 students could not study english independently. the teachers assume that their students still need supervision to some extent. this assumption is based on students’ late collection of assignments or students’ comments that they encounter difficulties in understanding the learning materials. therefore, teachers noticed that websites or applications that support autonomous learning are needed. yana (written reflection) few of my students are always late in collecting their online assignments. i need to remind them to collect the assignments. when i ask them the reasons for the late collection, most of them http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 120-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license answer that they do not really understand the assignments. my students also mentioned that they are not motivated to do assignments alone at home. i think they need fun english websites or applications to support them in learning english independently. discussion when teachers think that delivering the lesson is one of the challenges in teaching online, fully online learning practices are quite brand new for possibly all secondary school year 7-9 teachers in indonesia. the closest step to online learning that has been practiced in few schools in indonesia is blended learning practices. halverson and graham (2019) mentioned that the planning process in blended learning is required so that the independent learning process can be more effective. in fact, during online learning, students are expected to learn more independently (cole & vanderplank, 2016; sundqvist, 2019; zainuddin & perera, 2019). thus, teachers should deliver the lesson effectively so that the students can do independent learning. the following problem in teaching online is students’ too relaxed behaviors. teachers often have to wait for quite a long time to be responded to by their students. it is indeed possible that an unstable internet connection could cause the delayed responses. however, on some occasions, such as video conferencing classes, few students are always late or disturbed during the class. other students say that those students are probably still sleeping and forget to attend the class. therefore, teachers need to wait for the late students to be contacted by their classmates. since online learning mostly relies on the internet connection, internet signal becomes vital for the continuous implementation of online learning (derakhshan & hasanabbasi, 2015; fatimah et al., 2020). considering that indonesia is formed by thousands of islands with various geographical and economic conditions, it is not easy to expect equal internet access throughout indonesia. thus, uneven internet connection is considered as one of the challenges in online learning practices. the unforeseen shift from learning in brick-and-mortar classrooms into online learning really brings challenges, as mentioned previously. one challenge for teachers is adapting the lesson plans. we know that pure online teaching has not been popular in indonesia. even so, the spread of covid-19 made indonesian schools implement pure online learning. hence, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 121-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers are demanded to work on their creativity in facing this challenge. various suggestions are also proposed by indonesian efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers. one suggestion mentioned by the teachers is providing stable and fast internet signals across indonesia. teachers' and students’ ability to access the internet must also be assured (mollaei & riasati, 2013). if online learning is more permanent, every student and teacher must connect to the internet comfortably (hembrough & jordan, 2020). of course, it is not a simple matter, but internet access is the main factor in ensuring the continuity of online learning (marwan, 2017; prawiro, 2020). one suggestion comes from a teacher who teaches in a rural area. he is willing to visit his students’ houses to deliver materials and assignments due to often unstable internet signals in his area. later, when the internet signal happens to be good, the students can submit the assignments. if the students cannot connect to the internet, the teacher will collect the assignments in the next visitation. since his students are not that many, he decides that this kind of internet-assisted learning or blended learning is the best solution. there is also a suggestion for teachers who teach in places with poor internet signals to use chatting applications or educational websites that can be accessed when the internet signal is stable. this is a reasonable suggestion since using video conferencing applications may not work well. when the internet signal is quite good in another part of indonesia, some teachers mentioned using various online learning platforms such as edmodo or google classrooms. thus, according to those teachers, pure online learning is possible to be managed well. they need to adjust their lesson plans that are mostly blended learning forms into pure online learning. they also suggest other teachers find more online learning platforms and use them in teaching. then, teachers can give information to fellow teachers about the good and bad sides of the platforms and applications. another suggestion is administering webinars for teachers with topics related to online teaching. not all teachers are familiar with teaching online. the majority of schools in indonesia still require face-to-face meetings in classrooms. therefore, to familiarize teachers with online learning, webinars are quite efficient since conducting regular seminars is not possible. a national seminar that all teachers in indonesia can access is a good alternative to give insights about http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 122-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license online teaching for the teachers. the idea of holding webinars is similar to the release of a handbook on facilitating flexible learning written by huang et al. (2020). the handbook provides ideas on maintaining undisrupted learning during the covid-19 outbreak. moreover, teachers’ perspectives on teaching materials needed during online teaching are also shown in the present study. most teachers responded that they need interactive and engaging materials. it is understandable since students may tend to get bored and unmotivated while studying at home. teachers also mentioned that they wanted safe and easy to operate video conferencing applications. ideas to utilize movies or songs in class are also required since many students ask for them. doing assessments during online learning is quite tricky so that the teachers require suitable forms of assessments. students get less assistance from their teachers during open online learning, so websites or applications that support autonomous learning are necessary (köse, 2016). then, educational online games or instructions to do educational games online are also on-demand as many secondary school year 7-9 students are interested in them. the present study offers some inferences on the implementation of open online learning during the covid19 outbreak. first, the results provide efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers' perspectives on the challenges they face in implementing open online learning. second, suggestions from the teachers and information on teaching materials that the teachers expect during online learning are also presented in the present study. it is expected that the results of the present study can be beneficial in improving the quality of open online teaching during the covid19 pandemic. conclusions and suggestion the present study findings paint a picture of the practice of online learning in indonesia during the covid19 pandemic that is yet to cease. secondary school year 7-9 teachers who teach at the starting level of english education in indonesia have shared their experience in teaching beyond the classroom. teachers’ challenges in teaching online are difficulty in delivering lessons, poor internet connection, slow responses from students, and problems in adjusting teaching plans. then, the suggestions submitted by efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers are providing stable internet signals, visiting students’ houses, using online learning platforms, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 123-126 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license administering webinars, and using chatting applications or educational websites. lastly, the teachers also share teaching materials that are beneficial during online learning. the materials mentioned are interactive and engaging materials, safe and easy-to-operate video conferencing applications, ideas on how to utilize movies or songs in class, suitable assessments during online learning, websites or applications that support autonomous learning, and online educational games or instructions to do online games. the results in this study are necessary in order to maintain the efficacy of online learning. speaking about effective learning, the teachers’ role is essential, especially in educating secondary school year 7-9 students who are starting to learn english as a compulsory subject. information on teachers’ challenges in teaching online will allow other teachers to think of solutions when they face the same situations. the present study's suggestions and teaching materials can offer perspectives on making online learning fun and meaningful. since the available respondents in the present study are 20 efl secondary school year 7-9 teachers, future studies are expected to employ more respondents to better understand the online learning implementation, especially in secondary school year 7-9 level in indonesia. future research may also consider secondary school year 7-9 students’ perspectives on the challenges, suggestions, and learning materials needed during online learning to substantiate the results of the in-hand study. investigating perspectives from teachers and students from senior high schools and universities is also suggested because english is also taught there. those proposed studies are expected to provide a more complete picture of online learning during the covid-19 outbreak in indonesia. therefore, the effectiveness of online english teaching and learning practices in indonesia is well maintained. references abbasi, s., ayoob, t., malik, a., & memon, s. i. 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(2016). characteristics of effective junior high school english teachers in kabupaten pacitan based on students’ and teachers’ perceptions. jurnal pendidikan teori, penelitian, dan pengembangan, 1(3), 338–346. https://doi.org/10.17977/jp.v1i3. 6159 yin, r. k. (2015). qualitative research from start to finish. guilford publications. zainuddin, z., & perera, c. j. (2019). exploring students’ competence, autonomy and relatedness in the flipped classroom pedagogical model. journal of further and higher education, 43(1), 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877 x.2017.1356916 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 172-188 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17773 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee online learning readiness of junior high school students in denpasar kadek erlita dwiyanti*, i putu yogi pratama, ni putu ines marylena candra manik received: 15th oct 2020; revised: 15th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract the covid-19 pandemic has caused learning to be carried out online. not all students, however, are ready for online learning. this study aims to examine the level of readiness of eighth-grade students at a junior high school through an explanatory sequential mixed method design consisting of quantitative and qualitative phases. student readiness for online learning in this study was reviewed from five dimensions: self-directed learning, motivation for learning, computer/internet self-efficacy, learner control, and online communication self-efficacy. the online learning readiness scale (olrs) survey proposed by hung (2010) with a five-point-likert scale was used to collect quantitative data. the data were analyzed quantitatively, and the level of readiness was measured utilizing the e-learning readiness assessment model suggested by aydin and tasci (2005). follow-up interviews were then held to support the quantitative data. the results showed that the majority of students entered the level of "ready but needs a few improvements". however, there was one item in the dimension of self-directed learning that was included in the level of "not ready needs some work". the implication of this study is the need to encourage students to actively communicate in online learning, especially for shy students. key words: efl; online learning; online learning readiness scale (olrs) abstrak pandemi covid-19 menyebabkan pembelajaran dilakukan secara online. namun, tidak semua siswa siap dengan pembelajaran online. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji tingkat kesiapan siswa kelas viii sebuah sekolah menengah pertama melalui penelitian explanatory sequential mixed method yang terdiri dari tahap kuantitatif dan kualitatif. kesiapan siswa untuk pembelajaran online ditinjau dari lima dimensi: pembelajaran mandiri, motivasi belajar, efikasi diri komputer / internet, kontrol peserta didik, dan efikasi diri komunikasi online. survei online learning readiness scale (olrs) yang digagas oleh hung (2010) dilengkapi dengan skala likert lima poin digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data kuantitatif. data kemudian dianalisis dengan menggunakan analisis deskriptif kuantitatif dan tingkatannya diukur dengan model penilaian kesiapan e-learning yang dikemukakan oleh aydin dan tasci (2005). wawancara kemudian dilakukan untuk mengumpulkan data guna mendukung data kuantitatif. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara keseluruhan siswa memasuki level “siap, tetapi perlu sedikit perbaikan”. namun, ada satu item dalam dimensi pembelajaran mandiri yang termasuk dalam tingkat "belum siap, perlu peningkatan". implikasi dari penelitian ini adalah perlunya mendorong siswa untuk aktif berkomunikasi dalam pembelajaran online, khususnya bagi siswa yang pemalu. kata kunci: efl; pembelajaran online; skala kesiapan pembelajaran online (olrs) how to cite: dwiyanti k.e., pratama., ines marylena. (2020). online learning readiness of junior high school students in denpasar. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 172-188. doi:10.17773/ijee.v7i2.17773 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 173-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction covid-19 pandemic has affected all sectors of life, especially after social distancing policies limited the people's physical interaction. it results in the emergence of the petition of work from home to minimize the spread of the covid-19 virus. all sectors that can work from home are expected to do so, including the education sector (kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 2020). the teaching learning process should be done online, where the students must learn from home, and teachers teach from home. in online learning, the course is done through web-based learning and textbooks. besides, the teachers still teach the students via online conferencing systems or email (cheawjindakarn, suwannatthachote, & theeraroungchaisri, 2012). online learning is learning supported by the internet where the internet provides the learning material including youtube videos, powerpoint, e-book, audio, etc. (jeffrey et al., 2014), as well as the access for the interaction of teachers and students (bakia, shear, toyama, & lasseter, 2012). however, a sudden change from face-to-face learning to online learning does not give students time to adjust to online learning, so not all students are ready for online learning. the fact is that online learning is different from face-to-face learning in which face-toface learning allows human psychological contacts in the learning process (lalima & dangwal, 2017) and from direct social interaction which is happening in the classroom (shand & farrelly, 2017) that helps students to build their knowledge in learning (hurst, wallace, & nixon, 2013). although online learning has the advantage of providing flexible learning in terms of time and place as long as they are connected to the internet (lu & vela, 2015; luo, pan, choi, & strobel, 2017; stone, 2018; vanslambrouck, zhu, lombaerts, & philipsen, 2018), online learning cannot provide a sense of this direct psychological and social interaction. curriculum 2013 emphasizes student-centered learning, where students become the center of learning activity and the teacher only acts as a facilitator. online learning requires students‟ independence in learning and structured learning materials to easily understand the lesson (damayanti, fauzi, & inayati, 2018). therefore, the students' readiness to take an online learning class is crucial for the success of online learning. besides, it is agreed that students‟ readiness to participate in online learning affects their academic success differently (gay, 2018). students‟ satisfaction and motivation http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 174-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on online learning are affected by their readiness toward e-learning, selfefficacy, internet self-efficacy, online communication self-efficacy, selfdirected learning, learner control, and motivation towards e-learning (hung, chou, chen, & own, 2010; yılmaz, 2017). self-directed learning is a learning in which the students actively set their learning, including planning, monitoring, and evaluating the learning process (lee, tsai, chai, & koh, 2014). besides, self-directed learning is a learning where the students or the learners have their own pace in understanding the lesson (periya & sebihi, 2017). students who possess great self-directed learning can plan their tasks, set their learning goals, check their understanding and time (jansen, leeuwen, janssen, kester, & kalz, 2017). moreover, in terms of timemanagement, the students can adapt their time management in face-to-face learning to online learning (zimmerman & kulikowich, 2016). chee, divaharan, tan, and mun (2011) proposed eleven indicators of selfdirected learners, including: (1) identifying, determining, and stating his/her learning goals; (2) identifying learning tasks to reach the learning goals; (3) planning the learning processes; setting the standard for learning goals achievement; (4) managing and monitoring his/her learning; (5) formulating relevant question; (6) investigating the probability in making decisions; (7) managing the time by himself/herself; (8) doing self-reflection by considering the feedback from teachers and peers to reach the goal; (9) applying the knowledge to the context; and (10) utilizing the skills learned to explore the knowledge beyond the curriculum contents. in brief, self-directed learning is needed in online learning because it requires students‟ independence in learning. in the same way, motivation also has an important role in learning. motivation encourages and maintains learning behavior. hence, understanding learners‟ motivation is notable (huang & hew, 2016). motivation determines the activeness of students in the learning process. logically, students who have high motivation to learn will certainly tend to participate in the learning process. in contrast, students who have low motivation have less participation (widjaja & chen, 2017). motivation is divided into two types, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation (lin, zhang, & zheng, 2017; ryan & deci, 2000). the basic difference between the two types of motivation is that the source of the motivation itself. intrinsic motivation comes from inside http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 175-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the individual. it is based on the inherent interest. meanwhile, extrinsic motivation comes from outside factors/outcomes achieved by doing a particular thing (reiss, 2012; ryan & deci, 2000). cognitive evaluation theory (cet) is the variable that influences intrinsic motivation, while external regulation, introjection, identification, and integration are the types of extrinsic motivation (reiss, 2012). on the other hand, online learning allows students to control their learning. learner control gives students their own authority to control the learning instruction, including sequence, pace, flow, amount, and review of the learning instruction (simsek, 2012). learner control provides the students the freedom to set their learning, such as their duration to learn or accomplish a particular task. moreover, learning control is limited to controlling the learning surrounding and increasing the communication happened in the learning process (taipjutorus, hansen, & brown, 2012). online learning needs good learner control. when using the computer or mobile for learning online, there will be some distractions as students can open other programs such as social media, electronic games, listening to mp3, or access not-relevant web and sources (taylor, 2002). in brief, online learning requires student independence because students must have good control so they can control their own learning. furthermore, online learning requires the student‟s ability to use the internet and computer effectively. therefore, the internet and computer self-efficacy, including students' beliefs about their capabilities in managing and performing online courses, is important (hsu & chiu, 2004; teo & koh, 2010). students with high computer/internet self-efficacy will likely make an effort to solve the task by utilizing the internet application (kim & glassman, 2013; teo & koh, 2010). on the contrary, low computer/internet self-efficacy students tend to have low performance related to computer and internet activity (teh, chong, yong, & yew, 2010; teo & koh, 2010). fortunately, students nowadays have been accustomed to technology and the internet to help them in online learning (hung, chou, chen, & own, 2010). communication is also necessary for the learning process, both in face-toface and online learning. nevertheless, face-to-face communication is different from online communication. online communication is mostly in written form (except in teleconference). meanwhile, communication in face-toface learning is more vivid since it http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 176-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license employs non-verbal expressions such as facial expressions and body language. consequently, to be ready to undergo online learning, students should possess online communication capability and a good perception of their online communication. the student‟s perception about their capability to communicate and express themselves in an online environment is called online communication selfefficacy (yılmaz, 2017). some studies have been done to explore students' readiness in online learning in higher education settings. hung, chou, chen, and own (2010) found that the students' readiness was considered high in terms of computer/internet self-efficacy, motivation for learning, and online communication self-efficacy and was low in terms of learner control and selfdirected learning. on the other hand, gigdem and ozturk (2016) found that students‟ motivation for online learning was higher than their computer/internet self-efficacy and self-directed learning. it was also found that computer/internet self-efficacy, self-directed learning, and learning motivation were significantly positive relationships with learning achievement. however, only selfdirected learning was found to be the predictor of their achievements, while the other dimensions did not predict the students‟ achievements. furthermore, kırmızı (2015) revealed that out of the five online readiness dimensions, motivation was the most influential dimension on students‟ satisfaction while self-directed learning was the most crucial predictor of students‟ success towards the student satisfaction and success. another research also indicated significant positive correlations between students‟ online learning readiness in technical competencies and both types of autonomous motivation (identified and intrinsic motivation). additionally, the students who had low online learning readiness were likely unmotivated in learning (bovermann, weidlich, & bastiaens, 2018). additionally, another research revealed that online learning motivation readiness as the most conclusive factor of students‟ emotional intelligence, followed by self-directed learning, learner control, online communication self-efficacy, and computer/internet self-efficacy (buzdar, ali, & tariq, 2016). previous studies were about students' readiness online that were only done in the higher education context. simultaneously, the impact of covid-19 has caused online learning to be implemented at all levels, including http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 177-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the middle school level. furthermore, a preliminary interview was done with an english teacher in smp pelangi dharma nusantara denpasar which revealed that at the beginning of online learning, eighth-grade students at smp pelangi dharma nusantara were not ready to learn via online learning. however, students had to quickly adapt to sudden changes from face-toface learning to online learning. in their implementation, some obstacles often came from students. students were less motivated to participate in online learning, and students could not complete the assignments. accordingly, this study examined the students‟ readiness, which was seen from the five dimensions, namely selfdirected learning, motivation for online learning, learner control, self-efficacy of the computer and internet use, and selfefficacy of online communication and the level of online readiness. furthermore, different from the previous studies, which examined the students‟ readiness for online learning in the higher education setting; this study will explore the students‟ readiness in a secondary education institution. therefore, the research questions are formulated as follows: 1. how is the students‟ readiness for online learning? 2. what is the level of students‟ readiness for online learning?. method research design the study was designed as an explanatory sequential mixed method design. the research was done in two phases: the quantitative phase to collect quantitative data and the qualitative phase to collect the qualitative data to support and elaborate the quantitative data (creswell, 2012). the online learning readiness survey was conducted for the quantitative phase and interviews were done in the qualitative phase. population and sample the study population was 60 eighth grade students in smp pelangi dharma nusantara denpasar in the academic year 2020/2021. there were 2 intact classes with 60 students altogether in the population. finally, 35 students out of 60 students filled the survey. besides, there were 4 students from the two classes as the participants for the interview. data collection and analysis the quantitative phase employed an online survey in google form to gather the 5 dimensions of online learning readiness as the variables: selfdirected learning, motivation for online http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 178-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning, learner control, self-efficacy of the computer, and internet use and selfefficacy of online communication. the online learning readiness scale (olrs) survey was adopted from hung, chou, chen, & own (2010). there were eighteen statements in the survey. three statements were for measuring the students‟ readiness in terms of computer/internet selfefficacy. the statements were about their confidence in performing the basic functions of microsoft office programs (ms word, ms excel, and ms powerpoint), knowledge and skills in managing software for online learning, and confidence in using the internet for gathering information. five statements were used to measure the students‟ selfdirected learning. the statements included their independence in planning their study, seeking help when facing the learning problems, managing time, setting learning goals, and setting learning performance expectations. moreover, there were three statements to measure students‟ online learning control, including their control of their learning progress, their focus on learning, and their control to repeat the learning materials. on the other hand, four statements were designed to measure motivation, including their motivation for accepting new ideas, motivation to learn, motivation to learn from their mistakes, and motivation to share ideas with others. additionally, three questions aimed to measure students‟ online communication self-efficacy. the statements included the students‟ confidence in using online communication tools, expressing themselves through text, and posting questions in online discussions. moreover, the five-point likerttype scale was employed for the scoring. the scales consist of “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neutral”, “agree”, and “strongly agree” (ary, jacobs, & sorensen, 2010). moreover, the instruments were tried-out before they are used to do the content validation. the question items were validated to ensure readability, reliability, validity, item difficulty, and item discrimination. moreover, to support the quantitative data, interviews were done to have elaborative answers for the olrs survey. the survey data were analyzed in a descriptive quantitative analysis by using spss 25 to see the students' online learning readiness. the result of the analysis was then connected to the e-learning assessment model suggested by aydın and tasci (2005) to measure the online learning readiness level. the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 179-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license assessment model can be seen in figure 1. figure 1. e-learning assessment model (aydin & tasci, 2005, p. 250) moreover, three qualitative analysis procedures proposed by (miles & huberman, 1994), namely data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification, were used to analyze the data qualitatively. the data from interviews were converted into transcription, select, simplified, and selected for the associated answers in data reduction. in the data display, the data were displayed in the finding and discussion section. in conclusion drawing and verification, the data was verified by connecting them with theories and previous research. findings and discussion the findings of olrs (online learning readiness scale) survey showed that the grand mean score was 3.71. it was higher than the expected level of readiness suggested by aydın and tasci (2005) in which the students are considered ready for online learning if the mean score is or higher than 3.4. furthermore, the findings were described in detail according to the five dimensions of online readiness namely, computer/internet self-efficacy, selfdirected learning, learner control, motivation for online learning, selfefficacy of the computer and internet use, and online communication selfefficacy. findings on computer/internet selfefficacy the findings in terms of computer/internet self-efficacy were displayed in table 1 below. table 1. findings on computer/internet selfefficacy item n mean cis1 i feel confident in performing the basic functions of microsoft office programs (ms word, ms excel, and ms powerpoint). 35 3.57 cis2 i feel confident in my knowledge and skills of how to manage software for online learning. 35 3.43 cis3 i feel confident in using the internet (google, yahoo) to find or gather information for online learning. 35 3.97 total 3.66 table 1 showed that the mean scores of the three survey items were higher than the expected level of readiness (m=3.40). the grand mean http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 180-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license score for the dimension of computer/internet self-efficacy was 3.66. it indicated that students had enough computer and internet selfefficacy to undergo online learning. the students were ready to perform the basic functions microsoft office programs (ms word, ms excel, and ms powerpoint) if the students were required to accomplish assignments by typing them on microsoft office programs. student 3 added: “i am confident to use microsoft office programs (ms word, ms excel, and ms powerpoint) because i have learned them in elementary school.” besides, the students were also confident to use online learning programs. in this case, google classroom and whatsapp group were used as the online learning platforms. however, at the beginning of the use of google classroom, student 3 and student 4 said that they were a bit confused to join the class since it required the class passcode. in terms of the use of the internet, the students felt confident. all students said that surfing on the internet was not a new thing for them. they were already accustomed to that. overall, the students were ready in terms of the use of computers and the internet. the students might get accustomed to technology and the internet since they grow up in a technology era that would help them to deal with online learning (hung, chou, chen, & own, 2010). accordingly, this high-level of computer and internet self-efficacy would help them to utilize technology and improve their learning performance (teh, chong, yong, & yew, 2010; teo & koh, 2010). findings on self-directed learning self-directed learning defined student independence in their learning. the findings on self-directed learning were showed in table 2. table 2 findings on self-directed learning item n mean sdl1 i carry out my own study plan. 35 3.29 sdl2 i seek assistance when facing learning problems. 35 4.11 sdl3 i manage time well. 35 3.63 sdl4 i set up my learning goals 35 3.77 sdl5 i have higher expectations for my learning performance. 35 4.09 total 3.78 from table 2, it can be concluded that only one item that did not pass the expected level of readiness. the overall mean score was 3.78. generally, the students were not ready to plan their own learning. it was in the same line with the statement from student 3 who said: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 181-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license “i do not plan my study. i just follow what the teacher asked us to do.” however, the students were quite active in seeking help when they had problems with their learning as the mean score passed the expected mean score (m=3.40). the interview results revealed that when facing a problem, the students seek help from the teacher, the internet, and friends. student 1 stated: “when i have something i do not understand, i will ask the teacher through whatsapp group. however, if the teacher does not give a fast response reply, i will search for the answer on the internet. if the internet cannot help too, i will ask my friends.” in managing the time, the mean score of the survey passed the expected mean score. it showed that students generally did not have any problem with it. the interview showed that student 1, student 2, student 3, and student 4 did not have any problems in managing school time through online learning and time to do house chores. the students did not have problems managing their time in online learning. this was because the students transfer their time management skills from traditional learning to online learning, so it is not difficult for students to manage their time (zimmerman & kulikowich, 2016). furthermore, in general, the students set their own learning goals as the survey's mean score was higher than the expected mean score of online learning readiness. however, the result of the interview indicated that they did not set their learning goal. student 1, student 3, and student 4 said that they do not set their learning goal by themselves. they only followed the teacher. meanwhile, student 2 stated that sometimes she set her learning goals for the topic that she liked. the result of the survey and the interview revealed that the students had high expectations for their learning. student 4 stated: “i have high expectations toward my learning and get disappointed if i cannot reach my expectation.” regarding the grand score of the self-directed learning dimension, it can be said that the students were ready for online learning. however, if it was seen separately, their readiness in planning their own study still needed improvement. furthermore, to be considered as high self-directed learning, students should be able to plan their study and set their learning goals, monitor their understanding and time (jansen, leeuwen, janssen, kester, & kalz, 2017), and have high expectation toward their learning outcomes (kırmızı, 2015). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 182-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings on learner control online learning requires selflearning control from the students since the teachers cannot control the students directly. the result of the dimension of learner control was presented in table 3. table 3 findings on learner control item n mean lc1 i can direct my own learning progress. 35 3.46 lc2 i am not distracted by other online activities when learning online (instant messages, internet surfing). 35 3.51 lc3 i repeated the online instructional materials on the basis of my needs. 35 3.60 total 3.52 table 3 displayed that students were ready to face online learning in the dimension of learner control. moreover, the grand score for this dimension was 3.52. thus, it could be said that students generally could direct their own learning. student 3 said: “i can direct my own learning progress. i always want to make progress because i am always curious about something that i do not know and try to find out about it. i think it makes me improve my learning.” during the online class, the students were able to focus on the class and were not distracted by other online activities. student 1 stated: “during the online class, i focus on the class. i only open whatsapp class group. i ignore other messages that come to my whatsapp except it is from my parents and really urgent” in conclusion, the students had good learner control to ignore the distractions in online learning such as social media, electronic games, mp3 music, and other not relevant sites and materials, by contrast, they remained focus on the learning (taylor, 2002). besides, sometimes, the learning materials were hard to be understood and need to be comprehended repeatedly. related to this, based on the survey, the students had enough control to repeat the learning materials. the interview result indicated that the students repeated the material when they did not understand it yet. they repeated the materials until they understand. findings on motivation for online learning motivation is also important as the basis to develop online learning readiness. table 4 displayed the dimension of motivation for online learning. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 183-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4 findings on motivation for online learning item n mean mfol1 i am open to new ideas. 35 3.66 mfol2 i have motivation to learn. 35 3.86 mfol3 i improve from my mistakes. 35 4.11 mfol4 i like to share my ideas with others. 35 3.63 total 3.81 table 4 showed that the all the mean scores of the survey of motivation for online learning passed the expected mean score of online learning readiness (m=3.40) with the overall mean score was 3.81. the results of the survey displayed that the students were open to new ideas. the interview also resulted in the same. student 1 said: “if other students have different ideas with me, i will accept it if the ideas accepted by most students.” students also motivated to learn through online learning. student 2 stated: “i have a high motivation to learn in online learning because i love english. therefore, i am always motivated to study and try to master the materials.” on the other hand, students also learned from their mistakes. the mean score of this item was the two highest scores. it meant that students mostly learned from their mistakes. all student 1, student 2, student 3, and student 4 agreed that they should learn from their mistakes to make improvements. student 1 stated: “i always learn from my mistakes, so i will not repeat the same mistakes” students also had a willingness to share their ideas with other students as the mean score for the item was 3.63, higher than the expected mean score. from the interview, student 4 stated: “i like to share my ideas, especially when it is a group work.” in contrast, student 4 said: “i do not like to share my ideas with others because i am a shy person.” nevertheless, if it was seen from the total mean score of motivation for online learning, it could be concluded that the students possessed high motivation for online learning. additionally, the mean score was the highest mean score compared with the other four dimensions. the high motivation for online learning would encourage students to actively participate in online learning (widjaja & chen, 2017). findings on online communication self-efficacy communication is needed in teaching-learning process both in faceto-face learning and online learning. since online learning utilizes written http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 184-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license communication more than oral communication by using an online learning platform, the students have to possess good written online communication. the results of the survey for this dimension were presented in table 5. table 5 findings on online communication self-efficacy item n mean ocs1 i feel confident in using online tools (email, discussion) to communicate with others effectively. 35 3.74 ocs2 i feel confident in expressing myself (emotions and humor) through text. 35 3.74 ocs3 i feel confident in posting questions in online discussions. 35 3.69 total 3.72 table 5 showed that the grand mean for the online communication self-efficacy dimension was 3.72. the mean score of the first item ocs1 indicated that students already pass the standard of readiness in using online tools (email, discussion) to communicate with others. all student 1, student 2, student 3, and student 4 agreed that they were good in utilizing the online tools to have effective communication additionally, students felt confident to use text to express themselves. the mean score was 3.74 and it passed the expected mean score. moreover, the result from the interview revealed that all student 1, student 2, student 3, and student 4 were confident to speak through text. they even felt more confident to communicate via text than face-to-face. related to asking questions in online discussions, the result of the survey showed that the students generally students were ready for asking questions in online discussions. on the contrary, the result of the interview with student 3 showed that he did not confident to ask questions in online discussion. student 3 said: “i never asked in an online discussion. i avoid being the center of attention because i am a shy person. if i have questions, i will search them on the internet or ask my friends if i cannot find the answers on the internet.” even though the students were ready in terms of online communication in general, some students might avoid being involved in communication due to their personality. overall, if it was sorted, the dimension that had the highest mean score is the motivation dimension for online learning (m = 3.81), followed by the dimension of self-directed learning (m = 3.78), online communication selfefficacy (m = 3.72), computer/internet http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 185-188 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17773 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license self-efficacy (3.66), and learner control (3.52). a recent study found that the dimension of motivation got the highest mean score. this finding was consistent with gigdem and ozturk (2016) study and buzdar, ali, and tariq (2016). however, hung, chou, chen, and own (2010) found that computer/internet self-efficacy obtained the highest mean score. regarding the level of readiness, all the five dimensions were ranged between 3.4 and 4.2 which was considered in the level of “ready but needs a few improvements”. conclusion and suggestion this recent study investigated the level of students‟ online learning readiness according the five dimensions including computer/internet selfefficacy, self-directed learning, learner control, motivation for online learning, self-efficacy of the computer and internet use, and online communication self-efficacy. the result showed that generally, the students were ready for online learning, in which the grand mean score (m=3.71) passed the expected mean score of online learning readiness and was in the level of “ready but needs a few improvements”. specifically, the mean score of each dimension also passed the expected mean score of readiness and in the level of “ready but needs a few improvements”. however, one item of self-directed learning dimension related to the plan your own studies was still in the level of “not ready needs some work”. additionally, the dimension of online communication self-efficacy was in the level of “ready but needs a few improvements”. this study implied that the improvement was needed to encourage the students to 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(2017). online learners' motivation in online learning: the effect of online participation, social presence, and collaboration. in c. muniarti & r. sanjaya (eds.), learning technologies in education: issues and trends (pp. 72-93). soegijapranata catholic university. yılmaz, r. (2017). exploring the role of elearning readiness on student satisfaction and motivation in flipped classroom. computers in human behavior, 70, 251-260. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.085 zimmerman, w., & kulikowich, j. m. (2016). online learning self-efficacy in students with and without online learning experience. american journal of distance education, 30(3), 180-191. doi:10.1080/08923647.2016.1193801. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 159-171 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17622 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee strategies in dealing with the reading section of ‘toefl prediction’: a case of aceh efl learners fera busfina zalha*, alfiatunnur alfiatunnur, cut annisa triana kamil received: 04th sept 2020; revised: 13th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract highlighting the toefl prediction test, this study attempted to explore efl learners‟ strategies in dealing with the reading comprehension section of the toefl prediction test, both in reading the texts and tackling the questions. this study employed a qualitative research design as its approach and a semi-structured interview as the instrument to gain the data. six participants were purposively selected from the english language education department of uin ar-raniry banda aceh. they were interviewed concerning their reading strategies in dealing with the questions in the toefl prediction test. the findings revealed five strategies used by the participants in contending with the toefl reading section, classified into reading strategy and test-taking strategy. the reading strategies consist of skimming and scanning the passages, using context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and utilizing background knowledge. meanwhile, reviewing the questions and prioritizing easier questions are included in the testtaking strategy. this study proposes further research to investigate the effectiveness of particular strategies in improving efl students‟ performance in facing the reading section. key words: reading comprehension section; reading strategies; toefl prediction test abstrak mengangkat topik tes toefl prediksi, penelitian ini mencoba menyelidiki strategi yang dilakukan oleh mahasiswa-mahasiswi bahasa inggris dalam menghadapi bagian reading comprehension di tes toefl, baik strategi ketika membaca teks maupun ketika menjawab soal-soal yang tersedia. studi ini menggunakan pendekatan qualitatif dan menggunakan wawancara semi-terstruktur sebagai instrument untuk menghasilkan data. teknik purposive sampling digunakan dalam memilih enam partisipan untuk studi ini yang keenamnya berasal dari program studi pendidikan bahasa inggris uin ar-raniry banda aceh. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa ada lima strategi yang digunakan oleh partisipan dalam menyelesaikan toefl reading section. kelima strategi tersebut dapat diklasifikasikan kepada reading strategy (strategi membaca) dan testtaking strategy (strategi dalam menghadapi tes). reading strategies terdiri dari membaca teks dengan menggunakan teknik skimming and scanning, menggunakan konteks untuk dapat memahami makna dari katakata yang sukar, dan menggunakan background knowledge (pengetahuan sebelumnya) ketika membaca teks. sementara mereview pertanyaan dan mengutamakan menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang lebih mudah termasuk dalam test-taking strategy yang dilakukan oleh partisipan ketika menghadapi tes. studi ini mendukung penelitian lebih dalam kedepannya terkait keefektifan dari strategi-strategi ini dalam meningkatkan performa mahasiswa-mahasiswi bahasa inggris dalam menyelesaikan bagian reading comprehension. kata kunci: reading comprehension section (bagian reading comprehension); reading strategies (strategi membaca); toefl prediction test (tes toefl prediksi) how to cite: zalha f.b., alfiatunnur., kamil c.a. (2020). strategies in dealing with the reading section of „toefl prediction‟: a case of aceh efl learners. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 159-171. doi:10.17622/ijee.v7i2.17622 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 160-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction as a standardized test evaluating an individual's proficiency in understanding the english language, the toefl test has been widely used in many aspects of life. one of the toefl test's major roles can be vividly seen in the academic or educational sector. for instance, achieving certain scores of toefl has been one of the requirements to register as well as to complete the degree at the university level. according to clark (2014, cited in halim & ardiningtyas, 2018), more than 9,000 colleges and universities in more than 130 countries employ toefl scores to help them decide for the admission process. in line with that, in indonesia, university students (also university student candidates) have to sit for the toefl test to measure their english competence so that they can prove that they have met the english standard for university admission or graduation (netta & trisnawati, 2019). ananda (2016) also suggests that the toefl test score is one of the major requirements for admission and graduation in most prestigious universities in indonesia. abboud and hussein (2011) mentions that the toefl test itself has four different formats, which are paper based test (pbt), computer based test (cbt), internet-based test (ibt), and institutional testing program (itp). especially in indonesia, most universities apply what is called as toefl prediction test, or so-called toefl-equivalent, whose format is similar to the toefl itp (mahmud, 2014). universities provide toefl prediction at a more affordable price than toefl itp, and it is used only for internal purposes such as for universities‟ admission, scholarship, or graduation. even though the toefl prediction is only for local purposes, it is determinative, and its importance is certainly undoubted. consequently, students must achieve the minimum test score required by the university. uin ar-raniry banda aceh, one of the most leading universities in aceh province of indonesia, was chosen as this research site. this university also regulates their students to prove their english proficiency through the toefl prediction score in order for the students to graduate from the university. especially for english language learners, the minimum score that must be obtained by the students is 500. however, attaining this score still seems problematic for some students. they seem to be struggling to attempt to obtain the required minimum score. fadhilla (2019), in her study concerning efl students of uin ar-raniry, claims that it is still hard for the students to acquire the 500 score of the toefl test. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 161-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license as a result, students have to retake the test several times until they manage to get the needed score. there are various reasons underlying students‟ difficulties in succeeding in the toefl test. mahmud (2014) suggests that one factor causing students to struggle to deal with the toefl test is the various skills that are evaluated simultaneously at the same test. one solution for this is to have fruitful strategies for each respective skill. furthermore, in his research, antoni (2014) found that having a strategy is an essential factor in completing the test. he even proposes that having good strategies is more important than having skills. as the toefl prediction test consists of three sections; listening, structure and written expression, and reading comprehension, the test-takers need to have good strategies for each of those sections. this study is concerned with investigating strategies for the reading comprehension section, especially in reading the text and tackling the questions. this is interesting to be explored since this section is quite challenging. test takers have to manage answering questions related to long passages in the test in only 55 minutes. abboud and hussein (2011) suggest that efl learners tend to face difficulties in the reading comprehension section of toefl due to the test's limited time. therefore, to answer the section in the allocated time, there should be certain strategies used by test takers. according to jannah and fitriani (2018), test-takers‟ limitation of vocabulary and unfamiliar phrases also hampers them in understanding the meaning of the passages in the reading section, turning them to fail the section. thus, exploring the strategies effective in reading section is crucial to help future test takers deal with the test. studies regarding strategies in preparing for the toefl tets, especially in uin ar-raniry, have been done by several researchers (fadhilla, 2019; netta, 2019; hidayat, 2020). however, those studies do not specifically focus on one particular section of the toefl test; they are concerned with the toefl test in general instead. meanwhile, as previously mentioned, the reading section of the toefl test is quite challenging since the time is very limited, and the passages and the questions that test-takers need to deal with are quite many. therefore, this study attempts to fill the gap of the condition by investigating the answers to the question „what are strategies used by uin ar-raniry efl learners in dealing with the reading section of toefl prediction?‟ it is expected that this study provides useful strategies http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 162-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that future toefl test-takers can employ during their preparation for the toefl test and the test. in a similar vein, this can also guide toefl instructors regarding accommodating their students with appropriate learning strategies in the toefl test. toefl, standing for „test of english as a foreign language‟, is a standardized test aiming at measuring an individual‟s proficiency in the english language. it is defined as a test assessing the general knowledge or skills commonly required as an entry prerequisite in an academic institution (brown, 2005). toefl‟s score can be used as an indicator of someone‟s english proficiency level to predict their success in other contexts. according to abboud and hussein (2011), officially, the toefl test is administered in four formats, which are the paper-based toefl (pbt), the computer-based toefl (cbt), the internet-based toefl (ibt), and institutional testing program (itp). the first three formats differ only in the different sections the tests have and the equipment used in the test (using paper, computer, or internet). meanwhile, toefl itp is quite different from the other types of toefl tests. toefl itp, which was initiated in 1965, allows a university, institution, or agency to hold their own toefl test facilitated by their own staff and used only for their local purposes. this study uses the term toefl prediction, a toefl test provided by the university, uin ar-raniry, with a price much lower than the toefl itp. the test sections in the toefl prediction are similar to those in the toefl itp, encompassing the listening section, structure and written expression section, and reading comprehension section. the test takes place for about two hours and a half, and all of the question items are in the form of multiple choices. reading comprehension is the last section of the toefl prediction assessing the test-takers‟ competency in understanding english passages. according to roger (2005), the reading comprehension section is a part of the test evaluating test-takers' ability to answer the question based on the passages' information. this section consists of four or five passages and fifty questions in which the test takers have fifty minutes to finish. in this section, the test may ask about the main idea, directly answered details, vocabulary, or overall reviewed ideas (phillips, 2014). according to roger (2005), generally, the passages in the reading section are related to a particular realm of knowledge such as science and technology, geology, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 163-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license history, geography, culture, art, literature, architecture, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and biography. even though covering various topics yet, the organization and the texts' style are commonly simple and similar. the word „strategy‟ is defined as subjects that are intentionally and purposively used for particular processes (cohen, 2006). reading strategy is intentional acts taken by readers in order to comprehend the text. he (2008) proposes several reading strategies that readers can use to comprehend texts, such as skimming and scanning, analyzing vocabulary, distinguishing between literal and implied meanings, and highlighting discourse markers for process relationships. furthermore, according to phillips (2014, cited in jannah & fitriani, 2018), to deal with vocabulary questions, four strategies can be employed: finding out meanings from structural clues, finding word parts, and giving meaning for unfamiliar words by using context. meanwhile, such strategies as searching for specific information, using background knowledge, and identifying the text's tone or purpose can be used to review questions in the reading section. having successful reading strategies is essential as pani (2004) claims that effectively employing strategies is one way to be good readers. besides strategies in reading, as mentioned above, dooden (2015) also proposes another strategy called „testtaking strategy‟. he claims that “testtaking strategies are cognitive abilities to deal with any testing situation in an appropriate manner and to know what to do during tests” (dooden, 2015 p. 108). dooden (2015) furthermore mentions examples of test-taking strategies are managing time effectively, surveying all questions before responding, solving easy questions first, eliminating wrong options. those reading strategies are processes that can be used by testtakers to overcome comprehension failures. moreover, having test-taking strategies is equally important to have the basic knowledge and information to answer the test questions (langerquist, 1982). reading strategy and test-taking strategy are two different terms, even though they are often confused and may sound overlap. assiri and alodhahi (2018) mention that the two are different. the test-taking strategy is not specifically related to any language skills, whereas reading is only about reading skills. also, reading strategy is about engaging in a reading activity whose purpose is to comprehend texts. in contrast, the test-taking strategy is only used to cope with a test or assignment task. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 164-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method this research employed a descriptive qualitative approach. creswell (2012) defines that a qualitative approach allows the researcher to explore common experiences of an individual to develop a theory. thus, qualitative study allows researchers to explore phenomena, such as an individual's experience and feelings (ary, jacobs, sorensen, & razavieh, 2010). in this study, the qualitative approach was employed to explore students‟ experience using reading strategies and test-taking strategies in facing the toefl prediction test, especially in the reading comprehension section. furthermore, a semi-structured interview was utilized in data collection. thus, it made it possible to ask additional questions about the investigated issue during the interview. the instrument was used to give freedom to the participant and encourage them to speak about their strategy deeply, specifically, in reading the text and answering the questions. this study took place at uin arraniry banda aceh. this study's population was uin ar-raniry students in tarbiyah faculty, especially the english department‟s 2015 students. the samples, which were six participants, were chosen based on the purposive sampling method. this study purposively selected the students who achieved a score of 500 or more for the toefl prediction test and have 35-50 correct answers in the reading section presented by 45-67 scores for their reading comprehension section. the data analysis was done by following the stages proposed by ary et al. (2010), which are: (a) organizing and familiarizing, (b) coding and reducing, and (c) interpreting and representing. therefore, to be familiar with the data, the data from the interview were first organized by listening to the audiotapes and making a transcription. after that, reread the transcription and take notes on what is important. coding and reducing were done afterward by labelling the data to identify every item or idea derived from the interview. having been coded, the data which are not related to strategies used by participants in dealing with the toefl reading section were then eliminated. the selected data were then interpreted meaningfully and then represented descriptively. findings and discussion findings this study's findings are divided into two parts: strategies used in doing the reading process (reading strategies) and strategies in dealing with the types http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 165-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of questions in the reading section (testtaking strategies). the table below summarizes the findings of this study. table 1. reading and test-taking strategies no reading strategies test-taking strategies 1. skimming and scanning reviewing the questions 2. using context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary prioritizing easier questions 3. utilizing background knowledge reading strategies from the interview, it was found that in reading the text, the participants used three strategies: skimming and scanning the passages, using context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and utilizing background knowledge. all participants are initialed as ms, pk, km, ak, rza, and yz. based on the interview, most of the participants mentioned that the strategy they used to answer the reading section was skimming and scanning to search for certain information in the passages. question: what are the strategies that you use in answering the reading section of toefl? i skimmed and scanned the passage to get the idea of the text. because the passages are normally too long, i use the strategy to find the answer fast. [ms] furthermore, responses regarding skimming and scanning were also found in the participants‟ answers when asked whether they applied skimming and scanning strategy in reading the texts. question: do you use skimming and scanning strategy in reading the texts in reading comprehension? yes, if i cannot find the answer in the first paragraph, i will skim and scan the passage to look for the text's main idea because it is too boring to read a long passage, so yeah, i’m trying to read it fast. [rza] another reading strategy that the students used was understanding the meaning of the vocabulary by relating them to the context. question: what are the strategies that you use in answering the reading section of toefl? so like this, i first checked what the text was talking about. after that, i saw the vocabulary and then tried to relate them to the text's topic. here, i mean the context of the text. [yz] in addition, another participant, rza, also said: if i found difficult vocabulary, i would read the sentence that contained the vocabulary. if the sentence talked about http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 166-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license healthy so the vocabulary should be talking about that too. i just guess it and put the vocabulary into the context of passage. [rza] furthermore, this strategy was not only used to figure out the unfamiliar vocabulary in the passage but also used to answer the closest meaning types of question in the toefls‟ reading section. as mentioned by pk: so i looked for the description of the word in the sentence, and then i used the context of the text to understand the certain vocabulary and then answered the question that asked about the closest meaning. [pk] finally, the last reading strategy mentioned in the interview was utilizing background knowledge. as most topics discussed in the reading comprehension section are related to general topics such as history, science, or technology, all participants interestingly agreed that their background knowledge helped them comprehend more the topic in the passages and help them answer the questions easily. so. if i know the topics of the texts, i mean i have the background knowledge about it, i can relate to it even though i just understand the language a little. it eases me to find the answers. [km] in line with km, rza also asserted the importance of having background knowledge in reading the passages in the reading section: it is really useful. for example, if i knew about political things, and the passage talked about politics, it is helping me to understand the passage more and ease me to answer the questions. yes, background knowledge is really important. [rza] test-taking strategies besides strategies in reading, some strategies may be applied while dealing with questions in the reading section, called test-taking strategies. from the interview, it was found that in coping with the questions in the reading section, the participants employed two strategies, which were reviewing the questions and prioritizing easier questions. the participants agreed that reviewing the questions before going with the reading process was helpful when doing the reading section. i usually look for the questions first so that i will only read about what is need to be read to answer the question, not the whole passage. yeah, like we know that if we read the whole passage first, we will need to read it again after reading the question. [yz] km also supported the statement: i just read the question first and look for the keywords of the question, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 167-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and then i read the passage because i can find the answer easily, especially for certain questions. if i read all the passages first, i might forget what i have read, and i need to read it again, and it a waste of time. [km] the other strategy to overcome the test found in this study was prioritizing easier questions when answering the test. there were some questions considered easier, and there was a tendency from the participants to prioritize responding to those questions first. as stated by a participant: i think i would answer easier questions first, such as vocabulary, because i could find it directly in the text. so, i could move to another question quickly. [ms] furthermore, the strategy is considered effective as it can save time during the process of the test: i think it was very effective, i can save much time, so if i save my time, i can be more focus on the question, and i can finish it well. [pk] both of the test-taking strategies found in this study are related to dealing with the section's limited time. as defined by dooden (2015, test-taking strategies are about what to do during the test. therefore, in this case, it is about what to do with the limited time of the test; how to contend with the situation. this study's results indicate that the reading strategy and test-taking strategy are used by the participants to deal with the toefl prediction test. this is relevant with assiri and alodhahi (2018) claiming that testtaking strategies are essential when dealing with tasks related to reading comprehension. discussion this study found three strategies that efl learners used when they read passages in the reading comprehension section. they are skimming and scanning the passages, using context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and utilizing background knowledge. the idea of using skimming and scanning techniques is not newly introduced in reading comprehension. jannah and fitriani (2017) claim that students often skim and scan the passages as one of their strategies in answering the reading comprehension section of the toefl test. from the participants‟ responses, it can be deduced that to contend with the long passages, the participants used the strategy not to read the whole texts. as mentioned by aritonang, lasmana, and kurnia (2019), skimming and scanning are applicable strategies that enable test-takers to answer questions related to the main idea or specific information http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 168-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license without having to read all sentences in the passage. furthermore, from the interview, it was also revealed that using the text context enabled the students to understand the unfamiliar vocabulary even though they did not know the exact meaning of the words. it is not easy for efl learners, who are nonnatives, to know the meaning of all the vocabulary in the test's texts. therefore, trying to guess unfamiliar vocabulary by relating it to the passage's context can help understand the meaning of the vocabulary. according to nurhayati (2016), she states that 70% of her study‟s participants tried to understand the meaning of certain words by associating the words with the text's context. having prior knowledge related to the discussed topics in the text, as suggested by some of the participants, is also essential in reading the passages during the test. it can build the reader-text relationship, which leads the readers to get closer to the text. hasan, gushendra, and yonantha (2017) propose that by having relevant background knowledge, elf learners can better comprehend the text they read since it enables them to correlate their knowledge to the texts‟ content and context. jannah and fitriani (2017) conveyed that 50% of students tend to use their background knowledge as a good strategy in answering the reading comprehension section of toefl. in a similar vein with the reading strategy, the test-taking strategy also plays a pivotal role in facing the reading section. as shown in the findings section, two strategies are found in this study that belong to the test-taking strategy: reviewing the question and prioritizing easier questions. dooden (2015) proposes that looking at all the test questions before attempting to answer the questions is one of the successful strategies for testtakers. it sounds logical as rupp, ferne, and choi (2006, cited in assiri & alodhahi, 2018) that multiple-choice questions in the test can guide testtakers in scanning the text. the questions can help locating the certain information needed to answer the questions. as the reading section passages are normally long and the time allocated is limited, surveying all the questions prior to reading the passage helped test-takers read the text with a purpose in mind. they did not have to read for the whole passages, resulting in managing the time more effectively. moreover, dooden (2015) also suggests that one of the good testtaking strategies is the one that can result in managing the time effectively. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 169-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license furthermore, as abboud and hussein (2011) argue, one of the difficulties students face when taking a test is that the time available is not sufficient; therefore, it is believed that students who have more time in the test will have better performance for the test. not only can the test-taking strategy help students manage the time, but it also helps test-takers reduce test anxiety that they may experience. one of the participants claimed that having strategies could get rid of their nervousness when working on questions on toefl and increase their confidence, which in their opinion, can help them perform well in the toefl test. this is in line with dooden (2015) arguing that test-taking strategies indirectly minimize test anxiety felt by test-takers. conclusion and suggestion as the reading section of the toefl test consists of several long passages with 50 questions in total; therefore, it is unquestionable that fruitful strategies are crucial to succeed in the section. from the interview result, it was found that three reading strategies can be applied during the toefl reading section, which are skimming and scanning the passages, using context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary, and utilizing background knowledge. furthermore, two strategies can be used in dealing with the questions provided in the reading section, so-called testtaking strategies; they are reviewing the questions and prioritizing more straightforward questions. hopefully, knowing these five strategies can help efl learners and other test-takers deal with the reading comprehension section of the toefl test. it is hoped that efl learners can apply these strategies and succeed in achieving the targeted toefl score. besides, the findings are also expected to be guides for toefl instructors in preparing their students to be successful in the toefl test. to conclude, this study has explored the strategies that may be used in facing toefl reading section; however, further study exploring the effectiveness of particular strategies in improving students‟ performance in facing the section is suggested in order to strengthen the existing findings in this area of interest. references abboud, z. a. r., & hussein, n. j. 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(2018). difficulties faced by the students in answering toefl test questions. english, teaching, learning, and research journal, 4(2), 219-231. hasan, a., gushendra, r., & yonantha, f. (2017). the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 1-15. he, t. (2008). reading for different goals: the interplay of efl college students‟ multiple goals, reading strategy use and reading comprehension. journal of research in reading, 31(2), 224-242. hidayat, t. m. (2020). an analysis of learning strategies among students with 500 toefl score or above. uin ar-raniry banda aceh. langerquist, s. l. (1982). addison-wesley’s nursing examination review. addison-wesley. jannah, m., & fitriani, s. s. (2018). efl students‟ strategies dealing with common difficulties in toefl reading comprehension section. international journal of language education, 1(1), 29-36. mahmud, m. (2014). the efl students‟ problems in answering the test of english as a foreign language (toefl): a study in indonesian context. theory and practice in language studies, 4(12), 2581-2587. netta, a., & trisnawati, i. k. (2019). acehnese undergraduate students‟ strategies in preparing for toefl prediction: a preliminary study. englisia journal, 7(1), 41-52. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://www.ets.org/media/research/pdf/rr-06-06.pdf http://www.ets.org/media/research/pdf/rr-06-06.pdf ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 171-171 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17622 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license nurhayati, n. (2016). an analysis of students‟ strategies in answering toefl. the journal of english language studies, 1(1), 10-18. pani, s. (2004). reading strategy instruction through mental modelling. elt journal, 58(4), 355-362. phillips, d. (2014). longman preparation course for the toefl test. longman. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2021, 160-175 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee “elsa speak” in an online pronunciation class: students’ voices rolisda yosintha*, agnira rekha rolisda@gmail.com received: 5th november 2021; revised: 14th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract developing productive skills such as pronunciation requires more than just comprehension. students should have ample opportunities to practice their knowledge. with the strike of covid19 that has abruptly shifted learning from offline to an online setting, lecturers have tried to employ technologies such as elsa speak in teaching pronunciation online. with the rising popularity of this application, there should be a study investigating how the students perceive elsa speak in online pronunciation learning. to do so, this present study employed a mixedmethod approach to know the attitudes of 112 english department students toward elsa speak used in their online pronunciation class. through an analysis of data collected from questionnaires and interviews, the study found that most participants had a positive attitude toward elsa speak concerning its use in their online pronunciation class. even though there were some negative comments from the participants, the benefits outweighed the downside. to make the integration of elsa speak into online pronunciation learning more accommodating to students’ needs, lecturers could take some pedagogical measures, such as supplementing the materials provided by elsa speak with those from other resources, increasing their involvement during the learning process, and promoting collaborative activities. key words: elsa speak; online learning; pronunciation abstrak mengembangkan keterampilan produktif seperti pengucapan membutuhkan lebih dari sekedar pemahaman. siswa harus diberi banyak kesempatan untuk mempraktikkan pengetahuan mereka. dengan adanya wabah covid-19 yang mengubah sistem pembelajaran dari luring ke daring, dosen menggunakan teknologi seperti elsa speak dalam mengajar mata kuliah pengucapan secara daring. dengan meningkatnya popularitas dari aplikasi ini, harus ada penelitian yang menyelidiki bagaimana persepsi siswa tentang elsa speak dalam pembelajaran pengucapan secara daring. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan metode campuran untuk mengetahui sikap 112 mahasiswa jurusan bahasa inggris terhadap elsa speak yang digunakan di kelas pengucapan daring mereka. melalui analisis data yang dikumpulkan dari kuesioner dan wawancara, peneliti menemukan bahwa sebagian besar mahasiswa memiliki sikap positif terhadap elsa speak terkait penggunaannya di kelas mereka. meskipun terdapat beberapa komentar negatif dari partisipan, manfaat elsa speak lebih besar daripada kerugian yang ditimbulkan. supaya integrasi elsa speak ke dalam pembelajaran pengucapan secara daring lebih mengakomodasi kebutuhan mahasiswa, dosen dapat mengambil beberapa langkah pedagogis, seperti menggunakan materi tambahan untuk memberi variasi terhadap materi yang disediakan oleh elsa speak, meningkatkan keterlibatan dosen selama proses pembelajaran, dan mengimplementasikan kegiatan pembelajaran yang kolaboratif. kata kunci: elsa speak; pembelajaran daring; pengucapan how to cite: yosintha, r., rekha, a. (2022). ―elsa speak‖ in an online pronunciation class: students’ voices. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 160-175. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 161-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction when teaching pronunciation, teachers might encounter many challenges, either those related to the linguistic or pedagogical aspects. the non-nativeness of the teachers often becomes the culprit behind the linguistic constraints, leading to the avoidance of teaching pronunciation (li & zhang, 2016; vančová, 2019; wong, 2018). meanwhile, factors such as pedagogical priorities, inadequate teaching materials, limited time allocation, unclear teaching methodology, and the absence of training in teaching pronunciation could be the causes of the pedagogical problems (darcy, 2018; dixon, 2018). in the indonesian context, in which most pronunciation teachers are nonnative speakers of english, teaching pronunciation has become a great challenge. lack of confidence due to non-nativeness often hinders teachers from teaching pronunciation in a wellplanned teaching session. often, teachers only insert pronunciation materials as a supplement, not as a specific skill, resulting in low pronunciation abilities (kholis, 2021; samad & ismail, 2020). this unfortunate condition must be seriously addressed since pronunciation is vital for language development and is connected with other language skills (gómez & pablo, 2020). hence, teaching pronunciation should be given high priority, just like the other language skills, to maximize the outcomes of the english teaching and learning process. to do so, non-native english teachers could utilize technology as an alternative means of teaching pronunciation skills. extensive studies have been carried out in the realm of technology integration in teaching pronunciation. various mobile assisted language learning (mall) media have been employed and developed to facilitate pronunciation learning. mall is generally characterized as a learning mode that allows students more flexibility in managing their own learning by using personal and portable devices such as mobile phones, digital notebooks, laptops, tablets, etc. (cohen & ezra, 2018; hoi & mu, 2021). the application of mall in teaching pronunciation improved students’ pronunciation abilities (abduh, 2019; miqawati, 2020; sufi & shalmani, 2018). with their rich exposure to native pronunciation, these mall applications could benefit teachers and students. they provide students with the correct pronunciation input and help teachers reduce their anxiety in delivering the materials. with the strike of the coronavirus disease (covid-19), the use of mall in the online teaching and learning process has become more prominent, including in teaching pronunciation. without face-to-face interaction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 162-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license between teachers and students, it is difficult for teachers to assist students in practicing their pronunciation skills. in this case, mall could be a great way of providing students with abundant native input of english that, in some cases, could be better than that delivered by their own teachers. through mall, students could learn the materials and practice their pronunciation skills anytime and anywhere without a heavy dependence on their teachers. one example of mall media popularly used in teaching pronunciation is elsa (english language speech assistant) speak. it is an artificial intelligence (ai)-based language application developed to help its users to improve their pronunciation skills. with in-house speech recognition, deep learning technology, and automated feedback, elsa speak could be a great means of learning pronunciation in an online learning situation. teachers could integrate it into their curriculum, build their own module on the app, and assist the students with personalized help. in addition, with its teacher dashboard feature, teachers could effectively keep track of their students’ progress and performance in learning pronunciation (elsa corporation, 2021). for the students, elsa speak could help them identify their weaknesses in pronunciation as they would get precise feedback instantly from the application. students could also practice english conversations using stimulating games that include various sub-skills in pronunciation, such as intonation, rhythm, and word stress. for its remarkable features, elsa speak has attracted many researchers to investigate its implementation in the teaching and learning process of pronunciation. yilan (2019) investigated turkish students’ perspectives on learning english using two mall media, i.e., immerseme and elsa speak. through qualitative data analysis, she found that speech recognition technology (srt) effectively facilitated students’ learning. in another study, samad and ismail (2020) tried to verify elsa speak's effectiveness in improving indonesian students’ pronunciation skills. through quantitative data analysis using pre and post-test, they concluded that elsa speak effectively enhanced students’ pronunciation with a t-test score of 6.28. in a recent study, through a pronunciation test and an interview with english department students, kholis (2021) affirmed that elsa speak could engage the students in learning pronunciation and thus effectively improve their pronunciation skills. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 163-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license considering the potential of elsa speak in teaching pronunciation, the researchers assumed that the use of elsa speak could be further scrutinized in areas that other researchers had not explored. since most studies on this topic were carried out quantitatively in an offline learning setting, further study could be focused on the application of elsa speak in the online learning setting with a mixedmethod design in which the data were obtained from both quantitative and qualitative sources. given this motive, the researchers aimed to investigate students’ attitudes toward the use of elsa speak in the teaching and learning process of pronunciation during online learning. this study was guided by the following research questions: 1) what is students’ attitude toward elsa speak in developing their pronunciation skills during online learning? and 2) what measures could be taken to maximize the use of elsa speak in facilitating students’ pronunciation learning? the findings of this study are expected to contribute to the teaching and development of pronunciation skills, particularly in the online learning era. furthermore, the results are also expected to become a useful reference for teachers in teaching pronunciation with more confidence. method research design this study aimed to investigate students’ perspectives toward applying elsa speak in online pronunciation learning settings and examine the most practical actions to boost its positive impact on students’ pronunciation skills. to achieve these two goals, this present study employed a mixedmethod approach. creswell and creswell (2017) define a mixed-method as a research design to investigate an issue thoroughly by employing quantitative and qualitative data in a single study. this method was selected since this study aimed to scrutinize two aspects that would complement and validate one another’s results. research site and participants this study was carried out from march to september 2021 in one of the state universities in central java, indonesia. the data were collected from 112 students majoring in english education who used elsa speak in their online pronunciation and accent course in the even semester of the academic year of 2020/2021. all students in 4 classes were selected as the research participants. since the study was about personal viewpoints, the researchers seriously took into ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 164-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license consideration the participants’ personal confidentiality. therefore, before giving their data, the participants were asked to give their consent to this study. in addition, the researchers protected participants’ identities by using pseudonyms throughout this study to ensure that the information they gave was not associated with them. data collection and analysis for this mixed-method study, the data were obtained from both quantitative and qualitative sources. the quantitative data were collected using a four-point likert scale questionnaire, while the qualitative data were obtained from a semistructured interview. the questionnaire was administered to all research participants and was distributed using google form. the closed-ended questionnaire covered items focusing on the students’ attitudes toward elsa speak in an online pronunciation learning setting. five students were interviewed online via zoom meeting to validate and support the quantitative data. the interview focused on what the students expect from applying elsa speak in online pronunciation learning that could eventually enhance their learning outcomes. table 1 shows the demographic information of the interview participants. table 1. interview participants participant pseudonym sex 1 tiara f 2 bekti f 3 wulan f 4 zayin m 5 denny m the data obtained from the questionnaires were then analyzed quantitatively through categorization into frequency and conversion into percentages. at the same time, those obtained from the interview were evaluated qualitatively by employing content analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the matter (tight, 2017). the raw data from the interview were grouped into themes, coded, and analyzed to find links. the analysis results from both instruments were then evaluated to yield comprehensive findings. findings and discussion as mentioned earlier, this present study aimed to investigate the students’ perspectives toward the use of elsa speak in the teaching and learning process of pronunciation during online learning and to propose some ways to boost the use of elsa speak in teaching pronunciation. this section presents the study's findings and the discussion in one elaborated section. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 165-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license general attitudes toward elsa speak in facilitating online pronunciation learning what is students’ attitude toward elsa speak in developing their pronunciation skills during online learning? to answer this question, first, the researchers asked the participants to rate their general attitudes toward the use of elsa speak in their online pronunciation course on a four-point scale, with one being very negative (vn), two negative (n), three positive (p), and four very positive (vp). table 2 summarizes the responses of 112 students taking part in this study. table 2. general attitudes toward elsa speak in online pronunciation learning indicator vn n p vp mean general attitude toward studying pronunciation online using elsa speak. 0 17 78 17 3 with a mean score of 3, students’ attitudes toward the use of elsa speak during their online pronunciation course could be categorized as positive. this positive attitude could be related to some indicators. first, as many as 86 students (96%) agreed that elsa speak helped them to study pronunciation independently during online learning. to verify this finding, the researchers interviewed the five participants. denny mentioned “during the online learning, our interaction with the lecturer is very limited. most of the time, the online meeting is used only for delivering the theories. we don‟t have enough time to practice. so, i think elsa speak is very useful to help us learn independently”. in addition, bekti said that elsa speak has everything they need to study pronunciation independently at their own pace and various levels. the students could learn how to pronounce words and sentences correctly with the right intonation, word stress, and various accents. even sometimes, elsa speak gave better explanations about the pronunciation topics than the lecturers. this finding is similar to that of carter et al. (2020), stating that the flexibility offered by technological media in online learning supports learner autonomy. with the use of technology, students with limited data bundles or from poor connection areas can catch up with the teaching and learning process by studying independently at any time and from anywhere. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 166-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in addition, adnan and anwar (2020) affirmed that technologies could help minimize the lack of teacherstudent interaction during online learning, supporting students in learning independently. one of the interview participants, tiara, expressed her interest in using technologies during online learning, especially elsa speak, saying “during the online pronunciation learning, my lecturer directly customized the class in elsa speak. she adjusts the learning process to our progress. it helps us monitor our learning even if we don‟t interact face-to-face with the lecturer”. the results of the interview confirmed the quantitative data obtained from the questionnaire that elsa speak could be used to facilitate students’ pronunciation development in an independent learning setting. this finding is also in accordance with that of taqy (2021), confirming that elsa speak is a suitable application for autonomously learning pronunciation. second, elsa speak was considered useful in assisting students’ pronunciation learning in an online setting for as many as 98 (87.5%) and 14 (12.5%) students agreed and strongly agreed that this application provides accurate and instant feedback on their pronunciation. one of the interview participants, zayin, mentioned “to me, feedback is essential to improve my performance. during online learning, we don‟t have enough time to show our performance before the lecturer. with elsa speak, we can get instant and direct feedback, and it‟s very helpful”. quyen and ha (2021) exposed similar concerns about the lack of feedback given by lecturers during online learning. they affirmed that the absence of offline classes had forced lecturers to shift from direct to indirect feedback, resulting in unsatisfactory learning outcomes. correspondingly, the present study found comparable concerns as to when interviewed. some students expressed dissatisfaction with the indirect feedback their pronunciation lecturer gave. to mention a few, wulan said “in my pronunciation class, the lecturer asked us (the students) to record our pronunciation practices and upload them to our university e-learning management system. she will give written feedback after some days or even weeks. honestly, i think direct feedback is more effective for pronunciation course”. denny added that he rarely checked the feedback given by his pronunciation lecturer because it took time to access the system repeatedly every week. even worse, zayin mentioned ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 167-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license “when i checked the feedback given in the e-learning system a week after i submitted the work, i already forgot how i pronounced the words or sentences. so, the feedback could not improve my pronunciation”. these assertions implied that the students needed direct feedback on improving their pronunciation skills. this could be the reason why they had such a positive attitude toward elsa speak. with its direct and instant feedback, the students did not have to wait for the lecturer’s feedback to correct their pronunciation. this finding strengthens that of dini et al. (2021), showing that elsa speak is particularly useful in terms of the instant feedback provided to the users. even in an offline learning setting like that of dini’s research, feedback provided by elsa speak is significant for the students. therefore, it could be assured that the role of elsa speak in giving feedback to the students during online learning in this present study is undoubtedly pivotal. third, with an interactive user interface and interesting features, elsa speak was considered appropriate for online pronunciation learning. figure 1. the user interface and features of elsa speak derakhshan, kruk, mehdizadeh, and pawlak (2021) mentioned that students often experience boredom during online learning settings. in addition, affective filters such as motivation and stress often make the situation less conducive to learning (yuzulia, 2021). these active affective filters are also the case in this present study. students assessed themselves as feeling bored (51%), stressed (13%), and less motivated (48%) in their online learning. fortunately, elsa speak offers interesting and varied learning activities that could stimulate students’ interest in learning pronunciation online, thus reducing their boredom and stress and increasing their motivation. this is as mentioned by wulan in the interview that she often felt bored and sleepy during the online ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 168-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pronunciation learning, particularly when the lecturer gave a lot of theoretical explanations about the topic. elsa speak, with its interesting designs, various features, and interactive user interface, felt less bored and more motivated during the learning process, even when she had to learn independently. she asserted “when the online pronunciation class was allocated for theoretical explanations, i easily got bored and felt sleepy listening to the lecturer‟s talk for a long time. but when it‟s time for us (the students) to practice our pronunciation using elsa speak, particularly the game feature, i feel so motivated and determined to win the game”. this finding confirmed that of derakhshan et al. (2021), stating that technological tools could significantly improve students’ engagement during online learning in that students were actively involved in the learning process. they were given some time to explore the materials on their own and practice what they had learned interactively. other than providing interesting and interactive learning features, the students assessed elsa speak positively due to its rich materials. not only pronunciation materials, elsa speak also provides various listening and speaking materials. the interview participants mentioned this feature as an alternative to help them eliminate boredom during online pronunciation learning. tiara said “when i feel bored of learning or practicing my pronunciation using elsa speak, i usually change my focus to improving my listening or speaking skills using this application. kill two birds with one stone”. this elaboration implied that even though online learning often brought about students’ boredom during online pronunciation learning, the use of elsa speak could help decrease the detrimental effects. fourth, as elsa speak can be accessed online anytime and from anywhere, 74 students (66%) affirmed that elsa speak was suitable for online learning. however, 28 students (25%) gave an opposite view about the flexibility offered by elsa speak. in the interview session, bekti, tiara, zayin, and denny expressed their satisfaction with being able to operate elsa speak whenever they wanted to learn pronunciation. contrarily, wulan felt that this flexibility was not enough, stating “elsa speak is easy to use, and because it‟s a mobile application, it can be used anytime. but one thing that annoys me is that this app slows down the performance of my mobile phone, and thus the app freezes ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 169-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sometimes. it also requires a greater bandwidth when used to record or load the sounds”. this dissatisfaction could be related to the application size, which reaches 30 mb. this size could be even bigger as the application is frequently used, resulting in some technical problems. furthermore, the internet connection often made the problems worse. even though the application can be accessed at any time and from everywhere, it would not work when used in rural areas with low internet connections. tiara said “i live in a rural area where the internet connection is not strong. i can access elsa speak from home, but sometimes due to my low connection, the sounds produced by elsa speak are not clear enough. the application took a lot of time for loading, resulting in sentences with long pauses”. previous researchers in many countries frequently mention problems with the technology and the internet connection used during online learning. hussein, daoud, alrabaiah, and badawi (2020) have carried out a study in abu dhabi concerning students’ attitudes towards emergency online learning and found that even in developed counties like the united arab emirates, internet connection often became the culprit behind the obstacles faced by the students during online learning. this elaboration affirmed that the flexibility offered by mobile learning applications is not enough to facilitate online learning. there will always be a trade-off between flexibility and cost. this is as stated by rapanta, botturi, goodyear, guàrdia, and koole (2020) that even though asynchronous applications or tools boost flexibility, teachers or lecturers should take into consideration the greater bandwidth required to access and operate the tools that frequently burden the students financially. practical measures to optimize the use of elsa speak in online pronunciation learning to address the second research question regarding the ways to optimize the use of elsa speak in facilitating online pronunciation learning, the researchers deepened the interview session with the five participants to come up with some solutions to be expected as options to amplify the use of elsa speak in this context. three key ways could be projected to improve the quality of online pronunciation learning using elsa speak as summarized based on the responses of these five participants, namely exploring supplemental ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 170-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pronunciation contents, increasing the lecturer’s involvement during the learning process, and promoting a collaborative classroom. first, to avoid boredom during the pronunciation online learning, lecturers could explore supplemental pronunciation contents from sources other than elsa speak to avoid repetitive tasks. patall (2013) stated that even with interesting and welldesigned tasks, students might still feel bored when they are not given choices. the results of this present study showed that 83.3% of the participants agreed that their lecturer relied heavily on elsa speak in giving them the pronunciation tasks. when given similar task types repeatedly, it is most likely that students will get bored eventually. in the interview session, zayin argued “at first, when the lecturer introduced us to elsa speak, i was interested in learning pronunciation using this technology. however, i started feeling bored after several weeks of typical tasks in this application. i know everything the lecturer would ask us to do and how to do it, so it‟s no longer challenging for me”. zawodniak, kruk, and pawlak (2021) asserted that the lack of new stimuli and the assignment of repetitive tasks could be the reasons for students’ boredom during the learning process. this is not to say that repetitive tasks do not benefit students. bygate (2018) claimed that repetition could positively impact students’ learning outcomes. still, some concerns about using similar tasks for a long time could result in boredom and disengagement. in this case, the lecturers could anticipate boredom among the students by trying to supplement the pronunciation materials from elsa speak with those from other sources to enrich the tasks given to the students. it is undoubtedly necessary to employ various materials and avoid repetitive activities to ensure that the students are always cognitively challenged and affectively motivated during online pronunciation learning. second, it would be better for the students if the lecturers tried to increase their involvement in the online pronunciation classes. with the use of elsa speak in this learning context, the lecturers often let the students explore and learn from the application on their own without sufficient guidance. bekti said “online learning has significantly diminished the intensity of lecturer-student interaction. and with elsa speak as our main pronunciation learning tool, i personally feel that the lecturer has „abandoned‟ us”. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 171-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license additionally, denny specified that even though the lecturer had managed to organize the class and monitored their progress in elsa speak, he often missed the lively discussion with his lecturer. he contended “i feel that now elsa speak has dominated our pronunciation class. the lecturer‟s involvement in the learning process is not what i expected from this course. i wish to interact more with the lecturer, not with a machine”. these assertions confirmed the findings of rapanta et al. (2020) that teacher presence in either offline or online learning settings is pivotal. in their study, it is mentioned that teachers should be present cognitively (considering students’ readiness to participate in the learning process), socially (maintaining teacher-student and student-student interaction), and facilitator (facilitating and mentoring the students). in this study, the lecturer's social presence was considered insufficient to support the students’ learning process. the fact that the students had to learn in an online learning setting had already negatively affected this interaction. when added to the lack of lecturer involvement during the process, it is most likely that the outcomes of pronunciation learning would not be satisfactory. therefore, it is suggested that lecturers should make sure elsa speak does not dominate the classroom interaction, although they use it as the main learning tool in this online learning setting. third, the lecturer could integrate the use of elsa speak in a more collaborative setting. this study affirmed that elsa speak promoted students’ autonomy during online learning. however, working all the time individually using one mobile application for the whole semester would not greatly develop students’ communicative competence. as gomez and pablo (2020) have mentioned earlier, pronunciation skills support the development of other language skills as they could not be learned separately. this study also found similar findings as 66.7% and 33.3% of the participants agreed that the pronunciation skills they learned from elsa speak helped them boost the development of other language skills, especially listening and speaking. in the interview session, bekti added that elsa speak was a great application to develop pronunciation skills independently. even so, she needed to practice her pronunciation in a more varied learning setting. she wanted to compare her performance with her friends and practice her listening and speaking skills at once. therefore, even ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 172-175 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.23033 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license with elsa speak, the lecturers should balance the modes of classroom management (i.e., individual, pair, group, or whole-class work) to reduce monotonous learning activities that could lead to boredom and increase student cooperation. conclusions and suggestion the present study sought to find out how students perceived the process of pronunciation teaching and learning using elsa speak during online learning. the data analysis confirmed that students had positive attitudes toward elsa speak used in their online pronunciation learning. as concluded in many previous studies, technology played a significant role in facilitating online learning. these tools were interesting and stimulating and provided the students with more flexibility and opportunities to develop their autonomy. however, some areas could still be improved to maximize the benefits of elsa speak for the students. hence, the researchers propose some practical measures such as integrating various pronunciation materials to supplement those provided by elsa speak, enhancing the lecturer’s involvement during the learning process, and promoting collaborative learning settings. through these steps, it is expected that elsa speak could be continuously used to facilitate online pronunciation learning without eliminating the presence of lecturerstudent active interaction. based on the findings of this study, some recommendations for future application of technology in an online learning setting could be offered. first, the university should invest more in lecturer professional development. it is crucial to update lecturers’ pedagogical competencies to satisfy the students’ needs during online learning with technologies. second, lecturers and students should promote a positive attitude toward online learning. this situation is not easy for anyone. thus, there should be more understanding of the situation and communication between lecturers and students to develop a learning contract that accommodates both needs. at last, since online learning requires more autonomy during the learning process, students are expected to have more selfregulation to manage their learning process. references abduh, m. y. m. 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(2021). boredom as an aversive emotion experienced by english majors. relc journal, 003368822097373. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688 220973732 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 127-146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee classroom management in efl speaking class: strategies and challenges safrul muluk*, nasriyanti, habiburrahim, teuku zulfikar, saiful akmal, muhammad safwan safrul received: 22nd march 2021; revised: 26th may 2021; accepted: 29th june 2021 abstract this research was designed to investigate the strategies used and challenges faced by lecturers in managing efl speaking classes. the researchers used both classroom observation and semistructured interviews in collecting the data. the participants of this research were three efl lecturers teaching english speaking classes at the english department of universitas islam negeri ar-raniry, banda aceh, indonesia. these lecturers were selected purposively; all of them were those assigned to teach the speaking class. insights of the lecturers on their experiences in managing speaking classes were investigated to examine strategies and challenges they faced. the findings suggest that the lecturers utilized several strategies such as setting the classroom, determining seating arrangements, fostering discipline, applying certain speaking activities, and providing interesting topics to discuss. the data also indicated that the lecturers faced challenges in managing their teaching. issues such as lack of equipment or teaching media to support speaking activities, students’ lacked self-confidence, and lack of vocabulary were among the challenges faced by the lecturers. key words: classroom management; efl classroom; speaking class abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan mendapat informasi tentang strategi dan tantangan yang dihadapi dosen di dalam mengelola kelas. metode pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah observasi dan wawancara semiterstruktur. sumber data atau partisipan dalam penelitian ini adalah 3 dosen yang mengajar kelas speaking di prodi pendidikan bahasa inggris, uin ar-raniry banda aceh. para partisipan itu direkrut mengunakan teknik purposive sampling, dimana partisipan yang terlibat adalah yang sudah mengajar speaking selama beberapa semester. hasil obssrevasi dan wawancara diperoleh informasi bahwa terdapat beberapa strategi dosen di dalam mengelola kelas, diantaranya: menyusun tempat duduk sedimikian rupa, menegakkan disiplin, mengunakan berbagai teknik pembelajaran speaking, dan memberikan topik yang menarik untuk didiskusikan. penelitian ini juga memperoleh beberapa temuan yang berhubungan dengan tantangan dosen, diantaranya, tidak mencukupi fasilitas yang memadai yang dapat mendukung aktivitas pembelajaran speaking, kurangnya rasa percaya diri dari mahasiswa itu sendiri, dan tidak memadainya kosa kata yang dikuasai mahasiswa juga merupakan tantangan tersendiri dalam pengelolaan kelas speaking. kata kunci: pengelolaan kelas; pembelajaran efl; kelas speaking how to cite: muluk, s., nasriyanti., habiburrahim., zulfikar, t., akmal, s., safrul, m.s. (2021). classroom management in efl speaking class: strategies and challenges. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 127-146. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 128-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction classroom management is an essential element that often determines the success of the teaching-learning process (cruickshank, jenkins, and metcalf, 2006). this is so since the classroom is one of the main sites of the instructional process. classroom management can be defined as the environment in which the teachinglearning process occurs, with certain requirements needed to create an engaging classroom environment. evertson and weinstein (2006) reiterated that classroom management is the actions teachers create an environment that supports and facilitates both academic and social–emotional learning … it not only seeks to establish and sustain an orderly environment so students can engage in meaningful academic learning, it also aims to enhance students’ social and moral growth (p. 4). cruickshank et al. (2006) argued that planning classroom management strategies require considerations of the classroom environment that one wants and necessary guidelines and procedures to create a functioning and engaging learning environment. good educators must be aware of their teaching and/or leadership skills. this is because what they do in the classroom is tremendously influential on their students’ well-being (nakamura, 2000). this is why effective classroom management is much more than connecting positively with students or designing great lessons and triggering engaging and challenging learning experiences for students. good classroom management will improve students' learning experiences, which will result in positive influences on the achievement of learning objectives. the classroom's physical environment directly impacts the health, safety, comfort, and motivations of both students and lecturers. lecturers also have the responsibility to organize and manage the classroom space to create a comfortable and interesting learning environment. the effectiveness of classroom management with appropriate teaching strategies is one of the concepts that can improve students' learning motivation (sieberernagler, 2016). owing to this fact, this study was aimed at investigating the influence of classroom management strategies used by the lecturers in managing the efl speaking class and explore difficulties they faced in managing a speaking class. education experts have come up with several definitions of classroom http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 129-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license management. evertson and weinstein suggested that “classroom management involves teacher actions and instructional techniques to create a learning environment that facilitates and supports active engagement in both academic and social and emotional learning” (2006, p. 20). sternberg and williams (2002) defined classroom management as a set of techniques and skills a lecturer must have to contrive classroom management effectively. motivation, discipline, and respect are issues that are closely related to classroom management. as such, classroom management refers to positive behaviors and decisions necessary to create and maintain an orderly and positive learning environment. it involves planning and preparing materials, classroom decoration, classroom guidelines, and establishing and enforcing routines and rules. it is lecturers’ strategies to create and maintain an engaging and positive learning environment and discipline and teachers’ responses to students' misbehavior (tan, parson, hinson, & sardo-brown, 2003). when managing the classes, each lecturer must be aware of developing a positive classroom situation that can establish students to gain the learning goal. varank (2013) asserted that teachers should consider some aspects, namely arrangement of the physical environment, program activities, and behavior management. garrett (2014) described classroom management as all the actions teachers take to create and maintain an environment conducive to learning, a process consisting of five keys areas as follow: (1) physical design of the classroom, (2) rules and routine, (3) relationship, (4) engagement and motivation, and (5) discipline. the classroom's physical design relates to how the classroom is laid out (seat arrangement), where classroom resources and supplies are located, how the classroom layout is set up, etc. arrangement of the physical classroom environment means seating arrangement, lighting, temperature, cleanliness, material instruction, disturbance, etc. (varank, 2013). in speaking context, it means ensuring that students can see well without any disturbance, and the lighting of the classroom should be adequate as not to interfere with students in gaining the materials (pedota, 2007). the seating arrangement is one of the classroom management aspects that teachers should pay attention to. when they plan about classroom management, they should think about their goals and experiment with the class. however, there is no single arrangement that suits and works for all learning situations. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 130-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license concerning the relationships between lecturers and students, lecturers must encourage and develop compassionate and supportive relationships with students to feel safe and protected in the classroom. teachers must also be able to connect with students’ parents and promote supportive relations among students. teachers must create a classroom where all students feel comfortable, where both students and teachers feel safe to do learning activities. concerning engagement and motivation, effective classroom managers must create an engaging environment where all class members contribute to the teaching-learning process. teachers can create this engagement by setting up instructions that engage and motivate learners to participate in class activities. a teacher must know how to create a good and effective classroom environment for his/her students. teachers need to include two specific areas of cognitive space; setting expectations and creating a motivational learning situation. the final vital issue to consider is discipline, which relates to how teachers prevent and respond to students’ misbehavior. it revolves around making students understand the consequences of misconduct or misbehavior. it not only means punishment but also includes teachers’ actions that prevent misbehavior (garrett, 2014). classroom management includes all important aspects that are very influential in creating an ideal classroom atmosphere. these include seating and grouping arrangement, setting up activities (teacher’s and student’s activities), teacher's control over students in the classroom, maintaining discipline and motivation, dealing with problems, student's respect to the teacher and the class members (colleague), time setting, proper start and end of the lesson, giving instruction and monitoring students’ activities, and using proper tools and techniques in teaching. all those aspects are essential in speaking class. a teacher must make students interested and involved during the lesson taking place in the class; otherwise, it is challenging for a teacher to teach and get students’ attention to the class activities. classroom management is aimed at flourishing the teaching and learning process from which lecturers and students benefit. in well-managed classrooms, teachers could work easily, lessons will run smoothly, and students will likely understand and grasp the materials more effectively. in a wellorganized classroom, students are http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 131-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license encouraged and expected to be able to utilize classroom resources effectively. this is one area of teaching objectives focusing on students’ skills to use learning materials and learning centers to improve their learning experiences. to be able to cooperate with peers is also one of the expected academic behaviors. in this case, teachers must create a learning community where all class members participate and contribute actively informing their environment. students know what is expected of them and learn to work effectively as an individual and with peers. all action taken by the teacher should be focused on minimizing disruptions and fostering an environment where the students can learn. classroom management goals can be many, but here are the two common classroom management goals: creating a positive and productive learning environment. this goal means to maintain students' interest, motivation, and involvement. so, the focus is on activities that create a positive, productive, and facilitative learning environment. this goal is not meant for absolute control by the teacher. instead, effective classroom management maintains students' interest, student involvement, and also student motivation. the focus is on activities that create a positive, productive, and facilitative learning environment. the second goal is to support and foster a safe classroom community. it means the students are allowed to communicate and connect with their peers during the teaching-learning process. a safe classroom environment allows students to express and discuss their ideas without fear of being ridiculed for their misconceptions. to realize this, rules and routines must be put in place to provide members of the classroom the platform needed to interact with each other. the rules and routines must be clear, specific, and fair to all classroom members. each rule and routine must be clear to avoid misunderstanding on the part of the students. written descriptions of expected conduct and prohibited behavior must be made available and accessible to members of the classroom. to better achieve this objective, educators need sound classroom organization and behavior management skills to achieve this objective better. it adopts strategies that produce and improve meaningful interactions, which result in more successful classroom environments for both teachers and students (oliver & reschly, 2010). on this note, a study conducted by egeberg et al., (2016) highlighted the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 132-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license importance of good classroom management in the teaching learning process. they asserted that “classroom management, including both instructional and behavioral management, is a significant issue for teachers, school leaders, system administrators, and the public. it heavily affects community perceptions, teacher efficacy and wellbeing, and the standards of achievement of students” (egeberg et al., 2016, p. 1). thus, classroom management plays an important role in the creation of a supportive learning environment triggering students’ academic engagement aimed at developing their potential. other researchers argued that classroom management is of great importance in triggering students’ engagement, which in turn leads to positive effects on their achievement (almarghani and mijatovic, 2017; balan and metcalfe, 2012; wright and angelini, 2012). the attempt to create meaningful supportive learning environment, however, is not without challenges. this is why the issue of classroom management, with a focus on teacher's instructional behavior becomes one of the main issue attracting interventionists (clair et al., 2018). this paper examines the strategies and challenges that lecturers face in the teaching learning process, and examine how they navigate issues of classroom management, especially in the english speaking course. method research design this qualitative research focuses on the classroom management strategies in efl speaking classes. the researchers examined classroom management strategies utilized by public speaking lecturers, particularly on the aspects of classroom management that lecturers utilized to create a challenging learning environment. for this reason, a case study is used for this research to examine and explore lecturers’ classroom management strategies. case study research is a qualitative approach. the researcher explores a bounded system (a case), an event, or a small group of community members with in-depth analysis (creswell, 2014). in a similar vein, yin (2018) argued that a case study is called a study investigating the phenomenon within the real context. therefore, in terms of research design, this work can be considered a case study as it examined the strategies of classroom management deployed by lecturers in public speaking classes. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 133-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research participants this research involved three lecturers who agreed to be the participants; they were the lecturers of english speaking class at the english department in the faculty of education and teacher training of universitas islam negeri ar-raniry, indonesia. the researchers used a purposive sampling technique to select the participants. according to richard and yvonne (2008), in purposive sampling, each sample element is selected for a purpose because of the unique position of the sample element. in this research, the researchers only selected lecturers assigned to lecture public speaking class as the research sample. as there were six public speaking classes in the 2019/2020 academic year, the researchers decided to use a random sampling technique in recruiting the participants of this research. data collection the data were collected through semi-structured interviews and observation to gain in-depth information concerning lecturers’ classroom management strategies in an efl speaking class. this type of interview allowed much more space for interviewees to answer on their terms than a structured interview. the researchers had a list of questions and an interview guide to cover during the interview. with the participants' agreement, the interview session was recorded. the interviews ranged from fifteen to thirty minutes for each interviewee. data analysis the interview data recorded on audiotapes were fully transcribed to find the relevant information. the data were then coded. the researchers used the coded data to produce a conceptual framework, classifying the data into specific group categories (corbin & strauss, 2015). common emerging themes from the interview were identified. the data were analyzed using thematic analysis procedures to generate a list of possible themes based on the purpose of the study. in analyzing the data, the participants were addressed through the symbol “p”. for example, “p1” refers to participant 1. data from observation were used to confirm and validate participants’ insights from the interview sessions with the participants' actual classroom management practices. findings and discussion findings several themes were identified from the data analysis, namely classroom management strategies, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 134-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license seating arrangement, code of conduct, differentiated instruction, encouraging participation, correcting mistakes, providing interesting topics, and engaging students in learning. classroom management strategies the interview was conducted on 30th may 2019 and 7th june 2019. the researcher interviewed three pbi's lecturers who teach speaking in public speaking class. two participants were interviewed on the same day (on 30th may 2019), and the third participant was interviewed a week after that (on 7th june 2019). although the researchers asked the interview questions in english, the participants were allowed to answer in english and indonesian to answer the questions. there were nine questions related to the research questions given to the participants. our first inquiry was regarding the perception of the definition of classroom management. this question was asked to examine the participant's perception of classroom management. their responses were as transcribed in the following: classroom management is how we manage all the classrooms and get all the participants involved in the class activities. we have to find out the clue how we encourage them to engage in the classroom. (p1) similarly, p2 stated: classroom management is how we manage the class or the room, so the teaching and learning process can run smoothly and reach our target of teaching and learning process for certain subjects. (p2) in addition, p3 mentioned that classroom management is: classroom setting, or the process of setting the classroom. all lecturers participating in the study had a common understanding of what it means by classroom management. they said that classroom management is the term which was related to the setting of the class, maintaining discipline, managing the class to be more effective for the learning activities, making students active in the class, getting them to get involved in classroom activities, encouraging students to speak actively about the material or topic and also the seating arrangement which is effective for the speaking class. varied seating arrangement regarding classroom management strategies as practiced by lectures, we found that lecturers used various seating arrangements. the researchers http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 135-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license found the answer to their effort in creating an effective learning environment, especially for speaking classes. the answer is shown below: i like to set the seating arrangement in a u-shape. when the seating arrangement is set in a u-shape, i can teach the students easily. i can walk around the class to control the students. if i find students busy with their work, i can easily come to that student and ask them to pay attention to the lesson. i also like to set the seating arrangement in group work and pairs. if the students work in a group, they can share their experiences. another benefit of group work is that the weak students can learn from the strong student (smart students). i usually set the seating arrangement depending on the learning goals i want to achieve. (p1) other participants also stated that i normally arrange the chairs into a u-shape or circle to communicate with each other easily. (p2) another comment was also raised by p3, as he stated: mostly i like active class. i want all participants to be active in the classroom. i do not want to be the center of attention, but i want all people in the classroom to involve actively, and i want the student to be central. it is not good for a teacher to be central because everyone is waiting for me if it is teacher's central. i want the students to have the idea, so the teacher will not be the center of attention. (p3) the response above shows that the classroom's physical design becomes the first component of classroom management. the participants explain that seating arrangement is one of the most important aspects of creating an effective learning environment; it has a significant effect in helping students to cooperate. they also mention that arranging student's desks depended on students' needs and the learning goals they want to achieve. as shown above, the seating arrangement they usually display in the speaking class was in traditional rows, in u-shapes or semicircles, in a group of four, and the last is in pairs. setting the code of conduct the researchers prepared this question to know how the implementation of discipline works in the speaking class. here are their responses to the question: i will not allow the students to enter the class if they come five minutes late after class. because i http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 136-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license never come late and i always try to be on time. i tell them since the first meeting of the speaking class. i set up the rules for them. every student in my class is fine about the rules, and they are punctual. it depends on how we manage the classroom. if you are not disciplined, you do not show the students a good example. of course, the students will follow you. so, if you want to implement discipline to the students, first you should be disciplined. do not ask the students to be punctual, but you are always late. it is impossible, and it does not work. (p1) another participant also mentions: i make the rules. if the students come late, i will not allow them to join the class because it can bother the teaching and learning process, bother the lecturer's concentration, and all students in the class. normally at the beginning of the class, i always remind the students that if they come late six times, it means they are absent from the class for one time. (p2) this is also in line with the other two quotations, as p3 asserted: discipline? yes, we have already committed from the beginning of the class when we start the class. the finding showed that discipline is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a comfortable and safe learning situation. effective classroom management begins with the establishment of classroom rules on the first day of the class meeting. the participants explained that the implementation of discipline prevents students from coming late to class and makes it easy to control students' misbehavior. when you implement the discipline, make sure that you do it first. when you asked the student to be disciplined, you should show them a good example of discipline and maintaining discipline. differentiated instruction to allow students to learn better, teachers were very creative in shaping the participant’s effort to create an effective learning environment. here are the participants' responses to the question: it depends on the material. usually, i ask them to work in a group, i give them the topic, and then they have to discuss the topic with their friends in the group. i will give http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 137-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license them 50 minutes to do the discussion. after they finished the discussion, they have to present the discussion result in front of the class individually. (p1) the other participants also suggested that: i like to ask them to work in a group. i allow them to choose the topic that they love. i give them time to prepare and discuss the topic. after that, i ask them to do a presentation in front of the class. (p2) i want to create a natural classroom environment; i want all the students to have the opportunity to show what they have in their mind, their feeling and their idea. so, i will not force them to accept what i give to them. i want to encourage them to come up with their own idea. (p3) choosing appropriate and suitable learning activities will be an exact way of promoting student's engagement. regarding the learning activities, the researcher found that the participants used group work and presentation in speaking class to make students involve actively during the teaching-learning process. the participants also explained that the way they made students active in the class was by letting students choose the topic and then prepare about that topic and after that ask students to present in front of the class. encouraging for participation this question was asked to see how participants solve the problem when they have difficulties in managing the speaking class. i have a long time of teaching experience. i think i never found difficulties in managing the speaking class. sometimes, it is hard to make the students express their ideas because we learn a different language and do not have enough vocabulary. (p1) similarly, p2 also stated: i found no difficulties during teaching speaking, but sometimes it is hard to make all students involve actively in the class. p3 also asserted that: i do not have any problems with them, but some students are silent, mostly male students who do not want to talk in the classroom. nevertheless, this is not a big issue. correcting students’ mistakes this question was asked to strengthen the previous question. however, this question was indirectly answered by the previous question. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 138-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license here are the participant's responses to the question: teaching is challenging, not only for speaking class. every teaching is challenging because some students came from different school backgrounds and were taught by different teachers. one of the challenges that i used to find was when the students pronounce incorrectly that i cannot understand. then, i tell them the correct pronunciation, but they will make the same mistake the following week. this is also challenging because it is hard to change their previous knowledge. (p1) in line with his counterpart, p2 stated: their self-confidence is still low. sometimes even they have good vocabularies, but they still find difficulties expressing their ideas in the class. i always suggest they do more and more practice because they will be more confident to speak in front of the class by having more practice. another issue is about the facilities. sometimes we need a projector for the learning activity, but it is a little bit hard to get the projector. (p2) the responses above show that in managing the speaking class, the participants also found some challenges. the challenges were related to equipment and classroom facilities, the self-confidence of the students, and the lack of vocabulary. providing interesting topics this question was asked to know if there is any specific strategy used by the participants in managing the speaking class. here are their responses to the question. strategy? just ask the student to speak. there is no other way. when you give them a topic, try to analyze whether interested in the topic or not. a teacher should be aware of what she/he teaches in the class. (pl) other participants also argued that giving interesting topics for students to discuss is important. the topics will, in fact, boost students’ confidence. in his own words, p2 suggested: i do not have any specific strategy to make them speak actively in the class. i let them come up with their idea. in speaking class, we must build students' confidence and give them the confidence to show their idea. if we want to know what kind of topic they love, let them choose what topic they are familiar with. (p2) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 139-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in addition, p3 argued that introducing future topics also helps increase students’ learning focus, as he mentioned during the interview. i try to encourage the students to participate in a conversation actively. we deal with it before we start something. for example, next week, we will start our speech, and they have to prepare for the speech, and i will give them one week to think about the idea and then send me a message about the idea; then, i will check it first. after that, i will give them one week free, and in the 3rd week, they will present their presentation in the classroom. so mostly, we are dealing, and we commit, and the students obey the commitments. what happened today? we already talked about it, and i don't want to repeat it every time during the class. so, we will discuss any topics. we all agree with this, so we don't have any problem during the classroom because we already committed before. (p3) another component that makes the speaking class more conducive and active is choosing the most interesting topic to discuss. as a facilitator, the lecturer must be aware of what the students want to study. based on the interview result, the researchers found that the participants let the students decide what topic to discuss. it was found that the participants provide some topics for the students to choose from, such as real-life topics, interesting topics, and others. a lecturer as a classroom manager must be clear when giving instruction. the lecturer can also use student’s ideas in developing the teaching and learning materials. when you let the students get involved in choosing the topic they love, it makes them more active in speaking about the topic because they must choose the topic they are familiar with. the lecturer should be more pleasing and realistic toward student's needs and interests, make students feel comfortable enough during the learning process. when students realize that their lecturer cares about what they need and what they want to learn, it makes them more confident in expressing their idea. engaging students in learning our finding shows that teachers should be creative in encouraging students’ learning engagement. some participants argued that: because you teach speaking and conversation in english, please use english and not teach english in bahasa. (p1) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 140-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the participant suggests that teachers should consider using appropriate classroom language, in which he suggested that teachers need to communicate directly in english as they are english teachers. the other participant, p2, stated that: be a good educator for your students, pay attention to your way of correcting student’s mistakes, and use english when you are teaching speaking to make them practice their speaking and pronunciation. in addition, p3 also argued that: the first issue is we have to get the students engaged in the conversation which involves finding an idea and forcing them to find something they love. something they are familiar with. you know when they are familiar with a situation; it is going to be easy for them to come up with an idea to talk about. otherwise, it will be hard for them to deal with. for example, if i force them to talk about my topic, it will be hard for them, and they might not be familiar with my suggested topics. they need to come up with their idea, and it is going to be easy for them to research the topic, and it will be easy for them to participate in the classroom (p3). discussion this section presents a discussion based on the findings of this research. the discussion provided the answer to two research questions related to classroom management in speaking class. the first research question relates to the strategies used by the lecturers in managing the speaking class and the second question discusses the challenges faced by the lecturers in managing the classroom in teaching speaking. the research findings generated from classroom observation and interviews showed that the lecturers use some strategies in managing the speaking class. the strategies were related to the class setting, such as seating arrangement, maintaining discipline, getting students to be actively involved in the learning process, and choosing an interesting topic to discuss. regarding the statement, in this research, the researchers found out that arranging effective physical environments such as setting appropriate seating arrangements for students positively impacts students’ behavior and the learning result. this is in line with the statement put forward by varank (2013), asserting that a physical classroom environment means seating http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 141-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license arrangement contributes to the overall quality of the teaching-learning process. the participants mentioned that the seating arrangements they experienced when managing the speaking class included cluster style (grouping), u-shape style, and pair style. the cluster or grouping style emphasizes the importance of students working together to construct knowledge. the participants said that when they set the class in a group, they mixed the students with varying abilities so that the weak students can learn from strong or smart students. besides the cluster style, the participants also set the class in a ushape. this arrangement was intended to make the lecturer easy to observe and manage the students. this arrangement also emphasized the importance of students' talking directly to each other, and it also allowed for collaborative knowledge construction by pairing students. the participants said this arrangement enables students to observe the center of the room, making it easy for the lecturers to maintain attention when talking. the fact that both students and lecturers were able to engage in the teaching-learning process using a certain seating style is an important factor in improving students’ learning experience. on this note, egeberg, mcconney, and price suggested that “effective classroom management strategies are designed to create positive learning environments by building in positive supports that prevent challenging classroom behavior before the implementation of more reactive behavioral approaches” (2016, p. 5). the participants also explained that when they set the seating arrangement in a pairing style, it makes them easy to move around and talk with the student individually or with pairs. this arrangement was also suitable for group activities because the students can work in a group of two, and by having one pair turn their chairs around to join the group behind them, students can quickly form a group of four. the findings suggest that “... teacher actions and instructional techniques to create a learning environment that facilitate and support active engagement in both academic and social-emotional learning” (mcdonald, 2013, p. 20). the other finding indicates that maintaining discipline is significant. classroom management is certainly concerned with behavior and student's control of their learning. based on the interview result, the participant made the rules in the first meeting of the speaking class. these rules were http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 142-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license applied to decrease student's misbehavior and make the classroom environment suitable for the smooth running of the teaching and the learning process. as mentioned in the interview result, the participant also made the rules to anticipate students coming late to the class and asked to be on time in the speaking class. communicating classroom expectations to students is one of the strategies that can be utilized to set up the foundation of the teaching-learning process. this is in line with the statement of egeberg et al., who stated that “effective classroom management strategies are designed to create positive learning environments by building in positive supports that prevent challenging classroom behavior prior to the implementation of more reactive behavioral approaches” (2016, p. 5). teachers’ ability to control the classroom would result in the achievement of required instructional goals (smith & smith, 2006). another outcome of the findings of the strategies in managing the speaking class was conducting appropriate learning activities. the researcher found that the lecturer used group discussion and presentation to make the speaking class more active and conducive. the lecturer asked the students to work in a group and discuss the material with their friends. after that, they were asked to present it in front of the class. thus, beside sound classroom management skills, teachers’ ability to adopt suitable methods in creating learning engagement and supportive learning environment is critical (oliver & reschly, 2010). the last finding of managing the speaking effectively is providing and choosing an interesting topic to discuss. the lecturer has a significant role in motivating students to learn speaking. motivation is the need or reason and a feeling of interest in doing something. in learning, process motivation is important and needed because the motivated student learns effectively rather than an unmotivated student. this is in line with the study conducted by rawya (2012) who identified the positive effects of motivation on students’ speaking performance. within the context of this study, the lecturers enhance student's motivation by letting students choose the most interesting topic to discuss in the speaking class. the topic is related to a real-life topic, the newest issue about social life, politic, etc. the participants explain that choosing such a topic motivates the student to interact and participate easily. this strategy proved that the students become more active in talking in the speaking class because http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 143-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the topic is interesting to discuss and they are familiar with the topic. on the other hand, the findings of this research indicate that the participants faced some challenges in managing the speaking class. these challenges were related to equipment and classroom facilities, lack of vocabulary and interference of the mother tongue problem, and the students’ self-confidence. when teaching speaking, sometimes lecturers need a projector. however, it is hard to get the projector, and sometimes several classes at the university do not have enough chairs, so the students have to move to another room to find the chairs, and it is wasting time. lack of facilities has been considered as one of the main factors affecting the effective learning environment. another challenge the participants faced in speaking class is students’ lack of vocabulary. the lack of vocabulary makes the students feel that they could not find the appropriate vocabulary to express their thought and their idea in the speaking activity. when the students do not have enough vocabulary to speak in the class actively, they choose to remain silent because they are afraid of making mistakes or speaking with the wrong word. this particular challenge has a close relationship with the instructional method used by the lecturers. the teaching approach, in this case, is considered the most important factor affecting students’ skills. implementing active learning methods, in any subject, have been acknowledged to have positive impacts on students’ involvement which in turn yield in better achievement (hallinger & lu, 2013; kirstein & kufz, 2015). the last is about the self-confidence of the students. the participants mentioned that students have low selfconfidence to be actively involved in the speaking class, especially for the male they do not want to talk to and participate in the classroom activity. the effect of anxiety on students’ speaking ability has been well documented, one of which by habiburrahim et al. (2020). they suggested that low self-confidence affects students’ speaking ability, which could be observed through “the difficulties in constructing sentences and expressing the idea when they spoke in the target language” (2020, p. 254). in conclusion, based on the classroom observation and semistructured interview results, the participants created the classroom environment to be more pleasant for the learning process. the seats were arranged based on the learning http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 144-146 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20146 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license objectives. the lecturer also used some speaking activities to make the students get involved in the speaking class. those activities were like instructing the lesson, providing such an interesting topic to discuss, letting the students decide what lecturers should teach in the speaking class, etc. the lecturer also arranges the class and makes the atmosphere pleasant to make students comfortable and enjoy their learning process. to prevent students' misbehavior, students make the rules at the first meeting of the class, such as not being late and trying to be on time. the lecturer explicitly showed the students a good example of discipline by always being punctual and preparing before entering the class, and managing the class well. besides, there are some difficulties or challenges faced by the lecturer in managing the speaking class. as shown in the observation and interview result, those challenges were related to the equipment, lack of vocabulary, and student’s self-confidence. conclusions and suggestion this research aims to analyze the strategy used by the lecturer in managing the speaking class. based on the result of this research, some strategies are used by the lecturer to manage the speaking class. these are setting appropriate seating arrangements, managing learning activities, choose the most interesting topic to discuss, and making students discipline by setting the rules on the first meeting. there were also some challenges faced by the lecturer in managing the speaking class. those challenges are related to classroom facilities, such as no enough projectors, several classes do not have enough chairs, so the students have to search the chain in another room. the other challenges are related to the students. those are student's confidence and lack of vocabulary. some students do not have enough vocabulary to speak, and they do not have the bravery to express their idea because of a lack of confidence. the results of this research can be used as one reference in investigating the issue of classroom management in other settings or courses. although this research was confined to public speaking classes in the context of state islamic university in indonesia, it provides insights on strategies and challenges faced by efl lecturers that can be replicated in other fields of study. references almarghani, e. m., & mijatovic, i. 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(2018). case study research and applications: design and methods (6th ed.). sage publications. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 47-63 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee teaching practice during the pandemic outbreak: perceptions of pre-service english teachers eka fajar rahmani received: 25th february 2021; revised: 7th may 2021; accepted: 27th june 2021 abstract current studies report that a teaching practice program is important for pre-service teachers of english in providing real teaching experiences at school. however, since the covid-19 outbreak, all school activities are transferred to online delivery mode, which led to teaching practice implementation to be conducted online. this transference must cause pre-service teachers to have different teaching practice experiences. therefore, the study aims to discover pre-service teachers' perceptions regarding their teaching practice experience during the pandemic. this research was conducted to 114 seventh-semester students of the english education department of fkip pontianak. the methodology was a mixed-method where the quantitative procedure was first done, followed by the qualitative procedure. the data were gathered through questionnaires and interviews. the results indicated that the online teaching practice program brought various experiences resulting in “satisfying” and “unsatisfying” perceptions. in detail, more than 50% of participants agreed that despite the challenging situations they faced during the practice, they found the online teaching practice program beneficial, especially in providing broad teaching insights and experience. hence, despite limitations to its ways of implementation, teaching practice program tends to shape positive teaching mindset and attitudes for pre-service teachers. key words: pandemic; pre-service teachers; teaching practice abstrak studi saat ini melaporkan bahwa program praktik mengajar penting bagi calon guru bahasa inggris dalam memberikan pengalaman mengajar yang nyata di sekolah. namun, sejak merebaknya wabah covid-19, seluruh kegiatan sekolah dialihkan secara online, sehingga pelaksanaan praktik mengajar dilakukan secara online. pemindahan ini harus menyebabkan para calon guru memiliki pengalaman praktik mengajar yang berbeda. oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui persepsi calon guru tentang pengalaman praktik mengajar mereka selama pandemi. penelitian ini dilakukan terhadap 114 mahasiswa semester tujuh pada jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris fkip pontianak. metodolog yang digunakan adalah metode penelitian campuran di mana prosedur kuantitatif dilakukan pertama kali, diikuti oleh prosedur kualitatif. pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui kuesioner dan wawancara. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa program praktik mengajar online memberi berbagai pengalaman yang menghasilkan persepsi “memuaskan” atau “tidak memuaskan”. secara rinci, lebih dari 50% peserta setuju bahwa meskipun menghadapi situasi menantang selama praktik, mereka menemukan program praktik mengajar online bermanfaat, terutama dalam memberikan wawasan dan pengalaman mengajar yang luas. oleh karena itu, dapat disimpulkan bahwa terlepas dari cara pelaksanaannya, program praktik mengajar selalu membentuk pola pikir dan sikap mengajar yang positif kepada guru prajabatan. kata kunci: pandemic, calon guru, praktik mengajar how to cite: rahmani, e.f. (2021). teaching practice during the pandemic outbreak: perceptions of pre-service english teachers. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 47-63. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 48-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teachers play the most important role in education, especially when shaping students' attitudes, behaviours, and knowledge perceptions (makovec, 2018). when performing in the classroom, the role of teachers highly promotes an effective learning ambiance, which would be assisting students to create an enjoyable learning experience (prameswari & budiyanto, 2017). hence, teachers are always expected to present themselves professionally (makovec, 2018; putra, 2001; świtała, 2012). studies have revealed that among several factors affecting teachers’ professional performances in the classroom, beliefs and perceptions developed as preservice teachers are considered influential factors (moon et al., 2016). in relevant to it, education faculties have implemented a teaching practice program for the seventh-semester students to be ready for their teaching career. this policy is one beneficial program to prepare the students to be professional teachers who always uphold positive impacts. there are various definitions of a teaching practice program (also known as a teaching practicum). however, there has been one similar concept of this program in which it refers to experiential learning for the pre-service teachers. teacher practice program builds a foundation and an effective means to develop prospective teachers’ understanding of the why, what, and how of teaching and learning (abas, 2016). it is a preparatory process that enables pre-service teachers to acquire field experience in schools. it might be an opportunity for them to be certified later (moon et al., 2012). moreover, the teaching practice program offers chances to the pre-service teachers to build up a solid connection between current hypothetical information and school rehearses and assist them with acclimatizing theories and practices through detailed observation performed by experienced teachers (genc & buyukkarci, 2013). since the past decades, studies on the effectiveness of teaching practice programs towards the pre-service teachers’ competencies have been conducted. researchers have discussed this matter thoroughly emphasized its benefits and effectiveness as an initial or prior stage to shape mindset about teaching, as well as to provide broad teaching experiences (afalla & fabelico, 2020; heeralal & bayaga, 2011; marais & meier, 2004; moon et al., 2012; quick & siebörger, 2005). then, as a part of experiential learning, teaching practice program for education faculties helps the pre-service teachers to demonstrate their teaching knowledge and ability to real-context of teaching; to choose a specialization; and to establish identities as teachers (afalla & fabelico, 2020; fajriah et al., 2019; moon et al., http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 49-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 2016). furthermore, studies also reported that once pre-service teachers have formed positive beliefs and perceptions towards teaching, it rarely changes and is relatively stable (moon et al., 2016). accordingly, one research conducted by amankwah et al. (2017) also revealed the effectiveness of teaching practice programs to the undergraduate teachers, proven with an sd of .789 categorized as high, which means that the program was effective for the students to shape good mindsets towards teaching. however, there might be differences between the facts mentioned above. the teaching practice program was conducted offline with the current situation requiring them to have an online one due to the school closure policy caused by the covid-19 outbreak. at least since march 2020, governments of all countries, including indonesia, have designated the covid19 virus as a worldwide pandemic forcing a rapid and significant shift in education at all levels (varela & desiderio, 2020). the educational activities from schools to campuses were closed, with most transferring instruction to online delivery through virtual platforms (ismatun & sadida, 2020), not to exclude the teaching practice program in education faculties. having the program online must have brought enormous challenges for the prospective teachers because they could not experience the real teaching and school setting. lately, there has been an increasing number of studies on the perceptions of pre-service teachers towards the online teaching practice programs since mid2020 (i.e., graham et al., 2020; ismatun & sadida, 2020; mcintosh & nenonene, 2020; özkanal et al., 2020; varela & desiderio, 2020). those studies revealed that pre-service teachers’ attitudes and perceptions towards the online teaching practice varied; some showed positive responses, and some were not. these different perspectives were due to perceptions from one to another based on what they had perceived while having the experience (lewis, 2001). moreover, these increasing numbers of studies also indicated that examining perceptions of people or communities was considered important. in the light of this matter, the researcher conducted this study to examine the perceptions of the preservice english teachers of teacher training and education faculty after experiencing the online teaching practice program for six months completed in october 2020. the researcher believed that their perceptions were important to provide insights for the officials to create better program policies. through quantitative http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 50-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and qualitative analysis, the following research questions were addressed: 1. how do the pre-service teachers reflect upon the online teaching practice program? 2. what were the most challenging situations they have faced during the program, and how did they solve them? 3. what benefits did they get the most from the online teaching practice program? 4. as an english teacher, what was the most problematic issue they were facing during online teaching? method research design this study employed a mixedmethod methodology in which quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted. the mixed-method design would help the researcher provide complete and rich data to be discussed and presented to readers (creswell, 2014; 2012), especially regarding the pre-service teachers' perceptions towards the online teaching practice program. in the implementation, the quantitative procedure was done first, followed by the qualitative procedure. the quantitative was done through distributing questionnaire; and then the data were calculated using computational techniques (creswell, 2014). meanwhile, the qualitative procedure was done by interviewing some of the participants to explore the experience, perceptions, meanings, or intentions of participants of the research (almalki, 2016; leavy, 2017). research site and participants the participants of this study were 114 pre-service teachers. they were the 7th-semester students of the english education department of teacher training and education faculty universitas tanjungpura who enrolled in the 2020 teaching practice program. the participants were distributed to either public or private schools of junior and senior high school in pontianak and kubu raya regency, with a total of 57 schools for which the officials determined the placement policy. in specific, the participants were placed in pairs (2 persons) in each school with one or two experienced teachers to guide them. data collection and analysis the data were collected using a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. both questionnaire and interview questions were related to the participants’ experience during their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 51-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching practice in the pandemic setting adapted from several research studies. the questionnaire was a closeended style distributed to 114 participants. it was in the form of a likert scale with 5 options: very unsatisfying, unsatisfying, neutral, satisfying, ad very satisfying. there were 23 items in the questionnaire divided into four parts, namely (1) perceptions towards the overall experience of online teaching practice consisting of five items, (2) perceptions towards benefits of the online teaching practice consisting of seven items, (3) the perceptions towards challenges of the online teaching practice consisting six items, and (4) the perceptions towards challenges as an english teacher during the online teaching practice consisting five items. the questionnaire was distributed to the participants through google form. meanwhile, for the interview, the researcher randomly selected 5 from the 114 participants. the random selection did not need a particular selection system; yet, the selected ones could represent the opinions of the other participants since randomization allowed generalization as suggested by creswell (2014). in this research, each of five interview participants represented each of five classes in the 7th semester: 3 regular a classes and 2 regular b classes. there were six items asked represented the perceptions of the teachers perceived from their experiences. both questionnaire and interview questions were adapted from amankwah et al. (2017) and varela and desiderio (2020). the researcher used calculation to get the percentages and the mean score of the questionnaire responses to analyze the data. the results were then displayed in tables and charts. meanwhile, to analyze the interview, the researcher firstly transcribed the recordings. after that, they were interpreted, coded, and described in such a way. the interpretation was also made to questionnaire analysis. the researcher did not do any interventions to the data to maintain the originality and the naturalistic setting. findings and discussions findings since the data were collected through questionnaires and interviews, the findings then displayed the results in different sections. questionnaire analysis there are three parts of the questionnaire. the responses were analysed in three subheadings as part 1 to part 3, at which the items were presented in charts and tables. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 52-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license part 1: perceptions towards the overall experience of online teaching practice the first part of the questionnaire is about the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the online teaching experiences they had been through for six months. the results can be seen in figure 1 to figure 5. figure 1. overall opinions towards teaching practice program figure 1 indicates that only three out of five ratings are responded to by the respondents: satisfying, neutral, and unsatisfying. it can be seen that 60.7% or 69 pre-service teachers responded "neutral" option showing they did not feel satisfied nor unsatisfied with the online teaching practice program. then, 17.9% or 20 pre-service teachers were unsatisfied with the program; and 21.4% or 25 pre-service teachers were satisfied. figure 2. opinions towards the access of learning and communication with the experienced teachers from figure 2, it can be seen that the respondents responded to three out of five ratings given: satisfying, neutral, and unsatisfying. it showed that 42.9% or 49 pre-service teachers responded "neutral" option. then, 7.1% or 8 persons felt unsatisfied with the access of learning and communication with the experienced teachers; and 50%or 57-persons felt satisfied. figure 3. opinions towards the holistic teaching and school matter from figure 3, it can be indicated that there are four ratings responded: very satisfying, satisfying, neutral, and unsatisfying. it can be seen that the rating that responded the most is http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 53-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license neutral, with a percentage of 53.6% or 61 pre-service teachers. the second most rated rating is satisfying with a percentage of 25% or 29 pre-service teachers. the third is unsatisfying with 17.9% or 20 pre-service teachers. furthermore, the least responded is very satisfying with a percentage of 3.6% or 4 pre-service teachers. figure 4. opinions towards the online teaching practice placement figure 5. opinions towards the access to communicate with the field supervisor figure 4 shows there are three rating responses: very satisfying, satisfying, and neutral. it can be seen that 53.6% or 61 pre-service teachers responded satisfying; 42.9% or 49 persons responded "neutral" option, and 3.6% or 4 persons felt very satisfied with the placement policy. figure 5 shows there are four rating responses: very satisfying, satisfying, neutral, and unsatisfying. it can be seen that most of them felt satisfying with the access to communicate with the field supervisors during their online teaching practice, with a percentage of 53.5% or 61 preservice teachers. then, 28.6% or 33 persons responded neutral; 10.7% or 12 persons responded unsatisfied. furthermore, 7.1% or 8 persons responded "very satisfied" option. part 2: perceptions towards the benefits derived from online teaching practice part 2 of the questionnaire concerns the benefits derived from the teaching practice in the covid-19 pandemic situation. the data of part 2 analysis are presented in table 1 covers items, percentages of the items, and the decision of each of them. table 1 show indicates that more than 50% of pre-service teachers agreed that the online teaching practice offered benefits to teaching knowledge and professional development. as being presented, the highest percentage was 83.5% related to the advantages of teaching knowledge improvement and then was followed by the second highest benefits with a percentage of 81.5%, namely (1) online teaching practice deepened the pre-service http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 54-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers’ interest in teaching, (2) online teaching practice gives them broader insights about teaching which is beneficial for their teaching career, and (3) online teaching practice improved their teaching experience. table 1. benefits derived from online teaching practice no item % category 1 i deepened my interest in teaching 81.5 agree 2 online teaching practice equipped me with the necessary teaching skills 77.8 agree 3 online teaching practice improved my teaching knowledge 83.5 agree 4 online teaching practice gives me broader insights into teaching, which is beneficial for my teaching career 81.5 agree 5 online teaching practice increased my teaching efficacy 77.8 agree 6 online teaching practice supported my learning towards a professional teaching 73.8 agree 7 online teaching practice improved my teaching experience 81.5 agree part 3: perceptions towards the challenges of online teaching practice part 3 of the questionnaire is about the challenges faced by the pre-service teachers during their teaching practice in the covid-19 pandemic situation. the data of part 3 are presented in table 2. table 2. challenges of online teaching practice n items % category 1 lack of teaching aids and responses 75 agree 2 inadequate time for practicing teaching including classroom management 78.6 agree 3 inadequate time to learn administrative teaching matters 64.3 agree 4 lack of conducive learning situations 75 agree 5 lack of communication with the experienced teachers 67.9 disagree 6 lack of communication with the field supervisor 57.1 disagree table 2 shows pre-service teachers' responses towards their perceptions of challenges they faced during the online teaching practice program. it is indicated that out of six items asked, four are responded by “agree”, and two are responded by “disagree”. the range http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 55-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of percentages between those who agree and disagree with the statements is mostly close enough. as we can see, in item 6, for example, the range is only 14.2% between those who disagree and agree with one of the challenges of online teaching practice was lack of communication with the field supervisor. the pre-service teachers who disagreed are 57.1% or equal to 65 persons, while those who agreed are 42.9% or equals to 49 persons. however, in item 2, the range is quite far. more than 75% of pre-service teachers (precisely 78.6% or equals to 90 persons) agreed that inadequate time for practicing teaching was their most likely challenge in online teaching practice. what can be inferred from the results of the questionnaire analyses above is that despite the pandemic situation of when it was implemented, teaching practice maintains its cores in a way it improves pre-service teachers’ teaching knowledge and also interests. the pandemic situation did not demotivate or hold back the pre-service teachers from learning and dig as much information and knowledge about teaching from the experienced teachers. however, the challenges also impacted them, especially regarding time adequacy for teaching, lack of teaching aids, and inconducive teaching-learning situations. part 4: perceptions towards the challenges as an english teacher during online teaching practice. part 4 focuses on discovering the participants’ perceptions of the challenges an english teacher faces during online teaching practice. the result of the analysis can be seen in table 3. table 3. challenges as an english teacher during online teaching practice n items % category 1 difficulty in delivering materials in full english 97.8 agree 2 difficulty in teaching and assessing speaking skill 91.2 agree 3 difficulty in teaching and assessing writing skill 66.7 agree 4 difficulty in teaching and assessing reading skill 53.1% agree 5 difficulty in teaching and assessing listening skill 74.8 agree as shown in table 3, all 114 preservice teachers responded with similar responses towards the challenges as an english teacher in this online teaching. they agreed that delivering materials in english was difficult to do during online teaching, with a percentage of 97.8%. besides, they also agreed that http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 56-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching and assessing speaking skills were challenging amongst four english skills, with 91.2%. interview analysis this section presents the results of the interview analysis of five interviewees. the analysis is presented using subheadings q1 to q5. the researcher displays the responses of all participants, then interprets the data qualitatively. q1: describe your experience as a pre-service teacher during the covid-19 pandemic! from the interviewees' responses, it was inferred that the pre-service teachers were anxious when they did their teaching practice online for the first time. from the responses, too, it can be learned there are four similar experiences that the pre-service teachers shared during teaching practice program in the pandemic situation: (1) lack of opportunity to practice teaching, (2) less interesting or dull learning environment, (3) more opportunities to deal with teaching administrative matters, and (4) utilizing technology more often. among these shared experiences, the foremost one is lack of teaching practice, that four out of five interviewees responded the same thing. they were given limited access or opportunities to handle the classes (interviewee-2; interviewee-3; interviewee-4), although one of them (interviewee-1) was given 11 classes to handle. however, on a more positive side, the interviewees agreed that the online teaching practice offered more opportunities to tailor up with administrative stuff such as lesson plans, annual and semester plans, assessments, teaching journals. moreover, they were also given chances to do teacher on duty, allowing them to check and supervise all teachers while teaching (interview-3). in addition to that, the online teaching practice has also provided them with more opportunities to utilize and explore technology. the school required the teachers to use virtual platforms such as google meet, quizzes, google classroom, and ruang guru, which positively impacted the pre-service teachers. through online teaching practice, they finally set techniques or methods to manage online classes to run effectively and use more facilitations from the internet and various types of online platforms (interviewee-1, interviewee-2, interviewee-3, interviewee-4, & interviewee-5). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 57-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license q2: what have you personally experienced and observed as a pre-service teacher in this challenging situation? all interviewees experienced several similarities: they were anxious, struggling to adapt to new teaching environments, and difficult to conduct effective classroom management. however, the online teaching practice gave them insights that they had to keep learning to solve the problems they found, especially related to the use of technology and effective strategies in teaching. they realized that teachers were the core of the teaching ad learning activity. they had to solve any obstacles and adapt quickly to any teaching situation to give the best services to the students. q3-q4: what challenges have you faced as a pre-service teacher during the covid-19 pandemic, and how did you solve them? from the responses, it was indicated that the pre-service teachers faced almost similar problems. they found classroom management to be the most challenging aspect of online teaching. according to them, many students seemed to be misbehaved and indiscipline during online class such as being late joining the room, submitting assignments, and leaving the class without permission since there were no direct interactions between the teachers and the students (interviewee-1; interviewee-2; interviewee-3; interviewee-4; interviewee-5). besides, technical problems such as bad internet connections, lack of skill in utilizing technology, and students with no supported devices like smartphones were also significant challenges (interviewee-1; interviewee-2; interviewee-3; interviewee-4; interviewee-5). however, due to facing these challenges, the pre-service teachers learned strategies of how to solve them. these also motivated them to upgrade themselves to be professional teachers, as seen in how they solved the problems. q5: what problems did you face or observe during online teaching? from the responses, teaching english during the pandemic was quite challenging, especially when teaching using english. the interviewees said they were unsure if the students understood the explanation or instruction when they were teaching in english since no direct interaction happened. besides, they claimed that from their personal experience and observation during online teaching, speaking and listening were the most difficult skills to be conducted either teaching or assessing it. they said http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 58-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading, writing, and grammar mastery were the most frequent activities done during their teaching practice because these skills were much more easily administered to the students. discussion this study investigated the perceptions of 114 pre-service teachers of the english education department towards the online implementation of the 2020 teaching practice program related to the challenges and advantages of the program. from the statistical and narrative analysis, the researcher found that online teaching practice offered indispensable advantages despite the challenges. the pre-service teachers perceived that the online teaching practice had deepened their interests in teaching. nevertheless, before talking about the advantages, the researcher would like to address the challenges of online teaching practice according to pre-service teachers of this study. the first challenge was that online teaching practice offered inadequate time for having independent practice in the classroom. what could be perceived from the results, especially from the interview ones, was that the pre-service teachers were assigned to be the teachers’ assistants who were responsible for preparing the administrative teaching requirements, such as lesson plan, teaching journal, or yearly plan. thus, when they were asked to teach, they were struggling because they could not manage the class well. the case resulted in the second biggest challenge that was less conducive classroom situations. the pre-service teachers said they were difficult to control or manage the classroom, particularly related to students’ behaviour and engagement in the teaching-learning process. they said the students showed less enthusiasm during the class. they were less active, and they would talk only when they were asked to do so. the third challenge was that online teaching practice did not provide adequate teaching aids and responses. for pre-service teachers, teaching practice was the first real-time teaching experience. hence, complete guidance and directions on what to do or what to prepare for teaching were necessary. however, unfortunately, they did not get this attention comprehensively. in fact, as the beginner, pre-service teachers needed to have positive thoughts towards teaching and to feel secure when teaching. that is why complete guidance and feedback from senior teachers in order to be able to conduct their own teaching professionally were always becoming necessities (afalla & fabelico, 2020; http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 59-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license amankwah et al., 2017; heeralal & bayaga, 2011; moon et al., 2016). the fourth challenge was in terms of technical issues. the unstable internet connection and lack of accommodation for students were two of them. according to pre-service teachers, the students liked to leave the virtual classroom without permission; or leave and join the room several times. some students were always late to join the room because of an internet connection or waiting for the gadgets, which distracted the concentration of other students and the teachinglearning process. last but not least, regarding their specialty or major as english teachers, the pre-service teachers revealed that teaching english speaking or using english during the teaching and learning process was not possible. the first factor was because they were not in the class, so they could not fully motivate the students to speak, and the second one was that the students’ ability in speaking was low. according to them, the majority of students did not understand english. that was why using english was difficult. similarly, the listening activities, including daily practices or tests, were also challenging to do. this was due to the english ability, unstable connection, and incompatibility of the students’ gadgets. despite the challenges mentioned above, the advantages of online teaching practice helped the pre-service teachers achieve the program's main objective. according to them, the program's overall activities have let them obtain much information about the concept of teaching and professional teachers. besides, the practice also offered valuable teaching experience to shape a positive mindset and attitude towards teaching. furthermore, the pre-service teachers said that teaching practice program during pandemic has also provided opportunities to be familiar with technology in education. as can be inferred from the findings, they were compelled to use more than one teaching application. even though they were quite familiar with technology, they did not have the know-how of educational technology or to utilize technology to educate or teach. hence, the pre-service teachers also learned how to use and select appropriate teaching applications through having online teaching practice. further, they mentioned that they were also suggested to apply various teaching strategies. during the online class, they realized that the monotonous teaching strategy was ineffective since http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 60-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the students were likely to get distracted easily during the class. in online teaching practice, they were forced to find various strategies to motivate the students to participate in the class. through online teaching practice, they realized that becoming teachers was a challenge because teachers had to be ready to educate students in any situation, either online or offline. these findings corroborated and were also supported by findings of previous research conducted by abas (2016), daniel (2020), ersin et al. (2020), graham et al. (2020), ismatun and sadida (2020), mcintosh and nenonene (2020), özkanal et al. (2020), and varela and desiderio (2020). these studies also revealed that online teaching practice indeed brought challenges and advantages to pre-service teachers. in terms of challenges, they mentioned that online teaching practice caused the pre-service teachers to perceive fearful situations such as (1) unable to perform teaching independently; (2) unable to manage classrooms; (3) always facing technical issues; and (4) unable to get facilitated appropriately by experienced teachers. nevertheless, in contrary, the studies mentioned that pre-service teachers also remarked many advantages from the program involving (1) helping them to understand the concept of teaching and duties of professional teachers; (2) getting them prepared to face future education; (3) helping them to build creative and innovative teaching skills, and (4) letting them more familiar with educational applications. in light of this matter, mcintosh and nenonene (2020) emphasized that although pre-service teachers were fearful of the future and helpless in their desire for normalcy, the courage of pre-service teachers to do so through online teaching practice was sharpened due to the advantages they could obtain. in short, it can be understood that whatever the form is, teaching practice is always indeed useful for pre-service teachers. its powers to equip preservice teachers with teaching knowledge and skills, to provide broader insights about professional teachers, and to shape positive mindset and attitudes towards teaching are actually what make teaching practice important (abas, 2016; afalla & fabelico, 2020; fajriah et al., 2019; heeralal & bayaga, 2011; marais & meier, 2004; quick & siebörger, 2005). conclusions and suggestion the analyses have revealed that pre-service teachers' perceptions towards the teaching practice program http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 61-63 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19890 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conducted in covid-19 pandemic derived from their six months teaching practice experience are various. the study found that the teaching practice during pandemic offered numerous challenging situations and benefits. however, the challenging situations such as technical problems, classroom management difficulty, or the inability to use english (for they were assigned to be english teachers) were mere obstacles that they could finally handle. eventually, those problems became the best teachers, which provided them with more comprehensive experience. through experiencing teaching practice online, they realized that teachers indeed have to keep learning and updated to tailor up with all situations so that the activities of teaching itself can still be conducted well. last but not least, this study allows other researchers to find out deeper information related to the online implementation of teaching practice programs due to the covid-19 outbreak. the researchers could also use the results as a reference to conduct similar studies or elaborate the cases to discover brand-new phenomena relevant to online teaching practice. finally, since this study was conducted to english education department students, the researcher believes that the results are useful to offer new insights to the officials of the education faculty to create better policies for online teaching practice programs. references abas, m. c. 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(2012). the professional role of a teacher in the era of globalization on the example of poland. educational research ejournal, 1(1), 61–70. https://doi.org/10.5838/erej.201 2.11.05 varela, d. g., & desiderio, m. f. (2020). perceptions of covid-19 pandemic impact on the student teaching experience. research in higher education journal, 39, 1–12. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 232-246 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee alternative learning methods employed by language teachers in the new normal of covid-19 ida bagus nyoman mantra*, nengah dwi handayani, anak agung istri yudhi pramawati received: 18th july 2021; revised: 08th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract learning activities should be conducted effectively to create conducive learning conditions to develop students’ creativity and their higher learning competence. through conducting appropriate and effective learning activities, the learning objectives and learning competencies are easier to achieve. to create effective learning activities, teachers are required to have adequate understanding and competence in employing learning methods. this study aims to explore effective learning methods to create more creative learning activities for the students. this study found several alternative learning methods that can be utilized in the time of the new normal of covid-19 to continually improve the students’ competence. this study implies that teachers should continually expose themselves to various learning methods to establish conducive learning conditions in the classroom. key words: language; teachers; alternative; learning; methods abstrak kegiatan pembelajaran harus dilakukan secara efektif untuk menciptakan kondisi pembelajaran yang kondusif untuk mengembangkan kreativitas dan kompetensi belajar siswa yang lebih tinggi. melalui pelaksanaan kegiatan pembelajaran yang tepat dan efektif, tujuan pembelajaran dan kompetensi pembelajaran lebih mudah dicapai. untuk menciptakan kegiatan pembelajaran yang efektif, guru dituntut memiliki pemahaman dan kompetensi yang memadai dalam menggunakan metode pembelajaran. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menggali metode pembelajaran yang efektif untuk menciptakan kegiatan belajar yang lebih kreatif bagi siswa. penelitian ini menemukan beberapa metode pembelajaran alternatif yang dapat dimanfaatkan pada masa new normal covid-19 untuk terus meningkatkan kompetensi siswa. studi ini menyiratkan bahwa guru harus terus-menerus mengekspos diri mereka kedalam berbagai metode pembelajaran untuk membangun kondisi pembelajaran yang kondusif di dalam kelas. kata kunci: bahasa; guru; pembelajaran; alternatif; metode how to cite: mantra, i. b. n., handayani, n. d., & pramawati, a. a. i. y. (2021). alternative learning methods employed by language teachers in the new normal of covid-19. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 232-246. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 233-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the pandemic of covid-19, which were swept the world, has had an impact felt by all elements in human life, one of which is education. the increasing number of cases infected with the coronavirus made the republic of indonesia implement the large-scale social restrictions policy on this matter, impacting all educational institutions to be closed until an undetermined time. learning activities were conducted through online learning (rahayu & wirza, 2020). consequently, the use of learning technology becomes highly essential to answer the new system of learning. teachers were forced to teach their students through online learning using various existing platforms. this situation put teachers in a challenging dilemma to create effective learning activities. however, many innovations were born to answer existing challenges (gamage et al., 2020; gurgur & uzuner, 2011). eventually, teachers were able to teach through online learning and created several innovations to suit their students’ needs in learning. even though it is now considered a new normal period, online learning is still widely used in the teachinglearning process. an online learning system is a learning system without direct face-to-face communication between teachers and students, which is carried out online using the internet network (tallent-runnels et al., 2006). teachers must ensure teaching and learning activities run effectively even though students are at school. teachers are required to design innovative learning activities by utilizing online learning systems (gaytan & mcewen, 2007). consequently, a good internet connection becomes a high necessity for both teachers and students. an internet network connection is one of the obstacles students face in a rural area with difficulty accessing the internet. sometimes the network is unstable because the geographical location is still far from cellular signal coverage. additionally, some students cannot pay for the internet connection since they lack financial support (mulyawan, 2020). considering various obstacles in conducting online learning in indonesia, teachers must make various efforts to conduct meaningful communication. therefore, teachers sometimes made a variation in teaching using several online learning platforms. it is important to establish positive learning transformation. thus, the success of learning activities is highly dependent on the effectiveness of the communication process that occurs in the learning (gaytan & mcewen, 2007). effective communication in learning is a process of transforming messages in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 234-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the form of science and technology from educators to students, where students can understand the meaning of messages in accordance with predetermined goals, thereby increasing knowledge of science and technology and online learning systems may help teachers to provide better learning activities for their students (widiastuti, 2018). concerning the learning process, effective communication in learning must be supported by interpersonal communication skills that must be possessed by the teachers (astawa et al., 2018). in teaching and learning activities, interpersonal communication is a must so that there is a harmonious relationship between the teacher and the students. the effectiveness of communication in teaching and learning activities is very dependent on both parties (childs et al., 2005). however, because the teacher controls the class, the responsibility for healthy and effective communication in the classroom lies on the teacher. the future perspective of learning methods should acknowledge the importance of classroom communication even in the situation of online learning to create a conducive learning atmosphere. therefore, communication skills are key for successful learning (radhika, 2017). additionally, the quality of learning is influenced by the effectiveness of the communication that occurs in the classroom (handayani & widiastuti, 2019). effective communication in learning is a process of transforming messages in the form of science and technology from educators to students, where students can understand the meaning of messages in accordance with predetermined goals, thereby increasing knowledge of science and technology and causing changes in behaviour for the better learning condition (su et al., 2005). the teacher is the party most responsible for implementing effective communication in learning, and teachers are required to have good communication skills to produce an effective learning process (widiastuti, 2018). therefore, it can be said that the quality of teaching and learning can be seen from how the communication system takes place in the classroom. consequently, effective communication should be always be maintained during the implementation of learning methods (brata et al., 2021). many studies on the implementation of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic have been carried out by various researchers who reveal views on implementing learning, especially the successes of online learning and obstacles faced by teachers and students (e.g. robles & ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 235-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license braathen, 2002; tallent-runnels et al., 2006; gamage et al., 2020). however, hardly any study specifically investigated the prospective learning methods utilized by school teachers during the new normal. therefore, the study focused on investigating the alternative learning methods school teachers use to continually inform educators to create an effective and creative learning atmosphere. method research design the study was conducted as a descriptive, explanatory sequential mixed method design. the study was carried out in two stages: the quantitative stage was intended to collect quantitative data. the qualitative stage was to gather the qualitative data to complement and elaborate the quantitative data. an online survey was done to collect quantitative data, and online interviews were conducted to collect qualitative data. this research design was considered appropriate to collect the data required to figure out the alternative learning models employed by language teachers in bali. research site and participants this study was conducted in several schools in bali. 208 language teachers participated in this study. all teachers who participated in this study were asked to answer the questionnaire, and 20 teachers were selected to be interviewed. those 20 teachers were selected to be the representative of the whole participants. they were interviewed through google meet and conducted in a very relaxed situation to ensure that teachers provided the appropriate information according to the real existing phenomena. data collection and analysis the quantitative data were collected through an online survey using google form, and qualitative data were collected through interviews with the selected teachers by utilizing interview guidelines to obtain verbal information directly from the teachers about the learning methods that have been carried out during the time of new normal to establish to support the data collected through an online survey. the data analysis was done descriptively and carried out interactively and continuously until complete clear data were established. data analysis were started by doing a reduction process which means summarizing, choosing the main data, focusing on the important things, looking for themes and patterns, and discarding unnecessary ones. the presentation of data was done in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 236-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license form of brief descriptions to make it easier to understand the phenomenon. data verification is carried out where the researcher tries to find patterns, themes, relationships, similarities, things that often arise, and some of the data was obtained to draw conclusions. the data that have been concluded were verified during the research. verification is an examination of the veracity of a report, to ensure its validity. in this study, the data validation technique used was triangulation with sources. triangulation with sources means comparing and double-checking the degree of trustworthiness of information obtained through an online survey and interviews. findings and discussion findings the new normal of covid-19, teachers, were cautious in conducting the teaching-learning process. this was because covid-19 was still spreading. therefore strict health protocols were implemented in all learning activities. the government policy, which aimed at stopping the spread of covid-19, caused several limitations in direct classroom interaction. consequently, teachers mainly chose to teach from home through online systems. in the normal time, some teachers chose to conduct face-to-face learning with a limited number of students in the class, especially for those in the area where internet connection was very poor or no connection at all. teachers in the green area also conducted these learning activities. however, some teachers chose to conduct a hybrid learning system to minimize the direct contact, and when the face-to-face learning was conducted, the learning time was shortened. moreover, strict health protocols were carried out for all teachers and students. the teachers conducted some learning strategies during the new normal such as online learning, limited face-to-face learning, hybrid learning, and project-based learning. this graph shows the percentage of alternative learning methods employed by language teachers. graphic 1. graph of learning methods implementation the graph above showed that 50% of the teachers conducted online learning, this was understandable that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 237-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the spread of covid-19 was still very high in certain areas in bali. only 14.9% of teachers conducted face-to-face learning with a limited number of students according to the health protocols, and 25% of teachers conducted hybrid learning, which was a combination of face-to-face learning with limited numbers of students and online learning. there were 10.1% of teachers who conducted project-based learning. these were mainly the areas where the internet connection was too poor to conduct online learning. teachers in these areas taught students through whatsapp by giving them tasks to be solved at home and discussing the tasks with their friends through whatsapp. teachers occasionally monitor the students through whatsapp messages to ensure students do the tasks properly. the interview results also supported the data from the questionnaire in which most teachers described that face-to-face learning was tough to conduct due to the worry of being infected by covid-19. “i conducted online learning entirely for all learning processes, and i don’t want my students infected by the virus.” “i think it’s too risky to conduct face-to-face learning. i give my students tasks to do, and my students find it too difficult to join online learning because they don’t have a good internet connection.” “well, i conducted a short face-toface learning because my area is in a green zone but with stringent health protocols.” “i carried out hybrid learning several times during the last semester because the situation of the pandemic is decreasing. my students preferred seeing me directly, but when conducting face-to-face learning, the learning time was shortened by half, and everything conducted complied with health protocols.” the interviews showed that most teachers still mainly carry out online learning and sometimes conducted hybrid learning to ensure that students gained adequate learning competence. the face-to-face learning was only conducted in the green zone area, and all the learning activities were strictly conducted in compliance with the health protocols. the schools were also well-equipped with sufficient facilities to ensure that all students were safe against infection of covid-19. discussion apart from the obstacles related to an internet connection, online learning should be conducted due to limited ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 238-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license direct access for teachers and students to meet directly personally. therefore, it is important to enrich teachers’ competence in understanding various applicable online learning methods. in its application, online learning requires a variety of methods to achieve the expected results. on the other hand, variations in online learning methods also create enthusiasm from students to participate in the online learning process. based on the interviews with the respondents of this study, prospective learning methods can be employed during the new normal of the covid-19 pandemic. the learning methods may include online, face-toface, project-based, blended, and hybrid learning. online learning is conducted by utilizing the online system for all learning activities consisting of synchronous and asynchronous learning activities (timmis et al., 2016). using a robust online method, students remain in their homes in a safe state (fitriani et al., 2020). the online learning process can be carried out using google meet, zoom, webex, teams applications, etc. in addition, educational activities can be carried out using a learning management system (lms. moreover, teachers and students may also use social media, including instagram, youtube, and whatsapp, for teaching-learning activities. moreover, online learning provides an opportunity for students to control the success of learning independently. learners are free to decide when to start, when to finish, and which part of a module they want to learn first. if, after repeated, there are still things that he does not understand, the learner can contact the instructor, resource persons via email, chat or participate in interactive dialogues at certain times. meanwhile, face-to-face learning or offline method is a learning model carried out outside the network. in a sense, this learning is carried out faceto-face by considering the zoning and applicable health protocols. this method is very suitable for students in the yellow or green zone, especially with the strict health protocol. in this method, students are taught in turns or shift model to avoid crowds in which ideally less crowded classroom is more appropriate to avoid infection against the spread of the virus. this method is designed to deal with students who have difficulty joining online learning systems (liguori & winkler, 2020). this offline learning should be conducted in a limited number of students in the classroom should be carefully conducted to continually prevent the spread of the virus during the new normal of the covid-19 pandemic. strict health protocols should be strongly ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 239-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license implemented during the learning process. project-based learning is another learning method used during the new normal of the covid-19 pandemic. this method is considered to be effective because students are required to carry out their own learning projects so that they are away from the crowd during the learning process. moreover, this method improves students’ higher thinking skill and their creativity in doing things scientifically (syakur et al., 2020). additionally, in this method, several subjects can be taught integrative and various learning topics in an integrative manner. in addition to integrative learning, the project can be done collaboratively and with team teaching. the implementation of project-based learning is considered very safe for students against the spread of the virus since limited contacts among students and teachers can be created. hybrid learning is one of the methods that can be used during the new normal of the covid-19 pandemic. this method uses two approaches at once. hybrid learning is the ease of learning that combines various modes of delivery, teaching models, and learning styles, introducing a variety of media options for communication between teachers and students. hybrid learning combines face-to-face and online teaching, but more than that, as an element of social interaction (rasmitadila et al., 2020). hybrid learning provides the best opportunity to learn from classroom transitions to learning. hybrid learning involves classroom (or face-to-face) and online learning. this method effectively adds efficiency to classroom instruction and enables increased discussion or review of information outside the classroom. hybrid learning can also avoid students and teachers being infected against the virus or other infectious diseases. this method can be done by integrating an online system and limited face-to-face learning with strict health protocols. however, a face-toface meeting can also be replaced by google meetings or zoom meetings. this indicated that hybrid learning could be utilized in many situations of learning. hybrid learning can be introduced for all students who can entirely attend online learning as some help from the teachers can be given during face-to-face learning (amin et al., 2020). eventually, by doing this learning activity, students become more familiar with online learning. then after the situation is permitting, fully online learning can be carried out to enhance the students’ competence independently. the most important when conducting blended learning is to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 240-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license make the students actively in participating the lesson by combining face-to-face learning and online systems. in the new normal of the covid-19 pandemic, online learning systems can be continually utilized in the teaching and learning process to help students achieve optimal learning outcomes because it provides an easier way of learning. however, blended learning or hybrid learning may be more suitable (adas & bakir, 2013). this is entirely based on the local situation depending on the virus condition. some teachers during the interviews stated that currently, there are still many students who think that online learning is something difficult, tedious, and boring, so not a few students have difficulty understanding lessons that were delivered online. therefore, the teacher should have the ability to change the learning activities to make students happy, thereby arousing student motivation. students' activeness and process skills in the following lessons are very important to be nurtured. there are many ways for teachers to deliver the lesson that make students feel happy, including using the right approach and being assisted by the presence of media that support teaching and learning activities. effective learning is a learning method that involves more activities of students in accessing various information and knowledge to be discussed and studied in the learning process in the classroom so that they get various experiences that can increase their understanding and competence. effective learning can be in the form of active learning, and students are expected to actively try to find knowledge through learning by doing (metzger, 2015). moreover, effective learning can also be in the form of creative learning. it is a learning process that requires teachers to motivate and bring out the creativity of students during learning, using several methods and strategies that vary, for example, group work, role-playing, and problem-solving. in creative learning, teachers should stimulate students' creativity, both in developing thinking skills and in taking action in learning. both active and creative learning cannot merely be carried out through direct learning but can also be conducted through online learning. teaching can help students obtain information, ideas, skills, values, ways of thinking, means of expressing themselves, and ways of learning how to learn. learning is an attempt to teach students. implicit in this sense, there are activities to choose, determine, develop methods to achieve the desired learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 241-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license outcomes (astawa et al., 2018). this method's selection, determination, and development are based on existing learning conditions. the learning process is a process that contains a series of implementations by teachers and students based on reciprocal relationships that take place in educational situations to achieve certain goals (maba & mantra, 2018). this interaction or reciprocal relationship between teachers and students is the main requirement for the learning process. in reality, teachers are often too active in the learning process in schools. at the same time, students are made passive so that the interaction between teachers and students in the learning process is ineffective. if teachers dominate the learning process, learning effectiveness will not be achieved. to create effective learning conditions, teachers are required to manage the learning process that provides stimulation to students so that they are willing and able to learn. the teacher should provide the same service so that students who are responsible for the class experience the same attention (tremblay, 2013). to provide the same service, it is necessary to find the right strategy so that the objectives that have been formulated can be achieved. therefore, teachers should utilize active, creative, effective, and fun learning during the learning process, even through online systems (lancaster et al., 2014). this study revealed that most teachers conducted the online learning system using groups on social media such as whatsapp, telegram, instagram, google meet, google classroom, zoom applications, or other media as learning media. thus, the teacher can ensure students take part in learning simultaneously, even in different places. the problems that occur are not only in the instructional media system but the availability of quotas which require quite high costs for students and teachers to facilitate online learning needs. the quota purchased for internet needs has increased, and many parents are not ready to increase their budget in providing internet networks. this also becomes a critical issue for students, what time they have to study, while their parents are low-income or from the middle to lower class. based on the interviews, teachers clarified that future learning methods should use variations between online and face-to-face learning to make the learning activities more interesting and more effective. most teachers, additionally, explain that face-to-face can be done through video conference if the covid-19 virus or other virus ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 242-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pandemics still become a threat. of course, in a certain area, direct face to face may be needed due to the situation of the students, but most teachers believe that online learning systems are more flexible and more effective in learning and give the students have the opportunity to develop their competence more independently. this learning condition is certainly beneficial for students for their future life and beyond. to make future learning models effective, teachers in this study urged that the learning model be delivered based on active, creative, effective, and fun learning principles. active learning means that in the learning process, the teacher must create an atmosphere so that students ask questions, question, and express ideas. creative learning is intended the teacher creates a variety of learning activities to meet the various levels of ability of students, and students can also be creative in the learning process. effective learning is learning that succeeds in achieving the goals as expected. meanwhile, fun learning is learning that has an impressive atmosphere so that students' attention is fully focused on the lesson so that the time of attention is high so that the achievement of the objectives in learning is achieved properly. through active and creative learning s model was developed to make the learning situation experienced by the students more exciting and motivate students to carry out active learning activities that ultimately achieve optimal learning outcomes and improve the quality of english learning. conclusions and suggestion in essence, effective learning is a teaching and learning process that focuses not only on the results achieved by students but also on how an effective learning process can provide good understanding, intelligence, persistence, opportunity, and quality and can provide behavior change and apply it in their lives. to realize effective learning in terms of conditions and atmosphere and efforts to maintain it, the teacher as the supervisor must be able to carry out the learning process optimally. in addition, to create an atmosphere and conditions that are effective in learning, there must be certain supporting factors such as the learning environment, teacher expertise in teaching, adequate facilities and facilities, and good cooperation between teachers and students. prospective learning methods that can enrich students’ competence in the time of new normal of covid-19 pandemic can be in the form of online learning, small size face-to-face learning, projectbased learning, blended learning, and hybrid learning. this study implied that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 243-246 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21135 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers should continually develop their competence in teaching to ensure the learning activities effectively enhance students ‘learning achievement in gaining various 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(2018). efl students’ writing interactions through weblog and selfassessment. international journal of humanities, literature & arts, 1, 38–45. https://doi.org/10.31295/ijhla.v1n 1.32 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015, 59-72 an investigation of the practice of effective teaching strategies in three islamic senior high schools in south jakarta lia aida received: 29th march 2015; revised: 28th april 2015; accepted: 28th may 2015 abstract some research has argued that effective teachers significantly influence students’ performance. however, becoming effective teachers are not easy because they have to apply some strategies of effective teaching. for that reason, this paper intends to investigate whether teachers from three islamic senior high schools in south jakarta practice effective teaching strategies. these schools have been considered good due to the high mean score of english subject in ujian nasional. the framework of effective teaching follows the model developed by creemers and kyriakides, which relate teacher behavior in the classroom and student achievement. the framework consists of orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modeling, applications, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment, management of time, and classroom assessment. key words: teaching; effective teaching; effective teaching strategies abstrak banyak penelitian yang menyatakan bahwa guru-guru yang efektif sangat berperan penting dalam perkembangan siswa. namun, menjadi guru yang efektif tidaklah mudah karena mereka harus menerapkan beberapa strategi pengajaran yang efektif. oleh karena itu, paper ini bertujuan untuk melihat apakah para guru yang berasal dari tiga madrasah aliyah negeri (man) di daerah jakarta selatan mempraktekan strategi pengajaran yang efektif. framework pengajaran yang efektif mengikuti model yang dikembangkan oleh creemers dan kyriakides, yang menunjukkan adanya hubungan antara apa yang dilakukan oleh guru dikelas dengan pencapaian siswa. framework tersebut terdiri dari: orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modeling, applications, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment, management of time, and classroom assessment. kata kunci: pengajara; pengajaran yang efektif; strategi pengajaran yang efektif how to cite: aida. l. (2015). an investigation of the practice of effective teaching strategies in three islamic senior high schools in south jakarta. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(1), 58-75. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i1.2195 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i1.2195 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 60-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction nelson mandela once said that education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. the important idea is that a country, which has good quality in education can certainly be a developed country, one of which is finland. started from an agricultural country, which was not well-known, today finland moves forward in technological aspect. for instance, the product of nokia is spread in the world market. the excellence of nokia which has varied innovation, commercial enterprise, and technological improvement makes this country as a developed country like germany, japan, and the united states. not only is the improvement supported by research and technological industry, but it is also supported by education. the education in finland is categorized best because the country produces high quality generations. for example, in 2013, 93% the citizens in finland graduated from senior high school, which was 17.5% higher than those in the united states of america. then, more than 66% students attended the university which has the best quality in europe. in addition, the international survey of organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) in 2012 reports that finland was included in one of high-performing countries beside china and south korea. for instance, in 2012, the program for international student assessment (pisa) which stands for testing literacy in three competence fields like mathematics, science, and reading shows that finland was ranked first out of 65 countries for mathematics and science. further, it was also ranked first out of 65 countries for reading (schleicher, 2014). in short, these evidences prove that students’ performance in finland is very good. followint the assumption that teachers play significant roles in students’ outcome, it is reasonable to assume that teacher quality in finland is excellent. unlike finland, student achievement in indonesia has been considered low. in 2012, the program for international student assessment (pisa) showed that indonesia was ranked 64 out of 65 countries for mathematics and science respectively. in addition, it was also ranked 61 out of 65 countries for reading (schleicher, 2014). the low achievement was likely to be related with the low quality of most teachers. for instance, the asian development bank (adb) in 2006 reported that more than 90% teachers in madrasah taught lessons which were not in their field such as biology, chemistry, english, and math. this fact indicated that madrasah teachers in indonesia had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/literacy ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|61-72 low quality in teaching because of low competency and qualification. in line with this, strong (2007) states that the teachers who teach a subject for which they are not prepared do not provide students’ needs as good as certified teachers. in other words, teachers who are not well-qualified in their own fields become ineffective in teaching. consequently, this problem could lead to low students achievement. nevertheless, this does not mean that there are no good schools, which have high students’ achievement. some islamic senior high schools in south jakarta such as man 4 jakarta, man 11 jakarta and man 19 jakarta are considered good by public. students’ achievement in those schools is categorized high because of high mean scores of ujian nasional (un), especially for english subject. for instance, in 2013, the mean score of english subject at man 4 jakarta for ipa was (7.70), ips (7.47), and bahasa (7.14). referring to this result, it can be assumed that the english teaching process in those schools are effective. the above explanations emphasize the idea that effective teaching leads to high student achievement. for that reason, creating an effective teaching becomes an important aspect for indonesia as a developing country to produce future generations who can compete with other people in the world. this study, therefore, is intended to understand whether teachers apply the principles of effective teaching. in conceptualizing the effective teaching strategies, the researcher used dynamic model developed by creemers and kyriakides (2008) because it relates teacher behavior in the classroom and students’ achievement. the model refers to eight effectiveness strategies that describe teachers’ instructional role. the strategies are orientation, structuring, questioning, teaching modeling, applications, teacher role in making classroom a learning environment, management of time, and classroom assessment. firstly, it is necessary to calrify what we understand about teaching before effective teaching is further discussed. teaching is frequently considered as a simple process for those who master their subjects. however, the idea of teaching is related to a complex process which is fulfilled with varied people in a complicated social institution (bruce, 1967). in line with this, brown (1987, p.44) said that as a complex process, teaching requires teachers not only to deliver the material, but also to guide and facilitate learning, to enable the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 62-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 learner to learn, and to set the condition for learning. indirectly, this process provides teachers to create an academic cooperative environment in the school. the content of learning may be facts, procedures, skills, ideas and values which are applied in the learning activities. moreover, the content is useful in some activities such as comprehending the material, providing student needs, and solving the learning problem which are included in the teaching objectives (brown and madeline, 2002, p. 2). in addition, moore (2012) explains that teaching is an activity, which provides students to maximize their abilities in all aspects of development. in line with this, gage (1984) states that not only is an art regarded as a component of teaching, but science is also included as the other component. teaching has a scientific basis, which applications are derived from research. further, it is called as an art because it depends on teachers’ intuition combined with teacher’s experiences. hence, teaching can be viewed as having both artistic and scientific components (richard, 2007). in summary, teaching is a complex process, which involves students’ diverse ability and backgrounds in terms of linguistic, cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity. teaching is also called as an intentional activity concerned with student learning. the remaining question is how do we define effective teaching, which concerns what teachers do in the classroom that leads to better students’ performance. according to kriyacou (2009, p. 8), effective teaching can be defined as a teaching process that successfully facilitates students’ activities of obtaining knowledge and skills designed by the teacher. this is to say that effective teaching concerns the effects of learning activities on students’ performance. in other words, effective teaching deals with teacher activities that lead to better students’ performance. barry (2010) argues that these activities require a deep inside of subject matter, learning theory of diverse students, designing and teaching strategies, student needs, and evaluation of student outcomes. further, the activities also involve teachers’s competence to reflect, work with team, and keep on establishing professional teaching in order to enhance students’ achievement. further, not only does effective teaching need the teaching strategies, but also require human abilities, instinct, and intelligence to maximize teaching and learning process. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|63-72 in summary, effective teaching is defined as a teaching process that successfully achieves the teaching objectives by producing autonomous learners and high student outcomes. in this case, some studies have identified teacher behaviours that facilitate better students’ outcome. the findings of these studies have similar ideas concerning what effective teachers do in their classroom. daniel muijs and david reynold (2001, p. 30 – 32), for instance, describe some aspects of effective instructions. the first is clearly structured lessons. effective teachers develop lesson that have a clear structure, so pupils can easily understand the content of the lesson and how it relates to what they already know. the second is clearly structured presentations. in this case, effective teachers present materials in small parts according to the pupils’ level, which are then practiced before going on to the next step. the next step is pacing, in which basic skills are paced in such a way that during weekly or monthly reviews pupils are able to respond correctly in 90-95 per cent of cases. the fourth is modeling, which is a useful procedure to follow when teaching certain topics. modeling means demonstrating a procedure to learners so that they could learn. the fifth is the use of conceptual mapping, which is a framework that can be presented to pupils before the topic of the lesson is presented. the last is interactive questioning. effective teachers lead the discussion in the classroom through interactive questioning. in line with the above elemenets, another expert, westwood (1996) adds that there are some selected forms of effective teaching. they include presentation and explanation, in which effective teaching requires clarity in presentation and explanation. effective teaching also involves careful attention to classroom questioning. in addition, effective instruction must include a focus on teaching students efficient ways of approach in the tasks they are set and the provision of adaptive instruction in order to adjust different characteristics and needs of individual students. furthermore, creemers and kyriakides (2008, p. 104 – 117) develop dynamic model, which comprehensively include various teacher behaviors in the classroom that have been proved to influence students’ outcome. the model refers to eight effectiveness strategies that describe teachers’ instructional role. the first is orientation. it refers to the teacher behaviors in providing the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 64-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 objectives for which a specific task, lesson, or series of lessons takes place. orientation also deals eith teacher attempts to challenge students to identify during the lesson the reason why a particular activity takes place. the second is structuring, which emphasize teachers’ explanation on the series of activities during the lesson and arranging those activities from easier to more difficult ones. the third is questioning. effective teachers formulates both easy and difficult questions and raise them accordingly. the easy or narrow questions usually ask for only factual recall or specific correct answer, whereas difficult or broad questions seldom can be answered with a single word. moreover, broad questions do not have one correct answer and call on students to reach beyond simple memory. broad questions prompt students to use the thinking process in formulating answers. concerning questioning technique, moore (2012) proposes three types of questions. they are focusing questions, prompting questions, and probing questions. focusing questions could be factual, empirical, productive, or evaluative, and are used to direct student attention and determine what has been learned by students. prompting questions use clues that help students answer questions or correct initially inaccurate responses. probing questions aim at correcting, improving, or expanding a student’s initial response. they compel the students to think more thoroughly about the initial response. probing questions can be used for correcting an initial response, eliciting clarification, developing critical awareness, or refocusing a response. lastly, when raising questions, it is very important that teachers wait enogh time in order to give students sufficient time to prepare their answers. the fourth is teaching modeling. this term refers to an orientation toward what students should learn through specific teaching procedures and structures (arends, 2007). effective teachers may either present a strategy with clarity or invite students to explain how they solve a problem and subsequently use that information for promoting the idea of modeling. the provision of strategy is important so that students can use the strategy to learn outside the classroom. this modelling should be completed with application, which refers to learning activities or exercises that effective teachers design to facilitate students’ learning. the exercises could refer to some parts of the lesson, to the whole lesson, or even to a series of lessons. in this stage, students are expected to perform. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|65-72 the sixth is teacher role in making classroom a learning environment. effective teachers manages the classroom in such a way that enable different groups of students involved in the classroom interactions. in the dynamic model, five elements of the classroom as a learning environment are taken into account i.e. teacher-student interaction, studentstudent interaction, students’ treatment by the teacher, competition between students, and classroom disorder. the seventh is management of time, which is one of the most important indicators of a teacher’s ability to manage the classroom in an effective way. effective teachers organize and manage the classroom environment as an efficient learning environment and thereby to maximize engagement rates. the last one is classroom assessment, which is seen as an integral part of teaching. formative assessment, especially, is one of the most important factors associated with effectiveness at all levels, especially at the classroom level. in this paper, the eight factors explained in the dynamic model is used as a reference in conceptualizing effective teaching. this is because those factors have been previously found to be related to students’ outcome. in addition, the model is comprehensive because the factors cover what effective teachers do from the beginning until the end of the classroom session. in short, this study attempts to investigate whether teachers apply these eight classroom factors of the dynamic model in their teaching practices. the result of the study is expected tp be useful not only for the researcher but also for teachers and other parties. for teachers, the findings of this study could provide important information on what they should do in order to effective teachers. for other parties especially policy makers, the findings could serve as a fundamental basis to develop teacher development program concerning what teachers should focus if they have to improve their quality. method in this study, the researcher used two instruments to gather the data of teaching and lerning process, which were observation sheet and questionnaires. all components of the eight effective teaching principles of the dynamic model were included in both instruments. five scales were designed in the two instruments to indicate the quality of each observed activity, in which 1 is minimum and 5 is maximum. the questionnaire were given to teachers and students to gather ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 66-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 their opinion on teaching learning activities whereas an independent observer did the observation. the sample of this study was ten english teachers at the first and the second grade of three islamic senior high schools in south jakarta. the sample was chosen by using proportional stratified sampling. the researcher took 6 out of 8 english teachers in man 4 jakarta, 3 out of 5 english teachers in man 11 jakarta, and 1 out of 3 english teachers. so, there were ten english teachers, four males and six females. concerning the students, there were 243 students who participated in the study. findings and discussion in measuring the practice of effective teaching, the researcher used the data reported by the observer, teachers and students. the total score of effective teaching was gained by summing up the scores of all items divided by the number of the items. in addition, the mean score of each classroom factors of the dynamic model is also presented. this analysis was conducted to understand the teachers’ practice of the effective teaching strategies in general and also in each factor. the results are presented in table 1. table 1. the measurement of teaching effectiveness (te) data ori stru ques mode app cle time ass et teacher questionnaires 3.63 3.60 3.44 3.43 3.70 4.10 3.70 4.04 3.70 student questionnaires 2.96 3.02 3.21 2.68 3.03 3.19 3.15 3.25 3.06 observation sheets 2.40 1.54 2.93 2.20 2.70 2.93 2.40 3.28 2.54 notes: ori : orientation stru : structuring quest : questioning mode : modeling app : application cle : creating classroom as a learning environment time : time management et : the practice of effective teaching ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|67-72 in general, the table explains briefly that there were different perceptions among teachers, students, and the researcher related to the practice of effective teaching. the mean score of effective teaching from the teacher questionnaire shows the highest score compared to those from the students and the observer. the score was 3.63 out five scales. slightly different from this, the mean score of the students was 3.06. the observer gave the least score, which was only 2.53.these findings mean that teachers themselves viewed that they have used many of the principles of effective teaching while students considered that their teachers did not teach as effective as what the teachers thought. in this case, it is important to note the perception of the observer who could be argued to have better position in understanding the classroom factors of the dynamic model. because the mean score of the observer reached only 2.53, it means that the teachers did not yet really practice the principle of effective teaching in their teaching and learning process. the details of the teaching and learning process are explained in the following, which is presented according to the factors of the dynamic model and based on the observation data. orientation referring to the observer, the mean score of orientation as described in table 1 was 2.53. therefore, the teachers were not good in practicing the orientation because they did not maximize the applications of the orientation such as reviewing the material, describing the teaching objectives related to daily activities, and challenging the students to identify the reason why a particular topic should be learned. during the observation, there was only one teacher (ms. f) who reviewed the previous material. structuring compared to other factors, structuring was the lowest score, 1.54. this was because most of the teachers did not practice the structuring activities. almost all teachers did not start their teaching and learning activities with overviewing the objectives of the day lesson not described the content to be covered. the transitions between lesson parts was not given enough attention either. however, there were few teachers who attempted to draw conclusions about the materials that have been taught at the end of the lesson. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 68-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 questioning technique most teachers practiced questioning in their teaching and learning activities and the mean score reached almost 3. all teachers used familiar english words, asked various questions, gave orderly questions, and provided feedback to the student answers. however, the questions were limited only to questions stated in the textbooks. in other words, the teachers did not really create the questions themselves. in addition, most of the questions required the students to find the answers which were explicitly found in the text. the teachers rarely raised critical questions. teaching – modeling the data gained in the table mentioned that the teachers were not good in practicing the teachingmodelling. their mean score was 2.20. they did not provide relevant learning strategies that students can use to learn. the teaching and learning process took place through reading aloud and translating the text and then asnwering questions. application tasks concerning application activities, teachers started to provide exercises during the lesson. they also monitored and supervised students’ work during the application stage. on the other hand, the teachers did not give different exercises or theme to different groups of students who had different ability. furthermore, most teachers did not provide more encouragement to lowachieving students and to praise their success. the teacher role in making classroom as a learning environment. in this case, some teachers practiced some activities that can create classroom as a learning environment. for instance they invited the students to respect and to use the school rules and create a businesslike and supportive environment for learning. however, it was quite obvious that some students in several classes were not on tasks and busy with their own activities. management of time table 1 informs us that teachers were not good in managing their time. some of the time was not spent on teaching and learning activities. some of the teachers were not successful in finishing all ctivities. in addition, the teachers did not invite the students to finish the learning tasks on time by including time allotment in every student activities. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|69-72 classroom assessment compared to other factors, classroom assessment was the highest score. this findings mean that teachers were good enough in practicing the classroom assessment. it was obvious during the observation that nearly all teachers attempted to ensure that students understood the lesson by raising some questions. however, the method of conducting assessment was imited to raising questions, which was often conducted at the end of the lesson. conclusion and suggestion based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that the teachers have started to practice the strategies of effective teaching at their regular teaching practices. however, this does not mean that it is not necessary for teachers to improve. moreover, teachers still have a lot of weaknesses in many factors of the dynamic model. related to the practice of the orientation, there were three suggestions given to the teachers. first, the teachers should review the material in order to create long-term memory for the students. it is argued to be also effective to examine students’ comprehension related to the previous material. second, it is important for teachers to explain the aim of the lesson by connecting the lesson to the daily activities. this is important to make the tasks meaningful for the students. by explaining the importance of the lesson, it is expected to provide the students opportunities not only to participate actively in the classroom, but also to enhance their critical thinking. with respect to the practice of the structuring, several suggestions are offered. first, the teachers should begin the class with overviews of the objectives so that students understand what they should achieve at the end of the lesson. second, through outlining the content and signaling transitions between lesson parts, it would help both the teachers and the students to manage the teaching and learning process easily. third, the teachers should call attention to main ideas in order to achieve the key concepts of the lesson. finally, the teachers should give a conclusion at the end of the lesson in order to facilitate the students in memorizing the information that have been discussed. in terms of questioning technique, there were two suggestions. first, teachers are expected to ask questions at different stages from the beginning and during the lesson as well as at the end of the lesson. it would be useful to check students’ understanding and to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 70-72|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 evaluate students’ comprehension. in addition, there should be variation of questions concerning the difficulty level. teachers should also create questions that promote students’ critical thinking. concerning modeling, there were two suggestions which should be noticed by the teachers. first, the teachers should use one or more strategies to enhance student’s skills in solving their learning problems. further, the teachers should provide the opportunities for the students to use or develop more than one strategy to solve specific problems, or types of problems. furthermore, they should emphasize on using multiple strategies for a group of students. if possible, teachers should also invite the students to tell how they themselves deal with the problems. related to the provision of application tasks, there were three suggestions which should be developed by the teachers. first, the teachers should design relevant tasks in accordance to the goals. second, the teachers should supervise and provide corrective feedback during the application activities in order to promote better students’ performance. the last one, the teachers should pay attention more frequently to lowachieving students and praise their success so that they are eager to compete with other students. with regards to teachers’ role in making classroom as a learning environment, this study proposes two suggestions. first, the teachers should facilitate the establishment of agreement in the classroom to create a learning environment in the classroom. second, the teachers should use different strategies in order to keep different groups of students involved in the classroom interactions, which promotes student learning. in this case, teachers should also look at the time management, in which they are expected to arrange time allocation for every part of lesson. related to the practice of assessment, firstly, the teachers should provide different ways to make sure that students understand the lesson. in addition to questioning, teachers can also ask students to summarize what students learn during the lesson. second, the teachers use the data they collected from assessment to improve their teaching and learning activities. in addition, from assessment, teachers should be able to identify which topics should be retaught and which groups of students should be provided more attention and assistant. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (1), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|71-72 references arends, richard i. 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(1996). effective teaching, australian journal of teacher education, 27. yusup, muhammad., “strategi efektif embelajaran fisika: ajaran konsep”, skripsi pada program studi pendidikan fisika fkip universitas sriwijara. sains indonesia.(2014). “budaya inovasi di finlandia patut ditiru”, www.sainsindonesia.co.id. http://z.umn.edu/innovations http://z.umn.edu/innovations http://www.oecd.org/pisa http://education.ky/ http://www.sainsindonesia.co.id/ * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 64-79 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee fostering students’ grammatical competence through flipped classroom firdausa fadhilah*, ratna sari dewi, zaharil anasy, ismalianing eviyuliwati, syauki received: 18th march 2021; revised: 28th may 2021; accepted: 29th june 2021 abstract this study aims to identify whether flipped classroom strategy can enhance students’ grammatical competence. efl students still found difficulties in understanding and mastering grammar despite its central role in learning a new language. as we are living in the digital era, we can optimize digital tools in teaching and learning to assist students and teachers. furthermore, students nowadays are tech-savvy, so it would not be very difficult to integrate technology into classroom. the participants of this research were the tenth grade students at sman 4 tangerang selatan. classroom action research (car) was implemented as the research design with two cycles which comprised three meetings in each cycle. the cycle consisted of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. the instruments used were test, questionnaire, observation, and researcher’s field note. the results showed that 77.14% of students passed the minimum criterion score; further, the results among pre-test, post-test 1, and post-test 2 significantly increased. these findings indicate that flipped classroom have the potential to improve students’ grammatical competence. key words: education technology; flipped classroom; grammar; grammatical competence abstrak studi ini bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kompetensi gramatikal siswa melalui strategi flipped classroom dan untuk mengetahui bagaimana strategi tersebut meningkatkan kompetensi gramatikal siswa. siswa yang menggunakan bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl) masih mengalami kesulitan untuk memahami dan menguasai tata bahasa meskipun peran sentralnya dalam belajar bahasa. karena kita hidup di era digital, kita dapat mengoptimalkan alat digital dalam proses belajar-mengajar untuk membantu siswa dan guru. selain itu, siswa saat ini sudah paham teknologi sehingga tidak terlalu sulit untuk mengintegrasikan teknologi ke dalam kelas. melihat fenomena ini, oleh sebab itu, penelitian telah dilaksanakan. subjek penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas x di sman 4 tangerang selatan. penelitian tindakan kelas (ptk) dilaksanakan sebagai desain penelitian dengan dua siklus yang terdiri dari 3 pertemuan di setiap siklusnya. instrumen yang digunakan adalah tes, angket, observasi, dan catatan lapangan peneliti. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa 77,14% siswa dinyatakan lulus kriteria ketuntasan minimal (kkm). hasil pre-test, post-test 1, dan post-test 2 meningkat secara signifikan yang menunjukkan bahwa flipped classroom dapat meningkatkan kompetensi gramatikal siswa. kata kunci: teknologi pendidikan; strategi flipped classroom; tata bahasa; kompetensi tata bahasa how to cite: fadhilah, f., dewi, r. s., anasy, z., eviyuliwati, i., syauki. (2021). fostering students’ grammatical competence through flipped classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 64-79. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 65-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction grammar is a set of rules in which every language must have. languages will be meaningless if they do not have grammar. thus, grammar makes languages meaningful and comprehensible whenever people speak, write, read, and listen. kerr (1996, cited in lin 2010) states that grammar is the core of the heart in language as well as a tool to assist learners to comprehend the target language. as a result, grammar is needed in all skills of language and it cannot be separated from the four language skills. however, a number of studies claimed that english grammar is considered to be challenging for students to learn and to use it in communication. for example, alhamlan and baniabdelrahman (2015) maintain that many efl students find some challenges in mastering grammar. in consequence, chung (2016, cited in songbatumis 2017) mentioned that efl learners should struggle to comprehend the content because of their limited knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. widianingsih and gulo (2016) mention some grammatical difficulties encountered by english learners related to grammatical rules. some of the mistakes are, for example, tenses and plurality which relate to nouns. additional issues are about articles or determiners and verbs or predicates. over and above that, grammar is one of the most difficult components of learning a foreign language, and it should not be overlooked in language instruction (debata 2013, cited in elturki 2014). consequently, non-native speakers or even native speakers will find it difficult to understand and master the rules of the language. likewise, it is not something new for english learners to feel the same way. besides the difficulties encountered by the learners, the time allocation to learn english at school is limited and the teacher experiences serious difficulties related to grammar instruction (al-mekhlafi & nagaratman, 2011). furthermore, teaching has always been about pattern drilling and rule acquisition, despite our limited experience as elt instructors working with colleagues elt instructors in indonesia (gianina & wijaya, 2020). aside from grammar teaching challenges, the students lack for the awareness to be an autonomous learner. they also tend to be passive learners at class. similarly, exley (2005, cited in suryanto 2014) said that in the classroom, indonesian students have a culture to be embarrassed, passive, and quiet. as a result, they only depend on what teacher explains at classroom http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 66-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license which makes the teacher as the center and the only main resource in learning. previously, some researchers have researched the effectiveness of flipped classroom and scholars have argued that this model gave positive impacts to english learning. they are sarah and yousif (2016) who investigated the flipped classroom impact in grammar class on efl saudi secondary school students’ performances and attitudes. they used the edmodo site to get connected with the students where they could share the content through it. the research design was quasi-experimental with two non-equivalent yet cognate proportional classrooms. furthermore, al-naabi (2020) have conducted a study about the impact of flipped classroom on efl students’ grammar. it was a quasi-experimental one-group research design. the findings elucidated that flipped classroom had a positive influence on students’ comprehension and english grammar application. in addition to previous studies, in the current study of the flipped classroom, basal (2015) did a study that involved the flipped classroom strategy in foreign language teaching. it could be concluded from the research that flipped classroom strategy was beneficial in advance student preparation, solving the limited time of class activity, learning at one’s own pace, and the students’ participation improvement. those previous related research have some similarities and differences with this research. as for the similarities, the first and the second one have the two same variables which are grammar and flipped classroom. another one only has one same variable which is flipped classroom. however, both of the research have differences with this research in terms of the methodology. furthermore, the research gaps between those two research are that the previous study’s participants were private secondary school in saudi, using experimental study design, and gain english teachers’ perception toward flipped classroom strategy implementation. meanwhile, this current research’s participants were public high school in indonesia, using classroom action research (car) design, and obtaining students’ perception toward the strategy implementation. crystal (2012) said that grammar is the study on how we construct sentences, how we say what we aim, and how the various outcome that we express by changing the word order. competence is a collection of cognitively regulated skills or abilities in some specific areas. this involves both the ability and knowledge as well http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 67-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license as willingness to cope problems in that area (lehmann, 2007). canale & swain (1980, cited in lehmann 2007) said that competence can only be examined empirically by evaluating its result or performance (lehmann, 2007, p. 4). thus, grammatical competence is our knowledge of a language which is responsible for our capability to construct sentences (richards, 2006). as learners have good grammatical competence, the learners will get the ability to produce the language precisely (fikron, 2018). therefore, having good grammatical competence is to know and to understand grammatical rules used to construct the sentences correctly that is appropriate to the situation, time, and condition when producing the language. the term “strategy” in learning refers to a set of precise activity, behaviors, stages, or tactics used by students to improve their own leaning, such as finding out conversation patterns or giving oneself motivation to tackle a difficulty language task (murcia, 2001). basically, the idea of “flipped classroom strategy” is to flip the common classroom activities. thus, there is a change between the old teaching strategy and the flipped classroom strategy. the explanations would no longer be done in class but at home and the assignment would be done in class time (bergmann & sams, 2012). the flipped classroom strategy was begun in 2006 in colorado. this model uses video relating to the topic which is going to be learned and discussed as media to watch and learn at home (outside-class). then the next day, in the classroom, students are ready and familiar with the topic to be discussed and to be done with the assistance from the teacher (insideclass). the outside-class component comprises watching videos and doing quizzes, or mini tests that the teacher prepares before coming to the classroom. another outside-classroom component is using learning management systems such as online discussion groups which create a preview to in-class discussion. the inside-class component consists of inside-class discussions in small groups or as a whole class. students’ outsideclass learning can be reinforced with inside-class activities that involve critical thinking and problem-solving activities. the study of the flipped classroom strategy was derived from bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive domain theory that presents six levels of learning (zainuddin & halili, 2016). hence, the students carry out the lower levels of cognitive work (remembering and understanding) outside-class, and concentrate on the higher stages of cognitive work (applying, analyzing, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 68-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license evaluating, and creating) inclass time whereupon their teacher and peers support them (brame, 2013). figure 1. bloom’s revised taxonomy between traditional and flipped classroom hence, as a response to those problems, the researcher proposed to go over a solution to cope with the problems in mastering grammar by implementing flipped classroom strategy. the strategy has the concept that the lectures and explanations would no longer be executed in class but at home, while the project and assignment would be executed in the class time with the integration of technology (bergmann and sams, 2012). consequently, the students will have more time and are expected to be more enthusiast and interested in learning grammar both in class and outside class time and will have an opportunity to be more active in classroom activities while the teacher will be easier to give instruction with the assistance of technology. in other words, this flipped classroom is taken into account as fruitful strategy to improve students’ grammatical competence in efl context. method research design the research design employed in this study was classroom action research (car) and the data collection used qualitative and quantitative data. action research focuses on a particular, practical concern and attempts to gain quick fix to a problem (creswell, 2012). since this research combined both of qualitative and quantitative to collect the data, a detailed image of the social phenomenon could be established (greene & caracelli, 1997). the car design implemented was from kemmis and mctaggart’s model which consisted of four phases; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting as showed below. figure 2. kemmis and mctaggart action research model (1998: 11-14, cited in burns 2010) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 69-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license each cycle consisted of 3 meetings and in the first step, the researcher made some plans to be integrated to the class accordance with the goals that want to be achieved. the planning included the preparation of providing scenario of learning as well as the research instruments. the primary instrument to measure the improvement of students’ grammatical competence was test. the tests comprised pre-test and post-test that were conducted before and after the implementation of flipped classroom using classroom action research (car). researcher’s field note was used to record and describe the situation of what was happening in the class and the students during the implementation of the classroom action research in each meeting. the field note was included an observation that used observation sheet measuring teacher and students’ performance. to support the data and to add information related to the effectiveness of flipped classroom strategy to foster students’ grammatical competence, questionnaire was used as well. both open and closed-ended question were employed. according to bailey (1994, cited in cohen, manion, & morrison 2007), open-ended questions are beneficial for exploratory questionnaire. while closed-ended questions are highly structured and beneficial to produce frequentness of response compliant to statistical treatment and analysis (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). research site and participants the study took place sman 4 tangerang selatan. the participants of the research were one of the tenth grade classes of that consisted of 35 students. this study purposively selected a class that has low-interest in learning english and the class’ score average of english was not satisfactory. in this study, the students were taught english grammar by applying flipped classroom strategy. data collection and analysis the data analysis was done by four stages in classroom action research; planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. before conducting the research by using classroom action research, the researcher did a preliminary observation to investigate the real situation, condition, and the problems found in the class. thus the researcher in this study acted as an english teacher. the pre-observation used an observation sheet to collect the data. then, the observation result was used to create a lesson plan which was http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 70-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for the first stage of action research, planning. during the acting and observing stage, the researcher gathered qualitative data using researcher’s field note that would be used to support quantitative data in reflecting stage. the researcher’s field note consists of descriptive field note and reflective field note (creswell, 2012). the quantitative data collection was done by test. tests provide a forceful method of data collection and a stirring test array to collect numerical data instead of verbal data (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2007). the data from the test would strengthen the other data if there were either some significant improvements or diminishments. the tests consisted of pre-test and post-test that the questions were adopted and adapted from several sources; grammar books and english books which were used for the tenth grade at school. the research is categorized success if at least 75% of the subject (students) either can accomplish several enhancements scores from pretest to second posttest or can surpass the target score of the minimum criteria of learning mastery (kkm). according to ministry of education and culture (moec) regulation, kkm is minimum learning mastery standard that is determined by school. hence, to know the percentage of successful students, if the benchmark is fulfilled, it means that the research succeeds. subsequently, the research will be stopped. at the end of classroom action research (car), questionnaire (open and closed ended questions) was shared to students to gain information from the participants’ experiences unaffected by either anyone or anything (creswell, 2012). observation was done using observation sheet. it was recorded on the sheet to monitor the classroom activity, students and teacher’s performance. it was filled in by an observer who was a real english teacher that used to teach them. so, the researcher who also acted as a teacher during the research collaborated with their english teacher. the observation was carried out twice; before and during the car implementation. besides, the researcher also monitored and wrote the result on researcher’s field note. however, it was only a description of what was happening in the class and a reflection for the teacher on what aspects or things should be fixed so that the outcome would be maximum. to know whether the flipped classroom strategy was successful or not, the teacher conducted the test which was multiple choice and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 71-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license included the grammar materials that had been discussed, such as present tense, present future tense, too, enough, very, ability (can, could, be able). the materials followed the students’ english materials at school. findings and discussion findings test after conducting pre-test, post-test 1, and post-test2, the researcher analyzed the data by calculating the students’ score to obtain the percentage of the results. herewith, the researcher concluded the description of car assessment in each cycle in the following table 1. table 1. results of research data test students’ grammar score averag e successf ul student (%) lowes t highest pretest 30 70 48.43 2.9% (1 student) post test 1 23 77 58.74 25.71% (9 students) post test 2 47 93 73.66 77.14% (27studen t s) acquired from the figures and table above, there was a significant enhancement on the percentage of the students who surpassed the criterion minimum score (kkm). in the pre-test, there was only 2.9% of student or 1 student who succeeded whereas 97.1% or the 34 remains students who did not reach the kkm. there was also an improvement on post-test 1 where 25.71% of students or 9 students who reached the kkm and the rest 26 students or 74.29% were still far below the kkm. all in all, in the post-test 2, the number of the fulfilled students was high, in which 77.14% or 27 students passed the kkm. meanwhile, the remaining 8 students or 22.86% of students did not successfully reach the kkm. shortly, among all of the tests acquired the improvement on each test. however, the very high gap was from post-test 1 to post-test 2 which successfully reached the criterion of success of classroom action research. subsequently, the classroom action research (car) was finished off until cycle 2. researcher’s field note according to the teacher’s field notes written, the students showed more enthusiasm and seemed more active as the meetings passed by. they also were less shy and doubtful to ask the teacher some questions and some words they found difficult to understand or to ensure what to do with the project given. besides, the researcher took notes on the progress of the students who studied at home by http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 72-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license watching the videos which were shared on google classroom. in the first meeting, still many students who did not care and realize the importance of viewing the videos at home before the in-class activity. however, as the meeting went by for more than a month, the number of students watching the videos was increased which also showed that their attitude and motivation to learn english grammar were improved. furthermore, because the flipped classroom strategy made the students have a lot of discussion at the class, the researcher discovered that at the earliest meeting, the discussion still needed to be well-organized since the class was a bit noisy. not only that but also the researcher spent more time to walk around to answer the questions and to observe their improvement in mastering the grammar. as a result, on reflective notes, the researcher needed to be more firm and needed to wellorganized especially in time management. however, in the next meeting the researcher could solve them well. on the reflective notes, the researcher tried to find out what made the students less interested to watch the videos in the first cycle. the researcher ended up realizing that the videos given in the first cycle were mostly in english and the duration was too long. the researcher realized that it was slightly difficult to find the english grammar materials in the indonesia language. if there so, most of them were more than 5 minutes and kind of lecturing-video which probably made them boring and less interested. therefore, in the second cycle, the researcher created the videos by herself with some guidance from the book “flip your classroom” by bergmann and sams (2012), to fulfill their needs and attract them to watch the videos. additionally, the researcher also asked the teacher who acted as an observer to give some inputs toward the classroom activities as well as the researchers. questionnaire questionnaire was aimed to know about their experiences and perceptions toward english grammar learning by applying the flipped classroom strategy. the questions were 14 questions, which were categorized into four concerns. the concerns correlated with the communication and interaction during the english grammar teaching-learning process for the questions number 1-2 (2 items), the english grammar learning using the flipped classroom strategy itself for the number 3-7 (5 items), the media in the english grammar teaching and learning for the number 8-13 (6 items), and at the last concern, the researcher expected http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 73-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students to express their perspectives about their experience learning english grammar using the flipped classroom strategy. the first concern was about students’ interaction with the teacher and peers during the english grammar teaching-learning process. the outcome showed that most of them communicated with their peers a lot during the discussion with a percentage of 74.3% or 26 students said ‘yes’. meanwhile, the interaction between the students and the teacher positioned higher, with a percentage of 85.7% or 30 students. during the in-class activity, they asked a few questions as well as they discussed with their peers a lot. thus, the flipped classroom strategy succeeded in creating an interactive and dynamic class. figure 3. results of questionnaire in students’ interaction figure 4. results of questionnaire in flipped classroom application the second concern correlated with learning english grammar using the flipped classroom strategy. the result presented that during learning using the strategy, they learned by themselves more intense with a percentage of 68.6%. they also thought that the grammar exercises given were related to their daily lives with a percentage of 85.7%. hence, that was one of the factors that made them felt easier to understand the materials. because in this study the researcher used material videos for outside-class activity, the question about the video was asked as well. there were 33 students or 94.3% of them claimed that the video assisted them to understand and apply the knowledge in writing and speaking tasks. furthermore, 57.1% of them applied their learning experience outside the class and 88.6% of them explored their ways in learning grammar. it showed that the strategy slowly made up their attitude in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 74-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning english especially grammar in this case. figure 5. result of questionnaire in media implementation the third concern was about the media used in the flipped classroom strategy. in this research, the media used were material video and google classroom as a learning platform to share the materials. the result unfolded that they needed a technical assistant to view the material videos on google classroom with a percentage of 71.4% or 25 students said so. they also thought that a technical assistant and various learning sources helped them increasing their motivation in learning, with a percentage of 85.7%. in addition, they preferred to choose other videos to be accessed for learning at home, with a percentage of 82.9%. besides, most of them liked watching videos routinely which gained 68.6%. during the implementation of the flipped classroom strategy, the researcher used two kinds of material videos, the first was the videos from the internet such as youtube and another one was the video created by the researcher. when the students were asked which video that made them understand more effortless, the result was 74.3% of them chose the video created by the researcher. the last question in this concern was about what aspects that increased their learning experience during the implantation of the flipped classroom strategy. there were six aspects; availability and access to online content and course materials (28.6%), evaluation and feedback (14.3%), easy to use a web environment (google classroom) (22.9%), in-class, group discussion (40%), group collaboration (20%), working on the assignments (watching videos) by their own at home (22.9%). as the data are shown above, in-class group discussion positioned as the highest aspect that built up their learning experience. for the last concern, it was an open-ended question about their perspectives about their experience learning english grammar using the flipped classroom strategy. the answers were diverse among them. however, most of them thought that the flipped classroom strategy was beneficial and effective for them in learning english grammar. some of the reasons were because of watching the video as outside-class activity and doing the discussion as an in-class http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 75-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license activity. some of them also added by viewing the video could make them more enthusiast but one of the obstacles about this was the availability of internet quota. oftentimes, the researcher found out the main reason for not being able to watch the material videos at home was about it. hence, based on the post-questionnaire results, it could be recapitulated that the flipped classroom strategy could assist the students understand and master english grammar gradually. it also helped them intensify their learning both at home and in class. additionally, many of them liked watching video, thus the material video was impactful for them as well, especially the video created by the teacher after doing some observations to find the students’ needs in learning. discussion based on the finding above, the usage of flipped classroom strategy has assisted students to improve their mastery in english grammar. not only has helped students but also teachers to be more creative and to create a better learning atmosphere. the result of first cycle, however, did not achieve the goal to pass 75% of the students and the scores were also below the researchers’ expectation in the first place. it was only 9 students or 25.71 % who passed the minimum score. it could be because they still adapted with the strategy and most of the students did not watch the material video (learn outside class). however, in the cycle 2, the outcome was satisfying and rising sharply. according to questionnaire, one of the reasons was because of the material videos given. the teacher created some material videos by herself, realizing that the material videos given to students before were too long and most of them were in full english. the teacher used tiktok (a video application) which is a viral application for youth nowadays, to help her make more attractive and concise videos about the materials. hence, the findings indicate that flipped classroom strategy had a positive impact on students’ grammatical competence. it worked for them as the researcher observed that the students who watched and learned from the videos outside-classroom rocketed. these findings confirm some previous research. alnaabi (2020) investigated the impact of flipped classroom on efl students’ grammar involving 28 oman students. the researcher found that the understanding and usage of english grammar had increased. in line with alnaabi (2020), sarah & yousif (2016) claimed that flipped classroom appeared to play a role in fostering http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 76-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grammar performance of students and their attitudes towards the flipped classroom strategy in efl class were positive. based on the explanation above, it is feasible to define that the flipped classroom strategy was impactful for efl students in comprehending and using english grammar. the strategy required students learn both outside and inside class, participate in classroom’s activities, and to be independent learners. those made students had positive attitudes towards the strategy. conclusions and suggestion due to the result obtained, the researchers acquired some research findings based on the result of test instruments. in classroom, the students feel more enjoyed and have more courage to ask questions and speak up their thoughts. furthermore, discussing with their peers makes them more active and enthusiastic in learning english grammar. those attitudes lead them to level up their performance in understanding and mastering english grammar that is proved by the test which has been done. besides, by implementing flipped classroom strategy which allows students to access technology such as material videos, reading sources, and quizzes, they are more interested in learning. it also assisted them to learn the material earlier at home before coming to the class. thus, they get used to be independent to manage their learning before the class starts. to put it concisely, upon the research findings, it can be inferred that the implementation of the flipped classroom strategy for english grammar learning at the tenth-grade students is able to assist and foster their grammatical competence. at last, this study espouses the recommendation, especially for teachers teaching english especially teaching its structure or grammar should be carried out in more dynamic and interactive ways. teachers are expected to be able to optimize technology as media to help them in teaching. it is also recommended for other researchers to conduct further investigations either in more detail or in the application of flipped classroom strategy in other skills of language because recently education technology becomes more popular in this pandemic situation. furthermore, the writer hopes that the research findings can be reckoned as a reference for future research to cope with the problems in english learning process. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 77-79 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references abune, a. a. 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(2008). pengantar statistik pendidikan. jakarta: raja grafindo persada. suryanto. 2014. issue in teaching english in a cultural context: a case of indonesia. retrieved from http://ejournal.unsri.ac.id/ widianingsih, n. k., & ingatan gulo. (2016). grammatical difficulties encountered by second language learners of english. stba teknorat. yuskar, bobby. cited 5 january 2020. english curriculum in indonesia. retrieved from, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/engli shcurriculum-indonesia-bobbyyuskar/. zainuddin, zamzani., & siti. h. halili. (2016). flipped classroom research and trends from different fields of study. international review of research in open and distributed learning, 17(3). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2021, 102-119 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee exploring efl teacher’s and student’s challenges in remote learning context in tabanan, bali hery santosa, i gede putu dharma dewangga putra*, ni putu astiti pratiwi dharmadewangga1@gmail.com received: 8th october 2021; revised: 18th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract this descriptive qualitative study aimed to investigate the challenges faced by and strategies used by efl teachers and students to cope with the challenges in implementing online remote learning. a public school in tabanan was chosen as the setting of the study, with a teacher and five students as the subjects based on two criteria, namely activeness, and participation. the data were collected through observations and interviews to determine the challenges and the strategies used by the teacher and the students. the data were analyzed by using interactive model analysis. the results indicated that the challenges the teacher and the students faced were mainly related to the platforms being used and the network connection. however, the teacher also faced a prominent challenge related to the student's motivation in learning. several strategies were used by the teacher and the students, mainly solving the issue related to the network connection. the study results indicated the need for proper infrastructure and the teacher’s ability to support remote learning. key words: challenges; remote learning; strategies abstrak studi kualitatif deskriptif ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki tantangan yang dihadapi oleh guru dan strategi yang digunakan baik oleh guru maupun siswa pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing dalam mengatasi tantangan dalam pelaksanaan pembelajaran jarak jauh. sebuah sekolah negeri di tabanan dipilih sebagai latar studi ini, dengan seorang guru dan lima siswa sebagai peserta dalam penelitian ini dengan mempertimbangkan kriteria yaitu: keaktifan dan partisipasi. data dikumpulkan melalui observasi dan wawancara untuk mengetahui tantangan dan strategi yang digunakan oleh guru dan siswa. data dianalisis dengan menggunakan analysis model interaksi (interactive model analysis). hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tantangan yang dihadapi oleh guru dan siswa sebagian besar terkait dengan platform yang digunakan dan koneksi jaringan. namun, guru juga menghadapi tantangan yang menonjol terkait motivasi siswa dalam belajar. ada beberapa strategi yang digunakan oleh guru dan siswa terutama untuk menyelesaikan masalah yang berkaitan dengan koneksi jaringan. hasil penelitian menunjukkan perlunya infrastruktur yang layak dan kemampuan guru untuk mendukung pembelajaran jarak jauh. kata kunci: tantangan; pembelajaran jarak jauh; strategi how to cite: santosa, h., putra, i.g.p.d. dewangga, pratiwi, ni p.a. (2022). exploring efl teacher’s and student’s challenges in remote learning context in tabanan, bali. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 102-119. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 103-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teaching and learning activities nowadays do not always require teachers and students to interact directly, meaning that they can be separated in time and distance (geraedts & pollalis, 2008). this practice can be made possible due to the development of technology. this is the reason why technology has been integrated with every teaching and learning activity. most countries worldwide have been implementing technology, especially in the form of online learning platforms, to support the teacher at school. online learning platforms, such as schoology and google classroom, can help teachers teach students and deliver the materials easily. this allows teachers and students to remotely teach and learn from their homes (heredia et al., 2019). during the covid-19 pandemic, countries worldwide use online learning platforms to teach their students remote learning to decrease the spread of the virus. the online learning platform is used to teach the students because it can help the teacher to share the materials easily, and the students can access it anytime and anywhere (eroz-tuga, 2013). the teacher can use the platform to support them in distance learning. they do not need to meet at school to do learning activities. besides helping facilitate the learning process during this unprecedented time, the practice of online learning also gives a lot of challenges, especially for the students. they may get into trouble in their network or connection while accessing the materials or during video conference meeting through the platform (setlhako, 2014). students may get problems with their internet connection because of their geographic location. students living on a mountain or hill may have problems with their connection as the signal is difficult to attain in such places. students' problems may affect their participation in the online learning process, affecting their learning outcomes at the end of the semester. they cannot learn effectively as what they learn at school. furthermore, as they cannot meet in person, the group discussion process will be more difficult to be conducted (motzo & proudfoot, 2017). they could not meet each other to do the assignment with their friends, which affected the result of their group assignment and the discussion quality. sman 1 baturiti is one of the schools implementing remote learning for its students. the results of the preliminary observation indicated that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 104-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license both the teachers and the students faced challenges during the remote learning process. the students who lived in mountainous areas often experienced trouble during their learning. they had an unstable internet connection, which made the video and audio quality bad during the video conference. furthermore, the student reportedly could not upload their assignment to the platform their teacher used. this certainly becomes a problem as ossiannilsson (2020) suggests that one of the principles in the practice of remote teaching is accessibility which allows students to access the platform or devices anytime and anywhere (ossiannilsson, 2020). as online learning in the emergency remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic seems to be continued shortly, it is important to address all of the challenges the teachers and the students face during the process. it is urgent to be done to seek a better solution for better implementation. thus, this study arose to investigate their challenges during the online learning process. further, this study also investigated the solution the efl teachers and students used to encounter the challenges. this study took sman 1 baturiti in tabanan regency, bali, as the setting of the study, with the teachers and students as the samples. it was chosen because it is located on high land, surrounded by hills and mountains. this makes it often gets terrible internet access. thus, considering this phenomenon, this study arose to investigate (1) the challenges of the efl teachers and (2) the challenges of efl students in implementing online learning in the emergency remote teaching context in sman 1 baturiti. besides that, this study also investigated (3) how the efl teachers and (4) students cope with the challenges. thus, there were four major focuses of this study. several studies also indicated the existence of challenges during the practice of online learning. studies by setlhako (2014), almegren (2015), and motzo and proudfoot (2017) showed that online learning becomes challenging for students as they face problems with technology use and internet access. the internet connection is not only faced by the students. nugroho et al. (2021) found that the teacher also experienced network issues during remote learning. moreover, to provide a stable internet connection, both parties need to purchase internet data which can lead to another challenge regarding the financial issue. this is supported by basaza and milman (2010), who state that the financial cost of education is quite high. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 105-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license further, budiman (2021) found that virtual meeting during online remote teaching consumes a lot of internet data. if the students have economic issues, it will be hard for them to afford internet data. besides internet connection, other studies also revealed more challenges in distance learning. ekmekçi (2015) found that giving feedback to the students also becomes a challenge during distance learning, and the teacher could not give the feedback due to time limitations of distance learning. motzo and proudfoot (2017) state that it is also hard to do a discussion online due to the network problem or the number of students on the course. giving a response also becomes a challenge to the student if they cannot hear their friends’ explanations due to the network issue. this will affect the quality of student interaction between students and teachers (chawdhry, 2010). regarding the previous studies, this study also investigated the challenges faced by the teachers and students in online learning. however, this study also explored the teachers' and students' strategies to cope with the challenges. method research design this study used a qualitative descriptive research design as it could help gain rich data or information from the participants by using different data collection methods and instruments. the data could also be described in detail. according to mohajan (2018), a qualitative research design is a research that tends to make the researcher explore the meaning and insight that is given to the researcher based on the researcher's experience. research site and participants the subjects of the research were an efl teacher and 5 students at sma n 1 baturiti, representing their grades for the research. the students’ identities were coded as s1, s2, s3, s4, and s5 in the study. purposive sampling was used to choose the participants from the students. the rationale for choosing this setting was the location in a mountainous village. data collection and analysis the data were collected through two methods they were observation and interview. the observation was conducted with an observation checklist as the instrument for which ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 106-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license validity had been ensured. it helped the researcher to gain and gather the data through real-life experiences. the researcher virtually observed the teacher and students due to the pandemic situation. the things being observed included the strength and limitations of the platform used and the interaction between the teachers and the students. then, an open-ended interview was used to help gain the data about the challenge that the efl teacher and students experienced and the strategies to scope the challenge. the observation was done through an observation checklist that was adapted from ossiannilsson (2020), while the interview was conducted using an interview guide which was also adapted from ossiannilsson (2020). the observation sheet covered three main aspects, including the platform’s accessibility, network issue, and students’ motivation. the interview guide consisted of 19 questions with 5 main aspects, including accessibility, device dimension, platform dimension, interface dimension, and network aspect. both instruments’ contents were judged to ensure their validity and reliability through an expert judgment sheet and gregory formula, resulting in the instruments being valid and reliable to be used. the researcher employed interactive model analysis (miles & huberman, 1994) to help analyze the data. the analysis model has four steps: data collection, display, reduction, and conclusion or drawing or verifying. findings and discussion findings challenges faced and strategies used by the efl teacher relating to the challenges faced by the teacher at sma n 1 baturiti, the results revealed that the challenges were mainly about the platform being used, the network, and the students’ efforts. these data were gathered from the results of the observation and interview. the results of the observation are presented in table 1. table 1. teacher’s observation result indicator observation result platform’s accessibility the teacher could not open the video sent by the students directly to google classroom, which was caused by an unknown problem the platform could accommodate all the materials and tasks as it has a different tool to be used network issues there were network issues that the teacher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 107-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indicator observation result experienced due to the weather condition and the living area students’ motivation during the online learning meeting, the students were active in participating several students did not respond to the teacher’s announcement and instruction platform appeared as a challenge as the teacher reported that the students often could not send their assignments in the form of videos to google classroom as one of the platforms used by the teacher. even when the students had uploaded the videos on the platform, they were often inaccessible. further, like uploading videos to google classroom required a good, stable network connection, the teacher often received complaints from the students as they could not upload them. this certainly became a problem as the teacher needed the videos as a form of speaking assignment and for further assignments. the teacher could not let the students present their speaking assignments synchronously due to the time limitation and the number of students in a class. thus, sending the assignment in the form of videos to google classroom was proposed as the way. however, due to this challenge, the process could not be run smoothly, which also affected the effectiveness of the online remote teaching and learning process. the interview result also indicated that the teacher found network issues during the implementation of the online remote teaching. the network issue became a challenge for the teacher due to the teacher’s limited internet data, which was the opposite of the large data consumption. it showed that the platforms used by the teacher consumed a lot of internet data, particularly whatsapp and google classroom. it was because the two were used to send videos for the students or download the videos that the students sent through the platform. the actions required a lot amount of internet data due to the process of downloading and uploading videos. further, good, stable network access was needed for the videos to be successfully downloaded or uploaded. the teacher also explained that google meet consumed the most internet data as it used audio and video in online virtual meetings. further, regarding the cellular network generation type, the teacher stated that the platform required good network access as minimal as 4g. however, the surrounding area made it difficult to get a 4g network. as the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 108-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teacher lived in a rural area, the need for a 4g network and good, stable internet access became a challenge. besides, the teacher often experiences network issues while implementing online remote teaching and network issues caused by geographical effects. the results indicated that the network issue faced by the teacher was very challenging. it was because the teacher did not only have difficulties accessing a good, stable network in which signals often suddenly switched from 4g to 3g. instead, the teacher could face the network issue for days due to the results of the network that was being cut off. living in a rural, mountainous area was suspected to be the cause of such network issues. it also restricted the teacher from high-speed internet access. this certainly was not an ideal condition for conducting online remote teaching. the implementation of the online remote teaching also became challenging as the students’ effort in participating during the learning process was rather low. during the implementation of the online remote teaching, some of the students did not respond to their teacher’s announcement and questions posted on the platforms used in the online remote teaching and learning. the reason was to save their internet data. they did not want to spend a lot of internet data. several students gave other reasons. the data were supported by the results of the observation that the researcher obtained as presented in table 1 whereas some students did not respond to their teacher’s announcement. those students also did not answer their teachers’ questions through whatsapp, google classroom, and the other platforms that the teacher used. to cope with the challenges, the teacher performed several strategies during the implementation of the online remote teaching. the details of the strategies being used are presented in table 2. table 2. teacher's challenges and strategies to cope with the challenges factors challenges strategies platform 1. students could not send the task due to internet issues 2. the teacher could not open the video assignment on google classroom change the assignment format network 3. the platform consumes a using wi-fi ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 109-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license factors challenges strategies lot of internet data 4. the platform requires 4g internet access 5. network issues students’ effort 6. lack of students’ participation communicate and ask about the reason to the students as the platform challenge could affect the effectiveness of the learning activities, the efl teacher asked the students to send their voice records rather than sending a video as the assignment. sending a voice record did not require a lot of internet data because the size of the file was smaller than the size of a video. thus, it became easier for the teacher and students to send the assignment and download it through the platform. further, to overcome the network issues, the teacher used public wifi near the teacher’s house to get good internet access. it also helped the teacher to save more internet data than usual. the teacher revealed this through the interview, which is presented as follows. finally, to deal with the challenge related to the students’ effort, the results indicated that the teacher went through several steps to cope with the challenge. firstly, the teacher checked the students’ activeness through the presence list. after that, the teacher contacted the students personally. the teacher asked the students the reason for their absence and also why they did not collect their task or assignment through the platform. this way, the teacher tried to make the students realize their ignorant behavior so that they would be more careful with an important assignment and would not miss any submissions. if it still did not enough, the teacher then asks the class leader to contact their friends. challenges faced and strategies used by the students as for the challenges that the students faced, the findings indicated that the students at a public school in tabanan also faced challenges relating to the platform being used and the network during the implementation of online remote learning. s1 revealed that accessing google classroom and sending videos through certain platforms was challenging due to the internet access issue. besides that, s1 also experienced difficulty in sending video through whatsapp as the platform did not support video that was more than 2 minutes. on the other hand, s2 revealed that it was difficult to use google classroom as it did not ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 110-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license support uploading more than 100 mb of files. s3 and s4 shared similar experiences about the challenge related to the platform, in which the materials could not be easily accessed on the platform as it required a good, stable internet. s3 stated that whatsapp and google classroom needed good internet access to be used. besides the network trouble, s4 also revealed that the existence of many whatsapp groups for each subject also caused challenges and confusion as too many groups were to be paid attention to. s4 also further emphasized the platform's limitation as to the result of large internet data requirements, as google classroom consumed a lot of internet data. the students needed to download the learning materials through the platform. the students also needed to submit their tasks through the platform. s5, on the other hand, also admitted the platform's limitation, which in this case was google classroom. s5 stated that it was challenging to upload videos or large files. however, s5 argued that when the video assignment was sent as a link from google drive, it became easier to upload and access. the interview result showed that s7 experienced a challenge in terms of the platform limitation. it revealed that s7 could not send a large-size video through google classroom. the video needed to be changed in the form of links if s7 wanted to send or submit it to google classroom. besides the platform limitation, the interview results showed that all the students experienced network issues during the online remote teaching implementation. s1, s2, s3, and s4 all agreed that sending and downloading videos from google classroom and whatsapp was troublesome because it required a good, stable internet connection and a lot of internet data. on the other hand, s5 stated that all learning platforms used required a lot of internet data. the requirement of large internet data became a challenge as it was expensive. further, the internet data network was also often unstable, creating inefficiency in online remote learning. they also all agreed that to access the platforms, they need a proper network in 4g. the rationale for using 4g was because 3g internet accesses were slower than 4g internet access. unfortunately, it was rather difficult for them to always have 4g networks due to their location. further, the students faced a more challenging situation in the rainy season. the network signal during the season became more unstable and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 111-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license difficult to get. s1 and s3 stated that the internet access dropped on rainy days. then, s2 and s4 provided the reason for such a condition. the geographical factors were because they lived in a rural, mountainous area. s2, who lived in a village, often got low internet access, while s4, who lived in a mountainous area, also experienced the same. the geographical factor played a big role in determining the kind of network connection the students could get. s5, on the other hand, revealed that the network issue often appeared when connecting to an online video conference platform. s5 stated that the network access was insufficient to accommodate the video conference the student joined. to overcome the challenges, the students found their strategies or solution while implementing online remote teaching. the details are presented in table 3. table 3. efl students' challenges and strategies to cope with the challenges factors challenges strategies platform 1. require good internet access (s1, s2) 2. could not access the materials due to slow internet access (s3, s4, s5)  using wi-fi to access the learning materials and send the link of the assignment (s1)  send the link form of the task to google classroom (s2, s5)  buy bigger internet data (s4) network 1. the platform consumes a lot of internet data (all of the students) 2. network requirement (all of the students) 3. network issues 4. slow internet access due to the rainy season (s1, s3) 5. demographic factor (s2, s4) 6. during the virtual meeting(s5)  using wi-fi (s1, s2)  using another network provider (s4)  went to a place that had better internet access (s5) s1 claimed that he searched for free wifi to access the platforms, send videos to google drive, and then send the link to whatsapp to cope with the platform challenge. s1 reported that he also sent the video in shorter parts in some cases. s2 and s5 also did the same thing. however, the link was often preferred to be sent through google classroom. thus, the results indicated that s1, s2, and s5 had the same strategies to cope with the problems in terms of videos. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 112-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on the other hand, s4 bought a bigger internet data package. s4 also set a reminder for the announcement the teacher sent through the platform so that s4 would never miss any announcements and information. regarding the network issue, the interview result showed that s1 and s2 had similar strategies to overcome it. they both used wi-fi to overcome the network issues that occurred during the implementation of online remote teaching by going to a place with wi-fi access. however, s2 did not always use wi-fi as he tended to wait for the network access to return to normal. on the other hand, regarding the issue with the network during the rainy season, s4 used another network provider to overcome the network issues. s4 used more than one network provider so that he had a higher chance of getting a better connection as he could change the network if the first network provider gave low internet access. s5, on the other hand, went to a place with better internet access, which was usually geographically higher. discussion the efl teacher at a public school in tabanan experienced three different challenges while implementing online remote teaching: platform, network, and students’ effort. first of all, the platform challenge that the efl teacher experience at a public school in tabanan affected the effectiveness of the learning activities, which made the students unable to send their tasks in the form of videos to the platform as a result of low internet access. mahyoob (2020) also found that issues in accessing online material can happen during remote learning due to low internet access. mahyoob (2020) also states that the platform issues were the most issues that have been reported during the implementation of online remote teaching in his research. research by nugroho et al. (2021) also found that teacher tends to send the learning materials through whatsapp group due to low internet access and to make the task more accessible to the students. the second challenge the efl teacher experienced was the network challenge, as large internet data were required to conduct the remote learning, particularly to access video conference applications. the platform consumes a lot of internet data to stabilize the audio and video quality. the platform should also be accessed using 4g internet access to maintain the stability of the audio and video quality. these data were in line with the study by budiman (2021), who found that 600 megabytes are needed to access video ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 113-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conference applications for sixty minutes. relating to the 4g internet access, the geographic area surrounding the teacher is suspected as the culprit. it was because the teacher lived in a mountainous, rural area which often experienced network issues. then, the rainy season also worsens the network issues, and the teacher could not use the network for several days. nugroho et al. (2021) also found similar results in their research, whereas teachers often struggle with network issues, making the learning activities ineffective. the efl teacher at a public school in tabanan used public wi-fi to cope with the network challenge. the public wi-fi near the teacher’s house helped the teacher get good internet access. the teacher also stated that using public wi-fi could help the teacher save more internet data during the online remote teaching. the teacher also did not need to spend a lot of money to buy continuous internet data because there was already public wi-fi near the teacher’s house, and it was also free to use anytime. finally, the last challenge was related to the students’ efforts, whereas some students did not respond to the teacher’s instruction. nugroho et al. (2021) also found similar results, whereas students’ motivations during the online remote teaching were decreased. the students also could not understand their teacher's instruction as only several students paid attention and joined the discussion session that the teacher held on the platform. it shows the importance of building the students’ motivation to make them enjoy and actively join the online remote teaching process. the teacher tended to communicate with the students and ask them why they were absent during the remote learning. to cope with this challenge, the teacher checks the students’ present lists and task submissions. then, the teacher contacted the students who did not join the online remote teaching. the teacher also contacted the students who did not submit their tasks on the platform. it could help the teacher know why the students are absent during the learning activities. if the students do not answer or respond after the teacher contacts them, the teacher then asks the class leader to contact their friends and ask them about their absence. the teacher needs to know the reason for their students’ absence, so the teacher can determine to give guidance and assess their students’ tasks. the result of this research was different from the result of the research by nugroho et al. (2021). the data ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 114-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license found by nugroho et al. (2021) shows that the teacher tends to revise the teaching method used. one of the teachers said that the teaching method that is being used seems not attractive to the students. the teaching method also seems not too interesting for the students, and that was the reason evaluate and revising the strategy that the teacher used (nugroho et al., 2021). the most challenging that the students experienced based on the observation result was google classroom. the students were worried because the teacher could not open their video assignment as the file size was not supported by the platform. this could make the students not get any score for their assignment if the teacher could not access it. almegren (2015) also found the challenges of technology. almegren (2015) stated that access to technology had become a challenge in arab saudi. many of the students do not have any access to technology during online learning. students’ ability to master also becomes a challenge during online learning. the network quality and also stability become the challenges that happened. most of them complain about the poor quality of the networks (almegren, 2015). there were also the strategies that the students took to overcome the challenge during the online remote teaching implementation. s1 used wi-fi to overcome the platform's challenge and google drive to send the video to the platform in the form of a link. similarly, s2 and s5 also used google drive and sent the links to the platform, which could reduce the file size. s4, on the other hand, bought a bigger internet data package as he struggled with large internet data consumption. the data differed from the study by almegren (2015), which only focused on the challenge of online learning. it did not explore any strategies for the students to cope with the challenge. the other challenge faced was network challenge, which included large internet data usage and unstable, low, and slow internet access, particularly during the rainy season. the data showed that the factors that made the students experience the network issues were weather changes and the geographic area. setlhako (2014) also found network and internet issues in the research. setlhako (2014) found that students should access the materials anywhere and anytime, but they should have internet access. setlhako (2014) also found that the students could not access the materials due to continuous extension from the extension period on the platform. that could make the students could not learn effectively during the online learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 115-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to cope with the challenge, the students used wi-fi for better internet access or other internet providers. based on the findings, it can be seen that the main issue of the challenges faced by both the teachers and the students in the two different schools was caused by the internet connection issue. this finding is in line with the results of the research conducted by hussaini et al. (2020). it was found that as a platform, google classroom was perceived positively by the students. however, as the students lived in rural areas with difficult internet access, the use of the platform became not maximal. this is also the case that happened in this research. it can be seen from the results of the observation that all of the platforms were perceived positively by both the teachers and the students. they found the platforms to be unique and easy to use. however, as they required a good internet connection to access them, the teachers and the students found them to be challenging. the problem with the internet connection happened as not all of the students had a stable internet connection in their homes (gilbert, 2015). studies by aboderin (2015), coman et al., (2020), gilbert (2015), and ismail et al., (2020) indicated that the issue of internet connection has been a classic challenge in the implementation of online learning as it is the basic infrastructure needed to support the online learning process. further, regarding the issue of large internet data consumption which was not economical for the students and the teacher, a study by ro'fah et al., (2020) has addressed the affordable internet data program provided by the government of indonesia during the pandemic is still not enough. this is in line with the findings of this research which showed that the teachers and the students also experienced this challenge in their classroom since the students often had problems with their internet data connection. this challenge certainly affects the practice of online remote teaching and learning at the two schools. hamid et al. (2020) suggest that the success of online learning practice in the online learning process is strongly tied to the availability of supporting learning infrastructure, one of which is the availability of stable internet access. besides, relating to the challenge of the platform, it can be seen that both the students and the teachers were struggling as the platforms did not support files that had big sizes. this finding is similar to octaberlina and muslimin's (2020) findings that investigated efl students’ perspectives toward online learning barriers in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 116-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license context of google classroom. octaberlina and muslimin (2020) found that besides a slow internet connection, students were also unfamiliar with online learning, including the platforms used. the study also underlined that the unfamiliar online learning led to the need for several pieces of training that could train the students to use the platform properly. the training included converting high-definition or big-size files into smaller ones and giving breaks during the online class. the results of this study indicated that there were still many challenges in implementing online remote teaching and learning, mainly related to the infrastructure, such as network connection and platform being used. thus, this alarms the government about the need and emergency to build more proper infrastructure to support the online remote teaching and learning process. it also further suggests the need for the teachers to find the best solution to cope with the challenges. besides that, teachers also need to communicate well with the students about what they should do and how to do it to cope with the challenges. on the other hand, even though the teachers are there to help them, the students also could not be just surrendered to the challenges. students could know how to cope with the challenges by reflecting and actively asking their friends who might have experienced similar challenges. conclusions and suggestion in conclusion, several challenges were faced by the teacher and the students at a public school in tabanan during the online remote teaching implementation. the challenges faced were mainly related to the platform being used and the network due to the geographical factor as they were living in the mountainous, rural area. besides that, the weather also proved to be an influential factor in the stability of the network. however, the efl teacher also faced challenges regarding the students’ effort in learning as some did not want to respond to the instructions. to cope with the challenges, the issue relating to the network was solved first by using wifi, bigger internet data, or other network providers. on the other hand, relating to the students’ efforts, the teacher communicated with the students. the results of the study provide several suggestions for some parties. the results suggest that the efl teacher {bibliography}needs more adaptation and strategies to cope with the challenges and develop effective learning activities. as for the efl students, learning more about technologies is suggested as it could ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 117-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license help them to adapt to the learning situation. they are also suggested to work together to share their struggles and experiences to better cope with the challenge. further researcher to explore more factors that became the challenges during the online remote teaching implementation is also encouraged to expand the scope of the research. references almegren, a. 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(2014). anxieties, challenges and successes in the transition to online teaching in an open and distance learning environment: the unisa experience. bulgarian comparative education society, 145–151 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 327-339 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the use of guessing games in improving the speaking skills of elementary school students fitria ayu meningsih*, suwarsih madya yogyakarta state university, indonesia (fitriaayum@gmail.com) received: 16th august 2021; revised: 29th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract guessing game is a part of communicative language teaching (clt), which will create an atmosphere for students to increase the desire to learn languages. however, learning with games makes students undisciplined and requires a long time. this study aims to determine the effect of learning english using a guessing game method on the speaking skills of elementary school students. the study is a one-group pretest-posttest design implemented at the islamic elementary school in yogyakarta. the study sample consisted of 68 students in grade 6 in 2019. the sampling technique used was total sampling. the measured learning outcomes are speaking skills in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and understanding. the data were processed using the wilcoxon test. the results showed that the students' speaking skills improved after learning with guessing games. the speaking skills that improved significantly are pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency. grammar and comprehension, on the other hand, improved but not significantly. the conclusion is that the guessing game can improve the students' speaking skills even though it has not covered all of its aspects. key words: communicative language teaching; elementary students; guessing games abstrak game menebak merupakan bagian dari communicative language teaching (clt) yang akan menciptakan suasana bagi siswa dalam meningkatkan keinginan untuk belajar bahasa. namun pembelajaran dengan permainan membuat siswa tidak disiplin dan membutuhkan waktu yang lama. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh pembelajaran bahasa inggris menggunakan metode menebak terhadap keterampilan berbicara siswa sekolah dasar. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian dengan menggunakan desain satu grup dengan pre tes dan pasca tes yang dilaksanakan di madrasah ibtidaiyah yogyakarta. sampel penelitian berjumlah 68 siswa kelas 6 tahun 2019. teknik pengambilan sampel yang digunakan adalah total sampling. hasil belajar yang diukur adalah keterampilan berbicara berupa pengucapan, kosakata, tata bahasa, kefasihan, dan pemahaman. data diolah menggunakan uji wilcoxon. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa keterampilan berbicara siswa meningkat setelah melalui proses pembelajaran dengan permainan tebak-tebakan. keterampilan berbicara meningkat secara signifikan adalah pengucapan, kosa kata dan kefasihan. tata bahasa dan pemahaman meningkat tetapi tidak signifikan. kesimpulannya adalah bahwa permainan tebak-tebakan dapat meningkatkan keterampilan berbicara siswa meskipun belum mencakup semua aspeknya. kata kunci: pengajaran bahasa komunikatif; siswa sekolah dasar; permainan tebak-tebakan how to cite: madya, s., & meningsih, f. a. (2021). the use of guessing game in improving the speaking skills of elementary school students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 327-3339. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 328-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english is an essential language to learn, especially in daily conversation, because english is an international language used globally. these conditions lead to the perception that it is necessary to master english from a young age. english is taught in elementary schools (dzanic & pejić, 2016). nevertheless, the importance of teaching english at the elementary level is still debated. kasihani (2007) explained that the cognitive abilities of a 10-year-old child would develop when he or she is taught a foreign language, including english. teaching english skills to the primary level is different from higher levels. there is a phase shift from the egocentric phase to the reciprocal phase. there is also a shifting in the child's view by seeing things from his perspective into seeing phenomena from another point of view. the effectiveness of teaching the english language to the children is related to increasing the children's interest and making english teaching more interesting (dzanic & pejić, 2016). therefore, the teacher's role in the teaching process is significant, so teaching english to elementary school children will be fulfilled well. the teacher's role is an essential factor in the learning process. in achieving learning success, teachers need appropriate methods (aji & budiyono, 2018). generally, good teachers always try to use the most effective teaching methods and use the right teaching aids or media. likewise, in choosing material, the teacher must adjust to the ability level of students' interests and needs. in addition to the teachers, schools also have a significant role because schools form the curriculum as a legitimate educational institution (sukmahidayanti, 2015). one of the english language learning techniques applied to elementary school children is games. games are part of communicative language teaching (clt), a learning technique that can increase students' desire to learn english by conditioning the learning atmosphere. games relax the learning environment, eliminate fear and enhance the practice for students. games are also funny and exciting, motivating students to learn english speaking skills (al-jarrah et al., 2019). several studies support the use of games as a medium in learning as it can improve grammar skills (haryanto, 2015), increase learning motivation and speaking skills (ho et al., 2019), improve listening skills, and encourage students to move forward and be active in language practice (valipour & aidinlou, 2014). however, there is a negative assumption about game http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 329-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning techniques: games have no educational value and waste time (freitas, 2019). while some teachers consider game learning techniques to have educational value, they rarely use them because they are challenging. after all, games are not suitable for onehour learning, and in single lessons with one teacher, game learning can be ineffective (freitas, 2019; stojkoviĥ & jerotijeviĥ, 2011). games also cause noise in the classroom so that they are considered not to form discipline. there are no instructions/rules, so they are considered to deviate from the purpose and inadequate learning time, and the games used are commonly used by students so that students become bored (stojkoviĥ & jerotijeviĥ, 2011). the difficulties and negative assumptions can be overcome if much evidence strengthens the use of games as a learning technique to improve learning outcomes. several researchers have reported the use of guessing games in improving speaking skills. (maqfirah et al., 2018) examined junior high school students in banda aceh with the results that guessing games increased students' fluency in speaking skills. (dewi et al., 2016) researched junior high school in kuta utara, showing that 60.68% of students strongly agree with guessing games in improving speaking skills. (nirwaty, 2020) examined in class viii a of smpn 1 tanjungpinang with the results that guessing games were more effective and could improve students' speaking achievement. (ai-hayati, 2020) examined senior high school students in cikasungka with the result that there was a significant difference in students' speaking ability between those taught by learning games and those who were not. (ayu & ayu, 2019) investigated the senior high school students in south angkola south tapanuli with the results that speaking skills could be improved through guessing games. the research was conducted on junior and senior high school students, and speaking skills were studied in general. previous studies examined the effects of guessing games on general speaking skills conducted on junior and senior high school students. speaking skills consist of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and understanding, whereas previous research has never focused on every aspect of speaking skills and only studied general speaking skills. in addition, elementary school students aged 6 to 12 years are still developing their first language skills in reading, writing complex, and mastering different vocabulary (collier, 2014). research on the use of guessing games related to speaking skills in every aspect, namely pronunciation, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 330-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and understanding, has never been studied before in elementary school students. therefore, this study aims to determine the effect of learning english using the guessing method on elementary school students' speaking skills, including grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. this study conducted a study of guessing games related to their impact on aspects of speaking skills in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, and understanding in elementary school students to find out what parts most influence the use of this learning method. this study is also expected to determine the appropriate learning method in improving speaking skills, especially for elementary school students. method research design this one group pretest-posttest design research was conducted in islamic elementary school, yogyakarta. this research was conducted on a group of 6th-grade students. research site and participants the sample consisted of 68 students in 2019. the study population was the 6th-grade elementary school students. the sampling technique used was total sampling. data collection and analysis this study used game cards for guessing games. the game card contains a picture and a question that the students randomly select. then the students will guess what is in the picture. each picture is in pairs then students are asked to find a pair. each pair asked and answered according to the question on the card. the teacher's assessment consists of 5 measured aspects: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension in speaking english. thus, an assessment form was needed from the five aspects of speaking ability with five assessment categories from poor to excellent with a 1-5 score. the implementation of activities was carried out by researchers whom teachers observed. the teacher observed the teaching and learning process in activities carried out by the teacher and student participation. research instruments used in data collection include field notes, observation sheets, and tests. the speaking skill assessment was carried out before and after the intervention. the collected data were analyzed statistically with descriptive analysis to find the mean speaking skill between the post-test and pre-test. furthermore, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 331-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license furthermore, hypothesis testing is conducted to determine the difference between post-test and pre-test of speaking skills using paired t-test for normally distributed data and wilcoxon's test for data not normally distributed at a significant level of 5%. the hypothesis proposed in this study is explained as follows: ha: there is a significant difference in speaking skill scores between the pre-test and post-test. h0: there is no significant difference in speaking skill scores between the pre-test and post-test. findings and discussion findings comparison of the speaking skill mean scores on pre-test and post-test this study measures speaking skills that consist of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, and comprehension. all aspects of speaking skills between pre-test and post-test are presented in figure 1. grammar describes the ability to use grammatical rules, while vocabulary describes the skills to use proper vocabulary in speaking. pronunciation describes the ability to pronounce words according to their meaning. fluency describes the fluency in speaking english, comprehensively describes the ability to capture the conversation of friends/teachers in english. figure 1. histogram of the mean speaking skill between pre-test and post-test all aspects of communication skills showed that the mean of communication skills on the post-test is greater than that of the pre-test. these results indicate that the intervention in learning english using the guessing http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 332-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license game method has improved all aspects of the students' speaking skills. the speaking skill which increased the most is in the vocabulary aspect, while the speaking skill which increased the lowest is comprehension. vocabulary skills have improved from moderate to good. the results of the normality test table 1. kolmogorov-smirnov normality test result variable statistic df p value s pronun ciation pre-test 0.422 68 0.000 post-test 0.342 68 0.000 vocabu lary pre-test 0.401 68 0.000 post-test 0.402 68 0.000 grammar pre-test 0.314 68 0.000 post-test 0.457 68 0.000 fluency pre-test 0.419 68 0.000 post-test 0.408 68 0.000 compre hension pre-test 0.445 68 0.000 pos-tets 0.359 68 0.000 speaking skill pre-test 0.180 68 0.000 post-test 0.164 68 0.000 results of kolmogorov-smirnov with lilliefors correction normality tests for all speaking skill aspects are shown in table 1. it is clear that all speaking skill aspects have a p-value are less than 0.05. thus, all data are not normally distributed. therefore, hypothesis testing was done by using the wilcoxon test. hypothesis test results hypothesis testing is conducted to test the significance of the difference in the mean score of speaking skills between the pre-test and post-test using the wilcoxon test with a significance level of 5%. the wilcoxon test results are shown in table 2. table 2. wilcoxon test result variable mean z p value s pronunci ation pre-test 2.88 -8.124 0.000 post-test 3.85 vocabul ary pre-test 3.07 -7.606 0.000 post-test 4.06 gramma r pre-test 2.65 -1.000 0.317 post-test 2.66 fluency pre-test 2.62 -2.449 0.014 post-test 2.71 compre hension pre-test 2.26 -1.732 0.083 post-test 2.31 speakin g skill pre-test 13.49 -7.590 0.000 post-test 15.59 the speaking skill aspect in pronunciation resulted in a p-value of 0.000, lower than 0.05, so h) was rejected. this means a significant difference in pronunciation scores between the pre-test and post-test. the speaking skill aspect in vocabulary resulted in a p-value of 0.000, lower than 0.05, so h0 was rejected. it means a significant difference in vocabulary scores between the pre-test and post-test. the speaking skill aspect in vocabulary resulted in a p-value of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3693611/table/tbl2674/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3693611/table/tbl2674/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 333-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 0.317, more significant than 0.05, so h0 was accepted. this means that there is no significant difference in grammar scores between the pre-test and posttest. the speaking skill aspect in fluency resulted in a p-value of 0.014 lower than 0.05, so h0 was rejected. this means a significant difference in fluency scores between the pre-test and post-test. the speaking skill aspect in comprehension resulted in a p-value of 0.083, more significant than 0.05, so h0 was accepted. this means that there is no significant difference in comprehension scores between the pretest and post-test. overall speaking skill resulted in a p-value of 0.000, lower than 0.05, so h0 was rejected. this means a significant difference in speaking skill scores between the pre-test and post-test. discussion overall, it shows that the speaking skills of elementary school students differ significantly from before and after learning using guessing games. speaking skills improved after learning using guessing games. speaking skills that improved significantly after learning with guessing games included vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency, but not grammar and comprehension. in this study, teaching english using guessing games contained rules such as not mocking and cheering on friends who answered incorrectly. on the contrary, they were given rules to appreciate each friend who answered with applause. students become motivated to attend lessons happily and do not feel anxious and worried about doing them even though they cannot. it means that the child dares to try to pronounce the english word. these results align with ho et al.'s (2019) research that games can increase learning motivation and speaking skills. a similar result was reported by (wang et al., 2011) that games could motivate students to learn english. the low ability of english could be caused by anxiety due to peer pressure. this is proved by the finding, which shows the students with high english proficiency have low anxiety due to peer pressure. (leo & cely, 2010) explained that students with low english proficiency have a high fear of expressing themselves. learning english through games can reduce anxiety from peer pressure, motivate and master vocabulary. games create a comfortable atmosphere and make students confident in completing spoken english assignments, especially during game activities. in this study, the mean score of pronunciation is significantly different, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 334-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license where the mean score in the post-test is higher than the pre-test. this showed an increase in pronunciation ability after learning with guessing games. pronunciation is a way of saying words in general. english pronunciation is different, and it causes difficulties for some individuals. the sounds pronounced in different words in english are sometimes similar to each other, making it difficult to distinguish, and it is complicated to understand what a native speaker is saying (hidayatullah, 2018). these results align with (timothy et al., 2020) that students' pronunciation skills increase after learning with a broad game, "word detector." however, different results were reported by (leong & ahmadi, 2017) that game is effective communication that can be developed through increasing skills in speaking, but many students difficult to express language lessons in pronunciation. they have difficulty expressing what will be said in learning a foreign language. these obstacles sometimes make people no longer want to speak due to psychological constraints and do not find appropriate words to express them. in this study, the mean vocabulary score is significantly different, where the mean score in the post-test is higher than the pre-test. this showed that vocabulary increased with learning games because they heard what their friends said, recorded. they were also asked to chat with pairs of friends based on the questions on the cards, which made them apply the vocabulary in conversations that made the students remember them even more. the conversation is carried out between students to relax the atmosphere compared to the teacher. this result is in line with (huyen & nga, 2003) that the students are helped in learning vocabulary through positive attitudes in the game. games make it easy for students to understand and remember new words that could be directly applied to the vocabulary in a relaxed and comfortable conversation. learning by using games also creates interaction from students with other students and teachers and gets motivated to speak english. vocabulary is one of the three elements of language, building materials, and the basis of language. fluent in communicating with others must have a specific vocabulary. faced with so many words to learn, it is necessary to investigate lean vocabulary strategies (bai, 2018). the voice is an essential factor in increasing the vocabulary of learners. therefore, students will have an advantage when they listen to good sayings from the teacher, quality recording, quality http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 335-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license stories, and so on (lumettu & runtuwene, 2018). the results of this study increased the fluency speaking skills after learning for threthree months of students where students were required to speak when the english learning process was by the rules set in the game. students are asked to speak according to the picture on the card, randomly taken by the students. this is relevant to (mudofir et al., 2019). in the first cycle of the learning process, students' english skills have increased significantly through the learning process with learning role-playing strategies. in addition, the results of student questionnaires also show that students are pleased and interested in implementing the role-playing learning strategy to improve students' english skills. in this study, the mean score of grammar skill in post-test is higher than pre-test but was not significant. this is because teaching emphasizes speaking, which prioritizes the courage to try. grammar is also learned in making sentences that will be conveyed when asking and answering questions with friends. the study results also showed an increase in the comprehension of speaking skills after the learning process with guessing games. however, it was not significant because the learning process was also short. many students uttered inappropriate pronunciations and whose vocabulary was not fully known so that students became less comprehensive with such short learning. this result is not in line with previous research that educational games help create more interest, encourage the learning atmosphere, and the difficulties experienced by students in learning and the difficulties experienced by teachers in teaching grammar are reduced, making it easier for students to learn from experience (al-jarrah et al., 2019). language games allow students to learn grammar freely or have significant autonomy because they can connect their minds from the knowledge they have with their use (butler, 2017; yaccob & yunus, 2019). in this study, the mean score of comprehension skill in post-test is higher than pre-test but was not significant. comprehension is a complex cognitive process in which the reader deliberately interacts with text in an attempt to derive meaning, using a series of strategic actions to extract and construct understanding from language (phuong, 2018). this result does not align with (parikawati, 2019) that scramble games positively impact reading study comprehension skills in high school students. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 336-339 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license thus, the learning process using guessing games has effectively improved the speaking skills of elementary school students, especially about vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. as explained in previous research, playing games is considered effective as a method or strategy for learning english, especially for young learners. it is also effective in teaching vocabulary mastery because students learn vocabulary not abstractly but concretely according to tangible objects (wang et al., 2011). overall, games help improve students' speaking skills. as freitas (2019) reported, games increase student motivation, are fascinating, and cause changes in behavior to be more active in learning, which impacts the results of good speaking skills. however, concerning speaking skills, guessing games in this study were not effective in improving grammar and comprehension. this can be related to the focus of what is conveyed in the game, a guessing game that emphasizes writing structures. this means that the improvement of speaking skills is not only related to interest, motivation, and pleasant atmosphere conditions, but it must also be studied carefully, what you want to convey in gameplay, the target to be achieved, and the minimum time required must be studied again. in various further studies. conclusions and suggestion communicative games through guessing games were a learning method that can improve elementary students' speaking skills in pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency, but not in grammar and understanding. the limitations of the material presented and the short learning time can be the cause. this study implies that guessing games can be an alternative learning method for elementary school children to improve their english speaking skills, especially pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency. the limitation of this study was that it was only conducted for three months, did not include the control group, and did not observe the student responses through observation in detail. further studies can compare with the control group, evaluate for an extended period, and add data from observations during the learning process. in addition, it is necessary to develop learning materials using games to achieve more effective learning. references ai-hayati. 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(2019). language games in teaching and learning english grammar: a literature review. arab world english journal, 10(1), 209–217. https://doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol10n o1.18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 213-231 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students’ perceptions on online peer feedback practice in efl writing i gede krisna meialldy putra*, made hery santosa, ni putu astiti pratiwi received: 02nd july 2021; revised: 29th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract this study investigated the implementation of online peer feedback practice, the students’ perceptions toward online peer feedback practice, and the students’ challenges toward online peer feedback practice. the study employed a mixed-method design with sma pgri blahbatuh students as the population, while the sample was 132 students. the data were collected through observing the online classes using an observation checklist, conducting a survey using a questionnaire, and conducting an interview using an interview guide through focus group discussion. the study’s findings imply several strengths and weaknesses in the online peer feedback practice. it was also revealed that the students had positive perceptions toward the online peer feedback practice. meanwhile, the interview results revealed several contradictory results regarding the students’ challenges. the students preferred the teacher’s feedback after the practice since it would make them feel safe. the students also suggested anonymous peer feedback practice since they could give the comments honestly, with details, and specifics. through this study, students can learn to improve their skills in communicating and collaborating with their peers. the study also provided the teacher information to create more effective and efficient online peer feedback practice. key words: peer feedback; remote teaching context; writing in efl abstrak penelitian ini didesain untuk menyelidiki penerapan praktik umpan balik rekan secara daring, persepsi siswa terhadap praktik umpan balik rekan secara daring, dan tantangan siswa terhadap praktik umpan balik rekan secara daring. penelitian ini menggunakan desain kombinasi dengan siswa sma pgri blahbatuh sebagai populasi, sedangkan sampelnya hanya 132 siswa. pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui observasi kelas online menggunakan lembar observasi, survei menggunakan kuesioner, dan wawancara menggunakan pedoman wawancara melalui diskusi kelompok terfokus. temuan penelitian menyiratkan bahwa ada beberapa kekuatan dan kelemahan dalam praktik umpan balik rekan secara daring. terungkap pula bahwa siswa memiliki persepsi positif terhadap praktik umpan balik rekan secara daring. sementara itu, hasil wawancara mengungkapkan beberapa hasil yang kontradiktif terkait tantangan siswa. siswa lebih menyukai masukan dari guru setelah latihan karena akan membuat mereka merasa lebih aman. para siswa juga menyarankan praktik umpan balik rekan anonim karena mereka dapat memberikan komentar dengan jujur, dengan detail, dan spesifik. melalui penelitian ini, siswa dapat belajar meningkatkan keterampilannya dalam berkomunikasi dan berkolaborasi dengan teman sebayanya. penelitian ini juga memberikan informasi kepada guru untuk menciptakan praktik umpan balik teman secara daring yang lebih efektif dan efisien. kata kunci: umpan balik rekan; penulisan pada efl; pembelajaran jarak jauh how to cite: putra, i g. k. m., santosa, m. h., pratiwi, n. p. a. (2021). students’ perceptions on online peer feedback practice in efl writing. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 213-231. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 214-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teaching and learning activities in the 21st century do not always require teachers and students doing interaction directly. it means they can be separated in time and distance. these teaching and learning activities are well-known as online remote teaching. boholano (2017) states that students in the 21st century grow up in a rapidly-paced digital world where they easily tune out of the traditional lecture-based classroom. the implementation of remote teaching is usually facilitated using a synchronous or asynchronous online discussion forum that allows people to interact remotely. various practices can be taught by implementing online remote teaching, and one of them is feedback practice. students recognize their strengths and weaknesses through feedback provided after achieving a particular goal in the learning process. according to narciss (2008), feedback can be defined as all post-response information provided to the students to inform them of their actual state of learning or performance. (hattie & timperley, 2007) emphasize that one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement is feedback. there are several feedback functions, such as identifying, verifying, or improving accurate answers or high-quality learning outcomes. doing so can promote the acquisition of the knowledge and cognitive operations required to carry out learning tasks (kaya & yılmaz, 2019). criticism comments identify where a learner needs improvement. by providing criticism comments, students can practice specific revision skills, such as problem detection, problem diagnosis, and selecting the appropriate solution to solve the problem (patchan & schunn, 2015). there are several classifications of feedback in writing, namely, in terms of the way it is provided (direct feedback and indirect feedback), the mode (written feedback and oral feedback), and the one who delivers the feedback (teacher feedback and peer feedback) ((wihastyanang et al., 2020). peer feedback refers to feedback given by fellow students (cahyono & amrina, 2016). students engage in learning of each other and thereby gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for their peers’ experiences and perspectives by providing feedback on the work of their peers (van popta et al., 2016). learning in the 21st century also requires students to be more independent while the teacher mainly acts as the facilitator. peer feedback provides the students the opportunity to be more independent and improve the collaboration and communication skills in 4c elements of the 21st skills ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 215-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license since they learn their weaknesses and strengths from each other. the 4c elements of 21st-century skills are critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication. the implementation of peer feedback practice in the learning process is based on vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (zpd) theory. zpd can be understood as the difference between what the students can do without help and what they cannot do without help. vygotsky (1978) emphasizes that the essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development, which means learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that can operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and cooperating with his peers. thus, zpd is the basis of peer feedback practice since the activities of peer feedback help the students realize and learn their mistakes with the help of their peers. peer feedback practice is appropriate to be implemented in the writing practice. since the process of writing takes time, starting from outlining to publishing, it makes writing becomes more complex. indonesian context writing is the subject that most students avoid (kusumaningrum et al., 2019). thus, an efficient, attractive, and effective method needs to be considered to improve the students’ writing skills. online peer feedback practice allows the students to improve their writing skills effectively and efficiently since they can do the activity remotely. it also allows the teacher to design attractive activities since the peer feedback can be provided in many interesting online discussion forum platforms such as google classroom. the act of providing peer feedback encourages students to engage in problem detection and encourages them to engage in problem diagnosis and then contemplate solutions before proposing the revisions (huisman, saab, van driel, & van den broek, 2018). students who provide peer feedback gain experience in problem detection, become more aware of types of writing problems, and may discover different revision strategies as a result (patchan & schunn, 2015). peer feedback practice through online discussion forums in remote teaching contexts also shows several advantages in its utilization. razı (2016) emphasizes that digital feedback allows a range of innovations that are not available in conventional practice, such as digital technology can remove student identification for anonymous peer review and provide review tools for the students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 216-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license several studies have been conducted in the same field as the present study. research using moodle was conducted by mwalongo (2013) that revealed that asynchronous discussion forums encourage peer feedback. the students’ reflection showed that they were optimistic about using peer feedback for assessment purposes because they learned about the assessment process, recognized bias problems, promoted collaboration, made them autonomous learners and facilitated their critical thinking. miftah (2016) conducted a study that revealed that concerning the writing instruction, it was found that the process steps of implementing peer response activities via facebook can be implemented through the process writing approach, namely, prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. it also showed the students’ abilities in writing argumentative essays enhanced, which is indicated by the enhancements of the percentage of the students’ scores and the percentage of their involvement in the writing activities during the peer response activities via facebook. razı (2016) conducted a study, and the results showed that students’ relations with their classmates impact the quality of feedback in open peer review, and students preferred lecturer feedback after the peer feedback. saeed et al. (2018) conducted a study. the results showed that asynchronous peer feedback fosters learners’ engagement in revisionoriented feedback, helps the students to understand the global and local issues in writing, but lack of motivation, embarrassment, and fear to exchange feedback with peers still being challenges for the implementation of peer feedback in writing courses. another research was conducted by aydawati et al. (2018). it revealed that peer review activities could improve the students’ writing skills, especially in the grammar aspect, which are limited on the kinds of the clause, run-on sentence, subject-verb agreement, the noun form, verb form, pronoun form, and pronoun reference. the students may do it both synchronously and asynchronously, as both activities have increased their writing scores. however, the increase of the score is higher when they do it synchronously where they can share their thought directly. a research was conducted by wahyudin (2018) which showed improvement in the writing ability of the students from the experimental group. it was also revealed that the use of online peer feedback with facebook had more positive impacts on the students’ writing ability than any teaching method used in the control group. another research was conducted ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 217-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by chuaphalakit et al. (2019), which revealed that the anonymous online peer feedback allowed the students to realize their mistakes from their friends’ comments and writing and then use the feedback to improve their work. those findings from the previous studies showed that online peer feedback in writing practice had given many advantages and challenges for the students to improve their writing ability in several aspects of writing as they learned from each other. the utilization of several online discussion forums from the previous studies also gave many advantages since the students can provide and receive feedback remotely. however, those previous studies did not investigate the students’ perceptions and challenges toward online peer feedback practice, which made it different from this study. this study was designed to investigate the implementation of online peer feedback practice, the students’ perceptions toward online peer feedback practice, and the students’ challenges toward online peer feedback practice. this study also used a bigger sample to investigate the students’ perceptions and provided several solutions for the students’ challenges. method research design this study conducted a mixedmethod design. creswell (2012) states that a mixed-method research design is a type of research design where the qualitative and quantitative designs are combined. the mixed-method design was suitable for this study since the combination of qualitative and quantitative data gave more detailed information to reach the study's aims. the quantitative data were collected through a survey using a questionnaire consisting of 18 items. the qualitative data were collected through observation and interviews. the observation used observation checklist consisted of 7 items, while the interview used interview guide consisted of 18 items. population and sample the study was conducted at sma pgri blahbatuh in the academic year of 2020/2021. the population of the study was the sma pgri blahbatuh students. the sampling technique used in the study was purposive sampling which means the study sample was chosen from a particular group as the representative of the research population (ary, jacobs, sorensen, & razavieh, 2010). there were two criteria for the sample: the sample must be high ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 218-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license school students from sma pgri blahbatuh. they must be the students who have experienced the peer feedback practice through online discussion platforms such as google classroom in their writing practice. regarding those criteria, the x bahasa dan budaya classes with a total of 132 students were chosen as the study sample. the interview used focus group discussion with eight students from the sample as the volunteers. data collection and analysis the researcher observed the google classroom online classes to investigate the peer feedback practice implementation using an observation checklist as the instrument. the observation checklist was designed based on the seven principles of good feedback practice by nicol and macfarlane-dick (2006, p. 205). the students’ perceptions were investigated through a survey using a questionnaire as the instrument, while the students’ challenges were investigated through interviews using an interview guide. both questionnaire and interview guide items which consisted of 18 valid items were adapted from strijbos et al. (2010) based on four scales, namely; perceived adequacy of feedback (paf), willingness to improve (wi), positive affect (pa), and negative affect (na). the interview guide consisted of paf, wi, and na scales since it focused on investigating the students’ challenges. all the instruments were checked in terms of content validity, while in the prior data collection, the questionnaire was also checked in terms of empirical validity and reliability. the content validity check showed that all the instruments were valid. furthermore, using pearson product moment, the empirical validity showed that all the questionnaire items were valid. the reliability checks also showed that the questionnaire items were reliable. the content validity, empirical validity, and reliability check results can be seen in tables 1, 2, and 3. table 1. content validity results no instrument content validity 1. observation checklist 1 2. questionnaire 1 3. interview guide 1 table 2. empirical validity results scales number of items r rcv decision 1 0.693 0.304 valid 2 0.868 0.304 valid 3 0.784 0.304 valid 4 0.908 0.304 valid paf 5 0.866 0.304 valid 6 0.893 0.304 valid 7 0.796 0.304 valid 8 0.776 0.304 valid 9 0.783 0.304 valid 10 0.809 0.304 valid wi 11 0.930 0.304 valid ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 219-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license scales number of items r rcv decision 12 0.907 0.304 valid 13 0.869 0.304 valid pa 14 0.869 0.304 valid 15 0.815 0.304 valid 16 0.967 0.304 valid na 17 0.971 0.304 valid 18 0.956 0.304 valid table 3. reliability check results scales cronbach’s alpha paf 0.937 wi 0.859 pa 0.807 na 0.959 the obtained data from the questionnaire results were analyzed using descriptive statistics analysis with four classifications, namely very negative, negative, positive, and very positive. the results of the observation and interview were used to compare the questionnaire results. table 4 shows the criteria to determine the perceptions of the students. table 4. the classification of perception no criteria formula classification 1. x ≥ mi + 1.5 sdi very positive 2. mi + 1.5 sdi > x ≥ mi positive 3. mi > x ≥ mi 1.5 sdi negative 4. x < mi 1.5 sdi very negative where: mi = mean ideal sdi = standard deviation ideal x = total score the calculations are: mi = sdi = findings and discussion findings on the implementation of online peer feedback practice at sma pgri blahbatuh the observation data were collected through google classroom online classes made by the teacher which the students practiced the online peer feedback. the key questions in the observation checklist were used as the guidelines to collect the data. the data of the observation are presented in the form of descriptions based on the seven key questions. the first online peer feedback practice was done when the students learned about the descriptive text. after making a descriptive text, the students were told to give feedback to their peers’ works. the teacher provided the instructions and an example of the feedback for the students. the students needed to give their peers’ works feedback by analyzing the global and local writing issues, namely content, organization, vocabulary, and language use. the teacher divided each issue's criteria score into four classifications: excellent, good, poor, and very poor. after giving scores to their peers’ work, the students needed to give feedback in the form of a description by focusing on the strengths, weaknesses, corrections, and suggestions for their peers’ works. the second online peer feedback practice ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 220-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was done when the students learned about biographical recount text. the rules and instructions of the peer feedback practice were still the same as the previous one, but the teacher added one more issue that the students’ needed to analyze in their peers’ works, namely neatness. both sections of the online peer feedback practice showed similar results, especially in the quality of the feedback given and received by the students since the instructions and rules were still similar. the findings revealed several strengths and weaknesses in the online peer feedback practice. it was found that the instructions and rules of the practice helped the students identify the writing issues in their peers’ works, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and neatness. it guided the students to recognize the good and bad works. the practice also facilitated the development of selfassessment followed by reflection. the students were motivated to learn their strengths and weaknesses when they corrected their works after receiving the feedback even though there were no following activities after the practice. it allowed the students to evaluate themselves through the feedback. the teacher also had the opportunity to monitor all the activities of the peer feedback practice since it was done in the online learning platform. thus, the practice process gave the teacher information regarding the teaching strategy that can be improved in the future. there are also some weaknesses in the implementation of online peer feedback practice. it was found that the feedback did not deliver high-quality information regarding the students’ works since the feedback provided was based on the criteria score determined by the teacher and then followed by the general comments of the works. the teacher’s example was also inadequate since only one example was provided, and the teacher provided an example of the feedback. several of the students only modified and changed a few words from the example and used it to provide feedback for their peers’ works, especially in the overall comment parts. the online peer feedback practice also did not allow the students to do peer dialogue with their peers since there was no discussion session in the google classroom online classes. the students submitted their feedback through submission provided by the teacher, and then the feedbacks were forwarded by the teacher to the students. the unavailable peer dialogue section made the peer feedback practice give fewer chances for the students to improve their communication and collaboration skills which belong to 4c elements in 21st-century skills. the peer feedback ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 221-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license practice also did not allow the students to close the gap between current and desired performance. there were no following activities after the students checked and revised their works individually. findings on efl students’ perceptions on online peer feedback practice the questionnaire results regarding the students’ perceptions were calculated into the classification criteria score in general and also based on the four scales, namely, perceived adequacy of feedback (paf), willingness to improve (wi), positive affect (pa), and negative affect (na). firstly, the calculation of the students’ perceptions, in general, is presented in table 5. table 5. the frequency of online peer feedback practice in general classification frequency relative frequency very positive 77 58.3 % positive 47 35.6 % negative 7 5.3 % very negative 1 0.8 % regarding the frequency data of online peer feedback practice in general, the frequency percentage of “very positive” perception was 58.3%. it means 77 students responded positively to the statements related to online peer feedback practice. the percentage of “positive” perception was 35.6% which means 47 students responded positively to the online peer feedback practice. only 7 students who gave negative responses with the percentage of 5.3% for the “negative” perception, while there was only 1 student who gave a response very negative with the percentage 0.8% for the “very negative perception toward the online peer feedback practice. thus, the students’ perceptions toward the online peer feedback practice in general was positive based on the calculation of the perceptions. the average of students’ perceptions toward online peer feedback practice based on the four scales; perceived adequacy of feedback (paf), willingness to improve (wi), positive affect (pa), and negative affect (na) were calculated and checked using the criteria score and the four classifications afterward. the frequency and relative frequency data for each scale can be seen in tables 6 and 7. table 6. the frequency of paf, wi, pa, and na scales classification frequency paf wi pa na very positive 77 96 97 90 positive 47 28 29 28 negative 6 6 5 9 very negative 2 2 1 5 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 222-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 7. the relative frequency of paf, wi, pa, and na scales classification relative frequency (%) paf wi pa na very positive 58.3 72.7 73.5 68.2 positive 35.6 21.2 22.0 21.2 negative 4.5 4.5 3.8 6.8 very negative 1.5 1.5 0.8 3.8 the frequency data of students’ perceptions on the online peer feedback practice based on the four scales show that the paf scale, which covered the adequacy of feedback that the students received and given, had 58.3% of “very positive” perception, 35.6% “positive” perception, 4.5% “negative” perception, and 1.5% of “very negative” perception. the wi scale, which covered the students’ willingness to improve their writing skills, had 72.7% of “very positive” perception, 21.2% “positive” perception, 4.5% “negative” perception, and 1.5% “very negative” perception. the pa scale, which covered the positive affect that the students felt toward the online peer feedback practice, had 73.5% of “very positive” perception, 22.0% of “positive” perception, 3.8% of “negative” perception, and 0.8% of “very negative” perception. the na scale, which covered the negative affect that the students felt toward the online peer feedback practice, had 68.2% of “very positive” perception, 21.2% of “positive” perception, 6.8% of “negative” perception, and 3.8% of “very negative” perception. thus, the students’ perceptions toward the online peer feedback practice based on the four scales were positive based on the calculation of the perceptions. findings on efl students’ challenges on online peer feedback practice even though the students had positive perceptions of the online peer feedback practice, they still faced several challenges in their practice. because the interview data collection took place at the time of the covid-19 pandemic, the researcher asked for permission to invite the students to the school for the interview. the interview has followed the health protocol rules to prevent transmission of covid-19. there were two significant results that emerged from the interview results. the first major challenge of the students is regarding their satisfaction from the adequacy of the feedback received and given. they admitted that the feedback was not enough for them. instead of only giving scores such as “good” or “excellent” in the issues of their peers’ writing such as “organization” and “vocabulary”, they thought that they could provide more detailed information regarding the issues in writing, such as for the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 223-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grammar or the quality of the paragraph. student e stated: “all the comments are similar sometimes. so, it becomes not enough because the others still can be given comments such as the structure or how is the paragraph.” the students also admitted that they disagreed with the feedback provided by their peers sometimes. they rechecked their works after receiving the feedback. they disagreed when they thought their works were correct, but their peers commented wrong. they also worried that the feedback given seemed to be careless. those feelings made the students think that the teacher’s feedback is essential after the peer feedback. student g commented: “after i corrected my work and i felt that i was right, i felt disagree with the comments given by my peer.” the second challenge is regarding the negative effects that the students felt during the practice. the students admitted that they felt unconfident with their ability after receiving negative feedback from their peers. student t commented: “sometimes i felt unconfident, but after that, i corrected myself. but i believe more with my own ability.” besides, the students worried that they would get bad scores because of the negative feedback even though they knew that the teacher would correct their works after the peer feedback practice. student c stated: “i ever felt that my score would be bad because of my peer’s comment that said my work was not good. but it was only temporary because the teacher will correct it again later on.” the students also stated that they sometimes felt offended when the feedback they received was not what they expected. the students’ feelings also depended on the relationship between the students, and the students would feel less offended if their close friends gave negative feedback. this effect also came up with the students’ statement that emphasized anonymously practicing online peer feedback. student d commented: “there is a little bit of offended feeling, but it also depends on who gave the comments.” discussion based on the questionnaire results, the students' perceptions showed the students had positive perceptions toward the online peer feedback practice in general. it means that a majority of students thought that the implementation of online peer feedback ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 224-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license practice is essential to improve their writing skills. it is supported by the observation result, which revealed that the online peer feedback practice helped the students realize their strengths and weaknesses in their writing mainly based on the global and local issues in writing (content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and neatness). saeed et al. (2018) reported that online peer feedback facilitated the students’ understanding of global and local issues in writing, while aydawati et al. (2018) also reported that the students understand more about the local issues in writing, especially grammar, after implementing the online peer feedback. the findings proved that the zone of proximal development (zpd) theory by vygotsky (1978) is the basis of online peer feedback practice implementation since the students realized their strengths and weaknesses through the feedback provided by their peers. besides, the observation results also proved that the online peer feedback practice gave the teachers information regarding the teaching strategy that can be improved since they could monitor all the peer feedback practice through the online learning platform. the frequency distribution from the paf scale shows that the majority of the students had positive perceptions toward the adequacy of feedback. it shows that a relatively fair number of students felt that the implementation of online peer feedback practice through google classroom was adequate to improve their writing skills. even though the students thought that the online peer feedback practice was adequate, the interview result, which focused on the students’ challenges, revealed several contradictory results. students thought that they could give more detailed information to their peers’ works instead of only giving “good” or “excellent” in the writing issues such as the “organization” or “vocabulary”. for example, the teacher could add the other writing issues that could be assessed, such as the grammar or the quality of the paragraph. the interview result was also consistent with the observation result, indicating that the online peer feedback practice did not deliver high-quality information about their learning. this finding aligns with what vu and alba (2007) found in their study. the students also appreciated more critical comments and practical suggestions for improvement in their peer feedback practice. the observation results also revealed no opportunity for the students to do peer dialogue since there was no discussion session. there were also no following activities after the students received the feedback. the discussion session would also allow the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 225-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students to deliver high-quality and detailed information. at the same time, the following activities would allow the students to check whether their works are correct after the revisions. mwalongo (2013) supported it, who reported that through discussion with peers, the students learned to develop new knowledge, treat mistakes as opportunities for learning, and understand difficult concepts. the peer dialogue sections would also allow the students to improve their communication and collaboration skills since they are two elements of 4c in 21st-century skills. thus, the teacher needs to allow the students to do peer dialogue and plan the following activities. interview results also revealed that students admitted they sometimes disagreed with their peers’ feedback, and they thought that the feedback was a lack of responsibility. chuaphalakit et al. (2019) also reported that some feedback givers lacked responsibility. furthermore, vu and alba (2007) found that the students were worried about the quality of the feedback. mwalongo (2013) study also revealed that the students reported they needed to be prepared before the peer feedback practice to reduce the negative attitudes toward the practice and increase its effectiveness since the students will be more responsible. the teacher needs to determine the rules regarding the expected attitudes and behaviors of the students before implementing the online peer feedback practice. it led to the students’ thought that teacher’s feedback is important after the peer feedback. it is also supported by razı's (2016) finding that the students commented that teacher feedback should be provided after the peer feedback because the students thought it would make them feel much safer. the teacher also only provided an example of the feedback for the students. it made the students only have a few references and many of the students also only modified and changed a few words from the example to provide feedback for their peers. the teacher should provide various kinds of examples for the students’ references and provide the consequences for the irresponsible actions done by the students. the feedback examples provided by the teacher can consider the feedback burger as the guide to show the students how to provide good constructive feedback. the feedback burger is started by giving positive feedback at the beginning, such as mentioning what the students did well in their writing. the second part is giving constructive feedback by pointing out what they need to improve in their writing. the feedback provider ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 226-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license should provide suggestions for the issues that need improvement, but they need to avoid giving negative feedback. the last part is by giving positive feedback again emphasizing the good points in their writing and mentioning the positive results the feedback receivers gain after revising their writing by considering the suggestions. the average percentage of each item and the calculation of the perceptions into the criteria score in the wi scale also indicated a relatively fair number of students who were motivated to improve their writing skills after the online peer feedback practice. it is in line with mwalongo's (2013) finding that revealed the students were motivated by the use of peer feedback and suggested it should be implemented in the other courses as well. the interview and observation results were consistent with the questionnaire analysis based on the students’ perceptions. it was found that the online peer feedback practice provided the opportunity for the students to do self-assessment then followed by reflection and the interview result also emphasized that the students corrected and checked their works after receiving the feedback. it also encouraged positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem for the students because they felt motivated to revise after receiving feedback. all of those findings contradict what saeed et al. (2018) found in their study, which indicated that the students were lack of motivation in exchanging feedback with their peers in writing courses. to overcome the problem, janssen et al. (2007) suggested that the students also need to feel the sense of respecting each other, social support, friendship, and feeling of attachment to one another. it can be done by providing the students with the opportunity to do peer dialogue since it is considered one of the principles of good feedback practice, according to nicol and macfarlane-dick (2006, p. 205). the average percentage of each item and the calculation of the perceptions into the criteria score based on the pa and na scales indicated that most of the students felt that the online peer feedback practice gave them more positive effects than negative effects. even though the perceptions were perceived positively, the interview results indicated that the online peer feedback practice still negatively affected the students. after receiving negative feedback, the students admitted that they were unconfident with their abilities. this feeling was only temporary since they knew that the teacher would also correct their works after the peer feedback. the students also reported that they ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 227-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sometimes felt offended by the feedback they did not expect. this problem was also affected by the relationship between the feedback provider and receiver, which came up with the student’s statement that they prefer the anonymous online peer feedback practice. they thought that they would feel free to give feedback in detail if their identity was protected. chuaphalakit et al. (2019) also found that the anonymous online peer feedback practice allowed the students to improve the quality of the feedback. besides, razı (2016) also emphasized that anonymous peer feedback enables the students to give more honest comments on their peers’ works. conclusively, this study revealed several prominent findings and solutions for the challenges. according to miftah (2016), peer feedback can be a helpful source of information where the students read and comment on each other’s works. thus, creating a discussion section during the online peer feedback practice implementation must be considered since the students are expected to give more details and specific information. it also facilitates them to deliver a higher quality of information. teacher feedback should also be given after the peer feedback practice since it will make the students feel safer because they know the teacher will assess their works afterward. in terms of motivation, the online peer feedback practice motivated the students to revise their works after selfassessment followed by reflection. besides, hattie and timperley (2007) state that the students can develop their skills in detecting errors and lead to their self-feedback to reach the goal. even though the students were motivated, they still mentioned that they disagreed and sometimes felt offended when they got feedback that they did not expect. thus, the teacher should prepare the instructions and the students properly by considering the seven principles of good feedback practice by nicol and macfarlane-dick (2006, p. 205) to prevent the students from giving the feedback carelessly. the teacher should also provide various kinds of feedback examples for the students by considering the feedback burger consists of three parts: positive feedback, constructive feedback, and ended by positive feedback again. furthermore, the method of anonymous online peer feedback practice needs to be considered since the students will have the opportunity to give more honest details and specifics without being afraid it will affect their relationship. through this study, the teacher could create more effective and efficient online peer feedback practice. the students also could learn to improve their skills in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 228-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license communicating and collaborating with their peers to achieve the learning goals. conclusions and suggestion overall, it was proved that the online peer feedback practice helped the students to realize their strengths and weaknesses in their writing mainly based on the global and local issues in writing (content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and neatness). even though the students’ perceptions were perceived positive neither in general and based on the four scales; perceived adequacy of feedback (paf), willingness to improve (wi), positive affect (pa), and negative affect (na), the observation results revealed several strengths and also weaknesses that still can be improved in the implementation. the interview results also showed some contradictory results regarding the students’ challenges. there are several solutions for students’ challenges and weaknesses in the implementation. providing the discussion session in google classroom will allow the students to do peer dialogue and deliver high-quality information. the peer dialogue section will also give bigger chances for the students to improve their communication and collaboration skills since those two skills belong to the 4c elements of 21st-century skills. it is also essential for the teacher to prepare the whole activities, including the following activities, to reduce negative attitudes from the students. providing feedback examples for the students for their references also needs to be considered. the examples can consider that the feedback burger consists of positive feedback, constructive feedback, and positive feedback. the students’ unconfident and offended feelings can be solved by implementing anonymous online peer feedback practice. through this study, students can learn to improve their skills in communicating and collaborating with their peers and provide the teacher information to create more effective and efficient online peer feedback practice. there are several suggestions for the researcher who will research in the same field. the further researcher can conduct another study to investigate the students’ perceptions and their challenges on online peer feedback practice in efl writing in the synchronous online learning environment. the further researcher can conduct another study with a bigger sample such as the whole students in a school. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 229-231 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21488 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references ary, d., jacobs, l. c., sorensen, c., & razavieh, a. 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(1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes (m. cole, v. john-steiner, s. scribner, & e. souberman (eds.)). harvard university press. wahyudin, a. y. (2018). the impact of online peer feedback on efl students’ writing at tertiary level. bahtera: jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra, 17(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/retrieved from http://journal.unj.ac.id/unj/inde x.php/bahtera/ wihastyanang, w. d., kusumaningrum, s. r., latief, a., & cahyono, b. y. (2020). impacts of providing online teacher and peer feedback on students’ writing performance. turkish online journal of distance education, 21(2), 178–189. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 10.17718/tojde.728157. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020, 111-129 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i1.17577 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effect of schoology on the students’ writing interest agustin apriliani*, abdul asib, ngadiso received: 30th sept 2020; revised: 10th dec 2020; accepted: 25th dec 2020 abstract this research aimed to determine the effect of using schoology as learning media on students’ writing interest. the research was done in a 2x2 experimental design with experimental and control classes selected as participants using purposive random sampling. the two groups had the same writing ability but received different learning media treatments, picture series for the control class, and schoology for the experimental class. the tukey’s test results showed that qobtain between columns a1 and a2 (3.46) was higher than qtable (2.92) proving that using schoology in teaching writing was significantly different from picture series. on the other hand, qobtain between cells a1b1 and a2b1 (4.47) was higher than qtable (3.08) proving that using schoology differed significantly from picture series in teaching writing for students who had high interest. then qobtain between cells a1b2 and a2b2 (0.41) was lower than qtable (3.08) proving that using schoology did not differ significantly from picture series in teaching writing for students who had low interest. this study concludes that learning writing skills using schoology affects students' levels of learning interests. schoology, therefore, could be an alternative learning media platform for teaching and learning writing skills. key words: schoology; effect; students’ writing interest abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh penggunaan media pembelajaran schoology terhadap minat menulis siswa. penelitian dilakukan dalam rancangan eksperimen 2x2 dengan kelas eksperimen dan kelas kontrol dipilih sebagai partisipan dengan menggunakan purposive random sampling. kedua kelompok memiliki kemampuan menulis yang sama tetapi mendapat perlakuan media pembelajaran yang berbeda yaitu picture series untuk kelas kontrol dan schoology untuk kelas eksperimen. hasil uji tukey menunjukkan bahwa qobtain antara kolom a1 dan a2 (3,46) lebih tinggi dari qtabel (2,92) yang membuktikan bahwa penggunaan schoology dalam pengajaran menulis berbeda secara signifikan dengan picture series. di sisi lain, qobtain antara sel a1b1 dan a2b1 (4,47) lebih tinggi dari qtabel (3,08) membuktikan bahwa penggunaan schoology berbeda secara signifikan dengan picture series dalam pengajaran menulis untuk siswa yang memiliki minat tinggi. kemudian qobtain antara sel a1b2 dan a2b2 (0.41) lebih rendah dari qtabel (3.08) membuktikan bahwa penggunaan schoology tidak berbeda secara signifikan dengan picture series dalam pembelajaran menulis untuk siswa yang memiliki minat rendah. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran keterampilan menulis menggunakan schoology berpengaruh terhadap tingkat minat belajar siswa. oleh karena itu, schoology dapat menjadi platform media pembelajaran alternatif untuk pembelajaran keterampilan menulis. kata kunci: schoology; pengaruh; minat menulis siswa how to cite: apriliani a., asib a., ngadiso. (2020). the effect of schoology on the students’ writing interest. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7(2), 111-129. doi:10.17577 /ijee.v7i2.17577 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 112-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction electronic media and the internet cannot be separated from human life that is increasingly advanced (kapoor, tamilmani, rana, patil, dwivedi, & nerur (2018). education utilizes learning facilities that are connected to the internet or also known as social media learning nowadays. the teacher can use social media as a medium to teach the students using the internet, such as google classroom, schoology, moodle, and others. social learning media with various features make the learning process more enjoyable and make it easier for teachers to overcome the students’ difficulties in understanding concepts and developing ideas, especially writing skills. computer and internet technology, both in terms of hardware and software, provide many offers and choices for the education sector to support the learning process (aljawarneh, 2020). students have started to use computer and internet technology to access subject matter and increase their knowledge. even a teacher will find teaching materials easily, which is following with their field. students can deepen the knowledge obtained supported by finding additional information outside of what is taught by the teacher. in using social media learning, the teacher can share some supporting materials and videos so that students can understand the material quickly. students are expected not to be bored in attending the lesson when the teacher uses video, music, picture, or another interesting media in teaching and learning process. fareed, ashraf, and bilal (2016) stated that writing is an activity to produce written language that will be read. it is described as a process that is not as simple as it is assumed. the students often feel confused about how to begin their writing and organize their sentences to be interesting writing. to make the student have more ideas, the teacher must have innovative ways. the innovative way uses interesting media or technological facilities (barak & yuan, 2021; sivarajah, curci, johnson, lam, lee, & richardson, 2019). this interesting media can support the students in getting more ideas by looking at the video or picture represented in the media. one of the technological facilities that can be used for teaching writing is schoology. according to ferdianto and dwiniasih (2019), schoology offers free and easyto-use learning, including social learning management (lms). schoology has complete specifications with various learning tools, for example, checking attendance, tests, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 113-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license quizzes, and assignment submissions (aydın & demirer, 2016). schoology allows teachers and students to collaborate in order to achieve the learning goals. the collaboration in question is a variety of individual, group, and discussion data carried out in the schoology group. therefore, schoology is very suitable to be used as a supporting learning media using the internet. according to sriyanto and kaniadewi (2019), there are three reasons why the teacher must use schoology to teach the students. the first, schoology offers the teacher to support their online learning activities with the students. the second, schoology, presents some resources and collaborative groups for students and teachers to develop with others. in their learning network, it can include in mobile applications such as android and ios. other applications that can be connected with schoology are google drive, twitter, and facebook. the third is a free instructional component for teachers and students. schoology has several advantages to use in learning, such as schoology can be a forum for collaborative groups of students, with teachers can be involved in it. schoology can run on any web browser and can connect with other applications. several studies have shown that learning with schoology results in higher learning outcomes. the students’ learning outcomes can be used to measure the learning process that has been carried out. this statement is supported by araujo, carneiro, cruz-aguayo, and schady (2016), which state that every teaching and learning process always produces the learning outcomes. it can be said that learning outcomes are the end or peak of the learning process. the end of this activity is the measure of students' success rate in the teaching and learning process. the other study was conducted by low (2015) from thammasat university. this study revealed that schoology could motivate students and had a positive effect on students’ writing skills. 80% of students agreed that schoology was attractive, flexible, and increase students’ marks. then, apriliani, asib, and ngadiso (2019) researched the implementation of schoology in education. this research found that schoology could be an effective way of teaching writing for supporting the 4.0 era. it had proven that there was a significant difference in students’ writing skills after and before being taught by using schoology. the results of some studies show that schoology has positive impacts when implemented in the teaching and learning process. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 114-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based on su and cheng (2015), other factors influence in teaching and learning process. one of them is the students’ interest. according to pantziara and philippou (2015), interest motivates the students to strive to achieve a particular goal. interest is the feeling of wanting to give attention to something or wanting to be involved with and discover more about something. interest also refers to a sense of concern with and curiosity about someone or something and the power of attracting or holding one’s attention. in writing process, the psychological factors will influence the students’ writing projects result. the psychological factors are the student’s motivation and interest. hariyanto, soetarno, joko, and gunarhadi (2019) stated that interest has a significant role in influencing the students’ learning activity, which includes students’ emotions, feeling, attention, satisfaction, motivation, and pleasure. the positive interest and attitudes of each student will increase their chance for success in learning. students’ learning is facilitated by achievement motivation and emotional motivation. these motivations will foster the language learners’ interest. the relationship between interests and motivation becomes more complicated with the increasing of motivational types. there are three types of motivation to foster the students’ learning interests. instrumental motivation, emotional motivation, and achievement motivation have a significant role in increasing the students’ learning interest (ferrell, phillips, & barbera, 2016). the researchers are convinced that the students’ interest in language learning can cause an integrative motivation. integrative motivation may become a source of everlasting interest of students in learning, especially in english lessons. based on the statement above, schoology as a medium to teach writing make the students more interested in joining the teaching and learning process in the class and online. interest influences the students to improve their writing skills. the students’ interest is divided into two types, and they are students who had high interest and students who had low interest. the students who had high interest will have a high interest in writing many texts. sicat (2015) investigated that students who had high interest like to write anything topics that the teacher gives to them, which is used as an exciting topic in schoology. they will be more active in joining the teachinglearning process than the students’ who had low interest, especially writing. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 115-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on the contrary, picture series media cannot satisfy the students in joining the writing class when the teacher used picture series, and the students feel bored. they thought that picture series just showed some pictures, and that cannot attract them. singh, tan, abdullah, and mustafa (2017) explain that picture series are drawn about objects or people that the learners can describe with their own words. the students depend on the picture that the teacher explains to the students in writing class. they watch the picture and write a text-based on the picture. this model does not increase the students’ achievement in creativity, thinking, and problemsolving. the students also have a low level of interest when they use this media in nearly all the activities, texts, tasks, and tests given to them. based on the statements above, the picture series is supposed to be more effective for students with a low interest in writing skills. based on the observations at smk kesehatan bina karya medika, which uses the 2013 curriculum, learning english, especially in writing, the teacher only uses traditional teaching methods. the teacher's traditional learning is only based on student worksheets and handbooks (almashaqbeh & al shurman, 2015). the teacher does not have innovation in learning, so students sometimes get bored with taking part in the class. whereas in writing skills, teachers are required to develop students' ideas so that students can write an essay in english and be assessed according to the aspects of writing skills, namely content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. based on the literature review, students’ interest will affect their writing skills (apsari, 2017; huy, 2015; sipayung, 2016). the students who had high interest will have better writing skills than those who had a low interest. however, it is a challenge for the teacher to increase the students’ interest to make better writing skill. the uses of media have a significant role in the teaching and learning process. teaching media can improve the students’ interest. many teachers do not use appropriate media to teach writing to make higher students’ interest in learning. these conditions make the researchers propose schoology as a social media to teach writing, aiming to increase the students’ interest. using schoology in education is an important thing that can be implemented by the teacher when the teacher teaches writing. schoology can be an alternative social media used by the teacher to make the students interact with each other (sarrab, alhttp://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 116-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license shihi, al-khanjari, & bourdoucen, 2018). besides, the students’ interests also influence the teaching and learning process in writing. based on the study's background above, the researchers research the effect of schoology on the students’ writing interest. the study's research questions are: (a) do the students who have high interest have better writing skills than those with low interest? (b) is there any interaction between teaching media and students’ interests? besides, this research aims to reveal whether teaching writing using schoology is more effective than using picture series for students and to reveal whether the students who had high interest will have better writing skills than students who had low interest. method the method of this research was an experimental study. an experimental study was defined as the technique, which attempts to ferret out cause and effect relationships. through experimentations, a cause and effect relationship could be isolated. because of its ability to identify caution, the experimental approach has come to represent the teaching media prototype for solving problems (taber, 2019). this research related to teaching media's effectiveness as the independent variable and students’ interest as the attributive variable in teaching writing skills. this research involved three variables: independent variable, dependent variable, and attributive variable. the independent variable of this research was the teaching media. the factors were manipulated and selected in this study were teaching media. the purpose of this study is to know the effect and the relationship to the phenomenon investigated. the teaching media that was used in this study were schoology and picture series. these two different media was related to two groups of students. in this study, a group of students taught by using schoology media as the experimental group, and a group of students who taught by using picture series media as the control group. the research design was presented in table 1. table 1 factorial design 2 x 2 media interest schoology picture series .teaching (experimental group) (a1) (control group) (a2) high (b1) a1 b1 a2 b1 low (b2) a1 b2 a2 b2 note: independent variable: media (schoology and picture series) experimental group: the class taught by using schoology control group: the class taught by using picture series dependent variable: writing skill attributive variable: students’ interest http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 117-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in this research, the researchers used cluster random sampling. according to nasution (2016), cluster random sampling was a heterogeneous grouping against the elements. on the other hand, as a consideration in selecting samples, the researcher conducted preliminary observation by looking at the tenth-grade students' characteristics. this research was carried out in vocational high school (smk) at ponorogo, east java, indonesia. in this case, all members of selected groups had similar characteristics. therefore, the researcher decided to randomly take only two classes (x health analyst class and x pharmacy class) as the study sample, which consisted of 48 students. these classes had the same ability in writing skills. in this case, 24 students were taken from x health analyst class, and 24 students were taken from x pharmacy class. each class was divided into two groups, students who have high interest and low interest. one of the two classes was taught using schoology media, and the other class was taught using picture series. tukey test was used to know the significant difference between the means from two media (schoology compared to picture series), the means from two groups of students’ interest (students who had high interest compared to those who had a low interest), two means between media based on students’ interest (schoology compared to picture series for students with high interest), and two means between media based on students’ interest (schoology compared to picture series for students having low interest). it was done to look for qobtain, which was obtained by comparing the difference between means by the square root of the within-group variation and sample size. findings and discussion the researchers conducted a preliminary study before doing experimental research in one of the vocational high school (smk) at ponorogo. the preliminary study's focus was to know the use of english learning media, especially in teaching writing skills used by the english teacher and the students’ interest in learning english. to collect the preliminary study data, the researchers used the steps of observation, interview, documentation, and document analysis. the result of the preliminary study was the teaching materials and media in learning english. teaching materials and media for learning english used a textbook that was produced by the government. the teacher also still used english module. the material of the english module was not much different from http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 118-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the textbook from the government. the textbook given to students was the textbook that had been used in previous years. in other words, there was no new material in the book. the school used the 2013 curriculum. in the 2013 curriculum, english teachers were required to be more creative in using models, methods, media, and teaching materials to learn english, especially writing skills. the method used by the teacher was a traditional method. the teacher taught english lessons according to the textbook without any media. based on the observation and interview, the researchers found that students’ interest in this school was still low in learning english. it needed to be improved. after the researchers know about the problem, the researcher prepared the research instruments. the research instruments that were used in this research were lesson plans, questionnaires, and writing tests. a lesson plan was used to know what the activities were done in this research. the lesson plan might be adjusted with the students’ material. this research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of using two different media to teach writing based on the students’ interests. the researcher used data gained from the students’ writing test scores taken from the control class and experimental class. the control class was taught by using picture series, and the experimental class was taught by using schoology. after the writing test scores were gained, the scores were then sorted following the students’ interest levels. the students’ scores were then grouped into the scores of high-interest level and lowinterest levels. the data obtained consists of the highest score, lowest score, range, mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. the result of students’ interest and writing score of the control class was presented in table 2. table 2 the students’ interest and writing score of control class no students' name students' interest score (b1) writing score (a1) 1 hr 90.00 82 2 fd 87.50 87 3 ys 85.00 89 4 am 83.75 87 5 dn 83.75 92 6 nd 83.75 81 7 pa 83.75 86 8 ar 78.13 81 9 er 78.13 78 10 yp 78.13 84 11 so 76.88 80 12 wa 76.88 83 no students' name students' interest writing score http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 119-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license no students' name students' interest score (b1) writing score (a1) score (b2) (a1) 13 ss 75.00 85 14 ta 75.00 83 15 tan 73.75 86 16 ne 72.50 84 17 rd 71.25 86 18 af 70.00 77 19 fa 69.38 81 20 ad 65.63 80 21 wf 65.63 85 22 dg 65.00 81 23 aw 63.13 84 24 ms 60.00 78 the result of students’ interest and writing score of the experimental class is presented in table 3. table 3 the students’ interest and writing score of experimental class no students' name students' interest score (b1) writing score (a1) 1 eb 85.00 94 2 aa 83.75 87 3 ea 83.75 88 4 dn 82.50 92 5 ke 82.50 92 6 ls 81.25 89 7 na 81.25 87 8 at 80.00 90 9 nm 80.00 86 no students' name students' interest score (b1) writing score (a1) 10 eal 78.13 82 11 an 75.00 88 12 nd 75.00 89 no students' name students' interest score (b2) writing score (a1) 13 in 73.75 86 14 am 72.50 86 15 fn 72.50 83 16 dp 71.25 83 17 rar 70.00 83 18 ra 70.00 80 19 rf 69.38 89 20 vf 69.38 86 21 ad 65.00 77 22 bf 63.75 82 23 ac 63.13 78 24 dw 60.00 82 based on the data, the researcher tested the hypothesis by using the tukey test. it was needed to prove the interaction between the groups. the result of tukey test computation could be seen as follows: table 4 the result of tukey test between group qo qt status a1 – a2 3.46 2.92 significant b1 – b2 5.21 2.92 significant a1b1a2b1 4.47 3.08 significant a1b2 – a2b2 0.41 3.08 not significant based on the tukey test summary above, it could be concluded that qobtain http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 120-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license between columns a1 and a2 (3.46) was higher than qtable (2.92). it proved that the use of schoology in teaching writing was significantly different from picture series. the mean score of a1 (85.79) was higher than the mean score of a2 (83.33). it meant that using schoology was more effective than using picture series in teaching writing. then, qobtain between rows b1 and b2 (5.21) was higher than qtable (2.92), it proved that the students having high interest and those having low interest were significantly different in their writing skill. the mean score of b1 (86.42) was higher than the mean score of b2 (82.71). it meant that the students who had high interest had better writing skills than those with low interest. the table also showed that qobtain between cells a1b1 and a2b1 (4.47) was higher than qtable (3.08). it proved that using schoology differs significantly from using picture series in teaching writing for students who had high interest. the mean score of a1b1 (88.67) was higher than the mean score of a2 (84.17). it meant that using schoology was more effective than using picture series to teach writing for students who had high interest. furthermore, because qobtain between cells a1b2 and a2b2 (0.41) was lower than qtable (3.08), it proved that using schoology did not differ significantly from using picture series in teaching writing for students who had low interest. based on the result, schoology is a media that support students to learn well. in teaching writing, schoology can make students more actives. students have more choices and control over their studies but still under guidance from their teacher. with this activity, it can create long-life learning. the time and place for learning can take place anywhere at any time when they used schoology media. these medium delivery mechanisms, instructional approaches, technologies, and learning situations, involve supporting learning, individualized yet collaborative and interactive learning. these phenomena are in line with suryati and suryana (2019), who stated that schoology is a web-based social network for k-12 that assists the users (the student or the teacher) to create, manage, interact, and share academic content. schoology also provides teachers and students access to the presence, collection tasks, exercises, and media learning sources that can be accessed anytime, anywhere. it provides access to parents to monitor students’ progress in the school. there are many benefits when they are using schoology in the teaching and learning process. in schoology, the process of teaching-learning using schoology http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 121-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license combines with face-to-face and online learning. students have more choices and control over their study but still under the guidance and instruction of their teacher at the same time. in schoology, students use the abundant materials on the internet and have a better understanding of the substantive materials with the teacher's help in a face-to-face classroom. this media provides students a more significant opportunity to interact with each other and with their teachers. students who use schoology perform better than those who take face-to-face classes. through this activity, the students learn how to write well and produce a good text. many students are uploading their text in the schoology group. with this activity, the students share their difficulty when they face in writing a text. they can ask about the difficulties with other friends and their teacher. these phenomena align with phungsuk, viriyavejakul, and ratanaolarn (2017), saying that schoology supports students' active learners. they take a chance, question, make decisions, analyze, think critically, and create a draft to do good writing and make a discussion online. the students choose the topic that they want to write about based on their interests. they are very motivated when the teacher lets them choose any specific topic for their text. writing something interesting and around them makes the students enthusiastic in the learning process. the teacher is a facilitator that will help the students when they need help. altemueller and lindquist (2017) state that in teaching using schoology, teachers or mentors facilitate, rather than direct. the students explore a system, ask questions, look at problems within that system, determine solutions, and plan the writing. the students’ interest determines the students’ writing topic. therefore, they write what they want to write. the teacher does not determine what the students have to write. it is based on the principles of using schoology in the teaching and learning process stated by joshua, swastika, and estiyanti (2016) that an effective way to use schoology as a media in the teaching and learning process is differentiated according to students’ interests. meanwhile, picture series support the teachers in the teaching and learning process, but these media have several weaknesses, such as cannot depict motion as the film does. if it is not unique, it can seem uninteresting to students, and depicting a specific purpose might be challenging to locate. the students cannot describe the picture because the picture series sometimes looks unclear and lacks http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 122-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license representation. therefore, the students will get difficulties in writing a text. the student cannot develop their ideas when they are writing an english text. rofi’ah and ma’rifah (2018) states that pictures only focus on eye perception, and pictures that are too complex will not be effective in learning activities. in the writing activity using picture series, the students often find difficulties interpreting the meaning of the story exposed in the pictures. the complexity of the pictures affects the students’ perception. based on the above elaboration, the difference between schoology and picture series can be seen on the media used. schoology media focuses on the internet in providing the materials. the teacher and the students can access the facility of schoology and explore the materials freely in dealing with the topic being taught. the students quickly improve their ideas in writing an english text. picture series focuses on the visual picture in providing the materials. sometimes, picture series cannot represent the object well, so the students can develop their ideas in writing an english text. based on the statements above, the researcher concludes that teaching writing using schoology is more effective than teaching writing using picture series. schoology gives new experiences to the students. for example, the students can access schoology wherever they want. the students can interact with each other in the group so they can share their ideas. the teacher can comment on the students’ tasks, and the teacher can easily upload the material in the group. on the other hand, picture series make the students get bored quickly. the picture series cannot give students the flexibility to compose based on their interests. picture series cannot depict motion as film, and if the pictures used are not unique, and students seem uninterested in writing. students’ interest influences their achievement, especially in writing skill. students' writing skill having high learning interest is better than the one of those having low learning interest. those who have high learning interests tend to be more active in the teaching and learning process. they have enough bravery to consult their learning problem with their teacher. they are also brave to answer a teacher’s question whenever they are asked to or not. they have firm intention in learning that makes them understand the lesson more easily. they are also eager to look for other relevant learning sources to improve their understanding of the class's lesson. furthermore, students who have http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 123-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license high interest tend to have some characteristics, such as cooperation, self-confidence, responsibility, leadership, and positive thinking. spitzer and aronson (2015) state that students, who feel interested in whatever they learn, show higher academic achievement and can remember the materials in the long term. furthermore, al-mahrooqi, abrar-ul-hassan, & cofie (2016) mention that interested participants are also likely to be motivated learners; they are more likely to seek out challenges and difficulties, use effective learning strategies, and use feedback. it stands to reason that the level of interest influences how the students will achieve their learning results. the high level of interest automatically leads to a high degree of attention and will raise the probability of successful learning. the higher level of interest made the higher probability the of students’ success in learning. meanwhile, pratama and setyaningrum (2018) mention four aspects of interest: consciousness, willingness, attention, and pleasure. the high level of those aspects in the writing activities will bring a good result of writing skill. in the language classroom activities, students who have high interest show a better result in learning. they are also seen to be more active during learning activities. moreover, they show a better awareness of writing activities. they push themselves mentally and physically to follow and get their writing assignments done. they, somehow, take careful action in creating and writing a story. they show a good habit of memorizing the information they have had before on the written form. the high-interested students give more attention to concentrate on the activities in writing. they do the task seriously and give their best efforts to finish it. in conclusion, the students who have high interest increase their writing skills significantly. students with low learning interest are usually reluctant to participate in the teaching and learning process actively. they might lazily involve in the class discussion. they do not have enough intention to learn. that is why they cannot reach their achievement optimally. finally, students with low learning interest have some characteristics: individualistic, unconfident, irresponsible, lack of leadership, and subjective thinking. hwang and chang (2016) states that participants with little interest have less capacity to attend, find meaning, and identify their questions. they have less willingness and awareness about the upcoming knowledge and task. their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 124-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license motivation to follow the writing activities is not stable. in the writing activities, the students who have low interest do their writing tasks as harshly as possible without giving any possibilities to make the story in good order. it is because they do not have the feeling to do so. that is why the writing skill of students who have low interest is below the average. therefore, it can be concluded that the students’ writing skill of those with high learning interest is better than that the one of those having low learning interest. although english subject has been taught from elementary school until university level, teaching writing skills is not easy for the teacher, especially for senior high school students. the teachers have to pay more attention to how the students have to be taught and what kind of media should be applied to write and produce good writing and understand the material quickly. choosing and applying the proper media can trigger the students to have a high interest in producing good writing. in other words, choosing improper media will bring them to have low interest in teaching writing. therefore, applying media in teachinglearning could influence the students’ skills, especially in writing english text. therefore, the teacher should be selective and creative in selecting the media applied in teaching-learning. another factor that influences in teaching writing is interest. interest also plays an essential role in the learning process, especially for its role in achieving teaching and learning. dole et al. (2017) stated that participants begin to ask and seek answers to curious questions as they engage content with interest. thus, interest affects the students’ learning and plays an influencing factor in achieving the students’ writing results. the level of interest can be defined into two levels, namely high and low interest. schoology is suitable for teaching writing skills. here, schoology provides advantages not only for the teacher but also for the students. by using schoology, the teacher can lead the students easy to learn writing with the topic being taught by using the internet facility. the students can develop their ideas, create a more effective learning experience, and allow students to exchange collective and individual feedback and responses by using the facility of schoology. as a result, they can produce good writing, mostly english text. for the students who have high interest, it is assumed that using schoology is better than using picture series in teaching writing because the students who have high interest find no http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 125-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license problem to come up with their fresh, original, and new ideas they produce their writing. furthermore, students who have high interest tend to have some characteristics, such as cooperation, self-confidence, responsibility, leadership, and positive thinking. these characteristics support them in reaching the goals of the teaching and learning process, especially in writing. in picture series, students will pay more attention to the picture more on learning material. furthermore, it will take and cost much time to provide an appropriate picture series for the teacher. small and unclear pictures may arouse problems in the teachinglearning process since they may misunderstand the pictures. the interaction between the teacher and students is usually in the form of oneway communication from the teacher to the students. besides that, interested students cannot be appropriately facilitated. for the students who have low interest, it is assumed that using picture series is better than schoology in teaching writing because the students who have low interest are helped by the teacher for developing their idea in writing text step by step. hulleman and harackiewick (2017) states that participants with little interest have less capacity to attend, find meaning, and identify their questions. in other words, students with low interest tend to have low awareness and attention to attend the learning process, willingness and pleasure to find meaning, and confidence to make questions. during the writing activity, students with low interest are seen to get distracted easily. they cannot focus on the lesson maximally because they have a short span of concentration. they prefer using teaching media that takes short and fast duration. besides, these students tend to wait for the teacher‘s orders and instructions to answer the questions and tasks. students with low learning interest have some characteristics: individualistic, unconfident, irresponsible, lack of leadership, and subjective thinking. these characteristics will make them difficult to reach the teaching and learning process goals, especially in writing. in summary, it can be assumed that there is an interaction between the teaching media used and the students’ interest in teaching writing skills. conclusion and suggestion the researchers draw some research findings based on the result of the hypothesis testing as the conclusion. first, using schoology as teaching http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 7 (2), 2020 126-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v7i2.17577 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license media is more effective than using picture series in teaching writing at tenth-grade students of vocational high school. besides that, the students with high interest have better writing skills than those with low interest at tenthgrade vocational high school students. based on the result, there is an interaction between teaching media and students’ interest in teaching writing. teaching media on the students’ writing skill depends on the students’ interest at tenth-grade students of vocational high school. using schoology as teaching media is effective for students who have high interest, and using picture series as teaching media is effective for students who have low interest. based on the research findings, it can be inferred that schoology is an effective medium to teach writing, and there is an interaction effect between the media of teaching and the level of students’ interest. some suggestions are addressed to the teachers, students, and other researchers. to improve the students’ writing skills at school, english teachers are suggested to use schoology media in writing class. teachers are suggested to be more creative and innovative in using various kinds of interesting teaching media that accompany the materials to be more active and encouraged to learn. they do not get difficulty in writing. it is suggested for the teachers to follow specific seminars, workshops, teacher training, benchmarking programs, english teachers forums, or even browsing on the internet related to the usage of schoology to get a better result in the teaching and learning process. the students are suggested to understand the use of schoology media in the writing process and practice more in writing by applying schoology to be more skillful in writing. other researchers should conduct future investigations in detail about schoology media use for teaching writing. furthermore, the writer 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(2019). experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges. studies in science education, 55(1), 69-119. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.20 19.1658058. doi:10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s1076633218301387 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s1076633218301387 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2018.03.025 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2018.03.025 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 1-16 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee indonesian learners’ self-directed learning and resilience in online english classes: assessing interaction with l2 achievement adaninggar septi subekti received: 14th may 2021; revised: 28th may 2021; accepted: 29th june 2021 abstract the present study was conducted to find the relationship between english for academic purposes (eap) learners’ self-directed learning (sdl) and their achievement as measured with their eap class grades as well as the relationship between these grades and their resilience. this study used a survey as the method of data collection and 157 learners who were enrolled in eap online classes willingly participated in the study. results of pearson’s correlation and regression analysis showed that learners’ sdl was very weakly associated with their grades (r (155) = .01, p > .05), with their sdl being unable to predict their ultimate achievement (r2 = .000). this study further found a very weak negative relationship between learners’ resilience and their grades (r (155) = -.02, p > .05). learners’ resilience was not a predictor for their grades either (r2 = .000). as the present study is an exploratory study of the issue in question in the indonesian context of english as a foreign language (efl), it is suggested that further studies be conducted to establish more conclusive findings on the predictive power of learners’ sdl and resilience towards their english learning achievement. key words: self-directed learning (sdl); resilience; l2 achievement; online learning abstrak studi ini bertujuan menginvestigasi hubungan antara self-directed learning (sdl) pembelajar kelas bahasa inggris untuk tujuan akademik (eap) dan pencapaian belajar di kelas bahasa inggris serta hubungan antara pencapaian belajar tersebut dengan ketahanan (resilience) mereka. studi ini menggunakan metode survei dan sebanyak 157 pembelajar di kelas eap bermoda daring berpartisipasi dalam studi ini. studi ini menemukan bahwa sdl pembelajar berkorelasi sangat lemah dengan pencapaian belajar (r (155) = .01, p > .05) dan bahwa sdl tidak mampu memprediksi pencapaian belajar (r2 = .000). studi ini juga menemukan bahwa ketahanan pembelajar berkorelasi sangat lemah dengan pencapaian belajar (r (155) = -.02, p > .05) dan tidak mampu memprediksi pencapaian belajar (r2 = .000). karena studi ini termasuk studi awal dalam kajian sdl dan ketahanan pembelajar dalam kaitannya dengan pencapaian belajar pada konteks pembelajaran bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing di indonesia, terkait dengan hasil studi ini, disarankan dilakukan studi-studi lain dalam konteks indonesia. studi-studi ini dapat dilakukan untuk mendapatkan kesimpulan yang lebih solid terkait besar kecilnya kemampuan sdl dan ketahanan pembelajar dalam memprediksi pencapaian belajar mereka dalam bahasa inggris. kata kunci: self-directed learning (sdl); ketahanan; pencapaian belajar bahasa inggris; pembelajaran daring how to cite: subekti, a. s. (2021). indonesian learners’ self-directed learning and resilience in online english classes: assessing interaction with l2 achievement. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 1-16. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 2-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the covid-19 pandemic has changed the way millions of students worldwide learn, from studying on-site to online (subekti, 2020). due to the online mode of instruction, learners were compelled to assume more responsibility for learning in the online instructional process as the effectiveness of online learning largely depends on learners’ active learning (fu, 2013). for this reason, learners' self-directed learning (sdl) during online instruction could be paramount. sdl refers to learners’ ability to make decisions, with or without teachers’ prompts, and to self-direct themselves related to their learning (basereh & pishkar, 2016; sze-yeng & hussain, 2010). ayyildiz and tarhan (2015) asserted that learners with a high level of sdl can determine their goals of learning, strategies to achieve them as well as monitor and assess their achievements. several research studies on sdl in online learning have been conducted in various educational contexts (e.g.: basereh & pishkar, 2016; ko, 2018; park, sung, & joo, 2018; rashid & asghar, 2016; subekti, 2021; sumuer, 2018; uz & uzun, 2018) and these studies imply many researchers’ acknowledgement towards the importance of sdl in learning. an experimental study by uz and uzun (2018), for instance, found that learners' sdl in the class with blended learning was significantly higher than those in the face-to-face class, suggesting that online mode of instruction was associated with a higher sdl. in a similar vein, a qualitative study in the indonesian university context by zainuddin, habiburrahim, muluk, and keumala (2019) also found that learners’ sdl was affected by interesting instructional contents. another study by sumuer (2018) in turkey found that welldesigned online learning was a supporting factor for the development of learners’ sdl where learners could take initiatives for their learning success. furthermore, in the online learning setting, sdl is considered playing a very important role in affecting learning success (zhu, bonk, & doo, 2020). in an online setting where spatial and temporal freedom possibly make learners feel disconnected and disengaged from learning (plaisance, 2018), learners should self-direct themselves in the learning process including studying independently and asking questions to solve learning difficulties (zhu et al., 2020). several studies have been conducted in the asian context to specifically investigate the extent to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 3-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license which learners’ sdl could predict their achievement in english (e.g.: cho & ma, 2015; hadi, kalantari, & ghaslani, 2014; kim, 2014; li & park, 2019; xuan razali, & samad, 2018). a study in iran by hadi et al. (2014), for example, found that there was no significant association between learners’ sdl and their achievement in english. in a similar vein, a study in the malaysian context by xuan et al. (2018) also found that there was no significant difference in sdl among learners from different academic achievements. in contrast, a study by kim (2014), involving korean high school learners, found a statistically significant association between learners’ sdl and english performance. in line with kim (2014), in a study involving 146 korean university learners, cho and ma (2015) also found a positive relationship between their sdl and english proficiency. a more recent study in korea by li and park (2019) also reported that learners' sdl could account for 10% of the variance in their english proficiency. in addition, in the iranian university context, it was found through an experimental study that upper intermediate l2 learners’ sdl affected their speaking accuracy (majedi & pishkar, 2016). regarding all these findings, though there seem to be more studies suggesting the positive effect of learners’ sdl towards their l2 achievement, the findings in this particular area of sdl have thus far been inconsistent, implying conducting further studies in the field are worthwhile. furthermore, the online mode of instruction during the covid-19 pandemic has been characterised by many challenges (lancker & parolin, 2020; onyema et al., 2020; rapanta, botturi, goodyear, & guardea, 2020) and this could also test learners’ level of resilience. kim and kim (2016) defined learners’ resilience as “the sum of an individual’s abilities that allow him or her to bounce back from adversity and even thrive in the face of difficult times” (p. 2). further,, simons, beaumont, and holland (2018) explained that there are two core ideas in defining resilience: adversity and positive adaptations. hence, resilient learners are those who can positively adapt when they are facing adversities (simons et al., 2018), difficulties of learning online amidst the covid-19 pandemic being one of them. as reported by several recent studies in indonesia (e.g.: eko, atmojo & nugroho, 2020; gunawan, suranti, & fathoroni, 2020), indonesian learners still experienced some challenges in participating in online learning such as a lack of necessary resources like supporting gadgets and internet http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 4-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license connection, and unfamiliarity with the online mode. in relation with these challenges, learners’ resilience, their capability to bounce back in the face of adversity (kim & kim, 2016), possibly plays a critical role in influencing learning success. though not as popular as sdl, resilience has also been investigated by various l2 research studies, mostly in the asian context (e.g.: danesh & shahnaazari, 2020; kim, kim, & kim, 2018; kim & kim, 2020, 2016; malekan & hajimohammadi, 2017; nguyen, stanley, stanley, & wang, 2015; subekti, 2021). in korea, kim and kim (2016), involving 1620 secondary school learners, found that learners’ resilience, seen from their persistence, could strongly predict their english as l2 proficiency and motivated learning behaviours. kim et al. (2018) in the same korean context also found that their elementary school learner participants reported a quite high optimism level and their resilience positively affected their l2 motivation. in the iranian context, kamali and fahim (2011) reported that their participants’ resilience significantly affected these participants’ ability in comprehending texts containing unfamiliar vocabulary. in a similar vein, another study in iran by malekan and hajimohammadi (2017) also found that learners’ resilience could predict these learners’ translation ability. furthermore, several other studies in iran also found that learners’ resilience significantly predicted their l2 achievement (e.g.: abolmaali & mahmudi, 2013; khajavy, makiabadi, & navokhi, 2019; najafzadeh, jahedizadeh, & ghanizadeh, 2019). a study involving 384 iranian female high school learners by abolmaali and mahmudi (2013) found that these learners’ resilience significantly predicted their academic achievement. in a similar vein, najafzadeh et al. (2019) also found a statistically significant, though weak, correlation between their 173 university learner participants’ resilience and their achievement in english. another recent study in iran also found that learners’ psychological capital, their resilience being one of them, was a positive significant predictor of their achievement (khajavy et al., 2019). the relatively same findings of these aforementioned studies could suggest that learners’ resilience could be a predictor of various l2 achievements. this may be attributed to problemsolving skills resilient learners possess that allow them to have strategies to cope with learning challenges (danesh & shahnaazari, 2020; hagger & hamilton, 2018). moreover, as far as online learning is concerned, both learners’ sdl and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 5-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license resilience are influenced by online learning design. for example, in indonesia, zainuddin et al. (2019) found in their qualitative study that welldesigned online learning increased university learners’ sdl. sumuer (2018) specifically mentioned that online learning providing the right amount of challenge, allowing collaborations, and a certain degree of flexibility could potentially nurture the growth of learners' sdl and resilience. overwhelming tasks should be avoided in such a setting as this could be anxiety-provoking rather than stimulating learners to develop resilience and autonomy (rapanta et al., 2020). in the indonesian context, l2 learners’ sdl and resilience could play a critical role in affecting their success in online l2 learning setting especially amidst the covid-19 pandemic with all the possible challenges related to possible lack of resources and infrastructure, as well as learners’ unfamiliarity with online learning. a study which paralleled this present study investigated the relationship between learners' sdl and resilience (subekti, 2021) and it found that learners' resilience could moderately predict their sdl in an online learning setting, suggesting that the two constructs are indeed related to each other. nevertheless, specific quantitative studies investigating the possible effect of learners’ sdl and resilience towards their achievements in english as l2 class in the indonesian context are still very rare, if not non-existent. besides, in contrast to the general trend on the predictive ability of resilience towards l2 achievement in many previous studies (e.g.: khajavy et al., 2019; kim & kim, 2016; malekan & hajimohammadi, 2017; najafzadeh et al., 2019), a study by karabiyik (2020) in turkey found that learners’ perseverance, one characteristic of resilience, could not predict their academic achievement as measured with their gpa, probably suggesting that further studies investigating the relationship between resilience and l2 achievement are needed to obtain a more established inference. in addition, the findings on the relationships between learners' sdl and l2 achievement, as previously mentioned, have so far been inconsistent. for these reasons, it could be worthwhile to conduct a quantitative study investigating indonesian learners' sdl and resilience in relation to their l2 achievement. with these mentioned rationales, the present study seeks to answer the following research questions: first, is there any effect of learners’ sdl towards their l2 achievement?. second, is there any http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 6-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license effect of learners’ resilience towards their l2 achievement?. method research design the present study used a survey as the method of data collection. this study was conducted in parallel with a previous study using the same set of questionnaires (subekti, 2021). subekti (2021) investigated the relationship between learners’ sdl and their resilience. the present study, along with the study by subekti (2021), adapted fifteen questionnaire items indicating sdl applicable to the l2 learning context from ayyildiz's and tarhan's (2015) self-directed learning skills scale (sdlss), which in total consists of 40 questionnaire items. furthermore, the present study adapted twelve questionnaire items, designed by wagnild and young (1993) and termed resilience scale (rs). the original questionnaire consists of 25 items originally developed in the field of nursing. therefore, only twelve items applicable to the l2 learning context were used with necessary adjustments and modifications. there were five possible responses: "strongly agree" (5 points), "agree" (4 points), "neither agree nor disagree (3 points), "disagree" (2 points) and "strongly disagree" (1 point). there were two negative items in the sdl questionnaire in which "strongly disagree" indicated high sdl. these items were reverse-scored. the cronbach's alpha coefficient of the sdl questionnaire was at .78 indicating that the sdl questionnaire had quite high internal reliability. furthermore, the cronbach's alpha coefficient of the resilience questionnaire was at .86, indicating the questionnaire had a very high internal reliability. the fifteen items on sdl adapted from ayyildiz and tarhan (2015) and the twelve items on resilience adapted from wagnild and young (1993) were translated into the indonesian language and incorporated into one set of questionnaires which also included demographic information questions and whether the participants gave consent for their grades of eap class to be used for the research purpose. the indonesian version of questionnaires were piloted by three indonesian nonenglish department students. two indonesian english teachers also reviewed the questionnaire. this was to ensure that the questionnaire was accurate and simple to complete (gray, 2014). minor revisions were made per their feedback. participants and ethical considerations the participants of the present study were 157 university learners http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 7-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license studying at a private university in java, indonesia. convenient sampling was employed in which the recruitment of participants was mostly based on the easiest access (dornyei, 2007; gray, 2014). the population was some 450 learners taking eap classes. of these 157 participants, 72 (45.9%) were males and 85 (54.1%) were females. the mean of the participants’ age was 20.34, with the minimum being 18 and the maximum being 25 (sd=1.35). these participants were taking eap online classes in their respective departments in the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. the participants’ departments could be observed in table 1. table 1. the participants’ departments no department s number of participan ts percentag e 1 management 52 33.1% 2 biology 38 24.2% 3 architecture 23 14.6% 4 product design 23 14.6% 5 accounting 11 7% 6. informatics 10 6.4% as at the time of data collection these participants were studying online due to the covid-19 pandemic, they resided in various islands or places in indonesia. table 2 presented the participants’ islands of residence at the time of the data collection. table 2. the participants’ islands of residence no islands number of participant s percentag e 1 java 108 68.8% 2 kalimantan 14 8.9% 3 sulawesi 12 7.6% 4 sumatera 8 5.1% 5 papua 5 3.2% 6. nusa tenggara 5 3.2% 7 bali 2 1.3% 8 other islands/plac es 3 1.9% the 157 participants of the present study were also the majority of the 187 participants of the present study’s paralleled study (subekti, 2021). 30 participants of the study by subekti (2021) were excluded from the present study because they did not allow their grades in the eap classes to be used, and as such their decision was respected. this was the implementation of a research ethics principle, voluntary participation (israel & hay, 2006). the questionnaire distribution was conducted with the help of the eap class teachers within the period of october up to november 2020 after permission to conduct research was obtained from the respective heads of departments as the gatekeepers of the target participants (ramrathan, grange, & shawa, 2016). the class teachers had the liberty as to when to distribute the questionnaires within this period considering the respective classes’ http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 8-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license agenda. it was to minimise disruption, and thus avoiding possible harm (israel & hay, 2006). learners' grades were obtained through the help of the class teachers per whether learners gave consent for their grades to be used for this study’s purpose. the grades were the participants’ final grades obtained in their respective eap classes in the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. only learners who gave this consent were involved in the present study, thus the exclusion of 30 learner participants of the study by subekti (2021) from the present study as previously mentioned. data analysis the questionnaire was distributed in the form of google form, the responses of which were then recorded in spss 25. from the total 187 participants filling out the questionnaires, 30 participants did not give their consent for their grades to be used for research purposes. hence, their data were only used for the study by subekti (2021) and were excluded from the present study, involving learners' grades as the parameter of l2 achievement. the data from the other 157 participants were then further analysed using pearson’s correlation and regression formulas to find the association between learners' sdl and l2 achievement as well as their resilience and l2 achievement. the sequence of data analysis could be observed in figure 1. figure 1. the sequence of data analysis http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 9-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion findings the learner participants’ mean of grades was 79.30 with the minimum being 3.67 and the maximum being 97.38 (sd=17.14). the composite mean score of the fifteen sdl items was 59.37 (sd=6.19) indicating the mean score of approximately 3.96 in each item, suggesting a high level of sdl. furthermore, the composite mean score of the twelve items on resilience was 48.55 (sd=6.14) indicating the mean score of approximately 4.05 in each item. this suggested that the learner participants had a high level of resilience in general. the predictive power of learners’ sdl towards their l2 achievement through a pearson’s correlation analysis, the present study found a very weak positive correlation between learners’ sdl and their l2 achievement as seen in their grades, with the correlation being statistically nonsignificant, r (155) = .01, p > .05. the complete result could be observed in table 3. to see the extent to which learners' sdl could predict their grades, a regression formula was executed. the detailed result could be seen in table 4. table 3. correlation between learners’ sdl and their l2 achievement learners’ l2 achievement learners’ sdl pearson correlation .011 sig. (2-tailed) .891 n 157 table 4. regression results with learners' sdl as the independent variable model r r square adjusted r square 1 .011a .000 -.006 a. predictors: (constant), learners’ sdl as seen in table 4, the study found that the value of r2 was .000. it indicated that learners’ sdl could not predict their grades. there were other variables, making up almost 100%, not involved in this formula affecting their grades. the predictive power of learners’ resilience towards their l2 achievement as seen in table 5, the present study found a negative weak relationship between learners’ resilience and their grades in english class. this indicated that the higher learners’ resilience, the lower their achievement in english. however, the relationship was not significant, r (155) = -.02, p > .05. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 10-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 5. correlation between learners’ resilience and their l2 achievement learners’ l2 achievement learners’ resilience pearson correlation -.021 sig. (2-tailed) .793 n 157 furthermore, through a regression formula, the present study found that learners’ resilience could not predict their grades in english class (r2 = .000). the regression result could be observed in table 6. table 6. regression results with learners’ resilience as the independent variable model r r square adjusted r square 1 .021a .000 -.006 a. predictors: (constant), learners’ resilience discussion the predictive power of learners’ sdl towards their l2 achievement the present study found the learner participants’ sdl was weakly correlated with their l2 achievement and that their sdl could not predict their achievement. this finding was quite surprising considering that learners’ sdl is often seen as a critical factor affecting the success of learning especially in the online setting (zainuddin et al., 2019; zhu et al., 2020). this finding was also in contrast with several findings of previous studies in the iranian and korean contexts indicating sdl as a predictive factor of l2 achievement (e.g.: cho & ma, 2015; kim, 2014; li & park, 2019; majedi & pishkar, 2016). regarding the contrasting findings, several possible factors could be in play. three out of the four previous studies were conducted in korea (cho & ma, 2015; kim, 2014; li & park, 2019). this could suggest that it has been established that korean learners’ reported sdl level could predict their l2 achievement. that was to state that the korean participants probably did what they reported in their sdl questionnaires. in comparison, the present study's indonesian participants might not have done what they reported they had been doing. as for the present study's different findings from that of majedi and pishkar (2016), this difference could be attributed to the different methods between the two studies. whilst the present study used a survey and used the participants' grades in their english classes, the study by majedi and pishkar (2016) was an experimental study with a speaking accuracy test as the measurement of l2 achievement where intensive self-directed learning method was purposely implemented. despite the present study’s different finding from the previously mentioned findings of several studies, this present study's finding was in line with the findings of other previous studies suggesting no significant http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 11-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license relationship between learners sdl and their achievement (e.g.: hadi et al., 2014 in iran; xuan et al., 2018 in malaysia). the same as the present study’s participants, the participants participating in the study by xuan et al. (2018) were also non-english department students. in this case, the rather similar characteristics between the participants of both studies could be at play affecting this same finding. furthermore, regarding the same finding of the present study with that of hadi et al. (2014) in iran, the fact that both indonesia and iran considered english as a foreign language (efl) whose usage was confined in classroom uses could also influence the degree of learners’ sdl in learning english in both studies. this efl setting could play a part in affecting learners’ sdl in addition to the quality of online learning instruction (sumuer, 2018; zainuddin et al., 2019; zhu et al., 2020). the predictive power of learners’ resilience towards their l2 achievement the present study found that learners’ resilience could not predict their l2 achievement. this finding was the same as the finding of a recent study by karabiyik (2020) in turkey reporting that learners’ resilience could not predict their gpa. regarding this, other factors which were possibly more dominant such as aptitude could be at play in both studies. this present study’s finding, however, was in contrast with the general trend in resilience literature in which many previous studies have found that learners’ resilience was a significant predictor of various l2 achievement in various learning contexts (e.g.: abolmaali & mahmudi, 2013; kamali & fahim, 2011; khajavy et al., 2019; kim & kim, 2016; malekan & hajimohammadi, 2017; najafzadeh et al., 2019). considering the plethora of research suggesting the positive predictive power of resilience towards achievement, the present study’s finding was very surprising and at least two factors could be accounted for this particular finding. the first factor was that the resilience construct measured in the questionnaire was more on positive self-talk and this might not be directly related to their grades in english classes. classroom-specific resilience attitudes might be more directly related to learners’ grades rather than resilience in a more general sense. however, to point out this particular factor as the determinant was not quite convincing either. that was because thus far, many resilience studies in l2 learning contexts also employed questionnaires on general resilience attitudes. hence, it could be stated that the present study’s http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 12-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license finding was quite unprecedented, suggesting further studies in the indonesian context are needed for more conclusive findings. the second factor that was possibly at play was the measurement of l2 achievement in the present study which might not be standardised. as the participants were from different eap classes, each class very possibly had different tasks to complete, and so different scoring components and rubrics. hence, though the scoring range was the same (from 0 to 100), the level of difficulty to achieve it may have been heterogeneous. in addition, as each class was taught by different teachers, each teacher might have had their grading standard, which could further affect the l2 achievement component in the present study. conclusion and suggestions the present study investigated english as l2 learners' sdl and resilience and their predictive power towards their l2 achievement in the indonesian context which was quite under-researched regarding this particular field. however, this study surprisingly found that neither learners' sdl nor their resilience could predict their achievement in english despite the plethora of research in many other learning contexts suggesting the power of these two constructs in influencing learners' l2 achievement. the present study’s finding could be perplexing for both english teachers and researchers in the field. however, rather than drawing a too early conclusion on the sdl-achievement and resilienceachievement relationships, further studies in the same indonesian context are necessary for a more solid conclusion. regarding the present study's surprising findings, future researchers investigating the indonesian context could employ instruments measuring more classroom-specific sdl and resilience attitudes rather than the general ones to optimise the possibility of participants reporting what they do or have been doing rather than what they should do. a more uniformed criterion of l2 achievement may also be employed, for instance, grades measuring learners’ achievement in the same language tasks. acknowledgement i would like to express my gratitude towards the heads of departments who granted permission to conduct this study in their eap classes. my gratitude also goes to all eap teachers who helped distribute the questionnaires and all participants without whom this study could not have been completed. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 13-16 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20681 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references abolmaali, k., & mahmudi, r. 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(2020). self-directed learning in moocs: exploring the relationships among motivation, self-monitoring, and self-management. educational technology research and development. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423020-09747-8. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 156-167 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee improving students’ writing skills of recount text by applying transition-action-details (tad) strategy muh. arief muhsin received: 14th october 2017; revised: 21th november 2017; accepted: 28th december 2017 abstract this research aimed to explain how the use of the transition-action-details (tad, hereafter) strategy improved students’ skills in writing recount text dealing with the content of writing. it also aimed to explain how the tad strategy improved students’ skills in writing recount text dealing with the organization of writing. employing car as the reseaech design, the research findings indicate that tad strategy improves students’ writing skills of recount text. it was proven by the writing recount text of the students’ mean score in cycle 2 test result (78.95). this improved from the cycle 1 mean score (68.95). it improved significantly from diagnostic test (d – test) mean score (61.04). the writing recount text of the students’ achievement in cycle 2 indicated that it had met the score target (70.00), and considered to be successful criteria in improving the writing recount text through tad strategy. based on the findings above, the author concluded that using tad strategy could improve the writing recount text of the students. key words: writing; recount text; transition-action-details abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan bagaimana penggunaan strategi transisi-aksi-detail (tad, selanjutnya) strategi meningkatkan keterampilan siswa dalam menulis recount text yang berhubungan dengan isi tulisan. ini juga bertujuan untuk menjelaskan bagaimana strategi tad meningkatkan keterampilan siswa dalam menulis recount text yang berhubungan dengan organisasi penulisan. temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tad strategy meningkatkan keterampilan menulis siswa dari recount text. hal ini terbukti dengan penulisan recount text dari nilai rata-rata siswa dalam hasil tes siklus 2 (78,95). ini meningkat dari skor rata-rata siklus 1 (68,95). ini meningkat secara signifikan dari tes diagnostik (d-test) skor rata-rata (61,04). tulisan recount text tentang pencapaian siswa dalam siklus 2 menunjukkan bahwa mereka telah memenuhi target skor (70,00), dan dianggap sebagai kriteria yang berhasil dalam meningkatkan penulisan recount text melalui tad strategy. berdasarkan temuan di atas, penulis menyimpulkan bahwa menggunakan tad strategy dapat meningkatkan penulisan recount text dari para siswa. kata kunci: writing; recount text; transition-action-details how to cite: muhsin, m. a. (2017). improving students’ writing skills of recount text by applying transitionaction-details (tad) strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 156-167. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 157-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in writing, we need a good idea in order to produce a composition or written material (syamsuri, muhsin & nurmayani, 2016). if students do not have ideas, they will get bored and disinterested in writing. for writing subject, students must have ideas about what they will write and how far they know about the topic (patel & jain, 2008); sometimes they have to choose one theme and then decide on one topic, finding the appropriate word to express an idea (anderson & anderson, 1997). as any writing teacher has experienced, students are frequently worried about the prospect of writing in english (gerlach, 1994). they worry about paragraph writing almost as much as about longer research papers in english (patel, 2008). they worry about expressing their ideas clearly within the boundaries of correct usage, grammar, spelling, and punctuation (byrne, 1986). often in the initial years of their language learning, there is little focus on the creative aspects of writing because exams generally focus more on grammar, spelling, or punctuation. because of this, students develop a fear of writing and think that everything they write is riddled with errors (derewianka, 2004). these fears hinder them and frequently make their writing process slow and also unsuccessful (paltridge, 2004). considering the above mentioned, the present study aimed at finding a good solution and making the students interested in writing english (helnich & farhady, 1982; morley, 2007), and changes the opinion that says: the students consider writing as the hardest skill to acquire (yakkop, 2006). there are ways to solve these problems, starting from providing various learning resources to be read in every semester (mayers, 2002), applying various learning methods, and offering various kinds of learning aids (allen, 1972). as a response to the aim above, an observation of english teaching was conducted by using tad strategy. the reason for this application is based on the assumption that by using this strategy, recount textthe students’ writing skills of recount text can be facilitated effectively (oshima & hogue, 1997). tad strategy shows a lot of words or ideas among the events on the story and keeps them loosely connected where the writer can draw picture to be displayed (marpaung, 2012). the sequence of event is then described in some sort of order, for instance a time order. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 158-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license regarding to the descriptions above, the author is interested in implementing tad strategy in improving students skills’ in writing recount text. the author is interested in implementing this strategy due to the students’ relatively low skills in english, especially in writing recount text. tad strategy is one of the strategies in teaching writing recount text process. below is its definition:  transition a well-organized essay is the basic for coherence. hence, there is a way that aids to coherence among the paragraph in order to the paragraph have logic easy to read and to understand. christie and maton in tarigan, (2011) stated that transition is chain-link as a connector among paragraphs. it has the function as a connector nearby two idea paragraph. it means that it works as a support paragraph in order to achieve coherence. furthermore, this is similar to reid (2005) who stated that transition in english sometimes called connector which has different grammatical uses. then, this is different from peha (2003) that pointed out that transition is a short phrase like “then” or “after a while” or “in the beginning” that helps introduce each new action in these sequences. it is not necessary to have a transition for each action. however, transition can help writing flow more smoothly from section to section. based on the statements above, it can be inferred that transition works as a signal relationship among the sentences of the paragraph. it has the function as support coherence among the sentence and leads the sentence which will be discussed. thus, the transition in the sentences connects a topic to one another on the paragraph.  action according to peha (2003), action is actual events (the thing that happened) listed in the order in which they occurred. thus, in this scene the writer needs the event to describe the action in order to know what going on. in conclusion, action is the process event which is being done by people based on their sequence of events to get the purpose. this is the character’s people do and say that happen to them (lin, 2006). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 159-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license  details peha (2003) defined detail as additional information about each action. for each action, the audience will probably have transition action detail strategy two or three important questions needed to answer. these answers are details. in conclusion, detail is the way to support information an action in one paragraph or more in order to be completed (muhsin, m. a., 2016). detail is extremely important part of writing. because without details it is hard for readers to know exactly what a writer is trying to say. it means that this tad strategy can be used for the students to write recount text by concerning the three basic structures such as transition, action, and detail. furthermore, this strategy can also engage students’ imagination or experience to write recount text easier. tad writing strategy pioneered by peha (2003) is a writing strategy that uses tad chart consisting of columns and rows showing a sequence of events. there are three columns that must be filled by participants, such as transitions columns, action columns, and details columns. each column can be filled by several rows. after filling each row and column with sentences, students can move the sentences consisting of transitional signals, sequence of events, and some details actions into a new recount paragraph. methods research design this research followed the principal working of classroom action research (car, hereafter) that contained of four stages; they were planning, implementation of action, observation, and reflection (donahue, 2003; kusumah & dwitagama, 2011). this research was held in two cycles. they were first and second cycle, and each cycle was the series of activity which had a close relation. the realization of the second cycle was continuing and re-correcting from the first cycle. each cycle was conducted in four meetings. research subject the study was conducted at madrasah aliyah negeri (man) pangkep regency for english subject. the subjects of this research were students of class x.i in 2013-2014 academic years. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 160-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research instrument the research employed two instruments for collecting data: 1. test the test was used to measure the students’ writing skills through transition-action-details strategy. it was done to know the improvement of writing skills of students. the test was given at the end of cycle one. then, at the end of cycle two, a test was given again as the last evaluation test. from that last test, the author knew the improvement of students’ writing skill. 2. observation sheet it was aimed to collect data about the students’ participations in teaching learning process through transitionaction-details strategy. research procedures in this study, the author used the car principle to collect the data. the research was divided into two cycles with each cycle consisted of four phases. the cycle was described through the scheme of action research phases as follows figure 1. figure 1. the cycle of classroom action research technique of data analysis the data in the car from the score was analyzed using the following formula: a) to find out the mean score of the students’ writing test through tad strategy, the author used the following formula: note : = mean score = total score n = number of subject (gay, 1981). b) to calculate the percentage of the students’ activity in learning process using formula: p = 100% note: p : percentage f : frequency n : total number of subject (hatch and hassen in ike 2007: 26). c) to know the students’ participation in teaching learning process through ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 161-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tad strategy, the author used percentage formula as follows: p = fq × 100% 4 x n where: p = percentage fq = sum of all the student’s score n = total students (sudjana, 1990). findings and discussion the improvement of the students’ skill in writing recount text through tad strategy based on the result of the students’ assessment is described as follow table 1. table 1 shows the means score of the students’ writing ability in d-test was 61.04. then, in the first cycle showed that the means score of unity was 68.58 the mean score of completeness was 67.70, the mean score of coherence was 68.12, the mean score of spatial order was 67.50, and the total of the mean score in the first cycle was 68.95. meanwhile, in the second cycle, the mean score of unity was 77.91, the mean score of completeness was 77.70, the mean score of coherence was 77.91, the mean score of spatial order was 77.70, and the total of mean score in the second cycle was 78.95. the table 2 shows that, the students’ mean score of diagnostic test before the implementation of tad strategy was 61.04 which was categorized as “fairly good”. after conducting the first cycle and the second cycles, the result showed that the students' scores in the first and second cycles improved. in the first cycle, the mean score of students was 68.95, classified as “fairly good”; meanwhile, the mean score of students in the second cycle was 78.95, classified as “good”. table 1. the mean score of the students’ skill in writing recount text table 2. the classification of the students’ writing skill no. cycle score mean score classification 1 d – test 1465 61.04 fairly good 2 cycle 1 1655 68.95 fairly good 3 cycle 2 1895 78.95 good ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 162-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the data above can also be seen in the following diagram: graphic 1. the classification of the students’ writing skill this diagram shows that there was improvement in each cycle after the implementation of tad strategy. it was shown that the mean score in d-test was 61.04, the mean score in the first cycle was 68.95, and the mean score in the second cycle was 78.95. 1. application of tad strategy in variable of content (unity) table 3. the mean score of the students’ score in indicator “unity” mean score of indicator “unity” non-tad strategy the application of tad strategy d-test cycle i cycle ii 60.20 68.54 77.91 the table 3 shows that the mean score of the students’ writing ability in variable of content (unity) in diagnostic test before using tad strategy was 60.20. after applying treatment in the first cycle, the mean score was 68.54, meanwhile in the second cycle, the mean score was 77.91. table 4 rate percentage of the students’ score in indicator “unity” classificat ion ran ge d-test application of transition-actiondetails strategy f % cycle i cycle 2 f % f % excellent 90 – 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 very good 80 – 89 0 0 1 4% 1 5 62 % good 70 – 79 4 17 % 1 4 58 % 9 38 % fair good 60 – 69 1 5 63 % 9 38 % 0 0 fair 50 – 59 5 20 % 0 0 0 0 total 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % the table 4. shows that, the rate percentage of the students’ writing ability in diagnostic test before applying tad strategy was 5 students (21%) were classified as fair, 15 students (62%) were classified as fairly good, 4 students (17%) were classified as good from 24 respondents. after applying treatment, especially in variable of content (unity), the last evaluation showed that the first cycle were 9 students (38%) were classified as fairly good, 14 students (58%) were classified as good and 1 students (4%) were classified very good from 24 respondents, meanwhile the second ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 163-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license cycle were 9 students (38%) were classified as good and 15 students (62%) were classified as very good from 24 respondents. 2. application of tad strategy in variable of content (completeness) table 5. the mean score of the students’ score in indicator “completeness” mean score of indicator “completeness” non-tad strategy the application of tad strategy d-test cycle i cycle ii 59.37 67.70 77.70 table 6. rate percentage of the students’ score in indicator “completeness” classificat ion ran ge d-test application of transition-actiondetails strategy f % cycle i cycle 2 f % f % excellent 90 – 100 0 0 0 0 1 4% very good 80 – 89 0 0 1 4% 1 4 58 % good 70 – 79 4 17 % 1 2 50 % 9 38 % fair good 60 – 69 1 1 46 % 1 1 46 % 0 0 fair 50 – 59 9 37 % 0 0 0 0 total 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % the table 5 shows that the mean score of the students’ writing ability in variable of content (completeness) in diagnostic test before applying tad strategy was 59.37. after applying treatment in the first cycle, the mean score was 67.70, meanwhile in the second cycle, the mean score was 77.70. the table above shows that, the rate percentage of the students’ writing ability in diagnostic test before using tad strategy was 9 students (37%) were classified as fair, 11 students (63%) were classified as fairly good and 4 students (17%) were classified as good from 24 respondents. after applying treatment especially in variable of content (completeness), the last evaluation shows that in the first cycle, 11 students (46%) were classified as very fairly good, 12 students (50%) were classified as good and 1 students (4%) were classified very good from 24 respondents, meanwhile in the second cycle, 9 students (38%) were classified as good, 14 students (58%) were classified as very good and 1 students (4%) were classified excellent from 24 respondents. 3. application of tad strategy in variable of organization (coherence) table 7. the mean score of the students’ score in indicator “coherence” mean score of indicator “coherence” non-tad strategy the application of tad strategy d-test cycle i cycle ii 60,41 68,12 77,91 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 164-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 8. rate percentage of the students’ score in indicator “coherence” classific ation ran ge d-test application of tad strategy f % cycle i cycle 2 f % f % excellent 90 – 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 very good 80 – 89 0 0 1 4% 1 6 67 % good 70 – 79 3 12 % 1 3 54 % 8 33 % fair good 60 – 69 1 5 63 % 1 0 42 % 0 0 fair 50 – 59 6 25 % 0 0 0 0 total 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % the table 7 shows that the mean score of the students’ writing ability in variable of organization (coherence) in the diagnostic test before applying tad strategy was 60.41. after applying treatment in the first cycle, the mean score was 68.12, meanwhile in the second cycle, the mean score was 77.91. the table 8 shows that, the rate percentage of the students’ writing ability in diagnostic test before applying tad strategy was 6 students (25%) who were classified as fair, 15 students (63%) were classified as fairly good, and 3 students (12%) were classified as good from 24 respondents. after applying treatment especially in variable of organization (coherence), the last evaluation shows that in the first cycle, 10 students (42%) were classified as fairly good, 13 students (54%) were classified as good and 1 students (4%) were classified as very good from 24 respondents, meanwhile in the second cycle, 8 students (33%) were classified as very good and 16 students (67%) were classified as very good from 24 respondents. 4. application of tad strategy in variable of organization (spatial order ) table 9. the mean score of the students’ score in indicator “spatial order” mean score of indicator “spatial order” non-tad strategy the application of tad strategy d-test cycle i cycle ii 60.20 67.05 77.70 table 10. rate percentage of the students score in indicator “spatial order” classifica tion ran ge d-test application of tad strategy f % cycle i cycle 2 f % f % excellent 90 – 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 very good 80 – 89 0 0 1 4% 1 4 58 % good 70 – 79 3 12 % 1 1 46 % 1 0 42 % fair good 60 – 69 1 4 59 % 1 2 50 % 0 0 fair 50 – 59 7 29 % 0 0 0 0 total 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % 2 4 100 % ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 165-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the table 9 shows that the mean score of the students’ writing ability in variable of organization (spatial order) in the diagnostic test before applying tad strategy was 60.20. after applying treatment in the first cycle, the mean score was 67.05, meanwhile in the second cycle, the mean score was 77.70. the table 10. shows that, the rate percentage of the students’ writing ability in diagnostic test before using tad strategy was 7 students (29%) who were classified as fair, 14 students (59%) were classified as fairly good, 3 students (12%) from 24 respondents. after applying treatment especially in variable of organization (spatial order), the last evaluation shows that in the first cycle, 12 students (50%) were classified as fairly good, 11 students (46%) were classified as good and 1 students (4%) were classified very good from 24 respondents, meanwhile in the second cycle, 10 students (42%) were classified as good, 14 students (58%) were classified as very good from 24 respondents. 5. observation result the observation result of the students’ participation in teaching and learning process is shown in the following table 11. table 11. the percentage of the students’ participation cycl e students’ participation avera ge score meeting 1st 2nd 3rd 4th i 40.62 % 47.91 % 53.12 % 60.41 % 50.51 ii 69.79 % 75% 85.41 % 88.54 % 79.68 the table above explained about average of the students’ activeness in teaching and learning process in every meeting. the percentages of cycle i from the first meeting to the fourth meeting were 40.62%, 47.91%, 53.12%, and 60.41%. in cycle ii, the percentage of the students’ activeness from the first meeting to the fourth meeting were 69.79%, 75%, 85.41%, and 88.54%. hence, the average of the students’ activeness in cycle i was 50.51%, and the average of the students’ activeness in cycle ii was 79.68%. the data could be shown in the chart below: graphic 2. the percentage of the students’ participation in learning process ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 166-167 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.2430 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the chart above shows the students’ observation in the teaching and learning writing process by using tad strategy. from the chart, it was known that there was a changing pattern of the students’ situation in teaching and learning process from cycle i to cycle ii, where in cycle i were 40.62%, 47.91%, 53.12%, 60.41%, and the cycle ii were 69.79%, 75%, 85.41%, and 88.54%. hence, the average of the students’ activeness in cycle i was 50.51%, and the average of the students’ activeness in cycle ii was 79.68%. conclusion and suggestion the use of tad strategy could improve the students’ ability in writing recount text viewed from its content. it can be shown from the students’ mean scores of writing viewed from its content from d-test to cycle i until cycle ii. the students’ mean scores of d-test (60.00) ≤ cycle i (70.62) ≤ cycle ii (77.81). the use of tad strategy could improve the students’ ability in writing recount text viewed from its organization. it can be shown from the students’ mean scores of writing viewed from its organization from dtest to cycle i until cycle ii. the students’ mean scores d-test (60.70) ≤ cycle i (67.81) ≤ cycle ii (77.81). the average of the students’ activeness in cycle i was 50.51%. after repairing the weakness and taking action in teaching and learning process through tad strategy, the average of the students’ activeness becomes 79.68% in the last meeting of cycle ii. it means that the use of tad strategy is able to improve the students’ activeness in learning english, especially in teaching recount text. references anderson, m., & anderson, k. 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(2006). cooperative learning in improving writing skill at smu nasional makassar. a thesis (unpublished) of english department of unismuh makassar. http://www.ttms.org/ * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 31-46 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee enhancing elt classroom using moodle e-learning during the pandemic: students’ and teachers’ voices arlischa ardinengtyas*, arifin nur himawan received: 27th march 2021; revised: 24th may 2021; accepted: 26th june 2021 abstract the covid-19 pandemic that started at the end of december 2019 has brought tremendous impacts on education in indonesia and worldwide. responding to this situation, the ministry of education appeals to some educational institutions to conduct online learning during the pandemic. sma muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta is one of the schools which consistently adhered to the regulation by maintaining the learning process through moodle-based e-learning. this phenomenological study is designed to explore students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward the implementation of moodle e learning in elt during the pandemic. the semi-structured interview was conducted to twenty students and three teachers to get the data based on their beliefs, perceptions, experiences, and perspectives toward the phenomenon. results of this study show that the use of moodle e-learning brings benefits to the elt classroom. it builds students’ learning interest and contributes to the enhancement of technological and pedagogical aspects in elt. comprehensive material and learning sources are beneficial to expand students’ autonomous learning and problem-solving skills. further, maximizing moodle e-learning features such as discussion forum and teleconference can bridge the demand of blended learning. thus, moodle e-learning is a recommended platform for conducting online learning especially during the pandemic. key words: blended learning; moodle e-learning; problem solving skill; students’ learning interest; students’ autonomous learning abstrak penyakit pandemik (covid-19) yang terjadi pada akhir desember 2019 membawa dampak yang luar biasa bagi pendidikan indonesia. menaggapi situasi tersebut, kementerian pendidikan menghimbau beberapa institusi pendidikan untuk melakukan pembelajaran online selama pandemik terjadi. sma muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta merupakan salah satu sekolah yang konsisten menaati regulasi dengan tetap menjaga proses pembelajaran melalui moodle e learning based. penelitian ini dirancang di bawah studi fenomenologi untuk mengeksplorasi resepsi siswa dan guru terhadap penerapan moodle e-learning di elt selama penyakit pandemi. wawancara semiterstruktur di lakukan terhadap dua puluh siswa dan tiga guru untuk mendapatkan data yang tidak terbatas berdasarkan keyakinan resepsi, pengalaman, dan perspektif mereka terhadap fenomena tersebut. penggunaan moodle e-learning membawa beberapa manfaat bagi kelas elt. hasil penelitian ini menunjukn bahwa penggunaan moodle e-learning meningkatkan minat belajar siswa. selain itu memberikan konstribusi pada beberapa peningkatan aspek teknologi dan pedagogis di elt. materi yang komprehensif, dan sumber belajar bermanfaat untuk mengembangkan pembelajaran otonom siswa dan ketrampilan memecahkan masalah memaksimalkan fitur moodle e-learning seperti forum diskusi dan telekonferensi dapat menjembatani permintaan blended learning. dengan demikian, moodle e-learning adalah platform yang direkomendasikan untuk melakukan pembelajaran online. kata kunci: blended learning; moodle e-learning; keterampilan pemecahan masalah minat belajar siswa; pembelajaran otonom siswa how to cite: ardinengtyas, a., himawan, a.n. (2021). enhancing elt classroom using moodle elearning during the pandemic: students’ and teachers’ voices. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 31-46. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 32-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the use of technology is very popular for the young generation to attain their life and knowledge desires. r. raja (2018) say that students nowadays prefer to use technology because they can get positive outcomes. online resources carry out students’ pleasure to get information and knowledge. the presence of technology has changed the educational paradigm in a modern style where the students have wide access to learn, an advanced learning technology allows the teacher to conduct distance learning (thomas et al., 2012). the changes in the educational paradigm are generated from the contribution of industrial revolution 4.0. lase (2019) states that industrial revolution 4.0 changes the way of thinking in education. the use of advanced technology, automation, and data exchanges improve classroom activities through the virtual world. in addition, lase (2015) explains that industrial revolution 4.0 combines the virtual world, automation technology, and cyber technology to produce automatic production. therefore, the use of internet is beneficial to expand virtual learning. this type of learning is commonly called as online learning. internet can be defined as a global area network that connects the computer systems through networking system protocol and allows the user to share information (setiyani, 2010). it helps the students get sophisticated knowledge and information access with a low budget (dogruer, eyyam, and menevis, 2011). waryanto (2016) and r. raja (2018) claim that the internet enables students to have stylish access of information through electronic learning (elearning). the development of the internet has reached the future demand for learning. it has a great contribution to the development of e-learning in education. elyas (2018) defines elearning as the use of the internet to facilitate the learning process through information data transmission. the interconnection network system enables the students to get information and knowledge beyond the limits. ucu et al. (2018) explain that the characteristic of e-learning class is to enable students and teachers to use electronic devices that provide autonomous learning. while jethro et al. (2012) say that there are some benefits of e-learning in education, such as improving learning quality, developing students learning engagement, and learning interest. elearning offers a wide range of tools to enable teachers and learners to be innovative and creative. the popularization of e-learning begins to change the current learning trends. blended learning is the most popular learning trends in education. wahid (2019) explains that blended learning refers to the combination of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 33-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license face to face teaching and computer technology. the main purpose is to enhance learning flexibility and provide wide access for autonomous learning. mufdalifah (2017) in her research explains that the use of e-learning and social media platforms is beneficial to create an interactive learning environment. it facilitates the students learning needs in any situation. since the pandemic disease (covid 19) spread to the entire population of the countries, the use of e-learning is very popular for the teacher and educational stakeholders to conduct online learning during the pandemic. in indonesia, it becomes an alternative way to be implemented. the ministry of education works collaboratively with some educational institutions to define an appropriate strategy to conduct online learning during the pandemic. some regulations have been taken including performing online learning for all educational institutions. even, the ministry of education launches a circular no. 36962/mpk.a/hk/2020 which obligates all educational institutions to conduct online learning during covid19. responding to this situation, teachers and educators take to utilize a suitable e-learning platform to maintain the learning process during pandemic disease (covid 19). elearning platform is defined as various stages of the institutional education process where the means of communication and informational technology are significantly utilized (dodun et al., 2015). it is an interactive online service that provides a broad way of information access, tools, and resources to reinforce the learning process through the internet (ghirardini, 2011). currently, the use of an open-source platform obtains high demand from the teachers and educators. there are many open elearning resources available to be implemented, such as google classroom, edmodo, and also schoology. most of them are expedited by stylish and user-friendly features interface with an obvious operation. usman (2016) accentuates that edmodo and other open-source platforms are furnished with stylish features, including grade book, quiz, library, file/link attachment, and many other features that empower teachers to maintain their online learning. apart from its sophisticated features, open-source e-learning platforms such as edmodo and schoology gain some deficiencies. usman (2016) reveals that the opensource platform such as edmodo is mostly designed by its provider for informal institution usage. the default http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 34-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license platform interface cannot be customized in the formal display. in addition, haryanto (2018) explains that the default setting of the schoology restricts the user to access through a non-android smartphone. as an opensource e-learning platform, moodle has some advanced features to cover those problems. benta, bologa, and dzitac (2014) explain that moodle is an open-source e-learning platform designed to provide an integrated learning system to create a personalized and formal learning environment. gunawan et al. (2016) and singh (2016) convey that moodle is a distinguished e-learning platform that is used to promote adaptive learning between teachers and students. in addition, it enables the user to get wide access to be an administrator to create the working structure and modify the course by using additional plugins. many kinds of research are conducted to investigate the potentials of e-learning in education. soliman (2014) and al-maqtri (2014) explain that the use of e-learning is successfully generated students' language proficiency. some online quizzes provide an effective way for the students to do the assignment. while mutambik (2018) explains that the implementation of e-learning enhances students' language proficiency and independent learning. in addition, free e-learning platforms such as edmodo and schoology take some benefits in classroom activities. muhlis (2017) and usman (2016) state that there are some potentials of edmodo. it provides a convenient way to maintain online learning, discussion, and evaluation. moreover, the use of another elearning platform such as schoology can enhance the students’ learning achievement (tigowati et al., 2017). those researches are generally present the potentials and benefits of opensource e-learning platform in education, but only a few data that present the use of customized elearning platform such as moodle in education. moodle is one of the common e-learning platforms which has a customized design setting to support the learning process. it has multiple features that can be adjusted and integrated with the school portal and website. hence, this research is conducted to find the potentials of moodle e-learning in education. the researcher develops some questions to investigate the potentials of moodle elearning in education. first, how does moodle e-learning influence students' learning interests? second, how does moodle e-learning influence learning quality? third, how does moodle elearning bridge the demand of blended learning trends? http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 35-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method research design this research was developed under phenomenological qualitative research. christensen, johnson, and turner (2014) explains that phenomenological research concern to describe the experience of phenomena happen to participant`s life world. the purpose is to describe a certain phenomenon accurately based on the truth of the fact (groenewald, 2004). further, purposive sampling was performed to determine the participants. etikan (2016) explains that purposive sampling enables us to have a chance to determine the participants based on their quality possessed. some criteria had been set up to be used as the measurement for the participants. research participants for the students, they must be actively registered as the students of sma muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta, familiar with the internet or gadget, and they must have the experience to join the learning activities during covid-19 by using e-learning. based on those criteria, the researcher chooses twenty students as participants. all the participants are taken from grade x because the researcher works as an english teacher dedicated to teaching grade x students. for the teacher, the criteria which have been set is the teacher who has at least five years of teaching experience in elt, and the teacher must have the experience to use e-learning at least for six months during the pandemic disease. as the result, there are three teachers available to meet the criteria of being the participant. data collection and analysis to collect the data, the first phase of the study is investigating the phenomenon that happened at sma muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta. after that, the researcher conducted a semistructured interview with the participants to get deep information about the phenomenon. as explained by anne galleta (2013), the use of a semi-structured interview is beneficial to obtain extricate data based on the participants’ experience and perspectives toward the related phenomena. in this research, the researcher conducts a semi-structured interview for both students and teachers to extricate the data about their beliefs, experiences, and perspectives toward the phenomena. interviewing both students and teachers avoids the subjectivity of the data finding. it is very beneficial to get the extricate data based on the students’ experience and perspectives toward the phenomenon without any intervention. it depicts the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 36-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license real fact of what the students feel, reflect, and experience in joining elt classrooms using moodle e-learning. while for the teacher, the semistructured was conducted to obtain detailed information related to their experiences, perceptions, and beliefs, toward the use of moodle e-learning in elt during the pandemic disease. the next step is developing the descriptive comments taken from the interview transcript by identifying the key phrase, explanations, description, and emotional despond from the participants. the descriptive comments were used to create brief descriptions of the phenomena or cases being investigated. cooper, fleischer, and cotton (2012) said that the descriptive comments are beneficial to identify the key phrase, explanations, description, and emotional responses from the participants. findings and discussion findings findings respond to the purpose of the study and are presented systematically. findings are supported with sufficient and relevant quotations, examples, tables and diagrams. for making a table, see the following example. table 1. perceptions collected from the interview script and questionnaire responses moodle e-learning responses moodle e-learning builds students’ learning interests the use of moodle elearning improves students’ interest during the learning process moodle e-learning contributes to the enhancement of technological and pedagogical aspects the use of comprehensive learning materials and enjoyable learning media is very useful to conduct virtual learning during pandemic disease (covid 19) moodle e-learning features provide various learning styles the use of moodle elearning is useful to provide various learning styles moodle e-learning promotes students' autonomous learning it can improve the students learning experience maximizing the moodle e-learning platform bridges the demand of blended learning trends the features of moodle e-learning bridges the need of blended learning discussion in this section, the researcher provides some data findings to answer the research questions. the findings concern students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward the use of the moodle e-learning platform during covid 19). the data were constructed and analyzed based on the students' perceptions collected from the interview script and questionnaire http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 37-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license responses. to ensure the participants' privacy, the researcher used the pseudo name of the participants, such as azhar (students 1), memei (students 2), anto (teacher1), and yanti (teacher 2). moodle e-learning builds students’ learning interests. the current indonesian curriculum (kurikulum 2013) tends to emphasize the students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. the use of an enjoyable learning strategy and learning media is a key to achieve the above learning goals. in this case, the use of moodle e-learning is an alternative way to build students’ learning interests. from luaran et al. (2014) explain that the use of advanced technology in moodle e-learning brings some positive environment in the classroom. the use of internet sources, interactive, and multimedia learning materials engage the students’ interest. after conducting interview processes with some students, the researcher found that the use of moodle as an e-learning provides some enjoyment during the learning process and improves their learning interest. “i feel enjoy in this learning method. i am quite interested with the use of moodle e-learning because it provides an easy way for learning. it brings wide access for us to access learning source flexibly through the internet.” (arif) “the use of moodle e-learning is very interesting for me because at that time we need a learning system which enables students to study from home during pandemic disease. the features of the system are user friendly where the students can use it to expand their knowledge. it provides some effortless features which enable us to submit our work and do some online exercises.” (adel) while from the teachers’ perception, it can be realized that the students have positive responses toward the use of moodle e-learning. it provides enjoyable learning and evaluation where students can get stylish features on it. they prefer to use this platform to join long-distance learning because they do not need to have a direct meeting as usual. “on my side, the use of moodle elearning improves the students’ learning interest because it has stylish features that provide convenience for the students’ to access the learning materials. furthermore, it has advanced features of evaluation where the students can get direct feedback through this platform.” (yanti) “………………….. the use of moodle e-learning provides an efficient way and it is very simple ya.. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 38-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license because it can be accessed everywhere and any time, hence the students no need to have the direct meeting.” (anto) from the explanation, it can be inferred that the use of moodle elearning improves students’ interest during the learning process. the stylish features and user-friendly display help the students to get enjoyment to expand their knowledge. moreover, it provides a simple way to complete learning activities and learning assignments through interactive features. moodle e-learning contributes to the enhancement of technological and pedagogical aspects. the use of advanced technology and pedagogical aspects are keys to have outstanding online learning. after conducting some interviews with the students, it can be realized that moodle e-learning provides stylish learning features and enjoyable tools to support the learning process. “a good e-learning platform such as moodle provides some enjoyment for the students to join virtual learning with their gadgets. i am very interested in it because i think it is the new style of learning where we can enroll in the class with our gadget.” (ray) “i think that the learning material on moodle e-learning is very interesting. i can get a lot of information, not only in conventional form but also in stylish mode. my teacher delivered the material well by using learning flog video and learning animation so i can get a lot from that.” (delvin) from the teachers’ responses, the use of technological platforms, internet broadband, and infrastructure is very useful to support online learning activities and build a positive learning environment. “i think it is very beneficial to improve both technological and pedagogical aspects. moodle elearning becomes one of the learning platforms which contributes to support the technological aspect because it enables the teachers to develop their technological skills and knowledge. furthermore, it encourages the teacher to improve their skill to design the attractive learning material using technological platforms to facilitate the students to enroll the online learning during the pandemic.” (bunga) “….. of course, because the teachers need to have good knowledge in both technological aspects and pedagogical aspect. those aspects cant be separated during the learning process. the use of moodle e-learning helps the teacher to improve their technological and pedagogical aspects.” (yanti) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 39-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by considering the responses above, it can be concluded that both technological and pedagogical aspects are essential to conduct online learning. moodle e-learning provides stylish learning features and enjoyable tools to support the learning process. moreover, the use of comprehensive learning materials and enjoyable learning media is very useful to conduct virtual learning during pandemic disease (covid 19). while the implementation of moodle e-learning encourages the teacher to improve both technological and pedagogical aspects. moodle e-learning features provide various learning styles. generating learning styles is an essential aspect to be considered by the teacher because it provides wide access for the students to have successful learning. prystiananta (2018) defines the learning styles as the way of students to retain knowledge and information. there are some differences in learning styles among the students, including visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. the result of the interview process showed that moodle e-learning features assist the students to learn the material through various styles. they explained that the use of moodle generates various learning styles. it has stylish features and user-friendly that enable students to have various learning styles. “i think that the features are very useful to improve the learning quality because it provides a variety of learning. it avoids some monotonous learning and i like it.” (arif) “……….the use of multimedia learning, visual and audiovisual learning helps the students to have good comprehension. (ceny) from the teachers’ responses, the students give more insights toward the use of moodle e-learning during the learning process. according to their perspective, it provides flexible learning and efficient learning. students can get wide access to find any learning resource through the internet. they get a lot of exposures for learning and they can perform the best learning style. “sure, because the moodle elearning provides many kinds of features that enable students to access learning materials in the form of video, audio, learning modules, and other online resources. therefore, it guides the students to get many exposures and varieties of learning styles. they can find their best.” (yanti) “moodle e-learning directly guides the students to explore the learning materials in many ways. by using internet, they can explore so http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 40-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license many learning resources to improve their knowledge through digital data transformation, visual, audiovisual and multimedia learning resources.” (bunga) from the discussion above, the use of moodle e-learning is useful to provide various learning styles. the use of stylish and user-friendly features enables students to expand their learning styles. moreover, moodle has equipped with audiovisual and multimedia tools that accommodate the students’ advanced learning. the other side, it allows students to access multiple learning resources can provide efficient learning and fun learning. moodle e-learning promotes students' autonomous learning. the use of moodle e-learning is beneficial to comply with the requirement of curriculum 2013 where students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills are emphasized. ahghar (2012) states that critical thinking and problem solving become an essential skill that must be achieved by learners in life issues. the current educational also concern about the development of students’ independent learning. the previous study showed that most of the students lack these skills; hence they got problems on how to start learning, how to get the learning resource, and how to obtain the solution. the use of moodle e-learning provides wide access for students to develop their learning curiosity through multiple learning sources. from the result of the interview process, the use of moodle elearning allows students to have freedom of learning, flexibility access, and autonomous learning. "overall i can enjoy the learning process and it is very interesting sir. it’s beneficial for us to have freedom of learning. students can access many sources, not only from the book given by the teacher but we can access from the e-learning server, and other sides such as the internet, e-book, newspaper, and so on." (alif) "it provides practicality and flexible access for students to reach any learning resource. it’s applicable to be used in the current situation when we have to stay at home and maintaining social distancing. we feel free to get learning resources and to do the assignment." (najwa) while from the teachers’ responses, it showed that the use of moodle elearning enables students to expand their digital learning experience, open their minds to have a new insight, and find their way to solve the problem. "on my side, there are some benefits of e-learning for the students. it is fun learning because students can learn from any device that promotes http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 41-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license digital learning experiences. it allows the students to open their mind to get a new insight. they can learn from any resources. moreover, it encourages the students to find their way to solve the problem." (anto) "in my opinion, it has some benefits for students because it develops students’ autonomous learning, improves the students’ literacy awareness, and critical thinking to solve the problem." (yanti) from the discussion above it can be seen that moodle e-learning is beneficial for developing students’ autonomous learning because it provides freedom of learning and flexible access, so it can improve the students learning experience. moreover, the use of moodle elearning expands the students’ digital learning experience and help them to open their mind to improve their problem-solving skills. maximizing the moodle elearning platform bridges the demand of blended learning trends. a sophisticated technology had been developed to maintain the learning process to be more effective and efficient. the current demand for blended learning is to facilitate the students with virtual learning environments and resources. wahid (2019) explains that blended learning requires the combination of face to face teaching and computer technology to enhance flexible learning and autonomous learning. the use of moodle e-learning provides multiple features to maximize online learning, from student’s perspectives, those, should be practice in advance, and the teacher need to expand their competence to adapt its features. “on my side, i prefer to use elearning during the pandemic disease of covid 19. e-learning (moodle) is a good decision because it provides complete features for learning. i can see that there is access for teachers and students to have face to face learning through a virtual environment. i believe that it can expand the students learning experience and help the students to understand the material well. the problem is that the teachers rarely use these features.” (arif) “i like to use e-learning (moodle). it provides a stylish features interface with a single login portal so the students get easier access for online learning. students no need to access multiple links. it is supposed to be more interesting if the teacher can maximize the learning process using teleconference features, i am interested in it. it is very helpful to expand the students’ comprehension of the learning material. i need it. we need to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 42-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license get more practice on it, and the teacher should expand their ability to use this feature. i believe it will be fun learning.” (azzra) while from the teachers’ responses, the researcher found that students enjoy joining e-learning. the use of elearning provides an easy way to access the learning materials and resource through a single login interface. from their points of view, there should be some improvements in teaching and learning activities. the use of teleconference and group discussion and smart white-board applications should be optimized. “the use of moodle e-learning provides multiple features that are beneficial to support online learning. but some features should be developed in advance such as discussion forum and teleconference because the current features are unstable to be used.” (yanti) “the use of smart board application is beneficial to enhance the learning process. it enables the students to give some feedback by using a sentence, or vignette through the smart boards hence the interactive learning can be generated. it should be equipped with some features which accommodate two-ways communications between teachers and students.”(bunga) from the explanation, it can be inferred that maximizing the features of moodle e-learning bridges the need of blended learning. it has advanced learning features and a friendly user interface which enables students to access the learning materials easily. furthermore, the stylish user interface provides an easy way for the students to access learning materials. the sophisticated e-learning features like video and teleconference are available to enhance students learning pleasures. maximize those features helps the students to have enjoyment in learning and it can meet the students’ needs through blended learning. conclusions and suggestion living in the digital era expands people's desire to obtain wide access to science and technology. the development of ict contributes improvement in the way of teaching and learning. e-learning is one of the alternative ways to achieve the human desires of knowledge and science. adapting the situation of covid-19, moodle e-learning provides some potential features to maintain virtual learning. the result of this research indicates that moodle e-learning builds students’ learning interest. the stylish features and user-friendly display help the students to get enjoyment and interest to expand their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 43-46 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knowledge. learning assignment features have been designed in an interactive arrangement where the students get enthusiastic to enroll. the use of moodle e-learning contributes to some enhancements of technological and pedagogical aspects. performing integrated ict internet broadband, comprehensive material, and learning sources is very beneficial to improve the learning quality. it allows the students to expand their autonomous learning, digital learning experience, and problem-solving skills. moreover, the audiovisual and mulitimedia tools provide various learning styles where the students can reach an advanced learning experience. maximizing its features, such as discussion forum and teleconference, can bridge the demand of blended learning. this research suggests that the use of moodle elearning still have more beneficial aspects in education. therefore, the researcher recommends the next researcher to conduct further research about the implementation of moodle elearning in other educational fields. acknowledgments this article is based on research conducted at sma muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta. we (arlischa ardinengtyas and arifin nur himawan) grateful for a number of friends and colleagues in encouraging and supporting us to do the work, and finally to publish it. references ahghar, g. 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(2016). on-line learning sebagai salah satu inovasi pembelajaran. in pythagoras (vol. 2, issue 1, pp. 10– 23). http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/defa ult/files/132304807/online learning sebagai salah satu inovasi pembelajaran.pdf http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 163-178 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee indonesian culture influence towards english directive acts used by senior high school students tamara becce tenridinanti1*, indawan syahri2, maribel casinto abalos3, rini susanti4 received: 20th march 2021; revised: 28th may 2021; accepted: 27th june 2021 abstract in uttering the english language, especially english directive acts, indonesian people do not deliver it directly, but they convey it long-winded. it is influenced by the indonesian culture that tends to convolute in explaining something which is different from the english-speaking culture that speaks straight to the point. the objectives of the study were to identify the common types of directive illocutionary acts and to describe how the indonesian culture is represented in english illocutionary acts made by the students of sma negeri 10 palembang. the method of the study was descriptive-qualitative. the data was collected from twenty-six participants of sma negeri 10 palembang through the role-play technique. results of this study showed eight common types of english directive acts: commanding, requesting, suggesting, forbidding, questioning, permitting, encouraging, and wishing. besides, the resemblance between the indonesian culture and illocutionary acts has an interconnection shown in culture transfer. in this this study in particular, questioning was the most dominant directive act, and this is because indonesian people tend to ask first before uttering straight to the point and suggesting was the second most dominant whereas requesting was the least dominant. key words: english directive acts; illocutionary acts; indonesian culture abstrak dalam pengucapan bahasa inggris khususnya bahasa inggris directive act, orang indonesia tidak menyampaikannya secara langsung, tetapi menyampaikannya dengan bertele-tele. hal tersebut dipengaruhi oleh budaya indonesia yang berbelit-belit dalam menjelaskan sesuatu yang berbeda dengan budaya inggris yang berbicara langsung ke intinya. tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengidentifikasi jenis-jenis ilokusi direktif yang umum dan mendeskripsikan bagaimana kemiripan budaya indonesia dalam ilokusi bahasa inggris yang dibuat oleh siswa sma negeri 10 palembang. metode penelitian adalah deskriptif kualitatif. pengumpulan data dilakukan pada dua puluh enam peserta sma negeri 10 palembang melalui peragaan role play. studi ini menunjukkan delapan jenis tindakan direktif bahasa inggris yang umum seperti memerintah, meminta, menyarankan, melarang, mempertanyakan, mengizinkan, mendorong, dan berharap. selain itu, kemiripan budaya indonesia dengan ilokusi memiliki keterkaitan yang terlihat dalam transfer budaya. dari penelitian ini, bertanya sangat dominan karena masyarakat indonesia cenderung bertanya terlebih dahulu sebelum berbicara langsung ke pokok permasalahan. dominasi kedua menunjukkan, dan yang terakhir meminta. kata kunci: budaya indonesia, tindakan direktif inggris, tindakan ilokusi how to cite: tenridinanti,t. b., syahri, i., abalos, m. c., susanti, r.. (2021). indonesian culture influence towards english directive acts used by senior high school students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 163-178. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 164-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction indonesian people tend to respect others in such an indirect way. joyce (2012) illustrates that indirect communication is the norm, although indirectness varies with cultures and geographic regions. indirect communicators seek to avoid conflict, tension and uncomfortable situations. in a high-context culture, which may be relatively homogeneous and emphasize interdependence and social relationships, people develop deep and often unconscious understandings of what is expected in that culture. because of shared expectations about behavior, the context can be altered by the speaker to convey information. in short, indirectness is a communication tend to have mutual harmony for maintaining good relationship because it is safe enough in a polite way that is very useful in a social situation. besides, mansyur (2016) illustrates that indonesia is known as a friendly nation and has a noble character, both in behaving and in speech acts. commonly, manifested behavior in politeness is known in linguistics as directive acts. lailiyah (2015) assumes that the directive speech act is an act that is used to get someone doing something is not merely giving an order or making a request. according to the meaning and context of the utterance, there are a variety of actions that can be performed through directive speech act, such as requesting, asking, commanding, suggesting, advising, inviting, and so on. additionally, puri (2015) explains that the directive speech act attempts by the speaker to get addressee to do something. these cases include advice, commands, orders, questions, and requests. moreover, syahri (2013) declares that indonesian cultural norms considered varied in speech act realizations. for instance, many of the subjects used ‘sorry’ or ‘i am sorry’ instead of ‘excuse me’ as the attention getters, while the native speakers of english did not start the requests in such a way. this culture will influence indonesian people in uttering or doing speech acts. it will not the same as native speakers’ speech acts. in uttering the english language, especially english directive acts, indonesian people do not deliver it directly, but they convey it longwinded. this way of speaking is influenced by the indonesian culture that convoluted in explaining something different from english culture that speaks straight to the point. in line with wolipop (2021) statements that indonesian who are born with a different mother tongue there may be some obstacles. fortunately, there have http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 165-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license been english lessons since elementary school, at least a little of the vocabulary has been mastered. despite the fact that there are still some who find it difficult to speak english actively. when someone asks others to speak english, the answers were still halting, nervous, even worse, they do not connect with what is being asked. therefore, this study is intended to address the following problems: 1) what are the common types of directive illocutionary acts used by sma negeri 10 palembang students?; 2) how does the indonesian culture resemble illocutionary acts made by sma negeri 10 palembang students?. speech acts generally can be defined as the actions performed via utterances (permana and citraresmana, 2017). it is an act that consists of many performances such as congratulating, inviting, greeting, ordering, promising and warning. this notion is applied to speech acts. the speaker communicates to the hearer more than transferring his message by means of relying on their standard cultural background information such as requesting, refusing, apologizing, etc (aliakbari, aghaee, and azimiamoli, 2015). a speech act is not merely relaying; it presumes such action of a language. furthermore, speech act focuses on what speakers’ mean in the linguistic theory that can be seen from their action or communicative action. in this case, searle (1975) cited in roberts (2017) clarifies that the austinian tradition best exemplified by searle's work aims to classify the kinds of speech acts we perform. for example, here’s the taxonomy from searle: assertive: this category means to propose something from the speaker to the hearer. directives: attempt to make the addressee perform an action: asking, ordering, requesting, inviting, advising, begging. commissives: commit the speaker to some future course of action: promising, planning, vowing, betting, opposing. expressives: express how the speaker feels about a state of affairs: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, deploring. i am sorry that i lied to you. declarations: change the state of the world to bring it into conformity with the propositional content. directives are a speech that aims to produce an effect on a speech partner in the form of an action or has the intention to make a speech partner doing something (budiasih, latifah, andayani, and rohmadi, 2017). besides, permana and citraresmana (2017) elaborate that illocutionary directive acts are a type of speech act in which the speaker intends to order or ask other people (the hearers) to do http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 166-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license something, such as commanding, requesting, suggesting, inviting, forbidding and so on (searle, 1969). in addition, there are eight kinds of the directive illocutionary act, according to searle (1969) as cited in permana and citraresmana (2017): (1) commanding is the function used to ask or order someone to do something in a direct way. it is usually done by the powerful one to powerless one. (2) requesting can be defined to ask or order someone to do something indirectly or politely. by asking a request, the hearer has the right to refuse or deny it. in other words, the hearer has the choices of whether to accept or reject the request. (3) suggesting can be defined as what the speaker‟s purpose to get the hearer to do something in some future action. the speaker can also perform it for the hearer by attaching or putting forward an idea or plan to think about. (4) forbidding is used usually to ask or order someone not to do something. it can be defined that the speaker prohibits the hearer from doing an act. (5) questioning is the speaker expresses this illocutionary function in order to get the reply, answer, or information from the listener. (6) permitting includes agree to, allow, authorize, bless, consent to, dismiss, excuse, exempt, forgive, grant leave or permission, license, pardon, permit, release, and sanction. (7) encouraging can be defined that as giving the listener support or courage to do something. (8) wishing can be defined that the speaker hopes something good to happen in future. in addition, the act of pray refers to the future act. considering the directive acts means that to make the hearers’ doing an action or giving the statements first to have communicative action between the speaker and the hearer in terms of commanding, requesting, suggesting, forbidding, questioning, permitting, encouraging, and wishing. method since the study aimed to know the common types of directive illocutionary acts and these resembled to indonesian culture, it utilized the descriptive qualitative research. creswell (2012) states that qualitative methods can be used to obtain the intricate details about phenomena such as feelings, thought processes, and emotions that are difficult to extract or learn about through more conventional methods. in other words, qualitative research focuses on describing, understanding and clarifying a human’s experience. respondents the participants were 26 students from grade 11, science 7 class of sma http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 167-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license negeri 10 palembang. the students were grouped into 13 groups composed of 2 students to act out the different given role plays. they were prepared to initiate conversation using the english language since english is their foreign language. data collection and analysis in collecting the data, this study used the elicitation technique. it is in line with kaswan (2014) stated in his study, the english teaching and learning is still dominated by the teacher-centered approach. as a result, students’ communicative competence is below expectation. for that reason and another, the teacher should shift their teaching approach from the teachercentered approach to learner-centered approach by using the elicitation technique. it was adopted in the data gathering procedure to draw out necessary information because english is not used to communicate among indonesian students. in this case, this study used role-play for collecting the data of english directive acts. in collecting the data, the writer analysed the data using pragmatics analysis in terms of social context and qualitative data analysis in this study. yule (1993), cited in yuliana (2011), elaborates that pragmatics analysis is social. the linguistics context arises from communication emergence and interaction between members of the community with a very specific socialcultural background. in this case, it related to the local culture that is indonesian culture. the steps of collecting the data are firstly the writer prepared some scenarios about english directive acts. secondly, the writer asked the students to conduct role-play based on the scenarios. thirdly, the writer recorded and saved them. then, the writer made the transcription based on recording. at first, the writer made the scenarios of role-plays as follow: role-plays instruction: read the scenarios carefully and try to comprehend the contents and roles of the interlocutors in them. demonstrate a dialogue of each scenario below with your friends. 1) you are a teacher who talks to a student in the classroom. you ask your student to submit his/her homework. what do you say to your student? 2) now, you are going to have an english exam. yet, you forget to bring a pen. so, you would like to borrow your friend’s pen. what can you say to your friend? http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 168-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 3) your friend is crying right now. he/she lost a notebook in the class. you are about to suggest in order to make him/her feel calm. what do you suggest? 4) there is one of your friends who stole your pen. as his/her friend, you have to forbid him/her to do that. what will you say? 5) while studying english, you were very sleepy. so you ask your friend to explain about the lesson just now. what are you going to ask your friend? 6) your teacher is explaining a lesson right now. yet, you want to go to the toilet for a while. how can you ask permission from your teacher? 7) your student is going to have a debate competition next week. as a teacher, you must support him/her. what do you say? 8) tomorrow you will have an exam. you talk to your friend about your hope for the exam. what do you say to your friend about your hope? 9) in the exam, your friend would like to cheat your answers. what will you say to your friend? 10) your student gets a lower score in the english exam. as a teacher, you want to give him/her suggestion. what do you suggest? 11) one of your friends likes smoking. you have to forbid him/her about the bad habit. what do you want to say? 12) outside of the classroom, someone calls you. you are going to have permission from your teacher to go out for a while. what will you say to your teacher? 13) in recess time, you are very hungry. you want to ask your friend to go to canteen. what do you say? the result of the recording was added in the attachment. there are some explanations about a symbol in the recording which the writer wrote in order to make the description easy to understand, such as (a) italic words mean selected items that the writer took to discuss; (b) slash (/) means a short pause; (c) twice slash (//) means a long pause; (d) … means some more utterances secondly, the writer distributed the scenarios of role-plays to thirteen partners of twenty-six students in the classroom. the writer explained in a http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 169-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license glance about english directive acts in order to make them understand what they should do. afterwards, the writer gave the rules that they must conduct role play in a partner in front of the class. then, they had to follow the scenario of role-plays. thirdly, the students were recorded while conducting role-plays. they started to utter a sentence after the writer said one, two, three. besides, the writer stopped the recording after they finished talking. finally, the writer collected the recording and saved it, which would be made the transcription of the recording in her attachment of study. then, the writer decided selected items from the recording transcription to discuss the study's objective. in this context, by using pragmatics analysis and qualitative data analysis, after the writer got the data, the writer analysed the data by applying the following steps: 1) organizing the data. the writer organized the data by collecting dialogues in role-plays, such as listening to the data gathering on the phone, typing them through a laptop and saving the data. 2) classifying kinds of english directive acts used by the students of sma negeri 10 palembang. the writer decided on selected items by giving numbers in italic words to know english directive acts from the data gathering. then, the writer classified the data by sorting out items chosen into each type of english directive to have a further explanation; 3) categorizing the data, the last, the writer categorized the data that included indonesian culture transferred in english directive acts. findings and discussions based on the method of this study, the authors used role-play to collect the data. the writer played the recording of role play conducted by the students of sma negeri 10 palembang in science 7 class of eleventh-grade students. in this class, it has thirty-six students but only twenty-six students who demonstrated the role-plays. from thirteen role-plays scenarios as mentioned in the methodology, the writer embodied eight types of english directive acts in scenarios of role-plays such as commanding, requesting, suggesting, forbidding, questioning, permitting, encouraging, and wishing. moreover, there are seventy-three selected items from the recording of role-play to each type of english directive act that the writer put in the appendix. based on the selected items, we notice that the first, questioning is dominant to utter by students. secondly, the students utter suggesting, the third is requesting and so on. to be http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 170-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license detailed, figure 1 illustrates kinds of english directive acts in a pie chart. figure 1. kinds of english directive acts types of directive acts commanding scenario number one discusses a teacher asking a student to submit his/her homework. while a teacher is asking in a direct way to a student, that is called command. commanding is effective only if the speaker has some degree of control over the addressee's actions. it also means that sentences normally have no grammatical subject and whose verb is imperatives (assola, 2017). one type of english directive acts that use imperative forms as shown in (1) and (2) as the same cases. (1) submit your homework / aby! (2) collect homework! in case number (2), the word submits in (1) changes into collect that still has the same meaning used by the students. as in (1) and (3), the students in the different situation take the same verb clauses that submit your homework. furthermore, there is an addition please at the last words in (3) and in front words as in (4) to indicate more polite. in scenario one, after the teacher asks, student b answered it as in (4) for having extra time before submitting the homework. for instance, the students realized the commanding as in the following excerpt: (3) everyone / submit your homework / please // right now! (4) yes, sure / but // please give me five minutes more! requesting in scenario number two, you forget to bring a pen while having an english exam and you want to borrow your friend’s pen that implies a requesting to your friend. requesting is an illocutionary function used to ask or order someone to do something indirectly or politely. request can also be defined as a polite or indirect command (kusumo, 2015). for example, it can be seen from example (8). (8) can i borrow your pen? student a used can as the modal in request form. according to essberger http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 171-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (2019), request forms that you might want to teach include, in approximate order by level: can i/you…?. moreover, it means that student a used requesting in this scenario which is one of type in english directive acts. for instance, it is also shown in (9), (10), (11), (12) and (13). (9) student a : oh my god / i feel asleep … can you tell me what we / learnt in this class? student b : we / we learn about english directive acts. (10) can i see your pen? (11)… excuse me / miss / i am so pale / can i go to the toilet please? it’s / i can /… (12) sir / can i go to the / restroom? (13) sir / can i / can i have an excuse? i got a call from the / private teacher’s room. suggesting scenario three, your friend lost his/her notebook and felt sad. in the dialogue, student a said about sadness as in excerpt (18). (18) student a: illuh / i am so sad because i lost my notebook. student b: you // must smile / every day. student a: thank you. she said to your friend that illuh / i am so sad because i lost my notebook. in this case, the answer of student b was you must smile every day which means student a should joy in daily life even her notebook was lost. therefore, the word “must” state that is a suggestion form because student a should accept her advice in order not to be sad anymore. moreover, suggesting means communicating an idea or feeling to consider or recommending something. the function of suggesting a directive speech act is intended to make the hearer consider matters presented by speakers. furthermore, the hearer is willing to follow the suggestions given (fitriana, 2013). forbidding (31) don’t stole / pen / pen! (32) don’t … don’t // don’t steal my pen! the explanation of scenario four means that your friend stole your pen. thus, you have to forbid his/her in making a bad habit. while student b answered, he/she gave prohibition or forbidding something to his/her friend. forbidding is one of type english directive acts mentioned by searle. forbidding is defined as someone was allowed to do something or not do something. in terms of the function of speech, forbidding means asking the hearer not to do something. for instance “don’t ask these http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 172-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license questions!”(fitriana, 2013). in sum, the word does not mean to prohibit to do something. it is the same as the next excerpt in (33). (33) oh / oh no / don’t take my pen! / give me fee! meanwhile, in scenario number five informs that you were very sleepy in studying english, then student b said “english lesson. don’t sleep!”, he answered english lesson from the question mentioned. then, student b prohibited student a not to sleep when studying. don’t means not to do something which is part of forbidding. it is related to the following example number (34). (34) student a : bro / what is lesson now? student b : english lesson. don’t / sleep! student a : okay / okay / thank you / bro. in (35), scenario six gives a scenario about a student want to go to toilet but the other student prohibits something to his/her as in the example. (35) yes / but / don’t so long. further more, scenario number nine would like to forbid your friend who wants to cheat your answer while doing exam in the classroom so that you must convey prohibition form. by saying don’t cheat, it can be interpreted that the student prohibited his/her friends as shown in (36). besides, it has different verbs that cheat converted to copy as in (37). (36) don’t cheat! (37) student a : hey / don’t copy my answer. student b : i didn’t study last night. student a : oh / i’m sorry to hear that. the different situation made by scenario ten that the student gets lower score because of playing games as in (38). moreover, in scenario eleven the student prohibits his/her friend in order not to smoke again as in (39). it happens in the last examples of forbidding. for instance, the forbidding is made as the following examples. (38) student a : ojan / you have the / lower / lower score in my class. student b : i’m sorry / sir … i didn’t study last night. student a : why you didn’t study? student b : because // i // mustank. student a : you must study hard! / hard again / and don’t play a game / don’t play a game. student b : okay / sir / thank you for your lesson. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 173-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (39) student a : wow! / it’s delicious. student b : bro / bro. / don’t smoke! student a : yeyen / i like / smoking. student b : don’t smoke, nyayu! student a : okay / okay. questioning najjar(2015) declared that questions in english are put within three main categories: yes /no questions; wh-questions; and alternative questions. thus, it is one of english directive acts which called questioning. in questioning, the response is needed to answer. the example is in scenario one that the teacher would like to ask a student to submit his/her homework (40). (40) student a: jaki / where / where is the // homework you did yesterday? student b: sorry/sir / i forget to bring that. student a : okay / for / for now … i give you an ex / excuse / but / but tomorrow / i’ll give you punishment if you don’t bring. student b: okay/yes. additionally, scenario three gives a description that a student lost his/her notebook. the other student asks to a student who lost a notebook in whquestions as in (41). besides, here are some examples of wh-questions in some cases in some scenarios as in (42), (43), (44), (45), (46), (47), (48), (49), (50), and (51). (41) why are you crying? (42) … wait / this is my pen / where / where do you find this? / you stole this from me … you / you shouldn’t / you shouldn’t stole … stuff that isn’t yours. (43) bro / what is lesson now? (44) tata / i was / very sleepy today. what does / the lesson that … has been teach / today / by teacher? (45) i’m very sleepy and i miss the … the late … i miss the // the latest // the latest lesson … now / what is it about? (46) why do you want to go to restroom? (47) why did you get / twenty for your / exam? (48) why you didn’t study? (49) hey / why are you smoking? (50) why? (51) what happen? in keeping with these as najjar (2015) stated, yes/no questions is also one kind of questioning in english directive acts. exactly, yes/no questions started by using do/did/does and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 174-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is/are which is the last added by question mark. the word do is a form of question which can be answered by yes/no. it can be seen from the following excerpt as in (52), (53), (54), (55), (56), (57), (58), and (59). (52) oh no / i lost my pen / is it my pen? (53) is this yours pen / your / your pen? (54) do you see / do you see my pen? (55) i lost it near / near somewhere / do you stole it? (56) do you study for / the / exam tomorrow? (57) we … mid term test on our … lia course / did you study? (58) do you know the // answer of / number two? you have to stop smoking / look at your body / you’re going to be fat / do you want to get a cancer also? / do you want to have a smell breath? / do you want to have / a breathing problem? / no / just stop smoking. permitting (60) excuse me … i want / to / go to / toilet. (61) excuse me / miss … i have to go / to the toilet. may i have your / permission? (62) … excuse me miss / i am so pale / can i go to the toilet, please? it’s / i can / … the scenario number six tells that student a wanted to go to the toilet while his teacher explained a lesson. here, student a said “excuse me. in this case, the word “excuse me” showed attention-getter (syahri, 2013), which means student a needed an attention-getter from student b to ask permission. additionally, permitting is part of english directive acts means asking permission. the same cases are as presented in (63) and (64). (63) student a : excuse me / i want to go to // out. student b : get it. the scenario number twelve declares that you want to go out because someone calls you outside of classroom and you want to ask permission from your teacher. at first, student a started to say “excuse me, i want to go to .. out”. by saying “excuse me”, it is an attention getter to have a permission from another speaker. afterwards, it can be noticed as in (64). (64) student a : excuse me / miss. i want to // get out / because / someone / called me there. (65) student b : okay / sure. encouraging http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 175-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in scenario number seven, a student needs support from his/her teacher for joining the debate competition next week. the word good luck means encouraging that is part of english directive acts. it encourages an external locus of control which as same as supporting (holstein, 2018). as shown in (65), (66), and (67). (65) student a: hey refli / good luck / for your competition! and / may you / got / get / a good result. student b: thank you / sir. (66) student a : sir / i want to join the / school debate competition. student b : oh / really? well / good luck for that! student a : thank you / sir. (67) student a : okay / sir / i want to // join … debate competition. student b : okay / i believe you. wishing the words “wish” and “hope” are the statements of wishing. lukman (2016) cited in sirwan and yulia (2017) declare that wishing is a feeling or expresses a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attainable; want something that cannot or probably not happen. wishing is to want something to happen or be true even though it is unlikely or impossible and wants to do something to happen. the scenario number seven informs that your student wants to debate competition next week and want to give support as a good teacher. in sum, wishing is one of english directive acts that hope something. it is shown as the following excerpt in (68). (68) student a: tata / you have debate / competition next week. i hope you / do well / next week and / i hope / you / got / nice score. student b: thank you. (69) student a : good morning / david. student b : morning / bal. student a : do you study for / the / exam tomorrow? student b : yes, i // study / i study. student a : i wish we can do / an exam for tomorrow and / i hope we can / get / a big score, right? student b : aamiin. student a : thank you. (70) student a : citra … we have / exam / tomorrow. student b : i hope score / is big. (71) student a : hey / adri / i studied for six hours just to / just for this exam / i wish i had a good score. (72) student b : me / i don’t really care if tomorrow is exam / it’s good or not / the point is / if it’s exam / i just look / it’s gone // quick / that’s all. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 176-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (73) student a : we … mid term test on our … lia course / did you study? student b : yes / i studied. student a : … i’m hoping / i’m hoping that / i’m hoping … on you that i will see your answers. conclusions and suggestion based on the findings, it can be concluded that the data showed eight common types of english directive acts, which demonstrated in 13 scenarios of role-plays by the students of sma negeri 10 palembang, such as commanding (to ask a direct way), requesting (asking indirect way), suggesting (giving advice or suggestion), forbidding (prohibiting to do something), questioning (to make a question), permitting (asking an excuse), encouraging (giving support), and wishing (to hope of something). there were four dialogues in each scenario from the thirteenth scenarios of role-plays, so there were fifty-two dialogues of all scenarios in the recording. in addition, from fifty-two dialogues of all scenarios, there were seventy-three selected items of each type of english directive acts. the first there were seven selected items in commanding, secondly ten selected items in requesting, thirdly in suggesting had thirteen selected items, fourthly forbidding had nine selected items, fifthly questioning had twenty selected items, sixthly permitting had five selected items, the next is encouraging had three selected items, and the last is wishing had six selected items in this study. the culture transfer of indonesian culture in english directive acts was happened. while the students uttered english directive acts in this study, they naturally showed an interconnection between indonesian culture and english directive acts. in politeness and indirectness, there were three dominance types mentioned previously, such as questioning, suggesting, and requesting. it can be concluded that from this study, indonesian culture, especially the students of sma negeri 10 palembang tend to ask a question before speaking straight to the point. they also tend to give a suggestion and make a request. acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to the faculty of teacher training and education of universitas muhammadiyah palembang and university of mindanao, the philippines. this project is one of the cooperation implementations between the two universities. feedback from my thesis supervisors, prof. dr. indawan and dr. maribel, helped me a lot in data analysis of this study. my special http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 177-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license appreciation also goes to ms. rini susanti for her feedback and guidance in transforming this project from thesis to a research paper. references aliakbari, m., aghaee, r., & azimiamoli, f. 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(2021). kenapa orang indonesia susah bisa bahasa inggris? ini jawabannya! (why english is difficult for indonesian people). retrieved june 26, 2021, from https://wolipop.detik.com/work -and-money/d-5372497/kenapaorang-indonesia-susah-bisabahasa-inggris-ini-jawabannya http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://wolipop.detik.com/work-and-money/d-5372497/kenapa-orang-indonesia-susah-bisa-bahasa-inggris-ini-jawabannya https://wolipop.detik.com/work-and-money/d-5372497/kenapa-orang-indonesia-susah-bisa-bahasa-inggris-ini-jawabannya https://wolipop.detik.com/work-and-money/d-5372497/kenapa-orang-indonesia-susah-bisa-bahasa-inggris-ini-jawabannya https://wolipop.detik.com/work-and-money/d-5372497/kenapa-orang-indonesia-susah-bisa-bahasa-inggris-ini-jawabannya ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 1-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license appendix the recording of role play scenario 1 you are a teacher who talks to a student in the classroom. you ask your student to submit his/her homework. what do you say to your student? 1.student a : … submit your homework / aby! student b : okay okay okay. 2.student a : collect homework! student b : yes … 3.student a : … everyone / submit your homework / please // right now. student b : yes sure / but // please / give me five minutes more! 4.student a : jaki / where / where is the // homework that you did yesterday? student b : sorry / sir / i forget to bring that. student a : okay / for / for now … i give you an ex / excuse / but / but tomorrow / i’ll give you punishment if you don’t bring. student b : okay / yes. scenario 2 now, you are going to have an english exam. yet, you forget to bring a pen. you would like to borrow your friend’s pen. what can you say to your friend? 1.student a : can i borrow your pen? student b : okay, sure. 2.student a : … would you / lend me a pen? student b : yes. 3.student a : nanda / i forget to bring my pen / may i borrow your pen? student b : yeah / you use mine. 4.student a : can i borrow your pen? / i lost my pen. student b : okay / i have // two pens. this is.. scenario 3 your friend is crying right now. he/she lost a notebook in the class. you are about to suggest in order to make him/her feel calm. what do you suggest ? 1.student a : illuh / i am so sad because i lost my notebook. student b : you // must smile / everyday. student a : thank you. 2.student a : i lost / my / notebook. student b : you should / be happy. 3.student a : why are you crying? student b : i lost my notebook / i forget where i put it. student a : oh my god / why don’t you // ask … our teacher / or our friends? … student b : okay / thank you for your // advice. 4.student a : why are you crying? student b : oh // i / i lost my // homework’s book. student a : you should buy a new one. student b : oh / but / i don’t have money. student a : i’ll give / i’ll give you money. scenario 4 there is one of your friend who stole your pen. as his/her friend, you have to forbid him/her to do that. what will you say? 1.student a : cesa / i stole // your / pen. student b : don’t stole / pen! / pen! 2.student a : i lost my pen. student b : i stole / your / pen / pen. student a : don’t … don’t // don’t steal my pen! 3.student a : oh no / i lost my pen / is it my pen? student b : is this yours pen / your / your pen? student a : yes / that’s my pen. student b : oh / i’m sorry / i accidentally took it from the table. student a : oh / oh no / don’t take my pen! / give me fee! 4.student a : do you see / do you see my pen? student b : no / i don’t. student a : i lost it near / near somewhere / do you stole it? student b : i // don’t know but i // find a pen near my / gadget / gadget. student a : can i see your pen? student b : okay / this is… student a : … wait / this is my pen / where / where do you find this? / you stole this from me … you / you shouldn’t / you shouldn’t stole … stuff that isn’t yours. student b : okay / thank you for your / for your attention / oh / i’m sorry. scenario 5 while studying english, you were very sleepy. you ask your friend to explain about the lesson just now. what are you going to ask to your friend? 1.student a : bro / what is lesson now? http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 2-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license student b : english lesson. don’t / sleep! student a : okay / okay / thank you / bro. 2.student a : tata / i was / very sleepy today / what does / the lesson that … has been teach / today / by teacher? student b : english. 3.student a : oh my god / i feel asleep … can you tell me what we / learnt in this class? student b : we / we learn about english directive acts. 4.student a : i’m very sleepy and i miss the … the late … i miss the // the latest // the latest lesson … now / what is it about? student b : about the // english directive acts. scenario 6 your teacher is explaining a lesson right now. yet, you want to go to toilet for a while. how can you ask permission to your teacher? 1.student a : excuse me … i want / to / go to / toilet. student b : ... yes … go out! 2.student a : excuse me / miss … i have to go / to toilet / may i have your / permission? student b : sure. 3.student a : … excuse me miss / i am so pale / can i go to the toilet please? it’s / i can / ... student b : yes / but / don’t so long. 4.student a : sir / can i go to the / restroom? student b : why do you want to go to restroom? student a : because i want to pee. student b : … okay / just go. student a : thank you / sir. scenario 7 your student is going to have debate competition next week. as a teacher, you must support him/her. what do you say? 1.student a : hey refli / good luck / for your competition! and / may you / got / get / a good result. student b : thank you / sir. 2.student a : tata / you have debate / competition next week. i hope you / do well / next week and / i hope / you / got / nice score. student b : thank you. 3.student a : sir / i want to join the / school debate competition. student b : oh / really? well / good luck for that! student a : thank you / sir. 4.student a : okay / sir / i want to // join … debate competition. student b : okay / i believe you. scenario 8 tomorrow you will have an exam. you talk to your friend about your hope in exam. what do you say to your friend about your hope? 1.student a : good morning / david. student b : morning / bal. student a : do you study for / the / exam tomorrow? student b : yes, i // study / i study. student a : i wish we can do / an exam for tomorrow and / i hope we can / get / a big score, right david? student b : aamiin. student a : thank you. 2.student a : citra … we have / exam / tomorrow. student b : i hope score / is big. 3.student a : hey / adri / i studied for six hours just to / just for this exam / i wish i had a good score. student b : me / i don’t really care if tomorrow is exam / it’s good or not / the point is / if it’s exam / i just look / it’s gone // quick / that’s all. 4.student a : we … mid term test on our … lia course / did you study? student b : yes / i studied. student a : … i’m hoping / i’m hoping that / i’m hoping … on you that i will see your answers. student b : okay. scenario 9 in the exam, your friend would like to cheat your answers. what will you say to your friend? 1.student a : i want to / cheat your answers. student b : don’t cheat! 2.student a : i want to cheat / your book. student b : don’t / don’t cheat, citra. 3.student a : do you know the // answer of / number two? student b : i don’t know the answer / i don’t know the answer / i haven’t answered it yet. student a : okay / well. 4.student a : hey / don’t copy my answer. student b : i didn’t study last night. student a : oh / i’m sorry to hear that. scenario 10 your student gets a lower score in english exam. as a teacher, you want to give him/her suggestion. what do you suggest? http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 3-178 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.20127 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 1.student a : hello / student / i think // i think you should … // i think you should / very / dilligent again / next day. student b : okay / mr. 2.student a : i get // lower / score. student b : you should study hard. 3.student a : why did you get / twenty for your / exam? student b : i don’t know / i have studied for / quite wow for six hours / four hours / and i still don’t know / i still got lower score. student a : well / you should study hard. student b : maybe / i can / thank you. 4.student a : ojan / you have the / lower / lower score in my class. student b : i’m sorry / sir … i didn’t study last night. student a : why you didn’t study? student b : because // i // mustank. student a : you must study hard! / hard again / and don’t play a game / don’t play a game. student b : okay / sir / thank you for your lesson. scenario 11 one of your friend is like smoking. you have to forbid him/her about bad habit. what do you want to say? 1.student a : wow! / it’s delicious. student b : bro / bro. / don’t smoke! 2.student a : yeyen / i like / smoking. student b : don’t smoke, nyayu! student a : okay / okay. 3.student a : you have to stop smoking / look at your body / you’re going to be fat / do you want to get a cancer also? / do you want to have a smell breath? / do you want to have / a breathing problem? no / just stop smoking. student b : yes / but / this is my problem not yours. 4.student a : hey / why are you smoking? student b : why? student a : you / you shouldn’t smoke / the smoking is bad for your // lungs. student b : okay / thank you. scenario 12 outside of classroom, someone calls you. you are going to have a permission from your teacher to go out for a while. what will you say to your teacher? 1.student a : excuse me / i want to go to // out. student b : get it. 2.student a : excuse me / miss. i want to // get out / because / someone / called me there. student b : okay / sure. 3.student a : sir / may i go to the outside ? / because i would like something to get. student b : yes. 4.student a : sir / can i / can i have an excuse? / i got a call from the / private teacher’s room. student b : what happen? student a : … my score is bad. student b : oh / okay. scenario 13 in a resist time, you are very hungry. you want to ask your friend to go to canteen. what do you say? 1.student a : i am / hungry. student b : yes. / go to / canteen! let’s / go / to canteen! 2.student a : ama, i am very hungry right now. let’s go / to canteen! student b : okay, arli. let’s / go! 3.student a : i’m so hungry / i haven’t eaten since this morning. let’s go to the canteen. student b : okay / let’s go! 4.student a : you look so // tired. student b : .. yes / it is because i didn’t have a // breakfast … this morning. student a : okay / you should go to canteen. student b : alright / let’s go to canteen! http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021, 80-107 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the benefits of reading aloud for children: a review in efl context jennet senawati1, ni komang arie suwastini2*, i gusti agung sri rwa jayantini3, ni luh putu sri adnyani4, ni nyoman artini5 received: 25th february 2021; revised: 24th may 2021; accepted: 28th june 2021 abstract although reading aloud is an old teaching strategy, its relevance has been vouched by research from time to time. the present study aimed to critically review experts' opinions and results of previous research on the definition and characteristics of reading aloud and its benefits for young children in the efl contexts by employing george’s (2008) model of literature review. the review revealed that the teacher plays the most crucial role in reading aloud, acting as the bridge between the text and the student's comprehension. a good design of reading aloud demands the teacher’s competence in choosing the text to meet the students’ interest and level; planning the tempo of the reading and the pauses to pose questions and comments; and making connections with the text and the children. reading aloud benefits children’s english regarding their vocabulary, pronunciation, comprehension, listening skills, reading skills, speaking skills, communicative skills, and motivation, literacy, and critical thinking skills. these results imply that reading aloud is still relevant to be implemented nowadays because of the benefits it brings to children’s english. key words: english as foreign language, reading aloud, young learners, characteristics, benefits abstrak meski sering dianggap metode lama, membaca nyaring memberi banyak manfaat. artikel ini bertujuan untuk melakukan kajian kritis terhadap pendapat ahli dan penelitian terdahulu mengenai pengertian, ciri khas, serta manfaat membaca nyaring, dengan mengikuti model penelitian kajian pustaka george (2008). diungkapkan bahwa guru menjadi penentu kesuksesan kegiatan membaca nyaring sebagai jembatan yang menghubungkan siswa dengan teks yang dibaca. kegiatan membaca nyaring bergantung pada kemampuan guru untuk memilih teks yang sesuai dengan minat dan kemampuan siswa, serta merancang proses pembacaan terkait tempo dan penempatan jeda untuk memberi komentar, bertanya, maupun membuat kaitan-kaitan antara teks dan siswa. ahli dan penelitian terdahulu berpendapat bahwa kegiatan membaca nyaring berkontribusi secara positif terhadap siswa terkait pembentukan kosakata, pelafalan, pemahaman, keterampilan mendengar, membaca, berbicara, dan berkomunikasi, serta motivasi, literasi, dan kemampuan berpikir kritis berkomunikasi mereka. jadi, membaca nyaring sangat relevan diimmplementasikan pada jaman sekarang karena kegiatan ini sangat positif untuk perkembangan bahasa inggris siswa. kata kunci: bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing, membaca nyaring, anak usia dini, karakteristik, manfaat how to cite: senawati, j., suwastini, ni komang a., jayantini, i gusti a.s.r., adnyani, ni luh p. s., artini, ni n. (2021). the benefits of reading aloud for children: a review in efl context. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(1), 80-107. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 81-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction globalization encourages people to speak good english to perform meaningful and communication (manik & suwastini, 2020; miqawati, 2020; suwastini, wiraningsih, & adnyani, 2020a). as the language spoken by most people worldwide, it is often suggested that children should start learning english as a foreign language early. in indonesia, some kindergartens have started introducing english to their students because it is believed that it will benefit the children for their later stages in english learning (hanifah & afidah, 2018). teaching english to young learners is quite different from teaching english to older students. it mainly involves activities that require the students to voluntarily speak english or perform actions according to english instruction with the absence of coercion (bransford, brown, & cocking, 2000; cameron, 2003). thus, teachers of young learners must design the instruction to involve activities that will make the children learn english subconsciously through songs, word games, role plays, paintings, cuttings, arranging pictures, or storytelling (haycaft, 1978; linse & nunan, 2005). the students will easily reach the study's goal because the students are motivated to study, and the students will encourage themselves to become actively involved in the learning process (muhid, amalia, hilaliyah, budiana, & wajdi, 2020). language skills are comprised of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills (gebhard, 2017). listening and reading belong to receptive skills, while speaking and writing are productive (klimova, 2014; siskin & nunan, 1990). all these four skills need to be taught simultaneously (nunan, 2015; sadiku, 2015). thus, reading activities can be taught as a beginning to understand words and texts (fien, santoro, baker, park, chard, williams, & haria, 2011), which the students later use in their speech and writing while processing other oral inputs from their peers, their teacher, or other sources (broughton, brumfit, flavell, hill, & pincas, 1980; nunan, 2015). the reading process involves a complex process to understand the text by creating the meaning of the text (broughton et al., 1980; dzulfikri & saukah, 2017), through which students can gain new experience and knowledge. for young learners, reading is the process of matching the sounds of the language and the written text (nunan, 2015). a good foundation of reading skills can prepare the next step of the reading stage (batini, bartolucci, & timpone, 2018; korkmaz & karatepe, 2018). the reading process introduces and consolidates the vocabulary and the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 82-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license structure to encourage the students' passive vocabulary for the students' pleasure (haycaft, 1978). furthermore, reading materials also exemplify morality, character education, and feminist ideology (hutapea & suwastini, 2019; suwastini, lasmawan, artini, & mahayanti, 2020b; suwastini, utami, & artini, 2020c; utami, suwastini, artini, & kultsum, 2020). reading is one of the skills that can be integrated easily with any program in teaching english to young learners (linse & nunan, 2005) reading aloud can be the simplest way for young learners to deliver the reading experience between the students and the teacher to introduce literacy skills (barrentine, 1996). many studies have argued the benefits of reading aloud for english students, especially young learners (burkins & croft, 2010; mantei & kervin, 2018; pentimonti & justice, 2010; tainio & slotte, 2017). besides, experts have argued the importance of reading aloud as foundations for children’s later language development (hahn, 2002; jacobs, 2016; tarim, 2015). regarding the many positive arguments for reading aloud in the efl context, the present study perceives it essential to provide a comprehensive summary of its definition, characteristics, a systematic procedure of its implementation, and a comprehensive summary of its benefits. thus, the present study critically reviews experts’ opinions and previous studies to achieve these purposes. such review will provide teachers and researchers in efl contexts a comprehensive synthesis of the definition, characteristics, procedures, and benefits of reading aloud for young learners in efl contexts. method research design the present study was conducted as library research following george’s model of library research that relies on the results of previous studies and experts’ opinions for answering the present study’s research questions (2008). the current study adopted the adjustment of george’s model (2008) into a qualitative design made by ariantini, suwastini, adnyani, dantes, & jayantini (2021). the following figure illustrates the research procedure of this study. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 83-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1. research procedure research site and source of data the present study was conducted through online databases, such as google scholar, eric, research gate, and library genesis, as library research. from these databases, relevant sources such as a book, journal articles, and website articles were retrieved. the keywords used to retrieve the books and articles were: the effectiveness of reading aloud, the benefits of reading aloud, reading aloud, reading aloud and listening, reading aloud for young learners, and reading aloud in efl contexts. the arguments, research findings, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 84-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussions, and recommendations from these sources were used as the source of data for answering the present study’s research questions concerning the characteristics, procedures, and benefits of reading aloud for children in the efl contexts. because reading aloud is a very traditional method, the present study did not limit the publication of the sources, believing that this conventional method offers unique benefits for children. however, considering the importance of reviewing the relevance of reading aloud in the present contexts, the present study included articles published from 2015 to 2020. five books and thirty-five articles were selected from these processes to be included in the inclusion/exclusion process that evaluates the relevance of the sources for answering the present study’s research questions. after the inclusion/exclusion process, five books and twenty-two articles were established as the data sources for the present study, with thirteen of the articles published from 2015 to 2020. data collection and data analysis the data collection was conducted by closely reading the five books and twenty-two articles. the first step was to record these twenty-seven sources into a table that maps the arguments, methods, findings, and recommendations that they pose. the record was continued with tabulating detailed information from the data sources regarding their arguments on the definition and aspects of reading aloud, how to conduct reading aloud, as well as the benefits of implementing reading aloud for children in the efl contexts. the data analysis was conducted by making syntheses of similar arguments and drawing comparisons of different details. these syntheses and comparisons are used to draw insights that enabled the present study to draw its thesis on the use of reading aloud in the efl contexts. after the thesis was drawn, the study was then continued with proposing arguments and outlining its thesis presentation into a comprehensible review research article aimed by this present article. findings and discussion reading aloud: definition, aspects and characteristics reading aloud is the process of the students using their eyes, ears, and brain to take in a series of the story, listen to the narrator's voice, and make sense of what they see and hear (gurdon, 2019; trelease, 2013). reading aloud is argued to be most beneficial for children because it acts as the basis for their foundation to build knowledge http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 85-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and the source of emotional and intellectual nourishment (gurdon, 2019). during reading aloud, the teacher plays a crucial role to facilitate the interactions between the text and the students (huang, 2010; marchessault & larwin, 2014). the following figure illustrates the role of the teacher in a reading-aloud activity. figure 2. the relationship between teacher, text, and children in reading aloud activity the central position of the teacher in the reading aloud activity is illustrated in figure 2. the teacher becomes the bridge between the text and the children. as the bridge between the children and the text, the teacher directly interacts with the text and the children (huang, 2010). the teacher’s direct interaction with the text ensures that the teacher comprehends the text while acting to assess whether the text is suitable for the children. the teacher reads the text aloud to the children to create interaction between the children and the text (huang, 2010), helping them understand the text without actually reading the text due to their early stage of competence (marchessault & larwin, 2014; wadsworth, 2008). the teacher’s voice will make the students focus on the text and the teacher's voice to avoid misunderstanding. the other significant interaction in the above figure is the interaction between the teacher and the students. through this interaction, the teacher firstly recognizes the students’ interest and cognitive level, through which the teacher will base the process of the reading aloud. this interaction is a continuous process during the reading aloud to assess the students’ comprehension of the text and maintain their interest and motivation (hahn, 2002). the students need to pay attention to the teacher so they can stay on the line. it is different from watching a video or listening to the audio, in which the students will absorb the information passively, much like being spoon-fed. with prompt questions from the teachers, students can construct more knowledge when listening to reading aloud. during reading aloud, teachers can ask better questions such as who, where, when and discuss the possible answers. such prompts will encourage the students to examine the text more carefully (hahn, 2002). the teacher should also show the text's feelings and ideas, act the text out, dramatize the text, use gestures and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 86-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license facial expressions to convey the emotion of the text (tarim, 2015). because of this interaction, reading aloud is better than watching the movie and listening to the audio. reading aloud allows an active process among the students, whereas watching the video is a passive process (johnston, 2015). to make the reading aloud process more effectively, jacobs ( 2016) outlines guidelines for the teacher in terms of how to choose the excellent text, how to set the scene of the text, give the title and author of the reading text, and how to read the text with feeling and variety, as can be observed from figure 3. figure 3. the procedure of reading aloud, according to jacobs (2016) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 87-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the first step of the reading aloud activity would be choosing the right text to read, which meets the students’ interests and cognitive level. choosing the right text is essential, especially to gain the students' interest to listen to the teacher's reading aloud. this step includes considering the topic that the students like and the level of the text that the teacher will read for them. then the teacher has decided on a particular text. it is essential that the teacher read the text first to understand the meaning of the text, the moral, the linguistic aspects, and marking essential points such as where to pause and pose prompts. after the teacher is ready with the chosen text, the first step of the actual reading process is setting the scene. it is where the teacher sets the place of the reading and sets the students’ mood. the next step is to perform a prelude. this is where the teacher starts reading the title and the author of the text he will read. it also acts as a preliminary activity where the teacher asks questions to recall the right prior knowledge to help them understand the text. narratively, the prelude allows the students to build their expectations which will trigger suspense in the students' minds. it is crucial to keep the students interested in listening to the reading aloud. after the prelude succeeds in building the children’s interest, the teacher can start reading the content of the text. the tricks to how to read the story should also be abundant. it can be by summarizing, emphasizing slow parts, paraphrasing new words, stopping at exciting places to invite student participation to respond, pose questions, comments, or making connections while encouraging collaboration and critical thinking. reading aloud is not a race of reading a text; however, reading aloud is the reading process's journey (trelease, 1989). so, the teacher and the students must pay attention to the process of reading aloud. simple, fun, and cheap are the key to the reading aloud process to make the students comfortable during the reading aloud class (trelease, 1989). these strategies can ensure that the reading aloud activity can positively affect the students’ vocabulary, pronunciation, comprehension, communicative skills, critical thinking skills, motivation, literacy, listening skills. in line with jacob’s opinion (2016), lane and wright (2007)emphasize three aspects that teachers must be concerned with when applying reading aloud in the classroom: the method, text, and activity. the first aspect is the method used. the reading method in reading aloud should keep the students focused http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 88-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on the text. thus, the teacher must plan questions about the text to create interactive communication about the text and give students a chance to understand the text carefully. the second aspect is the reading material. the book that the teacher will read must suit the lesson's goals to support the learning goals in general. the choice of the book will also affect the method planned to deliver the reading aloud and the activities inserted before, during, or after the reading aloud so that the reading aloud activity is delivered well. the third aspect is that the reading activity must be performed as dialogic reading. the teacher can invite the students to become active in the reading aloud activity to avoid the students. by reading aloud, the students realize that reading is crucial in the teaching-learning process to build their future knowledge. the activities can be directed to support the learning goals as well as for building communicative and collaborative skills, as well as for building critical thinking. according to trelease (1989), reading aloud needs a minimum of 15 minutes a day to benefit the children. it is argued that reading aloud must be a daily routine for the students in their classroom, and the teacher must facilitate the students in reading aloud to get the best result. to avoid boredom in the teaching-learning process, the teacher must choose a story that is of interest to the students (giroir, grimaldo, vaughn, & roberts, 2015). in this case, other than only gaining the students' attention and keeping the students interested, the choice of the reading material can encourage the students to love words, stories, poems, books, and new ideas or knowledge. it is also argued that reading aloud increases the spirit to think and read (huda, kartanegara, gamal, & zakaria, 2015), which may positively contribute to the students’ future development (batini et al., 2019). in the context of indonesian efl, reading aloud can be a perfect alternative for introducing english as a foreign language to young learners. the first reason is that it does not require the children to actually read, which is convenient since reading is only introduced in elementary school (ministry of education and culture, 2017). however, english can be introduced very early to children, especially orally, i.e., through reading aloud. the second reason is related to the fact that english as a foreign language in indonesia has a very different phonetic system from indonesian’s (suwastini et al., 2020a; manik & suwastini, 2020). reading aloud can be a medium for exposing young learners to the sounds of english http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 89-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to young learners (gabrielatos, 1996; kelly, 2000; kindle, 2009). the benefits of reading aloud in the efl contexts reviews of the relevant sources conducted in this study resulted in a summary of the benefits of reading aloud as argued by experts and proven by previous studies. among the twenty-seven sources reviewed in this study, all of them argue for the various benefits of reading aloud for children in the efl context. the following figure displays the arguments from these articles. figure 4. benefits of reading aloud for children in efl contexts figure 4 displays that among the twenty-seven sources reviewed in this study, nineteen of them argue that reading aloud positively impacts the students’ english vocabulary. eight of them claim that reading aloud improves students’ ability to pronounce english words correctly. nineteen of the twenty-seven studies make a case for developing students’ comprehension through reading aloud. nine of these studies vouch that reading aloud can build a foundation for the children’s communicative skills. twelve of these studies maintain that the main benefit of reading aloud is for improving students’ reading skills. there are twelve studies among the twenty-seven studies observed that argue for the benefit of reading aloud to promote students’ critical thinking. twelve studies maintain that reading aloud can motivate the students to learn reading habits and learn in general. thirteen studies perceive reading aloud as beneficial in building students’ literacy. twelve studies connect the activity of reading aloud with the improvement of students’ listening skills. seven of these twenty-eight studies recognize the opportunity for improving students’ speaking skills through reading aloud activity. the following sections will elaborate arguments from these studies more thoroughly. reading aloud for improving english vocabulary vocabulary is the main component in language proficiency because it provides the basis for the students to comprehend written and oral texts as well as for expressing written and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 90-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license spoken ideas (linse & nunan, 2005; richards & renandya, 2002; richards & schmidt, 2010). in indonesia efl contexts, english as foreign language lesson is usually started with introducing english vocabularies (santosa, pratama, & putra, 2020) in order to sufficient vocabulary repertoires that facilitate the students’ language skills developments (abdulrahman & basalama, 2019; ferreira, 2003; nagy & anderson, 1984). the aspects of vocabulary include word meaning (i.e., synonym, antonym, connotation, and denotation), extending word use such as idioms, word combination, or collocation, and grammar, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (harmer, 2001). experts have argued that these aspects of vocabulary are positively impacted through reading aloud among children because the teacher’s clear speaking style during reading aloud can substantially impact the students' sentence recognition memory, through which the students can recall their prior vocabularies or gain new words (batini et al., 2018; bullinaria, 2014; cerón, 2014; draper, 1993; giroir et al., 2015; hemmati, gholamrezapour, & hessamy, 2015; g. jacobs & hannah, 2004; johnston, 2015; kindle, 2009; novianti & abdurahman, 2019; proença et al., 2017; trelease, 1989; yusuf, yusuf, yusuf, & nadya, 2017). according to draper (1993) and huang (2010) for the students to develop good vocabularies through reading aloud, the teacher must maintain good interaction in the reading aloud process to allow the students enough time for constructing the new words while the teacher can check whether the students get the word meanings correctly. through this interaction, the teacher can provide emphasis on new words and take time to let the new words sink into the students’ repertoire (gurdon, 2019; g. jacobs, 2016; kindle, 2009; marchessault & larwin, 2014; novianti & abdurahman, 2019; tarim, 2015; trelease, 2013). in the context of indonesian english learning, reading aloud is the safest choice for introducing new vocabulary for children. with globalization, english has become parts of global exposure through television, films, social media, and the internet, providing authentic english exposure to children (ariantini et al., 2021; hutapea & suwastini, 2019; listiani, suwastini, dantes, adnyani, & jayantini, 2021; suwastini et al., 2020b; suwastini, et al., 2020c; utami et al., 2020). however, many have argued for the rationing of children’s exposure to gadgets to prevent addiction and antisocial behaviors (chotipaktanasook & reinders, 2016; mahmud, 2020; wulanjani & indriani, 2021). thus, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 91-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading aloud can provide english exposure to children without exposing them to excessive screen time. in this case, reading aloud becomes the better alternative due to the children’s age and cognitive development that have not reached the mature point for autonomous reading. parents and teachers will provide the reading texts, exempting the need for their autonomy or the requirement for them to choose their own texts, as appropriate english reading texts for young learners will be provided by knowledgeable adults around them (huang, 2010; g. jacobs, 2016; marchessault & larwin, 2014; wadsworth, 2008) (huang, 2010; marchessault & larwin, 2014; wadsworth, 2008; jacobs, 2016). reading for nurturing pronunciation pronunciation is another aspect to worry about when the target language has a different phonetic system than the children’s mother tongue (adnyani, beratha, & suparwa, 2017; adnyani & pastika, 2016). it is also the case with the indonesian efl context. unattended mispronunciation may result in fossilization or permanent incorrect pronunciation (adnyani & kusumawardani, 2020; adnyani, sari, suputra, pastika, & suparwa, 2018; suwastini, wiraningsih, et al., 2020). thus, it is essential to introduce correct pronunciation as early as possible to children learning english as a foreign language (gabrielatos, 1996). improper pronunciation can create misunderstanding and miscommunication (haycaft, 1978; kelly, 2000). it is argued that reading aloud can be the best activity for exposing children to the model of correct pronunciation. bullinaria (2014), gabrielatos (1996), huang (2010), kailani (1998), proença et al. (2017), and wadsworth (2008) recognize the importance of reading aloud as the activity that provides model pronunciation for children when they listen to the teacher reading the words and pronounce whole words appropriately. the examples from the teacher in the reading aloud activity will help students recognize the pronunciation of words and collective words (bullinaria, 2014; proença et al., 2017). with young children, the internalization of these model pronunciations can happen subconsciously as their purpose is listening to the story being read, not to absorb correct pronunciation. this process is critical to embed the correct pronunciation into the children's repertoire (adnyani & pastika, 2016; adnyani & kusumawardani, 2020). with older children, the process of absorbing the model pronunciation can be more of a twofold process for a http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 92-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license richer benefit. as older children start to recognize letters and written words, reading aloud prompts children to connect the written text that the students are reading with the sounds that the teacher is pronouncing, building a foundation for their later development of reading skills (gabrielatos, 1996). reading aloud also provides a chance for students to practice their pronunciation. it includes pauses where the teacher asks questions to the students, comments on essential points, and connects parts of the texts and between the text and the students (jacobs, 2016). when students answer questions or give comments, they can practice pronouncing english words correctly (kailani, 1998; huda et al., 2015). again, the teacher’s role is crucial here because she should interrupt students’ improper pronunciation to prevent fossilizations (adnyani et al., 2018; kailani, 1998; adnyani & kusumawardani, 2020; proença et al., 2017). as the teacher is ready with markings of new and challenging words to pronounce, the teacher can prompt the pronunciation of these words by posing questions that require the students to answer using these words (tarim, 2015). proença et al. (2017) argue that reading aloud for older children should give a chance for the students to be the reader, through which they would practice their pronunciation and develop their other skills. this turn-taking between the teacher and the students will allow the teacher to detect problems in the students' pronunciation and assess the students' fluency (proença et al., 2017). reading aloud for cultivating comprehension language use involves the process of exchanging information, where information is expressed and comprehended by interlocutors (giovanelli, 2015). thus, comprehension plays a significant role in students learning english as a foreign language. the four language skills aimed at language learning depend on the students’ comprehension of the content being communicated: how much the students comprehend from what they listen and read will determine how well they speak and write (nunan, 1989, 2004; renandya & widodo, 2016). regarding the process of reading aloud recommended by jacobs (2016), reading aloud can cultivate students’ understanding in several ways. first of all, by nature, reading aloud is both reading and listening activities (gurdon, 2019), the receptive skills that determine how much the students will comprehend a reading text or a speech (linse & nunan, 2005; http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 93-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mol & bus, 2011; mundhe, 2015). gurdon (2019) emphasizes that reading aloud cultivates the students’ comprehension by exposing them to a text delivered in dual mode: as they listen to the teacher, they read the text and vice versa. this duality collaboratively helps the students’ comprehension of the text because the teacher’s reading will add dimensions of accents, intonations, and comments from the teachers that guide the students’ comprehension when they are reading the text simultaneously (batini et al., 2018; giroir et al., 2015; huang, 2010; huda et al., 2015; wadsworth, 2008; yusuf, et al., 2017). as argued by jacobs (2016) and marchessault and larwin (2014), reading aloud is conducted with pauses for making connections, asking questions, as well as making and inviting comments. this interaction is a rich process that cultivates students’ understanding. for huang (2010), the pauses in reading aloud give moments for the students to let the information they hear sink into their minds. this process is important because this is where the students make connections among bits of information that they hear and between the new information with their repertoire prior knowledge, creating an understanding that becomes the basis of their comprehension (draper, 1993; hahn, 2002; hemmati et al., 2015; jacobs & renandya, 2019; kailani, 1998). according to tarim (2015), gurdon (2019), johnston (2015), lane & wright (2007), novianti & abdurahman (2019), and trelease (1989), the simple questions asked by the teacher during reading aloud activity cultivate the students’ comprehension by guiding them through the process of connecting information from the story and the information from the students’ life in general. reading aloud for training listening skills listening is the receptive skill that trains the students’ comprehension through auditory media (nunan, 2015). as a passive skill, its practice does not usually require the students to produce the language. instead, they are required to extract the meaning of a spoken or written text that has been heard (mundhe, 2015). this receptive skill's primary goal is to develop the students' ability to interpret and understand the texts' meaning using the students' existing language knowledge (gabrielatos, 1996). children develop their listening skills by listening to the sounds around them (linse & nunan, 2005). hence, reading aloud can be a very good activity for honing students’ listening skills. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 94-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license children mostly listen to the teacher's voice during reading aloud as the teacher reads the text aloud. the teacher's voice delivers spoken words, phrases, sentences that act as general listening practice for children (batini et al., 2018; cerón 2014; gabrielatos, 1996; hahn 2002; mol & bus, 2011; proença et al., 2017; trelease 1989). for batini et al. (2018), hemmati et al. (2015), jacobs & hannah (2004), and jacobs (2016), the activity of listening to the voice of the teacher speaking in english is the practice that makes the children accustomed to listening to english words. it is essential in areas where english is not part of the daily interaction, such as rural and frontier areas. indonesia has a broad coverage of such regions, where books are rare, and internet connections are scarce (puspitasari, suwastini, blangsinga, dantes, & tuerah, 2021; utami, suwastini, dantes, suprihatin, & adnyani, 2021). in such a situation, reading aloud can be very practical for honing children’s listening skills and getting them accustomed to hearing english words. besides improving students’ basic listening skills, reading aloud offers other benefits that can further enhance students’ later listening skill development. draper (1993) believes that the prelude stage in the reading aloud activity provides children with clues and intriguing questions about the text. it does not only function to build students’ interest but also to build the next level of listening skill, predicting the next words or sentences that may come after the certain sentences. furthermore, the teacher's pauses during the reading aloud help students stay focused on what is coming from the teacher’s story (lane & wright, 2007). for jacobs (2016) and lane and wright (2007), it is the interaction between the teacher and the students that offer the most benefit for students’ listening skills, because the children can feel the presence of the teacher, and so they feel paid attention to, listened to, and cared for. this interaction is the missing part from listening activity conducted with recorded audios or videos (hahn, 2002; johnston, 2015), where children become passive listeners. for draper (1993), gabrielatos (1996), and jacobs (2016), being active listeners make them better english learners than just being passive listeners. reading aloud for developing reading skills and general literacy jacobs & hannah (2004) and batini et al. (2018) claim that reading aloud places the foundation for further developing reading skills because reading aloud promotes silent reading. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 95-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for jacobs & hannah (2004), it is essential for children to advance to silent reading because it is centered on the students, making them the focal point of learning beyond the mastery of language skills. reading becomes the strategy to gain knowledge and insights about the world. cerón (2014) and hahn (2002) perceive the benefits of reading aloud beyond the students' general reading skills. they are particularly riveted to the interaction between the teacher and the students while reading aloud activity. for cerón (2014), reading aloud changes the reading process into an active interaction that inhibits students from falling into passive reading. the questions and comments posed by the teacher can trigger the students to actively think about the text and make a connection between the text and their life. hahn (202) shares this same idea and sees this active reading as an opportunity for building a taste for fine literature. reading aloud is argued to offer further benefits to younger children’s reading skills. batini et al. (2018) consider the interaction between the teacher and the children while reading aloud activity as the pioneering step for reading comprehension. for batini et al. (2018), reading aloud acts as a guided reading activity. in the first level, children’s reading is guided by the teacher’s voice. it is in line with gabrielatos’ (1996) opinion that children start recognizing written forms of the words pronounced by the teacher through reading aloud. furthermore, the dialogue between the teacher and the students and the reading aloud process can act as a bridge that guides the students’ comprehension (batini et al., 2018; marchessault & larwin, 2014). in this case, the teacher can scaffold the guidance to advance the students’ comprehension (ersani, suwastini, padmadewi, & artini, 2021). in the indonesian efl context, reading aloud can be very strategic for a couple of reasons. first of all, indonesia has low literacy, and children prefer watching to reading (ministry of education and culture, 2017; listiani et al., 2021; ariantini et al., 2021). although watching has its own benefits, students need to build basic literacy with adequate reading skills. reading aloud can bridge this gap by presenting reading in an effortless environment where children do not have to “read” in the reading aloud activity (gurdon, 2019; hahn, 2002; johnston, 2015; lane & wright, 2007). later on, teachers can modify the questions during the reading aloud to excite the students, build their curiosity, and generate their interest toward the text, through which children will develop their basic literacy (draper, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 96-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 1993; hahn, 2002; huda et al., 2015; batini et al., 2018). because reading aloud is an effortless reading, children are not scared to be involved, opening opportunities for building their literacy (bulinnaria, 2014; cerón, 2014; jacobs & hannah, 2004; novianti & abdurahman, 2019; trelease 1989; trelease, 2013). reading aloud for stimulating speaking, communicative, and writing skills according to cerón (2014), the dialogic process during these questions and answers can kickstart students' speaking skills. when the teacher asks questions, she can modify the questions to direct the students to provide elaborative answers (gabrielatos 1996; jacobs, 2016). together with the students' comprehension from listening to the teacher’s reading, students can build confidence in answering the questions (cerón, 2014; gabrielatos, 1996; giroir et al., 2015; hahn, 2002; hemmati et al., 2015; jacobs & hannah, 2004). for novianti and abdurahman (2019) and tarim (2015), this confidence, supported with a wide range of vocabulary and trained pronunciation, reading aloud can foster students’ speaking fluency. novianti and abdurahman (2019) implemented reading aloud among college students to benefits relevant to 21st-century skills. they argue that reading aloud in an efl context can be used to coach students' writing skills with adult learners. the teacherstudent interaction mandated in reading aloud activity can be shifted into activities that promote writing skills with older students. novianti and abdurahman (2019) used literary text in their experiment. during and after the reading aloud, the students were asked to write comments, opinions, interpretation, and analysis of the literary text they read. written comments and report like this can become a habit that foster students’ writing skills. because they have to write their own interpretation and analysis, this activity can be challenging and exciting. the goal of language learning is the communicative skills that allow the students to use the target language effectively. reading aloud has been argued to promote vocabulary building, pronunciation practice, comprehension of spoken and written text, and listening, reading, and speaking skills needed to build communicative skills. according to cerón (2014) and gabrielatos (1996), the listening and speaking skills built through the reading aloud activity build the students’ confidence about their english competence, leading to their confidence to communicate using http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 97-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english as their target language. for hahn (2002) and huda et al. (2015), when the language skills are equipped with sufficient vocabulary and trained pronunciation achieved from the dialogic process, reading aloud can promote students’ communicative skills in general. reading aloud for constructing motivation and critical thinking skills marchessault & larwin (2014) and jacobs (2016) maintain that teacher-led reading aloud can increase students’ motivation to read. the reading process seems effortless, as the teacher starts the reading activity with a story that requires the students only to listen. it creates a variation from the usual “paper-and-pencil tasks” (hahn, 2002). in the context of efl learning, this effortlessness also eases the students into an english learning atmosphere that is fun and entertaining (huang, 2010; trelease, 1989; trelease, 2013). furthermore, the pauses taken by the teacher during reading aloud provide interaction that can encourage dialogic expressions among children, making them feel welcome to the learning process (batini et al., 2018; cerón, 2014; hahn, 2002; johnston, 2015). another important impact of reading aloud on students’ motivation is how reading aloud can promote a passion for reading, which is the foundation for later literacy skills (hahn, 2002; huda et al., 2015; jacobs & hannah, 2004; gurdon 2019). trelease (1989) argues that reading aloud presents reading as a pleasure that can create an internal motivation to gain more reading pleasures. during the reading aloud activity, the teacher can pause from reading to make comments and connections and ask questions that can enrich this pleasure of reading. for trelease (2013), wadsworth (2008), and draper (1993), this is what cultivates students’ passion for reading. what is most important about this passion is that reading is the very activity that opens students’ access to unlimited knowledge. for jacobs (2016), cerón (2014), and huda et al. (2015), the interaction established by the teacher during reading aloud activity can be directed to trigger students' critical thinking. when the teacher comments and invites students to share their opinions, students construct their arguments by connecting facts in the text and between facts in the text and the students' reallife (wadsworth, 2008). besides, the prelude and the questions from the teacher can also train students’ predictive ability by conditioning them to make predictions about what will happen in the story (marchessault & larwin, 2014; draper, 1993). when http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 98-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license appropriately prompted, students can find possible solutions and outcomes to the problems faced by the characters in the story, training them in problemsolving skills (johnston 2015). for batini et al. (2018) and gurdon (2019), the process of critical thinking happens when students creatively construct imaginations about the story being read. books for children provide many descriptions (kindle, 2009), and through the teacher’s voice, students can imagine what is verbally described. batini et al. (2018) further argue that children also develop empathy toward the events experienced by the characters in the book being read. furthermore, when the teacher invites the students to make comments and connections, reading aloud becomes a stage for emotional sharing (batini et al., 2018). making connections between the details in the story and the students’ respective experience also create a stage for sharing experience. mundhe (2015) and novianti and abdurahman (2019) argue that the sharing moments can engage the students’ critical thinking by conditioning them to take a point of view in commenting on facts from the text. furthermore, johnston (2015) argues that reading aloud can raise awareness about cultural differences among children. the teacher can use pauses while reading aloud to comment on cultural differences between the students’ cultural background and the target culture. in the indonesian efl context, text with culturally authentic content is crucial for introducing awareness about cultural differences between indonesian culture and the target cultures of english-speaking countries indonesian people. indonesia is a very culturally diverse country, and many conflicts have happened due to simple misunderstandings or systematic ethnocentrism. thus, reading aloud can be deliberately designed to raise cultural differences awareness among children. conclusions and suggestion from the discussions above, it can be concluded that reading aloud has been deemed an excellent strategy for teaching english to young learners. the strategy requires the teacher to choose appropriate texts for the students’ level and interest, read the text aloud with proper pronunciation and intonation, and pause to make comments, ask questions, and make the connection. experts and previous research have argued that this activity positively impacts the students' vocabulary, pronunciation, language skills, communicative skills, literacy, motivation, and critical thinking skills. furthermore, reading aloud can create http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8 (1), 2021 99-107 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i1.19880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license an enjoyable learning experience that motivates the students to read. it can train their creative thinking and cultivate their imagination. reading aloud also improves the students' interpersonal skills: when they are trained to listen and pay attention to the speaker, they learn to appreciate others. reading aloud also cultivates the students' compassion toward the text's emotions. these benefits have been argued to affect the students’ future progress in their english learning. another important conclusion from this study is the centrality of the teacher’s role in reading aloud activity. the teacher acts as the bridge between the text and the children’s comprehension, as well as the model for proper pronunciation, awareness about cultural differences, train students’ empathy, provide moments for sharing, and foster an appetite for reading and learning in general. in the indonesian context, reading aloud can be one of the best alternatives for introducing english to children. reading aloud can prevent children from gadget addictions in urban areas. in contrast, reading aloud in rural and frontier areas can increase students’ exposure to english and enrich their insights into the world. parents can also apply this at home, where simple stories and fairy tales could be an excellent choice of texts for their children as children find stories enjoyable. it is true that reading aloud may be one of the oldest teaching strategies. nevertheless, considering the benefits of reading aloud for young learners range from building a foundation for their future development in english as well as for developing their imagination, critical thinking, empathy, and compassion, reading aloud is a very relevant strategy for teaching english for young learners in this 21st century. after all, reading is the path that delivers students to books, where books are the source of knowledge. to quote emily dickinson’s poem “there is frigate like a book," reading can take students “lands away,” a school that is accessible even to “the poorest.” when a book can contain so much knowledge and insights, it is reading that becomes the key that deliver the students to that knowledge. references abdulrahman, t. r., & basalama, n. 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(2017). skimming and scanning techniques to assist efl students in understanding english reading texts. indonesian research journal in education, 1(1), 43–57. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 10.22437/irje.v1i1.4338 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 297-308 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee efl teachers' experiences during the pandemic: stories from rural area in tungkal ilir district pahrozi ahmad*, anita triastuti yogyakarta state university, indonesia (pahrozi0008pasca.2020@student.uny.ac.id) received: 07 september 2021; revised: 23th november 2021; accepted: 27 december 2021 abstract this article explores the implementation of online learning by english teachers in the age of the coronavirus pandemic in the tungkal ilir district, west tanjung jabung regency. this article examines two research questions: (1) how do efl teachers describe their practices and perceptions of online learning during the pandemic, and (2) what challenges efl teachers face while implementing online learning during the pandemic. in this small-scale qualitative study, three english teachers took part. semi-structured interviews were used to gather information. the result revealed that teachers in remote areas used social media and digital platforms to carry out their online teaching. on the other hand, these teachers had some issues incorporating online learning. the problems can be divided into two categories: (a) unfamiliarity with the platforms and (b) inability to respond to students quickly. in addition, some suggestions are also given for further researchers to conduct a similar study. key words: covid-19; efl teachers' experiences; rural areas abstrak artikel ini membahas tentang implementasi pembelajaran online oleh guru bahasa inggris di era pandemi virus corona di kecamatan tungkal ilir, kabupaten tanjung jabung barat. artikel ini membahas dua pertanyaan penelitian: (1) bagaimana guru efl menggambarkan praktik dan persepsi mereka tentang pembelajaran online selama pandemi, dan (2) apa tantangan yang dihadapi guru efl saat menerapkan pembelajaran online selama pandemi. tiga guru bahasa inggris diambil sebagai responden dalam studi kualitatif skala kecil ini. wawancara semi terstruktur digunakan untuk mengumpulkan informasi. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa guru di daerah terpencil telah menggunakan media sosial dan platform digital untuk melaksanakan pengajaran online mereka. disisi lain, guru memiliki beberapa masalah dalam penerapan pembelajaran online. masalah dapat dibagi menjadi dua kategori: (a) ketidaktahuan dengan platform dan (b) ketidakmampuan untuk merespon siswa dengan cepat. selain itu, beberapa saran juga diberikan bagi peneliti selanjutnya untuk melakukan penelitian serupa. kata kunci: covid-19; pengalaman guru efl; daerah pedesaan how to cite: ahmad, p., & triastuti, a. (2021). efl teachers' experiences during the pandemic: stories from rural area in tungkal ilir district. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 297-308. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 298-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the current global pandemic resulting from the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) outbreak has significantly altered how people behave in their daily lives (nugroho et al., 2021). all countries worldwide that have been affected by this contagious disease require their society to do social and physical distancing to avoid infection (reluga, 2010). in reaction to this, the indonesian minister of education and culture has urged schools to do online learning for covid-19 affected districts (mendikbud, 2020b). as a result of covid-19's rising dissemination, he has also ordered all education units to implement online learning by 24 march 2020 (mendikbud, 2020a). in order to comply with these policies, students must learn online, and teachers must work from home. thus, it completely substitutes face-to-face classroom learning with online learning. the term 'online learning' refers to the educational procedure through electronic devices such as computers, tablets, and smartphones, thus requiring a connection to the internet. indeed, it is a type of distance education that allows students to acquire education from anywhere they are. to communicate with others, students and teachers can use applications such as skype and whatsapp or use other methods such as email and videos or podcasts (gonzalez & st. louis, 2018). however, distance education covers challenges such as geographical distance and a variety of other factors that hinder students from attending classes in person (hrastinski, 2008; kara, 2020; singh & thurman, 2019). as mentioned earlier, the covid19 pandemic has caused the educational system to shift from formal classroom contact to casual digital learning. the abrupt shifting has several repercussions. first, it astounds teachers, students, school administrators, and authorities because the global pandemic was not predicted previously (amin & sundari, 2020). second, teachers and students must adapt to emergency online teaching and learning (abdulkareem & eidan, 2020). lastly, for both teachers and students, the transition from face-to-face classroom engagement to online teaching and learning includes some benefits, challenges, and drawbacks (ivone et al., 2020; satar & akcan, 2018). research has shown that online learning has some advantages for both teachers and students that have been thoroughly documented, such as in online teaching pedagogy (j. a. cohen, 2020), online teaching strategies (inayati et al., 2021), and instruction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 299-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license methods and curriculum design (kostoulas-makrakis, 2016). in addition, halim and hashim (2019) found that online learning can improve classroom engagement, communication skills, and self-confidence. furthermore, pazilah et al. (2019) mentioned that entertaining and engaging online learning activities could boost students' motivation. teachers can use authentic learning materials through videos, television clips, and other helpful multimedia sources (e.g., youtube, wikimedia, wikipedia, and spotify) to make online learning fun. in line with this, digital platforms such as applications, learning management systems, and social networking sites can be utilized in teaching and learning activities during the pandemic. for example, to improve the efficacy of teaching and learning, today's language learning has extensively integrated numerous digital technologies, social media, and virtual environments (lam et al., 2018; nugroho & mutiaraningrum, 2020). the result shows that it significantly impacts language learners' development (chun et al., 2016; hembrough & jordan, 2020; lam et al., 2018) although there are numerous benefits to online learning, there are also issues to consider when establishing online classes or learning activities. for example, students may become sidetracked by other online content due to digital activities, reducing their involvement in the class lesson or activity (omar et al., 2012). furthermore, there is the risk of encountering technical issues, such as audio and video abnormalities (halim & hashim, 2019). despite online learning issues, teachers and administrators will need to devise inventive solutions based on best practices to ensure that academic learning objectives and goals are accomplished in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic around the world. the problem mentioned above indicates a need to understand the various perceptions of online learning among teachers in rural areas during the pandemic. therefore, this study will explore efl teachers' perceptions of online learning in rural areas in the tungkal ilir district during coronavirus pandemic circumstances. with this aim, this paper addresses the following research questions: 1) how do efl teachers describe their online learning practices in rural areas during the pandemic?; 2) what are the challenges that efl teachers face while implementing online learning in rural areas during the pandemic? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 300-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method research design an interpretive paradigm was used to perform this qualitative study. a concern for the individual characterizes this paradigm. in the interpretive paradigm, the primary goal is to comprehend the subjective world of human experience (l. cohen et al., 2017). therefore, the natural object of this research is basically in the form of qualitative entities such as social phenomena, perceptions, and problems in online learning. research site and participants three on-duty english teachers at a junior high school in tungkal ilir district were chosen to be the research participants. the participants must have met the following criteria: online teaching english during the pandemic and teaching in rural schools (desa teluk sialang and desa tungkal 1). then, for the sake of confidentiality of participants, they are referred to as initials instead of names. data collection and analysis data were collected through indepth semi-structured interviews, in which interviewees (participants) will be asked a series of questions about their perceptions of online teaching during the pandemic. according to newby (2014) and mears (2012), indepth semi-structured interviews help gather thorough information on one's attitudes and habits and investigate new subjects in greater depth. it means that the researcher can explore more about what they know about a topic, what they have encountered, how they feel about specific issues, and how they view the specific issues. the semistructured interview lasted for about 60 minutes for each participant and was conducted through a telephone call. while conducting a semistructured interview, a set of questions is prepared as the basis for the initial query. it serves as a guide to ensure that the interview does not stray from the topic at hand. in other words, the interviewer has guidance in hands, but it is still possible to extend the interview when a new issue appears. before starting the interview, the participant was notified and permitted to record the conversation. the interview recordings were transcribed, and the transcription then is analyzed by referring to the procedures introduced by flick (2002), namely open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. findings and discussion since there are two research questions proposed in this study, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 301-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings will be divided into two sections: 1) teachers' perceptions of online learning and 2) the challenges of online teaching. teachers' perceptions of online learning one of the questions asked during the interview was, "how do you describe online learning in teaching english in the classroom?" this question was specifically addressed to determine the teachers' basic comprehension of online teaching. it is believed that teachers with a good understanding and favorable opinion of online learning are thought to impact the success and efficacy of their classes substantially. in addition, their knowledge will also help them integrate online learning during the pandemic. there was much agreement among teachers when it came to answering the question. they claimed that online learning was poorly implemented. "theoretically, online learning is, uhm, a learning system where students and teachers are in a separate place. usually, it can be done synchronously or asynchronously". (ms. mps/5) "online learning needs an internet connection, so, i think, the implementation of online learning in our place is not well implemented. there are so many challenges we have encountered". (ms. nu/7) "online learning can be conducted if teachers and students have a strong internet connection. however, the most important thing is that the students must have supported technology, such as smartphones. in fact, some students do not have it". (ms. mf/10) the teachers' description of online learning and how they carried it out indicate that it is somehow problematic. the results of teachers implementing online learning are also shown in some other schools in indonesia through some studies by atmojo and nugroho (2020) and moser et al. (2021). their studies reported that the teachers shared a similar perception that online learning is somehow problematic and needs a strong internet connection and adequate supporting technology. two months after the covid-19 outbreak began, giovannella et al. (2020) undertook a study in the italian school to reveal the teachers' understanding and experience of online learning. it was found that teachers were more likely to have a good understanding of implementing technologies while teaching. it means that teachers' understanding of the technology used is needed to prepare for future teaching activities. to this ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 302-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license end, (federkeil et al., 2020) also advises that teachers improve their digital skills. since online teaching methods are becoming increasingly popular, schools should provide the required hardware and software, such as computers needed by the teachers. the semi-structured interviews also indicated the teaching platform used during the social distancing era. in general, teaching platforms can be classified into three types: they are as follows: (1) chat and message; (2) video conference; (3) youtube. this result aligns with atmojo and nugroho (2020) and correia et al. (2020) that the most utilized platform in teaching during the social distancing era are whatsapp, zoom, google meeting, and youtube. teaching through whatsapp, according to tragant et al. (2020), can promote interaction between teacher and student, as well as among students. although student participation dwindled with time, teachers said that students wrote most whatsapp messages as part of teacher-initiated projects. thus, the teacher-initiated projects could help them practice their language skills and engage in authentic communication. in this case, all participants agree that using whatsapp in teaching during the pandemic is simple and easy to operate. "i use whatsapp to share materials, youtube links, give information about assignments, and provide questions and answer sessions." (ms. nu/15) "i sometimes utilize google meeting to explain materials, discuss with students, and provide question and answer sessions. at other times, i also use zoom. but, most of the time, i use whatsapp in teaching". (ms. mf/18) "i attach youtube video links in wag to provide my students with visual materials." (ms. nu/22) the challenges of online teaching during the pandemic although online teaching activities could be conducted using several digital platforms, the participants' responses showed that they encountered several challenges. first, some participants confessed that they had not been familiar with online learning platforms at the beginning of online teaching administration. second, for teachers, particularly in rural places, performing online teaching was a novel experience because they were used to face-to-face classroom interactions prior to the global epidemic. as a result, they had to quickly adjust to the current state of online teaching and learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 303-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license "at the beginning, the only option that comes to my mind is to run my online classes through whatsapp because i am unfamiliar with other media. however, after discussing and practicing with my colleagues, i try to use other media such as video zoom." (ms. mps/36) "yes... in the beginning, i hesitate how to carry out my online teaching activities with the students because i rarely use online learning tools." (ms. mf/42) other research supports this finding, indicating that most teachers only have a rudimentary understanding of online learning and digital platforms (adedoyin & soykan, 2020; dhawan, 2020). moreover, most teachers, especially those in rural regions, are used to having face-to-face classroom interactions rather than online learning through digital platforms, which could explain the unfamiliarity (putri et al., 2020). second, participants indicated that they could not provide direct feedback and comments during the online teaching exercises. the incapacity could be attributed to a lack of digital platforms and limited internet connectivity. although using a video conference such as zoom, the participants noted that providing direct feedback and responses to the students' works or inquiries was challenging as in face-to-face teaching. in addition, poor internet connection possessed by both teachers and students overwhelmed the situation during the covid-19 pandemic. "i face problem in giving feedback to my students during the online teaching, especially when the teaching and learning are using online chatting like whatsapp or google classroom." (ms. nu/49) "one of my challenges in online teaching is being unable to respond quickly to my students' work and projects. in addition, i will have to deal with the complexities of teaching online with digital devices, which will take extra time. as a result, i rarely respond to the work of my students. another challenge is the internet connection. when the electricity is off, there will be no internet connection. (ms. mps/53) "i cannot give quick feedback or responses to my students' queries or remarks during online teaching due to a lack of internet access. also, it seems that the students are not particularly motivated to participate in online learning. so, maybe, i have to design more interesting online teaching activities, although it is tough." (ms. mf/45) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 304-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this finding depicts that inability to provide quick responses and lack of students' engagement become the other challenges encountered by the teachers. these results agree with friedman (2020) and toquero (2020) that english teachers must deal with the complexity of online teaching, mainly teaching feedback and passive involvement of their students in online learning activities. furthermore, the participants also provided insights and suggestions to overcome the challenges both teachers and students encountered during the emergency of online teaching. "the problem could be solved by involving teachers in certain training, workshops, or seminars addressing how to conduct efficient online learning so that they are familiar with the various online learning tools." (ms. mps/59) "…… i think by joining some workshops or training, teachers can know how to use and design interactive online teaching". (ms. nu/61) the most common recommendation for teachers is to participate in training and development programs to increase their abilities and understanding of digital learning platforms. lailiyah and cahyono (2017) mentioned that extensive involvement in such activities enables teachers to enhance their online learning capacity and equips them to design representative teaching activities. this result is consistent with the findings of nugroho et al. (2021) and sithole et al. (2019), who found that involving teachers in training and development programs is an excellent strategy to improve their professional competence. conclusions and suggestion the present study examined the efl teachers' experiences concerning how they carried out online teaching practices and their challenges in teaching in the age of covid-19 pandemic. this study leads to several compelling results: 1) a variety of applications and platforms such as social media (e.g., whatsapp, youtube) and digital platforms (e.g., zoom, google meet) are employed to carry out online learning. however, many issues emerge from the students and the teachers. as a result of the lack of preparation and planning, online learning does not function efficiently; 2) the findings reveal the challenges of implementing online learning at a rural school in tungkal ilir district. for example, a lack of expertise with digital learning platforms and the inability to respond quickly to students, and a lack of technological infrastructure. these challenges demonstrate the importance ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 305-308 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22409 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of taking these findings into account and taking action by addressing the issues, particularly in terms of familiarizing and developing the technological field in all educational settings to meet desired learning outcomes. nonetheless, some limitations should be considered when evaluating this study. first, only three efl teachers from remote tanjung jabung barat regency can participate in this study. therefore, future studies in similar areas should be conducted with many participants and perform various data instruments (e.g., observation and survey) to depict more detailed data. second, future studies should examine additional data sources such as observation and field notes to elicit the most reliable data and accurately reflect the current inquiry's intricacies to enhance the data and prevent subjective viewpoints. references abdulkareem, t. a., & eidan, s. m. 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(2020). extending language learning beyond the efl classroom through whatsapp. computer assisted language learning. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822 1.2020.1854310 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 396-410 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee automatic caption features on google meet as a pronunciation assessment tool boris ramadhika*, rolisda yosintha, sukma shinta yunianti universitas tidar, indonesia, indonesia (ggramadhika@untidar.ac.id) received: 13th september 2021; revised: 28h juni 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this study aims to find out the use google meet automatic caption feature to assist teachers of non-native english to assess their students' english pronunciation. we used a mixedmethod with the explanatory-sequential approach following it. this research study was done at tidar university with 12 participants, further reduced to 4 in the participant selection step. as the data were both quantitative and qualitative, we used the word error rate (wer) formula quantitatively and qualitative content analysis qualitatively. the findings show that artificial intelligence (ai) has a very sensitive system in transforming sounds into written forms. it also has an auto-correction system that sometimes can substitute a word with a meaningless one if a speaker pronounces the word unclearly or to the nearest word if a speaker mispronounces it. even though it does not accurately process the punctuation and there is no sufficient correction on grammar, we believe the ai can help teachers in a pronunciation assessment. key words: assessment; automatic caption; google meet; pronunciation abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui penggunaan fitur teks otomatis pada google meet untuk membantu para guru bahasa inggris bukan penutur asli saat menilai pengucapan bahasa inggris siswa mereka. kami menggunakan metode penelitian campuran dengan pendekatan eksplanatorisekuensial. penelitian ini dilakukan di universitas tidar dengan jumlah peserta sebanyak 12 orang yang dikurangi menjadi 4 orang pada tahap seleksi peserta. data penelitian bersifat kuantitatif dan kualitatif. untuk menganalisa data secara kuantitatif digunakan rumus word error rate (wer). sedangkan, secara kualitatif mengunakan analisis isi kualitatif. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ai (artificial intelligence/ kecerdasan buatan) memiliki sistem yang sangat sensitif dalam mengubah suara menjadi bentuk tulisan. fitur ini juga memiliki sistem koreksi otomatis yang terkadang dapat menggantikan kata yang tidak berarti jika pembicara mengucapkan kata dengan tidak jelas atau diubah ke kata terdekat jika pembicara salah mengucapkan kata tersebut. meskipun tidak memproses tanda baca secara akurat dan tidak ada koreksi yang memadai pada tata bahasa, kami yakin ai dapat membantu para guru dalam penilaian pengucapan. kata kunci: penilaian; teks otomatis; google meet; pengucapan how to cite: ramadhika, b., yosintha, r., yunianti, s. s. (2022). automatic caption features on google meet as a pronunciation assessment tool. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 396-410. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 397-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in english as a foreign language (efl) contexts, teachers often neglect or avoid pronunciation. insufficient time allocation, methodological uncertainties, pedagogical priorities, inadequate materials, and inadequate pronunciation teaching training are often factors causing this situation (dixon, 2018; isabelle, 2018). in the indonesian context, lack of confidence caused by non-nativeness only adds to the teaching and assessment process challenges of students‟ pronunciation. meanwhile, pronunciation is essential and bonded with all language skills (hunt-gómez & navarro-pablo, 2020), and thus teaching pronunciation should be prioritized. this pedagogical gap should be addressed to help improve the english teaching and learning process results. to do so, utilizing technology could be an alternative for teachers to develop students‟ pronunciation skills. the integration of technology with the teaching and assessment process of pronunciation has been extensively implemented. numerous mobile assisted language learning (mall) media have been developed and used to teach and learn pronunciation. mall is defined as a learning mode in which students can manage their own learning with the help of mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. (cohen & ezra, 2018; hoi & mu, 2021). kim and kwon (2012) list four types of mobile application services for mall, namely mobile social networking, mobile podcasting, course management service, and automatic speech recognition. the use of mall in teaching pronunciation is highly beneficial for both the teachers and students. the exposure to native pronunciation provided by mall makes it possible for students to develop their skills properly. for non-native teachers, mall lessens their burden in delivering the lesson. in the assessment process, however, teachers might still encounter some problems. by nature, the testing of productive skills, including pronunciation, is not as simple as that of receptive skills. various mall media for testing reading and listening are vastly available since the answers to the questions are mostly closed-ended. those for testing writing, speaking, and pronunciation skills are relatively limited since the responses could be varied and open-ended. with no fixed answers to the questions, human raters are needed to review the answers manually. consequently, the time required for this process is considerably long, and the cost of developing such media for testing the productive skills is highly-priced. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 398-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to help teachers in the assessment process of pronunciation, some mall alternatives have been extensively explored and developed. rayshata and ciptaningrum (2020) analyzed the development of fifteen indonesian efl students‟ pronunciation using automatic speech recognition (asr) in google‟s voice search application (gvsa). their study showed that gvsa could help students improve their pronunciation skills in consonant sounds and vowels, and diphthongs. in another study, evers and chen (2020) explored the use of asr in speechnotes to examine the difference in taiwanese adults‟ pronunciation performance with peer feedback and individual practice. they found that the two groups‟ pronunciation results were significantly different in that asr in speechnotes was better used in asr-based pronunciation activities with peer feedback. in other words, asr in speechnotes could not be successfully used for individual or independent learning. cheng, lau, lam, zhan, and chan (2020) developed a phonics learning voice chatbot (plvc) by combining asr and triple neural networks (tnn). using this mall media, they compared users‟ performance in phonic learning when assessed by plvc and professional english teachers. with a correlation coefficient of 0.71, the results showed that the assessment result from plvc was reliable. in a more recent study, spring and tabuchi (2021) investigated the practicality of an asr tool called nattos in improving japanese efl students‟ pronunciation in an online learning setting. after a series of implementations, they concluded that nattos could objectively improve students‟ pronunciation, particularly in their mastery of consonant and vowel sounds, even though the lesson was delivered online. despite the potential advantages of asr-based mall media for assessing pronunciation, some areas could be improved. most studies about asrbased pronunciation mall media focused on the teaching and learning of pronunciation, not on the assessment process (rayshata & ciptaningrum, 2020; ryan & ryuji, 2021). in addition, some of the asr tools being explored were not freely and readily available for public use (e.g., phonics learning voice chatbot and nattos). therefore, other asr-based mall media should be further explored that could help teachers assess students‟ pronunciation skills. google meet, a videocommunication service developed by google in 2017, has an asr feature and thus could be developed for this purpose. asr in google meet converts speech to text to provide live captions ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 399-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to assist participants with hearing problems or those who simply cannot follow spoken language well. until december 2020, this feature has been expanded to five languages: english, french, german, portuguese (brazil), and spanish (nelson, 2020). considering the potential of asr used in google meet, the researchers assumed that automatic caption features on google meet could be further explored in testing pronunciation. given this motive, the researchers aimed to evaluate the feasibility of automatic caption features on google meet as a pronunciation assessment tool. the following research questions guided this study: can the google meet auto caption feature help teachers assess students‟ pronunciation? the findings of this study are expected to contribute to the development of students‟ pronunciation through the utilization of effective and efficient mall media. furthermore, teachers are expected to make use of this study as a reference and basis for consideration when they are about to assess their students‟ pronunciation with ease and accuracy. method the method used in this research study was the mixed method because we had quantitative and qualitative data. we also adopted the explanatorysequential approach as we were interested in following up the quantitative results with qualitative data. this approach can be seen figure 1. figure 1. the explanatory-sequential approach the words „quan‟ and „qual‟ are written and used according to their own purposes. the word „quan‟ means that our quantitative data were taken as secondary to qualitative data, while the word “qual” means the study was driven qualitatively (edmonds & kennedy, 2020). research design we used the participant-selection design as our research design which a involves two-phase process (edmonds & kennedy, 2020). the first phase is the participant selection which was done by collecting and analyzing quantitative data; while the second phase is collecting and analyzing qualitative data, which was done to the selected participants and was used to interpret the quantitative data at the final step. the research design can be seen in the following figure 2. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 400-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 2. the participant-selection design research site and participants the total participants were twelve people: eleven university students and one native speaker of english. these students were randomly selected. for the native speaker, the authors asked one person from america to analyze the feature of automatic caption in google meet. data collection and analysis based on the research design that the authors used, the data were gathered synchronously using the google meet application. in the first phase, to collect the “quan” data, we first asked each participant to read a passage (426 words) taken from a toefl test question in silence for one minute. then, they were asked to read it aloud while activating the automatic caption from google meet. the authors then recorded each participant‟s reading using xbox game bar, which is available in windows 10, by pressing windows logo + g. after that, the authors used word error rate (wer) (klakow & peters, 2002) to analyze the data. we used wer because we gathered the data based on the system performance (prabhavalkar et al., 2018). wer contains 1) insertion: words that are not spoken but are detected, 2) deletions: words that are spoken but are not written, and 3) substitutions: words that are spoken and written differently in which the formula is as seen figure 3. figure 3. the word error rate formula for the insertions and deletions, we were looking at the caption while, at the same time, also hearing what the participants said. some words written in the caption but were not said by the participants were considered insertions. on the other hand, words that were spoken but not written in the caption were considered deletions. for substitutions, we focused on the caption and matched it with the text that the participants read. after we had the data, we put it into the formula and had the results for the first phase. based on the quantitative data analysis result using wer, we then partially selected some participants for the next phase. we categorized the participants into high, mid, and low in wer. at this stage, it was the end of the first phase, as the objective in the first phase was to select participants for the second phase (edmonds & kennedy, 2020). in the second phase, we started to collect the “qual” data by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 401-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interviewing the selected participants. the interviews lasted about 10 to 15 minutes and were digitally recorded and saved on a secure laptop. after that, the data were analyzed qualitatively using qualitative content analysis (mayring, 2019). we would like to have the data related to the educational background of the selected participants, the device used, and the experience they had. next, the categorization was made based on the interview results such as english and non-english students, high, mid, and low devices, and years of learning english. furthermore, we also used wondershare filmora 9 software to see the audio pulse track, especially in the error parts. this was done to determine whether there was a difference between correct and incorrect pronunciation. finally, we interpreted the quantitative data to qualitative data in the final stage in describing the findings qualitatively. first, we looked at the wer results and matched them with the qualitative data. second, we analyzed the errors made by the participants. for example, whether the low-quality device would affect the caption (the ai performance) or not. third, we tried to look at the audio pulse whether the errors had the same pulse or not. lastly, we interpreted the findings qualitatively. findings and discussion findings phase 1 in phase 1, stage 1, we asked the participants to read aloud a passage taken from a toefl test question. we then recorded it and analyzed the results quantitatively using wer. the table below shows the results of phase 1 in quantitative results in table 1. table 1. the results of wer initial names inserti ons deleti ons substitu tions number of errors number of words words error rate percentage ns 0 0 4 4 436 0.0092 0.917% ille 1 4 7 37 48 446 0.1076 10.762% ee 1 4 6 25 35 422 0.0829 8.294% ee 2 3 5 8 12 430 0.0372 3.721% ee 3 13 7 65 85 436 0.1950 19.495% otu 1 21 4 56 81 456 0.1776 17.763% otu 2 10 5 38 53 439 0.1207 12.073% ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 402-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license initial names inserti ons deleti ons substitu tions number of errors number of words words error rate percentage otu 3 8 4 13 25 430 0.0581 5.814% ille 2 18 15 66 99 455 0.2176 21.758% sa 1 5 4 23 32 431 0.0742 7.425% sa 2 6 6 16 28 434 0.0645 6.452% ou 4 10 9 38 57 437 0.1304 13.043% the terms that are used in the table are as follows: ns : native speaker ille : indonesian literature and language education students ee : english education students sa : state administration students otu : outside tidar university students as shown in table 1, the „quan‟ data show that the native speaker had the lowest percentage (0.917%) in making errors. some of the students also made notable efforts since they could make less than 10% errors. although we cannot say that the feature is perfect, by looking at the results, we could also say that the google meet automatic caption feature did work to translate spoken forms to written forms. however, we might think many things could be analyzed further. therefore, we wanted to go deeper, assuring that the google meet automatic caption feature can be a supportive learning tool to assess speaking skills. the next step that we would do after getting the „quan‟ data was to select some participants for phase 1, step 2. we then selected ns, ee 3, otu 3, and ille 2. first, we asked ns because she is a native american; we wanted to know why the automatic caption feature still showed some substitutions. second, we chose ee 3 because this student is actually an english education student. in fact, the automatic caption feature noticed many errors in her pronunciation; we were curious whether it was her pronunciation or the machine translation that caused the errors. third, we were interested in otu 3‟s results because he was not from the english education study program. however, he still could make it, reaching less than 10% errors. lastly, we selected ille 2 because this student had the most errors; we might find out whether ille 2 made the mistakes. phase 2 after we selected some participants, in phase 2, step 3, we asked them one by one using ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 403-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license whatsapp messages. they were asked open-ended questions. we tried to figure out their educational background, the device used, and their experience when they read the passage. after that, we used ipa to find out mainly about the learning experience that they had. the results would be the “qual” data used for further analysis in interpreting „quan‟ data to qualitative data. here are qualitative data results for each participant that are also being the analysis in step 4: ns ns is a native speaker from the usa. however, she has been in indonesia for more than five years. although she is a native, she still made some errors according to the machine even though it is the lowest one. her errors were only four substitutions even though she used a laptop without an external microphone. the errors are presented in the following table2. table 2. ns error words error words error types correct words in visage substitution envisaged our substitution are they’re substitution their vectors substitution factors she admitted that she found some words that were unusual for her. she added that some terms were very english for an american like her. she had to look up first for idioms that did not make sense to her, such as “come a cropper.” moreover, she argued that some sentences were too long to read and did not have enough punctuation, which made her hard to take a break from reading the passage. therefore, at some points, she had to make pauses that made the errors such as „their‟, which was, as a result, substituted with „they‟re‟. in that case, pauses have affected the ai processing of sound into written forms. ee 3 ee is a fifth-semester student of english education. she used a laptop and a headset to read the passage. ironically, she had so many errors with more than 19% of wer. we tried to find out the reasons by interviewing her. first, she argued that she was so nervous and made reading very fast. this might cause the machine to catch the sound in error. second, some vocabularies were unfamiliar to her; she did not know how to pronounce them. she also stated that even when she thought she mispronounced it, she still believed that she made it correctly. she was very confident with her skill that she rated herself 8.9 out of 10, and, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 404-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from what we heard from our ears, we believed that she spoke too fast that the ai from the machine missed the sound. it was because ai needed a little time to transform sound into written forms. it was like when she had already pronounced three words; the ai only managed to process one word, causing deletion errors. apart from it, she mispronounced some words, causing the ai to process them in errors. otu 3 otu 3 is a fourth-semester student of the agricultural industry technology study program. she used a laptop without a headset to read the passage. based on our interview with her, we found out that she thought her english skill was only 5 out of 10, and it was not in line with the result of her wer, which is only at around 5%. she also stated that she was not too sure of her pronunciation as there were some words that, in her opinion, were hard to pronounce. as a result, she finished reading the passage by pronouncing the words carefully and slowly. ille 2 as for the last, we decided to look at the most errors produced by ille 2. she was a student of indonesian language and literature education. it might be logical for a non-english education student to make such errors. however, we were still interested in this because we would like to compare the ai to recognize errors. she used her smartphone with a headset on it when she read the passage. as for her, english was not something that she would jump into, which was why she chose indonesian instead as her major. she also did not hesitate when she said she was between 3 or 4 out of 10 for her english level. she was so nervous and read the passage uncalmly as she found some difficulties pronouncing certain words. she also had some pauses, causing the ai to process her sound into random words. after we look at the errors caused by the selected participants, in step 5, an analysis to relate and describe the “quan” to “qual” data was carried out. ee 3, otu 3, and ille 2 had common substitution error words. what we did after was to find out the audio pulse track both for the error and correct ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 405-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license words using wondershare filmora 9 software to track down whether the error words were audiovisually the same as the correct ones or not. we took the audio pulse track of the correct words from ns, who pronounced those words correctly. the results can be seen in the following table 3. table 3. audio pulse track in common substitution errors the table 3 shows that the pulse tracks on the error and correct words are different, and it means that the speaker needs to pronounce the words correctly and carefully. for example, many participants pronounced the word “screen” instead of “green” because they sounded the phrase “promotesgreen” (words „s‟ and „g‟ were like in the one word) which resulted in “promote screen” (not “promotes green”) by the ai; they did not give a clear space to pronounce the words “promotes” and “green.” meanwhile, the word “seldom” to “so don‟t do”, happened because the participants did not pronounce the „l‟ in “seldom.” this made the ai recognize the word “sedom”-which the „l‟ was not clear enoughto the nearest pronunciation “so don‟t”. as for the words “this”“these”, “over”-“offer”, and “led”“lead”, they were purely mispronounced by the participants. for example, in the pulse track for the word “this”, we can see that the participants only produced /i/ (short „i‟) instead of /i:/ (long „i‟) to produce “these”. the same thing happens to words “over”-“offer”. the participants pronounced /v/ instead of /f/. the last words, “led”-“lead”, were clear. it can be heard that the participants pronounced /led/ rather than /li:d/. discussion from this point, we have found several findings from the analysis results. first, it is interesting that as long as the speaker pronounces words correctly, even at a fast tempo, the ai will still function precisely in transforming sounds into written forms. the ai is very sensitive to speakers‟ sounds that a word has to be pronounced correctly to be captioned ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 406-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license accurately. as long as the speaker pronounces the words correctly, the ai will not substitute the words for other nearest-pronounced words. second, google meet auto caption‟s ai has an auto-correction system. however, the system is only limited to words. the ai will transform the sounds into written words that have the nearest pronunciation produced by the speaker. on some occasions, it can arbitrarily form meaningless words. for example, when a speaker wants to say „architectural‟ but he/she does not pronounce it clear enough, it can become „rc tectoral”. we know that „tectoral‟ is meaningless. third, the other thing found from the ai‟s auto-correction system is that it does not care about grammar. it can be said that the auto-correction system does not correct the syntax for its captions. the ai will be forming captions according to the sounds produced by the speaker ignoring the structures of the sentences. for example, if the speaker mispronounces the word „these‟ to „this‟ in a phrase „these documents‟, the ai will stand in „this documents‟ for the caption. fourth, if the speaker speaks too fast, it can cause deletion errors. this is because the ai needs time to process sounds to words. on average, when a speaker already pronounces three words, the ai will only have processed one word. as a result, there will be some delays in processing the captions. if the speaker corrects the words or restates the same words during the „delaying time‟, it can cause the ai to make errors in captioning. fifth, we also noticed that the ai is not really accurate in processing punctuations because of some factors. however, it recognizes punctuations; it still arbitrarily transforms pauses to either a comma or a full stop for a pause between two sentences. sometimes, the next word does not start with a capital word, even after a full stop. while in some random occasions, a word with a capital letter is written in the middle of a sentence. other punctuations such as apostrophes, colons, and quotation marks are greatly ignored. the ai in google meet has proven useful in captioning speech to text based on the findings. this is supported by what soni, sheikh, and kopprapu (2019) have found that google speech command is a good tool even without an enhancement. even so, at some times, the ai has failed to contain accurate captions, leading to confusion. this is similar to the ai on youtube. lee and cha (2020) found that the ai on youtube also occasionally fails to caption the speech accurately, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 407-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license especially when spoken by non-native people. the difference is that the ai in google meet will caption the speech the same as what the speaker pronounces, even resulting arbitrarily and meaningless. in contrast, the ai on youtube will caption the speech with the nearest pronounced word (malik et al., 2021). however, we have identified and acknowledged our study‟s limitations. our data only can prove that the ai in google meet can sensitively detect one‟s english pronunciation. we still do not know, for instance, if there is an english preference, such as british or american english, or not in the google meet automatic caption feature. examination of key issues, impacts, and effectiveness of this feature to be applied in an english as a foreign language (efl) class setting has not been explored yet due to our limited data. as a result, we only focus on whether the ai in google meet can help non-native english teachers in assessing the pronunciation skill of non-native english students or not. we believe that our research findings will be a good starting point to explore the potential of the google meet automatic caption feature. for other researchers, they can identify whether the automatic caption feature in google is better than the others, such as the ai on youtube, or not. teachers can also start to use google meet for a meeting and, especially, teaching and assessing the pronunciation skill. even students can use it as a selfimprovement tool for their pronunciation skills as they can notice the caption if they mispronounce a word. thus, further works related to the ai in google meet should be related more in practicality, especially in an efl class setting. moreover, there is a possibility that this tool can be used to teach and assess other english skills. conclusions and suggestion to conclude, automatic speech recognition technologies have been particularly developed. based on the findings, google meet as a pronunciation assessment tool will be a handy tool to assess students‟ pronunciation. it can, especially for the non-natives of english, reduce the teachers‟ subjective perspective in assessing students‟ pronunciation since the ai is very sensitive to word pronunciation. in that case, it will help non-native teachers to assess students‟ english pronunciation more comprehensively. for students, we suggest that they use the google meet auto caption feature to help them correct their english pronunciation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 408-410 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.22482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license moreover, our study raises a number of opportunities for future research that may be done to find other possible findings which we cannot reach due to our data limitations. first, we believe that google meet can be used as a pronunciation assessment. however, its practicality is still unknown in terms of its effectiveness and efficiency in being used in an efl class setting. second, this study can also be extended in comparative ways. there may be other asr tools that can be used to assess pronunciation, such as on youtube. comparing these two asr ai will need further works to do. finally, it is necessary to do similar research studies to examine whether the google automatic caption feature can be used to assess other skills. acknowledgments the authors acknowledge the support received from the institute of research, community service, and education quality assurance of universitas tidar. in addition, the authors 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(2019). label-driven timefrequency masking for robust speech command recognition. lecture notes in computer science (including subseries lecture notes in artificial intelligence and lecture notes in bioinformatics) (vol. 11697 lnai, pp. 341–351). springer verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3030-27947-9_29 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 59-78 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students' descriptive writing performances in online english language classroom farida hamid*, siti zulfa*, tungky ariwibowo, nida husna, didin nuruddin hidayat faridahamid@uinjkt.ac.id received: 27th january 2022; revised: 27th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract during the covid-19 situation, the online classroom activities assist teachers and students in achieving the learning objectives. the objectives of this study were to know students' performances and obstacles in the online descriptive writing english language classroom. the qualitative method was used as the research design. the data were collected through open-ended questionnaires, semi-interviews, and documents. the study involved one teacher and 30 students in senior high school through purposive sampling. the results indicated that students' performances were mostly good in the online descriptive writing learning activities following their high motivation and great attitude to participate in the online classroom. however, some problems persisted, such as a lack of vocabulary and confusion in generic structure text and grammatical use. in addition, the internet connection has become the main problem supporting students' performance during online classroom activities. hence, adding more supporting and proper activities that can be applied online is needed. key words: descriptive text; english; online classroom; writing abstrak selama covid-19, kegiatan kelas online membantu guru dan siswa untuk mencapai tujuan pembelajaran. tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui kinerja siswa dan hambatan dalam menulis deskriptif online kelas bahasa inggris. metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode kualitatif. pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui angket terbuka, semi wawancara, dan dokumen. penelitian ini melibatkan satu orang guru dan 30 siswa sma melalui purposive sampling. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kinerja siswa sebagian besar baik dalam kegiatan pembelajaran menulis deskriptif online karena motivasi tinggi dan sikap mereka yang baik untuk berpartisipasi dalam kelas online. namun, beberapa masalah masih tetap ada seperti kurangnya kosa kata dan kebingungan dalam memahami struktur teks umum dan penggunaan tata bahasa. selain itu, koneksi internet menjadi kendala utama untuk menunjang kinerja siswa selama kegiatan kelas online. oleh karena itu, sangat penting untuk menambah lebih banyak kegiatan yang mendukung dan tepat yang dapat diterapkan melalui online sangat diperlukan. kata kunci:; teks deskriptif bahasa inggris; kelas online; menulis how to cite: hamid, f., zulfa, s., ariwibowo, t., husna, n., hidayat, d. n. (2022). students' descriptive writing performances in online english language classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 59-78. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 60-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing performs as the central part of transferring any idea; it requires comprehensive information to create a masterpiece text. according to klimova (2013), mastering writing requires the learners to use metacognitive and cognitive skills, which means they need to arrange writing goals structurally and its necessities as supporting sources during the writing process. writing is crucial to conveying the message and can be improved through practice (kaiser, 2016). there are many references and a wide area of sources that allow the learners to explore the information before creating writing; hence, english writing becomes interesting to learn as part of english learning process. a good writing skill involves comprehension and application of new knowledge by utilizing critical thinking while composing the writing idea (defazio et al., 2010). therefore, to produce a piece of good writing, students were required to understand the idea before and after the writing process. there are many types of writing text, one of them is writing descriptive text. according to kurnia and kareviati (2021), descriptive writing means describing something through words that the readers can understand by portraying someone, place, or thing related to the learners' life. the descriptive text has two parts: identification of how to introduce a person and description of something based on the writer's description (kurnia & kareviati, 2021). presenting something through descriptive text engages readers to imagine it. the writing descriptive text process is similar to the artist who creates something that the audience can see clearly (taufikurohman, 2018). it means the descriptive text should let the readers know what was being described in a detailed explanation. it was also stated that writing a descriptive text is bound to the objective and significance of the structures (noprianto, 2017). in indonesia senior high school, the descriptive text learned by students refers to curriculum k-13 and the syllabus. students expect to make a good text describing something to obtain the learning goals of descriptive text activities (widiati et al., 2017). therefore, in comprehending how to write descriptive text, students must conceive appropriate materials and learn how to put them together, to give readers a clear idea and understand its meaning. descriptive text means to describe something to the readers. according to knapp and watkins (2005), descriptive text permits the writers to interact or ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 61-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license observe something objectively or subjective; the descriptive text expands the characterization of a person, place, or a thing mainly using the present tense, adjective, an adverbial phrase. the descriptive text presents the audience through their senses and imagination about the meaning and description of something (siregar & dongoran, 2020). the writer of descriptive text tends to give the best explanation through physical sense to obtain the information in detail. gerot and wignell (1994), as cited in rojiyah (2017), mention that part of the descriptive text consists of social function, generic structures, grammatical features, and purpose. the social function means to describe a person, place, or thing. the generic structures are related to identification and description. the grammar usage in descriptive is simple present tense. then, writing descriptive text intends to make the readers understand the text. in addition, the part of writing descriptively is important in creating outstanding writing. according to mclean (2012), the writing process structure contains pre-writing such as selecting the topic; drafting consisting of an introduction, body, and conclusion in the descriptive text; revising means focusing on coherent descriptive text; editing to notice the word and grammar; and, students could publish their descriptive writing text properly. tracking students' performance in writing descriptive text online is necessary to know their development in getting good writing results. as one of the benefits, the descriptive text materials could be shared through the online classroom that students could access. hendrawaty and santoso (2016) mentioned that the online classroom media of writing descriptive text enhance students' learning quality since the media is easy to use in the learning process. in addition, the online classroom could embrace students' participation to write their idea development in writing descriptive text (lemov, 2020). writing need to practice by students to convey the message; hence, through online activities, students can utter their idea in writing descriptive text. students' performance in the online classroom provides active learners by giving their opinion in creating descriptive text. therefore, students' performance in writing descriptive text concerns their motivation and attitude during the online learning activities can be recorded when it is necessary. students' motivation in writing appears from the inside and outside; it could influence their target in the writing learning process (aryanika, 2016), and it could be recorded in a better way through an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 62-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license online setting. mosha (2014) writes that students' performance is relevant to motivation and attitudes. students' motivation could arouse their passion for learning about descriptive text materials, while students' attitudes would indicate their readiness to write the descriptive text process. their motivation influences students' performance in learning to write a descriptive text. alizadeh (2016) mentions that students' motivation connects with their success in the learning process. motivation plays a role in students' writing performance since they must achieve descriptive learning goals. motivation connects with a person's desire to achieve something; it is divided into external and internal motivation that could direct students' performance (harmer, 2007). in the descriptive writing text, students' external motivation could impact their performance related to their goals and curiosity. in contrast, students' internal motivation is the encouragement to be successful and their attitudes in writing descriptive text. students' motivation in the descriptive writing activities is tied to their effort and willingness to obtain the learning objective (purnama et al., 2019). students could well participate in writing a proper descriptive text since they like to develop ideas about something. a good writing text grade could also influence their motivation and performance in the online learning process. students' attitudes also could drive students' performance in the online descriptive text learning. susanti and mujid (2019) mentioned that attitude refers to behaviors in the learning process; students could make an optimum study. students' nature to participate in writing descriptive text is influenced by their habit of accepting the materials. students with a positive attitude toward writing descriptive text are related to their excellent cognitive skills (sari et al., 2020). a good understanding of descriptive text materials boosts students to be active and have good attitudes in the learning process; hence, it is essential to direct students to perform well. also, students' positive attitudes could assist them in obtaining descriptive writing text learning objectives (setyowati & sukmawan, 2016). students with a positive attitude and intend to do better in the learning process, mainly in writing descriptive text, could develop their ability through practice. a positive attitude could direct students to do better in the online descriptive text process. students' attitudes refer to how students think and feel during the learning process regarding descriptive text (sari et al., 2020). hence, students' ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 63-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license performance entangles their motivation and attitudes during online learning. however, the online classroom activities cannot be separated from the obstacle the students may face. the internet connection provided better activities in the online writing descriptive text classroom. however, the stability of the connection might hinder the process (saminathan, 2021). it was mentioned that the online classroom requires a good internet connection; it becomes a problem if teachers and students cannot provide it. like many other online activities, the online descriptive text classroom activities need a reliable internet connection; hence, it becomes necessary to be concerned with authority. during a pandemic situation, the teaching-learning process through the online classroom assists students and teachers in keeping on going with the teaching-learning process. the students were provided “a place” to practice their writing through the online platform. the online classroom, to some extent, does not hinder the process of learning writing. thus, the learning process still runs at a respective pace, and the online media becomes a communicative device to enhance students' motivation and serve students' own pace to explore their writing using proper grammatical rules (sariani et al., 2021). the online classroom is like common classroom activity that aims to develop materials and engage with students (crawford, 2020). for instance, google classroom, whatsapp group, and lms facilitate students' writing process. the online classroom as media utilizes students' performance in writing descriptive text; learning sources, expanding the idea that could increase students' performance in writing activities. teachers and students need to keep track of the writing process, avoiding the obstacles that could affect students' performance in writing descriptive text. according to hendrawaty and santoso (2016), their study proves that elearning in writing descriptive text could improve students' motivation and writing skills. in line, the online classroom provided students to learn descriptive text. it could expand students' performance to create a proper descriptive text. the success of students' performance would face the stage with the difficulties in the learning process of writing descriptive text. according to novita (2017), some obstacles influence students’ performance in writing descriptive text: structure, grammar, and lack of vocabulary. students undergo hardship to construct the structure in writing descriptive text; perhaps students do not entirely understand the part of descriptive text. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 64-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the grammar usage and vocabulary would impact descriptive text writing since it needs to comprehend descriptions about something. students could not embrace the materials of descriptive text; they could not follow the aspect of writing descriptive text (i. pablo & s. lasaten, 2018). students' incomprehension about descriptive text subjects caused the fatal in the process of writing descriptive text. students' obstacles in writing descriptive text relate to their competence in developing ideas. students feel confused to share their idea in writing descriptive text (turnip et al., 2019). describing something requires many resources before the writing process; hence, students are obliged to know sufficient knowledge about the contents. the online writing descriptive text classroom during the covid-19 also has internet connection issues. atmojo and nugroho (2020) write about the challenges in online activities related to unstable internet networking. students could face this handicap during online learning activities. it could hamper students' performance in writing descriptive text. however, students' learning process faces difficulties in writing descriptive text. according to ismayanti and kholiq (2020), some students cannot devote their idea to writing descriptive text; they duplicate others' work without getting the aims and content of the text. the obstacles to developing descriptive writing ideas could hamper students from achieving their learning goals. students' other difficulties in writing descriptive text are related to its generic structure and grammatical rules (nurfidoh & kareviati, 2020). since students were confused about writing based on the structure of text or grammar, such as the verb, they could not write descriptive text correctly. besides, vocabulary knowledge is part of the obstacle in writing descriptive text (kristiana et al., 2021). since students do not know the word's meaning, they cannot express their writing ideas. the students' performance in writing the descriptive text was designed to meet teaching objectives based on the basic competencies in the curriculum and syllabus. with the changing trends in conducting the learning process that pandemic covid19 accelerated, the teachers should be ready with the possibility of using more than just the way of the processes. therefore, understanding how to maximize the online way should be accompanied by some understanding of the problems that may come. discovering the difficulties in writing descriptive text online could help students prevent and solve the obstacles. in addition, previous studies were conducted on relevant issues in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 65-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license descriptive text. hendrawaty and santoso (2016) discovered that many students are writing descriptive text using the e-learning model. novita (2017) discovers students' writing of a descriptive text and discovers the impediments of writing descriptive text. kurnia and kareviati (2021) focus on students' perceptions in writing descriptive activities. shararuddin et al. (2021) find out the cause why esl could not write a good descriptive text and find out technology approach which can help students write descriptive text properly. turnip et al. (2019) analyze students' writing descriptive capacity. this present research intended to know students' performances in online writing descriptive text and find out the obstacles in writing descriptive process through the online classroom with the focus on senior high school students. methods research design the current study employed qualitative research as a method and a case study as a design. the use of the qualitative method to know respondents' experiences through a natural setting toward the issues of study (creswell & creswell, 2018). it attempts to explain the case and peoples' effect on education. besides, the use of a case study aims to get indepth information for the issue's discussion (creswell, 2014). case studies fit the education field to execute the problem and its impact. this research finds out students' performance in writing descriptive text in online classrooms and the obstacles to online writing in english language classrooms. research site and participants the research participants are the primary data cause the resulting participant's obtained data toward the study issue (given, 2008). this study involves 30 pupils using purposive sampling in a private islamic senior high school and one english teacher. data collection and analysis this research employs questionnaires, interviews, and documents to collect the data. creswell (2012) writes that collecting the data in qualitative research is necessary to get respondents' approval to collect their data and information. in addition, the questionnaires consist of students' performance in online writing descriptive text and the obstacle in the online classroom; the questionnaires were adopted from nurfidoh and kareviati (2020), kurnia and kareviati (2021), and riyanti (2015). the questionnaires were administered through google form. then, the researchers used a semi-interview ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 66-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license through telephone involving some participants. also, the documents were used as evidence about students' performance in online writing descriptive text english language classroom. in addition, the data analysis employs the theory of miles and huberman (1994). first, the data reduction, the researchers select the data related to the issues and also make the themes. next, the data display was organized, presenting the data through detailed explanations related to the literature review. last, draw a conclusion; it gives the essence of study objectives. data were analyzed in a manual by the researchers. the result of questionnaires observes participants' points of view related to the issue. the interview data analyze through coding and transcript of the call conversation. the researchers conduct data analysis by synchronizing the data questionnaire and interview. then, both data are combined and equalized into the result of the research. the final finding of the study could determine the research topic and literature review based on facts data. findings and discussion findings the study of students' performances in online descriptive writing in english language classrooms proves that students could follow the online activities but also face difficulties during the learning process. student' performances in online descriptive writing english language classroom the data of students' performances entangles students' motivation and attitude in online descriptive writing learning. students' performance data shows that they know the materials and like to study online descriptive text writing; "because the descriptive materials were fun learning, not boring, and easy to understand." (student 9). it is convinced that the materials of descriptive writing are uncomplicated for students. also, students could achieve learning objectives by getting good grades in descriptive text materials; "i understand enough about descriptive text materials so that i could get a satisfactory grade" (student 4). students' performance in online descriptive text demonstrates that students could well participate in the learning process. besides, through the online descriptive writing classroom, students could be more prepared to study; "i understand enough the material because i have time to translate the english words that i do not know" (student 22). the online descriptive text classroom provided students to study more about the materials, so it assists students and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 67-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers in obtaining the learning goals. the english teacher mentioned, "students do not have difficulties understanding the descriptive materials since they have a background. the learning result was appropriate with the learning objective." students' performances are supported by their ability and learning situation that could arouse their participants in the online descriptive text. the writing process for students demands time to develop their ability; hence, when students have more time to prepare and practice their performance in writing, it could establish adeptly (kurniasih et al., 2020). students who have substantial effort in writing the descriptive text process could enhance their writing activities (sabti et al., 2019). students' and teachers' points of view in online descriptive writing indicate that students' performance is mostly good in the learning activities. in addition, students' performance is also involved students' motivation in conducting online descriptive writing learning. students who like to write something would be more engaged in descriptive learning; "i like to write anything about the lesson or story" (student 1). it could promote students' performances in writing descriptive text activities since they are familiar with writing. besides, by mastering writing ability, students could well participate in a discussion of descriptive text materials; "i motivated to ask about the descriptive text materials so i could more understand" (student 13). students' motivation contributes to their performance in writing descriptive text to gain more knowledge by asking for the materials. students also feel a different atmosphere in online writing descriptive text classroom; "at the beginning of online classroom, i did not have any spirit and lazy. then, i tried to adapt with a new situation and feel comfortable" (student 16, interview). the rapid transformation of the face-to-face learning process into online activities might confound students and teachers, but online learning could offer different learning experiences. also, the english teacher pointed out that "students were active to participate in the online classroom when i stimulate through questions, then they would answer enthusiastically." the online writing descriptive text process involves students' motivation. the impulse from students to write descriptive text occurs when they have high motivation to master the writing process (sabti et al., 2019). the learning process and motivation presence could evoke students' progress to develop their ability to write a descriptive text. motivation in the writing process refers to an inner power that comes from students; they could reinforce a willingness to do better in writing ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 68-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (aryanika, 2016). it could determine that the student's motivation could influence the learning activities about the descriptive text materials. moreover, students' performance is also related to their attitude. students could feel the great spirit of learning the descriptive materials since they could understand them; "i have a great passion for understanding the descriptive text materials better, being active students, and learning more" (student 6). also, students feel satisfied doing the descriptive text task since they thought it was not hard material and could follow the learning process; "i satisfied with the descriptive text task, and it proves that i understand the materials" (student 14). students' attitudes in the online descriptive writing classroom could direct students to perform better in the lesson. besides, students' attitude in the online descriptive learning could be discovered by their ability to write descriptive text; "i can write descriptive text well, and it is easy materials for me" (student 30). since students could follow the online descriptive process, also, they could develop their writing ability. the english teacher mentioned that attractive media and methods could influence the online writing descriptive activities; "we used pictures and text as media in online descriptive text, then i implemented a guided question technique to enhance students' participation." besides students' active participation in developing their descriptive writing ability, the attitudes could guide students to perform better. the role of students' attitudes in the language learning process, particularly in writing descriptive text, is necessary to make them enjoy the learning experiences (harmer, 2007). students' attitude intends to reassure their process in writing to do better (sari et al., 2020). it proves that students with high intention to participate in online descriptive text classroom activities could perform better. the obstacles in online descriptive writing english language classroom the different learning environments in the online classroom make students face obstacles in learning descriptive text materials. it could influence students' performance in the online descriptive classroom; it related to their understanding of the materials; "i do not understand well about the grammatical rule and its structure" (student 7). the descriptive text ties with its structure and mainly uses the simple present tense; students struggle to write descriptive text properly. also, vocabulary issues become the main obstacles for students in writing descriptive text. "i do not know the meaning of a word in the text. i ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 69-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license have more time to understand the materials. in online activities, the internet connection also disturbing me" (student 4). students lack vocabulary knowledge, which could hamper them in online descriptive writing; also, online learning could obstruct students from studying more. the english teacher admits that mainly the obstacle related to vocabulary, the structures, and internet connection. students' lack of vocabulary is mainly a problem in the learning process related to the descriptive text. also, the trouble of internet connection could hamper the learning activities." in addition, students' performance in writing descriptive text could determine their ability to implement the material through the online learning process. in the following example of descriptive text by student 16: another place that you can visit in indonesia is yogyakarta. this place has beautiful cultural tourism. tourism object like borobudur temple is popular over the place. this is because, in borobudur temple, you can learn about its historical history, and it is a good spot to see the sunrise. moreover, yogyakarta is also wellknown as kota pelajar because there are many education institutes over the place. (student 16, document). the text has clear content and organization (identification and description). however, the grammar usage and mechanism are still unclear and have misspellings. the use of vocabulary is standard to describe the topic. however, there are solutions to the obstacles faced by the students. the teacher's method assists students in facing the obstacle of online descriptive writing; "the teacher delivers descriptive materials fit students' ability and easy to understand" (student 12). the teacher's role becomes necessary in the online descriptive text to assist students in understanding the materials. the teacher also gave a solution to utilize a translation machine to understand the descriptive text better; "since students did not know the meaning of the text, they could not ask about it. hence, they could use google translate." the online learning process utilizing any application could help students and teachers improve students' performance in the online descriptive writing classroom. in addition, the obstacles of online descriptive writing could hamper students' performance. students face difficulties having a piece of knowledge in expanding their writing (dabbagh, 2017). since writing descriptive text contains factual information about something, students need to develop their wisdom. also, the main concern in writing descriptive text related to grammatical and vocabulary that students found difficult in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 70-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing process (kristiana et al., 2021). creating a proper descriptive text involves proper word choices and verbs. the obstacles to writing descriptive text force students to enhance their writing performance. hence, students need to practice and learn more to have better quality in writing descriptive text. discussion their performance and obstacles influenced students' writing process in the online english classroom. students' performance online descriptive text writing process directs them to engage more in classroom activities. this finding is supported by he (2019) mentioned that engaging students in writing descriptive text could grow selfdiscipline in students' performance. students who get good scores in online descriptive writing have good performance in the learning process. komba et al. (2012) mentioned a dependency between students' performance and ability in writing; students' performance in online writing establishes their ability to write, which leads to getting good grades and comprehending the materials. in addition, online descriptive writing activities facilitate students to understand the materials better. this finding is reinforced by lemov (2020) that online classroom activities embrace students with sufficient time to grasp writing materials. students could find the resources and practice writing descriptive text. students' performance in the online descriptive text is influenced through practice to perform better in the learning process (shahzadi & ahmad, 2011). besides, their background knowledge of descriptive text materials supports students' performance in online writing descriptive text. sulistyo et al. (2019) found that online writing activities connect to students' background knowledge which could increase their writing performance. students' requirement to fulfill the learning process of descriptive text materials makes them give the finest effort in the writing that could establish students' writing performances. in addition, students' performance in online writing descriptive text involves their motivations and attitudes. the criteria of students' performance embrace motivation and attitudes that could lead the way students participate in the learning process and directly obtain the learning objectives (mosha, 2014). students capable of delivering their ideas in writing are influenced by their motivations to develop their understanding of writing descriptive text. it is reinforced by purnama et al. (2019) that the motivation could ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 71-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license encourage students to write a descriptive text accurately since they have the confidence to do better. a positive mind with great motivation could enlarge students' performance to convey their idea in writing descriptive text. students could get comprehension about descriptive text materials endorsed by their motivation. this finding confirms by gai mali (2015) that students' motivation contributes to the writing process since they can understand it. in addition, students' motivation in online writing descriptive text could drive them to participate more in a writing classroom. this finding is reinforced by shararuddin et al. (2021) mentioned that students feel motivated to write descriptive text correctly since they utilize the online writing activities to establish students' performance. students could experience the convenience of the online classroom in their writing process. besides, the role of teachers in online writing descriptive text could evoke students' motivation to understand writing materials. this finding is supported by rakic et al. (2019) that online activities entangle teachers in facilitating better online classroom activities to enhance students' performance. thus, students' motivation is connected with students' performance, particularly in online writing descriptive text. moreover, students' attitudes in online writing descriptive text assist students in gaining better writing performance. during the online writing process, students with good attitudes are willing to participate in comprehending descriptive text materials actively. it is confirmed by setyowati and sukmawan (2016) that positive attitudes could direct students to commit to giving outstanding writing in the learning process. then students performance needs to understand the process of writing descriptive text by gaining more information in writing. when students master writing, their writing descriptive text process is influenced by their attitudes to learning more. the finding supported by susanti and mujid (2019) mentioned that students' attitudes connect to their behavior in writing. students with a sufficient understanding of descriptive text materials would easier grasp the idea in the writing process. using online learning in writing descriptive text could establish students' performance since it is significant to implement the media that could direct students to be capable (wati, 2018). in addition, students' attitudes drive them to write descriptive text correctly during online classroom activities. hendrawaty and santoso (2016) emphasize that the online writing of descriptive text ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 72-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license arouses self-learners and collaborative learning in the learning activities. students' performance writing descriptive text through online activities involves active participation and awareness to write appropriately. also, students' attitudes are influenced by the interactive activities in online writing descriptive text. students' attitudes followed their writing descriptive text process, which could obtain in an online writing classroom that could direct establish students' performance (albana et al., 2020; sulistyo et al., 2019; trisnaningrum et al., 2019). hence, students' attitudes could embrace students' performance in writing descriptive text process. however, students' performance influences the obstacles in online writing descriptive text. students face difficulties understanding the language features, such as the tenses in writing descriptive text. this finding was confirmed by noprianto (2017) that mentioned students' inadequate understanding of the social function, structures, and language features could interrupt writing a descriptive text. the obstacles could hamper students' performances in online writing descriptive text. in line, ismayanti and kholiq (2020) emphasized that most students could not write descriptive text appropriately due to the generic structure, grammar, and word spelling. also, students find difficulties in comprehending descriptive text structure. the topic or object described in descriptive text requires a clear description. describing the object in a text must undergo sequentially following a descriptive text structure consisting of identification and description (novita, 2017). besides, students need to understand writing rules for a descriptive text and the grammatical use, which could confuse students in accurately writing a descriptive text. students' obstacles related to grammatical errors include using the verb and unnecessary words in a descriptive text (suryana, 2019). an ideal descriptive text is a good creation connecting the language rules and art words to make readers understand the descriptive text. in addition, many students find it hard to know the proper word or meaning when writing a text; it obstructs them from writing descriptive text. this finding is supported by jayanti (2019) that good writing of descriptive text requires rich vocabulary use to furnish a descriptive text, but students face obstacles toward lack of vocabulary. it was challenging for students to establish descriptive writing since it needed rich vocabulary to furnish descriptive text. during the online writing of the descriptive text, students face obstacles related to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 73-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license internet connection that could hamper their performance in the writing process. atmojo and nugroho (2020) confirmed that the online writing activities of descriptive text require a stable internet connection, but inequality of facilities could hamper students' participation in the learning process. besides, students require an approach that makes it easy to express their idea in writing descriptive text (fadhly & nurendah, 2014). using online writing descriptive text could assist students in the learning process, enhancing students' ability to write a descriptive text despite the obstacles. hence, students need to know about the obstacles to writing better descriptive text. conclusions and suggestion students' performance in the online descriptive writing english language classroom indicates their readiness to follow the learning activities. students could participate well in the online writing process since their motivation and attitudes influence their performances. high motivation and great attitudes could direct students' performance in the online writing descriptive text to obtain the learning objectives. however, students also face obstacles in the learning process of writing descriptive through the online classroom. the most difficulties of online descriptive writing are related to the lack of understanding of vocabulary, generic structure, grammar, and idea expression. also, the internet connection could hamper students' performances in the online classroom. therefore, teachers and students need collaboration to enhance the online learning process in writing descriptive text, for instance utilizing more media to engage the activities, selecting fun and proper activities online, and guiding students to be brave in expressing their idea to write a descriptive text perfectly. the online learning process needs to provide a stable internet connection to support students' activities, leading to better performance in online writing descriptive text. students' and teachers' contributions could assist the learning process, particularly in writing descriptive text materials to accomplish the learning objective and write masterpiece descriptive text. this study's limitation focused on students’ performance in the senior high school context of online descriptive text writing. for further research, it would be interesting to discover students' performance on the other types of writing text in embracing online classroom activities. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 74-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references albana, h. h., marzuki, a. g., alex, & hidayat, d. n. 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(2019). a study of students’ attitude toward learning english of the tenth graders in sman 1 abung semuli lampung utara. jurnal elsa, 17(1), 15–20. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 78-78 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.24498 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license taufikurohman, i. s. (2018). the effectiveness of using padlet in teaching writing descriptive text. journal of applied linguistics and literarcy, 2(2), 71–88. trisnaningrum, y., alek, a., & hidayat, d. n. (2019). discourse analysis of grammatical cohesion devices in college students’ academic writing essay. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i 1.12502 turnip, y. a. m., marbun, f. v. g., girsang, a. l., & tarigan, s. n. (2019). an analysis of students’ ability in writing descriptive texts. linguistic, english education and art (leea) journal, 3(1), 173–179. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 10.31539/leea.v3i1.987 an wati, d. r. (2018). improving the students’ descriptive text writing ability through the implementation of clustering technique at the tenth grade of man 1 metro. english education: jurnal tadris bahasa inggris pissn, 11(1), 129–143. widiati, u., rohma, z., & furaidah. (2017). buku guru bahasa inggris kementrian pendidikan dan kebudayaan. pusat kurikulum dan perbukuan, balitbang, kemendikbud. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 79-101 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the use of authentic materials in online english teaching: from the learners’ perspective gufron1*, ainul azmin2 gufron.raihan@pradita.ac.id received: 24th march 2022; revised: 16th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract the main objective of this study is to explore students' views on english teaching using authentic materials. this research was conducted in an english class where the students are staffs who are lecturers in a private university in jakarta. an inductive qualitative research method was employed by interviewing five randomly selected respondents after teaching for 15 weeks. the data from the interview were analyzed in three steps; quotation, coding, and thematic analysis using atlas.ti. the data analysis results showed that using authentic materials was more interesting and impressive than the ones that were not authentic and not related to the students' subject matter. using authentic material also increases students' interest in speaking more because the topics discussed are related to students' real world. besides, this method can increase interest in reading because students are familiar with vocabularies that are related to their majors. however, this method is not suitable for applying in a classroom where students are from different majors. key words: authentic materials; real world; perception; text books; interesting abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengeksplorasi pandangan siswa tentang pengajaran bahasa inggris menggunakan bahan ajar yang otentik. penelitian ini dilakukan di kelas bahasa inggris dimana mahasiswanya adalah staf pengajar di salah satu perguruan tinggi swasta di jakarta. metode penelitian kualitatif digunakan dengan mewawancarai lima responden yang dipilih secara acak setelah mengikuti pembelajaran selama 15 minggu. data dari wawancara dianalisis menggunakan atlas.ti. hasil analisis data menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan materi autentik lebih menarik dan mengesankan dibandingkan dengan menggunakan materi ajar yang umum yang tidak berkaitan dengan real-life siswa. menggunakan materi autentik juga meningkatkan minat siswa untuk berbicara lebih aktif di ruang kelas karena topik yang dibahas berkaitan dengan jurusannya. selain itu, metode ini dapat meningkatkan minat baca karena siswa terbiasa dengan kosa kata yang berhubungan dengan disiplin ilmunya. kata kunci: materi yang otentik; persepsi; buku teks; menarik how to cite: gufron., azmin, a. (2022). the use of authentic materials in online english teaching: from the learners’ perspective. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 79-101. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 80-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english is a compulsory subject at the university level applied in indonesia, aiming to improve human resources that can compete globally. learning english from secondary level to tertiary level is one way to increase human resources who can compete in this global era because english is a global language that is used as international communication, both spoken and written (margana and sugesti, 2013) cited in husna and amri (2019). students generally learn english using general english textbooks regardless of what department they are from. students from it and business management, for instance, will receive and learn the same textbooks as general english provided by the university. this makes the graduates unable to communicate effectively in the workplace because the material studied in class does not link and match with what is demanded by the industry. regarding the availability of authentic texts for teaching materials, language instructors can get the materials needed anywhere and anytime through online news, videos from youtube, printed newspapers and magazines, etc. teaching english using authentic materials makes it easier for instructors to get teaching materials whose benefits can be applied not only by teachers but also by students (yusuf and tanti, 2010). furthermore, gilmore (2007) stated that students could be exposed to real language sources used by speakers and writers by using authentic material. authentic materials enable teachers to improve their skills in developing teaching materials and learning activities to increase student engagement in learning english. berardo (2006), in his personal experience, when teaching english using authentic material, said that students were exposed to the real language used in the real context. furthermore, he revealed that using authentic material is more interesting and more up to date than textbooks. defining authentic material according to nunan (1989), authentic materials are all forms of teaching materials that are not specifically designed to teach english. authentic materials, by their nature, are generated not for foreign language learners but communication between native users of the language (mcgrath, 2002; foppoli, 2006). badger and macdonald (2010) describe in more detail that what is meant by authentic material is all types of text, photographs, selected short videos, and all types of teaching materials from various sources whose initial form was not devoted to teaching purposes. for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 81-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this study, the researcher combines several definitions mentioned above, which means that authentic material is any form of teaching material to teach language where the initial form of the material is produced, not at teaching language. the selected material is adjusted to the subject matter and students' real life. meanwhile, all types of teaching materials that are intentionally made for teaching language are called inauthentic materials. hedge (2000) stated that an authentic material is teaching material that is intentionally produced to teach english as a second or first language (esl/efl) which is materialised in the form of textbooks, workbooks, modules, etc. thus, inauthentic material is purpose-written material intentionally designed for teaching and learning purposes (field, 2008). authentic materials are more economical and easier to obtain anytime and anywhere. the english language instructors can get authentic material from online news, magazines, newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and journals and then choose topics that match their majors (rao,2019). teachers and researchers acknowledged the importance of using authentic materials in teaching languages.. this can be seen from several empirical studies that show the positive impact of using authentic materials in learning english. parmawati and yugafiati (2017), in their research on the use of am showed increased reading skills results. the reading scores indicate this in the pretest and post-test after using am. meanwhile, edrenius (2018) conducted a study of the attitude of english teachers in teaching listening skills to am. the study found that am material is more interesting because the text taught is aligned with the students' subject matters, their social life, and the world of work meanwhile, hamouda (2020), in his quasi-experimental study, revealed that the experimental group showed a significant improvement in their listening comprehension. besides that, students also showed a positive and satisfied attitude towards teaching listening comprehension using authentic material.several experts also acknowledge this in language teaching and pedagogy that authentic materials can improve students' communication skills (guariento & morely, 2001). authentic texts, simplified texts, and text books pinter (2006) considers authentic texts as a way to motivate students to learn english. this is supported by the opinion of gilmore (2007) which says that authentic text is more interesting than textbooks because it places more ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 82-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license emphasis on delivering messages and not merely teaching language. furthermore, authentic text can also create intrinsic motivation and challenges in language learning because learners learn different texts with varying difficulty levels. students are encouraged to be able to understand english texts that native speakers usually read. lundberg (2007) pointed out that many students lose their motivation to learn english because some teachers continue to use textbooks and teach vocabulary not in students' real lives. because the teacher himself provides authentic materials, students' specific needs can be inserted. more materials that are appropriate to students' subject matter are introduced to students to be more familiar with the vocabulary inserted in the teaching materials. hence, students can improve their deductive skills by understanding vocabulary based on context, not the meaning of each word (gilmore, 2007). furthermore, learning english using authentic material with a group discussion model can enrich the vocabulary and improve grammar skills. in addition, students can learn new language patterns and encourage them to improve their four language skills; listening, speaking, reading, and writing (day and ainley, 2008). besides authentic texts, simplified texts are also part of teaching materials in learning english. simplified texts have been simplified and generated by considering certain grammatical and linguistic forms aimed at teaching languages for teaching foreign language learners (crossley, et al, 2012). some english textbook compilers incorporate many teaching materials from various sources such as newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and videos into the textbook. the selected material is adjusted to the learning needs of the 4 language skills. pamphlets, magazines, and newspaper clippings are usually used to teach reading and writing skills, while short videos teach listening and speaking skills. however, several challenges can hinder english teachers from using authentic materials. one of them is the issue of time constraints (gilmore, 2007). an instructor must first prepare teaching materials by selecting and sorting several teaching materials from different sources: newspapers, online news, printed and online magazines, and short conversation videos from youtube. the material chosen must be in accordance with the subject matter and the needs of students from different majors. another problem because many language teachers still use textbooks is that they follow the curriculum that has been set by the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 83-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license institution so that a teacher rigidly follows the existing course objectives. seunarinesingh (2010), in his study of the use of authentic materials in english learning, found that it is not easy to combine authentic materials with the english syllabus that the institution has set. furthermore, the challenges faced in the use of authentic materials come from the students themselves. according to the experience of some teachers, students are not easy to digest the materials delivered through authentic materials (gilmore, 2007; day & ainley, 2008; chan, 2013). advantages of authentic materials richards (2001) noted five benefits of using authentic materials in teaching english; the first, it impacts learners' positive motivation. intrinsically, the use of am is more interesting and motivating than the use of teaching materials provided, such as textbooks. am provides several interesting sources for learning english that can trigger the interest of many language learners. secondly, am presents some information about authentic culture related to the target language. the materials available in several sources can be selected according to several aspects of the target language culture. thirdly, in am, learners can expose the real language instead of being exposed to artificial texts usually found in textbooks set up to teach grammatical rules and certain discourses. the fourth advantage of am is that the material taught is closely related to students' needs so that what students learn in class can be linked to what is needed in the real world. lastly, by using am, instructors can apply creative teaching approaches. a well-trained lecturer can develop his teaching skills by developing learning activities in the classroom with learning styles that match the learning styles of each student. am can minimize the level of hesitation among students. with the authentic material they learn, they believe that what they learn in class can be applied in the real world because each topic taught contains situational language appropriate to the students' needs. in addition, the use of am can reduce costs because students and teachers do not need to buy textbooks. teachers can obtain learning materials from various sources, both printed and available online. furthermore, am can improve students' critical thinking. each learning topic can be developed in the form of class discussions so that students learn to improve their language proficiency and improve their knowledge in their field. in this case, teachers and learners develop their learning creativity. the last advantage of am is that the selected material is ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 84-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license more flexible to be used in several different classes (joraboyev, 2021). perception of online english learning many studies have been conducted on students' perceptions on online english learning. antón (2011) and kaler (2012) found that students generally positively perceive online learning. however, it was also revealed that some learners prefer a blended or hybrid course delivery where the materials are delivered online and f2f. tate (2014), in his study that combines online and f2f with etutor support, found that students have positive perceptions. in a study involving high school students who were considered successful in organizing online learning, kaler (2012) found that students experience freedom in learning, increase challenges, and can develop autonomous learning compared to face-to-face instructions, besides students having a positive perception of online learning. meanwhile, ushida (2005), in an investigation on students' attitudes and motivation in learning a language online, found that students showed positive attitudes and stable motivation levels during the learning process. furthermore, ushida (2005) explained that the contributing factors were students' freedom in choosing courses and self-confidence in using computers before class started. however, there are also studies on online teaching that show negative perceptions. research conducted by oliver et al. (2012) shows that students perceived the negative perceptions of foreign language learning online instructions. in this study, perceptions between students learning foreign languages and students learning other subject areas online were compared. teachers and students recommended several aspects of teaching, such as collaborative learning, providing facilities and infrastructure to develop online learning, and timely feedback. carril et al. (2013) identified the instructor's new role and pedagogical competency in a virtual learning environment in a quantitative study. in his research, it was found that instructors had high competencies in creating learning content instead of assessment proficiency. it was also found that instructors were aware of the importance of training. they are ready to attend training to cope with the teaching environment, from f2f to online instructions. in addition, the role of online learning automatically also impacts the function of students. learners must be more active in the learning process by using collaborative learning to increase their understanding of learning materials carried out online. each learner and instructor need to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 85-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understand that they have different roles in a virtual environment to succeed in the online learning and teaching model. previous studies on teaching english using authentic material a study conducted by miller (2005) and thanajaro (2000) showed that the use of authentic materials impacts the development of students' speaking skills. in addition, otte (2006) found that adult learners who are frequently exposed to authentic materials impact increasing their listening and learning motivation. a similar study was conducted by wikström (2016). the study showed that all the teachers surveyed showed a positive attitude towards using authentic materials in improving students' communication skills. furthermore, akbari and razavi (2015) also conducted research from the teacher's perspective. they found that english teachers have a positive attitude towards am in teaching reading and listening skills. meanwhile, sundana (2017) found that teaching english using authentic materials in writing descriptive text has a significant role in improving students' writing skills. students also showed a positive perception of the use of am in teaching writing skills. in another study conducted by wikström (2016), it was shown that teaching english using authentic text was very useful. however, some teachers are faced with the problem of limited time and still doubt whether their students can understand the text, which is quite difficult. meanwhile, in their research, husna & amri (2019) show that am in teaching english can create a more fun and effective learning atmosphere because the topics taught are aligned with students' real lives. chamba et al. (2019) in a quasiexperimental study, revealed that students showed positive results on writing skills. furthermore, students think that authentic material taken from various resources is helpful, fun, and easy to use. this impacts increasing student motivation because they are easy to understand most of the authentic materials used. furthermore, in his quasi-experimental study. keshmirshekan (2019) stated that the communicative competence of the experimental group was more outperformed and showed that teaching speaking skills using authentic materials had a positive impact on students' communication skills. in line with that, the results of research conducted by losada, et al. (2017), in their study of the impact of authentic materials on students' comminicative competence found that tasks selected from authentic materials that were still within the pedagogical framework had ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 86-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a positive impact on improving students' communication skills and also have an impact on comfort in teaching. several studies concerned with teacher perceptions have been carried out. kaya et al. (2015) conducted a study in a reading skill class that revealed that efl teachers had positive attitudes towards using authentic reading texts. course designers can incorporate authentic text into the language teaching curriculum to improve the quality of learning. meanwhile, bedir et al. (2016) revealed that it is important to use authentic material to contextualize each topic taught so that students understand it more easily. after all, all respondents agree that teachers must master qualified general knowledge. however, the problems faced by teachers when preparing the material are time constraints, costs, equipment, and knowledge. in another study, rehman and perveen (2021) found that teachers showed a positive attitude towards using authentic materials. however, they are faced with problems with existing curricula, assessment systems, and administrative problems. they recommend adapting the authentic material to the curriculum and exam system. however, several studies criticize the use of authentic material in learning english. guarianto & morley (2001), as cited in febrina (2017), revealed that teaching materials taken from authentic materials are complex, thus making learners, especially efl learners, more complicated. in these circumstances, non-authentic materials are more suitable because they are easier to understand, especially for efl learners. furthermore, exposing authentic materials can cause anxiety and frustration for learners where english is a foreign language. this is due to their difficulty in understanding the text provided in the form of authentic material (bacon & finneman, 1990; horwitz, et al. (1986) cited in (erbaggio, et al., 2012). meanwhile, day (2004) criticized authentic material in teaching english (elt) by using cult terms. according to him, the use of authentic materials has reached cult status. in fact, he argues that authentic material is not needed and can even be misleading. one of the criticised points was the appropriateness of language ability, variety of english, activities, tasks, and exercises. research questions this study focuses on perceived changes in method of teaching of english as a foreign language. therefore, the researcher explored students' perceptions of learning english online using authentic ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 87-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license materials. the current study seeks to answer research questions: rq1: what are the perceptions of students towards authentic materials implemented in the online english for staff class?; rq2: to what extent does authentic material improve student interest in reading and speaking?. method research design in this study, the researcher used the inductive-qualitative method. this method is commonly used when researching attitudes and related phenomena (mckay, 2010). to support this method, the researcher conducted a semi-structured interview session to explore the students' views on teaching of english online using authentic materials. the researcher interviewed five students who had finished learning english online for 15 weeks. the results of the interviews were then analyzed using atlas.ti. participants the samples of this study were faculty members of one of private university in jakarta who teach in different departments; pharmacy, law, civil engineering, international relations, communications, economics, and it. this study was a classroom action research in the class english for staff at one of private university in jakarta which is conducted online. before the english for staff class starts, all staff takes an english placement test. the placement test results determine at what level each student starts learning english, consisting of five levels; beginner, elementary, upper elementary, pre-intermediate, and advanced levels. they are required to take the english language training program up to an advanced level. all staff and lectures are required to be proficient in english. the current level of these participants is the preintermediate level which means they can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes, and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. in addition, they can understand the main points of things that are commonly encountered at work, at school, etc. instruments in this qualitative research approach, the researcher conducted the interview session to explore the students’ views on the usage of authentic materials in teaching and learning english. five selected students were interviewed on their perceptions of the process of learning english using authentic materials. this enables the researcher to understand each ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 88-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license respondent's views and personal perceptions about the authentic materials used in the class of english for staff. the researcher classified the interview questions into several items to ensure that respondents could analyze their learning experiences when answering multiple questions. according to fraenkel et al. (2012), interviews collect data by verbally asking individuals or groups of people to explore what is on people's minds about a certain issue. the researcher conducted this interview to answer questions from the research question of this study, namely, 'what are the perception of students towards authentic materials implemented in the english for staff class, and to what extent does authentic material improve student interest in reading and speaking’. more specifically, the researcher segmented the interview protocol into three clusters to obtain more in-depth information about students' views and experiences in learning english using authentic materials. the three clusters are (1) students’ perception, (2) students’ interest to speak, (3) and students’ interest to read. thus, this interview model supports the researcher in systematically collecting more in-depth information from several respondents. data collection procedure since this study was a classroom action research in the class of english for staff at one of private university in jakarta, the researcher was directly involved in collecting data by interviewing the respondents in the class of english for staff. during the class, students are exposed to the online teaching materials related to the subject matter of each student. each student has the opportunity to present articles from online media related to their respective subject matter. after the article's presentation, each student was allowed to ask questions to create an active and interactive class. interviews were conducted online using the gmeet platform. one of the advantages of interviews using google meet is that the interview results are automatically saved to a cloud system available on google, such as google drive, and sent automatically to the gmail account. data obtained from the respondent through the interview sessions were analyzed using thematic analysis by describing each answer given by the respondent. the researcher used atlas.ti to analyse the scripts of interviews generated from the respondents. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 89-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion the overall student’s perceptions toward learning english online using authentic material and learners’ interest in reading and speaking the researcher analyzed the interview results using atlas.ti to get a more detailed and comprehensive answer. the results of interviews conducted with several randomly selected samples were transcribed and then given a thematic code following braun and clarke's coding system (2006). according to them, thematic analysis is a method commonly carried out in a research pattern that aims to identify, analyze, and report. several steps taken by the researcher before giving the thematic code were quotation, coding, and thematic analysis. at the first quotation stage, the researcher transcribed all the respondents' answers, then coded for each answer. the coding process was the second step in analyzing the interview results. the next step is to conduct thematic analysis by grouping each code generated to answer the research question of this study 'what are the perception of students towards authentic materials implemented in the english for staff class, and to what extent does authentic material improve student interest in reading and speaking.' figure 1 shows the process of analyzing the interview results using atlas.ti. figure 1. qualitative analysis tree diagram using atlas.ti the researcher decided to focus on three group thematic analyses from the quotation, coding, and thematic analysis processes, namely (1) learners’ general perception, (2) improve learners’ interest in speaking, and (3) improve learners’ interest in reading. student’s perceptions toward learning english online using authentic material attitude is one of the important factors in learning english. a positive attitude needs to be created so that students are always engaged and learn effectively to produce positive outcomes (wikström, 2016; alshaikhi and madini, 2016; zhafarghandi and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 90-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license barekat, 2014). the teacher's role as a facilitator is crucial to present the right teaching method to create students' intrinsic motivation. in this study, the researcher found that students' perceptions of teaching english using authentic material were very positive, as expressed by respondent 1 “using authentic material is very interesting and very impressive. i think this method is fascinating. he further said that compared to using general texts as he experienced in his previous english classes, authentic material was more interesting “...compared to my previous experience of learning english using common texts, the experience of learning using authentic material was much more interesting”. this situation is in line with research conducted by bacon and finneman (1990) that students show a positive attitude when learning english using authentic materials. furthermore, some students expressed that this method was effective and entertaining. some consider that english is no longer a difficult thing to learn as stated by respondent 5, “in general, this authentic material is entertaining and effective. because this method is fun, i don't think it makes english difficult and makes us want to learn english”. furthermore, he revealed that authentic material is more interesting because the text presented relates to real life. “i feel delighted with this way of learning using authentic materials. focusing more on my real-life experience is definitely more interesting”. this is in line with what was expressed by respondent 2, who expressed his comfort in using authentic text compared to using text that is not in accordance with his subject matter. "it is different from other methods where the reading material is about topics other than my subject matter". easy to understand another factor that causes students to be interested in speaking is that the teaching material is relatively easier to understand. this is because the reading text that is read is in accordance with the discipline so that students quickly absorb and understand the text's message comprehensively. as stated by parmawati and yugafiati (2017) that reading a text that has to do with the reader's knowledge can increase reading motivation so that it is easier to understand the text comprehensively. in this study, the researchers found it easier for students to understand texts related to the real world. as stated by respondent 2, “because the material taught is about a very familiar topic to my real world, it is easier for me to understand the material”. this is in line with that experienced by respondent 1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 91-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license "the new vocabulary that i got was easier to understand because there was already preknowledge". by studying easy-to-understand material, students' interest in speaking increases. this was experienced by respondent 1 “because this method allows me always to want to talk because the material in this text is easy to understand”. more meaningful than general text to provide a different atmosphere in the classroom, a teacher as a facilitator needs to implement new methods that make students engaged and motivated in learning english to improve their english proficiency (edrenius, 2018). the researcher's experience being directly involved in teaching and interviewing students' views on the use of the method of the authentic material found that students before using this method felt anxious before entering class because they did not know what topic to study. as stated by respondent 5, “before this, i was afraid before learning english because we didn't know the material we would learn”. using authentic material makes students more motivated than using general text, which makes the learning atmosphere boring. this was expressed by respondent 1 “before this, i studied english using common texts, and it was very boring, in my opinion”. this is different from the situation in the classroom where authentic material is implemented, as stated by respondent 2, "this is different from the situation where the material being taught is not related to my subject matter". figure 2. group code of perception on using authentic materials improve learners’ interest in speaking improve interest to speak up in class to improve students' speaking skills, it is necessary to find a way to trigger them to talk a lot. the more often students speak, the greater the opportunity to improve speaking skills (losada, et al., 2017). several respondents in this study indicated that students' interest in authentic material triggers them to speak. this was expressed by respondent 3 "because this material is authentic and directly related to my field, i have to force myself to speak, and i am not too tense ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 92-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license because i have mastered the material i have to convey". besides, students are interested in speaking because the topics discussed are related to real life. as expressed by respondent 2, “this method improves my interest to speak up because i already have intrinsic motivation where i really like my field”. furthermore, students are motivated to speak because the reading of the text has been mastered. this is responded by respondent 5 “this is an interesting way to motivate me to speak because when i read it, i inevitably have to talk.” by using authentic material, students easily understand the content of the text because it is related to the subject matter they have mastered. students already have the preknowledge to speak more often because it is easy to convey it (keshmirshekan, 2019). this study found that students' motivation to speak increased because the topics discussed were familiar with real life. this was expressed by respondent 2 “...it means that there is preknowledge. it's really encouraging me to speak up more in english”. the same thing was expressed by respondent 3 “i feel comfortable and more relaxed in studying because i have mastered the topic that i will convey". by using authentic material, students easily understand the content of the text because it is related to the subject matter they have mastered. students already have the preknowledge to speak more often because it is easy to convey it (adam et al., 2010). this study found that students' motivation to speak increased because the topics discussed were familiar with real life. this was expressed by respondent 2 “...it means that there is preknowledge. it's really encouraging me to speak up more in english. the same thing was expressed by respondent 3 “i feel comfortable and more relaxed in studying because i have mastered the topic that i will convey. because the texts they learn in class relate to familiar topics with their world, every vocabulary they read is straightforward to understand. this is what encourages students to speak. as experienced by respondent 1, "this method allows me always to want to talk because the material in this text is easy to understand," furthermore, this method encourages students to speak in class even though they have limited language skills. respondent 1 stated that even with limited english skills, he still tried to speak. “certainly, it greatly increases interest in speaking. even more than that, i am quite challenged to always speak in class even with my limited english skills, especially speaking skills”. the same expression was also conveyed by respondent 2 "it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 93-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license makes me more comfortable when delivering, even though there are still many rooms to improve my grammar and enrich my vocabulary". real world related another reason why students are interested in speaking out in class during the teaching and learning process is that the reading text used is related to the subject matter of each student. in line with what was stated by (chamba et al., 2019), the results of interviews with several respondents showed that real word related teaching materials could increase students' interest in speaking out as stated by respondent 2 " i talk more in class because the topics being discussed are related to the topics in my field”. he further stated, "i master issues that develop because they are very close to me and are often used in my workplace". meanwhile, because the material taught is familiar with real-life, students do not receive pressure in learning to create a more relaxed learning atmosphere. this was expressed by respondent 3 “i feel comfortable and more relaxed in studying because i have mastered the topic that i will convey”. in addition, learning english using authentic material can automatically increase knowledge of hard skills. knowledge related to hard skills can be increased by reading materials related to each student's subject matter in english classes. this was revealed by respondent 5 “sometimes even the theory that i didn't understand when i was studying in class could even be understood after reading this article when i was learning english”. in addition, students can naturally enrich new vocabularies directly related to their disciplines because the text being studied is authentic. as narrated by r2, “i learned new vocabulary in the field of discipline that i was studying because the material was directly related to my real world”. respondent 4 also experienced the same thing where he could take advantage of this authentic material by learning new vocabulary related to his discipline "i learn a lot of vocabulary related to the subject matter so that it can enrich the vocabulary". by enriching the vocabulary, students will be more motivated to speak because they have overcome problems that l2 learners often face, namely limited vocabulary (sundana, 2017). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 94-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 3. group code of improve interest in speaking learners’ interest in reading familiar with the vocabulary because every topic studied in class is always related to the student's discipline, students already have preknowledge and are familiar with the vocabulary being studied (yuhong, 2012). it can also increase students' interest in reading texts related to the real world. as stated by respondent 2, “because the material taught is about a very familiar topic to my real world, it is easier for me to understand the material” this is seconded by respondent 1 “however, after i learned with a new experience, by using am, i felt close and familiar with the vocabulary that i had known all this time. the same thing was also expressed by respondent 5 that when reading authentic texts, students encountered many technical words related to the subject matter "after reading this authentic material, i often encounter some technical words related to my field." furthermore, the vocabulary read in authentic texts is mostly related to the real world, as stated by respondent 2, “i learned much to improve my vocabulary related to my real world”. in addition, students mastering vocabulary related to their respective disciplines also impact increasing students' interest in speaking more in class. this was also expressed by respondent 2 “i master a lot of vocabulary related to the subject matter” and “i talk more in class because the topics being discussed are related to the topics in my field.”. in addition, respondent 3 emphasized that learning english using authentic material can enrich new vocabulary "of course, and i learned new vocabulary in the field of discipline that i was studying because the material was directly related to my real world". learn new vocabularies learning english using authentic material methods is like a double-edged coin; besides enriching new vocabulary, students can also increase knowledge in their disciplines (hatab, 2010). through interviews conducted with several respondents, the researcher found that students felt many benefits from using this method, including learning new ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 95-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26504 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocabulary. respondent 2 said, “i feel that i have many opportunities to explore new vocabulary that i can take in class and have the opportunity to speak up.” furthermore, students learn new vocabulary to improve their reading skills, focusing on their discipline. respondent 3 revealed, "i learned new vocabulary in the field of discipline that i was studying". he further revealed that mastering and learning new vocabulary also impacts increasing interest to speak up in class “...it is more interesting to learn, increase interest in speaking, and add more new vocabulary”. besides increasing interest in speaking, students can also improve their hard skills in their field by learning new vocabulary. this was revealed by respondent 4 "by using authentic material, we improve our speaking and enrich our vocabulary and also increase our knowledge in our respective fields". meanwhile, respondent 5 stated that reading articles related to scientific disciplines can enrich the vocabulary of other disciplines but still related to their field of science “i have learned a lot of new vocabulary, not just vocabulary from my field but also other disciplines such as law because the articles i read sometimes contain information about it-related laws such as cyber law”. learning english using authentic materials improves students' english proficiency and improves students' hard skills because each topic discussed is related to each student's scientific discipline (wulandari and waloyo, 2018). figure 4. group code of improve interest in reading conclusions and suggestion this study explores the students' perception of teaching english using authentic material, students’ interest to speak and read. initially, students viewed that using authentic materials was effective compared to general text as experienced in previous english classes. authentic material is more effective and entertaining. even students think that english is no longer a difficult thing to learn because by using authentic materials, the teaching materials studied are texts related to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 96-101 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26054 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license real-life so that students are easy to absorb because they already have preknowledge. before using authentic material, students feel anxious even before entering class because they will learn english, where the material to be studied is a text that they are not familiar with and not related to their scientific discipline. by using authentic material, students are more motivated. this research also found that students find it easier to understand teaching materials and the contents of passages that are read comprehensively. this is because students are already familiar with some vocabulary from authentic texts following students' real world. by reading texts that are easily absorbed, students' motivation to learn is increasing. furthermore, students' interest in speaking is also increasing because the topics studied are interesting, and they do not experience difficulties choosing the vocabulary to be spoken. another thing that encourages students to speak is that the texts they learn in class are related to topics familiar with real life. every vocabulary they read is straightforward to understand. furthermore, students can take advantage of this authentic material method by learning some new vocabulary according to the needs of their discipline, which can automatically improve their hard skills. in addition, by learning new vocabulary, students' 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(2018). the portrait of authentic material in teaching english for specific purposes (esp). elt-echo, 3(2), 98-108. retrieved from http://syekhnurjati.ac.id yuhong, j. (2012). reflection, change, and reconstruction in the context of educational reform and innovation in china: towards an integrated framework centred on reflective teaching practice for efl teachers’ professional development. newcastle upon tyne, ne6 2xx, uk: cambridge scholars publishing. yusuf, f. n., & tanti, d. (2010). authentic materials in a vocational school writing class: any advantage?. proceedings of the 1st upi international conference on technical and vocational education and training. retrieved from http://fptk.upi.edu/tvetconference/download. zhafarghandi, a. m. & barekat, b. (2014). a survey of iranian efl teachers' and learners' perceptions toward authentic listening materials at university level. advances in language and literary studies, 5(4), 184-197. http://hdl.handle.net/10063/3523 http://hdl.handle.net/10063/3523 http://du.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a917888&dswid=-7217 http://du.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a917888&dswid=-7217 http://du.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a917888&dswid=-7217 http://fptk.upi.edu/tvet-conference/download http://fptk.upi.edu/tvet-conference/download * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 176-191 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee gender differences in the strategy inventory for language learning (sill) serliah nur1*, faidah yusuf2 serliah.nur@uin-alauddin.ac.id received: 15th april 2022; revised: 28th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract this research investigates the learning strategies used by english as a foreign language (efl) students and gender differences in the strategy inventory for language learning (sill) in indonesia. to gather the data, this study employed quantitative descriptive methods with a google form-based questionnaire involving 110 college students, and the data were analysed using spss 25. the fifty items of the questionnaire were divided into six strategies: memory strategy, cognitive strategy, metacognitive strategy, compensation strategy, emotion strategy, and social strategy. findings of the study indicate that the students use all the strategies in learning english, and all these strategies are in a high level of use except for memory strategy which is in a moderate level. gender differences data show that most male students preferred the social strategy (36%), whereas most female students preferred metacognitive strategy (56.47%) suggesting that male and female students have different learning styles. the results of this research shed light on the importance of raising teachers‟ awareness of their students‟ diversity in learning strategies. thus, teachers should improve their repertoire of teaching techniques and strategies to meet students‟ different learning styles in the classroom. key words: gender; language learning strategies; sill abstrak penelitian ini menyelidiki strategi pembelajaran yang digunakan oleh siswa bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl) dan perbedaan gender dalam inventarisasi strategi untuk pembelajaran bahasa (sill) di indonesia. untuk mengumpulkan data, penelitian ini menggunakan metode kuantitatif dengan kuesioner berbasis google form yang melibatkan 110 mahasiswa, dan data dianalisis menggunakan spss 25. lima puluh item kuesioner dibagi menjadi enam strategi: strategi memori, strategi kognitif, strategi metakognitif. strategi, strategi kompensasi, strategi emosi, dan strategi sosial. temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa siswa menggunakan semua strategi dalam belajar bahasa inggris, dan semua jenis strategi berada di tingkat tinggi kecuali strategi memori yang berada di tingkat sedang. data perbedaan gender menunjukkan bahwa sebagian besar siswa laki-laki lebih menyukai strategi sosial (36%), sedangkan sebagian besar siswa perempuan lebih menyukai strategi metakognitif (56,47%) menunjukkan bahwa siswa laki-laki dan perempuan memiliki gaya belajar yang berbeda secara signifikan. hasil penelitian ini menyoroti pentingnya meningkatkan kesadaran guru tentang keragaman siswa mereka dalam strategi pembelajaran. dengan demikian, guru harus meningkatkan repertoar teknik dan strategi pengajaran mereka untuk memenuhi gaya belajar siswa yang berbeda di kelas. kata kunci: jenis kelamin; strategi pembelajaran bahasa; sill how to cite: nur, s., yusuf, f. (2022). gender differences in the strategy inventory for language learning (sill). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 176-191. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 177-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction learning strategy provides english teachers and students with the tools they need to develop their knowledge of the english language in the classroom, making it an essential component of english language teaching (khansir et al., 2021). similarly, adapting teaching approaches to meet students' various learning style preferences is one way to improve student motivation and performance (wehrwein et al., 2007). english as an international language is becoming increasingly important to learn because it is required for communication and success in education or the workplace. acquiring these language skills becomes a requirement for most university students, but it is also required for the general public. before presenting the tobe-learned information, teachers ask students to make a prediction about a fact or outcome (brod, 2021). the english language, on the other hand, has provided the country with a great deal of contact with the international world (cirocki & widodo, 2019). as a result, language proficiency is an important aspect of competing in this globalisation era. in the teaching and learning context, unfortunately, students are often bored or unmotivated to learn a foreign language, so appropriate learning strategies are required (ames & archer, 1988). furthermore, learning strategies play an important role in influencing learners to have good language proficiency. learners exposed to common instruction procedures achieve varying degrees of success in language learning, and the concept of language acquisition as the spontaneous development of language even in the absence of instruction has shifted researchers' attention away from methods and products of language teaching and toward processes in language learning known as language learning strategies (öztürk & çakıroğlu, 2021). as a result, those learning strategies are the thoughts and actions that individuals employ in order to achieve a learning goal (ansari et al., 2021). extensive research identified the learning strategies used by students of a variety of second and foreign languages, and a slightly smaller body of research documented the effectiveness of helping less successful language students improve their performance through learning strategy instruction. another factor that can affect learning strategy is gender (korlat et al., 2021). gender is referred to as sex differences in this study, either a boy or ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 178-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a girl, man or woman, and in this study students are referred to as male and female. it is usual to discover that one individual to another has a distinct learning approach to master their topics, particularly english subjects as a foreign language in indonesia, and there is evidence that some preferences are established based on gender disparities. a survey of the literature on learning strategies reveals five key characteristics (de andrés martnez, 2012). a. strategies are crucial in second or foreign language learning because they promote and assist language acquisition. b. learners are the actual agents in their use and selection of techniques because they are immediately affected by them. c. language acquisition, like all learning, must be internalized, and strategies are problemsolving procedures or techniques employed by learners to cope with the complex learning process. d. learning tactics aren't always visible to the naked eye. this explains why, in general, foreign language teachers are unaware of them. e. strategies are adaptable, therefore it stands to reason that they may be taught and learners trained in their administration. as a result, strategy training or learner training can be defined as the approaches employed by teachers to make learners aware of the existence of their strategies and train them in their application. ansari et al. (2021) defines learning strategies as any combination of procedures, steps, plans, or routines employed by the learner to facilitate the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and utilisation of information. meanwhile, according to inglés et al. (2017), learning strategies are purposeful behaviours and thoughts that learners utilise throughout learning to better grasp, learn, or recall new information. furthermore, haelermans (2022) states that when students are engaged in a learning activity, they have multiple resources that they employ in various ways to finish or accomplish the assignment, which may be referred to as the process of learning strategy. learning strategies are unique acts made by learners to improve the efficiency of their learning. ames and archer (1988) suggested that learning strategies are procedures that learners deliberately choose, and which may result in activities performed to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 179-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license improve the learning or use of a second or foreign language through storage, retention, recall, and reinforcement and application of information about that language. additionally, o'malley et al. (1987) define learning strategies as unique ideas or behaviours that individuals utilise to help them absorb, remember, or retain new information. based on all criteria, learning strategies can be defined as students‟ distinct ways of processing information that promote comprehension, learning, or retention of the material. grenfell and harris (2002) divide learning strategies into four major types: metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective. according to o'malley et al. (1987), learning strategies pertain to learners' planning their learning, thinking about the learning process, monitoring their comprehension or output, and assessing the consequences of their learning. cognitive strategies are key activities that the learner employs in order to gain information and understanding of the linguistic system. a learner who identifies a difficult word in a book and successfully infers its meaning from the context is employing a cognitive technique. utilising oxford's strategy inventory of language learning (sill) in bessai (2018), strategies are generalising, making comparisons between languages, forming linkages between words, practising as well as analysing and reasoning. meanwhile, cervin-ellqvist et al. (2021) describe cognitive strategies as mental processes directly concerned with information processing. moreover, cervin-ellqvist et al. (2021) elaborates that cognitive methods are more constrained to specific learning tasks and require more direct manipulation of the learning material itself. among the most significant cognitive methods are repetition, resourcing, translation, grouping, note-taking, deduction, recombination, imaging, auditory representation, keyword, contextualization, elaboration, transfer, and inference. o'malley et al. (1987) explains metacognitive as an executive function, which is, strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it occurs, observing one's own production or comprehension, correcting one's own mistakes, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. in addition, cervin-ellqvist et al. (2021) indicate that metacognitive methods include awareness of what one is doing and the strategies one is employing, as well as knowledge about the actual learning process. social strategies, meanwhile, are the social behaviours that learners use ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 180-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license when learning a language. social techniques include relying on friends for assistance, participating in group discussions despite not completely comprehending what is being discussed, and working with others (bateman, 2021). furthermore, according to collins et al. (2021), socioaffective tactics are closely related to social-mediating activity and engaging with others. cooperation and explanation questions are two of the most important socio-affective techniques. as previously noted, metacognitive methods are strategies employed by students to supervise, regulate, or selfdirect language learning. prioritization, goal setting, planning, and selfmanagement are all part of the tactics (rubin, 2011). oxford‟s et al. (1989) distinguished two types of learning strategies: direct and indirect. memory, cognitive, and compensatory techniques are examples of direct strategies, whereas metacognitive, affective, and social strategies are examples of indirect strategies. the first form of direct approach is memory methods, which include making mental associations, using visuals and sounds, studying thoroughly, and deploying actions. cognitive methods, such as summarising or reasoning deductively, are the second type of direct approach, allowing learners to grasp and produce new language in a variety of ways. learning a new language necessitates the use of cognitive methods. it is divided into four sections: practise, receiving and sending messages, evaluating and reasoning, and establishing a structure for input and output (snow et al., 2021). the third sort of direct method is compensating tactics, such as guessing or employing synonyms, which allow learners to utilise the language despite significant knowledge gaps (oxford et al., 1989). in contrast, indirect strategies are defined as techniques used to promote and manage language learning without being directly involved in the target language. they are classified into three types: metacognitive, affective, and social strategies (fabricius & wellman, 2021; garcía-ros et al., 2018). the first type of indirect strategy is the metacognitive strategy, which means “beyond, alongside, or in addition to the cognitive” as it allows students to synchronise their learning process. the affective strategy is the second sort of indirect approach, and it refers to emotions, attitudes, motivations, and values. social strategy is the third form of indirect approach. it promotes learner-to-learner interaction (grenfell & harris, 2002). three previous studies are worth discussing for their relevance to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 181-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license present study. mega et al. (2019) researched efl students' learning strategies for learning english and discovered a number of techniques employed by successful and unsuccessful senior high school students, as well as the most often used strategy by successful and unsuccessful senior high school students. this study included 40 students, 20 of whom were successful and 20 of whom were unsuccessful. sill questions based on oxford (1990) were employed in this study. the findings revealed that successful students utilised the metacognitive learning technique the most, whereas failing students used the cognitive strategy. meanwhile, viriya & sapsirin (2014) analyse gender variations in language learning styles and tactics. the perceptual learning style preference questionnaire (plspq) was used to determine the learning styles of the pupils. this study employed the oxford strategy inventory for language learning (sill) to determine language learning techniques (1990). the study's participants were 150 students from thailand's faculty of information and communication technology (ict). the study's findings show that gender has an effect on language learning style but has no effect on language learning tactics. furthermore, ho and ng. (2016) conducted research on gender-based differences in language learning strategies among undergraduates at a malaysian public university with the goal of examining the language learning strategies used by the undergraduate students and investigating the relationship between language and gender. respondents included 534 male and 1173 female students from malaysian public universities. the strategy inventory for language learning (sill) developed by oxford is the study's tool (1990). the data was analysed using descriptive statistics, the t-test, one-way anova, and chi-square. according to the findings of the study, students utilised metacognitive techniques the most, while affective methods were used the least. furthermore, there was a considerable gender difference in language acquisition strategies. slightly different from previous studies above in terms of research focus, the present study investigates students‟ learning strategies and how gender plays a role in their use of learning styles and strategies in learning english at the english and literature department of a public university in makassar. in particular, this study is intended to answer the following research questions: 1) what learning strategies do the students use ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 182-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in learning english at the english and literature department at a public university in makassar? is there any difference in terms of language learning strategies based on gender? method this research applied the descriptive quantitative method (mcfadden, 2021). the participants were 85 females and 22 males from the sixth-semester students‟ class of 2019 who were studying the english proficiency test. the sill questionnaire, popularised by oxford 1989, strategy inventory for language learning (sill) version 7.0 (esl/efl), with 50 items, was utilised in this study. the sill is a five-point scale that ranges from 'never, typically not, sometimes, usually, and always'. the average reveals how frequently the student employs learning tactics. the averages for each section of the sill show which strategy groups the learner employs the most frequently (oxford, 1990). spss 25 was used to analyse the data, which showed the frequency, mean, and standard deviation of students' self-evaluation of their selfreported strategy use (leavy & patricia, 2017). findings and discussion findings students’ learning strategies in learning english 107 participants were given the questionnaire. the questionnaire is used in the form of a language learning strategy inventory (sill). the questionnaire's fifty items were classified into the following strategies: memory strategy, cognitive strategy, meta-cognitive strategy, compensatory strategy, emotion strategy, and social communication strategy. sill uses surveys to determine the sorts of learning tactics used by respondents. there are six categories of learning strategies that are used as a foundation for categorising learning techniques based on input. the mean score from the statistical analysis of the respondents' responses is used to determine the level of criterion for each technique. the following are mean scores from each of learning strategies for each level: a. memory strategy with the mean score of 29.51 which is categorized as moderate; b. cognitive strategy with the mean score of 50.00 which is categorized as high; ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 183-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license c. compensation strategy with the mean score of 21.11 which is categorized as high; d. metacognitive strategy with the mean score of 35.96 which is categorized as high; e. emotion strategy with the mean score of 20.36 which is categorized as high; and f. social strategy with the mean score of 21.07 which is categorized as high based on these findings, it can be concluded that in general, all types of learning strategies the students possess are in the high category except for the memory strategy, where students are considered to be in the moderate level. as oxford (1990) argued that the more variations the language strategies used by the students, the greater the chance of success in language learning. furthermore, ellis (2006) also stated that the application of language learning strategies is one of the factors that contribute the to the success of students in acquiring a second or foreign language. students’ differences in learning english based on gender the number of students who became respondents consisted of twenty-two male students and eightyeight female students. male students categorization tables table 1. memory strategy criteria memory strategy frequency % very high 2 9,0 high 9 40.91 moderate 11 50 low 0 0 very low 0 0 from the table 1, it can be seen that of twenty-two students, there are two students (9%) who got a very high classification and eleven students (50%) get a moderate classification. thus, the male students are classified as moderate criteria in-memory strategy. table 2. cognitive strategy criteria cognitive strategy frequency % very high 4 18,18 high 15 68,18 moderate 3 13,63 low 0 0 ver y low 0 0 the results in the table 2 indicate that there are fifteen students (68.18%) who are in high classification, nine students (21.3%) who agree, sixteen students (43.3%) disagree, and six students (16.2%) strongly disagree. it can be said that most of the students are categorized as high in cognitive strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 184-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3. compensation strategy criteria compensation strategy frequency % very high 4 18 high 12 55 moderate 6 27 low 0 0 very low 0 0 the table 3, shows that there are twelve students (55%) who are in high classification, four students (18%) who as very high criteria. it means most participants are at a high level in their use of compensation strategy. table 4. meta-cognitive strategy criteria meta-cognitive strategy frequency % very high 8 36 high 13 59,5 moderate 1 4,5 low 0 0 very low 0 0 the result of this item shows that there is only one student (4.5%) who gets moderate criteria, thirteen students (59.5%) agree, and eight students (36%) are in very high criteria. it can be concluded that most male students get high and very high levels in metacognitive strategy. table 5. emotion strategy criteria emotion strategy frequency % very high 1 4,5 high 8 36 moderate 9 41 low 3 13,7 very low 1 4,9 the table 6 of emotion strategies indicates the various criteria filled by male students. there are nine students (41%) who are in moderate criteria, eight students (36%) are in high criteria and one student (4.9%) is in very high criteria. the lowest criteria are also filled by one student (4.9%). therefore, the result shows that most male students are having moderate to highest level in their use of emotion strategy. table 6. social strategy criteria social strategy frequency % very high 8 36 high 8 36 moderate 5 23,1 low 1 4,9 very low 0 0 this table 6, shows that there are eight students (36%) who get high and very high criteria. one student (4.9%) has been in low criteria and the rest are in moderate criteria. it means that most of the students are having high and very high level in their use of social strategy. table 7. the highest percentage recapitulation for male students no. strategy frequ ency (%) categor y 1 memory strategy 11 50 modera te 2 cognitive strategy 15 68,18 high 3 compensati on strategy 12 55 high 4 metacognitive strategy 13 59,5 high 5 emotion 9 41 modera ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 185-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license strategy te 6 social communicat ion strategy 8 36 very high 8 36 high from table 7, the recapitulation for male students above indicates that the social communication strategy used by male students is in the high and very high level with 36%. this shows that the number of students „always‟ apply social communication strategy in their learning process. while 11 students (50%) applied memory strategy, and 9 students used emotion strategy (41%), both in a moderate level. this indicated that the number of students „sometimes‟ apply the memory strategy and emotion strategy. female students categorization tables table 8. memory strategy criteria memory strategy frequency % very high 4 4,71 high 30 35,29 moderate 40 47,01 low 10 11,76 very low 1 1,18 this table 8, the result of this item shows that there is only one student (1.18%) who gets the lowest criteria while moderate criteria are filled by forty students (47.01%). thus, it can be concluded that most female students get a moderate to very low level in their use of memory strategy. table 9. cognitive strategy criteria cognitive strategy frequency % very high 15 17,64 high 48 56,47 moderate 20 23,52 low 1 1,18 very low 1 1,18 the result in the table 9 indicates that there are forty-eight students (56.47%) who are in high classification, fifteen students (17.64%) are in very high criteria, while low and very low criteria are filled by only one student (1.18%). it can be said that most of the students are categorized as high level in their use cognitive strategy. table 10. compensation strategy criteria compensation strategy frequency % very high 14 16,47 high 43 50.59 moderate 26 30,59 low 2 2,35 very low 0 the table 10 shows that forty-three students (50.59%) are in high criteria, followed by moderate criteria in 30.59%, and fourteen students (16.47%) are in very high criteria. thus it is concluded that most female students are categorized as high criteria in their compensation strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 186-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 11. meta-cognitive strategy criteria meta-cognitive strategy frequency % very high 48 56,47 high 30 35,29 moderate 5 5,88 low 2 2,35 very low 0 0 this table 11 shows that there are forty-eight students (56.47%) who get very high criteria and high criteria in 35.29%. only two students (2.35%) are in low criteria. it means that most of the students are having highest criteria in meta-cognitive strategy. table 12. emotion strategy criteria emotion strategy frequency % very high 8 9,41 high 32 37,65 moderate 34 40 low 11 12,94 very low 0 0 the emotional strategy table 12 shows that thirty-four students (40%) get moderate criteria. thirty-two students (7.65%) are in the high criteria and eight students (9.42%) are in the very high criteria. therefore, most students are in high and very high level in their use of emotion strategy. table 13. social strategy criteria social strategy frequency % very high 16 18,82 high 35 41,18 moderate 26 30,59 low 5 5,88 very low 3 3,53 the result of this item shows that a total of almost 60% of students are at high and very high level of their use of social strategy. it can be concluded that social strategy is widely used among female students. table 14. the highest percentage recapitulation for female students n o. strategy frequ ency percen tage (%) catego ry 1 memory strategy 40 47,01 moder ate 2 cognitive strategy 48 56,47 high 3 compensati on strategy 43 50.59 high 4 metacognitive strategy 48 56,47 very high 5 emotion strategy 34 40 moder ate 6 social strategy 35 41,18 high the table 14, show of recapitulation for female students above indicates that metacognitive and cognitive strategies are in the same percentage of 56.47% as high and very high criteria. this finding means that 48 female students „always‟ apply the metacognitive strategies and 48 students „usually‟ apply the cognitive strategy. while emotion and memory strategy are in a moderate level by with 40% and 47.01%. this finding indicates that 34 students from the total of 85 respondents „sometimes‟ apply the emotion and memory strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 187-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion overall, this study indicates that both male and female students use emotion and memory strategies in learning the english language with a moderate level. however, the difference lies in the most used strategy. female students prefer cognitive and metacognitive as most widely used strategies, whereas male students use social strategy as their most preferred strategy in learning the english language. these findings show that sixthsemester female english and literature department students are aware of their own cognitive and metacognitive abilities. according to rubin (2011), metacognitive information is critical for learners in assisting them in selecting and activating their learning techniques. furthermore, zhang and graham (2020) suggested that establishing metacognitive techniques allows learners to understand their learning process and to understand which methods help them succeed. accordingly, learners who use these methods are more eager to control a variety of learning strategy options and applications, as well as how they use these strategies. these findings are consistent with those of a prior study by ho & ng. (2016) and mega et al. (2019). meanwhile, sixth-semester male students favoured social strategy, indicating that they knew they could not learn the language alone and that they needed to make an effort to receive supports from others and work collaboratively. this finding confirms bateman‟s (2021) statement that some instances of social strategy include relying on friends for assistance, participating in group discussions, and cooperating with others. finally, this study confirms that language learning strategy is a crucial factor in assessing students‟ learning potentials. facilitating students‟ use of the most suitable learning strategies to match their own learning styles is of great importance in promoting effective language learning including english as a foreign language learning. indeed, the use of appropriate learning strategies by the students can help them become effective learners in achieving ultimate success in language learning (mega et al., 2019). it is, however, necessary for the students to practice more about how to use learning strategies effectively to improve their actual and most productive use of language learning strategies relevant to their own learning styles. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 188-191 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.25671 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusion and suggestions this research has examined language learning strategies as used by sixth-semester students of the english and literature department class of 2019 of a public university in makassar. the research revealed that students applied all types of learning strategies in learning english. these learning strategies were analysed and found to be in a high category of use by both male and female students except for the memory strategy. however, differences in english learning strategies are clearly identifiable when gender is considered. most male students (36%) favoured the social strategy, whereas most female students (56.47%) preferred the metacognitive strategy in their english learning respectively. it is therefore highly recommended that english teachers should vary their classroom instruction by incorporating various teaching techniques and strategies to meet students‟ different learning styles and strategies. references ames, c., & archer, j. 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(2020). learning vocabulary through listening: the role of vocabulary knowledge and listening proficiency. language learning, 70(4), 1017–1053. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.1 2411. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2021, 41-58 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the vulnerability of novice efl teachers in formal and nonformal teaching environment erina andriani*, concilianus laos mbato andrianierina@gmail.com received: 21st october 2021; revised: 17th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract studies have investigated teacher vulnerability and its relation to teacher identity construction. teacher vulnerability may emerge from internal and external conflicts based on teachers’ experiences. though studies covered internal and external challenges for teachers, they rarely compared the academic environment aspect. this research intended to see if environment variables as external factors caused different experiences and vulnerabilities in novice efl teachers. therefore, this research aimed to determine if the different academic environments in formal and non-formal settings posed distinct challenges for novice efl teachers. this study used narrative inquiry with a reflection and interview to gather the data. the participants were four novice efl teachers: two teachers from formal education (fe) and non-formal education (nfe). the results showed that fe and nfe teachers shared some challenges, including student participation and classroom management, that led to vulnerability. still, fe and nfe teachers also shared their distinct challenges. the teachers had similar strategies to cope with their vulnerability, but fe and nfe teachers employed additional strategies to face their distinct challenges. this study may help teachers consider different teaching environments for identifying and overcoming vulnerability. key words: formal education; non-formal education; novice efl teachers; vulnerability abstrak banyak studi telah meneliti kerentanan guru dan relasinya dengan pembentukan identitas guru. kerentanan guru dapat tumbuh dari pertentangan internal dan eksternal, berdasarkan pengalaman para guru. walau banyak studi telah mempelajari tantangan internal dan ekternal guru, namun belum banyak studi yang membandingkan aspek lingkungan akademik. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat apakah variabel lingkungan sebagai faktor eksternal menyebabkan perbedaan pengalaman dan kerentanan bagi guru bahasa inggris pemula. maka dari itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat apakah lingkungan akademik formal dan non-formal yang berbeda memberikan tantangan yang berbeda bagi guru bahasa inggris pemula. penelitian ini menggunakan penelitian naratif dengan refleksi dan wawancara untuk mengumpulkan data. responden studi ini adalah empat guru bahasa inggris pemula, dua orang dari pendidikan formal (pf) dan dua orang dari pendidikan non-formal (pnf). hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa guru pendidikan formal dan non-formal mengalami berbagai tantangan serupa, seperti partisipasi siswa dan manajemen kelas, yang merujuk pada kerentanan guru, namun guru pf dan pnf juga mengalami tantangan yang berbeda. untuk mengatasi kerentanan mereka, guru juga menerapkan strategi yang serupa, namun guru pf dan pnf juga menerapkan beberapa strategi yang berbeda dalam mengatasi tantangan. penelitian ini dapat membantu para guru untuk mempertimbangkan lingkungan mengajar yang berbeda dalam mengidentifikasi dan mengatasi kerentanan. kata kunci: pendidikan formal; pendidikan non-formal; guru bahasa inggris pemula; kerentanan guru how to cite: andriani, e., mbato, c. l. (2022). the vulnerability of novice efl teachers in formal and non-formal teaching environment. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 41-58. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 42-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction teachers can experience vulnerability in their teaching experiences. vulnerability is a complex emotional experience in various contexts (lasky, 2005). the consequences of teachers’ decisions (manoj & alex, 2017), along with the status of english and the culture around the teacher (teng, 2020), may cause negative emotions that often lead to novice teachers’ sense of powerlessness and failure (teng, 2017). those experiences influence a teacher’s vulnerability, as in the teacher identity construction process, teaching experiences are often the source of both self-esteem and vulnerability (teng, 2017). as teacher vulnerability can affect teachers’ identity and, eventually, their classrooms (anttila, pyhältö, soini, & pietarinen, 2016; lasky, 2005), teachers often hide or ignore it (kelchtermans, 2018). however, teachers are suggested to embrace their vulnerability, as it is believed that embracing vulnerability makes better teachers (kelchtermans, 2009), as it allows the teachers to be true to themselves and be adaptive in dealing with their vulnerabilities (teng, 2020). teachers can identify and then deal with their vulnerability with reflection. to start dealing with their problems, teachers must first find and evaluate their actions inside and outside the classroom. that way, the teacher can identify what the problems are and what the sources are. a reflection can be an appropriate tool for both identifying teacher vulnerability (páez, eudave muñoz, cañedo ortiz, & macías esparza, 2020), as reflection does not only help teachers to consider the classroom space and “identify the knowledge immersed in it” (páez et al., 2020, p. 13), including the problems and their causes but also their perception as the teacher (alsup, 2018), including their strengths and weaknesses. the teachers can find ways to overcome vulnerability from the reflection results and use the qualities they possess. teachers’ vulnerabilities arise from their teaching experiences. teacher vulnerability often happens when teachers experience something out of their control, which affects them emotionally (lasky, 2005). both internal and external sources can cause teacher vulnerability. both are interrelated and can cause unpleasing feelings affecting teachers’ decisions and performances. the internal aspects can be teachers’ emotions, self-efficacy, and competence, while the external ones can be the school system and teaching environment. teachers’ internal conflictions that may cause vulnerability include their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 43-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license emotions, self-efficacy, and competence. emotions can be the source of vulnerability (yoo & carter, 2017). as teachers find tensions, they inflict concerns (francis et al., 2018) and stress (gray, wright, & pascoe, 2017; martins, bispo, & campos, 2016), which cause vulnerability. in addition, their inabilities, which may lead them to act outside of their own beliefs (lasky, 2005), can cause teachers to feel powerless (teng, 2017). teachers need to have a grip on their emotions, as those can affect “their decision-making, interpersonal relationships, the trajectory of their teacher identity development, and the level of commitment they have to the profession overall” (hong, cross francis, & schutz, 2018). teachers’ competence can also contribute to their vulnerability. the vulnerability may arise because of the teacher’s low sense of competence (cattley, 2007; florida & mbato, 2020; lasky, 2005). novice teachers might not possess the knowledge or skills needed to interact and manage their new classes, and the emotional load from their selfconsciousness in their competencies and autonomy are given to them can inflict vulnerability (alsup, 2018; cattley, 2007). vulnerability can be caused by self-efficacy as well (alsup, 2018; gangloff & mazilescu, 2017). teachers’ self-efficacy can emerge from their emotions and competence. teachers’ emotions and beliefs are interrelated (barcelos & ruohotielyhty, 2018). while good emotions can inflict teachers’ pride and self-esteem (teng, 2017), negative emotions can inflict low self-efficacy (bandura, 1997; gangloff & mazilescu, 2017). related to competence, teachers’ perception of their abilities, especially from past failures and their mastery of their craft, can be the sources of low self-efficacy (bandura, 1997). teachers’ internal conflicts may be caused by external factors that lead to unfavorable experiences. not only teachers’ internal struggles (jackson, 2018) stated that the environment around the teachers could cause stress. the interaction with the students might cause teachers’ powerlessness (kelchtermans, 2009; teng, 2017). interacting with non-cooperative students makes teachers question their authority (teng, 2017). the interactions with the other teachers and other parties (administrators, parents, etc.) also cause teachers discomfort (zhu, waxman, rivera, & burlbaw, 2018). novice teachers seek acknowledgment from other significant parties (kelchtermans, 2018), so the judgment, disagreement, or disapproval from colleagues or other parties on teachers’ decisions and autonomy can be the challenges that put them under ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 44-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pressure or cause disappointment (teng, 2017). the other external factor is the school system and regulation (kelchtermans, 2009). the unsupportive regulations and policies challenge teachers’ emotions (teng, 2017). in addition, the systems where the teachers are judged based on their students’ scores or where they cannot have the freedom to facilitate students’ learning process (kelchtermans, 2009) also confront teachers’ agency. in coping and overcoming vulnerability while constructing their professional identity in the process, the teachers need to first identify their vulnerabilities from both factors. novice teachers can reflect on their experiences to assess their vulnerabilities and combat them. novice teachers lack practical experiences, which is a disadvantage as it can reduce teachers’ sense of preparedness and confidence in facing the class (colson, sparks, berridge, frimming, & willis, 2017). reflection can help teachers assess their performances to develop skills and construct their identity (florida & mbato, 2020). páez et al. (2020) investigated the vulnerability of teachers in higher secondary education. in their study, internal difficulties (lacking pedagogical and material mastery and promoting students’ autonomous learning) and external challenges (students’ background knowledge and learning resources) were found through reflection and action. the respondents could come up with solutions to their challenges by figuring out their difficulties. zhu et al. (2018) investigated the student teachers’ professional vulnerability at school. similar to novice teachers, student teachers lacked practical experience in schools. it revealed that the student teachers’ professional vulnerability was caused by five experience categories: professional connections, teaching approaches, different responsibilities, hierarchical positions, and the regulations for teaching practicum. those experiences affected especially the sts’ emotions. upon reflection on their experiences, the sts took elaborate actions to cope with their difficulties, especially in hierarchical and micropolitical aspects. in line with the strategies for coping with vulnerabilities, florida and mbato (2020) studied novice and experienced teachers’ strategies in turning vulnerability into professional identity. both novice and experienced teachers used reflection to assess their conditions and find the best solution. the challenge for the novice teacher was the others’ judgment, while the experienced teacher’s challenge was workload. upon finding the best solutions for their respective challenges, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 45-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license both teachers developed teacher identity. teachers need to constantly reflect on their decisions and performances as “reflective practitioners” (harrison & lee, 2011) to identify their weaknesses and eventually better themselves. both internal and external sources of vulnerability previously discussed can be either their strength or weakness, depending on teachers’ nature and perspective when reflecting on their experiences. teachers do reflection as it helps them “to recognize their strengths and weaknesses” (florida & mbato, 2020, p. 9). in addition, knowing vulnerabilities can be the teacher’s strength, as it is the first step in their transformation (andrzejewski, baker-doyle, glazier, & reimer, 2019). teachers can then better themselves and overcome vulnerability by dealing with stress and keeping a positive relationship with the students (florida & mbato, 2020). the transformation process leads to teachers’ identity construction and resilience (day, 2018). as the internal and external factors in teachers’ academic experiences affect each other, different teaching environments may cause diverse vulnerability. the teaching environment includes all external aspects surrounding the teachers, such as students, policies, culture, values, workload, colleagues, parents, and other parties (florida & mbato, 2020; lasky, 2005; teng, 2017) as the interaction with the environment surrounding the teachers is one of the sources of vulnerability, teachers in fe and nfe may have distinct experiences that cause internal confliction and therefore vulnerability. to achieve that, this study used narrative inquiry on teachers’ reflection to investigate this topic in both groups. internal and external sources inflict teacher vulnerability. many types of research show identifying internal and external sources of vulnerability through reflection. in páez et al. (2020), teachers identified teachers’ pedagogical competencies as their internal problem and students’ academic competencies as the external problem. zhu et al. (2018) shared how the colleagues and mentors as the external causes affected the student teacher’s professional vulnerability. in florida and mbato (2020), the external sources, others’ judgment, and policy were the novice and experienced teachers’ challenges, respectively. as previously mentioned, external factors can influence or even cause teachers’ internal conflicts. external factors are more challenging as teachers do not have the authority to control ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 46-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license them fully and, therefore, may harm their interactions and performances in teaching (florida & mbato, 2020; kelchtermans, 2009). one instance of external factors is different teaching environments, such as formal and nonformal education. pre-service teachers, even those who graduated from teacher education, are often not familiar with the distinct teaching environment in formal and non-formal fields, which triggers distinct vulnerabilities. as the teacher’s surroundings often evoke teacher vulnerability, the different environments can cause distinct experiences and struggles. the teaching environment is different in formal and non-formal forms of education, as they have different values, curricula, policies, and purposes (ban paud dan pnf, 2019). however, studies rarely compared how different teaching environments contribute to novice efl teachers’ vulnerability. hence, this research aimed to determine the novice teachers’ vulnerability in both teaching environments and how they cope with their vulnerability. the research questions for this study are “how did the different teaching environments between formal and non-formal education contribute to novice efl teachers’ vulnerability?” and “how did the novice efl teachers in different teaching environments cope with their vulnerability?” method research design this qualitative study identifies teachers’ vulnerability in fe and nfe teaching environments and their ways of dealing with it. the qualitative study provides in-depth data and the narrative from the data analysis (creswell, 2012). several previous studies used this method to provide the teachers’ vulnerability based on their unique conditions and experiences (páez et al., 2020; zhu et al., 2018). the previous study by florida and mbato (2020) already implemented this method to investigate the vulnerability of novice and experienced teachers. this study, however, specifically used narrative inquiry design in addition to the qualitative method, which allowed the participants to reflect on their actions and experiences (merriam & tisdell, 2016). this research design is characterized by the use of reflections, subjects’ knowledge, and experiences (creswell, 2012) in facing certain occurrences while respecting their cognitive, emotional, and evaluative capabilities. therefore, narrative inquiry design encapsulates the subjects’ narratives about the research topic. the researchers found narrative inquiry appropriate to be the research design of this study, as it enabled the researchers to find out the teachers’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 47-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license whole experiences, perceptions, feelings, and thought processes in facing their vulnerabilities. research site and participants the chosen participants for this study were four novice efl teachers, two from each fe and nfe group, selected using convenient sampling (ary, jacobs, sorensen, & razavieh, 2010), as not all teachers felt comfortable sharing their vulnerable experiences. previous studies have investigated the vulnerabilities of novice teachers (zhu et al., 2018), and some took a step further to compare novice teachers and experienced teachers (florida & mbato, 2020). those studies also show the influence of the teaching environment on teachers. due to that finding and the lack of research regarding the influence of the teaching environment, this study aimed to reveal the impact of different teaching environments on novice teachers. thus, the participants from fe and nfe were chosen. this study limited the participants to efl teachers who taught in senior high schools and english courses in yogyakarta. two participants, one fe teacher, and one nfe teacher, were in their first year of teaching, while the other two were in their second year of teaching. data collection and analysis the data were gathered using a semi-structured interview to reflect on their teaching experiences, concerning theories from alsup (2018), florida and mbato (2020), kelchtermans (2018), teng (2020), and zhu et al. (2018). those theories regarding the teachers’ vulnerability were put into five main semi-structured interview questions. the reflection included the teachers’ positive qualities and their challenges inside and outside the classroom, as well as how they dealt with their challenges and what they learned from those experiences. the data gathering process was conducted in august. the teachers were first contacted to be interviewed through zoom or whatsapp. the interviews were recorded and lasted around one hour. the results were then transcribed using the non-verbatim transcription. after being transcribed, the reoccurring themes or unique details were tabulated and categorized based on the found groups. the data then were analyzed by comparing and contrasting the previous studies, such as alsup (2018), florida and mbato (2020), kelchtermans (2018), teng (2020), and zhu et al. (2018), especially regarding the sources of teachers’ vulnerabilities and the ways to handle teacher vulnerability. the data ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 48-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license presentation was in form of comparing and contrasting participants’ results from both groups. this organization is similar to the previous studies by florida and mbato (2020), páez et al. (2020), and zhu et al. (2018). findings and discussion findings formal education (fe) and nonformal education (nfe) novice efl teachers’ vulnerability the participants from both fe and nfe shared their reflections on their vulnerability. table 1 shows teachers’ perceptions of their qualities and how those helped them in their academic experiences. table 1. fe and nfe novice efl teachers’ perception of their qualities ft 01 f t0 2 nft0 1 nft0 2 english proficiencies ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ patience ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ confidence ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ communication skills ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ teaching skills ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ emotional management ✓ ✓ adapting to changes ✓ ✓ fe and nfe teachers had five common qualities: english proficiencies, patience, confidence, communication, and teaching skills. for example, regarding good communication and teaching skills, ft01 shared that she liked to teach and interact with the students, while nft01 said she could teach well and was not shy. “for my qualities, i think my english is fine. if i am in the class, i am confident about my abilities. i like to teach and see students figure things out. i’m patient… and also like to interact with the students, like talking to them like they are my friends.” (ft01) “i think my english is good, and i’m patient. i can teach well, do other works, and i am not shy to talk to other tutors, principal, or owner.” (nft01) teachers also shared distinct perceptions of their qualities. fts shared good emotion management as their quality. in contrast, two teachers shared adaptability as teachers as their strength (ft01 and nft02). “i can compose myself… and i can learn from other teachers or other sources to adapt to curriculum changes.” (ft01) “i can adapt well if there are changes in class, level, program, etc. because teaching those classes feels different.” (nft02) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 49-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in addition to their qualities, the teachers also shared their challenges in teaching efl classes. table 2 shows teachers’ challenges from their academic experiences inside the classroom. table 2. fe and nfe novice efl teachers’ challenges inside the classroom ft 01 f t0 2 nft0 1 nft0 2 participation ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ misbehavior ✓ ✓ ✓ teacher’s selfefficacy ✓ drop-out students ✓ homeroom teacher responsibilities ✓ inside the class, fts’ challenges were students’ online and offline learning behavior and low participation. participation was also one of the nfts’ challenges, while misbehavior was also a challenge for nft02. “sometimes in zoom, they just quiet, but when practicing, they say it’s difficult. when offline, they chat or go out a lot, just some of them. some students also really don’t want to listen or don’t have respect for teachers and just disrupt the class.” (ft02) “sometimes they find ways to slack off, saying they are tired, or some of them don’t want to do exercise. the working students are busy, so they often late, miss the class, or assignment.” (nft02) though teachers shared some similar challenges, fts and nfts had their challenges inside the class. for example, nft02 had issues with students who could easily drop out of the course, while ft01 had to deal with responsibilities as a homeroom teacher. though teachers perceived confidence as their strengths, nft01 still had selfefficacy issues. “some students drop out quite easily, and they’re difficult to track.” (nft02) “some students are already smart enough, so i sometimes feel scared and not confident.” (nft01) “i just don’t think i’m prepared for the bigger responsibility of being a homeroom teacher.” (ft01) in addition to teachers’ challenges inside the class, they shared their challenges outside the class, as presented in table 3. outside the class, the challenges included the curriculum, relation with other teachers, additional work, schedule, and training. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 50-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3. fe and nfe novice efl teachers’ challenges outside the classroom ft 01 f t0 2 nft0 1 nft0 2 curriculum demands ✓ ✓ schedule ✓ additional work ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ coordination ✓ lack of training and guidance ✓ ✓ as seen in table 3, all teachers had challenges handling their additional work. the work included being a coordinator for events, finding teachers, and working aside from teaching. “i am new, so sometimes if there are events, other teachers want the younger ones to be the responsible ones.” (ft01) “we need to take additional work for course content like we just made a promotion video, and we took pics for our social media.” (nft01) “we are kinda busy, and we have to work even without classes every day, so it’s kinda hard if we must go try to find teachers.” (nft02) in addition to the common challenge, fts and nfts had more distinct challenges. the challenge that the fts only faced was curriculum demands. “probably understanding what the curriculum wants; sometimes we have a training (diklat), but not quite helpful for the actual use at school.” (ft01) “in relation to curriculum, it’s difficult to also provide the materials, like examples, readings, etc. that follow the curriculum but suit students’ interests.” (ft02) similarly, some challenges were faced by only the nfts. those challenges were their schedule, coordination, and lack of training and guidance. “the worktime varies a lot, like one day i need to teach from eight to nine at night, which is super draining. we have other people responsible for our learning materials, and it’s helpful for my workload, but if there are things i or my students cannot understand, i cannot directly solve it.” (nft01) “sometimes i don’t know if i do things right because we lack supervision.” (nft02) non-formal and formal novice efl teachers’ ways of coping with challenges after identifying their vulnerability, the participants also reflected on how they coped with it. the participants shared about the ways they solved problems inside and outside the class. teachers perceived that their qualities helped them inside the classroom, as presented in table 4. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 51-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. fe and nfe novice efl teachers’ coping strategies inside the classroom ft 01 f t0 2 nft0 1 nft0 2 managing emotion ✓ ✓ ✓ improving and teaching english better ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ negotiating with students ✓ ✓ teaching flexibility ✓ ✓ learning materials ✓ varying classroom delivery ✓ ✓ keeping a good relationship with students ✓ ✓ by reflecting on their qualities and challenges, the teachers could identify how their strengths helped them solve their challenges and cope with their vulnerability. teachers mentioned how improving their english and teaching it properly helped their self-efficacy. “i could learn english and improve quickly, and i felt that i rarely got critics about my language or my media uses when teaching.” (ft02) in addition, some similar strategies were shared by fts and nfts. teachers’ strategies included managing emotion, negotiating with students, varying classroom delivery, and maintaining good student relationships. “when i face troublesome students, i try not to get carried away with my emotions, keep being logical and calm.” (nft01) “i can adapt myself well so when i have to make changes in my teaching. i could learn quickly and apply them.” (ft02) “i think i could communicate well with my students. to solve problems, i started to negotiate things with students. that way, i also tried to befriend the students, made them feel like they could share their feelings without being afraid or shy.” (ft01) though the teachers shared some common strategies, fts and nfts shared some distinct ones. fts shared about being more flexible, while one nft shared about learning teaching materials herself. “i think my english is good, and i learn quickly, but materials like ielts were never taught in uni, so i learned them myself.” (nft01) “i tried to be more flexible. for example, if students had good reasons for late submissions, for example, i can excuse them.” (ft02) teachers also had strategies to solve problems outside the class that was unrelated to teaching. the teachers shared those strategies in table 5. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 52-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 5. fe and nfe novice efl teachers’ coping strategies outside the classroom ft 01 f t0 2 nft0 1 nft0 2 communicating with parents or other teachers ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ managing emotion ✓ ✓ being discipline ✓ ✓ solving issues in the institution ✓ ✓ communicating workload ✓ ✓ the teachers’ common strategy was to communicate with other teachers or parents. they collaborate with others to support students’ needs or solve problems outside the class. “i communicate things with others, the homeroom teacher, and the parents, not to lecture the student, but to find the best solutions. if there are problems with other teachers, we just talk things out.” (ft02) fts only shared some strategies. those strategies included managing emotions and being disciplined. “i think it’s important not to be emotional also with other teachers, or with parents, a problem happens.” (ft01) “i always tried to follow the rules. i rarely got any warnings from misbehavior; good for me, for my supervisor, and good role model for my students.” (ft02) similarly, some strategies were only shared by nfts. those strategies were working together to solve issues and communicating workload. “we can share ideas to solve things like marketing, interviewing tutors, etc. it’s good to take part in solving problems.” (nft02) “i started to initiate communication about my workload and students’ condition with my class assistant so we can follow up troubled students” (nft01) discussion non-formal and formal novice efl teachers’ vulnerability the teachers’ awareness of their job helps them position themselves in their working environment and adjust their expectations. both fts and nfts were aware of their job demands and their positions in it. fts had low expectations of their salary and workload. yet, those did not stop them from being teachers, as their experiences building the students’ morale and knowledge were enjoyable and desired. those were in line with florida and mbato (2020) that although their experience differed, they received similar emotions and found their purpose. like fts, nfts knew that their classroom management might be easier than school teachers but with more difficult english subjects. though their experience differed from fts teachers, as they did not focus on ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 53-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students’ moral development, through their experience, the nfts found their purpose to support the students’ understanding of english in different areas that they could not get in schools (florida & mbato, 2020). the teachers’ qualities differ from one to another, and by identifying those qualities, teachers can use them in dealing with difficult situations. the qualities that the fts and nfts shared included their teaching and communication skills, english proficiencies, confidence, and patience, which were their internal strength. they are in line with alsup (2018), cattley (2007), florida and mbato (2020), gangloff and mazilescu (2017), and lasky (2005). inside the class, fts and nfts could utilize those qualities in their teaching, dealing with students’ problems and avoiding emotional burnout, which could help them overcome their vulnerability and increase resilience (alsup, 2018; f. teng, 2020). outside the class, their qualities helped with their relationship with other teachers (fts and nfts), and fts also mentioned their behavior regarding policies. the peer pressure from other teachers and the unsupportive policies may induce stress and disappointment (kelchtermans, 2018; teng, 2017), but the teachers’ strengths helped them prevent those negative emotions. in addition, only two teachers from each form of education mentioned emotion management and adaptability. they show that those qualities are not easily possessed but can support teachers’ teaching and avoid burnout (lasky, 2005; teng, 2020). aside from their qualities, teachers also mentioned their challenges in their academic experiences. for inside the class, all teachers mentioned students’ participation as their challenge. despite their confidence in communication and classroom management, fts and nfts still had challenges engaging the students in the learning process. their decisions in the classroom may affect the way students behave (manoj & alex, 2017), so students’ low participation may lower teachers’ selfefficacy (gangloff & mazilescu, 2017), sense of authority (teng, 2017), and ultimately their emotions, as stated by hong et al. (2018), which lead to vulnerability. nfts also mentioned their teaching efficacy, students’ motivation, and dropping out. those challenges can relate to each other. the students can easily drop out of english courses as it is not formal education and is just supplementary. that mindset may cause lower motivation for students, as they can get out anytime once they do not feel any benefit from the course or other personal reasons. that influences ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 54-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers’ efficacy, as they may feel that their teaching is insufficient to keep the students motivated (bandura, 1997; gangloff & mazilescu, 2017). for outside the class, fts mentioned curriculum and school events. the frequent changes in the curriculum may make teachers lack a sense of preparedness which can lower their teaching efficacy (kelchtermans, 2018). the school events are related to the additional workload that requires more effort, and inexperienced teachers may find pressure and expectations from other teachers (kelchtermans, 2018). nfts also mentioned additional workload and payment. those are related as they need to handle more work, sometimes outside of teaching, to gain more salary. non-formal and formal novice efl teachers’ ways of coping with challenges the teachers reflected on their performances in the classroom to identify the causes of their vulnerability and acted upon them. fts and nfts dealt with their problems by being communicative with the students and other workers outside the classroom, along with individual learning. being communicative helped them in maintaining interpersonal relationships with others to avoid emotional burnout from a bad working atmosphere, like stress, low cooperation, selfconsciousness, anxiety, and uncertainty, in line with alsup (2018), francis et al. (2018), gray et al. (2017), and teng (2017). individual learning helped them increase their competence and improve their teaching self-efficacy, as stated by cattley (2007), florida and mbato (2020), and lasky (2005). regarding the fts’ strategies, they included being patient and being understanding, which could also help their emotion management and interpersonal relationship with others, in line with hong et al. (2018), and lasky (2005). in contrast, nfts dealt with their problems by adjusting themselves to additional work, enjoying the work, collaborating with their co-workers, and clearing up job descriptions. nfts work in shifts depending on the class they teach, and they need to get accustomed to working outside their shifts to cover other classes. as they alter their attitude toward their work, they will find their working experience more enjoyable (florida & mbato, 2020). nfts also avoided peer pressure by making sure they understood their job descriptions and, at the same time, collaborated and helped other workers (kelchtermans, 2018). from their reflection, teachers found ways to deal with their problems ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 55-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and learned to better themselves as a teacher. their self-reflection helped them overcome their vulnerability and develop their identity as teachers, supporting alsup (2018) and zhu et al. (2018). fts and nfts learned that their emotion management influenced the way teachers presented themselves in the classroom, and that influenced students’ emotions, and reduced burnout, in line with florida and mbato (2020) and lasky (2005). classroom management increased their selfefficacy, reducing their vulnerability and burnout, as stated by barcelos and ruohotie-lyhty (2018). fts also included time management, which is included in their classroom management and maintaining good interpersonal relationships with students and other teachers in line with kelchtermans (2018). conclusion and suggestions this study explored the vulnerability of fe and nfe novice efl teachers and the ways they coped with their vulnerability. fts and nfts were aware of their job demand and positioned themselves in the said working environment. they shared similar qualities, including patience, english proficiencies, confidence, communication skills, and teaching skills, while some teachers added emotion management and adaptability. those helped them in their teaching, dealing with the students, and working with other teachers, while fts added about being disciplined and nfts added about individual learning. for challenges, their similar challenges included student participation, while nfts added dropping out students, which is a more common phenomenon in courses compared to in schools. the teachers coped with their vulnerability by increasing communication and individual learning. fts also shared being patient and understanding, while nfts’ ways were adjusting to shifting changes, enjoying work, being collaborative, and making clear their tasks. from their experience, they learned the importance of classroom and emotion management, while fts added time management and good interpersonal relationship. this study is still limited to the number of participants. future researchers can vary the types of teachers, types of education, and types of subjects and include more participants. the implication of this study is for teachers to use reflection to identify their vulnerability and find ways to deal with it. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 56-58 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.22473 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references alsup, j. 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(2018). the micropolitics of student teachers’ professional vulnerability during teaching practicums: a chinese perspective. the asia-pacific education researcher, 27(2), 155– 165. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299018-0374-5 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 89-105 project-based learning in indonesian efl classrooms: from theory to practice yustinus calvin gai mali received: 17th march 2016; revised: 20th may 2016; accepted: 28th june 2016 abstract project based learning (pbl) refers to an approach to instruction that teaches curriculum concepts through a project espousing principles of learner-centered teaching, learner autonomy, collaborative learning, and learning through tasks. this paper justifies the implementation of pbl to design two main projects and their activities in creative writing and second language acquisition classes at english language education program of dunia university indonesia (ed-du). moreover, the paper details pedagogical practices and learning resources deployed in both classes. the discussions would seem to indicate that the use of pbl grounded in the projects shows a high level of students’ participation in learning, and teachers’ innovative teaching practices. finally, the paper hopes to provide efl teachers who have similar teaching practices with practical ideas they can develop to help students achieve particular learning objectives in their classrooms and continue the positive trends of implementing pbl in teaching and learning. key words: project-based learning; projects; efl classrooms abstrak pembelajaran berbasis proyek (pbl) merupakan suatu pendekatan instruksi yang mengajarkan suatu konsep kurikulum yang didukung prinsip pengajaran yang terpusat pada siswa, otonomi siswa, pembelajaran kolaboratif, dan pembelajaran melalui tugas. kajian ini memberikan alasan tentang implementasi pbl untuk merancang dua proyek utama dan aktifitasnya di kelas creative writing dan second language acquisition pada program studi pendidikan bahasa inggris, universitas dunia indonesia. selain itu, kajian ini memaparkan secara rinci praktik pedagogi dan sumber pembelajaran yang digunakan di kedua kelas tersebut. pembahasan dalam kajian ini nampak mengindikasikan bahwa penggunaan pbl dalam kedua proyek tersebut menunjukan tingkat partisipasi siswa yang tinggi dan praktek pengajaran guru yang inovatif. akhirnya, kajian ini berharap untuk memberikan guru bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing yang mempunyai praktik pengajaran serupa dengan ide praktis yang mereka bisa modifikasi dan kembangkan untuk membantu siswa mencapai tujuan pembelajaran tertentu dalam kelas mereka dan melanjutkan kecenderungan positif pada implementasi pbl dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. kata kunci: pembelajaran berbasis proyek; proyek; kelas bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing how to cite: mali, y.,c., g. (2016). project-based learning in indonesian efl classrooms: from theory to practice. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 89-105. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.2651 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.2651 mailto:salwa@unikama.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 90-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction project based learning (pbl) is social practice into which students are socialized through a series of group activities involving the simultaneous learning of language, content, and skills (slater, beckett, & aufderhaar, 2006). pbl is also “an approach to instruction that teaches curriculum concepts through a project” (bell, 2010, p.41). in brief, an approach shows how a language is learned (richards & schmidt, 2010) and gives ways of teaching something, which uses classroom activities or techniques to help learners learn (british council, 2008). in essence, the approach espouses four main principles (hedge, 2000). the first principle is learnercentered teaching. it encourages students to share responsibility for their learning (merlot pedagogy, 2016), in which a teacher offers support and guidance during the learning process (stoller, 2002). the second principle is autonomy. it suggests, “learners to assume a maximum amount of responsibility for their learning” (richards, 2015, p. 742). brown (2007) posits that teachers should provide opportunities for students to solve problems in small groups and practice their language outside their classroom to achieve a value of learner autonomy. the third principle is collaborative learning is “an instruction method in which students at various performance levels work together in groups to achieve a common academic goal (gokhale, 1995, p.23). besides, a collaborative work encourages students to explore and to apply their course materials as an attempt to search for understanding, solutions, or to create a product (smith & macgregor, 1992). then, the last principle is learning through tasks. in essence, a task refers to an activity that enables students to achieve a particular learning goal (richards & schmidt, 2010) using their available language resources and leading to a real outcome (richards & renandya, 2002). further, pbl is a type of contextualized cooperative learning designed within five main phases highlighting the essence of students’ participation (sharan, 1998, as cited in dooly & masats, 2008). the stages start with [1] selecting a topic, [2] planning for the project, and [3] finding information about a topic of the project. they continue to [4] developing and implementing plans to complete the project and [5] presenting and evaluating an output of the project and students’ efforts to finish the project. literature acknowledges significances of pbl in teaching and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|91-105 learning. pbl has been “advocated as an effective means for promoting language and content learning in efl classrooms” (guo, 2006, p.147). besides, it helps students to achieve a greater understanding of a topic, increase their learning motivation (bell, 2010), p.39) and inspires them to obtain a deeper knowledge of a particular subject (edutopia, 2008). a project work also leads to mirroring real-life tasks and provides opportunities for students to work cooperatively in a small group, in which they can share resources and ideas in completing a particular project (stoller, 2002). furthermore, research into language teaching reports that pbl supports, facilitates, and improves a learning process (tamin & grant, 2013) and helps english language learners achieve their language-learning goals (beckett & slater, 2005, as cited in foss, carney, mcdonald, rooks, 2007). the english language education program of dunia university indonesia (ed-du) (anonymous) offers courses that its students have to complete during their four-year study. some of the courses are creative writing (cw) and second language acquisition (sla) situated in english as a foreign language (efl) setting. it is regarded as a situation in which people learn english in a formal classroom with limited opportunities to use the language outside their classroom (richards & schmidt, 2010). this paper reaffirms the benefits of pbl and ideas that “all program instructors in their pbl learning program are free to design their individual class projects as long as they fit within the framework of the course” (foss et al., 2007, p.6). with this in mind, two projects and their learning activities were designed using pbl that would seem to help the students achieve learning objectives in both classes. this paper aims to justify why the pbl approach was selected to design the projects (foss et al., 2007), to explain the implementation of pbl in the contexts of cw and sla classes, and to share some pedagogical practices that indonesian efl teachers can develop to help their students achieve particular learning objectives in their classes. therefore, to achieve these goals, the paper initially introduces cw and sla classes and details learning activities that students have done in the classrooms. then, it explains some learning sources and supporting technology that students used in completing the projects. the paper continues to relate the learning activities with pbl principles, to detail challenges of pbl, and to provide possible solutions to overcome the challenges. finally, the paper explains ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 92-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 some pedagogical implications for teaching and learning particularly in efl contexts and possible directions for future research. creative writing class cw is one of language skill courses offered in the first semester at ed-du. in this course, the students learn english language aspects through creative writing in the forms of poems and a biography (ragawati & pattiwael, 2014). at the end of the course, they are expected to possess some competencies, such as to [a] identify some features and language aspects addressed in poems and [b] write some kinds of poems, such as metaphor, acrostic, narrative, and haiku. a metaphor poem is a figure of speech that indicates either an implicit or an explicit comparison between two different things that possess similar characteristics (literary devices, 2015): mother, my doctor (a metaphor poem by nahason louiz wari yoafifi) mother is a doctor her smile is medicine when i am sick she nurses me when i am weak she makes my life healthy another example of the metaphor poem can be seen on a student’s blog (see pratiwi, 2014). then, acrostic is a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name, or phrase when people read it vertically (poetry foundation, 2015): risma (an acrostic poem written by risma ida aruan) responsible innovative sincere marvelous amazing other examples of the acrostic poem can be seen in some students’ blogs (see lawalata, 2014; natasya, 2015). meanwhile, in a narrative poem, students may tell a story about anything (brown, 2015). brown also notes that the poem’s lines have a rhyming pattern (see rhein, 2006). they sometimes do not have it al all: everything is all right (a narrative poem written by nadzifa nur fadilla) we used to laugh together we used to cry together we used to walk together we used to be four only three of us are now left on the fragile path in the darkest night in this cruel universe ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|93-105 it won't be easy we need someone who can lead us the true leader who has gone forever the future looked so dark we couldn't watch our footsteps our trades faded away but i realize something that you see us from heaven ask god to guide us ask the angels to tell us everything is all right another example of the poem can be seen on a student’s blog (see widyastuti, 2015). in essence, writing the poem enables the students to learn simple past tense. last, haiku is a 17syllable verse form of poems that can be about anything (brown, 2015). god, my strength (a haiku written by lutfi febriawan) god, you are my strength when i am weak, sad, and down you are ray of life other examples of the poem can be seen on students’ blogs (see agista, 2015; manihuruk, 2015). in essence, haiku has three metrical units (toyomasu, 2001) and consists of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second lines, and five syllables in the third line (william, 2015). in this class, a poster project (ragawanti, 2014) was designed to help the students perform the competencies (a-b). this project was done in a group of two until three students. within an approximately week period, they had to write a type of poems that they have learned in their classroom and to illustrate it in a poster. the poem should be about fdu. at the start of this project, the students were briefed with ideas on how to design a poster (rochester institute of technology, 2014. also, they were showed some posters created by their seniors in the previous cw class to corroborate the ideas. the group continued to write the poem and consulted it to the lecturer. then, we discussed the poem to see its meaning and to review grammatical aspects carefully as we would publish the posters in a cw tutor blog (campbell, 2003) that i run in the classroom. in addition to uploading any important information about the class, the tutor blog, in this case, also functions as an online gallery space for a review of students’ works (duffy & bruns, 2006) as people can see the posters online and leave some comments to them. significantly, “because other people can see the blog, students are more careful about looking up words they need and checking ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 94-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 grammar and spelling” (abu bakar & ismail, 2009, p.49, as cited in walker & white, 2013, p.76). moreover, exposure to a broader audience was an opportunity for the students to obtain more diverse feedback on their work (purcell, buchanan, & friedrich, 2013) and to increase their satisfaction that possibly enhances their motivation (dornyei, 2001). after that, students in the group arranged their time to design the poster and decided who did what to complete the project. an essential part of pbl phases is to present an output of the project. therefore, upon completing the poster (see calvin, 2014), every group was asked to present its poster (see figure 1) in front of the class. every group explained meanings of the poem and their relation to the design of the poster. figure 1. the group’s poster (a poster by cindy octaviani, angela nirmala nariswari, and galuh widyastuti) a question and answer section was provided in which all students in the classroom might ask the group to clarify particular aspects of the poster. nevertheless, a clear challenge for doing the project was the fact that only few students who could well utilize supporting software, such as adobe photoshop, corel draw, photoscape, to design the poster. therefore, in a sense, the poster designs done by particular groups were significantly better than those by other groups. second language acquisition class sla is an elective course held in the tenth semester at ed-swcu. the course is about how people, including the students as english learners, acquire and learn a second language (l2) other than their mother tongue. the course also reviews research findings of previous sla studies (see, for instance, bellingham, 2004; so & dominguez, 2004; shoaib & dornyei, 2004; mali, 2015a), which are still being continued up to this moment, and great linguists’ opinions on many aspects that influence the l2 acquisition, both from learners’ internal and external factors. moreover, the course deals with some keys of success in sla that the students can adopt in their learning and acquisition of english. at the end of the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|95-105 course, they are expected to be able to [c] explain how people learn and acquire a second language, [d] explain various factors affecting the second language acquisition, and [e] conduct a small-scale sla study in the form of academic essay paper. the students are assigned to write an academic essay paper to help them achieve the classroom objectives (c-e). this project was completed in a step-by-step fashion. the students, in a group of two until three students, had to conduct a library study and to write an academic essay paper on an sla topic that interested them. as a guideline, they were asked to follow a format adapted from a journal (indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 2015). moreover, at the start of this project, the students discussed a paper that has followed the format to serve as a frame of their reference. at the end of the semester, they had to report their study in the form of 15002000 academic essay paper with, at least, eight supporting references (see, for instance, benson & nunan, 2004; ellis, 1985, 1997, 2008; gass & selinker, 2001; trolke, 2006). they were given opportunities to consult their problems in completing the essay. they were also encouraged to write their paper well and to present it in a national undergraduate conference in indonesia (see, for instance, http://uc-pbiusd.blogspot.co.id/ & https://www .facebook.com/fllstudentconference /) as the follow-up of the project. the students collaborated with their group members to complete their essay. they communicated to share learning resources they had. they also discussed which parts of their research paper that every group member had to write. they negotiated their different perspectives in writing their essay and looked for their best solution to overcome the differences. these activities reflect the learner-centered teaching in which students solve problems, answer, and formulate questions of their own (felder, 2015). some groups communicated online through their facebook group and whatsapp during the completion of their project. in another case, the collaboration was done by helping one another to explain difficult concepts that they read from particular books so that they could write them in their essay. every group was scheduled to have a classroom presentation reporting the progress of the writing and problems encountered in completing the project to monitor the progress of the work. in this activity, other students in the class might ask questions, provide constructive feedback to the essay, and suggest http://uc-pbi-usd.blogspot.co.id/ http://uc-pbi-usd.blogspot.co.id/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 96-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 possible ways to overcome the problems. findings and discussion this section relates the learning activities detailed in the previous parts with pbl principles to explain the implementation of the principles in the contexts of cw and sla classes. this paper endorses a belief that pbl in both classes can possibly engage the students in “solving semi-structured problems calling for competencies expected in high-performance work organizations” (lattimer & riordan, 2011, p.20). the use of pbl in both classes has provided extensive opportunities for the students to work together with their group mates, articulate their thought, negotiate, and appreciate different perspectives they had so that they could complete their projects. this collaboration may be a demonstration of how pbl can mirror real-life tasks (stoller, 2002) particularly in the twenty-first century (bell, 2010) that encourages students to understand how to plan, build, and collaborate with their pairs or small groups (davila, 2015). interestingly, the students also maximize the use of facebook group and whatsapp, in which they can communicate, share related learning materials, and download them electronically, to support the collaboration. the real-life tasks are also in line with the substantial policies stipulated in indonesian qualification framework (iqf). in brief, iqf aims to equalize and integrate an educational field, work training, and work experience of every indonesian citizen (kementrian pendidikan nasional republik indonesia, 2012). iqf technically consists of nine qualification levels (see figure 2), in which each level has specific descriptions to perform. concerning the framework, the students who will possess their bachelor degree after they graduate are in the level 6. in essence, one of the specific descriptions of the level appears to encourage them to have a cooperation skill: “bertanggung jawab pada pekerjaan sendiri dan dapat diberi tanggung jawab atas pencapaian hasil kerja organisasi (kementrian pendidikan nasional republik indonesia, 2012, p.14). “being responsible for their job and able to be given responsibility for an organization work achievement” (translated by the researcher). the use of facebook group and whatsapp to support students’ learning collaboration is also in line ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|97-105 with another description in the framework: “mampu memanfaatkan ipteks dalam bidang keahliannya, dan mampu beradaptasi terhadap situasi yang dihadapi dalam penyelesaian masalah” (kementrian pendidikan nasio-nal republik indonesia, 2012, p.14). “being able to utilize ict in their expertise, and being able to adapt to situations they are facing in solving a particular problem” (translated by the researcher). these phenomena are translated as an opportunity for students to practice performing the real-world tasks described in iqf that they possibly have to perform after they finish their undergraduate study. nevertheless, working in the group to complete the projects in both classes created some identified challenges. to some extents, it was quite difficult to ensure that every group member contributed equally to writing the essay and designing the poster. it was possible that a particular student in the group dominated ideas and ignored inputs from other team members. this situation might make other team members feel inferior and limit their learning experiences through the projects. therefore, the students were given a peer-assessment rubric (see table 1) and asked to assess their group mates’ performance and contributions in their group. it was necessary to do the assessment, for evaluating students’ efforts to complete the project is an essential phase in pbl framework (sharan, 1998, as cited in dooly and masats, 2008). figure 2. nine qualifications levels in iqf (taken from kementrian pendidikan nasional republik indonesia, 2012, p.6) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 98-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 1. the peer assessment rubric (adapted from franker, 2015; vandervelde, 2015) 1 unsatisfactory 2 partially proficient 3 proficient 4 exemplary contribution to the team project/work does not collect any relevant information; no useful suggestions to address team's needs; collects information when prodded; tries to offer some ideas, but not well developed, and not clearly expressed, to meet team's needs; collects basic, useful information related to the project; occasionally offers useful ideas to meet the team's needs; collects and presents to the team a great deal of relevant information; offers well-developed and clearly expressed ideas directly related to the group's purpose. taking responsibility does not perform assigned tasks; often misses meetings and, when present, does not have anything constructive to say; relies on others to do the work; performs assigned tasks but needs many reminders; attends meetings regularly but generally does not say anything constructive; sometimes expects others to do his/her work; performs all assigned tasks; attends meetings regularly and usually participates effectively; generally reliable; performs all tasks very effectively; attends all meetings and participates enthusiastically; very reliable. valuing other team members often argues with team mates; doesn't let anyone else talk; occasional personal attacks and "putdowns"; wants to have things done his way and does not listen to alternate approaches usually does much of the talking; does not pay much attention when others talk, and often assumes their ideas will not work generally listens to others' points of view; always uses appropriate and respectful language; tries to make a definite effort to understand others' ideas; always listens to others and their ideas; helps them develop their ideas while giving them full credit; always helps the team reach a fair decision. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|99-105 figure 3. edmodo home page besides, the peer assessment system was to make sure that each member of the group was involved in the process of doing the projects. each member of the group assessed other members of the group using likert scale of 1-4. then, the students were asked to submit the rubric at the end of the course. the scored rubric was considered as one of the criteria to determine their final grade in sla class. the students were explained clearly that the peer assessment could make a significant difference in their final grade, so they should prove their deep involvement in the completing the projects. another challenge of pbl is also to reach a balance between an excessive teacher control versus an absence of teachers’ feedback and guidance during the completion of the project (dooly & masats, 2008). building a regular consultation was necessary as a teacher could always monitor and suggest ideas to complete the projects. in that case, edmodo was utilized (https://www.edmodo.com/). edmodo (see figure 3) is a social media service for education (walker & white, 2013) and a virtual learning environment (light & polin, 2010), in which “students can learn even when they are miles away from their teacher and classmates” (harmer, 2007, p.121). edmodo serves as a platform where they could regularly consult the lecturer and submit a draft of their paper online. besides, edmodo is a platform from which they could access their lecturer’s feedback to their paper https://www.edmodo.com/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 100-105|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 electronically whenever and wherever they are (mali, 2015b). conclusion to conclude, the use of pbl grounded in the poster and academic essay projects appears to prove a high level of students’ learning participation in a way that the students can experience working together with their group mates to articulate their thought, to negotiate, and to appreciate different perspectives. besides, the use of pbl would seem to the help the students to practice real-life tasks described in iqf that they possibly have to perform after they graduate. the discussion also shows students’ innovation in a way that they can experience using the technology in completing the projects. finally, this paper highlights the essence of students’ learning collaboration with their group mates and of using technology to help students complete particular classroom projects. it will be interesting for future researchers to explore the place of technology in pbl activities and to what extent the use of technology supports students’ learning collaboration and helps them to complete their 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(2015). how to write a haiku poem: haiku examples and tips. retrieved october 27th, 2015, from http://www.creativewriting-now.com/how-to-writea-haiku.html http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/ http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/ http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/dirassmnt/teamworkrubric.html http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/dirassmnt/teamworkrubric.html http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/dirassmnt/teamworkrubric.html http://geeisworking.blogspot.co.id/2015/09/narrative-poem-undefine.html http://geeisworking.blogspot.co.id/2015/09/narrative-poem-undefine.html http://geeisworking.blogspot.co.id/2015/09/narrative-poem-undefine.html http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-haiku.html http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-haiku.html http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-haiku.html * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 179-197 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee activate reading comprehension of second language acquisition (sla) by applying know-want to know-learned (kwl) strategy adieli laoli received: 05th june 2021; revised: 28th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract the purpose of this research is to describe how students achieve their reading comprehension performance when they apply the kwl (know, want to know, learned) strategy. kwl is a strategy that can better comprehend the content of material read by the students. using this strategy can help the students read effectively and efficiently to build their comprehension. after analyzing the data, the finding shows that the kwl strategy positively contributes to the students’ achievement in their reading comprehension. it can be seen from the progress of scores in each cycle that the students acquired. other aspects that the students should have in applying this strategy, such as motivation and vocabulary mastery, play a vital role in classroom activities; besides, the serious attention of the teacher to use the procedures of kwl strategy is necessary. the result of this research is kwl strategy can increase the students' reading comprehension in second language acquisition (sla) subject by applying some modifications to the procedures. considering the result from the research, the researcher recommends that the kwl strategy be continuously implemented in activating students’ reading comprehension. key words: kwl strategy; motivation; reading comprehension; students’ achievement; vocabulary mastery abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mendeskripsikan bagaimana siswa mencapai pemahamannya ketika menerapkan strategi kwl. kwl merupakan salah satu strategi yang dapat memberikan pemahaman yang lebih baik akan sebuah konten materi yang dibaca oleh siswa. penggunaan strategi dapat membantu siswa membaca secara efektif dan efisien untuk membangun pemahaman. hasil analisis data menunjukkan bahwa strategi kwl memiliki kontribusi positif terhadap prestasi siswa dalam memahami bacaan sla, hal ini dapat dilihat dari kemajuan akan nilai dalam pembelajaran yang diperoleh siswa. aspek lain yang harus dimiliki siswa dalam menerapkan strategi ini, misalnya motivasi dan penguasaan kosakata memegang peranan yang sangat penting dalam kegiatan kelas, selain itu perhatian serius dari guru untuk menerapkan prosedur strategi kwl mutlak diperlukan. hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa strategi kwl dapat meningkatkan pemahaman membaca siswa pada pelajaran sla dengan penerapan beberapa modifikasi pada prosedurnya. berdasarkan hasil penelitian tersebut, peneliti merekomendasikan strategi kwl untuk diimplementasikan secara berkelanjutan untuk meningkatkan pemahaman membaca siswa. kata kunci: strategi kwl; motivasi; pemahaman membaca; prestasi siswa; penguasaan kosakata how to cite: laoli, a. (2021). activate reading comprehension of second language acquisition (sla) by applying know-want to know-learned (kwl) strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 179-197. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 180-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading is a source of learning and a source of enjoyment. someone may travel around the world through reading. they may read the story of a country, for example, what happens to the country, how the societies get a living, how the government manages the economic activities, how the education owned by the societies, what the government does to promote the tourism destination, what the government does to defend his country from outside enemy, etc. all this information may be read from books, magazines, newspapers, and online devices, for example, the internet, facebook, instagram, and whatsapp. according to akyol (2013), reading is the process of establishing meaning in a suitable environment using appropriate information based on effective communication between the author and the reader by the appropriate aim and method. in line with this, castles et al. (2018) define that reading is the basis for the acquisition of knowledge, cultural engagement, democracy, and success in the workplace. reading activities allow someone to enhance their knowledge and change their mind to see the world. in reading, it is necessary to engage the students to set the goal to grow their motivation. protacio (2017) implied that reading engagement represents the students’ motivation to read and engage in reading activities to improve their understanding of texts. hence, the current study provides evidence regarding reading engagement and comprehension level efficacy. establishing meaning, understanding, and acquisition of knowledge refers to the comprehension of the text that the readers should build. glenberg (2017) asserts that comprehension accounts for the ability to engage in responses to the information provided in the text. next, comprehension means different things to different people. indeed, comprehension is not a unitary phenomenon but rather a family of skills and activities (kintsch, w., & kintsch, 2005; rapp & van den broek, 2005; van den broek et al., 2005) reading comprehension is the process through which the readers are interacting with written text to get the meaning. according to oakley (2011), reading comprehension is the desired result of reading and can be defined as the skill of combining background knowledge with reading texts. then, snow (2002) defines reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 181-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interaction and involvement with written language. castles et al. (2018) emphasized that the goal of reading comprehension is to understand what has been read. thus, reading development must be to develop a system that allows students to construct meaning from print. on the other hand, the students are expected to describe, explain, and address the content they have acquired. then, reading comprehension is essential that the students can effectively comprehend the text to succeed in their academic and professional objectives at the global level (meniado, 2016). therefore, developing reading comprehension ability is an important aspect of the acquisition of a second language. second language acquisition (sla) is the subject that should be studied by the students of the sixth semester of english department ikip gunungsitoli. from the target above, the students found difficulties comprehending the material provided in the reference book (escudero, 2018). a student who starts college education may face many challenges related to reading due to the lack of reading culture, which has been evidenced in ecuador since early childhood and throughout basic education and high school. the same situation may be the same as the sixthsemester students of english department ikip gunungsitoli to comprehend the material of sla. the students found problems to make connections between parts of the passage to build up an interpretation requires recognition of the words, the students cannot hold information in mind, the students cannot scan backward, and forwards to relevant words and phrases, the students are not able to understand of cues from sentence structure, those problems influence their comprehension from the content of sla. to overcome the problems, the researcher applies the kwl (know, want, learned) strategy in teaching sla because many results of research suggest that kwl strategy can give a better result to comprehend the content of the material read by the students. for example, kadhim (2019) found that kwl strategy is a good strategy which enables the students to activate their knowledge and operate their thinking to memorize their information besides the students are more active and participate while the process of learning. this opinion inspired the researcher to conduct research with the title, activate reading comprehension of second language acquisition (sla) by applying kwl strategy. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 182-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license according to torgesen (2000), reading comprehension is influenced by a broad range of factors, including their motivation, interest, vocabulary, general knowledge, knowledge of the particular subject, word identification skills, reasoning ability, use of effective strategies to identify main ideas and supporting detail, and an appreciation of text structure. it is expected that the students of the sixth semester of the english department have mastered all these factors as the prerequisite of comprehending the sla subject. at the end of the students' activities, they can comprehend their reading material. westwood (2001) stated that the readers must use the acquired information to filter, interpret, organize, reflect upon, and establish relationships with the new incoming information on the page. therefore, the sixth-semester students of the english department are expected to achieve competence, as stated by westwood. as stated previously, the book used by the students is introducing second language acquisition, which was written by troike (2012). the topics that have to be studied consist of seven chapters: chapter i: introducing second language acquisition, chapter ii: foundations of second language acquisition, chapter iii: the linguistics of second language acquisition, chapter iv: the psychology of second language acquisition, chapter v: social contexts of second language acquisition, chapter vi: acquiring knowledge for l2 use, chapter vii: l2 learning and teaching. those materials are studied by using kwl strategy the kwl strategy is used to activate the students' background knowledge. the students build selfconfidence to plan and monitor their comprehension until they can link the new information they get to have the means of learning. hashimi and delemi (2008) and nofal (2007), as quoted by alsoudi (2017), indicated that the kwl strategy provokes students thinking by asking questions, independent thinking, and setting objectives that lead them to achieve their goal. according to vy and ha (2020), the kwl strategy was proven to improve the students’ reading comprehension achievement as it could aid the students in dealing with some difficulties. kadem (2020) also recommends implementing the kwl strategy in their sessions to raise the students’ abilities to understand what the students read and ensure class enjoyment and effectiveness. furthermore, aseeri (2020) contends that kwl strategy refers to a metacognition strategy that has three steps. the first step is deputized by the letter (k) to show what the learner ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 183-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knows about the subject matter. the second step is deputized by the letter (w) to show what the learner seeks to learn or acquire. the third step begins with the letter (l) to show what the learner has learned and how much they have an advantage from the teaching topic. then, thi thanh dieu (2015) explained that the kwl strategy helps teachers activate learners’ schema concerning a topic or subject. it promotes research, active reading, and inquisition since schema theory can be a beneficial theory that helps us understand how our brain processes information. the research had been done by mustafa and muhammad (2016) gave evidence that the experimental group who taught using k.w.l had higher achievement than the control group. backman (2006, p. 79) also indicates that the k-w-l technique is a good strategy because it enables the teacher to assess students' background knowledge and interests before the lecture and easily understand to monitor the content of the material they have learned. in line with some previous research, al-wazzan (2020) reveals that teaching reading skills based on the kwl strategy positively influence students. from the findings above, the researcher believed that kwl strategy might contribute to the sixth-semester students of the english department of ikip gunungsitoli. the researchers have found some procedures, for example, youniss (2013), dieu (2015), and alsoudi (2017). a. youniss (2013) applied the kwl strategy in three steps: before reading while reading and after reading before reading 1. preparing the text. 2. the teacher is drawing three columns on the board, stating on the first column: title of the text what do i know about the subject (k) what i want to know about the subject (w) what i learned (l) 3. the teacher asks students to discuss with each other and retrieve their previous knowledge about the subject (brainstorming). 4. teacher makes the students ask questions about what they want to know about the subject and record these questions in the second column (w). while-reading (reading and discussing the text) 1. reading the subject: the student has to be the model for the reading. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 184-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 2. letting students read every paragraph silently. in this case, students should read 3. carefully to find the answers to the questions in the second column (w). 4. assigning some students to read the text aloud. after reading (reading and discussing the text) 1. discussion of the text which has been read what is in the first and second columns. then ask them to write what they have learned for the text in the third column (l). 2. encourage students to write any interesting thing they found while reading the text in the third column. 3. encourage students to refer to other sources to answer any difficult question from the second column. 4. discussing the answers which are written in the third column by students. b. dieu (2015) 1. pre-activity: train students to collect their schema and find out their lack of info 2. main-activity. 3. post-activity. c. alsoudi (2017). 1. clarifying the topic: by writing the lesson title on the board. 2. determination of the previous knowledge needed for the new knowledge (k). 3. what i want to know (w); the teacher should determine the instructional objectives of the lesson. 4. reading comprehension: the students have to read and understand the new topic. 5. post-reading: students start reflecting on what they understand, and ask questions about what they need to know (l). 6. evaluation: students start to evaluate what they knew and understood. the procedures above became a consideration for the researcher to apply the kwl strategy in the classroom by doing some modification from them. it could be as follows: pre reading 1. the researcher decided the topic that is studied 2. the researcher drew three columns on the board as follow ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 185-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license title of the text what i know (k) what i want to know (w) what i learn (l) 3. the researcher activated the students' prior knowledge by asking words, phrases, and questions and their answers they wrote in column k. 4. the researcher invited the students to discuss the answers to the questions. whilst reading 1. the researcher allowed the students to read their text, and the students focused on getting the main idea on their text. 2. the researcher asked the students to write some questions with (what, who, why, when, where, which, whose, whom, and how), and the questions were written in column w. 3. the researcher gave the time for the students to find the answer to the questions, and the answers would be written on column l. post reading 1. the researcher invited the students to discuss what information they got in column l by choosing some of the students. 2. the researcher asked the students to convey their idea orally to develop their speaking ability. 3. the researcher gave the time for the students to write if they had other interesting information in column l. 4. the researcher encouraged the students to find other sources related to the topic to develop their knowledge. method research design this research was conducted by using classroom action research (car). action research is a methodology that closely involves participants in a social situation; it is necessarily strongly influenced by their values and culture, somekh (2006). in action research, the researcher is concerned with using a systematic process in solving educational problems and making improvements (tomal, 2010). further, tomal explained that in action research, the researcher is concerned with using a systematic process in solving educational problems and making improvements. therefore the methodology used by the researcher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 186-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was classroom action research (car) which was classified into three categories, cycle 1, cycle 2, and cycle 3. the classification of the time used in this research was 4 (four) months. each month consists of 4 (four) weeks, and one week equals one meeting, where cycle 1 consisted of 5 (five) weeks, cycle 2 consisted of 5 (five) weeks, and cycle 3 consisted of 6 (six) weeks. the process used by the researcher had four phases that were begun from planning, action, observation, and reflection. each cycle was ended with 5 (five) questions in essay form, and those questions were validated by using content and face validity. research site and participants second language acquisition (sla) constitutes a subject that gives a wide knowledge for the students how to get english as a foreign language at english department ikip gunungsitoli as students whose first language is not english or non-native speaker. the participants of this research were the sixth-semester students of the english department, consisting of 32 students. data collection and analysis the researcher collected the data by teaching the students where one meeting applied the fourth steps of car, planning, action, observation, and reflection. each cycle consisted of 5 (five) meetings, except cycle 3 consisted of 6 (six) meetings. each meeting had a unique result because of the students participating in following the teaching and learning process were diverse. for example, the motivation of the students to fill the chart prepared was so enthusiastic. it could be seen from the students' activities had a high spirit to compete in the classroom by writing and orally. to assure the researcher whether classroom activities were running well or not, the researcher was always accompanied by a teacher collaborator and filled the form that had been prepared. at the end of each cycle, the researcher evaluated and had a reflection. findings and discussion findings the problem appears because of the gap between reality and expectation. the main gap that the students found in studying the second language acquisition (sla) is related to the lack of comprehension of getting a message from the reading text the students read. the problem the researcher formulated, how does kwl strategy increase the students' comprehension of sla subject at the sixth-semester students of english department ikip gunungsitoli? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 187-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in cycle one, the materials that were studied were chapter 1 and chapter ii. the researcher used the time to explain the way how to comprehend the message from the text they read by following the procedures of the kwl strategy. classroom activities were fulfilled by reading and doing exercises to fill the chart provided with intervention from the researcher. the intervention had to be done because some students had little knowledge of following the procedures. many students do not understand why they are involved in the learning activity. the researcher responded to the situation by creating environments that respond sensitively to students' needs until the students' behavior is positive and goal-directed (jones & jone, 1998). the students always got reward when the result of their working was better. in cycle ii, the studied materials were chapter iii and chapter iv. classroom activities had good progress. the students began trying to conclude what they got from the material, and the students were able to solve the problems they found to fill the chart and began to have the independence to decide what content of each column. the students enjoyed their classroom activities because the classroom atmosphere was full of fun. for example, the students might modify the form of their chart, and they add something to the column. the students also searched the same topics from the internet to show alternative information and develop their knowledge related to their studied topic. in cycle iii, classroom activities were reading the material, and the students were able to draw the chart and fill the column with the material they read. mcallister (1994) notes the usefulness of the k-w-l in keeping track of the quantity and quality of participation of primary level compensatory students. further, having students articulate their thoughts when solving a problem using the k-w-l format emphasizes that process is as important as the product. in this phase, the students got used to filling the column without intervention from the researcher. the students were able to connect, differentiate, and compare the information from each column to build their comprehension. the discussion played a significant role in building the students' confidence. nagel, blignaut, and cronjé (2009) said that weak students generally interact and participate less than stronger students. thus teachers should increase their level of collaboration via discussion to enhance their understanding and improve their critical thinking skills. to keep the time, the researcher asked some of the students to orally convey the result of their tasks. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 188-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1. the result of students’ observation students cycle n i ii iii active 10 27 32 32 % 31,3 81,3 100 inactive 22 5 32 % 68,7 15,7 cooperative 8 25 30 32 % 25 78,2 93,7 uncooperative 24 7 2 32 % 75 21,8 6,3 the result of students' observation to apply the kwl strategy showed that active and cooperative students in cycle i did not achieve 50% from the participants because the students were not effective in applying the procedures. consequently, the students felt difficult to have the spirit or motivation to follow the classroom activities. in cycle ii, the researcher encouraged the students to improve their understanding of filling the chart by activating their level performance and inviting them to discuss the problems they found. the researcher also encouraged the students to use the question words to guide them to think and had the perseverance to expand on ideas. hence, the students’ performance can achieve above 75%, step by step inactive, and uncooperative students showed their self-confidence. for the last cycle, classroom activities were running better, the students showed their interest in this strategy, and as a result, their attitude towards reading class had some changes. the students were aware of how important the procedures of the kwl strategy would be applied when being read. thus, the procedures of the kwl strategy should be familiar to the students and have the enthusiasm to do their tasks. the students could think about and reflect on their prior knowledge and develop their questions. discussion using question words was the dominant action for the students. at the end of each cycle, the researcher evaluated the students’ achievements and analyzed the students’ papers, the result as follow: table 2. the students’ achievement in reading comprehension in sla cycle n grading f % i 32 excellent 90 100 0 0 good 80 89 0 0 adequate 70 79 8 25 inadequate 60 69 17 53.1 failing 0 59 7 23.3 ii 32 excellent 90 100 1 3.1 good 80 89 9 28.1 adequate 70 79 21 65,6 inadequate 60 69 1 3,1 failing 0 59 0 0 iii 32 excellent 90 -100 5 15.6 good 80 89 25 78.1 adequate 70 79 2 6.3 inadequate 60 69 0 0 failing 0 59 0 0 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 189-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3. the students’ score in reading comprehension in sla cycle highest score lowest score average i 77 56 63 ii 90 64 72 iii 95 81 83 table 2 and table 3 illustrate the students’ achievement in sla after implementing the kwl strategy. the result of students' achievement in the first cycle showed that most students' score was inadequate level with an average 63. this score indicated that the students were not familiar with the procedures of the kwl strategy. hesitating happened in the students' minds because of difficulties in filling the charts. they could not differentiate the content of the first column, second column, and third column. the students needed the intervention to guide them to get the point from their reading text and which column should be filled. classroom activities in cycle two gave progress on the students’ achievement, the majority of the students were inadequate level (70 – 79), reflection on ideas to fill the charts were diverse, students began to be brave to express their ideas because of the chance they had to make questions as a part of humorous students' activities. in the classroom activities in the last cycle, most of the students were able to comprehend the reading material they read and feel interested in reading. filling the column would help students talk about and explore their own experiences and/or feelings, which would, in turn, help them to understand the value they attached to the material being read. most of the students’ achievement was at a good level (80-89), and their average was 83. the matter showed that the students could acquire the content they read. the data explained that observation showed that the students' activities to follow the teaching and learning process had progressed every cycle. this matter could be seen from the active and cooperative students when they were given a chance to discuss. they were enthusiastic to follow the kwl procedures and reflect their ideas. rogers (2002) contended that doing' reflection would be (1) a 'meaning-making process', (2) a 'systematic, rigorous, and disciplined way of thinking', (3) an activity that takes place 'in community, in interaction with others', and (4) drawn to 'attitudes that value the personal and intellectual growth of oneself and others. in rogers' opinion, reflection emphasized that the students’ mindset should be changed from inactive to be active and from uncooperative to be cooperative. by doing this, it would probably be the effective interaction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 190-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that happened between them and could bear the positive achievement. discussion the role of intervention in klw strategy in comprehending sla at the beginning of teaching sla, the intervention was necessary because the procedures of the kwl strategy were not familiar for the students, the discussion was not running well, inactive and uncooperative were seen in the classroom situation. that's why the intervention was being applied to encourage the students to be active and cooperative by the purpose, they initiate and intensify cooperation among them. they initiated to make questions to fill the column they owned. an intervention is any action initiated to create a more positive way for the students to interact. according to al safadi (2014), intervention strategies are the systematic instructions to promote progress in an area where there is a need for classroom activities. ajen (2019) stated that intervention designed to change behavior could be directed at one or more of its determinant: attitudes, subjective norms, or perception of behavior control. interventions focus on the person as a subject and understand how people make sense of their worlds and then act, madoc-jones (2008). the intervention in teaching sla was needed for students with a vague point of view of kwl procedures or negative attitudes. an intervention can be thought of as "a set of actions that, when taken, have demonstrated the ability to change a fixed educational trajectory" (methe & riley-tillman, 2008). as an example of academic intervention, the teacher may select question generation (davey & mcbride, 1986; rosenshine et al., 1996), a strategy in which the student is taught to locate or generate main idea sentences for each paragraph in a passage and record those ‘gist’ sentences for later review. students’ motivation in studying sla with k w l strategy motivation is one of the most crucial predictive factors of foreign/second (l2) language learning achievement. motivation is a power that should be owned by the students to perform or accomplish a task. motivation can come from within (internal) or outside (external). internal motivation is what learners themselves bring into the learning environment like attitudes, needs, personality factors, and values. in contrast, external motivation originates in the learning environment, where persons are offered the right incentives for doing a certain ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 191-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license thing. the use of rewards represents a reinforcement approach to motivation, moore, kenneth d. (2005). motivation influences achievement (e.g., ahmed et al., 2010; cleary & chen, 2009; reynolds, 1991; shores & shannon, 2007; steinmayr & spinath, 2009; woolley et al., 2010). applying fluency in reading comprehension of sla with k w l strategy the students’ fluency in reading comprehension of sla is a key factor and adequate improvement in learning to read. developing fluency in reading is very important to achieve comprehension (lems et al., 2010). thus, fluency is part of the developmental reading process in which readers move beyond word recognition to begin to stitch together meanings across words. this linking function is sometimes called a "bridge" between decoding words and comprehension of connected text (nation, 2009). fluency development involves making the best use of what is already known. the best-known kind of fluency development is speed reading, where learners focus on increasing their reading speed while maintaining good comprehension. according to serravallo (2010), fluency is vital to signal the extent to which a reader makes sense of the text as he reads. fluency tells us about comprehension. a reader also communicates that meaning to a listener through reading smoothly and expressively. fluency affects comprehension, and comprehension affects fluency (kuhn, 2008; rasinski, 2003). furthermore, khataee (2019) quoted several results of studies that stated that many factors affect reading comprehension, for example, fluency, word recognition, memory vocabulary, and grammar. the role of vocabulary in reading comprehension of sla with k w l strategy it is impossible for the students without the knowledge of vocabulary in comprehending sla material. the knowledge of vocabulary is as a bridge for the students to comprehend the reading text. vocabulary knowledge is strongly linked to reading comprehension (freebody & anderson, 1983), and there is reason to believe that vocabulary knowledge is an especially important factor in understanding the reading problems experienced by second-language learners (garcía, 1991; laufer & sim, 1985). regarding the importance of vocabulary, o'malley and chamot (1990) believe that vocabulary knowledge in second/foreign language learning is of paramount importance in as much as it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 192-197 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.20910 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is underpinned by a schema-based approach to language learning, which deals with information processing. according to tozcu and coady (2004), acquiring adequate vocabulary knowledge is one of the significant issues that enhance reading comprehension. the students' ability to master vocabulary may determine how they comprehend their reading text. the more students have the vocabulary, the more information they acquire. conclusions and suggestion kwl is intended to be an exercise for students to guide them in reading and understanding a text. it was effective in improving participants' motivation for learning sla subjects. the relationship between achievement and motivation was also significant and positive due to the use of the kwl strategy, where the students who owned a strong motivation to get a high score. the strategy may work well as a pre-assessment tool because it reveals what students know and want to learn about a topic before instruction. as a post-assessment tool, they all started developing their questions because it fosters reflection after the experiences, requiring students to teach and express their thoughts. moreover, by providing a place for question development both before and during reading, the students said they felt forced to think of questions while reading to fill in the kwl worksheet, as they did not want any empty spaces. the result of this research is kwl strategy can increase the students' reading comprehension on second language acquisition (sla) subject by applying some modifications to the procedures. this finding was in line with mustafa and muhammad (2016) conducted a study aimed to know the effect of k.w.l upon achievement in islamic education in mecca in saudi arabia. the researcher used a quasiexperimental design using 2 groups (experimental and control groups). the results showed that the experimental group who taught using k.w.l had higher achievement than the control group. considering the result from the research, the researcher recommends that the kwl strategy should be continuously implemented in activating students’ reading comprehension by considering the motivation, fluency and the knowledge of students’ vocabulary. references ahmed, w., minnaert, a., van der werf, g., & kuyper, h. 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(2003). seven keys to comprehension: how to help your kids read it and get it. three rivers press. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2021, 140-159 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee distance learning in the pandemi covid-19 situation: efl learning under indonesia's health protocol mohamad syafri*, saude received: 15th june 2021; revised: 15th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract the implementation of the distance learning policy in all schools in indonesia due to the covid-19 outbreak has affected the teaching process. this quantitative research elucidates how efl teaching and learning cope with the procedure. two aspects will be illuminated in this research; the first is how schools and teachers prepare for online-based distance learning. the second is how the learning process conducts during the distance learning policy. this research collected data from 167 participants, including vice principals, efl teachers, it operators, and students from senior high schools in palu, central sulawesi provinces. the data was analyzed following the illuminative evaluation model by parlett and hamilton. the results found that schools and teachers are more well-equipped and prepared than the students. however, some students still face difficulties due to the absence of facilities and geographical situation. in the learning process, more flexible policies in class are still implemented by teachers, especially for students with limited access and lack of affective aspects. key words: distance learning; efl; health protocol abstrak penerapan kebijakan pembelajaran jarak jauh ke seluruh sekolah di indonesia akibat wabah covid-19 berdampak pada proses belajar mengajar. penelitian kuantitatif ini menjelaskan bagaimana pengajaran dan pembelajaran bahasa inggris harus beradaptasi dengan protocol kesehatan. dua aspek yang disoroti dalam penelitian ini; pertama, bagaimana sekolah dan guru mempersiapkan pembelajaran jarak jauh berbasis online. kedua, bagaimana proses pembelajaran dilakukan selama penerapan pembelajaran jarak jauh. penelitian ini mengumpulkan data dari 167 peserta, termasuk wakil kepala sekolah, guru bahasa inggris, operator it, dan siswa dari sekolah menengah atas di palu, provinsi sulawesi tengah. data dianalisis dengan model illuminative evaluation oleh parlett dan hamilton. hasilnya ditemukan bahwa sekolah dan guru lebih siap dibandingkan dengan siswa. beberapa siswa masih menghadapi kesulitan karena tidak adanya fasilitas dan situasi geografis. dalam proses pembelajaran, guru masih harus memberikan kebijakan yang lebih fleksibel di kelas, terutama bagi siswa dengan akses yang terbatas dan aspek afektif yang kurang. kata kunci: pembelajaran jarak jauh; efl; protokol kesehatan how to cite: syafri, m., saude,. (2022). distance learning in the pandemi covid-19 situation: efl learning under indonesia's health protocol. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 140-159. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 141-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction coronavirus or covid-19 has been classified as a pandemic by the world health organization (who) since 11th march 2020 (who, 2020). this condition threatens many aspects of human life. the fast spreading of coronavirus has shaped a new way of social interaction in almost every sector in indonesia, including education. unicef warned that the pandemic could potentially create a loss of education for the young generation (unicef, 2020). anticipating the condition and following the national restrictions policy, indonesia's ministry of religious affairs and ministry of education and culture implemented a new system for running the teaching and learning. schools have implemented distance teaching and learning. under circular number 4 of 2020 on implementation of education policy in emergency during covid-19 spread, the government implemented distance learning using online platforms (education ministry adjusts several policies amid covid-19, 2020). the step was also implemented for madrasah (islamic school) by the directorate general of islamic education under the ministry of religious affairs (ministry of religious affairs of the republic of indonesia, 2020). despite today's condition, numerous educators and educational institutions have used distance learning for years. for fundamental reasons, distance learning is an alternative teaching and learning process for those who cannot attend a face-to-face classroom (beldarrain, 2006; wang & sun, 2001). distance learning improves as technology does. today's distance learning, characterized by its internetbased technology, leads to hybrid opportunities for distance learning (white 2006; wang & sun 2001). the improvement of distance learning highlighted two main elements: education and improvement in technology. education is a form of communication, transferring knowledge from one generation to another. therefore, an effort has been made to improve communication and interaction between the education provider and learner (wang & sun 2001). as a result, the idea of the knowledge-transferring method has been improved rapidly. the invention of the computer in the mid-20th century has also boosted the process. since the 1950s, computers have supported language learning (hidayati, 2015). ict's definition refers to computer-based technologies and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 142-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license internet-based (al arif, 2019). in this covid-19 era, as distance learning gains popularity worldwide, ict’s role grows even more significant. numbers of studies have been done to explore how distance learning is conducted. the trend of distance learning has been emerging before the covid-19. parkes (2015) 2015 conducted a study about an online learning implementation in universities. they were exploring students' and staff’s preparedness regarding online learning. their research found that students were considered unprepared for some academic and e-learning competencies, including time management, critical thinking skills, and collaborating with others. andrada and his team (2019) studied 121 business school deans who have implemented online learning. based on their findings, the cost is the main obstacle to establishing highquality online learning. however, the standardized and certified online courses lead to positive feedback from the students to enroll in the online courses. differ from the previous two, castro and tumibay (2021) conducted literature research with 30 articles and books about online learning efficacy. high digital literacy is required for both teachers and students to have successful online learning. besides that, the learning content also needs special attention to have standardized quality. other moderating factors include academic support, institutional adoption, and course design could also determine the online learning result and experience. even though online learning has attracted researchers long before the covid-19 time, the pandemic situation has made online learning even more popular among researchers. wong (2020) researched 118 hongkong’s students about the development of four aspects of learning; arousal, relatedness, autonomy, and competence, in a complete online learning class. the research found that online learning could not provide the relatedness and arousal aspects as no social interaction between teachers and students. however, it effectively develops learners’ autonomy and sense of competence. baticulon et al. (2021) also studied the online learning process in the covid-19 situation. a total of participants, 3670 phillipine’s medical students, found that adjusting learning styles, having to perform responsibilities at home, economic conditions, technological conditions, and poor communication or lack of clear directions from educators are the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 143-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license most frequent problems in online learning. dhawan (2020) also explored the learning process in covid-19 time by doing a literature study. the findings of the research found challenges need to be coped with in online learning, including; infrastructure, education quality, digital illiteracy, and cost. however, online learning also has its opportunity, such as increasing innovation, flexible programs, strengthening skills, and users can be of any age. maman et al. (2020) also researched online learning in indonesia. they found that digital illiteracy, high internet price, additional work for parents in assisting children in learning, interaction among students, time consuming for teachers and parents, and the need for more coordination are problems faced in online learning. however, online learning also has positive effects as it enhances teachers' creativity and innovation in their teaching and learning process. based on some previous studies, it can be seen that online learning comes with complexity. it not only comes with a negative impact but also some positive feedback. to highlight, online learning studies focusing on efl are still limited. therefore, efl online learning still has a wide area to be explored. on the other hand, this research also gives a wider perspective compared to previous studies. this research not only focuses on one group but also on the elaborate perspective of students, educational staff, teachers, and stakeholders about online learning. this research is believed to illuminate and strengthen the quality and understanding related to distance learning performance in expected or force majeure situations. this study aims to explore how efl teaching copes with distance learning. therefore, this research wants to answer two main questions: "how is the preparedness for online-based distance learning?" and "how is the efl teaching and learning process in online-based distance learning?" method research design this study is summative evaluation research within the frame of the quantitative method. its focus is to see the program's effectiveness, related factors, strengths and weaknesses, and its effect on the program's consideration and future policy (arifin, 2010; divayana, 2017; neuman, 2014). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 144-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the research uses the illuminative evaluation model by parlett and hamilton. as it stands on the idea of giving description and interpretation rather than measurement and prediction (parlett & hamilton, 1972). this model has been used by experts of its ability to provide a more in-depth and comprehensive perspective about a program (çalışkan, 2014; chirwa, 2015; gültekin & demirci, 2020). in this study, the data collected the participants' beliefs, points of view, understanding, and responses via faceto-face and phone in-depth interviews and questionnaires using google forms before being analyzed. participants 167 participants from senior high schools voluntarily participated in this research. they are vice-principals in senior high schools (n=3), efl teachers (n=6), it operator (n=1), and senior high school students (n=157). most of the research participants are women, both teachers and students. the total number of female participants is 116 (69%). those numbers include 110 students, 4 teachers,1 vice-principal and 1 it operator, and 51 male participants (31%), including 51 students, 2 teachers, and 2 vice principals. most of the students are from tenth grade (36%), followed by twelfth grade (33%) and eleventh grade (30%). the teachers' educational backgrounds are bachelor's and magister's degrees in english education or english literature. the data for participants is shown in the table below. table 1. demography data of participants demography category number (n) gender male 51 female 116 occupation students 157 efl teachers 6 vice principals 3 it operator 1 classes x 59 xi 49 xii 54 instruments there are two primary instruments: in-depth interviews and questionnaires. the in-depth interview is used for the efl teachers in a format of open-ended interviews related to their role as a teacher in implementing distance learning. the data from students were collected using the questionnaire, and for the teachers was in the form of an open-ended interview. both the questionnaire and interview were in bahasa. the questionnaires were distributed via google form, a free ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 145-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license web-based application to efficiently collect survey information (mallette & barone, 2013; mulatsih, 2020). due to the limited direct contact, google forms was useful to widen the reach. the questions spread was 18-number questionnaires on the likert scale. the interview for teachers was conducted by phone call and face-toface meeting. the interview duration is around 45-60 minutes each. the questionnaire and interview explored four aspects; online learning readiness, course development, learning process, student-teacher interaction, assessment, and student satisfaction (wang & sun, 2001). data collection the data collected from the students was deployed via a google form. the interview with viceprincipals, teachers, it operators, and some students’ representatives was held simultaneously by phone and faceto-face meeting. collecting data was done from june-september 2020, and the data gathered were stored in the form of audio and spreadsheet. data analysis to acquire reliable and valid data, the data are classified based on the sources of the participant. the data collected from teachers and students are grouped based on their clusters. the data from the instruments were first coded and classified based on their functions before being analyzed; online learning readiness, course development, learning process, studentteacher interaction, assessment, and student satisfaction. the coding is done to cluster the data and acquire the conclusion (bell, 2010). all the data found are validated by triangulation from member checks and experts' check-in analyzing the data. the triangulation is conducted to see the data's consistency by comparing the information used by different means (dawson, 2007). the data that have been verified are classified following the aspects studied in the research. then the data served to form the proper conclusions needed. findings and discussion findings the research findings are organized according to the research questions. it consists of two subsections to display the data, elaborate on the findings, and strengthen previous related studies. the first subsection is to heighten the schools, teachers, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 146-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students' preparedness for online-based distance learning, including online learning readiness and course development. the second is to explain how english learning is conducted online-based distance learning, including the learning process and evaluation. preparedness for the online-based distance learning online learning readiness online learning readiness is seen from three perspectives: supportive learning online platforms, facilities, and school members' digital literacy. the first aspect being measured is the implementation of the learning software platform. under the distancelearning policy, the government facilitated schools and universities with guidance and technical support. ministry of religious affairs, one of the ministries in charge of islamic education, deployed e-learning madrasah for all schools under the ministry. e-learning madrasah has 6 features: administrator, courses teacher, counseling teacher, homeroom teacher, student, and supervisor (apa itu elearning madrasah?, 2020). the application is managed locally using the local server by the school operator. since its launch by the ministry, the schools have started introducing the system to their teachers. the schools have appointed operators around february or one month before the implementation of distance learning. during the time of preparation, the school's operator input and synchronized the data. after transferring the data, operators under the school instruction give proper training and accompaniment both for teachers and students. however, due to time efficiency, most of the students' training was done by their homeroom teachers and course teachers. this is an essential step as the application plays a prominent role in the distance learning process. the application features a regular class-like system, including the supervision aspect by the school's authority, teacher evaluation, and virtual classroom meetings. the system is rapidly improving, following the health protocol implementation needs and having the most suitable learning conditions. the proper training authorized by the schools gets a positive response to the better process for distance learning. in all schools, english teachers understand the application's use and react positively to the schools' quick response and the application. however, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 147-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technical problems sometimes occur during the learning. as the application strictly follows the schedule, some interaction issues during the learning process are found. therefore, most teachers also use a supportive application in the learning process. teachers still use platforms like whatsapp, google classroom, or zoom. teachers and students still use the alternative applications to minimize the problems with the main application. the second aspect is facilities. the online-based distance learning almost hundred percent relies on supporting technology, including gadgets, stable internet access, and electrical stability. in terms of facilities, schools and teachers are well-prepared. the availability can see of schools' internet availability, where almost all schools have provided wi-fi access in their school area and computer laboratory. english teachers also found fewer problems in terms of digital supportive facilities. all the teachers have suitable gadgets, either notebooks or mobile phones, that support their learning process. some teachers also stated that they have internet access in their homes where they use it for learning, despite the schools' free internet access. however, difficulties would be found with students. not only bigger in number, but students also come from the various background; economic, social, and even geographical challenges. in terms of their understanding of technology, most students found fewer difficulties. the applications and gadgets are familiar to them, which they use daily. teachers expressed that students' understanding of the application used in learning is relatively high, around 90%. in line with that, the survey of the students also found that most students understand how to use the application. the number of students who stated they do not understand how to use the application correctly is around 10%, with 9% saying that they do not understand. only 1% totally do not understand the application. the other 90% stated that they totally understand (15%), understand (59%), and quite understand the application (16%). on the other hand, with various backgrounds, some students face obstacles. schools found many problems, absence of gadgets, unstable internet access, and even power shortage. these conditions differ from one school to another thus located in the city center has less problem related with internet or electrical stability. it is found that some students who live in rural areas, especially with schools that implemented boarding systems or located in the suburbs, commonly face ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 148-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license unstable internet and electrical connections. the main common problem that face by students is due to their economic background. many students come from low-income families, resulting in the absence of necessary gadgets or the inability to have good internet access. the number is varied between schools. some teachers put the number at 10%. however, in some classes, 50% of the students still face online readiness obstacles. despite the number, all teachers agree that finding students with problems joining classes online in every class is highly possible. in some cases, both teachers and schools tried to provide or give an alternative, such as more flexibility in joining the class, coordinating with the homeroom teacher, or giving some students access to use the computer laboratory. the last aspect being considered is digital literacy. experts simply defined digital literacy as technical, cognitive, and sociological skills to perform tasks and solve digital environment problems. (eshet-alkalai, 2004). both teachers and students have the necessary digital literacy to run the online-based distance learning class. the conditions are due to preparation time, proper training, and user-friendly application. according to the schools' authority, schools had taken time for preparation, including data synchronization and training. it also supported the elearning application, which uses the local server system and operator appointed by the schools. the application also used a user-friendly application. teachers found that the application has few differences from many social media platforms commonly used today, such as facebook or google classroom, with modifications for learning purposes. course development schools have implemented policies in developing courses related to the adaptation of distance learning under indonesia's health protocol. despite the varieties, the purpose and result are under the ministry of education and culture and ministry of religious affairs guidelines. both ministries have highlighted that schools should shift the orientation from curriculum goals to a more moderate and tolerant based on the local condition. based on the central government's instruction, the schools started implementing the 'emergency curriculum' following the health protocol. the emergency curriculum is based on the consideration of the current situation in indonesia. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 149-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license curriculum itself is made following the psbb (big scale social limitation) regulation in indonesia (kurikulum madrasah, 2020). guided by the instructions, the schools have cut their time by about 50%. the schools still start at around 07.00 and end at 12.00-13.00. the steps taken by the school were started by reshaping the curriculum by the school's authority, in this case, is the vice-principal of curriculum and academics. schools use two ways. the first is splitting the time of classroom learning, with half of the time used outside the school's hours or letting the students learn independently. the second way is to change the weekly schedule to a per-round schedule, each round consisting of 10 days. however, both ways still required to reduce the regular hours given to each subject for classroom learning. the policy led english teachers to adapt. as the schools' authority had announced the implementation of the emergency curriculum, the team teaching subjects, including english, do their internal meeting to prepare for new learning. the english teacher then selects what kind of material is necessary to be given during class time, and the others will be given for students to study independently. based on the teachers, the material will mostly be given in the classroom, while the tasks and practices could be done outside the class time. despite the condition that limited face-to-face meetings, almost all kinds of materials could be delivered. the teachers still selected spoken skills courses, such as listening and speaking. the teachers have not limited their learning to one or two platforms or media. they also use various media to support english learning, including audio recording or even video. efl for online-based distance learning learning process the learning process of distance learning is immensely challenging both for teachers and students. there are three aspects related to the learning process in distance learning. the first is the teachers' aspect, students' aspect, and material deliverance. as learning is a process that both teachers and students conduct. students' condition becomes a prominent aspect of being considered. the teachers use e-learning as the main platform. this application allows the teachers to have a number of classlike features, such as checking students' involvement and activity, giving materials, forums, and discussion. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 150-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, as e-learning is an application with a more rigid system, the teachers still use other supportive applications, such as whatsapp, google classroom, and zoom. the platforms are used as alternatives for unexpected conditions. the second aspect related to the learning process is the students' aspect. among all three factors, student involvement in learning is the most complicated condition. it is not only the numbers of the students but also the students' background. it cannot be denied that changes will create responses from the students. many students still found that online-based distance learning is still below the expectation. the number shows that around 38% of students said online learning has lower quality than regular learning. some reasons found, such as the common technical obstacles and the lack of motivation in learning during the online learning. however, students also stated that teachers with useful digital literacy could be lit up the class better. despite the response, some students found positive points about online-based distance learning. they found themselves more improved in technological use and can explore more learning material as they are supported with more sophisticated technology. the last aspect is the teaching material. it also includes the deliverance of the material. the material itself is divided into two parts, following the rearrangement of the curriculum, the classroom material and self-learning material. the classroom materials are the prominent parts of the curriculum. the self-learning material is part of the curriculum that is considered to enrich the students' understanding, which can be learned independently. such efl materials like speaking, listening, and pronunciation can still be delivered despite the condition. based on the teachers' explanation, several media provide this kind of material, such as audio material, providing media using videos, or asking students to make videos to demonstrate the skills. the use of various media to deliver the learning materials also encourages students. students find some media interesting for them and let them learn new things. it also leads them to explore their creativity. despite the benefits of distance learning, some students still find several obstacles to the learning process. the material delivered in the distance learning process is still considered hard to be understood by a number of students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 151-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the total number of students who stated they could understand the material is 54,5 %, while the rest, 33,1%, quite understand and 12,4% consider they do not understand the material. evaluation evaluation's main function is to create a certified, secured, or improved personnel or program (aminullah et al., 2019; stavropoulou & stroubouki, 2014). the implementation of distance learning requires proper evaluation. schools' application for distance learning also provides evaluation features, both supervisor-to-teacher and teacher-to-students evaluation. the teachers are evaluated by the supervisor, principal, and vice-principal to ensure the learning is conducted adequately. through e-learning, the supervisor can check whether all the pre-learning items have been prepared by the teachers, including lesson plans, teacher's activeness, and others. this feature has become prominent and responded positively by the teachers. the teachers see that this feature increases their motivation to conduct the learning process and become more well-prepared with the class. teacher-to-student evaluation supported by the application. despite the circumstances, english teachers still evaluate their students' cognitive, affective, and psychomotor perspectives with slightly different approaches. most teachers acknowledged that the affective area evaluation is harder than the other when doing online learning. the problems are based on less direct contact and communication with the students. teachers cannot properly observe and evaluate the student's activeness, attitude, and behavior. as the cognitive aspect is prominent, especially with curriculum 2013, teachers maximize their role in evaluating cognitive aspects. english teachers from all schools observe how students communicate and respond to teachers and other students via online platforms. the result of observation becomes one of the bases for the affective aspects seen. for cognitive and psychomotor still have more options to be evaluated. however, compared to the regular classes, the number of options is still limited, and more flexibility is necessary. such evaluation to measure students' ability to speak or pronounce words correctly is done by assigning students to record videos related to the material. therefore, the number of exams and tasks is modified or reduced according to the class's circumstances. most english teachers do not conduct ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 152-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the daily test when they complete a chapter. instead, the only main tests conducted are midterm and final examinations. in doing the test, teachers are supported with features in e-learning. even though the features allow various test types, teachers mostly do the multiple-choice test. the system more supports the multiple-choice test, as the essay test needs more rigid and precise answers based on keywords. on the other hand, the automaticity and practicality of large-scale scoring are the reasons. even though the features of elearning are user-friendly for doing the test, a few unexpected situations still should be treated properly. condition like a blackout or losing internet access is one condition in which teachers will provide the extra time or ask a third person, like homeroom teachers, to help manually. with the support of advanced technology, most types of evaluation can be done. however, such concerns related to moral values and other affective aspects should still be highlighted by more tremendous effort. discussion this research elucidated the implementation of online-based distance learning and how efl teachers cope. the challenges of the new system changing due to the force majeure of the rising covid-19 cases in indonesia are uncommon for most schools. the schools and teachers have several questions to be answered, ranging from how to online readiness, providing facilities required, developing courses, doing the teaching process, and evaluating the course. the research finding shows that online readiness is relatively high for students and teachers. students found fewer problems using the internet and learning application, as most of them are familiar with such technology. on the other hand, government or school authorities are concerned about standardizing the digital literacy required for the teacher. schools' it operators were trained; therefore, those individuals will have the capability to teach and guide teachers during and during the learning. the idea aligns with swan's (2017) research that online learning requires institutions' readiness to provide the tutor with good technology understanding. schools policy to provide preparation time before implementing the learning respond positively. it also supported a user-friendly application with many similarities with other familiar platforms. therefore, teachers and students have the capability of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 153-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technical efficacy in computer use, selfcontrol efficacy, and internet navigation skill as required for online readiness in distance learning (wei & chou, 2020). providing the required facilities for online-based distance learning is probably one of the most demanding challenges. both teachers and schools possess not have any problems related to the facilities. schools provide their teachers with wi-fi and computer access for those in need. the problem related to facilities is mostly found in students. gadgets, internet access, and stable electricity are some obstacles to learning. although most students have the required facilities, the number of those who have not cannot be ignored. it is common to find someone who has a problem accessing online classes for reasons such as the absence of gadgets, home's location in suburbs or rural areas, or even the inability to purchase internet packages. in some cases, the number could reach 50% of the class members. based on the conditions, schools and teachers also provide some alternatives. this includes giving students access to use schools' computer laboratory or coordinating between homeroom teachers to help them work manually. the findings are in line with the research of napitapulu (2020) that one of the reasons most students feel unsatisfied with distance learning is the lack of access to technology. the condition resulted in some followings, such as getting the material, joining the class activity, and others. developing courses is a major step for an online-based distance learning program. during the pandemic, the government implemented policies related to online learning, followed by the emergency curriculum. under regulations, the school is urged to implement more flexible learning. choices are also given to the schools, either following the emergency curriculum designed by the government or modifying their own following the guidance. in response, all vice principals reduce the number of hours of learning. schools use two ways. the first has a 10-day schedule rather than a weekly schedule. the second is limiting the course's hour into halves; classroom learning and independent learning. efl teachers also manage their course material by giving the prominent and necessary materials in the classroom. at the same time, the students commonly do tasks and practice independently. all three aspects, online readiness, providing facility required, and developing courses, tried to explain the preparedness for online-based distance ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 154-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning. schools and teachers have already followed the guidelines for distance learning. despite the schools' maximum efforts, there are more complex conditions beyond the reach of the schools and teachers' capability, such as providing stable internet and electrical support necessary for the learning. however, the research also explores that the authorities realized the conditions. therefore, alternatives and more flexible policies are provided. this research's second question is "how is the efl teaching and learning process in the online-based distance learning?". the study tries to illuminate this question by elucidating two aspects: the teaching process and evaluation done by the efl teachers in senior high schools. the teaching process conducts during distance learning is a new challenge for the teacher. with the reduced teaching hour, efl teachers tend to classify their learning material. by doing so, they could effectively manage their learning. tasks and practices are allocated more outside the class meeting. this idea is in line with asmuni (asmuni, 2020) that giving tasks or materials that worked outside the class hours could be one of the solutions for online-based distance learning. the efl teachers must admit that problems such as the absence of gadgets and unstable internet access should solve creatively. therefore, teachers also have more flexibility in their learning, such as by giving material through other platforms that the students could access easier. in some cases, the teacher also coordinates with homeroom teachers, which will be delivered home or required students to take to school. in terms of learning materials, the teacher found not many problems. almost all kinds of materials could be done digitally, including speaking and listening practices. by using audio and video media. students also found distance learning could be helpful due to the availability of the internet and other learning applications. the variety of media can also become an additional point for learning. it is in line with sadikin and hamidah's (2020) research, in which distance learning can encourage students to explore their learning. the evaluation is the second aspect to be considered in the online-based distance learning. evaluation could be challenging as direct contact with students is limited, and the affective aspect becomes the most challenging aspect of evaluating. teachers admitted ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 155-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that they have fewer options be the consideration for the affective aspect. on the other hand, online learning also benefits the evaluation. giving tests were admitted by students who are more comfortable with the automaticity and efficiency of technology. the large-scale scoring could be done in minutes, and there is no need to prepare the paper-based test commonly done in class. however, with limited time, efl teachers also reduce the number of tests offered. practically, such daily test done regularly to evaluate students' understanding of a chapter or material is not conducted. the only main tests are midterm and final. after elaborating the discussion based on this research's findings, there are highlighted points with research conducted by other researchers. following the idea proposed by dhawan (2020) and adedoyin and soykan (2020), the most crucial aspect of distance learning is the preparation of facilities, including proper training for teachers or tutors in using technology. another factor that is considered is the need to choose a proper application that could raise equality and shorten the gaps, this idea has been implemented by the schools with using e-learning applications made by the governments. in line with this research is putra et. al. (2020) research related problems faced by students. the absence of gadget, internet stability, and students' location are some of the problems that students commonly faced in distance learning. despite numerous challenges, experts agree that online learning has opened opportunities to improve the understanding of both teachers and students about technology (adedoyin & soykan, 2020; dhawan, 2020). the covid-19 era also led to our ability to adapt the unpredicted situations. conclusion and suggestions in this study, efl teachers, vice principals, and students are interviewed and asked about their learning conditions under the social distancing and distance learning policy highlighted some prominent aspects. it is admitted that the education system faces limited time for preparation. however, a crucial and important protocol had been taken in which able to minimize the impact. the research found two challenges to the main considerations; the absence of facilities for the students and the affective aspects that were limited to be taught and evaluated. however, distance learning also leads to some positive effects, such as encouraging students to be more independent, improving the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 156-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.21045 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teacher's digital literacy, and our education ability to adapt. hence, this research still has limitations, especially in having the number of participants. the use of digital platforms such as google forms to collect students' opinions could not collect the data of those with limited access to internet and gadgets. geographical coverage also should be highlighted as one of the limitations of this research. it is hoped that this research could enlighten researchers, authorities, and teachers' views on distance learning, especially under the force majeure condition. the perspective of distance learning is hoped to be seen not as the result of the reaction but also as a well-planned program that could be implemented in any situation. further research is expected to widen the understanding related to distance learning. therefore, our education will be more wellprepared and improved the quality. references adedoyin, o. b., & soykan, e. 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(2020). when no one can go to school: does online learning meet students’ basic learning needs? interactive learning environments, 0(0), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1049482 0.2020.1789672 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 309-326 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee engagement strategies in electronic tools for online english learning: higher education context rizky eka prasetya akademi sekretari budi luhur, indonesia (rizky.ekaprasetya@budiluhur.ac.id) received: 31st august 2021; revised: 29th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract the study aimed to explore and investigate the versatility, capacity, and adaptability for accommodating online english learning. the qualitative approach was employed in the study with a descriptive research design. 86 participants responded to the survey, and 25 semi-structured interviews were adjusted from the national survey of student engagement (nsse). the study’s findings have implications for employing online instructors, instructional designers, and administrators to increase online course engagement. the study exposed four recommendations based on the finding, including instructional elements of collaborated and interactive activities, integrated electronic tests applied on mobile phones, and enhanced social familiarity. english lecturers preferred to use moodle and google classroom as their daily learning management system (lms) in the study context. the interactive tools intended to apply with quizgame and wirewax while conference communication instrument approved to the google meeting and skype. conclusively, the study offered implications for practice by confirming and presenting the online tools approach that might be utilized to engage and implement online english learning education in higher education circumstances. key words: instructional engagement; electronic tools; english online learning; higher education abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi dan menyelidiki keserbagunaan, kapasitas, dan kemampuan beradaptasi untuk mengakomodasi pembelajaran daring bahasa inggris. pendekatan kualitatif digunakan dalam penelitian ini dengan desain penelitian deskriptif. 86 peserta menanggapi survei, dan 25 wawancara semiterstruktur disesuaikan dari national survey of student engagement (nsse). temuan penelitian ini memiliki implikasi untuk mengenlola instruktur daring, perancang instruksional pembelajaran, dan administrator untuk meningkatkan keterlibatan kelas daring. studi ini memaparkan empat rekomendasi, termasuk elemen instruksional dari aktivitas kolaborasi dan interaktif, tes elektronik terintegrasi yang diterapkan pada ponsel, dan peningkatan kedekatan sosial. instruktur atau dosen bahasa inggris lebih menggunakan moodle dan google classroom sebagai learning management system (lms) harian mereka dalam konteks belajar daring. keterlibatan alat interaktif dimaksudkan untuk penerapan dengan quizgame dan wirewax sementara instrumen komunikasi konferensi digunakan dalam google meeting dan skype. secara meyakinkan, penelitian ini menawarkan implikasi untuk praktik dengan mengonfirmasi dan menyajikan pendekatan alat daring sehingga dapat digunakan untuk melibatkan dan mengimplementasikan pendidikan pembelajaran bahasa inggris daring di lingkungan pendidikan tinggi. kata kunci: keterlibatan instruksional; alat elektronik; pembelajaran daring bahasa inggris how to cite: prasetya, r. e. (2021). engagement strategies in electronic tools english online learning: higher education context. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 309-326. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 310-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the covid-19 outbreak had placed the benefits of online learning in higher education into the center when physical contact and conventional face-to-face learning were restricted. when physical contact and conventional face-to-face learning are limited, the epidemic has callously thrown the usefulness of online learning in education into the forefront. learners may have unrestricted access to materials and resources found anywhere on the planet, and online learning frequently improves learners’ creative thinking and learning independence. the fundamental issue with the indonesian context must be accessible to the learner to have any effects, and the first element in bringing online learning to poorer nations is to ensure that they have reliable internet access. mishra (2017) asserted that the second need was to increase the availability and amount of open educational resources (oer). third, increasing the availability of oers necessitates increasing user trust. those who want to develop reusable learning items for their classes need to discover excellent, acceptable content quickly and easily. finally, pozdeeva and obskov (2015) added that the most challenging task for higher education curricula had been providing an interactive component of learning since the level of the interactive experience determines the entire quality of indonesians’ university. online learning emphasized the availability of learning sources and student communication throughout the learning process with the advancement of network technology, computer technology, and other forms of technology. as a result, andrade (2017) affirmed that online learning had enhanced the practical mode of education, with many learners participating. learners’ involvement was a fundamental prerequisite for learning, and it has a significant effect on online education. it impacted the lack of interaction between lecturers and learners, inadequate participation in online learning, inconsistent learner participation, and low efficiency in online learning (khan, 2016). a transformation to online study required improvements to the teaching and learning practices traditionally linked with higher education learning environments. distance education has become more accessible because of rapid technological advancements. tananuraksakul (2016) exposed that most of the terminology was accepted to online learning, open learning, internet-based learning, computermediated learning, flipped learning, and mobile learning technologies. instruments could associate with a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 311-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license computer network, enabling learners to study anywhere, at any time, in any rhythm, and by any method. therefore, online learning might be seen as a technology that enables a more studentcentered, innovative, and flexible teaching-learning process. faramarzi et al. (2019) asserted that online learning was described as educational experiences in synchronous or asynchronous contexts through the varieties of gadgets, including smartphones, laptops, personal computers, and others if equipped with internet access. electronic english courses delivered online should be innovative, engaging, and participatory. english lecturers should provide learners with time limitations and reminders to keep them aware and focused (soliman, 2016). attempts should be made to humanize the educational process as much as achievable. learners should acquire personalized attention to adjust smoothly to this current learning environment. saeheng (2017) indicated that learners might communicate through social media and numerous group forums. communication was critical, so online learning content should engage and attract language learners to practice while also sharpening their capabilities. tan (2015) asserted that the quality of the online courses ought to be constantly enhanced, and lecturers should strive to accommodate the most effective possible instruction. atoum et al. (2017) added that online programs had to be innovative, engaging, relevant, learners-centered, and group-based in the environment. language learners frequently feel isolated and alienated from the rest of their online classes due to a lack of face-to-face contacts, in-class teamwork, and unfamiliarity with online teaching. it was more important than ever for educators to reconsider learners’ engagement strategy to provide a positive learning experience. it became critical to include learning methodologies emphasizing student activity and creative engagement. la hanisi et al. (2018) exposed that collaborative learning brings two or more individuals together to facilitate learning. by examining and comprehending topics as a group, they may get fresh insights and improve their knowledge retention by defending their stance and reframing ideas. experiential learning is the process of gaining knowledge via experience or through action. bohon et al. (2017) supported that experiential learning theory contributed an appropriate and practical framework for further professional development for inconsiderable educators seeking to improve their effectiveness as english language learner instructors. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 312-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license circumstances often involved primary diagnostic procedures, diversion activities, and accomplishments. it motivated learners to consider critically, enhance their problemsolving and managing capabilities, and maintain material practically. students might be improved independent learning in these settings to study and engage with instructors and other students. therefore, hosseini et al. (2016) stated that electronic learning information was not delivered through classroom lessons or seminars but was accessible via various learning platforms and forums. instantaneous feedback and reaction were impossible in such a setting. in this context, learners did not congregate in virtual classrooms concurrently. rather than that, recorded presentations and digital resources were communicated through online mail, discussion forums, social media, and collaborative papers. zaripova (2020) identified that both asynchronous and synchronous techniques to learning need individuals to cognitively comprehend the content independently and with the option of social interaction. interacting with the content was one technique to assure that the information was comprehended asynchronously. musiimenta et al. (2019) explained that social intermediaries were critical in both online learning approaches. bergdahl et al. (2018) conclude that engaging learners is essential because when it stops interacting with the learning content, the learning process mills to a stop. student engagement would be described as the student’s emotional involvement in and effort toward obtaining, understanding, or understanding the information, abilities, or proficiency that academic work was intended to encourage. multiple possibilities for language learners’ participation remained critical in the online atmosphere. due to the significance of involvement, developing successful online courses had been developed. engagement approaches focus on implementing positive learning experiences, including possibilities for active learning, such as collaborative group work, having learners facilitate presentations and discussions, actively participating in resources, elaborating course assignments with direct components, and integrating case studies and considerations (cabanilla, 2016). engagement is critical for resolving learner isolation, disengagement, persistence, and completion rates (yang et al., 2018). student involvement is critical to online learning because it may demonstrate students’ significant effort necessary for cognitive growth and their inherent capacity to build their knowledge, resulting in a high ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 313-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license degree of student achievement. while the information was formerly the primary emphasis, interactivity now plays a critical role in promoting online learning. hu and li (2017) revealed that three fundamental engagement was approached for online learning have increased student engagement: learnermaterial, student-lecturers, and learnerlearner. online learners become more active and interested in their courses due to their interactions with classmates and instructors. interactivity and the capacity of the community contribute to delivering high-quality education and the achievement of more effective english learning outcomes. the conditions became crucial in conceptions of online participation and a lack of agreement or clarity around how online learning tools can help engagement in english pedagogy. the intricate nature of totally online education has been identified as one issue that requires more consideration. this study adds to this body of knowledge by exploring and examining the concept of english lecturers, as a course designer, involvement at a higher education institution that has intentionally shifted to online teaching and learning in response to the epidemic. educators must devote a significant amount of work to developing successful ways of delivering online english education. the engagement of online tools encouraged learners to contribute remarks, encourage learners to invite questions, and expand their compasses for the course material. the research questions involved 1) how do engagement online english learning establish the english instructional in higher education? 2) what instructional online learning tools are accomplished in higher education's english pedagogy? method research design this study employed the qualitative approach. in qualitative research, non-numerical data is collected and analyzed to comprehend ideas, concepts, or experiences better. it may be utilized to understand engagement instructional electronic tools for learning the online english language. descriptive research design is implemented to discover and explore characteristics, patterns, tendencies, and classifications. therefore, the condition attempted to gather measurable data for statistical analysis of a population sample. it is a widely used educational instrument that gathers and defines a demographic category’s characteristics, particularly online language learning tools. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 314-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research site and participants the 86 participants came from 13 higher education and universities in south jakarta region. they have a similar classification to teach english for specific purposes on the online learning pedagogy because of the pandemic. they have delivered complete online learning for one year. the development of survey instruments has been developed and explored in the higher education context. the national survey of student engagement (nsse) was conducted by the trustees of indiana university (2016) became the initial formed survey conducted in the united states. the following time, its instrument enhanced adjusting, adapting, and accommodating learners’ engagement in various contexts. redmond et al. (2018) developed the engagement strategies in the electronic survey for 86 participants, and it was accommodated through an online survey google form. meanwhile, the semi-structured interview was applied for 25 participants. it was purposely to reach dept information and respond to every respondent for the topics’ issue. data collection and analysis the analytical purposes research approach analyzed the participants’ experiences and perspectives on online technologies and english pedagogy. it is conducted and completed with an open-ended questions survey. the open-ended question survey was appropriately employed to the respondents because of the main topic of discovering the opportunity to understand engagement online instructional tools. meanwhile, a semistructured interview was conducted to gain objectivity of feedback of each respondent while also subtracting for spontaneous investigation of issues relevant to that. the thematic deductive analysis focused on analyzing the data with specific predetermined anticipated themes based on prior knowledge of implementing online tools learning english pedagogy. the study began with the coding on a theme. thematic coding is a qualitative analysis that entails documenting or recognizing portions of text or pictures connected by a similar subject or concept. this condition enabled the content categorization and created a framework of thematic thoughts about it. content analysis was categorized into two broad categories: conceptual analysis and relational analysis. findings and discussion findings according to the studies mentioned earlier, participants have an advantageous effect on teaching english online. the studies identified ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 315-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license four distinct instructional elements of participants’ activities: collaboratedinteractive activities, integrated electronic tests, applied on mobile phones, and enhanced social familiarity. the instructional tools online engagement model for higher education shown in table 1 summarised the elements and indicators benchmark. the concept evolved from four online engagement (cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, collaborative engagement, and social engagement) table 1. classification instructional engagement english learning online instructional elements description outcome sample interview responses collaborated and interactive activities creative tasks; i prefer to spend our time exploring the creative environment in electronic learning. e-learning gave us critical lesson to explore the technology, and our students gain much attraction use online tolls including quizzizz, kahoot, lms moodle, etcetera games (roleplays, imitations, business and development games); in my perspective, gamification approaches aim to provide students’ innate needs or english pedagogy members for socialization, learning, superiority, competitiveness, accomplishment, prestige, self-expression, altruism, or completion. my lecturers’ team applied edpuzzle, spellquiz, jeopardylabs, etcetera use of actual and interactive material (interactive lectures, videoaudio materials, a student in the role of a “teacher,” socratic dialogue, asking questions); yammer, edmodo, and bubbl.us are beneficial online learning for english learning. it gave us a chance as lecturers to improve our interactive material. i would prefer the youtube edu channel to have more actual content in my online learning moodle we are solving tasks (associative maps, brainstorming, case analysis). our online learning virtual class could have more interaction activity because our time was limited in the session. we would open discussion to the light topic for lifestyle, gossiping, and politics. the discussion was not only frequently attracted learners to join with the conversation but also initiated many exploration subjects integrated electronic tests. summative assessment it was easy for english lecturers to conduct the electronic testing to know how much or far language learners understand the topic at the end of the discussion or explanation. we use the google classroom feature or moodle (quiz or assignment) formative assessment i intended to have electronic testing in the google form. the english lecturers could find the readable statistics at the end of the testing. it would have the advantage as educators to know the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 316-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license instructional elements description outcome sample interview responses overall knowledge of each learner and select the appropriate learning approach and style diagnostic, in lms moodle, the educators could give their learners various tests depending on their goals and achievements. the condition was essential to explore the learners’ characterized strengths or weaknesses in the four aspects of language learners. applied on mobile phone. portability & mobility we found that google classroom and lms moodle could apply to the smartphone. it shaped the english learning approach and style in the virtual class. the pedagogy managed to be more personalized to each member of pedagogy. social connectivity i believe utilising smartphones were more uncomplicated and more comfortable for learners in our university since it took different approach styles in english learning. in addition, smartphones or mobil phones would keep the content simpler than other electronic devices. context sensitivity we used mobile devices to accommodate the synchronous activity. however, our learners and english lecturers would prefer the mobile phone to be communication devices more usable than other electronic devices. our institution employed lms moodle and google classroom that was not flawless to accommodate the synchronous activity. individuality online learning promoted self-learning, and i think it could have a measurable impact on independent learning. language learners can access english content anytime and anywhere. enhanced social familiarity synchronous (such as instant messaging or language exchange websites and mobile applications learning english will not attract learners if there is no direct communication. the online environment might be challenging for a member of pedagogy to implement. but we usually spare time to have a conference video or engage in activity in the chat application asynchronous (such as message boards and internet forums) lms moodle and google classroom were excellent places to apply the asynchronous teaching-learning style. we could post or give some indirect conversation to have feedback on the assessment as previously stated, the online engagement instructional provided a practical perspective on online tool involvement based on linked lecturers’ experiences and the distillation of literary topics into core conceptions. the four interconnected components provided english lecturers, instructional designers, and faculty a model for accommodating, facilitating, and evaluating english pedagogy online engagement. the respondent got their opinion through an open-question survey focusing on several elements, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 317-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license including collaborated and interactive activities, integrated electronic tests applied on mobile phones, and endorsed social familiarity. in general, university a, b, d, and g intended to have less utilisation of third-party online tools or instruments on the internet, their most opinion related to the limited and restriction of creating moderate standard-outcome from their learners. therefore, it would be impacted to the activities in electronic learning. the institution concentrated on the adaptability of multi-capabilities of their learners, so their policy was not creating many activities in the english learning course session. however, the english lecturers and instructors have applied various interacting activities to accommodate distinguished outcomes or goals for specific targets. at this point, conference videos might get frequently implemented in each english learning course session. based on the open-question survey result, electronic learning might get challenging for universities c, d, e, and j. the practical outcome as their learning outcome caused the different implementation of electronic testing based on lms moodle. the english lecturers (instructors) did not have complete and personal capabilities to organise the course, so they were easily confused about applying comprehensive electronic testing. university d, e, and h implemented both moodle and google classroom. there were five from 9 english lecturers utilising these electronic learning environments. they expressed that using google classroom electronic testing activity was simpler than moodle. however, university c responded different approach. eight from 12 english lecturers employed a third partially application online to conduct electronic testing. the focus group discussion responded to different opinions related to advance mobile phone utilisation. university a, c, e, f, and i had commonly acknowledged that mobile phone features’ adaptability was not always similar to the web-based version in laptops or personal computers. they expressed that moodle was not the best interface for pedagogy users as participants. six of 8 english lecturers alternate edmodo and schoology as their online learning systems to solve the problem. university d had distinguished respond which previously mentioned utilised moodle and google classroom, and they found these integrations giving them the advantage in the electronic environment. the educators should be noticed that the challenge to follow the online learning course was in their content and the utilisation of devices. educators’ and learners’ perspectives ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 318-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were frequently inconsistent, so educators and learners should discuss the technicality matter. the 85-respondent (47%) the 85-respondent (47%) preferred moodle as their electronic learning ecosystem. moodle is favored by countless instructors and professionals because it is open-source, has several collaboration features such as chat, forum, and discussions, simplifies course and user administration, and integrates effortlessly with intermediary programs and custom plugins. based on the result, 72respondent (40%) applied to the google classroom. the platform selected feature delivered and accommodated in the simple electronic environment. google classroom is an available collaboration tool for english lecturers to build online classes, invite students, and conduct classroom discussions. the 15 participants (8%) chose edmodo, and 9 participants (5%) approved that schoology. these platforms were less popular than any others among pedagogy members in this study. while schoology and edmodo have certain commonalities, they also have significant distinctions. schoology’s lms system is built on the concept of collaboration, with periodic checks to ensure learners are engaged with the subject. edmodo is structured similarly to facebook’s online communication network. learners, instructors, and parents may interact through postings, which other members may respond with like or comment the interactive learning tools survey result found kahoot had 65 respondents, quizgame had 53 respondents, wirewax had 16 respondents, and vyond had five respondents. english professors are now searching for innovative technologies to supplement classroom education when compelled to provide instruction online. educators regularly advised instructors not to rely on a single tool but to experiment with numerous platforms and get the advantages of each for extraordinary outcomes. everyone answered figure 1. online learning management system figure 2. interactive learning tools ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 319-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license simultaneously. this condition also enables us to offer feedback to everyone simultaneously. kahoot kept a record of each student’s performance on each question. the quiz game may show a student progress dashboard on the projector, allowing you to monitor each student’s progress and quickly determine how many questions the class answered correctly/incorrectly. interactive online tools are becoming a tool for creating online quizzes that enable users to create public or private examinations. the tool enables educators to efficiently set numerous quiz parameters, such as test length, question randomised, instantaneous feedback, question characters variety, custom award production and branding, and automated grading. quizizz and gimkit collaborated to enable enrolled people to create quizzes, courses, and flashcards tailored to their courses and play quizzes developed by others members. it allowed the creation of various question formats, include\ng multiplechoice, matching, fill the blank, etcetera. the result found that several tools that accommodated english learning pedagogy concerned the electronic environment. in particular, the conference zoom was popular with 86 respondents, and the following to the google meeting 70 respondents, skype 48 respondents, and cisco webex 36 respondents. skype, zoom, and google’s meeting platforms should all be capable of supporting the workforce’s size. as indicated before, most providers provided a free plan with a standardised meeting volume – often among 100 and 200 members. in addition, the cisco webex platform facilitates most business video conferencing tools that allow users to share files, and others provide many collaboration features such as video call, live file description, and implementation with popular office productivity apps. however, interactive online communication is contingent upon qualified instructors' adequately planned and guided educational experiences. furthermore, because learners have various learning styles or a mixture of types, the educational program should develop various learning modes. additionally, instructional paradigms should be modified to the new instructional settings. figure 3. conference communication instrument ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 320-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion the factors in the communication process determine online learning interaction. any one of these variables may decrease communication efficacy. al asmari (2015) suggested that the online learning environment should be offered an exciting potential to improve learners’ learning experiences by delivering interactive and customisable information. interactivity is a critical component of online education since it helps attract and retain students. instructors might use interactive online tools to improve communication with students and enhance their online learning experience (jabeen & thomas, 2015). in comparison, online resources are often used to make up for the absence of face-to-face connection in a conventional educational context. in prior online learning research, alam (2016) revealed that the most often examined interactivity was the influence of learners’ peers’ contact on online environment learning. interactivity is a significant predictor of engagement because it enables users to be completely immersed in the mediated environment. jung and gunawardena (2015) added that virtual presence was frequently referred to as immersion. it is defined as a participant’s immersive experience in mediated communication. once a compromise between learners’ skill level and task difficulty was accomplished, language learners often consider a greater degree of flow convinced by increased curiosity and interest (dong & liu, 2020). additionally, the interactive learning tools (kahoot, quizgame, wirewax, and vyond) established crucial flow functions in enhancing students’ positivity, such as enjoyment and excitement while doing the online activity. students’ flow experiences throughout the kahoot and quizgame process significantly influenced their reported interactive online language learning tool values. alsowat (2016) stated that the indicators had exposed those learners who have a more excellent feeling of attention, concentration, control, and interest to find online activities more pleasurable and engaging. thus, wirewax and vyond presented customisable challenge opportunities that allow pedagogy members to harmonise their capabilities to online learning activities. goyal and krishnamurthy (2018) identified that the condition was critical for increasing students’ progress experience during the online learning process, which is critical for actively promoting a positive online learning experience. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 321-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the web-based learning management system (lms) aims to facilitate educating and studying activities. avcı and ergün (2019) assured that the platforms included various features that allow faculty members to exchange learning materials and engage in synchronous and asynchronous engagement with their learners. a learning management system (lms) refers to various systems that manage and access online learning education programs, instructors, and administrators. in general, rudneva and valeeva (2017) revealed that these services had several core features, such as restricting access to authorised individuals, providing various forms of educational information, and providing various communication tools. flexibility within a defined framework and versatility in an online platform will also be critical exactly currently. mckay and young (2017) stated that cognitive engagement signified the active learning process. this condition was the most basic sort of interaction. the environment had validated and recognised as cognitive engagement, in which students participated in the learning process to comprehend complicated concepts and master challenging abilities. moodle, google classroom, edmodo, and schoology enabled english lecturers to observe learners’ progress and support that they reach performance targets. for example, if an online student cannot finish an online learning scenario effectively, moodle may provide extra materials to help them improve their performance or learning practices online ecosystem utilising various plugins. in addition, google classroom, edmodo, and schoology of learning management systems gave reporting and analytics capacities that enable educators to recognise parts of their online learning course that might need improvement if english lecturers realise that many online learners have difficulty with a particular online course class. androsoff and phongsatha (2019) discovered that english lecturers included course designers and instructors connected with language learners and indicated that they actively investigate the necessities emotionally and have the most success re-engaging learners in the online learning process. synchronous online learning refers to a system in which lessons are taught instantaneously, and english lecturers and learners are engaged directly. khan (2016) affirmed that this condition provided learners with access to highquality, actual, and comprehensive material delivery and the vital benefit of digital social interaction and collaboration in the learning management ecosystem. additionally, teng and sinwongsuwat (2015) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 322-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license authenticated that the educator becomes noticeable to the learner in the virtual classroom, facilitating the educator to develop significant relationships with each learner and build a feeling of engagement and belonging virtual classroom. this approach emphasised social contact, bond, and compassion to support the curriculum’s english online pedagogy. the opportunity to experience wellproduced and selected curricular elements with institutions that may not have prepared such content for online distribution is evident (lou, 2017). skype, zoom, google meetings, and cisco webex provided the same sensation of engagement and connection as face-to-face interactions with colleagues. it may seem to be the fastest method of communication and collaboration. however, when used excessively, live video calls are a productivity killer. synchronous video communications enable small group meeting attendees to speak and interact through voice, video, and screensharing technology. halverson and graham (2019) concluded that social engagement had implied a term that relates to a student’s social involvement in his or her college experience. it encompasses both materials in context or out of context to take place outside the virtual classroom, such as leisure or social occasions, as well as social conversations. additionally, van bergen et al. (2019) affirmed that members of online learning were an excellent option for interactive online classrooms in which professors and students can view and communicate in real-time. video conferencing enables every pedagogy member to meet with someone in another room, building, or nation as if they were sitting across the table. the on-demand video provides a more adaptable yet vibrant medium for indepth communication. it is often more successful than live video communications simply because, like email and other written documents, it can be seen at any time and from any place and can be searched and rewatched afterward. korkealehto (2021) determined that asynchronous video interactions allowed communication, collaboration, and instruction using pre-recorded videos and live video streams incorporating the presenter’s video, screen sharing, and another context. engaging strategies and approaches were one way to ensure that online learning is beneficial for the school and, more significantly, that students succeed in pursuing a college degree (ismail, 2017). indeed, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 323-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license establishing student engagement in online courses might get even more critical than in higher education or university courses since online students experience fewer opportunities to interact with the institution and possibly more requirements on their time and attention. in other words, oraif and elyas (2021) found that engagement may be an essential factor in establishing online learning as a necessary component of higher education and a critical element of an english pedagogies’ future the discussion should explore the significance of the work results, not repeat them. a combined results and discussion section is often appropriate and avoids extensive citations and discussion of published literature. in discussion, it is the essential section of your article. here you get the chance to sell your data. make the discussion corresponding to the results, but do not reiterate. often should begin with a summary of the leading scientific findings (not experimental results). the following components should be covered in discussion: how do your results relate to the original question or objectives outlined in the introduction section (what)? do you provide a scientific interpretation of each of your results or findings presented (why)? are your results consistent with what other investigators have reported (what else)? or are there any differences? conclusions and suggestion the common misperception is that english lecturers or instructors must engage learners in online learning for the same quantity of time as they would in a conventional face-to-face meeting in the regular class. this condition might result in either an excessive amount of time spent in front of an electronic device during live sessions or an excessive number of practice activities and assignments, which require students to sit and do work for hours. these circumstances are only applied in the typical class meeting, characterised by interactions with classmates and their surroundings. these provide possibilities for selfexamination and exploration. educators should design courses with avoidance creating the impression that online education implied hours of busywork. video chats/video conferencing are a great way to help students feel connected. asynchronous communication did not provide language learners with the equivalent level of engagement and interaction as synchronous (video conferencing) communication. therefore, it is vital to acknowledge that children are increasingly learning in their homes, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 324-326 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.22358 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license with diverse equipment, time, and facilitate degrees. improving the quality of online teaching-learning becomes critical at this point. indonesian institutions’ online education has increased exponentially following the epidemic. as a result, english lecturers and course designers have transformed the complete instructional method to approach new online circumstances and adapt to exchanging scenarios. however, online learning also has a significant problem with personal involvement. language learners intend to have two-way interaction, which may be challenging to establish in the online environment. it is necessary to explore and determine the broad parameter description of engaging instructional design in online media platforms, including moodle, google classroom, zoology, and so on. it should be concentrated on the challenges, effectiveness, implementations, and efficacies of the online english language pedagogy integrated into versatility platforms. references al asmari, a. a. 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(2020). the new methods of teaching english language. архив научных публикаций jspi, 1–261. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 289-310 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee esp students’ use of appraisal language in tourism blogs ni putu era marsakawati universitas pendidikan ganesha, indonesia (era.marsakawati@undiksha.ac.id) received: 31th january 2022; revised: 27th november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this study investigated how esp students used appraisal language in their tourism blogs. the research design used in this study was a qualitative content analysis. the data sources of this research were ten tourism blogs written by the seventh-semester students taking english for tourism course. these blogs were selected based on several criteria: a) they were written by students who had good writing skills, and b) they promoted tourism spots in bali. the obtained data were analyzed by using several steps, namely a) determining the single clause that existed in each sentence; b) identifying clauses based on appraisal theory (attitude, engagement, and graduation), c) categorizing clauses into appraisal language, and d) concluding. the results showed that students realized appraisal language through three types of resources: attitude, engagement, and graduation. attitude was realized through appreciation and affect; engagement was realized through expansion and contraction; and graduation was realized through force and focus. this study implies that to create tourism blogs well, students do not only simply include appraisal language in their writing but also learn how to use them in purposeful and strategic ways. key words: appraisal language; promotional text; tourism blog abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis bagaimana mahasiswa esp menggunakan appraisal language pada tourism blogs. rancangan penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah analisis konten kualitatif. sumber data penelitian ini adalah sepuluh tourism blog yang ditulis oleh mahasiswa semester vii yang mengambil mata kuliah english for tourism. tourism blogs ini dipilih berdasarkan beberapa kriteria: a) tourism blogs ditulis oleh mahasiswa yang memiliki keterampilan menulis yang baik, dan b) tourism blogs mempromosikan destinasi wisata di bali. data yang diperoleh dianalisis dengan menggunakan beberapa langkah, yaitu a) menentukan klausa yang ada pada tiap kalimat; b) mengidentifikasi klausa sesuai dengan teori appraisal (attitude, enggagement dan graduation), c) mengelompokkan klausa ke dalam appraisal language, dan d) menarik simpulan. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa merealisasikan appraisal language melalui tiga jenis resources: attitude, engagement, dan graduation. attitude direalisasikan melalui appreciation dan affect; engagement direalisasikan melalui expansion dan constraction; dan graduation direalisasikan melalui force dan focus. penelitian ini menyiratkan bahwa untuk membuat tourism blog yang baik, mahasiswa tidak hanya sekedar memasukkan appraisal language dalam tulisan mereka tetapi juga belajar bagaimana menggunakannya dengan cara yang strategis. kata kunci: appraisal language; teks promosi; tourism blog how to cite: marsakawati, ni p. e.(2022). esp students’ use of appraisal language in tourism blogs. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 289-310. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 290-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english for tourism is one of the elective courses taken by the seventh semester students in one of english education department at a state university in bali. in this course, students are equipped with competencies to become professional tourism marketing. to function well in this social practice, they should have knowledge and skills of english in the field of marketing. in so doing, after the students graduate from the university, they are expected to be able to participate and function well in workplaces. to achieve this, in esp learning, students do not only learn about general english but also specific english as needed in their future work (mickan, 2017; poedjiastutie & oliver, 2017). in the practice of tourism marketing, one of the skills that should be possessed by employees is the skill to promote tourist destinations. the media of promotion can be done through blogging. according to pal and kapur (2010), blogging is one of the effective media that can be used by marketers to promote their business. they further argue that through blogging, the marketers can share their ideas to the target readers in a fast and focused manner. thus, writing tourism blogs is one of the essential skills that should be mastered by students taking english for tourism course. in this context, this promotion aims to attract potential visitors to visit the promoted destinations. to enable the esp students to write purposeful tourism blogs, they do not only need to understand the structure of the texts posted in their blogs, but they also need to master the linguistic features, such as the use of appraisal language. appraisal language is rooted in systemic functional linguistic (sfl) theory that is used to realize interpersonal meaning (martin & white, 2005). this interpersonal meaning is very important to be delivered properly considering that when doing promotions, marketers do not only convey information related to the promoted destinations but also express feelings, opinions, and judgments of the marketers. within sfl, interpersonal meanings are realized through an appraisal system consisting of attitude, engagement, and graduation. this system explains how language is used to evaluate attitude, take stances, create authorial identity, and construct interpersonal positioning and relationship (wei, wherrity, & zhang 2015). in this context of the study, the attitude subsystem deals with the marketers positive/negative emotions toward people or things. engagement ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 291-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license deals with the marketers’ voices concerning others’ voices. the graduation attends to grading phenomena, whereby feelings are amplified and categories are blurred (martin &white 2005). the use of appraisal language is important in the context of promotional texts, including tourism blogs aiming at influencing people to visit the place being promoted. this is because appraisal language consists of specific registers, which can be purposively selected by the marketers to meet their objectives. even, yang (2016) argues that in order to influence and convince the target audience, the language users need to use the appraisal resources. due to the importance of appraisal language, there have been a number of studies of how appraisal language are deployed in promotional texts (see, kristina, hashima, & hariharan, 2017; ho & suen; 2017; mocini, 2013). these studies explore how professional marketers promote their products/services through promotional media such as books, brochures, billboards, and websites. unfortunately, few researchers have studied how future marketers (students) conduct promotions on blog media. research on this area is needed to find out to what extent these prospective marketers already have the knowledge and skills related to the expected esp competencies. not only in promotional texts, research concerning the use of appraisal language has also been widely conducted in students’ writing, however, they mostly focused on nonpromotional texts (see amornrattanasirichok & jaroongkhongdach, 2017; fitriati, solihah, & tusino, 2018; mendale, komariah, & fitriani 2019; fitriati & solihah; 2019; jalilifar, alireza, & hemmati, 2013; solihah, 2020; yuliana & gandana, 2018) from the reviewed studies, it can be identified that the gap in the literature still exists in relation to the use of appraisal language in students’ writing. particularly, the studies on how esp students exploit appraisal language in their promotional texts through blog media are regrettably rare. studies in this area are needed to generate practical pedagogical implications to promote the use of appraisal language in students’ promotional texts by using blog media. thus, it can provide an overview of students' esp competencies and give input related to the esp curriculum and learning. to fill the identified empirical gap, the researcher conducted a study that aimed to describe how esp students use appraisal language in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 292-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their tourism blogs. the present study is expected to contribute to raising teachers and students’ awareness of the importance of appraisal resources in writing promotional texts as well as to enhancing students’ writing skills. literature review tourism blog in this digital age, the way tourism marketers promote their tourism product and services is shifted from paper-based marketing to digital marketing. one type of digital marketing tool, which commonly used by tourism marketers is blog. according to volo (2010), blog is a free online journal or informational website aiming to display certain information or subject to the readers. the information is written specifically for the target readers and is arranged in a chronological order (labanauskaitė fiore, & stašys, 2020). blog also allows bloggers to combine texts, images, videos, audios, and links to create more informative, communicative, and persuasive texts. all information stored in the blog is distributed fast and is easily accessed by the readers. in so doing, tourism marketers also use blog as a platform to share the information about the tourist destinations, attract the readers’ attention about the described tourist spots, and persuade readers to visit the promoted tourism places. as the technology is growing rapidly, the way tourists search and purchase tourism products and services is changing (li, robinson, & oriade 2017), in which tourists tend to find the needed information in the internet. when tourists plan to visit certain tourist destinations, they use search engines in advance to obtain information about the intended destinations (labanauskaitė, fiore, & stašys, 2020). in response this, tourism marketers need to create tourism blogs to provide effective digital marketing tools, which can influence tourism marketing and attract more potential visitors to visit their tourism objects. appraisal language appraisal language or evaluative language is a system rooted from systemic functional linguistics, where language is used to interact with other people, construct roles and relationship as well as give evaluation (martin & rose, 2007). in this paper, the term appraisal language and evaluative language is used interchangeably. according to martin and white (2005), appraisal language is divided into three subsystems: attitude, engagement, and graduation. the first subsystem is attitude. attitude is concerned with the writers’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 293-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license feelings, judgments of behavior and evaluation of things. attitude resources can be used to convey both positive and negative emotions and are expressed explicitly or implicitly. referring to martin and white (2005), attitude is classified into three subdivisions: affect, judgement, and appreciation. affect resources are used by the language users to express emotions and feelings, such as happy/sad (happiness/unhappiness), confident/anxious (security/insecurity), and absorbed/ bored with (satisfaction/dissatisfaction). judgement resources are employed when the writers intend to evaluate people’s characters and behaviours, which falls into two main categories: social esteem and social sanction. appreciation resources are deployed by the writers for evaluating things, including natural phenomena. the dimensions of appreciation are reaction, composition, and valuation. the second subsystem of appraisal language is engagement. engagement resources are used by the writer to engage and involve readers (yuliana & gandana 2018). in addition, the resources of engagement are also deployed to create the writers’ stance and position towards the issue being presented in their writings. the engagement strategies are in the form of lexicogrammatical resources (ho & suen, 2017) that are used to either open the dialogue space through expansive resources (i.e., entertain or attribute) or close the dialogue space by using contraction resources (i.,e., disclaim or proclaim). the third system of appraisal language is graduation. graduation resources are used by the writers to strengthen and weaken their attitudinal systems (wu, 2018). by using these resources, the writers can grade their attitudinal meanings (values of attitude and engagement) up or down. if the writers intend to scale from low to high intensity, they can use force resources by using intensification and quantification. meanwhile, if they intend to scale from a core to marginal membership, they can use focus resources to sharpening or softening the boundaries between categories (jalilifar & moradi, 2019). promotional text promotional texts are texts used by marketers to attract potential customers to purchase a product or service (kristina, hashima, & hariharan 2017). following bathia (2014), promotional text belongs to promotional genre, that serves three functions, namely informative function, attractive function, and persuasive function. in the context of tourism industry, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 294-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license existence of promotional text serves as a key mechanism in promoting and publicizing the tourist attractions and allow potential tourists to learn about tourism products/services and persuade them to purchase these products (hui, santhi, & mungthaisong, 2020). to meet the communicative purpose of the promotional texts, the writers need to use certain linguistics strategies, such as the use of certain attitudinal resources that can create a good impression about the promoted tourist destinations. method research design this study was aimed to describe how esp students used appraisal language in their tourism blogs. to achieve this aim, the researcher used a qualitative research approach. according to creswell (2007), qualitative approach is an approach that allows the researcher to collect, interpret, and analyze data in natural settings. through this approach, the researcher studied how meaning is constructed through written language in the real context. in addition to this, the researcher did not conduct any treatments to the research participants. in this context of the study, the researcher made an interpretation based on what she read in the students’ tourism blogs. among some numbers of qualitative inquiry forms, a qualitative content analysis was used in this study. this technique provides a systematic way of analyzing language in a discourse. in addition, this also involves a close reading of the text and a systematic discursive practice (krippendorff, 2018), in which the researcher is engaged in the text to explore the phenomenon under study by interpreting the text (drisko & maschi 2016). in implementing this research design, the researcher categorized qualitative textual data into clusters of similar entities or conceptual categories to explore esp students’ attitude in their tourism blogs. source of data the source of the data for this research is ten tourism blogs written by the seventh-semester students taking english for tourism course. the criteria for selecting the ten tourism blogs are: a) tourism blogs promote tourist destinations in bali, and b) they were written by students who had good writing skills. this was evidenced by the consistency of their writing skills during the course and from the final score of the previous writing course. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 295-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data collection and analysis data collection was carried out through the following procedures. a) asking all students to write tourism blogs as their final project; b) asking all students to submit the tourism blog addresses; c) reading all students’ tourism blogs repeatedly; and d) selecting ten tourism blogs based on the predetermined criteria. after the data were collected, they were analyzed by following some steps, namely: a) determining the single clause in each sentence; b) identifying clauses based on appraisal theory (attitude, engagement, and graduation); c) grouping clauses into appraisal language; d) concluding. findings and discussion findings the findings on the distribution of appraisal language used by esp students in the tourism blogs are presented in table 1. table 1. summary distribution of appraisal language attitude engageme nt graduati on tota l + 106 16 88 120 330 32 % 5% 28% 35% 100 % table 1 reveals that esp students use all types of appraisal language in their writings, with the predominance subsystem used is attitude. the detailed distribution for each subsystem is provided in the following tables. table 2. the distribution of attitude resources affect appreciatio n judgemen t tota l + + + 19 1 87 15 0 0 122 16 % 1 % 71% 12 % 0% 0% 100 % table 2 shows that esp students use positive appreciation the most. even, they used both positive and negative appreciation in their writings. table 3. the distribution of graduation resources force focus total intensi ficatio n quanti ficatio n sharpe ning softe ning 91 28 0 1 120 76% 23% 0% 1% 100% table 3 shows the use of graduation resources in students’ promotion texts. all texts written by students contain graduation resources. of the two types of graduation resources, students use force resources more than focus resources. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 296-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. the distribution of engagement resources expansion contraction tota l enterta in attrib ute disclai m proclai m 52 1 34 1 88 59% 1% 39% 1% 100 % table 4 shows that students used both types of engagement resources, in which expansion resources were used more than contractions. discussion this study found that tourism blogs written by esp students contained all types of appraisal resources. these resources are realized through the use of attitude, engagement, and graduation resources. these three divisions of appraisal resources are used as a tool for the students to create a powerful promotional texts to persuade the readers. each type of appraisal resource is discussed in the section below. attitude resources attitude resources are evaluation resources that students use to express their emotions (martin & white, 2005). among the three attitude resources, students used two attitude resources: appreciation resources and affect resources. this research finding is similar to the studies conducted by ho (2019) and ho & suen (2017) revealing that the authors of promotional text evaluate the promoted places/things positively and express positive emotions in their writings. appreciation appreciation is the most frequent type of attitude used by esp students in their tourism blogs. according to martin and white 2005, appreciation resources are used to appreciate objects, including scenery. these resources are divided into three: reaction (has to do with attention and emotional impact), valuation (has to do with the assessment of the social significance of thing), and composition (has to do with the perceptions of proportionality and detail of thing). each of which will be described as follows. reaction based on the results of the data analysis, reaction is the most predominance type of appreciation used by the esp students in their tourism blogs. reaction relates to the writers’ response to something or a phenomenon. this reaction is oriented towards interpersonal significance. therefore, in this case, students tended to describe the promoted tourism places based on their views. examples of clauses containing positive reaction are as follows. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 297-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 1. there are many interesting photo spots with beautiful sunflowers (t3, c21) 2. blue lagoon offers a bit adventurous track (t6, c13) 3. this is because the tree becomes a very aesthetic and attractive photo spot (t10,c17) 4. when the sun rises, this lovina beach will look exotic with black sand(t2, c22) 5. while taking a shower, enjoying the fresh and clear of kanto lampo waterfall… (t8,c19) 6. …..and easy to reach;(t3, c15) 7. kintamani provides a very unique scenery (t1,c5) the bolded words “interesting”, “beautiful”, “adventurous”, “aesthetic’, “attractive”, “exotic”, “fresh” and “clear”, “easy” , and “unique” show positive reaction. through these registers, the students evaluate the promoted places by evoking the readers’ positive emotions. these lexical items are purposively selected to grab the reaction of the potential visitors to visit the places. interestingly, reaction is not only expressed positively but also negatively. the use of negative reactions can also be seen in tourism blogs written by the students. negative promotion is related to someone's negative response, in this case, the blog writer, to something or a phenomenon that is appreciated. below are the two examples. 8. for sure, it is a bit tiring (t6, c17) 9. but, visiting this place is quite difficult (t7, c20) register “tiring” in example 8 and “difficult” in example 9 show the writers’ feelings when reaching the promoted places. the students described their emotional reactions negatively to the target visitors. this is done to provide a genuine experience for the visitors. valuation valuation is oriented to the way the author evaluates something or a phenomenon more objectively (mocini, 2013). in the tourism blogs written by the students, students use valuation to appreciate the promoted place based on the reality/the fact seen/felt by them. the following are some examples of clauses that contain valuation. 10. this price is still relatively affordable (t5, c37) 11. …..to discover various corals, plants, and fish, such as tuna, batfish, sea turtles, angelfish, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 298-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license jackfish, and many more (t5, c16) 12. lovina beach is one of the most famous tourist attractions in bali (t2, c1) 13. pantai teluk karang sewu is one of the popular tourist attractions (t9, c11) 14. this beach is an uninhabited place (t4, c30) 15. there is a hidden destination at panji village named kedu (refreshing water destination) (t7, c1) 16. (it) is always crowded with local and foreign tourists (t1, c4) the words in bold italics in examples 10-16 are vocabulary classified as valuation resources. the word "affordable" in example 10 is used to inform the entry fee that need to be paid by potential visitors. in addition to using positive evaluation, the results of the data analysis also show that students use negative evaluation, as can be seen in the following examples. 17. ….but the place is still underrated(t3, c7) 18. the common beach usually has black sand (t9, c24) in example 17, the student uses “underrated” to explain the reality about the place to the reader. in example 18, the writer uses the word “common” to describe sand on beaches in general. by using this vocabulary, the author intends to convey that the sand on lovina beach is not like the sand in general. this means that the use of words that contain negative evaluation aims to give a positive impression of the place being promoted on the blog. composition composition is related to the sense of perception. it concerns the writers’ view of order (martin & white, 2005). below are some clauses that contain register positive composition. 19. the waves on lovina beach are quite calm (t2, c13) 20. kanto lampo still a perfect natural scenery (t8, c4) 21. the location of karang sewu also very strategic (t9, c33) examples 19-21 show some registers used to express positive composition. the words "calm", “perfect”, “strategic” are used to describe the structure of the promoted places. surprisingly, in addition to using positive composition, students also use negative composition in their promotional texts. below are some ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 299-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license clauses containing negative composition registers. 22. because the terrain is rocky enough (t7, c21) 23. where the island is very hot and dry(t5, c6) register “rocky” in example 22 shows the structure of the terrain. registers "hot and dry" in example 23 are used to evaluate the island. in this clause, the author tries to show the true island atmosphere to tell the readers so that they can prepare themselves better such as bringing appropriate hats, sunscreen cream and others if they are planning to go on vacation. affect affect is the second most frequent type of attitude resource used by the students in their tourism blogs. affect concerns with positive or negative feelings, that can be realized in domains: dis/satisfaction (whether the appraiser is interested or bored), in/security (whether the appraiser is confident or anxious), and un/happiness (whether the appraiser is happy or sad) (martin & white, 2005). each of which is described as follows. satisfaction satisfaction is a part of affect resources that are used to express feelings of satisfaction with something (ho & suen, 2017). in this study, satisfaction is the most predominantly affect resource used by the students. some examples can be seen in the clauses below. 24. this location is the most strategic place to enjoy the natural scenery (t1,c8) 25. menjangan island area always impress the visitors(t5,c12) 26. people are also attracted to come to menjangan island (t5,c27) 27. there are some people who love to refresh their mind (t9,c5) the bolded vocabulary in examples 24-27 show satisfaction resources. in these examples, the students tend to use registers in the form of verbs. the use of verb, according to mocini (2013) aims to illustrate an emotional reaction. the meaning of the verb can be conveyed implicitly or explicitly. as written in examples 23 and 24, "enjoy” and “impress" are categorized as mental process. implicitly, the phrase "this location and menjangan island" refers to visitors as emoters (someone who experiences) that are referred to as nonauthorial affect. the trigger for these emotions is "natural scenery and visitors" respectively. likewise, example 25 indicates non-authorial ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 300-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license affect, namely 'people' who will be satisfied if they visit menjangan island. in addition, the phrase “love to refresh” in example 26 also shows the interest of potential visitors to refresh their mood. in promotional blogs, the use of these registers can increase people's desire to visit the promoted place. security security relates to feeling of safe, confident and protected. in the analyzed data, it is presented that the students use words and verb phrases about feeling safe. the examples are presented below. 28. there is no need to doubt about the tourism facilities in kintamani(t1, c12) 29. this hot water can cure common skin diseases (t1, c21) 30. because the local government has protected these animals (t2, c12) 31. ….which make the guest more comfortable lay on the grass (t9, c31) the use of security registers is quite varied. as seen in example 27, this phrase convinces readers to come to kintamani without worrying about the facilities. example 28 denotes another emotion of physical health which is beneficial for those who wish to have a natural treatment with 'hot' water. example 29 implies that the author also wants to inform readers that there is no need to think negatively about the safety of animals (dolphins) because they have been conserved by the government. example 30 evaluates the visitor's comfortable feeling when lying on the grass. happiness happiness relates to the 'perception of the heart' including sadness and happiness. in the tourism blogs, the register of happiness is used to express the feelings of potential visitors when visiting the place and trying out the activities there. some examples containing the register of happiness are shown in the clauses below. 32. …and make you feel happy to do anything (t7, c27) 33. … and relax your soul;(t6, c20) 34. this place will refresh your day. (t7, c26) in example 32, the writer describes the readers' feelings that they will be happy if they do activities in that place. in example 33, the word “relax” relates to a mental process that aims to refresh the visitor's mind. example 34 contains a "refresh" register which functions to reflect the happy condition of visitors when visiting the place. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 301-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interestingly, besides showing security, data analysis also shows insecurity, as presented in example 35. if you are afraid.. (t6,c26) the word “afraid” in example 35 is used to inform the reader about the challenging activity done by the visitor in the promoted place. graduation resources graduation is the second most dominant type of appraisal language used by the students in their tourism blogs. graduation is divided into two: force and focus. force deals with assessing of amount (quantification) or intensity (intensification). focus is concerned with grading the values on a scale between core (sharpen) and marginal (soften) membership of category (jalilifar, alireza, & hemmati 2013; martin & white, 2005). in this study, force resources are used more frequently than focus resources. this research finding confirms the study conducted by jalilifar and moradi (2019) and wu (2018). the dominant use of force resources indicates that the authors use exaggeration language as a maximization strategy to build a strong persuasive strategy to attract readers to visit the places. the details of the findings are presented below. force force refers to the system used to express high or low intensity, strengthen or weaken the feelings and attitudes conveyed by the author and can also be used to express numbers. force is divided into two parts: intensification and quantification intensification force-intensification is the most dominant type of force used by the students in their tourism blogs. examples of force used by the students are as follows. 35. kintamani provides a very unique and amazing natural scenery (t1, c6) 36. lovina beach is one of the most famous tourist attractions in bali (t2, c1) 37. no, no, no for now (t4, c13) 38. the seawater surrounds this beach as clear as crystal; (t4, c42) 39. which is always crowded with local and foreign tourists (t1, c5) from examples 36-40, it can be seen that the registers “very”, “most” are used to express high intensity. the word “very” is used to reinforce the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 302-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license words “unique and amazing”. this aims to convince the readers to imagine how unique and amazing the scenery in kintamani is. this is needed in persuasive texts such as promotional texts to attract the attention of readers. while the word “most” is used to strengthen the adjective "famous". it aims to exaggerate the meaning of the word “famous”. besides the words “very” and “most”, words “no, no, no” are also included in force-intensification. according to martin and white (2005), intensification can also be realized in the word repetition. the words “no, no, no” in example 38 illustrate that the meaning of the word is strictly prohibited, where there is an emphasis and reinforcement on the meaning of the word "no". the phrase “as clear as crystal” in example 39 also belongs to intensification because it includes a figurative language. this is the author's analogy to express crystal-clear water. the word “always” in example 40 is also categorized as intensification because it is used to describe an activity or how often it happens. the author conveys an emphasis on habits or activities that occur continuously. quantification quantification is a part of graduation that is used to express quantity. according to martin and white (2005), quantification is a language of valuing a quantity that is used to measure numbers and features such as size and weight. forcequantification is the second most used graduation expression in this study. examples of the use of forcequanfication can be seen in the following clauses. 40. tourists can also take as many photos as they want (t3, c34) 41. usually, some other beaches will offer a sunset (t2, c23) 42. and if there are a few visitors, this beach feels like a private beach (t4, c25) 43. tourists who visit can also learn a lot about plantation there (t3, c25) 44. so, gili putih is a small white island in the middle of the sea (t4, c29) the registers “many”, “some”, “a few”, “a lot” are used to express an evaluation related to the amount, while the word “small” is used to express an evaluation of size. focus focus is related to judgment to sharpen and soften a feeling or attitude. focus is divided into two parts, namely: sharpening and softening. in the tourism blogs written by the students, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 303-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license there is only one clause containing softening resource, shown in example 60. 45. “it is very cheap for this kind of amazing place”(t9, c38) the word “kind of” belongs to the category of focus-softening expressions. the word “kind of” shows a softening attitude when expressing or appreciating "amazing places". the use of softening is used for polite situations. softening is difficult to define whether it means positive or negative. in general, softening positive sentences will occur if the assessment of positive sentences that are interpreted has the potential to cause problems for readers. engagement resources engagement resource is the least type of appraisal language used by the students in their tourism blogs. through engagement resources, the students constructed a different level of intimacy by either affirming or distancing himself from what was written. in this study, the two types of engagement resources (expansion and contraction) are used by the students, in which expansive resources are used more frequently than constructive resources. by using expansive resources, the students acknowledged alternative voices and thus expanded the dialogic space in their tourism blogs. a delicate analysis reveals that the dominant expansive resources used in this study are entertain. the predominantly used of entertain resources in students’ writing is also shown in the yuliana and gandana (2018)’s study, in which the use of modality (can, will) is used to create a sense of opening dialog with the readers. the detailed findings are shown below. expansion expansion is part of engagement that is used to provide space for readers to accept or reject statements written by the author. expansion, according to martin and white (2005) is divided into two: entertain and attribute. entertain in promotional texts written by the students, entertainment is one of the most widely used engagement components. it is used when the author suggests a plausible alternative to the implicit belief. the clauses below are examples of entertainment in a promotional text written by the students. 46. the visitors can also enjoy a natural hot spring bath in toya bungkah village (t1,c20) 47. tourists can enjoy the beauty of sunflowers (t3,c33) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 304-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 48. tourists can also take as many photos as they want (t3,c34) the word "can" in examples 47-49 indicate that the writer is describing something that can be seen by the reader, such as enjoying a natural hot spring bath or admiring the beauty of sunflowers. in addition to using the modal auxiliaries “can”, the students also use “will” as can be seen in the following examples. 49. some other beaches will offer a sunset; (t2,c23) 50. this sunrise view will be even more amazing; (t2,c25) 51. this lovina beach will look exotic with black sand. (t2,c29) in examples 50-52, the auxiliary modal "will" indicate that the author promises the possibility if the reader visits a certain location. the author writes that the sunrise view will be even more amazing, as in example 51. the author promises a sunrise view, so that when tourists arrive, they will be greeted with a stunning view. attribute according to martin and white (2005), attribute resources are used by writers to convince readers by using statements from other people. in addition, fuoli (2012) further said that attributes are representations of external sources, the author must gain the reader's trust by using the ideas that have been discussed previously. the following clauses are examples of clauses belonging to attributes. 52. so the society believe that this hot water, can cure common skin diseases (t1,c26) the word “believe” in italics in example 53 shows how the author builds trust with the reader by using statements made by many people or other people (society). by using this register, readers will feel more involved because there has been a testimony from the society about the benefit of the hot water. contraction different from the study conducted by yuliana and gandana (2018) that has no contraction, this study reveals that the students use disclaim and proclaim as the constructive resources. the different finding is due to the different nature of the texts. in this study, the students uses disclaim to show disassociate themselves from the stance that they include in the texts. it is natural as the tourism blogs created by the students are a kind of promotional text aiming at persuading the readers to visit the place. in this study, two contraction resources are used by the students, namely disclaim and proclaim. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 305-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license disclaim a disclaim can be interpreted as a rejection or disapproval of something, examples of clauses containing disclaim are as follows. 53. we can not think that all people have the same interest (t9,c2) 54. but in contrast to lovina beach (t2,c24) 55. the tourists usually do not just visit places that are famous and hits recently(t3,c1) 56. ..and don’t forget to keep your health (t4,c1) 57. but now it has started to be managed (t4,c38) all of these examples express rejection or denial of something. in example 55, the word “but” is used to compare another beach with lovina beach, the same case is also found in example 58, in which the word “but” is used to explain that there is a change in a current situation. example 57, the negation is used to remind the readers to maintain their health. proclaim according to martin and white (2005), proclaim can show a proposition as being highly justifiable (interesting, logical, reasonable, reasoned, widely recognized, reliable, etc.). the example is shown as follows. 36. it is quite difficult to find freshwater sources, especially during the dry season (t5,c5) based on the distribution of appraisal language, the students use attitude resources more than graduation and engagement resources. this indicates that in their tourism blogs, the students mostly convey both positive and feelings emotions, particularly towards the phenomenon. this is evidenced by the most predominantly used of appreciation resources in their tourism blogs. through a more delicate analysis, in terms of appreciation, reaction is the predominant resource used by the students. they use reaction resources invoke the potential visitors’ positive emotions so that they would visit the places being promoted. as noted by mocini (2013), reaction concerns whether the entity evaluated is pleasing or displeasing to the senses. in this research context, the use of positive reaction is needed to please the readers’ senses to attract the potential customers’ attention about things being promoted. this research finding corroborates with lasne (2017) that found reaction resources are the most predominant appreciation resources used in chinese clothing companies. similar to lasne’s (2017) study, this study also reveals that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 306-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the blog writers take a relatively more emotional approach to persuade the readers. the research finding in this research is also strengthened by the use of affect resources as the second most dominant attitude resources used by the students. through the use of affect resources, the students build more positive emotions to invoke the readers’ positive feelings towards the places being promoted (ho, 2019). the deployment of both reactionappreciation and affect resources are aimed at achieving the purpose of creating tourism blogs, that is promoting tourist destinations in bali. to achieve this aim, the students need to consider the use of appropriate registers, which can help them in describing the place as vividly as possible (noprianto, 2017). by the use of the preselected vocabulary, the tourism blogs’ readers can visualize the beauty of the place and are attracted to visit the place. in addition to using these two resources of attitude, the students also use graduation resources. through a delicate analysis, it is revealed the students use force resources more than focus. this research finding is in line with findings from previous research (fauziah, warsono, & widhiyanto 2019; jalilifar, alireza, & hemmati, 2013; mocini, 2013; yang, 2016). in these studies, force resources are predominantly used to strengthen and exaggerate the meaning. in so doing, the readers can be more attracted to visit the promoted place. despite persuading the potential readers about the tourist destinations, the students still provide dialogic spaces by opening up alternative voices. this is shown by the predominance use of expansion resources in their tourism blogs. following yuliana and gandana (2018), expansion, particularly entertain resources are used to anticipate potential disagreement of the addressee regarding the proposition. in this way, the students are open for different voices that may come from the readers. in this research context, the students present their individual subjectivity towards the places. it is obvious that the students use the three types of appraisal language in their tourism blogs. however, their distribution is still considered less effective. in terms of attitude resources, the students still use some negative words, which may affect the visitors’ desire to visit the places. besides, the students also employ simple and repetitive words. this result of the study empirically supports the studies conducted by fareed, ashraf, and bilal (2016) and siregar (2020) indicating that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 307-310 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.24574 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocabulary is one of students’ problems in mastering writing skills. to avoid this, afzal (2019) suggests students enrich their word-repository and develop linguistic repertoire. indeed, learning vocabulary is challenging. thus, it needs teachers to scaffold the students about the appropriate registers used to create texts as to meet the aim of the text, certain text requires certain linguistics features to use. conclusions and suggestion this study highlights how esp students use appraisal language in their tourism blogs. based on data analysis, it is revealed that the three types of appraisal language (attitude, graduation, and engagement) are employed. among these three resources, attitude is the most dominant type of appraisal language used by the students. this indicates that the students evaluate the phenomenon by evoking both their emotions and the readers’ feelings in their tourism blogs. this is purposively done to achieve the purpose of the text. even so, the varieties of vocabulary used by the students are still limited as the students still use ineffective, basic, and repetitive words. thus, the study suggests english teachers provide more learning activities to scaffold the needed registers. this study only focuses on exploring the deployment of appraisal language of students’ having good writing skills, future study needs to be conducted to explore how students with different levels of english proficiency use appraisal language in their blogs. besides, a study focusing on comparing the use of appraisal language in companies’ websites between novice and professional marketers is worth conducting to provide the bridge between the novice and the professional ones in using appraisal language in promotional discourse. acknowledgments the researcher is thankful for the students, who willingly participated in this study. the researcher is also grateful for the editorial journal and the reviewers of indonesian journal of english education for the thoughtful comments and feedback. references afzal, n. 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(2018). writers’ voice and engagement strategies in students’ analytical exposition texts.indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 7(3), 613– 620. doi: 10.17509/ijal.v7i3.9812. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 359-371 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee exploring students’ interests and challenges in writing fiction in creative writing class utami dewi1*, fitri rayani siregar2 ` universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia 2 universitas islam negeri syekh ali ahmad addary padangsidimpuan, indonesia (utamidewi@uinsu.ac.id) received: 04th october 2022; revised: 28h november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this article explored students' interests and challenges in writing fiction in efl creative writing classes. the study used a qualitative approach involving 43 college students studying creative writing as the subjects of the study. research instruments for this study were questionnaires and interviews, the first of which asked students what genres of fiction they were interested in, and the second confirmed their motivations in writing the fiction genre and their challenges in writing fiction. data from questionnaires were analysed using percentages, while data from the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). findings of the study revealed that (1) most students (53.5%) were interested in and preferred writing romance fiction, and (2) most students experienced challenges in writing short stories including difficulties in developing an exciting story, deciding on a plot and elaborate dialogues, and defining the characters in the story. key words: fiction; students’ interest; challenges abstrak penelitiaan ini mengeksplorasi minat dan tantangan mahasiswa dalam menulis fiksi di kelas menulis kreatif efl. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan melibatkan 43 mahasiswa yang mempelajari penulisan kreatif sebagai subjek penelitian. instrumen penelitian untuk penelitian ini adalah kuesioner dan wawancara, yang pertama menanyakan kepada siswa genre fiksi apa yang mereka minati, dan yang kedua mengkonfirmasi motivasi mereka dalam menulis genre fiksi dan tantangan mereka dalam menulis fiksi. data hasil kuesioner dianalisis dengan persentase, sedangkan data hasil wawancara dianalisis dengan analisis tematik (braun & clarke, 2006). temuan penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa (1) sebagian besar siswa (53,5%) tertarik dan lebih suka menulis fiksi roman, dan (2) sebagian besar siswa mengalami tantangan dalam menulis cerita pendek termasuk kesulitan dalam mengembangkan cerita yang menarik, menentukan plot dan dialog yang terperinci, dan mendefinisikan karakter dalam cerita. kata kunci: cerita fiksi; minat mahasiswa; tantangan how to cite: dewi, u., siregar, f. r. (2022). exploring students’ interests and challenges in writing fiction in creative writing class. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 359-371. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 359-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing is a crucial skill that needs to be encouraged in efl classes. writing is expressing an idea in written language and connecting people. in efl writing class, students should be able to write their ideas in sentences. writing not only assists students with their social development but also connects them to be in tune with what happens in the world around them. students must consider the audience and purpose in writing (moses & mohamad, 2019). students always learn academic writing to develop their ability to write research papers. besides that, students also learn creative writing. creative writing is a fun field of study in language learning abilities. it stems purely from enthusiasm from within and develops as time evolves into something much more desirable, knowledgeable, and immensely necessary for the learning environment (harshini, 2020). nowadays, university students are taught academic writing and creative writing. creative writing is a new subject in the english department of the state islamic university of north sumatra. by studying creative writing, efl students can write creatively and produce fun writing products. creative writing is a course in which the writer is an artist of his/herself and connected; therefore, their writing is connected to their life (nugraha, 2021). the topics discussed in creative writing class include writing fiction, writing creative non-fiction, and writing poetry. creative writing is any form of writing written with the creativity of mind including fiction writing, poetry writing, creative nonfiction writing, and more. the purpose is to express, whether it be thoughts, experiences, or emotions (olehlova, 2016). in efl creative writing class, the students learn to write fiction in english. fiction is a literary work in which the imagination produces the content, but it is not based on facts (milhorn, 2006). the students learned to write a short story, which is a brief work of fiction. short story writing aims at encouraging students to write literary works. having competence in writing short stories, students can develop their imagination (masie et al., 2018). in writing fiction, the students should be able to use english vocabulary and also be able to produce creative stories. that is why writing fiction becomes a challenge for efl students, and one of the biggest problems in efl creative writing was a lack of vocabulary and low level of language proficiency. they assumed limited knowledge of grammatical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 360-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sentence structure (alisha et al., 2019). fiction is a literary work based on imagination, such as a novel, short story, or fairy tale. rather than simply giving information or inciting the reader to make an action beneficial to the writer, creative writing is written to entertain or educate someone, spread awareness about something, or express one's ideas and opinions (olehlova, 2016). though fiction is just imagination, it is not easy to write fiction. the elements of fiction are characters, dialogue, setting, plot, and conflict. in creative writing class, the learners wrote fiction based on their imagination. some factors influence students' ability to write fiction, such as interests, motivation, teaching strategies, and challenges. in this study, the student's interests and challenges in writing fiction are to be examined. the two factors were described from two points of view: positive and negative. students' interests as a positive factor increase students' ability to write fiction. interest is a propensity to pay attention and remember some activity. learners who have interests pay attention and interest to something and get satisfaction from that. the learners' interest will rise if students get a stimulus from the outside and feel pleasure through something (ainia, 2020). this study examined whether the students have the savours to write fiction. this study investigated the genres they are interested in, such as romance, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery, and thriller. in learning creative writing, the students are independent in choosing their genre based on their interests. if the students are interested in a topic, they can write the story creatively. the students wrote and created ideas in their writing. previous studies have discussed the students' interests and writing abilities. the students have high interest and will have good motivation and valuable abilities. interest plays a massive role in motivation and confidence; teachers and classroom practices can influence students' interest in writing (lipstein & renninger, 2007). high-interest influences students' activity (tri, 2014). in addition, slameto (cited in tri, 2014) stated that indicators of students' interest include attention, willingness, needs, happiness, good attitude, and participation. if the students are interested in the subject, they pay attention. at the same time, as the teacher explains the material, the students do the task, learn the materials, enjoy doing the assignments, have the proper motivation, and deliver an appropriate response to the teacher. in addition, interest helps overcome ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 361-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license unusual or early arrival or frequent repetition of plateaus in learning. students interested in writing are also more likely to develop a sophisticated understanding of writing and its possibilities (lipstein & renninger, 2007). while challenges as negative factors retard the students' competence in writing fiction. the challenges tend to cause difficulties experienced by the students in writing fiction. writing has become difficult because of the challenges students face in learning writing skills. this study investigated students' challenges in writing fiction and whether the students had difficulties in writing fiction. other researchers found some challenges esl students face, such as a lack of vocabulary, poor grammar, poor spelling, readiness, and lack of exposure to books and reading materials (moses & mohamad, 2019). in addition, some challenges or problems for students in writing are the lack of vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, motivation, and the learning environment (ali & ramana, 2018). based on previous research, students’ interest in writing tends to have a positive effect on their ability to write; on the other hand, students' challenges in writing fiction tend to have negative impacts on their achievement in writing. the previous research, however, only discussed students' interests and difficulties in academic writing, not about students’ interests and challenges in creative writing especially fiction writing. this study, on the other hand, is concerned with writing fiction, and it aims to investigate the students’ interests and challenges in fiction writing. results of this study will benefit students in improving their ability to write fiction and solve creative writing difficulties. method research design this study applied a qualitative approach to explore the efl students’ interests and challenges in writing fiction. qualitative research is an approach to exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem (creswell, 2007). this study investigated the students' interest in writing fiction and the challenges students face in writing fiction in efl writing classes. participants the participants of this study were 43 students of the english department of the state islamic university of north sumatra. the researcher chose the participants by using purposive ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 362-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sampling. the participants of this study were the students who studied creative writing subject in which they wrote fiction as one of their assignments. data collection and analysis the questionnaires and interviews were used to investigate the students' interests and challenges in writing fiction. in this study, 43 students were given questionnaires to investigate the students' interests in writing fiction, and only ten students were given a semi-structured interview to explore the reasons for the student's interest and the students’ challenges in writing fiction. the researchers chose ten students who had difficulties writing fiction. the students participated in efl creative writing class and had experience writing fiction; therefore, they can share their perceptions about their interests and challenges in writing fiction. the questionnaires were calculated and presented in percentages. the questionnaires represented the students’ interests and their challenges in writing fiction. the questionnaires were also analysed in each item to conclude students’ interest and challenge in writing fiction. the transcriptions of interviews were analysed using steps for thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). the first step requires the researchers to fully engage in the data by transcribing the interviews, reading the transcripts, and listening to the recordings. next, the researchers started to interpret the collated codes. the data were sorted according to overarching themes. the researchers should be focused on the relationship between codes, subthemes, and themes. the next step is to refine and define the themes and potential subthemes within the data. finally, researchers must translate their analysis into interpretable parts as the research findings. to make the trustworthiness of this study, a member check was used. the researcher shared the analyses of interview transcripts with the participants and confirmed or disconfirmed any claims. findings and discussion this section was divided into two sections: the findings from the data of questionnaires and interviews and the discussion of the results of this study. findings the first part of the findings presented the result of questionnaires that dealt with the students' interests in writing fiction. before investigating the students' interest in writing fiction, the researcher explored whether efl students were fond of reading fiction. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 363-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the question asked about the factors of students' interest in writing fiction. the results represented that 95.34% of students read fiction, and only 4.65% did not like to read fiction stories. based on figure 1, most efl students were interested in reading fiction stories. 95.34% 4.65% students' interests in reading fiction yes no figure 1. the percentages of students’ interest in reading fiction. the next question asked whether students like to write fiction or not. the questionnaires investigated the students' willingness and feelings to write fiction. this question examined the students' interest in writing fiction. the results of the student's answers are represented in figure 2. figure 2 shows that 74.41% of students liked to write fiction, and 25.58% of students did not like to write fiction. figure 2 represented that most efl students are interested in writing fiction. figure 2. the percentages of students’ interest in writing fiction based on figure 1 and figure 2, most students who are interested in reading fiction also are interested in writing fiction. however, some students are interested in reading fiction but not writing fiction. the percentage of students' interest in reading fiction (95.34%) was higher than that of students' interest in writing fiction (74.41%). it meant that students were more interested in reading fiction rather than writing fiction. furthermore, the next question examined what genre of fiction students liked to write. the results showed that four genres of fiction interested the students. the following figure describes the types of fiction students wrote and the percentages in each category. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 364-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 55.50%23.30% 9.30% 9.30% 2.60% genre of fiction romanc e fiction fantasy fiction mystery fiction science fiction historical fiction figure 3. the percentages of students’ interest in writing genre of fiction the results in figure 3 represented that 55.5% of the students like to write romance. from the percentages, it presented that most of the students liked to write romance. to find out the students' reasons, the researcher interviews some students based on their chosen genre. the transcription showed the interview with student 1 and student 2. s1: because the romance genre is the most popular. in my opinion, this genre is also the easiest to write because the ideas can come from events around us which recreated. s2: when i write romance fiction, my feeling is so happy, and i do not know the main reason, but the point is i like to write romance fiction rather than another. maybe when we write fiction, we can feel it by ourselves and touch it. most students who adored writing romance said they felt happy when they wrote romance fiction. they stated that it is the easiest to write because the topic deals with real life, and they just recreated the story. in addition, one of the students was interested in writing romance fiction because romance is the most popular genre. secondly, figure 3 shows that 23.3% of the students were interested in fantasy writing. some reasonable statements were given by students when they decided to write fantasy fiction. s3: because fantasy stories, in my opinion, are more interesting to write. s4: because it is something that i like, using my big fantasy mind and writing it on paper. students 3 and 4 stated they decided to write fantasy fiction because fantasy stories are fascinating. the students also can use their imagination and fantasy in writing the story. eventually, the students were interested in writing mystery fiction and science fiction. 9.3 % of the students were interested in mysteries, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 365-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and 9.3% also liked to write science fiction. some students stated the reason they wrote mystery and science fiction. s5: because mystery fiction seems very interesting to write and makes the readers curious about the mystery presented. s6: i have a unique sensation when writing a mystery story because the readers can feel scared. the students had a curious and unique feeling when they wrote mystery fiction, so they felt interested in writing it. other students said they had challenges writing science fiction and making the story more reasonable to read. the students had different reasons for choosing their genre of fiction. though they found some difficulties, they were interested in writing the genre of fiction. s7: it is very challenging to write about science fiction because you have to do research beforehand since it is related to science, and you want to make your story sounds reasonable. students said they had challenges writing science fiction and making the story more reasonable to read. lastly, 2.6% of the students were interested in historical fiction, and no one liked to write a thriller. student 8, who adored historical fiction, said, “i choose to write historical fiction because it has a clear sequence. historical fiction is also important for people so they can know about history through the story”. the students wrote historical fiction because historical fiction has clear sequences. in conclusion, based on the explanation above, most students were interested in romance, then followed by writing fantasy, mystery, science, and historical fiction. the students considered many reasons for choosing the fiction genre they wanted to write. they felt happy, interested, unique sensations, and curious when they wrote the fiction. the second finding was about students’ challenges. some challenges were found by students when they wrote fiction. in investigating the challenges faced by students, the researcher gave the questionnaires and interviewed the students. the first statement in the questionnaire asked the students whether it was easy to write fiction. the result showed that most students did not think writing fiction was easy. the result represented that 15 (34%) of students strongly disagreed, and 8 (19%) disagreed with the statement. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 366-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license second statement in the questionnaire asked the students whether students found challenges in writing fiction. most of the students decided that they had difficulties writing fiction. it was shown from the results that 9 (21%) students agree, and 10 (23%) students strongly agree. the following are the data from the questionnaires. table 1. students’ challenges no questionnaires s d d n a sa 1 it is easy to write fiction. 15 8 8 5 7 2 i found challenges in writing fiction 9 8 7 9 10 in conclusion, table 1 represented that most of the efl students stated that they faced challenges in writing fiction in english, and most did not agree that writing fiction was easy. interviews investigated the challenges students faced in writing english fiction. the researcher only chose randomly ten students who faced difficulties in writing fiction. the following table presents the results of the interviews about challenges in writing fiction. by answering the interviews, the students expressed their problems in writing fiction as their challenges. the data on students' challenges in writing fiction is displayed in the following table 2. table 2. the students’ challenges in writing fiction no themes categories 1 difficult to find the topic and develop the idea. theme analysis of students' interviews:  the challenge is when my imagination is stuck out of ideas.  the challenge is that i am in the middle of the story, confused about the plot. moreover, sometimes i am stuck in the middle of the story, confused about what to continue.  select the topic.  the challenge is when i want to choose the topic.  if the story is written in english, my challenge in writing fiction is to choose my words and arrange sentences that convey the story’s meaning well. however, if it is written in indonesian, my challenge is to condense the story so that the plot is not too long.  about a week ago, sometimes i get stuck with the story i wrote.  the challenges sometimes i run out of ideas, and i get stuck; when i am in it, i cannot keep writing at that time 2 difficult to make an exciting story. theme analysis of students' interviews."  make the story look interesting.  how to deliver the word ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 367-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license beautifully to make the readers get the feeling 3 difficult to set the plot and the dialogue. theme analysis of students’ interviews:  challenges to developing the plot and making dialogue.  write the storyline to reach a good final ending.  the challenge is that it is hard to start a story or make the story end.  and challenges to create an ever-evolving storyline.  difficult to think about the plot because written fiction has to imagine so that the story reaches the reader. 4 difficult to decide the characters in the story.  two weeks ago, the challenge was to create characters.  confused about choosing the character.  the challenge that i face is making the characterisation of the fiction.  difficult to decide on characters. based on table 2, the results of students' difficulties in writing fiction were classified into four themes; they were: 1. difficult to find the topic and develop an idea. deciding on the theme and topic is the most important to be agreed upon before we write the story. from the interview result, the students have difficulty deciding the short story’s theme and topic. one of the students said, "the challenge is when i want to choose the topic”. 2. difficult to make an exciting story. every writer should be able to make their story interesting to be readable. it is not easy to make the story more interesting. the writer should have creativity and good imagination in writing the story. in this study, the students got difficulty developing an exciting account. one of the students said, "making the story look interesting is challenging”. it meant those students lacked creativity and faced difficulties writing an exciting story. 3. difficult to set the plot and dialogues. a plot is a sequence of events in a story. some students got difficulties in setting their stories and making dialogues. the students faced challenges in establishing the field and making dialogues between characters in the story because they needed the imagination to make the plot and the dialogues. students said, "challenges to developing the plot and making a dialogue is challenging”. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 368-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 4. difficult to decide on the characters in the story. the story requires the central character, motivated to take action or react to an outside force to achieve some purpose. in writing a short story, the writer should be able to decide the characterisation of his/her account. in this study, some students got difficulty deciding the characters in the story. deciding on the characters of the story was essential thing before the writer developed the plot in the story. strong characters were considered, such as the protagonists and the antagonist. in this study, some students have problems setting the character because they have weak imaginations in creating the story. one of the students said, "the challenge that i face is making the characterisation of the fiction". in conclusion, in this study, the students were interested in writing some fiction genres but faced some challenges when writing fiction. romance fiction was the most favourite genre that the students wrote. the students struggled to decide on topics, plots, and characters and make dialogue and fun stories. discussion the students decided to write some genres of fiction, such as romance fiction (53.5%), fantasy (23.3%), science fiction (9.3%), and mystery (9.3%). other research also found that some of the students were actively writing fiction. they were all involved as characters who wrote about their fictional lives using shifting points of view (ryan rish, 2011). romance fiction is the most popular, and the story deals with real life. students tended to explore personal topics that involved their inner emotions (pitaloka, 2019). the research also found that students enrolled in john's swords and spaceships class were interested in fantasy and science fiction (ryan rish, 2011). the result also showed minimal genre chosen by students, representing that only 2.6 % of students were interested in writing historical fiction though she found a challenge in making the story sequence. historical fiction is a literary genre in which the story takes place in the past. historical fiction captures the details of the period as accurately as possible, such as social norms, manners, customs, and traditions, to enhance believability. many novels in this genre tell fictional stories involving real historical characters and events (parimala & rajendra karmarkar, 2022) most of the students faced challenges in writing a short story. the study’s findings presented that students faced four challenges in writing short fiction. firstly, students were difficult to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 369-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license find the topic and develop an idea. the previous research stated that the students had difficulty deciding the theme and developing the story. the student’s ability to organise the idea was weak because they could not manage the ideas well (aulia, 2019; uswar & andriani, 2019). another researcher also found that 55% of the students find their writing problems because they do not have enough ideas for the task (thi & anh, n.d.). furthermore, the lack of vocabulary has caused the students to face challenges writing their ideas (moses & mohamad, 2019). secondly, students were experiencing difficulty in developing an exciting story. the other researcher found that in the process of creating the theme, 69% of the students experienced similar problems in the creation of the plot, whether or not the main idea of the story is unique or similar to the other stories (pratiwi, 2019). thirdly, students found challenges in setting the plot and making dialogues. lastly, efl students faced challenges in deciding the characters in the story. on the other hand, there are 11 issues in total, namely plot, characterisations, theme, settings, point of view, grammar, sentence structure, word choice, distractions, writer's block, and mood as the challenges in writing a short story (pratiwi, 2019). many researchers found that students have problems developing their ideas in writing. each student may face different challenges in learning writing (moses & mohamad, 2019). the language issues in the learners' writing were grammar and syntax, including incorrect use of prepositions, articles, tenses, singular/plural, verbs, sentence structure, and informal expressions (fareed et al., 2016). this research also found that students got difficulties elaborating the idea in writing fiction. conclusion and suggestions fiction is a type of creative writing based on the writer's imagination. the students' interests positively impacted their writing ability; on the other hand, students' challenges involved adverse effects on the students when they wrote fiction. in this study, most of the students were interested in writing romance fiction because romance was familiar to them and they enjoyed when writing that genre. the students also faced four challenges in writing fiction including difficulties in 1) deciding the topic and developing the idea, 2) making an exciting story, 3) creating a good plot with interesting dialogues, and 4) setting robust characters in fiction. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 370-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by knowing the students' interests in writing fiction, the lecturers can choose the appropriate genre and enhance the student's ability to write fiction. in addition, by knowing the students' challenges, the lecturers can use strategies or techniques in writing fiction to solve the students' difficulties. both factors can influence students' ability to write fiction; therefore, the teachers should be able to solve the students' challenges and enhance the student's interest in writing fiction. the correlation between gender and students' interest in writing fiction is another interesting topic that can be investigated further. related to challenges, researchers can analyse some strategies used in writing fiction. references ainia, n. (2020). students’ interest in learning english of lleventh-grade students sma negeri 1 sukodadi. 7(2). ali, s., & ramana, v. (2018). academic writing challenges at universities in saudi arabia and solutions. international journal of english language and humanities, 4(10), 291–298. alisha, f., safitri, n., santoso, i., & siliwangi, i. (2019). students difficulties in writing efl. project, volume 2(1). aulia, f. (2019). an analysis of students’ ability and difficulty in writing narrative text. braun, v., & clarke, v. (2006). using thematic analysis in psychology. in qualitative research in psychology (vol. 3, issue 2). https://doi.org/10.1191/14780887 06qp063oa creswell, j. w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: vol. 3rd ed. harshini, p. (2020). creative writing and its influence in the generation of language sills: a creative approach. journal of critical reviews, 7(4), 186–188. https://doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.04. 32 lipstein, r., & renninger, k. a. (2007). swarthmore college works educational studies faculty works interest for writing: how teachers can make a difference. http://works.swarthmore.edu/faceducation masie, s. r., siswanto, w., pratiwi, y., & suwignyo, h. (2018). the literacies effectiveness of short story writing learning model. journal of language teaching and research, 9(2), 391. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0902. 23 milhorn, h. t. (2006). writing genre fiction: a guide to the craft. de rebus, 9–11. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 371-371 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28372 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license moses, r. n., & mohamad, m. (2019). challenges faced by students and teachers on writing skills in esl contexts: a literature review. creative education, 10(13), 3385–3391. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2019.10 13260 parimala, g., & rajendra karmarkar, p. (2022). historical fiction and hilary mantel. international journal of english literature and social sciences, 7(1), 2456–7620. https://doi.org/10.22161/ijels pitaloka, r. (2019). a content analysis of male and female students’ differences in writing english fiction at sixth semester of english education study program [thesis]. iain bengkulu. pratiwi, n. y. (2019). the analysis of problems encountered by beginner writer in writing short story: a case study in creative writing class. indonesian journal of educational research and review, 2(3). olehlova, i. and p. i. (2016). creative writing. in agenda (vol. 49, issues 3–4). estonian unesco youth association in cooperation with piepildīto sapņu istaba and cooperativa braccianti. https://doi.org/10.4324/97804292 61114-7 ryan rish, b. m. (2011). engaging adolescents’ interests, literacy practices, and identities: digital collaborative writing of fantasy fiction. nugraha, d. s. a. (2021). problems encountered by students in online creative writing class and solutions. edulingua, 8(2). thi, d., & anh, n. (n.d.). efl student’s writing skills: challenges and remedies. 9(6), 74–84. https://doi.org/10.9790/73880906017484 tri, s. (2014). teaching style and students’ interest in learning english. jurnal penelitian universitas jambi seri humaniora, 8(33), 44. https://ipsas.upm.edu.my/upload/d okumen/iiss_022.pdf uswar, y., & andriani, n. (2019). efl students’ ability in writing reviews for a novel at a university in medan. studies in english language and education, 6(2), 300–308. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v6i2 .14784. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 145-159 an investigation of cohesion and rhetorical moves in thesis abstracts luthfiyah, alek, fahriany received: 01st february 2015; revised: 6th august 2015; accepted: 25th november 2015 abstract this study aimed at investigating cohesion and rhetorical moves in thesis abstracts of english education students. this study employed a qualitative research design in which 10 abstracts were chosen as samples. the cohesion is analyzed based on halliday's and hasan's concept while rhetorical moves are analyzed based on swales' and feak's framework. the results show that all cohesive devices are used except substitution. among those devices, reference is the most frequently used. the results also show that some cohesive devices are used incorrectly. as a result, seven abstracts (70%) are still in medium category of cohesion level while three abstracts (30%) are in high category of cohesion level. furthermore, 7 abstracts are organized in different move patterns which do not follow the swales' and feak's framework. from the results of the study, it can be concluded that most of the abstract samples achieve medium category level of cohesion, and the rhetorical moves in most of the abstracts samples are not organized well. key words: thesis abstracts, rhetorical moves, cohesive devices abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki kohesi dan langkah retoris dalam abstrak tesis mahasiswa pendidikan bahasa inggris. penelitian ini menggunakan desain penelitian kualitatif di mana 10 abstrak dipilih sebagai sampel. kohesi dalam abstrak dianalisis berdasarkan konsep kohesi halliday dan hasan sementara langkah retoris dianalisis berdasarkan kerangka swales dan feak. hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa semua perangkat kohesif digunakan dalam 10 abstrak kecuali substitusi. di antara perangkat tersebut, referensi adalah yang paling sering digunakan. hasil penelitian juga menunjukkan bahwa ada beberapa perangkat kohesif yang digunakan secara tidak benar dalam abstrak. akibatnya, tujuh abstrak (70%) masih dalam kategori tingkat kohesi sedang sementara tiga abstrak (30%) berada pada kategori tingkat kohesi tinggi. selanjutnya, 7 abstrak diatur dalam pola langkah yang berbeda yang tidak mengikuti kerangka swales dan feak. dari hasil penelitian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa sebagian besar sampel abstrak mencapai tingkat kategori kohesi sedang, dan langkah retoris di sebagian besar sampel abstrak tidak terorganisasi dengan baik. kata kunci: abstrak skripsi, langkah-langkah retoris, perangkat kohesif how to cite: luthfiyah., alex., fahriany. (2015). an investigation of cohesion and rhetorical moves in thesis abstracts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 145-159. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2. 3086 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3086 introduction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 146-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction an abstract as one of the academic genres has its own organizational framework and linguistic features. the abstract describes the important information of work or research as briefly and accurately as possible. the information of the abstract is usually written in some moves such as background, aim, method, result and conclusion. besides, the abstract should be written in no more than one page and should consist of about 150−300 words. also, the tenses which are commonly used in abstracts are simple present tense, simple past tense, and present perfect tense. those tenses can be written in active and passive voice form. in addition, the abstract has many important roles. one of them is to provide the principle knowledge of an article. the abstract also can be considered as a persuasive rhetorical tool which describes the importance of the text. besides, the abstract can fulfill an important social function that allows readers to see how individuals work to position themselves within their communities (hyland, as cited in afful & nartey, 2014, p. 93). hence, the abstract of research paper has to be well written. there are many important aspects to take into account in writing an abstract. one of the aspects is cohesion. chan and foo (2001) said that according to academic writing handbooks and esp instructors, cohesive is one of the abstract features which has to be considered beside clear, concise, well-organized, and selfcontained (p. 13). cohesion is a semantic relation that produce connectivity between the ideas in the text through the use of linguistic devices which are mutually dependent in order to generate a text. in this paper, cohesion refers to the use of linguistic devices to indicate the relations between the parts in the abstract. hence, cohesion is an important tool for producing a text and its meaning. by using cohesion, the writer can join the linguistic items to produce textual continuity that enables the reader to follow the logical or chronological sequence of a text. therefore, there is a need to know the use of cohesive devices in the process of creating the abstract. furthermore, rhetorical move is also important aspect which has to be considered in writing abstract. abstracts are guided by a series of moves which characterize the flow of the discourse. swales (as cited in noguera, 2012, p. 68) used the terms ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ refer to the sequential subdivision of each section ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|147-159 of the ras (research articles). move is also defined as a segment of the abstract. each move presents a particular intention or purpose which complete to the overall communicative purpose of the text (swales, as cited by oneplee, p. 13). the different moves of abstract had been presented in some studies. the studies described the threemove, the four-move, the five-move and the six-move. there are a number of studies on abstracts. most of these studies have investigated the move analysis or rhetorical variation (e.g. tseng, 2011; saboori & hashemi, 2013), language varieties of the abstracts (ye and wang, 2013). cohesive elements in abstracts also had been conducted by some researchers (e.g. kai, 2008; seddigh, shokrpour & kafipor, 2010; afful & nartey, 2014). however, much less attention has been given to cohesion level in thesis abstract. also, there is no research yet on rhetorical move with cohesion in thesis abstract. therefore, the current study will investigate the rhetorical move and cohesion in the undergraduate students’ thesis abstracts of english education department in uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. in this study, the abstracts which are investigated are the thesis abstracts of undergraduate students of english education in uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. these abstracts are chosen because of the importance of the thesis as one of the requirements in getting bachelor degree. as the development of technology, uin also publishes the students’ thesis on internet to be accessed by others. however, based on her analysis on some abstracts of students’ thesis in english education of uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, the researcher found that there are some cohesive devices which are not used properly in the abstracts. the rhetorical moves of the abstracts are also not organized well. it is because the information in some moves of the abstracts is not successfully presented. also, some verb tenses and voice forms are not used correctly. based on the problem of the study, the researcher formulated the research question as follow: 1. to what extent is the cohesion level achieved in the students’ thesis abstract of english education department in fitk uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta?; 2. how is the rhetorical move of the students’ thesis abstract of english education department in fitk uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta organized? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 148-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 method this study is a discourse analysis which uses a qualitative research design to investigate cohesion and rhetorical moves in thesis abstracts. the data of this study are written data about cohesive devices and rhetorical move in the abstracts. the data sources are the students’ thesis abstracts of department of english education in uin syarif hidayatullah, jakarta from the period of 2014. there are 147 abstracts from this period. then, those abstracts are analyzed about the use of cohesive devices. after that, the researcher chooses 10 abstracts which have the lowest score of cohesion to be data sources. in collecting and analyzing the data, each abstracts are read carefully to identify the move and the cohesive devices. the moves found are marked and coded following the swale's and feak's (2009) move framework while the cohesive devices found are marked and coded following halliday's and hasan's (2013) cohesion concept. all moves and all cohesive devices found are classified based on the codes into tables provided. after that, the rhetorical moves and the cohesive devices used in the abstracts are analyzed. also, the problems which may appear in the rhetorical move and in the cohesive devices in the abstracts will be considered. then, the data which have been analyzed are interpreted and concluded by the researcher to answer the research questions. furthermore, to know and describe the cohesion level of the 10 abstracts, the parameter assessment is required. in this study, the gradual technique is used to construct that parameter. the parameter is used to know the cohesion level per pair of sentences in the 10 abstracts so that the sentences in the abstract have to be separated first into pairs. then, each pair is analyzed and given score. after analyzing the cohesion level, the total score from each abstract is categorized into high category, medium category and low category level. research findings cohesion frequency of cohesive devices used the findings of this research show that all devices are used in all 10 abstracts except substitution. from all devices, reference, conjunction, and repetition are used in all abstrcacts while some other devices such as synonym, hyponym, antonym, and collocation are used in some abstracts. the frequency of each device can be seen in the pie chart below. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|149-159 as seen in figure 1, reference is the most dominant devices used in the 10 students' thesis abstracts with 42.6% followed by repetition with 37.2%. in addition, the least dominant device is general word in which occurs only once (0.2%). the next least dominant device is ellipsis with 0.9% followed by antonym (1, 2%) and collocation (1, 7%). while, the other devices such as conjunction, synonym, hyponym and meronym are used frequently in the 10 students' thesis abstracts. furthermore, from all the devices found in 10 students' thesis abstracts, there are some devices which are used incorrectly. the incorrect devices are reference, conjunction, repetition, synonym, hyponym, and collocation. among those devices, reference is the most dominant incorrect device which consists of 44 incorrect items or 73.3%. moreover, the findings show that all the 10 students' thesis abstracts use incorrect cohesive devices. there are three abstracts which mostly use incorrect devices; they are abstract 1, abstract 8, and abstract 10. while the abstract which use a few incorrect devices is abstract 4 with only two incorrect devices. this is the example of the incorrect cohesive device used. cohesion level concerning on cohesion level, it is found that there are two categories of cohesion level, which are high and medium, as can be seen in table 1. figure 1. the frequency of cohesive devices in the students' thesis abstracts ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 150-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 1. cohesion category level of the students' thesis abstracts abstract category level score a1 high 84.8 a2 high 80 a3 medium 76.2 a4 medium 71 a5 medium 77.5 a6 high 81.9 a7 medium 67.3 a8 medium 50 a9 medium 75.4 a10 medium 77.4 table 2. move pattern of the students' thesis abstracts moves total percentage pattern 3 moves 1 10% amr= 1 4 moves 7 70% amrc = 3 bamr = 1 amcr=1 amcrc=1 amcrmrc=1 5 moves 2 20% bamcrc=1 ambmrmc=1 note: b = background, a = aim, m = method, r = result, c = conclusion table 1 shows that most of the samples of the abstracts are in medium category level. there are 7 abstracts (70%) which are in the medium category of cohesion level and three abstracts (30%) which are in the high category of cohesion level. it can be seen that abstract 1, abstract 2, and abstract 6 reach the high level of cohesion because they have good score of cohesion level. however, all the ten abstracts above have one or more pairs of sentences in which the level is not cohesive. the pairs of sentences which are not cohesive are caused by the cohesive devices which are not used correctly or even not used at all. rhetorical moves move pattern from the analysis, the pattern of abstract move can be seen in the table 2. it can be seen in table 2 that, from all 10 abstracts, there is no abstract which follows the move pattern proposed by swales and feak (2004): background, aim, method, result, and conclusion (bamrc). it might be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|151-159 because the students were not able to write their ideas in a good order so that they placed some moves in different part (cycling the move). the other possible reason is that the students only know three or four moves which have to be included in the abstract. table 2 shows that from 10 abstracts, there is one abstract consisting of three moves with amr pattern. it means that there are two missing moves in the abstract. next, there are seven abstracts consist of four moves. the most dominant pattern of four-move abstracts is amrc. the other four-move abstracts use the pattern of bamr; amcr; amcrc; and amcrmrc. also, there are two abstracts consist of five moves with different pattern; bamcrc; and ambmrmc. it can be concluded that the most frequent abstract is the fourmove abstract with amrc pattern while the least frequent abstract is the three-move abstract with amr pattern. moreover, there are also some abstracts which contain of move cycles. it means that there is one or more moves in the abstracts which is repeated. it can be seen in table 2 that the move cycles of method move (m), result move (r), and conclusion move (c) in some patterns such as amcrmrc. move frequency furthermore, all moves in the 10 students' thesis abstracts are distributed in different frequency in which some moves are used in all abstracts and the other moves are not. the frequency of each move can be seen in table 3. table 3 shows that: the background move is the least frequent move in the students' thesis abstract (30%); the aim move, the method move, and the result move are found in 100% of the analyzed abstracts and the conclusion move are used frequently in abstracts of students' thesis (80%). it means that the aim move, the method move, and the result move are the obligatory moves in the 10 students' thesis abstract while the background move is optional and the conclusion move is conventional. table 3. the frequency of the occurrence of each move in the students' thesis abstracts move total percentage background 3 30 % aim 10 100 % method 10 100 % result 10 100% conclusion 8 80 % the length of move content the background move is only presented in 3 abstracts (30%). one abstract provides the general information and the problem of study ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 152-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 while the other two abstracts provide the general information only or the problem only. the information is written in one or two sentences. similarly, the aim move in the abstracts samples are mostly written in one or two sentences. it is about 8 25% of the abstract so that it becomes the shortest move in most abstracts (60%). all the abstracts samples describe a general purpose of the study in the aim move. besides, some other abstracts add the information of specific purpose or the importance of the study. unlike the aim move, the methods move is the longest part in almost all abstracts (80%). all abstracts samples describe about method and design of the study, and most of them explain about population and sample of the study, instrument for collecting data, and data analysis techniques. in addition, 20% of abstracts samples add the information of data collecting procedures and research procedures in the method move. however, there is also unclear information in the method move. next, the result move in most of the abstracts samples describe about the result of statistical calculation and the result of hypothesis. it means that the result move is written in short sentences even it is so short in one abstract that make the information is not sufficiently presented. there are only two abstracts provide much more information in the result move. furthermore, the conclusion move is also the shortest move in most of abstracts samples. 60% of the abstracts describe the conclusion of the study in only in one sentence. on the other side, two abstracts add some information of research discussion but one of them provides incomplete sentence. in addition, the problem also appears in this move in some abstracts that the conclusion move with the same information is written twice in cycling. the verb tense and voice the tense used in the background move and the aim move in most abstracts samples is simple present tense in the active voice form. however, inconsistent tense is used in those two moves. in addition, the method move in the students' thesis abstracts uses simple present and simple past tense. 50% of the abstracts use both the simple present and simple past tenses, 40% of the abstracts use simple past tense, and the rest use simple present. the tenses are used in the form of active and passive voice or even the mix of them. nevertheless, the method move which uses both the simple present and simple past tense sometimes seems to be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|153-159 inconsistent in using the tenses. some passive verbs are also not successfully used in this move. moreover, most of students' thesis abstracts (50%) describe the result move in simple present tense with the active voice form or the mix form of active and passive voice. while, the other 40% abstracts use both the simple present and simple past tense, and one abstract uses only simple past tense. however, the same as the method move, the result move in some abstracts contains of incorrect passive and inconsistent tenses used. furthermore, the tense used mostly in the conclusion move is present tense in the form of active voice. however, incorrect passive voice is also presented in two abstracts. discussion cohesion the result of the present research shows that all cohesive devices, except substitution, proposed by halliday and hasan (2013) are used in varying proportions. from all devices used, reference is the predominant cohesive device used in the 10 abstracts with 42.6% or 283 items. it is in line with the researches done by fakuade and sharndama (2012) and abusaeedi (2010). in the students' thesis abstracts, most references occur anaphorically with the dominant reference used is demonstrative reference of definite article 'the'. it is because the abstracts consist of some moves therefore this reference is used to provide the information which has been discussed earlier as clear as well. however, the definite article 'the' is the most dominant device which is used incorrectly by the students so that it makes the abstracts cannot be interpreted well by the reader. the problem mostly occurs in the use of references without any referent. it can be because the students are confused when they have to use the definite article 'the'. unlikely, the previous study by sadighi and heydari (2012) found that the personal reference is the most dominant incorrect device. it is because the writers are still confused to distinguish the various references. next, as it is mentioned before, substitution is the device which is not used in the students' thesis abstracts while ellipsis is found only 6 items (0.9 %). in the previous study by fakuade and sharndama (2012), not only the substitution which is not used but also ellipsis. however, abusaeedi (2010) found that substitution and ellipsis are used in the students essay although they are used in small number. it may be due to the uncommon use of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 154-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 substitution and ellipsis in written test such as in abstracts. then, conjunctions seem to be frequently used in all 10 abstracts with additive conjunction as dominant conjunctions. it may stem from the writers’ strong desire to explicitly present their arguments chronologically. nevertheless, in line with sadighi and heydari (2012), some conjunctions are not used correctly. from all incorrect uses of conjunction, most of them are because the writers are unable to stamp explicitly the relation between sentences appropriately. in other words, there are some conjunctions not used as their functions such as some causal conjunctions which are signaled by additive conjunction or temporal conjunctions which are signal by causal conjunction. besides, among the lexical cohesive devices, repetition (37.2%) is the most frequently used by the students in their thesis abstracts. it is similar with the researches by seddigh et al. (2010). however, from all cohesive devices, repetition comes the second of the most frequent devices as in study by fakuade and sharndama (2012). many occurrences of repetition is because the repetition of the same lexical item is the easiest form of reiteration. however, like the previous study by sadighi and heydari (2012), the present study found that there are some repetitions which are not used correctly in the students' thesis abstracts. the incorrect uses of repetition are caused by the interference of students' l1 (native language). furthermore, seven abstracts of the students' thesis (70%) are in medium category of cohesion level and three abstracts (30%) are in high category of cohesion level. the abstracts which are in the medium category of cohesion level use more incorrect devices than those which are in the high category of cohesion level. also, the medium abstracts contain not cohesive pairs of sentences more than the high ones. rhetorical moves the result of move analysis in the abstracts samples shows that most of the abstracts (30%) fundamentally followed the amrc pattern which is proposed by hyland (2000). it is similar with the findings of studies by tseng (2011), saboori and hashemi (2013), and kang and lee (2015). it indicates that the students of english education department in uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta tend to use the four-move abstract in their thesis and open their thesis abstracts with the aim move. it may be due to the fact that the amrc ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|155-159 pattern is commonly used in language community especially in english education. it means that amrc pattern is the conventional structure set by the english academic discourse community. on the other hand, the other abstracts include moves cycling (repeating the moves). in some previous study, the move cycling is not discussed. however, saboori and hashemi (2013) discussed about hybrid move instead of moves cycling. in the present study, the moves which are cycled or repeated are the method move, the result move and the conclusion move such as amcrmrc (aim, method, conclusion, result, method, result, and conclusion); bamcrc (background, aim, method, result, and conclusion); and ambmrmc (aim, method, background, method, result, method, and conclusion). in addition, as done by the previous researchers, all moves in the abstracts samples were classified into obligatory, conventional, and optional moves. in line with tseng (2011), saboori and hashemi (2013), and kang lee (2015), the present study found that the aim move, the method move, and the result move are obligatory moves, the conclusion move is conventional move and the bakcground move is optional move. in detail, the aim move, the method move and the result move are included in all abstracts samples; the conclusion move is used in most abstracts samples; and the background move is only used in a few abstracts samples. the different frequency of each move is influenced by the research field. this is as stated by suntara and usaha (2013) that the greater frequency of occurrence of the conclusion move in the field of applied linguistics may be a consequence of the nature of the discipline. and, kanoksilapatham (as cited by saeesaw & tangkiengsirisin, 2014) said that "the presence of the background move reflects the richness of current literature in the fields and, on the other hand, the absence of the move may be due most likely to the relatively short history in the fields". moreover, among the five moves, the methods move is the longest move in most abstracts samples. it means that the students in the present study tend to provide more information in method move. it is different from the study conducted by tseng (2013) which found that the result move was the longest, suggesting that the focus of the abstracts is to provide the informative results. on the other hand, the aim move is the shortest move among the others. it is also different from the study by tseng (2013) which found that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 156-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the background move was the shortest, suggesting that it was less attended to the abstracts. next, in the case of verb tense, comparing the results of the present study with the previous studies, similarities and differences are found. in line with tseng (2013) and saboori and hashemi (2013), the present tense is used mostly in the background move, the aim move, and the conclusion move. those moves are also written mostly in active voice form. then, both present tense and past tense are used frequently in the method move and present tense is mostly used in the result move. tseng (2013), however, found that the past tense was used more frequently in the method move and the result move, and saboori and hashemi (2013) found that present tense are used dominantly in the method and the result move. tseng (2013) argued about this issue that "verb tense usage is quite a complex issue in that authors may vary their choice of verb tense depending on the overall purpose, the context, the sequence of ideas, or even what is being expressed." furthermore, there are some problems appearing in each move of the thesis abstracts. first, in some abstracts, incomplete information of the move content is included in the background move, the method move, the result move, or the conclusion move. second, the content move is unnecessarily repeated in the background move and the conclusion move. third, the tense is used inconsistently in the background move, the aim move, the method move, or the result move in some abstracts. fourth, the passive form is used incorrectly in the method move, the result move, or the conclusion move in some abstracts. conclusion and suggestion based on the research findings, it can be concluded that from 10 thesis abstracts chosen, most of the abstracts are in the medium category of cohesion level. it is due to the fact that there are some pairs of sentences in the abstracts which are not cohesive. in other words, there are some devices which are not used incorrectly or not used at all so that the pairs of sentences are not cohesive. then, concerning on rhetorical moves, most of the abstracts samples use various move patterns which do not follow the swale's and feak's move pattern. the rhetorical moves in the most abstracts are also organized by using incorrect passive voice and inconsistent tense. it means that the rhetorical moves in most of the students’ abstracts samples are not organized well. it can be because the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|157-159 students are not able to organize their ideas in a good order and they are lack of knowledge about the abstract features. the findings in this research inform the students and other people that, in writing the abstracts, they have to make sure that cohesive devices are correctly used to connect every sentence in abstract. as the abstract consists of some moves, they can use reference, repetition and conjunction more than the other devices to connect each move. if they use the reference, they have to make sure that the referent is provided and is suitable with the reference. then, in using conjunction, they have to know the meaning and the function of conjunction in order to avoid misused of the conjunction. the different types of research can also influence the use of conjunction. for example, in abstract of experimental study will use more causal conjunction while in abstract of descriptive study will use more additive or temporal conjunction. in organizing the rhetorical move of thesis abstract, bamrc and amrc pattern can be effectively used based on the content of research paper. if the research paper contains much important information of research findings, using amrc pattern is more effective than bamrc. on the other hand, if there is only little information of research findings in the research paper, it is better to use bamrc pattern to provide whole information of the research paper. the findings of this research also inform the students and other people that, before writing the abstracts, they have to separate each moves first or they can write a structured abstract. it is needed to make their ideas organized in good order and avoid repeating the same information. and, the students have to know the language features of each move in thesis abstracts. they have to make sure that they do not use different tenses in the same area of information. then, the students have to recognize the use of voices in every move in abstracts. they have to be able to differentiate the active voice and passive voice form to avoid misinterpretation. references abusaeedi, a. a. r. (2010). use of cohesive ties in english as a foreign language students' writing. iranian journal of applied language studies, vol.2, no.1, 2010. afful, j. b. a., and nartey, m. (2014). cohesion in the abstracts of undergraduate dissertations: an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 158-159|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 intra-disciplinary study in a ghanaian university. journal of elt and applied linguistics (jeltal) volume 2, issue 1, 2014. retrieved from http://www.jeltal.com. chan, s.k. and foo, s. (2001) bridging the interdisciplinary gap in abstract writing for scholarly communication, in genres and discourse in education, work and cultural life. oslo: oslo university college. fakuade, g., and sharndama e. c. (2012). a comparative analysis of variations in cohesive devices in professional and popularized legal texts. british journal of arts and social sciences vol. 4, no. 2, 2012. retrieved from http://www.bjournal.co.uk/bj ass.aspx. halliday & hassan. (2013). cohesion in english. usa: routledge. retrieved may3,2014, retrieved from http://books.google.com.my/bo oks?id=dsusagaaqbaj&pg= pt16&dq=cohesion+and+texture &hl=en&sa=x&ei=vzlju6ngsijr qfasoag&ved=0ceoq6aewbq# v=onepage&q=cohesion%20and% 20texture&f= false. kai, j. (2008). lexical cohesion patterns in ns and nns dissertation abstracts in applied linguistics: a comparative study. linguistics journal, 3, 132–144. 2011, retrieved from http://www.linguisticsjournal.co m. kang, h. y. and lee, ch. h. (2014). analysis of topic changes and moves in abstracts of multimedia-assisted language learning and language learning and technology. multimediaassisted language learning, 17(4), 38-60. oneplee, j. (2008). genre analysis of scientific abstracts: a comparative study of science and nature journals. a master thesis. piqué-noguera, c. (2012a). content and form in english business abstracts and research articles: a corpus-based genre approach. valencia: universitat de valència; phd dissertation. saboori, f., & hashemi, m. r. (2013). a cross-disciplinary move analysis of research article abstracts. international journal of language learning and applied linguistics world (ijllalw), volume 4 (4), ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|159-159 2013; 483−496. retrieved from http://www.ijllalw.org. sadighi, f. and heydari, p. (2012). cohesion analysis of l2 writing: the case of iranian undergraduate efl learners. mediterranean journal of social sciences vol. 3 (2) may 2012. saeeaw, s. and tangkiengsirisin, s. (2014). rhetorical variation across research article abstracts in environmental science and applied linguistics. english language teaching; vol. 7, no. 8; 2014. doi:10.5539/elt.v7n8p81. seddigh, f., shokrpour, n., & kafipour, r. (2010). lexical cohesion in english and persian abstracts. iranian journal of applied language studies, vol. 2, no.1, 2010. retrieved from http://ijals2.usb.ac.ir/ article_66_17.html. suntara, w., and usaha, s. (2013). research article abstracts in two related disciplines: rhetorical variation between linguistics and applied linguistics. english language teaching; vol. 6, no. 2; 2013. doi:10.5539/elt.v6n2p84. swales, j. m. & c. b. feak (2009). abstracts and the writing of abstracts. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. tseng, f. (2011). analyses of move structure and verb tense of research article abstracts in applied linguistics journals. international journal of english linguistics vol. 1, no. 2, 2011. doi:10.5539/ijel.v1n2p27. ye, d. and wang d. (2013). language varieties of the abstracts in journal articles written by chinese and american scholars: a contrastive corpus analysis using the gramulator. international journal of applied linguistics & english literature, vol. 2 no. 2, 2013. doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.2p.15. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 144-159 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the implementation of wordwall games in vocabulary learning nasru ilahiyati*, zuliati rohmah, hamamah brawijaya university (nasruilahiyati@student.ub.ac.id) received: 24th december 2022; revised: 15th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this article investigates the use of online-based application "wordwall games" as a vocabulary learning tool. the research aims to observe the participants' ability to enhance pronunciation, memorize vocabulary, and construct words into sentences. this study addresses three research questions: how is the design of wordwall games beneficial for developing students' vocabulary?; how is the application of wordwall games integrated into vocabulary teaching?; how do students acquire new vocabulary after being instructed using wordwall? to collect the data for this study, the researchers conducted direct observations involving ten students studying english literature in malang as participants of this study. six game-based media were utilized, including random card games, crossword games, true or false tasks, translation tasks, construct word tasks, and anagram tasks. the research findings indicate that using wordwall games as a learning tool effectively improves students’ pronunciation, memorization, and sentence construction skills. key words: online-based learning; wordwall games; vocabulary learning abstrak artikel ini membahas penggunaan aplikasi berbasis online "wordwall games" sebagai alat pembelajaran kosakata. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengobservasi kemampuan partisipan dalam meningkatkan pengucapan, menghafal, dan menyusun kata-kata menjadi kalimat. artikel ini membahas tiga pertanyaan: 1. bagaimana desain wordwall games bermanfaat untuk mengembangkan kosakata siswa? 2. bagaimana penerapan wordwall games dalam pengajaran kosakata? 3. bagaimana siswa memperoleh kosakata baru setelah diajarkan menggunakan wordwall? peneliti melakukan observasi langsung yang melibatkan sepuluh mahasiswa yang sedang menempuh pendidikan sastra inggris di malang. enam media berbasis permainan digunakan, termasuk random card games, crossword games, true or false tasks, translation tasks, construct word tasks, dan anagram tasks. temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan wordwall games sebagai alat pembelajaran efektif dalam meningkatkan pengucapan, penghafalan, dan kemampuan menyusun kalimat. kata kunci: aplikasi berbasis online; permainan wordwall; pembelajaran kosakata how to cite: ilahiyati, n., rohmah, z., hamamah. (2023). the implementation of wordwall games in vocabulary learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 144-159. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 145-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction vocabulary is an essential factor in english language learning. vocabulary is integral to learning grammar, structure, and pronunciation (suparmin, 2017). when learning vocabulary, the students need to write the vocabulary and memorize it in front of the class and usually use textbooks, spelling drills, and listening, and students are required to take notes when teachers explain (yu, 2018). this kind of phenomenon is still a conventional style for teaching vocabulary. almost all students feel bored and uninterested because they are forced to memorize it within a specific time frame and several words (devanti & amalia, 2018). thus, students need various activities to enhance their vocabulary and build exciting learning situations. recently, games have been referred to as effective media for teaching english, especially for vocabulary comprehension, as game-based learning enhances students' creativity and increases their knowledge (rohmah, 2012; rohmah, 2013; shiddiq, 2021). furthermore, gaming media can provide a motivating and enjoyable environment (aini, 2020). using games in vocabulary learning, students feel challenged and curious as they play them. game-based learning evokes emotions in students as they think about answers and solve challenges within the game. this aligns with previous research conducted by yuniarti and rahkmawati (2021), stating that games help students solve problems, enhance critical thinking skills, and make judgments in the learning process. moreover, studies conducted by kherzlou et al. (2017), alzahrani and roberts (2021), munoz et al. (2021), and perez (2022) reported that using media with moving objects or images (animation) and audio clips as game media can help students and teachers become more interactive in learning, especially in improving vocabulary mastery. previous studies reinforce that game-based learning helps students enhance their language proficiency, particularly in understanding vocabulary. one of the game applications based on educational and interactive quizzes is wordwall (shiddiq, 2021). usually, crossword games can be found in magazines or newspapers. however, with the help of technological developments, crossword puzzle games can now be accessed via the wordwall application. the wordwall application combines modes of speech, images, colors, moving images, sound, and music to make the media more attractive. using wordwall, students and teachers can easily access it http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 146-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license anywhere and anytime. in addition, students can develop new language learning skills in a way that is easy to remember because the game features can be used as reference material if students have difficulty finding the correct vocabulary (yuniarti & rahkmawati, 2021). the wordwall application features provide 18 interactive games, including match up, open the box, random cards, anagrams, labeled, categorized, quiz, find the match, matching pairs, missing word, wordsearch, rank order, random wheel, group short, unjumble, gameshow quiz, maze chase and airplane. they have different and exciting game designs, and many users state that this application can contribute to the interactive student learning process (shiddiq, 2021). one of the previous research stated that the tendency of conventional learning in an era of advanced technology would create less efficient learning situations (li, 2021). however, the excessive use of technology impacts students' dependency during learning (devanti & amalia, 2018). kacetl and klimova (2019) stated that technology is widely accepted to support language acquisition. additionally, kacetl and klimova (2019) asserted that technology help develop all language skills, primarily retaining new vocabulary. so, the use of technology as a support for student education is very beneficial. hence, some people are still debating if this educational-based game will increase motivation, self-confidence, and a more comprehensive understanding of vocabulary. therefore, the current research is presented to see how technology can enhance the students' language mastery, especially the wordwall game application, to improve vocabulary. this study is expected to confirm the great potential of games-based learning to increase vocabulary learning significantly. thus, this study aims to show whether the wordwall games are appropriate for teaching vocabulary. the research questions are formulated as follows: how is the design of the wordwall games to develop students' vocabulary? how is the application of the wordwall games in the teaching of vocabulary? how do the students acquire new vocabulary after being taught using the wordwall? method research design the research design applied in this study is to use descriptive qualitative research. according to cohen, l (2017), qualitative descriptive research is a research design that focuses on describing individuals' and groups' http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 147-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lived experiences and perceptions. it aims to provide a detailed, comprehensive account of the phenomenon being studied through rigorous data collection and analysis methods. the selection of qualitative descriptive design in this research is based on the relevance of ongoing events and current conditions regarding the analysis of wordwall games in learning vocabulary. research site and participants the participants are ten students in the 1st semester majoring in english literature in uin malang who joined "teman belajar" as one of the programs intended for new students majoring in english literature to improve their english skills. mostly, the students who have joined this program are in basic capabilities, especially in english. data collection and analysis the researchers used triangulation of data sources to gain specific information through observation and semi-structured in-depth interviews. the observation technique in this study aims to observe the participant's ability to learn vocabulary using wordwall games as a medium. the instrument used in this research is classroom observation involving the researcher as the educator directly in the classroom. the researcher introduced wordwall games as the media with the topic of "transactional activities" and selected five types of games for the participants: random card games, crossword games, true or false, translation tasks, construct words, and anagram tasks. then, the researcher will compare and assess the participants' vocabulary abilities before and after learning the material. the scores from both activities will be compared and observed to determine whether there is an improvement during the learning process. the final scores will determine the success of wordwall games as a vocabulary learning media. to examine the participants' perceptions, the researcher conducts semi-structured in-depth interviews after the conclusion of the learning process. the purpose of the semi-structured in-depth interviews is to assist the researcher in understanding the participants' perceptions after applying wordwall games as a vocabulary learning media. this is supported by the statement from newby (2004) that semi-structured indepth interviews facilitate the exploration of specific topics in detail between the interviewer and the participant. therefore, it will help the researcher describe the participants' perceptions of the used learning media. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 148-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion findings the findings reveal the design of the wordwall games in teaching english vocabulary, the implementation of the wordwall media in vocabulary class, and the assessment of the students after being taught using the wordwall. the multimodal design: the wordwall games the game-based learning used in this study is the wordwall application. this application is designed interactively to support language or vocabulary learning with various game features. in this observation class, the teacher used five kinds of games aimed at mastering english vocabulary. among them are random card games, crossword games, true or false tasks, translation tasks, construct word tasks, and anagram tasks. the wordwall application can be accessed by anyone, especially teachers who need educational game-based learning media as a form of fun digital media. the wordwall apps provide several features that can be accessed for free and premium service. the premium features have more media game choices, while free features restrict access to media usage. nevertheless, in the present study, the researchers use the premium service for a more extensive range of game coverage and learning activities per the classroom's learning needs. the first media in the wordwall app is the random card games. this game has a design like a poker card formed from origami paper or printed paper as a learning device in the class. however, these random card games are digitalformed and only accessible via electronic devices such as laptops and smartphones. the random card games are created by purposively selecting words on transactional activities. the words contain 20 transactional activities, for example, aisle, buy, expensive, etc. once the media is ready for classroom use, the researchers share the game link for the students to access by filling in a username. filling the identity can make the teacher easy to monitor if the students have opened the link and to score the student's performance. figure 1. the random card design http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 149-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the second media is the digital crossword game. similar to the one primarily found in magazines or newspapers but this game requires the users to fill in the squares with the answers from the glossary on shopping words. at the same time, the users of digital crossword games must click the word in the squares to answer the question. digital crossword games have several colorful design options. there are five design options: cartoon design, space design, sky design, monochrome design, and simple design. the researchers chose the simple design without presenting cartoon characters because the target students are not children, so the design is determined based on the target users. figure 2. the crossword games design the third media is the true or false task which requires the students to match the sentences with the pictures on the screen. when the pictures and the sentences are matched, the students have to click true, and conversely, they have to click false if the pictures they see disagree with the statements. the students only have a limited time to read the statement, and then students answer whether the statement is true or false. after all the answers are filled in, each student's scores will appear, and the answer key will be available as a student reference for further learning. figure 3. the true or false task design the fourth and fifth media are translation task and construct word task. these media require the students to arrange random words about shopping in order and to interpret the word arrangement, for example, of the random word "milk-a-at-want-sectionbuy-diary-to-i." the students must drag the words individually until the sentence is appropriately arranged. the students can continue to the next random word if the sentence structure is correct. while the answer is still wrong, the students stay on the same page and cannot continue. the last medium is the anagram task. this media requires the students to arrange random letters in the correct sentences. for example, the right http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 150-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sentence, "we are moving to the third aisle," was randomized to be "ew – ear ivomgn-otdrthileast." the students must compose letters by letters to form the proper word order. next, the sentence structure will be wholly formed if all the random words have been composed. this media confused the students when they carried out the long word; for example, the word "bargain" scrambled into "general." the advantage of this activity is that the users make them more challenging. figure 4. the construct word and translation design figure 5. the anagram task design the implementation of the word wall games in the vocabulary implementing the wordwall gamebased media in vocabulary learning includes several objectives: mastery of remembering, translating, and using the appropriate vocabulary depending on the context. within 60 minutes, the implementation of learning includes three significant activities points: table 1. activities to implement the wordwall games stages activities pre activity greetings warm-up (crossword games) main activity watch the video "grocery shopping." listen and mention related vocabulary. practice vocabulary comprehension using: true or false tasks, translation tasks, construct word tasks, and anagram tasks. post activity feedback the first stage is a pre-activity lesson. the first pre-activity stage begins with a warming-up session divided into two: random cards and crossword games. in the random card session, the researchers asked the students to choose a random card from the grocery shopping vocabulary and to pronounce each word. each student got three unfamiliar vocabulary words and then tried to pronounce them as well as http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 151-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license possible. this is done to recall the grocery shopping vocabulary that they might previously forget because some of them did not know the vocabulary beforehand. some students were very enthusiastic and active when they had to pronounce the vocabulary in front of their friends, although the other students felt embarrassed when they did so. then, the students listened to the teacher's model of pronouncing the vocabulary correctly and had to repeat after together. this activity aims to build their confidence without fear of learning new experiences, especially when pronouncing the vocabulary in front of the class. to remember what was learned in the first session, the students searched for the available vocabulary in the random box by looking at the already available keywords. this activity is called crossword game. the activity invited students to find the vocabulary they found in the first session. they must click on the link shared to access the games. then the students found twenty keywords and started enthusiastically collecting random words one by one in five minutes. the students who found the twenty vocabularies in the list at the end of the session were ranked from first place until the last one. the students could see the score at the end of time. the next main activity is watching videos. the researchers shared a video from an english learning site, learn english with bob the canadian, in the link (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ng-de6qu wke&t=241s). the duration of the video is about 5:18 minutes showing a man doing a mini vlog while shopping at the supermarket. the vlog shows a man doing grocery shopping while mentioning some vocabulary in the appropriate context. for example, the man mentions that the first step before entering the market should take the cart. the man mentions the word "cart" while showing the picture of the cart, and the place of the chart should be taken. in addition, he also gives the model of pronouncing the word "cart" accurately in english. after watching the video, the teacher asked the students to mention new words they found in the video and to write them on their personal vocabulary record sheet. the students should mention the words with the meaning. they can use offline or online dictionaries to help them find the meaning. the next main activity is to practice some tasks. the activity aims to investigate the students' ability to master vocabulary. the activity started with the researchers sharing the link to games in the whatsapp group and gave 20 minutes for the students to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 152-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license complete all of the tasks. for each task, the students had 5 minutes to complete and continued to the next task in the same duration. the researchers monitored the students' performance by walking around the class to assess the accuracy and quickness of the student's responses. the first task started with the true or false tasks. the students determined the statement according to the context of the previous video. if the statement is true, the answer is valid; if it does not match the answer, it is false. after the statements were shown individually, the students clicked on the true or false button. afterward, the students worked on games about constructing random words (construct word tasks) and random letters (anagram tasks). the aims of the last two assignments are that the students will not only memorize the vocabulary and how to pronounce it, but they will be able to remember and write the correct arrangement of letters and words. after doing all the activities, the researchers asked the students which activities they enjoyed or disliked. then, the researchers asked the students' scores and recorded them based on the results of their work. at the end of the teaching stages, the researchers asked the students to make an oral reflection on the last session of the class. after that, the researchers asked them what they liked about the material, which part of the games or tasks they liked, their interests in the video, and whether the tasks were easy or difficult. all students answered that they enjoyed the topic of learning, the games, and all activities carried out from the beginning to the end of the session because they found some unfamiliar words that they had learned. for example, they never knew the word "aisle," which is the synonym for the "corridor" in the supermarket. it means they have a chance to enrich the new vocab and the synonyms of the words. also, the researchers asked them which type of media they preferred. some admitted that the wordwall games had not been applied before in the class. from their simple reflection, the researchers could conclude that the students are interested in, enjoyed, and focused their attention when learning vocabulary using multimodal media, games, and video. students vocabulary mastery using the wordwall games the assessment of each student is an important component to prove the effectiveness of wordwall games in vocabulary learning implementation. the assessment of participants is evaluated based on three aspects of vocabulary mastery: memorization, translation, and constructing words http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 153-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license into sentences. the researcher assessed the participants by comparing their scores before and after the activity. the pre-activity assessment was based on the highest score achieved by participants who completed 20 questions within 5 minutes. the following are the students with the highest scores in the pre-activity assessment : figure 6. the student's highest score on crossword games the score result above shows the top two scorers with the allocated time. out of 20 questions, student a (1st) completed 20 questions in 4 minutes and 28 seconds. furthermore, the next score was obtained by student b (2nd), who solved 15 questions in 5 minutes. for the third rank, no student could complete more than 10 questions in 5 minutes, so they did not meet the requirements on the leaderboard. for the other 8 students, the researchers wrote a manual score for this game. all scores are under 10 points. it was concluded that almost all students did not reach the target of memorizing assessments. the following table displays the students with the score under 10 points : table 2. the students' lowest scores on crossword games name scores student c 8 student d 7 student e 6 student f 6 student g 7 student h 8 student i 8 student j 9 thus, it can be concluded that the pre-activity assessment shows that the overall student scores have not reached the maximum value. that evidence this out of 10 students, 2 could only answer questions at an accessible level within the specified time frame. then, from the results of the main activities, the researchers assessed the students' abilities in translating and constructing sentences. translating is in the true or false games, and constructing sentences is in the construct word and anagram games. the student's assessment is based on the accuracy of the total score of each task. the true-false game consists of 20 questions, the construct http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 154-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license word task consists of 20 questions, and the anagram task consists of 20 questions. each student had a different score because the value is not only assessed from the activeness of answering questions but the assessment is based on the activity and speed of students doing the class assignments. the following table presents the average scores of true or false, construct word and anagram tasks: table 4. the median scores of students' task name score me an true or false construc t word anagra m student c 95 95 95 95 student d 90 85 100 92 student e 85 95 95 92 student f 90 90 90 90 student g 90 90 95 92 student h 85 85 90 87 student i 90 95 95 94 student a 100 100 100 100 student b 95 95 95 95 student j 85 90 90 88 based on the explanation of students' assessment table 4, the assessment results are conducted by the wordwall games system, wherein if a student completes more than 10 crossword puzzle questions within 5 minutes, that score falls into the top score category. based on the comparison of assessments between the pre-activity and main activity, only 2 students could complete the crossword puzzle within 5 minutes, while the remaining 8 could not. the mainactivity assessment shows significant results with an average score above 80 points, which meets the standard passing grade. based on the average scores in the main activity, it is stated that 10 students successfully achieved scores above the passing grade, indicating that they meet the assessment standards in classroom observation. in addition, the semiinterview assessment or feedback session found that they felt they had not mastered the existing vocabulary because it is still foreign, so finding vocabulary in crossword games is challenging. after watching the video, they learned a lot of new vocabulary. their teacher also asked them to record what they got through the video. therefore, in most activities, including true or false tasks, constructing words, and anagrams, almost all students could answer them accurately, even though the allotted time was limited. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 155-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license therefore, comparing the grade tables above shows an increase in scores from the pre-activity to the main activity, proving that the presence of word wall games assists students as a vocabulary learning medium. discussion the study results show that games using the wordwall application can improve english vocabulary mastery. this agrees with the opinion of shiddiq (2021) that wordwall games benefit students, especially those just learning vocabulary through games that highlight the necessary and essential words to achieve the game's objective. this study also supports li (2021), who states that games can create a fun atmosphere so that students learn quickly. the form of design also determines students' interest in learning. in the wordwall applications, the game designs are available with various components. its simple form makes it easier for students and teachers to operate its application. the features contained in the games are also varied and easy to understand for the users. the six media's design is adapted to help language learners in mastering english by respecting the background of the participants so that they can speak basic english merely. the media design is made as simple as possible without involving a lot of images and colorful components but adding enriched components, inputting the linguistic components, vocabulary, and learning topics. the researchers added colorful audio-visuals to make media content easier to see and remember. this is in line with the findings of lin and yu (2017) that showing texts and pictures combined may help students achieve the best scores in the post-test. thus, using games in the class give benefits students in mastering vocabulary. the results of implementing the wordwall media on vocabulary learning showed high enthusiasm for the students. this is because students have never had an experience using gamebased digital media in their language learning. they find the different learning styles fun. during the lesson, the students mentioned their high interest in this media. some said this media was unique because it matched their age. they were a generation that could not leave their gadgets behind during learning. this agrees with the research by kacetl and klimova (2019) reported that a person could not live without mobile technologies they use them daily, including in language learning. they feel bored when they have to memorize vocabulary monotonously. with audio-visualhttp://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 156-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based game media, they are easier to remember due to the involvement of combining audio-visual and verbal into one media simultaneously. their interest is shown by the full involvement of students during learning. during the learning activities, they actively work on instructions, assignments, quizzes, or games. their responses assess that the implemented media is following the learning objectives. however, khezrlou and sadegi (2017) stated that many challenges are evident when involving mobile technologies in learning. their findings suggested that students prefer more traditional instructional technology for effective engagement and learning. one of the challenges of students using mobile technologies is that they do not like the problems with the existing infrastructure. for example, the internet connection may be inconsistent and slow. this response is in line with the study of rahman (2015) stated that one of the problems with using technologies for learning is infrequent electric connection and slow internet because they are not allowed to use technology for study in their school. this also happened when the researchers entered the class. some students' gadgets were not connected to the internet when doing assignments, and the university does not provide internet access with a stable connection. this reduces the time to complete the tasks, so the students' opportunities to get perfect scores are constrained. this phenomenon shows that technology-based media is not always practical when applied to learning. this becomes an evaluation of the state of the classroom, and other equipment must be prepared; the teacher needs to remind the students to have internet quota before the class (rahman, 2015). during the learning activity, the students individually complete all learning activities. the assessment is based on the student's ability to understand the material through grocery shopping videos via the youtube platform. they admit that what the teacher explained in the video is understood by them in terms of the context of the discussion, and the language used, and the storyline itself. the assessment started with the students' main activities within a limited time. the 20-minute time allocation puts pressure on the students to complete assignments. in addition, some students experienced unexpected conditions, such as difficulty connecting to the internet. this is not very clear for the teachers to take the scores because the time allotted was not the same as the other friends. the time allocation cannot be changed because the applied timer cannot be changed http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 157-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license spontaneously in the application. this situation agrees with the previous research by kacetl and klimova (2019), explaining that mobile applications for learning english always have problems in their application, like the features of time, design, etc. therefore, this will create problems for the teacher to give an overall score. another learning problem is when the students have to make sentences with the vocabulary they have just learned. they feel embarrassed because they are nervous that the sentence they compose are not entirely correct, and they feel embarrassed by the pronunciation of the vocabulary. the atmosphere was awkward and made the students feel insecure about expressing their thoughts in front of the class because they became the center of attention of other students. this problem should be the researcher's evaluation to consider making a friendlier atmosphere in the classroom to make the students feel less tense. one way to improve this is by providing more pair-work discussions among the students in the class. as marlena et al. (2015) stated that with the application pair work in the classroom, a cooperative atmosphere would be created where students will communicate with each other, listen to each other, and share giving and receiving, which these conditions will foster the spirit of, attitude and behavior that allows for positive dependency. milal et al. (2020) also ascertain that cooperative learning through pair work enables students to learn and work together. additionally, sadipun (2020) stated that think-pairshare is a model to help students build confidence in their ability to solve mathematical problems so that it will reduce the anxiety that students often experience. conclusions and suggestion game-based learning is an educational-based media game that can improve students' ability to learn vocabulary, especially the six games of random card games, crossword games, true or false tasks, translation tasks, construct word tasks, and anagram tasks. the results of the media implementation in the classroom impacted their motivation and confidence in vocabulary mastery. also, this indicates that technology-based media, especially games, have an impact on improving memorization, translation, and sentence construction. it should be noted that students showed positive responses during learning, despite some problems during learning vocabulary, but this did not significantly hinder the learning process. the learning problem becomes http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 158-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the teacher's evaluation of learning. thus, the teacher can fix it at the next meeting. further research needs to be done to complement this study's deficiencies, especially in learning problems and solutions to time management and classroom situations by using game media in vocabulary class. references aini, y, i (2020). using digital scrabble games as an english learning medium. jurnal batra (bahasa dan sastra), 6(1), 76-87. alzahrani, s., & roberts, l. (2021). the effect of visuospatial designing elements of zoomable user interfaces on second language vocabulary acquisition. the system, 96 (1). 1-30, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system .2020.102396 cohen, l., lawrence, m., & morrison, k. (2017). research methods in education. eighth edition. in research methods in education. devanti, y. m. (2018). the use of video as a medium to improve students' vocabulary mastery. ellite: journal of english language, literature, and teaching, 3(1), 42– 47. https://doi.org/10.32528/ellite.v 3i1.1778 kacetl, j., & klímová, b. (2019). use of smartphone applications in english language learning: a challenge for foreign language education. education sciences, 9(3), 179. 1-9 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9 030179 khezrlou, s., ellis, r., & sadeghi, k. (2017). effects of computerassisted glosses on efl learners' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension in three learning conditions. a system, 65, 104–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system .2017.01.009 li, r. (2021). does a game-based vocabulary learning app influence chinese efl learners' vocabulary achievement, motivation, and self-confidence? sage open, 11(1), 1-12, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244 0211003092 lin, c.-c., & yu, y.-c. (2016). effects of presentation modes on mobileassisted vocabulary learning and cognitive load. interactive learning environments, 25(4), 528–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/1049482 0.2016.1155160 milal, a. d., rohmah, z., kusumajanti, w., basthomi, y., sholihah, d. n., & susilowati, m. (2020). integrating character education in english teaching at islamic junior high schools in indonesia. teflin journal a publication on the teaching and learning of english, 31(1), 88. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 159-159 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29905 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license https://doi.org/10.15639/teflinjo urnal.v31i1/88-107 muñoz, c., pujadas, g., & pattemore, a. (2021). audio-visual input for learning l2 vocabulary and grammatical constructions. second language research, 00(0), 1-25, https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658 3211015797 marlena, n., dwijayanti, r., & dewi, r. m. (2015). penerapan pembelajaran think, pair, share (tps) untuk meningkatkan hasil belajar dan respon mahasiswa pada materi konsep diri mata kuliah pengembangan kepribadian. prosiding seminar nasional newby, p. (2014). research methods for education. routledge rahman, t. (2015). challenges of using technology in the secondary english language classroom. thesis. brac university. http://dspace. bracu.ac.bd, 8080. rohmah, z. (2013). fun activities: cara asik belajar bahasa asing. malang: cv bintang sejahtera. rohmah, z. (2012). teaching english joyfully. malang: cv bintang sejahtera. sadipun, b. (2020). penerapan model pembelajaran kooperatif tipe think-pair share untuk meningkatkan prestasi belajar ips siswa kelas v sd. inteligensi : jurnal ilmu pendidikan, 3(1), 11–16. https://doi.org/10.33366/ilg.v3i1 .1461 shiddiq, j. (2021). inovasi pemanfaatan word-wall sebagai media gamebased learning untuk bahasa arab. jalie; journal of applied linguistics and islamic education, 5(1), 151-169. widyasari press. (n.d.). pentingnya kosakata pada keterampilan bahasa inggris. widyasari press. https://widyasaripress.com/pent ingnya-kosakata-padaketerampilan-bahasa-inggris/ yuniarti, f., & rakhmawati, d. (2021). studi kasus: game digital “kahoot” dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. jurnal ilmiah bina edukasi, 1(1), 46-59. zhonggen, y. (2018). differences in serious game-aided and traditional english vocabulary acquisition. computers & education, 127, 214–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compe du.2018.07.014. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 178-187 reviewing the curriculum of an english department of a private university in indonesia rentauli mariah silalahi received: 10th november 2015; revised: 09th december 2015; accepted: 29th december 2015 abstract curriculum is a very important guideline as any teacher should have to develop syllabuses, lesson plans, and teaching materials. this study aims at evaluating the current curriculum of the english department of one of the private universities in indonesia, sisingamangaraja university (pseudonym); a teacher training college. this study is trying to look at the content of the curriculum to meet the criteria of a good curriculum. the documented data used were collected from the head of the university’s english department. further, the author also conducted interviews to the head of the english department and some of the english department’s current students. it is expected that the outcome of this study will bring some recommendations to the institution necessary to improve the studied curriculum and it is not unlikely that the recommendations can also be useful for english teachers elsewhere. key words : curriculum; objective; language learning; assessment abstrak kurikulum merupakan pedoman yang penting karena setiap guru harus mengembangkan silabus, rencana pembelajaran, dan materi pembelajaran. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menilai kurikulum yang digunakan oleh jurusan bahasa inggris di salah satu universitas swasta di indonesia, universitas sisingamangaraja (nama samaran); lembaga pendidikan tenaga kependidikan. penelitian ini mencoba untuk menganalisa isi dari kurikulum berdasarkan kriteria dari kurikulum yang baik. data penelitian ini diambil dari dokumen dari ketua jurusan bahasa inggris. selanjutnya, penelitian ini juga melakukan wawancara kepada ketua jurusan bahasa inggris dan beberapa mahasiswa baru jurusan tersebut. hasil dari penelitian ini diharapkan memberi masukan kepada institusi untuk meningkatkan kurikulumnya dan tidak menutup kemungkinan rekomendasi yang diberikan dalam penelitian ini bermanfaat bagi guru bahasa inggris di tempat lain. kata kunci: kurikulum; tujuan; pembelajaranbahasa; penilaian how to cite: rentauli, m.,s. (2015). reviewing the curriculum of an english department of a private university in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 178-187. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3088 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3088 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|179-187 introduction the curriculum the author chose to analyze is the curriculum of the english study program of the teachers training college of the university of sisingamangaraja, indonesia. this currently used curriculum was applied since the mid of 2009. the target learners of this curriculum are graduate students from senior high schools from different regions in the province; north sumatera. there have been some curriculum revisions since the establishment of this study program in 1962. however, the author will only analyze the current curriculum with brief comparison to the second latest curriculum when necessary. since the curriculum is written in bahasa indonesia (indonesian language), then for reference that needs clarity, it will be translated into english. curriculum is ‘a general statement of goals and outcomes, learning arrangements, evaluation and documentation relating to the management of programs within an educational institution’ (feez, 1998, p.9) that covers four broad components including ‘planning, implementing, evaluating, and managing’ (nunan, 1988, cited in nunan, 1989, p.14). however, the written document of the current curriculum of the english study program of the university of sisingamangaraja mentions only some details on planning and little on implementing and managing and nothing about evaluation. it only provides information on the background and the purpose of the curriculum change, the series of activities to produce the new curriculum, the vision, mission, objective, and the unit courses descriptions of the new curriculum. therefore, the author did some interviews to the head of the english department and to some of its students to get more comprehensive information to satisfactorily present this curriculum analysis. later on, for convenience, to refer to the current curriculum of the sisingamangarja university english study program, the author will simply use ‘2009 curriculum’. method this is a qualitative study conducted by mostly collecting documented data and personal interviews. the data collected were received from the head of the english department of sisingamangaraja university in the form of curriculum and syllabuses. another data such as national curriculum was collected by the author from the internet. the personal interviews were conducted by the author to the head of the english ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 180-187|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 department and some of the current students studying in the english department. this study will focus on discussing every aspect of the curriculum by grouping them into seven categories: the aims and objectives of the curriculum, the history of the curriculum, the implementation of the curriculum, the theory of language and language learning that underlies the curriculum, the relationship of the curriculum to government and institution’s policies, assessment policies accompanying the curriculum, and professional development provisions regarding the curriculum implementation. the theories used for every aspect of the curriculum discussed will come nonseparately under each topic of discussion. findings and discussion the aims and objectives of the curriculum richards (2001) defines aim as ‘a statement of a general change that a program seeks to bring about in learners and reflects the ideology of the curriculum and shows how the curriculum will seek to realize it’ (p.120). the 2009 curriculum’s aim is to carry out an effective learning process and to enable graduates to participate effectively and successfully in the society. more precisely, the head of the english department states that its aim is relevant with the institution and the faculty’s aims, which is to particularly enable students in teaching english based on the current demands in the work field (perscomm, march 28, 2015). it is exactly as what brown (1995) suggests that emphasis should be centered on ‘students’ needs’ (p.21), in this case to be professional teachers. richards (2002) defines objective as ‘a statement of specific changes a program seeks to bring about and results from an analysis of the aim into its different components’ (p.11). the objective of the 2009 curriculum is to produce professional, qualified, and ethical english teachers and alumni that can exist to be models in the plural and global society. particularly, the alumni will be able to compete in various aspects of knowledge including science, attitude and skills, and to be able to build educative cooperation among a variety of society’s elements in order to manage an optimum educational process. these are samples of the actual abilities brown (1995) claims for students to have in achieving a specific aim. the history of the curriculum the prior 2003 curriculum is a competence based curriculum that has ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|181-187 been in congruence to the previous government regulation for national standard curriculum. then, in 2007, the indonesian ministry of national education designs a new national standard curriculum and requires every school to adapt that new curriculum. however, this english study program has only started to adjust its curriculum in 2009. this 2009 curriculum is a revised edition of the 2003 curriculum designed in august 2009 by considering the indonesian government regulation about national standard curriculum no.19, chapter iii, article 9, 2005, sisingamangaraja university’s principal academic regulation 2005, and the head of sisingamangaraja university’s decision letter no.86, 2009. however, the curriculum revisions were basically triggered by the emergence of unit level curriculum from government and the overlapping of some unit courses in the previous 2003 curriculum. ktsp is designed based on content and graduate competence in which it emphasizes knowledge, skills and fundamental values reflected in consistent and continuous habits for thinking and responding that enables students to be competent. therefore, to keep up with the national curriculum change that obviously is a demand for producing professional teachers, sisingamangaraja university’s english department designs the 2009 curriculum based on competence but with integration of text based. however, the reviewing process seems to be held in quite a rush because it must be applied immediately (perscomm, march 28, 2015). regarding some of the unit courses overlapping, the head of the english department, acknowledges that there are four unit courses that have quite similar contents one to another. they are pronunciation practice i, pronunciation practice ii, dictation, and english phonology. so, because they are overlapping, the first three courses are deleted and are substituted with english basic competence i and english basic competence ii that provide students with not only pronunciation but also structure and vocabulary, while the english phonology remains. the implementation of the curriculum the new curriculum was implemented in the second semester in 2009 and applied to all students. however, there is no change in the educational organization system which applies credit system. the purpose of the credit system corresponds to the institution’s mission in order to provide students more varied and flexible unit courses for their target and interest of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 182-187|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 certain professionalism. one credit means fifty minutes lecturing in the classroom, sixty minutes structured academic activity outside the classroom such as doing assignments, writing paper, and library research, and another sixty minutes for independent study (perscomm, march 28, 2015). like the previous curriculum, there are 160 credits of unit courses provided for students. students unnecessarily enroll in all courses since, in order to graduate, they are only required to pass 146 credits consisting of 142 credits mandatory unit and 4 credits elective unit. however, to overcome the problems of that some students have taken some unit courses that are no longer exist in the new curriculum, the english department makes regulation for unit courses conversion. for example, students who have taken ‘pendidikanpancasila’ (the special course to learn indonesian philosophy) can convert the grade for ‘batak’s literacy’ (one of the indonesian ethnics’ literacy; origins from north sumatera ) without even enrolling in the new course (perscomm, april 25, 2015). actually, this kind of policy has been implemented since 2003 where there was a curriculum change from the 1997 to the 2003 curriculum. there are some major changes of unit courses in this new curriculum, they areone unit course changes from mandatory to elective, thirteen unit courses’ names modified more specifically, three unit courses no longer provided, and two new mandatory and four new elective unit courses added to the curriculum. although many of the courses are for general purposes, some of them are targeted for specific purposes such as speech, academic writing, english correspondence, and poetry. in contrast,despite the unit courses’ changes, there is no additional teaching staff. presently, there are 25 lecturers; part timer and full timer, one has doctoral degree, most have mastersdegree, and some bachelor graduates, to teach almost a thousand students enrolling in the english study program. for teaching practices, every lecturer must take the curriculum as a guideline to design their course and ‘develop their courses and programs’ (nunan, 1989, p.17). this is as what nunan argues that lecturers are people who are dealing with detail work and strategies to run the unit courses in classroom. yet, both the head of the english department and current students that the author had interviewed mentioned that there was no change in lecturers’ teaching ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|183-187 methods and contents (perscomm, april 24 & 25, 2015). the new pedagogical theme for this curriculum is integrating genre into the communicative competence based curriculum. therefore, the lecturers should be able to recognize and teach appropriate genres in their teaching. the text-based syllabus will most appropriately fit in this purpose for that type encompasses all types of syllabuses (feez, 1998). then, as representative, the author chose the communicative listening course’s syllabus. the finding is that the syllabus only has a general description of the course, lists of sixteen meetings’ topics, teaching methods, evaluations and references. this english study program has actually been supported with two language laboratories one is a multimedia laboratory equipped with 40 computers for students, a widescreen, a projector, a big loudspeaker, teaching materials, and a pilot computer for the lecturer, and the other one is an internet room with 40 computers (perscomm, april 23, 2015). however, these facilities are still only for listening courses (perscomm, april 24 & 25, 2015). the theory of language and language learning that underlie the curriculum two important elements, feez (1998) emphasizes, to create an english course syllabus are the theory of language and language learning. these theories should drive the curriculum since syllabus is the specific plan for teaching any unit courses from the content of the curriculum. therefore, a language curriculum must have an underlying theory of language and language learning. nevertheless, it is not overtly stated in the 2009 curriculum what theory of language and language learning underlies the curriculum. however, by reviewing the aim and objective of the curriculum and the principles on what bases the curriculum is designed from, it seems that all components concentrate on content and competence. it appears that language is understood as text and discourse and the language learning theory is to serve the purpose of communication. it seems to achieve what harmer (2007) argues that both text and discourse can communicate meaning when they have the factors of ‘coherence and cohesion’ (p.29). for that purpose, theoretically, lecturers should apply communicative language teaching strategies focused on text, and based on ‘communicative competence’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 184-187|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 (celce-murcia et al., 1995, p.5). sufficiently, the curriculum’s unit courses have covered the required components of linguistic, strategic, sociocultural, actional, and discourse competencies to meet the proposed model of celce-murcia et al.’s (1995) communicative competence. the relationship of the curriculum to government and institution’s policies the indonesian ministry of education provides national curriculum, syllabuses and even lesson plans for school teachers. however, universities are in differently situation in which the government only provides guidelines as principles to design each university’s curriculum, syllabuses, and lesson plans. the 2009 curriculum is fundamentally organized in accordance with the institution (sisingamangaraja university) academic regulation, chapter ii, article 5, 2005 and the indonesian government regulation no.19, chapter iii, article 9, 2005. briefly, the curriculum has an inseparable interrelationship to both regulations. firstly, the english study program revises the 2003 curriculum based on the government regulation for the implementation of a new curriculum; ktsp to best facilitates students to be professional teacher candidates that soon must be able to teach using ktsp in schools. secondly, the result is the 2009 curriculum that has not only consisted of all courses required by the government but also integrated the university’s vision and mission in its aim and objective. assessment policies accompanying the curriculum there are two kinds of assessment to know how much students have learned in the course. they are proficiency test that measures student’s understanding of the language and achievement test that measures students’ ability after learning a certain course for a period of time. an achievement test can be conducted either after the completion of a lesson or at the completion of a course (nation & macalister, 2010). unfortunately there is no assessment policy accompanying this curriculum, not even a single guideline for lecturers to make a test. so every lecturer freely makes their own tests to evaluate students’ learning (perscomm, april 24, 2015) with common assessment forms such as assignment, quiz, practicum, midterm test and final test. for communicative listening course, for instance, the tests were about filling in gaps and writing a summary of the video watched or listened to (pers comm., april 25, 2015). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|185-187 referring to curriculum evaluation, it is a five-yearly program (perscomms, march, 28, 2015). yet, the 2009 curriculum is the result of the ‘summative evaluation’ (richards, 2001, p. 288) of the 2003 curriculum in which it has been evaluated as less valuable to help students’ existence in institution and society (2009 curriculum, p. 2). professional development provisions regarding the curriculum implementation regarding the implementation of the new curriculum, the head of the english department admits that it has not been explained to all lecturers and there has not yet been any training or workshop or other forms of professional development arrangements nor is there a plan to make one (perscomms, april 24, 2015). however, apart from the curriculum issue, the english department has a policy for staff to attend international seminars or workshops and to encourage lecturers to continue their study for a higher degree (perscomms, march, 28, 2015). conclusion and suggestion listed in the table below are the strengths and weaknesses of the new curriculum and immediate recommendations to overcome the weaknesses. as the table shows, the main weaknesses are the unclearly defined objectives, unmentioned theories of language and language learning and unchanging contents and methods of teaching despite the changing curriculum. in line with these weaknesses, some recommendations, as also shown in table 1 are offered. concerning the objectives for instance, the description of smaller observable learning performances is suggested so that they could be easily measured. in this case, lecturers are advised to define the objectives of their courses in their syllabuses. with regards to theory, there should be mechanism to make sure that all lecturers are informed so that every body have the same perception about the theory underlying the curriculum. finally, concerning the teaching method, it is suggested that regular workshops and seminar are conducted to continually develop teacher professionalism. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 186-187|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 1. the strengths and the weaknesses of the new curriculum no strengths weaknesses recommendations 1 it is a new communicative competence based curriculum that soundly integrates text based competence and has sufficiently met the government’s regulation. the curriculum’s objectives are still less specifically defined, therefore the author assumes the syllabus of each unit course should have specific stated objectives. unfortunately, after looking at some syllabuses, none mentions any objective in it. the curriculum’s objectives should be revised to better describe the aims into smaller observable learning performance (richards, 2002) and teachers should define their courses’ objectives in their own syllabuses. 2 though there are some unit courses no longer provided, students can just convert their grades to the new unit courses in the 2009 curriculum. the curriculum has not mentioned its theory of language or language learning, and this causes suspicion whether there is any. the theory of language and language learning underlie the curriculum must be defined and informed to all lecturers so that everyone will have a same perception on how to modify their teaching to correspond the new curriculum. 3 it has greatly accommodated the institution’s missions in its aim and objective. in congruence to the 2009 curriculum, lecturers should apply clt methods; however, it seems that there is still lack of ‘communicative activities’ (harmer, 2007, p.70) happening in the classroom. it appears that the changes are in names only while contents and teaching methods remain unchanged. this will be of good issue for lecturers’ meeting to encourage immediate workshops, seminars or trainings. the informants can be from the lecturers or professionals from government or other institutions. teachers’ teaching can also be observed for good purposes such as for improving teachers’ teaching methods, ‘needs analysis, or research’ (brown, 1995, p. 193). 4 it has a multimedia laboratory and an internet room they are not yet used maximally. the lecturers or the head of the study program should organize the use of the room and its facilities to their maximum potential for developing students’ skills and knowledge in english. 5 there is no guideline to assess students’ learning. the head of the english department should assign a committee to design a guideline for students’ learning assessments and administer periodical review because test results will contribute greatly for ‘curriculum development and program evaluation plans’ (brown, 1995, p. 125). 6 despite its implementation in progress, it has not been explained to all lecturers and no initiative for any sort of professional development provision. the head of the english department should arrange a meeting to socialize the curriculum and uses it to collect lecturers’ ideas for professional development arrangements. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|187-187 references brown, james dean. (1995). the elements of language curriculum. boston: heinle&heinle publishers. celce-murcia, m., dörnyei, z., thurrell, s. (1995). communicative competence: a pedagogically motivated model with content specifications. applied linguistics, 6(2), 5-35. feez, susan. (1998). text-based syllabus design. sydney: national centre for english language teaching and research. harmer, jeremy. (2007). the practice of english language teaching: fourth edition. england: pearson education limited. kenning, marie-madeleine. (2007). ict and language learning: from print to the mobile phone. new york: palgrave macmillan. nation, i.s.p., macalister, john. (2010). language curriculum design. new york: routledge. nunan, david. (1989). designing tasks for the communicative classroom. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, jack c. (2001). curriculum development in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, jack c. (2002). planning aims and objectives in language programs. singapore: oxford graphic printers pte ltd. warschauer and healey (2012). technology in language learning 2012. wilis and webquest, www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/cce ia/ images/stories/pdf/tefl /carolyn.pdf. warschauer, m., & kern, r. g. (2000). network-based language teaching: concepts and practice: cambridge university press. william and burden (2009). motivation in second and foreign language learning and development. www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy gotsky78.pdf. zhu and kaplan (2001). a model for teaching with technology. www.crltumich.edu/inst/mod el. http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/docentes/ http://www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.psy.cmu.edu-siegler/vy%20gotsky78.pdf http://www.crltumich.edu/inst/model http://www.crltumich.edu/inst/model * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 311-333 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee efl pre-service teachers’ experiences in designing tpack based instructional videos istifa putri*, susilo, noor rachmawaty mulawarman university, indonesia (olisusunmul@gmail.com) received: 31th july 2022; revised: 28th november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract the article analyzed pre-service teachers’ experiences in designing and implementing instructional videos based on the tpack framework in their microteaching course. this was a qualitative study in which nine students of english teacher education (i.e., preservice teachers) were the participants who learned to design and implement instructional videos in their micro-teaching course. the data were extracted from the results of the interview and document analyses on their instructional videos made in microteaching class together with other 29 students participating in the class. the data were analyzed by using the interactive model proposed by miles et al. (2014). the result showed that pre-service teachers had various self-reflections in the experiences of designing and implementing the instructional videos based on the tpack framework, putting into three phases of steps in design-making and product-implementing. the pre-service teachers’ inadequacies in having the tk and ck caused difficulties in designing the instructional videos in general. moreover, the pre-service teachers coped with numerous challenges, both personally and technically. finally, this finding is advisable for 21stcentury teacher candidates who should integrate technology into teaching in that they should be technology-alert in any circumstance of teaching. key words: pre-service efl teachers; instructional video; microteaching course; tpack-based instructional video abstrak artikel ini menganalisis pengalaman calon guru dalam merancang dan mengimplementasikan video instruksional berdasarkan kerangka kerja tpack dalam kursus microteaching mereka. ini adalah studi kualitatif di mana sembilan siswa pendidikan guru bahasa inggris (yaitu, calon guru) adalah peserta yang belajar merancang dan mengimplementasikan video instruksional dalam kursus micro-teaching mereka. data diambil dari hasil wawancara dan analisis dokumen pada video instruksional mereka yang dibuat di kelas microteaching bersama dengan 29 siswa lain yang berpartisipasi di kelas tersebut. data dianalisis dengan menggunakan model interaktif yang diusulkan oleh miles et al. (2014). hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa calon guru memiliki berbagai refleksi diri dalam pengalaman merancang dan mengimplementasikan video pembelajaran berdasarkan kerangka tpack, menempatkan ke dalam tiga fase langkah dalam pembuatan desain dan implementasi produk. kekurangan guru prajabatan dalam memiliki tk dan ck menyebabkan kesulitan dalam merancang video pembelajaran secara umum. selain itu, calon guru menghadapi berbagai tantangan, baik secara pribadi maupun teknis. akhirnya, temuan ini disarankan untuk calon guru abad ke-21 yang harus mengintegrasikan teknologi ke dalam pengajaran karena mereka harus mewaspadai teknologi dalam segala situasi pengajaran. kata kunci: calon guru efl, video instruksional, kursus microteaching, video instruksional berbasis tpack how to cite: putri i., susilo, rachmawaty, n.(2022). efl pre-service teachers’ experiences in designing tpack -based instructional videos . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 334357. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 335-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the instructional video seemingly puts itself in a lucrative function as digital resources might bring teachers to their new roles in the post-pandemic era of instruction. it occurs because videos as media of instruction have been empirically claimed as practical tools to enhance learning achievement. for instance, numerous previous findings proved that video, specifically, can be highly effective as an educational tool (e.g., kay, 2012; allen & smith, 2012; lloyd & robertson, 2012; rackaway, 2012; hsin & cigas, 2013). some other researchers emphasized that instructional video used with a clear purpose in the mind of the video-makers may support the learning (seidel et al., 2005; sherin & vanes, 2009). in addition, various technology platforms, like tutorial videos, short animations with dialogue, short videos, short english videos, plotagon, tailor-made animated cartoons, modalities of videos, short stories through computers, whatsapp groups, and silent short movies are numerous technology-based media in efl teaching which previous researchers mentioned as giving significant effects on the student's achievement (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; sari et al., 2021). however, using video as media of instruction without having them in a straightforward design, especially for instruction, will bring teachers into disadvantageous and inefficient classroom actions. moreover, integrating technology will be successful depending on the teachers’ roles since teachers’ beliefs and best experiences influence how they apply the technology in the classroom abukhattala (2015). a question arose on what instructional video looks like as it becomes an effective medium in teaching. the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack) frame might presumably answer this question. tpack is the relationship between all three essential components of knowledge (technology, pedagogy, and content) and becomes a unit as a framework (mishra & koehler, 2008). furthermore, tpack was implemented into education research as a theoretical framework for understanding teacher knowledge of effective technology integration in the tpack (mishra & koehler, 2006). tpack framework builds on shulman's (1986) pedagogical content knowledge (pck) construct to include technology knowledge situated within ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 336-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the content and pedagogical knowledge. pck refers to the content knowledge that deals with the teaching process. various findings approved the notion that the tpack framework is practical not only for sharpening clear purpose in instructional video design but also for implementation of technology in class generally (see ajloni & o’toole, 2021; bonafini & lee, 2021; niess & gillow-wiles, 2021; lachner et al., 2021; quyang & scharber, 2018; santos & castro, 2021; limbong, 2017; setiawan et al., 2018; tokmak, 2015). hence, pre-service teachers’ experiences in designing and implementing technology-driven instruction presumably play a vital role in whether teaching with technology gains any success in the classroom. this is crucial because 21st-century teachers should be equipped with technology-based competence as complementary skills and pedagogical competence as their main subjects. this article is a research report on designing and implementing instructional videos using the tpack framework. this research is mainly intended to analyze the pre-service teacher’s reflective experiences in designing and implementing instructional videos based on the tpack framework in their microteaching course. literature review concepts of technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). there have been some researchers arguing models indicating the integration of technological knowledge and pedagogical and content knowledge in the last decade (see gao et al., 2009; goktas et al., 2009; mishra & koehler, 2006; mishra et al., 2009; niess, 2005; zhao et al., 2002). mishra & koehler (2006) were very familiar with the framework for technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). the framework is an extended version of the original framework proposed by shulman (1986), which focuses on pedagogical content knowledge (pck). there are three primary forms of knowledge, i.e., content, pedagogy, and technology (mishra et al., 2009). the tpack framework builds on shulman's (1986) work to include technology for effective teaching and emerges from content, pedagogy, and technology (mishra et al., 2009). tpack has a more flexible framework for research ends. mishra et al. (2011) argued that the tpack framework could have different pedagogical approaches, content areas, and technologies. furthermore, tpack studies have been explored in various ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 337-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license educational institutions to study the relationship between technology and pedagogy with opportunities and challenges identified in the process. the tpack model has increased student engagement, collaboration, and learning flexibility (lye, 2013). figure 1. the tpack framework and its knowledge components moreover, as is seen in figure 1, the intersections of the three circles of knowledge are pedagogical content knowledge (pck), technological content knowledge (tck), and technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), reside in the tpack, which should then be viewed within the learning and teaching context. teacher educators have embraced tpack for research and teaching purposes. the tpack framework (mishra & koehler, 2008) for teachers describes the teacher knowledge required to teach effectively with technology. tpack was introduced to the educational research field as a theoretical framework for understanding teacher knowledge necessary for effective technology integration (mishra & koehler, 2006). pedagogical knowledge (pk) according to shin et al. (2009), pedagogical knowledge is knowledge about teaching practices and techniques. teaching practices mean the teacher teaches the material or specific content in the classroom and uses an appropriate approach. design in the teaching and learning process means how teachers deliver the material step by step. the technique is a classroom practice used by a teacher or implementing an approach and method. in addition, pedagogical knowledge is teachers’ deep knowledge about the processes and procedures or teaching and learning methods. they encompass overall educational purposes, values, and aims, among other factors. this generic knowledge applies to understanding how students learn, general classroom management skills, lesson planning, and student assessment (mishra et al., 2009). pedagogical knowledge is the teaching methods or processes presumably consisting of knowledge in classroom management, assessment, lesson plan development, or student learning. richards & rodgers (2014) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 338-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mentioned this as a method theoretically concerned with an approach organized by design and practically realized in the procedure. content knowledge (ck) content knowledge refers to the knowledge or subject matter. this knowledge would include understanding concepts, theories, ideas, organizational frameworks, practical parts, evidence, and proof of such knowledge (mishra et al., 2009), or it is the factual subject matter taught in class (mishra & koehler, 2006). teachers must know about the content they will teach and how the nature of knowledge is different for various content areas. technological knowledge (tk) technological knowledge includes a practical understanding of computer software and hardware, specialized tools presentation, and other use of technologies in the instructional function. knowledge of the existence, components, and capabilities of various technologies used in teaching and learning settings, and conversely, knowing how teaching might change due to using technologies (mishra & koehler, 2006). tk mainly encompasses the ability to adapt to and learn new technologies. pedagogical content knowledge (pck) pedagogical content knowledge refers to the knowledge about the process of teaching (shulman, 1986). it gives different perspectives by blending the pedagogy and content to accomplish the teaching goal better. there are usually some steps for the teacher to prepare the material in the teaching process. (richards & rodgers, 2014) defined the term activity in the teaching and learning process as any kind of goal-oriented class procedure involving students taking class action concerning the goals of the course. technological content knowledge (tck) technological content knowledge refers to the understanding of how technology can create new representations for specific content. mishra & koehler (2006) defined tck as knowledge that is both technology and content related. when the teacher wants to teach the material or content, they must choose the related technology tools they will use in the teaching and learning process. in addition, tck gives learners the ability to digest the link between content knowledge and technology and how technology and content impact and restrict one another. hence, tck is defined as learning about the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 339-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technologies used within the content area. for instance, in teaching the english language, when they wanted to deliver the material about simple present tense from the dialogue in the movie. to make the teacher quickly get the part of the dialogue related to simple current tense material, they will use some tools; for instance, they will use camtasia to cut and get the amount they want. moreover, it suggests that teachers understand that they can change the way learners practice and digest concepts in a particular substance by using technology. technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk) technological pedagogical knowledge is defined as how technologies can be used in instructional issues. mishra & koehler (2006) argued that technical, pedagogical knowledge is knowledge about pedagogical strategies for using existing specialized tools for teaching. in addition, specialized pedagogical knowledge is about how participants used technologies to understand student learning's cognitive, social, and behavioral aspects. to that end, a discussion forum was commonly preferred. the knowledge of innovative technologies and pedagogies can help academics to improve student learning. although technology has been related to functional fixedness, lecturers need to rethink creative ways of using technologies to customize pedagogical purposes (koehler et al., 2013). technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) tpack is a framework for describing and understanding the goals for technology use. tpack framework (mishra & koehler, 2008) describes the type of teacher knowledge required to teach effectively with technology. teaching effectively involves using tools, techniques, and strategies to optimize student learning and understanding context, mainly how your students learn, how they process information, what motivates them to learn more, and what impedes the learning process with a technology tool. the importance of understanding the tpack framework for pre-service teachers is to make them learn quickly, and they will teach with an educational video. concepts of educational video an educational video is a form of multimedia that conveys information through two simultaneous sensory channels: aural and visual. it often uses multiple presentation modes, such as verbal and pictorial representations in the case of on-screen print and closedcaptioning (mayer, 2009). with the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 340-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license evolution of digital technology and fast access to streaming video channels via the internet, video has moved from being an essential element to being considered a teaching methodology, with the increase in the number of settings that use dynamic images to catch learners’ attention (ardanuy raso et al., 2009), to the notion that experts (see choi & johnson, 2007; shyu, 2000; wisher & curnow, 1999 perceived it as much more efficient than those presented in books or text material. teaching english with educational video teaching english with video is a common thing in the 21st era; in addition, wang (2015) explains that there are three targets of teaching english with video materials, i.e., to help efl learners development of language skills; to prepare students’ competence in intercultural communication, and to sharpen students’ aesthetic values and competence in appreciating artistic values' english videos. learning object review instrument (lori) the researcher used lori as the mainline learning object (lo) evaluation methodologies using review instruments such as evaluation rubrics, of which the most cited is the learning object review instrument (lori) developed by vargo et al. (2003) and improved by niess (2005) lori 1.5 uses nine items with brief descriptive rubrics associated with each item. the items and what they measure may be outlined as: 1. content quality: the lo content is free of error and presented without bias. logical arguments support claims, and presentations highlight significant ideas. 2. learning goal alignment: appropriate learning goals are stated. the learning activities, content, and assessments provided by the lo align with the declared purposes. 3. feedback and adaptation: the lo provides feedback driven by differing learner inputs or learner modeling. 4. motivation: the lo content is relevant to the personal goals and interests of the intended learners. 5. presentation design: the style of information design in the lo enables users to learn efficiently. the presentations of the lo minimize visual search; text and graphics are clear, concise, and free of errors. screen ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 341-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license components do not interfere with learning goals. 6. interaction usability: the user interface design implicitly informs learners about how to interact with the lo. navigation through the lo is simple. the behavior of the user interface is consistent and predictable. 7. accessibility: the design of controls and presentation formats in the lo may accommodate learners with sensory and motor disabilities. the lo can be accessed through different electronic means, including assistive and highly portable devices. 8. reusability: the lo is a standalone resource that can readily transfer to different courses, learning designs, and contexts. 9. standards compliance: the lo conforms to relevant international standards and specifications. sufficient metadata is provided in tagged codes and made available to users. microteaching course according to bell & bull (2010), microteaching is a course in teacher education where pre-service teachers 'teach' in front of their friends to gain experience before becoming in-service teachers. in addition, ghanaguru et al., (2013) also stated that microteaching is one of the most appropriate tools to reduce the gap between theory and practice. based on the statement of some researchers above, microteaching is an introductory course for pre-service teachers. thus, in microteaching, the pre-service is trained to be a teacher in the future, and they learn how to make an appropriate lesson plan and teach with the proper method, strategy, and technique. to sum up, microteaching can be defined as a course in a university, especially in the education field. in the microteaching course, the pre-service teachers are being trained before they become a teacher because they practice teaching in the classroom in front of their friends with selected topics based on the material that they will teach for elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, or even university student. furthermore, microteaching in english department at mulawarman university, samarinda, east kalimantan, indonesia, is one of the compulsory courses that sixth-semester students must take. in the microteaching course, the pre-service teachers learned how to teach in the classroom using a methodology, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 342-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license strategy, and technique for teaching and learning progress based on students’ necessity. before taking a microteaching course, they must pass teaching english as a foreign language i and teaching english as a foreign language ii in the fourth and fifth semesters as compulsory courses. they must get b (70-79) for the minimum score to continue to take a microteaching course in the following semester. at the beginning of the microteaching course semester, preservice teachers will conduct the educational video with the tpack framework as the instructional design model. then, pre-service teachers will guide the educational video phase by phase in the tpack framework. last, they had to do teaching practice in the classroom using educational videos. pre-service teachers will be interviewed regarding their experiences designing and implementing the video. previous studies the first previous study is a study by (tokmak, 2015) with the title preservice teachers’ perceptions on tpack development after designing educational games. his study collected the data through educational computer games designed by participants, focus group interviews, observations, and participant journals. the researcher used the qualitative method as his research design. the similarity between the previous study and the present study is the use of the tpack framework in designing specific teaching material and using interviews to collect the data. the present study analyses preservice teachers' experience when implementing educational videos in microteaching courses. but the previous study described how the researcher aimed to investigate early childhood education (ece) pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their tpack development during an educational game design activity using powerpoint. the second previous study is the pre-service efl’ experience making project using paci by limbong (2017). the design of this study was qualitative data. the researcher collected the data through interviews. to develop the discussion, the researcher relied on analyzing information by asking five pre-service teachers about their experiences through paci to develop the tpack framework. the similarity between the previous study and the present study is the use of tpack in designing specific teaching material and using interviews to collect the data. the difference study analyses pre-service teachers' experience when implementing ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 343-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license educational videos in microteaching courses. but the previous study described how the researcher designed and developed multimedia technologyintegrated materials of the paci model with project-based learning through blended learning between traditional face-to-face and facebook closed-group discussion methods throughout the tpack framework during the computer literacy course in the faculty of teacher training. method the design of this study was qualitative, in which the researchers used the result of interviews and documents to interpret data through narrative explanation. specifically, the researchers explored the pre-service teachers’ experiences after conducting teaching practices on microteaching courses where they were required to implement instructional videos in front of the classroom. the researchers analyzed the designing and implementation of such instructional videos based on tpack’s framework. research participants the study was conducted in the microteaching class of the english department, faculty of teacher training and education, mulawarman university, indonesia. the participants were nine students of efl pre-service teachers who were selected from the total class members of 29 students. the chosen participants represented the highest, middle, and lowest-scored students in that course. data collection technique the data were extracted from the results of the interview and document analyses on an instructional video. the nine pre-service teachers were chosen as the representatives of the 29 teacher students. the standard used in selecting the participants and sites was whether they were “information-rich” fields (creswell, 2012), which finally showed that the representatives were: those who had the highest scores, those who had got the middle scores, and those who had brought the lowest scores. the interview was conducted approximately 15-30 minutes in line with the number of questions. furthermore, the researcher collected the instructional videos from the participants’ subject reflections and lesson plans of their teaching practices in the microteaching course. before the research process, the participants signed a consent form informing them that they were involved in the study. data analysis technique the researchers made the coding extracts to interpret the data by reviewing a set of field notes, transcribing, synthesizing the quotes ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 344-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license meaningfully, and gradually drawing the relations between parts of the intact. codes were used to organize details, driving the researchers to progressively find the segments relating to particular constructs or themes about the research questions. furthermore, the researchers used saldana’s (2009) guidelines to make such coding schemes, as shown in table 1. in addition, the researchers analyzed the data by using the interactive model proposed by (miles et al., 2014). the data analyses were proceeding three concurrent flows of activities, i.e., data collection, data display, data condensation, and conclusion (drawing/verifying). table 1. coding scheme by the researchers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 345-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1: the coding manual for qualitative researchers (saldana, 2009). figure 2. component of the interactive model (miles et al., 2014) findings and discussion findings pre-service teachers’ experiences in designing and implementing instructional videos as designed in this study, the researchers explored the pre-service teachers’ experiences after conducting teaching practices on microteaching courses. they were required to implement instructional videos in front of the classroom. the researchers analyzed the design and implementation of such instructional videos based on tpack’s framework. the results showed that the pre-service teachers had time fifteen to twenty minutes for implementing their teaching materials. after one preservice teacher successfully implemented the teaching material, the other pre-service teachers and the lecturer gave feedback on their teaching performance. the input, among other things, is about whether the topics given in the materials implemented in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 346-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the videos are interesting. in this result, there are three steps of designing and implementing the instructional videos, i.e., 1) preparation, 2) pre-designing process, 3) post-designed. most preservice teachers admitted that the experience of designing instructional models enhanced their knowledge concerning logical, pedagogical, and content knowledge in those three steps. therefore, they had positive experiences designing and implementing the instructional videos, where effectiveness, creativity, and innovation appeared. firstly, in preparation, the preservice teachers prepared for the teaching material or chose the right topic for students. then they decided on the teaching strategies or learning styles suitable to their issues and learners’ grades in school. furthermore, in this step, in the designs of the videos resides the pedagogical knowledge (pk), content knowledge (ck), and technological knowledge (tk). for the next step, i.e., the pre-designing process, there is an activity when the pre-service teachers design the video with some technology tools such as powerpoint, camtasia, internet, filmora, and c-map. for instance, as was stated by student 1, she designed the teaching materials using tk. she adopted a part of a youtube video suitable to the topic; then, she used powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, internet, filmora, and c-map as applications for designing the subject matter. as she said: “i chose and took a video from youtube that focuses on language features about expressing intention; then i also had to record my voice and myself to explain the materials.” (s1, lines 62-63) she had experience designing her teaching materials and then converting them into pacific applications during the design step. another was experienced by student 3; in designing the teaching material, she used her technological knowledge. as she said: “i know the technology tool is powerpoint because it is one of the most common tools for teaching or explaining materials. then luckily, in college, i now know filmora camtasia and c-map. similarly, laptop, lcd and speakers.” (s3, lines 10-13) she knew she acknowledged some technology tools when designing her educational video. table 3 displays the analytical constructs summarized from the whole process done by the subjects of the study. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 347-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3. summary of preparation phase of designing and implementing instructional videos secondly, in the pre-designing process, there was an activity when the pre-service teachers designed instructional videos with some technology tools. the pre-service teachers showed their skills and knowledge to apply the technology tools in this process. as acknowledged by student 8, she used tck to explain the materials integrated with instructional videos briefly. as she consented: “umm, my main tool is the instructional video. i only played and paused the video, gave them more explanations, and made sure they understood the instruction. i showed them the instructional video using lcd, laptop and speaker mic, and i used microphone so my students can hear the sounds from video clearly” (s8, line 75-79) it was exemplified in the above data extract that student 8 knew how to use these applications, i.e., the instructional video they used contained powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, internet, filmora, and c-map. she used pacific, starting from the beginning of teaching until the end. additionally, as also mentioned by student 9, she used tck as well to explain materials briefly in her instructional video, as follows: “and also, i took dialogue from some famous movies so students will know the context of the topic from the real action.” (s9, lines 51-52) in addition, she took some dialogue from the internet related to the topics, and she edited the video to put in the video based on her lesson plan. table 4 displays the analytical constructs summarized from the whole process done by the subjects of the study. the last step is a post-designing process. this is the finishing process of making the pre-service teachers' instructional videos based on tpack for teaching and learning practices. tpack is a framework for describing and understanding the goals for technology use. the model introduces the relationships between all three essential components of knowledge, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 348-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license i.e., technology, pedagogy, and content (mishra & koehler, 2006b). in this last phase, all pre-service teachers (i.e., student one until student 9) have succeeded in making the instructional videos and implementing them in the teaching and learning practices. table 4. summary of pre-designing phase results pre-service teacher’s challenges in designing and implementing instructional videos based on the tpack framework most pre-service teachers faced two kinds of challenges in designing their instructional videos, i.e., externaltechnical challenges and internalpersonal challenges. external-technical challenges in these challenges, the pre-service teachers faced difficulties with the technology tools, software, or applications they used to design the videos. technical issues like the camtasia or filmora render being very slow, camtasia could not cut the audio, the inability to use the software, etc., were among other problems to challenge. for instance, the challenge stated that student 1 said that she found it difficult to cut the videos from youtube and unite them into the instructional videos she made as she told: “sometimes my laptop worked slowly because the software is too heavy for my laptop… then, it’s a kind of difficulty when i had to cut the videos from youtube and unite them.” (s1, line 76-78) another case is as was experienced by student 7, where h e had challenges in terms of his adequate knowledge of specific software. he said that he had already known many technology tools that can be used for teaching practices but had not been quite familiar with using them. therefore, he had to learn repeatedly until he understood enough how to use the technology tools for his teaching practice as he added: “the most challenging for me was, honestly, i already knew that many technology tools can be used for teaching practice in the college. then, i had to learn, learn, and repeatedly learn from the basics ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 349-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license until i understood enough about the software to design my educational video. i was shocked because i had no clue and had zero knowledge about using the software. i learned how to use camtasia, audacity, filmora, and c-map to design my educational video. it was so hard for me; there are many technology tools that i must master and understand the function.” (s7, lines 67-73) internal-personal challenges these challenges are related to experiences in pedagogical activities, such as knowledge about designing lesson plans, triggering creativity in videos, managing their time to create videos, and personal survival. for instance, they had difficulties creatively defining objects, colors, scenarios, buttons, and characters; as was experienced by student 5, she had challenges breaking down the topics, and choosing which words, and which sentences she should put in the slides. as she said: “umm… when i broke down the topic, choosing which words and sentences i should put in the slides. it was so hard and confusing because i’m afraid my explanation in the slides wasn’t the right one or probably not important, not the exact point. then, searching for qualified pictures is a must. i have to search and search again until i find the right ones. moreover, when i did a zoom-in/out in the camtasia, highlighting or underlining which words or sentences are effective, give the colors to them was sometimes confusing” (s5, line 73-80) it was not easy to search for the right pictures or videos related to her topic. in addition, she felt confused whenever she had to do a zoom-in or zoom-out in camtasia, highlight or underline which words or sentences were adequate, and give color to them to make clear explanations for the learners. another subject, namely, student 9, felt run out of creativity when she was making the design, animation, or any other highlighted essential points in her videos, as she confessed: “the most challenging thing for me was how to design the powerpoint, put a brief explanation, make it as interesting as i could for my students so they can understand the materials very well, then they will not get bored easily while watching and paying more attention to my videos. at the same time, when i take a video from youtube, sometimes i am afraid that the video is not related to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 350-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license topics and is not suitable for my students’ grades. so, i had to filter the videos, search and watch them, search for other videos, and repeat them until i thought i had already found the right videos. it took time. at this moment, i was often run out of inspiration. in conclusion, the challenge was a little bit tiring for me.” (s9, lines 64-70) in coping with challenges, however, there are differences among pre-service teachers who get higher scores, those who get average scores, and those who earn lower scores in terms of facing the challenges. the higher pre-service teachers prepared the materials well before teaching practices, even though some sometimes got nervous because they lacked pck. if the higher score pre-service teachers did this, let alone the average and lower score ones. in terms of being anxious when implementing the materials in the teaching practices, it was tough for them to cope. discussion the challenges and the solving strategies faced by the pre-service teachers reside in how they make the tk and ck in the videos they created. they had difficulties using camtasia and filmora (i.e., the tk) and reflecting on their ideas in their educational videos (i.e., the tk and ck). with the help of friends, they learned to use technology. this implies that during the process, the pre-service teachers’ inadequacies in having the tk and ck caused difficulties in designing the instructional videos in general. this finding supported (thompson & mishra, 2007) study, which argued that the three knowledge domains (i.e., the tk, pk, and ck) are integrated. in other words, the level of competence stipulated in each knowledge domain influences the entire processes in the tpack frame. however, at the same time, the result revealed that the preservice teachers compensated for inadequacy in each knowledge domain with the help of peers, lecturers, or internet searching, in addition to personal efforts to increase their knowledge. furthermore, the pre-service teachers’ preferences on topics for videos were quite crucial in determining how well the process of designing videos was, as the topic they decided on will influence the ease and difficulty levels in making the videos. in the assignment, the lecturers asked them to generate english-written content, for example, about grammar and text genres, within their content knowledge; in the meantime, some of them found that they felt difficult to choose suitable topics, which ease their high creativity to make and at the same ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 351-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license time were interesting for learners. this notion seemingly confirms tokmak’s (2015) study, which stated that creativity requires combining too many elements, namely elements related to, for instance, pre-service teacher thoughts, how to suit the instructional games to the learners’ levels, subject matters’ characteristics, game characteristics, and design issues. furthermore, the pre-service teachers agreed that designing the topics into instructional videos was a difficult task, so was selecting the method appropriate for their materials. the syllabus does not clearly describe teaching methods; it contains only a general guideline of teaching materials for one semester. in addition, they also must obtain a strenuous effort to make the purpose of the teaching because it should suit the learning materials to be contextual. this issue supported what sert and li (2019) found that the learners’ levels are considered critical, influential factors in preparing materials. the pre-service teachers do not just focus on students’ linguistic levels but also the cultural values and norms. nevertheless, even when they designed their video for teaching practices with those technology tools, they were not satisfied enough with their results because most pre-service teachers stated that it takes time for them and needs more creativity. they had to make the subject matter interesting, attractive, and easy to digest for the learners. these results were different from tokmak (2015), in which it was stated that most preservice teachers were satisfied with the instructional computer games they designed. they felt their games were attractive, followed design principles, and were appropriate for the target audience and curriculum. this difference might be caused by the fact that the curricula used are different. finally, the results revealed that designing instructional technology requires all knowledge domains of tpack in addition to experiences in teaching practices. moreover, creativity was highly emphasized by the preservice teachers. the tpack framework means generic knowledge necessary for teachers to have for their abilities to integrate technology into teaching. this finding is in line with what schmidt et al. (2009) argued that teachers should spontaneously recognize the complex interactions amongst three essential components of knowledge: the pk, ck, and tk, to integrate the teaching of materials into technology-driven pedagogic methods or appropriate subject matters. that is why the pre-service teachers under study combined the subject matters, the design, and the technique to implement ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 352-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching practices in the classroom with those three pieces of knowledge. further, the pre-service teachers are willing to apply tpack in the teaching process, although they have challenges when implementing the pck, tck, and tpk. specifically, most pre-service teachers faced difficulties managing the teaching time because they had only fifteen minutes. it was not enough for them to implement those videos into their teaching practices. at the same time, they have some issues to solve in designing the educational videos, such as upgrading technology-use capacity, increasing creativity, and enhancing motivation. conclusions and suggestion the efl pre-service teachers had various self-reflections on the experiences of designing and implementing the instructional videos based on the tpack framework, putting into three phases of steps in design-making and productimplementing. this becomes a positive experience for them. they need such experiences in designing and implementing instructional videos based on the tpack framework in microteaching courses, increasing their innovation, creativity, and motivation in their teaching skills. the challenge they should embrace is always present in such attempts. the challenges were divided into two categories, externaltechnical and internal-personal challenges. the trend exemplified the first one that some pre-service teachers had slow programs on their laptops; second, the pre-service teachers had to struggle when they were developing their videos; third, the specification of their laptops did not meet the requirements to run a specific application; forth, the laptops were not faster enough to render the videos, and fifth, their laptops worked very slowly when they wanted to edit, adjust the pictures with the contents, cut the videos, and use some applications. as a result, it all became a difficulty that needed an immediate solution for them. in the second one, typical cases showed that 1) the pre-service teachers did not have experience making a lesson plan, so they had to learn independently; 2) when they designed the videos, sometimes they were run out of creativity to make the design suitable with their materials to get learners’ attention and be attractive to the learners; and 3) some of them did not conduct some activities because they could not properly take advantage of their time in teaching. despite those difficulties, designing an instructional video gave them some experience in using advanced technology tools for their teaching and learning practices in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 353-357 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27447 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the future. an implication that can be drawn from this conclusion is that preservice teachers, in addition to being equipped with their primary subject competence, need an essential supplementary technological competence before they become teachers in the actual field. references abukhattala, i. 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(2002). conditions for classroom technology innovations. teachers college record, 104(3), 482–515. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 106-125 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee instagram to learn english vocabulary: a study of indonesian non-english major university students thesalonika dwi wardhani puspita baruti, adaninggar septi subekti* universitas kristen duta wacana, indonesia ((adaninggar@staff.ukdw.ac.id) received: 31st august 2022; revised: 01st may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of non-english primary university students in indonesia on using instagram for vocabulary learning and to find out the students' views of learning english vocabulary using instagram. considering the popularity of instagram among indonesian university students and the scarcity of such studies involving non-english primary students, investigating their use of instagram for english vocabulary learning can be worthwhile and relevant. the study involved 213 student participants who were instagram users in an online survey and six in online interviews. the survey found that the participants generally had positive attitudes toward using instagram for vocabulary learning. however, the study found the participants' somewhat ambivalent views through the thematic analysis of the interview data. students reported consciously learning new isolated english vocabulary from english captions on instagram. they unconsciously acquired isolated english vocabulary from photos and videos on instagram. however, instagram was not helping in obtaining vocabulary in contexts as it gave a limited content explanation. the findings could help teachers to make an informed decision when using instagram in the instructional process, optimizing its strength and potential. key words: english vocabulary; instagram; vocabulary learning; isolated vocabulary; vocabulary in context abstrak tujuan studi ini adalah untuk mengetahui sikap mahasiswa jurusan non-bahasa inggris di indonesia terhadap penggunaan instagram untuk pembelajaran kosakata bahasa inggris dan untuk mengetahui pandangan mahasiswa mengenai pembelajaran kosakata bahasa inggris menggunakan instagram. mengingat bahwa kepopuleran instagram di kalangan mahasiswa dan bahwa studi yang melibatkan mahasiswa jurusan non-bahasa inggris masih cukup langka, studi yang melibatkan kelompok mahasiswa ini sangat diperlukan dan relevan. studi melibatkan 213 mahasiswa pengguna instagram melalui survei daring dan enam diantaranya melalui wawancara daring. studi ini menemukan bahwa para peserta secara umum memiliki sikap positif terhadap penggunaan instagram untuk pembelajaran kosakata. namun, melalui analisis tematik hasil wawancara, ditemukan bahwa peserta wawancara memiliki pandangan yang sedikit ambivalen. mereka melaporkan bahwa melalui instagram, mereka secara sadar mempelajari kosakata lepas baru melalui captions instagram. selanjutnya, para peserta melaporkan bahwa secara tidak sadar mereka memperoleh kosakata lepas dari foto dan video di instagram. namun, dilaporkan bahwa instagram tidak begitu membantu dalam pemerolehan kosakata dalam konteks. hasil studi ini dapat membantu pengajar untuk membuat keputusan yang tepat saat menggunakan instagram dalam proses pembelajaran, mengoptimalkan kekuatan dan potensinya. kata kunci: kosakata bahasa inggris; instagram; pembelajaran kosakata; kosakata lepas; kosakata dalam konteks how to cite: baruti, t.d.w.p., subekti, a.s. (2023). instagram to learn english vocabulary: a study of indonesian non-english major university students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 106-125. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 107-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction vocabulary mastery is crucial in learning a second/foreign (l2) language. vocabulary is essential in learners' writing and speaking production (alqahtani, 2015). thornbury (2002), in an early yet still relevant work, posited that vocabulary learning is paramount for developing all language skills. successful language learning cannot be achieved without vocabulary (zhi-liang, 2010). hence, teachers are encouraged to pay more attention to their students' vocabulary learning, including optimizing the use of technology. in this modern era, technology has become necessary worldwide, including in the education sector. information and communication technology's role is growing, especially in the education field (sarkar, 2012). the role is becoming essential and continues to grow in the 21st century. in the 21st century, students can learn a language using technology anywhere, and teachers must adapt and be prepared (gajjar, 2013). one form of ict in social media. several reasonably recent studies about social media in language learning have been conducted, perhaps suggesting the growing importance of social media in language learning. a study by khan et al. (2016) involving 36 university teachers in pakistan reported that social media was perceived to affect university students' english learning, especially vocabulary. khan et al. (2016) also mentioned that social media helped engage students' interest in english and minimized hesitation or boredom. in indonesia, lailiyah and setiyaningsih (2020) found that their indonesian student participants reported positive experiences using instagram for english communication. similarly, in a saudi arabian context, fadda (2020) found that students preferred to use instagram because they were immersed and actively engaged in communication in english through it. nonetheless, fadda (2020) admitted that instagram lacks structure in learning opportunities and may provide limited information at a time. furthermore, several studies have investigated using social media, such as instagram, for vocabulary learning (fadda, 2020; indari & putri, 2018; lasmiasih, 2019; lina, 2021; sivagnanam & yunus, 2020). a study by sivagnanam and yunus (2020) in malaysia involving primary school students found that students improved their vocabulary skills by collaborating with other social media users in the comment section on instagram. in an earlier study, indari and putri (2018) found that social media significantly affected indonesian high school http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 108-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students' vocabulary achievement. furthermore, in another indonesian high school context, lasmiasih (2019) found that students got difficulties mastering the english language because they did not know the meaning of the words, both written and spoken, and using instagram photos, videos, and captions helped these students know meanings of words they did not know before. in line with that, a recent study by lina (2021) involving indonesian university students also suggested that students making status updates in their accounts related to their english learning in online classes could be a way for them to recycle learning materials. the findings, however, suggested that while many students applied correct grammar, only a few used vocabulary learned from the online class (lina, 2021). furthermore, though investigating learning in general, a mixed-methods study involving 166 high school students by mao (2014) found that when students were using social media, they felt relaxed and connected with other users, making learning more fun, meaningful, and interactive. however, some participants in this study perceived instagram as distracting and not helpful enough for learning purposes (mao, 2014), hinting at the limitation of this platform. several authors posited that instagram has the potential to facilitate vocabulary learning, with fewer studies suggesting otherwise. in an iranian context, an experimental study by beyranvand and rahmatollahi (2021) found that the group using instagram outperformed the others using adobe connect regarding vocabulary mastery. as instagram provides contextualized visual information (ahmadi & tabatabaei, 2021; gonulal, 2019; gunawan et al., 2021), it could be helpful for visual learners to learn english vocabulary (ahmadi & tabatabaei, 2021) and contribute to more enjoyable vocabulary learning experiences (al-ghamdi, 2018). studies by aloraini (2018) and fadda (2020) in saudi arabia and qisthi (2020) in indonesia found that students might prefer to use instagram in systematic ways over others in learning english vocabulary, for example by observing english accounts and hashtags to find new vocabulary (qisthi, 2020). instagram also offers interactive vocabulary enrichment (lailiyah & setiyaningsih, 2020). hence, instagram might be a learning media for students with prior experience in using the social media platform (fadda, 2020). however, a study by wahyudin and sari (2018) found that albeit being a minority, some participants reported their disagreement on the usefulness of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 109-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license instagram for language learning, suggesting that individual students' use of instagram may affect the extent to which they could obtain learning experiences through instagram. furthermore, previous studies also suggested that as instagram could facilitate vocabulary learning, it indirectly could facilitate writing, of which vocabulary is essential (listiani, 2016; soviyah & etikaningsih, 2018). in the writing process, students should have sufficient vocabulary mastery; with limited vocabulary, they may not be able to express their thoughts optimally (soviyah & etikaningsih, 2018). soviyah and etikaningsih (2018) added that to face those difficulties, instagram has some features that can be used in the learning process of writing. the features of instagram, such as photo or video-sharing and social networking, are an excellent resource to use in the instructional process, especially in l2 writing (soviyah & etikaningsih, 2018). similarly, several studies suggested that students could upload photos, write photo captions, and comment on others' pictures in unlimited provided space, thus facilitating the learning of vocabulary and writing (bestari et al., 2020; f. handayani, 2016; listiani, 2016; maolida & purnamasari, 2018). furthermore, several vocational college student participants in a study by rinda et al. (2018) acknowledged that their vocabulary repertoire improved by giving comments in english among friends on instagram. furthermore, instagram is a very popular social media platform in the indonesian context. as of early 2022, for example, instagram had 99.15 million users in the country, 35.7% of its total population (kemp, 2022). hence, it is common for indonesian university students to have instagram accounts and become active users of instagram. considering the popularity of instagram among indonesian students and that students can optimize the features of instagram as a learning tool (mahmudah & ardi, 2020; shafie & mahadi, 2019), investigating indonesian students' use of instagram for english vocabulary learning can be worthwhile and very relevant for the students. studies about instagram in l2 learning in indonesia have been conducted using various methods. for example, there have been several qualitative studies (agustin & ayu, 2021; gunawan et al., 2021; rosyida & seftika, 2019) and quantitative studies (qisthi, 2020; soviyah & etikaningsih, 2018; wahyudin & sari, 2018) about instagram and english vocabulary. the participants of these previous studies were mainly english department students. only the qualitative study by gunawan et al. (2021) involved a http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 110-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license university student from a non-english department. in addition, several studies have also been conducted on instagram for language learning skills (asyiah, 2017; listiani, 2016; mahmudah & ardi, 2020). these studies involved indonesian junior high school students. despite the possible contributions of these studies mentioned above, a study involving more participants could be needed to produce findings with the possibility of generalization. furthermore, considering the scarcity of such studies involving indonesian non-english department students, it could be worthwhile to involve them. considering the earlier rationales, the present study seeks to answer these two research questions. first, what is indonesian non-english primary university students' attitude towards using instagram to learn english vocabulary? second, what are the students' views on using instagram for english vocabulary development? the findings of this study can generally benefit teachers in the way that they can make an informed pedagogical decision concerning the use of instagram for l2 learning. for researchers, furthermore, the finding of the first research questions obtained through a survey may be generalized to a broader population sharing the same characteristics as the participants. method research design the present study employed a mixed-methods design. it combined an online survey to answer the first research question and online interviews to answer the second question. the pragmatism paradigm informed it, focusing on "what works" to answer the research questions best. the possibility of generalization was the rationale for selecting the survey method (gray, 2014). in comparison, interviews were conducted to obtain in-depth data about the phenomenon and explanations of the "how" and "why" of the quantitative data (gray, 2014) and to obtain understanding, meaning, and points of view from the standpoint of the participants (hammarberg et al., 2016). furthermore, the use of mixed methods was also attributed to the equally popular quantitative methods (al-kandari et al., 2016; aloraini, 2018; duggan & brenner, 2013; gonulal, 2019; r. d. handayani et al., 2020; li, 2017) and qualitative methods (gunawan et al., 2021; mansor & rahim, 2017; rosyida & seftika, 2019) in the field of studies on social media in education. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 111-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research instruments the online survey, made in google form to answer the first research question, employed a set of a questionnaire consisting of eight closeended items on students' attitudes toward the use of instagram for vocabulary learning. items 1 and 2 were adapted from a study by gonulal (2019), items 3 up to 6 were adapted from that of khan et al. (2016), and items 7 and 8 were adapted from that of mustain et al. (2019). the participants were to choose among the following possible responses: "strongly agree," equal to 5, "agree," equal to 4, "disagree," equal to 2. moreover, "strongly disagree" is equal to 1. the eight questionnaire items were categorised into two categories for more straightforward data presentation in findings and discussion. the first category is "1nstagram as a platform to improve english vocabulary mastery," and the second is "instagram and vocabulary learning." furthermore, online semistructured interviews through the google meet platform were employed to answer the second research question. the interviews used several interview checklists on the participants' views regarding using instagram for vocabulary development. examples of questions included "did you learn english vocabulary through instagram or not?" and "how did you learn english vocabulary through instagram? – if you did not, what did you learn through it?" participants and ethical consideration a total of 213 indonesian nonenglish department students participated in the present study. they were 51 males (23.9%) and 162 females (76.1%). the minimum age of the participants was 18, and the maximum was 23. they were from various islands or regions in indonesia, and their domiciles can be seen in table 1. table 1. the participants’ domiciles no. domiciles number of participants percentage 1. java 149 70.0% 2. nusa tenggara and bali 4 1.9% 3. sumatera 23 10.8% 4. kalimantan 13 6.1% 5. sulawesi 12 5.66% 6. papua 7 3.3% 7. others 5 2.3% from these 213 survey participants who indicated their willingness to be invited for possible follow-up interviews, six participants were randomly selected using a random picker application to be invited for interviews. of these six participants, three were males, and the other three were females. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 112-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this study used three ethical principles, autonomy, beneficence, and confidentiality. autonomy, the freedom to decide whether to participate in a study (hammersley, 2015), was maintained through an informed consent form indicating that the participants participated voluntarily (gray, 2014). the questionnaire consent form was available in the first part of the google form questionnaire, while the interview consent form, also prepared in google form, was given to the interviewees to be read and completed before the interviews. second, beneficence, focusing on benefiting others (beauchamp, 2008), was maintained by prioritizing the needs of the participants during data collection and giving monetary rewards for participation. last, the confidentiality principle was maintained using pseudonyms in the interview excerpts throughout this report (oliver, 2003). data collection and data analysis the data collection sequence was divided into two phases, the quantitative online survey and the qualitative online interviews. the online survey was done in google forms, and the link was shared through whatsapp and instagram. the information on intended participants was provided in the whatsapp caption and the google form questionnaire. that was to make sure that the prospective participants were indeed instagram users. the period of the survey was from november 2021 up to december 2021. after the questionnaire distribution, the data were downloaded as an excel file and processed in spss 25. descriptive statistics on spss 25 were employed to answer the first research question in the form of mean scores and percentages. the qualitative data collection phase of online interviews was conducted during the period of 7 up to 12 february 2022. through google meet, online interviews were conducted in the indonesian language, with which language the participants were familiar. each interview lasted around 30 minutes. the data were fully transcribed, translated into english, and further analyzed using thematic analysis per the second research question (braun & clarke, 2006). the steps included getting familiar with the dataset by reading and rereading the transcripts, searching for themes, and selecting excerpts that could best reflect the themes (braun & clarke, 2006). these selected excerpts were presented in the report, along with the pseudonyms of the interviewees stating the excerpts. the sequence of data collection and analysis can be observed in figure 1. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 113-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1. the sequence of data collection and analysis table 2. instagram as a platform to improve english vocabulary mastery no. statement mean scores strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 1. instagram is an excellent platform to increase english vocabulary. 4.09 22.6% 71% 6.5% 0% 2. instagram is a good platform for learning new words in english. 4.38 22.1% 65.4% 12.4% 0% 3. instagram provides vocabulary which contains words and images. 3.97 40.6% 58.5% 0.9% 0% 4. instagram is an easy way to develop english vocabulary. 3.77 14.7% 66.8% 18% 0.5% 5. instagram facilitates english learners' vocabulary development process. 3.63 12.4% 63.1% 24.4% 0% findings and discussions findings indonesian non-english primary university students' attitudes toward the use of instagram to learn english vocabulary the eight questionnaire items used in the survey had .85 cronbach's alpha coefficient, indicating relatively high internal reliability. the mean score of these eight questionnaire items was 3.73 from the range of 1-5 (sd 7.31), indicating a reasonably positive attitude toward using instagram for vocabulary learning. furthermore, as previously explained in methods, the designing google form questionnaire on students’ attitudes towards the use of instagram for vocabulary learning sharing the link through whatsapp and instagram randomly selected six participants for online interviews performing descriptive statistics on the data in spss 25 answering research question 1 in means and percentages conducting interviews in indonesian transcribing and translating interview transcripts into english conducting thematic analysis answering research question 2 in interview excerpts http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 114-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license questionnaire was categorized into two categories, 'instagram as a platform to improve english vocabulary mastery' and 'instagram and vocabulary learning,' to make the presentation of findings easier. the detailed results of questionnaire items in the first category can be seen in table 2. furthermore, the detailed results on questionnaire items in the second category could be seen in table 3. table 3. instagram and vocabulary learning no . statem ent me an sco res stro ngly agre e agr ee di sag ree stro ngly disa gree 6. instagr am helps me to develo p my englis h vocabu lary. 3.71 13.8 % 65.9 % 18. 4% 1.8% 7. i learn more englis h vocabu lary by using instagr am. 3.33 12.9 % 49.3 % 34. 1% 3.7% 8. i prefer using instagr am to learn englis h over other media. 2.96 6.9% 40.6 % 47 % 5.5% students views on the use of instagram for english vocabulary development regarding the second research question, six participants were interviewed. the pseudonyms of these participants were endri (male/m), sasa (female), dido (male), zara (f), eca (f), and bibi (m). the study found three themes from the interviews, which can be observed in table 4. table 4. student's views on the use of instagram for vocabulary development theme 1 students unconsciously acquired isolated english vocabulary from photos and videos on instagram. theme 2 students consciously learned new isolated english vocabulary from english captions on instagram. theme 3 instagram was not helping students to use the obtained vocabulary in sentences. theme 1. students unconsciously acquired isolated english vocabulary from photos and videos on instagram. the study found that learning vocabulary through photos and videos on instagram made students unconsciously obtain new english vocabulary. three students, endri, sasa, and eca, experienced that they unconsciously learned english vocabulary from english content or english accounts on instagram. they reported: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 115-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license "[…] because each content on instagram provides english content using the english language, i learn english unconsciously." [endri/m] "instagram provides many pictures and videos. it is easy to remember the information through photos or videos. […]” [sasa/f] "[…] instagram is one social media that could provide funny content compared to other applications. it helps me learn new words in fun ways since instagram shows the visualization." [eca/f] theme 2. students consciously learned english vocabulary from writing english captions on instagram. two out of six participants, zara and eca, reported learning english vocabulary through writing a caption on instagram. furthermore, they practised their writing skills when posting a photo or video on instagram in english. they stated: “[...] i prefer to write captions in english when i want to post photos or videos. from writing a caption, i become more confident in using vocabulary in sentences rather than when i just see an english account to learn vocabulary." [zara/f] "[...] nowadays, teenagers mostly use english when writing captions, so i also learn english vocabulary from [writing] captions." [eca/f] moreover, these students also added how they learned english vocabulary through writing captions on instagram. they shared: "i learn vocabulary through reading someone's caption especially i learn from young learners like us. for example, usually, people from south jakarta often use 'which is… literally'. for me, those words could be a new way to learn vocabulary. so, most of the words that often come up, they could be learned." [zara/f] "[...] some of my posts used english captions. it is not for style, but sometimes i want to test my vocabulary skills." [eca/f] theme 3. instagram was not helping students to use the obtained vocabulary in sentences. albeit the generally positive views on using instagram for vocabulary learning, it turned out that two students had different points of view. those students, sasa and zara, reported that instagram was not helping when learning vocabulary in context. they stated: "[...] so, when i get a new word, i do not directly apply it in a perfect sentence… such as there are adverb, object, subject… i do not construct the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 116-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sentence. so, for learning english vocabulary in more detail, instagram could not help me much." [sasa/f] "[...] instagram increases my english vocabulary. however, if we learn the basics of english, such as applying the vocabulary and grammar in a sentence, i think instagram was not helping." [zara/f] discussion indonesian non-english primary university students' attitudes toward the use of instagram to learn english vocabulary first questionnaire category: instagram as a platform to improve english vocabulary mastery as seen in table 2, items 1 and 2 had the highest mean scores of more than 4.00 (on a 1-5 scale), indicating their favorable attitude towards instagram as a good platform for vocabulary learning. this finding was similar to a study by lailiyah and setiyaningsih (2020), who found that their indonesian student participants expressed positive attitudes about their experiences of using instagram for communication in english. the similarity might indicate that indonesian students had a positive attitude towards instagram for education. item number 1, "instagram is a good platform to increase english vocabulary," produced the secondhighest mean score (4.09). there were, 154 participants (71%) answered 'agree,' and 45 (22.6%) answering 'strongly agree', indicating the participants' endorsement that instagram could facilitate students to improve their english mastery. this endorsement may be attributed to the participants' familiarity with instagram features, allowing a wide range of activities to facilitate learning. this finding was in line with studies in saudi arabia by fadda (2020) and aloraini (2018) who found that students perceived instagram as an advantageous tool to learn english vocabulary and provided students with a fun online learning environment. item number 2, "instagram is a good platform to learn new words in english," had the highest mean score (4.38). one hundred eighty-nine participants (87.5%) endorsed this statement. the participants' agreement resonated with a finding of a study in saudi arabia by al-ghamdi (2018), where the participants reported that instagram could use their students' vocabulary control and contribute to positive and enjoyable online learning http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 117-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license experiences. the similarity suggested that indonesian and saudi arabian participants generally shared positive attitudes towards instagram as a language learning tool. furthermore, item number 3, "instagram provides vocabulary which contains words and images," produced a mean score of 3.97. 99.1% of participants endorsed this statement. this may be because many instagram accounts were providing english vocabulary content. this platform also might become an online vocabulary library since students could follow different english accounts or search for new words using hashtags. similar to this present study, a study by qisti (2020) in an indonesian university context found that students observed english accounts and hashtags to find new vocabulary. in addition, a qualitative study by agustin and ayu (2021) and a quantitative study by soviyah and etikaningsih (2018) in indonesian contexts also reported that instagram had some interesting features, one of which was that students could share or watch exciting photos or videos and students favored this. the consistent findings among these studies could indicate that indonesian students generally favored instagram features allowing multimodal learning. next, item number 4, "instagram is an easy way to develop english vocabulary," had a mean score of 3.77. 81.5% of participants endorsed the statement. this may be attributed to the fact that students were likely to use instagram since this platform allowed students to learn anywhere and anytime. students could develop their english vocabulary based on their situation and be flexible per their needs. this finding aligned with a finding of an experimental study in iran by beyranvand and rahmatollahi (2021). the study suggested that the group using instagram outperformed the other group not using it in terms of vocabulary mastery (beyranvand & rahmatollahi, 2021). related to the present study, the finding may suggest that instagram had engaged students to be more enthusiastic about learning. moreover, item 5, "instagram facilitates english learners' vocabulary development process," produced a mean score of 3.63. 75.5% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. this finding aligned with a study by khan et al. (2016) in pakistan involving 36 english teachers on the perceived dominant role of social media in students' english vocabulary development. nevertheless, it is essential to note that this item had the highest disagreement compared to other items. 24.4% of participants http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 118-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license answered "disagree" this disagreement may suggest that the positive effects of instagram usage on language learning were not uniform among students. several students may have limited vocabulary learning experiences when using instagram because they made or were exposed to limited english content on instagram. second questionnaire category: instagram and vocabulary learning in table 3, there were three questionnaire items. item number 6 produced a relatively high mean score of 3.71, followed by item number 7, with an average mean score of 3.33, and item number 8, with a relatively low mean score of 2.96. first, item number 6, "instagram helps me to develop english vocabulary," with a mean score of 3.71, was endorsed by 79.7% of the participants. the reasonably positive attitude following a finding of a study by rinda et al. (2018) involving indonesian vocational high school students who found more than 71% of their participants also perceived instagram to be facilitating english vocabulary development. instagram allows students to interact with people around the world. hence, students could develop their english vocabulary by communicating with instagram users worldwide. furthermore, item numbers 7 and 8 produced the lowest mean scores among all questionnaire items in both categories. item number 7, "i learn more english vocabulary by using instagram," with a mean score of 3.33, was endorsed by 62.2% of the participants while 37.8% disagreed. similarly, item number 8, "i prefer using instagram to learn english than other media," with a low mean score of 2.96, was endorsed by only 47.5% of the participants, while the other 52.5% or 112 out of 213 participants expressed their disagreement. these findings may be attributed to the possibility that instagram could not fully help students to do meaningful vocabulary learning experiences. for example, instagram offers a limited content explanation. this finding was in line with a study by wahyudin and sari (2018) in an indonesian context, who found that instagram could not help students access suitable english learning materials. moreover, a mixed-methods study on high school students was conducted by mao (2014), who also found that some students assumed that instagram was distracting, timeconsuming, and suitable for socializing but not so much for learning. thus, some participants in the present study and previous studies (e.g: mao, 2014; http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 119-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license wahyudin & sari, 2018) may have believed that instagram might be good for entertainment purposes and not good enough for very elaborate language learning purposes. students views on the use of instagram for english vocabulary development theme 1. students unconsciously acquired isolated english vocabulary from photos and videos on instagram. as seen from the interview excerpts, the findings suggested that learning english vocabulary through instagram had engaged students' interest in various english content or english learning accounts. students independently chose the contents and learned the contexts since this platform provides an authentic source. moreover, students could access many photos and videos and follow many english accounts to learn english vocabulary. several studies have documented students' experiences of learning vocabulary using instagram (ahmadi & tabatabaei, 2021; gonulal, 2019; gunawan et al., 2021). these studies found that instagram provided visual data with contextual texts. the visualized contents made students unconsciously acquire vocabulary (ahmadi & tabatabaei, 2021; gonulal, 2019; gunawan et al., 2021). in addition, the use of instagram could make students get rid of boredom through the photos and videos uploaded on this platform. as eca, one of the interviewees, mentioned in the interview, instagram offered various creative content to eliminate boredom. this finding was in line with the findings of studies by lina (2021) and lasmiasih (2019), who found that this platform effectively increased students' vocabulary mastery by showing various visual content to reduce their boredom in the learning process. thus, students might enjoy gaining more english vocabulary without getting bored. theme 2. students consciously learned english vocabulary from writing english captions on instagram. as suggested through the mentioned excerpts in this theme, instagram had given students space to improve their writing ability, and from writing, they also expanded their vocabulary as used in sentences. students freely selected photos or videos to upload and wrote the relevant captions. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 120-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license through this, students obtained the opportunity to practice their writing skills and improve their analytical and error-correction skills. similar findings were also reported by several previous studies in asia (shafie & mahadi, 2019; wahyudin & sari, 2018) in the way students would prepare their sentences for captions when they posted on instagram. eventually, students consciously increased their vocabulary by writing a caption or description on their photos or videos. several studies investigating the use of instagram for writing in indonesian contexts also suggested that writing captions on instagram helped students practice their writing (bestari et al., 2020; f. handayani, 2016; maolida & purnamasari, 2018), with vocabulary learning being an inevitable part of it. theme 3. instagram was not helping students to use the obtained vocabulary in sentences. the interview excerpts on this theme suggested that there was an obstacle to learning english vocabulary using instagram. students reported that they could not produce english vocabulary in sentences, and instagram could not support students' needs. the first possible reason was an instagram content specifically for english learning typically only offers one english vocabulary word and the indonesian translation. an example we found on instagram to better illustrate this was information in a picture, "hati-hati yang suka masih tertukar antara kata ini: 'borrow: meminjam' 'lend': meminjamkan" (translated: pay attention for those of you who are still confused between these words: 'borrow': [indonesian translation] 'lend': [indonesian translation]). the second reason was that much instagram content written in english did not provide specific explanations for students to learn. this was expected, considering the students' encounters with english content on instagram were typically accidental, and most contents were not explicitly meant for language learning. this finding was in line with a study in saudi arabia conducted by fadda (2020), suggesting that the amount of information available on instagram may be limited at a given time. fadda (2020) also reported that instagram lacks structure in learning opportunities. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 121-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusion and suggestions the present study has several implications. informed by the finding that instagram did not facilitate students to learn english vocabulary in a sentence, teachers may optimize several instagram features in instructions, such as providing content about english vocabulary in the feed, story, reels, igtv, or iglive with detailed explanations. hence, students can learn vocabulary in contexts through instagram. similarly, teachers can provide english materials in contextualized visual products on instagram to allow students to understand the meaning of words as used in sentences. furthermore, since instagram allows posts containing photos and videos with captions, students can develop their ideas to write a caption in english related to the photo or video that they will upload. moreover, students can freely follow english accounts that will help them increase their vocabulary mastery, making social media experiences beneficial for their language learning. furthermore, this study also has several contributions. first, the survey data from 213 indonesian non-english major university student participants may be generalized to the wider indonesian context sharing the same characteristics as participants. the indepth data about students' perspectives on the use of instagram for vocabulary development also suggested that the use of instagram, albeit popular among students, also had limitations. this finding could be on the other side of the pendulum thus far, heavily favoring social media for language learning. the limitation of the present study mainly stemmed from the limited empirical studies with which the findings on the limitation of instagram could be compared. that was because the plethora of literature on social media has heavily reported the positive effects and attitudes towards social media for language learning. last but not least, there are several suggestions for future studies. based on the findings on students' inability to construct sentences from the vocabulary they knew from instagram, future studies could explore ways to enhance student's ability to use the isolated vocabulary they know in spoken or written contexts. furthermore, considering the development of instagram enabling students to learn through technology and its popularity among young people, future researchers may conduct studies on using instagram to learn other language skills, such as speaking and listening. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 122-125 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.26969 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references agustin, r. w., & ayu, m. 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(2010). a study on english vocabulary learning strategies for non-english majors in independent college. crosscultural communication, 6(4), 152– 164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021, 259-280 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effectiveness of google classroom media in teaching english for tourism at a tourism and business institute ni komang arie suwastini*, i made drati nalantha, gede rasben dantes received: 01st august 2021; revised: 15th october 2021; accepted: 27th december 2021 abstract the present study examined the effectiveness of google classroom media in teaching english for tourism students at a private tourism and business institute in bali during mandatory online learning in 2020. the study was qualitative research, implementing the qait model for evaluating the effectiveness of google classroom in teaching english, involving four lecturers and 42 students. the data were collected through observations of the teaching-learning process in two classes and interviews with the lecturers. the researchers were the primary research instrument, supported by interview guides and an observation checklist. in general, the use of google classroom in these english for tourism classes was only sufficiently effective, with only one lecturer performing well, two lecturers performing sufficiently, and one lecturer performing insufficiently. obstacles identified among the students were lousy internet connection, lack of device, low motivation, and lack of readiness in using the online learning platform. in conclusion, the implementation of google classroom in the observed english classroom was proven to be only sufficient. this conclusion implies the need for more training for teachers in using google classroom to improve the quality, appropriateness, incentive, and timeeffectiveness of the teaching and learning process, especially in online learning. key words: google classroom; online learning; english for tourism; qait abstrak penelitian ini mengamati efektivitas media google classroom dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris untuk mahasiswa pariwisata di institut pariwisata dan bisnis swasta di bali selama pembelajaran online wajib tahun 2020. penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif, mengimplementasikan model qait untuk mengevaluasi efektivitas google classroom di pengajaran bahasa inggris, yang melibatkan empat dosen dan 42 mahasiswa. pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui observasi proses belajar mengajar di kedua kelas dan wawancara dengan dosen. peneliti bertindak sebagai instrumen penelitian utama, didukung oleh pedoman wawancara dan daftar periksa observasi. secara umum penggunaan google classroom pada kelas bahasa inggris untuk pariwisata ini baru cukup efektif, dengan hanya satu dosen yang berprestasi baik, dua dosen berprestasi cukup, dan satu dosen dirasa kurang memadai. kendala yang ditemukan pada siswa adalah koneksi internet yang buruk, kurangnya perangkat, motivasi yang rendah, dan kurangnya kesiapan dalam menggunakan platform pembelajaran online. kesimpulannya, penerapan google classroom di kelas bahasa inggris yang diamati terbukti hanya cukup. kesimpulan ini menyiratkan perlunya lebih banyak pelatihan bagi guru dalam menggunakan google classroom untuk meningkatkan kualitas, kesesuaian, insentif, dan efektivitas waktu proses belajar mengajar, terutama dalam pembelajaran online. kata kunci: google classroom; pembelajaran daring; english for tourism; qait how to cite: suwastini, n. k. a., nalantha, i. m. d., & dantes, g. r. (2021). the effectiveness of google classroom media in teaching english for tourism at a tourism and business institute. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 259-280. doi:10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 260-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction during the covid pandemic, everyone must keep their distance from each other to avoid spreading this virus. this obligation is also mandated in indonesia, as instructed in circular letter number hk.02.01/menkes/ 199/2020 concerning communication on handling covid-19 (ministry of health indonesia, 2020). however, learning activities must be carried on to maintain the quality of education. thus, online classes are conducted to replace conventional face-to-face classes. in this setting, learning activities are carried out in the students' and the lecturer's residences without the necessity to meet in a physical classroom, as outlined in the minister of education and culture circular letter no.4 of 2020. this letter states that all academic activities must be conducted online until an undetermined time limit (minister of education and culture indonesia, 2020), both during the pandemic and whenever necessary. this concept of online learning is made possible by the development of technology, where sophisticated gadgets and various online learning platforms are available (afifi, 2011; dantes et al., 2019). google classroom is becoming one of the leading choices for online teaching, with the ministry of education and culture conducting training on using google classroom for teachers. google creates this teaching platform to help educational institutions in providing education. google classroom offers many advantages that make it easy for teachers to educate their students in the teaching and learning process (phoenix, 2020). this teaching and learning process is inside and outside the classroom because students can learn anywhere and anytime by accessing google classroom online. further, this platform becomes a learning management system that can provide students with teaching materials and test facilities (nicholson, 2020). google classroom is deemed as one of the platforms that are the easiest to use and is argued to offer many benefits, such as accessibility, flexibility, and adaptability in the teaching and learning process (alim et al., 2019; beaumont, 2018; guzman et al., 2017; heggart & yoo, 2018; iftakhar, 2016; sukmawati & nensia, 2019; syakur et al., 2020). however, many studies have argued that google classroom also challenges teachers and students across levels. school children were found to have problems with the connection, insufficient readiness to use the online learning platform, and lack of preparedness to autonomous learning generally required in online learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 261-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (abidin & saputro, 2020; bhat et al., 2018; puspitasari et al., 2021; suhroh & cahyono, 2020; zakaria, 2021). considering the emergency and mandatory nature of online learning, evaluation needs to be conducted to determine how effective the implementation of online learning using google classroom is, especially in the first months of the pandemic. as teachers and students are forced to adopt online learning methods and pick google classroom as the platform, the teachers' technological competence may affect the quality of teaching and learning in conventional face-to-face teaching and online learning. thus, there is a possibility that this mandatory yet sudden transfer to online learning and the use of google classroom may need improvements. hassan et al. (2020) and puspitasari et al. (2021) argue that teachers and students found the implementation of google classroom during the mandatory online learning at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic has posed considerable challenges due to unfamiliarity with the learning management system and technical challenges such as limited internet access and unavailability of digital devices to access the online platform. preliminary observation in a tourism and business institute in bali also indicated that the same problems were experienced by the lecturers and the students, especially during the emergency online teaching mandated since march 2020. many meetings were canceled during the switch, with lecturers trying to find ways to keep the knowledge transfer going. the next term of the mandatory online teaching that started in the second half of the year sometimes gave lecturers and students more ready. many lecturers also opted for the same learning management system to conduct their instructions in higher education, including lecturers in the tourism and business institute previously observed. considering the many challenges teachers and students face in the implementation of google classroom, the present study aimed to evaluate the implementation of google classroom in an efl class in a tourism and business institute in bali using slavin’s (2017) qait model. slavin (2017) proposes a qait model in seeing the effectiveness of learning through four inter-related elements of instruction: the quality, the appropriate level, the incentive, and time management. quality of instruction concerns how educators convey information systems to enable the students to achieve the learning goals. an appropriate level of instruction deals with whether an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 262-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license instruction is suitable for the student's level of readiness, as reflected by the students' responses during the instruction and their accomplishment of the assignments. from the aspect of incentive, the learning process is evaluated concerning how educators motivate students to be enthusiastically engaged during the learning process. the aspect of time in slavin's model evaluate whether or not the teachinglearning process is conducted in effective time management: whether or not the learning objectives are achieved within the allocated time, with the proper arrangement as how much time is used for apperception and preactivity, whilst-activity, and postactivity as well as for assessment. the present study implemented slavin’s qait model to follow the preliminary observation of using google classroom in online learning in bali's tourism and business institute. it was essential to conduct this research because there have been many indications of challenges faced by teachers in using google classroom as the platform recommended by the ministry to be used during the mandatory online learning due to the covid-19 pandemic. puspitasari et al. (2021) found that older teachers had a hard time adapting to google classroom at the beginning of the pandemic. hassan et al. (2020), octaberlina and muslimin (2020), and zulkefli et al. (2020) found that students found it challenging to use google classroom because the students that they observed did not have a reliable internet connection. they found that the unstable internet connection demotivated the students to study. atmojo and nugroho (2020) found that google classroom cannot motivate the students to participate in the discussion tabs. meanwhile, students had difficulty comprehending the learning material shared through google classroom because they were not explained in detail (agung et al., 2020; atmojo and nugroho, 2020). moreover, the preliminary observation indicated that the lecturers experienced difficulties implementing google classroom. the teachinglearning process should be investigated further to provide a deeper understanding of the process and the challenges experienced by the lecturers in the classroom under investigation. this study’s result would become a direct recommendation for the institute where the study was conducted. however, in the broader contexts, the results of this study can also serve as reflections for teachers and lecturers who implement google classroom. the results can build recommendations for teachers and educators about problems in implementing google classroom and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 263-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license online learning in general, which may be taken to stakeholders as considerations in making further policies related to online learning and implementations of specific learning management systems. methods research design the research method used in this study was a descriptive qualitative method through an in-depth online interview which follows miles et al.'s (2014) model of qualitative data analysis. the main instrument for the data collection was the researcher, who assisted with observation sheets and interview guides. the rubric of qait evaluation is displayed in table 1, while the interview guides are displayed in table 2 and table 3. table 1. the rubric of qait evaluation for evaluating the teaching-learning process aspects of evaluation very good good sufficient insufficient quality of instruction all students have satisfactory learning outcomes in accordance with the learning objectives. most students have good learning outcomes following the learning objectives. some students have good learning outcomes in accordance with the learning objectives. most students have learning outcomes that are incompatible with learning objectives. appropriate level of instruction all students understood the instructions quickly; all students did their assignments according to the instructions given by the lecturer. most students understood the instructions well; most students did their assignments correctly according to the instructions given by the lecturer. some students understood the instructions, but most of them did not fully understand them; some did the assignments correctly according to the instruction given by the lecturer. most of the students were confused about the instructions; students did not do the assignments or did them incorrectly without following the instructions given by the lecturer. incentive all students are active in commenting and sharing opinions on class discussions on the stream or classwork tab. most students are active in commenting and sharing opinions on class discussions on the stream or classwork tab. some students are active in commenting and sharing opinions on class discussions on the stream or classwork tab. no students actively comment and share opinions on class discussions in the classwork stream or tab. time  lessons finish on time  all students submit the assignment on  lessons finish on time  most students submit the assignment on  lessons finish late  some students are late in submitting assignments  some learning  lessons finish late  most students are late in submitting assignments  most learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 264-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license aspects of evaluation very good good sufficient insufficient time  all learning objectives are achieved within the time allocated time  most learning objectives are achieved within the time allocated objectives are achieved within the time allocated objectives are not achieved within the time allocated. table 2. interview guide for the lecturers category definition question quality of instruction the quality of instruction refers to a series of activities carried out during teaching and learning activities. 1. how do you teach the material to students in google classroom? 2. what do you feel about google classroom as your new teaching and learning media? appropriate level of instruction the way teachers provide the appropriate level of teaching for teaching diverse students. 3. how do you inform the assignments to students? 4. how do you believe your instruction is appropriate for your students? incentive the way of teachers motivates their students 5. how do you motivate your students? 6. how do you make sure students are interested in the lesson? time the efficiency of the time used for teaching and learning 7. how do you manage the time using google classroom? 8. do you think this platform is efficient and useful? why? table 3. interview guides for the students category definition question quality of instruction the quality of instruction refers to a series of activities carried out during teaching and learning activities. 1. do you understand the material in google classroom? 2. what do you feel about google classroom as teaching and learning media? appropriate level of instruction the way teachers provide the appropriate level of teaching for teaching diverse students. 3. how does the lecturer inform the assignments to students? 4. do you like the teaching-learning process conducted through google classroom by the lecturers? incentive the way of teachers motivates their students. 5. does google classroom motivate you to study better? 6. is the lesson through google classroom interesting for you? time the efficiency of the time used for teaching and learning 7. how do you manage the time using google classroom? 8. do you think this platform is efficient and useful? why? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 265-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the rubric above was used as guidelines to observe the teachinglearning process as the teacher's and the student's activities were observed in each of the meetings. research site and participants the subjects of this research were four lecturers of english in a tourism and business institute in bali in the first semester of the academic year 2020/2021. the four lecturers taught two english classes. the first class had twenty-two students, and the second class had twenty students. lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 were in team-teaching in the first class, while lecturer 3 and 4 were in team-teaching in the second class. in these team-teachings, the pair taught the class simultaneously and shared the same syllabus, but they designed their instructions respectively. forty-two students taught by the four lecturers in the two classes observed in this study were also enrolled as secondary research subjects for confirming the results of interviews and observations conducted with the teachers and the learning process. the objects of the study were the quality, appropriateness, incentive, and time management of the online classes conducted by the research subjects, following slavin’s qait model (2017). data collection and analysis the data collection methods employed in this study were observations and semi-structured interviews. the observations were conducted on the online learning through google classroom and google meet as the online, face-to-face meeting. the observations were conducted in five meetings of each of the lecturers' classes. each of the classrooms was observed five times, making 20 observations altogether. the learning process observed included the recordings of the google meets, sharing materials, discussions, sending assignments, doing examinations, grading assignments, giving feedback, and conducting exams. the interviews were conducted using online platforms such as whatsapp chats, whatsapp video calls or voice calls, and regular telephone calls with the lecturers and the students. during the step of data condensation, the data collected were then classified into the four elements of slavin’s qait model. this step was conducted while continuously ensuring that all the data were collected and tabulated. after the tabulation was completed, the analysis was continued with categorizing the lecturers' instructions following a set of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 266-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license evaluation blueprints adapted from slavin's qait model. all of the steps in the data collection, data condensation, and data display were conducted interactively to ensure that the conclusion drawn from the process was trustworthy. findings and discussion findings table 4 displays the result of the observations conducted during the teaching and learning activities in english in tourism students at the international tourism and business institute. the observations were conducted in 2 classes. two lecturers taught each class in a team-teaching model, where each lecturer designed their contents for their respective google classroom. the study observed the teaching-learning process as recorded through google meet, the content, and the discussion activities in the google classroom. in this case, objects of the observations are the instructions designed by the lecturers, the teaching-learning process conducted by the lecturers, and the activities conducted by the students during the meets and in the online discussion. table 4. observation result evalua ted aspect s observation results class a/ lectur er 1 class a/ lecture r 2 class b/ lecture r 3 class b/ lecture r 4 qualit y of instruc tion suffici ent sufficie nt good good appro priate level of instruc tion suffici ent good good good incenti ve insuffi cient insuffic ient insuffic ient good time insufficie nt insuffic ient insuffic ient insuf ficien t regarding the quality of instruction, two lecturers conducted their instructions sufficiently while the other two lecturers' instructions were good. regarding the appropriateness of the instruction level, one lecturer performed sufficiently, while the other three performed well. the incentive of instructions conducted by three lecturers was insufficient, but one lecturer managed to conduct good instruction. however, all four lecturers involved in this study reflected poor time management in terms of time management. in other words, the instruction conducted by lecturer 1 was sufficient in terms of quality and appropriate level of instruction but insufficient in terms of incentive and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 267-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license time management. the instruction conducted by lecturer 2 was sufficient in terms of quality, good in terms of the appropriate level, but insufficient in terms of incentive and time management. the instruction conducted by lecturer 3 was good in terms of quality and appropriate level of instructions but insufficient in terms of incentive and time management. the instruction conducted by lecturer 4 was good in terms of quality of instruction, the appropriate level of instruction, and incentive but insufficient in terms of time management. the overall instruction conducted by lecturer 1 was insufficient, lecturer 2 was sufficient, lecturer 3 was sufficient, and lecturer 4 was good. in general, the instructions conducted in the beginner classes of the institute under investigation were sufficient. discussion quality of instruction from table 4, it can be observed that the quality of instruction conducted by the four lecturers in the tourism and business institute observed in this study was between sufficient and good. lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 conducted sufficient quality of instruction, while lecturer 3 and lecturer 4 conducted good quality of instruction. lecturer 1 designed the meetings in the google classroom with the lesson's topic, gave videos that explained the teaching material and assignments as a form of assessment. the face-to-face meetings usually lasted quite briefly, with the lecturer checking the students’ presence and giving assignments, which the students did independently. this lecturer provided the instructions for the assignments on the classwork tab. the learning goals of the classes taught by the lecturer 1 was sufficient, with most students did not submit the assignments. interviews with the students revealed that they did not submit the assignment because they could not do it since they did not understand how to do it. lecturer 2 had the same instruction pattern, but this lecturer provided more alternative learning sources, such as e-books, pdf files, and videos. this lecturer also provided longer explanations of the topic and the task in face-to-face meetings, with asynchronous discussion opened in the comment section. however, the comment sections did not show any questions from the students. in general, most students did not achieve the learning objectives, despite the richer learning sources provided by the lecturer. interviews with the students revealed that most students did not read the e-books and the pdf files provided by the lecturer. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 268-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lecturer 3 and lecturer 4 designed their instruction more completely. in addition to learning sources in e-books and pdf files, they also provided related educational videos from youtube and other websites. during the synchronous face-to-face online meetings, while recording the students’ presence and giving learning materials, they also explained the teaching material instead of only giving them the materials and asking them to read independently. they provided clear instructions on how to do the assignments. another significant difference that they did differently from lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 was that they invited students to ask questions in the comment sections. they took time to answer the students' questions. interviews with lecturer 3 and lecturer 4 revealed that they tried to conduct process assessment through the asynchronous discussion to assess whether the students understood the learning material. they admitted that making their students ask questions or respond to the lecturers' questions was challenging. observations on the comment section revealed that students mostly ask about technical aspects like submitting the assignment, in what format, and whether the deadline was fixed. the instructions conducted by lecturer 3 and lecturer 4 seemed to yield better quality of instruction since most of their students achieved the learning goals with good outcomes. the instructions conducted by lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 relied on taskbased learning that can force students to practice learning autonomy, especially among adult learners. however, the students might have been unready with high learning autonomy as they were in their first year in the university. thus, the lack of interaction between the lecturers and the students seemed to affect the students negatively. when they did not understand the instruction, they did not ask. when they were provided with more learning sources, they did not access them. fauzan and arifin (2019) also found that the teaching and learning process weaknesses using google classroom can be caused by students' reluctance to read. as the students were passive, lecturer 1 and lecturer 2 did not adjust to the students’ learning profiles. they acted as learning facilitators who directed students to carry out certain activities without step-by-step assistance, leading to students' failure to do the assignment and negatively affecting their learning outcomes. fauzan & arifin (2019) also found the same phenomenon where failure in understanding the teacher’s instructions for the assignments resulted in the students’ failure to do and submit their assignments. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 269-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license instructions provided by the lecturers need to be clear and complete to allow students to learn more effectively (syakur et al., 2020). furthermore, the teacher needs to assist in the learning process instead of simply relying on assignment completion as the only assessment. ersani et al. (2021) argue the importance of providing scaffolding for students in an online setting because students have different readiness that may affect how they progress during the learning process and its outcome. the instructions conducted by lecturer 3 and lecturer 4 were of better quality when compared to those conducted by lecturer 1 and 2 because of the relatively productive asynchronous discussion they conducted. the study conducted by muslimah (2018) confirms these findings. she observed that productive discussion in google classroom could lead to better learning quality. the discussions may not be limited to the learning contents and technical aspects since many students were not familiar with google classroom and how to submit assignments via online platforms. although this may not be related directly to the quality of instruction conducted by lecturer 3 and lecturer 4, the teachers' explanation of these technicalities facilitated the students submitting their assignments, albeit some tardiness. this finding is similar to the findings conducted by azhar and iqbal (2018), fauzan and arifin (2019), and megawati and astutik (2019). they revealed that the mastery of google classroom features affected the quality of the learning process and the learning outcomes. similarly, shaharanee et al. (2016) argue that google classroom should be used as a tool for active learning. the success of the instruction depends on how the teachers guide their students; both in terms of learning content and how to navigate the online system. appropriate level of instruction table 4 displays that the instructions designed by the lecturers in the tourism and business observed in this study were generally good. lecturer 2, lecturer 3, and lecturer 4 designed and conducted their instructions well, while lecturer 1 designed and conducted sufficient instruction. the instruction designed and conducted by lecturer 1 seemed to be confusing for most students. some students did understand the instruction and submitted their assignment, but most of them admitted that they were confused about the instructions given by lecturer 1. as described previously, students in the class taught by lecturer 1 rarely submitted their assignments. interview with the students revealed ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 270-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that most students did not do the assignment because they did not understand how to do it. observations on the instructions of the assignments provided by lecturer 1 revealed that the instructions tended to belong with unnecessary notes that confused the students. besides the interview with lecturer 1, it was revealed that the lecturer tried to provide instructions with emphasis that if they did not understand the material, they should watch the video again and again until they understood it. lecturer 1 admitted that the long instructions were provided to help the students understand how to do the assignment. as observed in the google classroom comment section, lecturer 1 did not provide asynchronous discussions. unlike lecturer 1, the other three lecturers provided asynchronous discussion that allowed the students to ask questions or comments. interview with the students revealed that the productive comment section helped them understand the teaching material and the assignments' instructions. thus, more students taught by lecturer 2, lecturer 3, and lecturer 4 submitted their assignments. however, there was a difference in productivity between the asynchronous discussions held by these three teachers. the comment sections in the class taught by lecturer 2 were not as active as those taught by lecturer 3 and lecturer 4. nevertheless, the students were equally confident in doing the assignments. interview with the students taught by lecturer 2 revealed that they did not ask many questions because they were reluctant. besides, they also admitted that the instructions to do the assignments were straightforward to follow them well. observations on the instructions for doing the assignments provided by the three lecturers revealed that they provided short and simple instructions that were easy to understand. there are two important points to highlight considering the appropriateness of the instructions level conducted by the four lecturers observed in this study. the first one is the length and clarity of the instructions for the assignments. observations on the instructions for doing assignments and the interview with the students revealed that short and simple instructions provided by lecturer 2, lecturer 3, and lecturer 4 were more appropriate for the students than the long instructions provided by lecturer 1. the relevance of shorter and simpler instructions among these students might be related to the fact that they were first-year students who may come to the institute with varying degrees of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 271-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english competence. thus, shorter and simpler instructions would be more uncomplicated for them to comprehend. the same result was found by alim et al. (2019), who explored the effectiveness of google classroom as an instructional medium and revealed that short and simple instructions were more effective in google classroom because they can prevent confusion. the second point is that the use of the stream tab contributed positively to the student's comprehension of the material and the instructions for doing the assignments. using videos as learning sources in efl classrooms has been argued to benefit students' language skills, vocabulary, motivations, pronunciation, grammar, and 21st-century skills (ariantini et al., 2021; listiani et al., 2021; puspawati et al. 2021; wang & chen, 2019). nevertheless, the present study revealed that students still needed guidance during the learning process to prevent them from being stuck and feeling lost. more straightforward and shorter instructions for the assignments can be understood by more competent students and their less-ready friends (dwiyanti & suwastini, 2021; suwastini et al., 2021). besides, the discussions in the comment sections can also act as scaffolding to provide additional explanations for students who need more guidance (ersani et al., 2021). beaumont (2018) states that the google classroom could store data from the material taught in the google classroom so students can quickly return to previous material without needing to ask their friends or educators again. students can also learn the material from data to remember and re-learn the material taught before. however, the response from the students can be taken as a need for reflection. despite the usability of google classroom for online learning, teachers should avoid using it to store the material and expect them to learn from the material pile. teachers should not make one-size-fits-all material because students have different learning profiles, readiness, and interests (ersani et al., 2021; suwastini et al., 2021). the material stored in the platform should suit the learning theme and facilitate students' learning. incentive motivation is essential to students' learning process. in slavin's qait model, the incentive aspect relates to how the instruction designed and conducted by the lecturer can motivate the students to participate in the learning activities and get the best benefits from the learning process. table 4 shows that on the instruction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 272-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conducted by the four lecturers, the average quality of the instruction was borderline insufficient and sufficient. three of the four lecturers conducted insufficient instructions, but the instruction conducted by lecturer 4 was good. lecturer 1 was the lecturer whose instruction did not have comment sections. that means there was no interaction between the lecturer and the students after the lecturer was done doing the presence checking and introducing the topics of the meetings on the online, face-to-face meetings. observation on the instructions conducted by lecturer 1 revealed that the interaction was limited to the lecturer getting to know if the students were present or absent and, if they were not present, for what reason. although the interaction seemed to be minimum, lecturer 1 checked that the students' presence was apparently enough to invite some participation from the students, albeit very few. lecturer 2 and lecturer 3 opened comment sections. however, the students in the class taught by lecturer 2 did not use the opportunity. the comment sections of the classes conducted by lecturer 2 were not productive. thus, the interaction in the instructions conducted by lecturer 2 was more or less similar to those conducted by lecturer 1. the students taught by lecturer 3 showed more participation than in the learning process conducted by lecturer 1 and lecturer 2. however, there was a significant decline in students' participation in the later meetings conducted by lecturer 3. interview with lecturer 3 revealed that not all students' questions were given feedback, and the students whose comments were not given feedback tended to stop posting comments or asking questions on the comment sections. interview with the students revealed that they felt it was no use to participate in the comment section anymore because the lecturer did not give feedback. it resulted in the low average of participation in the instructions conducted by lecturer 3. unlike the other three lecturers, lecturer 4 conducted instructions that inspired good participation. lecturer 4 conducted the face-to-face online meetings longer than the average of the three other lecturers. lecturer 4 took time to answer students’ questions during the synchronous meetings. furthermore, observations on the comment sections and stream tab revealed that most students actively commented and shared opinions about the lecturer's questions. interviews with lecturer 4 revealed that the lecturer tried to answer every question the students asked and gave feedback on the students' comments. interviews ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 273-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license with the students in this class revealed that they felt motivated to answer questions and comment because they got feedback and reinforcements. the interactions between the lecturer and the students seemed to boost the students' motivations to participate in the learning process, resulting in a good level of incentive. thus, the dismissal of the comment section featured in google classroom by lecturer 1 limited the students’ participation. the students’ reluctance to participate in the comment sections in the instruction conducted by lecturer 2 reflected the low effort of the lecturer to motivate the students to participate. the lecturer could initiate the discussions by posting specific questions for the students to answer. sudarsana et al. (2019) found that effective use of the comments section can boost students' participation. the lecturer can also use the comment sections to post a collaborative project that allows students to communicate with their peers through the comments section and coursework tabs. heggart and yoo (2018) found that the comments section motivates the students to interact with their peers and build collaborations. the lack of participation among the students in the class taught by lecturer 3 was similar to the findings from shaharanee et al. (2016). students enjoyed interacting with the teachers in their study but not with their peers using google classroom. thus, when lecturer 3 did not respond to each of the students' comments and questions, they just went inactive instead of commenting on their friends' opinions. time table 4 displays that all four lecturers conducted insufficient time management. there were four general problems in the teachers’ time management: the inability of the lecturers to finish the material within the time allocation for each meeting, the prolonged response-time to teachers' questions or in giving comments, the students' tardiness in submitting their assignment, and the teachers' difficulties in managing their time to provide feedback and to respond to the students’ questions or comments. in general, all four lecturers could not finish their teaching material within the allocated time. they admitted that they found it difficult to assess whether their students could follow the instructions and comprehend the material adequately because they could not see their expressions. while google meet promises face-to-face online interaction, not every student turned on their videos, nor could the screen display all of the students' screens simultaneously. it was very different ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 274-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from the immediate assessment of the students' facial expressions and gestures to support a quick process assessment that can help the lecturers decide how to proceed with the instructions. observations on the instruction conducted by lecturer 1 revealed that lecturer 1 provided very few explanations synchronously without asynchronous discussions as follow-ups. lecturer 2 provided longer explanations and asynchronous discussion, yet the students’ reluctance to comment on the stream tab contributed to the lecturer’s inability to assess the students’ comprehension. lecturers 3 and 4 had a clearer idea about the students' comprehension only after prolonged, time-consuming discussions. lecturer 1 did not have discussion sessions, and the instructions on the assignments were considered confusing by the students. thus, most students taught by lecturer 1 did not submit their assignments on time. interviews with the students admitted that they did not submit their assignments on time because they were confused about the instructions provided by lecturer 1. furthermore, the appropriateness of instructions conducted by lecturer 1 was only sufficient. besides, lecturer 1 did not use the comment feature. the combination of the instruction's low appropriateness and the unavailability of asynchronous discussions might have affected the students’ prolonged tardiness in submitting their assignments. the same students were taught by lecturer 2. most of them were also tardy in submitting their assignments and responding to the teacher's comments or questions. unlike lecturer 1, lecturer 2 used the comment feature on the google classroom, yet hardly any students posted comments or questions. interview with the students revealed that their late submission was due to the time-consuming nature of the assignments. when viewed from the evaluation of the level appropriateness of the instruction's level conducted by lecturer 2, the level was good. that means the instructions were appropriate for the student's level and readiness. when questions about this tardiness were brought up, students admitted that they were late because it took them long to finish. considering that the instruction was appropriate, the students' tardiness might have resulted from their inability to manage their time well. the students taught by lecturer 3 were also mostly late in submitting their assignments, despite the excellent quality and level of instruction appropriateness achieved by lecturer 3. observation showed that students ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 275-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license posed questions on the comment section, yet many were left without the lecturer's responses. as mentioned before, an interview with lecturer 3 revealed that the lecturer did not reply to all students' questions because of time limitations. interview with the students taught by lecturer 3 revealed that they were late submitting assignments because they could not finish the assignments on time. in this case, in the instruction conducted by lecturer 3, both lecturer and the students had a problem with their time management. lecturer 4 had almost all of the students’ questions and comments attended to, which may have contributed to the excellent quality, appropriateness, and incentive from the instructions conducted by lecturer 4. nevertheless, observations on the time of the feedback given showed some tardiness. perhaps, it was because of the many questions and comments the lecturer had to respond to. interview with lecturer 4 revealed that the lecturer felt overwhelmed with the many comments that needed feedback. it was stated that the lecturer tried to respond to all of the questions and give feedback to all students' comments and assignments. however, it took so much time to attend them all. interviews with the students revealed that they did not submit the assignments on time because they were waiting for feedback from the lecturer. thus, while the students were waiting for feedback, they delayed their submission, causing tardiness in the general submissions. hence, the instructions conducted by lecturer 4 were quite similar to that of lecturer 3 in terms of time management: both the students and the lecturer had problems with time management. unlike the case with the results of muslimah's (2018) study where time management in google classroom learning was very effective, the research results in the current study showed that the timing was less effective. the difference in this result was found because the educators in the muslimah's study applied the google classroom more optimally than the teachers in the current study. it means improvement is needed to get better time management in using google classroom in the future. bhat et al. (2018) also found that some students did not submit their assignments on time on google classroom because they thought they could submit them beyond the deadline. the teacher would still accept it as they usually do in the case of manual submissions. besides, lecturers in this study admitted that they did not know if the students told the truth about their problems in submitting their assignments or not. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 8(2), 2021 276-280 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v8i2.21932 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this point becomes the lecturers' problem in assessing their work. moreover, the instructions of the third and four lecturers here were better than the first and second lecturers, which were compared from the number of submission counts on the classwork tab on google classroom. additionally, to tackle the overwhelming need to give students feedback, teachers can acknowledge students' comments on each other's work as feedback. another alternative is to post general feedback at the end of the meeting and encourage the students to reflect on their progress in learning. general feedback can improve students' learning autonomy since they have to identify their participation in the classroom. it is more practical for the teachers, as suggested by heggart and yoo (2018). conclusions and suggestion based on the result of this study and the discussion, it can be concluded that using google classroom media in teaching english for tourism students is not effective. it is proven by the discussion of this study based on the result of interviews and observations. the researcher found that the lecturer had not yet fully adapted to this teaching media and had not found the right teaching strategy for this media. this problem emerges because this is the first time lecturers and tourism students have used this media and have not fully adapted to this. the slow response of students makes lecturers assume that students are less interested in using google classroom, which makes lecturers want to use other media which are more attractive. furthermore, the analysis on the learning effectiveness of using google classroom for teaching based on four elements of the qait model proposed by slavin (2017) showed that this media is less optimal in teaching english. in addition, lecturers face many problems, such as students who are late joining class to students who are late in collecting assignments for various reasons. it means many improvements must be made to achieve the learning objectives in these online classes. references abidin, z., & saputro, t. m. e. 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(2021). online learning in master educational administration program: student’s perception. ijemi (international journal of educational management and innovation), 2(2), 240–248. https://doi.org/doi: 10.12928/ijemi.v2i2.3749 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 188-201 a study of avoidance strategy of face threat of native speaker and non-native speaker by using goffman’s facework theory salmon pandarangga received: 12th mei 2015; revised: 19th august 2015; accepted: 25th october 2015 abstract the purpose of this study was to analyze the avoidance strategy of face threat by english native speaker and non-native speaker who learnt other language e.g. english. this study used irving goffman’s face-work theory and its relation to avoidance face threat as a framework. 2 participants (one australian and one indonesian) took part in this study. both participants were interviewed in english language in english speaking environment for about 30 minutes each. the participants were asked to tell about their hobbies with some open-ended questions. this study focused on spoken sentences produced by both interviewees that indicated avoidance of face threat. the findings revealed that the native speaker and non-native speaker reacted differently to avoid face threat. in addition, they also had their own strategy to avoid the face threat. this study concluded that different cultures significantly contributed to the strategy of avoidance of face threat. key words: face-work; avoidance of face-threat; native speaker; non-native speaker abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisa strategi penghindaran “face-threat” oleh penutur bahasa ibu (inggris) dan penutur bahasa asing dalam hal ini bahasa inggris. penelitian ini menggunakan teori irving goffman tentang face–work dan hubungannya dalam menghindari “facethreat” sebagai kerangka acuan. dua orang partisipan (satu orang australia dan satu orang indonesia) mengambil bagian dalam penelitian ini. masing-masing partisipan diwawancara dalam bahasa inggris di lingkungan bahasa inggris (australia) selama kurang lebih 30 menit. masingmasing partisipan ditanyai tentang hobi mereka. penelitian ini berfokus pada kalimat-kalimat yang diucapkan oleh partisipan yang mengindikasikan penghindaran “face-threat”. hasil analisa mengungkapkan bahwa penutur bahasa ibu (inggris) dan penutur bahasa asing (inggris) merespons secara berbeda untuk menghindari “face threat”. selain itu, mereka juga mempunyai strategi tersendiri untuk menghindari “face threat”. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa budaya yang berbeda juga mempunyai kontribusi yang penting terhadap strategi dalam menghindari “face threat”. kata kunci: face-work; penghindaran “face threat”; penutur bahasa ibu; penutur bahasa asing how to cite: pandarangga, s. (2015). a study of avoidance strategy of face threat of native speaker and non-native speaker by using goffman’s face-work theory. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 188-201. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3087 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3087 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|189-201 introduction it is widely believed that irving goffman (1922-1982) is one of the founding fathers and centre of modern sociology in society. his contributions to modern sociology are widely known all over the world. many scholars such as brown and levinson with their politeness theory acknowledged goffman’s influences on their work. goffman has particularly interests in observing and learning people’s behaviours and interactions either in verbal or non-verbal communication in society. it is believed that goffman, an expert about modern urban life and its social interaction, has ability to perceive insignificant aspects of everyday activities as well as help people to see the importance, stability and complexity of social interactions in society (manning, 1992). in addition, some theorists such as burns (1992) noted that goffman seemed to believe that the finding of social interaction or practice as discovery. however, as burns further explained, it did not necessarily mean that goffman discovered something new which was previously unknown but he made clear information. it is believed that it is the nature of human beings to have and maintain a good and positive relationship with others. in order to have a good relationship, goffman in one of his theories, face-work interaction, suggested that participants in a certain interaction need to maintain each other’s face. it can be said that while a participant maintains his own face, he also needs to maintain other faces in a certain interaction. further, it is believed that it is likely to help the participants to avoid their face from being potentially embarrassed or offended. this face-work theory focusses on the variety of social interaction among participants particularly on how to maintain their face they have emotionally and deliberately created in a certain interaction. it seems that these participants use a face maintaining strategy to avoid face threat e.g. embarrassment. it is believed that the main concept of the face-work theory is based on the social interaction among participants in a society. in one of his essay, the presentation of self in everyday life, goffman suggested that participants, before entering a social setting for interaction, need to know and have information about the situation and other participants involved (meyrowitz, 1990). he further suggested that the need to know the situation in the social setting as well as the participants is highly likely to help ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 190-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 other participants to know whether, for example, the situation is in formal or informal, sad or happy, what or how to speak. on the other hand, as he continued, participants in the situation also need to know about the participants who entered the situation e.g. the purpose or reason for being there. in short, knowing each other well and the situation are believed to help each of the participants to interact in appropriate way. for example, the participants display what is called “civility or a good manner-socially acceptable or proper behaviour-in the presence of others” (burn, 1992, p. 27). having known and understood the meaning of social situation and the participants involved, it can, as goffman believed, help the participants to understand as well as interpret most everyday social interactions e.g. daily conversation (manning, 1992). however, as goffman continued, in interaction, participants also need some background assumptions what used to be called as the “syntax” or language in which without the language the assumption is incomprehensible. goffman believed that the background assumption enable participants to know and interpret more comprehensively, for instance, the hidden messages of conversation in interaction. further, without the background assumption, the social interaction is “only a chaotic abundance of fact” (p. 118). therefore, to avoid incomprehensible assumptions in social interaction, it is argued that people need to know some principles of social interaction. some theorists such as grice (as cited in brown, 2012, p. 147) have formulated four aspects of interaction principles, often called “gricean maxims: 1) the quantity maxim: make your contribution as informative as is required, but not more, or less, than is required; 2) the quality maxim: do not say something which you believe to be false or for which you lack of evidence; 3) the relation maxim: be relevant; 4) the manner maxim: be clear, brief and orderly. brown (2012) added that this principle interaction might not work in conversational exchange in daily basis but it might help to explain conversation between two or more people. these four principles can help people to effectively and efficiently interact with each other. in can be said that, as brown further claimed, the interaction principles can also help persons to maintain each other face in social interaction. moreover, goffman (1967) explicitly acknowledged that the concept of face he introduced originally ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|191-201 came from two sources, i.e. chinese and american indian conception of face. chiappini (2003) claimed that one of the sources in which goffman directly indebted to is durkheim’s work. chiappini continued that the central idea of durkheim’s work is how to keep the sacred (gods) from the profane (believers) yet both the sacred and profane may able to communicate through ritual only. goffman (1967) postulates the sacredness of the participants’ face, the maintenance which, requires ritual order in which “it shows how worthy he is of respect or how worthy he feels others of it” (p. 19). based on durkheim’s works, goffman defines face as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. the line, as he further explained, is a pattern of verbal and nonverbal expression in which the person articulates his point of view of the situation as well as makes evaluation about the participants, especially himself. moreover, it is believed that face is “an image of self” (p. 5) which is sacred and therefore need to be protected. in other words, the face the participants have actually show who they really are in the society. for example, a respected person in society needs to protect his face from doing something inappropriate, which is socially unacceptable. in addition, goffman (1967) strongly argued that a person is said to “have, or be in, or maintain face when the line he effectively takes presents an image of him that is internally consistent” in which other participants support him with their good impression and judgement about his consistency between face and line (p. 6). it can be assumed that the person should give a good impression about himself first so that other participants who had an impression about the person would do the same thing as return. in this way, a good interaction could be positively established and maintained among the participants including the person involved in a particular contact. it is highly likely that the impression is closely related to the feelings of responses to the face experienced by the participants. in other words, the “feelings attached to self, and a self-expressed through face” (chiappini, 2003, p. 1457). chiappini further argued that as the feelings are involved, then, the face is not purely rational. it is thus claimed that the feelings can be either good or bad for the face. to support this argument, goffman (1967) pointed out that if in a particular contact, the face can be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 192-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 established and maintained even better than the person could have expected, he is highly likely to feel good and thus responds the particular situation with feelings of confidence and assurance. further, the confident person who is firm in the line is likely to open his arms and heart to others because he feels safe and secure with his current situation. another thing, he puts his trust on others while others put their trust on him. however, as goffman continued, if the face is not what the person has expected, he is likely to feel embarrassment. he believed that the embarrassment happens because the person feels inadequate and a lack of confidence and competence to do certain activities. at some extreme case, the person who becomes shamefaced “may falter, collapse and crumble” (p.8) which may lead further “disorder to the expressive organization of the situation” (p. 9). in other words, the shamefaced and crumbled person will be likely to have some difficulties to express himself even to say some simple words. however, goffman believed that so long as all the participants in the particular interaction accept and respect each other’s lines, it is not highly unlikely the embarrassment feelings can be actually avoided or at least minimized. in other words, participants need to cooperatively and continually accept each other’s weakness and strength as well. the participants, for example, may help and encourage each other to improve their weakness as well as learn from their strength. another suggestion, others need to protect his face and feelings in order to “presumably make it easier for him to regain composure “(p. 103) and his selfconfidence. goffman further noted that the mutual acceptance of lines which is “a basic structural feature of interaction, especially the interaction of face-to-face talk” (p. 11) has an important role to maintain face. in addition, it is strongly believed that this way does not only maintain face but also save each other face which possibly lead to establish a good and mutual relationship among the participants because of respect and dignity. in other words, the strategies of saving each other face are highly likely to avoid the participants to feel alienated to one another. furthermore, goffman (1967) clearly pointed out that face-saving strategy is “the traffic rules of social interaction” (p. 12) among the participants in a particular interaction. he further noted that there are at least two main important rules of face-saving in interaction. firstly, because of his own emotional feelings such as honour ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|193-201 and pride attached to the image of self, he is likely to believe that it is very important to protect his own image from being ridiculed or offended. secondly, as an image of others is attached to his emotional feelings, he tends to believe that it is necessarily important to protect other face because he wants to avoid the embarrassment directed toward him if they fail to maintain their face. in other words, goffman believed that in order to retain his own face, he needs to “be considerate of the line taken by the other participants” (p. 12). unlike face, face-work is “the action taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face” (goffman, 1967, p. 12) including his verbal behaviour (chiappini, 2003). for instance, a staff who has a lower position in a company is likely to behave or talk politely to his manager. the face-work theory has been largely known as a way to describe “only appropriate and polite behaviour with a focus on face-threat mitigation” (locher & watts, 2005, p. 11) as well as save the face from being threatened. they further added that face-work theory excludes rudeness, impoliteness and inappropriate behaviours. in addition, in face-work, as goffman claimed, the person has two points of view, that is, “a defensive orientation toward saving his own face and a protective orientation toward saving others’ face” (p. 14). he further explained that in saving his own face, the person is likely to protect his face from being ruined or offended which may also entail and ruin others; whilst saving others, the person tends to protect face which may not also lead to loss his own. in order to avoid the face threat, goffman (1967) suggested that the person not needs to talk about topics that might possibly lead to the expression of information which is not consistent with the line he is maintaining. therefore, it is strongly believed that the person is courage not to tell any information that he does not know exactly or he is not sure what to say about a certain topic. if, for example, the person still talked about uncertain information to other participants who had already known the right information, it would negatively affect his line which might lead to embarrassment to his face. it is therefore suggested that the person needs only to talk about something he knows. in this way, it would save not only the person face but also possibly other participants face. goffman further suggested that the person needs to be as realistic as possible in the interaction e.g. conversation with other ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 194-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 participants. for instance, the person is expected not to lie otherwise it might embarrass him and lose his face as well (goffman, 1981). another suggestion, the person and the participants need to have and show respect and politeness in interaction in which in this way “their self-respect is not threatened” (p. 17). however, goffman (1981) mildly warned that when the person fails to save his face that might lead to embarrassment, he might openly and genuinely acknowledges an incident has occurred. for example, if the person admitted that he made mistakes, then he might say to other participants: “i am sorry” or “i do apologize to any inconveniences caused”. it is further claimed by goffman that the genuine apology is highly likely to save the person face. another thing, when a person who is caught out of face cannot control his strong feeling e.g. excited to share information but not what had been expected, the other participants might “protectively turn away from him or his activity for a moment, to give him time to assemble himself” (p. 18). moreover, other participants might possibly help him to turn away from the conversation for a moment so that he might have time to assemble himself. in his latest essay, replies and responses, goffman (1981) believed that whenever persons have conversation, it is very likely that the persons ask questions or give answers. for example, persons who ask questions or questioners are oriented “to what lies just ahead, and depend on what is to come” (p. 5). it can be said that the persons who ask questions are in curiosity for the answers given. the answers given might have been either expected or unexpected by the questioners. if, for instance, the unexpected answers come, the questioners are likely to follow up with other questions for more clarifications. conversely, if the answers meet the questioners’ expectation, it is likely that the questioners will ask other questions unrelated to the previous one. unlike the questioners, the persons who answer questions or answerers are oriented “to what has just been said, and look backward, not forward” (p. 5). in other words, the answerers also in curiosity for the questions asked. once the questions are asked, the answerers tend to answer on the basis of the information or knowledge they already have. if, for example, the answers given are not what is expected, the answerers will look backward to what they just answered and clarify the answers in a more comprehensive way. in addition, goffman (1981) suggested that in conversation, it is ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|195-201 critical for all the persons to convey the information needed correctly and appropriately to the intended recipients as to what the senders exactly wanted the information to get across. it is thus, as goffman further stated, very fundamental requirements of conversation that the persons either the recipients or senders have comprehensively understood the messages. however, goffman acknowledged that in conversation, the person may likely possibly experience what is called “genuine uncertainty and genuine misunderstanding” (p. 11) in understanding the messages correctly and clearly. however, it is strongly believed that a working agreement among the persons “for all practical purposes” (p. 10) in conversation which means mutual understanding in dealing with misunderstanding. for example, if one person failed to explain a certain issue, others would likely to understand the person’s situation and possibly “reply honestly with whatever they know that is relevant and no more” (p. 15) about the person as a way to support and encourage him to move forward. goffman further stated that the mutual understanding among the persons is not only safeguards the feelings but also communication. in addition, goffman argued that the participants are obliged to make sure that the resources of face-to-face interaction are not unwittingly employed to do something unexpected and unintended that may possibly lead to embarrassment. he further stated that the motivation to preserve or maintain everyone’s face may “end up acting so as to preserve orderly communication” (p. 19). face-work concept is not without critics. it is previously explained that goffman’s concept of face and facework in social interaction has their roots in chinese and american indian conception of face. it is argued that even though the roots of the conception of face have originated in chinese and american indian, goffman applied the concept of face in anglo-american society (western). goffman explicitly acknowledged in his essay interaction ritual that his essay “will be chiefly in the context of american society” (goffman, 1967, p. 192). in order to support this argument, chiappini (2003) strongly claimed that a careful reading of goffman essay on face-work can reveal some distinctly individualistic elements which appear seemingly to be woven into the original concept of face from china. chiappini (2003) further claimed that the model of face introduced by goffman predominantly based on “the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 196-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 western ethnocentric assumptions such as the existence of predominantly rational actor and the strategic, goal oriented nature of face-work and of social interaction” (p. 1454). chen and gu (as cited in chiappini, 2003) argued that the frequently borrowing of facework theory on the basis of western analytical frameworks and tool as well as lack of original non-western discourse studies and its own analytical framework considered as an obstacle to the development of non-western theories and empirical work. in addition, chiappini stated that facework, which for goffman seems to be equivalent to face-saving practice, are believed to be different to every person, social group or society, even though they are drawn from a similar framework. similarly, hymes (as cited in dua, 1990) strongly argued that some principles in face-work theory are not universally valid to others from different cultural backgrounds. in other words, it seems that the goffman’s facework theory can be highly applicable for western society e.g. individualism but not to eastern e.g. collectivism. these two societies can be distinguished into two main characteristics, that are, individualism versus collectivism. according to tingtoomey and chung (as cited in moss and tubbs, 2006, p. 316) individualism tend to value the individual identity and rights as the most important thing over the group identity and rights. individualism, as they continued, is likely to emphasize on personal goals, independency and direct communication. further, in terms of communication, the individualism tends to say what they are thinking, be “direct, precise and absolute” (p. 318). in other words, the individualism communication style is similar to the communication principles previously suggested by goffman with his facework theory (1976) and grice in dua (1990). unlike individualism, collectivism is likely to value the group identity rather than individual identity. the collectivism, as they further continued, tends to focus on group obligations and indirect communication. in communication, the collectivism tends to be “indirect, imprecise and probabilistic” (p. 318). the question is whether individuals with different backgrounds, for example, native and non-native speakers have different strategies and reason to avoid face threat. therefore, this paper is intended to analyze the avoidance strategy of face threat by english native speaker and non-native speaker who learnt other language e.g. english. the face-work theory developed by goffman and its relation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|197-201 to avoidance face threat is used as a framework. it is argued that the native speaker (ns) and non-native speaker (nns) react differently to avoid face threat. the argument is that ns and nns have different cultural background and thus have different strategy to avoid face threat. method this methods section provided all aspects of study needed to be informed to the readers (gass & mackey, 2005). they further continued that these aspects of study gave detailed information about the participants, the procedure and analysis conducted as described in the following section. participants two participants took part in this study. the participants were students, male and almost twenty-five years old. one of the participants was a native speaker (australian), while the other was non-native speaker (indonesian). according to lightbown and spada (2012) native speaker is someone who has learned and master a language from an early age while non-native speaker is someone who has ability to comprehend and use other language which is different from a native speaker. both participants studied in one of the universities in melbourne, australia. one of them (australian) was doing his bachelor degree and the other one (indonesian) was master degree. they were both interviewed in english for about 30 minutes each. the materials used for this research are some open-ended questions that had previously prepared. the questions were mainly about the participants’ hobbies or activities. a mobile phone was used to record the interview which was later the recordings data would be used for analyses purposes. procedure first of all, both participants were contacted for the interview. they were both interviewed in different places. one of the participants was in common room in campus while the other was in his house. both participants were basically given the same questions. before starting the questions, the participants would be given some background information and the main purpose of the study. having understood the purpose of the study, both would be given a brief instruction about what to talk about. after they clearly understood the instructions, they would be asked, with some questions that had been prepared the day before, to tell their hobbies. they were free to share anything about their hobbies or activities. in addition, they were asked for their permission that all ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 198-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 their answers during the interview were being recorded for analysis purposes. analysis of the data began by transcribing the participants’ recording data. the findings were presented in verbal description of data. it would take some samples in the interview transcript, from the native speaker and another from a non-native speaker. it is believed that the data taken represented the characteristic of each participant “face” they attempted to maintain. research findings and discussion in the transcript, when the interviewer asked a question to the native speaker (ns) about his opinion of learning a foreign language “how did you find it? difficult? challenging?, (paused) , then, the ns said “ yea to practice my indonesian and ah… fluent in indonesian ah…it could ahm… that help little bit i suppose” (paused) then continued by saying “uhm…i don’t know…just let the pressure”. the ns participants tended to be as informative as is required yet as the same time he did not want to talk about something that he is not familiar or lack of evidence. ns did not want to say unnecessary and unimportant information that is irrelevant to the question asked. in addition, it is believed that the ns says “uhm…i don’t know …just let the pressure “ as a strategy to avoid face threat. in other words, ns wants to maintain his own face as well as interviewer face from being potentially embarrassed because of inaccurate information. the ns participant said “i don’t know” because he didn’t want to say something that he was not quite sure about the information he had. this strategy confirms what has been reported in the literature. for example, goffman (1967, p. 16) clearly stated to “keep off topic” or information which is irrelevant with the line he is maintaining. similarly, moss and tubbs (2006) believed that people need to be direct and precise to any information they have and share. another interesting aspect is related to the characteristic of western face. another question the interviewer asked, “did they help you i mean for example you make mistake or something about… don’t say this in indonesian? in this way” and he replied “uhm… yea. they did help me yea… constructively”. this response indicated that the ns participant answered honestly that he was helped by the indonesian people when he made mistake. according to goffman and grice (as cited in brown, 2012) people need to reply honestly to any questions ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|199-201 asked and based on what they know which is relevant and nothing more. however, when the interviewer asked question to the non native speaker (nns) “have you any play basketball or something?”, then, nns interviewee said “ i think my ages not youth age anymore. i mean im not teenager anymore. so i think its not suitable for me since here in university so many young people playing basketball so i think i, i just uhm… you know hold myself not to playing it”. another example of his response, “o.ye.ye… but badminton is maybe you can play single or double but you have to be flexible your body have to be flexible you have if may be… maybe played on the smaller field but you have to…move up and down and you have to jump or smash something in maybe135 uhm…a bit… ah…you know how to say it…ah… you have to be flexible. you have to be go up and down. and you have to know how to smash and how to give the ball in short way”. from the responses above, it seemed that the nns participant was likely to express himself by giving as much as information possible, even though the information was bit irrelevant with the question asked. unlike the ns, nns participant tended to give information as many as possible even though it was not what was expected or required to answer. goffman claimed that indirect and imprecise information given may “discredit him and make him lose face” (p. 16). according to grice (as cited in dua, 1990) the nns broke the rule of conversational principles e.g. avoid ambiguity and be brief. grice (ibid) further argued that people should provide relevant and precise information as required and needed where talk exchange takes place. in other words, providing relevant and precise information can possibly avoid misunderstanding. however, it is believed that nns gives much information as a strategy to avoid face threat. it is further believed that this strategy somehow confirms goffman’s face theory to maintain face from being embarrassed yet in different way. it seemed that nns did not want people consider him as incompetent and thus he needed to supply lots of information about the question asked. in addition, the indirect and imprecise information given by nns confirm the collectivism communication theory (ting-toomey and chung, 1996). conclusion and suggestion it is now believed that people are expected not only to maintain their face ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 200-201|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 from embarrassment but also others face involved in the interaction. the result of study showed that both participants have different strategy of avoidance of face threat. for example, the ns tended to talk directly while the nns talk indirectly. however, it is important to point out that the reason to maintain and avoid embarrassment may be universally different for each person. for example, the way people in asia maintain their face would be different from the people in europe. one of the factors that significantly contribute to the difference is their cultures. furthermore, it seems that face theory on the basis of western framework is too dominant. the limitation of this study is that lack of study of face based on eastern (indigenous) framework. it is therefore suggested future study could concentrate the study of face based on eastern (indigenous) framework. references brown, y. 2012. the study of language. great britain: cambridge university press. burns, t. 1992. erving goffman. great britain: routledge. chiappini, f. b. 2003. face and politeness: new (insights) for old (concepts). journal of pragmatics (35). retrieved may 19, 2012, from www.sciencedirect.com. dua, h. r. and riggins, s. h. (ed) 1990. the phenomology of miscommunication.berlin: walter de gruyter & co. gass, s. m., & selinker, l. 2008. second language acquisition: an introduction course (3rd ed.). usa: sheridan books, inc. goffman, e. 1967. interaction ritual: essay on face-to-face behavior. new york: pantheon books. goffman, e. 1981. forms of talk. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. lightbown, p. and spada, n. 2012. how languages are learned. shanghai: oxford university express. loacher, m. and watts, r. 2005. politeness theory and relational work. journal of politeness research (1). retrieved may 20, 2012, from www.sciencedirect.com. manning, p. 1992. erving goffman and modern sociology. united kingdom: polity press. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|201-201 meyrowitz, j. and riggins s. h. (ed) 1990. redefining the situation: extending dramaturgy into a theory of social change and media effects. berlin: walter de gruyter & co. tubbs, s. l., & moss, s. 2006. human communication: principles and contexts. new york: mcgrawhill companies, inc. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 63-82 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee assessment media for offline and online writing tests at junior high schools during the covid-19 pandemic siti zulfa, nida husna*, dhila nurul azmi, didin n. hidayat uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, indonesia ( nida.husna@uinjkt.ac.id) received: 31st august 2022; revised: 01st may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this study explores writing assessment media used by english teachers in offline and online assessment procedures during the last covid-19 pandemic. this qualitative study incorporates a case study design with five english teachers of junior high schools serving as research participants selected purposively. the data for this study were gathered using semi-structured interviews with english teachers and students writing documents. the study results indicate that english teachers utilized different media in their offline and online assessments. for the offline activities, they used conventional paper-based media to collect writing samples, administer written tests, and conduct writing projects to measure students' attainment levels of their writing skills. for the online activities, they used platforms familiar to them, including google classroom, google form, and whatsapp, and most of them assessed their students using multiple choice questions; yet some of the teachers did paper-based tests but submitted them to the online media. the teachers used rubrics for both assessment modes and provided feedback accordingly. one important implication of this research for post-pandemic english teaching underscores the significance of teachers' initiatives of alternating offline and online media to assess students' writing skills and maximize students' learning experiences in response to actual classroom constraints and opportunities. key words: english writing; assessment media; offline; online; covid-19 abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi berbagai bentuk media penilaian menulis yang digunakan oleh guru bahasa inggris dalam kegiatan offline dan online selama covid-19. penelitian ini menggunakan studi kualitatif dengan desain studi kasus. partisipan penelitian ini meliputi lima guru bahasa inggris di sekolah menengah pertama yang dipilih dengan teknik purposive sampling. instrumen penelitian menggunakan wawancara semi-terstruktur untuk setiap guru bahasa inggris dan dokumen tulisan siswa. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa guru bahasa inggris menggunakan dan menerapkan media penilaian menulis yang berbeda dalam kegiatan luring dan daring selama dan pasca pandemi covid-19. selama kegiatan offline, guru bahasa inggris menggunakan kertas sebagai media produk tulisan, tes tertulis, dan proyek untuk menilai tulisan siswa. sementara itu, selama kegiatan daring, guru bahasa inggris menggunakan media platform daring seperti google classroom, google form, dan whatsapp; guru menilai dengan menggunakan pertanyaan pilihan ganda namun beberapa guru masih menggunakan kertas untuk dikirimkan ke media tersebut. guru bahasa inggris menggunakan rubrik khusus dan memberikan umpan balik dalam menilai tulisan siswa selama kegiatan offline dan online. pengalaman baru dalam mengintegrasikan media penilaian alternatif dalam menulis dapat bermanfaat bagi guru bahasa inggris dan siswa, terutama untuk membantu tugas menulis. kata kunci: menulis bahasa inggris; media penilaian; luring; daring; covid-19 how to cite: zulfa, s., husna, n., azmi, d. n., hidayat, d. n. (2023). assessment media for offline and online writing tests at junior high schools during the covid-19 pandemic. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 63-82. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 mailto:sitizulfa21@mhs.uinjkt.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 64-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the writing skill for english learners entangles many aspects since writing embraces learners' thinking in conveying ideas (ariyanti, 2016). the necessary element to achieve comprehensive writing ability is writing assessment. cuesta et al. (2019) mentioned that english writing assessment could reflect and facilitate learners' writing processes to get better. english writing assessment enhances learners' learning process and outcomes (wang et al., 2020). in addition, brown and abeywickrama (2018) emphasized that writing assessment is a complicated mission for english teachers. assessing writing is essential for english teachers who can use nontechnology and technology. nontechnology can use portfolio-based media to assess learners' english writing (lam, 2018a). in contrast, technology could employ to assess learners' writing process (zou et al., 2021); english teachers use many technologies as writing assessment media. hence, english teachers must understand writing assessment media in offline and online activities during covid-19. the activities of students' writing are closely related to writing assessment. weigle (2002) mentioned that assessing students' writing needs to know the writing design based on the purposes. students' writing could influence the learning process; thus, the writing assessment becomes part of the teaching organizer to support students' writing development (wolcott & legg, 1998). in addition, brown and abeywickrama (2018) emphasized that writing assessment needs to consider writing authenticity, scoring, and assessment time. it means that english teachers need the ability to distinguish the originality of students' writing and be assertive in deciding on writing assessments. english teachers assess students' writing since the assessment result could direct students' writing improvement (phongsirikul, 2018). it needs responsibility for teachers and students in writing assessments; teachers need to design suitable writing assessments to facilitate students' comprehend their writing development (lee, 2017). thus, writing assessments are necessary for teachers' and students' learning. in assessing english writing, one needs to understand the fundamental aspects of assessment. nurhasanah (2020) writes that writing assessments include three aspects: the affective aspect, which relates to students' writing behavior, the cognitive aspect, which relates to students' writing comprehension—moreover, the skill aspect, which relates to students' http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 65-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing implication. the writing assessment could influence teachers' practice in teaching writing (drid, 2018). writing assessment connects to facilitating student feedback and enhances students' reliance on expanding their writing ability (suastra & menggo, 2020). the students' writing assessment results could direct students to refine their writing (lam, 2018b). besides, lee (2017) mentioned that various writing assessment media assist the teacher in measuring and understanding students' writing. thus, writing assessment media need the rubric as guidance during the writing assessment (weigle, 2002). teachers and students need to use appropriate writing assessment media. in addition, nguyen and phan (2020) emphasized that authentic assessment becomes necessary for writing assessments. writing assessment media drive students' awareness of their capability in writing; students will get better writing quality by understanding themselves during the writing assessment process (suastra & menggo, 2020). english teachers could adjust the writing assessment media during offline and online activities. in offline activities, several media could be used to assess students' writing, such as journals, assignments, and portfolios (natalia et al., 2018; refnaldi et al., 2017). besides, in online activities, english teachers can employ online platforms as writing assessment media, namely google form, google classroom, and kahoot (novitasari, 2020). chamorro (2022) mentioned differences in implementing writing assessments through offline and online activities and the impact of both writing assessment media could enhance students' writing development. therefore, english teachers must determine appropriate writing assessment media. teachers and students can meet directly to conduct writing assessments in offline learning. natalia et al. (2018) mentioned that journals could use for assessing students writing since they can practice writing english text. observation is essential for writing assessment since english teachers can significantly monitor and observe students' writing process (drid, 2018). implementing project work and writing products assist students in building their writing and collaborating with peers during writing activities (lam, 2018b). the other writing assessment media offline could use a portfolio (refnaldi et al., 2017). besides, teachers can facilitate students through traditional assessment media by using paper-and-pencil quizzes to encourage students to convey their ideas (phongsirikul, 2018). offline writing assessment media facilitate students to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 66-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license write carefully during the assessment process (charernwiwatthanasri, 2021). those media could help english teachers to assess students' english writing. in addition, fisne et al. (2022) write that the writing assessment needs systematic regulation to optimize the assessment media. english teachers can adjust appropriate assessment media to obtain learners' writing development information. learners' writing success can recognize by the assessment tool's writing quality (fatima & akbar, 2020). in face-to-face activities, writing assessment media could give learners instantaneous feedback (ahmed & alkadi, 2021). besides, traditional assessment media in writing count as an effective way of face-to-face learning (quansah, 2018). the writing assessment media offline embraces teachers and learners to improve their understanding of the writing process. the focus on offline activities in writing assessment media could encourage learners to comprehend the writing activities better (chamorro, 2022). hence, writing assessment media in offline activities offers many benefits for english teachers to implement in the writing classroom. in the offline learning situation during covid-19, teachers could implement several writing assessment media directly in the classroom. ahmed and al-kadi (2021) mentioned that writing assessments are conducted directly in the classroom; english teachers provide students with direct feedback. assessing students' english writing could help them understand their writing development (young, 2020). thus, writing assessment strategies could direct students to attain the learning objective of writing materials (fatima & akbar, 2020). selecting appropriate writing assessment media in face-to-face learning as part of strategic improvement promotes better students' writing outcomes. chung and choi (2021) emphasize that english teachers must decide on writing assessments to sustain self-learning and the developmental process for students. the writing assessment procedure in face-to-face or offline activities must consider the media for better student writing. moreover, english teachers could assess students' writing using several online platforms during online activities. novitasari (2020) writes that the application of google forms, google classroom, kahoot, edmodo, and instagram could utilize english teachers in assessing students' writing. with google forms as a writing assessment tool, english teachers can get detailed data on students' writing http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 67-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by providing many features and less cost (sari et al., 2020). english teachers can create many writing tasks, obtain students' writing results directly, or give feedback by implementing google forms as a writing assessment tool (adelia et al., 2021). digital writing assessment media are convenient for teachers during assessment progress, particularly web-based documents such as google docs (chamorro, 2022). those applications assist english teachers in assessing students' writing in online activities. in addition, abduh (2021) mentioned that english teachers experience convenient ways to assess learners' writing progress through online writing assessment media. through online writing assessments, learners have opportunities to develop their writing ability (alhujaylan, 2019). in addition, chamorro (2022) writes that online writing assessment media allow learners to get revisions regarding their writing activities. it assists learners in knowing their writing ability to improve writing quality. online writing assessment media offer significant processes for learners in online activities (charernwiwatthanasri, 2021). online writing assessment media are helpful during the covid-19 situation; zhang et al. (2021) mentioned that due to covid19, writing learning and assessment used the online platform to support english teachers and students. english teachers need to understand writing assessment media in online learning activities. during online activities, the writing assessment and learning activities adjust with the regulation and practice (zhang et al., 2021). the convenience of online assessment leads to positive results in students' writing progress, yet english teachers also face difficulties (abduh, 2021). besides, english teachers found difficulty in incorporating technology in writing assessments during online activities (ramadass & shah, 2022). in addition, utilizing a writing assessment tool during online learning could assist students in fostering their writing ability since it provides accessible sources (krishan et al., 2020). the writing assessment process reflects the teaching and learning process to improve classroom activities' quality, particularly attaining students' writing in high quality (dwiyanti & suwastini, 2021). besides, english teachers must comprehend assessment strategies using online writing assessment media such as google forms and google classroom (arif, 2020). hence, it is necessary to employ writing assessments in online activities during covid-19. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 68-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing assessment media becomes an interesting issue since it relates to the role of english teachers and students in the learning process. there are several studies regarding writing assessment media. first, the study by dwiyanti and suwastini (2021) showed that english teachers could implement several assessments, namely authentic, formative, and summative online. next, research conducted by cuesta et al. (2019) discovers that alternative assessment media assist learners in enhancing their writing product and make the process more meaningful. next, the study by ahmed and al-kadi (2021) about online and face-to-face assessment indicates that face-to-face peer assessment gives more effectiveness in feedback than online assessment. then, charernwiwatthanasri (2021) researched the blended assignment in writing activities as part of assessment without using online media; the study discovered that blended learning through various traditional assignments increases students' writing assessment. the last study is conducted by chamorro (2022) about computerand-paper-based writing tests as assessments. the study indicates the differences in cognitive aspect; pb mode assists students to have macroplanning in writing assessment while cb mode help in micro-planning in writing assessment. the present study, therefore, is intended to investigate assessment media used by english teachers in offline and online learning environments. the research's gap focuses on writing assessment media in offline and online activities during the covid-19, particularly in junior high schools involving english teachers from different schools with the same subdistrict. during covid-19, learning activities have changed to online activities, yet some schools also have implemented offline activities. in junior high schools located in sub-district cisauk, district tangerang, the province of banten has been using two learning activities during covid-19, namely offline and online. it is essential to explore the types of english writing assessment media, how teachers use these various media for offline and online writing assessment, and how they resolve emerging challenges. therefore, the researchers are interested in investigating the writing assessment media used by english teachers in offline and online assessment activities and how they assess students' writing in offline and online activities during covid-19. the research questions include "what writing assessment media was used by http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 69-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english teachers in offline and online activities during the covid-19? how do english teachers assess students' writing in offline and online activities during the covid-19?" method research design this present study used qualitative methodology with a case study design. mirhosseini (2020) mentioned that qualitative methodology in education research requires a potential concept of study and rigorous science. this research discovered the issues about writing assessment media at the junior high school level with the exact location sub-district in cisauk. in addition, johnson and christensen (2020) mentioned that a case study offers a detailed explanation of the issues based on characteristics and dynamics. the case study happens in three junior high schools in cisauk. therefore, this research aims to determine writing assessment media in offline and online activities during the covid-19 pandemic and its implementation. research site and participants the role of the sample is necessary to enrich the research process and result. according to grønmo (2020), collecting research data needs to understand the participant selection focus in connecting to the issues' field. the place of research was conducted in smpn 1, smpn 2, and smpn 3 cisauk with consideration that the schools with the exact location cisauk sub-district, tangerang district, banten province, jawa island, indonesia, has been implemented offline and online activities during covid-19. the sample of research involves five english teachers from three junior high schools. data collection and analysis to collect the data about the types and implementations of assessment media in english writing, the researchers used semi-structured interviews observations including documents of observations. the researchers gave the research permission and got the approval for interviews. the interview sessions were conducted through the zoom platform for 20 minutes for each english teacher, and the videos of the interviews were recorded. the researchers also collected students' writing works to complement data analysis. in addition, this present study adapted the interview questions from aryani (2013) and dwiyanti and suwastini (2021), consisting of six questions about offline writing http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 70-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license assessment media and six about online writing assessment media. furthermore, this present study used the data analysis design by miles et al. (2014). it consists of three primary data analysis stages: condensation, display, and conclusion. the first stage is reducing the data interviews, such as selecting the suitable one to present in the findings. the researchers conducted a transcript of the video interviews into a document. next, displaying the data means organizing, analyzing, and presenting the data through detailed explanations. interview data were presented as proof of answering the research questions about the issues. also, documentation was presented to strengthen the analysis. the last is concluding; the researchers conclude the result of the finding and discussion part; then, the researchers make the essence of the research. the researchers also verified the result by connecting to other sources to support the detail of data and information on the issues. findings and discussion findings the study of writing assessment media in offline and online activities during covid-19 discovered that english teachers used several types of assessment media and their implementation. offline learning activities writing assessment media the assessment media for students' writing used paper-based types for the writing product, written tests, and projects in offline activities. according to english teachers: "the writing activities in the offline classroom during the covid-19 situation did well; i asked students to write on paper about the material directly in the classroom." (english teacher 5). in addition, the other english teachers used paper and pictures for assessing students' writing, and it mentioned that "i asked students to write something through pair in a group project by providing the pictures for each group and asked them to write different text, for instance, group 1 writing recount text, group 2 writing descriptive text. then, we could get a comprehensive discussion about writing materials." (english teacher 2). in line, english teacher 3 said, "in offline activities, students better understand the writing material. after discussing the material, i asked students to write and support by a question-and-answer session." the english teachers provide activities that support the writing materials. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 71-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the following figure 1 were written tests for assessing students' work in offline activities. figure 1. student's writing offline the implementations of offline writing assessment media the implementation of writing assessment entangles by providing the score and feedback for students' work in offline activities. scoring aspects scoring aspects involve affective, cognitive, and skills in the writing process. english teachers assess students' writing about the grammar and vocabulary choices of cognitive aspect, and it stated that "i gave a score for students' writing based on the appropriate of structure, grammar, vocabulary and i assess based on their cognitive and writing skills." (english teacher 1). the other english teachers also assess students' writing based on specific aspects; english teacher 2 mentioned that "i assessed and scored students' writing based on the content, tenses, vocabulary, and mechanics," while english teacher 5 stated that "for writing, i assessed from the basic criteria with some adjusting criteria. the e vocabulary". based on the english teachers' measured aspects were the sentence structure, the content, the themes, and th, the researchers concluded that aspects of score about vocabulary, appropriate structure, correct content, and grammar. feedback english teachers provide feedback as part of an assessment of students' writing. according to english teacher 1, he provided students with sufficient feedback; "if in students' writing have the missing letter, i gave feedback by circling the wrong letter and tell them the right one. i also called some students to give them corrective writing text, and the students need to tell others so we could have emotional communication in writing activities." the english teachers conducted the feedback by engaging students to understand their writing development. english teacher 2 pointed out, "i provided direct feedback for students' writing in the offline classroom by participating http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 72-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students to correct the wrong verb together so students could motivate each other." in addition, english teacher 4 gives more information as feedback about students' writing, "the feedback given in offline learning through giving grades and conveying the key points need to be justified." the feedback as part of the writing assessment could direct students to understand their writing better. online learning activities writing assessment media the assessment media for students' writing used several online platforms, such as english teachers asking students to upload their writing on paper to google classroom or whatsapp group. also, some teachers use google forms to provide a written test with multiple choices. english teacher 1 mentioned that he used several online applications to assess students' writing; "i used google classroom as a main online platform, sometimes i used google form for students' writing assignment that could help me to score students' writing." besides, there were other online platforms used by english teachers in assessing writing; "i used whatsapp group to facilitate students in the writing process, so they do not have to be afraid. also, i utilized google classroom for students to send the task, and there was a rubric so students could know their score directly." (english teacher 2). in addition, english teachers 4 and 5 merely used the whatsapp application online writing assessments media; "we do not use applications like zoom, google meet, and google classroom because of some obstacles and students are also experiencing difficulties. so, we only used the whatsapp group for writing assessment tool." the following figure 2 was an example of types of writing assessment media in online activities. figure 2. student's writing online http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 73-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the implementation of online writing assessment media the process of implementation of writing assessment media during online activities entangles scoring aspects and feedback. scoring aspects students' writing had three main scoring aspects: affective, cognitive, and skills. according to the data, the researchers found similar scoring aspect processes in offline and online activities. english teacher 1 said, "the scoring aspect in offline and online activities used the same format yet adjusted to the writing task. however, in online learning, i emphasized that students conduct their writing, so i used to ask students to re-write again when they met me in person." in addition, the other english teachers pointed out that they still used the same format in students' writing assessment; "the process of scoring students' writing online also same as offline which the writing must include the correct content, tenses, vocabulary, and mechanics." (english teacher 2). based on the data, they give the scoring aspect based on the correct vocabulary, structure, content, and grammar in the online writing assessment process. feedback in the online writing assessment, english teachers gave feedback by identifying students' writing errors with the marks in google classroom or using whatsapp group for discussion. it mentioned, "the feedback carried out through personal or general in google classroom that provides the column in the form of grades and the marks to show the wrong pattern. whatsapp groups are used for feedback if many students do not understand the writing materials." (english teacher 3). in addition, the english teachers give feedback on covering the most wrong items in students' writing and rediscuss the materials; english teacher 2 mentioned that "i gave students' writing feedback in next meeting through zoom after giving the task in google classroom. i gave general feedback based on the most incorrect use of tenses in students' writing. i could not give one by one students' writing feedback because online writing activities faced many drawbacks." in addition, other english teachers conduct the feedback in different ways; "in online learning, students are allowed to call english teachers to ask about the material. i even called the student first after the student texted me personally. i ensure the children understood the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 74-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writing material." (english teacher 4). discussion there were differences in assessment media in offline and online activities during covid-19. in offline learning during covid-19, english teachers implemented writing assessment media in the writing classroom by using the writing task through a paper-based. based on the findings, more or least, english teachers did the same thing in assessing students' writing in offline and online activities. offline, students were asked to write a paper, and teachers assessed it. while online, english teachers ask students to write on paper, take pictures, and then send them to google classroom. a similar study by phongsirikul (2018) discovered that many english teachers preferred to use the paper-based test in assessing students' writing with consideration of the high value in the validity and reliability of students' writing products. the projects work by asking students to write on paper, which makes it easier for the teachers to assess students' writing skills, which could encourage students to write the text based on some criteria (structure, content, and vocabulary) (natalia et al., 2018). the paper task in writing assessment media could cover students' cognition toward writing materials since students could prepare before writing on paper (chamorro, 2022). english teachers rely on paper as a primary medium for assessing students' writing for many reasons, such as physically writing on paper enhances cognitive processing and improves students' comprehension (drid, 2018). in addition, online writing assessment media utilize various online platforms to assess students' writing, such as google classroom, google form, and whatsapp, yet some english teachers still ask students to write in a paper and upload it into those applications. the novitasari (2020) study discovered that using online platforms such as google classroom and google form to assess students' writing is valuable for practical feedback quality. google classroom provides english teachers to assess students' writing, and students can enhance their writing (yufrizal & sinaga, 2021). the study by juliana (2021) indicates that whatsapp has become an effective platform for writing english language learning and assessment since it was a handy online platform. in contrast, english teachers still use paper to upload into online platforms for the convenience of assessing students' writing. chamorro (2022) noted that paper and pen for http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 75-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license assessing students' writing is identical for more authentic and meaningful writing result, which helps teachers to asses directly and easier. using paper as an assessment medium promotes equity and inclusivity, as it eliminates potential technological barriers and ensures access for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds (wanchid & charoensuk, 2015). it is interesting to know why english teachers still use paper for online assessment. based on the school area's condition, many students and teachers still did not use technology appropriately or have adequate technology devices to assist learning. in a line study by hamad (2017), students feel hesitant to use online platforms for studying since they are unfamiliar with and have difficulty operating it. even though english teachers and students have passed the covid-19 situation, which forced them to use it, it is still hard to directly assess students' writing through online platforms (krishan et al., 2020). students may sometimes not have equal access to technology or internet connectivity outside of school. requiring students to submit assignments digitally could inadvertently create disparities among students based on their access to technology, potentially excluding those who do not have the necessary resources (phongsirikul, 2018). in addition, teachers may have concerns about accurately assessing students' work when it is submitted digitally. they may worry about issues such as plagiarism, the reliability of online tools for checking grammar and spelling, or the difficulty of providing detailed feedback on digital assignments (farrokhnia et al., 2023; wanchid & charoensuk, 2015) moreover, in the offline writing assessment, english teachers give scores based on students' writing abilities. the teachers implemented three main aspects of the writing assessment: the affective, cognitive, and skill aspects representing students' writing abilities (nurhasanah, 2020). the study by drid (2018) stated that the basis of students' writing assessment relates to the appropriate use of ideas, grammar, structure, punctuation, and mechanics. in addition, the correct letter in writing could influence the scoring system. brown and abeywickrama (2018) pointed out that the scoring process in writing assessment includes writing letters, punctuation, and word choices. writing involves organization, content, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics (duwila & khusaini, 2019). the process of offline writing assessment entangles various characteristics that could strengthen students' writing results. therefore, writing scoring becomes http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 76-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license necessary for english teachers and students to improve writing activities and assessments (alamri & adawi, 2021). conversely, during the online activities during covid-19, english teachers conduct the same activities for the writing assessment process, giving the score. principally, english teachers argued that they implemented the same scoring aspect for students' writing in online learning during covid-19; it consists of appropriately using grammar, vocabulary, spelling, content, and mechanics in students' writing. in line, brown and abeywickrama (2018) mentioned that in writing assessments, english teachers must consider scoring guides involving content, form, structure, vocab, grammar, and spelling. the aspects of writing are seen in organization, content, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics (duwila & khusaini, 2019). in addition, the scoring process is conducted with online writing assessment media; english teachers found convenient ways to conduct the assessment through online assessment media. the study by lee (2017) indicated that english teachers could create writing assessments automatically in an online writing platform, providing automated scores, comments, or feedback. besides, chamorro (2022) writes that students' writing results through online writing assessments are influenced by their writing process; english teachers could get students' writing results directly in online writing assessment media. besides, the online writing assessment media provide students to give direct scores for their writing tasks (arif, 2020). furthermore, the other implementation activities of writing assessment involve the feedback in offline and online activities during covid-19. in offline writing assessment activities, english teachers provide students' writing with corrective feedback. english teachers could give feedback on students' writing by underlining the wrong text item, making students aware of their writing (purnomo et al., 2021). delivering feedback on students' writing could allow them to repair their writing mistakes and be part of the learning process (wang et al., 2020). students are also more comfortable providing feedback individually to improve their writing skills (isnawati, 2018). in addition, english teachers support the feedback for students to support each other. the study by mali (2015) discovered that writing feedback from english teachers promotes students with high motivation to enhance their writing better. english teachers must provide students' writing works through the appropriate feedback http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 77-82 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license processes. giving feedback on students' writing promotes students' confidence in recognizing their writing development (refnaldi et al., 2017). conclusions and suggestion the writing assessment process plays an essential mission for english teachers. teachers need appropriate writing assessment media using technology-based or non-technologybased media to obtain accurate writing results. according to the findings and discussion, the researchers conclude that english teachers use different writing assessment media used by the english teachers for in offline and online activities during the covid-19 period. these english teachers implemented offline writing assessment media using the writing task through a paper-based project. in contrast, online writing assessment media utilize various online platforms to assess students' writing, such as google classroom, google form, and whatsapp. in addition, the implementation of writing assessment media in offline and online activities gives the scoring aspect for students' writing with elements such as appropriate grammar, organization, vocabulary, content, and mechanics. also, english teachers provide feedback on students' writing online through direct and immediate feedback and offline activities through giving comments or rediscussing. therefore, it emphasizes the importance of using appropriate writing assessment media in offline and online activities during covid-19. the researchers suggest that english teachers could use suitable writing assessment media to support students writing development. the study's limitations were conducted at the junior high school level, and the assessment media focused on writing. the other researchers could conduct the study at various levels and other english skills for further research. references abduh, m. y. m. 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(2021). teacher engagement with online formative assessment in efl writing during covid-19 pandemic: the case of china. asia-pacific education researcher, 30(6), 487–498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299021-00593-7 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 211-226 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee english student-teacher awareness of differentiated instruction (di) implementation in classroom eka fajar rahmani*, dwi riyanti universitas tanjungpura, pontianak, indonesia (ekasastria10@fkip.untan.ac.id) received: 15th august 2022; revised: 11th october 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this study aimed to examine the understanding of english education department studentteachers on the use of differentiated instruction (di) in the classroom. there were 80 studentteachers, 20 (25%) male and 60 (75%) female. the data were collected primarily through a 31-item questionnaire with four scales ranging from "not important" to "very important." the questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine the amount of di awareness and importance. the data underwent descriptive analysis (statistical analysis) by comparing the mean score (m) and standard deviation (sd) of each item for the level of awareness and by calculating percentages for the level of importance. the results indicated that the student-teachers awareness of di implementation ranges from "high" with the lowest score of 2.06 (2.06>2.01-3.00) to "very high" with the highest score of 3.71 (3.71>3.01-4.00). consequently, the level of importance concurred with or supported the awareness result that the participants regarded di to be important, ranging from "somewhat important" (49.40%) to "very important" (88.39%). these findings suggest good implications for the pedagogical element of student-teacher knowledge of di implementation in the classroom. key words: differentiated instruction; english student-teacher abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi kesadaran mahasiswa plp pendidikan bahasa inggris tentang penerapan pembelajaran berdifferensiasi (di) di kelas. ada 80 mahasiswa plp, 20 (25%) laki-laki dan 60 (75%) perempuan. data dikumpulkan melalui kuesioner dengan empat skala mulai dari "not implotant" hingga "strongly important" yang berjumlah 31 item. data dianalisis secara deskriptif analisis (analisis statistik) dengan membandingkan nilai rata-rata (m) dan standar deviasi (sd) masing-masing item untuk tingkat kesadaran dan dengan menghitung persentase untuk tingkat kepentingan. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa kesadaran mahasiswa plp terhadap penerapan di berkisar antara "tinggi" dengan skor terendah 2,06 (2,06>2,01-3,00) hingga "sangat tinggi" dengan skor tertinggi 3,71 (3,71>3,014,00). hasil tersebut sejalan dengan hasil tingkat kepentingan bahwa peserta menganggap di penting, mulai dari "agak penting" (49,40%) hingga "sangat penting" (88,39%). temuan ini menunjukkan implikasi yang baik untuk elemen pedagogis pengetahuan mahasiswa plp implementasi di di kelas. kata kunci: mahasiswa plp bahasa inggris; pembelajaran berdiferensiasi how to cite: rahmani, eka f., riyanti, d. (2022). english student-teacher awareness of differentiated instruction (di) implementation in classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 192-210. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 212-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction students are unique in that they are different in many aspects, such as intelligence, self-efficacy, needs, ability, interests, styles of learning, and even motivation to be engaged in learning activities (barnes, 2019; imbeau & tomlinson, 2013; janu setiyowati et al., 2019; mohd ikhwan & azlina, 2019; yavuz, 2020). these differences make the classroom diverse, complex, and challenging for teachers; they must consider these as their prior knowledge before setting up teaching matters. knowledge of 'students' uniqueness is a precondition for the realization of the adaptive teaching process (bernard et al., 2019). it also helps the teachers 'find the best practices to meet the learners' needs and respond to diverse situations (rahman, scaife, yahya, & jalil, 2015). a solution for this phenomenon is implementing differentiated instruction, an approach based on the reality that students of the same age differ in their readiness to learn, interests, learning styles, and backgrounds (darra & kanellopoulou, 2019). differentiated instruction (di) is a pedagogical approach aimed at addressing the variation of learners in the classroom through modifying instructions and curriculum to match the s' 'student's needs (reis & renzulli, 2018). much clearly, imbeau and tomlinson (2013) defined differentiation as an approach to teaching in which teachers adjust curricula, instructional techniques, resources, learning activities, and student products to meet the unique requirements of individual students and small groups to optimize each student's learning opportunity through addressing their readiness levels, interests, and learning styles. the power of differentiated instruction relies on its notion, which aligns with the concept of constructivism theory, as is well-known that constructivism has brought a significant influence on education development, especially in the way of altering the paradigm from teacher to student-centred, designing classroom activities, and promoting objectives and learning experiences at the same time (fernando & marikar, 2017; golder & bengal, 2018; gunduz & hursen, 2015; v & a, 2016). constructivism assumes each person's knowledge is unique and varies, concurring with the fundamental concept of differentiated instruction (meyer, 2009). accordingly, robinson, maldonado, and whaley (2014), in their paper, pointed out that dewey and piaget, the two phenomenal constructivists, promoted differentiated instruction with a shared claim that individuals cannot instantly absorb and use given knowledge but must develop their knowledge based on previous ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 213-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license experiences and innate inherent in them. ontario educational institution (2010) has listed seven essential concepts of differentiated instruction for teachers before or while deliberating the di. firstly, knowledge of '' readiness to work with concepts, interests, and learning preferencesis seen as equally valid. secondly, teachers use a repertoire of instructional and assessment strategies to meet the needs of different learners. thirdly, all differentiated instruction activities are equally engaging and respectful and take approximately the same time. the next is that unless students have an iep, all differentiated instruction is based on the same curriculum expectations, and all students have opportunities to achieve the same high performance standards. the fifth relates to assessment, in which students are assessed before, during, and after learning. assessments inform the next steps for both teacher and student. the sixth is that even if students have choices in demonstrating their learning, teachers can use a common assessment tool, such as rubrics, so that all student work is judged against the same criteria. last but not least, a defining characteristic of a differentiated classroom is flexibility. student work in short-term, flexible learning groups and educators are flexible in creating and altering instruction in response to learners. differentiated instruction has five basic elements, as introduced by tomlinson and strickland (2005), which can be modified by adjusting to the needs and situations involving content, process, projects, and learning environment. the content deals with what the student needs to learn and which resources will help. the process is the activities that help students understand what they learn. the project allows students to show what they have understood or known. the learning environment is related to the classroom atmosphere and how the class works together. numerous researchers have conducted studies related to di implemented in english classes for the past five years (i.e. loberg, nilsson, kaatari, & thomas, 2020; magableh & abdullah, 2020; naka, 2017, 2018; saleh, 2021; suwastini, rinawati, jayantini, & dantes, 2021; tanjung & ashadi, 2019; whipple, 2012, etc.). these studies reported that the di implementation has successfully helped english teachers accommodate diverse classes despite the impediments faced by teachers while implementing it. teachers' careful selection of tailored education elements leads to success, and students who receive differentiated ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 214-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license instruction are calmer and more confident studying english based on their needs and preferences (suwastini et al., 2021). furthermore, teachers believed di helped them cater to their student's needs and interests (bidari, 2021; wan, 2020). teachers' perceptions about developing language learning skills and the effectiveness of di in a classroom played roles in overall teaching and learning performance (bidari, 2021). from these studies, it can be understood that implementing di in efl diverse classes is crucial since 'english ability, needs, and preferences are varied, and can be easily accommodated through enclosing di. despite 'the numerous studies mentioned above, unfortunately, there are limited studies conducted to seek the efl pre-service teachers or studentteachers teachers' awareness of di. in fact, as future teachers, obtaining information regarding their awareness of the di strategy is crucial. lack of pedagogical teaching frameworks might make the student-teachers less professional in many aspects (baier et al., 2021; zhao, 2012). applying unfacilitated teaching approaches, for instance, might result in a passive and unmotivated learning environment due to a lack of awareness on the side of teachers about the differences among students (agustrianita et al., 2019; imbeau & tomlinson, 2013; tomlinson & strickland, 2005). nevertheless, the researcher found one similar study by nepal (2021). the study reveals that most pre-service teachers understand differentiation as a tool for modifying instruction specifically to accommodate challenging students. in addition, the findings suggest that diversity is commonly perceived as referring to "others," and inclusion is viewed as a technique for integrating "different" individuals into the mainstream. this study, however, was not done in the context of elt or efl instruction but rather on differentiation in inclusive education. this is the gap that the researchers wish to fill. the significance of this study is crystal clear, as the findings will be especially useful for efl student-teachers and lecturers in determining the extent to which student-teachers are prepared to become teachers with a pedagogical understanding of di. in addition, this study serves as a resource for efl or elt researchers, particularly in preservice teachers' understanding of differentiated instruction. there are two research questions posed in this study: (1) are the english education department's studentteacher aware of di's importance to be implemented in the classroom? and (2) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 215-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license how important is di to be implemented in the classroom from the student-teacher perspective of the english education department? in line with these questions, the research purposes are (1) to investigate to what extent the student-teacher of the english education department is aware of di implementation and (2) to find out how important di is to be implemented in the classroom according to the student-teacher of english education department. method research design the researchers employed descriptive – a quantitative design. in this type of research, data may be obtained qualitatively, but it is frequently examined quantitatively using frequencies, percentages, or other statistical techniques to discover relationships (nassaji, 2015). as for this research, the researcher investigated the 'students' awareness ,which is qualitative but quantitative in the way the data were analyzed and presented. the research started by observing the latest phenomenon in indonesia where di is being encouraged to be applied to all levels of education listed in the concept of the merdeka curriculum, the newest curriculum (mariati et al., 2021). then, it continued to reviewing continued to review literatureon di, and realized that di was also crucial to be understood by student-teacher of the english education department (the research participants). after that, the researchers formulated the problems and research questions. the researchers then distributed the questionnaire to the participants to collect the data without intervening with the data and the participants (natural setting) (creswell, 2014; miles et al., 2014). finally, the researchers analyzed the data statistically and presented them in tables and charts, as seen in the findings and discussion section. research site and participants the research was conducted online by distributing google forms. the participants are sixth-semester students of the english education department of teacher training and education faculty of universitas tanjungpura who have passed micro teaching and tefl subjects and are now taking their teaching practice or internship at appointed schools. the total participants are 80 students consisting of 20 (25%) male students and 60 (75%) female students. data collection and analysis the researcher used a closed-ended questionnaire as the primary data. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 216-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license questionnaire was modified from whipple (2012) about the 'participants' understanding of differentiated instructions. it consisted of 31 items covering six elements of differentiated instruction involving 'students' interests, assessment, lesson plan, content, process, and product. the questionnaire was in the form of a likert scale with four options from ""not important" to""strongly important". then, the questionnaire responses were tabulated, analyzed, and presented in tables and charts. the researchers referred to the level of importance with an interval of 25 points derived from the four-scale tabulation. the level of importance is presented in table 1 below. table 1. level of importance index category 0-25 not important 26-50 fairly important 51-75 important 76-100 strongly important the level of importance is in the form of percentages of each responded item of the questionnaire. these data would also be converted and displayed into charts to see the responses' differences. after getting the importance level of each di element, the researchers then interpret the level of awareness obtained by calculating the interval of four scales of 1.00 on each category. the level of awareness is presented in table 2 below. table 2. level of awareness index category 0-1.00 low 1.01-2.00 moderate 2.01-3.00 high 3.01-4.00 very high finally, all the data were gathered, concluded, and communicated respectively to answer the research questions posed in the study. findings and discussion findings the findings in this paper are presented in two parts based on the number of research questions posed, as below: rq1: are the english education department's student-teacher aware of di's importance in being implemented in the classroom? the results indicated that students of the english education department were aware of di's importance in being implemented in the classroom. the participants responded precisely positively to the questionnaire items from the six posed elements. the awareness level was benchmarked by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 217-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license each item's mean score (m) and standard deviation (sd). the 'students' awareness level of the importance of di in the classroom is high. in detail, the awareness level varies from high to very high category. out of 31 items, there are ten items categorized as very high with a percentage of 32,25%, and 21 items categorized as high with a percentage of 67,74%. the results are presented in table 3 to table 8 below. table 3. 'students' interest item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 0 7 35 38 3.39 2.92 2 80 7 10 43 20 2.95 2.54 3 80 15 23 32 10 2.46 2.12 4 80 0 27 28 25 2.98 2.55 referring to the level of awareness index, mean scores in the first element asked about 'students' interests indicate that the participants are aware of the importance of di in finding and integrating students’' interests in teaching-learning. this first element consists of four statements responded by 80 participants (n=80). the values range from high with a mean score of 2.46 (2.46>2.01-3.00) and sd=2.12 on the third statement to very high with mean score 3.39 (3.39>3.01-4.00) and sd=2.92 on the first statement. the level of awareness in this element is dominated by high category (three out of four items being posed). table 4. assessment item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 0 12 56 12 3.00 2.51 2 80 0 8 36 36 3.35 2.88 3 80 0 13 28 39 3.33 2.88 4 80 0 3 17 60 3.71 3.22 5 80 12 8 27 33 3.01 2.68 table 4 displays the results of the second element asked about the importance of di in constructing the assessment. there are five statements responded to by 80 participants (n=80), with the mean score ranging from 3.00 to 3.71. referring to the level of awareness index, the participants are aware of the awareness category reaching high (3.00>2.01-3.00) and sd=2.51 on the first statement to very high (3.71>3.01-4.00) and sd=3.22 on the fourth statement. from the table, it can be learned that four out of five statements are categorized as very high. table 5. lesson planning item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 3 22 31 24 2.84 2.57 2 80 0 37 12 31 2.82 2.57 3 80 22 13 29 16 2.40 2.23 4 80 8 11 34 27 2.89 2.64 5 80 28 14 19 19 2.28 2.17 6 80 5 12 23 40 3.11 2.85 table 5 presents the results of the third element asked about the importance of di in designing the plans. there are six statements in the questionnaire responded to by 80 participants (n=80), with the mean score ranging from 2.28 to 3.11. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 218-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license referring to the level of awareness index, the participants are aware of the awareness category reaching high (2.28>2.01-3.00) and sd=2.17 on the third statement to very high (3.11>3.014.00) and sd=2.85 on the sixth statement. the dominant category in this element is high; five out of six statements are indexed as high, and one is very high. table 6. content item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 0 9 47 24 3.19 2.62 2 80 13 19 30 18 2.66 2.24 3 80 17 11 30 22 2.71 2.33 4 80 37 7 29 7 2.08 1.77 5 80 0 17 52 11 2.93 2.36 table 6 presents the descriptive analysis of the fourth element asked about the importance of di in designing content for classroom activities. it consists of five statements responded to by 80 respondents (n=80). the awareness level is gauged by the mean scores referring to the index of awareness level in which the results range from high (2.08>2.01-3.00) on the fourth statement with sd=1.77 to very high (3.19>3.01-4.00) on the first statement with sd=2.62. four out of five statements are indexed as high, and one is very high. these results indicate that the participants are aware of di's importance in being integrated into designing the content of the classroom activity. table 7. process item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 6 21 37 16 2.79 2.39 2 80 0 13 55 12 2.99 2.50 3 80 29 18 32 1 2.06 1.73 4 80 10 21 27 22 2.76 2.42 5 80 0 16 26 38 3.28 2.84 table 7 displays the descriptive analysis of the fifth element asked about the importance of di in designing the process of classroom activities. there are five items responded by 80 respondents (n=80). the results indicate that the 'participants' awareness reaches the category of high to very high with the mean score 2.06 (2.06>2.01-3.00) and sd=1.73, and 3.28 (3.28>3.01-4.00) and sd=2.84 respectively. it can be seen from the table that four out of five items are indexed by high. table 8. product item n ni fi i si m sd 1 80 7 13 39 21 2.93 2.53 2 80 13 18 22 27 2.79 2.48 3 80 9 27 15 29 2.80 2.48 4 80 24 16 20 20 2.45 2.21 5 80 0 7 24 49 3.53 3.05 6 80 3 7 27 43 3.38 2.94 referring to the results displayed in table 8 above, it is indicated that students' level of awareness reaches from high to very high category. the mean score varies from 2.06 (2.06>2.013.00) and sd=1.73 and 3.53 (3.53>3.014.00) and sd=3.05, respectively. there are six items posed in the sixth di ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 219-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license element about product responded to by 80 participants (n=80). from the results, it can be concluded that the participants are highly aware of ' 'di's importance in planning and designing the product to be instructed to the students, that four out of six items are indexed as high. rq2: how important is di to be implemented in the classroom from the perspective of the student-teacher of the english education department? the participants have agreed that implementing differentiated instructions (di) in the classroom is essential. the importance level varies, ranging from fairly important to strongly important. among 31 items, two are fairly important, nineteen are important, and ten are strongly important. the detail of the result can be seen in the following figures. figure 1. ' 'student's interest figure 1 above shows that the highest percentage reaches 80.65% categorized as "strongly important", while the lowest is 58.63% categorized as "important". four items are asked in this element; two are categorized as strongly important, and two are as important, with 80.65%, 70.83%, 70.24%, and 58.63%, respectively. figure 2. assessment figure 2 above displays the percentage results of di implementation in assessment. the percentage relies upon 71.43% categorized as important to 88.39% categorized as strongly important. three out of five items in the second element are categorized as strongly important, and two are important, with 79.17%, 79.76%, 88.39%, 71.43%, and 71.73%, respectively. figure 3. lesson planning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 220-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 3 above shows that five out of six items are categorized as important, and one is responded by strongly important. the range of the percentages varies from 56.25%, categorized as important, to 75.79% categorized as strongly important. in detail, statements 1 to 5 are responded by important with 70.24%, 69.64%, 59.23%, 71.43%, and 56.25% respectively. meanwhile, statement 6 responded by strongly agree with the percentage 76.79%. figure 4. content figure 4 above displays 'participants' responses to the importance of di in assessment in the form of a percentage. the result indicates that three out of five items are responded by important with the percentage of 63.39%, 64.58%, and 69.64% on statements 2, statement 3, and statement 5, respectively; one is fairly important with a percentage of 49.40% on statement 4, and one is strongly important with the percentage of 75.89% on statement 1. figure 5. process figure 5 displays the 'participants' responses to the importance of di in designing content. the result indicates that three out of five items are responded by important with the percentage of 66.37%, 71.13%, and 65.77% on statements 1, statement 2, and statement 4, respectively; one is fairly important with a percentage of 49.11% on statement 3, and one is strongly important with the percentage of 77.98% on statement 5. figure 6. product figure 6 presents the response of di importance in designing a product as a percentage. from the figure, it can be seen that the student's responses range from 58.33% to 83.93%. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 221-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in detail, the students responded to four out of six statements by "important" with a percentage of 69.64%, 66.37%, 66.67%, and 58.33% on statements 1, statement 2, statement 3, and statement 4, respectively. the other two statements are responded by strongly important with a percentage of 83.93% and 80.36%. discussion this study is significant in the way it examines the perceptions of the student-teacher of the english education department towards the importance of differentiated instructions implemented in six core elements of teaching-learning. the results of this study have confirmed that the student-teachers are aware that differentiated instruction is important to be applied in all aspects of teaching. the results that have been presented in tables and figures in the findings section are evidence of it. differentiated instruction framework is not a new issue in education and is believed to effectively cater to 'students' diversity (bidari, 2021; wan, 2016, 2020). it has been popular amongst educators, practitioners, and researchers across nations since 1990s, and it gained more popularity in 2017 as the di articles were published and cited by authors in accredited journals (smale-jacobse et al., 2019). the result of the study indicated that the tendency to use differentiated classroom instruction by practitioners (teachers or lecturers) increases within years. in the indonesian context, di has now taken into account that the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology suggested that di be implemented in the classroom. di is seen as the solution for the indonesian classes that are diverse in the background (mariati et al., 2021). by implementing di in class, teachers are expected to build a learning environment using effective strategies or scenarios to accommodate the 'students' needs (gentry et al., 2013; ireh & ibeneme, 2010). as di is essential in many ways, teachers should recognize its existence and apply it to design relevant and effective class scenarios. it goes similar to the student-teachers who would become teachers in the future. hence, getting information about their awareness towards di approach is essential. a lack of understanding on the part of teachers regarding the 'students' differences unfacilitated teaching approaches, such as the employment of more traditional methods such as lecturing (agustrianita et al., 2019), resulting passive and unmotivated learning environment ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 222-226 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (tomlinson, 2001; tomlinson & strickland, 2005). since the results of this study indicate positive perceptions obtained from the questionnaire responses, the researchers believed that english student-teachers from the english education department are ready to be caring and attentive teachers in the future. nevertheless, they still need to further deepen the notion of di, particularly on the point of (1) relating grouping students related to readiness level in the element of content and (2) using a 'students' preference group in the element of the process. these two points obtained almost 50% responses of the total participants categorized as somewhat important while readiness and preferences are crucial to be involved (koehler, 2010; tomlinson et al., 2003; whipple, 2012). furthermore, the results of this study complete the previous studies about di implementation and 'teachers' perceptions towards di conducted by several researchers (see background)(al-shaboul et al., 2021; ginja & chen, 2020; magableh & abdullah, 2020; saleh, 2021; whipple, 2012). for the last five years, no studies have been published on efl studentteachers awareness of di. meanwhile, as future teachers, understanding or awareness of teaching-learning knowhow is an issue as a basis of knowledge development or enrichment for becoming professional teachers (zhao, 2012). henceforth, this study has contributed to filling in this gap. references agustrianita, a., suherdi, d., & purnawarman, p. 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(2012). student 'teachers' knowledge structure and their professional development-based on the study of efl student teachers. journal of cambridge studies, 7(2), 68–82. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 1-18 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee english blended learning: an analysis of indonesian students’ perception aminah suriaman1*, nurgan tadeko2, konder manurung3, sriati usman4, atik yuliyani5 amisuriaman@gmail.com received: 14th march 2022; revised: 26th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract the study attempted to analyze the students of tadulako university's perspective toward blended learning instruction in english teaching. the study employed a quantitative approach using a longitudinal survey design. 48 english department students in the fourth and sixth semesters were selected as the sample of the research using a simple random sampling technique. the data were gained through the questionnaire distributed online and the interview in the face-to-face technique. data have been analyzed descriptively and inferentially using spss program version 21. the results showed that blended learning through moodle-based instruction and face-to-face learning in the classroom was a modern way of learning, convenient to learn english anywhere and anytime. according to most of the respondents, blended learning is the way to enhance their self-directed learning. they can understand the subject well through blended learning, and students feel satisfied using blended learning in english teaching. it could be concluded that blended learning is helpful to apply in english teaching. the results contributed theoretical and practical information and references to practitioners and researchers in this field of study. key words: english blended learning; moodle-based instruction abstrak penelitian ini mencoba untuk menganalisis perspektif mahasiswa universitas tadulako terhadap pengajaran blended learning dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif dengan menggunakan desain survei longitudinal. 48 mahasiswa jurusan bahasa inggris semester empat dan enam dipilih sebagai sampel penelitian dengan menggunakan teknik sampel acak secara sederhana. data diperoleh melalui kuesioner yang disebarkan secara daring dan wawancara dengan teknik tatap muka. data dianalisis secara deskriptif dan inferensial menggunakan program spss versi 21. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa blended learning melalui pembelajaran berbasis moodle dan pembelajaran tatap muka di kelas menurut mahasiswa merupakan cara belajar yang modern, nyaman untuk belajar bahasa inggris dimana saja dan kapan saja. blended learning menurut sebagian besar responden, adalah cara untuk meningkatkan self-directed mereka dalam belajar, mereka dapat memahami materi pembelajaran dengan baik melalui blended learning, dan siswa merasa puas menggunakan blended learning dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. dapat disimpulkan bahwa blended learning berguna untuk diterapkan dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. hasil penelitian ini memberikan kontribusi informasi dan referensi secara teoritis dan praktis kepada para praktisi dan peneliti selanjutnya dalam bidang studi ini. kata kunci: pembelajaran bahasa inggris campuran; pengajaran berbasis moodle how to cite: suriaman. a., tadeko, n., manurung, k., usman, s., yuliyani, a. (2022). english blended learning: an analysis of indonesian students’ perception. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 1-18. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 2-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the advance in technology encourages and motivates educators to be more creative in facilitating the process of teaching and learning. this paper explores how lecturers, particularly at tadulako university, maximize facilitating students to keep on learning after natural disasters. in this earthquake, most ruins were learning facilities, and students' perceptions of the blended learning model were analyzed. the aftermath of the natural disaster in palu, central sulawesi, has negatively affected all sectors, including education. the teaching and learning process at tadulako university has broken off due to the breakdown of learning facilities, disconnected communication networks, and other disruptions that have impacted the learning system in tadulako university. the unpredictable conditions since the earthquake still occurred mainly every day that making people scared and feel safe leaving away from this city. therefore many students and even the lecturers left for other cities. this condition occurred for several weeks, and the learning activities stopped for a while. having the condition described above, to keep the teaching and learning process, the idea of blended learning in the form of a web-based learning system is to bear in mind. the basic concept of shifting teaching from face-to-face to blended learning by advantage technology is considered an intelligent solution in the instructional learning model, particularly for those institutions which still implement non-online learning activities. the limited face-to-face in the classroom due to inadequate classrooms to be used and the lack of printed resources can be managed using ict-information and communication technology (yunus et al., 2009; rinantanti, bin-tahir, 2019) as a form of blended learning. in recent years, computer-based or ict-based learning methods in education have been widely used, from primary level education to higher education (budianto, 2014). the use of ict in the teaching-learning process does not only create a joyful learning environment but also can help motivate the students and capture their attention. students' independent learning can be trained by controlling their participation through ict, such as web-based applications. google classroom in blended learning can encourage the use of technology and develop classroom dynamics in limited conditions (engelbertink et al., 2020; heggart & yoo, 2018). in addition, online learning increases student participation in discussions in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 3-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning environment from both the student and the teacher's point of view (abazi-bexheti et al., 2018; han & ellis, 2019). blended learning represents an opportunity to integrate the innovative and technological advances offered by online learning with the interaction and participation offered in the best of traditional learning (kaye, 2003). while (bersin, 2004: 78) defines blended learning: as "the combination of different training "media" (technologies, activities, and types of events) to create an optimum training program for a specific audience. the term "blended" means that traditional instructor-led training is being supplemented with other electronic formats. in the context of this book, blended learning programs use many different forms of learning, perhaps complemented with instructor-led training and other live formats". the blended learning model is a learning model that combines methods face to face teaching with computerassisted teaching methods, both offline and online, to form an integrated learning approach. previously, material digital-based has been practiced but within the support role, which is to support face-to-face teaching. the purpose of blended learning is to provide a learning experience the most effective and efficient. nowadays, the term 'blended' is becoming popular, so more and more combinations are referred to as blended learning. however, understanding learning based on blended learning is learning that combines the strategy of delivering learning using face-to-face learning activities with computer-based (offline) and online computers (internet-based and mobile learning). blended learning is considered a choice to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and more significant attraction in interacting with students in a diverse learning environment. blended learning offers opportunities to study in a group and learn independently simultaneously or at different times and places. blended learning has an ideal structure and procedures to be applied in learning to help increase the competence of teachers and students. blended learning must have adequate technology quality, tools used, learning theory, learning theory, and adequate summative evaluation (cutri, & whiting, 2018; hrastinski, 2019; kintu, zhu & kagambe, 2017). this model using google classroom demonstrates the ease of use and effectiveness that makes it easier to manage to learn documents and content (al-maroof, & al-emran, 2018; rasheed et al., 2020). blended learning can also help adapt to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 4-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license offline learning by considering the diversity and characteristics of learners in language learning (alberth, 2011; boelens et al., 2018). additionally, the blended learning objective is to improve learning results. it is also helpful in improving communication in three modes of learning, traditional classroom-based learning environment, blended, and entirely online. research results show that blended learning produces a stronger sense of community between students than traditional learning or online learning. students' perceptions of online classes show an excellent category because the teacher can facilitate a good, dynamic and objective effective learning climate in evaluation (boelens et al., 2017; pattiserlihun & setiadi, 2020) technically, there are various models in the development of blended learning that can be applied both online and offline; online and offline model of face-to-face learning, using an electronic module, combining learning with texts, audio, and multimedia (web-based). as part of blended learning, web-based instructional materials can provide teachers and students with a broad range of new and exciting experiences that sometimes are impossible to duplicate in a traditional classroom. the development of webbased learning has provided students with various teaching and learning alternatives that have expanded the educational process from traditional learning to advanced learning (suriaman et al., 2019). moreover, blended learning equipped with various materials (texts, pictures, flashes, music, audio, and video) attracts students' attention and facilitates their acquisition of detailed knowledge (suriaman et al., 2019). this study aims to reveal how blended learning was perceived by the students whether the application of blended learning through web-based instructional materials met students' needs in learning. web-based instruction as another development of teaching materials is the use of media/technology as one of the characteristics in the web-based learning process, including the use of text, audio, video, and multimedia. the use of text, audio, video, and multimedia is for the enrichment of material to practice, and to strengthen students in learning one topic. as the essential learning tool in online learning, blended development learning using the web has become important. as stated by (khalid, 2020) e-learning is the trust and use of information and communication technology (ict) for information ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 5-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sharing education in the context of distant instructors and learners, in time or space, or both, to improve the learning experience and student performance. moreover, regarding online learning, it is imperative to enrich teachers' capacity to understand different applied e-learning methods. in its application, e-learning requires many methods to achieve expected results (mantra et al., 2021). on the other hand, variations in online learning methods also create the students' enthusiasm to join online learning treatment. therefore this study was conducted to analyze the use of web-based learning through students’ insight. the web learning model expected more independent study time than offline and online face-to-face. method respondents the study employed a quantitative approach using a longitudinal survey design. 54 english department students in the fourth and sixth semesters were selected as the sample of the research using a simple random sampling technique. instruments the participants of this study who previously had different subjects with blended learning design shared the course materials dealing with the course outline, online group presentation through zoom, assignment submission accessed in moodle web, and other learning activities conducted online. procedures the participants of this study who previously had different subjects with blended learning design shared the course materials dealing with the course outline, online group presentation through zoom, assignment submission accessed in moodle web, and other learning activities conducted online. data analysis the data have been analyzed descriptively and inferentially using spss program version 21. findings and discussion this part is presented in two separate sections. firstly, the findings were obtained from a questionnaire concerning the students' perception of learning english via blended learning (web-based instruction (wbi), google classroom, and zoom). secondly, the discussion of the data obtained. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 6-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings this part analyzes students' perception of learning english via blended learning that involves webbased instruction, google classroom, and zoom. the heading of the online questionnaires was presented in table 1, and the figures; table 1 students' perception of learning english through blended learning instructions: please read each item of the questionnaire and make a checkmark in a rating box that describes your opinions toward learning english via blended learning (web-based instruction (wbi, google classroom, zoom). the criteria for rating your opinions are as follow: 4 = strongly agree 3 = agree 2 = disagree 1 = strongly disagree table 1. students' perception of learning english through blended learning no statements rating of opinions (%) 1 2 3 4 1 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is a modern way of learning. 16. 7 8.3 52 .1 22. 9 2 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is convenient to learn 8.3 8.2 52 .1 31. 3 you can review the lessons anywhere and anytime 3 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is the way to enhance your self-directed learning. 2.1 12. 5 72 .9 12. 5 4 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is enjoyable. 8.3 16. 7 52 .1 22. 9 5 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) does not make you feel isolated 2.1 22. 9 56 .3 18. 8 6 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) helps learn english 4.2 27. 1 47 .9 20. 8 7 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) helps you remember more new english words. 2.1 31. 3 54 .2 12. 5 8 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) has a clear explanation of contents and exercises. 4.2 29. 2 64 .6 2.1 9 learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) has the appropriate content with learning objectives. 14. 4 25 54 .4 6.3 10 learning english via blended learning is easy to understand the lessons. 6.3 22. 9 66 .7 4.2 11 overall, learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is satisfactory. 9 20. 2 56 .3 14. 5 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 7-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the data are shown in the chart: 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 56.3% 47.9% 54.2% 64.6% 66.7% 56.3% don't feel isolated usef ul in learn in g english inc rease vocabulary clear exp lan ation of co nten ts & exerc is es chart 1. students' perception of blended learning the data reveals that based on 11 questionnaires. the overall score of students' perceptions of learning through blended learning, moodle web-based, google classroom, and zoom is at an agreed level. it can be seen from the table that refers to question no. 1. learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is a modern way of learning; 52.1% of respondents agree, 22.9% responded strongly agreed, 8.3% of students responded they disagreed. meanwhile, none of the respondents reacted strongly disagreed with the statement. referring to learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is convenient to learn; you can review the lessons anywhere and anytime. the data shows that 52.1% of students respond that they agree, and 31.3% of students strongly agree, while 16.7% of students disagree. regarding questions learning english via blended learning (moodlebased instruction, gc, zoom) is the way to enhance your self-directed learning. the majority of the students, 72.9%, considered agreeing, while 12.5% of students responded strongly agree. in contrast, a similar percentage of students responded to disagree, and only 8.3% said strongly disagree with the statement. further, learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) helps learn english, 47.9% of students agree with this statement, 20.8% strongly agree with it. about 27.1% said they disagree, and 4.2% firmly disagree. learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) helps them remember more new english words. the result reveals that the highest score of respondents ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 8-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license agree, 54.2%. while several students respond strongly agreed is 12.5% and 31.3% disagree. learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) has a clear explanation of contents and exercises was, responded 64.6% agreed with students, 29.2% of students disagreed with the statement. only little number responded strongly disagree. learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) has the appropriate content with learning objectives. most students supported this statement. it can be seen based on their response that 68.8% agree, and none of them disagree. according to the students, learning english via blended learning is easy to understand the lessons. the student response supports this response; 66.7 % agree; however, some students disagree with that statement 22.9%. the last questionnaire referred to overall english learning via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is satisfactory. most participants agree with the statement, and 56.3% agree with the statement. the remaining 14.6 % strongly agree. discussion the analysis design constructed in this study is generated empirically and theoretically from the review of literature as well as the results of students' perception of learning english via blended learning (web-based instruction (wbi, google classroom, zoom). students expect how they were educated and learned to be supported by interactive and attractive learning materials. furthermore, one interesting way according to the students' perception is that learning through blended learning (wbi, google classroom, zoom). although the condition after the natural disaster occurred, the teaching and learning allotment was decreased due to an unavailable classroom. however, with blended learning, the students are still active in learning because learning materials are accessible online. suriaman et al., (2019) state that learning via web-based instruction is a significant way to enhance the students' learning ability and willingness to participate in the classroom. another research has shown that blended learning oriented to an online model without being limited by space positively impacts students (setiyani, 2019). the use of this model shows an increase in the number of participation, graduation rates, and learning experiences because it uses technology ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 9-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that does not depend on specific modalities and mobility (alsalhi, eltahir, & al-qatawneh, 2019; dziuban et al., 2018; moura et al., 2020). the effectiveness of blended learning is also demonstrated by increased knowledge and academic achievement (bondarenko et al., 2018; keiper et al., 2020; vallée et al., 2020). this study was conducted with a blended learning system that shifted the face-to-face meeting to zoom, accessible instructional materials through web-based moodle and google classroom. the research was conducted to determine how the students perceived blended learning for the specific subject and whether the students met their learning needs through blended learning. this study has involved 48 students who had blended learning experiences. the data was obtained from questionnaire distribution after students at the end of the semester. the questionnaire consisted of 11 statements concerning blended learning and how the students perceived the teaching and learning process conducted through the blended learning system. the research results indicated that students' opinions on learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is a modern way of learning. this statement was responded to positively by students. it indicated that from 48 respondents, 52.1% agreed with the statement. they found the way they learned is modern and practical where the learning materials could be accessed through their mobile phone although they were out of campus or classroom. this finding of the study is in parallel with many research results (suriaman et al.. 2019), showing the available tool such as mobile phones, personal laptops, and internet networks belonging to most the students can support them to learn in any place, anytime, and both inside and outside the classroom. it is also in line with the research study results conducted by cirak and yildirim (2018), showing that the students are satisfied with the blended learning process. the use of virtual classes whether using flipped or even google classroom is proven to provide practicality and smoothness of instructional procedures in learning because it provides privacy, interaction, and innovative interface design (kumar et al., 2020; nugraha et al., 2019). following the students' perception of learning english via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is the way to enhance their self-directed learning; the response reveals that most of the students realize they become independent learners. the learning system, like blended learning, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 10-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license leads them to search and find themselves by the direction of their lecturer and friends, and automatically they become directed learners. this response is in line with suriaman et al., (2018) reveal that the teachers also have a significant role in carrying out instructions in the learning process, which students look up to. therefore, to develop methods to encourage independent learning, it is necessary to choose an appropriate teaching technique and media that can cover all the problems faced by the students. blended learning by integrating technology such as the internet as a medium in the process of teaching and learning it is the potential to add value to the learning process and to increase students' attention and motivation. therefore, learning materials used in blended learning can promote classroom interaction to maximize opportunities for students to put english to a particular user and create a student-centered learning environment (suriaman, 2015). the results of other studies show that groups of students who use the blended learning model have better performance in developing english skills (moradimokhles & hwang, 2020). it also emphasizes better interactivity between teachers and students (kacetl & semradova, 2020). another result of the study is that the materials were uploaded online. both moodle web-based and google classroom uploaded by the lecturers have positively impacted the students. the students perceived the feature of online course materials via moodle web-based with specific activities, online discussion through zoom and students interaction among their friends run out-of-class sharing respectively. these results highlight the instructor's importance in organizing the whole process, the students' requirement of fulfilling their responsibilities, face-to-face courses' being an integral part of the blended learning process, and the valuableness of the features of online course materials. the last result of the study referred to overall english learning via blended learning (moodle-based instruction, gc, zoom) is satisfactory, most students agree with the statement. it can be claimed that blended learning provides student satisfaction and has proven to have positive effects on many variables. accordingly, it can be stated that the findings obtained within the scope of the present study are significant for the designers of blended learning lessons. these results are parallel with a research entitled "students and teacher perception on the role of ict in promoting instruction for quality teaching and learning in central sulawesi, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 11-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indonesia, found that blended learning in the form of web-based instructional materials helps promote students' independent learning. in addition. similar research (thamrin et al., 2019) states that the research subjects involved in the study responded well to the use of the internet compared to conventional or regular learning processes in the classroom. students who use blended learning show reasonable satisfaction using lms, google classroom, flipped-problembased learning model (fpblm), which is interpreted through motivation and interest (rachman et al., 2019; ramadhani et al., 2019; shaharanee et al., 2016). regarding the students' perception of whether they are satisfied with the content provided by the lecturer in the teaching in the form of blended learning, most respondents enjoy learning with various attractive content displays such as video, images, powerpoint, and others. it accommodates the students' learning style, which mostly is visual learners. this perception is in line with bersin (2004:54)"visual learners: approximately 50 to 70 percent of the population are characterized as "visual learners", meaning that they relate most effectively to written information, diagrams, images, and pictures. visual learners like taking notes, writing on the whiteboard, and creating and viewing powerpoint slides with graphics. most internet-based courseware is targeted toward visual learning, (i know i am a visual learner because my best ideas and concepts come from diagrams and pictures. learning is carried out by integrating online, and visuals show increased student interactivity. research that supports this statement, is conducted by holbrey (2020), who uses games in learning, and stockwell (2015), who uses video in problem-solving-based online learning. it can be inferred that providing various materials for learners in learning can motivate and encourage them to study well. based on the literature (gecer, 2008) asserts that the students found good the inclusion of the tasks they perform within the context of blended learning. hence, including online activities in students' assessments and evaluations encourages students to participate in online discussions. it can be inferred that these results support the finding obtained within the display, considering that the taking part in understudies considers the processbased assessment and evaluation significant in the course of blended learning. as a matter of fact, students' participation in both online and face-toface activities has been included in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 12-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students' evaluations of the two blended learning designs (kurt & yıldırım, 2018) the research results (szadziewska & kujawski, 2017) point out the advantages and disadvantages of blended learning. they state that blended learning is more comfortable to access the teaching and learning materials, more efficient and quicker communication with the instructor. better ability to pay attention during classes, and the possibility to better prepare for the exam. in addition, idris (2011) states that blended learning can enlarge the learning network. be easy to implement. have financial efficiency. and improve students' learning interests. students show a positive perception because learning using the blended learning model can improve analytical thinking skills. professional competence for prospective teachers, and learning motivation (aritonang, 2014; gjestvang, 2020; klentien & wannasawade, 2016) however, although the benefit of blended learning is reliable and widely recognized, the surveyed students also showed the severe drawbacks of blended learning, such as defective materials, login problems, low creativity in searching for knowledge, and internet connection problems. nevertheless, these drawbacks seemed did not occur in the same place. moreover, the advantages of blended learning outweigh its drawbacks. conclusions and suggestion blended learning is a learning model that can improve fascination with face-to-face learning. blended learning can accommodate developments in extensive technology without having to leave face-to-face learning in class by combining elearning. blended learning makes students continue to learn and follow the learning process, and it helps both teachers and students face challenges in the future. it could be denied that implementing blended learning by integrating teaching instruction with technology offers a positive contribution to education. teachinglearning constraints; inadequate classrooms due to natural disaster effects, small-time allotment, and lack of references can be solved via blended learning, which is web-based moodle, google classroom, and zoom is sort of them. web-based moodle, google classroom, and zoom are provided tools that make teachers creative in designing online teaching-learning courses, it supports face-to-face meetings. from the data obtained, almost none of the respondents gave a negative view of implementing blended ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 13-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning. they previously considered that learning and teaching run slowly and unachievable learning objectives. however, after experiencing blended learning, almost all students respond that teaching-learning via a blended system has been running effectively, efficiently, and entertaining. as a result, all students prefer teaching-learning instruction online. it is suggested that blended learning should be encouraged. acknowledgments thanks to the directorate general of resources for science technology, and higher education, which has provided the funding to conduct this study. thank you is addressed to lembaga penelitian dan pengabdian kepada masyarakat universitas tadulako, research team, students as respondents, and others who have contributed ideas. therefore, we would like to thank to all those who have helped implement this research. references abazi-bexheti, l., kadriu, a., jajaga, e., apostolova-trpkovska, m., & abazi-alili, h. 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(2017). advantages and disadvantages of the blended-learning method used in the educational process at the faculty of management at the university of gdansk. in the opinion of undergraduate http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/ http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 18-18 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26787 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students. iceri proceedings, 3938-3946. doi: 10.21125/iceri.2017.1051 thamrin, n. s., suriaman, a., & maghfirah, m. (2019). students’perception of the implementation of moodles webbased in learning grammar. jolttl (indonesian journal of language teaching and linguistics), 4(1), 1-10. doi: 10.30957/ijoltl.v4i1.552 vallée, a., sorbets, e., cariou, a., & blacher, j. (2020). blended learning compared to traditional learning in medical education: systematic review and metaanalysis. journal of medical internet research, 22(8). https://doi.org/10.2196/16504 yunus, m. m., lubis, m. a., & pei lin, c. (2009). language learning via ict: uses. challenges. and issues. wseas transactions on information science and applications, 6(9), 1453–1467. retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/p ublication/234793968%0alangua ge. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 76-88 the use of songs in increasing students’ understanding of figurative language salwa, ayu liskinasih received: 07th march 2016; revised: 17th may 2016; accepted: 28th june 2016 abstract this study aims at investigating the perceptions of students at kanjuruhan university of malang about the use of songs as supplementary materials in understanding the meanings of figurative language such as metaphor, hyperbole, personification, etc. this study employed a mixed-methods approach. the data were collected through questionnaire, video-recording and focus-group discussion. the participants of this study were 30 students attending vocabulary class in the third semester. the results of this data analysis showed that most of the students (85%) have positive attitudes towards the use of songs as considerable media to help them understand the meanings of figurative language and improve their motivation in learning english. it is hoped that english lecturers will use songs as one of interesting techniques in teaching figurative language, so that students will be more interested in analyzing figurative language using authentic-based materials. key words: figurative language; songs; vocabulary abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan secara rinci bagaimana pembelajaran bahasa kiasan (figurative language) seperti metafora, hiperbola, personifikasi, dsb agar dapat lebih mudah dimengerti oleh para mahasiswa, melalui media lagu sebagai materi tambahan (supplementary materials). metode penelitian ini adalah mixed-method. peneliti menggunakan beberapa instrumen penelitian yaitu kuesioner, observasi, rekaman video dan juga focusgroup discussion yang dilakukan pada para participant yaitu 30 mahasiswa semester tiga yang menempuh mata kuliah vocabulary pada jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris universitas kanjuruhan malang. hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwasanya para mahasiswa (85%) memiliki persepsi dan sikap yang positif terhadap penggunaan lagu dalam pembelajaran figurative language. pembelajaran dengan menggunaan media lagu ini juga dapat meningkatkan motivasi mahasiswa dalam mempelajari figurative language. penelitian ini secara teori dapat menambah variasi metode pembelajaran figurative language sehingga diharapkan para dosen pengajar mata kuliah vocabulary serta mata kuliah intro to literature (pendekatan sastra) dapat menerapkan metode ini didalam kelas sehingga dapat meningkatkan motivasi mahasiswa dalam mempelajari bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing melalui media otentik seperti lagu. kata kunci: figurative language; lagu; vocabulary how to cite: salwa. liskinasih, a. (2016). the use of songs in increasing students’ understanding of figurative language. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 75-88. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3 i1.3443 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3443 mailto:salwa@unikama.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|77-88 introduction vocabulary mastery plays a significant role in developing learner’s language competence. some considerable linguists have claimed the importance of vocabulary mastery in the process of second language acquisition (sla). according to cook (2003), grammatical knowledge itself does not guarantee the students could use the target language (tl) to socially function, particularly in the actual use of the tl in daily communications in which vocabulary mastery is absolutely needed. despite the significant role of vocabulary, previous studies on university students’ ability in vocabulary acquisition showed low competency on vocabulary mastery. cahyono and utami (2008)’ study contented that vocabulary is not frequently taught at the university level since it is only applied in some topics based on the curriculum in english education department. in addition, some studies showed that students had a low competence in vocabulary, predominantly in the area of figurative language (utami, 2012) furthermore, many english lecturers only focus on the teaching of grammar and pronunciation; consequently, students found difficulties in applying and understanding english vocabularies particularly figurative languages used in the literary work, such as poems, novels, or films. so far, in some classes, particularly in the efl settings, figurative language is either ignored or treated as if it was a very difficult topic since it has illiteral meanings and unusual symbols, and provide combination of words that have a new perspective and meanings on the word as well. however, so far the teaching method used is considered as a conventional way by using constructed materials such as modules, books, therefore the use of songs may help enrich students’ vocabulary particularly in the figurative language ones. figurative language is language deflection to create certain and rhetorical effects or special meanings (shen, 2009), for example: “it rains cats and dogs” it means a heavy rain. there is no relationship with animals in this case cats and dogs. there are many kinds of figurative language such as metaphor which is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two things that are basically similar. personification is a figure of speech where human qualities are given to animals. hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetoric device of figure of speech. while simile is a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 78-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 figure of speech that directly compares two things by using connecting words—as or like. considering that the teaching of figurative language is not easy, therefore english lecturers should apply more interesting teaching strategies, for example by using songs as media. it is hoped that authentic materials like songs are more frequently used as supplementary materials, so that students may learn english and having fun simultaneously. many previous studies show positive impacts of songs in increasing students’ vocabulary acquisition, particularly in understanding literary works. shen (2009) claimed that the use of songs reduced students’ stress in learning the transferred meanings or figurative language; therefore, songs can increase students’ self-confidence in learning english. hunt and beglar (as cited in cahyono and widiati, 2011) added that there are three considerable strategies in the vocabulary acquisition: direct, indirect and independent strategy learning. from those three strategies, the independent strategy learning is considered as the most crucial one as it gives opportunities for students to learn vocabulary autodidactically or outside the classrooms. one of the remarkable strategies is by listening to songs. in addition, according to krashen (as cited in nunan, 1999), learning figurative language through song is regarded as one of the subconscious acquisition. in this process, students increase their vocabulary mastery unintentionally while they enjoy doing daily activities. hence, students will not only focus on the grammatical aspects as they do when they are doing a conscious learning. this notion is strengthened by pusporini’s study (2013) which also showed that songs have positive influences towards students’ vocabulary enrichment since students can learn a foreign language in a more natural way. in this study, the researchers tried to analyze the perceptions of students on the use of songs in learning figurative language. this is important since the result of this study will help the researchers to know how the use of songs might help students learning figurative language from their perspective—different from the preceding studies which tried to prove the effectiveness of the strategy. method this is a mixed-method research as the researchers combined both qualitative and quantitative technique to gather the data. to know students’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|79-88 perceptions on the use of songs in learning figurative language, the researchers employed a set of survey which belongs to quantitative data collection technique. in addition, to get deeper meaning from students’ survey answers, the researchers also collected qualitative data from focus group discussion (fgd). furthermore, to complete the data, the researchers collected information from classroom observation. this observation helped the researcher to relate students’ survey answers with the teaching learning situations (latief, 2012). the participants of this study were 30 students at the department of english education, university of kanjuruhan malang. they were attending the vocabulary course in the second semester. in this study, the participants were divided into several groups. each group was asked to present an analysis of figurative language represented in songs. the steps of the presentation were listening to the songs and analyzing the figurative language found in the lyrics. findings and discussion questionnaire results on students’ perception upon figurative language learning through songs showed strong positive attitudes. these results can be summed up from students’ questionnaire answers which consist of fifteen questions related to their perceptions on the use of song technique in learning figurative language. the diagram 1 shows that almost half of the students (14 students or 46%) strongly agreed that they like learning english through song. furthermore, 14 other students (46%) also agreed to the same notion. thus, it can be understood that almost all of the students enjoyed the teaching and learning process using songs as instructional media. diagram 1. column chart on the first question answers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 80-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 it can be seen from the diagram 2 that around 47% respondents (14 students) agreed that it was easier for them to learn english and its’ concept through authentic materials like songs or movies. the other 13 students (43%) even strongly agreed to this statement. therefore, it can be inferred that almost all students enjoy learning english through authentic materials. from the diagram 3, it is interesting to know that 37% of the students (11 students) disagreed over the statement asserting that students could comprehend the concept of figurative language by only reading text books. the majority of the students (40% or 12 students) were slightly agreed to this notion, while 17% respondents (5 students) agreed with this notion. this variety shows that each student has different style of learning; thus, providing an assortment of instructional techniques will facilitate experience on numerous learning styles. diagram 2. column chart on the second question answers diagram 3. column chart on the third question answers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|81-88 diagram 4. i could understand the concept of figurative language better when it was taught using songs as instructional media. diagram 5. column chart on the fifth question answers the diagram 4 shows students’ positive perceptions on the use of songs as media in the teaching of figurative language. here 47% students (14 people) declared their agreement over the statement affirming that they could easily comprehend the concept of figurative language when it was taught using songs. moreover, 33% other students (10 people) even strongly agreed to this statement. hence, it can be said that the majority of the class enjoyed using songs in learning figurative language. from the diagram 5, it can be seen that, unfortunately, 57% of total respondents (17 people) agreed to the statement that they had difficulties in understanding figurative language on song lyrics. this number suggests that even if songs could be an enjoyable instructional media, yet understanding figurative language in song lyrics was still considered as a challenging task. the diagram 6 suggests that more than half (57%) of all students (17 people) affirmed their agreement and the other 9 people (30%) even ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 82-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 strongly agreed that the task of analyzing figurative language in song lyrics helped them gaining better comprehension on the meanings of figurative language. it can be understood since the task provided immediate practice to understand the topic. surprisingly, no one (0%) in the class declared that they disagreed with this statement. the result of the seventh question answers in diagram 7 reveals that almost half (47%) of all total respondents (14 people) agreed that they preferred working in group than working individually when analyzing figurative language in song lyrics. additionally, ten other students (34%) also strongly agreed to this statement. in other word, the majority of the students enjoyed working in groups when accomplishing the task. talking about group members, diagram 8 shows that around 45% students (13 people) were in agreement to mention that their peers were very supportive to help comprehending concepts and finding examples of figurative language; especially on their analyzed song lyrics. on the other hand, no one mentioned their disagreement over this statement. these findings suggest that the learning of figurative language is easier to be done in group since the students can share their knowledge and discuss the meaning of figurative language together. diagram 6. column chart on the sixth question answers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|83-88 diagram 7. column chart on the seventh question answers diagram 8. column chart on the eighth question answers diagram 9. column chart on the ninth question answers another interesting fact related to music genres used in the instruction is shown in diagram 9. here the students shared various reactions over the statement that suggests figurative language in certain musical genres is easier to be analyzed; such as popular music or slow rhythm music other than rap or rock. in fact, 30% of the students (9 people) said they are strongly agreed, 23% (7 people) agreed to the statement, other 30% (9 people) slightly agreed to the statement, while only 2% (4 people) disagreed. this finding related to the fact that each student has their own musical preference. thus, as long as they can ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 84-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 enjoy the music, it would be possible to use any musical genre in the students’ analysis. the diagram 10 explains students’ perception on learning figurative language by listening to the result of other group analysis in class presentation. around 40% of the student (12 people) agreed that they can easily understand other group explanation; while 33% other (10 people) slightly agreed to the notion. this result shows that most of students find it easier to understand figurative language when it is put in the context. here, in the classroom presentation, the students not only presented merely about the meaning of figurative language in their song, but also connected the meaning to the overall context, theme, or tone of the song. compared to other media, most students agreed that learning figurative language through songs is easier. it can be seen from the diagram 11 that shows 17% students strongly agreed to the statement; 37% or most of the students agreed to the statement; and 36% other slightly agreed to this notion. figurative language used in songs is usually less than what we can find in movie or novel, yet it is used effectively in provided context. next, diagram 12 tells us about students’ perception on their advanced understanding of the concept after teacher’s follow up. the pie chart in diagram 12 shows that most of the students be in agreement that their teacher’s follow ups were very helpful in advancing their understanding. in other word, a good technique will work better by teacher’s supports and it’s beneficial in building students’ stronger comprehension. in diagram 13, we can see the optimism of the students to be able to analyze figurative language on song lyrics other than the one that they did as assignment. this data means that teaching figurative language using song is not only enjoyable for the students but also great to foster students’ selfconfidence and autonomy in learning. the other proof that students were getting more confidence in applying their comprehension is shown in diagram 14. here, almost all of the students agreed to the notion that they can make use of the figurative language examples from the song that they analyzed on their oral/ written communication in english. this data ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|85-88 shows us that figurative language examples in songs are easy to be memorized and understood, thus, it might also be easy for them to use it in other contexts. diagram 10. column chart on the tenth question answers diagram 11. column chart on the eleventh question answers diagram 12. column chart on the twelfth question answers diagram 13. column chart on the thirteenth question answers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 86-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 diagram 14. column chart on the fourteenth question answers diagram 15. column chart on the fifteenth question answers the last data in diagram 15 shows similar results to diagram 13 and 14. from the students’ answers, it is known that most of the students believed they can mention at least five kinds of figurative language and make example from each of it after they learned it through song lyric analysis. these positive results were supported by the data collected through classroom observation and focus group discussion. before the questionnaire was designed, the researchers conducted one month classroom observations to see how the class was organized and what activities were conducted in the classroom. the observation instrument used was the classroom observation schedule (good, 2000) and the classroom observation was done in max 60 minutes in length. the researchers conducted classroom observation since the process of education can be observed in more naturalistic settings and also it provides more detailed and precise evidence than other data sources (good, 2000). furthermore, from the video recording, the researchers saw that the students were very active and well prepared in presenting their analysis. the focus group discussions were done right after the classroom presentations. this focus group discussion (fgd) is used as a qualitative approach to explore data about students’ perceptions, opinions, and attitudes ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|87-88 towards the use of songs in the teaching and learning of figurative language (creswell, 2009). in this fgd, the researchers applied three stages, namely planning, interviews and analysis of the data. the benefits of conducting focus group discussion is the researcher can also compare results among different groups (freitas, 1998). the results of the fgd showed that the students agreed with the statement that songs helped them to understood figurative language in an enjoyable way. they could pick their favorite songs and learned the implicit meanings of the lyrics from its’ figurative language. the students also said that the traditional way of learning figurative language was boring and hard to be comprehended because it was only theories on the text books. furthermore, learning figurative language through songs was also increasing the students’ learning motivation. figurative language is used to be considered as a tricky topic since the students have to learn implicit meanings using symbols; which was quite hard to be understood. thus, the songs’ lyrics give the students a clearer context or situation to help them understand the meaning of figurative language. conclusion and suggestion the result of this study showed that the students have positive perception and attitude on the use of songs in learning figurative language. using songs was proven to be successfully increased students comprehension, motivation, selfconfidence, and autonomy in learning figurative language. it is suggested from the result of this study that teacher can employ similar technique to teach figurative language. it is expected that the students will also be more motivated and comprehend the concept more easily. for further researcher, it is also important to study the employment of other authentic materials in the teaching of figurative language; for example, using novels, movies, youtube videos, or other sources. further researcher can also utilize these materials and compare its effectiveness. this study is needed to know which supplementary materials might be the most successful in facilitating the teaching and learning process. references creswell, j.w. (2009). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. thousand ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 88-88|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 oaks, california: sage publications, inc. cahyono, b.y., &widiati, u. (2011).the teaching of english as a foreign language in indonesia. malang: state university of malang press. cook, g. (2003). applied linguistics.oxford: oxford university press. cahyono, b.y & widiati, u (2008). the teaching of efl vocabulary in the indonesian context. teflin journal. the state of the art. 19(1).1-17. freitas, h. (1998). the focus group, a qualitative research method, journal of education. 1(1), 1-22. good, t . (2000). looking in classrooms. new york. longman. latief, m.a. (2012). research methods on language learning: an introduction. malang: um press. nunan, d. (1999). second language teaching and learning. boston: heinle. pusporini, r. (2012). teaching english genre through songs. a paper presented at the 59th teflin international conference. widya mandala catholic university surabaya. 6-8 november 2012. shen, c. (2009). using english songs: an enjoyable and effective approach to elt.english language teaching journal. 2(1), 88-94. utami, i.l.p. (2012). profil masalahmasalah pembelajaran pada perkuliahan poetry. jurnal pendidikan dan pengajaran. 45 (3), 210-219. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 132-144 an oral discourse perspective on second language learning iwan jazadi received: 31th january 2015; revised: 16th september 2015; accepted: 25th november 2015 abstract teaching and learning to speak english using oral language data drawn from real life communication can be unique experiences for english teachers and students who usually rely on unauthentic written texts of a textbook. this small study focuses on a conversation involving the author and his native speaker counterpart. entities of the conversation put under analysis and discussion include its register and generic structure, exchanges, prosodic features and communication strategies. the dialogic features of the text are presented in the data collection procedure and description section. the article is expected to provide a perspective for doing similar analysis with other oral data by teachers and advanced learners of english as a second or foreign language. key words : actual oral language; exchanges; prosody; communication strategies abstrak mengajar dan belajar berbicara bahasa inggris menggunakan data bahasa lisan dari komunikasi kehidupan nyata dapat menjadi pengalaman unik bagi guru dan pembelajar yang biasanya bergantung pada teks-teks buku pelajaran yang bersifat tertulis dan tidak otentik. studi kecil ini difokuskan pada percakapan yang melibatkan penulis dan mitranya seorang pembicara asli bahasa inggris. bagianbagian percakapan yang dianalisis dan dibahas termasuk register dan struktur umum, pertukaran, ciri-ciri prosodik, dan strategi komunikasi. ciri-ciri dialogis teks disajikan dalam bagian prosedur pengumpulan dan gambaran data. artikel ini diharapkan memberikan cara pandang untuk melakukan telaah serupa dengan data lisan yang lain oleh guru dan pembelajar tingkat tinggi untuk bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa kedua atau bahasa asing. kata kunci: bahasa lisan kehidupan nyata; pertukaran; prosodi; strategi komunikasi how to cite: jazadi, i. (2015). an oral discourse perspective on second language learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 132-144. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3092 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3092 introduction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|133-144 introduction the use of interaction, actual verbal communication, authentic oral texts or spoken language corpora has been identified as a determinant source of learning english as a second or foreign language (hatch, 1992; mccarthy & carter, 1994; stenstrom, 1994; clennell, 1997; aijmer & stenstrom, 2005; stephens, 2011; dose, 2013). such a use can also serve as an approach for reflective practice that is both ‘evidence-based and data-led’ (walsh & mann, 2015). spoken language corpora are used to analyze phenomena characteristic of natural spoken language, including discourse markers, hedges, tags, backchannels and ellipsis (aijmer & stenstrom, 2005). by studying spoken language at discourse level students can gain more appropriate knowledge of the purposes and motives that lie behind language options (hatch, 1992; mccarthy & carter, 1994). clennell (1997) and stephens (2011) found that the use of authentic oral texts as source for esl teaching and learning raises overseas students’ awareness of appropriate pragmatic discourse features of english intonation, which is a key to reducing communication breakdown between native and non-native speakers of english. in addition, actual oral language data exposes learners with ample strategies of communication so as to allow the flow and maintenance of an oral interaction (clennell, 1994a, b; hie & yin, 2008; lam, 2010; ugla & adnan, 2013). thus, using actual or appropriate oral english texts increases the potential of foreign language learners to produce spoken expressions that sound natural or appropriate to their native speaker counterparts (dose, 2013). as a matter of fact, despite the claim of continuously using communicative approach in which oral interaction is generally a main feature, the majority of english teachers have not exploited the use of spoken language corpora in teaching; this has led to the lack of success of non-native students especially at the advanced level to achieve native like competence (clennell, 1997; stephens, 2011; dose, 2013). on the other hand, there have been some practical books that provide a good perspective for analyzing spoken language data in ways that facilitate learner understanding and acquisition (e.g., mccarthy & carter, 1994; stenstrom, 1994). for this reason a minor research project of a conversation has been conducted, focusing on the following questions: 1. what are the register and generic structure of the conversation under study? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 134-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 2. what are the characteristics of the exchanges or conversational movement and prosody of the conversation? 3. what communication strategies are used by the participants in the conversation? the main purpose of this project is to share with efl teachers and advanced learners the researcher’s genuine experience of studying (i.e., transcribing, interpreting and identifying key features using a set of standard conventions and terminologies) his own orally produced text. it is argued that using selfproduced oral discourse for analysis and learning can result in everlasting impressions and hence strongly facilitates language acquisition at the advanced level (clennell, 1997). the next section serves to explain the data collection procedure and description, which aims to illustrate both the contextual choice and the text of the conversation. the contextual choice refers to initial steps which were gone through to produce the dialogue, in relation to ethical issues and data credibility. by the text it means the overall textual structure of the recorded interaction. the data presentation and analysis section focuses on some key elements of the data, i.e., the register and generic structure of the conversation, explanation of exchanges, prosodic features and communication strategies. the key concepts (drawn mainly from stenstrom, 1994; mccarthy, 1991; brown & yule, 1983) are introduced, given examples and explained through the recorded oral data. method to have actual spoken language data for analysis, a small recording project has been carried out. the recording was transcribed using standard orthographic forms using the international phonetic association (ipa) conventions adopted by brown and yule (1983) as follows: short pauses : + longer pauses : ++ overlappings : | | unintelligible parts : (?) backchannelling : { } rising tone one tone group : / falling tone on tone group : \ rise/fall : /\ fall/rise : \/ turns : (number) the sample of transcribed data for analysis is provided in the appendix. the interaction is between b, a native english teacher in a language center of an australian university and a, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|135-144 researcher, a non-native english speaker. some procedure has been followed to produce the interaction. b was met and informed that the researcher would like to have an informal conversation with her and would record it for the purpose of a small research project in teaching english as a second language. she agreed and the room was prepared; it was one of the center quiet study rooms and equipped with a recorder. the sitting position of the researcher and the resource person was opposite to each other and mediated by a small table. until the time the recorded talk was about to start, the sorts of topics to talk about had not been determined. the researcher explained that the topics to talk about could be just anything as long as a conversation was produced, but of course the one which would be familiar to both of them. in such a case, the researcher could initiate by asking questions and the interlocutor would respond, or vice versa. the description as above is important mainly because it was not an accidental speech event, yet the nature of the speech production is guaranteed as a natural one, or it can be seen as a particular ‘genre’ (eggins, 1994). what is important for both participants to establish at stages as above is an initial ‘intersubjectivity’; that is the sharing of awareness, which aims to establish a triangular relationship between the speaker, the listener, and the context of situation (wells, 1981, p. 47). this intersubjectivity is prerequisite for communication to be successful. that the participants had not decided what to talk about in the dialogue indicates that the expressions or speech which would be produced were natural, unplanned, and therefore could represent an actual spoken language that can be analyzed for learning purposes. research findings and discussion the register and generic structure the conversation can be analyzed in terms of its ‘register’ and ‘generic structure’ (eggins, 1994). a text register covers its ‘field’, ‘mode’ and ‘tenor’. the ‘field’ deals with what the text is about: teaching english as a second or foreign language. the field can usually be identified from the lexical items in the conversation, such as ‘international students’ (turn 1), ‘multicultural group’ (turn 9), ‘language background’ (turn 12), ‘communicative approach’ (turn 13), and ‘non-native speakers of english’ (turn 22). the ‘mode’ has to do with what role language is playing in the interaction. as many turn-takings occur ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 136-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 and as the terms ‘dialogue’ or ‘conversation’ have been used so far, the interaction is evidently communication between two persons. however, it is quite difficult to identify from the text whether the participants are face-to-face or not, particularly by observing its deictic words. it is because they were talking about abstract things, not concrete things which can be observed in a view of whether they are near or distant from the participants and therefore can inform the distance of the participants. last, the ‘tenor’ is to do with the interpersonal relationships between the participants and the social role they are playing. from the text, we can easily observe that b is an experienced native english speaking teacher while a is one who shares many similarities in profession with her, an english teacher but a non-native english speaker, who seeks information around b’s professional teaching experiences. in terms of ‘generic structure’, the interaction can be more suitably labeled as an informal interview because a has always taken the turns of asking questions while b of responding. the interaction is developed by such things as b’s confirming the questions, a’s asking for confirmation of b’s explanation. and, it is terminated by a’s explicitly intending to end to conversation by thanking b. the purpose of the interview seems to be more ‘transactional’ as there is a transaction of b’s knowledge and experience in which a prompted b to produce such. this cannot be considered as an ‘interpersonal’ one because the interview was apparently so packaged that it served a tangible goal (eggins, 1994, p. 47). explanation of the exchanges what makes an interaction a typical spoken interaction is that it contains the atmosphere of cooperativeness and harmony. spoken interaction is a collaborative, spontaneous social activity governed by the principles of turn-taking and cooperation between/among the participants. because spoken interaction is spontaneous, proper turn-taking is not necessarily what happens; there are some other forms of conversational entities which signify attention or provide positive impact to the flow of the interaction (i.e. backchannels, overlappings) and the ones which may indicate various types of hesitation phenomena, such as: verbal fillers, silence, repetitions and incomplete utterances (stenstrom, 1994, p. 1). each of entities in the recorded interaction is analyzed below. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|137-144 turn-takings ‘a turn is everything the current speaker says before the next speaker takes over’ (stenstrom, 1994, p. 4). the turns of the recorded interaction are indicated by the specific numbering in the transcription, for example: 1 a: i’d like to ask you + first of all + about what is your impression particularly on having + uum + a lot of + um + international students or something ++ coming |from| 2 b: |what’s| my /impression the numbering 1 and 2 above counts for the turns which a and b used to produce their speech. thus, as shown in the appendix, the sample of the transcribed data for this analysis consists of 49 turns. backchannels backchannels are reduced turns of a speaker to give a sign of attention to the other party who is currently dominating the flow of the interaction, which do not involve a speaker shift and even motivate the other to continue (stenstrom, 1994, p. 1 & 5). backchannelling can be found in many turns of the recording, mediated by the symbols { }, as the following: 7 a: {oo + so + um} 17a: {oo + yes} 19a: {uhm} such backchannels also appear in turns 23, 27, 33, 35, 37, 43 and 51. overlappings there is also a time when a participant interrupts a speaker’s turn while s/he has not terminated her/his speech and overlapping of speech production occurs. in the transcription, overlapping is signed by the symbols ||. these overlappings can be observed in turns 1 and 2: 1 a: i’d like to ask you + first of all + about what is your impression particularly on having + uum + a lot of + um + international students of something ++ coming |from| 2 b: |what’s| my/ impression also in turns 37 and 38: 37a: |{oo + so}| 38b: |for beginners| in turn 37, however, the speech is not only overlapping, but also backchannelling because it functions to show attention to b’s speech. verbal fillers verbal fillers are sorts of lexical expressions which are used to fill ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 138-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 pauses, instead of silence, which do not necessarily convey certain messages. they may indicate some kind of hesitation; they also can produce a positive effect to the flow of conversation which helps the speaker to take, prepare and yield the turn and to anticipate feedback (stenstrom, 1994, p. 1). there are several verbal fillers which are used in the recorded interaction, in turns 1, 14, 16, 22, 42, 50 and 52; some are presented below (in the bold type): 1 a: i’d like to ask you + first of all + about what is your impression particularly on having + uum + a lot of + um + international students or something ++ coming |from| 14b: well + let me see 42b: yea + should be normal + but + you know + that is + that students have said to me incomplete utterances another characteristic which is often discovered in spoken interaction is ‘incomplete utterances’ which occur when a participant takes over before the other indicates to finish, more probably because he/she can predict what her/his interlocutor is going to say, or the interlocutor is still planning to say in her/his mind while the one overtaking feels that he/she is able to help for the idea or to confirm what the interlocutor is going to say. to a high extent, this construes the ‘quality principle’ of grice (as cited in cutting, 2002) which highlights the significance of efficiency of speech. we can observe these incomplete utterances in the transcription, for example in turn 1 in which b in turn 2 takes over and also in turns 15, 20, 29, etc. one example can be seen below: 29a: \/do you ever have some complaints + for example + from your learners + about that kind of thing + in which your methods + 30b: /\oo + it’s different teaching /methods in turn 29, a has not finished his speech, rather he is still planning what to say (indicated by the pause (+)) when b takes over. in such a case, b predicts what a is going to say by specifying the ‘method’ with ‘teaching method’. however, she is not completely sure about the prediction yet and so at the end of her expression she applies a rising intonation (‘/method’) which serves as her device to ask for confirmation from a. more on the intonational discourse is discussed below. prosodic features another area of analysis which plays a quite determinant role for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|139-144 successful communication is prosody, which includes, tone group boundaries, tonic syllables and pitch movement. tone groups tone groups constitute informational units segmented by the speaker to convey a particular pragmatic message and form ‘phonological boundaries’; such a message is projected in at least one nuclear prominence or tonic syllable in a tone group (from now on, the tonic syllables are shown in capital letters). a nuclear prominence usually indicates what the speaker assumes to be new in the sense of ‘newsworthy’, in contrast to being given information (mccarthy 1991, p. 99; clennell, 1997, p. 3). tone groups may also be segmented by certain pause lengths (brown & yule, as cited in mccarthy, 1991). as shown in some examples from the recording: 3 a: um + about how you approach your /teaching + because u + will be + um a lot of um u + intercultural + crosscultural /\problems 4 b: /\yeaa + but i don’t usually find much problem + and + it’s because i’ve always taught in + a multicultural \group 5 a: /since 6 b: since all of my teaching + i’ve been teaching for + twelve years. in turn 3, there are evidently three tone groups. the first one ‘um’ indicates a’s impression on b’s question in the previous turn. in next tone groups in turn 3 and the other turns, all the tonic syllables bring new newsworthy. pitch movement the main concern here is tonicity which refers to the location of tone in a tone unit. ‘the same item in the same position but in different turns may or may not carry a nuclear tone’; therefore, analyzing the tonicity is necessarily significant (stenstorm, 1994, p. 24). the tonicity is indicated by the flow of intonation which consists of three types: rising ( / ), falling ( \ ) and leveling (no symbol) (brown & yule, 1983). let us see the examples below: 10 b: \yeaa + from different /culture 11 a: from different \culture though similar in form, both turns above bring about different pragmatic meanings because each has different intonation. the rising tone in turn 10 shows asking for confirmation, while the falling one in turn 11 indicates giving confirmation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 140-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 communication strategies ‘communication strategies’ (css) is the other very important area to investigate for the purpose of second language learning. such strategies may not necessarily be derived from learning the second language. many second language learners have acquired these in their first language acquisition. fortunately, many of the strategies may be available universally because they are not necessarily linguisticdependent, but rather have to do with how participants manage to survive, to make others understand and to build a smooth flow of communication. in other words, as clennell, (1994a, p. 2) propounds, css, both verbal and non-verbal, are significant for two main reasons: to cope with communication breakdowns and to enhance the effectiveness of communication. in short, css deal with interactants’ efforts to make their input, linguistic and functional, comprehensible to others (tsui, 1991, 1995). observing the transcribed recording, several key css which both a and b have employed to produce such a successful conversation were found. the main cs which a used is questioning, which is spread out in almost all of a’s turns (turns 1, 5, 9, 13, etc.). indeed, this is really true, as stenstrom (1994, p. 2) remarks: ‘question can be used to start a conversation and they can be used over and over again to keep it going when it is on the point of fading out.’ even, a uses questions to shift from topic to another and to develop the topic. a’s further cs is doing any sort of question modification which is comprehension-oriented, that is doing any circumlocution to enable b to grasp his intended messages. this is done so because a feels that b has not understood him (as indicated by her facial expression or another nonlinguistic factor), or b herself employs a ‘confirmation checking’ device, namely asking a to confirm what she said. the way to carry out a confirmation check can be by repeating or paraphrasing what the previous speaker said with a rising tone. as in the examples below: 1 a: i’d like to ask you + first of all + about what is your impression particularly on having + uum + a lot of + um + international students or something ++ coming |from| 2 b: |what’s| my /impresion 3 a: um + about how you approach your /teaching + because u + will be + um a lot of um u + intercultural + crosscultural /\problems ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|141-144 in turn 1, a poses a question. yet, it is not fully comprehensible to b since she asks for confirmation by paraphrasing a’s question in a rising tone. what a does further is semantically modifying the question by referring to any concrete referent, in this case teaching practice and this makes b understand what a’s question actually is. in fact, confirmation check is the device which b often uses in the interaction; we can see other examples in turn 10, 22, 30. however, as the confirmation check in turn 22 is observed more closely, it is a bit different from the others: 22b: how they /learnt + \yea + that’s a good argument for non native of english + being good teachers + do you /that + because + because if you + if you add to learn english yourself the first tone unit (‘how they /learnt’), which is terminated in a rising tone and so connotes a question, is a confirmation check; but she does not wait until a provides confirmation as in other turns, rather she is confirmed herself. the other cs which was found interesting is what a expresses in turn 41: he paraphrases b’s previous explanation, but not applying rising intonation to ask for confirmation, rather he uses a sort of ‘opinionating’, and successfully b decodes it as asking further clarification (in the next turn). as in the following turns: 41a: it should be normal i think + 42b: /\yea + should be normal + but you know + that is that students have said to me a’s preference of ‘opinionating’, instead of tangible questioning, is perhaps because the degree of his certainty supersedes his curiosity. what he needs, however, is support, not objection, from his interlocutor b. conclusion and suggestion the data presentation and analysis can be summarized as follows. first, the contextual procedure in spoken text production should be considered to ensure its naturalness and spontaneity so that it can be used as a model source of learning. second, the register and generic structure of the text provides the intrinsic nature of the text. third, the analysis of exchanges or conversational movement and the prosodic features which are characteristic to spoken language interaction shows that spoken text is just substantially different from a written one. such discussion leads to a conclusion that considering actual data of oral discourse can provide empirical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 142-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 evidence on how linguistic elements are realized in actual communication and what sort of role they play. last, to make the conversation flow, the participants have applied some communication strategies. in the data analysis it is shown that the communication strategies such as questioning, responding, modifying, clarifying are developed and constitute various nuances in the communication, and play a role of determining to which direction an interaction aims and is further developed. there are some implications from the findings. first, an english teacher or student can create a natural spoken text provided that the requirement of spontaneity in producing the utterances is fulfilled. for many advanced level students, involving themselves in natural conversations in english either with native english speakers or with their non-native peers or teachers is an opportunity to improve their oral mastery in the second or foreign language. moreover, by recording, transcribing and analyzing their own conversations, the students can develop their meta-cognition through which they can reflect and critique their own oral production. the data presentation and analysis can serve a practical model for efl/esl students and teachers in creating and analyzing their own oral texts. it is envisaged that being able to analyze oral texts produced by native english speakers and likewise nonnative speakers, advanced level students would see the subtle differences in the varied aspects of the spoken texts. this skill may inform the students regarding how they manage to achieve a near-native level of oral competence or a level where they can communicate orally effectively with their native speaking counterparts. references aijmer, k. & stenstrom, a.b. (2005). approaches to spoken interaction. journal of pragmatics, 37, 17431751. brown, g. and yule, g. (1983). teaching the spoken language. cambridge: cambridge university press. clennell, c. (1997). raising the pedagogic status of discourse intonation teaching. elt journal, 51(2), 117-125. clennell, c. (1994a). an interlanguage discourse perspective on the communication strategies used by adult second language learner of english when performing pedagogic task. eslta, 10(3), 3340. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|143-144 clennell, c. (1994b). investigating the use of communication strategies by adult second language learner. tesol journal, 4(1), pp. 32-33. cutting, j. (2002). pragmatics and discourse: a resource book for students. london & new york: routledge. dose, s. (2013). ‘describing and teaching spoken english: an educational-linguistic study of scripted speech’. unpublished phd dissertation, universitat gieben, germany. eggins, s. (1994). an introduction to systematic functional linguistics. london: pinter publishers. hatch, e. (1992). discourse and language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. hie, t.s. & yin, c.e.l.l. (2008). lexical and discourse-based communication strategies of malaysian esl learners. malaysian journal of elt research, 4, 18-31. lam, w.y.k. (2010). implementing communication strategy instruction in the esl oral classroom: what do lowproficiency learners tell us? tesl canada journal, 27(2), 11-30. mccarthy, m. (1991). discourse analysis for language teachers. cambridge: cambridge university press. mccarthy, m. & carter, r. (1994). language as discourse: perspectives for language teaching. london: longman. richards, j. (2006). communicative language teaching today. cambridge: cambridge university press. stenstrom, a. b. (1994). an introduction to spoken interaction. london: longman. stephens, m.a. (2011). why exposure to prosody should precede the teaching of reading. the language teacher, 35(4), 68-73. tsui, a. b.m. (1995). introducing classroom interaction. london: penguin english applied linguistics. tsui, a.b.m. (1991). learner involvement and comprehensible input. relc journal, 22(2), 44-60. ugla, r.l. & adnan, n.i. (2013). study of the communication strategies used by malaysian esl students at tertiary level. international journal of english language education, 1(1), 130-139. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 144-144|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 walsh, s. & mann, s. (2015). doing reflective practice: a data-led way forward. elt journal, 69(4), 351362. wells, g. (1981). learning through interaction: the study of language development. cambridge: cambridge university press. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 120-131 a learner’s self-regulated learning in writing hapsari dwi kartika received: 04th november 2015; revised: 16th december 2015; accepted: 28th december 2015 abstract the purpose of this study was to analyze self-regulated learning (slr) upon the process of writing task. the motivated and learning strategies questionnaire (mlsq) developed by pintrich was used to generate the participant's cognitive and metacognitive activity. data were collected from the participant’s journal written during her task performance and from her scores from three essay assignments in psychology and instruction subject. the result indicated an improvement in the participant’s writing performance, such as recalling previous knowledge and reviewing her writing. it showed that the participant’s marks among the three assignments significantly increased. the result also indicated participant’s difficulties and strength in her writing. however, the study further suggested time expansion to obtain a more comprehensive slr performance, such as motivational and emotional aspects. key words: self-regulated learning; writing task; graduate student abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisa self-regulated learning (slr) terhadap proses dalam tugas menulis. kuesioner motivasi dan strategi belajar (mlsq) yang di kembangkan pintrinch di gunakan untuk mengetahui aktifitas kognitif dan metacognitive partisipan. data dikumpulkan dari tulisan jurnal partisipan selama mengerjakan tugas, serta data dari hasil tugas menulis essay dalam mata kuliah psychology and instruction. hasil menunjukkan bahwa ada perkembangan dalam performa menulis partisipan, contohnya memanggil pengetahuan partisipan sebelumnya dan peninjauan kembali tulisannya. hasil tersebut menunjukkan bahwa nilai partisipan dari tiga tugas menulis mengalami peningkatan secara signifkan. hasil studi juga memperlihatkan kesulitan dan kelebihan partisipan. akan tetapi studi ini menyarankan adanya perpanjangan waktu agar hasil performa slr partisipan bisa lebih komprehensif, seperti pada aspek motivasi dan emosi partisipan. kata kunci: belajar dengan cara self-regulated; tugas menulis; pelajar pasca sarjana how to cite: hapsari. (2015). a learner’s self-regulated learning in writing. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 120-131. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3085 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3085 introduction ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|121-131 introduction in a university educational system, students are expected to be selfregulated in their learning (winne & perry, 2000; perry & vandekamp, 2000). they must start to be self-directed once entering the university. also, they have to plan their own study such as selecting a particular topic that is suitable for their future career and discipline. they have to manage and monitor their study every time they have difficulty in learning and performing a task or taking examination. if a student fails to manage his or her own needs, he or she will be a poor-performer of academic achievement. students must take responsibilities for their own learning (zimmerman, 1990; schapiro & livingston, 2000). at this point, the researcher is taking herself as the participant in a case study. the participant has difficulty in writing and self-regulation. she makes particular mistakes in her writing and has a problem in managing her time when completing a task such as writing an essay. the participant assumed that her poor performance is not only due to her lack of knowledge about the content of a topic area, but also her self-regulation in performing essay writing. self-regulated learning (srl) has been an interesting issue in many decades. belief about how selfregulation is powerful to students’ achievement has been examined (muis & franco, 2009). there are also many studies that investigated the component of self-regulation adopted by students in their learning (pintrich, roeser, & de grrot, 1994; malmivvouri, 2006; harrison & prain, 2009). motivation also has a strong relation with selfregulation that determine students goal in learning (ames & archer, 1988). the number of research that related students’ achievement in academic performance are greater than years before; they examined how self regulation can promote students’ motivation in achieving higher academic level and well-performed in many domains, such as science and language (eilama & aharon, 2003). high-achiever students demonstrate higher self-regulation in their learning (zimmerman & pons, 1986; eilama & aharon, 2003). furthermore, students in different cognitive development experience different self-regulation development. a study in a primary school found that students were self-regulated and collaborated with their teachers. in addition, teachers consistently involved young children to choose what their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 122-131|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 students would like to read and write in the classroom, and teachers also guide their students to evaluate their performance (perry & vandekamp, 2000). ). several studies have found the effectiveness of self-regulation program for school students. support feedback from teachers and peers are helpful for students’ self-regulation in secondary schools (harrison & prain, 2009). students in college and undergraduate students who demonstrate their selfregulation in learning indicates their skills advancement (kitsantas & zimmerman, 2006). pre-service teacher students also need to have a program and practice their self-regulation by self-questioning called improve (kramarski & michalsky, 2010) to improve their skills. in the context of higher education, self-regulation is crucial. learning in a higher education demands higher thinking and analysis. academic literacy such as reading and drawing expects students of a higher degree to adapt new learning styles to meet the standard of academic literacy. adapting new ways to understand, interpret and organize their knowledge is related to higher learning (lea & street, 1998). research on self-regulation attempts to help students in higher education to have their best learning strategy by promoting students self-regulation in academic literacy. with regards to self-regulation in writing, a profound model that helps a learner to be well-regulated in writing is designed by flower and hayes (1981). they divided the writing process into three steps. planning, translating and reviewing is classified under one’s cognitive monitoring (flower & hayes, 1981). this model is reflected to self-regulation process in learning or performing a task; students are planning, monitoring and evaluating (schraw, 1998). three steps in writing, according to flower and hayes (1981) model, may be taught by employing self-regulation strategy to students. extended and regular practice can augment students writing performance. self-regulation learning is applicable at any age and cognitive development. in other words, students in classroom context or higher education may be taught this strategy (schunk & zimmerman, 1998). students in lower level, such as in primary and secondary classroom need teacher or peer guide to employ self-regulation learning by explicit instruction in training (zimmerman, bonner & kovach, 1996). hence, students in higher educatin may be more selfregulated to start practicing the strategy ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|123-131 without control from academic staffs or teachers. students in higher levels may not attend particular class that teaches them how to be self-regulated. they can find the strategy in a book or article that provides repertoire of self-regulation. considering the problems faced by the writer and the usefulness of srl, the participant decided to design her plan in completing the last two essays as an intervention. she expected the intervention will bring about change to her study regulation and enable her to become aware of what she has to do when approaching a task method the instruction is constructed and employed based on flower and hayes’ (1981) steps on writing. the present project is aimed to enhance participant’s self-regulated in her writing. the intervention will be selfreinforcement of the participant’s task performance in writing. based on the three process of writing, the participant was given a series of strategy in writing i.e. to plan, monitor and evaluate her assignment. prior to the instructional intervention, the participant undertook an slr questionnaire designed and modified by the researcher from motivated strategies for learning questioners or mlsq (pintrich, 1981). at the end of the intervention she was also given similar questionnaire to compare the two condition of the participant between the interventions. participant the participant was a student of school of education in flinders university. in australia, when someone conducts a research study, the researcher should consider the research ethic. this research study has adhered to that requirement. this project was a self-regulation learning description of the researcher. the participant was the researcher herself. this study was conducted as the researcher’s final project as her fulfillment of psychology and instruction topic. data collection there were three data collection employed. first, the data from a questionnaire was given to the participant at the beginning of the study and at the end of the study or after she wrote the last focus question assignment. there were 12 questions modified by the researcher. some of the questions were adopted from mlsq (pintrich, 1981). the question was subjected to understand participant’s self-regulated statement before and after the intervention. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 124-131|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the second data collection was taken from the participant’s journal written during her task performance from the first assigned essay of focus question to the third one. the data was to scrutinize participant’s cognitive process and metacognitive activity. therefore, the researcher used a protocol analysis, which has been successfully used to study other cognitive processes. it is also used as a medium of realizing self-regulation (nuckles, hubner & rankl, 2009). the third data collection was based on the participant’s scores from three essay assignments in psychology and instruction topic obtained from july 27 to november 4. the essays were subjected to see the participant’s comprehension between data collected and components of motivation, cognitive and metacognitive theory. the lecturer designed a standard in scoring the paper. this instrument was to look participant’s academic performance. the first and second data collections are appropriate methods to understand one’s self-regulation. selfreport questionnaire is frequently used as protocol in measuring self-regulated learning (boekaerts, pintrich, & zeidner, 2000). the third method that looks at participant’s achievement is the actual and representative performance from a whole class timeline. finding and discussion findings the table 1 is participant’s responds of her pre and post-test questionnaire modified from pintrich (1981). the respond is using yes or no statement. “yes” means that the participant’s did what a self-regulated learner does according to mlsq. “no” means that the participant did not show the action in her writing process. the researcher modified some questions from mslq; she took some questions that she assumed represent a selfregulation learning and reflects the cognitive process in writing as flower and hayes (1981) had given. the ten questions are selected based on the researcher’s initial perception about self regulation in writing. it indicates that the self-regulation occurred after the participant understand about her cognitive process. she get better in selfregulation after she interfered herself and practice it deliberately. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|125-131 table 1. participant’s responds of her pre and post-test questionnaire no questionnaire pretest posttest 1 i try to think through a topic and decide what i am supposed to do no yes 2 i usually write in a place where i can concentrate (pintrich, 1981) yes yes 3 i make a schedule on completing the task no yes 4 i find it easy to stick to the writing schedule (pintrich, 1981) no yes 5 i search and read many references no yes 6 i check my grammar and spelling after and during writing. yes yes 7 i have a friend of mine edited my work no yes 9 i usually find time to review my writing (pintrich, 1981) yes yes 10 i ask my lecture to clarify some point that i don’t understand from the task (pintrich, 1981) yes yes table 2. participant’s cognitive process in writing as her self-regulation description in performing a task. task /essay writing the cognitive process. indication of cognitive process based on flower and hayes (1981). quotes (participant’s journal) focus question 2: learners are cognitive planning: setting goal generating idea organizing writers form an internal representation of the knowledge that will be used in writing retrieving relevant information from longterm memory. writers identify first or last topics, important ideas, and presentation patterns establishing goal setting no indication “i summarize each article in a literature review form given by a lecture from another class. it is quite helpful to simplify my reading of an article.” “i start making a concept map of what i am going to write as an outline”. monitoring : translating idea the process of translating requires the writer to juggle all the special demands of written english such as spelling and grammar, the task of translating can interfere with the more global process of planning what one wants to say. determines how long a writer will continue generating ideas before attempting to write prose “i reread the article while striving constructing a paragraph.” “i write the paper in specific time. it takes some times because i have to find appropriate words.” evaluation: reviewing writers choose to read what they have written either as a springboard to further translating or with an eye to systematically evaluating and/or revising the text. an evaluation of either the text or one's own planning. “i read my paper and check the spelling and grammar, and rearrange the organization of my paper.” no indication ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 126-131|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 task /essay writing the cognitive process. indication of cognitive process based on flower and hayes (1981). quotes (participant’s journal) focus question 3 : learners are metacognitive planning writers form an internal representation of the knowledge that will be used in writing retrieving relevant information from longterm memory. writers identify first or last topics, important ideas, and presentation patterns establishing goal setting. “this activity begins with typing keywords in flinders library online search and browse some helpful books or article that support my ideas” “i read several sources such as articles or books, and take any information about metacognitive.” “before writing, i try to remember what knowledge i have about the metacognitive and cognitive from the classroom.” “here is the schedule that i use during the day; this schedule is made to direct my writing process.” monitoring the process of translating requires the writer to juggle all the special demands of written english such as spelling and grammar, the task of translating can interfere with the more global process of planning what one wants to say. determines how long a writer will continue generating ideas before attempting to write prose “how i say this” “i think i’ll reread the last two paragraphs. there are sentences that need appropriate vocabulary” “is it better to use word in regard with or in conjunction with, or what word?” “i start writing and translating my idea into a text. i write an introduction. my target is 100 or 200 words for this section. but surely for 30 minutes writing, i make 100 words at least” evaluation writers choose to read what they have written either as a springboard to further translating or with an eye to systematically evaluating and/or revising the text. an evaluation of either the text or one's own planning. “proof read my writing, spelling and the flow of my thinking” “proofread my writing and check whether there something to add or miss out” “had i completed the schedule?” ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|127-131 table above shows participant’s writing process. there was no intervention at the first assignment because the participant perceived no self-regulation occurred in her writing process. however, in the second assignment, she started to interfere her work with self-regulated strategy. in the third assignment, the participant strictly monitored her intervention in the writing. however, according to flower and hayes (1981), planning, translating and reviewing remains under monitor of one’s cognitive process. in the first intervention in assignment 2, the participant did not find data showing her internal representation of a knowledge planning. therefore, she took a key word as her first perception of her knowledge about the assignment in the second intervention. however, a self-regulated learning is a brand new knowledge for the participant. she needs to reads more references to conducted rigorous study about self-regulation. she understands a small amount of self-regulation; subsequently, she derived the questionnaire from her own knowledge and some of the questions were similar to mslq. table 3. marks from focus assignment rubric mark criteria motivation focus question cognitive focus question metacognition focus question data relevant data included p p c data represented in appropriate formats p c c theory key area concept discussed c c c links between area concept elaborated p p p theory practice links links between area concept and data elaborated c c c big picture evidence of development of an elaborated mental model of an area p p p writing formalities organization/structure of proposition p c c overall score p c c ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 128-131|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 4. grade description f p c lecturer’s grade description unable to demonstrate satisfactory academic performance in the topic or has failed to complete essential topic elements or required assessment tasks at an acceptable level. in accordance with topic objective undertaken the required core work for the topic and demonstrated at least an adequate level of knowledge/understanding competencies/ skill required for meeting topic objectives and satisfactory completing essential assessment exercises. adequate knowledge of matter contained in set text or reading material , and demonstrated familiarity with major academic debates, approaches, methodologies and conceptual tools. undertaken all the required core work for the topic the high level and considerable additional work in wider areas relevant to the topic has demonstrated advance knowledge/understanding competencies/ skill required for meeting topic objectives and satisfactory completing essential assessment exercises. adequate knowledge of matter contained in set text or reading material , and demonstrated familiarity with and the ability to apply range of major academic debates, approaches, methodologies and conceptual tools. completed all course objectives and shown considerable evidence of a sound capacity to work with the range of relevant subject matter. the table above shows improvement in participant’s writing performance. those marks indicate that participant difficulties and strength in her writing. a self-regulated learning intervention has enhanced participant’s problem in some area such as in the data and writing formalities criteria. p and c were marks given by the lecturer for the participant’s overall writing score. each score representes the participant’s essay writing accomplishment such as its literature review, practical project justification, practical project design and step by step explanations, critical discussion, and formalities sentence structure and spelling. the university, where the participant studied, has its own assessment standard. nevertheless, the lecturer also has a great deal to design his or her own essay writing assessment rubric. discussion according to flower and hayes (as cited in bruning et al., 2004), there are three processes in writing. the first is planning. at this stage, the writer generates and organizes her writing. for example, the writer activates her prior knowledge and discerns if she could relate a current task with her previous knowledge: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|129-131 “before writing, i try to remember what knowledge i have about the metacognitive and cognitive from the classroom.” recalling previous knowledge allows the participant’ to activate her long-term memory. it is stated that “the second element is the writer's long-term memory in which the writer has stored knowledge, not only of the topic, but of the audience and of various writing plans” (flower & hayes, 1981). during this stages, the participant setting and designing her own schedule to manage her task (winne & hadwin, 1998): “here is the schedule that i use during the day, this schedule is made to direct my writing process.” the next stage is initiated to translating her idea and perception into the text form according to the writer’s knowledge transformation. this stage is fairly challenging as the participant struggles to write down her idea in the text form. “how i say this” indicates the participant’s confusion in articulating her idea in a word even in verbal. she tried to find appropriate diction and syntax that represent her idea. a process of reviewing is not necessarily the end of a task. the reviewing process may lead another new planning or translating the idea into a text (flower & hayes, 1981). self-regulation has a strong correlation with academic achievement. it showed that participant’s mark among three assignments enhanced. the participant’s planning and time management is developed in task essay writing focus question 3. it indicated that “high-achieving students generally exhibited more srl skills (were better planners and managers of time) than did average achieving students.” (eilama & aharon, 2003) there are many aspects or components of self-regulation that may be useful to be explored in the project. task environment and motivation components may influence the participant’s effort and dynamic in learning and performing a task (schapiro & livingston, 2000). however, a further study is necessary to explore the participant’s motivational and emotional aspects in her learning and performing a task. furthermore, explicit instructional design-plansactivities should be interfered by the teacher or lecturer to acquire more appropriate result. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 130-131|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 conclusion and suggestion higher education requires students to write an essay as a fulfillment of the requirements for their grade of academic achievement. beside language, students may also have difficulty to regulate their own learning. in the present study, the participant has difficulty in writing and self-regulation. some typical mistakes in her writing are reduced by improving the participant’s srl. in the intervention, the participants employed a profound model that helps a learner to well-regulated his or her writing. this was designed by flower and hayes (1981). they divided the writing process into three steps: planning, translating and reviewing. analyses from three collected data showed meaningful improvement in the participant’s writing. the researcher suggests time extension to practice the slr. she believes the more the participant demonstrates self regulated, the better she performs. the questionnaires employed should represent multidimensional aspects which more likely indicate participant’s motivation, cognitive and metacognitive statement. if the slr is aimed to be taught in the classroom, it should be presented directly and explicitly by the teacher. references ames, c. & archer, j. 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(1981). a cognitive process theory of writing source: college composition and communication. remedial and special education, 32(4), 365-387. graham, s., harris, k. r., & mason, l (2005). improving the writing performance, knowledge, and self-efficacy of struggling young writers: the effects of selfregulated strategy development. contemporary educational psychology, 30, 207–241. harrison, s. & prain, v (2009). selfregulated learning in junior ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|131-131 secondary english. issues in educational research, 19(3). kitsantas, a. & zimmerman, b. j. (2006). how can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively? enhancing selfregulation of practice: the influence of graphing and selfevaluative standards. metacognition learning, 1, 201–212, doi: 10.1007/s11409-006-9000-7 kramarski, b. & michalsky, t. (2010). preparing preservice teachers for self-regulated learning in the context of technological pedagogical content knowledge. learning and instruction, 20, 434447. lea, m. r. & street, b. v. (1998). students writing in higher education: an academic literacy approach. studies in higher education, 2, p. 157. muis, k., r. & franco, g., m. (2009). epistemic beliefs: setting the standards for self-regulated learning. contemporary educational psychology, 34, 306–318. nu¨ckles, matthias., hu¨bner, s., & renkl, a. (2009). enhancing selfregulated learning by writing learning protocols. learning and instruction, 19, 259-271. perry, n. e. & vandekamp, k. j. o. (2000). creating classroom contexts that support young children's development of selfregulated learning. international journal of educational research, 33, 821-843. pintrich, p. r., roeser, r. w., & de groot, e. a. m. (1994). classroom and individual differences in early adolescents' motivation and self-regulated learning. the journal of early adolescence, 14, 139. schapiro, s. r. & livingston, j. a. (2000). dynamic self-regulation: the driving force behind academic achievement. innovative higher education, 25(1). winne, p. j. (1996). a metacognitive view of individual differences in self-regulated learning. learning and individual differences, 8(4), 327-353. zimmerman, b. j. & pons, m. m. (1986). development of a structured interview for assessing student use of self-regulated learning strategies. american educational research journal, 23(4), 614-628. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 19-40 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the representations of character education values in english textbook when english rings a bell brenda khanadi1, ni komang arie suwastini2*, kadek eva krishna adnyani3, ni luh putu sri adnyani4, i gusti agung sri rwa jayantini5 arie.suwastini@undiksha.ac.id received: 19th april 2022; revised: 28th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract the present study analyzed the representations of the five core values of character education recommended by the indonesian ministry of national education in 2017 into a national english textbook for 7th grade, entitled when english rings a bell. the present study was qualitative research, which conducted the data classification, data display, and conclusion drawing concurrently and repeatedly, while the whole process is always compared with the data collection. the study revealed that the book investigated represents all five core values: religiosity, nationalism, independence, cooperation, and integrity. religiosity and nationalism were the two values most cultivated in the textbook, while integrity is represented more infrequently, and cooperation value is sparsely presented. these findings imply that the imbalanced representation of the five core values in the textbook investigated could negatively affect the students’ character building. thus, the present study recommends teachers use this textbook to design activities that call for cooperation and integrity values, so the students’ character building at school can be more balanced. key words: character education; core values; efl textbook; representation abstrak penelitian ini mencermati representasi lima nilai utama pendidikan karakter yang direkomendasikan kementrian pendidikan dan kebudayaan pada 2017 ke dalam buku teks bahasa inggris untuk kelas vii berjudul when english rings a bell. kajian ini dirancang sebagai penelitian kualitatif deskriptif, dimana kategorisasi data, pemaparan data, dan penarikan kesimpulan dilakukan bersamaan dan berulang, serta selalu dibandingkan dengan proses dan hasil pengumpulan data. ditemukan bahwa buku teks yang dikaji mengandung representasi kelima nilai utama pendidikan karakter yang direkomendasikan kementrian: religius, nasionalis, mandiri, gotong royong, dan integritas. nilai religius dan nasionalis adalah dua nilai yang paling sering dihadirkan, sementara intgritas dihadirkan cukup sering dan nilai gotong royong merupakan nilai yang paling jarang. temuan ini menunjukkan bahwa ada ketidakseimbangan dalam representasi kelima nilai utama pendidikan karakter dalam buku teks yang dikaji, yang dapat berimplikasi negative pada pengembangan karakter anak. untuk itu, penelitian ini menyarankan agar guru mengimbangkan ketimpangan pada buku teks ini dengan merancang kegiatan-kegiatan yang mengembangkan nilai gotong royong dan integritas sehingga usaha penguatan karakter siswa dapat berlangsung dengan lebih baik dalam pembelajaran di sekolah. kata kunci: pendidikan karakter; lima nilai utama; buku teks bahasa inggris; representasi how to cite: khanadi, b., suwastini, ni k. a., adnyani, k.e. k., adnyani, ni l.p.s., jayantini, i g. a.s.r. (2022). the representations of character education values in english textbook when english rings a bell. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 19-40. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 20-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction character is a mental and moral human quality formed through action, behavior, attitude, emotion, and habits (aghni et al., 2020). a person with good character is believed to have good behaviors and manners, such as discipline, obeying the rules, responsibility, creativity, professionalism, and antidiscrimination (syafitri, 2019). character education is an education process to make an individual have a good personality, shown through attitude, honesty, responsibility, working hard, and respecting others (lickona & roosevelt, 1993). in 2010, the indonesian ministry of education recommended eighteen character education values to be emphasized for learners (ministry of national education, 2010a & 2010b). later in 2017, the ministry updated the recommendation into five core values rooted in the nation’s foundation, pancasila, or the five foundations (darmayenti & yustina, 2021; hutubessy, 2019; putriyanti, winarni, & rohmadi, 2019). the five core values are religiosity, independence, cooperation, integrity, and nationalist value. within these five aspects, some sub-values elaborate on the five core values. it underlies the effort to prepare the next generation to be more responsible people with good characters by providing learners with understanding and awareness of moral values (zulkarnaen et al., 2011; ministry of education and culture, no 8, 2016; ministry of education and culture, 2017). the current 2013 curriculum designed by the ministry incorporates the building of students’ characters by focusing on three elements of the learning process: attitude, knowledge, and skill (kurnia, 2020). with such focus, the instructions' planning, implementation, and assessment are designed to direct students to become moral agents in experiencing their life (indrayani et al., 2018; putri, artini, & wahyuni, 2020). it means that the learning process is focused on cognitive achievement with emphasis on character, morals, behavior, and attitude in the learning process (e.g., tolerant, honest, responsible, obeying the rule, respecting others, helpful, religious, discipline, solidarity, creative and hardworking). all aspects of the learning process should intermediate the cultivation of character value among the students, including the textbooks (puspitasari, puji, widyaningrum, & allamnakhrah, 2021). a textbook is printed paper used to reach learning purposes and integrates ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 21-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license values about the knowledge in the textbook (ayu et al., 2019). a textbook usually contains learning materials, explanations, exercises, activities, texts, pictures, and illustrations. while most of the contents are related to the student's cognitive development, the values inserted through the material in the textbook are intended to be subconsciously immersed into the students’ minds to affect their affective behaviors (tse & zhang, 2017) a textbook, “when english rings a bell”, was published by the ministry of education in 2013 to support english learning in 7th grade classrooms. in 2017, its revised version was published. assuming that the 2017 version is in line with the ministry’s updated recommendation of the five core values of character education, it is crucial to scrutinize the book from the perspective of the five core values. many researchers have analyzed about character education in textbook, such as darmayenti et al. (2021), hirdayu et al. (2022), husna & kamar (2019), kusramadhani et al. (2022), mandala & pujiati (2020), masita (2021), permana et al. (2018), puspitasari et al. (2021), setiawan & fahriany (2017), and wardani et al. (2019). darmayenti et al. (2021) dealt with developing religious character and local wisdom in the textbook for university students. puspitasari et al. (2021) focused on character education in the primary textbook. masita (2021), setiawan & fahriany (2017), setiawan & fahriany (2017), wardani et al. (2019) focused on character education in a senior high school textbook. some researchers have already focused on character education in junior high school textbooks (hirdayu et al., 2022; husna & kamar, 2019; kusramadhani et al., 2022; mandala & pujiati, 2020; permana et al., 2018). however, hirdayu et al. (2022), husna & kamar (2019), kusramadhani et al. (2022), and (permana et al., 2018) focused on 18 character education values in the english textbook for 7th grade students proposed by the ministry of national education in 2010. however, only a few studies have taken the endeavor to analyze the book using the 2017 update of recommendation of character values by the indonesian ministry of education and culture. mandala & pujiati (2020) analyzed the representation of the five core values proposed by the ministry of education and culture in 2017. however, the research subject was english in mind second edition (student’s book starter) special edition published by cambridge university press for the 7th grade students. thus, the present study aimed to analyze 2017’s revision of the textbook bahasa inggris when english rings a bell from the perspective of the five core values ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 22-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license recommended by the ministry in 2017. it is crucial to conduct the study to fill the gap in the analysis of english textbooks from the various perspective of character education. moreover, analysis of character values insertion into textbooks for junior high school is crucial when viewed from the students’ development as children undergoing early adolescence. it is a stage where the students undergo drastic physical and psychological changes that require guidance from adults and the institutions around them. a strong character building will assist these students during these changes. hence, their textbooks must be inserted with the recommended character values. this present study will elaborate on the insertion of the recommended five core values into 2017’s revision of the textbook bahasa inggris when english rings a bell, which may provide insights for stakeholders on how to improve textbooks from the perspective of character education. method research design the study was designed as qualitative descriptive research, following the interactive qualitative data analysis model from miles, huberman & saldana (2014). the subject of the present study was the efl textbook for 7th graders entitled bahasa inggris when english rings a bell, published in 2017. the object of the study was the core values represented learning objectives, warm-up activities, vocabulary builder, pronunciation practice, reading, writing, speaking, listening activity, and exercises included in the textbook. data collection and analysis following the interactive qualitative data analysis from miles, huberman, and saldana (2014), the data analysis includes the data categorization/condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing are conducted simultaneously. moreover, the conclusion drawn is always compared with the data collection. in such simultaneous processes, each step of the data collection and analysis can repeatedly happen to ensure that all necessary data are collected and analyzed, allowing the research to draw trustworthy conclusions. this study's primary data collection and analysis instrument were the researchers, supported by additional instruments, such as an observation checklist and field notes. the data collection was conducted by closely observing the textbook, followed by marking parts of the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 23-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license textbook that represent character values. during this process, filed notes and an observation checklist assisted the researchers in recording the process and result of the reading and observation. the observation checklist supported the data categorization and condensation, where the collected data were recorded into the related categories in this checklist. the data display was conducted by presenting the categorized values collected from the textbook, followed by elaborations of how those values were represented. from the elaborations, the conclusion can be drawn on the values sufficiently presented in the textbook or those that endured under-representation and its implications on the effort to build students’ characters. findings and discussion findings the study observed the representations of the five core values and the sub-values in a national textbook published by the ministry of education and culture in 2017 for students of grade 7, junior high school, entitled bahasa inggris when english rings a bell. the table below displays those five core values and the sub-values contained in the textbook. figure 1. representations of character values in the efl textbook when english rings a bell for grade 7 figure 1 shows that all the five core values mandated by the ministry of education and culture in 2017 were represented in the textbook when english rings a bell for grade 7. the religiosity value was inserted 101 times, the nationalist value occurred 81 times, the independent value appeared 59, the cooporation value was inserted 44 times, and the integrity value was represented 43 times. discussion religious value religious value is related to human beliefs in god. according to the ministry of education and culture (2017), religious values direct students to behave according to high moral values, obey social norms and respect people with different religions to create peaceful life within indonesia’s religious diversity. religious values are applied through being grateful, sincere, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 24-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and believing in themselves (darmayenti & yustina, 2021; hutubessy, 2019; putriyanti, winarni, & rohmadi, 2019; santoso et al., 2020). the religious value is identified four times in textbook activities. the most religious value is represented in chapter 3 in observing and asking question segment, associating activity, and chapter 4 in associating activity. edo's statement represents the most vibrant religious value through observing and asking questions. the statement reflects edo’s custom before he sleeps. his self-belief in ending his day with prayer is good behavior. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 42) edo’s statement shows religious character building for young learners. the excerpt entices learners to keep in mind not to forget praying. the authors present the religious value by telling and showing students always to remember god in any situation when they are sad, happy, sick, or healthy (mugrib & zulfah, 2016). one of the indicators of religious value is a belief in the existence of god for his manifest toward all capacity in this world (jauhara, setianingsih, & basyar, 2021). by trusting in god's power, we will always feel thankful. it is in line with ayu, tasnim & eko (2019); saadilah, linda & khairir (2020) religiosity refers to a belief in god's manifestation and power in the form of religion, media, ceremony, and adoration. the religious value continues to be highlighted in chapter iii on the time and schedule topic. in associating activity, the wednesday schedule contained religion course. the insertion of a religion course at least once a week is customary, implying faithful practice and habituation for the students. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 55) being religious is not limited to embracing a belief but also promoting religious teaching. therefore, the religion course in the timetable implies the effort to pass on religious values to the students. for the students to become an intelligent as individuals and as a generation, it is necessary to have insight and understanding related to religion itself and its school practice since carrying teaching religion and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 25-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license working on the implementation are essential processes to build young learners' character education (putri et al., 2020). the insertion of the course can be interpreted as the view that religion is compulsory to be taught at school and implemented in everyday life. it was relevant to (masita, 2021) about personal beliefs shown from their knowledge about the religion and represented in their moral and personal attitude. the last religious value emerges in personal attitude. the religious value is represented by the picture of a family praying before their meals, raising their hands, remembering, and calling his name. it represents their gratitude for what is given by god to their table. having a meal is a regular activity. the picture implies that praying should comply with normal activity. a good attitude through praying represents religious value. regular praying in every situation and activity will bring religiousness to mind (ikawati, 2016). besides, one of the gratitude that can be done is to keep our own self-cleaned. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 91) the picture indicated several activities of character education value introduced by the excerpt. praying and keeping self-clean are actions of gratitude to god for creating all things in this world (jauhara et al., 2021). nationalist value indonesia is known as a country with diverse traditions, ethnicities, cultures, religions, and customs. the uniqueness of those wealthy has challenges and problems in this globalization era. this globalized world brings nationalist values as actions that should be integrated into language learning, especially in textbooks (aghni et al., 2020). it included the need for development in the young generation's core ethics. therefore, according to atmazaki & agustina (2020), there should be an effort to balance people's intellectual with the development of good character about the importance of social environment, high integrity, and ability to realize differences among others. the spirit of nationality and a love for their country or homeland is vital for the students to develop because they will be the future generation that builds and maintains indonesia (nova, 2017). it is associated with the shibboleth of indonesian, which states "berbeda-beda tetapi tetap satu" or unity in diversity always becomes one that has a unique meaning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 26-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and under the precepts of the third sila in pancasila (ismawati, 2018). communicating activities, especially material about greeting in chapter 1, had a solid nationalist value. the excerpt can be seen as follows: “from now on, i will always” greet others when i meet them, say goodbye when i leave them, thank others for doing good to me, say sorry when i make a mistake. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 19) the excerpt above shows the significant and small things that can be done to respect others. greeting, saying goodbye, thanking others, and saying sorry will show your respect for other people's existence. this part also emphasizes that humans are social beings; hence respecting others is valued in their daily lives. therefore, peers, community, and society is the place for an individual to train his/her behavior in accepting togetherness (alex & chen, 2012). besides, the above consideration raises a disciplined value of a pluralistic country. it can be seen that the excerpt’s purpose is to push down degraded characters and bring up a character education of supportive elements of life (listiawati, 2018). through anticipating character degradation, the nationalist values must be included a love of the homeland, being aware as part of society, and keeping equals among diversity (fridiyanto, 2020). nationalist character is also identified in associating activities that create long text entitled “i’m proud of indonesia.’ the text symbolizes students’ proudness of indonesia which makes them learn more in-depth about what indonesia has and its growth. in these activities, the students explore places, populations, islands, weather, mountains, and climate valid in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 27-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 173) the above work indicates learners' activities in producing a handwrite that tells a sense of their admiration of multi-cultural, diversity of ethnic, and habitude of indonesia citizen. the text explicitly mentions indonesia's geographical state, its climate condition, and the result of crops and livestock in indonesia. with a more detailed description of indonesia, readers can figure out the islands' complexity, richness, natural potential, and the variety of cultural uniqueness. it further develops learners' moral awareness of their nation's diversity and be prepared them for the challenges of living in a diverse society (ismawati, 2018). other researchers found a similar area of simple recognition of own country's issues to be able to realize one and others' strengths and weaknesses (thoriquttyas & rohmawati, 2017). it affects human morals of not being egoist with culturally diverse and keeping the unity of indonesia. it is also emphasized in the textbook as the learning objectives are written as follows “to make them stand out, to show my pride in them, to promote them and to criticize them” (ministry of education and culture, 2017). therefore, the text describing the indonesian environment can be seen as carrying nationalist values. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 28-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license independence value independence character is one of the essential values recommended to be integrated into school textbooks. the value is the belief in responsibility for one’s self-work and duty (listiawati, 2018). it generates personal professionalism in doing their job. it is supported by kusumaningputri, khazanah, & setiarini (2017), who argue that independence means a character that combines beliefs, ideas, and experiences to be creative, hardworking, and responsible for an individual's actions and behavior of a good citizen. similarly, everything done by yourself without any help from others and having self-responsible for your self-passion in learning is called an independent person (damayanti & nurgiyantoro, 2018). two sub-values of nationalist value appeared in the english textbook hardworking and creative values. sixteen learning activities represented these two subvalues. the most independent value is shown in observing and asking questions and associating activities. students are asked to make a list of tables making greeting expressions differently, according to the formality of the contexts and the different interlocutors. in this part, students work alone to have independent value in deciding, listing, and creating selfwork. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 10) (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p.13) the excerpt shows the pictures to relate learners’ prior knowledge about greeting and saying goodbye activities. the above task is asked to be completed by working individually and elaborating the expression creatively. both tables have examples of greeting and saying goodbye to allow learners to combine ideas, creativity, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 29-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hardworking values into their responses. the tables provide information about the pronouns and tenses used in certain expressions. therefore, through the tables, learners are expected to be able to respect others' works. since every work done by learners will have a different style to share, directed by the learners' independence and understanding of how to work hard and do one's best in accomplishing a duty (kamaruddin, 2012). moreover, independent work based on heriansyah (2018) is an important skill to build for learners in responding to the current globalization era to have good interpersonal skills. these textbook activities provide the necessary steps to improve learners' interpersonal skills, such as being hardworking, independent, and creative. another independence value comes in associating part, where learners are asked to do a project related to themselves. there will be information about your self-activities, including name, origin, residence, favorite things, hobbies, and family. we will make a „this is me!” project. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 35) this part showed that there are instructions to work on a project. the project is about telling our family members in real life and sharing more detail about ourselves in front of the classroom. since the topic was specified to students’ family members, it implies they are required to find the details on their own. students will work with their responsibility without any other people demanding him/her. to acquire the value, through project work, students will independently explore their knowledge and consolidate the value into their behavior (suwarno & wardani, 2018). therefore, in this activity, students will have their critical thinking, creativity, and hardworking to finish and learner from the given task (ministry of education and culture, 2017). cooperation value cooperation means having communicative skills in communicating problems, solutions, or arguments. individuals should have good communication skills in discussing a particular issue and establish solidarity, togetherness, help, and antidiscrimination. there will be process deliberation through interacting with others (thoyyibah, hartono, & bharati, 2019). moreover, cooperation is reflected in individual attitudes and behavior with the surroundings' interactive communication (dewiyani & sagirani, 2014). therefore, cooperation value in this current globalization era becomes the primer reason to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 30-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license implement and integrate character education in learning primary sources. cooperation value is distributed in 9 activities and divided into several subvalues: solidarity, anti-discrimination, empathy, and helpful values. the most apparent cooperation value is identified in associating, observing, and asking questions section. in associating activity, the cooperation value is present in the dialog of edo's friends. in the observing and asking questions part, the cooperation value is present when deni is taking part in the conversation with his parents. lina: look! edo is very helpful. deni: yes, he is. he is helpful and kind. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 117) the dialogue above shows that the excerpt tells the way to acquire cooperation value is to become a helpful person. the value of working together to help and achieve specific goals is represented in the associating activity of chapter v. they show cooperation value in working together actions shown by edo helping his teacher bring books. his helpfulness establishes a character of helping each other for a specific purpose, representing the fifth sila of indonesia (idris & zubair, 2019). based on the ministry of education and culture (2017), togetherness, cooperation, and working together can simplify and facilitate people to gain the purpose with less burden but in optimal achievement. thus, values are essential to be learned for beginner learners to have a social feeling of togetherness. the cooperation value is also represented in the observing and asking questions activity. the second cooperation value highlights the racial differences commonly found in society. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 7) the excerpt displayed the two boys who had been greeting their parents. the first picture on the left shows a boy greeting his father, while the second picture shows a boy greeting his mother. these communication skills with older people are needed in a digital environment. the rapid development of communication ways using screen have a negative side impact on teenagers' communication skills. for instance, adolescents become uncommunicative due to their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 31-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license communication style and are less interested in real-world communication. it affected adolescents' way not to be able to think critically and argue things naturally. through the picture, it is expected that the differences between them from the skin tone, hair type, and two different racial backgrounds become the power to cooperate with good communication skills. it can be interpreted that greetings were addressed equally despite their genders and races. it is in line with idris & zubair's (2019) opinion that togetherness, communication, and cooperative working mean doing something together without considering the participants' genders and ages. it is related to social justice for all the people of indonesia, which firstly be perceived in the family circle of interaction. the above picture brings the textbook user and the teacher aware of the basis of working cooperatively in diversity. this principle of equality in diversity can support collaborative works that can build students' cooperative values. integrity value integrity is another core value to be inserted into school textbooks to build honest, responsible, and trustworthy behavior. according to damayanti & nurgiyantoro (2018), integrity value is shown in a person's attitude as an honest and polite individual. those values are emphasized in the fourth sila of pancasila, which states about a good character in personal (ministry of education and culture, 2017). the most vigorous representation of integrity value appeared in the observing and asking question segment and the reflection activity. in the observing and asking questions part, integrity value is elaborated in the making of a list of students' self-habits in chapter vi. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 137) the list above includes the value of honesty as a good habit. in the first stage, students are asked to write their habits in school or during school activities while at the same time developing their understanding related to the good values in their habits. it supports students to have reasoning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 32-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license skills toward the habits they wrote. they can state a good or even lousy habit that represents their honesty. afterwards, they will share the work with their classmate and get feedback from the teacher. there also will have a situation of being trusted through students' and learners' speech, action, and work (sofwan et al., 2018). it connected with nurbaiti, sparta & adbillah's invention about human behavior values in universal through attitude, feeling, words and action and represented in their knowledge, feeling, and moral behavior (nurbaiti, suparta, & abdillah, 2019). thus, integrity value is concerned with individual habits by consistently practising honesty, starting from being honest in school and in any situation. another representation of integrity value is found in chapter 8, in the reflection activity. all students are asked to have self-reflection handwrite related to their learning process in this part. it is about how each will respond to their learning and be honest with their throwback feeling, action, and work. the reflection activity invites students to contribute their ideas and express their feelings about the learning process happened. they shared selfmeasurement toward materials and explanations from the teacher and the textbook. bringing a mirror into selfassessment will help others improve the following learning process and achieve more successful learning. this way leads the teacher to obtain natural observation of learners' character in the classroom and conceptualize the teacher’s objective to the student’s behavior (abu et al., 2015). the nature of reflecting own-self is an opportunity for both sides, teacher and students in own-self roles and responsibilities, to think critically about his/her learning outcomes. kamaruddin (2012) argues that self-control is a quality to increase the value and morality to maximize all learning process parties. (ministry of education and culture, 2017, p. 183) thus, the textbook conceives the five-core values by targeting early-age learners and highlighting real-life examples for good understanding and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 33-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license simpler to explain. the content analysis revealed five-character values inserted in the textbook, pictures, activities, instructions, exercises, projects, and reflections. it is believed that understanding would lead our world generation to have good models and worth to be emulated. based on the finding above, respecting others in religious values is the most frequently presented in the book. it is presented through good behavior like respecting other people, other people will respect you, the diversity becomes unique, complex, plural, and social community is the country's wealth. in the teaching and learning process, different gender, race, background, habits, religions, diverse points of view, and opinions are welcome. the textbook is considered a qualified textbook that meets the goal of the ministry of education and culture program, where respecting other values is also included in pancasila. moreover, the teachers who have a significant role help students develop their nationalist character by taking into serious learners’ attitudes of respecting others who talk, appreciating different understanding, and supporting various levels of ability. through building the character of respecting others, learners will form their critical understanding of controlling themselves as different human beings, unique creatures, valuable, and individuals with good character. husna & lestari (2019) found that respecting other values is most strongly emphasized in the textbook. for pala (2011), a school is a place to teach and form students’ character, and having examples of such value in the textbook can prepare students to respect other people in their life. the application of integrity value in the textbook is the lowest representative value. it has slightly different from the cooperation value. the excerpt cultivates honest and responsible values in every work, exercise, and performance as part of their attitude. it indicates a building system process from the instructions and examples covered by the textbook to teach students indicators of consistent individual as honest and responsible character. similar findings were found by abdullah (2018) in honest and accountable values that should be aware by every student in school or even outside of the school. he gives shreds of evidence on being honest can be seen from the attitude of not breaking the rules, doing positive activities, and do not perform untruths things. at the same time, responsible value is reflected through students' bad feelings if they do not finish their tasks and can understand their self-ability. honest and responsible character is a vital character value for students to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 34-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grow and socialize in communities. since those values are essential, the representative of honest and responsible values superiorly support indonesian students to shape good individual morality. maintaining students' good character in differentiating the right and wrong points will lead them to be honest and responsible (sofwan et al., 2018). moreover, honesty and responsibility contribute to the formation of strong future generations, enabling them to survive future life challenges (novianti, 2017). nonetheless, it showed the unbalanced core values representation. religious values are twice as high as integrity values. the nationalism value is also high and almost equivalent to the independence value. however, the cooperation value is as low as the integrity value. therefore, technological development and economic inequality will increase the threat of individualism. the analysis results raised concern because the cooperation value tends to receive sparse emphasis in the textbook. similar to the threat of radicalism, that can destroy national unity. this book only includes 43 representations of integrity value and becomes the lowest inserted value. this unequal representation of the five core values may lead to future problems. for example, a lack of examples of cooperative values may lead students to commit violence because they are not given enough examples of working together and overcoming differences during the collaborative process. the textbook's lack of integrity and cooperation values leads students to be individualistic. individualistic attitude makes students not aware of the importance to be of survival through interacting with other people. this attitude may shape students into selfcentered people who cannot work in a group and do not have a sense of belonging. students think that all negative things such as violence and bullying do not like to help others or do not have a sense of empathy for others and are unable to collaborate in society. the teachers must anticipate all those negative things that are not expected by placing more emphasis on teaching into direct practice on the five core values. the teacher plays an active role in guiding students' behaviors. here the role of the school is needed to support the formation of student character by providing extra activities to emphasize the cooperation value, the nationalism value, and the ability to work independently. these three values need to receive more emphasis to balance up the representations of the five core values. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 35-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusions and suggestion the present study elaborated on an indonesian learning textbook for english courses at the junior high school level for grade vii was designed and established by the ministry of education and culture in 2017. the textbook presented five core character values with the latest revision by the ministry. the english textbook entitled when english rings a bell presents religious values most frequently compared to the other four core values. such emphasis is essential to prevent the degradation of respect and tolerance for religious norms and different religious beliefs. the nationalist value is represented in the second position. the textbook provides the substantial diversity in indonesia, where loving our homeland is an effort to unite the diversity. independence value is in the third position where we present our ideology of pancasila. after being colonized by other countries, independence should be introduced at an early age for learners. indonesia's citizens are working so hard to grow the value of hardworking on achieving dreams of being an independent country. the value continues to cooperate with character. cooperation value should always be present in teaching and learning activities. this value prepares students to appreciate and understand togetherness, so they can reap the benefits of working cooperatively. the next value is integrity which covers individual speech, work, and action that can be trusted. nowadays, getting trust is not easy when criminality more often happens. it is essential to introduce character values for students to prepare their lifelong in authentic media and example. a textbook is one of the teachings and learning media designed and proposed by the ministry of education and culture aimed to develop and make students aware of the five core values implementation in any situation. each value complements other core values as what should be carried out by an individual character and is equally important as in sila pancasila of indonesia. it is part of holistic implementation in cultivating character values in the educational field with the development of physical, intellectual, feeling, ethical, and spiritual aspects. these aspects can be covered at school to help students build and maintain a good attitude and behavior concerning good social relations. therefore, the cultivation of the five core values should be more equally distributed through all elements in the textbook with real examples and highly engage learners’ focus. therefore, teachers have a prominent influence on facilitating the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 36-40 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26649 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning environment in various social contexts to represent different character values, while an effort to equalize character values in a textbook. innovative learning strategies and methods are needed to insert the five core values into the classroom so students can develop them as part of their habits. when the five core values are sufficiently presented in examples of good behaviors, students can imitate the activities and experience the impact of building and implementing good values. hence, the present study suggests that the stakeholder equalize the representation of the five core values in the textbooks. however, the selection of the learning material in the textbook should be given more attention that suits the students' needs to help them to achieve the five values optimally. the teacher's role is to direct learners to implement the values in everyday activities not only at school but also in daily life with the support of family and societal 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(2019). analysis of character education values in the english textbook. jurnal pendidikan karakter, (2), 231–244. doi: https://doi.org/10.21831/jp k.v9i2.26416. https://doi.org/10.21831/jpk.v9i2.26416 https://doi.org/10.21831/jpk.v9i2.26416 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022, 120-139 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee critical thinking in elt: indonesian teachers’ understanding and practice ten years down the track maya defianty1*, kate wilson2 maya.defianty@uinjkt.ac.id received: 24th april 2022; revised: 29th may 2022; accepted: 29th june 2022 abstract it has been over a decade since the ministry of education and culture in indonesia mandated teachers to foster critical thinking; however, studies document that in indonesia, students’ critical thinking still lags behind other countries. this condition led us to investigate teachers’ understanding of critical thinking as they hold the central role in promoting it. this qualitative research survey involved 64 english language teachers who had signed up for a webinar about critical thinking. the respondents varied in terms of gender, educational background, and teaching experience. the questionnaire was distributed online, and their participation in filling out the questionnaire was voluntary. questions were divided into two categories: the respondents’ demographic data, including gender, educational background, and teaching context. the second category focused on teachers’ understanding of critical thinking and its implementation in the classroom context. the study found that teachers do not yet have comprehensive knowledge about critical thinking, and this is reflected in their teaching practice and assessment of students’ critical thinking. interestingly, the study revealed that only a few teachers realized that their difficulties in promoting critical thinking might derive from their limited understanding about the notion. key words: critical thinking; indonesia; teachers’ understanding; english language teaching; pedagogy; assessment abstrak sudah lebih dari satu dekade sejak kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan di indonesia mengamanatkan guru untuk meningkatkan kemampuan berpikir kritis; namun, beberapa studi mendokumentasikan bahwa di indonesia, tingkat kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa masih tertinggal dari negara lain. kondisi ini mendorong kami untuk meneliti pemahaman guru tentang berpikir kritis mengingat guru memegang peran penting sentral dalam mempromosikannya. survei penelitian kualitatif ini melibatkan 64 guru bahasa inggris yang telah mendaftar untuk webinar tentang berpikir kritis. responden bervariasi dalam hal jenis kelamin, latar belakang pendidikan, dan pengalaman mengajar. kuesioner disebarkan secara online, dan partisipasi mereka dalam mengisi kuesioner bersifat sukarela. pertanyaan dibagi menjadi dua kategori: data demografi responden, termasuk jenis kelamin, latar belakang pendidikan, dan konteks pengajaran. kategori kedua berfokus pada pemahaman guru tentang berpikir kritis dan implementasinya dalam konteks kelas. studi ini menemukan bahwa guru belum memiliki pengetahuan yang komprehensif tentang berpikir kritis, dan hal ini tercermin dalam praktik mengajar mereka serta dalam menilai kemampuan berpikir kritis siswa. salah satu temuan menarik dari penelitian ini adalah hanya sedikit guru yang menyadari bahwa kesulitan mereka dalam mempromosikan berpikir kritis pada siswa kemungkinan besar dikarenakan pemahaman mereka yang terbatas tentang konsep berpikir kritis tersebut. kata kunci: berpikir kritis; indonesia; pemahaman guru; pengajaran bahasa inggris; pedagogi; penilaian how to cite: defianty, m., wilson, k. (2022). critical thinking in elt: indonesian teachers’ understanding and practice ten years down the track. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(1), 120-139 doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 120-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in the last decade the notion of critical thinking (ct) has been widely recognized as one of the pivotal skills in the 21st century. several countries in asia such as singapore and hong kong (mok, 2011), china (lin, 2018) and iran (afshar & movassagh, 2017), have made critical thinking part of their education reform. in indonesia, critical thinking has been mandated in several policies (see moec decree no.17/2010, article 77 and moec decree no.23/2016). further, the government also changed the national examination from un to asesmen nasional, specifically akm. the national examination was designed to emulate questions in pisa; indonesia ranks the tenth lowest among other countries who applied the test. as in pisa, the current national examination required students to use higher order thinking skills to be able to answer the questions (kementrian pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 2020). under these policies teachers are expected to incorporate critical thinking into classroom practice. nevertheless, although it has been more than a decade since the first policy about critical thinking was issued, current studies, specifically from the elt (english language teaching) landscape in indonesia, have not yet reported a promising result. for example, indah and kusuma’s (2016) study reported that students’ argumentative essay writing did not reflect critical thinking features. in addition, several studies document that teachers are still having difficulties in fostering critical thinking in classroom contexts. defianty and wilson (2020), who focused their study on teachers’ competence in fostering critical thinking through questioning, found that teachers often missed the opportunity to capitalize on their questioning strategy to improve students’ critical thinking skills. apparently, teachers still consider critical thinking to be challenging (zainudin, vianty, and inderawati, 2019), and thus it is little surprise that students too have limited understanding of critical thinking (mbato, 2019; zainudin et al., 2019). in fact, gandana, nafisah, and ayu’s (2021) study revealed that disseminating critical thinking can be challenging. the study focused on exploring teachers’ understanding of a critical thinking model which was disseminated to 13 efl teachers. drawing on data from teachers’ lesson plans, the study found that embedding critical teaching is still challenging because teachers have only modest understanding about critical thinking (gandana et al., 2021). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 121-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license it is important to note, though, that several studies also document success in enhancing students’ critical thinking. for example, saputra, joyoatmojo, wardani and sangka (2018), who focused their study on improving students’ critical thinking through a jigsaw problem-based collaborative learning model, found that their model was effective. similarly, kurniawati, sugaryamah, and hasanah (2020), who focused their study on incorporating critical literacy pedagogy (clp), found that clp can enhance students’ engagement with critical thinking. studies so far suggest that enhancing students’ critical thinking skill is viable provided that it is supported by teachers’ understanding of the concept. needless to say, teachers’ professional development or training can potentially facilitate the process. like all training programs, professional development for teachers should start from participants’ current knowledge and understanding as well as their concerns. however, although extensive research has been carried out on critical thinking in elt in indonesia, only a few studies have explored teachers’ current conceptions of critical thinking. for example, ilyas (2018) focused on identifying how teachers recognize and conceptualize critical thinking, and found similarities between indonesian teachers’ conceptions of ct and those of teachers in western countries reported in the literature. although ilyas’ study has provided some insights into indonesian teachers’ understanding of critical thinking, it was based on a limited sample of 59 teachers, and did not explore how these teachers implemented their understandings of ct or the challenges they experience in teaching ct. this current study extends the current literature by further exploring english teachers’ understanding of critical thinking as well as their implementation and assessment of ct in classroom settings. difficulties encountered by teachers are also surveyed. it is understandable that teachers may find it hard to define critical thinking. although the term has been adopted world-wide in education policies at all levels, it is notoriously hard to pin down. however, it is acknowledged widely that critical thinking skills – skills in solving problems, decision-making and deciding what to believe or do and why – will be essential in the uncertain world ahead. in our modern globalized world, the rapid pace of technological change and the ubiquitous spread of information and new ideas mean that individuals need to be skilled at making http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 122-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license judgments based on sound reasoning and responsible, ethical behaviour. the oecd (vincent-lancrin et al., 2019) also argues that ct is essential for the well-being of individuals, as it enables them to lead “good and happy” lives, and to fulfill their roles in a democratic society. importantly, critical thinking in education also enables students to engage more deeply with their subject matter which, in turn, engenders motivation and enables learners to transfer their learning to other contexts (biggs, 2011). at one level, critical thinking can be seen as the application of cognitive skills. the best known skills-based approach draw on foundation of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (bloom et al. 1956) and anderson and krathwohl’s subsequent revision of the taxonomy (krathwohl, 2002). bloom’s taxonomy was developed in reaction against the prevalence of rote learning in many education systems and has been enthusiastically adopted in many contexts, including in the indonesian education system. it presents a hierarchy of thinking skills: lower order skills of remembering and understanding, and higher order skills of applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating. in order to interpret these skills in their pedagogy, teachers need to be able to unpack these portmanteau terms – especially in the context of their own discipline. this task is not selfevident for many teachers. anderson and krathwohl (2001, cited in krathwohl ,2002) provide a list of cognitive processes associated with each level of the taxonomy. for example, “understanding” is described as “interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarising, inferring, comparing and explaining”. however, it could be argued that it is impossible to “understand” something if you have not first “analysed” it. similarly, analysis arguably entails a wide range of cognitive processes, such as identifying the component parts, comparing, categorizing, identifying cause and effect, to name a few. thus, it seems that the taxonomy has to be conceptualized and interpreted with some flexibility. nevertheless, it has been widely applied to classroom teaching, and its associated cognitive processes can provide a platform for teachers in both explaining and assessing critical thinking. another skills-based approach to ct, which has its roots in the discipline of philosophy, emphasizes the role of logic in drawing conclusions and making judgments. from this perspective, students need to be taught the skills of logical reasoning including identifying assumptions, recognizing fallacies, drawing inferences, and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 123-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license identifying gaps in arguments. one particular skill emanating from this school of thought is “reading between the lines” (patrikis, 2003). however, focusing simply on thinking skills is arguably a reductive approach to teaching critical thinking. davies and barnett (2015) and others emphasise that students not only need to learn skills for ct, but also to develop a disposition for ct. in other words, students need to develop habits of critical thinking and to be motivated to put them into practice. they need to develop ct traits such as openmindedness, curiosity, scepticism and an inclination to reflect, as well as the sensitivity to know when to apply ct. paul and elder (2019) also emphasise traits such as fairmindness and “intellectual humility, integrity and empathy.” harvard university’s project zero project proposes that one way to build up habits of ct is to train students to follow “thinking routines” (harvard school of education, 2016) which are easy to apply and easy to transfer to different contexts. these routines include patterns such as “ i used to think …; but now i think …”, “see, think, wonder” and “circle of viewpoints”. the project advocates that students also need to build familiarity with ct tools such as concept-mapping and using tables and charts. another widely applied approach to motivation and ct is that of john biggs, (2011) whose work focuses on the distinction between deep and surface learners. while surface learners tend to learn by rote memorization and are inclined to do the minimum necessary to pass, deep learners engage with their subject matter and are motivated to explore and think deeply rather than simply performing the required task. however, the notion of “deep” learning is another portmanteau term which is hard to apply to classroom teaching and assessment. an enduring discussion in the ct literature is whether ct is a generic or discipline-specific practice. mcpeck (1981) claimed that ct was not transferable across disciplines. however, others, such as moore (2011), have argued that ct thinking skills are generalisable, although there are particular cultures of thinking germane to different disciplines. most national curricula and university policies maintain that ct should be developed in every discipline. however, often ct is not made explicit by teachers in their pedagogy or in the textbooks they are required to use (ilyas, 2017). in the field of english language teaching, in particular, there has been a growing interest in recent years in how critical thinking should be integrated http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 124-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license into classroom pedagogy. defianty and wilson (2020) argue that ct in elt applies in two respects: thinking through the language and thinking about the language. especially at more advanced levels, such as in eap (english for academic purposes), students have long been encouraged to apply critical thinking in their reading and writing. students are typically asked to structure their paragaphs and essays according to ct processes such as “compare and contrast”; “for and against”; “cause and effect”; and “problem and solution” (see, for example, texts such as oshima and hogue, 2006). such tasks require students to apply ct to diverse common topics such as global warming, television advertising, junk foods and so on. defianty and wilson (2020) call this thinking through the language, as students are required to use the english language to mediate their thinking. however, defianty and wilson (2020) argue that students should also be challenged to think critically about the language itself and how it is used to make meaning, from word and sentence level through to the level of discourse: how the language is used to construct concepts, negotiate relationships, and communicate information. for example, students should be encouraged to think critically about the differences between genres, how features of english compare with their mother tongue, how pronouns are used to construct relationships, how tenses provide context about action, how topic sentences assist writers to communicate with clarity, how subtle use of vocabulary can add nuance to a text, and so on. by using skills of analysis and evaluation, students can gain greater awareness of the language, improve their skills in meaning-making in the language, and increase their motivation to learn. as li (2019) puts it, learners need to take charge of the why and how in learning by making deliberate efforts in their learning so that they do not simply remember and recall language in its abstract form, but rather engage in critical and creative analysis and evaluation of material at hand in order to internalize and appropriate the language. (li, 2019, p.2). thus, incorporating ct into english language teaching has clear benefits for the students’ immediate development of language resources, as well as for their general development of critical thinking skills and dispositions in the face of a fast-changing world modern world. yet, despite this, and the fact that ct has been mandated in the indonesian education system for more than a decade, english language http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 125-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers still appear to have rudimentary understandings of ct and pedagogies for ct, as discussed in the introduction. in order to further promote ct in elt in indonesia, then, it is crucial to learn more about how teachers perceive, implement and assess ct. method this study employed qualitative survey research. this design was selected because it enabled the researchers to gain information from unknown and diverse respondents (braun, clarke, boulton, davey & mcevoy, 2021). respondents were recruited from a planned webinar about critical thinking. prior to the webinar, the 271 participants were asked to fill out the questionnaire, distributed via a google form. sixty-four responses were received. the online mode made it possible to recruit respondents from varied backgrounds and diverse areas of indonesia. table 1 shows the respondents’ profiles. table 1. respondents’ backgrounds the questionnaire was divided into two parts. the first part of the questionnaire concerned respondents’ demographic information, including gender, teaching experience, and teaching context. the second part, consisting of principally of open-ended questions, focused on teachers’ understanding of critical thinking and its implementation in their practice. the questions included how the respondents perceived critical thinking, how they foster the notion in the classroom context, how students were assessed, and the challenges they may encounter in implementing critical thinking. the respondents were invited to answer in english, as they were all english language teachers. after the questionnaire was designed, it was reviewed by a potential respondent and modified accordingly. thematic analysis was used to explore the data following recommendations by braun and clarke (2006). the survey responses to each question were entered into an excel spreadsheet. each researcher, both wellversed in the theory of ct pedagogy, coded the responses individually. next, the coding was jointly reviewed and merged, and clustered and re-clustered into a number of themes in order to capture important patterns. although instances of the recurrence of these themes were quantified, the numerical count was regarded as indicative only. as braun and clarke (2006) emphasise, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 126-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the ‘keyness’ of a theme is not necessarily dependent on quantifiable measures but rather on whether it captures something important in relation to the overall research question. findings and discussion findings this research aimed to identify efl teachers’ understanding of critical thinking and how it is implemented in their classroom settings. in addition, this study also explores teachers’ assessment practice and the challenges encountered by teachers in fostering critical thinking. the overall response to the survey was poor; among 271 respondents in the critical thinking webinar to whom the survey was distributed, only 64 respondents filled out the questionnaire. nonetheless, these respondents have provided a valuable insight into how they perceived and practice the notion. this section will be divided based on the set of questions from the questionnaires. the research design is clearly described and appropriate for the purpose of the study. the purpose, content and usage of data collection tools are explained and justified. teachers’ understanding of critical thinking sixty-three of the 64 respondents answered the question, “what is your understanding of critical thinking?”, however, many respondents (17) gave vacuous, irrelevant or circular responses. for example, teacher 7 wrote “think critically on something that we read, we listen, we see, etc.”. the majority of those who responded gave answers which reflected a skills-based perspective on ct, and these respondents generally used terminology from bloom’s taxonomy in defining critical thinking. for example, teacher 8 stated that “ct is the process of conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, and evaluating based on observation or experience.” ten respondents considered critical thinking referred to skills of applying logic; as stated by teacher 12 “it is kind of skill that should be introduced to the students in order they can to think clearly and rationally, understanding the logical connection between ideas”. interestingly, “reading between the lines” was also a recurring theme in the responses to the survey. moreover, 5 respondents were perplexed in distinguishing between critical and criticize to define critical thinking. for example, teacher 47 defined critical thinking as “the way of thinking in criticizing things”. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 127-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license thirteen out of 64 respondents defined critical thinking in terms of dispositions. for example, teacher 59 said that critical thinking can mean “empowering students with the way they act and react to some issues”, while teacher 3 defined ct as “the way of thinking that triggers curiosity, creativity, problem solving etc”. in addition, teacher 6 also believed that critical thinking can enhance students’ participation in learning. the data also revealed that “deep” thinking was a recurring keyword in defining critical thinking, used by 8 of the respondents. for example, teacher 3 defined critical thinking as “…deep thinking about something based on evidences.” however, only a few respondents (7 of 64) perceived critical thinking as both skills and dispositions. for example, teacher 23 stated that: it's the way students think in learning something. not only learning at school, but learning anything in their lives. how can they gain any knowledge by their own and apply it to understand another knowledges. then, they use their knowledge to solve any problem. of these 7 respondents, two had copied their definitions verbatim from a website which came up immediately in a google search (criticalthinking.org). applying critical thinking besides identifying teachers’ conception of critical thinking, this research also investigated how teachers apply their understanding in classroom practice. a rather unexpected result from the survey was that this question attracted the highest number of responses. this suggested that some respondents who still had fuzzy understandings about critical thinking felt able to implement the concept in their teaching practice. data from the research showed that there was a wide array of classroom activities applied by the respondents in promoting critical thinking, reflecting a broad approach to communicative language teaching (clt). many responses focused particularly on speaking activities such as discussion and debates, or generally on asking students for their opinions. in fact, questioning to promote critical thinking was cited as the most prominent teaching strategy. for example, teacher 43 used questioning to explore students’ thinking; s/he stated one of activities that can be applied is in "giving opinion". while a part of students agree with a statement. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 128-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ask them if they have to disagree with it, what reasons they should explain”. among the four language macroskills, many of the respondents mentioned reading as a means to practice critical thinking; as teacher 11 said, asking my students to read "fake news" articles and asked them to analyze the article, do they think that the article is true or it's not, then i will ask them to tell the reason why do they think so. teacher 13 also used narrative text as a way to promote critical thinking; she stated, when we discuss the contents of a story in a narrative text, it is very important to look for its parts: characterization of function, story crisis, etc. these all need problem solving. another set of responses focused on writing as a vehicle for ct. for example, teacher 35 wrote: yes, for example in writing or taking notes. it takes more than just a wide range of vocab to convey one's ideas, the content must also show our understanding of the topic being written. good writing activity is a long process of thinking and discovering things. as the respondents mostly promoted critical thinking through reading, it is little surprise that reading texts were the most commonly cited learning materials. however, some respondents were using other learning materials such as video; as teacher 52 said: we give a video of a very short movie to students, then we give chance for them to ask questions or we ask some questions to them ( e.g why ... happened? or what makes a main character change his behavior? etc..) which required them to think not just take it for granted. the majority of the respondents focused on classroom activities that could be categorised as critical thinking through the target language (defianty & wilson, 2020), that is, encouraging students to interact critically about diverse topics in the medium of english. teacher 22 gave an example of how she applied critical thinking through the target language; as she stated, when a teacher introduces or wants to discuss about an issue, then ask for the students' opinion related to the issue, then they try to speak up, it's a critical thinking in learning process. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 129-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in comparison, data from the questionnaire revealed that only 15 respondents’ responses concerned critical thinking about the language, that is with a focus on how the language is used to make meaning. teacher 10 illustrated how she implemented the activity; as she claimed, if you find the word 'does' in negative & interrogative simple present sentences, it means you don't need to have the ending ~s in the verbs for third person singular (your verbs must be back to the infinitive ones). similarly, teacher 34 wrote “evaluate how language shapes understanding (idea), like the representation of gender in canonic literature: snow white story, cinderella etc”. assessing students’ critical thinking the overall response to the question on assessment of ct was poor. among 64 respondents, 28 respondents did not answer the question; moreover, 18 respondents did not address the question in a meaningful way. for example, one of the respondents’ answer was “ct comes first before language skills”. this finding implied that more than half of the respondents were unsure of how to assess students’ critical thinking skills. this finding is rather disappointing since assessment can provide valuable information both for students and teachers about students’ current critical thinking level. the information can then be used to provide an insight into how to alter teaching (and students’ learning) to enhance students’ critical thinking competence (brookhart, 2010). moreover, data from the research showed that only five respondents considered questioning as a means to assess students critical thinking competence, even though it was widely mentioned as a teaching technique. this finding is somewhat counterintuitive because questioning can be used as a productive assessment instrument because it is flexible, and teachers can apply this instrument at any stage of learning, whether for formative or summative purposes (wiliam & leahy, 2015). however, three out of these five respondents were aware that they could apply bloom’s (revised) taxonomy in implementing the technique; as the respondents stated: by checking their answers to hot questions (teacher 18) by designing the questions require critical thinking skills such as using graded bloom's taxonomy in the assessment. (teacher 19) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 130-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license i give the hots items whether spoken or written in short, long answer and can be essay. then i check their answer with the rubric i have made. (teacher 52) besides questioning, other tools the respondents used in assessing students’ critical thinking skill were debates, projects, journals and problem solvingbased learning. only two respondents mentioned the use of rubrics in assessing ct. challenges the next question in the questionnaire was about difficulties encountered by teachers in fostering critical thinking in their classroom. the total number of responses for this question was 47; this means that 17 respondents did not answer the question. the themes that emerged from the question about teachers’ difficulties in promoting critical thinking are presented in table 2. by far the most frequently mentioned challenge related to students’ level of linguistic competence. for example, teacher 26 said: the ability level of most of my students in understanding the basic area of the language itself is still very limited, so commonly, it is not easy for them to understand the issue being discussed and express their opinion about it. similarly, teacher 34 said that students’ competence contributed to the difficulties in fostering critical thinking; in the questionnaire she claimed that: i think because some students didn't have a good comprehension. if we want to promote about the critical thinking, i think we should start from the basic, so that students can have a same comprehension to understand something before they apply the critical thinking. in particular, students’ limited vocabulary was considered to hamper teachers in promoting critical thinking; as teacher 37 said “the challenge is to ensure that the students are equipped with adequate vocab to express something when it comes to discussion.” in addition, the disparate levels of language ability within the class, as well as the size of large classes, were also frequently mentioned. the most striking result to emerge from the data is that only a few respondents considered their own limited knowledge about ct and ct pedagogy to be one of the factors that can be a barrier in promoting critical thinking. of those who admitted their own limitations, some also complained about other factors as well. as teacher http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 131-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 36 said: “i really want to promote ct but it's not easy due to lack of my creativity and lack of ss' learning motivation, as well the limited time allotment”. table 2. source of difficulties discussion as ilyas (2018) found, the data from the survey indicated that indonesian elt teachers have a range of ideas about how to define critical thinking which reflect concepts in the literature, particularly those drawn from bloom’s taxonomy. however, more than a quarter of the respondents showed only limited understanding of ct. this is concerning, especially as the sample group of teachers in the study was biased towards those who were already interested in the concept of ct. they were a group of committed teachers at all levels of elt education, who participated voluntarily in the online forum from which they were recruited because they were keen to improve their professional learning. further, they had made the choice to join a webinar on critical thinking. yet, despite this, only 64 of the 271 webinar respondents were willing to complete the survey and, of these, 17 gave vacuous answers like ct is “a method that forces someone to think critically” (teacher 64). others gave vague definitions like “deep thinking”, or over-precise definitions, focusing on only one narrow aspect of ct, like “reading between the lines” (teacher 42). overall, the results confirm the findings of defianty & wilson (2019) that indonesian teachers of english do not have a clear understanding of ct. it was also somewhat disappointing that such a small proportion of respondents recognized ct dispositions in their definitions. qualities such as open-mindedness and curiosity are fundamental to the transference of critical thinking skills, and a recognition of the importance of ct dispositions is crucial in engaging students in ct practices. wilson (2016) in a study of critical reading in eap (english for academic purposes) found that students who were not engaged were marginalized from the classroom activity and only minimally able to apply ct in their reading of the text. in addition, when asked about the challenges they faced in teaching ct, most teachers failed to recognize their own limitations, although a few did confess that their limited understanding http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 132-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of ct was a barrier to incorporating it into their teaching. it is understandable that teachers might find it difficult to encapsulate their conceptions of ct in an online survey, given the widely ranging and diffuse definitions in the literature. definitions such as “deep thinking” do little to demystify ct or to give teachers any indication as to how to enact teaching for ct in the classroom. most teachers in indonesia are familiar with the idea of higher-order thinking skills (hots) from bloom’s taxonomy which has been widely promoted. in fact, teachers are now required to assess hots. however, as discussed above, the hots terminology involves portmanteau terms which are hard to unpack into the multiple cognitive processes which they imply. “analyse”, for example, could imply breaking something into the component parts, categorising, seeing how something works, identifying the problems inherent in something and deciding on possible solutions, identifying the causes of a phenomenon and speculating on its effects, and so on. moreover, the way in which analysis is applied in different disciplines varies, and this is a conundrum for english teachers who may not be not specialists in the discourse areas in which their students are participating. a further challenge for teachers in indonesia, as ilyas (2017) points out, is that ct was not traditionally a feature of education in indonesia either during the colonial era, nor during the three decades of the suharto’s “new order”. so teachers themselves were not exposed to ct during their own schooling. the sometimes vacuous answers in the survey may point towards this issue. without a clear understanding of ct, it may be very difficult for teachers to incorporate it into their teaching. as vincent-lancrin, s., et al. (2019) have explained, it often remains unclear for teachers what creativity and critical thinking… actually mean and entail in their teaching practice. rather than a problem of “resistance to change” or “innovation fatigue”, the lack of implementation comes from a lack of clarity about what these big concepts actually mean, and how they translate into teaching, learning and formative assessment. (vincent-lancrin, s., et al., 2019, p.20) the teachers’ limited understanding of ct and their lack of confidence was also apparent in the examples they gave of implementing ct in their classrooms. although some of the teachers gave rich and knowledgeable responses, generally the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 133-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license respondents gave little elaboration of their teaching of ct. for example, teacher 43 wrote “writing is an excellent example to nurture ct”. many answers centred vaguely around “discussion” or “asking for an opinion”. for example, teacher 55 wrote “by giving my students many questions and ask their opinion related to the theme that we are going to discuss.” the vagueness of these responses gives some insights into why teachers found it difficult to elicit ct in their classes. although discussion is clearly fundamental to ct, it can be difficult to stimulate substantial interaction in class if students have not been provided with sufficient scaffolding (wilson, 2016). the respondents’ most commonly stated challenge was the generally low level of language skills amongst their students, as well as differential levels of english language skills, particularly in large classes. the teachers mentioned lack of relevant vocabulary, in particular, but the students’ reluctance to participate may indicate more than just a paucity of vocabulary. they may be tongue-tied because they do not how to respond to the teacher’s questions, or what is expected when they are asked for “an opinion”. ct, although it is at root a basic human skill does not just happen: it needs nurturing and developing, in other words “scaffolding”. given the teachers’ vague definitions of ct, and their restricted approach to teaching ct, it is not surprising that they were generally unsure of how to assess ct, with more than half admitting that they either did not assess it or were not sure whether they assessed it or not. given that it is compulsory for elt teachers in indonesia to assess their students’ use of higher order thinking, this finding was both surprising and concerning. once again, their answers to the question were often vague, for example “i assess my students when i am asking my students to think the best answer” (teacher 45). only one teacher mentioned the use of rubrics for assessing ct. the results of this survey, as recommended by ilyas (2018), demonstrate clearly that there is a need for further professional development for teachers in the area of ct. teachers need to have a clearer understanding of ct, but importantly they also need to know what it really means to teach for ct: what classroom practices support ct; what tasks can be used to engage students in critical thinking; what kind of scaffolding is needed to enable them to achieve these tasks successfully; and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 134-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license how to assess students’ development of ct skills and dispositions. professional development programs also need to take into careful consideration the barriers to teaching ct which were identified by the respondents in this survey. in order to support students with low language skills and lack of exposure to ct, teachers need to understand the concept of “scaffolding”. according to hammond and gibbons (2005), scaffolding involves both “high challenge” and “high support”. they advocate the use of high challenge tasks which extend the students’ abilities and engage students of all abilities within the class. project-based learning, debates, and essay-writing, as mentioned by the respondents in the survey, can all be all good examples of high challenge tasks. however, it is crucial that students are also provided with plenty of support so that they can achieve these high challenge tasks successfully. high support can be “designed-in” if teachers prepare stimulating input material, thoughtprovoking questions, and carefully sequenced sub-tasks which build the language resources and ct skills that are necessary language resources for rich participation. for example, they may benefit from analysing model texts, or from engaging with visual material before engaging with more challenging textual material. this kind of scaffolding can be planned into a lesson sequence. teachers also need to build skills in what hammond and gibbons call “contingent scaffolding”. this is the “on-the-spot” ability to ask questions that push students towards deeper ct. defianty and wilson’s (2020) research found that efl teachers’ ability to ask such questions was limited. importantly, the teaching of ct needs to be made explicit. abrami et al. (2008) in a meta-analysis of 117 studies of ct instruction should follow the “infusion” approach in which ct learning objectives are explicitly communicated to students. in a later study, abrami et al. (2015) found that effective strategies for teaching ct included exposure to authentic problems and examples, rich opportunities for dialogue and ongoing support. professional development activities need to be enriched with achievable models of good practice. teachers need to be to see how ct pedagogies can be implemented in indonesian contexts, including with large classes and in rural and regional areas. this suggests that further research is needed to identify examples of good practice that can serve to inspire efl teachers and help them to recognize how teaching for ct http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9 (1), 2022 135-139 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i1.26673 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license can be enacted in contexts similar to theirs. such models could assist teachers to develop their own repertoires of practice that will enable them to infuse their pedagogy with ct. conclusions and suggestion this study has lent further support to previous research (defianty & wilson, 2020; ilyas, 2018; zainudin, vianty & inderawati 2019) which has shown that, although elt teachers in indonesia are familiar with some of the terminology from the literature on ct, their understandings may still be “fuzzy”. in addition, the data suggests that teachers have a limited repertoire of pedagogical strategies for ct, and in particular, that they lack understanding of how to assess ct. the sample group for the study was biased towards teachers who were committed to quality teaching and who had an interest in ct, so the findings may be somewhat optimistic as a portrait of elt teachers nationwide, and given that ct has been mandated in indonesia for more than a decade, it is concerning that these teachers were still limited in their understanding of pedagogies for ct. nevertheless, the study suggests a fairly positive view of ct in elt in indonesia. teachers already have some understandings of ct, albeit not welldeveloped. good professional development with a focus on practical applications in the classroom, as well as assessment strategies for ct, has the potential to enable indonesian teachers of english to infuse their teaching of english with critical thinking. hence the study suggests that there is a need for further research focusing on classroom strategies for teaching ct. teachers would benefit from real-life examples of how teachers can successfully integrate ct into their pedagogy. in particular, it would be useful to have more examples of the use of scaffolding as a pedagogy to support the development of ct, including strategies for developing students’ language resources and at the same time engaging students in critical thinking activities. further, future research should focus on productive strategies for assessing ct, both formatively and summatively. references abrami, p.c., bernard, r.m., borokhovski, e., wade, a., surkes, m.a., tamim, r. & zhang, d. 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(2019), fostering students' creativity and critical thinking: what it means in school, educational research and innovation, oecd publishing, paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/62 212c37-en. wiliam, d., & leahy, s. (2015). embedding formative assessment: practical techniques for k-12 classrooms. west palm beach, fla: learning sciences international. wilson, k. (2009). reading in the margins: eap reading pedagogies and their critical, postcritical potential. phd thesis, university of technology sydney, http://hdl.handle.net/2100/839 wilson, k. (2016). critical reading, critical thinking: delicate scaffolding in english for academic purposes (eap). thinking skills and creativity, 22 (2016) 256-265. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2016.10.002 zainudin, a., vianty, m., & inderawati, r. (2019). the practice and challenges of implementing critical thinking skills in omani post-basic efl classrooms. english review: journal of english education, 8(1), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v10n 12p116. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.1787/62212c37-en https://doi.org/10.1787/62212c37-en http://hdl.handle.net/2100/839 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 249-265 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee language politeness strategies employed by lecturers and students in online learning ida bagus nyoman mantra*, nengah dwi handayani, dewa gede agung gana kumara universitas mahasaraswati denpasar, indonesia (bagusmantra@unmas.ac.id) received: 11th july 2022; revised: 28th october 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract politeness is a way to communicate so that speakers do not feel pressured, cornered, and offended. using polite language makes the speech partners and interlocutors feel respected and comfortable and do not cause misunderstanding. in classroom communication, language politeness is vital to maintain harmonious interactions between students and lecturers. it is not merely needed during face-to-face learning, but it is also required during online learning. this study investigates the language politeness strategies students and university lecturers employ during the online learning processes. the researchers in this study used a qualitative approach. the data were collected through conducting observation, recording, and field notes. this study found that several language politeness strategies were employed by the students and the lecturer, namely: the maxim of tact, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of humility, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy. the findings of this study provide implications to enrich the knowledge relevant to the theories and principles concerning effective language politeness strategies used during the learning process. key words: language; politeness; online; learning abstrak kesantunan adalah cara berkomunikasi agar penutur tidak merasa tertekan, terpojok, dan tersinggung. menggunakan bahasa yang santun membuat mitra tutur dan lawan bicara merasa dihargai dan nyaman serta tidak menimbulkan kesalahpahaman. dalam komunikasi kelas, kesantunan berbahasa sangat penting untuk menjaga keharmonisan interaksi antara mahasiswa dan dosen. tidak hanya dibutuhkan saat pembelajaran tatap muka, tetapi juga dibutuhkan saat pembelajaran daring. penelitian ini mengkaji strategi kesantunan berbahasa yang digunakan mahasiswa dan dosen selama proses pembelajaran daring. peneliti dalam penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif. data dikumpulkan melalui observasi, pencatatan, dan catatan lapangan. penelitian ini menemukan beberapa strategi kesantunan berbahasa yang digunakan oleh mahasiswa dan dosen, yaitu: maksim kebijaksanaan, maksim kedermawanan, maksim penghargaan, maksim kerendahan hati, maksim kesetujuan, dan maksim simpati. temuan penelitian ini memberikan implikasi untuk memperkaya pengetahuan yang relevan dengan teori dan prinsip mengenai strategi kesantunan berbahasa yang efektif yang digunakan selama proses pembelajaran. kata kunci: bahasa; kesantunan; daring; pembelajaran how to cite: mantra, ida b. n., handayani, n. d., kumara, dewa g. a. g. (2022). language politeness strategies employed by lecturers and students in online learning. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 249-265. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 250-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction language is a communication system that uses arbitrary vocal symbols, which can be strengthened by accurate bodily movements (radhika, 2017). language as a communication tool is the most effective way to convey thoughts, opinions, intentions, feeling, and goals to other people. in a broad sense, language is used to deliver messages or meanings from one person to another (handayani et al., 2019). therefore, an excellent ability to use language in communication is essential. theoretically, everyone can use a language to establish good communication with others (astawa et al., 2018). in creating good communication, everyone must maintain ethics in communicating so that communication goals can be achieved. in using a language as a tool of communication, language users must also pay attention to the rules of language, both linguistic and pragmatic rules, so that the purpose of communicating can be achieved (gladkova et al., 2019). language is used to express opinions, thoughts, feeling, ideas, and arguments to other people. therefore, increasing language skills is essential to establish effective communication. in this case, effective communication can be done using several strategies, for example, using the right choice of words, polite expressions, pleasantries, and suitable sentence structures (ifechelobi, 2014). these strategies should be carried out by speakers and interlocutors so that the communication process can run well and the message to be conveyed can be adequately achieved (sari et al., 2020). in communicating, language politeness is needed so that communication becomes more effective (yeomans et al., 2019). language politeness is the main prerequisite in the communication process. language politeness is needed to maintain social relations (elhadi, 2018). language politeness is one of the parameters of language civilization. language politeness is one of the dimensions of education that needs attention to realize sustainable educational development (mantra et al., 2020). regarding classroom communication, astawa et al. (2017) emphasized that students need to consider their language choice and should be able to employ appropriate communication strategies. additionally, students should be able to communicate based on the situational and sociocultural context that applies to the campus environment (fitriyah et al., 2020). therefore, students need to understand and be able to use various forms of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 251-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license language politeness according to the sociocultural context that applies to academic interactions (anyanwu, 2016). nowadays, students are required to have better communication skills due to the shift of communication strategies through the use of technology certainly affects the communication strategies in the classroom. consequently, these changes also affect students' language politeness patterns in the learning process (shamahmudova, 2021). it indicates that politeness in language use is crucial to maintaining good social relations. during online learning, the pattern of communication between lecturers and students has changed (zarei & fathi, 2020). intensive study concerning language politeness in online learning should be carried out more comprehensively because the use of diction and sentences, and discourse are now different from face-to-face learning (kebritchi et al., 2017). there need to be more communication strategies and language politeness used in online learning. moreover, communication has also affected the distance, time in delivering the message and communication technology used during online learning (widiastuti et al., 2021). however, online learning provides some benefits for the success of learning because the learning process can be assessable to anybody. moreover, online learning activities can challenge students because using various media and applications to support the learning process (mantra et al., 2021). applications widely used in online learning are google meet, zoom, google classroom, whatsapp, and various other applications that are considered easy to use to conduct learning activities (putra et al., 2020). the change in the learning model from face-to-face to online is a new habit for educators and students (rahayu & wirza, 2020). learning patterns have changed drastically, which also changed the patterns of communication. furthermore, the changes in communication patterns cause changes in language politeness used in classroom interaction (widya, 2018). therefore, implementing language politeness during online learning became the focus of this research. it was done because, based on observations made by researchers during online learning, students tend to violate language politeness. behind the ease of communicating through technological media, lecturers and students must still follow the principles of linguistic politeness in the language (rahmi, 2020). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 252-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the speech acts used during online learning consist of several components that interact with each other to obtain an effective interaction. speech acts are one of the pragmatic concepts that produce social acts (shamahmudova, 2021). a speech act is an action that is displayed through speech in the communication process by complying with the principles of language politeness (ningsih et al., 2020). in essence, language politeness is closely related to the use of the six maxims, namely, the maxim of wisdom, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of humility, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy (kurniawan, 2018). the politeness of student speech acts in character education has values that are very important to understand the ethics or character of a student; this can be seen through the way he interacts with the teacher in the learning process (ifechelobi, 2014), especially online learning. in the learning process, politeness of speech acts dramatically influences the learning outcomes. politeness is essential in reflecting the speaker's character (nurjanah, 2017). this politeness is an educator's effort to build a close relationship with students in managing online teaching and learning activities. variations in the use of forms of politeness in language show that expressions of politeness are based on various purposes and functions (fitriah & hidayat, 2018). several previous studies have been conducted concerning language politeness used in the classroom, which revealed that language politeness is undoubtedly essential to establish effective communication (nurjanah, 2017; ifechelobi, 2014; fitriyah et al., 2020). the similarity of this research lies in the study of language politeness that uses the principle of politeness and investigates the language politeness that occurred during the learning process. furthermore, the previous studies mainly investigated maxims employed by teachers and students during face-to-face learning. however, this study focused on investigating maxims used by the lecturer and university students during online learning. moreover, this study also critically analyzed the six maxims, namely the maxim of tact, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of humility, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy. it is done to ensure that all utterances spoken during the online learning process are analyzed to comply with the indicators of the practical maxims. therefore, this research is deemed necessary because it has educative implications for students and teachers to create more effective ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 253-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license communication during learning. learning processes could be successful if each student can understand and use the language politeness. literature review politeness is a rule of behaviour determined and mutually agreed upon by a particular community, so politeness is a prerequisite for social behaviour (syafrizal & putri, 2020). the essence of language politeness is our ethics in socializing in society, or where we are, by using language and choosing good words, and paying attention to where, when, and to whom we speak because language is culture. therefore, to understand a language properly, people must understand the culture (fitriah & hidayat, 2018). some theories discuss language politeness, such as politeness theory by yule & widdowson (1996), which states that our speech will sound polite to our listeners or interlocutors if three rules must be obeyed, namely formality, aloofness, and hesitancy. these rules should be obeyed in such a way that communication becomes harmonious. politeness is a property positioned with speech. in this case, according to the interlocutor's opinion, the speaker does not exceed his rights or deny fulfilling his obligations. at the same time, respect is part of the activity that serves as a symbolic means to express appreciation regularly (sari et al., 2020). furthermore, in this study, the researchers chose to use the theory of politeness principles suggested by leech (2014). the researcher uses geoffrey leech's theory because this theory is more appropriate than the other theories related to language politeness. besides, geoffrey leech's theory also has six maxims of language politeness principles, which are usually unknowingly often applied in the learning process. leech (2014) describes the politeness principle as the following six maxims: the tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, and agreement maxim. , sympathy maxim. leech (2014) in his book states that politeness is a study of how something utterance has meaning in a situation where there is a willingness of language users to communicate. in his theory, a language situation depends on permanent factors, such as age, status, and roles. language politeness is one way to create harmony in social life. language politeness is a system of interpersonal relationships designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the contradictions and confrontations inherent in humans. this conflict avoidance is carried out by language that pleases the interlocutor. creating ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 254-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license polite language must be distinct from the context of the speech, social factors, and culture. method research design this study employed a qualitative research design with descriptive analysis. the qualitative study was merely conducted to reveal the existing natural phenomena (taylor et al., 2015). the data were in the form of language politeness strategies used by the lecturer and the students during online learning. online classroom observations were conducted to quantitative data required data for this study. this research design was considered appropriate to collect the necessary data to determine the language politeness strategies employed by lecturers and students during online learning in higher education. research site and participants this study was conducted in english education study program at a private university in bali. the participants of the study were the english lecturers and the students of the english education study program. the total number of participants was 40 students. data collection and analysis the data of this research were collected by observation method, recording technique, and field note method. the data in this study are the utterances spoken by students and lecturers. the researchers were passive participants because they were not involved in the learning activity; the researcher attended the class merely as observers. when the activity started, the researchers recorded the classroom interactions. it was done so that it could be heard repeatedly. it becomes a tool for re-checking the correctness of the data that has been previously recorded. in addition, the researcher recorded every utterance related to the purpose of the problem, namely utterances that met the principles of politeness in language, namely the maxim of tact, maxim of generosity, maxim of appreciation, the maxim of humility, the maxim of agreement, and maxim of sympathy. the analysis technique was carried out by examining all available data from several sources. then the next step was to perform data reduction, which was carried out by making abstractions. the next step was to arrange them into units and then categorize them in the next step. the final stage of this analysis was interpreting the data to manage the interim results of this research ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 255-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (hennink et al., 2020). the steps used in the data analysis of this research start with identifying, classifying, and describing data on student-lecturer language politeness in online learning communication utterances. after that, the research data were drawn to conclusions based on the results of the data analysis. the data analysis was carried out by referring to the following steps. (1) the data transcribed from the recording is then selected. data selection was made by marking the data that needed to be analyzed. the data that has been collected needs to be re-selected. it is done to separate the required and unneeded data. (2) the data that has been selected were then classified based on the problems that have been formulated. the data were classified by grouping the data based on the six maxims studied, namely the maxim of wisdom, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of humility, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy. (3) data analysis was conducted to determine the politeness principle based on the division of the six maxims. furthermore, the discussion of the data was done descriptively by explaining the amount of data obtained and the form of use of language politeness by student lecturers to provide valid and reliable findings. findings and discussion findings this study dealt with language politeness used by the students and lecturers in this online class. it examined six maxims, namely the maxim of tact, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of humility, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy. the data from this research can be presented as the following. maxim of tact the maxim of tact is that the speaker tries to speak attentively and consistently seeks to limit harm to others and increase the gain to others. the principle of the maxim of tact or the maxim of wisdom is that the speaker can reduce or minimize losses to others and increase or increase profits to other parties. the speaker using this maxim in discussion activities is characterized by speech that does not impose personal opinions, uses subtle and straightforward diction in asking questions, and answers such as sorry, thank you, and please, not to be sarcastic in asking or giving opinions. in the following speech, the maxim of wisdom is found. lecturer: well, to do the assignment today, you can ask in the whatsapp group. if you ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 256-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license need help understanding, you can ask me in the whatsapp group by writing a question or using a voice note. context: the speech event above occurred at a class meeting in an online english class. the lecturer explained that students might ask questions through the whatsapp group if the students need help understanding how to do the assignment. the principle of the maxim of tact in the speech should adhere to the principle of minimizing benefits for themselves and increasing the benefits of others when communicating. if, in speaking, people adhere to the maxim of wisdom, they will be able to avoid envy, jealousy, and other attitudes that are less polite to the interlocutor. maxim of generosity this politeness strategy is used to express a speech act to show a sense of giving in which the speaker shows sacrifice for others by reducing his personal needs. placing himself in a place that is below or in a lower position implies that the individual is caring, generous, and generous towards others. in the following speech, the generosity maxim is found. lecturer: why are so many people going in and out of zoom today? do i have to wait another 10 minutes before starting the lesson? student: i am sorry, sir. the signal is not good today, sir. there are some of my friends whose signal is still disturbed. i will tell them to join again, ok, sir? context: the speech event above occurred at the beginning of the lecture when the lecturer checked each student's attendance. the lecturer saw some students go out and enter zoom. lecturers, with complete generosity, gave the students to go back into zoom and wait another 10 minutes to start lectures. the characteristic of the generosity maxim is to minimize benefits to self and maximize cost to self. this maxim requires each speech act participant to complete the loss to himself and minimize the benefit to himself. maxim of appreciation the speech act of appreciation is fundamental in communication, especially interaction in the online learning process in the classroom. respecting other people in communication will make the communication process run well, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 257-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the communication goals can be achieved. maxim of appreciation can be found in these utterances. lecturer: wow, your answer is perfect. you can explain well”. student: thank you, sir. context: the speech event above occurred when the lecturer listened to the student's answers to find who could answer the questions correctly. in this maxim of generosity, the participants of the speech are expected to be able to respect other people. respect for others will occur when people can reduce profits for themselves and maximize profits for others. with the maxim of generosity or generosity, speech participants are encouraged to respect others. maxim of humility the humility maxim or simplicity is characterized by a person having to limit praise to himself. one should extend the shame or attack on oneself. the more he praises or tends to himself, the more disrespectful a person is. student: that is enough that we can talk about this topic. if there is something we still need to discuss, please forgive us. we apologize. context: the above speech event occurred because the presentation activity had been completed, and the speech above was spoken by one of the participants in the presentation group. in the maxim of humility, participants are encouraged to have a humble attitude. this humility is done by reducing self-praise. maxim of agreement the maxim of the agreement occurred in communicating during the learning process if students and lecturers must be willing to minimize disagreements in the interaction process. in order to comply with this maxim in discussion activities, communication should be done by giving agreement or approval to the opinions of others marked by diction, "true, correct, yes, agree". in using the maxim of agreement, speakers should be ready and willing to accept the discussion results. lecturer: how about next? can we start 30 minutes early? there are many things we need to discuss. is it possible? student: yes, sir. lecturer: can i give me the module now so you can study it before the lecture starts? student: yes, sir, thank you. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 258-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license context: the above speech event occurred at the end of the lecture. lecturers and students are discussing lectures next week to start 30 minutes early because there was much material to be discussed. in the maxim of agreement, it is hoped that the speech participants can build consensus when speaking. participants in speech acts are not allowed to behead or directly refute the other party's words. maxim of sympathy sympathy speech acts are needed in communicating in class because using speech that contains sympathy makes the communication process more polite and smooth. the maxim of sympathy is that in every act of speaking, there must be an effort to strengthen mutual sympathy and limit hatred or antipathy between one party and another. lecturer: hopefully, all are in good health. the lectures will be held online from today. you may experience difficulties because this lecture system is new to all of us. besides that, like your parents, who have a low economy, it will be challenging too. in addition, you also have to pay for the internet network to attend lectures. context: the speech event above occurred when lecturers shared their opinions because of the online lecture system being implemented at the time, so the lecturer gave his opinion on this matter. in maxim of sympathy, it appeals to the speech participants to maximize the attitude of sympathy between humans in speaking. people who are cynical towards other parties will be considered as people who do not know polite manners. discussion based on the data analysis, the maxim of tact was used when the lecturers tried to give students the freedom to ask how to do assignments and ask things that they did not yet understand by students by writing questions or sending voice notes in the whatsapp group. by saying, “well, to do the assignment today, you can ask in the whatsapp group. if you do not understand, you can ask me in the whatsapp group by writing a question or using a voice note”. it showed the lecturer was using a maxim of tact. in the speech, the lecturer showed very wise politeness, allowing students to ask questions through the whatsapp group. based on the data related to the maxim of generosity, it was found that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 259-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license one of the students explained the weak signal at that time so that his friends left and entered zoom. speech act used by the student to answer the lecturer's speech, “i am sorry, sir, it seems the signal is not good today, sir. there are some of my friends whose signal is still disturbed. i will tell them to join again, ok sir?” aims to help his friends who still had a problem with internet network. the actions taken by this student can be said to help their friends who are in trouble joining the zoom room. therefore, the utterances of students and lecturers above are classified as generosity maxim. the principle of the maxim of generosity is that the speaker may reduce the profit for himself and increase the sacrifice for himself (kurniawan, 2018). the speaker who uses this maxim in discussion activities is marked by helping others when they have difficulty explaining their opinions, offering something to the interlocutor, and allowing others to express their opinion. based on the lecture's speech related to the maxim of appreciation as presented in the findings above, it can be seen that the lecturer said, “your answer is perfect. you can explain well," which is one form of direct speech about appreciation. one form of appreciation is a word of praise, like very good, like the words in the lecturer's speech above. it can be concluded that the data meet the principle of politeness maxim of appreciation or praise. the maxim of appreciation is characterized by politeness in language, namely conveying pleasant things or compliments to the speech partner and not offending the speech partner. the principle of the maxim of appreciation is that the speaker can reduce criticism of others and add praise to others (widya, 2018). compliance with this maxim in discussion activities is marked by appreciation when other people answer or refute opinions, not insinuating the interlocutor, being able to respect other people's opinions, not demeaning people, and saying "thank you" when getting suggestions. based on the data related to the maxim of humility, it was found that the lecturer met the criteria of the maxim of humility. it can be seen when the students apologized if there was material that had not been presented due to their limited ability; the students showed their humility. because the topic of the material presented is quite broad, the student apologized if there was something that had not been presented. besides that, the student was also aware of many things that must be discussed related to the topic presented; therefore, by apologizing, this student used the humility maxim as a politeness strategy (marsih, 2010). the apologies ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 260-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license spoken by students need to be conveyed because the presentation activities could never be perfect. for this reason, students felt they had to apologize for the lack of their group presentation. thus, the speech above can be categorized as the maxim of humility because it used the politeness marker „please‟. the word „please‟ can also be categorized as a politeness marker in communication. based on the data related to the maxim of agreement, it was found that the lecturer agreed with the students to start 30 minutes earlier because there was much material to discuss. the speech acts used by the lecturers were to obtain approval for the inaccuracy that might occur at the next meeting. other reasons also follow this statement. after hearing the lecturer, the students agreed with the lecturer's speech by answering, "yes, sir". in another speech, the lecturer said, "can i give me the module now so you can study it before the lecture starts?” then the student answered, "yes, sir, thank you". this answer showed that it was agreed that the lecturer sent the module to the whatsapp group so that discussions at the next meeting became easier because students could study the module first before the next meeting. in the data above, it can be seen that lecturers and students meet the criteria for the maxim of agreement. the principle of the maxim of agreement is that the speaker can reduce the discrepancy between himself and others and increase the correspondence between himself and others (fitriyah et al., 2020). the speakers use this maxim to maintain politeness in using the language to foster smooth and effective communication. maxim of sympathy was found in the speech when the lecturer explained his concerns about students‟ difficulty learning online because they had to use an internet connection. the lecturer also expressed sympathy because students had to pay for the internet network to attend lectures. moreover, the lecturer felt that students' parents would also experience economic difficulties during the covid-19 pandemic. this lecturer's utterance can be classified as the maxim of sympathy. the principle of the maxim of sympathy is that the speech participants should increase their sympathy with others and reduce their antipathy toward others (fitriyah et al., 2020). this maxim is fundamental to establishing conducive communication and creating a caring atmosphere in communication situations. politeness is a behaviour that is expressed in a good or ethical. politeness is a cultural phenomenon, so what is considered polite by one culture ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 261-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license may not be the case in other cultures (mantra & kumara, 2018). destination politeness, including language politeness, is to make a fun interacting atmosphere. language politeness can be done through the speech actor obeying the polite principle of polite language that applies in the community that uses that language. so, it is expected that speech actors do not ignore the principle of courtesy. it is to maintain a good relationship with his partner. thus, in communicating, it is necessary to use polite speech acts so that the communication process occurs smoothly; then, the sender and recipient of the message must understand each other's linguistic rules and social norms in communicating. language politeness is a way of behaving in a community that agrees upon that as a rule of social behaviour. politeness can not only be seen from the speaker's side but also must pay attention to the impression of the interlocutor who listens to what the speaker is saying. a language expressed in speech will feel more polite if the speaker uses proper politeness. likewise, in the campus environment, students are taught and required to be able to use language under linguistic rules or norms. therefore, education is one of the forums for forming language politeness. the ability to use language orally under linguistic rules or norms will establish good and pleasant communication relationships. good communication relations are expected between students and students, students with students, lecturers, and all language users in the campus environment. based on the findings described above, this study's implication can be formulated as the following. the use of language politeness in the classroom provided a conducive learning atmosphere. moreover, students and lecturers feel highly comfortable communicating during the learning activities because of the appropriateness of language politeness used by students and the lecturer. therefore, compliance with the language principles must be considered to attain a harmonious relationship between students and lecturers. during the teaching and learning activities, especially in university, harmonious communication between lecturers and students should be well maintained to achieve the learning objective. consequently, a good understanding of the principles of language politeness certainly provides beneficial implications for the success of teaching and learning processes. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 262-265 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27069 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusions and suggestion language politeness is reflected in the procedures for communicating through verbal signs or language procedures. when people communicate, they are subject to cultural norms, not just conveying the ideas they have in mind. language procedures must be under the cultural elements that exist in the society in which they live and the use of a language in communication. the participants must consider language procedures for smooth communication. therefore, the problem of language procedures must get attention, especially in teaching and learning the language. knowing the language procedures helps people better understand the messages conveyed in communication. in this study, it was found that there are six maxims used in online learning, namely, the maxim of tact, the maxim of generosity, the maxim of appreciation, the maxim of humility, the maxim of agreement, and the maxim of sympathy. this study was conducted during online learning. therefore, considering the differences between face-to-face and online learning, this study was limited to analyzing the spoken discourses that occurred during the online learning process. consequently, this study's results should be carefully considered for future research. furthermore, this study suggests that other researchers should conduct a further intensive study to reveal further findings related to language politeness in the learning process. references anyanwu, e. c. 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(2020). a review of the literature on integration of whatsapp into english language classroom. journal of humanities and social sciences research, 2(2), 23–28. https://doi.org/10.37534/bp.jhss r.2020.v2.n2.id1075.p23. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 227-248 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee student related factors affecting afghan efl undergraduates’ speaking skill hazrat usman mashwani*, siti maftuhah damio sayed jamaluddin afghani university, afghanistan (usman.kunar@gmail.com) received: 30th june 2022; revised: 18th october 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract speaking skill is one of the most important skills of the four language skills. it is believed as an indicator of competency in a language. nazara (2011) considers speaking skill as an essential skill of the four language skills and suggests that efl students have to master the speaking skill. unfortunately, the majority of afghan efl undergraduates are facing issues in the speaking skill. most of afghan undergraduate efl learners are good in reading and writing but they are not accurate and fluent in oral communication (zia and sulan, 2015). hence, this study was conducted to particularly investigate student-related factors that affect students’ speaking skill. a mixed-method approach was used for the study. data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. the data collected through questionnaires was analyzed in spss whereas the data collected through interviews was thematically analysed. a total of 90 students were purposively selected and participated in the study. the findings show that psychological factors and weak background of english language in the part of students were some of the factors that impede students speaking skill. it is hoped that the findings of the current study will help teachers as well as educators to be attentive toward students-related responsibilities to reduce the factors that affect students' speaking skill. key words: afghan efl undergraduates; speaking skill; student-related factors abstrak keterampilan berbicara merupakan salah satu keterampilan terpenting dari empat keterampilan berbahasa. hal ini diyakini sebagai indikator kompetensi dalam suatu bahasa. nazara (2011) menganggap keterampilan berbicara sebagai keterampilan penting dari empat keterampilan bahasa dan menyarankan bahwa siswa efl harus menguasai keterampilan berbicara. sayangnya, mayoritas sarjana efl afghanistan menghadapi masalah dalam keterampilan berbicara. sebagian besar pelajar efl sarjana afghanistan pandai membaca dan menulis tetapi mereka tidak akurat dan lancar dalam komunikasi lisan (zia dan sulan, 2015). oleh karena itu, penelitian ini dilakukan untuk secara khusus menyelidiki faktor-faktor yang berhubungan dengan siswa yang mempengaruhi keterampilan berbicara siswa. pendekatan metode campuran digunakan untuk penelitian ini. pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui kuesioner dan wawancara. data yang dikumpulkan melalui kuesioner dianalisis dengan spss sedangkan data yang dikumpulkan melalui wawancara dianalisis secara tematik. sebanyak 90 siswa dipilih secara purposive dan berpartisipasi dalam penelitian ini. temuan menunjukkan bahwa faktor psikologis dan latar belakang bahasa inggris yang lemah di pihak siswa adalah beberapa faktor yang menghambat keterampilan berbicara siswa. diharapkan temuan dari penelitian ini akan membantu guru serta pendidik untuk memperhatikan tanggung jawab terkait siswa untuk mengurangi faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi keterampilan berbicara siswa. kata kunci: sarjana efl afghanistan; keterampilan berbicara; faktor yang berhubungan dengan siswa how to cite: mashwani, hazrat u., damio, siti m. (2022). student related factors affecting afghan efl undergraduates’ speaking skill. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 227-248-210. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 228-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction speaking is measured as one of the most essential skills of the four skills listening, speaking, reading, and writingof a language. generally, speaking skill is believed as an indicator of language competency i.e. someone who is good in speaking skill of a language is considered competent in that language. speaking skill is the most important skill and one has to master in the speaking skill of a language while learning it as a foreign or second language because students are mostly jugged on their speaking skill in real life situation (rao, 2019). this is supported by hedge (2001), who state that it is speaking skill that helps in judging one's language competency and helps to make an impression of his/her ability in that particular language. this is further supported by mazouzi (2013), who believes that learning a language means to be able to speak that language. speaking skill is considered the most important and essential skill to be mastered in foreign language teaching/learning and this is why majority of elt seminars and conferences are focusing on speaking skill and significant work has been constantly publishing as a course book, audios, and videos on speaking skill (nazara, 2011). however, afghan efl undergraduates are not up to the mark in this important language skill. afghan efl undergraduates are good in the reading, writing, and listening of english language, but they face issues while speaking. most of the afghan undergraduates face problems while they communicate in english and this is because of the anxiety they have while participating in classroom speaking activities (zia and sulan, 2015). the aim of this study is to examine the possible student related factors that affect afghan efl undergraduates' speaking skill. the objectives of the research are (1) to investigate students’ attitudes towards english language, (2) to investigate psychological factors that hinders students’ speaking skill, and (3) to investigate students’ abilities and background knowledge of english language. the research questions are (1) what are the students’ attitudes towards english language? (2) what are the psychological factors that hinders students’ speaking skill? (3) what are students’ abilities and background knowledge of english language? the role of students is equally important in learning and improving their speaking skill. however, there are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 229-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license some issues on the part of the students that affect their speaking skill. the most significant issue on the part of students is the psychological factors. according to cabe and selatan (2012), psychological factors like fear of making mistakes, lack of confidence, shyness, anxiety, and lack of motivation are some of the leading issues that hinder students' speaking skill. another issue with the students might be their learning style, i.e., the method or approach the teacher uses in the speaking class may not be suitable for them. learning styles refer to a different characteristic of the learners, i.e., visual, auditory, extrovert and introvert learners. learning styles, in fact, categorize learners on the basis of their processing capabilities, which result in diverse learning necessities (kuhn, 2009). speaking skill is to use a language for a purpose (baker and watsrup, 2003). to convey ideas, opinions, feelings, and thoughts to others by talking is speaking (oxford advanced dictionary, 2015). a speaker has to use his psychological, physiological, and physical abilities to speak properly. every skill of a language is essential, but speaking has got the status that it is always believed to be the indicator of competency in a language. it provides the speaker with the ability to share his/her ideas in various contexts (chaney and burk, 1998). this is backed by huebner (1960), who states that it is speaking skill which one can use in daily life communication. studies have shown a number of factors that affect speaking skill. the major factors being identified are inadequate exposure to english language (mezrigui, 2011; shteiwi and hamuda, 2016 and tuan and mai, 2015). similarly, psychological factor is also one of the main factors that hamper students speaking skill (juhana, 2012). students could not perform well in the speaking skill because they feel fear and pressure of friends lest they make any mistake which will surely be accompanied by friends laugh on them. this is supported by afshar and asakereh's study (2016), who found that the speaking skill of efl students figure 1 conceptual framework students-related factors affecting afghan efl undergraduates’ speaking skill dependent variable independent variable psychological factors learning interest learning styles studentrelated factors ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 230-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is greatly affected by psychological factor and it damages students’ improvement in speaking skill. some factors are closely related to the students, which affect their speaking skill. one of the main factors that affect students’ speaking skill is psychological factors. a study carried by cabe and selatan (2012) identified psychological factors that hinder students from speaking and they found that psychological factors like fear of making mistakes, lack of confidence, shyness, speaking anxiety and lack of motivation were the main factors that affect students' in-class speaking of english. savaşçı (2014) carried research to explore the factors affecting students’ reluctance in oral communication and found the main factors as anxiety, the teacher being in the class, classroom conditions, students' fear of making a mistake while speaking, and some students who were not responding positively in the conversation activities. a student can experience different psychological factors in the speaking class because of several factors, which may be the environment, the teacher, the activities, the setting or even him/herself. of these, some are anxiety, lack of motivation, lack of selfconfidence, shyness, lack of interest, learning styles, and so on (bourezzane, 2015). the psychological factors are presented in the following sections. many factors affect students' speaking skill, but anxiety is one of the factors that affects speaking skill to a great extent. oxford (1999) explains that it is a learner's fear or apprehension that comes into being when they speak the language. it is a fact that every human being experiences anxiety mostly at the initial phase of their activities in various spheres and reduces in time (bourezzane, 2015). int the same way, students’ motivation plays a significant role in the success or failure of the process of learning, no matter if it is a second language or foreign language learning (bourezzane, 2015). researchers, as well as teachers, opine that it is the motivation that is the most crucial factor which affects the tempo of the success of the second or foreign language. (dörnyei, 1998). self-confidence is another aspect that contributes to the success of students in speaking skill. selfconfidence, to put it simply, is the positive thinking and right image of oneself. in esl and efl confidence is one of the crucial elements. selfconfidence boosts a person to perform well in the language even with weak linguistic competence and feels free with no worry of being ridiculous or ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 231-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license any sort of negative thinking of making mistakes (bourezzane, 2015). the fear of making mistakes also affects students’ speaking skill. to err is human, but sometimes the thought of making mistakes becomes dominant and leaves the learner with great trouble. it is a kind of pessimism, where the learner sees the negative angle in every stance. previous research (afshar & asakereh, 2016; juhana, 2012) have proven that the fear of making a mistake affect speaking skill. shyness is another factor that affects speaking skill. manning and ray (1993) claimed that shyness is not a state that permanently affects people. an example is that some people on one occasion are shy but not on the other. similarly, some people are shy for most of the time. additionally, lack of interest is affecting students’ performance. it is known that interest plays a vital role in the learning process. most of the time learners are not interested in language learning, but they are compelled by others which results in failure in the learning of a specific language. according to lehman and schraw (2009), it is interest that increases motivation, engagement, and persistence. therefore, it can be deduced that it is the lack of interest that reduces motivation, engagement, and perseverance which are considered the most critical aspects of esl/efl learning practice. furthermore, every human being is born with innate learning styles. these learning styles make learners different from each other. kuhn (2009) explains that "learning styles are the distinctions among individuals’ processing capabilities that result in very different learning necessities" (p.575). learning styles cover various form, i.e., learning preferences like visual vs auditory learners, personality traits like extroverts vs introverts learners and cognitive styles like field dependence vs field independence. similarly, learning preferences of students have a role in students’ successes. oxford (2001) defines learning preferences as physical, perceptual ways with which the student is at ease and makes clear four significant areas of learning preferences. the learner who is visual needs some stimuli with speaking activities and speaking activities without visual support will be very difficult for them and will decrease their chances of participation in such activities. on the other hand, those learners who are auditory are very much at ease with the simple classroom. it means that classroom interactions in role play, discussion, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 232-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and similar other activities motivate them. additionally, audiotaped conversations and reading aloud conversations are helpful for their stimulation to participate in speaking classroom activities. in contrast, kinesthetic and tactile learners love those activities where they can move like role plays and language games. they would not like to just sit for an hour. according to dörnyei (2005, p.141), "the various sensory preferences do not eliminate each other, and some learners are both auditory and visual." likewise, students personality traits have a relationship with their speaking performance. personality traits refer to the psychological tendencies and behaviours of an individual (hampson, 2012). previous research shows the relationship between learners’ personality traits and their oral presentation in the intended language. four categories of personality have been discovered and can be seen in the learning process of which extroversion and introversion are the most explored variables in personality traits. these two terms are opposite. in literature, there is no agreement about the effects of personality styles on speaking. moreover, affective learning strategies can help students to better perform in speaking activities. affective learning strategies are strategies which can be used by esl/efl learners in improving progress and especially increasing proficiency in speaking (oxford, 2001). even though, psychological factors which undoubtedly affect efl undergraduates’ speaking skill in classroom activities, students can overcome these problems with the help of effective learning strategies. finally, students have to help themselves and enjoy in the speaking activities. hidayat and herawati (2012) carried a study on factors influencing students’ speaking fluency and found that the students were successful in speaking because they were enjoying the learning process. secondly, they had great self-motivation and also, they had support from other people around them. method research design mixed method approach has been used for the study to collect in depth data. mixed method is used to see in detail the factors that hamper students’ speaking skill. mixed method research provides the researcher with the indepth understanding of the research issue (fraenkel, wallen & hyun, 2016). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 233-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research site and participants the research has been conducted at the english department of sayed jamaluddin afghani university. the university is located in the city of asadabad, kunar, afghanistan. it is a public university and currently offers admission in 21 degree programs under five faculties. 190 students are currently studying their degree program at the department of english in four different levels (classes). so, the population of the study comprise of 190 students. of 190 students, 50 students from senior level (third year undergraduate) and 40 students from junior level (fourth year undergraduate) are purposively selected as the sample of the study. "in purposively sampling the researchers do not simply study whoever is available but rather use their judgment to select a sample that they believe, based on prior information, will provide the data they need" (fraenkel et al., 2016, p.101). data collection and analysis two instruments i.e. questionnaire and interviews were used as data collection instruments for the study. questionnaire is the broadly used data collection instrument in social science that provides the researcher with systematic data (parajuli, 2004). the researcher has adopted the questionnaire from pal (2015) and then adapted to suit the study. interview as a data collection instrument provide the researcher with in-depth insights (kendall, 2008). the data collected with interviews helps in the validation of data being collected through questionnaire. the interviews were conducted after data has been collected through questionnaires. the quantitative data was analysed through spss version 20 and qualitative data was analysed thematically. thematic analysis classifies data into related themes (patterns) from the data (alhojailan, 2012). the privacy of the participants was kept by assigning a code name to each interviewer. findings and discussion findings the results of the questionnaire students’ attitudes toward english language the following responses are about the students’ attitudes toward the english language. the respondents were required to provide the information about the attitudes they hold toward english language. the results are shown in table 1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 234-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1. the frequency and percentage of student attitude toward english language no items alternatives total never rarely sometimes usually always 1 i like to speak in english fre. 0 0 0 3 87 90 % 0 0 0 3.3 96.7 100 2 i speak in english inside the classroom fre. 0 15 75 0 0 90 % 0 16.7 83.3 0 0 100 3 i actively participate in the speaking class fre. 0 0 0 57 33 90 % 0 0 0 63.3 36.7 100 4 i watch english tv programs fre. 56 31 3 0 0 90 % 62.2 34.4 3.3 0 0 100 5 i listen to english radio programs fre. 0 78 12 0 0 90 % 0 86.7 13.3 0 0 100 6 i speak english fluently with my english teacher fre. 49 41 0 0 0 90 % 54.4 45.6 0 0 0 100 7 i speak english fluently with my classmates fre. 0 0 37 53 0 90 % 0 0 41.1 58.9 0 100 8 i speak english fluently in front of the audience fre. 0 0 42 48 0 90 % 0 0 46.7 53.3 0 100 9 i try to find out how to improve my english accent fre. 0 0 0 19 71 90 % 0 0 0 21.1 78.9 100 10 i do not have negative attitude towards the culture of native speakers of english fre. 0 3 36 40 11 90 % 0 3.3 40 44.4 12.2 100 according to table 1, when the students were asked about their attitude towards speaking in english, the majority of them (87) replied that they like to speak in english (96.7%), while (3) students replied usually (3.3%). to question no.2, which asked the students about the frequency of speaking english inside the classroom, the majority of them (75) replied that they sometimes speak english inside the classroom (83.3%), while (15) students replied that they rarely speak english inside the classroom (16.7%). to question no. three which asked the students about their participation in speaking class; the majority of the students (57) replied that they usually participate actively in the speaking class (63.3%), while (33) students replied that they always participate actively in the speaking class (36.7%). similarly, to question no.4 which asked the students about watching english programs on television; majority of the students (56) replied that they never watch english programs on television (62.2%), 31 students replied that they rarely watch english programs on television (34.3%), while 3 persons replied that they sometimes ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 235-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license watch english programs on television (3.3%). to question no.5 which asked the students about listening to english programs on the radio; the majority of the students (78) replied that rarely listen to english programs on the radio (86.7%), while (12) students replied that they sometimes listen to english programs on the radio (13.3%). to question no. 6 which asked the students about their fluency of english speaking with their teacher; the majority of them (49) replied that they never speak fluently with their english teacher (54.4%), while 41 students replied that they rarely speak fluently with their english teacher (45.6%). to question no. seven which asked the students about their english-speaking fluency with their classmates; the majority of them (53) replied that they usually speak fluent english with their classmates (58.9%), while 37 students replied that they sometimes speak fluent english with their classmates (41.1%). in the same way, question no.8 which asked the students about their english speaking fluency in front of the audience shows that the majority of them (48) usually speak fluent english in front of the audience (53.3%), while 42 students replied that they sometimes speak fluent english in front of the audience (46.7%). to question no.9 which asked about the student's efforts to improve their english accent; the majority of them (71) replied that they always try to improve their english accent (78.9%), while 19 students replied that they usually try to improve their english accent (21.1%). to question no.10 which asked about the attitude of the students towards the culture of native speakers of english; majority of the students (40) replied that they rarely have negative attitude towards the culture of the native speakers of english (44.4%), 36 students replied that they sometimes have negative attitudes towards the culture of the native speakers of english (40%), 11 students replied that they never have negative attitudes towards the culture of the native speakers, while 3 students replied that they usually have negative attitudes towards the culture of the native speakers (3.3%). psychological factors that hinder students’ speaking skill according to table 2, question no.11 asked about the fear of the students while starting a conversation in english; the majority of them (73) replied that they are always afraid to start a conversation in english (81.1%), while 17 students replied that sometimes afraid of starting a conversation in english (18.9%). question no.12 which asked the students about their feel of shyness while speaking in english; the majority ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 236-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of them (48) replied that they sometimes feel shyness while speaking in english (53.3%), while 42 students replied that they rarely feel shyness while speaking in english (46.7%). question no. 13 which asked about the confidence of the students when speaking english majority of the students (62) replied that they sometimes feel confident when speaking english (68.9%), 24 students replied that usually feel confident when speaking english (26.7%), 3 students replied that they rarely feel confident while speaking in english (3.3%), while 1 student replied that he always feel confident when speaking in english (1.1%). table 2.the frequency and percentage of psychological factors that hinder students' speaking skill . no alternatives total my english teacher: never rarely sometimes usually always 11 i am not afraid of starting a conversation in english fre. 73 0 17 0 0 90 % 81.1 0 18.9 0 0 100 12 i do not feel shy when speaking english fre. 0 0 48 42 0 90 % 0 0 53.3 46.7 0 100 13 i feel self-confident when speaking english fre. 0 3 62 24 1 90 % 0 3.3 68.9 26.7 1.1 100 14 i do not fear making mistakes while speaking in english fre. 2 67 17 4 0 90 % 2.2 74.4 18.9 4.4 0 100 15 i do not feel nervous while someone is speaking english to me fre. 0 0 28 57 5 90 % 0 0 31.1 63.3 5.6 100 16 i do not get nervous when speaking english in class fre. 5 62 19 4 0 90 % 5.6 68.9 21.1 4.4 0 100 17 i feel sure and relaxed when speaking english fre. 31 54 5 0 0 90 % 34.4 60 5.6 0 0 100 18 i don’t fear speaking english in public places fre. 14 62 14 0 0 90 % 15.6 68.9 15.6 0 0 100 19 i am not in constant fear of forgetting my speech fre. 1 15 66 8 0 90 % 1.1 16.7 73.3 8.9 0 100 20 i don’t feel confused when i miss a word while speaking english in speaking class fre. 0 13 65 11 1 90 % 0 14.4 72.2 12.2 1.1 100 21 i do not have fear speaking english with native speakers fre. 13 76 0 1 0 90 % 14.4 84.4 0 1.1 0 100 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 237-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license similarly, question no. 14 which asked the students about their fear of making mistakes while speaking in english; majority of the students (67) replied that they rarely feel fear of making mistakes while speaking in english (74.4%), 17 students replied that they sometimes feel fear of making a mistake while speaking in english (18.9%), 4 students replied that they usually feel fear while speaking in english (4.4%), while 2 students replied that they never feel fear of making mistakes while speaking in english (2.2%). question no.15 which asked about the students' nervousness while someone is speaking english to them; majority of them (57) students replied that they rarely become nervous when someone is speaking english to them (63.3%), 28 students replied that they sometimes become nervous when someone is speaking in english to them (31.1%), while 5 students replied that they never feel nervous when someone is speaking english to them (5.6%). likewise, question no.16 which asked the students about their nervousness when speaking english in the class; the majority of the students (62) replied that they usually get nervous when speaking english in the class (68.9%), 19 students replied that they sometimes get nervous when speaking english in the class (21.1%), 5 students replied that they always get nervous when speaking english in the class (5.6%), while 4 students replied that they rarely get nervous when speaking english in the class (4.4%). question no.17 which asked about the feeling of sureness and relaxation while speaking english; the majority of the students (54) replied that they rarely feel sure and relaxed when speaking english (60%), 31 students replied that they never feel sure and relaxed when speaking english (34.4%), while 5 students replied that they sometimes feel sure and relaxed when speaking english (5.6%). question no. 18 which asked the students about their fear when speaking in public places; the majority of the students (62) replied that usually feel fear when speaking english in public places (68.9%), 14 students replied that they sometimes feel fear when speaking english in public places (15.6%), while 14 students replied that they always feel fear when speaking english in public places (15.6%). question no.19 which asked the students about their fear of forgetting speech; the majority of the students (66) students replied that they sometimes feel fear of forgetting speech (73.3%), 15 students replied that usually feel fear of forgetting speech (16.7%), 8 students replied that they rarely feel fear of forgetting speech (8.9%), while 1 student replied that he always feel fear of forgetting the speech (1.1%). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 238-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license similarly, question no. 20 which asked about the confusion of the students when they miss a word while speaking in english speaking class; the majority of the students (65) replied that they sometimes feel confused when they miss a word while speaking english in speaking class (72.2%), 13 students replied that they usually feel confused when they miss a word while speaking english in speaking class (14.4%), 11 students replied that they rarely feel confused when they miss a word while speaking english in speaking class (12.2%), while 1 student replied that he never feel confused when speaking english in speaking class (1.1%). question no.21 which asked about the fear of the students when speaking to native speakers; the majority of the students (76) replied that they usually feel fear when speaking to native speakers (84.4%), 13 students replied that they always feel fear when speaking to native speakers (14.4 %), while 1 student replied that he rarely feel fear when speaking to native speakers (1.1%). students’ abilities and background knowledge of english language according to table 3, question no. 22 asked about expressing a point of view in english without pashto translation; the majority of the students (53) replied that they sometimes could express their point of view in english without pashto translation (58.9%), while 37 students replied that they rarely express their point of view in english without pashto translation (41.1%). question no.23 which asked about the students preference of speaking in their mother tongue; the majority of the students (49) replied that usually prefer mother tongue for speaking (54.4%), 26 students replied that they always prefer their mother tongue for speaking (28.9%), 14 students replied that they sometimes prefer to mother tongue for speaking (15.6%), while (1) student replied that he rarely prefer to speak in mother tongue (1.1%). question no.24 asked about the students comprehension of what the other person is saying in english; the majority of the students (54) replied that they usually find it easy to comprehend what the other person is saying in english (60%), 35 students replied that they always find it easy to comprehend what the other person is saying in english (38.9%), while 1 student replied that he sometimes find it easy to comprehend what the other person is saying in english (1.1%). question no.25 which asked the students about their knowledge of grammar to construct errors free sentences when speaking english; the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 239-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license majority of the students (44) replied that they sometimes construct errors free sentences when speaking english (48.9%), 35 students replied that rarely construct errors free sentences when speaking english (38.9%), 9 students replied that they usually construct errors free sentences when speaking english (10%), while 2 students replied that they always construct errors free sentences when speaking english (2.2%). table 3. the frequency and percentage of student's abilities and background knowledge of english language no items alternatives total never rarely sometimes usually always 22 i can express my point of view in english without pashto translation fre. 0 37 53 0 0 90 % 0 41.1 58.9 0 0 100 23 i do not prefer to speak in my mother tongue fre. 26 49 14 1 0 90 % 28.9 54.4 15.6 1.1 0 100 24 i find it easy to comprehend what the other person is saying in english fre. 0 0 1 54 35 90 % 0 0 1.1 60 38.9 100 25 i have good knowledge of english grammar that helps me to construct errors free sentences when speaking english fre. 0 35 44 9 2 90 % 0 38.9 48.9 10 2.2 100 26 i have good knowledge of english vocabulary that can let me easily express my ideas when speaking english fre. 0 0 16 45 29 90 % 0 0 17.8 50 32.2 100 27 i do not make a lot of pauses when i speak in english fre. 0 60 25 5 0 90 % 0 66.7 27.8 5.6 0 100 28 when i am speaking in english, i do not first construct my message in my mother tongue and then to translate it into english wordby-word fre. 38 52 0 0 0 90 % 42.2 57.8 0 0 0 100 likewise, question no.26 which asked students about their knowledge of english vocabulary that can let them easily express their ideas when speaking english; the majority of the students (45) replied that usually they ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 240-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license have vocabulary that can easily let them to easily express their ideas when speaking english (50%), 29 students replied that always have vocabulary that can let them to easily express their ideas when speaking english (32.2%), while 16 students replied that sometimes have vocabulary that can let them to easily express their ideas when speaking english (17.8%). question no. 27 which asked about the pauses students make when speaking in english; the majority of the students (60) replied that they usually make pauses when speaking in english (66.7%), 25 students replied that they sometimes make pauses when speaking in english (27.8%), while 5 students replied that they rarely make pauses when speaking in english (5.6%). question no.28 which asked the students about the construction of message in mother tongue and then translating it into english word-byword; the majority of the students (52) replied that they usually construct the message in their mother tongue and then translates it into english word by word (57.8%), while 38 student replied that they always construct their message in their mother tongue and then translates it into english word by word (42.2%). the findings of the interviews the students' attitudes towards english speaking class pertaining to the students' attitudes towards the speaking class; the majority (y3s1, y3s2, y3s3, y3s4, y3s5, y4s1, y4s3, y4s4) of the students replied that they like their english-speaking class. one student (y4s1) elaborated that when he enrolled in the university, he felt fear and shyness in the speaking class and he explained that he felt that way because he thought that the teacher will bring him to the front of the class but as they did a few practical activities in the speaking class, now he feels very comfortable in the speaking class and is very interested in the speaking class as compared to other classes. he likes and wishes to speak for more extended time in the class. the majority of the students said that they like the english-speaking class because they want to practice their vocabulary in the speaking class. they are interested in the speaking class as it seems the only class to all the students that will improve their english speaking. the following excerpts are some of the examples of learners' responses to the question regarding their attitudes towards the speaking class and the students' stances towards it. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 241-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license y3s3: "i like my speaking class, and i myself have chosen this field. i like to learn and speak the english language as it is an international language and is spoken everywhere". (line 17-19) y4s3: "i feel very good in my speaking class. it is an international language but regardless of the factor whether a language is international or not but one should feel good about it otherwise one will not be able to learn it". (line 23-25) the psychological factors regarding their confidence, while speaking in english; the students' responses were entirely different from each other. some students said that they are confident while others said that they are not as confident as it should be for an english major student. they explained their stance that they have neither spoke nor listen to native speakers, so while speaking in english, they usually think of their vocabulary and sentences that whether they are right or wrong. they are not sure of their vocabulary and pronunciation that is why they are not so confident when speaking in english. the following excerpts are some of the examples of learners' responses to the question regarding their confidence while speaking in english and the students' stances towards it. y3s4: "i feel very confident when i speak in english. i have studied english for three years in the university, in the courses and also taught english in various courses that is why i am confident in my english". (line 22-24) y4s4: "i should say my confidence level is about 30% while i speak english. because we do not have strong background in english and also it is not our own language". (line 23-25) relating to the fear of making mistakes while speaking in english; the majority (y3s1, y3s2, y3s3, y3s5, y4s1, y4s2, y4s5) of students said that they feel the fear of making mistakes while speaking in english. they explained that they feel the fear of making mistakes because it is not their native language and they never have the chance to listen or speak to a native speaker. they are unsure about their english vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar and that is why every time they speak english, they feel the fear of making mistakes. they are afraid because if they make any mistake people will laugh at them. the following excerpts are some of the examples of learners' responses to the question regarding their confidence ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 242-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license while speaking in english and the students' stances towards it. y3s5: "usually, i have the fear of making mistakes in speaking english. i feel fear because if we make mistakes people will laugh on us". (line 23-24) y4s5: "yes, i feel a little bit of fear of making mistakes. we feel fear because it is not our mother tongue and when one talk in the language of others, definitely they will feel the fear of making mistakes". (line 28-30) discussion the primary objective of the study is to carefully examine the factors that affect the students' speaking skill of afghan universities especially, at the university of sayed jamaluddin afghani, kunar. the study investigated the factors that affect students speaking skill in the part of the students. three research questions were used as the basis for this study: 1) what are the attitudes of afghan efl undergraduates toward english language? 2) what are the psychological factors that hinder afghan efl undergraduates speaking skill? 3) what are the abilities and background knowledge of afghan efl undergraduates? a questionnaire and interview were the primary tools in which data were collected. the data of questionnaire was categorized and analysed quantitatively using spss version 20 and the data collected through interviews was qualitatively analysed by giving the thematic description. the simple narrative description was used for the analysis. based on the research questions the discussion of research finding is presented next. students’ attitudes toward english language the first research question in this study is intended to explore the attitudes of afghan efl undergraduates toward english language. the attitudes of afghan efl undergraduates were identified from the students' responses to the questionnaire and interview protocol. the findings are discussed from the perspective of students’ responses. based on the findings presented in table 1 the students have a positive attitude towards learning and speaking english. it was also proven by their interview responses that they are very motivated to learn and speak english. y3s3: "i like my speaking class, and i myself have chosen this field. i like to learn and speak the english language as it is an international ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 243-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license language and is spoken everywhere". (line 17-19) y4s3: "i feel very good in my speaking class. it is an international language but regardless of the factor whether a language is international or not but one should feel good about it otherwise one will not be able to learn it". (line 23-25) according to bourezzane (2015), motivation plays a significant role in the success or failure of the process of learning, no matter if it is second language or foreign language learning. however, table 1 (in section 4) also revealed that students sometimes speak english inside the classroom. similarly, according to balasree et al., (2017), listening to english radio and tv plays a vital role in improving listening skill and so speaking skill. however, the student's responses revealed that they rarely watch english tv and listen to radio programs. student psychological factors based on the finding presented in table 2, the students are usually afraid of english conversations. they feel shy and do not feel confident when speaking in english. they usually have a fear of making mistakes while speaking in english. similarly, they usually feel nervous and feel fear when speaking english in class and public places. these statements were also supported by their interview responses. y4s4: i should say my confidence level is about 30% while i speak english. because we do not have a strong background in english and also it is not our own language. (line 23-25) y3s5: usually, i have a fear of making mistakes in speaking english. i feel fear because if we make mistakes, people will laugh at us. (line 23-24) y4s5: yes, i feel a little bit of fear of making mistakes. we feel fear because it is not our mother tongue and when one talk in the language of others, undoubtedly they will feel the fear of making mistakes. (line 28-30) this was also found by juhana (2012) that numerous psychological factors prevent students from speaking fluently in the english class. juhana (2012) adds that the most notable factors are a fear of mistake which is caused by the other students' presence. the students think that friends will laugh at them if they make any mistake. similarly, anxiety and shyness are the other factors that hinder one’s speaking skill. in the context of sayed jamaluddin afghani university ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 244-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (sjauk), the students also feel shy, feel nervous and are not confident while speaking in english. there are certain reasons that make afghan students worried and discouraged while speaking in english. the students do not have a strong background in english language at the school level. at the school level, they are not required to communicate in the english language. so, when students reach the university level where they are required to converse in speaking classes, they face several difficulties in the english language. their lack of practice and contact with the english language at the school level resulted in them feeling shy and unconfident while speaking in english. students' abilities and background knowledge the findings in table 3 show that the students usually understand what others say in english and their english vocabulary is satisfactory as they can comprehend other's messages as well as express their ideas when speaking in english. on the other hand, their knowledge of grammar is not satisfactory, and they can rarely construct errors free sentences when speaking in english. according to richards and renandya (2008), grammar not only helps in mastering spoken language and making correct sentences, but it also enables the learner to manipulate structures and understand suitable grammatical form for the context. foppoli (2009) states that it is grammar that enables students to structure and organize their messages and ideas across. it means that it is difficult to adequately convey ideas without enough command of the grammar patterns and structures. in the case of students in sjauk, they usually construct their message in their mother tongue first and then translate it into english verbatim (word-by-word). this tends to interrupt the fluency of the utterance and is shown by the many pauses that they made while speaking english. the afghans faced an enormous amount of problems in the past. the three-decade of war has ruined every sector of life including education. english is not the first or second language in afghanistan, and its status is only of a foreign language. the students come to university without having a strong background in the english language at schools. as the use of english at school level is very limited. conclusions and suggestion this study has attempted to explore the students-related factors that affect afghan efl undergraduates’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 245-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license speaking skill. to conclude, what have been analysed, presented, and discussed in this study are presented next. the role of students in learning speaking is also of paramount importance. it is true that the teacher and the environment help the students in learning speaking but the student, himself/herself, is also the focal point in learning speaking. the study showed that students' attitudes were favorable towards the english language. however, they were strongly affected by psychological factors. they were afraid to start a conversation in english. they felt shy and did not feel confident when speaking in english. they were afraid of making mistakes while speaking in english and felt nervous and were uncomfortable when speaking english in class and public places. similarly, their knowledge of grammar was not satisfactory, and they rarely could construct error-free sentences when speaking english. the students first construct their message in their mother tongue and then translate it into english word-by-word and usually make lots of pauses when speaking in english. these were some of the factors that affected their speaking skill. the students' weak background of english language at the school level ultimately causes an issue for them at the university level. at the school level, the students did not converse enough in the english language but at the university level they are required to speak in english language and this sudden change from native language to english language causes the students to feel worried, anxious, and shy. based on the conclusion of discussions on findings, the following recommendations are reached. students should be responsible for improving their speaking skill. they should actively participate in the classroom speaking activities provided by the teacher. they should actively participate in the pair work, group work, role-plays, dialogues, discussions, and other classroom activities provided by their teacher to improve their speaking skill. in addition, they should communicate with people outside the classroom to practice their english. they should make their plans for learning and practice new vocabulary by listening to english radio or tv programs. they ought to use and practice whatever they have learned in the classroom both inside and outside of the class to improve their confidence. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 246-248 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.26887 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article 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(2015). efl learners’ levels of classroom performance anxieties and their causes in classroom speaking activities in afghanistan. international journal of english and education, 2(1). * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 311-333 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee politeness use in the online english learning community and its pedagogical implication reza anis maulidya*, didin nuruddin hidayat, nida husna, alek uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, indonesia (reza.anis20@mhs.uinjkt.ac.id) received: 02nd april 2022; revised: 17th november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this article is aimed to investigate the power, identity, and ideology behind politeness expressions, as well as the maxims of politeness established by leech and applied in the english language use of members of the graduate program of english education's olc. the data were taken in the third semester and one session at uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. as a result, the language employed in this study is examined using fairclough's qualitative design and critical discourse analysis. following that, the data was evaluated. eight utterances suggest the employment of the tact maxim, six utterances of the generosity maxim, ten utterances of the approbation maxim, eleven utterances of modesty, and nine utterances of the agreement maxim discovered in the results. the politeness that occurs in the olc remains that community members maintain politeness level refers to the educational and academic setting that used such expressions of politeness that still include the hidden meaning or critics within the conversations in which they are actively participating. furthermore, the pedagogical implications of this study revealed that politeness awareness had influenced the effective creation of meaningful teaching and learning processes on how the english language is utilized between higher-level students and the lecturer. furthermore, this study will likely be part of the literature on politeness in dialogue in the online learning community. key words: critical-discourse-analysis; english-education; online-community; politeness abstrak artikel ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki kekuatan, identitas, dan ideologi di balik ekspresi kesantunan, serta maksim kesantunan yang ditetapkan oleh leech dan diterapkan dalam penggunaan bahasa inggris anggota komunitas pembelajaran online program pascasarjana pendidikan bahasa inggris. . pengambilan data dilakukan pada semester tiga dan satu sesi di uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. akibatnya, bahasa yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini diperiksa dengan menggunakan desain kualitatif fairclough dan analisis wacana kritis. setelah itu dilakukan evaluasi terhadap data tersebut. ada delapan ucapan yang menyarankan penggunaan maksim kebijaksanaan, enam ucapan maksim kedermawanan, sepuluh ucapan maksim pujian, sebelas ucapan maksim kesopanan, dan sembilan ucapan maksim kesepakatan ditemukan dalam hasil penelitian. kesantunan yang terjadi dalam komunitas pembelajaran online tetap bahwa anggota komunitas mempertahankan tingkat kesopanan mengacu pada setting akademik pendidikan yang menggunakan ungkapan kesantunan yang masih mengandung makna atau kritik tersembunyi dalam percakapan di mana mereka berpartisipasi secara aktif. selanjutnya, implikasi pedagogis dari penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa kesadaran kesantunan telah mempengaruhi penciptaan efektif proses belajar mengajar yang bermakna tentang bagaimana bahasa inggris digunakan antara mahasiswa tingkat tinggi dan dosen. selanjutnya, penelitian ini kemungkinan akan menjadi bagian dari literatur tentang penggunaan kesantunan dalam dialog dalam komunitas pembelajaran online. kata kunci: analisis wacana kritis; pendidikan bahasa inggris; komunitas online; kesopanan how to cite: maulidya, r. a., hidayat, d. n., husna, n., alek (2022). politeness use in the online english learning community and its pedagogical implication. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 311-333. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 312-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the covid-19 pandemic situation in indonesia has created a significant shift in the academic setting, including in higher education levels in indonesia. it is resulting in new learning model such as face-to-fac to online learning. in many contexts, the development of new habits in the learning environment, which lasted for two years in uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, has resulted in the emergence of an online learning community (olc). according to tu & corry (2002, p. 1), it was clearly stated that “all of the activities and interactions occur in an online environment, called online learning community (olc)”; further, they explained that olc has been applied widely in online education. the possibility of a new emergent community of olc exists as long as there are groups of individuals that share similar goals and interests and, in doing so, apply the same methods, work with the same tools, and express themselves in a common language (sari, 2012; tu & corry, 2002). moreover, they develop comparable beliefs and value systems due to their common activities is also considered as online learning community (beth et al., 2015; tu & corry, 2002) an olc in the graduate program, especially in english education courses, is assisted with technology during covid-19. it allows instructors and student-teachers to work with the same tools, in other words, they can engage more effectively with technology and develop new abilities through a participatory social process of education (abidin et al., 2021). additionally, by working with the same tools and constructing the same knowledge in the online learning environment, each member of olc contributes to the other’s knowledge growth (beth et al., 2015). therefore, this kind of activity brings to online learning some characteristics that facilitate classroom learning; a feeling of connectedness to fellow learners and members of olc and trust in each other as a resource for knowledge. hence, due to the above situation that occurred in an online learning setting, the study conducted by sari (2012) revealed that olc also promotes the learning process, which is active and collaborative. further, olc which consists of student-teachers as the members, potentially to develop their professional development through olc that they have participated as the advantage of being involved. in the online learning environment setting, is supported with the advancement of technology. it has the potential to empower instructors and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 313-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students alike, allowing them to be more responsive to learning (szymkowiak et al., 2021) in addition, according to baskerville (2012), technology should be used opportunistically, which means instructors and students can derive valuable insights from their personal learning experiences and may find that exploring digital media for information might assist them in developing successful techniques in teaching and learning and the building of first-hand knowledge (surjowati, 2021). besides delivering materials, the purpose of language use among olc members also changes; online conversations have been seen as having a greater possibility for intimacy than offline encounters (croes & antheunis, 2021). intimacy during the meeting is essential in building the relationship and reducing problems in reciprocal communication (shapkina, 2021). therefore, the politeness of language used by the online community in graduate programs of english education is important to be analyzed using maxims of politeness theories as well as a critical discourse analysis framework to see the power, identity, and ideology politeness expressions used by each member of the online community, and whether the use of technology affects their language use or vice versa. students and lecturers communicate via language as social creatures by reciprocally engaging in academic educational settings. the language employed might be formally written or spoken (yule, 2010). furthermore, humans' expressed and written forms of speech must include a degree of adaptability to accommodate meaning to the intended individual, the interlocutor (chang et al., 2012). here, flexibility refers to modifying the language and diction used in communication. this adjustment is critical to the etiquette used in social interaction since it comprises values agreed upon by the social community (ryabova, 2015). it is often referred to as politeness in linguistic norms; as yule (1996, p.60) remarked, "... it is conceivable to see politeness as a fixed term, as in the concept of courteous social conduct, or etiquette, within a culture". politeness is defined by alenzi (2019) as a pragmatic notion that relates to how language acts are carried out, more precisely, how relational functions in linguistic actions are performed. in line with this, politeness in higher academic educational settings, such as communication between students and lecturers, is achieved through spoken discourse during classroom discussions in an online setting. the language used highlights ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 314-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their social status, which also implies their difference in power, identity, and ideology that can be discovered through their language. it shows how language works (endrayuni et al., 2021; fitriah & hidayat, 2018). in politeness theory, polite expressions are categorized based on the effect on others and the risk of the speaker’s speech. those aspects of politeness expressions commonly adjust the social role and class, the speaker's identity and the cultural environment of the context (leech, 1991). further, leech and larina (2005) propose theoretical framework based on six types of maxims that can be used to establish the scale of politeness, they are maxims of agreement, tact, modesty, approbation, generosity, and sympathy. for example, the expression of tact maxim may be "can you help me?" which is a more polite request than "help me" but less courteous than "could you possibly help me?" because there is a rationale for equality, the more a request offers an option, the more courteous it is. similarly, “thank you so much” is more polite than only “thanks” since it emphasizes an expression of gratitude rather than expressing gratitude in a limited way. thus, related to the critical discourse analysis (cda) approach is appropriate for this research since politeness is essential for developing and maintaining social connections between students and lecturers as members of olc. cda is a critical theory of language that considers language use as a type of social practice (janks, 1997). it was also argued that all social behaviors are linked to specific historical circumstances and serve as a method of reproducing or contesting existing social relations and serving various interests. the concerns of interests are what connect discourse to power relations. there are several kinds of cda based on the viewpoints of the founders. such as van dick’s model of cda, which sees critical discourse from the historical values of the discourse (van dijk, 2015). meanwhile, fairclough (2018) defines cda as a type of discourse analysis that seeks to methodically investigate frequently oblique linkages of causality and influence across (a) discursive practices, events, and texts and (b) larger social and cultural structures, relations, and processes; to research how such practices, events, and texts emerge from and are ideologically moulded by power relations and power conflicts; and to investigate how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is a factor in securing power ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 315-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and hegemony (ghanizadeh et al., 2020). furthermore, several researchers have used the cda approach by fairclough (1995) and politeness principle by leech to explore research related to politeness issues in online learning communities or pedagogical areas integrated with technological use. for example, the study was conducted by taghizadeh & mahjourian (2017) which was investigating the cda use by fairclough (1995) towards politeness expressions using theoretical framework by brown and levinson (1987), politeness principles by leech (1991) and the cooperative principle by grice (1975) in virtual setting of english courses. the results highlighted that the politeness expression allows the speaking subject to perform his/her identity in a virtual environment through interactional conversation. it can be a very effective manner of 'performing power' less directly, especially in unequal situations. it assists superiors in maintaining their position of power and allows subordinates to challenge power systems. the next is the study conducted by vinagre (2008) which focused on the linguistic aspects of politeness methods employed in the e-mail exchanges between english and spanish learners. this study found substantial social gaps; participants used politeness methods, including "claiming common ground," "assuming or expressing reciprocity," and "conveying partnership" while interacting with others through using the model of politeness strategies proposed by brown and levinson (1978, 1987). ho and swan (2007) also conducted a study aimed at investigating the politeness manner that links between grice's cooperative principles components in students' discussion posts and prolonged debate and relationships between gricean elements in students' discussion postings and course performance. the study's results indicated that quality was the most crucial parameter for predicting direct replies to a posting. the study also revealed that students with a high average quality score earned better final course marks than their peers. additionally, pupils with a high score in politeness manner obtained better conference marks than their peers. another study done in 2009 by schallert et al. looked at the discourse of two-course activities, computermediated discussion (cmd), and synchronous conversation to determine what kinds of discourse functions and politeness approaches they represented ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 316-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in an online classroom discussions setting. from the previous related studies mentioned above, it can be concluded that the use of politeness expressions in communication, specifically in educational setting matters. the politeness expressions and manner will be analyzed through the cda approach regarding the application of politeness expression in online learning communities, which has been a prevalent issue discussed in the educational research setting. the study focuses primarily on the era of postcovid-19 with its emerging online learning communities (olc) phenomenon, especially in indonesia. however, although this paper discusses a similar topic mentioned in previous studies, this research can still find novelty since this research is more concerned with the language learning and teaching performed online at a higher education level and further discusses the pedagogical implication of politeness use. furthermore, this study aims to investigate the politeness maxims of one lecturer and students in an olc with varying levels of authority employed. moreover, it also explores how the cda is used as a research tool to examine the politeness establishment of identity, ideology, and power of members in an online discourse analysis course of the english education graduate program at state university in indonesia. therefore, this research may benefit other online community members in education, especially in language learning. the current situation of educational affairs results from the interactions of social, cultural, economic, and epistemological elements. as young (1990) wrote, the current educational crisis results from the one-sided development of our capacity for national management of human affairs and rational problem-solving. the institution of mass schooling can be either a source of the problem or a possible vehicle for the changes in learns level we require (p. 23). the term education has been defined as ''informal and formal learning opportunities for prospective and inservice teachers for elementary and adult students'' (rogers, 2011, p.11); according to her, learning opportunities can take place in the school building (e.g., in classrooms and also meeting rooms), which are supported by national policies. critical discourse analysis's assumptions are based on the uneven power between speakers and listeners, readers and writer is related to their different access to linguistic and social situations processes. therefore, critical discourse analysis presumes that institutions such as schools can ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 317-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license promote the mastery of discursive practices: the discourse, texts, genres, and the lexical and grammatical structure of everyday language. this idea can be construed as a reframing of educational equality according to how systematically deformed and ideological communication provides situations for differential institutional access to discursive resources, the educational competence needed for social and economic relations in information-based economics (luke, 2003). method research design this research used a qualitative method to analyze politeness elements in the online learning community (olc) conversations in a meeting of the discourse analysis course conducted online by the english education graduate program. furthermore, this study utilizes qualitative descriptive approaches to explore the language use of community members and give descriptive explanations of the phenomena under inquiry based on the experiences experienced by people or groups. kirk and miller (2011) and yin (2015) defined qualitative research as a social science discipline that focuses on human observations for both topic matter and methodologies. research site and participants sixteen graduate students of the english education program year academic 2020 at uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta and one female lecturer enrolled in english environment courses' online learning and teaching process. it held one session in the third semester at the university. the student's field was english education in the master's program, and they communicated in english during the sessions. research instruments the study focuses on applying cda as a research instrument to analyze politeness standards utilized by members of the online learning community (olc) in the english education graduate program of uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. hence, the researchers employed fairclough's cda model (fairclough, 1995; norman fairclough & fairclough, 2018) which uncovers the ambiguity of the use of polite expressions in discourse that is not balanced between discourse participants is applied to investigate the interaction between a language and a larger society due to politeness being part of the culture (ryabova, 2015). as fairclough (1995) suggested, speech may be perceived via three analyses: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 318-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 1. text analysis (description); related to linguistics, for example by looking at vocabulary, semantics, and sentence structure, as well as coherence and cohesiveness, and how these units form a meaning. 2. processing analysis (interpretation); related to the process of production and consumption of text; for example, text patterns used in conversations, or routines when teaching in a classroom setting. 3. social analysis (explanation); related to the context outside the text; for example the context of the situation or the context of the media in relation to a particular society or political culture. the point is to explore that language is still used to transmit power, identity, and ideology. data collection and analysis the data for this study were taken from spoken languages during the online course and recorded through the zoom recording feature to investigate the language used during the discussions. the recording duration lasted 120 minutes in one session. furthermore, in the process of collecting the data, the researcher did the following steps: 1. record the video and audio of the online learning community (olc) during the session. 2. transcribe the audio or spoken discourse in conversation among the community members and change the data into written discourse. in analyzing the study's data, conversations among the community members were transcribed into written speech after the spoken discourse. first, the data were identified based on the context of different topics. second, the researcher tabulates the data and creates codes for each data. third, the data were analyzed based on leech's principles of politeness maxim. then, the data were interpreted through cda theory by fairclough and drawn in the discussion discussing research that focuses on analyzing several expressions that used to occur in the conversation within the discussion, such as interrupting, asking for permission, appreciating, responding to appreciation, asking for help, greeting, and giving comments. findings and discussion findings from the recorded conversations between lecturers and students in the discourse analysis, 44 utterances ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 319-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license contain the maxims put forward by leech. it was found that eight utterances show the use of the maxim of tact, six utterances of the maxim of generosity, ten utterances of the maxim of approbation, eleven utterances of the maxim of modesty, and nine utterances of the maxim of agreement. each use of an expression has its characteristics and meaning when used by different people. furthermore, the explanation and analysis of politeness used by members of the online learning community for students, teachers, and lecturers of the master of english education program are interpreted as follows. the sample findings will only be included in one sample conversation to concise this research. moreover, still understandable, but information from all data is tabulated as follows: table 1. research data finding dat a cod e type of maxim dat a cod e type of maxim d1 modesty d25 generosity d2 agreement d26 approbation d3 modesty d27 agreement d4 agreement d28 tact d5 modesty d29 approbation d6 agreement d30 generosity d7 approbation d31 agreement d8 approbation d32 tact d9 approbation d33 generosity d10 modesty d34 generosity d11 modesty d35 generosity d12 tact d36 approbation d13 agreement d37 generosity d14 approbation d38 approbation d15 tact d39 modesty d16 modesty 340 modesty d17 agreement d41 approbation d18 generosity d42 approbation d19 tact d43 generosity d20 agreement d44 tact d21 tact d22 modesty d23 modesty d24 agreement tact maxim the underlying premise of the maxim of tact or wisdom in the principle of politeness is that in speaking activities, individuals should constantly minimize their gains while increasing the benefits of others. a polite person is well-spoken and believes in and practices the wisdom of maxim. in addition, according to leech (1991), the longer a person's discourse, the higher the urge to be nice to the other person. the following conversation occurred between the lecturer and student 10 in the q n a session. lecturer: language is what? student10: why is language constructing and constructed? lecturer: ok. uh, let me try (loh, why should i?) hahaha. ok, yeah, so it is like this student 10: i did not understand. lecturer: yeah, so there is the question of whether a broad language is constructing and constructed. i asked the question to one who gives ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 320-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license question does it means related to th e construction of the language itself developing the l anguage or developing on some ot her thing? student 10: yes, as i read based on van dijk, language is not only to communicate; language is a construct and constructed. i do not understand what does it means? lecturer: ok, language has been constructed understandin g of the phenomenon. yeah, because we do some analysis. yeah, on a specific discourse, like o n conversation, it will explain why that conversation happens. yeah, and also, why is this being co nstructed? because based on that analysis and not understandin g what happened, we construct another thing based o n that construction. uh, are you there? student 10: yes, miss, thank you for explaining. lecturer: are you sure you understand? student 10: insya allah as referred to in the conversation between student 10 and the lecturer above, it can be seen that the tact maxim of politeness expression occurs within the utterances by the lecturer. on this occasion, the lecturer is taking more opportunities to participate in the classroom discussion, and the tact can be seen as the wiseness of the lecturer who understands the presenters cannot answer this theoretical-based question. it was based on her sudden response, "loh, why should i? hahaha. ok, yeah, so it is like this.." it indicates that she knew it was not her duty to answer a community member's question at the first chance. however, she did it, claiming that she let herself be responsible for that kind of misunderstanding question. therefore, before the presenters asked for help from other members to solve the question, the lecturer interrupted and gave her responses. this kind of manner counts as a politeness expression through tact maxim; she tried to minimize harm to others (ryabova, 2015). in this case, "others" are presenters and maximize profit for others who are another student who is asking and others who are joined in this discussion and being informed by her initiative thought to give responses to the question. hence, the tact maxim also happened when she asked student 10, "are you sure you understand?" because she was aware and sensitive that the response of miss, thank you for explaining tone implies that the student did not yet ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 321-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understand the explanation. the student was saying so due to her respectful act toward the lecturer who had explained her question, so by expressing thankfulness (mandala, 2018), the student is using this kind of polite expression as she was aware of using that kind of language as social rules (brown, 2015), it supposed to avoid more conversation that will charge more effort of the lecturer as it is also stated by brown (2015) that a speaker has a natural propensity toward social superiors to be more polite and politeness is typically shared symmetrically. furthermore, with her power, as the lecturer who is superior and wellknown as the one with many experiences and knowledge related to linguistics and a discoursal course, she interrupted the conversation without using the phrase or modals that will indicate politeness speech by saying directly, "language is what?", this kind of way of interrupting is less polite. however, it seems normal since grice and brown argued that the superior commonly is less courteous to an inferior (brown, 2015). hence, the response was given by student 10 by saying "insya allah," is an arabic phrase that means "if it is god's will" and is closely related to islamic culture that expresses showing certainty with the highest possibility. this kind of response shows the specific identity of the student-teacher in the community (norman fairclough & fairclough, 2018; teun a. van dijk, 2015). the way she uses the language clearly shows the ideology and identity the person is holding onto (obana, 2017). furthermore, the phrase "insya allah" remains polite to use. generosity maxim the principle of generosity requires participants or community members to demonstrate care for others. when individuals can reduce their profits while enhancing the profits of others, they acquire the respect of others around them (leech, 1991). the following discussion is an excerpt from the discovery. student 1: uh, since the time has shown that it is 10:16, i’m afraid. uh, we still have one chance to answer the question and so. i don't know many of the questions. and then i am over it, but we... we will try. best as we can. student 9: alright, thank you, andi, for your kindness. finally, you let me give my question even though, yeah, the time it has been 9:16. to talk about critical discourse analysis is fascinating, and my question precisely arises ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 322-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from reza's explanation before. that is, as mentioned about the framing. this discourse analysis is framed by the social, or maybe like the media. so, if the critical discourse analysis is raised by the social or media, uh, is there any rules or requirements we ask the social human how to speak, how to behave related to this discourse analysis and then the second question is, uh, so if it is what we call is affected by the social to exactly what this discourse analysis, uh, what is determining the discourse itself, i mean like if this critical discourse analysis affected by this social, or maybe the media, so. so, how the discourse selects this discourse analysis. itself, i think. yeah, i hope my question is clear. thank you. student 1: ok, thank you, ka dewi, for the question. from the conversation above, student 1 used the maxim of politeness in the form of generosity to express his magnanimity during the discussion with other community members. in the case of the discussion, the limited time for which the section of question and answer time has closed, and no more question is usually allowed to be proposed (based on the weekly agenda). it can be known when student 1 mentions the actual time by that occasion in his area, in this case, he is from southeast sulawesi and still stays there, by saying, "uh, since the time has shown that it is 10:16.” i’m afraid. uh, we still have one chance to answer the question" it can be seen that the identity of southeast sulawesi people is well-known as straight a point type of person since saying the real meaning of the speech is part of their distinctive culture. it is in line with raodah (2019), who argued that makassarese people are often considered rude or angry. however, the way they convey their intentions is too direct to the core of the conversation, which makes the makassarese people get bad reviews. the habit of getting to the point is that the natural behavior of the makassarese people was influenced by colonialism. however, the kind of rejection to members who asked is straightforward by being polite in this conversation is a part of politeness expression done by the student-teacher 1 when he did not tell directly the exact meaning of the phrase he used in the conversation. in contrast, the longer the utterance is too long and convoluted, the higher the politeness level (mandala, 2018). the act performed by student 1 indicated that he is aware that each community has its own set of norms ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 323-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and values (janks, 1997) that determine the degree to which a speech is forced or hated, and one wishes to be more polite when imposing more major impositions (mansoor, 2018) instead of saying "you cannot ask, we have done the qna session," however, he was kind of realized that is supposed to be impolite manner during the conversation. by lowering the standard of politeness and being adopted by the people of southeast sulawesi, who are straight to the point, he restrains himself from adapting to the members of the olc, the majority of whom are members of the javanese tribe. using the phrase "i am afraid" is a kind of generosity maxim because he was such a philanthrope person in this discourse and decided to be respectful, even willing to make it difficult for himself, as long as the other person feels happy and is given the opportunity or benefit which can found in the "but we we will try as best as we can", this maxim of generosity indicated in so many reasons, it is not only about the expression of politeness, but beyond than that. the possibility of motive that also can be about how a man treats a woman who is older than him, so being polite is a general manner of behaving in the environment (norman fairclough & fairclough, 2018) furthermore, the politeness expression also occurred in the responses from student-teacher 2 using the phrase "all right, thank you, andy, for your kindness. finally, you let me give my question even though yeah, the time it has been 9:16". in this case, she acted politely by saying "thank you," as it is an essential thing in every culture to respect other people with good traits, while here, actually, she was expressing that she was offended because previously, the student was mentioning actual time which signalled indication that he rejected her chance to ask questions. it can be seen by what sentence she added to follow the first expression. the word "finally" indicates her disappointment through a polite act. however, it remains less polite to say so. moreover, by mentioning the actual time on her location, "the time it has been 9:16", indicated the ideology that implicitly stated that "women are all correct" (bacha et al., 2012) as she claimed that what the student-teacher said about time was not correct and meant to only avoid her question. even though the information about the time that student-teacher one said was correct, the time in his place is one hour earlier than most community members. the act performed by student-teacher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 324-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license two also indicated the superiority of student 9, who is older than student 1. the superior is commonly less courteous than the inferior(leech & larina, 2005). approbation maxim the maxim of gratitude states that someone is courteous if they constantly attempt to express thanks to the other party when communicating. with this guideline in mind, it is intended that the participants in the speech would refrain from mocking, berating, or disparaging one another (leech, 1991). student 1: uh, maybe that is all, uh, for our group presentation. thank you very much for your attention, and we apologize that we are consuming too much time. uh, i give it back to ka intan. student 7: ok, thank you so much for the presenter. thanks for the beautiful presentation. so let us give the online applause, guys. as referred to the conversation between students-teachers above, it can be seen that the maxim of approbation expression occurs within the utterances by student 7 to respond to student 1, even though student one had been asking for apologizing and realizing the presentation they are carried on was not the perfect one, student 7 keep giving a compliment to the presenters. this kind of maxim is known as the maxim of appreciation, and instead of blaming the presenters for their performance, she prefers giving compliments three times as she responded to the speech from student 7. the first appreciation was given to student 1 because he gave control of the flow to student 7 back as the moderator of the discourse class. the second appreciation is aimed at complementing the effort and hard work, the presenters, had done at that moment. the last appreciation was the expression of appreciation of feelings of guilt spoken by student 1. from the features of the zoom app, it can be known from the phrase "online applause" that she was asking permission from another member of the community also to be appreciative; the online applause given in the zoom room is part of politeness in this conversation between both student 1 (presenter of the discussion) and the student 7 (moderator of the class). from the act performed by student 7, we know that she has a very detailed identity and is well at treating people reasonably, mainly through compliments (ryabova, 2015). when something goes regular and routine, it can say that student-teacher 2 has a large social circle; therefore, the ability to show her positive face was natural ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 325-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and sincere due to what societies taught and shaped her to be as she is in the above conversation (obana, 2017). the ability to treat someone refers to the social values held by that person. in addition, appreciation is how politeness expressions are applied (taghizadeh & mahjourian, 2012) modesty maxim the principle of modesty or humility requires the speaker to be courteous by minimizing praise for himself. individuals will be considered arrogant and arrogant if they constantly praise and favour themselves throughout speaking activities. student 8: yes, i want to ask a question about your presentation group. ok. we are talking about the critique and analysis and critique. we have many sorts. yeah, like we can watch on the television seriously, we discuss rocky gerung. uh, a lot of. uh, umm, a critical analysis we can find a lot in rocky gerung's speech, correct? like your meme, say that one of the critics. try to criticize with humor like warkop dki in orde baru. try to put their titles right like dongkrak antik and then set on credit, etc. they try to make that humor but /try to create the government. so my question is only a simple question. in this recent era, we know how much this criticism can impress young students? from the speech uttered by student 8, it is found that the maxim of modesty occurred in his speech when he asked the presenter related to cda, in the phrase, "so my question is only a simple question." at the same time, it was not a simple question since he briefly explained political humor in indonesia and political figures with controversion ideologies. by saying a simple one which is not simply part of the modesty maxim, it implies a simple question comes from a simple understanding in mind (dijk, 2009). by saying so, student 8 intended to show himself as simple and modest. however, before proposing the question, his brief previous prologue shows that he is smart and not as simple as he shows himself toward community members (brown, 2015). agreement maxim this maxim is intended to create compatibility or agreement among speech participants during speaking events. if the speaker and the speech partner agree or are compatible during speaking activities, then each of them can be considered polite (leech, 1991). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 326-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license student 4: yeah, i.. i, i agree with alivia because i think in indonesian culture, responding to a compliment with another compliment is considered a humble person. so, when someone comes to compliment you, well, uh, you are beautiful. oh, thank you, but you are more beautiful. so if we replay that with another compliment, someone will think that we think it is uh, indonesian culture yah. i think. student 3: yeah, thank you, ka nur wahidah, maybe anyone wants to add an opinion? yeah, i think so. can i add more? student 1: yes. off course. student 3: actually, i do not think that it happens in another country, but in indonesia, it happens like that. i have watched some series, a girl is complimenting another one, but they do not do another compliment back because it is what it is. as referred to the conversation between students-teachers above, it can be seen that the maxim of agreement in politeness expression occurs within the utterances above, that student four was expressing the same perspective to student 3 by saying and explaining more about her opinion with the same concept of thinking and added a different contextual example to the student 3. this act of politeness is also part of appreciating and complimenting other members of an online learning community to agree with what others think (surjowati, 2021). meanwhile, from the activities performed by student 4, it can be seen that implicitly she was trying to show off that she is a part of humble people who said the same values as the content of this discussion because ideology is a reflection of what people are interested in such values (dijk, 2009). furthermore, the maxim of agreement is found in student three language use, "yeah, thank you ka nur wahidah, maybe anyone wants to add the opinion? yeah, i think so. can i add more?” on these phrases, it was seen that student 3 is polite, even though the use of "can" is less formal than "may" in an academic setting, as in line with (abidin et al., 2021) in online learning community (olc) the intimacy among the members is getting closer. furthermore, the close relationship between each member will influence them to use less polite phrases but still count as polite. in addition, despite the polite expression, she disagreed with the student's four opinions, so she asked for other opinions, which means that she was not getting enough of those ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 327-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license proposed thoughts. hereafter, she added other opinions that she thinks are more correct to the context of discussions. according to leech (1991), if the speaker and the speech partner agree or are compatible during speaking activities, each of them might be called polite. discussion in online learning communities, politeness expressions are essential to sustaining the relationships of all community members, particularly at the online learning community (olc) of the graduate program of english education in uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta. according to the explanations and descriptions of the data in the finding above, it can be seen that all student-teachers in the online community maintain a polite use of language as their social rules. consequently, mansoor (2018) argues that politeness expressions are adopted as the social rules for those who are unconsciously understood and practised by all members of the community who believe that everything said and what is meant in a discussion avoid conflict should remember that another person has. through politeness expressions used by each member, they establish the social position and power in a society (bax, 2011; janks, 1997). furthermore, it is not just about social status and power but can also uncover its identity. the speaker's identity is shaped by their experiences and social activities while living in the present community (matsuda, 2015). in line with the findings, the lecturer's language displays a high degree of civility when responding to the community members' debates. the lecturer's identity shows the higher education a person has, as well as the higher politeness they express in the community because this kind of person is aware that a "positive face" is essential for their existence in society, as seen by the way the lecturer stands with personal opinion with a strong reason of arguments even though still deliver the formal language politely and formally. moreover, identity, ideology, and the power of being a lecturer have also impacted how the person adjusts her politeness expression in the discussion since politeness is defined not only by the use of language but also by etiquette that follows in the particular culture (schneider, 2012; yule, 1996). in this case, such as the way the lecturer interrupts in the middle of the explanation or clarifies what the members have misunderstood information. however, through the analytical approach of critical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 328-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discourse analysis, the power only influences how etiquette is applied, but the contrary goes for language use. the power of being a lecturer understood as a person with higher social status than a student, makes the lecturer bravely cut off the ongoing discussion with a polite expression of spoken discourse. what is more, the ideology of being a lecturer figure was also seen from the politeness form of language. the frequent use of the modal "may i?" is part of the unconscious and sudden manner that the lecturer keeps in mind in communicating with people under her social status. accordingly, the modal "may" from superior to inferior counts as a polite expression of language use (brown, 2015; holmes, 1995) however, the frequent use of modal among students is "can". it remains customary or informal in some particular events because it shows a close relationship as people use it in the same age range. furthermore, the close relationship between each member will influence them to use less polite phrases but still count as polite. in line with this, in an academic setting, as in line with abidin et al. (2021), in online learning community (olc), the intimacy among the members is getting closer. hence, at its most basic, when community member uses particular expressions of politeness, they follow the principles of politeness. leech and larina (2005) explained that the principle of politeness could be seen and categorized through six maxims: tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement maxim, and sympathy maxim. however, in this olc conversation, there are only five kinds of maxims because the member of the olc did not use the maxim of sympathy to express their politeness since it is supposed to be used in the kind of condolences event, not in line with the olc which discusses discourse analysis. furthermore, the modesty maxim in this online academic setting is the most frequent maxim. from this result, it can be understood that most members of olc are mainly decreasing praise for themselves and less criticizing the fault of others during the discussion to maintain the relationship between them. pedagogical implication at a higher educational level, especially in discourse analysis courses in the graduate program, politeness in english language education is not taught inductively because it is not the main focus of the core course. however, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 329-333 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.25482 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license politeness in the mentioned community has already been a norm among its members, as yule said that politeness is an etiquette agreed upon among society (yule, 1996). from the findings and discussions above, many members of the online community who also have roles as student-teachers of the english language did not realize to apply politeness and use proper rules in their own words during the interaction in the online classroom, for example, when they were missing the degree use of modals “can” and “may” when interrupting or communicating. on the other hand, english teachers must have that natural awareness and qualities in using english (yasin et al., 2020), especially in politeness expressions. since teachers are role models in the foreign language classroom, teachers' language use will eventually affect how students perceive the language to be used properly. the role of a teacher in pedagogical areas is admitted as a person who is an expert in the field of the study, the social status of teachers in an education setting will make them always have a “positive face” in front of their students; therefore, this is important for student-teacher to pay more attention the politeness use in the learning and teaching process. conclusions and suggestion the exploration of politeness expression used by a member of the online learning community (olc) during covid-19 might have transformed into another form of politeness. online learning removes the distance between the lecturer and members during the conversation. moreover, it was seen from the perspective of critical discourse analysis, which can uncover the meaning behind the language of its members in society. furthermore, the implication in the pedagogical aspects can also be understood that the politeness implication may have different functions in the interaction between students and the lecturer. yet, it is still crucial to know “each role” in the community when using the language. this study suggests further research to determine the implementation of politeness in the case of seeing the meaning of language use based on a comparative study between online and offline learning communities to see distinct differences between the use of the language of politeness. references abidin, z., mathrani, a., & hunter, r. 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(2015). qualitative research from start to finish. guilford publications. young, r. (1990). a critical theory of education (habermas a). teachers college press. yule, g. (1996). pragmatic (h. g. widdowson (ed.); first edit). oxford university press. yule, g. (2010). the study of language (4th ed.). cambridge university press. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 37-62 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee efl learners' experiences of peer feedback in paragraph writing through cloud collaboration dedi kurniawan*, hariswan putera jaya, alhenri wijaya universitas sriwijaya, indonesia (dedikurniawan@unsri.ac.id) received: 06th january 2023; revised: 28h may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract online peer feedback has become common in university writing classrooms due to the availability of computer technology. this study aimed to explore efl learners' experiences engaged in online peer feedback on writing through cloud collaboration. this study was an extension activity of the paragraph writing class for two weeks, in which ten participants voluntarily took part in it and were monitored by two instructors. the peer feedback exchanges, text revisions, and comments from interviews were qualitatively analyzed, and the emerging patterns of interaction were quantified. the results showed that the involvement of the participants in online peer feedback via cloud collaboration facility enabled students to detect and comprehend numerous writing problems, as well as revise and improve their work; both revision and non-revision-oriented feedbacks are part of the overall online textual interaction and communication that can be used to help them develop their second language; and the students also expressed different perspectives about whether they appreciated or disliked their online peer feedback experience. this study also provided some implications and recommendations for further research. key words: cloud collaboration: efl; online peer feedback abstrak umpan balik teman sebaya secara online telah menjadi hal yang umum di ruang kelas menulis di universitas sebagai hasil dari ketersediaan teknologi komputer. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi pengalaman pelajar efl yang terlibat dalam umpan balik teman sebaya secara online dalam menulis melalui kolaborasi cloud. penelitian ini merupakan kegiatan perpanjangan dari kelas menulis paragraf selama dua minggu yang diikuti oleh sepuluh peserta secara sukarela, dan dipantau oleh dua orang instruktur. pertukaran umpan balik dari teman sebaya, revisi teks, dan komentar dari wawancara dianalisis secara kualitatif dan pola interaksi yang muncul dikuantifikasi. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa keterlibatan para peserta dalam umpan balik teman sebaya secara online melalui fasilitas kolaborasi cloud memungkinkan siswa untuk mendeteksi dan memahami berbagai masalah dalam menulis, serta merevisi dan memperbaiki pekerjaan mereka; umpan balik yang berorientasi pada revisi dan non-revisi merupakan bagian dari keseluruhan interaksi dan komunikasi tekstual online yang dapat digunakan untuk membantu mereka mengembangkan bahasa kedua mereka; serta perspektif individu yang berbeda mengenai apakah mereka menyukai atau tidak menyukai pengalaman umpan balik teman sebaya secara online. penelitian ini juga memberikan beberapa implikasi dan rekomendasi untuk penelitian lebih lanjut. kata kunci: kolaborasi cloud: efl; umpan balik rekan sebaya secara daring how to cite: kurniawan, d., jaya, h.p., wijaya, a. (2023). efl learners' experiences of peer feedback in paragraph writing through cloud collaboration. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 37-62. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 mailto:dedikurniawan@unsri.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 38-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction collaboration skills refer to a person's capability to work together to solve problems and answer questions, work effectively in teams to achieve common goals, and assume shared responsibility for completing tasks (ravitz et al., 2012). collaboration in the learning process is a form of cooperation to help and complement each other to perform specific tasks to obtain a predetermined goal (kemdikbud, 2017). it is also a learning approach that involves groups working together to solve problems, complete tasks, or produce certain products (srinivas, 2011). collaborative activities in writing task, or collaborative writing, helps students to think critically and express themselves more openly, resulting in improved writing abilities (luna & ortiz, 2013), and it also allows students to learn through the language they use in the discussion process, which improves their writing skills (zhang, 2018). these are also in line with vygotsky's zone of proximal development, which holds that knowledge is formed due to social interaction (saville-troike, 2012). peer feedback is a part of the process-oriented approach in writing. this approach is based on the notion of zone proximal development (zpd), often known as the zone of optimal development. with the process of interaction/collaboration with other individuals, learners can attain optimum gains (vygotsky, 1978). writing tasks that follow a processoriented approach can help students become more self-reliant (alwasilah, 2006). the approach offers activities that good writers do: planning, revising, rearranging and deleting, multi-drafting, and producing the final piece. it is an answer to the weaknesses in the product approach, i.e., excessive emphasis on linguistic knowledge (stanley, 1993). however, this strategy is unconcerned with grammar and sentence structure, pays little attention to the final result, and requires much time (onozawa, 2010), and it provides inadequate input to linguistic knowledge (badger & white, 2000). as a response to the drawbacks, an extended activity to overcome the weaknesses students show in writing can be carried out (hyland, 2003). peer feedback in collaborative writing provides comments on others' works in pairs or small groups (hansen & liu, 2005). comments toward each other's writing in face-to-face classroom settings can provide efl students with a favorable circumstance to exercise their english language skills in a meaningful context. furthermore, it is also helpful for efl students to develop collaboration skills, awareness as http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 39-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license readers, and writing quality (hanjani & li, 2014). however, in the face-to-face setting, students are limited to their cultural background, which influences their participation in discussion, and to their level of english proficiency, which affects their capability to give and understand comments in a collaboration (liu & hansen, 2002). furthermore, there are a number of issues that arise from the classroom setting peer feedback, including students' infrequent use of peer feedback, learners' predisposition to address local issues in texts, such as grammar and vocabulary, more repeatedly as compared to global issues in writing, such as content and organization (cho & schunn, 2007) and feeling of discomfort and anxiety (wu et al., 2015). the development of internet technology played an important role in overcoming the cultural background and language proficiency that inhibit participation in learning (wu et al., 2015; saeed & ghazali, 2017; kurniawan et al., 2020; pitaloka et al., 2020). in general, some studies found that efl students had positive perceptions toward internet technology use in their learning process (abdullah et al., 2015; sepahpanah et al., 2015; loeneto & kurniawan, 2021; irana et al., 2021). internet technology has allowed the facilitation of online peer feedback activities, either synchronously or asynchronously, through various media such as facebook, online discussion forums, and cloud collaboration tools (wiki, google doc, etc.) (bradley, 2014; ho, 2015; inderawati et al., 2018; kurniawan et al., 2020). furthermore, guardado and shi (2007) concluded that online peer feedback offers benefits in terms of interactive textual interchange and increased student engagement. they added that the influence on revision differs depending on the contextual situation. the outbreak of covid-19, in which almost half a billion students worldwide were compelled to abandon their face-to-face learning activities (unesco, 2020), has led to a dominant mode of e-learning that combines online synchronous and asynchronous learning. although currently we have transformed into post covid-19 and adapted to the near-normal situation, the e-learning mode is not totally abandoned but has been reconstructed as a complement to classroom teaching and learning. in the indonesian context, as a result of the pandemic, the government has committed to improving online learning and pushing universities to develop a robust elearning platform. other than its compatibility with the current situations, online peer feedback http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 40-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in collaborative writing also offers group cohesion as a result of beyondclassroom writing activity (razak & saeed, 2014) or in other words, online activities can provide off-class voluntary learning activity which maximizes the effects of peer feedback in collaborative writing (chen, 2016). the current study focuses on efl undergraduate learners' involvement in asynchronous peer feedback in google docs due to the problems and issues that arise from face-to-face peer feedback in writing classes and the strength of online peer feedback. the research questions are formulated as follows: (1) what problems in writing does the feedback from efl students address in evaluating their works through google docs?; (2) how did the participants perceive their experiences in responding to the peer feedback through google docs addressed to them?. method the current study collected and analyzed data using a qualitative research approach. the rationale for this approach is that studies exploring the dynamics of group learning in general and learners' peer feedback in particular have demonstrated the benefits of qualitative methodologies (hmelo-silver et al., 2013). the study took a case study technique, which focuses on explaining and understanding a phenomenon (creswell, 2012). this method may also be used to look at efl students' peer feedback experiences in paragraph writing via cloud collaboration. context and participant the present study concentrated on cloud technology-based peer feedback as a structured extension activity of the paragraph writing courses in the department. the participants were ten preservice english teachers in their first year of study. ten participants were selected out of twenty-four students in the paragraph writing course based on their agreement and availability to be included in the study. since they were in the initial stage of english teacher training, their writing ability was very much the reflection of the training they had prior to their admission to the department. their english learning was of indonesian background in which they were taught writing using a conventional technique that emphasizes individual writing rather than peer or group writing and is almost entirely dominated by the teacher. they reported that they struggle with producing a good piece of writing. they were assured that their participation was optional and would http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 41-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license not impact their overall performance in the paragraph writing class. table 1. participants' profile initial gender age yib m 19 zz f 19 ac f 19 fd f 18 at f 19 nf f 19 ps f 19 c m 18 h m 18 sj f 19 google docs was selected as the tool for asynchronous cloudcollaboration peer feedback. the rationales for choosing it were that it offers potential in its interactive interface (zhou et al., 2012; yim et al., 2014; alharbi, 2019; orehovački, 2011; jeong, 2016; yang, 2010), higher possibility of participation (yim et al., 2014; brodahl et al., 2011; bradley & thouësny, 2017; rowe et al., 2013; erturk, 2016), and positive impact on revision (kurniawan & suganda, 2020; wang, 2017; jeong, 2016; bradley & thouësny, 2017). writing and cloud-collaboration process all the activities were conducted online. the live online discussions and writing material presentations were held through the university's learning management system (lms), while the asynchronous activities (peer feedback and instructors' feedback) were administered through google docs. the writing process was adapted from a process-oriented approach to writing (emig, 1971; hyland, 2003; oshima & hogue, 2007), with the following steps: (1) topic selection, (2) prewriting, (3) draft writing, (4) revising, (5) editing, and (6) publication. two types of paragraphs were assigned to the students: process and comparatives. the students were prepared for writing and peer feedback using cloud collaboration by discussing their needs and putting them into groups before the writing and peer feedback began. the process of writing one paragraph took one week. it took two weeks to finish the two paragraphs. two instructors were involved in the activity to ensure all the process of writing and the feedback ran smoothly. the instructors created folders on "google drive" labeled with each participant's name before the activity began. all of the actions related to the writing process were saved in those folders. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 42-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on the first day of the week, in the synchronous online sessions, the instructors presented material on how to write a good paragraph and also on how to give feedback on others' paragraphs. after that, the participants were asked to write a paragraph of 200 – 300 words. then, they discussed having the paragraph's general topic to write. later, it proceeded into a small group discussion of three or four. the small group discussion resulted in a more specific topic to write about. they then wrote the outline of the paragraphs and picked up the draft and the paragraph. the drafts were written on google docs and accessible to the other participants and the instructors. over the next two days, the small group members reviewed the paragraph written by others in their group and provided feedback through google docs. this peer feedback process was continued for the next two days by the whole participants giving feedback on other participants' paragraphs. after this process, the participant revised and edited their paragraph by considering the input from their peers. the instructors also gave feedback on the sixth day, and the participants made revisions and edits accordingly before the week's final day. on days 2 – 5, the instructors gave no feedback but facilitated the process and only intervened when necessary. although the instructors provided their feedback, they were not collected as data since this study focuses on peer feedback. data collection and analysis the data collected were from participants' communication or the peer feedback on google docs on days 2 – 5 from the two weeks of process writing. the feedback was stored automatically by google docs. however, since participants can edit and delete their feedback after posting, the instructors save the feedback in microsoft word file format at the end of each day. in addition, after the writing process, the participants were interviewed, which lasted an average of 30 minutes and was conducted in english. all the interviews were recorded and transcribed. this current study data analysis focused on peer feedback and interviews. we used a five-stage procedure (organizing, coding, clustering, quantification, interpreting, and reporting) (gibbs, 2002) to analyze the qualitative data from peer feedback and interviews. the data coding from the feedback was based on the coding scheme from a similar previous study (liu & sadler, 2003). however, the researcher created the definitions based on the instructions given to learners on http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 43-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the first day of the week, as seen in table 3. the focus area of the feedback was used as the basis for the coding, whether it was global (content, organization, and argumentative genre and purpose) or local (language, including grammar and meaning, and mechanics). the feedback was further coded into whether or not they were revisionoriented or non-revision-oriented (liu & sadler, 2003). revision-oriented focused on the issue in the paragraph, leading to a revision, while the other did not. moreover, the non-revisionoriented feedback was coded using a scheme from an online peer learning study (janssen et al., 2007): social support and care, maintaining good relations, shared understanding, and social ties. table 3. feedback coding sample codes and their definition feedback sample content, any feedback on the paragraph's clarity, sufficiency, or applicability of ideas and supporting details to the topic. yib: can you describe it more? organization, any feedback focusing on theme coherence, logical flow or sequence of ideas, or sentence coherence. ps: this sentence is quite long (over 30 words). consider breaking it up into two or three shorter sentences. "the first reason is that this restaurant is right on the side of the road. it is near the bus stop, schools, and campus, making it easy to find. purpose, any feedback in the body of the paragraph focusing on unambiguous thesis statements, clarifying authors' perspectives, expressing assertions and counterarguments fd: which one makes them comfortable? language, any feedback emphasizing the grammar (form, tenses, etc.) or meaning of linguistic elements at: consider using a past participle here "eaten." mechanics, any feedback focusing on punctuation, spelling, or capitalization. sj: capital letter,, but if you want to make it one sentence, youmusto put a comma instead ofa period. the clustering stage involved categorizing the feedback into two groups: revision-oriented and nonrevision-oriented. the coding and classification steps were reiterated repeatedly as the discovered categories or patterns were refined until the two coders agreed 91% of the time. the next step involved quantifying the qualitative data of revision-oriented comments, text revisions, and nonrevision-oriented comments in general. the final step concentrated on interpreting and reporting the findings following the study objectives, data analysis, and clustering. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 44-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the interview was conducted based on the adapted interview guide with the following questions: (1) did you find the activity beneficial? (2) do you like to provide and receive online peer feedback? why do you think that is? (3) how did you provide online peer feedback? (4) how did you use online peer feedback to help you revise? (5) is face-to-face peer feedback better than online peer feedback? (6) what difficulties did you encounter during online peer feedback? please compare your experiences with peer feedback received face to face (guardado & shi, 2007). finally, interviewees' remarks were utilized to analyze students' perceptions of using or ignoring online peer feedback in their revisions. the research design has been clearly described and is appropriate for the study. the purpose, content, and usage of data collection tools have also been explained and justified. findings and discussion findings rq1: what problems in writing does the feedback from efl students address in evaluating their works through google docs? this study attempted to explore the peer feedback the participants offered through google docs. table 4 shows that the generated feedbacks were 337 in numbers. they were categorized into revision oriented (196 feedbacks, 58.16%) and non-revision oriented (141 feedbacks, 41.84%) table 4. peer feedback numbers group number of feedbacks percentage (1) revision oriented 196 58.16 % global 5 1.48 % local 191 56.68 % (2) non-revision oriented 141 41.84 % total 337 100 % with sample feedback retrieved from peer feedback sessions, both types and sub-types of peer feedback exchanges are addressed in the following sections. revision-oriented feedbacks the findings indicated that the participants exchanged revisionoriented peer feedback (58.16%). they targeted various problems in paragraph writing at the global and local levels. only a few global-level feedbacks (5 times, 1.48%) addressed content, organization, and purpose. in the following excerpts, the comment posted by h communicated the content, particularly on the details that need to be elaborated. regarding the organization, feedback from ps http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 45-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pointing a lack of flow of ideas and suggested breaking longer sentences into multiple sentences. the participant also addressed a problem related to purpose, as pointed out by fd that the writer needed to clarify his perspective. on the other hand, the participants more dominantly offered local-level feedback (191 times, 56.68%), which addressed issues of language and mechanics. for instance, in the following excerpts, they targeted the problems on the correct use of pronouns, part of speech, verb tenses, other inflections, and word choices, as pointed out by zz, sj, fj, and ps. other instances showed that they also tried to deal with punctuation and capitalization problems, as at and nf mentioned. the higher number of local level feedbacks might indicate that they have a better understanding of language structure and mechanics, and they need more training in global level feedback such as content organization and purpose. despite the low number of global level feedbacks, few participants had exhibited their understanding of identifying the problem on content, organization, and purpose, which is far more difficult to distinguish. global level h: can you describe the details more? ps: this sentence is quite long (over 30 words). consider breaking it up into two or three shorter sentences. fd: which one makes them comfortable? local level zz: i think "they" is not consistent. because to change "kedai mahasiswa" to be pronoun, we actually use "it" by the way, thank you so much for this advice. sj: i don't know it is accurate or not, but from the application itself suggests that it should be "other" if you use the word 'shock' in this sentence, it will become noun, thus i use 'shocked' because it works as a verb fj: use verb 1 in a negative sentence of past simple ps: the verb should probably end in "s" because the subject is singular, "someone comes" at: there should be a space after the punctuation mark or after comma. nf: this is the pronoun 'i'. i think it is spelled with a capital letter. the asynchronous interaction on google docs had become a medium of training in pinpointing local and global problems in writing and how to let the writer know of the problem before offering a correction, as at, c, and ps indicated. at: is this the personal pronoun "i"? it is spelled uppercase. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 46-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license c: i mean, you write a word with repetitions three times in that sentence. try changing it. ps: this is somewhat unusual. i suggest you to changes "about" with "regarding or as for": regarding the price non-revision-oriented feedbacks the participants also posted feedback that did not address any problems in the paragraph (141 times, 41.84%). most of the non-revisionoriented feedback was offered to build a friendly situation. these comments included thanking, explaining a situation, praising, admitting errors or misunderstandings, and asking for clarification. thanking okay thank you thank you, fer. i almost forgot about that. okay, thanks for reminding okay, thank you for your advice you're welcome. explaining a situation oh sorry, it happened because my keyboard changed my typing automatically. whoa, i see. i did not care about the font before hehe. thanks for remind me. praising good job. it is a very good paragraph. admitting errors or misunderstanding ouhh i see, i know it. i was confused how to change it. do you have any idea how can i change it? okey i'll change it ouh okey, i'll fix the sentence thanks for correcting, i just realized it oh my god, i'm wrong. thank you for the advice okay, i will change it. thank you for your advice😊 i found myself confused when i'm writing this sentence, thanks for the suggestion asking for clarification what do you mean? are you sure about this wkwk some of these comments, for example, were to soften the issue addressed in the writing. as pointed out by yib and sj in their feedback. furthermore, the comments can also maintain social support and social ties, as indicated in the comments from ac and h. yib: oh, that would be great, that's my only suggestion for you. sj: that's my suggestion, if you don't want it, that's okay. i'm just worried about your sentence fenny. ac: please wait for another comment zahra. because i will check another sentences😊 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 47-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license h: okey no problem if our answer is wrong, because we still study right. please always to remind each other. follow-up revision after feedback a comparison of the first and final drafts show that all participants revised their paragraph. of the ten students, 5 made revisions to the global issue (content, organization, and purpose), and all revised the paragraph on the local issue (language and mechanics). from the 196 revision-oriented feedbacks, 163 (83.16%) were addressed, and 63 (16.84%). for global problems, of 5 feedbacks, all were addressed. furthermore, for the local problems, of 191 feedbacks, 158 were addressed, and 33 were not (table 5). table 5. revision based on peer feedback d total revisionoriented feedback (of two writing tasks) feedback addressed feedback not addressed global local global local a b c d e a b c d e yib 20 12 8 zz 14 1 10 3 ac 15 9 3 3 fd 21 1 8 5 5 2 at 25 1 10 5 6 3 nf 25 1 10 10 4 ps 23 13 10 c 16 10 3 3 h 20 1 9 7 3 sj 17 8 5 2 2 total 196 2 2 1 99 59 20 13 % 1.02 1.02 0.51 50.51 30.10 10.20 6.63 a=content b= organization c=purpose d=language e=mechanics the participants posted five pieces of feedback on the global problem, and all were addressed. global feedback usually does not provide a clear and direct part of the sentence requiring revision, so it needs more examination of what to revise from the paragraph, for instance, in the following excerpt. fd commented on the topic sentence of at that it is not connected to the paragraph's content. in responding to this, at added one sentence that clearly http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 48-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license express the topic and made other revisions to make the meaning more readily understandable. another example is from ac, who commented on ns to revise the title of her paragraph so that the organization of ideas would be more seamless. in responding to this, ns added a specific detail to the title corresponding to the paragraph's topic sentence. feedback from fd: your topic sentence is not connected to the content. original text from at: thinking about a budget during college is hard. from the textbooks and tuition to housing, and basic things like eating, the costs add up. college students generally live on income from a part-time job, work study, or student loans. make sure you are not spending more than you are receiving. whether it is student loans money, a monthly allowance from your parents, or money you have saved or earn for a part-time job, don't overdo your spending. revised text from at: thinking about a budget during college is hard. from the textbooks, tuition to housing, and basic things like eating. college students generally live on income from a part-time job, work study, or student loans. make sure you are not spending more than you are receiving. whether it is student loans money, a monthly allowance from your parents, or money you have saved or earn for a part-time job, do not over-spend your money. so, here are some additional tips for how you can save money. feedback from ac: from your paragraph explaining making fried rice from leftover rice, you can change the title according to the examples you wrote so that they are more suitable and easier to read. original text from ns: how to make fried rice fried rice is a delicious food that can be easily made from leftover rice, but not everyone knows how to make it. you need ingredients like are eggs, vegetables (cabbage, peas, etc.), and also soy sauce, flavorings and of course rice. so here are some steps to make fried rice using leftover rice. revised text from ns: how to make fried rice with leftover rice fried rice is a delicious food that can be easily made from leftover rice, but not everyone knows how to make it. you need ingredients like eggs, vegetables (cabbage, peas, etc.), and also soy sauce, flavorings and of course rice. so here are some steps to make fried rice using leftover rice. compared to the global one, local-level feedbacks were far higher in number. from 158 addressed feedbacks, 99 were of language while the other 59 were of mechanics. the local feedbacks were more specific on what to address and usually required only addition, deletion, or alteration of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 49-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license certain words or phrases. most often, the revisions were easy to do. for instance, in their comment to ac and c, h and ps suggested the use of alternative words for a more appropriate meaning. ac and c, responded by doing exactly as in the feedbacks of h and ps. furthermore, ac generated a revision beyond the suggestions, resulting in a better sentence. contrary to what ac did, c did not generate his own revision. feedback from h: you've used this word before. it'd be better if you don't repeat. so, just use the synonym of that word like special or particular. original text from ac: this campus has a distinctive yellow characteristic, this can be seen from the yellow landmark located in front of the campus area that reads unsri, the symbol of sriwijaya university and also the color of the student's university jacket which is also yellow. revised text from ac: this campus has a special yellow characteristic, this can be seen from the light yellow landmark located in front of the campus area that reads unsri with the symbol of sriwijaya university and also the yellow color of the student's jacket. feedback from ps: it should be disadvantages original text from c: the second advantage is caused by the outdoor situation. there is no roof but there are trees and small tents to cover some areas. revised text from c: the second disadvantages caused by the outdoor situation. there is no roof but there are trees and small tents to cover some areas. local-level problems are easier to offer since the issues in the sentence are much easier to spot and require less examination to offer feedback. for instance, the excerpts from yib and sj clearly showed that the sentences lack verbs, which was exactly what zz and h offered them. interestingly, yib extended to correct another identical problem to the sentence, although zz did not suggest it. however, this was not done by sj. another instance is the use of pronoun which was also discussed multiple times by the participants, as shown by ac in his feedbacks to nf. feedbacks from zz: change to "depends" because it is like a habit, right? original text from yib: of course, it depended on how crowded the restaurant was. likewise, the prices were expensive, yet i still like to eat there occasionally. revised text from yib: of course, it depends on how crowded the restaurant is. likewise, the prices are expensive, yet i still like to eat there occasionally. feedback from h: add "is" after it original text from sj: first, it cheap. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 50-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license revised text from sj: first, it is cheap. feedback from ac: change into "these" because it shows the plural things. original text from nf: the buildings that are grouped by faculties look like different cities, and also this "cities" have different colors, such as purple, pink, brown, green, blue, orange, etc. revised text from nf: the buildings that are grouped by faculties look like different cities, and also these "cities" have different colors, such as purple, pink, brown, green, blue, orange, etc. for mechanics, capitalization and punctuation are the most frequently discussed issues. these two issues are actually almost identical in all languages so it is quite effortless to spot the issues hence the dominant feedback about them, as illustrated in the following excerpts. feedback from nf: this sentence does not start with capital letter, and that is incorrect. original text from at: there are four points that are differences and similarities between indonesia and china. revised text from at: there are four points that are differences and similarities between indonesia and china. feedback from sj: there should be no space between specifically and coma. original text from c: this university is located in sumatera selatan, more specifically , in indralaya and palembang. original text from c: this university is located in sumatera selatan, more specifically, in indralaya and palembang. the feedback that the writers thought was incorrect or unnecessary went unaddressed. they frequently responded to the feedback by commenting that the changes were not required or that what they had written had no mistake, as illustrated in the following exchanges and the corresponding sentences. yib: because the subject is "it", you need to change it to "serves" c: but i tell my experience in the past, so i used past verb. text: besides, it also served unique drinks, for example, green tea yakult, orange lychee sparkle, sunrise italian soda, etc. ps: do not use the phrase "this building", because it will confuse the readers. use the phrase the auditorium instead. nf: is it confusing? i just want to use pronoun, because i had mention auditorium before. text: on the left side, you will see a rectorate building. it is a nice building with a unique roof that has a big hole in the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 51-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license middle of the inside. next, you can see the auditorium building in front of the rectorate building. this building is usually used for big campus events. inside of it, there is a stage and audience chairs. rq2: how did the participants perceive their experiences in responding to the peer feedback through google docs addressed to them? the research question is answered by summarizing the participants' answers to every question. in addition, extracts from the interview transcript will also be displayed to support the summary. first, the students perceived that the activity could help them improve their writing skills. as some of them pointed out: "yes i did. i thought that by having peer checking helped me in knowing my writing better. …they can help us in realizing stuff that needs to be improved in our writing." "yes, i feel this paragraph writing class is very useful for me, because it can make me understand better how to write paragraph. " "yes, i did. i think that activity is very useful for student especially in doing writing. …students knew their mistakes of grammar and also some typos they have made." all the participants felt the online peer feedback through google docs was helpful. they think it helps them identify errors they made and address the problem. furthermore, they also believe that reading others' pieces of writing has also sharpened their ability to spot errors they made in their writing, and eventually, the activity can help them improve their writing skill. second, most students preferred to give and receive feedback anonymously. as indicated in the following excerpt: "i agree to give advice anonymously because i like to use a pseudonym to advise others." "i love giving and receiving peer feedback anonymously because students are more willingness to comment on the mistakes as many as possible." "i prefer to give and receive feedback un-anonymous. i want my friends to know that the commenter is me because even though i give comment and suggestion, it does not mean i'm correct." most of the participants agreed that they prefer to give and receive feedback anonymously by using pseudonyms since it can eliminate the pressure of what others will feel concerning their feedback. however, one participant thought it was better to give and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 52-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license receive comments about his identity known by the other party. it would be easier, he believes, to discuss with other people with the knowledge of their identity. third, the participants mainly gave online feedback through google docs. as stated in the following: "i gave feedback online through google document. so, my friend will send her paragraph writing in the form of microsoft word to google document." "usually, i use ms. word and send it through email, or i also sometimes use google docs." "by using the google form, select the incorrect phrase/word/sentence, then give the correct one or give another suggestion." in giving online feedback, the participants mainly did it through google docs. in addition, they also did it using microsoft word and email. fourth, most students considered the activities to help them write easier. as shown below: "online feedback really helped me with the revision. …online feedback from my lecturer and my friends helped me realizing the typos or some grammatical error." "so, it helps me identifying the area that needs to be changed." "every time i get feedback, i could learn more and more. how to make the sentence properly and grammatically correct, etc." the online feedback, they believed, helps them identify the mistakes they have made in writing easier since the system has made it possible to place the feedback exactly on the parts that need revision. fifth, they like to do online peer feedback better. as stated in the following transcription: "i think online peer feedback activity is better than face-to-face because. sometimes you cannot muster up the words you want to say in front of the people you wanted to give feedback." "i think online is better in this case because the feedbacks we got can be kept as a file, and we can just open it whenever we want to learn about it again." "i think online peer-feedback activity is better because when we can highlight the certain mistakes. meanwhile, face-to-face peer feedback is also good but it's only in short time that we remember our mistakes so that i prefer to choose online peer feedback." all participants prefer to do online peer feedback than face-to-face activity. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 53-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license they believe that the anonymity offered by the online system can create a comfortable situation for communicating their feedback. cloud computing technology has also made it possible that the feedback can directly be viewed by the writer regardless of time and place. they generally think online feedback through cloud collaboration technology is more straightforward and accessible. sixth, the challenges they faced in doing the online peer feedback through cloud collaboration technology include difficulty in understanding others' comments, insufficient internet connection, and unsupported devices, as described below: "the challenge that i often face in situations like this is that i quite often have difficulty understanding the meaning of the responses that other people have given to my writing." "the challenges that i faced in online peer review are internet signal and my own confusion." "i think the challenges i face during online peer review is how-towrite a great feedback and help friends without giving bad vibes, as in face-toface peer feedback, i felt it was the same." "i was still new about google docs. i did not know how to comment from that application. i preferred to use paper back then." some of them feel that their unfamiliarity with cloud collaboration technology overwhelmed them at first. however, after several times of trials, it was not a problem anymore. interestingly, when discussing the challenges of online peer feedback, some claimed that face-to-face was just the same as online learning or even slightly better. discussion the interaction between the participants was reciprocal asynchronous feedback in which each received and provided feedback. the participant's interaction in online peer feedback through the cloud collaboration facility, as the finding showed, has enabled students to identify and comprehend various writing problems and make revisions and refine their writing. in other words, they achieved better results with the process of interaction or collaboration (vygotsky, 1978; kurniawan & suganda, 2020;, zhou et al., 2012; yim et al., 2014, zhu et al., 2017; karsenti & gauthier, 2018; min et al., 2018; suwantarathip & wichadee, 2014). without the interactions, it might be difficult for them to figure out the problems they need to solve and how to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 54-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license solve them. (chang, 2012; bradley, 2014; (long & richards, 1987). the findings also indicated that the participants had higher numbers of revision-oriented feedback. these higher numbers might be caused by the more time they have to reflect on giving feedback and responding to them as compared to the face-to-face peer feedback in which they are required to provide and respond to the feedback at the allocated time. this aligns with the role of asynchronous online tools, including cloud collaboration tools, in promoting reflection on problems in writing through the time distance between feedback provision and reaction (liu & sadler, 2003). this is supported by what the participants pointed out that the activity aids them in identifying errors and resolving them and that reading other people's work has improved their capacity to notice errors in their work. this is also partially backed up by the concept that the primary mediating influences on the dimensions of collaboration were forms of communication, task representations, matches/mismatches between participants' self-perceived and other-perceived roles, and peer feedback perceptions (cho, 2017). the online peer feedback in writing activity through cloud collaboration technology rooted its concept in the process-oriented approach to writing. the findings that the interactions in online peer feedback empowered the participants in improving their writing and their belief that it improved their capacity to identify their own writing errors is in line with the process-oriented approach in teaching writing (hayes, 2012). the participants offered global-level writing in the activity at a deficient level compared to what they offered in locallevel problems. this might be due to the participants' lack of writing experience and insufficient knowledge of global issues and the topics of their essays (liang, 2010). the difficulties english teachers have implementing complicated processes of processoriented-approach writing, such as brainstorming, prewriting, drafting, and editing, as well as the emphasis of efl traditional classroom practices on local writing features, may also have contributed to the problem (ariyanti, 2016). the non-revision-oriented feedback accounted for almost half of the total number. although these feedbacks are not the primary target, they are without importance which depends on the purpose of the peer feedback. both revision and nonrevision-oriented feedback from the whole online written interaction and communication can be input into their second language learning in general. it http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 55-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is generally understood that second language learning depends on input that converts into the intake when used in meaningful communication (long, 1985; guan et al., 2006). this aligns with the concept that knowledge is actively formed through discussion and collaboration (ravitz et al., 2012). in other words, the interaction of participant feedback is the power in the background that help english learner improve their language. the nonrevision-oriented feedbacks are essential in that they help to create group cohesion (bradley, 2014; liang, 2010) and eventually can assist in creating a comfortable atmosphere for collaboration. the peer feedback activities through cloud collaboration were perceived as a positive experience, as supported by their interview results. all the participants felt the online peer feedback through google docs was helpful. they commented that the activity helped them to be better at writing and, more specifically, it helped them be more conscious of their own writing. anonymity certainly contributed to their positive experience in the peer feedback activity. only one participant reported that he preferred to know the peer's identity that gave the feedback. almost everyone felt that giving and receiving feedback anonymously using pseudonyms is preferable since it removes the pressure of others' reactions to their input. their experience in using google docs as the facility for peer feedback collaboration was with minimal difficulty. however, few participants described their difficulty when using google docs initially. they stated that the online feedback made it simpler to identify the problems they had made in writing since the system allowed them to place the feedback precisely on the spots that needed improvement. they generally believe online feedback via cloud collaboration technology is more convenient and accessible, regardless of location or time. the positive experience is also reflected in the higher revision rate in addressing the revisionoriented feedback. on the other hand, the participants' exchanges in nonrevision-oriented feedback were lighthearted and cheerful. although it was not perceived as a negative experience by the participants, some challenges were also faced in doing the peer feedback activity. some felt that the feedback provided by peers was too challenging to understand and later caused difficulty in responding or addressing the problem. the lack of direct communication between the writer and reviewer demonstrates how a delayed communication process may have resulted in misconceptions and unanswered relevant comments. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 56-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, this difficulty eventually resulted in more extended exchanges discussing the content of the feedback, which was a well-written language practice. other challenges were poor internet connection and unsupported devices. despite these interview comments, google docs do not need a solid internet connection or an advanced device (google, 2021). some believed their lack of knowledge of cloud collaboration technology initially overwhelmed them. however, after repeated trials, it was no longer an issue. one participant felt uncomfortable with the anonymity and perceived that communication would be more accommodating if both parties knew each other. interestingly, when discussing the challenges of online peer feedback, some claimed that face-toface was just the same as online learning or even slightly better. conclusions and suggestion the findings and discussions of this study have led to some conclusions and implications. first, as the findings demonstrated, the involvement of the participants in online peer feedback via cloud collaboration enabled students to detect and comprehend numerous writing problems, as well as revise and improve their work. this is not to imply that peer feedback should take the place of teacher or instructor input entirely. on the other hand, they must employ technology to inspire students and increase peer feedback outside of traditional writing courses without undermining regular and formal writing classes. second, revision and non-revision-oriented feedbacks are part of the online textual interaction and communication that can help them develop their second language. as is generally understood, learning a second language is dependent on input, which transforms into intake when the language is employed in meaningful communication. third, the findings also reveal individuals' divided perspectives about whether they appreciated or disliked their online peer feedback experience. the findings support the shift in learners' and teachers' responsibility for language learning in asynchronous environments. learners are expected to take more active roles in their learning, with instructors/teachers serving as facilitators and providing support as needed. although the current study's findings appear optimistic, future research should consider a few limitations. to begin with, the number of participants is extremely limited. as a result, future studies should focus on a diverse variety of learners in order to allow findings and implications to be generalized to multiple contexts. this http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 57-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.25134 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license study did not measure the participant's progress but focused on their experience and perceptions. future study can also extend their observation of the experience and measure the participant's progress. a comparison between synchronous and asynchronous peer feedback can also be made to see each mode's contribution to writing progress and 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(2017). cept: collaborative editing tool for non-native authors. proceedings of the acm conference on computer supported cooperative work, cscw, 273–285. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181. 2998306 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 158-170 addressing 21st century communication skills: some emerging issues from eil pedagogy & intercultural communicative competence athriyana s. pattiwael received: 14th september 2016; revised: 17th november 2016; accepted: 28th december 2016 abstract 21st century skills has attracted the attention of various education experts, practitioners, school management, teachers and educational managers in asean countries, including indonesia. a number of activities in terms of seminars and workshops have been held by a wide range of institutions to address this framework in terms of how to align it to the curriculum and how to integrate it into classroom activities. regarding communication skills, partnership for 21st century skills defines 21st century communication skills – among the other five definitions – as communicating effectively in diverse environments (including multilingual and multicultural). realizing that this framework was developed in the american context for their national education purposes, it is imperative for various parties, including teachers and practitioners of english as a foreign language, to contextualize it by considering both local and regional contexts. as a minute contribution to the effort of contextualizing the framework, this paper will address some emerging issues in developing the instructional materials framed by the pedagogy of english as an international language and intercultural communicative competence. key words: 21st century communication skills; intercultural communicative competence abstrak keterampilan abad ke-21 telah menarik perhatian beragam kalangan dari pakar pendidikan, praktisi, pengelola sekolah, guru sampai para manajer institusi pendidikan di negara-negara asean, termasuk indonesia. serangkaian kegiatan termasuk seminar dan workshop telah diselenggarakan oleh berbagai institusi untuk membedah kerangka kerja ini dalam hal tentang keterampilan berkomunikasi, partnership for 21st century skills mendefinisikan keterampilan komunikasi abad ke-21 -di antara lima definisi lainnya– sebagai kemampuan berkomunikasi secara efektif di berbagai lingkungan (termasuk multibahasa dan multikultural). menyadari bahwa kerangka kerja ini dikembangkan dalam konteks amerika untuk tujuan pendidikan nasional mereka, maka sangatlah penting bagi berbagai pihak, termasuk guru dan praktisi bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing, untuk mengkontekstualisasikannya dengan mempertimbangkan konteks lokal dan regional. sebagai kontribusi kecil terhadap upaya kontekstualisasi tersebut, tulisan ini akan membahas beberapa isu yang muncul dalam pengembangan bahan ajar yang dibingkai oleh pedagogi bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa internasional dan kompetensi komunikasi antarbudaya. kata kunci: keterampilan abad ke-21; kompetensi komunikasi antar-budaya how to cite: pattiwael, a., s. (2016). addressing 21st century communication skills: some emerging issues from eil pedagogy & intercultural communicative competence. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 158-170 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.3164. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.3164 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.3164 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 159-170|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction communication in 21st century is characterized by the nature of the communication itself which tends to be more and more globalized. flew (2008) describes that we are moving from the typical model of 20th century communication characterized by oneto-many, top-down mass towards 21st century communication model that is more open, interactive, multidimensional and participatory. in relation to the pattern of globalized communication, goldsmith (1998) identifies two possible emerging interrelated trends , namely the sharp increase of the possibility to communicate instantly and massively across the world and the ability to create communities of choices. the increase is driven by several factors, such as global trade, media development and evolution, technology enhancement, international education, the advancement in scientific exchange and international tourism. the fact that 21st century communication drives an impressive international communication presents some opportunities. the opportunities for learning will be greater due to the massive available communication. goldsmith (2008) argues that 21st century communication provides the potential for “global connectedness”. this implies that we will have “the opportunity to interact in a way that leads to the rapid and positive evolution of our species” (p. 2). furthermore, 21st century communication creates a platform for collaboration across sectors and entities. it also creates room and access for local issues to be shared among the interactants. on the other hand, some challenges are also presented by the progressive 21st century communication. communication becomes both more difficult and more necessary since diversity and change are unavoidable. the diverse setting of communication will require more competent, strategic and articulate interactants. common conception of how communication take places is no longer adequate and to some extent might be misleading. the mechanical sender–receiver model of communication obscures complex relations and process in globalized communication (miller, 1996). the relevant underlying point here is english has gained global currency in the majority of 21st century communication process. jenkins and murata (2009) explicate that within the setting of communication where english has gained global currency, the interactants, who come from different ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|160-170 linguistic and cultural background, would most likely choose english as the means of communication since they cannot help using a language of their choice. by smith‟s definition (1976, cited in mckay, 2002), english here gains the status as an international language (eil) in which it is used by people of different nations to communicate with one another. the use of eil itself in 21st century communication activities presents some dynamics. the dynamics is best described by adopting canagarajah‟s (2006) features of postmodern globalization. postmodern globalization captures the dynamics of english use beyond kachru‟s perspectives of various role english serves in different parts of the world (the three concentric circles) that tends to segment the english use and variety in each of the circles. postmodern globalization facilitates the fact that communication activities occurs across the circles. varieties of english exist in the outer circle start to leak outside the circles. kachruvian model that views each variety considered to be valid and relevant within its national identity is being challenged. indian english is now relevant when the indians have to conduct their business activities with business counterparts from other countries. the speakers of english belong to inner circle are expected to at least have receptive skills in different englishes they might find in their business transaction with outsourced companies in different countries. the dynamics in expanding circle countries, such as china, vietnam, philippines, brazil, etc. presents another picture of 21st century communication activities. canagarajah (2006) and matsuda (2012) observe the increasing currency of english in these aforementioned countries. the speakers do not only use english for international relations and communication, but also use it for intranational purposes. furthermore, 21st century communication dynamics present another fact that english is used quite intensively and extensively on daily basis life by the speakers who live in many nonnative english contexts. english is progressively used as an international language both among native and nonnative speakers and among nonnative and nonnative speakers (acar, 2009). seidlhofer (2003) affirms that within these dynamics, english is used both by plurilingual and monolingual people. the following essential notion here is when it is used either plurilingually or monolingually, english has taken various forms reflecting the linguistic and cultural ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 161-170|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 backgrounds of its speakers (acar, 2009). the aforementioned dynamics indicate that the communicative needs are changing at the present time (canagarajah, 2006). it means that the nature of 21st century communication is not only rich and complex in term of linguistic features (acar, 2009), but also on the basis of cultural norms and values. the dynamics call for the need of reorienting the notion of becoming competent communicators of english. in the efforts of either adapting or adopting 21st communication skills to our english teaching and learning, this paper suggests that 21st communication skills should not only be perceived (and later be approached) from the perspective of using english as in the interaction among native speakers in which native speakerism and native likeness are the standard of usage and level of acceptance (trudgill & hannah, 1994). rather, these skills should also be contextualized in the reality of intercultural communication by embracing the fact that english as an international language is used to communicate with people from different nations, languages and cultural backgrounds. embracing the fact of eil in the effort of developing students‟ 21st cs brings the implications to our pedagogical decisions. teaching english as eil requires english learning and teaching practices and its agents to revisit the goal of learning english. the present elt classrooms practices that still learn english for interaction with native speakers through adopting native speaker communicative competence as a goal of learning and learning the cultural conventions of the native speaker are challenged (canagarajah, 2006; matsuda, 2012; mckay, 2002, 2003; alptekin, 2002; acar, 2009; pattiwael, 2014). the revisit is becoming more imperative considering the evolving role of english itself and the reality of cross-cultural communication in international communication contexts. these conditions present a new set of communicative need, determine what communicative competencies needed and later determine what kind of teaching-learning materials and classroom activities that teachers should take into account. communicative competence required in 21st century communication what communicative competence should we provide to our students to enable them to participate in these highly cross cultural and the international communication? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|162-170 canagarajah (2006) describes the profile of the expected communicators in this communication setting. 21st century communicators are expected to be multi-dialectical. it is unavoidable to be multi-dialectical since 21st century communication requires those who participate in it to “constantly shuttle between different varieties and communities” (p. 5). being a multidialectical communicator does not mean that being productive in all varieties of english. yet, it enables the communicators to be capable of negotiating diverse varieties to ensure the communication process runs effectively. furthermore, canagarajah (2006, p.233) considers “passive competence to understand new varieties” as also part of multidialectical competence. to this point of communicative competence, all varieties are considered important and significant in building up communicator‟s linguistic and cultural repertoire and to some extent enriching it. considering the fact that 21st century communication also takes place across cultures, the expected communicators in this communication context are also expected to be interculturally competent. byram‟s (2000) framework of intercultural communicative competence provides the portrayal of this typical communicators. when communicating cross-culturally, the communicators with some degree of intercultural competence are able to see relationships between different cultures and are able to mediate. the ability to mediate here involves the interpretation of each culture in terms of the other, either for themselves or for other people. furthermore, the communicators are described as the party whose critical or analytical understanding of (parts of) their own and other cultures. the state of being critical or analytical is constructed when there is a consciousness in the side of communicators that their perspectives and the ways of thinking are not naturally fabricated, yet culturally determined. mckay (2002) enriches byram‟s framework by elaborating it more into the setting of eil. the emphasis of being competent communicators (in the context of bilingual users in the outer circle) is given more on pragmatic and rhetorical competence. mckay (2002) explicates that achieving pragmatic competence involves the ability to understand the illocutionary force of an utterance, that is what a speaker intends by making it which is cultural in its nature. it also covers the ability to know which form for expressing a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 163-170|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 particular meaning is most appropriate for a particular context. the selection of form itself is culturally basis for selecting the inappropriate form to the context may lead to cross-cultural misunderstanding. the underlined intercultural competence here is developing the awareness that pragmatic rules can differ significantly across cultures. alptekin (2002) strengthens the notion by describing intercultural competence as the ability to communicate effectively with others from different cultural backgrounds. this ability is accompanied with an awareness of differences among cultures and with strategies for coping with such differences. in the setting of eil, nunn (2007, cited in acar, 2009) joins the line by emphasizing that intercultural competence requires the knowledge of cultures involve in the communication setting to facilitate the successful communication. within this setting, being intercultural competent communicators involve the ability to adjust to unpredictable multicultural situations. emerging issues in developing materials to address 21st communication skills within the frame of eil and icc considering the profile of the expected communicator in the 21st century, there are some emerging issues that teachers might take into account in material development process. the balanced focus of teaching and learning is the first emerging issue here. the focus of teaching and learning should also be on developing proficiency in pragmatics, rather than focus solely on developing proficiency in grammar or in abstract linguistic features as means of context to prepare the students to be able to “shuttle between english varieties and speech communities” (canagarajah, 2006, p. 5). embracing this focus would lead the teachers to include “sociolinguistic skills of dialect differentiation, code switching, style shifting, interpersonal communication, and discourse strategies” (mckay, 2005 in canagarajah, 2006, p.233). it is essential that students are informed to the fact that within the real intercultural and international communication setting, certain breakdown in communication settings could not be perceived as completely miscommunication. rather, the breakdown could be considered as a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|164-170 creative rhetorical act since in order to facilitate communication the interlocutors might work on convergence strategies, but they could also adopt the divergence strategies to create distance between them (jenkins, 2006). the second emerging issues here is developing stronger language awareness among students. the setting of 21st communication necessitates greater needs to engage with multiple english varieties. canagarajah (2006) suggests that developing competence in only one dialect or language system would not be a tactful step to take in developing the awareness. he argues that the communicators should develop the cognitive abilities to negotiate multiple dialects as they shuttle between communities and varieties. the awareness could be cultivated by assisting students to process the underlying system in the varieties that they encounter in social interactions. exposing to various social interactions, it is expected that when they were exposed to new varieties or dialects, students would gradually cultivate intuitive skills to develop relative communicative competence according to their needs. it is expected that as the prospective 21st century communicators, students were facilitated with the progressive ability to discern the structure, pattern and rules work within particular varieties or dialects. seidlhofer (2004), who works extensively in the area of lingua franca core features, encompasses the concept of developing language awareness by underlying the principle of lingua franca core. working with this principle, it is foundational to help students to find the fact that in such multilingual contexts, particular sound and grammatical structured classified as norm in a dominant variety may not contribute as the facilitating factors in communication process. the facts may reveal that in order to facilitate communication process, the communicators might have to deviate from these norms. setting the teaching objective(s) that serves the purpose of developing students‟ intercultural communicative competence is the next emerging issue. to ensure the elements of intercultural competence were facilitated well during the teaching and learning process, a set of clear teaching objective should be formulated. byram (2001), in his work in 1997, proposes a valuable paradigm on defining, teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence that has been exploited and referred to by various researchers in the field of intercultural communicative ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 165-170|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 competence. briefly, he contends that intercultural competence involves five elements namely attitudes, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction and critical cultural awareness/political education. byram‟s model of different dimensions of intercultural communicative competence then were summarized by nault (2006, cited in nunn, 2011). the dimensions cover the area of attitudes, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and cultural awareness. nault suggests that byram‟s model can be adapted as teaching objectives as follow: (1) attitudes. learners should be curious, openminded and flexible, or ready “to suspend disbelief” about others‟ cultures. (2) knowledge. learners should understand “social groups and their products and practices” and “the general processes of societal and individual interaction” in their own and foreign countries. (3) skills of interpreting and relating. learners should be able “to interpret a document or event from another culture” in relation to their own cultural perspective. (4) skills of discovery and interaction. learners should be able “to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices” and “operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction”. (5) critical cultural awareness. learners should be able “to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives, practices and products” in their own and others‟ cultures and countries. when english is used in an international setting, it involves crossing borders as individuals interact in cross-cultural encounter that highly demands intercultural competence. the nature of this typical communication which is highly cultural on its basis leads the teachers to bring culture into the classroom. the attention is drawn to which and how culture should be presented into the classrooms, as the next emerging issue in developing materials. cortazi and jin (1999) classifies the textbook and teaching materials reflecting cultures into three patterns, namely source culture materials, target culture materials and international target cultures materials. focusing on enhancing students‟ intercultural communicative competence, international target culture materials present some benefits, next to some disadvantages. international target culture materials use and incorporate a great variety of cultures in english and non-english-speaking countries around the world in the set of learning materials. the opportunities ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|166-170 for the students to experience reflective interpretation of their own culture (c1) and the culture of others (c2) are possible when they come into direct contact with other cultures. the experiences of coming into contact involve the students in an objective and subjective reflection of c1 and c2. the reflection provides them platform from which they must choose their own meanings that best reflect their personal perspectives. furthermore, the teachers through effective instructional activities may aid students‟ effort in finding possible manners in which english is used effectively to communicate with different types of communities for various international purposes. providing the students with the opportunity in which they are able to adapt to different types of communities is considered principal to nunn (2011). he argues that eil users do not operate in homogenous, single speech communities. therefore, they need to be able to communicate within different kinds of communities. the last emerging issues considered significant to be taken into account when developing materials is how teachers facilitate the process of developing students‟ intercultural communicative competence. this paper perceives english classrooms as a setting and/or context where the students extend their process of acquiring new cultures and be encouraged to follow this process of acquiring by self-reflection and meaning modification. learning about various culture-based communication contexts within this setting is more than just transferring the information between cultures. it requires the students to consider their own culturebased communication practices in relation to other (cultural) practices. mckay (2002) strengthens this notion by stating that the process of learning about another culture, including communication practices, entails reflection on one‟s own culture as well as the other cultures. teacher‟s role in facilitating this phase is imperative. brown (2000) describes what sort of process encountered by the students as they deal with various cultures presented in the class. the students experience feelings of being frustrated because of the failure mixed with the fearful anticipation of entering a new group. they suffer from feelings of social uncertainty or dissatisfaction as the result of being exposed and/or being in contact with new cultures. brown (2000) explains that this process is a significant aspect of the relationship between language learning and attitude toward the foreign culture and coins ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 167-170|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the process as the concept of anomie. this is the stage where the students find themselves neither bound firmly to their native culture nor fully adapted to the second culture. the teacher plays significant role in assisting the students who are on the phase of anomie. they bridge the gap by supporting the students to establish their “third place”. kramsch (1993) describes this “third place” as the place where the students position themselves between their first culture (c1) and the second culture (c2). as a process, it is described as the process of involving the students in an objective and subjective reflection of their c1 and c2. the reflection is imperative as an entry into the process of selecting and constructing their meanings that best reflect their personal perspectives. these personal perspectives are the results of comparing and contrasting between cultures. the process emphasizes the importance of individual interpretations of certain cultural practices and/or perspectives. this individual interpretation might lead the students to question or even further to challenge and debunk stereotypes around them. the reflective activity as the center of establishing the third place needs to consider two underlying points here. firstly, establishing a sphere of inter-culturality is the essential part of the reflective activity. kramsch (1993) emphasizes that the more reflective activity the students have, the clearer relationship between different cultural practices, including communication practices, they will find. the second crucial point relates to the focus of bringing and teaching culture-based communication practices to the class. the teachers are suggested to design the materials with the instructional activities that go beyond the presentation of culture-based communication facts or practices only. the instructional activities should bring the students arrive to the point where they understand what seems to be the „foreignness‟ of the other communication practices. the students are facilitated to find the macro features of the practices such as specific cultural values and attitudes behind certain communication practices. the findings might appear as either differences or similarities. the differences should be deliberately made visible to the students. kramsch (1993) claims that by identifying the difference the students are able to understand their own culture-based communication practices better and see how different cultures interact between one to another. the identification of differences would also help the students to see the unique and distinct characteristics of different ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|168-170 communication practices. by increasing students‟ awareness of culture-based communication differences, their sensitivity and accommodation skill can be developed. besides, the awareness would contribute to their cultural repertoire later be accessed and revisited when they shuttle between various culture-based communication settings with different communities and/or dialects. conclusion and suggestion 21st century communication practices at the present time shape the direction and the needs in teaching and learning english. the fact that the majority of 21st communication activities are highly intercultural in its nature present a strong call to embrace intercultural communicative competence in elt classrooms‟ efforts to address 21st communication skills. framing the efforts with eil pedagogy and the framework of intercultural communicative competence assist the teachers and the practitioners to revisit the concept of communicative competence elt classrooms aim at. furthermore, the framing would help the teacher to be more well-informed in their instructional decisions by considering some emerging issues in developing the materials. it is expected that our elt classrooms would provide more opportunities for the students to be effective communicators in any possible cross-cultural international communication. references acar, a. 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(2011). from defining to developing competence in eil and intercultural communication. english as an international language journal, 6 (1), 21-46. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|170-170 pattiwael, a. (2014). towards an intercultural competence in the world english era: some emerging issues and considerations regarding culture in the classrooms. in pandian, a., ling, c. l., lin, d.t., muniandy,j., choo, l.b & hiang, c. t (eds), language teaching and learning: new dimensions and interventions (pp.26-42). newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publishing. trudgill, p., & hannah, j. (1994). international english (3rd ed.). london: edward arnold. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 192-210 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee argumentative writing construction of efl writing class through declarative speech acts approach durotun nasihah*, sonny elfiyanto universitas islam malang, indonesia (durotun@unisma.ac.id) received: 15th june 2022; revised: 18th october 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract this study investigates how indonesian undergraduate efl students construct argumentative essays through critical discussion using pragma-dialectic and pragmatic approaches. this study employed a qualitative research method. the data consist of argumentative essays authored by undergraduate english students at a private university in indonesia (n=34). students worked in pairs as protagonist and antagonist, discussed and wrote essays on a controversial topic. the analysis showed that students used four steps of argumentation: confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. most students used confrontation and opening stages in the introduction, argumentation stage in developing a paragraph, and end with a conclusion. to understand the purpose of argumentation, the students were instructed to use four types of speech acts, which have different functions: assertive, commissive, declarative, and directive speech acts. implementing the pragma-dialectic theory helps the students comprehend argumentative writing and trains them to think critically in resolving differences. key words: pragma-dialectic approach; argumentative essay; speech acts abstrak penelitian ini mengkaji bagaimana siswa efl indonesia menuliskan esai argumentatif melalui diskusi kritis dengan menggunakan pendekatan pragma-dialektika van eemeren dan grootendorst (1970) dan pragmatis searle (1969). penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif. data berasal dari esai argumentatif semester ketiga yang ditulis oleh mahasiswa indonesia di jurusan bahasa inggris. tiga puluh empat siswa di kelas menulis mendiskusikan topik yang berbeda. siswa bekerja berpasangan untuk mendiskusikan topik kontroversial, dipisahkan menjadi kelompok protagonis dan antagonis. analisis mengklaim bahwa siswa menggunakan empat langkah argumentasi: konfrontasi, pembukaan, argumentasi, dan kesimpulan. penelitian ini menemukan bahwa sebagian besar siswa menggunakan tahap konfrontasi dan pembukaan dalam pendahuluan, tahap argumentasi dalam mengembangkan paragraf, dan diakhiri dengan kesimpulan. untuk mengetahui tujuan penggunaan argumentasi, siswa menggunakan empat tindak tutur, yang memiliki fungsi berbeda: asertif, komisif, deklaratif, dan direktif. menerapkan teori pragma-dialektika membantu siswa memahami tulisan argumentatif dan melatih mereka untuk memiliki pemikiran kritis yang baik dalam menyelesaikan pendapat yang berbeda. kata kunci: pendekatan pragma-dialektika; essai argumentative; tindak tutur how to cite: nasihah, d., elfiyanto, s. (2022). argumentative writing construction of efl writing class through declarative speech acts approach. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 192-210. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 193-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing is a skill that second language (l2) learners find the most difficult (miri, 2014). teachers face considerable obstacles in enhancing elementary to tertiary students' writing abilities (kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan ri, 2020). this phenomenon encourages language educators and efl professionals to look for a way to make writing less intimidating for efl students. the highest level of writing for university students is argumentative writing, which combines writing abilities and critical thinking. students were frequently expected to choose a position on a subject and defend it with evidence from trustworthy sources by employing argumentative writing techniques (setyowati et al., 2017). in a democratic setting, it is expected that members of society can defend their opinions while considering those of others. furthermore, pupils must be able to comprehend, elaborate, organize, and integrate information in the knowledge society (list & alexander, 2019). learning to argue will help people advance their academic and personal life (andrews, 2000). the argumentative discussion typically employs terminologies and major concepts to aid comprehension, particularly for a novice reader. a fundamental idea from which argumentation springs is a dispute or different points of view (explicit or implicit). van eemeren et al. (2002), wrote that there are always two sides involved in a quarrel or difference of opinion. when one side presents a viewpoint, the opposing side expresses questions about it or, more frequently, goes one step further and rejects the viewpoint. this argumentative discussion process uses a dialectic system (humblin, 1970). humbling explained that the dialectic system happens in the dialogue between two participants. the argumentative discussion has three essential components: (1) it consists of two parties, the protagonist and antagonist; (2) it has regular steps taken by both parties or participants; and (3) the dialogue has sequence steps. moreover, the protagonist has the first opportunity to present their point of view and argumentation in this situation, followed by the responses. they then adhere to the discourse rules (walton, 2007). following the above perspective, the researchers used the pragmadialectic approach to train the students to sharpen their critical thinking in argumentative writing because the pragma-dialectic can be used to investigate the critical conversation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 194-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license resulting in diverse viewpoints (kaldjärv, 2011). the pragma-dialectic paradigm is best served as a critical discourse that seeks to explain argumentative discussion and settle disagreements on the merits (van eemeren et al., 1984). with this strategy, the protagonist and antagonist attempt to see whether the protagonist's analysis can stand the antagonist's criticism. following the criticism from the antagonist, the protagonist presents the justification for their position. when arguing for a persuasive position, the protagonist seeks to support the statements. the protagonist attempt to disprove this assertion. the protagonist tries to justify or disprove the perspective upheld when the antagonist challenges him/her using fresh criticism, new facts that the opponent can respond to, etc. (van eemeren & grootendorst, 2003). besides, pragma-dialectic also concerns with the use of a pragmatic viewpoint in seeing language use, especially in speech acts, with dialectical notions from critical rationalism and dialogue logic (van eemeren et al., 1984; van eemeren & grootendorst, 2004). previous studies have shown that speakers’ use of speech acts could show their purpose of using argumentation (kamariah, 2021). moreover, speech acts were used to express an opinion produced by the protagonist and antagonist sides to resolve problems (fahmi & rustono, 2018; van eemeren & grootendorst, 2003). dialogue analysis may reveal arguments where a speaker's intended meaning differs from the meaning that the speaker and the hearer mutually construct. these cases can be explained by applying the interactionist speech act theory to models like the pragmadialectic model. the theory of speech act is used on certain types of conditions categorized by searle (1969): condition of propositional substance, condition of readiness, condition of honesty, and condition of necessity (saifudin, 2019; van eemeren et al., 2007). the term pragma-dialectic refers to two disciplines: pragmatics and dialectics. pragmatics is the study of the language used in communication, while dialectic is concerned with how arguments were exchanged (van eemeren et al., 2007). because the fundamental idea of a critical discourse aiming at resolving conflicts is founded on a speech act, this framework will appeal to pragmatics readers. following the paradigm, a disagreement of opinion can only be resolved through each dialogue stage: confrontation, introduction, argumentation, and conclusion. every utterance serves a purpose in critical debate; speech actions were carried out ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 195-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license according to the norms that must be followed in a critical argument to resolve a disagreement. analytically, the critical conversation can be divided into four stages (van eemeren & grootendorst, 2004): identifying the point of disagreement (confrontation stage), deciding where the debate will begin (opening stage), expressing the argumentative and critical responses to resolve the disagreement (argumentation stage), and establishing the discussion's outcome (conclusion stage). while this paradigm was accepted, van rees (2009) used the extended theory as a springboard for the analysis of a conceptual technique that is frequently employed in argumentative discourse for strategic maneuvering. table 1. the distribution speech act and the functions stage of argument ation speech act function confront ation stage assertives show the way to express the point of view commissives represent the agreement or the disagreement of the participants of the opinion. directives concerned with demands to declare the viewpoint declarativess represent definitions, clarification, and the specification of the point of view opening stage directives represent the challenge to defend the viewpoint of the proponent commissives view as the opponent's agreement or disagreement with the proponent's standpoint. declarativess the clarification and the specification at the opening stage argumen tation stage directives asking the participant to advance their viewpoint. assertives the way to improve the point of view of the participants in the discussion commissives the agreement or the disagreement of the arguers of the standpoint declarativess the specification and the definition of the standpoint conclusio n stage assertives the statement of the result of the discussion commissives the agreement or the disagreement of the participants regarding the viewpoint declarativess specify whether the difference of opinion is settled or not. additionally, allani (2018) agreed that the pragma-dialectic approach could be used to explore students’ use of argumentation. svačinová (2021) believed that the pragma-dialectic approach is useful for defining crisis diary writing as an argumentative activity type. ma and chen (2009) said that theoretically, using pragmadialectic in academic argumentation could develop the research framework and expand the research perspective and method of academic argument. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 196-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license practically, the pragma-dialectic approach can be used to train academic researchers in charge of public communication to use pragmatic argumentation reasonably and efficiently. more importantly, it gives readers a vital analytical tool to properly interpret academic arguments and develop their critical thinking skills. the previous studies (ma & chen, 2009; svačinová, 2021) gave a wider perspective that the pragmadialectic approach influences the writing process. based on the knowledge of the pragma-dialectic approach related to argumentative writing, this research aimed to fill in the gap of the use of pragma-dialectics in argumentative writing pair work (protagonist and antagonist). more specifically, the study aimed to investigate how students construct argumentative writing and the actual distribution of students’ speech acts in their argumentative writing using a pragma-dialectical approach. methods the study used qualitative research. the following briefly describes the participants, data collection, and analysis. participant the participant in this research was students of the islamic university of malang. thirty-four third-year students taking an efl writing course whose lecturers employed pragma-dialectic theory participated in the study. the participants were around 20-21 years old at the time of data collection. all students have already studied english for two years at the university. the students (n=34) were divided into protagonist group (n=17) and antagonist group (n=17). data collection the data were argumentation text from an argumentative writing class. thirty-four students worked in pairs to discuss different topics. they chose one topic prepared by the lecturer and which side they wanted to be (protagonist or antagonist side). the protagonists and antagonists attempted to systematically determine if the protagonist's viewpoint could survive the adversary's criticism. there were four steps to get the data, table 2. steps in collecting data week activity 1 the theory and examples of using pragmadialectic 2 choosing discussion partner presenting the topic of discussion 3 discussion verbally of the topic 4 writing students’ idea 5 continue to write the argumentation 6 submitting the writing feedback processes 7 repair the writing 8 submitting the revised writing ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 197-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data analysis the researchers analyzed the argumentative text procedure to investigate the use of the pragmadialectic approach in critical discussion (van eemeren & grootendorst, 2003). the researchers identified each paragraph of the student’s writing based on these rules: first, during the confrontation phase, discussant 1 externalized a position. this position was contested in an argumentation writing or speech that addresses a nonmixed, single difference (by discussant 2). second, after discussant 1 accepted discussant 2's challenge to clarify the point of view and agreed on the role assignments and discussion rules, the discussants began a debate in the initial stage. third, the protagonist-assumed discussant would defend the initial stance in the argumentation stage against the antagonist-assumed discussant. lastly, the discussant who served as the main character in the argumentation stage either retracted or did not retract the initial stance in the conclusion stage. in contrast, the discussant who served as the opposition in the argumentation stage either upheld or rejected the initial position in the dispute. the researchers divided the data into two categories based on the analysis of the procedure: students’ writing on the protagonist and the antagonist with pragmadialectic rules. the researchers analyzed the reason for using language by identifying the sentences' words, sentences, and purposes to investigate the distribution of speech acts. according to the dialectical method of a critical discussion, each speech act in the text had a particular function in examining the acceptability of assertions. every statement had a purpose in the early stages of a critical debate. the speech acts were performed following the conventions that must be followed in a critical discussion intended to settle a dispute (kaldjarv, 2011). findings and discussion findings construction of argumentative writing based on a pragmadialectic approach students were divided into protagonists and antagonists and instructed to write an argumentative essay. students were asked to compose an essay containing an introduction, a developing paragraph, and a conclusion. each composition contained several phases for creating the argument, including the confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. the following table ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 198-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license presents students’ construction of argumentation. table 3. the composition of the argumentation paragraph the compo sition paragr aph confront ation stage openin g stage argumen tation stage conclus ion stage fr eq % fr eq % fre q % fr eq % introd uction 27 45, 9 17 28 ,9 14 23, 8 0 0 develo ping topics 13 22, 1 15 25 ,5 34 57, 8 11 18 ,7 conclu sion 3 5,1 2 3, 4 7 11, 9 27 45 ,9 total 43 34 55 38 total 170 the table 3 shows that the students frequently used the confrontation stage (28,9%) and opening stage (45,9 %) in their paragraph introduction. in addition, the students used the argumentation stage in the developing topics (57,8%) and a summary in the conclusion section (45,9%). the students gave a systematic writing process in the introduction stage. they showed their standpoint about the case, showing the reason why they agreed or disagreed with the motion of the case. in the opening stage, the students tried to see the opponent’s standpoint on the case. both sides started to decide to do a critical discussion about the case. in the argumentation stage, the students tried to elaborate the evidence and fact to strengthen their opinion. in the conclusion stage, students tried to give the decision of the discussion whether they followed the other side’s opinion or still believed in their standpoint. it is different from kaldjärv (2011), who found that most estonian students use the first group writing style in exploring the state exam composition. this case happened because the work of estonian uses a monologue manuscript that lacks a dialectical approach. argumentative writing is the textual process of defending and discussing arguments (ferretti et al., 2009). argumentation model has been the most prominent theoretical framework to date regarding the essential elements of an argument (toulmin, 2003). through independent research into a subject to produce a collection, generation, and evaluation of evidence to support their position, students were motivated to construct arguments in their argumentative writing. students were often asked to adopt a viewpoint on a topic through the practice of argumentative writing and to support that position with evidence from trustworthy and authoritative sources (setyowati et al., 2017). a group of statements was referred to as an argument, and critical thinking was strongly related to this concept. some arguments were used to justify claims and judgments (indrilla & ciptaningrum, 2018). a writer must provide the information in an orderly, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 199-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license structured, and logical way to reach a persuasive conclusion (fisher, 2013). using a communicative writing process brought the dialogue between the protagonist and antagonist. argumentation demanded conversation. the levels of critical discussion effectively showed the argumentative writing's dialogue-level disagreements. moreover, according to van eemeren & grootendorst’s (2003) critical discussion, protagonist and antagonist speech acts interact in the dialectical process to resolve different opinions. in this opportunity, the students delivered the standpoint and took position and discussion rules in the confrontation and opening stage; the students might present data, evidence, opinion, and argumentation, and both discussants had the opportunity to dispute, maintain the standpoint, attacked the other side, and answered the questions. the students tried to elaborate the standpoint and argumentation into the conclusion. in this stage, the students needed to decide whether to keep the standpoint or recognize the other viewpoint. analytical speech acts in argumentative text based on a pragma-dialectics approach the argumentative text comprised four key discussion stages: confrontation, opening, argumentative, and conclusion. each step of the stages consisted of complex speech acts which had different purposes. the analytical speech effectively explained argumentation as a communicative practice in which both the speaker and hearer played a fundamental role (marchal, 2021). table 4. students’ speech act distribution in the argumentative writing class stages asserti ves commi ssives declar atives directi ves fr e q % fr e q % fr e q % fr e q % confro ntatio n (prota gonist side) 1 5 5,6 % 7 2,6 % 2 0, 7 % 1 0,3 % confro ntatio n (antag onist side) 1 7 6,3 % 1 1 4,0 7% 1 0, 3 % openi ng (prota gonist side) 1 3 4,8 % 1 0, 3 % 7 2,6 % openi ng (antag onist side) 9 3,3 % 1 1 4,0 7% argu mentat ive (prota gonist side) 6 2 22, 9% 6 2,2 % 2 0, 7 % 7 2,6 % argu 4 17, 1 0, 3 1,1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 200-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license stages asserti ves commi ssives declar atives directi ves fr e q % fr e q % fr e q % fr e q % mentat ive (antag onist side) 7 4% 3 % % concl usion (prota gonist side) 2 3 8,5 % concl usion (antag onist side) 2 4 8,9 % total 270 confrontation stage speech acts indicated the purpose of the statements or sentences in creating an argumentative paragraph. assertives, commissives, and pragmadialectic are used during the confrontation stage. assertiveness was the most frequently used in the confrontation stage by the protagonist (5,6%) and antagonist (7%). data (1) is from the protagonist, and data (2) is from the antagonist to present the caserelated viewpoint at the confrontation stage. kamariah (2021) found that using assertive speech acts in the confrontation stage was shown by expressing a point of view. she selected the speech act depending on the speaker's or writer's willingness to accept a specific propositional ability to a certain degree (van eemeren et al., 2007). 1) the death penalty is an effective way to deter criminals because death penalty can be both a deterrent and influence the behavior of those who commit serious crimes (100a) 2) on the other side i disagree with the argument that money brings happines to us (105a) data (1) is an assertive speech act used by the protagonist which shows how students express their standpoint by explaining the death penalty implicitly. it is different with data (2) from the antagonist which expresses his/her standpoint explicitly by saying “i disagree”. in addition, the study discovered that other writers employed sympathy to support the viewpoint (data 3) and (data 4). according to van eemeren & grootendorst (2004), commissives were employed to support a standpoint or not by reiterating a viewpoint that has been rejected as well as to support a challenge to a standpoint. here, the students attempt to further their viewpoint by disparaging that of the opposing side. 3) life is hard without money. but that doesn't mean money is everything. because having a lot ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 201-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of money does not guarantee leads happiness. people have jobs that give them meaning or purpose, they are happier and regardless of how much money they make (105) 4) people must be familiar with the phrase "money can't buy happiness." the term is not entirely correct. both data (3) and (4) represent disagreement of the opposite teams. the protagonist expressed disagreement by comparing the antagonist’s point of view and the protagonist’s argumentation, and vice versa. furthermore, the researchers also found declarative speech act in the confrontation stage (data 5 and 6) used to define. 5) money is an acceptable currency in exchange for economic activities (106a) 6) standardized test (un) is an exam held to control student competence at the primary and secondary education levels as a result of the learning process in accordance with the graduate competency standards (skl) (133). both data (5 and 6) show how the parties define money and national examination. these actions did not directly impact resolving different opinions between parties because, in critical discussion, declaratives did not play a significant part in resolving problems. nevertheless, in the confrontation stage, declaratives could uncover pseudo-disputes (kamariah, 2021). another speech act, directives, was also found in the confrontation stage by the protagonist’s side. directives expressed the demand to declare the standpoint about the case shown in data (7) below. 7) yep, i totally agree. if money brings happiness to people, of course, because why do we live without money, we can't live? (104) in this confrontation, the protagonist uses two speech acts in one stage: assertiveness and directives. here, the writer focused on the use of directives which represented how the protagonist asked other parties to declare the point of view of the case. there were some purposes for using directives (saifudin, 2019), such as to refute points of view that were raised, to defend points of view, to ask the opposing party for points of support for his position, or to demand a definition or an explanation of an opponent's statement. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 202-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opening stage after student 1 (protagonist) accepted student 2's challenge (antagonist) to convey their respective points of view, the division of labor and the rules for the debate are accepted. the data (commissive, declarative, and directive speech acts) had been identified. directive speech act 2,6% (protagonist) and 4,07% (antagonist) challenges the opposing argument to defend the standpoint. here, the writer asked the opposite side to get clarification about the other student's standpoint and statement. fahmi and rustono (2018) found that directives were used in the opening stage to demand the opposite party's clarification and asked for evidence of the argumentation. for example: 8) but people should also pay attention to child abuse cases – how do we send someone who commits such a heinous crime, and it happens again and again, to society? (100b) 9) many reasons were found, like what if they escaped from prison? what if ex-criminals who got out of prison were all around us? and other things. is that a reason to take human life (101) the data (8) show that the student from the protagonist wants to clarify how the student from the antagonist handles severe crime if the second student disagrees with implementing the death penalty for severe cases. the antagonist had a chance to explain the reason or offered new ideas for eradicating criminal acts. data (9) also showed how the protagonist team asked the clarification of the antagonist’s argumentation. another speech act in the opening stage was the commissive speech acts, which account for 4,8 % (protagonist) and 3,3% (antagonist). it showed how the student supported the standpoint or not by repeating rejecting the standpoint. this commissive was in line with van eemeren et al. (2007) accepting or disagreeing with the opposing argument, consenting to be a part of the opposing argument, agreeing with the norms of discussion connected to accepting or denying the arguments, and deciding to start a new discussion are a few instances of compliant speech acts in debate. data (10) and (11) represent the use of the commissive speech act in the text. the students defended the standpoint by showing the opposition's weakness. the students compared arguments to determine which were more logical and credible. in line with kamariah’s (2021) research, using commissives in the opening stage showed the disagreement that can create to support ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 203-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the case and express his opinion. for example 10) even, some people find every way to get more money to create happiness like they buckle down to fill up their needs and lifestyle and if we look any further, we can see some people do bad things just to get money (106b) 11) students must study many subjects for three years, but the subjects tested are only three subjects. and logically, with the standardized tests (un), many do not realize that they are studying to pass the exam. it's not about getting better, having better qualities, or having good manners; it's just about passing the test. (133) data (10) show how people try hard to get money and achieve happiness. they will do everything to fulfill their life's needs, but the students emphasized that some people used the wrong way to achieve that purpose. the students could not say that this was the definition that money is everything in human life. the students tried to compare the argumentation everyone needed money and the reality that some people used the wrong ways to get that money. this was how the students defended their standpoints and stood on their position. data (11) indicated how the party assigned its beliefs about the case. the party tried to show that they were on the antagonist’s side. in the opening stage, the use of declarative speech act is 0,3% (protagonist) which means only one student uses declarative to represent explanations, definitions, and the expression of the viewpoint. 12) standardized test (un) is an exam held to control student competence at the primary and secondary education levels as a result of the learning process in accordance with the graduate competency standards (skl) (133) the student uses declaratives in the opening stage used to define the national examination. argumentative stage in the argumentative stage, the protagonist role is to defend the initial viewpoint (van eemeren & grootendorst, 2003) and to counter the antagonist’s argument. the researchers found four types of speech acts: assertive 22,9% (protagonist) and 14,4% (antagonist), commissives 2,2 % (protagonist), directives (2,6% (protagonist) and 1,1% (antagonist), and declarative 0,7% (protagonist) and 0,3% (antagonist)., assertiveness in the argumentative stage refers to how the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 204-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license speaker or writer presents the case and increases the discussion participants' points of view (van eemeren & grootendorst, 2004). speakers or writers use assertive speech acts to extract data and show the truth to convince others. opponents will respond to a question using a variety of arguments. the objective also includes getting the other individual to come clean and admit the truth. the statement may convey the viewpoint under discussion, support a viewpoint with an argument, or explain the result of a discussion. fahmi and rustono (2018) also found that assertives were used to indicate explanation and argumentation. excerpt (13) shows how the protagonist student defends the standpoint by exploring data and the truth of the effectiveness of national examination, while another writer showed the opposite argumentation (data 14). it is in line with van eemeren et al. (2007), who gave a specific illustration of this assertive speech act adds to the argument. 13) the standardized test (un) is also an exercise to face the challenges that will occur after graduating from school to form a superior generation. as a quote says, "if it is like a standardized test (un) is only a rung of the ladder that you must pass before piling up thousands of other stairs that wait in the future." standardized tests train student’s mentality and train student’s responsibilities which will be very useful for students in the future. cheating during standardized tests (un) reflects students with weak mentality because they are not confident, lack of effort, rely only on friends, and easily give up on challenges. mental learners must be built very well (132) 14) several reasons make this standardized test (un) an unhealthy competency. first, some students cannot get good grades because they cannot master the material due to educational gaps between regions. second, they will justify any means to get good grades because the standardized test (un) purpose grades, including cheating to get good grades. last, educators who work closely with students (133) the protagonists also used commissive speech acts in the argumentation stage (2,2%) to indicate that they agreed or disagreed with the opponents’ argumentation. for example: 15) do you still think that when you got a lot of money leads to happiness? okay-okay, so how ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 205-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license about this when you buy something that you like, you felt happy right when buying those items, such as your favorite supercar, a mansion, etc. with the money, you can afford a lot of things that you want to own, so i think the more money you spend on your favorite things, the happier you are (108) excerpt (15) shows the illustration that buying things, fulfilling their needs, and spending more money on a hobby will create happiness in real life. it describes the reality of people with much money who can do whatever they want. kamariah (2021) also found that using commissives were used to show that the students can do something better than others. the speech acts used in the argumentation stage were directives, respectively 2.6% for protagonist and 1,1% for the antagonist), in the form of asking other students to give a definition, specification, and further explanation. using directives also indicates that the students want to advance argumentation in explaining the case. saifudin (2019) suggested that an effectively-directed speech act might be used to criticize arguments that support or defend a point of view, solicit an opponent's opinion to support a speaker’s point of view, or ask an opponent to clarify or explain a remark. for example: 16) in simple word money is everything but everything is not about money. what do you mean by that? if someone dies, we can't buy a soul for them and we can't also make their life (119) 17) well, still not believing that money leads to happiness? , well if that is the case, let’s take a look at this, well-known research from 2010 had shown that people tend to feel happier the more money they make only up until a point of about $75,000 a year. more people felt happiest when they can make more money than they think of right directive speech acts, exemplified by data (16) for the protagonist and (17) for the antagonist, are explicitly used to ask explanation about the opposite student's statement. the students were able to weaken the opposite arguments by asking for clarification. as van eemeren and grootendorst (2004) said, the directive speech act in the argumentation stage is used to ask the opponent to define, specify, and explain the argumentation in order to support the standpoint. the researchers also found declaratives in the argumentation stage whose function is for giving definition, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/how-your-salary-and-the-way-you-spend-money-affect-your-happiness.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/how-your-salary-and-the-way-you-spend-money-affect-your-happiness.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 206-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license specification, and additional argumentation to support the standpoint. pragma-dialectic are 0,7% (for the protagonists) and 0,3 % used by the antagonist shown in the data (18) and (19). both excerpts indicate how students try to define terms to strengthen their standpoint. 18) the standardized test (un) is an examination carried out as a national evaluation system for elementary to high school 19) the death penalty is a sentence or verdict handed down by the court as the heaviest form of punishment imposed on a person due to his actions conclusion stage in the last stages, the conclusion stage, it was reported that most protagonist (8,9%) and antagonist (8,5%) students used assertive. the findings were in line with van eemeren and grootendorst (2004) who believed that assertiveness is used to defend one’s standpoint and assign the result of the discussion. data (20) and (21) show how protagonist and antagonist students firmly believed their standpoint in their argumentation. kaldjärv (2011) also found in his research that students tended to use assertive speech acts to preserve their standpoint 20) the conclusion is money can bring a person happiness. money can increase the satisfaction of life depending on how people spend it. if everyone spends money on experiences or items that match his values, it will increase each person's happiness. and the last quote is, "money can't buy happiness, but it has happier money."(112) 21) in conclusion, many strong reasons say that money is not a source of happiness, money is only a tool for needs, and don't be excessive in spending. money cannot buy happiness because true happiness comes from our hearts when we can be grateful for what we have (113) discussion this research viewed how the students construct argumentative writing and how the distribution of speech act in every stage of argumentative writing. the finding above shows how the discussant uses confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion to construct argumentative text. based on the stages in critical discussion, the researchers found three groups of discussants in using critical discussion stages related to van eemeren et al. (1984) such as confrontation, opening, argumentation, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 207-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and conclusion. this research shows that the students apply every stage in critical discussion in different ways. no specific rules in applying stages in critical discussion, so some students use confrontation and opening stage in the introduction and use four stages in every next developing paragraph, and a conclusion ends all. some students use argumentation in developing paragraphs, and all argumentation ends at the conclusion stage. and, also some students use stages disheveled. on another point, the students' result discussion shows the pragmatic insight which focuses on speech acts introduced by searle (1969). four speech acts were used in students' argumentative writing, such as commissives, assertive, directives, and declarative, but the variations are only shown in the topic development stage. it is because the students do not have enough knowledge of pragmatics. the current research implied that the pragma-dialectic approach can be used to help students write argumentative writing systematically using critical discussion stages. in addition, speech acts are very important for students, so they can know the purposes of writing the argumentation. it helps them build brief, reasonable, logical argumentation to prove to the reader. conclusions and suggestion the stages in constructing argumentation help the students write the argumentative text systemically. they can place the stages based on argumentation purposes. implementing the pragma-dialectical theory enhances the comprehension of argumentation texts from a pragmatic and dialectical perspective. besides, this approach helps students to have good critical thinking in resolving different opinions. through this approach, the students are trained to discuss and explore their opinion by showing ideas, evidence, and data. also, the students must give a rebuttal, defend the standpoint of the case and refuse the opposite argumentation. sometimes, they can show that other arguments are weak and unconvincing to prove others with students' arguments. the finding shows that not all students follow the stages of critical discussion in sequence, so this is very important to introduce the use of the stages in critical discussion very well. besides that, understanding pragmatics is very needed here because it explains the purposes of argumentation. in this research, the use of speech acts does not vary in some stages because the students lack understanding of the use of language. for the next research, the teacher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 208-210 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.28522 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license should understand how to use speech acts in argumentative writing and why the students use them. this way will help the students to have clear arguments when they do critical discussions with others. acknowledgments the authors thank universitas islam malang, which has provided the funding to conduct this study, lembaga penelitian dan pengabdian kepada masyarakat universitas islam malang, and student participants. references allani, s. 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(2007). dialogue theory for critical argumentation. john benjamins publishing company. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 83-105 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.27898 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee classifying "culture" in indonesian secondary public education efl textbooks saiful akmal, nashriyah, najmiatul fauza, chamisah, khairiah syahabuddin universitas islam negeri ar-raniry banda aceh, indonesia (saiful.akmal@ar-raniry.ac.id) received: 31st august 2022; revised: 01st may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this study investigates the categorization of cultural materials and the sense of the culture of two "bahasa inggris 2017 updated edition" english textbooks for grades x and xi in senior high school in indonesian secondary education. this study examines which cultures are exemplified in the textbooks and how they are characterized. the study's design follows a qualitative descriptive design through content analysis. both the "categories of culture" approach of cortazzi and jin (1999) and the "sense of culture" approach of adaskou, britten, and fahsi (1990) were used in the present study. the data showed that the bahasa inggris tenth-grade textbook focused more on source culture instead of the target culture and international culture. nonetheless, in the bahasa inggris eleventh-grade textbook, the target culture is more dominant than the source and international cultures. in both books, the pragmatic sense dominated the aesthetic, semantic, and social sense. this study also uncovered an imbalance in the number of cultural categories exhibited. this study proposes that writers of efl textbooks should accommodate a balanced representation of source culture, target culture, and international culture, as well as provide an excellent four-cultural sense in the textbooks. key words: efl textbooks; indonesian secondary public education; cultural categorization; senses of culture abstrak penelitian ini menyelidiki kategorisasi bahan budaya dan pemahaman budaya dari dua buku teks bahasa inggris "bahasa inggris 2017 edisi terbaru" untuk kelas x dan xi di sekolah menengah atas dalam pendidikan menengah di indonesia. penelitian ini menguji budaya mana yang diwakili dalam buku teks dan bagaimana budaya tersebut dikarakterisasi. desain penelitian ini mengikuti desain deskriptif kualitatif melalui analisis konten. pendekatan "kategori budaya" dari cortazzi dan jin (1999) serta pendekatan "pemahaman budaya" dari adaskou, britten, dan fahsi (1990) digunakan dalam penelitian ini. data menunjukkan bahwa buku teks bahasa inggris kelas sepuluh lebih fokus pada budaya sumber daripada budaya target dan budaya internasional. namun, dalam buku teks bahasa inggris kelas sebelas, budaya target lebih dominan daripada budaya sumber dan budaya internasional. pada kedua buku tersebut, pemahaman pragmatik mendominasi pemahaman estetika, semantik, dan sosial. penelitian ini juga menemukan ketidakseimbangan dalam jumlah kategori budaya yang ditampilkan. penelitian ini mengusulkan bahwa penulis buku teks bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing sebaiknya menyertakan representasi yang seimbang dari budaya sumber, budaya target, dan budaya internasional, serta menyediakan pemahaman budaya yang baik dalam empat aspek dalam buku teks. kata kunci: buku teks bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing; pendidikan umum menengah indonesia; kategorisasi budaya; pemahaman budaya how to cite: akmal, s., nashriyah, fauza, n., chamisah, syahabuddin, k. (2023). classifying "culture" in indonesian secondary public education efl textbooks. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 83-105. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 84-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction language is the cultural mirror (kadarisman, 2005); thus, it is evident that culture and language are intricately linked. brown (2000) affirms that language and culture are inextricably linked; if they are separated, it will be impossible to determine their core qualities. risager and chapelle (2012) also said that it is unthinkable to detach language and culture because language practices are connected to different public routines in the actual realm. typically, a particular language indicates a specific group of individuals. when people communicate in a different language, they also deal with the culture that speaks that language. arslan (2016) stated that communication proficiency means language users should be culturally prepared. culture cannot be understood without direct access to a language. without addressing cultural norms and practices, language instruction cannot succeed (alptekin, 1993). mukundan (2005) also agrees that cultural teachings and activities must be prepared and integrated with the same attention as language activities. therefore, if cultural features such as mentality, lifestyle, beliefs, values, race, class, and gender are absent in language education, students cannot understand the language entrenched in the culture. in addition, the link between language and culture is distinct and varied. according to scholars, culture is a description of the language, and without languages, cultures would perish (kaikkonen et al., 1994; lappalainen, 2011). as language echoes culture and culture also reflects the language, fantini (1995) and moran (2001) agree that the two have a reciprocal relationship. jiang (2000) further illustrates the connection between language and culture by analogy with an iceberg. language is the main building block, but the most substantial part of apparent cultural differences lies beneath the surface. krasner (1999), holliday (2009), and kovács (2017) have pointed out the central role of culture in language teaching because of the inherent connection between the two. mckay (2002), for example, concludes that including cultural components in language, instruction can boost efl students' motivation. similarly, teaching students to value their distinctive culture benefits from exposure to other cultures. as edmonstone (2019) puts it, "culturebound" refers to the extent to which a person's cultural norms shape their worldview and, by extension, their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 85-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license learning. this can be problematic when they interact with people of other cultures. nevertheless, brown (2000) considers that to connect with a new language, and students must learn the language and the culture. since language and cultural teaching are meticulously linked, integrating culture into efl textbooks has become a broad fact. thus, teaching language learners about cultural factors could be accomplished via textbooks, as textbooks play an essential part in efl classrooms. doró (2013) and khanadi et al. (2022) stated that textbook selection is essential as it lays the groundwork for understanding and interpreting culture. in addition, mckay (2002) emphasizes that the cultural element variation insertion in efl materials will assist students in developing an interest in language learning and increases their motivation. faris (2014) found that secondary school students in west java were primarily exposed to positive portrayals of the target culture in textbooks. indonesia and its aesthetic parts commonly exemplify the cultural aspects. ekawati and hamdani (2012) further specified that efl textbooks and methods mirror the target, source, and international cultures. in addition, there have been some important studies into how cultures are depicted in english textbooks. arslan (2016) discovered the cultural content and occurrence of features associated with the source, target, and international cultures in efl textbooks. the results found disharmony between cultural matters, meaning that the target and international cultures were found more than the source cultures. silvia (2015) argues that indonesian high school english textbooks emphasize "surface culture" over "deep culture." famous names, foodstuffs, locations, traditional dances, and languages formulate the represented cultures. cultural values, thoughts, and standpoints remain forgotten. martono (2016), matsuda (2012), and yuen (2011) discovered that target cultures were prevalent in english textbooks. the research mentioned above findings from matsuda, yuen, and martono demonstrate that, while some modern theories advocate a balanced blend of local and global cultures, material developers have their views on cultural content integration. because cultural content is essential in elt, it should be carefully evaluated. in this light, rashidi and meihami (2016) researched the elt textbook's cultural substance in the inner, outer, and expanding groups of nation-states. the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 86-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license outcomes revealed changes between those efl textbooks. the inner circle contained more sources and target cultures. while the expanding circle characterized a universal culture, the outer circle presented a leaning toward having all types of cultural groupings together. cultural content in the textbook according to cunningsworth (1995), textbooks are essential in the elt teaching space since educators use them to organize and deliver programs, and learners depend on them for language content and reproduction. in addition, textbooks supply the course's primary content, acting as the source for students' language involvement and classroom language exercise (tomlinson, 2005). for teachers, textbooks are a map that sets the direction of the topic learned in the classroom. it contains substances like principles and actions that educate the students on particular cultures (ekawati & hamdani, 2012). efl textbooks customarily transport a direct or indirect collection of cultural ideals discussed in the texts as the "hidden curriculum." the hidden curriculum is understood as implicit, embedded, and unwritten values, beliefs, ideologies, morals, and other cultural features that teachers or lecturers instill in the learners through their teachings, interactions, and classroom activities. cunningsworth (1995) believes that a "hidden curriculum" is regularly starker compared to the recommended curriculum as it will affect learners' cultural awareness, perceptions, and knowledge after they are exposed at length to it. alsubaie (2015) further highlights that hidden curriculum can be an issue in education as it can both positively or negatively impact the overall curriculum. on the positive side, a hidden curriculum encourages the growth of social and emotional competencies. students gain skills in interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, teamwork, and professional development (orón semper & blasco, 2018). gunawan et al. (2018) further argue that hidden curriculum can also contribute to developing positive character traits such as honesty, integrity, responsibility, and resilience. students may also benefit from the hidden curriculum as it encourages critical thinking, problem-solving, personal growth, cultural awareness, and civic engagement at the same time (elliot et al., 2016). on the contrary, although the hidden curriculum may have positive consequences, it is equally critical to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 87-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license acknowledge any potential negative impacts. the first negative potential can appear in unintentionally driven biases and stereotypes (cocoradă, 2018). bray et al. (2018) reveal that a hidden curriculum can further reinforce social inequalities due to its lack of explicit instruction and limited focus on individual interests. in this light, the cultural aspects of a textbook are classified into three groups by cortazzi and jin (1999): the source culture, the target culture, and the international culture. elements of the source culture indicate the materials from which students can access a specific culture. instead of teaching students how to engage with people from different cultures, these resources aim to assist them in speaking with foreign visitors about their own culture. it is intended to acquaint learners with the indigenous culture and promote it to be more prevalent among them. the cultures of the british, the americans, the canadians, and the australians are presented in efl textbooks that include the target culture. non-englishspeaking communities and places where english is not the primary means of communication but is used as the international language in asian and african countries are instances of global cultures. moreover, adaskou et al. (1990) propose the four senses of cultural agenda in the textbook: the aesthetic, the sociological, the pragmatic, and the semantic sense. these four senses of cultural agenda shelter the broad classifications of culture: the total interpretation and the mentalist vision, the big c culture, and the small c culture. the big c culture discusses films, songs, and supplementary literary facets. at the same time, the culture with a small c denotes society and the natural surroundings of family, friends, and organizations. the aesthetic sense of culture talks about films, songs, and literature. the sociological sense of culture discusses society, friends, family, personal relations, physical condition, labor and leisureliness, tradition, and organization (hermawan & lia, 2012). the semantic sense of culture mentions the theoretical arrangement exemplified in the semantic use of language and prepares all our insights and assumed practices. for instance, many vocabularies (e.g., diet, garments, and organizations) are unique as they relate to a specific cultural behavior. the most recent, the pragmatic sense (or sociolinguistic), talk about the contextual information, societal expertise, and paralinguistic abilities that, plus mastery of the language code, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 88-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license make effective communication (tajeddin et al., 2018). to summarize, earlier studies have revealed that textbook selection, adopting a "hidden curriculum" of cultural ideals, and learning culture are all important in language education. teachers and students rely on their worldview of the new foreign language they teach and learn. cultural immersion in efl textbook selection impacts students' enthusiasm to study the language and encourages teachers to engage more with the students in the classroom (alshenqeeti, 2019). however, despite the increasing tendency among researchers to study the significance of language and culture in efl textbooks, ozdemir (2010) mentions that research on textbooks is currently limited and further research on cultural elements is needed. the analysis of the cultural content and the way it is presented in the textbooks, especially concerning the enforcement of specific curricula, is relatively lacking and understudied. this study is, therefore, a considerably novel and essential topic in curriculum development. this study recognizes the cultural diversity of indonesia by incorporating various rich cultural elements into efl textbooks. further, this study can enhance intercultural and real-world relevance to promote cultural awareness and sensitivity. to this end, this study aims to investigate the cultural content and presentation of the 2017 revised edition of english textbooks for tenthand eleventh-grade efl students in the indonesian secondary school system. method research design this study was designed to use content analysis to describe the english textbook's cultural contents. nomnian (2013) and wallen and fraenkel (2001) stated that content analysis is a research method that investigates selected sources' specific written words, texts, or visual contents. this qualitative study attempted to describe the cultural context of the textbook. as stated previously, english textbooks utilized by senior high school students in the tenth and eleventh grades titled "bahasa inggris" revised edition served as the primary data source for this study. the indonesian ministry of education and culture published these revised editions of textbooks in 2017 in response to changes made to the country's national curriculum in 2013. widiati, rohmah, and furaidah authored the first edition of the textbooks, an updated edition for the tenth grade. mahrukh bashir writes http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 89-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the second textbook and aims to provide fresh materials for the eleventh-graders. there are some explanations for why the textbook was chosen. first, the textbooks are appropriate for the existing core national curriculum. subsequently, the textbooks are used nationally as english instructional media for efl students at indonesian secondary schools. then, the textbooks are sanctioned by the indonesian ministry of education and culture to deal with the need to accommodate the 2013 curriculum revision. afterward, the textbooks are unlike the preceding version of the textbooks. the latest changes in the content have accommodated the affirmation of character-building and incorporated high-order thinking skills (hots). with culturally relevant materials, diverse reading texts, rich group exercises and discussions, and valuable tips and strategies, the selected textbooks can help students improve their english skills, encourage participation, and expand their horizons. therefore, the selected textbook is vital to be analyzed. data collection and analysis in this study, the data was collected by choosing the construing paths, discussions, images, and actions offered in every unit of the textbooks. one of the methods used in this study to analyze the data is by creating a checklist; 1) to unlock the cultural content exemplified in these textbooks from cortazzi and jin (1999); 2) to apply the categorization from adaskou, britten, and farsi (1990) to disclose how values are embodied in those textbooks. this study applied open coding, which embraces marking conceptions centered on their particular characteristics within texts (saldaña, 2012). we gave the codes for each cultural element by referring to the earlier framework. thus, the data was converted into categorizations and percentages. it was associated with and examined to scrutinize what cultures arose most often and how they were exemplified in the textbooks through tables and charts. findings and discussion findings cultural content in the english textbook "bahasa inggris" for the tenth grade this textbook covers fifteen units/chapters with diverse themes; therefore, it is theme-based. the theme ranges from talking about self, congratulation, tourist destinations, idols, indonesian culture, japanese http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 90-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license culture, the wring brothers, strong wind, and making friends. types of cultures exemplified in the bahasa inggris revised textbook for tenth-grade efl students. chart 1: types of cultures in the bahasa inggris revised textbook for tenth grade efl students the bar chart 1 represents the types of culture in the textbook with the following information: blue bar: source culture (sc) red bar: target culture (tc) green bar: international culture (ic) not all chapters in the textbook provide source culture content despite its continuous and dominant representation, the chart above mentions that not all textbook parts represent indonesian values as the source culture. the highest recurrence rate of source culture was found in unit 2 (17 occasions). oppositely, unit 7 provided none of the source cultures. the source culture was typically obtainable by people with names such as siti, edo, alif, deni, wayan, rahmi, firda, bayu, afgan, b.j. habibie, and cut nyak dhien. it was also visibly detected by the names of cities and provinces, such as surabaya, padang (cities), papua, aceh, and west sumatra; images of indonesian schoolchildren, venues, and other pictorial exemplifications. furthermore, text types such as descriptive and recounting indonesian cultures were straightforwardly presented. for example, the recount text about cut nyak dhien, a war heroine who battled the dutch colonialist, is found on pages 145 to 146, as is a story about malin kundang on page 172. figure.1 cut nyak dhien (acehnese heroine) in figure 2, the source culture was characterized by interchanges between indonesian speakers, as seen on pages 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 32, and 41. as displayed below, the two talkers http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 91-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license greeted each other and discussed their origins and what they do for a living. figure 2. dialogue between raja and slamet limited target culture representation the appearance of the target culture (english-speaking countries) in this textbook was relatively limited. however, it was present for all content categories like names, pictures, grammar, speech acts, reading passages, interchanges, songs, and quotes from world-famous individuals. the chart also described that every unit contained a target culture, and the uppermost occurrence of the target culture is located in unit 1 (14 occurrences). the example of target culture is exemplified by individual names, for example, steve jobs, mark zuckerberg, and oprah winfrey. in addition, the talk about target culture was displayed on pages 97 to 98 on the wright brothers from the united states, who developed the aircraft." figure 3. the conversation about the wright brothers representing the us target culture poor international cultural content figure 5. the taj mahal in india represents the international culture based on the chart 1 displayed earlier, international culture was the most negligible cultural content found in the textbook. the prominent appearance of international culture's presence was only found in unit 12 (9 occurrences). it appeared in the names of persons; lionel messi, shinto altar, and countries; india, singapore, malaysia, and japan. thus, some cultural texts are also found, such as the descriptive text of the taj mahal on page 58 and the narrative text of a japanese fairy tale entitled "issumboshi" on page 155. those passages represent a type of international culture. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 92-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license presentation of culture in english textbooks for the tenth grade adaskou, britten, and fahsi (1990) formulated the key senses to analyze the type of cultural representation: aesthetic, pragmatic, and sociological sense. table 1. the sense of culture occurrences in english textbooks for the tenth grade the domination of the pragmatic sense it can be evident from the table that the cultural content was intensely accessible from a pragmatic aspect. it materialized 111 occurrences (56.63 %) in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, speech, and reading and writing exercises. the pragmatic sense appeared 45 times in the source culture, 54 times in the target culture, and 12 times in the international culture. most pragmatic sense examples were found in pronouns, grammar reviews, adjectives, derivatives, adverbs, and reported speech. figure 6. grammar review representing a pragmatic sense of culture the sociological sense of family image furthermore, the social component emerged in 37 occurrences (18.87 %) that represent the entire category of culture: source culture (17 times), target culture (11 times), and international aspect of the culture (9 times). this aspect of cultural sense was regularly shown in interactions concerning family relations, groups, and organizations. for example, the following figure exemplifies how sociological sense is embedded in the source culture. the dialogue between two friends: rahmi and sinta, concerning the family vacation and the gift from her sister resembles how most indonesian families look. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 93-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 7. the interface between two friends represents a sociological sense moreover, the semantic element presented 30 occurrences (15.30 %). this type of cultural sense was limited to fashions. the aesthetic element was a minor portion of culture discovered in this textbook, appearing in 19 occurrences (9.69%) of moving pictures such as harry potter and twilight and songs. cultural content found in the english textbook "bahasa inggris" for the eleventh grade this textbook is typically grammarbased, unlike the one made for the tenth grade earlier. it has eight units or chapters, including an enrichment unit or chapter that offers reading comprehension with various subjects ranging from offers and suggestions, opinions and thoughts, natural disasters, letter writing, cause and effect, music, and explanation. types of culture represented in the textbook bahasa inggris for grade 11th chart 1. types of culture represented in the textbook bahasa inggris for grade 11th the visualization implied that not every textbook chapter contained the source culture. the highest occurrence of source cultures was surprisingly found in the enrichment unit (17 occurrences). in reverse, some chapters did not discuss the source culture, such as chapters 4, 7, and 8. using indonesian names, cities, and arts to teach source culture similar to the previous textbook for the tenth grade, the source culture mainly existed through the person names, for instance, soekarno, rahmad, joko, budi, riadi, yanti, soeharto, and ra kartini. next, it also emerges in the names of indonesian cities (including in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 94-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license postcards), such as ciputat, tangerang selatan, and lombok. also, in the last part of the textbook, there was a particular unit on reading comprehension comprising two reading texts associated with source cultures. for instance, on page 130, the reading passage describes the biography of the first indonesian president, soekarno. an extra reading on page 161 provides a text about the life story of ki hajar dewantara with his three well-known statements on education and the wayang art image representing famous javanese tradition in indonesia. figure 8. picture of indonesian wayang arts from java representing source culture using names, places, and literature to introduce the target culture since this textbook is very much in a grammar-based mode, the target culture was primarily offered in terms of grammar, names of people (i.e., johnson, etc.), and places (i.e., brooklyn, etc.). all book units offered target culture; the top portion of the target culture was found in unit 7. unit 7 discusses the importance of songs and poems from the target cultures. in addition, in the last chapter, a text representing the target culture entitled "the last leaf" by o henry, an american short story, is also found in the textbook. figure 9. "the last leaf," a story written by o henry, portrays the target culture using famous figures, texts, and letters to acknowledge international culture in the remaining units, merely three address topics related to international culture. it was constrained only to people with names like gandhi (india) and mandela (south africa). in addition, three texts represent international culture. first is a text entitled "vanity and pride" about monsieur and madame loisel. second, the reading titled "the enchanted fish" http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 95-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was adjusted from the grimm brothers' story (germany), 1812, "the fisherman and his wife." the last text is "letter to god and is about rancho lucas from argentina, who sent the letter to god to listen to his appeal. figure 10. "letter to god" from argentina represents international culture frequent target culture in a pragmatic sense table 2. presentation of culture in english textbooks for the tenth grade the table 2 shows that pragmatic sense was heavily obtainable in the textbook and found as many as 55 occurrences (48.67%) in condensed grammar and speech act themes. in this textbook, the topic of pragmatic sense is found 15 times in the source culture, 36 times in the target culture, and 5 times in the international culture. unlike the tenth-grade textbook, which highlighted the dominance of the pragmatic sense in the source culture, the pragmatic sense in the eleventhgrade textbook produced more dominant evidence in the target culture. figure 11. speech acts of disagreement represent a pragmatic sense. emphasizing the target culture in the textbook brings authenticity to the language learning process. it exposes students to real-life scenarios, cultural references, idiomatic expressions, and colloquialisms they will likely encounter when communicating with native english speakers. this prepares students to use english in practical, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 96-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license everyday situations and promotes a deeper understanding of the language beyond the classroom. aesthetic sense via songs and poems furthermore, the aesthetic component came into view 18 times (15.92%), obtainable through songs and poems. this aesthetic sense appeared four times in the source culture, 12 times in the target culture, and twice in the international culture. three songs like "stand by me" by ben e. king (page 87), "we shall overcome" by pete seeger (page 89), and "hero" by mariah carey (page 91), accompanied by three poems such as "invictus" by william ernest henley (page 93), "the road not taken" by robert frost (page 94), and "dreams" by langston hughes (page 95), all represented the native english speakers' culture. in addition to the pragmatic and aesthetic sense, the sociological aspect emerged in 32 occurrences (28.31%) in dialogue, readings, or information about family, friends, and institutions, similar to the tenth-grade english textbooks. so does the existence of semantic elements, which were only discovered eight times (7.07%) in the forms of clothes and their wearers. discussion the findings of this present study imply that cortazzi and jin's framework of cultural features was represented differently in the two selected textbooks. in addition, the textbooks' representation of culture was grounded on the four elements, which differed slightly from the framework proposed by adaskou et al. (1990). the cultural representations in each book were presented through visual illustrations, reading comprehension, declarations, people's names, places, conversations, and other activities. in addition, the findings revealed an imbalance in the tenth-grade textbook between the cultural elements, whereby the source culture was presented more than the target culture and the international culture. this result was consistent with earlier studies by rashidi and meihami (2016), silvia (2014), and syahri and susanti (2016). rashidi and meihami (2016) found that the source culture proportion exceeds other cultural senses. the finding also revealed that the second most frequently offered type of culture was the target culture, with a percentage of 38.26%, surpassing international culture, with 13.26%. thus, the first textbook can advocate students' cultures in english teaching http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 97-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and education. the finding also revealed that the target culture was the second most frequently offered type of culture, with a percentage of 38.26%, surpassing international culture with 13.26%. thus, the first textbook can advocate students' cultures in english teaching and education. learning resources that mirror the students' cultural background are more likely to inspire their interest and foster engagement. the textbook can foster a sense of familiarity and cultural relevance, as dee and penner (2017) emphasized, by emphasizing the source culture, which is the learners' own culture. students may feel more at ease and inspired to learn as a result. as a result, according to selmanović et al. (2020), it may open access to intangible cultural heritage preservation. a textbook with a strong source culture can aid in preserving the students' cultural heritage by highlighting the original culture. it enables individuals to discover and comprehend the traditions, values, history, and customs unique to their indigenous culture. (trung & van, 2020). this may encourage pride in their cultural heritage and more motivation to learn. for students learning english as a second or foreign language, including aspects of the source culture in the textbook, can make language acquisition across cultures easier (masek et al., 2021). students' comprehension and content retention can be improved by tying new vocabulary and grammar to wellknown cultural expressions. it also enables intercultural comparisons and the investigation of cultural parallels and divergences between the source and the target. the target language's cultural context is reflected through authentic materials in the textbook, such as dialogues and audio visualizations presented to learners. using english as a globally used language, the textbook equips students to interact with a global community of english speakers by emphasizing the target culture. it gives students the cultural knowledge, fluency, and proficiency necessary to communicate and work effectively with people from different backgrounds who speak english as a common language. this focus on the target culture encourages global citizenship and enhances cross-cultural interaction. in the end, savignon (2017) believe that students' communicative competence will improve and their language proficiency should be better. students can better manage cultural differences and adjust their communication style by learning about http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 98-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the target culture's practices, traditions, beliefs, and societal norms. this cultural competence fosters openmindedness, empathy, and successful communication in intercultural environments. focusing on the target culture encourages global citizenship and facilitates cross-cultural dialogue (goren & yemini, 2017). both textbooks have also been analyzed by using the four senses of culture: the aesthetic sense, the semantic sense, the pragmatic sense, and the social sense (adaskou et al., 1990). the pragmatic sense materializes more frequently in these two textbooks. it was offered in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, reading, and speech acts. the semantic sense, however, was addressed insignificantly in the first textbook. the pragmatic sense is essential to emphasize the practical aspects of language usage and communication in everyday contexts (ishihara & cohen, 2022). that is perhaps why the pragmatic sense of culture frequently predominates in secondary english language education textbooks. textbooks assist students in learning appropriate language use, social cues, and conversational skills that are particular to the target culture by focusing on the pragmatic sense of culture. risager (2007) says it can improve students' understanding of cultural dimensions to communicate clearly with native speakers. the second textbook ranked the second last significant cultural sense before aesthetic cultural sense, restricted to clothing images and fashion-related content. the textbook may attempt to visually illustrate various cultural features to engage students and give them a practical grasp of cultural concepts (tajeddin & teimournezhad, 2015). visually appealing content about clothing and fashion can be used to explore cultural values, current trends, and individual expression. it enables students to take note of and evaluate culturally relevant visual clues. in the eye of entwistle (2000), fashion body, morals, and symbolism can all be reflected in clothing and style, which is frequently linked to cultural identity. the textbook may attempt to combat preconceptions and promote critical thinking by exploring the connection between sartorial choices and cultural identity. accordingly, it can be inferred that both textbooks offer comparatively less semantic sense than the other three categories of sense. therefore, in-depth knowledge of language structure, vocabulary, and context is necessary to explore semantic elements fully. it may http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 99-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license be challenging to understand semantic intricacies because of textbooks' time and space restrictions. english language textbooks frequently prioritize acquiring language abilities like speaking, listening, reading, and writing. these abilities often require a concentration on language, vocabulary, and communication techniques. this might also explain why semantic sense is less and less discussed, as it involves profound interpretation and may be more relevant to university-level students with a solid foundation in the language (goddard, 2018). conclusions and suggestion the examination of the cultural content of these two textbooks has exposed some interesting findings. in the textbook for the tenth grade, the dominant presence was about the source culture. in contrast, the textbook for the eleventh grade mainly discussed the target culture, not the source and international cultures. visual artworks, people, places, grammar, speech acts, songs, and poems offer cultures. however, this study did not provide a close and meticulous cultural content comparison of the selected textbooks but instead decided to focus on the cultural content analysis of only these two textbooks. also, this present study did not include the textbooks used for twelfth-grade students, which can be a limitation. although the twelfth-grade students' textbook is excluded because most of their time is spent preparing for the national final examination, it is still very far from a complete analysis of the efl textbooks for students in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades at higher secondary schools. as a result, this study seems to suggest that policymakers for language education curriculum changes should re-enact the textbook assessment criteria by requiring cultural material integration and improve culturally more appropriate local content for indonesian students with a balanced portion of the target and international cultures. on top of that, another critical statement from the findings of this present study revealed ample data about the presence of culture in english textbooks for indonesian higher secondary school efl students. thus, tutors can identify the most appropriate cultural elements to nurture learners' cultural mindfulness. this study also attests that in the selected textbooks, the existence of international cultural content is lacking. therefore, future studies and textbook authors are suggested to consider this content seriously. at this moment, the presentation of international culture is http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 100-105 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.29924 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license inevitable, as it can raise efl students' external awareness of competing and existing cultures across the globe. the cultural knowledge of international cultures other than the target culture can widen the paradigm and way of viewing the world. another pivotal statement that can be taken from this study is that the representation of various senses of culture should be equally considered. in contrast to the sociological, artistic, and semantic senses, the pragmatic sense has been the primary focus of the textbooks under examination. accordingly, the students are accustomed to one particular and even unilateral understanding of the cultural sense and are unaware of the others. further research can expand the analysis to unlock some other potential research gaps resulting from the limitations of this study. future researchers can make it possible to conduct other similar studies on the same topic with lower secondary school students, different textbook publishers endorsed by the government, or textbooks used by efl learners in comparison at state and private schools. although the indonesian ministry of national education sanctions the selected textbooks for senior high school students, their respective cultural contents are notably unalike. the early english textbooks tend to be more tolerant of indigenous cultures. this is beneficial for increasing efl students' awareness of their own cultures. in contrast, the second textbook focuses primarily on the target culture, raising students' awareness of the cultural surroundings of native english speakers. unfortunately, those textbooks both offer trivial content regarding international culture, even 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(2011). the representation of foreign cultures in english textbooks. elt journal, 65(4), 458– 466. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccq0 89 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 266-288 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee pre-service teachers’ exploration on technology-enhanced language learning (tell): opportunities and challenges listiana ikawati iain syekh nurjati cirebon, indonesia (listiana.ikawati@syekhnurjati.ac.id) received: 04th september 2022; revised: 27th november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract the availability of various technological devices to support language learning which are considered as tell is worthy of being explored by teachers. this research is intended to understand the views of preservice teachers about the opportunities and challenges in their exploration of tell. a sequential explanatory mixed methods design was used to obtain data from 34 pre-service english teachers previously studying tell course in the fifth semester. in the first phase of the study, the participants were involved in a survey to obtain their general perspectives on tell exploration. a subsequent phase involved 5 participants joining semi-structured interviews to clarify the data from the first phase. the finding of the study indicates that the opportunities for tell exploration for pre-service teachers are contributed by the benefits of tell. in contrast, though undoubtedly necessary, tell exploration was challenged by some factors, including its basic ict requirement; its costly features and training; and teachers‟ lack of experience, competence, and resources to access technology. considering the needs, opportunities, and challenges, language teacher education should boost more exposure to tell for pre-service teachers through tell exploration in formal training and encourage them to keep developing their professionalism through informal training and other relevant sources on tell. key words: pre-service teachers; tell; exploration; language learning abstrak ketersediaan berbagai perangkat teknologi untuk mendukung pembelajaran bahasa yang dianggap sebagai tell layak untuk dieksplorasi oleh para guru. penelitian ini dimaksudkan untuk memahami pandangan calon guru tentang peluang dan tantangan dalam eksplorasi mereka terhadap tell. desain sequential explanatory mixed methods digunakan untuk memperoleh data dari 34 calon guru yang sebelumnya mempelajari mata kuliah tell di semester 5. pada fase pertama penelitian, peserta dilibatkan dalam sebuah survey untuk memperoleh perskpektif umum mereka tentang eksplorasi tell. tahap selanjutnya melibatkan 5 peserta yang mengikuti wawancara semi terstruktur untuk memperjelas data pada tahap pertama. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa peluang explorasi tell bagi calon guru berasal dari manfaat tell. sebaliknya, meskipun sangat diperlukan, eksplorasi tell terhambat oleh beberapa faktor, termasuk persyaratan tik dasar tell, fitur dan pelatihan tell yang mahal, dan kurangnya pengalaman, kompetensi, dan sumber daya guru untuk mengakses teknologi. mempertimbangkan kebutuhan, peluang dan tantangan tersebut, pendidikan guru bahasa harus mendorong lebih banyak paparan tell bagi calon guru melalui eksplorasi tell dalam pelatihan formal dan mendorong mereka untuk terus mengembangkan profesionalisme melalui pelatihan informal dan sumber relevan lainnya tentang tell. kata kunci: calon guru, tell; eksplorasi; pembelajaran bahasa how to cite: ikawati, l.(2022). pre-service teachers‟ exploration on technology-enhanced language learning (tell): opportunities and challenges. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 266-288-210. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 267-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the incorporation of technology in english language learning is unavoidable in today‟s world. the demand of 21st-century learning requires both teachers and learners to be literate, one of which is in ict. it deals with the ability to implement technologies effectively, such as: 1) using technological tools to investigate, manage, assess and share information; 2) using digital technologies, communication tools, and social networks properly to obtain information, and 3) implementing basic knowledge on the ethical and legal issues of information technology (the partnership for 21st century learning, 2009). hartshorne & ajjan (2009) add that integrating technology into the learning process enables students to do a collaboration, interaction, communication, co-creation, and knowledge sharing. besides that, by using the technologies, students will become active information receivers through the process of knowledge and experience exchanges making it possible for them to recreate new insights. thus, the teaching and learning process which incorporates technologies allows the teaching and learning process to be student-centered through interaction and communication through the technologies. it will also draw away the previous conventional learning which was mostly teachercentered. since the pandemic era, the role of technology in the teaching and learning process is getting crucial. the pandemic has shifted the learning mode from face-to-face to online (situmorang et al., 2020). in online learning, the teaching and learning process can be conducted either synchronously or asynchronously. another possible choice is the combination of both learning modes, which is often regarded as blended learning. however, since it happened so rapidly and unexpectedly, the pandemic has forced teachers and students to make use of the technology abruptly and without any or with less preparation. as a result, many teachers are not ready to implement the technology in the classrooms and have no idea on how to manage their online classrooms. the majority of teachers are not wellprepared to integrate technology into their lessons (bracewell, et al., 2007). some teachers found it difficult to transform their materials which were supposed to be delivered in face-to-face learning to online. some obstacles faced by teachers in technology integration include teachers‟ lack of software, sufficient training, learning equipment tools & resources, skilled personnel, confidence, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 268-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knowledge; teachers‟ reluctance to new technology; and limited time (habibu et al., 2012). thus, nowadays teachers not only need to master the content knowledge but they also need to be tech-savvy in order to get greater access to content knowledge. therefore, educators‟ role in providing sufficient knowledge on how to integrate technology into the lessons is highly required. higher education especially the one administering teacher education program is one of the institutions which is in charge of producing qualified and versatile teachers mastering 21st-century knowledge, expertise, and skills. in other words, the purpose of a teacher education program in higher education is to educate and prepare pre-service teachers to be qualified teachers in the future. rahimi (2015) states that preservice teachers are those students joining the education study program before their teaching. in their study program, these students are prepared with some teaching competencies to support their future careers. pre-service teachers must obtain appropriate knowledge on the opportunities and challenges in integrating technology into the lessons to be able to competently teach students dominated by digital natives (young et al., 2014). additionally, pre-service teachers need to have positive attitudes toward the incorporation of technology into their classrooms to effectively implement it. providing teacher candidates with knowledge on the feasibility and challenges in incorporating technology into the teaching and learning process will result in its fruitful application (myers & halpin, 2002; yushau, 2006). today, technology integration by preservice teachers is highly possible not because they will later teach the students who are mostly digital natives but because they are themselves, digital natives. the term digital natives refer to the young generations that were born along with the emergence of technology (prensky, 2001). these generations are known for being familiar and confident to use technology because they have spent most of their days using technological tools to socialize and entertain themselves (gallardoechenique et al., 2015; prensky, 2001). digital natives are also regarded as generation z comprising those people born between 1995 and characterized by quick decision-making and very interconnected (cilliers, 2017; consistency.uk, 2015). on the other hand, those people born before the emergence of technology and later need to adapt and start using the technology are referred to as digital immigrants (creighton, 2018; prensky, 2001). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 269-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license although there is no guarantee that pre-service teachers who belong to digital natives have good technological skills and possess good understanding on technology integration in the classroom, their everyday use of technology and their positive attitudes toward it may make it easier for them to do it. hence, providing them with the appropriate instruction to support their future career is a must. this instruction can be realized in teacher development that is regarded as an effort to assist teachers in developing their understanding, abilities, and approaches to teach and to enhance their self-confidence and expertise (son, 2018). teachers‟ development can be done through formal and informal ways based on their own current and future aims (richards & farrell, 2005; wallace, 1991). concerning language learning, the use of technology-enhanced language learning (tell) is viewed to contribute effectively to the lessons. the emergence of tell dated back to the 1960s when a more general term, call standing for computer-assisted language learning (call), developed. call deals with the usage of various kinds of computers and digital tools to assist language classrooms (son, 2018). warschauer (1997) perceives tell as „integrative call‟ which is the computer‟s „third phase of use‟ second language teaching for its integration representations of varied language components. radhakrishnan (2017) states that “technology-enhanced language learning uses computer technology, including hardware, software, and the internet to enhance the teaching and learning of languages.” bacon & finneman (1990) claim that the use of technology can effectively expose students to authentic materials for their learning. it can be concluded that tell is an evolution of call specifying the use of multimedia and the internet and exposing students to authentic materials which are useful for their language learning. there are some advantages and disadvantages of technologies used in language learning. the advantages of tell include: (1) it is flexible and can accommodate students‟ various learning styles; (2) it can be combined with textbooks for students‟ deeper understanding; (3) it brings a studentcentered atmosphere into the classrooms; (4) it encourages autonomous learning; (5) it enhances students' participation, motivates students to learn, and develops students‟ positive attitudes towards learning; (6) it decreases students‟ learning anxiety; (7) it improves students‟ communicative skills; (8) it allows students to access the target culture; (9) it enhances students‟ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 270-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license language skills and components; and (10) it exposes students to authentic and comprehensible materials (ghanizadeh et al., 2015; radhakrishnan, 2017). despite the advantages presented above, technology-enhanced language learning also shares some limitations. they include: (1) some of its features are paid and they are costly; (2) training on technology is costly; (3) the media used to assess the technology are sometimes expensive; (4) it requires both teachers and students to master basic technological knowledge; (5) there is a potential that errors may occur; (6) there are some access problems outside the school; (7) students may become too dependent on technology; (8) sometimes students will concern more on the features than the content of the technology; and (9) it is difficult to integrate technology into the school curriculum (radhakrishnan, 2017; yeşilel, 2016). furthermore, radhakrishnan (2017) classified six functions of technology to create favourable learning. first, technology enables students to access and study learning materials. second, technology encourages students to learn about research. third, technology teaches students how to communicate and collaborate effectively. fourth, technology teaches students to learn through construction. fifth, technology is used to assess students‟ learning progress and performance. sixth, technology is employed to support students‟ digital and multimedia literacy. some previous research on preservice teachers, tell and technology integration have been conducted by some scholars. first, a study conducted by dibella et al. (2015) investigated the use of technology and web 2.0 tools to improve pre-service teachers‟ readiness to integrate technology with crosscurricular adaptations. the results indicate that valuable workshops are effective to apply the tools for preservice teachers‟ future teaching and they must apply the technology in their future classrooms. second, corkett & benevides (2015) investigated preservice teachers‟ insights and selfconfidence on technology and multiliteracy within the inclusive classroom. the results of the study show that new teachers feel more confident to integrate technology into their classrooms after conducting research and developing a lesson plan about using the applications in an inclusive classroom. third, research conducted by yeşilel (2016) examined the benefits of using several web-based technologies to enhance young learners‟ language ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 271-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license skills. the results of the study suggest that technology is vital in education and teachers have to keep pace with the development of content knowledge and technological tools. the last research was done by situmorang et al. (2020) who studied students‟ voices regarding english teachers‟ readiness in technology-enhanced language learning during the pandemic. the results of the study indicate that english teachers possess good abilities, particularly to choose the appropriate learning tools for teaching, to manage the online classroom, and to conduct assessments for online learning. this study differs from the previous studies in many ways. first, the study by dibella et al. (2015) focuses on teacher candidates‟ readiness and intentions on the use of technology, particularly the web 2.0 tools, while this study is not only limited to the use of web 2.0 tools. second, corkett & benevides (2015) study the teacher candidates‟ insights and self-confidence on technology and multiliteracy within the inclusive classroom. in contrast, this study does not only focus on selfconfidence but also enables teacher candidates' views on the opportunities and challenges of tell. third, yeşilel (2016) studied the advantages of webbased technologies to improve young learners‟ language skills. on the other hand, this study does not only deal with the opportunities of tell but also its challenges and the participants are pre-service teachers. finally, unlike situmorang et al. (2020) studying students‟ perspectives on english teachers‟ readiness in tell during the pandemic, this study attempts to reveal the pre-service teachers‟ voices on tell after their own exploration. the pivot of technological tools in language learning especially in this post-pandemic time and some findings of the previous relevant studies on preservice teachers‟ technology integration raise the urgency of pre-service teachers‟ technology exploration. thus, this study attempted to examine their attitudes on their exploration on technologies to figure out some opportunities and challenges to incorporate technology in their future teaching. method research design the aim of the study was to figure out pre-service teachers‟ views on the opportunities and challenges in their exploration on tell. this study employed a sequential explanatory mixed methods design. in a sequential explanatory methods design, the researcher carries out the research in two phases, namely the quantitative ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 272-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license phase and the qualitative phase (creswell, 2013). research site and participants the participants in this research were the fifth-semester pre-service teachers enrolled in the english language department of higher education in indonesia. the total population consisted of 64 students. they took an elective course, entitled technology-enhanced language learning (tell). in this course, the students were involved in inquirybased learning. they were introduced to the basic knowledge on call and tell and learned how tell supported language learning. the lecturer also introduced students to foundational theories of tell and some technologies supporting language learning, such as flippity; learningapps.org; padlet; coggle; speech analyzer; notevibes, artificial intelligence; and nearpod and assigned them to complete tasks requiring them to explore the technologies and their features. in the end of the class, the lecturer assigned the students to fill out a reflection form. it reflected students‟ feelings and difficulties in using the technology and their biggest takeaway from the technology explored in the lesson. data collection and analysis the data in this study were collected in two main phases, namely the quantitative phase and the qualitative phase. the first phase, the quantitative phase, aimed to figure out the pre-service teachers‟ general attitudes on the opportunities and challenges on tell exploration. the data were collected by a means of a survey. the survey consisted of 63 items which could be classified into 6 sections. the sections included students‟ perceptions on pre-service teachers as digital natives, pre-service teachers‟ digital literacy, pre-service teachers‟ prior knowledge on tell, the need for tell integration in the classroom, and the benefits of tell, and the challenges in applying tell. the survey comprised 3 close-ended items requiring students to give the responses by checking the boxes and 60 four-point likert-scale consisting of 60 statements ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree). the closeended items were in the first and second sections of the questionnaire which were about pre-service teachers as digital natives and their prior knowledge on tell respectively. the survey created in google form was distributed to the total population of 64 students chosen through self-selected sampling. in self-selected sampling, the researcher publicized the research ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 273-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license information and the survey in certain media and the participants voluntarily participate in the research (saunders, et al., 2012). in this study, the researcher shared the research information and the survey link to tell class whatsapp groups but there were only 34 students voluntarily clicked the link and completed the survey. the participants consisted of 29 (85.29%) female students and 5 (14.71) male students. the data found in the quantitative phase were explored further in the second phase, the qualitative phase. in the qualitative phase, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews. based on the survey responses, a purposive sampling method was used to select five participants to involve in the interviews which were carried out at the zoom meeting. the interviews were conducted after the pre-service teachers finished their student teaching. another source of qualitative data was obtained from documents in the form of students‟ reflections completed in every class meeting on google classroom. the qualitative phase following the quantitative phase was carried out to understand and elaborate on the results from the quantitative phase. in addition, it is also done to improve the validity and reliability of the quantitative data previously obtained. the data collected in the quantitative phase were analyzed using descriptive statistics. spss version 26 was used to test the statistical significance of the questionnaire items with an alpha level of 0.05. the reliability of 60 questionnaire items results in the alpha coefficient of 0.944. this suggests that the items have high internal consistency. it implies that the responses were reliable. the case processing summary and reliability statistics are presented in the following table 1 and 2. table 1. case processing summary table 2. reliability statistics the data were later tabulated and the percentages were calculated to determine pre-service teachers‟ perspectives on the opportunities and challenges on tell exploration. in addition, interviews and documents were later used for verifying the reliability of the survey results and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 274-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license exploring more detailed perspectives of the participants. the qualitative data were analyzed using the four steps of the interactive model, including data collection, display, condensation and conclusion (miles & huberman, 1994). the results of qualitative data analysis supported the descriptive statistical analysis done in the first phase. the trustworthiness of this research was maintained by using triangulation. denzin (as cited in nzabonimpa and prozesky, 2021) states that triangulation can be done by combining methodologies in studying a similar case. since this study is a mixed method study, the triangulation was done by combining the data obtained through quantitative and qualitative methods. findings and discussion findings this part will report the findings of the research according to two phases of the research. the first is the result of the quantitative data analysis taken from the survey. the second is the result of the qualitative data analysis taken from the interviews and documents. reporting the quantitative data analysis the study aimed to investigate the opportunities and challenges in preservice teachers‟ exploration and integration of tell. this research mainly concerns with six aspects in tell exploration which include: (1) pre-service teachers as digital natives, (2) pre-service teachers‟ digital literacy, (3) pre-service teachers‟ prior knowledge on tell, (4) the need for tell exploration, (5) benefits of tell and (6) challenges in applying tell. data collected in the first phase of the research focused to get pre-service teachers‟ views on those aspects. pre-service teachers as digital natives table 3. pre-service teachers as digital natives table 3 illustrates how familiar the participants are with the technology as digital natives. the table reveals that the participants were familiar with technology and got used to it in their everyday life starting from the use of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 275-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license social media, the internet, video streaming services, music streaming services, and other digital websites and tools for learning english. all of the participants agreed that they owned social media and most of them access their social media every day. this contributed to the highest mean for the use of technology (3.88%). most of the participants also agreed that they accessed the internet every day shown by the mean score of 3.76%. they accessed the internet to read news, watch youtube, listen to songs and read lyrics, watch movies, read e-books and journals and learn english. in learning english, the participants mostly used the internet to access digital/ online dictionaries to find the meanings of difficult words. the lowest mean was in the use of online games/video games (1.88%). pre-service teachers’ digital literacy table 4 describes the pre-service teachers‟ digital literacy. it can be implied that most of the participants mastered basic ict skills. most of them stated they strongly agreed with the statements related to the use of word processing tools, online file-sharing services, learning management system (lms), search engines, and the ability to convert one type of ms. office file type to another. most of the participants were also familiar with the use of videoconferencing apps such as zoom and google meet. table 4. pre-service teachers‟ digital literacy besides that, most of the participants agreed that as pre-service teachers they could choose the appropriate elt materials, create engaging classroom activities by using technology, use certain apps to assess the learning progress, and use ai to support language learning but there were still few of them who could not do those abilities. the lowest means scores were obtained in the statements related ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 276-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to the ability to use gamification tools (2.97), create a youtube video and post it (2.68), create a mind map with an online app (2.53), and covert text-tospeech online (2.53). pre-service teachers’ prior knowledge on tell table 5. pre-service teachers‟ prior knowledge on tell table 5 indicates the pre-service teachers‟ prior knowledge on tell before they joined the tell course. it includes the need for tell integration and the distinction between call and tell. the result shows that most of the participants strongly agreed that technology played an important role in language learning and most of them knew that integrating technology in the classroom was a must. most of the participants were also familiar with the terms tell and call, yet few of them still could not define them. the need for pre-service teachers’ exploration on tell table 6. the need for pre-service teachers‟ exploration on tell table 6 explains the need for preservice teachers‟ exploration on tell. the participants were aware that tell belongs to the demands of 21st-century learning and tell implementation in the classroom can help enhance their 4cs including creativity & innovation, critical thinking & problem solving, communication and collaboration). the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 277-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license participants also mostly agreed that teacher professional development which included the development of skills in tell was needed. in addition, related to teachers‟ confidence in implanting tell in their classroom, most of the participants (50%) strongly agreed that it becomes a barrier in tell integration, and to solve that problem teachers need to have experience in using the technology (76.5%). besides that, the results of the survey also reveal that most of the participants strongly agreed that teachers should master some basic required abilities in integrating tell into the classroom which included the understanding on the values and challenges in technology incorporation and the ability to choose engaging gamification apps suited to students' proficiency level, to select the appropriate tell contents, to implement tell to help manage the online classroom and to solve the technical issues in applying tell. the benefits of tell table 7 presents some statements regarding the benefits of incorporating tell in language learning. most of the participants gave positive responses (“agree” and “strongly agree) to eight statements provided. four statements obtaining the same highest mean scores (3.71) include tell flexibility to accommodate students‟ different learning styles, the combination of tell and textbooks to deepen students‟ understanding, tell potential to enhance students‟ participation, motivation, and positive attitudes towards learning, and tell potential to improve students‟ communicative skills. table 7. the benefits of tell the challenges in tell incorporation table 8 shows some statements about the challenges in incorporating tell into the classroom. most of the participants (70.6%) strongly agreed that tell incorporation required both teachers‟ and students‟ mastery of basic technological knowledge. in contrast, few participants also showed their disagreement with the statements regarding paid and costly features of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 278-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tell, tell costly training, expensive media to access the technology, students‟ shifting concern in using the technology, and difficulty in incorporating technology into the school curriculum. table 8. the challenges in tell incorporation reporting the qualitative data analysis after the data were obtained from the survey, the researcher continued with the second phase of the research concerning more investigation on preservice teachers‟ exploration on tell based on participants‟ responses in the survey through the data from the semistructured interviews and documents. the data from interviews were obtained from five participants. pre-service teachers’ excessive use of smartphones the interviews asked pre-service teachers about the total hours they spent per day using their smartphones and the utilization of their smartphones. the result can be seen as table 9. table 9. the interview result on pre-service teachers‟ excessive use of smartphones points students’ responses lengthy use of smartphones students used smartphones longer than they did before the pandemic ranging from 6-more than 10 hours a day. utilization 1. 1. students used their phones mostly for pleasure, e.g. accessing social media, news. 2. 2. students used their smartphones for learning, e.g. joining online lectures, doing assignments. in the interviews, all of the participants claimed that they used their smartphones longer than before. previously, they spent 3 to 4 hours using their smartphones, but after the pandemic they used smartphones for around 6-10 hours a day or even more than 10 hours a day. they used their smartphones for pleasure and learning. for pleasure, they accessed their social media and read news. they also used their smartphones to support their online learning by joining teleconferences, browsing journals, and completing their assignments. they ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 279-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license also emphasized that they spent more time using their smartphones for pleasure rather than for learning. pre-service teachers’ prior knowledge on tell the interview question asked deeper about the participants‟ prior knowledge on tell before they joined the tell course. here are students‟ responses. table 10. the interview result on preservice teachers‟ prior knowledge on tell points students’ responses familiarity with tell before joining the course, students were familiar with few technological applications for language learning. application students had not applied tell applications before the course. the results of the interview reveal that before studying tell course they were familiar with few of technological applications for language learning. however, they had not had any handson experiences on the use of the applications. pre-service teachers’ need to explore tell the interview asked students to elaborate further on their opinions on the pre-service teachers‟ need to explore tell. here are students‟ responses. table 11. the interview result on pre-service teachers‟ need to explore tell points students’ responses need for tell exploration students claimed that before teaching they needed to explore tell. implication for future teaching students‟ experience in tell will prepare them to apply tell in their future teaching. students stated that before taking the tell course they had experiences in joining seminars about tell, but they had not applied them yet. after taking the tell course and learning how to use some applications for language learning, they found it interesting and useful for teaching. because of that, they advised that english teacher candidates should be given opportunities to explore tell in order to prepare for their future teaching. benefits/ opportunities of tell the interview question asked deeper about the participants‟ views on the benefits/ opportunities of tell. students‟ responses are presented in this table 12. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 280-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 12. the interview result on benefits/ opportunities of tell benefits/ opportunities students’ responses attractiveness students argued that they learned some interesting applications in the tell course. usefulness students considered that the applications they learnt in the tell course were useful for teaching. no charges students stated that some of the applications learnt in the tell course were good and free. effectiveness after learning the tell course, students implemented some applications in their teaching and they were effective. practicality students mentioned that some applications they learnt in tell were practical. the results of the interview above show that tell has some benefits. its attractiveness, usefulness, no charges, effectiveness, and practicality encourage pre-service teachers to apply them in their future teaching. the benefits of tell were also mentioned by the students in the reflection forms that they had to complete after the lesson. they shared their biggest takeaway from some lessons in the tell course as follows. table 13. pre-service teachers reflection on benefits/ opportunities of tell tell applications students’ reflections flippity a great, innovative, and awesome assistance for teachers to enhance the learning process learningapps.org a cool, rich, complete, attractive application for all levels of language learners padlet an interesting, cool, creative, and easy application elsa speak an easy and effective application with speech recognition to improve students‟ speaking skills students‟ reflections above supported the results of interviews on pre-service teachers‟ positive impressions on tell. they found some of the applications innovative, creative, attractive, complete, helpful, and suitable for language learners. challenges in tell incorporation the interview asked participants to give their views on the challenges on ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 281-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tell incorporation. the following table illustrated students‟ responses. table 14 the interview result & preservice teachers‟ reflection on their challenges in tell incorporation challenges students’ reflections teacher‟s lack of confidence 1. some technologies were too complicated for teachers and they preferred easier ones. 2. teachers lacked technological competence bad internet connection pre-service teachers experienced many technical problems due to bad internet connection. unfamiliarity with the applications pre-service teachers found some applications were new for them and they were not familiar yet. from the interviews and reflection forms, it is found that the main challenges in incorporating tell include teachers‟ lack of confidence, bad internet connection, and unfamiliarity with the applications. through the interview, the researcher also confirmed some of the students who disagreed with a few of the statements in the survey related to the costly tell features, tell training, tell media, and students‟ tendency to become too dependent on tell. they disagreed with the statement that tell features and training were costly because there were some free tell features and seminars or workshops in tell available. another student argued that students would not become too dependent on tell because some of them were still unfamiliar with the technology. discussion in this part, the findings of the study presented in the previous part will be elaborated. they will also be connected to the relevant literature. it is reported from the survey and interview results that as generation z who grows up along with the development of technology, the participants are familiar with and accustomed to using the technology in their daily activities. this is in line with gallardo-echenique et al. (2015) and prensky (2001) who mention that generation z is well-acquainted and confident to use technology since they spend most of their days using it to socialize and entertain themselves. this research also reveals that the participants‟ excessive use of their smartphones is contributed by online learning. the shifting of the learning mode from offline to online during the pandemic has also moved most of their activities to the virtual world. in line with this, bashir, et al (2021) point out that the pandemic has thoroughly ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 282-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license challenged and disturbed the university sector, including the learning mode and learning evaluation which have to be conducted virtually. that is why students are getting keener on accessing technology using their smartphones. statista reported that students‟ time to access applications during online learning has raised and contributed to an 8.5% rise in learning time from mobile phones in 2021, although they have still allocated more time using their smartphones for pleasure (adamo software, 2021). the pre-service teachers‟ familiarity with technology as generation z has also raised a question about their digital literacy and their prior knowledge of tell before joining the course. related to the pre-service teachers‟ digital literacy, the pre-service teachers mostly mastered ict basic skills and basic technological skills for teaching, yet some of them still did not know some particular apps which could be used for elt. in addition, the pre-service teachers already knew the importance of integrating tell in the classroom and were familiar with tell and call, but they still did not know how tell differed from call. thus, the pre-service teachers‟ familiarity with the technology does not guarantee their advancement in digital literacy and knowledge on tell. in line with this, hourigan and murray (2010) argue that though second language learners were born as digital natives in countries with good technology development they do not automatically have expertise in using technology for learning. regarding the need for pre-service teachers‟ exploration on tell, preservice teachers were aware of the importance of tell integration and they needed professional development enabling them to explore tell. this can build or even enhance their abilities in tell which is useful to prepare the teachers before they can incorporate tell in their classrooms. similarly, son (2014) suggests that call training for teachers enables them to gain skills needed to use the teaching materials and enhance their technological skills through the exploration of the relevant theories and practices on call and improve their roles in the teaching and learning process. egbert, et al. (2002) also conducted a study on the impact of technology for language learning coursework on the use of computers in the classroom indicating that teachers who apply activities using technology in language learning are those who previously had experience in the technology. thus, it is clear that the need for teacher education to grow preservice teachers‟ technological competencies is undoubtedly needed. to be able to incorporate technology ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 283-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license into their classrooms, they have to be confident in using the technology. this confidence can be achieved by providing them with some experiences in using the technology through formal and informal training. the findings of the study also highlight the benefits of tell for students which contribute to the opportunities of exploring tell. tell's flexibility in accommodating students‟ different learning styles; the combination of tell and textbooks to deepen students‟ understanding; tell potential to enhance students‟ participation, motivation, and positive attitudes towards learning; and tell potential to improve students‟ communicative skills are most of the benefits told by the participants. similarly, some scholars point out the opportunities of tell. zhao (2005) states that teachers and school officials are increasingly acknowledging the role of the internet and digital resources which greatly motivate students, engage students, accommodate students‟ diverse learning styles, and enhance the quality of the teaching and learning process. zhou & wei (2018) describe tell as any effort in learning a language utilizing technology to enhance the effectiveness of language learning, to motivate students, and to be flexible with students‟ different learning styles. additionally, boonyopakorn (2016) researched the impacts of tell on efl learners‟ english communication. it is found that tell serves as social media that help students practice their skills in communication and further enables them to improve their communicative competence in the four skills: listening, writing, reading, and speaking in various circumstances. further, exploring tell allows pre-service teachers to perceive its attractiveness and usefulness. it allows them to practice using some interesting, creative, and free applications that are beneficial for their future teaching. along with quality schools using the tools that technology makes accessible, teachers are demanded to be digitally proficient (richards, 2015). regarding the demand for teachers to be proficient in technology, teachers of english as to speakers of other languages (tesol) has developed the tesol technology standards comprising of some goals and standards for teachers‟ and students‟ literacy on technology (son, 2018). the guideline outlines the abilities, competence, and curriculum application that should be acknowledged by teachers and demands teachers to incorporate technology appropriately to support the teaching and learning process. thus, teacher education should enhance preservice teachers‟ technological skills by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 284-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license giving them opportunities to explore tell before they teach. the benefits and experience they get from their exploration will be the bases for their future teaching and they will keep up with the latest trend in language learning which cannot be separated from technology. apart from the benefits, tell exploration by pre-service teachers has also brought some challenges. these include the cost; teachers‟ negative attitudes and lack of experience and competence, and lack of resources. however, those issues can be anticipated or solved by utilizing free tell applications and joining some free online seminars, workshops, and training available. some research has shown the importance of technological training in teacher education. kessler (2006) on teachers‟ views of their preparation in the use of technology for language learning highlights that teachers lack experience in formal training and they have to find external sources from internet sites and discussions to improve their knowledge. son (2014) also reveals that after training on technology for language learning, most teachers continue developing their professionalism by learning from various sources, like internet sites and friends. mohalik & poddar (2020) studied the effectiveness of webinars and online workshops during the covid-19 pandemic. some of the findings suggest that webinars and online workshops are affordable and the knowledge learned can be applied efficiently in the field by the participants. thus, language teacher education should encourage pre-service teachers to develop their technological skills through formal and informal training which are budget friendly or even free and can provide more knowledge on tell for them. last but not least, teachers‟ negative attitudes toward tell and teachers‟ lack of experience, competence, and resources may result from their limited or even no experience of using technology. it is in agreement with son (2014) who lists some reasons why some teachers do not apply technology in language learning after the training which include a lack of confidence, time, knowledge, and skills to implement the technology in the language classrooms. kessler (2006) also adds that teacher candidates feel anxious about the implementation of technology in language learning at first, yet they started to understand its opportunities when they learn it deeper. in other words, teachers may feel reluctant, not confident, and negative about tell before they learn tell deeply, but after they see the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 285-288 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27944 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opportunities of tell they will appreciate it. conclusions and suggestion this research aimed to reveal the opportunities and challenges of preservice teachers‟ exploration on tell. as digital natives born with the emergence of technological advancement, the pre-service teachers still have basic knowledge and skills on tell. being digital natives does not guarantee them to be experts on technology for learning, including tell. this is due to very few exposures to tell that they obtained and they mostly made use of technology for getting pleasure rather than for learning. the participants are aware of the need for exploring tell for their future teaching. therefore, exploration on tell is highly required by preservice teachers. to conclude, preservice teachers‟ eagerness for technology should be encouraged and directed to tell exploration. it implies that language teacher education ought to give more chances for pre-service teachers to explore tell. references adamo software. 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(2018). strategies in technology-enhanced language learning. studies in second language learning and teaching, 8(2 special issue), 471–495. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt. 2018.8.2.13. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 71-83 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee indonesian university graduates’ english competence for facing the asean economic community (aec) rentauli mariah silalahi received: 18th april 2017; revised: 25th may 2017; accepted: 20th june 2017 abstract the asean economic community (aec) has been started since 2015, yet indonesia is not ready because many indonesian graduates are not ready with adequate english competence. this means many students graduated from universities with poor english proficiency. to investigate this unpreparedness, this study was carried out to one of the universities in indonesia by doing documents analysis towards the university‟s curriculum and the graduates‟ english proficiency as measured by toefl itp test. after the analysis, this study found out that the university was not yet ready to produce graduates who are competent in english because the graduates‟ toefl itp average score for all years was 457. from 944 graduates batch 2001 to 2013, there were only 2 percent who could achieve a toefl itp score of 550 or more. these research findings will be very useful for stakeholder and any other universities for reflection on their preparation for producing graduates who are competent in english. keywords: asean economic community (aec); english proficiency; toefl itp; curriculum abstrak masyarakat ekonomi asean (mea) telah dimulai sejak 2015, namun indonesia belum siap karena banyak lulusan indonesia belum memiliki kompetensi bahasa inggris yang memadai. ini berarti banyak siswa lulus dari universitas dengan kemampuan bahasa inggris yang buruk. untuk mengetahui ketidaksiapan ini, penelitian ini dilakukan pada salah satu universitas di indonesia dengan melakukan analisis dokumen terhadap kurikulum universitas dan kemampuan bahasa inggris lulusan yang diukur dengan tes toefl itp. penelitian ini menemukan bahwa universitas tersebut belum siap untuk menghasilkan lulusan yang kompeten dalam bahasa inggris karena nilai rata-rata toefl itp lulusan untuk semua tahun adalah 457. dari 944 lulusan, angkatan 2001 sampai 2013, hanya ada 2 persen saja yang bisa meraih nilai toefl itp 550 atau lebih. temuan penelitian ini akan sangat bermanfaat bagi pemangku kepentingan dan universitas lain untuk merenungkan persiapan mereka untuk menghasilkan lulusan yang kompeten dalam bahasa inggris. kata kunci: masyarakat ekonomi asean (mea); kemampuan bahasa inggris; toefl itp; kurikulum how to cite: silalahi, r. m. (2017). indonesian university graduates‟ english competence for facing the asean economic community (aec). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 71-83. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 72-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction aec stands for asean economic community. this is an era of free trade for the asean regional economic integration. when there is an integration, there should be many parties involved and due to the involvement of humans, then the humans‟ perceptions and attitudes should not be ignored. the people in all asean countries should be well informed of the consequences of this new era and therefore should be well prepared to welcome the era. a study conducted on finding out public opinion about the aec confirmed that people in asia as represented by indonesia, malaysia, and singapore were very enthusiastic and positive about the implementation of aec that might bring fortune to the society for the global exchange of many goods, services, and employees (benny et al., 2015). yet, many more related studies should be carried out to other asean countries so that the real reasons for why the aec has not been running well this year may be revealed. asean economic community (aec) has been officially started in 2015 but until recently the program seems not to run very well because the participating countries have not been well prepared in many sectors especially language. one of the four pillars of the aec is „integration into global economy.‟ being global will certainly mean having english abilities (human development priorities for the aec, 2015). english has been announced as the „official working language of the asean since 2008 (the asean charter: article 34, 2008, cited in tantiniranat, 2015 and human development for priorities for the aec, 2015). however, it was clear that many asean countries have not yet been prepared due to the lack of english proficiency as stated by ilham a habibie who frankly said that the lack of english proficiency among indonesians became a major challenge for the indonesians‟ participation into the aec (asean studies program, 2014). there are five key concepts for integrating a global focus into school curricula (mansilla & jackson, 2011): engaging students by addressing global challenges, globalizing the context for learning, connecting to universal themes, illuminating the global history of knowledge, and learning through international collaboration. in real practice, to integrate these five concepts into a school or university curriculum is not an easy task. it will require a long in-depth discussion and comprehension of a curriculum‟s designers. however, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 73-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license above all, the main challenge as the root that may enable the curriculum designers to grab the five concepts into a curriculum is to firstly integrate english into the curriculum as a must learned language. every curriculum designer should be aware of the fact that english is a mandatory core subject in every curriculum in the 21st century (aacte, 2010). if a curriculum has some flaws, there is possibility that the students may not be prepared to face the global competition. pyakurel (2014) revealed that lack of unified standard in university education system was the key challenge faced by universities in the aec. so, pyakurel deemed learning english was the major vehicle to deliver every asean countries to exchange, understand, and honor every value a nation had from history, cultures, identity, and language. therefore, it is now a huge responsibility of a university to produce graduates who are equipped with not only professional skill, but also language and intercultural skills. apart but inseparable from those demands, there is currently an emerging issue for internationalizing a curriculum among asean countries. internationalization of university touches the fundamental component of the university which is the curriculum that must be developed and accredited on an international standard (moussa & somjai, 2015), without which this will mean the integration of english into the curriculum is a must. moussa and somjai mentioned some alternatives for education reforms such as training courses in cross-cultural skills, and training in foreign languages and professional skills. a good example was started long time ago between philippines and indonesia in supervision cooperation between universities in both countries (up forum, 2014). that kind of cooperation had shown the work of a global competition in which both countries learned from each other to be highly competitive in the global market. tantiniranat (2015) claimed that in order to be well equipped to jump into the global competition in the aec era, an employee candidate should be able to show excellent performance on at least 10 skill categories. the ten skill categories are abilities in english and asean languages, ability to value multiple identities and multiculturalism, ability to work in overseas organization or abroad, ability to adapt for changes, knowledge of asean arts and culture studies, the wide worldview, own culture, asean citizenship, and intercultural (communicative) skill. however, tantiniranat emphasized that the most ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 74-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license predominant skills of all were english abilities and intercultural (communicative) skills. tantiniranat personally gave an in depth thought that intercultural skills was urgently needed to be integrated into the english language teaching for avoiding misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and chaos among all different cultures participating in the aec. actually, for facing aec, the asean countries should not only focus themselves to master english but also to learn other languages of asean countries‟ languages (kamolpun, 2015).. furthermore, mansilla and jackson (2011) stated that the study of world languages is a core component of global competence. therefore learning the world languages is the urgent matter to deal with if a student wants to be able to compete in the global world. it means the more languages someone knows the more knowledge and understanding she/he has for cross cultural understanding, communication, relation, and cooperation which eventually result in mutual understanding and respect. having a role as a lingua franca for asean countries, english becomes a mandatory subject taught in every school in all asean countries especially in indonesia. in indonesia, many students even go to after school extra course to learn english for accelerating their mastery of the language. teaching english even becomes a promising career in indonesia due to the demand for making every student capable of english. it is obviously a promising career because more and more students are interested to continue their study to university for english major. in contrast to the high interest of indonesian students to learn english, it is unlikely to thai students. kamolpun (2015) revealed that thailand is a country in need of english competence improvement. he initially mentioned that the thai students could not compete globally even regionally because of some factors, especially poor english ability. he acknowledged that the country had not yet determined the standard language proficiency test that might be used for assessing the students‟ english competence but he personally thought that the toefl test was a good choice for that purpose. in thailand, he admitted, the toefl ibt average score of the university students was about 76 or equals to 540-543 for toefl itp which was still very low for admission to study or work overseas (ets 2014, cited in kamolpun, 2015). in fact, indonesia was on the third place after singapore and malaysia for english competence as assessed by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 75-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license toefl test. although the data mentioned that indonesia was on the third position but it might not well represent the whole college community of indonesia. therefore, this study will focus on investigating the preparation of one of the universities in indonesia in producing globally competent graduates to compete in the global competition especially in the aec era. to do the investigation, this study formulates the research question as follows: “how prepared is wise university (pseudonym) to produce graduates of international quality in english competence?” method the research was conducted by doing documents analysis and interview. the documents collected to be analyzed were the university‟s curriculum and the graduates‟ toefl itp scores. since the university still graduated students of diploma programs since 2004 until this recent year, 2016, then the curriculum collected to be analyzed was the curriculum of the diploma programs and so were the graduates‟ toefl itp scores. the interview was done in order to get clarity about the data collected. the persons interviewed were the people involved in the making of the curriculum and the english teaching. they are the vice rector for academic affairs and the english lecturer. the interview was conducted using semi structure interviews as to make the interview runs smoothly following the flow of the talk. furthermore, for mapping the graduates‟ english competence into the current common european framework reference for languages or cefr, the researcher did some mapping work in order to find out the level of the graduates‟ english competence either they have the level of a2, b2, b1, or c1. findings and discussion curriculum the curriculum of all study programs at wise university was designed with a thorough and critical thinking so that the curriculum matched the students‟ needs and the markets. the design work itself was monitored and reviewed by senior lecturers as academic supervisors of wise university from the bandung institute of technology; a very wellknown university in indonesia for its highly prestigious achievements. the vice rector of academic affairs of the university granted that the university really cared for the students‟ english competence because the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 76-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license university was trying to produce qualified students who would be able to compete in the global market. that was the reason why the university made english courses as mandatory courses for six semesters in diploma program and three semesters in undergraduate program. the undergraduate program was intentionally designed to learn english less than the diploma programs; for three semesters only, because this program‟s main concern was to enable the students to be professional at their own field while for english competence they were expected to learn more at their own time during their study (a. s., personal communication, may13, 2016). the vice rector convincingly said: “the students of undergraduate program are more independent from those diploma programs because initially the curriculum between the two is different, and that is one of those differences. however, our university provides many english programs apart from the regular classes in order to help them get the feeling of the importance of english for their future. so far, we‟ve made some efforts such as english day where everyone should speak english, general lectures from invited professors from english speaking countries, english clubs, english competitions, and many more.” table 1 shows the number of semester the students at wise university study english during the period of their study. it is obviously clear that the students enrolling in diploma 3 get more advantages compared to the rest of the students because they are given an english course in every semester of their study at the university. meanwhile, the students who enroll in undergraduate program are at the most disadvantage because they are given an english course for three semesters only. the reason behind this policy was that the curriculum was designed to focus on giving the students the main important courses that were closely and directly related to their own major (a. s., personal communication, may 13, 2016). table 1. the number of english courses at wise university program no. of semesters no. of english courses diploma 3 program 6 6 diploma 4 program 8 6 undergraduate program 8 3 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 77-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. course names courses diploma program undergraduate program english 1 basic english 1 basic english 1 english 2 basic english 2 basic english 2 english 3 advance english 1 esp: toefl preparation english 4 advance english 2 -- english 5 esp: toefl preparation 1 -- english 6 esp: toefl preparation 2 -- in addition, there is also a perception from the members of the curriculum designers stating that the students of undergraduate program should be able to manage their own time to study english and improve their competence independently without supervision because these students have more free time compared to those diploma students (a. s., personal communication, may 13, 2016). table 2 shows the detailed names of each course given to the students for all programs. the english courses given in the first year were the same for all majors which were about the basic of english. basic english means learning the essential grammar and structure of english that will help the students to use english correctly especially for productive skills; speaking and writing. meanwhile, the advance english means learning more varieties of english that will enable students to read and understand different kinds of texts, to listen to various kinds of talks, to write more productively with different kinds of writing styles, and to produce spoken language using appropriate words and expressions. finally, the esp or english for specific purpose is aimed at helping students to learn the strategies and more specific materials related to toefl test. this preparation is considered very useful for students because they may learn about the test and the materials, and practice doing the toefl exercises in enough time before finally sitting the real toefl itp test which is organized to be conducted right after the end of the toefl preparation course (r.s, personal communication, may 3, 2016). the english lecturer confirmed saying “every end of the six semesters for diploma program, the students immediately sit the toefl itp test to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 78-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license know their achievement after having a toefl preparation course.” looking back at the curriculum which includes english courses to the whole semesters for diploma students raises a curious question of why students still get low scores for toefl itp while they are indeed given english courses even a special course to prepare them to sit the toefl itp test. that curiosity was then answered by the english lecturer who claimed that it was not an easy job to enable the whole hundreds of students to pass the toefl itp test with their very different kinds of english background and big number in a class. according to the lecturer, from around 60 students in every class, there was only about 5 percent of the students whose english capability had been way advanced over the other students while the rest were about medium to low. there was more difficulty to teach the students because the lecturer had to teach the students whose level of interest was different one to the other. there was a tendency that the weak students had no passion to learn english and seemed to be ignorance of their own weak english competence (r.s., personal communication, may 3, 2016). the lecturer admitted saying “it is certainly not easy to teach these students because of the students‟ premier background in which from senior high school they‟re already weak in english and from many informal interviews i ever conducted with my students, they admitted that they didn‟t like english subject from junior and senior high schools and therefore never tried to learn the subject well.” given a question about the students‟ overall performance in the classroom, the lecturer acknowledged that the students were able to follow the lesson, practice what was taught and almost all students were active when given some group discussions. the lecturer continued saying that the problem with their low toefl scores might be caused by other factors such as the pressure of the test atmosphere on the test day, the possibility of very unfamiliar test items, recordings and reading texts appeared on the test, and most probably the students unfamiliarity with the context of the test because the context was very westernized. the english lecturer claimed “probably a class preparation is not enough to enable students pass a toefl test. i think it requires more than that because the most important thing is the students must firstly have a strong basic in listening skill, reading skill, and grammar. without them, it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 79-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license will be hard for the students to pass any test. these students, i must admit, they haven‟t given serious thought of how important english is for their future and therefore they are not serious when having english classes.” in relation to the international acknowledgement for accreditation, the vice rector admitted that the university had not yet got any international accreditation but still in progress for preparing any important data and related matters to get one of the international accreditation such as abet. yet, „it may still be a long preparation‟, the vice rector emphasized. however, the university had already gained accreditation from the country of indonesia for all of the study programs. some are still c while the others are b. those study programs which got c were the undergraduate programs and they got a c because they were still freshly operated last year (r.s., personal communication, may 3, 2016). graduates’ english competence the university‟s graduate‟s english competence is measured by a toefl itp test. this university has been making the policy for all students to sit a toefl test before graduating since 2004 or since the university graduated its first batch. however, the students were varied in scores and only few of them were able to achieve a score of 550 or above. table 3 shows the score distribution of the students from students batch 2001 to 2013. table 3. toefl itp scores distribution of wise university graduates student batch graduate year toefl itp score total students >= 550 500 549 450 499 400 449 350 399 300 349 2001 2004 1 7 15 19 5 1 48 2002 2005 1 6 35 39 6 2 89 2003 2006 0 3 7 23 16 9 58 2004 2007 0 0 4 13 13 1 31 2005 2008 0 0 6 26 27 6 65 2006 2009 1 24 34 3 1 0 63 2007 2010 0 23 30 3 0 0 56 2008 2011 0 14 42 7 1 0 64 2009 2012 5 37 25 2 0 0 69 2010 2013 0 11 30 23 0 0 64 2011 2014 0 22 48 16 0 0 86 2012 2015 6 25 55 25 4 0 115 2013 2016 5 16 62 42 11 0 136 19 188 393 241 84 19 944 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 80-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to be able to compete globally, the graduates must have a minimum score of 550 for toefl itp. the score is equivalent to 6.5 for ielts and 79-80 for toefl ibt. the toefl itp score of 550 is the minimum safest score to apply for scholarship or employment overseas because there are only some universities and employers who accept applicants with a score light below it. to be highly qualified and competitive, a graduate must be able to achieve that score. the indonesian government has actually been supporting all indonesian graduates to improve their english competence as the government has been providing much scholarship to graduates who have intention to study overseas. however, the government requires the applicants to have a minimum score of 550 for toefl itp if they are planning to study overseas. however, reflecting to the toefl itp scores wise university graduates gained during the thirteen year period, it can be concluded that wise university had not been successful to produce graduates with adequate english competence to compete in the global market or the aec. those graduates were mostly not ready to compete in the global market because there were only 19 out of 944 or only 2 percent who could get a toefl score of 550 and above. there is however a progress on graduates‟ performance because in the last two years; students batch 2012 and 2013, the graduates who gained a score of 550 and above increased, though not very significant. the other interesting finding from the students‟ scores is that there is a significant threat to the students‟ inability to compete globally because there are around 36% of the graduates who had a very weak performance on english competence because there were 344 students who could only get a toefl itp score of 450 and below. this score is very low and still below level b1 of the common european framework of reference (cefr). that means the majority graduates were at the level of basic users (tannenbaum, 2011). based on cefr description, basic user indicates that the graduates: “can sometimes understand explicitly stated information in written texts and short dialogues containing simple vocabulary, can sometimes understand main ideas when they are strongly reinforced in texts and short oral exchanges, and in simple contexts, can sometimes select the appropriate verb tense and correctly choose between singular and plural nouns” ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 81-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (www.ets.org). to be able to compete in the global markets, university graduates should be able to get b2 level or independent user of the cefr, yet there were only less than 5 percent of the wise university graduates who could achieve that level. an important question worth to raise after analyzing this data is to find out the reasons behind the students‟ low performances in english. when the english lecturer was given such question, the lecturer said “obviously, our students here are studying english as a general course, not a specialized course. their major is also not english but information technology (it). therefore, i can see an indication that most of our students pay little concern to english courses because they still think that english is not a very important course for their career. maybe they haven‟t given a serious thought for applying for a job or scholarship overseas so most of them are not really that motivated and keen to study english” english competence based on cefr reflected to the toefl itp score it is very important to keep an university updated with current information about the equalization of their students english competence reflected to the international cefr. cefr is currently used as a standard indicator of someone‟s english proficiency worldwide. when reflected to the data of the wise university toefl itp scores, the students‟ english competences were at the range of level a2 to b2 of cefr. table 4 indicates those ranges of competence the wise university graduates have. from the data given on the table 4, it was clear that only 35 out of 944 graduates of wise university who could achieve a b2 level of the cefr. b2 level achievers are claimed to have abilities to: “connect information across utterances from different speakers in short dialogues and can identify main ideas and details when reinforced in lectures and longer conversations, in written text containing high-frequency academic vocabulary, can connect details and ideas to understand information that is explicitly stated or implied, and can organize appropriate ways to vary written sentences using appositives, participles, and subordinate clauses, and can demonstrate awareness of acceptable variations on basic grammatical rules”. http://www.ets.org/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 82-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. the wise university graduates‟ english competence based on cefr students batch cefr levels total c1 (627-677) b2 (543-626) b1 (460-542) a2 (337-459) 2001 0 2 17 29 48 2002 0 2 30 57 89 2003 0 0 8 50 58 2004 0 0 31 0 31 2005 0 0 65 0 65 2006 0 4 51 8 63 2007 0 4 46 6 56 2008 0 1 46 17 64 2009 0 7 57 5 69 2010 0 1 33 30 64 2011 0 0 60 26 86 2012 0 6 73 36 115 2013 0 8 64 64 136 0 35 581 328 944 conlusion and suggestion from the literature studied and elaborated above, a conclusion may withdraw that to be prepared for facing aec in relation to english competence, an university or a university must be able to produce graduates who are competent in english by achieving a toefl itp score of 550 at minimum, makes english course as one of the must learned language and if possible learning other asean languages, does some creative formulation of the materials given in the english classes so that the students will be able to have a communicative skills and cross cultural understanding, and makes some efforts to get an international acknowledgement or accreditation for the curriculum. the research found out that almost all of the graduates of wise university had not been yet ready to compete in the era of asean economic community given the data that only 2 percent of all of the graduates could achieve a toefl score of 550 or more. despite the fact that those graduates had been well prepared for two semesters to study and practice toefl test, most of them were not able to gain the score of 550. this fact is worth given a real thought because it may raises other curiosity either there is something wrong with the students or the teachers, or is the toefl itp score ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 83-83 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.3457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license really a reliable tool to determine someone‟s level of english proficiency. references aacte. 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(2014). the habbie center discussion report. jakarta. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 160-177 the effects of mind mapping (mp) and pre-questioning (pq) on the students’ reading comprehension maslakhatin received: 25th march 2015; revised: 24th august 2015; accepted: 15th november 2015 abstract this study was conducted to investigate the effects of mind mapping and pre-questioning on the students’ reading comprehension and on the students’ reading comprehension levels: literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation. this study was a quasi-experimental design, which involved 52 senior high school students of the eleventh grade in surabaya. mind mapping was used for the experimental group and prequestioning was for the control group. the instrument was 25 item reading comprehension test incorporating the four reading comprehension levels based on barrett taxonomy. independent sample t-test and manova test were used to analyze the data, which results revealed that there was no significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their overall reading comprehension and in their literal comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation level. however, there was a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their inferential comprehension. key word: reading comprehension; mind mapping; pre-questioning; literal comprehension abstrak penelitian ini diadakan untuk menganalisis pengaruh mind mapping dan pre-questioning terhadap pemahaman membaca siswa dan terhadap level pemahaman membaca siswa: literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, dan appreciation. penelitian ini menggunakan desain quasiexperimen, yang diikuti oleh52 siswa sma kelas sebelas di surabaya. mind mapping diberikan kepada kelompok eksperimen dan pre-questioning diberikan kepada kelompok kontrol. instrumen penelitiannya 25 item tes pemahaman membaca yang menggunakan level pemahaman membaca berdasarkan barrett taxonomy. data penelitian ini dianalisis menggunakan tes independent sample dan tes manova, yang hasilnya menunjukkan tidak adanya perbedaan signifikan antara siswa yang mendapatkan teknik mind mapping dan pre-questioning pada keseluruhan pemahaman membaca mereka. hasil penelitian juga menunjukkan tidak adanya perbedaan signifikan antara siswa yang mendapatkan teknik mind mapping dan pre-questioning pada level pemahaman literal, evaluation, dan appreciation mereka. namun, ada perbedaan yang signifikan antara siswa yang mendapatkan teknik mind mapping dan pre-questioning pada level pemahaman inferential mereka. kata kunci: pemahaman membaca; pemetaan pikiran; pra-pertanyaan; pemahaman literal how to cite: maslakhatin. (2015). the effects of mind mapping (mp) and pre-questioning (pq) on the students’ reading comprehension. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 161-177. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3090 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3090 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3090 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|161-177 introduction background knowledge or schemata plays an important role in reading comprehension. clarke and silberstein (as cited in carrell and eisterhold, 1983, p. 556) said that “a reader’s comprehension depends on her or his ability to relate the information that she or he gets from the text with prior knowledge.” therefore, if the students do not have related schemata, meaning that she or he does not have an understanding of the incoming data from the text, then she or he will find difficulties to understand a text and must do something to get a level of comprehension (celce-murcia, 1991). generally, every reader has already had his or her prior knowledge or background knowledge, yet it requires to be activated when he or she is reading. activating prior knowledge before reading can help the students get ready to read and be open to new information (al faki & siddiek, 2013). “in spite of the crucial role of schema activation, it is often forgotten or ignored in discussion of reading texts (yin, as cited in al faki & siddiek, 2013, p. 44).” therefore, here is probably the importance of the teacher’s role in helping the students activate their schema before reading. activating prior knowledge refers to the activities or strategies which are used to bring out what students already know about a topic. the most appropriate time to activate or build the students’ schemata is in pre-reading activity. schema is often defined as a concept in the brain which stores everything a person has already known in the past and relates it to the new experience he or she has. stevens (as cited in al faki and siddiek, 2013) defines schema quite simply as what one already knows about a subject. many linguists, cognitive psychologists, and psycholinguists admit that schema has an important role on reading process. they argued that schema is one of key factors affecting comprehension process. in line with this, ajideh (2006, p. 4) mentions schema theory acknowledges that whenever people gain knowledge, they try to fit that knowledge into some structures in memory that can help them make sense of that knowledge. it means that the students’ prior knowledge or schema directly affects their comprehension ability. nuttall (2005, p. 7) states “the kinds of assumption we make about the world depend on what we have experienced and how our minds have organized the knowledge we have got from our past experiences.” in addition, clarke and silberstein, as cited in carrell and eisterhold (1983, p. 556) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 162-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 said that “a reader’s comprehension depends on her or his ability to relate the information that she or he gets from the text with prior knowledge. ”therefore, schema plays an important role in reading comprehension. a reader needs to have prior knowledge or schema to understand the text we read otherwise we will have some difficulties in comprehending it (celcemurcia, 1991). students who have more related background knowledge will comprehend the text better. fisher and frey (2009) mention that “the more you know about a topic, the more likely it will be that you can comprehend what is written about it.” xiao-hui, jun, and wei-hua (2007) mention that there are three types of schemata. first is linguistic schemata, which deals with reader’s existing language proficiency in vocabulary, grammar, and idioms schemata; second is formal schemata, which concern the organizational forms and rhetorical structures of written texts; and third is content schemata, which is related to the background knowledge of the content area of a text or the topic a text. both background knowledge of the topic and vocabulary mastery are needed to get a better reading comprehension. mcnamara et al. (as cited in rizqiya, 2003) stated that in order to be able to comprehend text, not only the knowledge of the world is required but also the knowledge of the language. language of the world here means the content schemata while knowledge of language means the formal schemata. however, schema requires to be activated when a reader is reading. activating prior knowledge before reading can help the students get ready to read and be open to new information (al faki & siddiek, 2013). schema activation is often forgotten or ignored by the teachers when they teach reading (yin, as cited in al faki & siddiek, 2013). thus, the importance of the teacher’s role in helping the students activate their schema before reading is emphasized. the most appropriate time to activate or build the students’ schemata is in pre-reading activity. beside schema activation, the appropriate and interesting teaching method or technique were also necessary. chiramanee (as cited in thongyon & chiramanee, 2011) indicated that inappropriate teaching method and outdated teaching technique could cause many students failed understanding the content of the reading materials. in line with chiramanee, fitrawati (2009) also states that many teachers used outdated ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|163-177 teaching technique when they taught reading class. she mentions that the teacher usually started the learning process by asking the students to read the text by themselves, discussing some difficult words and doing the reading comprehension questions. those teaching reading activities are unattractive. the students will be inactive because the teacher did not provide any activities which could motivate and make them interested in reading the text going to be discussed. concerning teaching technique, siriphanich and laohawiriyanon (2010) suggest the use of mind mapping, which they define as an instrument to represent students’ understanding by using words, picture with color and symbols in a hierarchical or tree branch format. mind mapping is intended to give an opportunity for students to think of as many ideas as possible and to activate their schemata related to the topic. it can also train the students to recall what they already knew related to the topic before reading activity. similarly, buzan (as cited in indrayani, 2014, p. 18) considers that mind mapping is a useful technique which can activate the whole brain or background knowledge. mind mapping is a teaching reading technique which can help the students to comprehend the text. rizqiya (2013) concluded in her study that mind mapping can be an alternative technique in teaching reading comprehension. moreover, it can help the students to make an evaluative judgment of some aspects in the text. hay et al. (as cited in malekzadeh, 2015, p. 82) illustrates that mind maps assist evaluating meaningful knowledge acquisition in learning. besides, it trains the students to involve their emotional responses to plot and reactions to the author’s use of language. in line with this, mcclain (as cited in santiago, 2011, p. 126) states that mind maps would allow students to add their personal ideas to the topic and to increase comprehension. mind mapping could be conducted as a pre-reading activity. pre-reading activity is an activity which is done before reading process and aims to motivate, prepare, and activate the students’ background knowledge before reading. mukhroji (2011) defines pre-reading activities as an activity, which is directed at reader’s prior knowledge, especially of building and activating reader’s schemata before reading. the goals of pre-reading stage are to activate the students’ knowledge of the subject, to provide any language preparation that might be needed for coping with the passage, and finally to motivate the learners in order to want ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 164-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 to read the text (celce-murcia, 1991). meanwhile, lindsay and knight (2006, p. 76) states that pre-reading activities are expected to be able to assist the learners achieve the aims of the activity (i.e. stimulate what they already know about the topic, provide them with background information that they need before they read, and help them with words and phrases they will need to know. the use of mind mapping in the pre-reading activity could also be combined with pre-questioning. brown (as cited in hodijah, 2012, p. 3) defines pre-questioning as some questions which are raised by teachers before the students read the whole text and aims to build the students’ interest and motivation as well as their cognitive factors. pre-questioning is very useful to activate the schemata, because the students are assisted to predict what will be faced by them in the reading text. according to harmer (as cited in hodijah, 2012) there are four kinds of pre-questioning: (1) pre-questioning before reading to confirm expectations (to encourage the students predicting the content of the text, and to give them an interesting and motivating purpose for reading); (2) pre-questioning before reading to extract specific information (to force the students to extract specific information from the text); (3) prequestioning before reading for general comprehension (to build up the students’ prior knowledge); and (4) prequestioning before reading for detailed comprehension (to give the students some detailed information that should be found by them in the whole of the text). there are some advantages of pre-questioning on reading comprehension. first, it helps students in getting specific information from the text (harmer, 1985). second, it helps the students to relate every information they get from the text before making a conclusion. hence, by answering prequestioning from the teacher, the students can take the main point of the text. third, it helps the students to predict what will be faced in reading text so they can find inference meaning from the text (brown cited in dewi, sutarsyah and hasan, 2013). fourth, it enriches students’ vocabulary because pre-questioning provided by the teacher involves many words list (dewi, sutarsyah & hasan, 2013). fifth, it helps students in improving their critical comprehension level because it involves some questions which build the students’ imagination about their personal reacting (dewi, sutarsyah & hasan, ibid). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|165-177 when schema is activated using relevant technique such as mind mapping and pre-questioning, it is expected that students’ skill on reading comprehension could be enhanced. generally, the aim of reading is to understand or comprehend what is being read. howel at al. (as cited in laila, 2009) said that reading comprehension is the process of integrating information from the text with the knowledge acquired previously in order to build meaning. according to emilia (as cited in andanty, 2006), reading comprehension is a matter of how deep a reader’s understanding of the text is. it can be said that everyone has their own level of understanding in reading; their understanding comes from the text he or she reads and his or her own knowledge outside the text. ruddell (2007) classified the level of reading comprehension into four levels. first is literal comprehension, which involves understanding of information that is explicitly stated in the text. second is inferential comprehension, which concerns drawing conclusions not stated in the text but implied by the facts given. third is evaluation, which deals with judgments whether something is real or imaginary, whether it is appropriate, worthwhile, desirable or acceptable. fourth is appreciation, which involves emotional response to plot or themes; reactions to the author’s use of language. it also involves the taste. as has been previously indicated, reading comprehension is still a big problems for many students in indonesia. one case happened at a senior high school in surabaya. based on the information from one of the english teachers there, most students were not interested in reading class; they felt demotivated when they were asked to read the text. as a result, they had difficulty in understanding what they read. when the researcher asked that teacher whether he provided prereading activity and an appropriate technique in teaching reading, he said that in reading class he seldom provided pre-reading activity; he directly asked the students to read the text, discussed some difficult words, and did some reading comprehension questions. that teaching technique made the students feel demotivated because the teacher did not provide any activities which could motivate and make them interested in reading the text going to be discussed. in this case, the teacher should provide a teaching reading technique to motivate and attract the students’ interest to read the text so that they can comprehend the text. rizqiya (2013) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 166-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 claims the lack of reading comprehension is the result of the low interest in reading. there are many techniques which can motivate, attract the students’ interest to read the text and help them to improve their reading comprehension ability. two of them, pre-questioning and mind mapping have been previously discussed in this section. mind mapping is useful for not only improving students’ motivation but also activating their background knowledge. “mind mapping is a technique which aimed to activate the whole brain or background knowledge (buzan, as cited in indrayani, 2014, p. 18).” beside the teaching reading technique, the teacher should also use appropriate steps of teaching reading. in teaching reading, there are three phases: pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading activities (avery & graves, as cited in medina, 2008). prereading activities are intended to prepare the students before reading, to motivate them to read the text, and to activate or build their background knowledge or schema related to the topic going to be discussed. if the students do not have any related schemata, the teacher is responsible for helping them by providing background knowledge so that they are able to achieve better comprehension. considering the importance of background knowledge and teaching reading technique on reading comprehension, the researcher was interested in investigating the effect of mind mapping and pre-questioning on the students’ reading comprehension and the students’ reading comprehension levels. the framework used in investigating this comprehension level was barrett taxonomy, which consists of literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation (ruddell, 2007). she implemented mind mapping and prequestioning as pre-reading activities. method the study under report was a quasi-experimental design or nonequivalent-groups pretest-posttest design as modeled by mcmillan (2008). the researcher used this certain design by considering what ary et al. (2010) state that conducting research in the school situation, the researcher cannot rearrange the class to accomplish his or her study. non-random sampling was chosen to take the sample of this study because the researcher used the available classes provided by the headmaster. the experiment was conducted for five meetings because the researcher had limited time to do it; the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|167-177 experiment was conducted three weeks before final examination. one teacher was assigned to teach both groups, which aimed to avoid the appearance of extraneous variable and the potential for experiment effects (mcmillan, 2008). he then was involved in the administering of the pre-test, post-test, and the treatment. the participants of this study were the first grade students of senior high school in surabaya because the researcher assumed that mind mapping and pre-questioning would be more effective for the students who have low english proficiency. the researcher was given two classes: ips 1 and ips 2 by the headmaster. to determine the experimental and the control groups, the researcher took ballots and the result was ips 1 as the control group and ips 2 as the experimental group. by considering what arikunto (1998, p. 120) said, the researcher decided to take the sample 30% of the population. it was more or less 56 students, but then the normal distribution of the pretest scores was not obtained. therefore, the researcher decided to reduce the number of the sample by dropping four outliers and the exact sample was 52 students: 26 students from ips1 and 26 students from ips2. the activities in teaching reading which were conducted in both groups consisted of three stages: pre-reading, whilst-reading, and post-reading activities. in the experimental group, before delivering pre-reading activity, the teacher merely told the students the title of the text going to be discussed. after that, the teacher asked the students to predict the ideas of the story in a pair using mind mapping. in their mind mapping, they wrote down the ideas for each component of the generic structures. meanwhile, for those who were in the control group, the teacher provided some pre-reading questions which guided the students to predict the sequence of events in the story. next, in whilst-reading activities, the teacher distributed the text and asked them to read the story in the text in pair. one student in pair read the first half of the text and another student continued the second half. after that, they shared what they have read in pair. the teacher gave them guided reading comprehension questions incorporating the four reading comprehension levels (literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation). at last they did some reading comprehension questions independently. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 168-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 in post-reading activity, the students were asked to change the end of the story based on their imagination. this activity was chosen as a postreading activity because the researcher was inspired by what lindsay and knight (2006) argued that other skills can be involved in teaching reading, such as writing skill. the instrument of this study was a reading comprehension test incorporating the four levels of reading comprehension based on barrett’s taxonomy. this was because the researcher would like to investigate the students’ reading comprehension achievement with regards to reading comprehension levels. the test was adapted from standardized test; national examination test (grace, sudarwati, & muryati, 2008) because it is more consistent and reliable as an assessment instrument. the test was an objective test. it was in the form of multiple choice questions with four options for each question. in total 25 items were prepared: 7 questions for literal comprehension level, 6 questions for inferential comprehension level, 6 questions for evaluation level, and 6 questions for appreciation level. the questions in the pre-test were the same as the post-test. the steps of collecting data were first; the researcher constructed the pretest as the research instrument. she prepared a narrative text entitled “the legend of the mountain tangkuban perahu” and constructed 25 item reading comprehension test incorporating the four levels of reading comprehension based on barrett taxonomy. second, she then prepared three lesson plans or guideline for the instructor or teacher. third, for the treatment, she prepared three narrative texts entitled “the legend of bawang merah and bawang putih”; “the legend of prambanan temple”; and “the legend of toba lake” and constructed ten item reading comprehension tests for each title of those narrative texts. she then asked permission to the headmaster to conduct the experiment in his school; she got two classes of the first grade. taking a lottery was chosen to determine which class to be the experimental group and the control group. next, the researcher informed the teacher who taught in those two classes that he would be involved in the experiment and she gave lesson plans as the guidelines for conducting the experiment. third, the instrument was tried out to another class which was considered having similar reading comprehension ability with the two ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|169-177 chosen classes for the actual experiment. it aimed to know the reliability and validity of the instrument. after trying out the instrument three times, it had a high reliability because the coefficient was 0.858; it was close to 1.00 (tuckman, 1978). the item discriminability of the instrument was ten questions categorized as “satisfactory” and fifteen questions categorized as “effective.” meanwhile, the item difficulty of it was fourteen questions categorized as “acceptable,” five questions categorized as “easy,” four questions categorized as “difficult” and two questions categorized as “very difficult.” the researcher decided to use it as the instrument of the study because she had limited time. the content validity of the instrument was proved by the appropriateness between the test specification and the content of the instrument. after trying out the instrument, pretest and posttest were administered in this study. however, before the posttest was conducted, the treatment was implemented for two weeks. in this present study, the researcher was only as a non-participant observer. therefore, she involved the instructor or teacher in conducting the treatment for both the experimental and the control groups with different technique. the last step was marking the result of the pretest and posttest. the researcher analyzed the obtained scores in order to confirm the hypotheses of this research. before testing the first research question hypothesis, the researcher analyzed the pretest scores of both the experimental and the control group using independent-sample t-test after checking the normal distribution of the pretest scores. it aimed to know whether the students of both groups had the same reading comprehension ability. the calculation of the pretest scores revealed that the normal distribution was obtained after the researcher reduced the number of the sample by dropping four outliers. next, the researcher tested the first research question hypothesis. to confirm the hypothesis of the first research question, which concerned whether there was a significant difference between the students who received mind-mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their reading comprehension achievement, the researcher analyzed the data using independent-sample t-test. meanwhile, to confirm the second, third, fourth and fifth research questions, the researcher analyzed the data using manova test since there was more than one dependent variable in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 170-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 this study. however, before analyzing the second, third, fourth and fifth research questions, the researcher broke down the students’ scores based on each level of reading comprehension (literal comprehension, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation). to fulfill the two requirements of manova test, the researcher checked the normal distribution of the data and the homogeneity of variances before analyzing the data. the result revealed that the normal distribution was 0.42 and the homogeneity of variances was 0.01. it meant that the normal distribution of the data and the homogeneity of variances were obtained. research findings and discussion the researcher analyzed the pretest scores of both the experimental and the control groups, which aimed to know whether the students in both groups had equal reading comprehension.. the data were analyzed using t-test for independent sample. however, the normal distribution of the pretest scores on both groups should be confirmed before calculating the t-test. the result revealed that the pretest scores of both the experimental and the control groups were normally distributed. the calculation was continued using t-test for independent sample. the result revealed that the students in both groups had an equal ability in reading comprehension before they were given mind mapping and pre-questioning as a pre-reading activity or the treatment. the posttest scores of both the experimental and the control groups were also normally distributed. the calculation then was continued to analyzing the posttest scores of both groups using independent sample ttest. table 1. the result of the t-test for the posttest scores of both groups group mean df sig. (2tailed) conclusion experim ental control 52.46 58.46 50 .157 not significant table 1 shows that the null hypothesis was accepted. it means that there is no a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their reading comprehension achievement. the mean score of the experimental group (52.46) was merely slight different from the mean score of the control group (58.46). though the mean score of the control group was higher than the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|171-177 mean score of the experimental group, statistically calculated they were not significantly different. it could happen because the students’ reading comprehension in the control group was 2.77 greater than those in the experimental group before the treatment was implemented. the mean of the pretest score in the control group was 50.92 while in the experimental group was 48.23. therefore, after the treatment was implemented, the mean score of the control group was also greater than the mean score of the experimental group. this finding rejected the finding of rizqiya’s (2013) study. she states that mind mapping is a good technique for teaching reading comprehension. moreover, she mention that mind mapping succeeds to attract the students to read the text and improve their reading comprehension because the students related between what they wrote in their mind mapping and what they read in the text. three factors might influence the students in the control group to perform better than those in the experimental group. first, the mean of the pretest scores in the control group was 2.77 greater than the mean of the pretest score in the experimental group. second, the students in the experimental group were less familiarwith the story of tangkuban perahu. it was based on the researcher observation and the teacher’s information when the students made the mind map of that story. fisher and frey (2009) mention that when we fully understand a topic, it will be easier for a reader to grasp the content of a reading passage. third, it might be related to the students’ lack of vocabulary mastery. the teacher who was involved in this study told that the students in the experimental group found it difficult to make some sentences for fulfilling mind mapping. in addition, the teacher informed that most of them asked some difficult words to him. mcnamara et al. (as cited in rizqiya, 2003) stated that “language comprehension requires knowledge of the world (content schemata) as well as knowledge of the language (formal schemata). in other words, both background knowledge of the topic and vocabulary mastery are needed so that the students get a better reading comprehension. the calculation was then continued using manova test to examine the second, third, fourth and fifth research questions. checking the normal distribution of the data and the homogeneity of variances were done to fulfill the requirements of manova test. the result revealed that the posttest ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 172-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 scores with regards to the four reading comprehension levels were normally distributed (the p-value was 0.42) and the equality of variances was confirmed (the p-value was 0.01). the researcher then continued analyzing the data using manova. the result revealed that there is no a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their literal comprehension level. the possible factor influencing the result of the second hypothesis testing was both mind mapping and pre-questioning can help the students to get the information explicitly stated in the text since they had related background knowledge. thus, they can comprehend the content of text from their background knowledge. it was supported by siriphanich and laohawiriyanon (2010, p. 4), who defines “mind mapping is a tool to represent students’ understanding by using words, picture with color and symbols in a hierarchical or tree branch format. therefore, if the students have related background knowledge to the topic being discussed, automatically they will comprehend the information explicitly stated in the text as well. in addition, harmer (1985) states that prequestioning will help students get specific information from the text. the specific information of the text they get from pre-questioning provided by the teacher can help the students get the information explicitly stated in the text. there was a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their inferential comprehension level. this finding was supported by brown (as cited in dewi, sutarsyah & hasan, 2013), said that pre questioning whose function is to activate the prior knowledge can help the students to predict what will be faced by them in reading text so they can find inferential meaning from the text. two factors might influence the students in the control group to perform better than those in the experimental group. first, the mean of the pretest scores in the control group was 0.93 greater than the mean of the pretest score in the experimental group. it indicates that the students’ inferential comprehension level in the control group was better than those in the experimental group before the treatment was implemented. second, it might be related to the students’ vocabulary mastery. pre-questioning provided by the teacher involves many words list hence it enriches students’ vocabulary (dewi, sutarsyah & hasan, 2013). meanwhile, the students who ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|173-177 received mind-mapping could not enrich their vocabulary since they had to transfer what they already knew to the mind-mapping they wrote without any helping from the teacher. there is no a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their evaluation level. the possible factor influencing the result of the fourth hypothesis testing was both mind-mapping and pre-questioning can help the students get the understanding of evaluation level. mind mapping can help the students make an evaluative judgment of some aspects in the text. hay et al. (as cited in malekzadeh, 2015, p. 82) illustrates that “mind maps assist evaluating meaningful knowledge acquisition in learning.” there is not a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their appreciation level. the possible factor influencing the result of the fifth hypothesis testing was both mindmapping and pre-questioning can help the students get the understanding of appreciation level. mind-mapping and pre-questioning can help the students involve their emotional responses to plot and reactions to the author’s use of language. mcclain (as cited in santiago, 2011, p. 126) states that “mind maps would allow stu¬dents to add their personal ideas to the topic and to increase comprehension.” pre questioning helps students improve their critical comprehension level because it involves some questions which build the students’ imagination about their personal reacting (dewi, sutarsyah & hasan, 2013). conclusion and suggestion this present study was conducted based on the fact that most of the teachers ignored the importance of providing the interesting technique in teaching reading course. in fact, comprehending the content of the text is a consequence of having interest in reading. focusing on the pre-reading stage, the researcher intended to investigate the effect of mind mapping and pre-questioning on the students’ reading comprehension achievement generally and specifically analyzed the effect of mind mapping and prequestioning on the students’ reading comprehension levels. the equivalence of the students’ reading comprehension ability before the treatment was implemented firstly checked. the researcher used independent sample t-test to examine it. the result revealed that the students ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 174-177|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 of both the experimental group and the control group had the same reading comprehension ability before the treatment was implemented. in the experimental group, the students were given mind mapping as the treatment, while in the control group the students were given pre-questioning as the treatment. after the treatment was implemented, there was no a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received pre-questioning in their reading comprehension achievement. however, both mind mapping and prequestioning could be used as an alternative technique to improve the students’ reading comprehension achievement because there was a slight improvement on the mean scores of both groups’ pretest and posttest. the mean score of the control group was better than the mean score of the experimental group. it happened because of some possible factors. first, the students’ reading comprehension ability in the control group was 2.77 higher than those in the experimental group prior to the treatment. second, the students in the experimental group were probably less familiar with the story of “the legend of tangkuban perahu.” third, it might be related to the students’ lack of vocabulary mastery. based on the information from the teacher who was involved in this study, the students in the control group had english proficiency or vocabulary mastery better than those in the experimental group. the manova test was used to know the effect of mind mapping and pre-questioning on the students’ reading comprehension levels. the calculation revealed that there was no a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received prequestioning in their literal comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation level. however, there was a significant difference between the students who received mind mapping and those who received prequestioning in their inferential comprehension level. concluding the result of this study, the researcher finally could give some suggestion and recommendation. the researcher would like to present not only suggestion for students and teachers but also recommendation for further study. for the students, the researcher would like to suggest that they activate their background knowledge related to the topic being discussed. to get a better reading comprehension, the students should improve not only their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|175-177 ability in mastering vocabulary but also their ability in activating background knowledge related to the topic being discussed. for the teacher, the researcher would like to suggest her or him to consider the importance of providing an interesting technique which can motivate and attract the students’ interest in reading because comprehending the content of the text is a consequence of having interest in reading the text. mind mapping and pre-questioning can be used as an alternative technique to activate the students’ background knowledge of the topic being discussed and help the students comprehend the text they read. however, the teacher should also teach about word recognition or vocabulary. for future researchers, first the researcher would like to recommend them to replicate this study with bigger sample of students so that they can probably have a better result of their study. second, the researcher recommends them to implement the treatment as many as they can. they might have a better result so that their study can give a contribution to the students and the teachers as well. references ajideh, p. (2006). schema-theory based considerations on pre-reading activities in esp textbooks. the asian efl journal.16(1). 1-19. retrieved from http://asian-efljournal.com/november_2006_vol 16_art2.pdf. al faki, i.m., &siddiek, a.g. (2013).the role of background knowledge in enhancing reading comprehension.world journal of english language.3(4). 42-66. retrieved from file:///c:/users/w7/downloads /3736-12313-1-pb.pdf. andanty, f. d. (2006).reading strategies used by second grade high school students of sma negeri 1 surabaya. (unpublished graduate thesis).widya mandala chatolic university, surabaya, indonesia. carrell, p. l., &eisterhold, j. c. 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(2009). improving students’ reading abilityby using printed mass media. retrieved from http://eprints.uns.ac.id/3929/1/ 02807200909411.pdf. lindsay, c., & knight, p. (2006). learning and teaching english: a course for teachers. new york: oxford university press. malekzadeh, b., bayat, a. (2015). the effect of mind mapping strategy on comprehending implicit information in efl reading texts. iinternational journal educational investigation. 2(3). 81-90. retrieved from http://www.ijeionline.com/attac hments/article/40/ijeionline_vo l.2_no.3_2015-3-09.pdf. medina, s. l. (2008). a guide to teaching reading explained using a lesson about coffee. the internet ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|177-177 tesl journal. 14(6). retrieved from http://iteslj.org/techniques/me dina-coffee.html. nuttall, c. (2005). teaching reading skills in a foreign language. oxford: macmillan. rizqiya, r. s. (2013). the use of mind mapping in teaching reading comprehension. eltin journal. i(1), 32-43. retrieved from http://download.portalgaruda.or g/article.php ruddell, m. r. (2007). teaching content reading and writing. usa: john wiley & sons, inc. santiago, h. c. (2011). visual mapping to enhance learning and critical thinking skills. optometric education. 36 (3). 125-139. retrieved from http://journal.opted.org/articles /volume_36_number_3_visualm apping.pdf. siriphanich, p. & laohawiriyanon, c. (2010). using mind mapping technique to improve reading comprehension ability of thai efl university students. the 2nd international conference on humanities and social sciences. retrieved from http://tar.thailis.or.th/bitstream /123456789/892/1/001.pdf. thongyon, p., &chiramanee, t. (2011).the effects of pre-reading activities on reading comprehension ability.proceedings-teaching technique:the third international conference on humanities and social sciences. faculty of liberal arts, prince of songkla university. retrieved from http://fs.libarts.psu.ac.th/researc h/conference/proceedings3/artic le/3pdf/003.pdf. xiao-hui, l., jun, w., & wei-hua,w. (2007). analysis of schema theory and its influence on reading.uschina foreign language.5(11).1821. retrieved form http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/view doc/download?doi=10.1.1.121.60 55&rep=rep1&type=pdf. yusuf, h. o. (2011). the effect of prereading activities on students’ performance in reading comprehension in senior secondary schools. educational research. 2(9), 1451-1455. retrieved from http://www.interesjournals.org/ full-articles/. copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015, 101-119 the effectiveness of mindmapping in improving students’ writing skill viewed from their iq adi suyanto received: 29th october 2015; revised: 15th november 2015; accepted: 22th december 2015 abstract this research aims to know whether the mindmapping technique is more effective than the modeling technique in teaching writing, whether the writing skill of the students having high intelligence quotient (iq) is better than that of those having low iq in learning english, and whether there is an interaction between teaching techniques and students iq in teaching writing. the research was carried out at smpn 1 prambon nganjuk east java using experimental method. the subject of the research was each 36 students of the seventh grade 9 and the seventh grade 8. the experimental class used mind-mapping technique and the control class used modeling technique. the data was analyzed by the data using anova or analysis of variance and tukey test. the findings revealed that: (1) the mind-mapping technique was effectivein improving students’ writing skill (2) the writing skill of the students having high iq is better than that of those having low iq; and (3) there is an interaction between teaching techniques and students’ iq. therefore mind-mapping technique is an effective technique to improve the students’ writing skill. key words: writing skill; teaching technique; mind-mapping; intelligence quotient abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apakah teknik pemetaan pikiran (mindmapping) lebih efektif daripada teknik pemodelan dalam pengajaran menulis, apakah tingkat kemampuan menulis siswa yang memiliki iq tinggi lebih baik daripada mereka yang memiliki iq rendah dalam belajar bahasa inggris, dan adakah interaksi antara teknik mengajar dan iq siswa dalam pengajaran menulis. penelitian ini dilakukan di smpn 1 prambon nganjuk jawa timur dengan menggunakan metode eksperimen. subjek penelitian ini adalah masing-masing 36 siswa dari kelas tujuh 9 dan kelas tujuh 8. kelas eksperimen menggunakan teknik pemetaan pikiran (mind-mapping) sementara kelas kontrol menggunakan teknik pemodelan. data dianalisis menggunakan anova atau analisis varian dan uji tukey. temuan menunjukkan bahwa: (1) teknik pemetaan pikiran (mind mapping) efektif untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis untuk siswa; (2) pencapaian keterampilan menulis siswa yang memiliki iq tinggi lebih baik daripada mereka yang memiliki iq rendah; dan (3) ada interaksi antara teknik mengajar dan iq siswa. dengan demikian, teknik pemetaan pikiran (mind mapping) adalah teknik yang efektif untuk meningkatkan kemampuan menulis siswa. kata kunci: kemampuan menulis; tehnik pembelajaran; mind-mapping; kecerdasan inteligen how to cite: suyanto, a. (2015). the effectiveness of mindmapping in improving students’ writing skill viewed from their iq. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 101-119. doi:10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3089 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v2i2.3089 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 102-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction developing communicative competence is the main objective of the teaching english in indonesia. content standard, one of the eight national educational standards, states that one of the objectives of teaching english as a foreign language in indonesia is to develop communicative competence in oral and written form in the target language. the content standard also regulates students to attain functional literacy level, which is a level where the students are able to use language to fulfill their daily needs such as reading newspaper, manual, or instructions. to achieve the objectives, the teaching of english in indonesia is directed to develop students’ competence in four language skills, which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. among the four language skills mentioned above, writing skill is one of the two skills, which are tested in the final evaluation. therefore, it can be assumed that writing skill is one of the most important skills in the teaching of english in indonesia. furthermore, writing is also important because it can accelerate students in the process of learning the target language. byrne (1997, p. 6) states that in the early stages of a course towards oral proficiency, writing serves a variety of pedagogical purposes. the consideration strongly suggests that during early course where teaching still concentrates on aural-oral skills, teachers can make good use of writing as part of an integrated skills approach to language learning. even though writing skill is important, still it does not get enough attention and proper time allocation in the teaching and learning process. byrne (as cited in matthews, et al., 1985, p. 89) mentions that most teachers consider that class time should be almost entirely devoted for developing oral skill except for few exceptions, such as activities closely linked to some forms of oral work. therefore, writing activity is given to the students as an out-of-class activity, which is done in the students’ own pace and mostly without clear and specific instructions from the teacher. yet, it is sometimes reasonable because the time is short; therefore this also serves to increase the amount of language contact time. lack of teachers’ monitor on the process of the students’ writing activity causes a lot of problems in the students writing skill. if the researcher looks at the students’ written work, he normally finds that there are some inadequacies in their work. some of the errors may point to unfamiliarity with the language itself. the unfamiliarity with the language leads to errors in lexical and grammatical features. another ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|103-119 problem is closely related to the medium rather than the language such as problems of organizing information, punctuation, and spelling. a study conducted by supriyanto (2008, p. 2) indicates that students’ writing skill was still low. the students made a lot of grammatical, spelling, and punctuations mistakes. they got difficulties in “finding” their own ideas. they also got difficulties in expressing those ideas and organize them logically. the students were not capable of developing good paragraphs. theoretically, writing could be understood as an integral part of communication when the other person is not right there in front of us, listening to our words and looking at our gestures and facial expressions raimes (1983, p. 3). furthermore, byrne (1997, p. 1) states that writing is the use of graphic symbols which are arranged according to a certain conventions to form words and sentences. in addition to the definitions above, he states that writing is not merely the act of arranging graphic symbols. he furthermore states that in writing people produce a sequence of sentences arranged in a particular order and linked together in a certain ways. from the statement, it can be said that writing work follows a gradual stages from a simple use of graphic symbols to a complex arrangement of sentences based on certain rules and conventions. this is supported by scrivener (1994, p. 157) who states that writing work in the classroom falls on a continuum from copying which focuses on accuracy to free writing which concentrates on fluency. heaton (1975, p. 135) stated a view that the writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgmental elements. the varied skills are grouped into five general components or main areas, which are language use, mechanical skills, treatment of content, stylistic skills, and judgment skills. language use deals with the ability to write correct and appropriate sentences while mechanical skills concern the ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to the written language, e.g. punctuation, spelling. treatment of content is the ability to think creatively and develop thoughts, excluding all irrelevant information and stylistic skills are the ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs, and use language effectively. finally judgment skills deal with the ability to write in an appropriate manner for a particular purpose with a particular audience in mind, together with an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 104-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 ability to select, organize and order relevant information. another classification is suggested by brown (2001, p, 343) which identifies and enumerates micro skills of writing as follows: (1) producing graphemes and orthographic patterns of english; (2) producing writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose; (3) producing an acceptable core of words and using appropriate word order patterns; (4) using acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralisation), patterns, and rules; (5) expressing a particular meaning in different grammatical forms; (6) using cohesive devices in written discourse; (7) using the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse; (8) appropriately accomplishing the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose; (9) conveying links and connections between events and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification; distinguish between literal and implied meaning when writing; (10) correctly conveying culturally specific references in the context of the written text; develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience’s interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing. thus, it can be concluded that writing is the act of expressing ideas or thoughts in communication using graphic symbols which are arranged based on certain rules and conventions. they concern the aspects of content, organization, word choice, language use, and mechanics. the aspect of content deals about the ability to think creatively and develop thoughts, excluding all irrelevant information. organization is the logical order of sentences presented so that the arrangement of the sentences make sense; it involves unity and coherence. vocabulary is the ability to choose and use wide range of proper words, and idioms. language use is the ability to apply sentence structure and other grammatical features. mechanical aspect is related with the ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to the written language, counting punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. concerning the teaching and learning process, integrating the four language skills in the teaching of english is strongly demanded. byrne (1997, p. 6) proposes an example that it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|105-119 is impossible to learn to speak a foreign language without learning how to write in it. it is also stated that in the early stages of a course oriented towards oral proficiency, writing serves a variety of pedagogical purposes. the consideration strongly suggests that teacher should teach writing skills as part of an integrated skill approach of language learning. although at early stages writing will be largely a reinforcement of language learned orally, as the learner progress to the next stages of language learning, teacher can provide for written work on a more extensive scale. in the classroom, guided writing is a very important tool for helping students to become better writers. help can be given in thinking through ideas, ordering the ideas, considering the vocabulary and grammar, cooperatively preparing notes and draft copies, and in other ways of making preparation to write. students can learn to become a better writer by being actively encouraged to follow through series of preparatory steps before the final text is produced, and becoming aware of that preparation process, so that it can be done more independently and fluently in the future. however, as previously mentioned, it is not easy for students to learn writing. the strategies applied by the teacher at the school do not seem to be effective since they do not give much contribution in developing the students’ writing ability. students, mostly, have problems in organizing the ideas to become a well-organized written work. students, even the ones with high intelligence, cannot compose a well-organized written work although they have mastered the language components, such as vocabulary and grammar of the language. at the same time, students with low intelligence have to use most of their time struggling with the language components. lack of clear and specific instructions and also lack of control and monitor from the teacher during the writing process hinder the students from getting the appropriate writing skill needed to fulfill their daily communication need, whereas the scope of teaching of english in the junior high school is to develop competence in understanding and producing oral and written text in functional literacy level. to cope with this problem, the researcher proposes the use of mind mapping in the teaching of writing skill on the consideration that it can facilitate the teacher to monitor the process of the students’ writing activities. mind mapping, different from note taking, which is a conventional outlining, is an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 106-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 figure 1. an example of mind mapping taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wikiin outlining technique developed based on the way how the brain works. hedge (1998, p. 30) states that making a mind map is a strategy for note-making before writing; in other words, scribbling down ideas about a topic and developing those ideas as the mind makes associations. therefore, it can be said that mind mapping can give students a way to begin writing assignments. hayes (1992, p. 203) states that through mind mapping students turns random thoughts into patterns that can be written down and developed. students become increasingly motivated to complete a writing task as their ideas emerge in organized forms. it can be seen from the figure 1. that in mind mapping, ideas are presented in a radial, graphical, nonlinear manner, therefore mind maps encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks freely. though the branches of a mind map represent hierarchical tree structures, their radial arrangement disrupts the prioritizing of concepts typically associated with hierarchies presented with more linear visual cues. this orientation towards brainstorming encourages users to enumerate and connect concepts without a tendency to begin within a particular conceptual framework. from above elaboration it can be concluded that a mind map is a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|107-119 diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. it uses not only verbal description but also picture and symbol (deporter, 2005, p. 152). students’ cognitive development is needed before the teacher starts to expect the students to use mind mapping. according to piaget theory of cognitive development, junior high school students attain the formal-operational stage; this is a stage where they can think about abstract ideas. addition, mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.in addition to teaching technique, another important aspect related to learning outcome is intelligence. microsoft® encarta® 2008 states the core meaning of intelligence as having the ability to learn and understand easily. wechsler and binet, the founders of two well acknowledged intelligence tests, have other definitions of intelligence. binet (as cited in whittaker, 1970, p. 438) stated that intelligence is an overall ability of human being; it is a general mental ability verbal and non verbal that is complex in character and that intelligence does not qualitatively differ among individuals but it reflects quantitative differences. wechsler (as cited in whittaker, 1970, p. 443) defines intelligence as the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment. furthermore, whittaker (1970, p. 444) illustrates two different definitions of intelligence. he stated that layman usually thinks of intelligence as the innate, biological, god-given ability to think or to solve problems, while psychologist, on the other hand, recognizes that the most useful conception of intelligence reflects the individual’s intellectual capabilities at any given time where the capabilities reflect both the individual’s biological potential and his experiences of training since birth. jordan (2006, p. 215) states an identical idea that there are scientists who favor unitary models of intelligence. those scientists argue that, although there are numerous specific abilities (like language and mathematics), these specific abilities are all related to a general, overarching intelligence. other scientists favor the existence of more than one intelligence note that different “intelligences” are valued by different cultures. for example, in western cultures verbal and logical abilities are valued, whereas tribal cultures in indonesia, for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 108-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 example, may value the exceptional spatial ability needed for navigation, for identifying one’s cattle, or for identifying certain plants needed for medication. from some definitions above, it can be concluded that intelligence is the general mental ability of individual to think rationally and to adapt himself to new circumstances in the environment. it describes the aspects of verbal intelligence, performance (abstractvisual) intelligence, quantitative ability, and short-term memory. verbal intelligence is the capacity to understand and reason with language. performance intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply visual-spatial relationships. quantitative ability is competence to in understanding and using numerical concepts. short-term memory is the ability to retain in memory verbal and visual-spatial information presented just before recall is attempted.referring to the problems faced by students in writing and the advantageous of mind mapping, this study was intended to examine the effectiveness of mind mapping in improving students’ writing skill. this is because the organization of the students’ written work is unsatisfactory. in addition, the researcher uses mind mapping to increase the students’ ability in organizing their ideas since mind mapping is interconnected with the way how the brain organizes information. furthermore, considering the role of iq in students’ learning outcome, the use of mind mapping is also intended to accelerate the fluency of the writing ability of students with low iq because mind mapping not only demands students to rely on their iq but also to dig up and use optimally what they already have in their mind. in addition, this study is also intended to understand whether students having high iq have better score. three research questions are raised in this study as follows: 1. is mind mapping technique effective in improving students’ writing skill? 2. do students with high iq have better writing achievement than students having low iq? 3. is there any interaction between teaching techniques and students’ iq? it is hypothesized in this study that mind mapping technique is effective in improving students’ writing skill. it is also hypothesized that students with high iq have better writing achievement than students having low iq. finally, it is hypothesized that there is an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|109-119 interaction between teaching techniques and students’ iq in teaching writing. method research setting the research was conducted in smpn 1 prambon nganjuk which is located on watudandang village, prambon, nganjuk. this school was chosen because it is the school where the researcher has been teaching english since 2007, therefore there was a bigger chance for the researcher to be permitted to conduct the research. another reason was that mindmapping technique has never been applied in this school. that was known by the researcher after he conducted the preliminary observation and interviewed some of the teachers in smp 1 prambon. . research design the design of this research is simple factorial design (sugiyono, 2008, p. 77-79). it aims to study the independent variable, mind-mapping and observe the effect on the dependent variable, writing skill. in this research, there were two groups – experimental group and control group. based on the result of iq test that had been conducted at school by a professional iq test institution, every group was classified into two categories – the students with high iq and the ones with low iq. in the teaching learning process, the materials for both groups are the same. in the experimental group, the students were taught by using mindmapping technique, while in the control group, the students were taught using modeling technique. after the treatment, both groups were given a posttest to measure the improvement of the students’ writing skill. the test item was tried out before it was used to test the subject of the research. the tried out was given to a group of students who do not belong to the experimental and control class. the result was scored using a writing scoring rubric. based on the scoring rubric, the lowest possible score is 34 while the highest possible score is 100. the researcher used an inter rater to reduce the level of subjectivity of the scoring. population, sample, sampling the population of this research is taken from the students of the seventh grade of smpn 1 prambon kabupaten nganjuk in the academic year 2009/2010. the sample of this research was the students of class vii 8 and vii 9 of smpn 1 prambon nganjuk. this research uses a cluster random sampling to choose the sample of the research. this technique of sampling ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 110-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 was chosen under the following considerations: a. it is very difficult to list all the students of a class of the school. however, it would be likely to randomly select a subset of classes. b. the population is concentrated in “natural” cluster (classes). c. most of the variation in the population is within groups, not between them. in brief, from the total population 322 students which are divided into 9 classes, the researcher randomly took 2 classes, one for the experimental class and the other one for the control class. the experimental class consists of 36 students and so does the control class. therefore, the total number of the sample is 72 students. they were grouped into two classes. one was the experimental class and the other was the control class. the experimental group was class vii 9 while the control group was class vii 8. every group was classified by the result of iq test into students with high iq and students with low iq. data collecting techniques the data needed in this research are the scores of students’ iq and the scores of the students writing. since the scores of the students’ iq were taken from the result of the iq test conducted by an independent institution in the researcher’s school, so the researcher only has to prepare a set of writing test. based on the result of the iq test, the students from both experimental and control group were classified into students with high iq and the ones with low iq. the set of writing test only consisted of one test item. it is used to collect data related to the students’ improvements after the treatment is given to both groups. before the instrument is used in the real test, there was a try-out on the instrument. the aim of conducting the try-out test is to get information dealing with the characteristics of the test. best (1981, p.197) indicates that a good test must have several features; two of them are validity and reliability. since the test item is in the form of a single instruction, the try out was done to note the readability. the try out was done by asking a group of students who are not the subjects of the research; and the test item is readable since most of them state that it can be understood and they can execute the test based on the test item. the test item is as follow: write down a descriptive text about your own bicycle. data analysis before analyzing the data for testing the hypotheses, the researcher ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|111-119 analyzes the normality and the homogeneity of the data. the research data are then analyzed using anova test and tukey test. the analysis is meant to answer the three research questions raised in the study. before the data are analyzed using anova test, the data are divided into four groups, they are: (1) a1b1 which is the data of the students having high iq taught using mind mapping technique, (2) a1b2, the data of the students having low iq taught using mind mapping technique, (3) a2b1, the data of the students having high iq taught using modeling technique, and (4) a2b2 is the data of the students having low iq taught using modeling technique. research findings and discussion this research is one of the efforts to generate some improvement in teaching writing to the seventh grade students of the junior high school students. it has been discussed in the previous section that mindmapping technique is one of the alternatives to obtain the intention. three hypotheses were tested in the study using a 2 x 2 multifator of analysis of variance, which results are described in table 1. as seen from table 1, the coefficient of fo between columns (teaching techniques) (6.7955) is higher than ft (.05) (4.08). thus, there was a significant difference between teaching techniques, which meant that mind mapping was proved to improve students’ writing skills. in other words, the writing score of students in the experimental group was significantly higher than those of the control group. the mean score of students taught using mind mapping technique was 79.15 while that of the control group taught using modeling technique was 76.3. these findings also mean that teaching writing using mindmapping technique to the seventh grade students of smpn 1 prambon is more effective than the one using modeling technique. in addition, with respect to students’ iq, the findings also revealed the expected outcome. the coefficient of fo between rows (iq) (42.7704) was higher than ft (.05) (4.08)., which meant that the difference between high and loq iq was significant. it can be concluded that students having high iq demonstrated a significantly different result in their learning from the ones having low iq. the mean score of students having high iq (81.3) was higher than the one of those having low iq (74.15). this finding shows that the achievement of teaching writing to the students having high iq is better than the one to the students having low iq. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 112-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 1. the summary of a 2 x 2 multifactor analysis of variance source of variance ss df ms fo ft(.05) between columns (teaching techniques) 81.225 1 81.225 6.7955 4.17 between rows (iq) 511.225 1 511.225 42.7704 4.17 columns by rows 99.225 1 99.225 8.3014 4.17 (interaction) between groups 691.675 3 230.55833 within groups 430.3 36 11.952778 total 1121.975 39 furthermore, in terms of the interaction, the coefficient of fo between rows (the interaction between teaching technique and iq) (8.3014) was higher than ft (.05) (4.08) . thus, there was an empirical evidence to conclude that there was an interaction effect between the two variables, the teaching techniques and students’ iq. in this case, the findings indicate that mind mapping technique is more suitable for students with high iq while modeling technique is more suitable for students with low iq. referring to the above findings, the researcher draws a conclusion that the implementation of mindmapping technique is effective to help in generating and organizing the ideas for writing texts. writing is usually considered the most difficult skill of english to master. one of the major problems is how to generate ideas and how to organize the ideas well. heaton (1988, p. 135) stated that writing skills are complex, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also conceptual and judgmental elements. he also stated that one of the many and varied skills necessary for good writing is treatment of content: the ability to think creatively and develop thoughts and excluding all irrelevant information. to overcome the problem, an outlining strategy in the form of mind mapping is proposed to be applied in teaching writing. the results of this study also support the argument of hayes (1992, p. 203) that through mind mapping students turn random thoughts into patterns that can be written down and developed. students become increasingly motivated to complete a writing task as their ideas emerge in organized form. many students find writing difficult, and they find getting started the most difficult part of writing. mind mapping reduces the difficulty by giving students an organizing strategy to get them started. in mind mapping, ideas are freely associated and written out without pressure, thus reducing tension ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|113-119 and resistance often associated with writing. next, concerning iq, the findings revealed that the writing achievement of students with high iq is better than the one of those with low iq. this finding is not surprising since some studies have found that students with high iq tend to have better achievement concerning with all educational activities. jordan (2006, p. 217) for instance states that iq is related to academic achievement; students with high iqs generally do well in school and those with low iq scores tend to do poorly. writing, specifically, has several skills and some of them are hierarchical which means that some skills must be mastered first before a student masters the other ones. students with high iq usually will find creative steps to overcome the problems. jordan (2006, p. 215) implied that intelligence is closely associated with creativity. therefore, they usually will come up with a certain strategy in dealing with a challenging subject matter. in addition, aiken (1977, p. 169) stated that children with high iq have several characteristics, some of them are inquisitive, creative, and strong willed as well as rebellious. that iswhy students with high iq sometimes arise with an uncommon way out of a problem. they usually will be more encouraged to try harder when they face a challenging matter. on the contrary, students with low iq face problem with most of the academic processes. jordan (2006, p. 219) states that students with low iq usually have learning disabilities, which refer to a number of disorders that may affect the acquisition, organization, retention, understanding and use of verbal or nonverbal information. in relation with writing, jordan (2006, p. 219) stated that learning disabilities may interfere with the acquisition and use of oral language, reading, written language and mathematics. she gave details that the written language problem is related with the spelling and written expression. hence, students with low iq will face great problems when they confront composition writing. the problem is not only great but also complex since before they can fully master the previous materials namely spelling and sentence writing, they have to face composition writing. considering scrivener’s (1994, p. 255) statement that writing work in the classroom falls on a continuum, the complexity arises because spelling and sentence writing are needed if they want to deal with composition writing. without mastering the old one, it is almost not possible to deal properly ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 114-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 with the next materials. from other point of view, students with high iq usually have certain learning strategy; therefore, they have prepared the stages on their own pace to deal with the materials. as a result, students with high iq have better writing achievement than the ones having low iq. finally, in terms interaction between teaching techniques and students iq, there is no doubt that teaching techniques as well as students iq have a very important role in the success of teaching and learning process. in most cases, observing the students in all aspects is necessary before a teacher decides to apply a certain teaching technique in a classroom. iq is one of the aspects that should be taken into consideration. inquisitive is one of the characteristics of children with high iq; therefore they always explore their surrounding and generates new ideas about things (aiken, 1997, p. 169). mind mapping technique is one of the best techniques to manage students with this characteristic. hayes (1992, p. 203) stated that through mind mapping, students turn random thoughts into patterns that can be written down and developed. in other words, the prosperous ideas from the students with high iq can be managed and organized properly using mind mapping. in the implementation, teaching students how to use mind mapping takes about 10 minutes of demonstration time. the procedure is as follows: the teacher begins by writing a nucleus word or phrase (topic/theme) at the centre of the chalkboard and circles it; then asks the students to concentrate on the topic; after two minutes, asks the students one by one to write any words or phrases related to the topic; teacher makes the point that other words and phrases are to be associated with the nucleus word/phrase, and with other words and phrases; teacher may demonstrates free association by saying aloud words and phrases that come to mind and jotting them down rapidly; these words and phrases are all circled and connecting lines are drawn to show how they are associated. the procedure above is used to introduce the basic design of mind mapping and its application to the students. the steps are used to help the students analyze the ideas and represent them visually. the students will gradually be accustomed to use mind mapping to communicate their ideas. on the next meetings, the students are asked to use the diagram ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|115-119 as a basis to construct a written product/text. as a matter of fact, mind mapping is not only useful to help students writing a complex composition of a certain type text. it can help with almost any types of texts. it even helps students to draw a grammatical schemata. it also does not merely have to use words and phrases but also pictures, charts, or anything as long as they representing what students have in mind. in the process of writing, there are several roles of mind mapping. it can arouse motivation to write. after finding a topic, students can start from anywhere and do not have to be afraid of making mistakes. mind mapping can also get ideas gathered by jotting down anything come up in students’ mind. then, mind mapping can also serve as the planning and outlining. by drawing the associative lines the can plan students’ future composition, it is also possible for them to directly give numbers or other signs on the lines or words. in addition, mind mapping in useful in making notes and creating a first draft. in this case, students can choose, sketch the figure of their composition, and then develop their draft. finally, mind mapping is also useful in revising and editing. students can easily put side by side their draft and their mind map, then adding or omitting part of the draft, and even rearranging the draft and obtaining the final product. the other technique, modeling technique is less appropriate for students with high iq. kauchak (1989, p. 37) defined modeling as the tendency of an individual to behave in a way that imitates a behavior or attitude observed in others. modeling technique is less appropriate because students with high iq tend to be creative and have new ideas rather than imitating or following others. their other nature, rebellious, is also not so suitable with the imitative characteristic of the modeling technique. modeling technique is more suitable for students with low iq. considering the state of the learners, kauchak (1989, p.40) stated that the more uncertain the learner is the more significant will be the model’s effect. another point of view is that the imitative feature of modeling is inline with the need of low iq students who need more guidance and plain examples/models (aiken, 1997, p. 166). in writing, modeling technique is conducted by providing the students not only explicit example of the text type but also the generic structure of the text. by giving explicit examples of the same text type and similar generic ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 116-119|copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 structure several times, the students will acquire a fix structure of the text subconsciously. therefore, the students will be able to be more focus on mechanical aspects of language such as spelling and punctuation, and also on grammar. conclusion and suggestion based on the research findings, the conclusion of the study is that mind mapping technique is an effective teaching technique for teaching writing to the seventh grade students of smpn 1 prambon nganjuk. since mind mapping technique is simple, fun, and arousing students’ creativity in generating and organizing their ideas, students are getting more active and more encouraged to study writing and enhance their writing skills. as a result, the students’ writing achievement is improved optimally. many students find writing difficult, and they find getting started the most difficult part of writing. mind mapping reduces the difficulty by giving students an organizing strategy to get them started. in mind mapping, ideas are freely associated and written out without pressure, thereby reducing tension and resistance often associated with writing. although it is one type of outlining methods, the product of the prewriting activity using mind mapping is notably different from the one using other type of outlining. unlike conventional outlining, the product of prewriting activity using mind mapping does not follow a rigid fixed linear. in outlining, ideas must be arranged sequentially which is contradictory with the natural way of how brain works, because brain works in a non linear way. the elements of a given mind map are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. mind mapping also aid recall of existing memories. in this case, it is important for teachers to bear in their mind that correct choice of teaching technique can make the teaching and learning process not only run well but also interesting and enjoyable. enjoyable teaching and learning activities will help students receive the material more effectively and efficiently; it will also makes the teacher more focus on the necessary aspects needed for the class. mind mapping technique is a technique which will lead students to be more independent; thus it is good to be applied in small classes as well as the big ones. it is simple, fun and arousing ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2 (2), 2015 copyright © 2015, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|117-119 creativity. that is why, it is recommended for teacher to apply it in their class. furthermore, future researchers are suggested to conduct a similar research with different population characteristic. it is advised that a replication of this research design using mind mapping as teaching technique as the treatment for teaching writing can be done with some alteration such as different students’ condition like students’ habit, motivation, or interest. references afifudin. 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(1987). the study of language: an introduction. cambridge university press. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 1-22 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee exploring challenges in utilizing english resources for research and its remedies fauza nala farhain*, yani lubis, deasy yunita siregar universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia (fauzanalafarhain20@gmail.com) received: 06th january 2023; revised: 28h may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this qualitative study aimed to investigate students' problems in using english resources as research references at universitas islam negeri (uin) sumatera utara. data were collected through observations, interviews, and focused group discussions (fgd). the instruments complementing the techniques include observation forms, interviews, and fgd question lists. furthermore, the study used whatsapp on a smartphone to record, confirm, and ensure the validity of data about the subjects. the findings showed that english department students at uin sumatera utara had difficulties searching for research resources, understanding texts from international journals, and lacking skills in writing scientific papers. therefore, intensive writing practices would enhance writing skills, perception, and knowledge of when to pursue assistance. it is recommended that the university establish an academic writing center and offer writing consultation. the center may regularly organize writing workshops to guide searching, using references, and structuring the manuscript. key words: academic writing; problems in english understanding; scientific papers; scientific writing; thesis abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi permasalahan yang dihadapi oleh mahasiswa dalam menggunakan sumber-sumber berbahasa inggris sebagai rujukan dalam penulisan karya ilmiah di universitas islam negeri (uin) sumatera utara. penelitian yang menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif ini menggunakan berbagai tehnik pengumpulan data diantaranya observasi, wawancara dan focus group discussion (fgd). adapun instrumen yang digunakan dalam pengumpulan data adalah form observasi, daftar wawancara, dan daftar pertanyaan fgd. untuk merekam proses wawancara, peneliti menggunakan smartphone untuk merekam, mengkonfirmasi, dan memastikan validitas data tentang masalah yang diteliti. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa pendidikan bahasa inggris di uin sumatera utara mengalami kesulitan dalam menelusur sumber-sumber penelitian dan dalam memahami teks dari jurnal internasional, serta kurangnya keterampilan dalam menulis karya ilmiah. oleh karena itu, praktek penulisan karya ilmiah secara intensif perlu dikembangkan untuk meningkatkan keterampilan menulis, persepsi mahasiswa, dan pengetahuan mahasiswa tentang kapan saatnya mereka membutuhkan bantuan penulisan. universitas seyogyanya membangun sebuah pusat penulisan akademik dan memberikan konsultasi penulisan. pusat penulisan akademik ini juga dapat menyelenggarakan workshop secara reguler dengan memberikan bimbingan dalam penelusuran dan pemanfaatan sumber-sumber referensi serta bimbingan penyusunan naskah karya tulis ilmiah. kata kunci: penulisan akademik; permasalahan dalam memahami bahasa inggris; karya ilmiah; skripsi how to cite: farhain, f.n., lubis, y., siregar, d. y. (2023). exploring challenges in utilizing english resources for research and its remedies. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 1-22. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 2-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing scientific papers is a process that involves many aspects, such as critical thinking, composing ideas into words, and searching for resources. students' writing for final assignments and research encounter obstacles caused by psychological (anas, 2021), lingual (tiwari, 2019), and technological factors (alamri, 2021). most students have insufficient skills in expressing and constructing ideas into words, finding supporting resources, and using writing tools (hamzaoui, 2021). previous studies examined the difficulties students face when writing for academic purposes and suggested some strategies to overcome these challenges. according to tremblaywragg et al. (2021), undergraduate students feel isolated due to a lack of academic writing ability. murray and sharpling (2019) examined the traits of students' academic values in academic writing. the study found some traits of poor academic writing ability, including less favored in comparative judgment, poor introductions, and a tendency to be overly formulaic. other traits are vagueness of language and ideas, an insufficient sense of audience, the given and new information, limited and imprecise vocabulary, lack of relevance, failure to juxtapose ideas, inappropriate register, and weak conclusions. in line with this, english is a dominant international scientific language that becomes a pitfall for nonanglo-speaking students. this requires a code-switching strategy to help students to develop scientific writing in english. in line with this, archila et al. (2021) assessed a methodical and purposeful code-switching pedagogical strategy in writing academic papers. since writing academic papers is a process that necessitates supporting ideas with evidence, students need the capability to search journal articles for their references. however, many factors influence students' use of journal articles. craig-duchesne et al. (2018) found that students' use of journals varies considerably. the influencing factors are students' communication skills, preferences, journal structure, frequency of use, and workload. furthermore, three other factors are related to the social environment. personal and contextual factors mainly influence students' use of a journal. studies showed that a reflective approach is desirable to optimize journal use, where students must evaluate sources of information for references. additionally, journal articles written by more expert authors have credibility and are more comprehensible than less credible sources (werner da rosa & otero, 2018). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 3-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license citing references is another issue in academic writing. according to previous studies, most students lack the idea of writing correct citations of references (kargbo, 2010). the study further suggested the collaboration between faculty and librarian to provide adequate treatment in coping with citation problems when writing scientific papers. mckenna & kyser (2021) stated that students facing problems writing academic papers must participate in writing workshops more often. the study proposed that intensive writing experiences enhance proficiency, raise positive perceptions of writing, and help gain knowledge and make decisions when assistance is needed. moreover, workshops would provide insight into students' experiences leading to improved pedagogy. previous studies give wider perspectives on students' challenges in writing academic papers. little is investigated about how students experience the challenge of finding and utilizing resources while writing academic papers. this research aimed to fill in the gap in the research that specifically focused on the challenges of finding and using resources when writing academic papers. therefore, this study aimed to explore the following: (1) what are the problems students face in using english resources when writing scientific papers at the department of english education of tarbiyah faculty, universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia?; (2) how do students solve the problems of using english resources when writing scientific papers at the department of english education of tarbiyah faculty, universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia? writing is the process of expressing ideas, feelings, and experiences in written form, which requires appropriate knowledge and skills developed through practice. the main reasons for writing are to disseminate information to the public and record the knowledge for a longer period for future studies. a psychological condition, critical thinking, and background knowledge influence writing ability. it is an ideal development activity that begins by researching, observing, and reading the phenomena (potter, 2006). in higher education, the purposes of students' writing include assessment, learning, and entering particular disciplinary communities (rabl, 2019, p. 2). writing scientific papers requires critical thinking skills, where writers must consider the topic, especially when writing a research paper. a written work must be accountable, and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 4-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writers must be responsible for their writing work which requires adopting rules and ethics. one needs honesty, respect for other researchers, and trust in their scientific writing since it must be accountable. authors are responsible for creating an accurate and genuine publication of the study results. it is also necessary to provide a substantial contribution for readers to assess the publication's credit and responsibility (stocks, simcoe, toroser, & detora, 2018). scientific writing varies from class essays, school laboratory and research reports, scholarly books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, and a thesis (collins & cook, 2017). a thesis is a compulsory final assignment for finishing higher education studies. this writing is known by many terms, including final assignment, report, scientific papers, thesis, and dissertation, though it is a research report (jubilee enterprise, 2020). the tone in scientific writing is generally formal, objective, and informative (crosby, diclemente, & salazar, 2015). it requires a firm english sentence construction, usage, and punctuation foundation. writing involves one or multiple cycles, including (1) planning, which encompasses locating and reading source materials, (2) writing a rough draft; and (3) editing and proofreading. writers also aim for continuity and a logical flow of ideas supported by evidence, with appropriate source citations (rashid, 2018). however, difficulties are experienced when using english to communicate scientific findings. scientific writing in higher education is an area that should be an integral part of learning. however, the curriculum often ignores academic writing skills, leaving students with minimum knowledge and practice. the rules involved are also less taught to students explicitly, including ethics (rabl, 2019, p. 3). this condition leads to violating ethics, such as plagiarism by students in their academic writings. however, lecturers always assume that students already have knowledge and skills in academic writing. scientific writing requires an understanding of the writing process and the systematic method. it is formal and highly organized, necessitating formulating an argument, writing critically, providing supporting evidence, and developing new ideas (tian & low, 2012). additionally, developing strong writing abilities in the scientific domain not only involves comprehending the writing process and its systematic approach but also entails honing the skill to communicate and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 5-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license engage readers with intriguing and memorable discoveries effectively, enabling them to convey their findings effectively, engage readers, and foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of their work (zach, 2022). also, scientific writing mainly aims to disseminate new knowledge (suwarno, 2022) in journals, books, seminars, conferences, discussion forums, and mass media. according to sayekti (2021), the values in the wide publication of scientific papers include rationality, intelligence, the balance between heart and intellectual insights, and work or technical ability. skills are needed to find resources for reference in scientific writing, though they are less taught in classrooms and even universities where students are born with many reports. there is a huge range of help for students as scholars on the internet, with various manners by which they could be utilized (bailey, 2003, p. 134). however, the use of information from the internet necessitates an analysis of the resources. students need to be critical of the information searched on the internet. the research combines thinking, searching, reading, evaluating, writing, and revising (perrin, 2012, p. 1). critical thinking is the core skill needed in the research process, from determining the subject, writing the idea, defining the theoretical references, analyzing the data, and drawing conclusions and implications. therefore, students overcome critical thinking barriers by developing self-leadership skills and improving their electronic learning style (durnali, 2022). method this study employed a qualitative approach and collected data naturally from the participants experiencing problems in writing (creswell, 2014, p. 185). the author as the key informant in this qualitative study, which collected data from multiple sources that could be used for triangulation to ensure validity. the data included students' experiences, problems in writing a thesis, and coping strategies. this study was conducted inductively from a specific case to a general theory. findings were then reported descriptively using texts without involving statistical measurements. research site and participants the participants of this study are students enrolled in the english department, faculty of tarbiyah and teacher training (fitk), universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, medan. the research participants will primarily consist of students in the final stages of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 6-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their academic programs, typically in the process of writing their thesis, at the time of this study. participants were selected based on their availability and willingness to be involved in the research study, considering factors such as time constraints and other commitments they may have during the thesis writing period. confidentiality and anonymity will be ensured throughout the research to protect the participants' privacy. data collection and analysis this study was begun through a grand tour of the location to gain perspectives on how students work on their final papers. in this phase, observations were carried out by direct participation in the library and faculty. english students writing a thesis were involved in understanding problems in finding and using references in academic writings. in order to reach conclusions in qualitative studies, which mainly rely on descriptive data, field notes were recorded during the grand tour. this is due to the fact that a lack of data would lead to erroneous and inaccurate conclusions. after understanding the nature of students working on a thesis, a formal investigation was conducted using the data collection technique planned earlier. the data were analyzed before making conclusions and drafting a thesis. descriptive data on students' experiences and problems when writing a thesis and the strategy to overcome the difficulties were collected using four techniques, as follows. 1) participatory observation was conducted by interacting with the participants to obtain rich and accurate data regarding experiences and problems in writing a thesis. 2) focused group discussion (fgd) was used to collect the data collectively by involving participants in real discussions about their experiences and problems in writing a thesis. this technique was adopted to collect richer data through sharing amongst the participants. 3) the study carried out in-depth interviews with selected participants to understand personal experiences writing a thesis. this technique was employed to obtain the participants' personal feelings while working on their final assignments. furthermore, in-depth interviews help obtain psychological issues that might not be shared during the fgd. 4) documentation involved voice or video recording of data collection activities. some instruments were developed to facilitate the data collection process. 1) observation guide was applied to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 7-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license collect data through the observation technique. the instrument contained questions regarding the study setting, 'students' activities when writing a thesis, behaviors in seeking and using references in their academic writings, and actions in coping with the problems. 2) the study used a digital recorder during the fgd and in-depth interview sessions to anticipate data loss due to a lack of personal memory and disregard. 3) interview guide was used to collect data on personal experience. the instrument contained a list of questions detailing the problems of this study. 4) videos and photographs were recorded and taken using a smartphone for documentation purposes. the process of focused group discussion and in-depth interview was conducted using indonesian (bahasa indonesia). data analysis this study further employed miles & huberman's (1994) technique in analyzing the data using reduction, display, and conclusion drawing. figure 1 presents the process of data analysis in brief. the data acquired and documented during the observation, focused group discussion (fgd), and in-depth interview sessions were transcribed for further analysis and interpretation. the process of data reduction involving coding using nodes, categorizing, eliminating unrelevant data, and ordering was done utilizing nvivo 12, as presented in figure 2. figure 1. process of data analysis figure 2. process of coding and managing data http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 8-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion findings challenges encountered by students in the utilization of english resources for writing scientific papers the study objective was to explore the problems students face in using english resources in writing works and the strategies used to solve the challenges. this section discusses the results based on data obtained from document analysis, observation, fgds, and interviews. this study was conducted at the department of english education, the faculty of tarbiyah and teacher training, universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia. data were collected from the active students that wrote their thesis as their final education requirement. seven students, four males and three females, were interviewed collectively in the fgd session, followed by personal in-depth interviews to confirm the findings. the study first described the department of english education and the curriculum offered to identify why students encounter difficulties using english resources when writing academic papers. the analysis showed several challenges that most students have in using english resources. therefore, the major problems of the informants could be divided into several cases as follows. first, the most challenging problem in writing scientific articles is using english resources as references. according to the informants, the english used in the scientific articles is not easy to comprehend because it has many technical terms that make it difficult to understand the content. the informants use the google translate application to help understand english articles. however, the result of the translation into the indonesian language from the english version is inadequate and is different in meaning. the structure of the indonesian sentences is also grammatically incorrect, making the understanding more complicated. during the focused group discussion session, one of the participants, had, stated that: "the inadequate and improper use of the indonesian language is one of the factors that hinder the writing of academic papers in english." he believes that the difficulty in understanding english is due to a bad use of the mother tongue or indonesian (l1). a student with good skills in using indonesian is good at translating and understanding english, and vice versa. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 9-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license this difficulty is also increased by 'students' inability to paraphrase a text to avoid similarity when citing articles. the informants were not taught how to paraphrase an article during their study. although paraphrasing is essential in writing scientific papers, english department students have not received a special course or training in practising this skill. this indicates that paraphrasing is a barrier in converting the idea from the source to their thesis papers. students are forced to use the copy-and-paste method to hasten the writing process. consequently, the similarity of their writing with the source of reference shows a high percentage when checked using the turnitin application. however, paraphrasing text from the source could be aided by the quillbot application, which they learned to use from youtube. the second barrier to writing scientific papers is a lack of skills, including searching for references and using technology. sh stated that the inability to find scientific articles and books is due to the minimal use of those academic information sources. during the interview session, sh acknowledged that he rarely practices writing scientific papers during his studies. "i encountered two challenges in writing my academic work. the first challenge is my limited understanding of scientific writings in english that serve as references in my writing. the second challenge is my lack of proficiency in paraphrasing english sentences. in my opinion, the root cause of the first challenge is my infrequent exposure to reading scientific writings in english, including journal articles and books. the cause of the second challenge is my limited experience in writing academic papers.".” therefore, the participant and some other students have no idea where to find scientific articles and what sources are available, especially on the internet. in this regard, google has been their primary source of information searching by typing in the keywords of topics. some students follow their ' 'lecturer's recommendation to use electronic journals and e-books available on the internet. lecturers also encourage the use of mendeley, google scholar, researchgate, and z-library, as well as youtube, instagram, and tiktok. the lack of academic writing skills begins with the inability to find ideas or topics. not many students easily find a topic to write, especially a thesis. tp stated that defining the topic http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 10-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is the most difficult part of writing a scientific work. furthermore, fh stated that informants make many mistakes in writing a bibliography, a problem caused by ignorance of writing style standards. although writing a bibliography may forget to mention the source of information leads to ethical breaching in research, fh ignores the rules due to the lack of knowledge. it is maintained that fh has not been taught the rule of thumb for writing references as he stated: "one common mistake i often make is how i quote other people's opinions, which can come across as plagiarism. i have never been taught how to properly cite and reference sources according to the correct writing standards." the problem of writing is not merely emphasized in structuring words into sentences and paragraphs but also technical barriers to using word processing software. although students are familiar with microsoft word, they still encounter technical problems in maximizing the functions when writing formal reports. had and fh acknowledged this fact and fh acknowledged this fact that they must learn from youtube to utilize the functions. the third challenge is that students have psychological pressure. has and rk stated that students lack selfconfidence in finishing the thesis. time constraint to complete the thesis has created stress because students always keep thinking of the thesis. this situation increased the inability to use appropriate tools when finding references and skills in scientific writing. students know that a lack of references would make writing a good scientific thesis difficult, which must be based on other articles to be scientific. furthermore, students face the obligation to follow standards in writing. other factors adding to the burden are the lack of writing skills, unfamiliarity with using references and avoiding unethical conduct. the fourth challenge of ' 'today's academic requirement is the obligation to publish articles in academic journals from the thesis. despite the cost factor, students do not know the best way to write articles for publication. furthermore, they have not been exposed to the technical publishing procedure in electronic journals. this challenge was raised by fh and tp, who feel nervous and stressed with current university regulations. according to the two informants, publishing articles in accredited journals is expensive, and fear burdening their parents. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 11-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the fifth challenge in conducting research and using english resources is inadequate facilities provided by the university. tp stated that many obstacles were faced when writing thesis, including limited internet spots on campus. any internet identification has a limited or low connection and cannot support downloading articles from the internet. therefore, tp expects the university provides a strong and speedy internet connection. problem-solving approaches employed by students in utilizing english resources for scientific paper writing students of the department of english education of the faculty of tarbiyah and teacher training still face barriers in using english resources to write scientific papers. this section explains the strategies and tools utilized in helping students write scientific papers. students face barriers in searching for english resources to support their ideas from several media. in this case, sh and hus stated that youtube, instagram, and tiktok are the most often used media to learn. sa uses youtube more often than any other media to learn the best way to search for information online and seek help from more experienced colleagues. the interview showed that students use some tools to help understand the english resources on the internet. rk uses several tools, and google translate to help write a thesis and translate articles for better content understanding. quillbot is then used to paraphrase the texts before writing on paper. after learning from the media about searching for scientific information, students use electronic tools to conduct an actual search, understand, manage, and use the sources in their writings. the digital utilities employed during writing include google scholar, researchgate, google translate, quillbot, and mendeley. students use google scholar and researchgate to search for articles published on the internet. google translate is adopted to translate english into indonesian to understand the information. furthermore, quillbot paraphrases the text for a citation using mendeley, a reference manager tool. discussion the key findings of this research indicate that students face challenges in utilizing english resources as references, lacking skills in searching for references and using technology, experiencing psychological pressure, and fulfilling the obligation to publish http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 12-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license articles in academic journals. an important contributing factor to these challenges is the dominance of the english language in scientific articles, which poses a significant obstacle for non-english speakers. given the difficulty in comprehending scientific texts written in english, there is an apparent necessity for students to engage in reading and comprehension practices. although the university curriculum already includes relevant courses such as intensive reading, critical reading, and extensive reading, which provide students with six credits, there are still persistent barriers in understanding scientific english texts. consequently, this highlights the need to revisit and modify the curriculum of these reading courses, incorporating scientific content into the teaching process. integrating science into language learning familiarizes students with english resources and eventually eliminates problems in understanding texts in scientific articles. lee and buxton (2013) offered instructional strategies to integrate science and english proficiency in five areas. these include literacy, language support, discourse, home language support, and home culture connection strategies. furthermore, language barriers must be overcome to maximize access to english resources in writing. studies show that language barriers could hinder knowledge processing and impair the sensemaking of scientific content (tenzer, pudelko, & zellmer-bruhn, 2021). this means that translating and paraphrasing tools such as google translate and quillbot may become solutions but are not always adequate. therefore, machine translation enters numerable learning and multilanguage communication, empowering academia to extend knowledge (kelly & hou, 2021). however, there would always be a gap between the translated and original texts (flowerdew & li, 2009). google translate is popular tool, but it does not always adequately meet the ethic and emic of the translated (musk, 2022). students most often reject the result due to its incorrect translation. therefore, training is necessary for university students to improve selfconfidence and self-efficacy in understanding scientific articles written in english. the obstacles in searching for english resources mean a lack of information literacy strategy. according to ekman & quandt (1999, p. 177), students need five strategies to develop the skills needed to search for resources. first, students could search from the library catalogue. second, students could explore journal articles as communication media among scientists. third, students could use http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 13-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indexes and specialty publications. fourth, students could go to the library in person and browse the shelves for available sources. fifth, students may seek advice from colleagues or advisors. university students are expected to conduct research as part of their learning process, which requires maintaining integrity, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and determination (regulation of the ministry of education, culture, research and technology republic of indonesia number 39 year 2021 about academic integrity in scholarly communication, 2021). these ethics must be maintained to ensure the acceptable practice of academic research, and breaching may risk the annulment of diplomas for students. therefore, students must have information literacy skills searching for information from many sources and using it to support the research. information literacy skills imply the ability to ethically gather, use, manage, synthesize, and create information and data (bent & stubbings, 2011). these skills are necessary because of the massive information growth that might confuse people and complicate retrieval (septiyantono, 2016, p. 1.17). therefore, there is a need to teach information literacy skills to university students (wegener, 2018). information literacy skills must be integrated into the curriculum (hammons, 2020). according to studies, developing information literacy skills in the curriculum is effective for life-long learning (wallace, shorten, & crookes, 2000). the faculty could collaborate with library professionals to team-teach the skills. this is because engaging librarians in teaching information literacy improves research skills (elmborg, 2006; lange, canuel, & fitzgibbons, 2011). however, critical thinking is the most important information literacy skill (elmborg, 2006; goodsett, 2020) because research involves rigorous thinking, including searching for references. students could use a simple and advanced approach in searching for digital information on an electronic platform (ulum & suwondo, 2022). the simple search is conducted when students type keywords in the available box, though it gives general results. meanwhile, the advanced search option is a more complicated strategy of applying some words using boolean operators of and, or, and not. however, most students use the simple search strategy because they lack knowledge about the advanced option. using technology tools to overcome difficulties in the writing process indicates that students have http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 14-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license digital literacy skills. as part of the z generation community, students are exposed to digital devices daily and rapidly learn new software or applications. their efforts to learn independently from youtube and other media about tools used in writing scientific papers denote creativity and innovativeness. however, having digital literacy skills does not necessarily mean that students are literate in accessing and using information. digital literacy entails using skills to navigate networked technologies and interpret the meaning of digital messages (ala-mutka, 2011). it also denotes raising awareness of digital technology as an efficient communication tool. in contrast, information literacy involves searching and critically analyzing content from the web and using media materials for a specific purpose (coonan et al., 2018). furthermore, information literacy entails proficiency in the following seven key areas: identification of relevant information, determination of the scope of inquiry, strategic planning of information search, the effective gathering of pertinent data, critical evaluation of information quality, efficient management of acquired knowledge, and proficient presentation of findings. (bent & stubbings, 2011). moreover, proficiency in these seven key areas of information literacy is closely linked to students' challenges when writing scientific papers. by developing skills in identifying relevant information, students can overcome the challenge of finding appropriate resources for their research. defining the scope helps students focus their writing and avoid unnecessary digressions. planning information search strategies assists students in efficiently locating and accessing the necessary sources for their papers. information effectively enables students to gather comprehensive and reliable data to support their arguments. evaluating information allows students to assess the credibility and relevance of sources, ensuring the reliability of their research. managing information efficiently helps students organize and synthesize the acquired knowledge, facilitating the coherent presentation of their ideas. finally, presenting information enables students to communicate their findings and arguments to their intended audience effectively. by developing competence in these information literacy pillars, students can address the challenges they face in writing scientific papers and enhance the quality of their research and academic writing. previous research shows a need to include information literacy skills in the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 15-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license curriculum because they support research activities of higher education students. many universities have integrated information literacy into the curriculum, including in the united states, canada, scandinavia, australia, new zealand, and the netherlands (hepworth, 2009, p. 26). however, information literacy in indonesia remains the domain of the librarian's expertise. scientific writing involves structuring words into sentences and paragraphs, which requires time, energy, and intellectual. the finding showed that students experience difficulties starting to write, and many are overwhelmed by the complexity of the process (collins & cook, 2017). therefore, students must start with smaller efforts before allocating the time to write scientific papers. time constraints in writing a research project such as a thesis could frustrate students and cause idea block. this happens when they do not know what or how to write due to distraction from daily routine activities. therefore, students must spend some time in isolation when writing research papers (tremblay-wragg et al., 2021). tremblay-wragg (2021) in his research proposed thesez-vous model. this nonprofit organization offers over three days for graduate students working on a thesis to retreat from their daily routine and focus more on research. in line with this, boice (1983) suggested that writing is best accomplished on a regular schedule, regardless of mood. creative inspiration is more likely to follow than precede productivity in writing. the demand for converting research into an article for publication is growing. students are encouraged to publish the findings in scientific journals to communicate with the community. the research becomes an extensive and complete piece, resulting in several designs to publish in journals. these include lab experiment reports, interventional studies, literature reviews, and costeffectiveness papers (modesitt et al., 2022). however, the demand for publishing articles is not equipped with training. students struggle to find ways of constructing manuscripts from their thesis, creating confusion, anxiety, and psychological pressure. furthermore, students experience frustration when writing a thesis to graduate. izawa, et.al. (2007) measured five dimensions that cause stresses associated with writing a graduation thesis, including tensionanxiety, depressiondejection, anger-hostility, vigor, fatigue, and confusion. it suggested that a short period before submitting the thesis is the most stressful time for the students. the episodic stress http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 16-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license associated with writing a graduation thesis might affect the post-awakening cortisol secretion (izawa et al., 2007). although this condition is common, there are no efforts to help eliminate stress in writing a thesis. therefore, students strive to overcome psychological pressures to succeed in their studies. three principles must be considered regarding students' strategy to use machine translation, such as google translate, in writing scientific papers. first, machine translation should be utilized as a legitimate tool for support. it provides a means for scholarly communication and essential survival needs to participate in learning interactions. second, intermediate and advanced multilingual learners should be empowered to use machine translation. third, teachers should work with students to co-construct principles for their responsible use in writing (kelly & hou, 2021). students need in-service professional development through scientific writing and information literacy skills training. this includes searching for resources for reference and using english texts in their writing. intensive writing practices enhance writing skills, perception of writing, and knowledge of when to pursue assistance (mckenna & kyser, 2021). therefore, the department of english education must remodify its curriculum and the scientific writing course syllabi to include skills such as organizing academic writing, the standards involved, styles, and ethics. information literacy should be integrated into the education curriculum to familiarize students with searching, evaluating, and using information in english before the actual use in writing. conclusions and suggestion university students need to be exposed to information literacy skills to improve their ability to write research and understand scholarly works. university faculties could involve librarians as information specialists to teach the skills. this requires developing a collaboration model between faculty and librarians. research shows that librarians are professionals who play an important role in training technology and research programs in universities (biddle, 2021). the explosion of information resources on the internet may not guarantee easy access by students. finding and using the resources creates confusion. therefore, professional assistance is compulsory to train students in information literacy skills to support writing research and other scientific http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 17-22 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30517 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license papers. mastering information literacy skills will lead students to success in learning at university and in their future lives. this finding implies that universities need to establish an academic writing center that organizes regular workshops, specifically focusing on academic writing skills. these workshops can guide searching and using resources, structuring a manuscript, developing a coherent argument, and improving academic writing proficiency. by equipping students with essential writing strategies and techniques, these workshops can help alleviate confusion, anxiety, and psychological pressure associated with thesis writing (elfreihat, 2021). the center can also offer writing consultations or tutoring services where students can receive personalized feedback and guidance on their thesis writing process. experienced writing tutors or faculty members can provide support in areas such as organization, clarity, and academic style, helping students enhance the quality of their manuscripts and reduce stress. acknowledgments the authors thank the dean of the fakultas ilmu tarbiyah dan keguruan (fitk), universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, for giving permission to conduct the research. we also would like to acknowledge and appreciate the participation of students of the english department in this study for providing us with data that made the writing of this research possible. references ala-mutka, k. 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(2022). writing about research—the good, the bad, and the challenging. evidence based library and information practice, 17(1), 3–4. https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30 098 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2018.07.009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2018.07.009 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2018.1501168 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2018.1501168 https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30098 https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30098 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022, 372-395 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee expanding primary school students’ knowledge and sense of tolerance on “the world through english textbook” wahyunengsih1*, noni mia rahmawati2 1 uin syarif hidatullah jakarta, indonesia 2 malang islamic university, indonesia (wahyu.nengsih@uinjkt.ac.id) received: 02nd august 2022; revised: 28h november 2022; accepted: 27th december 2022 abstract character education is needed to shape the students’ characters, one of which is the sense of being tolerant toward differences of cultures in societies around the world. textbooks are suitable to introduce this value. this study is aimed to develop a primary school source of learning which significantly promotes the value of tolerance in the content. this textbook is aimed to introduce cultures from several parts of the world and stimulates the students' awareness of appreciating diversity. plomp’s model in 1997 research dan development (r&d) design is utilized in this present study. the finding shows the researchers can develop an english textbook entitled "the world through english". this book guides the students to enhance their knowledge and sense of tolerance into the level of warm tolerance according to the interpersonal tolerance scale (ipts) proposed by thomae (2016). as a result, this study shows that the development of an english textbook with persuasive tolerance value is acceptable and easily comprehended by elementary school students. key words: development research; english textbook; character education abstrak pendidikan karakter diperlukan untuk membentuk karakter peserta didik, salah satunya adalah rasa toleran terhadap perbedaan budaya dalam masyarakat di seluruh dunia. buku teks cocok untuk memperkenalkan nilai ini. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengembangkan sumber belajar sekolah dasar yang secara signifikan mengedepankan nilai toleransi dalam muatannya. buku ajar ini bertujuan untuk memperkenalkan budaya dari berbagai belahan dunia dan merangsang kesadaran siswa untuk menghargai keberagaman. model plomp pada tahun 1997 desain penelitian dan pengembangan (r&d) digunakan dalam penelitian ini. temuan menunjukkan peneliti dapat mengembangkan buku teks bahasa inggris berjudul "the world through english". buku ini membimbing siswa untuk meningkatkan pengetahuan dan rasa toleransi ke tingkat toleransi hangat menurut skala toleransi interpersonal (ipts) yang diusulkan oleh thomae (2016). hasilnya, penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa pengembangan buku teks bahasa inggris dengan nilai toleransi persuasif dapat diterima dan mudah dipahami oleh siswa sekolah dasar. kata kunci: penelitian pengembangan; buku teks bahasa inggris; pendidikan karakter how to cite: wahyunengsih, rahmawati, n. m.. (2022). expanding primary school students’ knowledge and sense of tolerance on “the world through english textbook”. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 372-395. doi:10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 373-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction children, nowadays tend to find no difficulty when they must find any information that they need. they use searching engines through smartphones anywhere and anytime they want (druin et al., 2009). they spend most of their time in using their smartphones which focuses on entertainment and social needs (sekarrini et al., 2020). however, the existence of these tools is mostly used not to expand their knowledge about things that happen in the world, outside their communities. even worse, there is a lot of misuse of technology that makes it easier for children and adolescents to label and not tolerate diversity. this becomes one of the major reasons for developing textbooks that can build students’ character. considering textbooks will be used under supervision of teachers during and after the class hour. furthermore, in indonesia, textbooks are designed based on the curriculum which merely focus on knowledge (mustika & permatasari, 2013; citra, et all; fahik, 2020; nesi et al., 2022; regiliana, 2021; yuliana & yulina, 2021). there are several other studies that also in line. first, one of the major factors of learning language failure in indonesia is caused by lack of opportunities provided by textbook to become an active language learner (winarni et al., 2022). second, indonesia textbook model with character education is important to be promoted (winarni, 2018). next, a study by (cicilia, 2017) compared indonesian and thai textbook. this study also figured out that indonesia textbook need to consider not only cognitive but also affective aspects. as a result, they may not have enough sense of tolerance to accept those who are different from them, especially when they are also not having proper moral education during their growth. being tolerant of others is one of the social values regarded to be gradually missing from the current millennial generation(tirza, 2022). this generation is characterized by the people who are more often using their logic, depending on the empirical way of thinking, as well as being materialistic, secular, and hedonistic (fadli, 2019). thus, they tend to not care about building a good relationship amongst people. these wrong behaviors may happen because the people have the so-called freedom of speech, yet they do not aware that with freedom come responsibilities (mccarthy-jones & mccarthy-jones, 2019). those results of previous studies shows that there should be a qualified textbook which contains of multi and national diversity in which leads the students to be able to appreciate and embrace in positive way. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 374-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license education, then, plays an important role in shaping the values adhered by societies. there are three domains of education that must be mastered by students; they are, cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains (wahyutiningsih, 2016). the affective domain is the one to be developed concerning shaping the students’ characters and moral values. the development of the students’ affective domain can be done by having the character or moral education. freud in wahyutiningsih (2016) believes that failure in giving education about good personalities to children at an early age will result in having problematic personalities when they reach adulthood. therefore, it is important to introduce children as early as possible with differences in world societies as an effort to shape their moral values. it is also crucial to provide them with the character or moral education to face such social differences. it has been known that education may contain other agenda on political, social, or religious issues. as a part of a certain society, it is difficult to separate education from such an agenda. thus, it is said that education, including textbooks as one of the media of teaching, contains “hidden” curriculum. cubukcu (in permana, 2018) says that the “hidden” curriculum may also deliver social norms and values believed and pertained within a society so that it also shapes the students’ characters appropriate to the society’s social norms and values. in introducing differences across countries around the world to boost students’ sense of tolerance, textbooks are regarded to be important tools to help teachers and educators to do so (setyono & widodo, 2019). thus, it is deemed that textbooks also have important roles in shaping the students’ characters, including the character of being able to be tolerant of differences. related to english, it has become a global language since years ago. at present, “people in every part of the world feel its urgent role in their life: for academic purposes, for business goals and other purposes” (rohmah, 2005). many parents think that their children should learn english as early as possible. schools react to the parents’ demand by providing english subject and making english as one of the languages for communications inside the school as early as when the children are in nursery school (thesis & murtiningrum, 2009). however, based on kurikulum 2013, english is not a required subject to be given until the students are in middle school. it means that students who are in primary school are not obligated to learn english. despite many controversies of being not relevant with today’s demand on ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 375-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching english as early as possible, the situation gives quite a freedom for textbook writers to be creative in deciding the themes in writing english textbook for primary school students. as a result, they can develop english textbooks deemed to be appropriate with the society’s situation nowadays. related to building students’ characteristics and shaping their moral values, it is necessary to introduce them to broad differences the world have on cultures. the textbook as an educational tool that can reach many students is ideal to be used to help educators to shape the students’ perspectives of the societies (han & shin, 2020). a study conducted shows that indonesian textbooks already contain the value of tolerance but mostly focus on how to interact to the older people and treat all people equally neglecting their religious and ethnic background(adijaya, 2020; cahyo, 2022). in other words, the value of tolerance is still exposed in very limited way which focuses on the local or national needs. however, today, students with the era of technology and social media, they need to bring the tolerance value internationally and beyond the limit of nationality, distance, and space. thus, it is hoped that the students can recognize and accept the differences so that they can improve their degree of tolerance toward others. the current study is trying to develop a book that can give a glimpse to the students of how the world is a unique place to live that is full of different cultures which is expected to achieve warm level of tolerance (thomae, 2016). character education the millennial generation is faced with many ordeals that are new due to the development of technology so that it is difficult to handle such ordeals since people do not have sufficient experiences to deal with them (nancu, et al., 2020). lickona (in permana, 2018) mentions ten disturbing youth trends; they are (1) violence and vandalism; (2) stealing; (3) cheating; (4) disrespect for authority; (5) peer cruelty; (6) bigotry; (7) bad language; (8) sexual precocity and abuse; (9) increasing selfcentredness and declining civic responsibility; and (10) self-destructive behavior. the act of being self-centered means that the youths put their importance foremost in comparison to others’ whether it brings damaging consequences to society. as a result, they tend to do as they pleased without being able to weigh the consequences of their actions so that they are also ignoring civic responsibility. the characteristics will likely be brought to adulthood if there is nothing done to mend such disturbing traits. as adults, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 376-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license corrupt practices may result from such false upbringing. pala (2011) defines the word “character” as a distinctive mark that differentiates one person to another. it often happens that someone is judged by others based on that person characters. it means that characters define who a person is. as characters define someone, character education is essential to be given to students from an early age to minimize the growth of the disturbing traits in youths. character education can be defined as “a growing discipline with the deliberate attempt to optimize students’ ethical behavior” (agboola, 2012). wahyutiningsih (2016) mentions the goal of having a character education is to shape the students’ personality to be a good human, a good resident, and a good citizen. such goal also suggests that the goal of character education is about shaping the students’ traits which are essential to be a member of a certain society, one of which is to shape the students’ sense of being tolerant to others which are different from them. the role of the textbook in character education a textbook is one of the tools which are used in the teaching and learning process. in indonesia, there is a saying that books are the window of the world. it means that by reading books, people have wide access to get knowledge of the world. for students, textbooks are the types of books that they read for most of the time. textbooks may function as the main source for the students to get language input and as a media for them to practice the language. however, no textbook is suitable for all teachers and students (mithans & ivanuš grmek, 2020; panjaitan & gatot sutapa yuliana, 2019; vitta, 2021). thus, teachers still need to adjust which are suitable to the character of their students. “textbooks are important devices in the educational process, which might instruct the teachers’ work, also embody the subjects, and contain the knowledge and norms preferred by the school” (kereszty, 2009). the notion suggests that besides scientific knowledge, textbooks contain societies’ norms and values which are regarded to be suitable for students by the school. hence, kereszty states that textbooks are often regarded as part of the “hidden” curriculum; that is, textbooks mediate the worldview, expectations, and values of the society with the life within schools through reflections of everyday life. therefore, students may learn many things related to life through textbooks. textbooks are also known to be one of the tools to maintain and support oppression (renner, 1997). renner believes that the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 377-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license contents of textbooks are controlled by those who are in power. however, textbooks are also possible to serve as agents of change (crawford, 2002). the idea deems textbooks as a useful tool to create some changes through both scientific and social knowledge within the textbooks. therefore, textbooks can also be used as a tool to shape the students’ perspectives on the world to grow their sense of tolerance related to other cultures which are different from theirs. in regards to character education, textbooks may be the tools to provide materials that contain examples of good personalities. permana (2018) mentions, textbooks are “expected to contain character values and knowledge which are appropriate to the learners”. to improve the students’ sense of tolerance, english textbooks may expose the students with information related to differences that occur in societies. as a global language, it is also possible that textbooks for english teaching display several cultures from several different countries around the world. such display in english textbooks may enrich the students’ knowledge as well as develop the students’ awareness that there are enormous social and cultural differences among people around the world. as a result, it is expected that textbooks can help the students to build their sense of tolerance towards those who are different from them. so, the purpose of this study is to develop an english textbook for sixth-grade students of primary schools which contains of knowledge and sense of tolerance in national as well as international level. therefore, the research questions were set up into two: how is the process of developing english textbook that contains of knowledge and sense of tolerance materials? and in which level that this book will enrich students’ knowledge and sense of tolerance? method this study employs research and development studies. this research design let the actual data from the main purpose of offering tolerance content in english textbook for primary and elementary school revealed. latief (2009) describes that a development study in education will obtain a teaching media as a result of the study. the notion is in line with the current study as it is intended to develop an english textbook for sixth-grade students of primary school. the r&d cycles was implemented in this study. it refers to plomp’s model in 1997 which proposed the cycle of r&d research. the cycle consists of the preliminary investigation step. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 378-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license researcher needs to carry out by analysing the problem or analysing the needs from the stakeholders as well as users. second, designing step. the purpose of this step to plan solution in designing the model based on the results of working plans. the third step is realization/construction. this step is conducted through producing activities, like developing textbook, creating teaching, and learning materials, producing service models for training or workshop. the last step is testing, evaluation, and revision. these three steps are carried out through the process of collecting, processing, and analyzing collected information systematically. the fifth step is implementation. here, the researcher must implement the result or product to the users (gustiani, 2019). figure 1. plomp’s model so, the present study adopt plomp’s r&d model as follows. first, there is a needs analysis test by having library research on the indonesian students’ sense of tolerance character. second, the documentary study from the recent available textbooks was conducted to figure out the weaknesses of those textbooks in term of the value of tolerance. third, the process of selecting certain level of education is the most suitable to use this type of textbook. it was basically based the needs and the availability of the respondents. after that, the researchers refer to the curriculum of indonesian national education to develop an english textbook for this level. the textbook is developed based on the core competencies (kompetensi inti) for sixthgrade students of primary schools relevant to kurikulum 2013 which is set by the ministry of education and culture of indonesia. in the structure of kurikulum 2013 for primary education as mentioned in the regulation namely lampiran permendikbud nomor 67 tahun 2013, english is not included as the required subjects for grade 1 up to grade 6 students of primary school. thus, there are no basic competencies (kompetensi dasar) for english for primary school students. meanwhile, both core competencies (kompetensi inti) and basic competencies (kompetensi dasar) are supposed to be used for developing an english textbook for primary school students. the criteria of selecting materials and sources of the book deeply concern on the stimulation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 379-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of students’ sense of tolerance based on (hjerm et al., 2020). it involves: 1) tolerance as phenomenon dependent on prejudice, 2) tolerance as a phenomenon distinct form prejudice, 3) other concerns: abstraction and multidimensionality, 4) tolerance as an orientation towards difference. the following procedures were expert validation process. it involved expert in english education including english lectures and teachers. the expert reviews in the draft were considered as the revising form of the following draft. next, the revised draft was implemented to the students of sixthgrade primary school in order to evaluate the acceptance and reliability as well as the level of difficulty of the textbook draft. finally, the final draft of the textbook was revised, printed, and publish nationally. for the second research questions, this study use questionnaire. this instrument is used to figure out the students’ level of tolerance based on the interpersonal tolerance scale (ipts). the questionnaire consists of all threedimension characteristics that represent their level, warm, cold, or limit tolerance. likert scale is employed in order to find the students score. research site and participants research site is elementary schools in malang regency. this study concerned on two public elementary schools. since the book is addressed for 6th grades students, therefore the participant of this study only focusses on at 6th grades. data collection and analysis as stated by latief (2009) about the procedures of a development study, the development of the english textbook for sixth-grade students of primary school is comprised of the activity on writing the textbook, reviewing the textbook, revising the textbook, having expert validations, performing try-out on the textbook, and having final revision on the textbook. in writing the textbook, some preliminary activities are performed. they are (1) deciding the theme for each unit of the extbook based on the core competency; (2) selecting the english language skills and language components suitable with each theme; (3) and compiling sources for creating and modifying reading texts. the reviews on the draft of the textbook are completed in this study. the validations are performed by two experts who are lecturers on english in two different universities. meanwhile, the try-outs of the textbook are done by three students of sixth-grade of three different primary schools. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 380-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the theme of each unit is decided based on the core competencies (kompetensi inti) for sixth-grade students of primary school. for the language skills and components, they were selected those based on the level of difficulty and the suitability with the themes. for the reading texts, this study was compiling the information from the internet to create or modify the texts. the exercises are created based on the theme and the reading texts. the reviews on the draft of the textbook were performed twice. the first review was completed between the two writers, and the second review, which could also be called as expert validation, was done by two english lecturers from two different universities. the reviews were mostly related to the use of grammar, word choice, pictures, and the types of exercises given in the textbook. meanwhile, the reviews by the experts were assessed by looking at some criteria on some categories of the aspects of a textbook. the criteria were related to the aspects of the materials, teaching and learning, language, and performance. the range of scores to be given is from 1 to 5, with 1 as being “not clear at all” and 5 as being “perfect”. the try-outs were carried out by three sixth-grade students from three different primary schools. each student must read two units and fill in the assessment form that consists of an assessment on the textbook’s level of difficulty related to grammar, vocabulary, reading texts, and exercises. the last revision was conducted after the writers got the assessment and feedback from the experts as well as after the try-outs have been completed by the students. for the questionnaires result which refers to the interpersonal tolerance scale (ipts) proposed by thomae (2016), it can be seen from the result of the students’ level of tolerance which got the warm tolerance level as the highest among two other levels. the answers are categorized into always = 5, sometimes = 4, seldom = 3, rare = 2, never = 1. findings and discussion findings primary textbook with tolerance education content developing process it was decided that the textbook will have the title "the world through english" as the textbook was intended to introduce different cultural values to students and that there are six units with six different themes for the textbook, of which the themes are decided based on the core ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 381-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license competencies. the decision was based on the usual hours allocated for english subject by schools. two units represent the first core competency that was related to the religious concepts; they are unit 1 entitled “holidays” and unit 5 entitled “unique traditions”. for the second core competency which is about the social concepts, unit 2 and 6 are created with the theme on “charity” and “be eco-friendly”. the third competency, which is about knowledge on technology, is represented by unit 3 entitled “hand-crafts”. for the last competency that is about how technology is being applied, unit 4 with the title “past discoveries” is developed. in those units, the language components, such as grammar and vocabulary, are selected based on the level of difficulty and the suitability with each theme. the first aspect of the textbook being assessed was related to the materials given in the textbook. the second aspect was about teaching and learning, which is about whether the textbook will be able to help the process of learning english. the third aspect is related to the use of the language in the textbook. the last aspect of the assessment was given to assess the presence of the textbook, such as its design, choice of fonts, etc. the mean scores of the assessment for those aspects are (1) 3.40 for the aspect on materials; (2) 3.43 for the aspect on teaching and learning; (3) 3.60 for the aspect on language; and (4) 4.00 for the aspect on presentations of the textbook. related to the aspect of materials, the two reviewers gave similar scores to the five indicators presented. on the indicator about the textbook’s content compatibility with core competency and basic competency as well as the textbook’s concept accuracy, the reviewers deem that the content of the book being developed has very good compatibility with the core competency, and it was also being accurate to the proposed concept; of which the textbook was developed to provide the students with knowledge on the world to boost their sense of tolerance. similarly, both reviewers give the score 3, or average, in assessing the other three indicators of the aspect on materials of the textbook. the other three indicators were about materials rejuvenation, materials presentation order, and suitability of the example. hence, since there was no significant difference in the assessment given by the reviewers on the indicators of the aspects of materials, the materials of the developed textbook can be deemed as valid to be used. the second aspect of the textbook being assessed by the reviewers was about teaching and learning that had ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 382-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license seven indicators. they are 1) purpose of learning, 2) motivation, 3) clarity of the exercises, 4) clarity of the learning indicators, 5) stimulating selfindependency, 6) suitability of the pictures with the materials, and 7) clarity of the title and subtitle. for these seven indicators, the reviewers mostly gave the scores 3 and 4, of which 3 as “average” and 4 as “very good”. the differences that can be seen from the assessment by the two reviewers on the second aspect of the developed textbook are related to indicators about the clarity of the learning indicators, stimulating self-independency, and suitability of the pictures with the materials. for the indicator of the clarity of the learning indicators, the first reviewer gives the score 4, while the second reviewer gives the score 3. meanwhile, for the indicators about stimulating self-independency and suitability of the pictures with the materials, the first reviewer assesses the indicators with score 3, and the second reviewer with score 4. both reviewers gave the same scores for the remaining four indicators of the aspect of teaching and learning. they give (1) score 4 on the indicator about the purpose of learning; (2) score 3 on the indicator about motivation; (3) score 4 on the indicator about the clarity of the exercises; and (4) score 3 on the indicator about the clarity of the title and subtitle. from the results of the assessment, the second aspect of the developed textbook on teaching and learning was said to be suitable or valid as there is no noteworthy difference between the assessment given by the first and second reviewer. related to the third aspect of the textbook, which is about the use of the language, there were five indicators to be assessed. the first indicator was about the suitability of the language with the students’ level. the first reviewer gave the score 4, and the second reviewer gives the score 3 for this indicator. for the next two indicators about language clarity and terms accuracy, both reviewers gave the score 4 as “very good” for each of these two indicators. the fourth indicator is related to grammar, pronunciation, and spelling accuracy. the fifth indicator was about the ability of the language used in the textbook to arouse the students’ curiosity. for the fourth and fifth indicators, the first reviewer passes the score 3 of being “average”, and the second reviewer passes the score 4 as “very good”. the same as the previous two aspects being assessed, the aspect on the language of the textbook can also be considered as valid or suitable since the results of the assessment from the reviewers do not show any major difference between the two of the results. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 383-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the last aspect of the textbook being assessed is about the presentations of the textbook. there were ten indicators of this aspect to be assessed. they are (1) letter font; (2) space; (3) quality of the text; (4) readability of the text; (5) quality of the pictures; (6) layout; (7) navigation sign; (8) background; (9) titles arrangement; and (10) interaction setting with the theme. among these ten indicators, the first reviewer passes score 5 as being “perfect” for two indicators; they are about letter font and quality of the pictures. however, the first reviewer gives the score 2 as "still bias" for the indicator that is related to background, and the second reviewer passes the score 3 for this indicator. for the other indicators, both reviewers shared evenly the score 3 of being “average” and score 4 of being “very good”. as a result, the assessment from the reviewers on the last aspect about the presentations of the textbook also does not show any significant dissimilarity among indicators, so that it can be said that the presentations of the textbook are valid or suitable for the students. feedbacks in the form of description were also given by the reviewers. the descriptive feedbacks were about the strengths and weaknesses of the draft of the textbook. one of the strengths that are noted by the reviewers are about the interesting themes of the units which cover worldwide knowledge as intended; that is, to produce a textbook for students to enhance their knowledge on the world to grow their sense of tolerance. the reviewers also point out that the draft of the textbook has contained suitable materials and exercises to help the students in improving their language skills. however, they also describe the weaknesses of the draft which have to be revised. some of the weaknesses mentioned are about there is no listening activities covered in the textbook, not all exercises give examples on how to do each of them, and the materials have to be more upto-date to suit the students’ situations. the try-out which was done by three students from three different schools also give some feedbacks for the writers. there are some aspects of the textbook which are being tried-out by the students. they are the level of difficulty of (1) reading texts; (2) grammar; (3) vocabulary; and (4) exercises. the students are also asked whether they get some new information from the textbook. for the reading texts, two students think that the texts are easy, while a student thinks that they are of average. two students deem that the grammar presented in the textbook are of average, while a student thinks of it as easy. related to the vocabulary that they find in the textbook, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 384-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license answers were distributed equally as each of them says that the vocabulary is difficult, of average, and easy. as for the exercises, two students believe that they are easy, while it is of average for the other student. related to getting new information from the texts in the textbook, all students answer that they got something new after reading the texts, such as information on past discoveries and traditions from another country. students’ level of knowledge and sense of tolerance as findings of the questionnaire shows that the total score for 53 of sixth grade students at 3 different schools shows that thirteen statements average score 85% answers always = 5. it is also the highest among other two-dimension levels which shows 45% answers always = 5 for cold tolerance, and 53% answers always = 5 for limit tolerance. therefore, this result shows the students level of tolerance is warm tolerance. it is clearly shown on the table down below. table 1. three-dimension tolerance levels tolerance dimension level total average maximum score warm tolerance 85% cold tolerance 45% limit tolerance 53% since the data shows that the highest score average is addressed to the warm tolerance level, the actual score of students on this level is described completely. based on this result, the finding can be concluded that students who learn english by using "the world through english" textbook are categorized into warm tolerance level. the number of students’ answers in each of the indicators also shows that the basic purposes of this study in which to provides an english textbook that not merely focuses on knowledge but also enrich students’ sense of tolerance is accomplished well. for example, almost all students answer always = 5 for the statement “i see differences in people's opinions and beliefs as opportunities to learn from each other.” similar findings are also seen in other indicators. this following table shows the complete indicators and the description of students’ answers in this warm tolerance level. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 385-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. students’ answers on warm tolerance dimension level no indicator total tolerance score nev er = 1 rar e = 2 seldo m = 3 someti mes = 4 alwa ys = 5 total respondents 53 students of 6th grades from 3 different schools 1 i see differences in people's opinions and beliefs as opportunities to learn from each other. 0 0 0 4 49 2 if i perceive somebody as acting incorrectly or curiously, i try to understand the reasons for their behavior. 0 0 2 10 41 3 if the values and behaviors of another person contradict my own values, i make an effort to understand the other person before judging them. 0 0 0 15 38 4 i embrace other people the way they are, even if we have very little in common. 0 0 0 7 46 5 i can respect another person, even if their beliefs contradict my own beliefs. 0 0 0 0 53 6 i give other people room to be themselves, without trying to change them. 0 0 0 3 50 7 i am able to acknowledge new and unfamiliar things, even if i dislike them. 0 0 4 7 42 8 i am able to reconsider and adjust my opinion if a conversation yields novel viewpoints. 0 3 5 5 40 9 i try to fully put myself into another person's position in order to understand their viewpoint. 0 0 0 25 28 10 i believe that there are multiple accurate viewpoints for most things. 0 0 0 30 23 11 if i am bothered by the attitudes or acts of another person, i can discuss it with them without rejecting them as a person. 0 0 3 5 45 12 i always try to respect another person, irrespective of their beliefs and behaviors. 0 0 0 0 53 13 i accept that other cultural communities may act upon values which i consider intolerant. 0 0 1 6 46 total score 0 3 15 117 554 average of 53 respondents 0% 0.00 2% 0.13% 14.2% 85% discussion based on the results of the study, there are several arguments that can be proposed to proof that this textbook achieve good standard of english textbook. first, the selected topics used in this text book are relevant with the needs of the users. the contents are also not against any of the appropriateness ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 386-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of indonesia students who are considered divers and religious. this is in line with litz (2001) that mention the qualification of a valuable textbook in elt must be able to be received by any level of quality, usefulness, appropriateness of the elt learners. moreover, a good textbook includes social identity and social group either in regional, social class, and minority ethnics. the content also allows social interaction in different level outsider and insider as mentioned by bryam (as cited in gunantar, 2017). this present textbook provides topics which considers minority group such as the culture of vodoo from africa. second, the result of the study also shows the units which are developed in the textbook are compatible with the core competencies for sixth-grade students of primary school set in kurikulum 2013. the compatibility of the themes of the units with the core competencies is in line with byrd in (sulistiyo et al., 2021a) who mention that the first standard to look for in a good textbook is the fit between the materials and the curriculum. from six themes of the units, each theme is fit to one of the core competencies. the texts in each unit are also well-matched with the concept accuracy of developing the textbook, of which its concept is to broaden the students' knowledge of cultures around the world. as mentioned previously, the compatibility with the core competencies can be seen in each unit. in unit 1, the theme is about “holidays”. the theme of this unit is selected based on the first core competency for sixthgrade students of primary school that emphasizes religious teachings. the texts which are developed also portray the theme. the first text is entitled “the day the world turns green” which tells about st. patrick’s day, one of the national holidays in ireland, while the second text is about celebrating eid alfitr in indonesia entitled “the day for fitri.” for unit 2, the theme on “charity” is selected based on the second core competence for sixth-grade students, which focuses on developing the students’ good characters. the theme of this unit is appropriate to help growing the students’ sense of empathy and tolerance towards others, especially those who are underprivileged. two texts discuss some famous people’s acts on giving charities or volunteering. the first text portrays oprah winfrey’s, a famous tv personality from the u.s., and deeds on helping poor people. the second text gives some examples of how korean artists make giving donations and doing volunteering a habit performed by the artists themselves and their fans. all of those topics are universally accepted (azarnoosh & khosrojerdi, 2018). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 387-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in unit 3, the theme to be brought up is “hand-crafts”, which is relevant to the fourth core competency for the sixth-grade students. this core competency deals with working on the students’ ability in presenting the factual and conceptual knowledge that they obtain. the fourth core competency comes before the third competency in the textbook in regards to the language component to be discussed in this unit. there are also two texts which were developed for unit 3. they are “china’s porcelain” and “let’s make an origami.” the second text is a procedural text which is intended to engage the students in practicing how to give instructions and ask for confirmations. the theme for unit 4 of the textbook is “past discoveries” which is suitable with the third competency that focuses on the understanding of factual and conceptual knowledge. the two texts in this unit describe the discovery of toothbrush and potato chips. they provide the students with some information on when, where, and how the two items were discovered (sulistiyo et al., 2021). in unit 5, the selected theme about unique traditions is again matched with the first core competency for sixthgrade students of primary school, of which traditions are usually closely related to practices of religious teachings. there are also two texts describe some unique traditions from two different parts of the world. they are about “voodoo” and unique traditions from africa. for the last unit, the theme “be eco-friendly” is developed to match with the second competency for sixth-grade students to promote the shaping of good characters. the choice for the theme is based on the expectation to build the students’ awareness of the importance of respecting nature and to stimulate the students’ creativity on creating efforts to help to make a sustainable environment (suwandi et al., 2018). the two texts that are developed on becoming eco-friendly describe mostly about what people can do to contribute to saving the earth (mohammadnia & moghadam, 2019). third, referring to the standard of a good textbook set by badan standar nasional pendidikan (bsnp), besides being suitable with the curriculum, teachers, and students, another criterion of a good textbook is "the language use is natural, attractive, and appropriate to the students” (suryani, 2018). suryani (2018) also mentions that, hence, the vocabulary, sentences, paragraphs, and discourse in the textbook should be suitable with the students' level of english. from the feedback given by the experts, it can be regarded that the language used in the textbook has ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 388-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license matched with the students’ level (azarfam & noordin, 2014). the results of the try-out from the three students also strengthen the feedbacks from the experts as they find a few difficulties in understanding the texts, the grammar, and the vocabularies (ayu & indrawati, 2018). for the discussions on grammar, the textbook arranges it based on the level of difficulty and the suitability with the theme. hence in unit 1, the kind of tenses to be discussed in unit 1 is present simple tense since the texts presented are about annual holidays. the discussion about present simple tense is continued in unit 2 on the use of present simple tense for third-person singular. in unit 3, the kinds of tenses to be presented after the discussions on present simple tense are present continuous tense. it is suitable for the procedural texts given in unit 3. unit 4 discusses past simple tense for the theme of the unit deals with inventions happened in the past. meanwhile, unit 5 presents a part that describes the difference between the use of past simple tense and present perfect tense. for the last unit, the kinds of tenses to be discussed deals with future intentions as the texts also show things that may or may not happen in the future. as for the vocabularies, the words which are presented to the students correspond to the theme of each unit and are matched with the texts (sulistiyo et al., 2021). fourth, according to (sheldon, 1988), there are seventeen criteria that can be used to assess the quality of a good textbook; rationale, availability, user definition, layout/graphics, accessibility, linkage, selection/grading, physical characteristics, appropriacy, authenticity, sufficiency, cultural bias, educational validity, stimulus/practice/revision, flexibility, guidance, overall value for money. this textbook, as mentioned on the finding, employs selected topics that mainly build the students sense of (herliana et al., 2020) . however, each of the material being used is still adjustable by the sixth-grade students. the result of the try-out test to the participant also figured out that the students found that they did not have any significant difficulties in using and comprehending the materials in the textbook. it means, all of the sixteen criteria proposed are fulfilled. besides, when it is being published and commercialized, the price is reasonable and affordable. primary textbook additional criteria in addition to the criteria mentioned above, badan standar nasional pendidikan (bsnp) states that a good textbook also needs to encourage ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 389-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the students’ curiosity and diversity value. byrd (2001) also proposes a similar idea that the content or explanations of a textbook should be of interest or use to the students. from the results of the try-out, all students mention that they get new information from the reading texts in the textbook, of which the new information that one student finds are different from another student. by getting new information, it can be considered that the reading texts in the textbook can arouse students’ curiosity. this result corresponds as well with cunningsworth (1995) who mentions that coursebooks or textbooks should provide opportunities for students to expand their knowledge not only in language learning but also in general. regarding the general knowledge in the textbook, the students mention that the new information they learned is from reading the texts about past discoveries in unit 4 and unique traditions in unit 5. the texts can also encourage students to value diversities in world societies since the texts presented in the textbook covers different cultural values from different countries. in each unit, the two texts cover different cultural values from at least two different countries. in unit 1, the values being represented by the texts are two different holidays celebrated in ireland and indonesia. the first text portrays how st. patrick's day is celebrated by irish people around the world, and the second text describes the celebration of eid al-fitr in indonesia. in unit 2, two different cultural values with the same moral value are depicted in the texts. the texts focus on charity programs given to the people in need performed by famous people from the u.s. and south korea (fareed, 2022). the cultural values portrayed in unit 3 are related to traditional handcrafts in china and japan. the first text shows the chinese craftsman’s tenacity in creating chinese porcelain, while the second text tells easy steps in making origami. in unit 4 about past discoveries, the students are presented with the past discoveries of toothbrush and potato chips. the two discoveries are less known by students of primary school, yet they are familiar with the two items. the texts presented in unit 5 portray several different cultural values from two different parts of the world, yet they are all related to believe embraced by the people in each society. the first text describes voodoo as a ritual which is still performed by the haitians. the second text describes two traditions from two different tribes in africa, of which the first one is about the touareg men who are well known because of their “blue-skin” appearances, and the second one is about dassanech women who are famous because of their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 390-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license recycled pieces of jewelry. the two texts in the last unit depict certain moral value than cultural values, which is about making the environment sustainable. cunningsworth (1995) mentions that as a part of “hidden curriculum”, many educationalists claim that presenting social and cultural values is more effective than the stated official curriculum since it encompasses most aspects of education. hence, related to character education, social and cultural values can be delivered effectively to the students as an effort to shape the students’ good characters through textbooks. one of the goals of developing this textbook is to grow the students' sense of being tolerant of others who are different from them, besides giving the students more experience in general (hashemi, 1998). by presenting texts that capture different social and cultural values, the textbook may help the students to accept and value the diversities around them so that they will also be able to grow their sense of being tolerant to others. such expectation is relevant to cunningsworth’s statement that the value system of a coursebook or textbook can influence the learners’ perceptions and attitudes. related to the presentations of a good textbook, byrd (2001) proposes some aspects to be considered. one of the aspects is about the appropriateness of the illustrations and other graphical and design elements to the students’ age and educational level. since the textbook is developed for sixth-grade students of primary school, the pictures to be displayed in the textbook are mostly clip-arts to fit with the students’ age. the textbook also provides illustrations in each reading text to help the students understand the content better (mohammadnia & moghadam, 2019). the selection of such images is appreciated by the experts who review the textbook as both judges the presentations of the images to be perfect. another aspect is about whether the texts are easy to read and suitable for the students' reading level. the students participated in the try-out think that the level of difficulty of the texts in the textbook is easy or of average. none of them say that the texts are difficult to understand. from the feedbacks of the experts, it can also be seen that the texts are readable using suitable fonts. overall, there is no essential issue about the presentations of the textbook that may hinder the students to understand the texts and get new information from them. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 9(2), 2022 391-395 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v9i2.27481 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusions and suggestion english textbooks can be used as a media that shows the students about the vast differences of cultures around the world. by exposing them towards cultures which are so different from theirs, the textbook can also help the students to shape and grow their sense of tolerance. after performing the activities on writing the draft, having reviews from the experts, and performing try-outs on the draft, this research can produce an english textbook for sixth-grade students of primary school entitled "the world through english". other researchers can perform further studies on the topic to develop english textbooks that also focus on providing students with portrayals of different. the results of the study also shows that the students who use this book can achieve warm tolerance level. book analyses are also expected to be carried out by other researchers to investigate the contents of the textbook. for the teachers, it is suggested that they give some reviews on the textbook before using it so that they can make some adjustments on how to use the textbook. they also need to give faceto-face explanations to the students to shape and grow the students’ sense of being tolerant. acknowledgments i would like to express my appreciation to dr. dwi fita heriawati, m. pd from universitas islam malang and oktavia widiastuti, m. pd from universitas kanjuruhan malang for their valuable and constructive suggestions during the planning and development of this research work. their willingness to give their time so generously has been very much appreciated. references agboola, a. & tsai, k.c. 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(2021). an analysis on indonesian elt textbook for grade xi from the perspective of sla principles using littlejohn’s framework. 9, 2338–3739. https://jurnal.unsur.ac.id/jeopallt * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 221-238 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee scholars in the making: unravelling the publication quest through a community of writing practice rahmah fithriani*, benni ichsanda rahman hz, eka yuni kurniati universitas islam negeri sumatera utara, indonesia (rahmahfithriani@uinsu.ac.id) received: 10th march 2023; revised: 24th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract although many studies have been conducted to investigate how graduate students navigate the publication endeavor as a graduation requirement, a scant number have explicitly focused on how master's students manage to do so through their participation in a community of practice (cop). this study set out to bridge this gap by examining the transformation experienced by indonesian master's students of english education in terms of their knowledge and practice in writing for scholarly publication after joining a writing group. this study employed a qualitative, descriptive case study approach. data were collected through a questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and artifact analysis from 15 students and analyzed using content analysis. findings indicate that after joining the writing group, the students reported increased skills in writing scholarly articles and more knowledge of the publication process. this study suggests the establishment of communities of writing practice in graduate programs to assist students in addressing the mounting pressure of scholarly publication, either as degree conferment or career preparation and advancement. key words: community of practice; graduate program; master's student; scholarly publication; writing group abstrak meskipun segudang penelitian telah dilakukan untuk menyelidiki bagaimana mahasiswa pascasarjana menavigasi upaya publikasi sebagai syarat kelulusan, hanya sedikit penelitian yang berfokus secara khusu pada bagaimana mahasiswa magister berhasil melakukannya melalui keikutsertaan mereka dalam komunitas praktik (cop). penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menjembatani kesenjangan tersebut dengan mengkaji transformasi yang dialami oleh mahasiswa magister pendidikan bahasa inggris di indonesia terkait pengetahuan dan praktik menulis untuk publikasi ilmiah setelah bergabung dengan kelompok menulis. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif deskriptif studi kasus. data dikumpulkan melalui angket, wawancara mendalam, dan analisis artefak dari 15 mahasiswa dan dianalisis dengan content analysis. temuan menunjukkan bahwa setelah bergabung dengan kelompok menulis, para mahasiswa melaporkan peningkatan keterampilan dalam menulis artikel ilmiah dan pengetahuan yang lebih baik tentang proses publikasi. studi ini menyarankan pembentukan komunitas praktik menulis dalam program pascasarjana untuk membantu mahasiswa mengatasi tekanan berat dalam publikasi ilmiah, baik sebagai persyaratan untuk mendapatkan gelar atau persiapan dan kemajuan karir. kata kunci: komunitas praktik; program pascasarjana; mahasiswa magister; publikasi ilmiah; kelompok menulis how to cite: fithriani, r., rahman hz, b.i., kurniati, e.y. (2023). scholars in the making: unravelling the publication quest through a community of writing practice. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 221-238. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 222-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction graduate students often pursue higher degrees to better position themselves in the increasingly competitive academic job market. since academic positions place a greater emphasis on the proof of scholarly works published in peer-reviewed journals (arnbjörnsdóttir & ingvarsdóttir, 2018; lassig et al., 2013; sletto et al., 2020), graduate students are expected to write early to establish a track record of publication. thus, graduate programs serve as a maturation venue for these 'scholars in the making' by facilitating their students' production of academic publications and simultaneously promoting their identity as scholarly writers. in addition to career preparation, the publication pressure for graduate students is exacerbated by the institutionalized policy of publishing requirements for degree conferral that is widely applied in higher education institutions. graduate students across the globe are under mounting pressure to publish in refereed journals on a national and international scale as a prerequisite to earning their terminal degree (barbero, 2008; hanauer et al., 2019; kumar & aitchison, 2018; li, 2016; nagano & bukovszki spiczene, 2018). for example, ph.d. degree-granting institutions in the united states require publishing in top-tier scholarly publications instead of the traditional dissertation as a requirement for program completion (jalongo et al., 2014). doctoral students in china must publish their scholarly papers in internationally reputable journals, whereas master's students, although allowed to publish their work in chinese, are highly encouraged to publish their scholarly writing in english to foster a university reputation (cargill et al., 2018). similarly, ph.d. candidates in malaysia and iran must publish their scholarly articles before defending their dissertations or graduating from university (jeyaraj, 2018; rezaei & syeiri, 2019). in the last decades, this pressure has trickled down to master's students with the result that publishing in refereed journals is increasingly institutionalized as a graduation requirement for them (fithriani et al., 2023; lathif et al., 2021: lei & chuang, 2009). a similar requirement is also implemented in master's programs in indonesia. since the introduction of the indonesian government regulation requiring scientific publications for bachelor, master's, and doctoral students (fithriani & salmiah, 2022; fithriani et al., 2023), indonesian master's students have been under mounting pressure to publish their work nationally accredited journals, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 223-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license popularly known as science and technology index (sinta) journals, in order to meet the university's publication requirement to obtain a master's degree. the pressure to publish in a reputable journal as a degree conferment has received burgeoning attention from scholars of the academic writing field, with many focusing on the challenges graduate students encounter when writing their manuscripts. among notable challenges frequently encountered in the writing process are discursive (languagerelated) challenges due to lack of required academic writing proficiency, such as inability to organize and develop ideas, paucity of expression, and incoherence in writing; and procedural difficulties, such as rhetorical patterning and genres, reporting the literature, use of citations; and lack of methodological thoroughness (al fadda; 2012; kent et al., 2017; phothongsunan, 2016). nondiscursive challenges either come from external factors such as time constraints, workload pressure, limited resources, lack of research networking and mentoring/guidance (gonzales et al., 2014; jiang et al., 2017; quimbo & sulabo, 2014) or internal factors of the students themselves, such as lack of motivation and self-efficacy for research; no self-perceived professional identity, low confidence in their ability, fear of rejection and competition, (hyland, 2016; mongkolhutti, 2020; quimbo & sulabo, 2014) were also reported to limit students' capacities to publish scholarly papers. notwithstanding the challenges of scholarly publication, master's students are often left on their own to figure out the standards of scholarly writing according to the styles and peculiarities of their specific academic field, known as a community of discourse. furthermore, lecturers and supervisors frequently presume that their students can adequately draft their manuscripts (odena & burgess, 2017). this assumption has made scholarly publication one of the most challenging aspects of graduate school for many students. against this backdrop, some efforts have been made to address these challenges regarding the excessive pressure that graduate students encounter in producing research outputs. one is the establishment of writing groups, which departments or individual supervisors commonly initiate. the establishment of writing groups to demystify the publication process is grounded on lave and wenger's (1991) concepts of 'legitimate peripheral participation' in 'communities of practice' (cop), which is defined as a group of people who http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 224-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license regularly share knowledge about a set of problems, concerns, or shared goals and help each other through interactions. in the case of a writing group, the members share similar writing situations, a desire for productive writing, and the urge to publish their work. a cop comprises people with diverse backgrounds and abilities so that they can learn from one another; those with more experience serve as teachers or mentors to those with less experience. thus, members contribute to developing an individual's and the group's learning (kumar & aitchison, 2018). increasing research has been given to investigating the function of such cop in supporting graduate students' publication endeavors and facilitating their maturation into scholarly writers. this body of literature has shed much light on a wide range of benefits of writing groups, such as emphasizing the relationship between writing and thinking/knowledge development (aitchison & guerin, 2014; badenhorst & guerin, 2016), promoting graduate students' professional development and scholarly identity (badenhorst & guerin, 2016; ciampa & wolfe, 2023; kent et al., 2017); fostering collegial support between graduate students (ciampa & wolfe, 2023; odena & burgess, 2017). however, despite the rich literature on this very topic, previous studies on graduate writing groups commonly involved doctoral students, whereas very little has been written about master's students' experiences of participating in community writing practice to unravel the publication quest to refereed english journals. since these two higher education levels have different foci, a master's degree is designed to improve career-oriented knowledge and abilities. in contrast, a doctorate is mainly research-based and aims to develop critical research, analytical, and writing skills to cover industry knowledge gaps. it will be intriguing to investigate how master's students navigate publication endeavors without the same level of preparation as doctoral students have. in response to this empirical gap, the study aims to investigate how 15 indonesian master's students of english education participated in a writing group to demystify the publication process as a graduation requirement, focusing on tracking their selfperceived transformation regarding their academic writing skills. the findings are hoped to expand our understanding of master's students' scholarly publishing practices and have implications for graduate publication in general. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 225-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license method research design this study employed a qualitative, descriptive case study approach to capture the comprehensive description needed to answer the two research questions (yin, 2014). because the goal of this study is to explore and encapsulate the scholarly writing experience of the indonesian master's students of english education in participating in a cop, a descriptive case study is deemed appropriate as it serves to "describe a phenomenon (the "case") in its real-world context" (yin, 2014, p. 238). in this inquiry, the realworld situations are the master's students' experiences in joining the writing group to seek support in navigating the publication process as part of the education requirements. utilizing a descriptive case study also allowed the detailed examination and elaboration of students' experiences and journeys in writing for scholarly publication through the writing group. research site and participants this study was conducted at a college of education at a state university in medan, indonesia. this institution offers 15 programs of study, four of which are graduate level, three master's degrees, and one doctoral program. english education, one of the master's programs, was chosen as the setting for this study. like all other indonesian institutions of higher learning, this college of education imposes the publication requirement for degree conferment. master's degree candidates must publish their papers at least in sinta 3-accredited journals, whereas doctorate candidates in sinta 2accredited journals to defend their thesis or dissertation. in addition, the master's program in english education was chosen purposefully chosen as the research site since only students in this program are required to publish in english as opposed to indonesian. these specific characteristics of the language of publication will permit us, as researchers, to explore the writing experience of indonesian master's students in the context of english as an additional language (eal). fifteen students (11 females and four males) across academic years were recruited as the participants who voluntarily joined the writing group. a purposeful sampling approach was adopted to obtain the most representative participants to answer the research questions. this technique is thought appropriate for discovering, comprehending, and gaining rich and diverse views from potential individuals who may offer the most significant perspective for understanding the investigated issue http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 226-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (merriam, 2009). thus, to comprehend how indonesian master's students of english education navigate publication pressure as part of their education requirement, it is essential to capture the voices of individuals who had or had not published in nationally accredited journals. the proportion of male and female students was considered when recruiting the participants to ensure that the actual demography was accurately represented. the writing group as the head of the master's program of english education where this study was conducted, the first author was concerned about the overall quality of the students, particularly concerning their writing, which led her to initiate the writing group. the primary objective of this group was to improve its members' academic writing skills. the core group comprised two instructors (the first and the second authors) and 15 master's students who voluntarily joined the cop. the group met every two weeks (typically on weekends) over three months. unfortunately, due to the varying schedules of the master's students in the group, members could not always attend every meeting. the three essential components of this writing group were group sessions, personal writing, and a seminar. during the group session, members explored a range of scientific writingrelated themes, including exploring reliable sources, the publication process, and research paper rhetoric patterns. they were also encouraged to share their writing progress with others in order to gain feedback. individual writing time was used to incorporate the knowledge obtained in group sessions. in addition, members rewrote and edited previous manuscripts that received feedback during individual writing. an expert in scholarly writing for publication was invited to the seminar to enhance the members' writing motivation and comprehension of best practices. data collection and analysis in order to achieve data source triangulation, this study employed three distinct data gathering methods: questionnaire, in-depth interview, and artifact analysis. the questionnaire and individual interviews with writing group participants constituted this study's primary data collection sources. the questionnaire with closedand open-ended questions was administered twice (once at the first meeting of the writing group and again after the sixth meeting) to examine the participants' perspectives on scholarly publication. after the last meeting of http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 227-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the writing group, interviews were conducted to glean further information and clarify what the members had stated on the questionnaire. each interview lasted between forty minutes and an hour. the interviews were audio recorded with the participant's consent. in addition, the data collection process entails an evaluation of the student drafts created during writing group activities. this process validated or disputed the underlying data about the transformation students perceived in their writing abilities. the collected data were analyzed using content analysis, through which the participants' responses to openended questions in the questionnaire and interview questions were contextually examined by reading each response in its entirety and highlighting words, phrases, or concepts that were deemed relevant to the phenomenon under study for subsequent coding. the data were coded in three stages using the structural coding method: precoding, first coding, and final coding (saldana, 2016). once they emerged, the themes were compared to the literature review, and their similarities and differences were described. to address the issue of data analysis, triangulation, peer debriefing, and member check was employed by comparing the results of data analysis conducted individually by the first two researchers and requesting that the participants carefully review the interview transcripts and data analysis to validate or dispute the data interpretations. findings and discussion findings to determine the participants' perceptions of their knowledge regarding scholarly publication before and after participating in the scholarly writing group, we handed out preand post-questionnaires to the students in the initial and final meetings. the prequestionnaire was designed to ascertain participants' identity and initial knowledge regarding scholarly publications. in the meantime, the postquestionnaire was disseminated to determine the student's final knowledge regarding scholarly publication after the writing training program had been completed. this procedure was carried out to ensure that the participants could provide the most comprehensive understanding of the investigated phenomenon. the students' demographic characteristics and perspectives on scholarly publication are described separately below. in the first part of the prequestionnaire, the demographic picture of the participants in terms of age, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 228-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license gender, profession, time in master's degree, and experience in scholarly publication was collected. according to table 1, 11 of the 15 selected participants are female, and four are male. the participants' ages ranged from 24 to 41 years old, with the majority of participants being between the ages of 25 and 26. regarding occupation, most students are teachers, followed by four full-time students and two principals at the bottom. in addition, the master's degree experience of students was divided into two categories: those with one year of experience (equal to two semesters of master's degree) and those with two years of experience (equal to four semesters in master's degree). nine students comprised most participants, dominated by the first type of time in master's degree programs. this condition corresponds to the number of students with experience in scholarly publication since six students in the fourth semester believed themselves to have "occasional" experience in academic publication. in the meantime, eight students in the second semester claimed to have no or little experience with a scholarly publication. table 1. participants' demographic data c g a p t e p1 f 32 headmaster 1 r p2 f 33 headmaster 1 r p3 f 26 teacher 1 n p4 f 29 teacher 2 s p5 f 27 teacher 2 s p6 f 25 teacher 2 s p7 f 24 student 2 s p8 f 25 student 1 r p9 f 27 teacher 1 r p10 m 25 student 1 n p11 m 24 student 1 n p12 m 29 teacher 1 n p13 f 25 teacher 1 s p14 f 41 teacher 2 s p15 m 32 teacher 2 r note: c = participants’ code g = gender ( f = female, m = male) a = age p = profession t = time in master's degree (in a year) e = experience in scholarly publication (r = rarely, n = never, s = sometimes) after deriving the students' demographic information, the second section of the pre-questionnaire was administered to determine the student's initial knowledge of scholarly publications regarding article submission, brainstorming, and writing procedure. the questionnaire answers were then used as a reference to develop a contextual training model for the participants. the data from the prequestionnaire reveals that before joining this writing-based community of practice, most students claimed http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 229-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license neither know nor not know (mean score = 3) regarding their knowledge of the article submission, brainstorming, and writing procedures for scientific publications. it is backed by statements like, "i have no idea about scholarly publication. i guess the scholarly article is similar to my undergraduate thesis published in the repository, " demonstrating students' need for more understanding and clarity over the word scholarly publication. this is also why most students consider writing a scholarly article necessary only for graduation requirements, as stated in open-ended questions such as "scholarly article is significant for the graduation requirements for master's degree." however, although the students' stance is in the middle of agree and disagree, the students believe they have a greater understanding of article submission and literature review writing. in the sections of the article submission, the students acknowledged that they knew how to locate a reputable publication, with an average score of 3.33. meanwhile, in the literature review, students confidently assert that they know how to cite reference materials with the maximum possible score, 4. this perspective is consistent with the responses to openended questions such as "...finding journals and citing references in the literature review are the simplest aspects of the writing process for me. i can google my desired publications or articles with a single click, and i have learned how to cite references during my undergraduate studies". however, students' knowledge of brainstorming, writing abstracts, introductions, methodology, findings, discussion, and references needed more attention, as the average score of each item was 3. this was also supported by the participants' statements that they had trouble coming up with a writing idea, had less knowledge of what should be written in the introduction and how to find the research gaps, did not know how to choose the best research design and participant recruitment techniques, could not explain clearly the data analysis, did not know how to display findings and create the discussion, and had blurred knowledge on what to write for the conclusion and references. from the preceding statement, the areas in which the writing group members found the most difficulty prior to the program were brainstorming, abstract, introduction, methodology, findings, discussion, conclusion, and references. following the master's students' participation in a writing-based community of practice, the postquestionnaire was administered to http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 230-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license determine the participants' final knowledge of scholarly publications. the data analysis reveals that after joining the writing group, the students experienced an increased comprehension of all parts of scholarly publications, starting from article submission to references. students clearly understand brainstorming, writing abstracts, introductions, methods, findings, discussion, and references. the initial confusion with the average score of 3 increased to 5 after the writing-based community practice was completed. it is further bolstered by the student's responses to the open-ended questions, such as "now i have a thorough understanding of what a scholarly publication is and the systematic steps for writing a scientific paper." additionally, the student's comprehension of the article submission and literature review increases proportionally from 3.3 and 3.5 to 5. the increased comprehension is also followed by the students' awareness of the importance of scholarly publication. previously, students merely viewed scholarly publication as the requirement for earning a master's degree; however, they now believe that publishing their academic work is equally essential for advancing their careers as teachers and principals and enhancing their professionalism in the workplace. figure 1 compares students' knowledge of scholarly publications before and after joining the scholarly writing group. it can be seen from the graph that participants' knowledge considerably increases from 3 to 5 of the average score. this improvement is observed across the board, from article submission to reference writing, indicating that after participating in the cop, students' understanding significantly increases by almost a hundred percent. figure 1. comparison of students' knowledge of scholarly publication pre and post-training in line with the data from a questionnaire, the analysis of students' manuscripts reveals similar results demonstrating that students' writing http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 231-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license has improved in several facets of scientific publication. as seen in figure 2, a manuscript written by participant 7 before she joined the writing group, the first paragraph of her introduction did not include any reference to support her argument. furthermore, she could have explained why researching the topic is vital. figure 2. participant 7's manuscript was written before joining the writing group the same manuscript seen in figure 3 was significantly improved after the revision made by participant 7 during her participation in the writing group. as shown in the picture, participant 7 adds references to support her argument (highlighted in green) and explains why the issue of academic writing is important to explore by providing instances from other contexts (highlighted in blue) before focusing on the context of her research (highlighted in red). this considerably better draft demonstrates the students' increased grasp of scientific writing, notably the rhetorical structure of an appropriate introduction to a research study. figure 3. participant 7's manuscript was revised after joining the writing group this finding regarding participants' improved knowledge of scholarly publications also emerged from the interview data. the participants admitted to gaining the necessary skills to navigate reliable sources and find related literature for their ongoing manuscripts, as seen in the following excerpt: i learn the practical way to easily search for literature from e-books and nationallyand internationally-indexed journals from my peers in this group (excerpt 1, interview, participant 3) participant 3 vividly admits that her ability to locate and access literature relevant to her manuscript easily is one result of participating in the writing group. she also indicates that her navigating knowledge comes from collaborating with other group http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 232-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license members. navigating relevant literature has also been something that she had trouble with in the past. after joining this group, participant 3's perception of discovering literary reviews shifted from "tough" to "easy". writing a manuscript based on the discourse community (dc) rhetorical framework is another aspect of the publication process that the participants improved after their involvement in the cop, as seen in the following excerpt: ….in writing an introduction, i once used a science paper as a text mentor for my article, so i assume every article contains the same part. unexpectedly, i've recently learned that different academic disciplines have distinct article-writing responsibilities, such as writing an introduction. (excerpt 2, interview, participant 14) participant 14, as cited in excerpt 2, was still determining whether each publication on a particular topic had its own rule to follow. however, after engaging in this community of practice, she is aware that each section of a scholarly piece, such as the introduction for one discourse community, is distinct from that of other discourse communities. discussion the results of this study demonstrate anticipated benefits associated with participation in a community of practice, including heightened proficiency and confidence in academic writing, as well as enhanced comprehension of the publication process. upon completion of the community of practice (cop) program, the master's students have acquired an enhanced understanding of the art of brainstorming, the ability to expound upon ideas and transform them into well-crafted paragraphs, and the skill to amalgamate these paragraphs into a cohesive and polished composition. the student's written work evinces their ability to effectively communicate their ideas, identify gaps in existing research, and elucidate the purpose of their study, particularly in the introductory section. over time, students' writing proficiency tends to improve as they acquire a greater understanding of the requisite techniques and content necessary for producing scholarly articles. the results suggest that the student's adeptness in academic writing is enhanced by their involvement in the cop. this lends credence to wenger's (2010) claim that cops serve as a means to foster professional growth. by participating in the writing group, the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 233-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license master's students in this study acquired fundamental principles of scholarly article writing and, as a result, cultivated a standard metalanguage. the learning through the writing group facilitated the students' acquisition of advanced academic writing skills, enabling them to delve into intricate writing concepts (ciampa & wolfe, 2023; kumar & aitchison, 2018). consequently, involvement in the writing group efficiently alters master's students' perceptions of their knowledge towards scholarly publication. the student's understanding of scholarly publications evolved from perplexity to perfect comprehension after joining the community of practice. they selfassessed confidently that they clearly understood how to write an article, as demonstrated by the questionnaire responses and document review results. the findings of this investigation are consistent with earlier research (ciampa & wolfe, 2023; kumar & aitchison, 2018; maher et al., 2008) that posited the advantages of participating in a writing group. specifically, the current study elucidates the function of a community of practice in fostering increased confidence in writing knowledge and skills among its members upon completion of the program. furthermore, weaver et al. (2013) observed similar outcomes in their investigation of the students' cognitive proficiency preand postparticipation in a writing training program. it demonstrates that the students possessed a more profound understanding of scholarly writing. in contrast to ciampa and wolfe's (2023) study that put enormous emphasis on enhancing students' comprehension of the substance of academic writing, the present study endeavors to assist students in exploring information about article content, idea generation, and submission to reputable journals. this study also evinces the students' transition from a neutral to a comprehensive comprehension of the publication process concerning article submission. the results indicate an increase in the survey responses about the self-assessment of the subjects' comprehension of various phases of the publication process. furthermore, the student participants involved in this study purported to possess rudimentary knowledge, particularly regarding locating a reputable scholarly journal. the observed phenomenon of shifting suggests that the students have acquired a heightened level of confidence regarding navigating the intricacies of the publication process after participating in the community of practice (cop). as mentioned above, the outcome can be attributed, in part, to the deconstruction of the process into http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 234-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license distinct components. specifically, the master's students identified and analyzed pertinent journals, procured reputable resources to serve as potential references for their chosen topics and incorporated selected references into their drafts to cultivate a brief literature review. weaver et al. (2013) and sletto et al. (2020) have reported analogous results, demonstrating enhanced confidence and comprehension of publication preparation procedures among their study participants. it has been observed that the enrollment of students in a writing group leads to a significant augmentation in their publication proficiency, particularly in identifying a reputable journal and executing a comprehensive literature review. these results substantiate the significance of a community of practice (cop), more specifically, a writing group, as a means of facilitating its members' understanding of the publication process (fithriani & salmiah, 2022; fithriani et al., 2023; sletto et al., 2020). in conclusion, it can be inferred that a heightened awareness of the appropriate procedures and content required for academic papers can lead to a sustained improvement in a student's writing proficiency. the impact of self-efficacy on writing achievement is noteworthy, as noted by pajares (2003) and prat-sala and redford (2012). it has been observed that students with higher levels of selfefficacy tend to exhibit better writing achievement and produce work of higher quality. conclusions and suggestion this study aimed to explore the experience of indonesian master's students of english education in demystifying the publication process as a graduation requirement through their participation in a writing group and any perceived change in their understanding of various aspects of scholarly publication. we argued that by outlining their narratives regarding their maturation into published scholars, we are compelled to respond to the question of what should be done to assist graduate students in coping with the increasing strain of the publication requirement for degree conferment. through their participation in the writing group, master's students gained knowledge of the fundamentals of producing a scholarly paper and had numerous opportunities to receive feedback from other members. as a result, the master's students' perception of the nature of scholarly publication has been transformed from a graduation requirement' to 'an integral http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 235-238 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31457 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license component of career advancement and professional development.' the master's students also confirmed that the dialogic presentation and discussions in the writing group helped them better comprehend the journal article's structure and cleared up their confusion over the processes of preparing for publication. this study presents the success of a cop-based writing group in unraveling the unconscious journey to the publication from the perspective of master's students of english education. it has been underlined that writing groups are a practical approach and platform for improving students' academic writing skills. all group members can gain social and emotional benefits from learning together through providing and receiving feedback in the community of practice. consequently, this study recommends that graduate programs establish such communities of practice for scholarly writing to be viewed as a routine, thereby addressing the growing need for graduate students to publish during their study time. references al fadda, h. 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(2014). case study research: design and methods (5th ed.). sage. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-02-2019-0040 https://doi.org/10.1108/jarhe-02-2019-0040 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2020.1748331 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2020.1748331 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2013.805692 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2013.805692 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_11 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_11 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 23-36 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee potencies of exercising agency amongst pre-service english teachers in micro teaching class santi farmasari*, baharuddin, dewi satria e., andra ade r., aulia dwi a. w. university of mataram, indonesia (santifarmasari@unram.ac.id) received: 02nd february 2023; revised: 16h may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract the role of teachers as agents of learning has been echoed for decades. as a driving force in an educational institute, teachers with high agency can be analogous to critical enzymes in the body of education. however, whether or not a sense of agency has been introduced, promoted, or facilitated amongst students studying to become teachers still receives little attention. this study seeks for evidence of potencies and typology of agency amongst final year pre-service english teachers (psets). 199 students were facilitated to explore english learning problems in high schools and constructed problem-based lesson plans from which their agency was identified. 24 psets with a high degree of agency were involved in a focus group discussion. the study reveals potencies of exercising agency which were greatly informed by the psets’ past and present learning experiences. the agentive actions were related to the implementation of technology, better engagement, and project-based learning. by doing so, the psets have shown their future professional identity which is important for pre-service teacher educators and institutions. this study has important implications for pre-service teacher educators to instill and further the development of agency during their teacher education program taking into account their students’ ecological capitals and capabilities. key words: assisted agency; english learning problems; agency potencies; agency typology abstrak peran guru sebagai agen pembelajaran telah digaungkan sejak lama. sebagai penggerak di institusi pendidikan, guru dengan tingkat agensi yang tinggi dapat dianalogikan sebagai sebuah enzim krusial di dunia pendidikan. namun, masih sangat sedikit penelitian yang mengkaji bagaimana agensi ini dapat diperkenalkan, didorong atau difasilitasi untuk berkembang pada calon guru bahasa inggris. penelitian ini dilaksanakan untuk mengetahui potensi-potensi dan jenis-jenis agensi pada mahasiswa calon guru tingkat akhir. 199 mahasiswa calon guru terlibat di penelitian ini. mereka difasilitasi untuk dapat mengeksplorasi permasalahan-permasalahan pembelajaran bahasa inggris sebagai dasar penyusunan rencana proses pembelajaran (rpp). 24 dari 199 dengan potensi agensi yang tinggi di rpp mereka kemudian diundang pada diskusi kelompok terfokus untuk mengklarifikasi rencana-rencana agentif mereka dalam memecahkan permasalahan pembelajaran. penelitian ini menemukan bahwa terdapat beberapa potensi agensi pada mahasiswa calon guru bahasa inggris yang berorientasi pada pemanfaatan teknologi, keterlibatan aktif dalam pembelajaran dan pembelajaran berbasis proyek. hasil penelitian ini mempunyai implikasi penting terhadap model pembelajaran calon guru di lembaga pendidik tenaga kependidikan (lptk) untuk menanamkan dan mengembangkan agensi guru sedini mungkin dengan memberikan stimuli-stimuli yang sesuai dengan kondisi ekologi dan kapasitas mahasiswa calon guru. kata kunci: agensi terbimbing; permasalahan pembelajaran bahasa inggris; potensi agensi, jenis agensi how to cite: farmasari, s. baharuddin, elmiana, d. s., riyanto, a.a., wahab, a.d.a. (2023). potencies of exercising agency amongst pre-service english teachers in micro teaching class. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 23-36. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 24-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction learning involves a complex and dynamic process (smagorinsky et al., 2012) according to the social dynamics of the people involved in it. this complex and dynamic process requires the agentive actions of teachers who can adapt, accommodate, and respond to changes and learning problems that can arise at any time. agency amongst teachers is usually defined as the capacity of teachers to initiate a change or solution of problems that occur in the learning environment (priestley et al., 2013). although the term teacher agency has been widely debated since the end of the 18th century due to its very diverse definitions (chisholm et al., 2019) and implications for the theory and concept of teacher agency (farmasari, 2020), as well as implications for research on teacher agency (farmasari, 2021), experts use the term autonomy (tao & gao, 2017), initiative (vaughn & faircloth, 2011), capacity (verberg et al., 2016), and efficacy (biesta et al., 2015) as keywords to describe teacher agency. in this vein, studies on teacher agency also focus on how teachers use their autonomy, capacity, initiative, and efficacy when dealing with learning problems in their educational ecological environment and emphasize the role of a teacher as an agent in their social environment (priestley et al., 2016). teacher agencies in learning have the potential to improve the ability to consistently seek or strive for the things necessary to improve the professionalism and quality of learning so that it has a great impact on success in facilitating the learning of its learners (simpson et al. 2018). this is because teachers continue to reflect and improve themselves so that their learning goals are achieved (ryder, 2018). thus, agencies are used by teachers to facilitate change as well as demand to be agents of change in school improvement, curriculum development, and teaching and learning in the classroom. teachers as agents not only convey information to students, but also have the potential to become facilitators who are in charge of providing ease of learning (facilitate of learning) to all students, so that they can learn in a pleasant, joyful, energetic, not anxious atmosphere, and dare to express opinions openly so that it becomes the basic capital for students to grow and develop into humans who are ready to adapt, facing various possibilities, and entering an era of globalization full of various challenges (hökkä at; al, 2017). the role of the teacher as a learning agent even now underlies one of the programs of the ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia (mecri) to improve the quality of learning in schools, namely the guru penggerak or driving teacher (kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 2022). as a driving force in an educational institute, teachers http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 25-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license with high agency are the driving force in the educational institution (hattie, 2012). the emphasis on increasing teacher agency is a response to the complexity of learning problems that must be anticipated and resolved by teachers as learning agents. this is one of the reasons why teachers are widely supported by studies on improving teacher professionalism and through many training programs and seminars (ashadi & rice, 2016; buchanan, 2015). however, the foci of studies and trainings are still mostly given to inservice teachers. little attention has been given to how agency can be instilled and grown before during teacher education program. in fact, the learning process carried out by teachers (in office) is influenced by the experience of the learning process during their teacher education program (braund & campbell, 2010). williams (2018) also highlighted that the approaches, methods, strategies and learning techniques used by teachers in the classroom were influenced by the approaches, methods, strategies and learning techniques used by their previous teachers or lecturers. this is in line with priestley et al's teacher agency model (2016) where the past learning experience of teachers is one of the important aspects that can shape their current and future agency. as the psets were learning to develop their skills at every stage of a teaching cycle (arshal, 2015), the opening, implementation and closing during which sense of agency can be identified (rubin & land, 2017) and the effectiveness of the teaching approaches leading to agency may be observed (pandey, 2019; msimangga, 2021). the potencies of agency exercises will later become important inputs in developing approaches, methods and learning materials so that students as prospective teachers are more adaptive, accommodative, and responsive (aar) to learning situations and problems (chisholm et al., 2019; williams, 2018). therefore, introducing and training teacher candidates to identify and exercise their agency is becoming imperative. as a starting point, we believe that identifying student teachers’ agencies can be used as a basis for further teacher development programs. this study aimed to identify the potencies and typology of teacher agency amongst pre-service english teachers (psets). this research was guided by two research questions: (1) what are the agency potencies amongst the psets in micro-teaching classes? and (2) what are the types of teacher agency (typology of agency) that the psets exercise?. the findings would contribute to relevant theories of teacher agency such as theories from http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 26-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license biesta et al. (2017); buchanan (2015); and priestley et al. (2016). this study would specifically provide novel insights about how agency can be facilitated amongsts pre-service teachers and suggest a research framework for studying it. the study would also suggest how pre-service teachers moderate their learning context, apply logical, critical, and innovative thinking in their microteaching processes and analyze them by referring to the principles of microteaching (kumar, 2016), learning english as a foreign language (freeman, 2016), and teacher agency theory (priestley et al., 2016). method research design this research is descriptive qualitative because verbal and descriptive data are used to reveal the meaning and social phenomena in a certain situation (satori & komariah, 2014; silverman, 2016). we propose a research methodology framework of researching the potencies of agency amongsts the psets in the following figure 1. research site and participants 199 (out of 221 students), 121 female and 78 male students enrolled in eight micro-teaching classes were involved after they consent their participation as the study participants. the study was conducted in a microteaching class in a state university located in southeastern part of indonesia. in the micro teaching class, the psets had to plan, implement, and evaluate their teaching practices. prior to teaching, each psets was facilitated to explore one english problem in a high school from which a lesson plan for the micro teaching was constructed respectively. figure 1: proposed research methodology http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 27-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data collection and analysis the data of this research were in the forms of (1) interview transcripts, (2) students’ lesson plans for microteaching, and (3) recording and notes from the focus group discussions. 24 students, three from each class, with prominent teacher agency potencies were invited to the focus-group discussion (fgd). with a limited number of discussion participants, focus group discussions are expected to produce confirmation, additional explanations, and answers to research questions and other matters that support the achievement of research objectives (yin, 2014). after the interview, two-session meetings were conducted to assist psets with strategic solutions to solve the problems they have identified. the research team brainstormed strategies, techniques, and methods to promote better learning processes and outcomes. the participants were also instructed to navigate literature related to the feasibility of the potential solutions. having decided on the strategies, techniques, or methods, the psets constructed a lesson plan for the microteaching practices. the interview transcripts and the solutions proposed in the lesson plans were tabulated to assist the thematic data analysis. in the micro-teaching classes, the problembased strategies were observed when implemented and notes were taken on the pre-prepared lesson plans. the data were then analyzed by adopting the six stages of thematic analysis from braun and clarke (2013) as shown in figure 2 and sample of data analysis is provided in table 1. figure 2: data analysis stages http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 28-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tabel 1. sample of thematic data analysis sample of excerpts themes sub-themes the teacher reported that his students have very limited vocabulary to start speaking or writing teaching strategy/methodology promoting better learning processes and outcomes i plan to use colourful vocabulary cards to show different parts of speech, also picture series where students can see series of events and combine them into one complete story pedagogic agency the teacher mentioned a lot of problems, but i think the main problem is students’ low motivation to learn english students’ wellbeing/motivation problem needs for more motivational learning processes/facilities as a teacher, we have to understand what our students like to do or how they like to learn. if they like to play games, i will use games professional, pegagogic agency the teacher said her students do not know the meaning of the texts in reading class; she has to translate the texts classroom management variative activity management if i were the teacher, i would ask them to work in group and help each other understand the text pedagogical related agency findings and discussion findings potencies of exercising teacher agency in english micro-teaching classes the micro-teaching carried out by the psets has gone through three stages, namely (1) the stage of exploring problems or cases of learning english in secondary schools, (2) the planning stage or preparation of a problem or case-based learning class in the lesson plans, and (3) the implementation of the lesson plans in the english microteaching classes. at the first stage, each respondent student carried out an exploration of problems or cases of english learning in secondary schools by interviewing one english teacher. in total, there were 199 english teachers who were interviewed. this exploration was carried out in the first week of micro-teaching lectures. semistructured interviews were conducted by students using the interview protocol prepared. the foci were to identify the learning problems and students’ strategic plans to solve the problems that they would propose in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 29-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their lesson plans. the following table reads the map of the learning problems explored, codes and themes derived from them. english learning problems themes subthemes (agency potentials ) (n) students’ wellbeing/mo tivation problem needs for more motivation al learning processes/ facilities using appropriat e teaching media 151 variyng communic ation activities 137 teaching strategy/meth odology needs for better learning processes and outcomes applying engaging teaching strategy 199 student’ low grammar & vocabulary knowledge linguistics insufficien cy applying engaging teaching strategy 199 english learning facilities/resou rces insufficien t facilities facilities for students’ selflearning 125 literacy problems literacy developm ent stages scaffoldin g activities 199 the problems or cases that have been explored by the psets are situated as triggering conditions or conditions that can stimulate their sense of agency. the english learning problems or cases are used to plan the lesson for the micro-teaching class. the table below presents the potencies of teacher agency amongst the student respondents that we identified from their lesson plans. the data show that teacher agency potencies are limited to the selection of learning methods and learning media or techniques. when confirmed on the focus group discussion, the selection of learning methods and media are greatly influenced by the psets’ perception and learning experience (buchanan, 2015). they admitted that they had better learning experience when the lessons were supported by media to arouse excitement and promote better understanding. as the representation of their learning experience, the instructional media chosen are oriented to arouse students’ interests, enthusiasm, and active participation. when i was a secondary high school student, i was not motivated to learning english because the method my teachers used was not interesting. i always feel bored and tired of learning. no media used, only textbooks…but when teachers used interesting media, i liked it and i learnt better (fgd, student 9). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 30-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 3: potencies of teacher agency english learning problems/case s themes / agency potentials students’ low motivation & enthusiasm in english learning using appropriate teaching media accommodatin g students’ learning activity preferences students’ low grammar & vocabulary knowledge applying engaging teaching strategy accessible learning materials limited english learning resources facilities for students’ self-learning accessible learning materials students’ incapability in developing ideas on writing tasks scaffolding activities for literacy developmen t applying writing stages students’ low participation in group work classroom managemen t varying students’ grouping types of teacher agency (typology of agency) the study reveals that there are several agentive plans that the participants proposed to overcome the english teaching and learning problems they have explored. the plans show that there are potencies of exercising agencies amongst pre-service teachers in the realm of pedagogy, by delivering learning materials in a way that is more attractive, engaging and accessible to students. francois (2014) theorized that pedagogic agency is influenced by the perception of a teacher that he has a role and responsibility to influence and change the learning process for the better outcomes. table 4: typology of agency themes/agency potentials types of agencies using appropriate teaching media accommodating students’ learning activity preferences pedagogic applying engaging teaching strategy accessible learning materials pedagogic facilities for students’ selflearning accessible learning materials pedagogic scaffolding activities for literacy development applying writing stages pedagogic classroom management varying students’ grouping pedagogic discussion this study sought to identify the potencies of agency amongst preservice english teachers (psets) and theories the typology of agency exercised. through the stimulation and assistance provided, the findings of this study revealed the psets capability in reflecting their past and present english learning experience as part of ecological experience (tao & gao, 2017). the past and present learning experiences greatly inform agentive actions as the psets placed themselves as students who had similar problems when learning english. the study in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 31-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license particular shed lights biesta et al’s. (2015) and priestley et al’s. (2016) theories on teacher agency, that agency is not only about teacher’s individual capacity, but the exercises of teacher agency are greatly stimulated by the existence of problematic or given conditions and situations that require responses in the form of problemsolving thoughts and actions. in the same vein, wu (2023) theories hat agency had complex relationships between professional identity transformation within teachers’ professional trajectory. transformation from being unagentive to agentive requires enabling stimulation that can assist teachers to dig agency potentials within individuals. the english learning problems explored by the psets prior to the lesson plan construction were used as triggering condition to activate their sense of agency oriented to solve the problems. as current students, during agency activation, the psets could reflect on their past and present learning experience oriented toward the future agentive plans. the study unfolds that when facilitated, the psets had been able to mediate their past and present learning experience and reflect on their expectations for better learning experiences. their exercises of agency that also endorsed the pedagogical assistance provided was agency enabling. in addition, this present study indicates that during the teacher education program, the psets have represented their future identity as agentive english teachers who are reflective and responsive to students’ learning problems and pedagogical needs. conclusions and suggestion the study confirms that the solutions taken to solve english learning problems were enabled by the assistance received and were dominantly informed by the psets learning experiences. the agency potentials were exercised to promote better learning experiences and outcomes by accommodating students’ wellbeing, varying learning strategies, methodology, media, and resources. by so doing, the psets exercised pedagogic agency as they view their power and responsibility to affect better outcomes (charteris & smardon, 2019; manyukhina & wyse, 2019; pei & yang, 2019). the study also profounds that through approriate stimulation and assistance, teacher agency is highly potential to be trained during teacher education program. the findings have implications on how pre-service teachers can be better assisted to penetrate their sense of agency beneficial for their future professional http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 32-36 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.30873 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching and for professional identity determination. acknowledgments we hereby acknowledge the 199 psets for their time, energy, and thoughts during the study. we also acknowledge the financial support from the board of research and community services of our home university. references allen, q. 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(2023). a longitudinal study of efl teacher agency and sustainable identity development: a positioning theory perspective. sustainability 15(1) 48. doi.org/10.3390/su15010048 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2016.1231060 https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2016.1231060 https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480x.2018.1453817 https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480x.2018.1453817 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 1-15 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the influence of prior knowledge on students’ listening and reading comprehension abdullah hasan1 , rizky gushendra2 , ferry yonantha3 received: 8th march 2017; revised: 15th may 2017; accepted: 22th june 2017 abstract the research aims to investigate the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. this study is a correlational research that involved 75 respondents as a sample from 150 students of the the tenth year of science classes as the total population. the respondents were selected by using a simple random sampling technique. 20 items of multiple choice of listening test and 20 items of multiple choice of reading test and 15 items of the prior knowledge questionnaire were used to collect the data. afterwards, the data were further analyzed by using pearson product moment correlation for the first and the second hypotheses and manova (multivariate analysis of variance) for the third hypothesis by using spss 25. the research findings revealed that the mean score of students‟ prior knowledge is 73.41 and is categorized as “good”, their listening comprehension is 68.13 and is categorized as “good”, and their reading comprehension is 70.67 and it is also categorized as “good”. it can be seen that the value of sig. (2-tailed) is 0.000<0.05. lastly, for the third hypothesis, the value of significance is 0.000<0.05. it means ha is accepted. then, it is generated that there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on both students‟ listening comprehension and reading comprehension. key words: influence; prior knowledge; listening comprehension; reading abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh pengetahuan yang ada pada siswa terhadap pemahaman listening dan speaking siswa kelas x man 1 pekanbaru. kajian ini merupakan penelitian korelasi yang terdiri dari 75 responden sebagai sampel dari populasi 150 orang siswa kelas x jurusan ipa dengan menggunakan tehnik sampel acak. tes listening dan reading menggunakan pilihan ganda yang masing-masingnya terdiri dari 20 soal. kuesioner digunakan untuk mengumpulkan data. kuesioner ini terdiri dari 15 pernyataan. selanjutnya data dianalisa dengan menggunakan korelasi pearson product moment untuk hipotesis yang pertama dan kedua, sedangkan untuk menganalisa hipotesis yang ketiga menggunakan manova (multivariate analysis of variance) spss versi 25. hasil penelitian mengungkapkan nilai rata-rata pengetahuan yang sudah ada adalah 73.41 dan dikategorikan “baik”. nilai rata-rata listening comprehension 68.13 dan dikategorikan “baik” serta nilai rata-rata reading comprehension 70.67 dan juga dikategorikan “baik” dapat diketahui bahwa nilai signifikan (2;tailed) adalah 0.000<0.05. akhirnya, untuk hipotesa yang ketiga nilai signifikannya 0.000<0.05. hasil ini menunjukkan bahwa ha diterima. kemudian, disimpulkan bahwa terdapat pengaruh yang signifikan prior knowledge siswa terhadap listening dan reading comprehension. kata kunci: pengaruh; pengetahuan yang sudah ada; pemahaman listening dan reading how to cite: hasan, a. gushendra, r. yonantha, f. (2017). the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 1-15. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744. mailto:abd_hasanuin@yahoo.com mailto:ricky82pku@gmail.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 2-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in teaching english as a foreign language (tefl), the teachers or the candidates of teachers should consider the four skills in english (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) as the achievement to be reached. the achievement in learning english is classified into two major skills: the receptive and the productive skills. being integrated between the receptive and the productive skills is highly not rebutted. however, understanding and comprehending each major skill deeply is truly needed. before going too much on discussing about the influence of prior knowledge toward productive skills that seems more interesting or outstanding in communication term, focusing and discussing more deeply on the receptive skills that are the basic skills before gaining the productive skills is much more needed. richards and schmidt (2010) determined the receptive skills consist of listening and reading as the passive skills. it means passive skills because the learners get input or information to process through listening and reading to get an understanding. these skills are really important where the learners get input first and later use the input to produce the output. normally, all language learners understand language receptively better than they can use productively (paton & wilkins, 2009). besides, the receptive skills are related to decoding skills (duquette, 1995). the learners have to receive the messages in the spoken or written form, then transfer them into the brain to be processed, understand and finally comprehend the message. thus, teaching receptive skills is really important because the learners gain the inputs containing information, messages or ideas and then they process those inputs into the brain to get understanding. afterwards, before the learners can use the inputs to produce the outputs, it is better for the learners to obtain the comprehension. it is supported by haastrup (1991) stating that comprehension precedes production. understanding the messages is the first requirement before giving any responses to them. listening comprehension is psychomotor process of receiving sound waves through the ears and transmitting nerve impulses to the brain. (brown, 2000). it means that listening needs complex ability of analysis not only to listen to what the speaker says, but also to know the meaning of that utterance. listening comprehension requires the students to listen selectively to what the speaker says, because the information is put in it. in the context of the task, the students must not know all what was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 3-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license said, but they must be able to finish all tasks successfully. as what brown (1994) said, “it does not matter whether or not the students have understood all the details of what was said. all the matter is that the students have been able to construct enough of a reasonable interpretation to make a decent effort at completing the task successfully (p. 148)”. they can construct the meaning if they can get the main information when they listen and it is much better if they can also get the supporting details of that main idea. sadighi and zare (2006) stated in their survey that learners may face some common problems in listening. they are as follows: (1)lack of phonological awareness; (2)lack of vocabulary; (3) lack of speed; (4) lack of motivation; (5) lack of understanding;; (6) lack of associating the prior knowledge with listening materials then, reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning by coordinating a number of complex processes that include word reading, word and world knowledge, and fluency (harris & graham, 2007). according to anderson (cited in nunan, 2003), the aim of reading is comprehension. the readers should master the comprehension skill. it requires prior knowledge to have the comprehension skill. the more we have good prior knowledge, the easier we comprehend the reading texts. dorn and sofflos (2005) stated that comprehension is a complex process regulated by cognitive, emotional, perceptual, and social experiences. furthermore, tankersley (2003) also claimed that comprehension is the central of reading. it is an important one in reading. without comprehension, the readers are not able to find out the meaning of the text. nunan (2003) stated common problems faced by learners in reading as follows: (1) poor phonemic awareness: if the students aren‟t aware of the sound structure of language and can‟t recognize and manipulate sounds within words, they need direct phonemic awareness training; (2) choppy sounding out / unable to blend smoothly: if the students „chop‟ or segment sounds apart as they sound out, they need instruction so they learn how to smoothly blend sounds together; (3) improper directional tracking: if the students frequently process letters out of order, it indicates they have not developed necessary left to right tracking. tracking errors are commonly associated with „whole word‟ errors. sometimes the students attempt to sound out, but says sounds out of order; (4) gaps in direct knowledge of the complete phonemic ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 4-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license code: the students need to automatically know the correct sound(s) for the letter(s). indicators a student is lacking the necessary knowledge of the code include not knowing the sounds in isolation, frequently missing complexities, problems in spelling (major gaps in print=sound relationship), indicators of indirect processing, inability to „sound out‟ words. slow processing can also be an indicator of lack of direct knowledge. if the students process sounds indirectly (such as thinking of another word with the sound) or has to „think‟ before they remember sounds, they need practice of the direct print sound knowledge until it is automatic. the knowledge needs to be direct, automatic and complete; (5) not paying attention to detail: the students need to carefully process all the letters in words. problems with attention to detail include missing sounds, adding sounds that are not present, missing endings and other details. accuracy is critical. help the students learn to process words carefully and pay attention to detail. stopping students when they miss a word and having them re-read it helps teach careful attention to detail. prior knowledge is one of the factors that supports learners‟ comprehension in listening and reading. schulman (1999) pointed out that the terms background knowledge and prior knowledge are generally used interchangeably. “learners construct meaning out of their prior understanding (p. 12)". any new learning must, in some fashion, connect with what learners already know, learners construct their sense of the world by applying their old understanding to new experiences and ideas”. prior knowledge is also called as relevant background knowledge, or just plain experience, when students make connections to what they are reading as well as listening, their comprehension increases. prior knowledge of the learners or also known as the mental schemata is one aspect of language processing which enhances the comprehension in learning a language. brown (2006) stated that prior knowledge is organized in schemata, generalized mental representations of our experience that are available to help us understand new experience. therefore, prior knowledge is seen to be important in this research to be investigated whether or not it has influence on students‟ listening and reading comprehension. the purpose of this research is to find out the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 5-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license year of man 1 pekanbaru. specifically, the study was done to fulfil the objectives that can be stated as follows: (1) to find out the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru; (2) to find out the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru; (3)to find out the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. based on the purpose above, three research questions are formulated: (1) is there any significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru?; (2) is there any significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru?; (3) is there any significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru? method this study is a correlational research which is one of the quantitative researches. this research is aimed at disclosing the influence of prior knowledge on listening and reading comprehension. there are three variables in this research; students‟ prior knowledge that is symbolized by “x” is as an independent variable and as dependent variables are the students‟ listening comprehension that is symbolized by “y1” and reading commprehension is symbolized by “y2”. gay and airasian (2000) stated that a correlational research attempts to determine whether, and to what degree, a relationship exists between two or more variables. the purpose of this research is to determine the influence among variables , in this case the influence of students‟ prior knowledge toward their listening and reading comprehension or how to use these relationships to rank prediction quantitatively. this research was conducted at state islamic senior high school (man) 1 pekanbaru which is located on bandeng street, marpoyan damai subdistrict pekanbaru. the duration of the research was three months, may up to july 2016. the sample of the research consisted of five classes comprised of 75 respondents. the sample of this study used a simple random sampling. gay and airasian (2000) stated that the simple random sampling is the process of selecting a sample in such a way that all individuals in the defined population have an equal and independent chance of being selected ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 6-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for the sample. the sample of this research is as follows table 1. the technique of data collection in order to get the data which were needed to support this study, the techniques of data collection are as follows : test to find out the correlation between students‟ prior knowledge on their listening and reading comprehension of the first year students at man 1 pekanbaru, the test was administered. it consisted of 20 questions of multiple choice to assess students‟ listening comprehension and reading comprehension. every multiple choice item consisted of four options (a, b, c, and d). then, the blueprints of listening and reading comprehension tests are as follows. table 1. the sample of the research no. classes total population sample (50%) 1 x natural science 1 30 15 2 x natural science 2 30 15 3 x natural science 3 30 15 4 x natural science 4 30 15 5 x natural science 5 30 15 total 150 75 table 2. blue print of listening comprehension test no indicators item number 1 identifying topic 5, 9, 12, 16 2 identifying communicative purpose 1, 7, 14, 17 3 distinguishing the supporting details like text organization 2, 8, 13, 18 4 identifying specific details containing characters 3, 10, 11, 19 5 making inference 4, 6, 15, 20 table 3. blue print of reading comprehension test no indicators item number 1 determining main idea. 1, 6, 11, 16 2 identifying supporting details. 5, 7, 12, 17 3 identifying the meaning of vocabulary 3, 10, 13, 18 4 making inferences. 4, 9, 14, 19 5 identifying reference. 2, 8, 15, 20 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 7-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. blue print of prior knowledge questionnaire no indicators item number 1 familiarity on content 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, 14. 2 familiarity on context 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15. questionnaire questionnaire was used to investigate the use of prior knowledge by the students in reading or listening comprehension. there were 15 items of statements. the respondents may choose 1 for “yes” or agree with the statements or 0 for “no” or disagree with the statements. findings and discussion findings hypothesis 1 the first analysis was to investigate the first hypothesis (ha1) of the study which is whether there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. in this study, ha was chosen for the first hypothesis based on the assumption and some related studies and theories in this study. h a1 was accepted if p > α (p = the significant score of students, α = the significant level), and level of significance of 0.05 was also used to compare. the data were correlated by using pearson product moment correlation (spss) in order to investigate whether there was any correlation or not. the first hypothesis can be proved by statistical analysis using pearson correlation. it is explained in table 5. then, the mean scores of students‟ prior knowledge and their listening comprehension were classified in order to determine the category of the students‟ prior knowledge and listening comprehension. the classification can be seen from the following table 6. table 5. mean and standard deviation of prior knowledge and listening comprehension variable mean standard deviation n prior knowledge 73.41 16.645 75 listeningcomprehension 68.13 12.487 75 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 8-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table. 6. the classification of students‟ score score categories 80-100 very good 66-79 good 56-65 sufficient 40-55 less 30-39 poor table. 7. the influence of prior knowledge on students listening comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru correlations prior knowledge listening comprehension prior knowledge pearson correlation 1 .899** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 75 75 listening comprehension pearson correlation .899** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 75 75 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). based on table 6, the mean prior knowledge is 73.41. it means the students‟ prior knowledge is categorized as “good”. meanwhile, the mean score of listening comprehension is 68.13. it means that the students‟ listening comprehension is categorized as “good”, too. thus, it can be stated that the level of both students‟ prior knowledge and their reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru is “good”. in order to determine the data analysis of the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension, pearson product moment is used and the results can be seen as in table 7. table 7 shows that there are 75 respondents for both variables – prior knowledge and listening comprehension. the significant value (2-tailed) is 0.000. the pearson correlation is 0.899. there are three ways in interpreting the result of the correlation: the first is by seeing the table of correlation coefficient interpretation (sugiono, 2011). from the above calculation, the value of pearson correlation is 0.899. according to sugiono (2011), rxy=0.899 means the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension is very high. then, the value of pearson correlation shows positive correlation. it means that the higher prior ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 9-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knowledge students have, the higher their listening comprehension will be. the second is by comparing the value of sig. (2-tailed) with the level of significance (0.05). from the table above, it is seen that the value of sig. (2tailed) is 0.000<0.05. it reveals that ha is accepted or there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension. the next way is by comparing the value of rxy with rtable. the value of rtable is 0.232 at 5% significant level and 0.302 at 1% sinificant level (df=n-2). it can be written “0.232<0.899>0.302” (ha is accepted, and ho is rejected). in other words, rxy is higher than rtable; then there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension. in conclusion, hypothesis alternative (ha1) is accepted. so, there is an influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening comprehension at the first year of man 1 pekanbaru. from the result, it is revealed that the students who have good prior knowledge are able to comprehend the listening materials better because prior knowledge provides good experiences to connect and comprehend the new information the listen. rubin (1990:78) stated, “attending and interpreting is accomplished more effectively when students know when and how to bring to bear their prior knowledge of the world and of foreign language in processing auditory information.” therefore, prior knowledge can really help students‟ listening comprehension improved. hypothesis 2 the second analysis is to investigate the second hypothesis (ha2) of the study which is whether there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. in this study, ha is chosen for the second hypothesis based on the assumption and some related studies and theories in this study. ha2 is accepted if p > α (p = the significant score of students, α = the significant level), and level of significance of 0.05 is also used to compare. the data are correlated by using pearson product moment correlation (spss) in order to investigate whether there is any correlation or not. the second hypothesis can be proved by statistical analysis using pearson correlation. it is explained in table 8. then, the mean scores of students‟ prior knowledge and their reading comprehension are classified in order to determine the category of the students‟ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 10-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license prior knowledge and reading comprehension. based on the score classification, the mean prior knowledge is 73.41. it means the students‟ prior knowledge is categorized into “good”. meanwhile, the mean reading comprehension is 70.67. it means that the students‟ reading comprehension is categorized into “good” too. thus, it can be stated that the level of both students‟ prior knowledge and their reading comprehension at the first year of man 1 pekanbaru is “good”. in order to determine the data analysis of the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension, pearson product moment is used and the results can be seen in table 8. table 9 shows that there are 75 respondents for both variables – prior knowledge and reading comprehension. the significance (2tailed) is 0.000. the pearson correlation is 0.899. there are three ways in interpreting the result of correlation. the first is by seeing the table of correlation coefficient interpretation (sugiono, 2011 & 2006). from the above calculation, the value of pearson correlation is 0.899. according to table 8. mean and standard deviation of prior knowledge and reading comprehension variable mean standard deviation n prior knowledge 73.41 16.645 75 reading comprehension 70.67 11.807 75 table 9. the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru correlations prior knowledge reading comprehension prior knowledge pearson correlation 1 .911** sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 75 75 reading comprehension pearson correlation .911** 1 sig. (2-tailed) .000 n 75 75 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 11-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sugiono, rxy=0.911 is between 0.800 – 1.00, that means the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension is very high. then, the value of pearson correlation shows positive correlation. it means that the higher prior knowledge students have, the higher their reading comprehension will be. the next is by comparing the value of sig. (2-tailed) with the level of significance(0.05). from the table above, it is seen that the value of sig. (2-tailed) is 0.000<0.05. it reveals that ha is accepted or there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension. the last is by comparing the value of rxy with rtable. the value of rtable is 0.232 at 5% significant level and 0.302 at 1% sinificant level (df=n-2). it can be written “0.232<0.899>0.302” (ha is accepted, and ho is rejected). in other words, rxy is higher than rtable, then there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension. in conclusion, hypothesis alternative (ha2) is accepted. so, there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. from the result, it is revealed that the students who have good prior knowledge are able to comprehend reading text better because the experiences they had before make them familiar with the content and context of the texts. brown (2006) stated that prior knowledge is organized in schemata, generalized mental representations of our experience that are available to help us understand new experience. it means students can activate their prior knowledge once the find a familiar materials that they have experienced before. therefore, prior knowledge can really help students‟ reading comprehension improve. hypothesis 3 the third analysis is to investigate the third hypothesis (h3) of the study which is whether there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. in this study, ha is chosen for the last hypothesis based on the assumption and some related studies and theories in this study. ha3 is accepted if p > α (p = the significant score of students, α = the significant level), and level of significance of 0.05 is also used to compare. the data are analyzed by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 12-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license using manova (multivariate analysis of variance) through spss 20 in order to investigate whether there is any influence or not. further explanation can be seen in table 10. then, to find out whether prior knowledge has significant influence on students‟ listening and reading comprehension can be investigated by using multivariate test/manova through spss 20. ha is accepted when the significant value (p)< level of significant 0.05. further explanation can be depicted below. follow table 12. table 10. descriptive statistics prior knowledge mean standard deviation n listening comprehension 27 40.00 . 1 33 40.00 . 1 47 47.86 4.880 7 53 56.67 5.774 3 60 58.50 7.091 10 67 68.33 2.887 3 73 67.14 6.112 14 80 74.67 4.419 15 87 76.50 7.091 10 93 80.00 3.536 5 100 85.00 3.162 6 total 68.13 12.487 75 reading comprehension 27 45.00 . 1 33 45.00 . 1 47 55.71 8.381 7 53 56.67 7.638 3 60 60.50 4.378 10 67 68.33 2.887 3 73 68.57 5.345 14 80 76.00 3.873 15 87 77.50 4.249 10 93 84.00 2.236 5 100 90.83 2.041 6 total 70.67 11.807 75 table 11. levene's test of equality of error variances f df1 df2 sig. listening comprehension 1.031 10 64 .429 reading comprehension 2.148 10 64 .053 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 13-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 12 the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension effect value f hypoth esis df error df sig. noncent. parameter obser ved powerd intercep t pillai's trace .993 4576.839b 2.000 63.000 .000 9153.677 1.000 wilks' lambda .007 4576.839b 2.000 63.000 .000 9153.677 1.000 hotelling's trace 145.296 4576.839b 2.000 63.000 .000 9153.677 1.000 roy's largest root 145.296 4576.839b 2.000 63.000 .000 9153.677 1.000 prior knowle dge pillai's trace 1.014 6.587 20.000 128.000 .000 131.742 1.000 wilks' lambda .088 14.898b 20.000 126.000 .000 297.963 1.000 hotelling's trace 9.159 28.392 20.000 124.000 .000 567.837 1.000 roy's largest root 9.030 57.791c 10.000 64.000 .000 577.911 1.000 a. design: intercept + prior knowledge b. exact statistic c. the statistic is an upper bound on f that yields a lower bound on the significance level. d. computed using alpha = .05 to determine whether the independent variable has significance on dependent variable(s) or not, the significant value (p) of 4 different multivariate tests (pillai‟s trace, wilks‟ lambda, hotteling‟s trace, and roy‟s largest root) is used to compare with level of significant 0.05. if significant value < 0.05, ha is accepted while ho and rejected. it means that there is a significant influence of independent variable on dependent variable(s). afterwards, from table 12 above, it is seen that the significant value of 4 different multivariate tests is 0.000 < 0.05. it reveals that ha is accepted or in other words, there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. discussion mastering listening and reading as receptive skills is very important as input to produce the output. listening is as an essential skill that should be completed with comprehension. chastain (1998) defined listening comprehension as the ability to understand speech of native speakers at normal speed in listening situation. not only listening, reading also plays an important role in learning. in reading, a reader is actively responsible ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 14-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license for making sense of text. it is a complex skill to construct the meaning of the text. pertaining to idea above, hudelson in henle & henle (2001, p. 154) stated, “an individual construct meaning through a transaction with written text that has been created by the reader‟s past experiences, language background and cultural framework, as well as the reader‟s purpose for reading”. how to gain comprehension in listening and reading? prior knowledge is one of the factors that supports learners‟ comprehension in listening and reading. according to schulman (1999), the terms background knowledge and prior knowledge are generally used interchangeably. “learners construct meaning out of their prior understanding. any new learning must, in some fashion, connect with what learners already know, learners construct their sense of the world by applying their old understanding to new experiences and ideas (p. 12)”. prior knowledge is also called as a relevant background knowledge, or just plain experience, when students make connections to what they are reading as well as listening, their comprehension increases. prior knowledge of the learners or also known as the mental schemata is one aspect of language processes which enhances the comprehension in learning a language. brown (2006) stated that prior knowledge is organized in schemata, generalized mental representations of our experience that are available to help us understand new experience. conclusion and suggestion considering the theories above, this research was carried out mainly to investigate the influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension. then, specifically, this research study was also done to prove and investigate three different hypotheses. referring to the research findings, it can be concluded that there is a significant influence of prior knowledge on students‟ listening and reading comprehension at the tenth year of man 1 pekanbaru. to conclude, it is suggested to the teachers and practitioners to revisit the concept of prior knowledge which really gives an influence toward students‟ listening and reading comprehension. the teachers also make efforts how to improve the students to be more active, creative and effective in teaching and learning process in order to achieve the teaching goal. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 15-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4744 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references brown, h. d. (2000). an interactive approach to language pedagogy. san fransisco: longman. brown, s. (2006). teaching listening. cambridge: cambridge university press. chastain, k. (1988). developing second language skills: theory and practice (3rd ed.) san diego: harcourt brace jovanovich. dorn, l. j., & sofflos, c. (2005). teaching for deep comprehension: a reading workshop approach. portland: stenhouse. http://library.nu/ (accessed october 01, 2011). duquette, g. (1995). second language practice: classroom strategies for developing communicative competence. london: cromwell press ltd. gay & airasian, p. (2000). educational research competencies for analysis and application (6th ed.). new jersey: pearson education. harris, k. r., & graham, s. (2007). teaching reading to students with learning difficulties. new york: the guildfoed press. nunan, d. (2003). practical english language teaching. newyork: mcgraw hill company. paton, a., & wilkins, m. (2009). teaching adult esol principles and practice. new york: institute of education. richards, j. c., & schmidt, r. (2010). longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. london: pearson education limited. rubin, j. (1990). improving foreign language listening comprehension. in james e. alatis (ed.). linguistics, language teaching, and language acquisition: the interdependence of theory, practice and research. gorgetown: gorgertown university press. schulman, l. (1999). taking learning seriously",.change journal, 31(4), , p. 12, http://www.guide linesonlearning.com/guideline-five (retrieved on april 27th2013). sadighi, f., & zare, s. (2006). is listening comprehension influenced by background knowledge of the learners: a case study of iranian efl learners‟. the linguistics journal, 1(3) shiraz university of iran. tankersley, k. (2003). the threads of reading strategies for literacy development. virginia: ascd. http://library.nu/ (retrieved on october 14, 2011). copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 29-45 the effect of group investigation and learning style on students’ writing of analytical exposition bambang untoro received: 24th march 2016; revised: 22th april 2016; accepted: 25th june 2016 abstract this study aimed to investigate the influence of group investigation, the difference between auditory and visual students, and the interaction between group investigation and learning style on students’ writing of analytical exposition. it was a quasi-experimental conducted for the second graders of sma islam al-azhar bsd. the findings revealed that there was an influence of group investigation on students’ writing of analytical exposition. the writing of students that experienced the group investigation model was better than those who had the conventional one. there was a significant difference between auditory students and visual students on their writing of analytical exposition. in both groups, the visual students had better achievement than the auditory ones. however, the visual and auditory students in experimental group had higher improvement. there was also a significant interaction between group investigation and learning style on students’ writing of analytical exposition. it could be concluded that applying a group investigation model was recommended in teaching writing of analytical exposition. key words: group investigation; writing; analytical exposition; learning style abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki pengaruh model pembelajaran investigasi kelompok, perbedaan antara siswa bergaya belajar audio dan visual, dan interaksi antara model investigasi kelompok dan gaya belajar terhadap kemampuan menulis analytical exposition siswa. penelitian ini merupakan eksperimen semu yang dilakukan pada siswa kelas xi sma islam al-azhar bsd. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat pengaruh yang signifikan antara siswa yang diajarkan melalui investigasi kelompok dengan siwa yang diajarkan secara konvensional, terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan antara siswa bergaya belajar audio dengan siswa bergaya belajar visual. siswa visual cenderung berkemampuan menulis lebih bagus daripada siswa audio. namun, ditinjau dari kedua gaya belajar tersebut, siswa pada kelas eksperimen berkemampuan menulis lebih bagus daripada siswa pada kelompok kontrol. terdapat interaksi yang signifikan antara investigasi kelompok dan gaya belajar terhadap kemampuan menulis siswa. hasil penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa model pembelajaran investigasi kelompok sesuai untuk pengajaran menulis analytical exposition. kata kunci: investigasi kelompok; menulis; analytical exposition; gaya belajar how to cite: untoro, b. (2016). the effect of group investigation and learning style on students’ writing of analytical exposition. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 29-45. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3445 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3445 mailto:bambanguntoro@yahoo.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 30-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction english plays an important role in education and other environments related to its function as a means of communication. consequently, many educational institutions both formal and informal include english subject to teach. related to the formal education, english is a compulsory subject in higher levels of education, including senior high schools. in learning english, writing is one of the language skills which need to be mastered by the learners. it is underlined by harmer (2004) who states that writing is one of the four skills that should be mastered by students and has always formed part of the syllabus in the teaching of english. in senior high schools, students have to learn different genres of writing like narrative, descriptive, and argumentative based on the prescribed syllabus from the ministry of education. mastering writing skill is very essential as it is used especially after students graduate and are involved in their work fields. the teaching and learning activity of writing is one of the matters that needs to be underlined since it is often conducted uninterestingly so that the students feel reluctant and do not have motivation to learn the materials. the teaching and learning process of argumentative writing is also often conducted conventionally in which the teacher provides a certain topic verbally that often makes students difficult to construct their ideas. teachers often pay more attention to the students’ final essays. this also happens in sma alazhar bsd as the context of the study, in which the teacher emphasizes on the result of the students’ essay. concerning the basic competencies that the students have to achieve, many students of sma islam al-azhar bsd still find it difficult to write analytical exposition essay. from the preliminary study, the researcher got the data of students’ english essays in which the average score is still low. group investigation is one of effective ways to improve students’ writing skill. it allows a class to work actively and cooperatively in small groups and enables students to take an active role in determining their own learning goals and processes. group investigation is expected to help students think critically by elaborating their ideas, opinion, and arguments to solve certain issues or problems. the students are expect to have experiences in identifying the topic, planning the investigation, carrying out investigation, preparing a final report, presenting it, and evaluating ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|31-45 achievement (slavin, 2005). these activities are very essential in developing students’ writing skill, especially the writing of analytical exposition. in learning, there are several factors which affect student outcome, one of which is students’ learning characteristics or learning styles. ideally, students have to realize that they hold a dominant style in learning which is different from others. maximizing this style is necessary to optimize their learning process. brown (2007, p. 129) states that the dimension of learning style that is salient in a formal classroom setting is the preference that students or learners show toward either visual, auditory, and kinesthetic input. however, from the three dimensions, visual and auditory learning styles are believed to be more dominant in the process of writing activities. sutrisno, et.al. (2013, p. 157) prove in their research that visual and auditory learning style influence the students’ writing. therefore, this study focuses on the visual and auditory learning style. writing activity is not simple since a person should think several subskills such as the mastery of the language itself, the knowledge of the related topic, and the way how to express ideas into written form. mastering writing skill is very essential as it is used even after students graduate and involve in their work fields. functional writing forms, such as business letters, advertisements, manual books, brochures, and others, will be their daily tasks when people work. nunan (1998, p. 37) claims that success in writing should involve six aspects: mastery of writing techniques, controlled and adherence to the conventions of spelling and punctuation usage, the use of grammar system to convey the intention/meaning of a person, the ability to organize the contents of the full text to provide a written description of the information, revise writing, and to select and customize the style needs of readers. this shows the complexity of thought that needs to be mastered by a competence writer in producing a quality essay. writing is a process which needs several steps. however, there are still some learners who ignore this process. they only write once without paying attention to the process. consequently, their writing often still has some errors related to either the content or the grammar. mastery of a number of aspects can be used as a means of assessment of the activity of writing. hung and young (2015, p. 250) underlines that writing process consists ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 32-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 of prewriting, writing, revising, editing, and publishing. a good essay does not merely have good grammar and sentence patterns or even good vocabularies, but involves other important aspects. therefore, teachers need to work hard effort to motivate and encourage learners to write. implementing a cooperative learning like group investigation model is one way to create a competitive and motivational learning process to improve the learners’ mastery of writing skill especially an argumentative one since it needs some ideas and arguments that sometimes can be found and elaborated through discussion lead by the teacher. based on the aspects involved in the writing process, learners can have low motivation if there is no trigger from the teachers. it is generally known that teachers play important roles in determining the success of learners in improving their writing achievement. further, various approaches are adopted to make teaching writing interesting and effective. khatijah (as cited in syafini & rizan, 2012, p. 407) proposes two approaches that teachers can adopt in teaching writing: the product approach and the process approach. the first approach is the product approach which focuses on the end result of the act of writing. it emphasizes on the different part of the text, words, sentences, paragraphs but there is not much focus on ideas and meaning (zamel, as cited in syafini & rizan, 2012, p. 407). the role of the teacher is to examine the finished product focusing more on linguistic accuracy (mcdonough & shaw, as cited in syafini & rizan, 2012, p. 407). since it focuses on the final result of students’ writing, the students do not have an opportunity to have the feedback to improve their essays. flower and hayes (as cited in white, 1988) believe that this approach is insufficient in enhancing the students’ writing performance. the second approach to writing is the process approach which focuses on how learners actually write. kroll (as cited in akhand and hasan, 2010, p. 79) describes that the process approach serves today as an umbrella term for many types of writing courses. they are not expected to produce and submit complete and polished responses to their writing assignments without going through stages of drafting and receiving feedback on their drafts, be it from peers and/or from the teacher, followed by revision of their evolving texts. thus, writing is a process which needs variety of learning activities. a process approach tends to focus more ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|33-45 on varied classroom activities which promote the development of language use: brainstorming, group discussion and rewriting (akhand and hasan, ibid). writing also needs some sub skills like understanding how to explore the contents of the idea, understanding essay organization, mastering vocabulary, mastering language knowledge, and understanding the mechanics. in writing, students have to consider what to write and how to write (jacobs et. al, as cited in weigle, 2002). once students want to write, they have to choose a topic, then extent the idea in order to know what is actually elaborated. however, how to write will guide the writer of how to express the idea of the writing which can be an argument, narration, description or other kinds of writing (ernidawati and sianturi, 2012, p. 2). through writing the students can transfer their experiences and knowledge to other. so, they should be able to produce sentence and develop it into paragraph, essay, and paper. however, many teachers still find it difficult to teach their students how to writing effectively. there are still some constraints faced by them in guiding their students to be actively involved during the teaching and learning process. some of the teaching and learning activities designed may not run smoothly because there are some complex problems during the process, such as students’ lack of english grammar and vocabulary, students’ knowledge of the topic itself, students’ learning styles, students’ motivation, the class condition, and others. in analytical exposition as the focus of the study, there should be a topic which is necessary to be discussed. the topic is usually related to the recent and important problems happen and need to be explored. in doing so, it is not easy for there are still several students who are not familiar with the problems. therefore, they do not know what to write. therefore, the teacher should try to guide them to explore the problem by implementing, for example, a group investigation model. conducting writing activities in group is effective because students can have higher motivation and elaborate the topic by working actively and cooperatively (harmer, 2004). there are many strategies or teaching and learning methods that will help the teacher in teaching english, especially in teaching writing. one of the strategies that can help enhancing the students’ writing of analytical exposition is applying a group investigation model. group investigation, according to isjoni (2009) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 34-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 is an organizational approach that allows a class to work actively and cooperatively in small groups and enables students to take an active role in determining their own learning goals and processes. group investigation method requires the students to form small interest groups, plan and implement their investigation, synthesize the group members’ findings, and make a presentation to the entire class. this model requires the students to take roles in searching sources, investigating relevant materials, proposing arguments, and presenting them within their groups and to the class. furthermore, slavin (2005, p. 218), explains six stages in conducting a group investigation. stage 1 is identifying the topic and organizing into research group; stage 2 is planning the investigation in groups; stage 3 is carrying out the investigation; stage 4 is preparing a final report; stage 5 is presenting the final report; stage 6 is evaluating achievement. it is assumed that this model positively effects the students’ writing of analytical exposition. however, every single learner has his/her own style of learning, including the learning of writing. some learners are good at visual activities. these learners will maximize their eyes in receiving and processing information, such as pictures, graphics, diagrams, photographs, and other visual media. others may use their ears during the learning process. auditory learners will learn fast through verbal discussion and listen to teacher’s explanation. there are also many students who prefer moving, touching, and practicing during the learning process. the term ―learning style‖ has been defined by various scholars mostly as a signal for individual differences. honey and mumford (as cited in singh, et.al., 2011, p. 144) describe learning style as an individual preference or habitual ways of processing and transforming knowledge. learning style is the combination of how someone absorbs and manages information (deporter & hernacki, 2007). while keefe (as cited in brown, 2007, p. 120) emphasizes learning styles as cognitive, affective, and psychological traits that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment. besides, pasher, et.al. (2009, p. 105) emphasize that learning style refers to the concept that individual differ regarding to what mode of instruction or study is most effective for them. since learners differ in their preferences to certain learning styles, it will be important for teachers to examine the variations in their students on the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|35-45 features of their learning styles, because the information about learner’s preference can help teachers become more sensitive to the differences students bring to the classroom (felder & purlin, 2005, p. 103). thus, adjustments can then be made to accommodate the students’ varied needs. this study hypothesizes that the students’ who get group investigation during the teaching and learning process will have higher skill in writing analytical exposition. during the teaching and learning activities of writing analytical exposition, they have the experience of planning, constructing, revising, and publishing or communicating their writing through investigation. besides, they also have different way in receiving information. although students have the same treatment, they still tend to dominantly apply a certain learning style which is comfortable for them. visual and auditory learners have different way in receiving and processing information during the learning process. in other words, applying group investigation model is not the only variable which can affect the students’ writing of analytical exposition. the students’ learning style is also another variable that can give effect to their achievement of writing. therefore, this study also incorporates learning style as an independent variable, together with the intervention. method design this was a quasi-experimental study employing a pre-test and posttest. this study has an independent variable with two dimensions: group investigation model (gi) and conventional learning model (cv). it also has an attributive or moderator variable: learning styles, which is divided into visual and auditory learning style. the dependent variable of this research is the writing of analytical exposition. thus, this research is conducted using 2x2 factorial design with pre-test post-test groups. participants the population was the second grade students of sma islam al-azhar bsd in academic year of 2015-2016. there were six classes in this grade with around thirty students for each class, so there were 180 students altogether. the six classes were divided into 2 programs: mathematics and natural science program (mipa) and social science program (ips). there were three classes for natural science program and three other classes for social science ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 36-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 program. the school required some considerations in determining the class, such as students’ intelligence, average scores from their report book, attitudes, and gender. in determining the sample, the researcher chose two classes randomly from available class. he got two classes: xi mipa 1 and xi mipa 3. then, from the two sample classes, he chose randomly to determine the class for experiment. finally, he got xi mipa 3 as the experiment group. instruments there are two kinds of instruments used in this research. the first instrument was a questionnaire to get the data of students’ learning style. this instrument was administered in both the controlled class and the experimental class before the treatment. the second instrument was a writing test to measure the students’ writing ability of analytical exposition which was administered also in both groups. this test was conducted before and after the students got the treatment. the elements of the composition measured are based on esl composition profile developed by jacobset.al. these elements include the content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. (jacobs et. al, as cited in weigle, 2002, p. 115). before administering the research instruments, the researcher had to test their validity and reliability. because the writing test instrument is considered as valid and reliable (weigle, 2002, p. 120–121), the researcher just conducted a try-out of learning style instrument. it was administered to 30 students. the data was analyzed statistically applying rpearson product moment and alpha cronbach formula. the content of intervention this study was conducted in ten meetings. the first one was conducted to administer a questionnaire to get the data of students’ learning styles and the pre-test for the analytical exposition essay. in doing so, the researcher gave one of the instruments, a questionnaire of learning style, to the controlled class and experimental class. they had to answer the 20 questions which took around 10 minutes. after that, the pretest was administered to measure the students’ prior writing ability of analytical exposition. this test was conducted to both groups before any treatment. they were asked to write an essay of analytical exposition in around 40 minutes. then, the researcher discussed with the teacher the preparation of implementing group investigation in the experimental group. it included the lesson plan, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|37-45 materials, and other preparation needed. the next eight meetings were allotted for the implementation of group investigation. it had six stages proposed by slavin (2005) which included identifying the topic and organizing into research group, planning the investigation in group, carrying out investigation, preparing a final report, presenting the final report, and evaluating achievement. finally, the last meeting was used to administer the post test of writing an analytical exposition. it was conducted to measure the students’ writing ability after the treatment finished. data analysis the data were analyzed to know whether there was a significant effect of group investigation model to the writing of analytical exposition. the researcher also analyzed the data of the students’ learning style to know whether there was also an effect of the learning style to the students’ writing of analytical exposition. besides, the researcher also analyzed all the data to know whether there was a significant interactional effect of group investigation model and learning styles to the students’ writing of analytical exposition. the data collected were also analyzed descriptively to find the mean, median, modus, variance, and standard deviation. in answering the research questions, two-way analysis of variance (anava) with the significance of (α) = 0.05 was employed to examine the effect of group investigation model to students’ writing of analytical exposition viewed from their learning style. this analysis means that if the significance coefficient value of the variable is less than 0.05 (<0.05), h0 is rejected, and h1 is accepted. the output of this variance analysis with the factorial design of 2x2 was used to prove the three proposed research hypotheses. necessary preliminary analyses such as normality and homogeneity of data were conducted, which results revealed that the data were both normal and homogeny. findings and discussion findings the descriptive data showed the results of pre-test and post-test of students’ writing of analytical exposition both in the controlled class and the experimental class. based on the data of the pretest score of writing analytical exposition in the controlled class, it was found that the mean was 59.33, the median was 58.50, the standard deviation was 8.07. furthermore, the minimum score was 57 while the maximum score was 77. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 38-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the mean of the students’ achievement in writing analytical exposition was still low for the minimum criteria determined by the school was 75.00. the mean score of the experimental class was also low, which was 59.90 with a standard deviation 0f 7.90. the minimum score was 44 and the maximum score was 78. after the treatment, differences between the experimental and controlled class appeared. the mean score of the post-test score in the controlled was 69.57 while that of the experimental class was 81.32. although we could see improvement in the controlled class, it was still below the minimum criteria of 75.00 determined by the school. in the controlled class, there were still 22 students (73.33%) who got less than 75.00, and only 8 students (26.67%) who could achieve 75 or more. further, based on the post-test scores in the experimental class, the minimum score was 63 and the maximum score was 93. if the mean from the post-test here is compared to the mean from the pre-test, there was an improvement from 59.90 to 81.32. the achievement of 81.32 was above the minimum criteria of 75.00 determined by the school. there were only 5 students (16.1%) who got less than 75.00, and amazingly there were 26 students (83.9%) who could achieve 75 or more. this achievement indicated that there was an effect of group investigation model to the students’ writing of analytical exposition. the data analysis also showed that visual learners had higher achievement in their writing of analytical exposition than auditory learners. it means that visual learners tended to have better achievement in their writing of analytical exposition than auditory learners. both visual and auditory learners in experimental class had higher achievement in their writing of analytical exposition than those in controlled class. in other words, using group investigation model in teaching writing of analytical exposition was able to enhance the students’ writing. table 1. the improvement of students’ writing in controlled class and experiment class group mean pretest posttest improv ement controlled class 59.33 69.57 10.24 experiment class 59.90 81.32 21.42 the mean of the writing achievement in the controlled class was 69.57, whereas the means of the writing achievement in the experimental class was 81.32. when it is compared to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|39-45 result of the pre-test scores, both classes had an improvement, but the experimental class had higher improvement than that in the controlled class with the difference of 11.75 points in the mean score. after delivering the instrument of learning style to the 30 students in the controlled class, there are 15 students holding visual learning style and 15 students having a tendency of auditory learning style. the average post test score of the visual students is 70.80, and the average score of auditory students is 68.33. then, from the 31 students in the experimental class, 18 students hold visual learning style and the other 13 students have a tendency of auditory learning style. the average post test score of the visual students is 85.67, and the average score of auditory students is 75.31. the first result of the data analysis described that the significance value of group investigation model was 0.000. there was a significant difference between the students taught by group investigation and those taught conventionally on their writing of analytical exposition. it can be concluded that the writing of analytical exposition for students who were taught by group investigation model was better than the writing of analytical exposition of those taught conventionally. group investigation model was proved to give significant effect of the students’ achievement in writing of analytical exposition. the second result of the data analysis showed that the significance value of the learning style was 0.000. it means that there was a significant difference between auditory students and visual students on their writing of analytical exposition. the third analysis described that the significance value of the learning style and group investigation model was 0.019. based on the data analysis, there was a significant interaction between group investigation model and learning styles to students’ writing of analytical exposition. the extended test was performed to find out which group contributed more to the students’ writing according to the teaching model and learning style. the test was conducted using the contrast test with t-test statistic. from the analysis result, it was obtained that the value of significance from gi vis (a1b1) >< cv vis (a2b1) was 0.002. since the value of significance was less than 0.05 (0.002 < 0.05), it means that there was a significant difference between visual students taught by group investigation model and those taught conventionally on their writing of analytical exposition. further, it was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 40-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 also obtained that the value of significance from giaud (a1b2) >< cv aud (a2b2) was less than 0.05 (0.002 < 0.05). it means that there was a significant difference between auditory students taught by group investigation model and those taught conventionally on their writing of analytical exposition. further analysis described clearly that the writing achievement of visual learners was higher than that of auditory learners. they can learn faster when there are some visual illustrations like diagram, video, and other fullpicture books. besides, they like to make some notes in detail. writing activity gave opportunities for students to make some notes. further, in group investigation model, the students used more visual illustrations like diagram, video, and other full-picture books when they investigated using some related sources. discussion the findings of the pre-test and post-test of the writing showed that the students performed better in the posttest compared to the pre-test. they had gained better achievement in their writing of analytical exposition. this significant improvement proved that the incorporation of group investigation model had positive outcomes in enhancing the students’ writing performance, especially in writing of analytical exposition. it proved that the inclusion of group investigation model in the writing lessons, especially the writing of analytical exposition, had positive effects on the students’ improvement in all the five writing components which were important to produce better essays. it is in line with the previous research conducted by pitoyo (2014) which revealed that the writing skills of students who followed the group cooperative learning model in the type of group investigation was better than the group of students who learnt through accelerated learning team and role playing. he concluded that applying group investigation model in teaching the students was effective to help the students in improving their writing skill. the incorporation of group investigation model as one type of a cooperative learning gave more opportunity for the students to explore their ideas during the process of their learning. this research finding also supported the previous research conducted by syafini and rizan (2012) which revealed that there were positive effects of cooperative learning in enhancing writing performance. the findings indicated that the students perform better in the post-test compared with the pre-test after the inclusion of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|41-45 cooperative learning in the writing classes. the finding of this research describes that there was a significant difference between auditory students and visual students on their writing of analytical exposition. it showed that the visual learners had higher achievement in their writing of analytical exposition. they performed better achievement especially in their writing of analytical exposition than auditory learners. it is in line with the theory proposed by studer (2015, p. 300–301) who states that visual learners like to learn through written language, such as reading and writing tasks, whereas auditory learners tend to have difficulty with reading and writing tasks. the way how auditory learners received information or learning materials was different from the way how visual learners received them. they will optimize their own style so that they can maximize their learning mastery. it is in line with the previous research conducted by ahmed (2012) which revealed the effect of different learning styles on developing writing of english as a foreign language (efl). in this research, the students were taught regardless of their different learning styles. it was found that the students experienced some writing difficulties. then, he conducted an experiment by giving a learning style inventory to the experimental group to help the students as well as their teacher be aware of their learning styles. further finding of this research also showed that there was a significant difference of writing analytical exposition between visual students who were taught by group investigation model and those who were taught by conventional one. there was also a significant difference of writing analytical exposition between auditory students who were taught by group investigation model and those who were taught by conventional one. the data description showed that visual students who were taught by group investigation model obtained higher score of writing analytical exposition. however, there was also an improvement of the writing for auditory students who were taught by group investigation model. so, group investigation was an effective learning model applied in both visual and auditory students. although visual students obtained better writing achievement than auditory students, it can be concluded that group investigation model was effective for both visual and auditory students at the grade eleventh of sma islam al-azhar bsd. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 42-45|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 finally, the result this study showed that there was a significant interaction between group investigation model and learning styles to students’ writing of analytical exposition with the significance value of the of 0.019. applying group investigation model in teaching writing of analytical exposition developed the students’ experience in planning, constructing, revising, and publishing or communicating their writing through investigation. besides, they also had different way in receiving information. each student had his/her own style of learning. although students had the same treatment, they still tended to dominantly apply a certain learning style which was comfortable for them. the significant interaction means that the use of group investigation model was not the only variable which affected the students’ writing of analytical exposition. the students’ learning style was also another variable that gave effect to their achievement of writing. thus, it can be concluded that there was an interaction between group investigation and learning style to students’ writing of analytical exposition. conclusion and suggestion based on the findings, it can be concluded that applying group investigation model is effective since there was an improvement in the students’ writing of analytical exposition. there was a significant difference between the students taught by group investigation model and those taught conventionally on their writing of analytical exposition. the finding also showed that the visual learners had higher achievement in their writing of analytical exposition. they tended to perform better achievement especially in their writing of analytical exposition than auditory learners. besides, the visual learners in experimental class had better achievement in their writing. however, comparing to the auditory and visual learners from the controlled class, the auditory and visual learners from experimental class had higher achievement in their writing. thus, group investigation was still as an effective learning model to be applied for both auditory and visual learners in learning writing of analytical exposition. finally, the third finding showed that there was an interaction between group investigation and learning styles to students’ writing of analytical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|43-45 exposition. the use of group investigation model was not the only variable which affected the students’ writing of analytical exposition. the students’ learning style was also another variable that gave effect to their achievement of writing. the findings of this research would be useful for english teachers in applying group investigation model as a viable alternative in teaching writing. the implementation of group investigation model in the writing lesson had been proven to produce positive effects on students’ writing achievement. since this study only focused on an analytical exposition as the main genre, to see more comprehensive result, further research should involve other kinds of genres, such as narrative texts, report texts, descriptive texts, etc. another suggestion is laid on the sample of the participants which was limited to two classes of the second grade students of sma islam al-azhar bsd. further research should involve more classes and participants from other institutions to generate more evidence on the effect of group investigation model to the students’ writing or to focus on different contexts. in other words, to get more convincing result, the future research should randomly select more students from more schools. references akhand, m., and hasan, k. 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(2005).cooperative learning: teori, riset dan praktek. bandung: nusa media. studer, j., r. (2015). the essential school counselor in a engaging society. los angeles/ london/ new delhi/ singapore/ washington dc: sage publication inc. sutrisno, zulaeha, i., and subyantoro. (2013) keefektifan pembelajaran menulis karangan deskriptif dengan model quantum dan inquiri terpimpin berpasangan berdasarkan gaya belajar peserta didik sekolah dasar. journal of primary education. jpe 2 (1) (2013).retrieved from http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/in dex.php/. syafini and rizan, t. n. (2012).the effects of cooperative learning in enhancing writing performance. bangkok: universiti kebangsaan malaysia. retrieved from http://www.ukm.my/solls09/ proceeding/pdf/ shafini.pdf. weigle, s., c. (2002).assessing writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. white, r.v. (1988). academic writing: process and product. elt documents 129. london: modern english publications and the british council. pp. 4–16. http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/vol_1_no_10_august_2011/19.pdf http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/vol_1_no_10_august_2011/19.pdf http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/ http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/ http://www.ukm.my/solls09/%20proceeding/pdf/%20shafini.pdf http://www.ukm.my/solls09/%20proceeding/pdf/%20shafini.pdf copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 46-59 indonesian or english? efl student teachers’ preference and perception on the language use in the classroom 1eddy haryanto, 2urip sulistiyo, 3miftahul khairani, 5retno wulan, received: 09th april 2016; revised: 22th may 2016; accepted: 25th june 2016 abstract the purposes of this research were to investigate learners’ perception in teaching english using bahasa and english, learners’ preference for language use as the medium of instruction, and the subjects that can be taught by using bahasa. the participants were 57 efl learners in the fourth semester at a university in jambi province, indonesia. this research was designed in mix method by distributing a questionnaire and conducting a focus group discussion (fgd) as the data collection techniques. the findings showed that the students were excited to have english as the medium of instruction in their classroom. however, they also welcome the l1 (bahasa indonesia). in addition, the learners preferred to have english as the medium of instruction in their english classroom. in view of this, the use of both their l1 and l2 should be balanced. moreover, concerning the subjects taught, the learners need the use of english especially in the listening and speaking classrooms. key words: efl student teachers; english teaching and learning; first language; foreign language abstrak penelitian in bertujuan untuk mengetahui persepsi mahasiswa mengenai pengajaran bahasa inggris dengan menggunakan bahasa indonesia dan bahasa inggris, pilihan mahasiswa dalam penggunaan bahasa tersebut sebagai media pengajaran di dalam kelas, dan jenis – jenis pelajaran yang bisa diajarkan dengan menggunakan bahasa indonesia. peserta dalam penelitian ini adalah 57 mahasiswa semester empat pada salah satu universitas di provinsi jambi, sumatra, indonesia yang diambil melalui purposive sampling. penelitian ini didesain dalam metode campuran melalui angket dan diskusi kelompok terarah (fgd). hasil yang didapat menunjukkan bahwa siswa sangat senang menggunakan bahasa inggris dalam pengajaran di kelas. namun, siswa juga tidak keberatan dengan penggunaan bahasa indonesia. sebagai tambahan, siswa lebih memilih penggunaan bahasa inggris sebagai media pengajaran di dalam kelas. oleh karena itu, penggunaan kedua bahasa tersebut haruslah seimbang. terkait dengan mata pelajaran, mahasiswa lebih memilih penggunaan bahasa inggris hanya dalam pengajaran “menyimak (listening)” dan “berbicara (speaking)” kata kunci: mahasiswa jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris; proses pembelajaran bahasa inggris, bahasa pertama; bahasa kedua how to cite: haryanto, e. sulistiyo, u. wulan, r. (2016). indonesian or english? efl student teachers’ preference and perception on the language use in the classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 46-59. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3941 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3941 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|47-59 introduction people communicate with each other by using language. there are many languages available in this world. those languages have their own characteristics which make them different from one to another, including english. although english is not a language which has numerous numbers of native speakers, english is seen as the lingua franca which acts as the additional language to the speakers (mauranen & ranta, 2009). according to goodwyn and branson (2005), language is a very essential tool for everyone in their society because it determines the individual. additionally, thompson and evans (2005) stated that “language is the ability to understand and use a structured system of communication” (p. 1). since there are many people who need to learn english to keep up with others, learning english has become a major activity among students, who realize that english is very popular and becomes a global language. crystal (2003) said that a language will get global status when it gives particular role and is accepted in every country. therefore, we cannot deny that english has a very crucial role in the globalization era to make the students able to compete with the others. as one of the students (preservice teachers) in english department, the researcher found many lecturers have used different language instruction in teaching. some lecturers use english, while others used bahasa indonesia (indonesian language) even in the higher semesters where the students perhaps have gained enough literacy skills. english and bahasa are the languages used in english classroom teaching. therefore, we cannot deny that they both are important, but what will happen to the students if they are taught mostly in english only? or mostly in bahasa only? of course this situation will likely affect students especially their ability. as krashen (as cited in purnama, 2014) pointed out, in the second language acquisition’s classroom, students use their comprehensible input to learn foreign language. according to swain (2008), it is a good idea to give the chance to the students to use most l2 in second language classroom to have good written and spoken input. in other words, students need to use english in order to practice to build their language proficiency. krashen (as cited in purnama, 2014) and cook (2008) stated that l2 will benefit the adult learners in learning process in the second language class to make them more active. moreover, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 48-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 krashen (as cited in purnama, ibid) pointed out that the input plays a crucial role in learning the second language. in line with this, a study conducted in kenya and uganda (muthwii, as cited in kioko, 2013) revealed that parents have high expectations in using english for their children to understand the subject matter better than using their mother tongue. however, krashen (as cited in purnama, 2014) also argued that the learners will be able to acquire the language only when they understand the message delivered from the teachers. students are taught only in english, they will have chance to develop their english proficiency. yet, it is also likely that some students have difficulties to catch the ideas explained by their lecturers in the classroom. furthermore, they may also have less confidence to deliver their opinion in front of the classroom. moreover, for indonesian learners, to overcome the difficulties in their learning and build their confidence, the use of bahasa (l1) was considered necessary by some students and lectureres in their english classroom. the use of bahasa (l1) in their english classroom is helpful in teaching – learning process, as long as it is not too much and it does not become a “habit” in the classroom. when the students are taught only in bahasa, they have no capability to use english, and have no chance to master english. according to christina and georgiana (2012), there are some disadvantages when using l1 in the l2 classroom. first, the overuse of l1 might become a habit for both teachers and learners in teaching and learning process. if the lectures always rely on the use of l1, it is possible if the use of l1 would be the habit in the classroom. when lecturers are speaking the l1, the learners will feel comfortable to follow them. apparently, the teacher’s language is the real model for the real communication happening in the second language classroom (cook, 2008). second, l1 may lead to misunderstanding when the learners try to get their target language. it happens because there are some words in the target language that do not have the appropriate meaning in the first language and vice versa. third, when the teachers use l1 to teach foreign language to the students, it may cause the negative transfer to the target language. for certain cases, the form of their native language with their foreign language is different, so the negative transfer may happen more often. this problem requires the lecturer to be flexible in using the language when they are teaching the students in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|49-59 english classroom. for instance, the use of bahasa can only be used when teaching certain subjects such as grammar and vocabulary, while the use of english only can be applied when the lecturer teaches some subject skills including pronunciation. addressing this issue, this study is intended find students’ perception and preference for language use as the medium of instruction in english classroom and to know what kind of subjects that can be delivered using bahasa. some researchers such as wong (2010), al sharaeai (2014), and snorradóttir (2014) have studied about learning a foreign language and language use in teaching foreign language in the classroom. although many researchers believe that teaching through english gives better result and improvement to the students, research on indonesian students whose english is their foreign language needs to be explored further. the purposes of this research were to investigate learners’ perception in teaching english using bahasa and english, learners’ preference for language use as the medium of instruction, and the subjects that can be taught by using bahasa. furthermore, it was also expected to give more knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages in using bahasa (l1) and foreign language (l2) in l2 teaching process. to achieve the purposes of the study, the following research questions were raised: 1. what is the students’ perception toward teaching english using bahasa or english in their english classroom? 2. what is the students’ preference for language use in their english classroom? 3. what kind of subjects (listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary or grammar) can be taught by using indonesian language? method this study was a mixed methods design with the questionnaire and focus group discussion (fgd) as the techniques in collecting the data. a total of 57 students in the fourth semester from one of the universities in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia participated in this study. the rationale for choosing such participants is because they are efl learners who have passed learning subject skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and grammar and vocabulary in the previous semesters. 16 participants (28.1%) were male, and 41 of them (71.9%) were female. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 50-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 concerning the data collection, the questionnaire was used to reveal the students’ perception and their preference for language use as the medium of instruction in their english classroom. it was also intended to understand the kinds of subject that could be taught through bahasa indonesia (indonesian language). meanwhile, fgd was conducted to support the data gathered through the survey questionnaire and to reveal the advantages in using both l1 and l2 in second language learning process. the questionnaire was distributed in march, 2016 while the fgd was conducted subsequently with students in one classroom, which took about 40 – 45 minutes. all of the participants did not receive any compensation for their participation in this research. however, we provided the nibbles for those who joined in the fgd. the data from the questionnaire was analyzed descriptively using the spss program, which included the frequency of each item in the questionniare, its percentage, and mean of each item. the reliability of the questionnaire was measured by using cronbach alpha, which coefficient was 0.7. it meant that the data were reliable and consistent. finally the data from the fgd was presented descriptively to support the data from the questionnaire results and discussion students’ demographic profiles the demographic profiles of the participants including total number of the students, gender and age are shown in table 1. there were 23 students (40.4%) in class a, 16 students (28.1%) in class b, and only 18 students (31.6%) in class h. from all classes, there were 16male students (28.1%) and 41 female students (71.9%). from the table below, class a has the most number of students, and from all classes the number of female students was more than male students. table 1. the percentage of number of students, gender and age of the respondents classes number of students gender age male female 18 19 20 21 a 23 (40.4%) 16 (28.1%) 41 (71.9%) 6 (10.5%) 38 (66.7%) 10 (17.5%) 3 (5.3%) b 16 (28.1%) h 18 (31.6%) total 57 students (100%) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|51-59 learners’ perception toward english use in english classroom in q1 (i like when my english teacher only uses english as the medium of instruction), 1 student (1.8%) chose strongly disagree, 5 students (8.8%) chose disagree, 12 students (21.1%) chose tend to disagree, 19 students (33.3%) chose tend to agree, 17 students (29.8%) chose agree and 3 students (5.3%) chose strongly agree. in q5 (english teachers are good examples if they only use english in english class), there were 2 students (3.5%) chose strongly disagree, 2 students (3.5%) chose disagree, 5 students (8.8%) chose tend to disagree, 15 students (26.3%) chose tend to agree, 26 students (45.6%) chose agree and 7 students (12.3%) chose strongly agree. finally, in q7 (it is fun to listen to my friends speaking english in the class), there were no students (0%) chose strongly disagree, 1 student (1.8%) chose disagree, 1 student (1.8%) chose tend to disagree, 10 students (17.5%) chose tend to agree, 25 students (43.9%) chose agree, and 20 students (35.1%) chose strongly agree. we also found through fgd that some students (s1, s3, s4, s6, s8, s9, s10, s12, and s14) stated that english as the medium of instruction in the classroom was good to improve their skills, especially in speaking skills. however, some considered hard because some students could catch the idea but some others could not understand the materials delivered by their teachers. furthermore, they also could not learn fast when they were taught in english. moreover, it was difficult for them to gain new words from their lectures. yet, they liked when their lecturers spoke english in front of the classroom because it could improve their skills, and could add their vocabularies. meanwhile, there were also some students (s2, s5, s7, s11, and s13) saying that they were okay with english as the medium of instruction in the classroom. they felt comfortable in using english as the medium of instruction in their classroom. they could understand their teacher’s explanation although they were passive learners. they stated that english was very important for them. by using english, they were able to produce new words, they could be active learners, and they had high self-confidence to speak with their teachers and friends. learners’ perception toward bahasa use in english classroom in q2 (i like when my english teacher tend to use bahasa as the medium of instruction), 2 students (3.5%) chose strongly disagree, 6 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 52-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 students (10.5%) chose disagree, 21 students (36.8%) chose tend to disagree, 16 students (28.1%) chose tend to agree, 10 students (17.5%) chose agree and 2 students (3.5%) chose strongly agree. furthermore, in q6 (english teachers are good to use bahasa when they teach english), there were 2 students (3.5%) chose strongly disagree, 13 students (22.8%) chose disagree, 21 students (36.8%) chose tend to disagree, 15 students (26.3%) chose tend to agree, 5 students (8.8%) chose agree and only 1 student (1.8%) chose strongly agree. finally, in q8 (i will not be upset if my friends also speak bahasa in the class), there were only 1 student (1.8%) chose strongly disagree, 7 students (12.3%) chose disagree, 2 students (3.5%) chose tend to disagree, 9 students (15.8%) chose tend to agree, 29 students (50.9%) chose agree, and 9 students (15.8%) chose strongly agree. we found out about the learners’ opinion when they were taught through bahasa in their english classroom. there were seven students (s1, s2, s3, s10, s11, s12, and s13) who had similar opinions that bahasa use as the medium of instruction in their english classroom was good because it could help them understand more the materials delivered by their lecturers. furthermore, they also could learn faster compared to when they were taught only in english. in other words, bahasa indonesia (indonesian language) enable them to learn and understand the materials easily. learners’ preference for english use as the medium of instruction in the classroom in q3 (the use of english-only in the classroom can improve my english standard), from all 57 students, no one chose strongly disagree (0%), only 1 student (1.8%) chose disagree, 8 students (14.0%) chose tend to disagree, 4 students (7.0%) chose tend to agree, 28 students (49.1%) chose agree and 16 students (28.1%) chose strongly agree. furthermore, in q9 (given the choice, i prefer using english-only in english classes instead of mixing it with bahasa), there were only 1 student (1.8%) chose strongly disagree, 5 students (8.8%) chose disagree, 8 students (14.0%) chose tend to disagree, 14 students (24.6%) chose tend to agree, 23 students (40.4%) chose agree and 6 students (10.5%) chose strongly agree. finally, in q11 (if my english teacher uses english to teach english, i will be excited), there were no students chose strongly disagree and disagree (0%), but 7 students (12.3%) chose tend to disagree, 17 students (29.8%) chose tend to agree, 24 students (42.1%) chose agree, and 9 students (15.8%) chose strongly agree. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|53-59 learners’ preference for bahasa use as the medium of instruction in the classroom q4 (the use of bahasa can make me master english well), from all 57 students, 8 students (14.0%) chose strongly disagree, 10 students (17.5%) chose disagree, 12 students (21.1%) chose tend to disagree, tend to agree, and agree and 3 students (5.3%) chose strongly agree. furthermore, in q10 (given the choice, i prefer using bahasa in english classes instead of english –only), there were only 2 students (3.5%) chose strongly disagree, 11 students (19.3%) chose disagree, 26 students (45.6%) chose tend to disagree, 15 students (26.3%) chose tend to agree, 2 students (3.5%) chose agree and 1 student (1.8%) chose strongly agree. finally, in q12 (if my english teacher uses bahasa to teach english, i will be excited), there were 2 students (3.5%) chose both strongly disagree and disagree, 27 students (47.4%) chose tend to disagree, 18 students (31.6%) chose tend to agree, 5 students (8.8%) chose agree, and 3 students (5.3%) chose strongly agree. from the fgd, the learners had the same answer in that they preferred to have english in their classroom. eventhough bahasa was important, and it could help them to understand the materials better, english was much better since they were in an english study program. tsukamoto’s study (2011) revealed that the efl japanese students also prefer to have english (l2) than their l1 (japanese) in their classroom since the students want to practice and develop their speaking and listening skills. therefore, they very welcome english in their classroom. certain subjects can be taught through bahasa as previously mentioned, the questionnaire was provided on 5 scales from strongly disagree to strongly agree. the results revealed that the students tend to agree on the use of bahasa when the lecturers teach grammar (m=3.63), vocabulary (m=3.28), writing (m=3.24), and reading (m=3.14) in their classroom. meanwhile, they tend to disagree to the use bahasa when the lecturers teach listening (m=2.85) and speaking (m=2.03). in other words, for two subject skills such as listening and speaking, the lecturers should teach them in english. through the fgd, some of the students stated that writing and reading should be taught through bahasa although most of them preferred grammar and vocabulary to be taught in bahasa. it seems that the students found hard to have better understanding about grammar and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 54-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 vocabulary if those basic subjects are taught in english. in line with this, ur (1991) suggested that the aspects that needs to be taught in vocabulary are aspects of meaning: denotations, connotation, and appropriateness. furthermore, ur (ibid) explained that denotation deal with the real meaning of a word that can be found easily in dictionary, while connotation is opposed with denotation meaning. in addition, appropriateness deals with the meaning of a word based on the context to know whether the use of certain word is very common or rare in the context. additionally, according to richards and renandya (2002), students may master the rules, pass the examination, create the illusion they know about the language. however, when it comes to the real word, they cannot use the grammar well in communicating because they lack of vocabulary and fluency. richards and renandya (ibid) further stated that “vocabulary is vast and untidy. we may attempt to systematize it by teaching the semantic fields, super ordinates and hyponyms, national or functional categories and the rest, but ultimately vocabulary remains to big muddle” (p. 149). in addition, reading has higher demand than writing activity. meanwhile, students did not choose both listening and speaking, which means that both listening and speaking should be taught by the lecturers in english. the demand of language use the table below presents the research finding regarding the demand of language use between class a, b, and h in their classroom. table 2. the frequency, percentage, mean and level (interpretation) of the demand of language use among classes class mean english preferred bahasa preferred a 4.39 (agree) 3.49 (tend to agree) b 4.43 (agree) 3.31 (tend to agree) h 4.94 (agree) 3.14 (tend to agree) total 4.57 (agree) 3.33 (tend to agree) table 2 presents the findings on the demand of language use between class a, b and h. from the table above, we can infer that both english and bahasa are considered important to be the language of instruction. in this table, class h had the highest demand (4.94) compared to classes a and b in their demand to use english in their classroom. consequently, it was not surprising to see that class h had the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|55-59 lowest demand to the use of bahasa as the medium of instruction. in general, this finding meant that the demand to use english as the medium of instruction was higher. advantages of using english in the class some students (s1, s2 s4, s5, s6, s8, s9, s10, s11, s12, and s13) had similar opinions about the advantages of english use as the medium of instruction in their english classroom. they stated that english could help them improve their skills both in receptive and productive skills. it also could improve their vocabularies, sentence development and finally develop their english skills. the use of english as the medium of instruction also could expand their knowledge and experiences. by having english as the medium of instruction in their english classroom, they would be able to speak that language and made it as their habit. furthermore, they would understand what their lecturers explain to them in teaching-learning process. they also stated that the aim of english study program was to enable students to master english. in other words, when they are taught by using english in their english classroom, they will be able to master it, and cultivate english as their habit. in addition, there were two students (s3 and s14) who stated that english had other benefits for them. english helped them communicate with people surround them, such as their friends, parents, sisters, and so on. as cook (2008) stated, “teachers’ can be the prime model for the communicative use of the second language” (p. 181). in other words, english is useful for them to communicate with other people in this global era. the advantages of using bahasa although the students believed that there were so many advantages in using english, they also could not deny that bahasa indonesia was still important in their english classroom for teaching “difficult” lesson or when the students had difficulties to understand the main point of the materials explained by the lecturers. s1, s2, s3, s4, s6, s7, s8, s10, s11, s13, and s14 stated that bahasa helped them understand more about the materials explained to them. when they found difficulties in learning english, the lectures might re-explain the material in bahasa indonesia to ensure that the students could catch the idea of the topic discussed in their classroom. they also stated that bahasa was also useful for them to master english because it is their first language. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 56-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 similarly, s5, s9 and s12 said that the use of bahasa indonesia in their classroom was good to improve their understanding about the issue discussed in the classroom. they could not deny that if they used bahasa excessively in the classroom, they would have less improvement. their skills would not develop well too as bahasa is used more in the classroom. therefore, they preferred to have english in the classroom rather than bahasa indonesia. this finding indicates that the learners preferred to be taught by using their l2 (english) as has been suggested by previous research such as krashen (as cited in purnama, 2014) and cook, 2008). however, when they found difficulties about the lessons explained by their lecturers in the classroom, bahasa can be an alternative for them to facilitate better explanation. the use of l1 benefits them in comprehending some lessons, clarifying the materials delivered to the students, adding their vocabulary and giving them opportunities to master their l2 by using their l1. when they can understand the materials given, it will be easier for them to get the objectives of their learning in the classroom; they can learn fast and well. littlewood and yu (cited in mohebbi & alevi, 2014) stated that teachers use l1 in the classroom to build social relationship, emphasize the main points of lesson, ensure that students understand the lesson taught, and to save time in the classroom. moreover, haryanto and mukminin (2012) propose that when the students do not understand the content explained by the teachers through english, the students prefer to have their l1 (bahasa indonesia) in their classroom. this finding is also similar with what mohebbi and alavi (2014) have obtained. in their study, they revealed that the second language teachers used l1 mainly to provide feedback, explain grammar, teach new vocabulary, help learners individually, and manage the classroom efficiently. although bahasa benefits them in such a way, as english students, the learners said that it is better for them to have more english in their english classroom. the use of bahasa may not facilitate their ability develop well. most of the students commented that they needed to master english, improved their skills and ability, and expanded their knowledge and experiences about english. therefore, they prefer to have english as the medium of instruction. in addition, adnan, mohamad, yusoff, and ghazali (2014) conducted a research in indonesian students about the use of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|57-59 bahasa in arabic classroom. they revealed that the students prefer to use arabic in arabic teaching – learning process in the classroom. they also showed that teachers taught arabic by emphasizing that language more. they use l1 only in desperate situation and allow the students to use bahasa only in one word. the teachers inhibit the students to use bahasa and challenge them to speak and communicate in arabic to let the students master the target language. some students also reveal that english provides many advantages for them, such as helping them develop their knowledge and experiences in using english. it also helps them add their new vocabulary. having english as the medium of instruction in their english classroom can be a good habit for them to practice speaking and communicating in english. furthermore, they will be able to master english well. the use of l2 is best used to learn that language itself (polio & duf, as cited in adnan, mohamad, yusoff, & ghazali, 2014). english can help them improve their skills too and some of the learners noted that they wanted to be english teachers, and therefore the use of english in their english classroom can help them to be good english teachers. the findings in this study are also in line with what muhlisin (2015) find that both teachers and students have no idea about how much they should apply l1 in second language classroom, yet both have the same request that no one wants to have more l1 in an l2 classroom. most of the students want to have both l1 and l2 in their english classroom. moreover, the overuse of l1 might hinder the development of students’ proficiency. thus, the lecturers are indeed required to be flexibe and smart to use l1 in l2 classroom. they may still use l1, bu do not overuse it. christina and gorgiana (2012) suggested that teachers should be proactive in their classroom. it means that the teachers should control and influence how and when to use l1 in the classroom. the teachers should be able to play with l1 and decide when the use of l1 may benefit the teaching – learning process. even, the lectures may explain to the students about her/his choices if s/he thinks it will be helpful. if a teacher can do this, a second language classroom can be a more authentic place to play with l1 and l2. conclusion and suggestion the purposes of this research were to investigate learners’ perception ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 58-59|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 in teaching english using bahasa and english, learners’ preference for language use as the medium of instruction, and the subjects that can be taught by using bahasa. the results indicated that the learners were happy when they were taught by using english and welcome bahasa indonesia to facilitate them get the exact point of difficult materials delivered by their lecturers in the classroom. in the light of the result, the efl learners found it hard to have english as the medium of instruction in their english classroom. however, it is very good for them to be taught in english since they are english students. it will help them master english as well as develop english as their habits. this study recommends that english lecturers should take into account the students’ needs about the predominant language that should be used in their english classroom. they should also attempt to have english in the classroom when teaching english, especially in the higher semesters because the students have high expectations to be excellent english teachers. although english is very important, lecturers should also see the situation when their students seem to have difficulties in catching the points of what they have explained. they should use bahasa only to emphasize the meaning of materials they explained to the learners. references adnan, m. a. m., mohamad, s., yusoff, m. a., & ghazali, z. (2014). teachers’ attitudes toward the use of first language in arabic classroom. international refereed research journal, 5 (2), 20–28. al-sharaeai, w. (2014). students’ perspectives on the use of l1 in english classrooms. graduate thesis and dissertation. iowa state university. christina, v. (2012). overusing mother tongue in english language teaching. international journal of communication research, 2(3), 212–218. cook, v. (2008). second language learning and language teaching (4 th ed.). london: hodder education. crystal, d. (2003). english as a global language. new york: cambridge university. goodwyn, a., & branson, j. (2005). teaching english a handbook for primary and secondary school teachers. london: routledge. haryanto, e., & mukminin, a. (2012). global, national, and local goals: english language policy ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|59-59 implementation in an indonesian international standard school. excellence in higher education, 3(2), 69–78. kioko, n. a. (2013). multilingual education in africa: lessons from the juba language in education conference. london: british council. mauranen, a., & ranta, e. (2009). english as a lingua franca: studies and findings. new york: cambridge scholars publishing. mohebbi, h., & alavi, s. m. (2014). an investigation into teachers’ first language use in a second language learning classroom context: a questionnaire – based study. bellaterra journal of teaching & learning language & literature, 7(4), 57–73. muhlisin. (2015). teachers’ beliefs and students’ perceptions on bilingual use in indonesian efl classroom: identity and classroom discourse. australian journal of basic and applied sciences, 9(24), 8–12. purnama, d. (2014). indonesian students who study english through two languages (indonesian and english): a case study. skripsi. jambi university. richards, j. c., & renandya, w. a. (2002). methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice. new york: cambridge university press. snorradóttir, b. a. (2014). language use in the english classroom: the role of students’ first language in grades 9 and 10 in english classrooms in iceland. b.ed. thesis. university of iceland. swain, m. (2008). the output hypothesis: its history and its future. foreign language teaching and research, 40(1), 45–50. thompson, g., & evans, h. (2005). thinking it through linking language skills, thinking skills and drama. great britain: david fulton publishers. tsukamoto, m. (2011). students’ perception of teachers’ language use in an efl classroom. (10), 143–154. retrieved march 7, 2016, from http://irlib.wilmina.ac.jp.pdf. ur, p. (1991). a course in language teaching. uk: cambridge university press. wong, r. (2010). the effectiveness of using english as the sole medium of instruction in english classes: students responses and improved english proficiency. porta linguarium 13 (1697-7467), 119 – 130. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 120-129 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. 5972 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee why study error? irawansyah received: 12th september 2017; revised: 15th november 2017; accepted: 28th desember 2017 abstract there are many students still doing errors or mistakes in learning english as a foreign language (efl) in indonesia. therefore, it is very important to study error. the error itself has long been an interest among foreign language researchers. the main task of error is how to describe a learning which occurs by examining students' output. it consists of correct and incorrect utterances. in this case, there are two approaches to learning students' errors, namely error analysis (ea) and contrastive analysis (ca). this paper only explains how error analysis is important in the teaching-learning process. it has many advantages when it is learned. ea has been classified into four types: linguistics category taxonomy, surface strategy taxonomy, comparative taxonomy, and communicative effect taxonomy. this study found error as an important tool for teachers and students to observe students‟ learning process and learning strategies. key words: error analysis; error; mistakes; teaching-learning process abstrak ada masih banyak siswa yang melakukan error atau mistake dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing (efl) di indonesia. oleh karena itu, hal ini sangat penting untuk mempelajari error. error itu sendiri sudah lama dipelajari oleh peneliti-peneliti bahasa asing. fungsi utama dari error itu sendiri adalah bagaimana mendeskripsikan pembelajaran yang terjadi dengan memeriksa hasil siswa. hal ini terdiri dari ujaran yang benar dan salah. dalam hal ini, ada dua pendekatan dalam mempelajari kesalahan siswa, yaitu analisis error (ea) dan analisis kontrastif (ca). makalah ini hanya untuk menjelaskan bagaimana error analisis yang mempunyai banyak pengaruh dalam proses pembelajaran. error analysis telah dikelompokkan menjadi empat jenis, yaitu kategori linguistik, kategori permukaan, kategori komparatif, dan kategori komunikatif. temuan penelitian ini menyampaikan bahwa error sebagai sebuah alat yang penting bagi guru dan siswa untuk mengamati proses belajar dan strategi pembelajaran siswa. kata kunci: analisis kesalahan, error; mistakes; proses belajar mengajar how to cite: irawansyah (2017). why study error?. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 120-129. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 121-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction it cannot be denied that many students often make errors or mistakes in the use of english as a foreign language (efl) in indonesia. making errors are inevitable in a teachinglearning process. many kinds of errors occur when students learn a foreign language. it is supported by dulay et al. (1982) who stated that people cannot learn a language without first systematically commit errors. furthermore, james (1998) added that an error arises “only when there was no intention to commit one”(p.77). many experts have discussed the understanding of error itself, for example, richards (1971;1974), dulay et al. (1982), james (1989;1998), norrish (1983), and ellis (1995). the results of their research were used in the second and foreign language teaching and learning. description of error the error is something that is done through an awareness where the doer of the error him or herself knows where the error lies. many experts conveyed the definition about the word of “error and mistake”. dulay et al. (1982) stated that errors are the flawed side of learner speech and writing. in addition, brown (1980) also stated about error and mistake. the error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar or a native speaker reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learners, while the mistake is a performance error that is either a random guess or "slip", in that it a failure to utilize a known system correctly. meanwhile, fauziati (2009) stated that errors are systematics, consistent deviance which is characteristics of the learner‟s linguistics system at a given stage of learning, and mistakes are deviation due to performance factors such as memory limitation, fatigue, and emotional strain. error analysis fauziati (2009) stated that error analysis as an approach to the study of sla in which its primary focus is on learner errors and the evidence of how learner errors can provide an understanding of the underlying processes of second language learning or second language acquisition. brown (1980) also mentioned the fact that learners‟ errors can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner, led to the surge of the study of learner's error, called „error analysis‟”. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 122-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license there are two functions of error analysis : (1) to investigate the language learning process, and (2) to show whether it is necessary or not for the teacher to give the remedial teaching. error analysis is described in four taxonomies, namely surface strategy, linguistics category, comparative, and communicative effect taxonomy. surface strategy taxonomy the surface strategy taxonomy is classified based on the way surface structures that will be altered, such as omitting necessary items, adding unnecessary ones, misforming, misordering item (dulay et al., 1982). in addition, james (1998) argued this taxonomy as target modification taxonomy which is classified based on the ways in which the learner‟s erroneous version is different from the presumed target version. analyzing error from this perspective has much promise for the researcher to concern with identifying cognitive processes that underlie the student's reconstruction of the new language. it also makes us aware that learner's errors result from their active ways of using the interim principles to produce the target language (dulay et al., 1982). under this taxonomy, errors consist of four types: omission, addition, misformation, and misordering (james, 1998). 1) the omission is one of the error types characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance, for example, his name george. it this sentence, the student omitted verb auxiliary such as is. it should be his name is george; 2) the addition is a type of error characterized by the presence of an item. it is the opposite of omission errors. it usually occurs when the students are often too faithful to use certain rules which result in errors. for example, the sparrows are flying. here is the addition of morpheme “s" with the sparrow that is not needed. the correct sentence is the sparrow is flying. at least, there are three types of addition errors, namely double marking, regularization, and simple addition; 3) misformation is the use of the wrong form of a structure or morpheme. in misformation error, the student supplies an item although it is still incorrect, for example. he is licking himself. it should be he is licking himself. there are three categories of misformation error, in this case, namely regularization, archi-forms, and alternating forms. 4) misordering is characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance. it occurs when towards to first and second language learning in constructions that have already been acquired, such as i do ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 123-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license not know what is daddy doing. the correct sentence is i do not know what daddy is doing. linguistics category it classifies errors according to either or both the language component or the particular linguistics constituent the error effects. language components include phonology (pronunciation), syntax and morphology (grammar), semantics and lexicon (meaning and vocabulary), and discourse (style). while constituents include the elements that comprise each language component (dulay et al., 1982) comparative taxonomy this classification is based on the comparison between the structure of second language errors and certain other types of construction. if we use comparative taxonomy to classify the errors of an indonesian student learning english, we might compare the structure of the learners‟ errors to that of errors reported for acquiring english as a first language. these comparisons have yielded two major error categories within this taxonomy: developmental errors and interlanguage errors (dulay et al., 1982). communicative effect taxonomy this type is based on "the perspective of their effect on the listener or reader". it deals much with distinguishing between errors that seem to cause miscommunication and those that do not. (dulay et al., 1982). this research has shown that errors reflect the overall organization of the sentence usually do not hinder communication (fauziati, 2009). source of error there are many sources of error itself. in general, the source of error consists of two parts, namely interlingual and intralingual transfer. brown (1980) classified the source of errors into four categories. first, interlingual transfer, that is the negative influence of the mother tongue of the learner. second, intralingual transfer, that is the negative transfer of items within the target language. third, the context of learning, which overlaps both types of transfer, for example, the classroom with its teacher and its materials in the case of school learning or the social situation in the case of untutored second language learning. fourth, communication strategies. it is obvious that communication strategy is the conscious employment of verbal mechanisms for communicating ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 124-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license an idea when linguistics forms are not available to the learner for some reasons. in addition, the communication strategies have five parts: (1) avoidance is a common communication strategy that can be broken down into several subcategories, and thus distinguished from other types of strategies. the most common type of avoidance strategy is „ syntactic or lexical avoidance‟ within a semantic category. when a learner, for example, cannot say “i lost my way” he/she might avoid the use of way and says “i lost my road” instead. “phonological avoidance is also common, as in the case of a learner of english who finds initial /i/ difficult to pronounce and wants to say “he is a liar” may choose to say “he does not speak the truth”. (2) prefabricated patterns which to memorize certain stock phrase or sentences without understanding the components of the phrases or sentences. “tourist survival” language is full of prefabricated patterns, most of which can be found in pocket bilingual “phrase” books which list hundreds of stock sentences for various occasions. the examples of these prefabricated patterns are “how much does it cost?”, “where is the toilet?”,i do not speak english” and “i do not understand you". (3) cognitive and personality style. one's own personal style of thinking can be a source of error, highlighting the idiosyncratic nature of many learners' errors. a reflective and conservative style results in very careful, yet hesitant production of speech with perhaps fewer errors but errors indicative of the conscious application of rules. such a person might also commit errors of over formality. a person with high selfesteem may be willing to risk more errors, in the interest of communication, because he does not feel as threatened by committing errors with a person with a low self-esteem. in answer to “how did you get here?” a person may be heard to say, “i drove my bicycle” while another might say, “i pedaled my bicycle” in an attempt to be precise. language errors can thus conceivably be traced to sources in certain personal or cognitive idiosyncrasies. (4) appeal to authority. the learner may directly ask a native speaker (the authority) if he gets stuck by saying for example, “how do you say?‟ or he might guess and then ask for verification from the native speaker of the correctness of the attempt. he might also choose to look for a word or structure up in a bilingual dictionary. (5) language switch. finally, when all other strategies fail to produce a meaningful utterance, a learner may switch to the so-called language switch. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 125-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that is, he may simply use his native language whether the hearer understands that native language or not. usually, just a word or two are slipped in, in the hope that learner will get the gist of what is being communicated. furthermore, norrish (1983) classified causes of error into three types: 1) carelessness. carelessness is often closely related to the lack of motivation. many teachers admit that it is not always the student‟s faults if he loses interest, perhaps the materials and/-or style of presentation does not suit him; 2) first language. learning a language (mother tongue or foreign language) is a matter of habit formation. when someone tries to learn new habits, the old ones will interfere with the new ones. this cause of the error is called first language interference; 3) translation. translation is one of the causes of error. this happens because a student translates his first language sentence or idiomatic expression into the target language word for word. this is probably the most common cause of the error. according to richards (1971), there are four categories of causes of errors, namely: 1) overgeneralization. it generally involves the creation of one deviant structure, for example, “he can sings". in that example, learners overgeneralizes that are the simple present tense, "s” ending is required by third person singular. the learners fail to realize that “s” ending is not required anymore when a sentence in the simple present tense is introduced by an auxiliary verb; 2) incomplete application of rules. this may occur when the learner has to respond immediately to questions made by the teacher and also appear when learners fail to apply the rules completely due to the stimulus sentence. an example of an incomplete application of rules can be seen in the question forms, for example: teacher’s questions student’s responses how much does it cost? it cost five dollar what does he have to do? he have to do write the address what does she tell him? she tell him to hurry as the above sample illustrates, when a question is used to elicit sentences, the answer often has to be corrected by the teacher to counteract the influence of this question. it means that the use of question may also be unrelated to the skills. it is meant to establish as a means of eliciting questions through a transform exercise; 3) false concepts hypothesized. false concepts hypothesized is due to the poor gradation of teaching items, for example, "one day it was happened” and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 126-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license “he is speaks english”. the form „was‟, may be interpreted as the marker of interference the past tense, and the „”is” may be understood to be the corresponding marker of the present tense. 4) ignorance of rule restriction. closely related to the generalization of the deviant structure is the failure to observe the restriction of existing structures, that is, the application of rules to the context where they do not apply. for example, “dion is the most tallest among his friends”. the example is the type of generalization and transfer since the learner is making use of a previously acquired rule on a new situation. procedures for error analysis the set of procedures for conducting error analysis was originally proposed by corder (1978). the procedure basically consists of three major stages, namely recognition, description, and explanation of errors. furthermore, according to sridhar (1980), there are some stages in error analysis: (1) collection of data; (2) identification of errors; (3) classification into error types; (4) statement of relative frequency of error types; (5) identification of the areas of difficulties in the target language; (6) therapy or remedial lesson; (7) analysis of the source of error. the implication of the error analysis fauziati (2009) stated that error analysis has a function as an analytical tool for understanding better the learners‟ problems in learning the second language. furthermore, one of the purposes of conducting error analysis is to identify the principles for an effective error correction. it means that it can help the teachers devise remedial lessons which help learners better learn the target language so that they can develop their interlanguage system. corder (1967) stated that the usefulness of error analysis in three respects: to the researcher, to the language teacher, and to the learner himself/herself. in learning errors, there are many benefits because it can identify strategies which learners use in language teaching. in addition, it is able to identify the causes of the learners‟ errors. furthermore, it can help obtain information on common difficulties in language learning as an aid to teaching or in development of teaching materials(richards, et.al.,1992). according to erdogen (2005), the implication of error analysis to language teaching can be viewed from ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 127-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license two aspects, namely language teachers, and syllabus designers. the implication for foreign language teachers in some cases, there are many advantages when the teachers find error analysis. corder (1987) stated that errors tell teachers how far learners have progressed towards the goal and what remains for them to learn. in addition, following the learners‟ progress, teachers can carry out their studies in accordance with what learners need to know and what part of the teaching strategy to chance or reconstruct. in this case, errors are a means of feedback for the teacher reflecting how effective he/she is in his/her teaching style and what changes he/she has to make to get higher performance from his/her students. furthermore, errors indicate the teacher the points that need further attention. additionally, errors show the way to be treated when their sources are identified correctly (erdogen, 2005). the implication for syllabus designers in teaching learning process, a syllabus design is needed, especially in english courses because it is a very important component. there are many factors that should be considered to decide on what to teach to what level and age group. at this point, errors are significant data for syllabus designers as they show what items are important to be included or which items need to be recycled in the syllabus (erdogen,2005). keshavarz (1997) argued that an error-based analysis can give reliable results upon which remedial materials can be constructed. in other words, an analysis of second language learners‟ error can help identify learners‟ linguistics difficulties and needs at a particular stage of language learning. it is essential for a syllabus to provide with the needs for learning appropriately, and errors are important evidence for that. in addition, errors are also useful in assessing teaching materials, for example, in chiang's view (1981) of the english composition course of the ntnu english department. the high frequencies of errors found in the compositions may indicate the insufficiency for the students to master the written component of the language. furthermore, chiang‟s research also found that there are other pedagogical implications of the error analysis. the first is the usefulness and need of remedial programs. when the result of error analysis shows huge frequencies of errors, remedial ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 128-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license programs of some kind are necessary. the second one. the development of error-based teaching materials and syllabuses for use in the composition class. patterns of errors can be built up into a classified inventory of errors together with the most revealing examples in the corpus. the third is the implication for individualized instruction. as one of the general trends in tesl and in education, in general, is towards individualization of instruction, the error-analysis practice is perhaps one of the most effective means of understanding the individualities of the learners. the fourth is understanding the strategies of the learners. understanding students‟ learning strategies, the teacher will be in a better position to teach. the fifth is understanding the strategies of the learner. understanding students‟ learning strategies, the teacher will be in a better position to teach. the sixth is implications for teaching methodology. as observed, many of the composition classes are based on the sole philosophy that “the more the students write, the better they write”. after the error analysis, this needs to be slightly modified into “the more a student is a guided to write, the better he or she writes”. khansir (2012) stated that error analysis has several implications for the handling of learner‟s errors in the classroom as follows: 1) devising remedial measures; 2) preparing a sequence of target language items in the classroom and textbook within the difficulties items coming after the easier ones. richards et al. (1992) mentioned the study of errors are used in order to: (1) identify strategies which learners use in language teaching, (2) identify the causes of learner‟s errors, and (3) obtain information on common difficulties in language learning as an aid to teaching or in development of teaching materials. based on the explanation that has been mentioned previously, the research question is formulated into: “is it important to learn error?”. the objective of this research is to explain how error analysis is important in the teaching-learning process. many advantages will be gotten when error analysis is learned. the significance of this research is to provide new insights towards error analysis theories which have many advantages in the learning process in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 129-129 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5972 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conclusion and suggestion the error has a very important role for teachers and students. this paper helps introduce about error analysis itself and how it contributes to teaching-learning process, especially in english language teaching process as the foreign language in indonesia. referring to the explanation above, it can be concluded that error analysis identifies the strategies that language learners use. furthermore, it can determine the common difficulties in learning, and also help the teachers develop materials for remedial teaching. if the errors occur, the teacher should understand the source of error itself. the reason is, through the understanding source of error, the teacher is able to provide an appropriate remedy that will resolve the students‟ problems and allow the teacher to discover the relevant rules. thus, an important clue for the teacher to decide on the sort of treatment is the source of error. harmer (1998) suggested that there are three steps that should be followed by the teacher when errors occur. the teacher first listens to the students, then identifies the problem, and puts it right in the most efficient way. in conclusion, the inevitable existence of errors has led researchers to learn on them and find out the natural steps for language learning. thus, findings of error analysis function as a facilitator in language teaching in many ways only if the teacher is aware of them and able to make the appropriate use of them in the teaching process references brown, h. d. (1980). principles of language learning and teaching. new jersey: prentice hall, inc. corder, s. p. (1967). the significance of learners´ errors. iral international review of applied linguistics, 5, 161– 170. corder, s.p. (1987). error analysis and interlanguage. oxford: oxford university press. chiang, t.(1981).“error analysis: a study of errors made in written english by chinese learners”. unpublished m.a. thesis, ntnu. dulay et al. (1982). language two. new york: oxford university press. fauziati, e. (2009). reading on applied linguistics: a handbook for language teacher and teacher-researcher. surakarta: era pustaka utama. harmer, j. (1998). how to teach english. essex: longman. james, k. (1998). errors in language learning and use: exploring error analysis. london: longman. richards, j. c. (1971). a non-contrastive approach to error analysis. journal of elt. 25, 204-219. richards et al. (1992). dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. essex: longman. . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 63-70 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee peer-discussion in toefl preparation class nyak mutia ismail, sri wahyuni received: 9th march 2017; revised: 20th may 2017; accepted: 25th june 2017 abstract the aim of this study was to see whether the technique of peer-discussion during the toefl preparation class benefits the students in increasing their score in section two of toefl test, structure and written expression. according to porter et al. (2001), during the process of students‘ interaction with their peer(s), students have more open chances to ask conceptual questions; and as their peer(s) respond, they can understand more correctly and individually the questions. this study adopted quasi-experimental design involving one class consisting of 24 second semester college students at economics faculty, syiah kuala university, aceh, indonesia. the result showed that the technique posed positive result on the students‘ score in section two of toefl. the findings revealed that the ha is accepted for the tvalue is 0.37 (df 22, α=0.05, -0.404 ≤ t ≥ 0.404 ). also, it is significant for the sigvalue is 0.9 (sigvalue ≥ α=0.05). hopefully, the result can contribute to the theoretical gap in the toefl domain since there have not been many experimental studies about this technique used in toefl class. the technique indeed helps the students in overcoming the problems that they face in the section two of toefl. besides, it can also boost their motivation in preparing for the toefl test. key words: peer-discussion; structure and written expression; toefl test; language test abstrak tujuan dari studi ini adalah untuk melihat apakah diskusi dengan teman selama kelas persiapan toefl dapat memberi manfaat kepada siswa dalam meningkatkan skor mereka di bagian kedua tes toefl, yakni structure and written expression. seperti dikatakan oleh porter et al. (2001) bahwa selama proses interaksi dengan teman, siswa mempunyai lebih banyak kesempatan untuk menanyakan pertanyaan konseptual; dan diwaktu mereka merespon, mereka mampu untuk mengerti dengan lebih baik dan secara individu pertanyaan tersebut. studi ini menggunakan desain quasi-experimental yang melibatkan satu kelas yang terdiri dari 24 siswa dari semester 2 di fakultas ekonomi, universitas syiah kuala university, aceh, indonesia. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa teknik ini mempunyai hasil positif terhadap skor siswa dalam bagian kedua tes toefl. hasil yang didapat menerima ha dengan nilai t 0.37 (df 22, α=0.05, -0.404 ≤ t ≥ 0.404 ). dan hasil ini juga signifikan dengan nilai signifikansi 0.9 (sigvalue ≥ α=0.05). diharapkan hasil dari studi ini dapat memberi kontribusi kepada kajian teoritis dalam karena masih belum banyak studi eksperiment tentang ini dalam pengajaran toefl. teknik ini mampu membantu siswa dalam menghadapi masalah dalam toefl di bagian kedua. di samping itu, teknik ini juga mampu meningkatkan motivasi siswa di dalam menghadapi tes toefl. kata kunci: diskusi dengan tema; structure and written expression; tes toefl; tes bahasa how to cite: ismail, n. m. wahyuni, s. (2017). peer-discussion in toefl preparation class. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 63-70. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 64-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction there are various tests that are utilized to see a person‘s ability in english. one of them is test of english as a foreign language (toefl). this test is seen as a highstake testing in indonesia. the most possible reason for this is because most english teachers provide easy questions for tests at school so that the students are not familiar with difficult questions (rosdiana & ismail, 2017). hence, there are a lot of courses—even universities— that offer preparation classes for toefl. the main purpose of this test is to seek the test-takers‘ english proficiency in direct and indirect situations, whether spoken or written english. this test is considered important because english has been seen as the worldwide lingua franca which is used by academic and nonacademic majority all over the world. for this rationale, most universities, national and international, has stated that toefl score is a qualification to finish or to enter a university (ananda, 2016). toefl is knowm for its language skill tests which are available in three types; they are paper-based, computer-based, and internet-based test. the paper-based test offers three sections—listening, structure and written expression, and reading. this type of teofl test was the one used in this study. in some universities, the test of written english (twe) is also administered to test the writing ability but it is still rare in indonesia, especially in aceh. then, the computer-based and the internet-based tests have more intricated test instruction since they have all skills tested—speaking, listening, reading, and writing. besides, there is also integrated instructional models employed in these two types of toefl tests. on the contrary, the problem was identified based on the author‘s observation: most toefl preparation classes only set ―item discussion‖ as their teaching strategy. in the ―item discussion‖ strategy, the tutor asks the learners to find the asnwer, and then, the tutor reveals the correct answer with some explanation. this model of learning is teacher-centered and has brought the learners to boredom and they build assumption that it is useless to learn toefl. besides, they are not aware of the starting points and the hallmarks in the discussion. apparently, a more student-oriented technique was being proposed in this study. it is the peer-discussion technique which involves students to be more active to inquire the knowledge that they need to seek during the process of learning toefl. the fact is that most acehnese toefl students are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 65-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license less proficient, generally in english. it is a profoundly good idea to have the students work on their own, while the tutor only acts as the facilitator. the phrase ―less proficient‖ mentioned is because for advanced learners this technique might not help in enriching their strategies in facing challenges in toefl. or, most advanced students choose to learn in individual mode and they get easily distracted—or even may get disruptive—when boring technique is applied (ismail, 2016). specifically, this study aimed at seeing whether the peer-discussion technique can increase students‘ score in toefl section two: structure and written expression. this techniques has been seen as a selfcan best-suit the learners as well as it can fit in with the curriculum applied in the classroom. as directly stated by pisano & berger (2016), ―peer learning‘ as an umbrella concept that encompasses a number of different mechanisms or instruments that support ‗learning‘ from and with peers with regard to policies, in our case related to sustainable development‖ (p. 4). from this quotation, we can be sure that peer work, in this case peer discussion, can be useful for the learners themselves and also the instructors. a study by larson, rydeman, and hedvall (2012) was employed to find out three objectives. the first one is to see the roles between the students and teacher during the implementation of peer instruction; second, the way the students collaborate with their peer during the peer instruction mode, and finally, the strategies used to increase students‘ learning motivation. there were two courses taken as the data collection process. it was carried out for 20 weeks with two teachers. the results depicted that, first, in the peer interaction process, teachers tried to facilitate the students with best feedback; while among the learners, they can change perspectives among one another; second, the students‘s mode in learning is that they try hard to accomplish the tasks that their teacher gave. and finally, the teachers increase the students‘ motivation by giving them private feedback, instead of in forum, so that the students can learn the feedback entirely as suggestions without any shameful moments. next, it is a study by zher, hussein, and saat (2008) which aimed at enhancing feedback via peer learning in the higher education setting. there were 75 participants as the students and one lecturer with four assistants. they were given three tasks: eportfolio, reflection, and project-based assignments. in collecting the data, the researchers used interviews and questionnaires. the result portrays that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 66-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license there are a lot of advantages of peer learning, such as the fact that students can see eachother‘s mistakes, accept others‘ opoinion, broaden their perspectives, and be cooperative instead of competitive. finally presented in this article, a study by kodabux & hoolash (2015). this study‘s objective was to find out lecturers‘ perspectives on students‘ schemes of learning since active engagement with the course material can promote deeper understanding of the discussed subject area. such goals were done in effort through the application of peer learning. the result shows that lecturers assumed that the peer learning can be ineffective because of the inflexibility and more trainings for preparation is needed for more specific tutor-tutee peer learning model. the scope of this study was to find out whether the peer-discussion technique works well in increasing students‘ score in toefl section two: structure and written expression. this study is significant since it might give contribution to the theoretical basis that there are lack of studies on peerdiscussion and other activities in toefl section two: structure and written expression. additionally, it is expected that the result can fill that theoretical gap. practically, it can be a new teaching perception for toefl tutors to modify their teaching techniques in the toefl preparation classes. departing from the explanation above, a hypothesis was formulated as follows,“does peer-discussion increase the students’ score in section two: structure and written expression of toefl?”. method this study employed a quasiexperimental study which was carried out with the pretest-posttest design and it only involved a single group. the data were collected using the instruments of test, which were the pretest at the beginning of the experimentation and the post-test at the end of the process. the result comparison between the pretest and post-test can be seen in the finding section. in addition, the process of the experimentation was carried out for 5 weeks. there were 24 toefl preparation student participants. they were the second semester economics students at syiah kuala university, aceh, indonesia. the instrument used was test—pretest and post-test. in both tests, the researcher used 50 questions of section two toefl which were taken from sharpe (2008). and for the posttest, there were also 50 questions—but different ones from the pretest—on structure and written expression. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 67-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license afterward, the data obtained from both tests were used to determine the normality, homogeneity, and mean score, to eventually be calculated for its tvalue in attempt to test the hypothesis. findings and discussion the requirements that are needed to be met to prove the hypothesis through t-test are normality, homogeneity, and mean score. they are presented in the following table. table 1. t-test requirements pretest posttest normality(kolmogorovsmirnov) 0.74 homogeneity (levene) 0.32 mean score 57.3 66.8 the tabel above shows that the data distribution of the pre-test and post-test are normal since the kolmogorov-smirnovvalue is 0.74 which is higher than the degree of freedom α=0.05. the normality means that there is no score that lies far away from the mean score, or known as the outliers. next, homogeneity of the data means that the fvalue (0.32) is higher than α=0.05. lastly, it can be seen from the mean score that there is an increase in from 57.3 to 66.8 after the peerdiscussion strategy during the toefl preparation (for section two: structure and written expression) was implemented. since all of the requirements have been met, so the process of data analysis can be proceeded, and the result of the hypothesis testing is provided in the following table. hypothesis testing assemblies the pretest and post-test. the hypothesis testing was conducted to configure whether the mean comparison between the pretest and post-test are significantly different or not. table 2. hypothesis testings tests tvalue sigvalue ha h0 pre-post 0.37 0.9   in the table 2 above, it is shown that in pretest and post-test, the t-test result is 0.37; since ttable for df 22 (twotailed) is within -0.404 and 0.404, so that the tvalue is still under the critical area and ha is accepted. to see whether it is significant, the sigvalue is also provided in the table showing the value of 0.9; the value is considered significant if sigvalue ≥ α=0.05. briefly, the score increase is statistically significant. there are two points that can be drawn from these results. first, regarding the increase that is gained by the group exposed to the technique of peer-discussion in the toefl preparation class, it can be said that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 68-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license while doing the peer discussion, they can see each others‘ strengths and weaknesses. as argued by moore and teather (2013) that students need to be able to identify their own weaknesses and find ways to brigde the gap. as added by xia, fielder, and siragosa (2013) that there are, indeed, other techniques and strategies in maximizing the result of the students‘ performance, but it reveals better results when the students work with other students. statistical measurements also shows that there are more objective judgements and effective evaluation in peer learning process. besides, this techniques can also create positive environment to all students as it narrows the marginalization between bright and weak students. furthermore, it is effective to develop academic and social skill; and, it also gives more value toward others‘ intelligence as well as personal growth and development (wessel, 2015). second, this technique can promote learners‘ higher motivation. postholm (2010) stated that an interaction with the learning environment is seen as a motive for people to develop themselves, so it is a great idea to build positive culture and environment in the learning environment. shortly, there have been a lot of studies on peer-learning and most of them concluded that peer-learning gives positive contribution, such as building students‘ skills in communication, critical thinking, and self-confidence. peer learning was shown to be as effective as the conventional classroom lecturing method in teaching undergraduate nursing students (stone, cooper, & cant, 2013). for instance, in writing skill, learners can learn to correct meanings and ideas as well as provide the feedbacks and corrections (miftah, 2016). it is helpful for the helpers as much as for the helped students as it depends on both students (helper and helped) to contribute to the process with integrity (topping, 2005). conclusion and suggestion to conclude, this research study has shown some new perspectives that the implementation of social activity such as peer-discussion in toefl preparation class is effective to be used to enhance the students‘ ability in the section two of toefl, which is structure and written expression. firstly, this strategy can increase the students‘ score in the performance test. it is clearly shown in the pretestposttest score comparison. secondly, it has also promoted students to be more motivated during the learning process because they can directly share the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 69-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license challenge that they find during the process with their peers. the suggestion is that this technique is worth to be deliberated for toefl instructors on its application in toefl preparation classes. references ananda, r. (2016). problems with section two itp toefl test. studies in english and education, 3(1), 37–51. ismail, n. m. (2016). using the process approach for teaching english descriptive writing. english education journal, 7(4), 535-548. kodabux, a., hoolash, b., & kumar. a. (2015). peer learning strategies: acknowledging lecturers‘ concerns of the tudent learning assistant scheme on a new higher education campus. journal of peer learning, 8(7), 59-84. miftah, m. z. (2016). efl students performance and expectation toward peer response in writing classroom. indonesian journal of english education, 3(2), 208-234. moore, c., & teather, s. (2013). engaging students in peer review: feedback as learning. issues in educational research, 23(2), 196211. pisano, u., & berger, g. (2016). exploring peer learning to support the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sd. european sustainable development network, quarterly report 40. porter, l., lee, c. b., simon, b., & zingaro, d. (2011). peer instruction: do students really learn from peer discussion in computing? proceedings of the 16th annual conference on innovation and technology in computer science education, june 27-29. darmstadt, germany. postholm, m. b. (2012). teachers' professional development: a theoretical review. retrieved on oct 17, 2017 from https://www.researchgate.net/p ublication/263253581_teachers% 27_professional_development_a_ theoretical_review [accessed]. rosdiana., & ismail, n. m. (2017). cognitive inquiry: is english really difficult for science students? getsempena english education journal, 4(1), 34-46. sharpe, p. j. (2008). barron’s practice exercises for the toefl (6th ed.). tangerang: bina rupa aksara. stone, r., cooper, s., & cant, r. (2013). the value of peer learning in undergraduate nursing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263253581_teachers%27_professional_development_a_theoretical_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263253581_teachers%27_professional_development_a_theoretical_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263253581_teachers%27_professional_development_a_theoretical_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263253581_teachers%27_professional_development_a_theoretical_review ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 70-70 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4837 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license education: a systematic review. isrn nursing. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/ 930901. topping, k. j. (2005). trends in peer learning. educational psychology, 25(6), 631–645. wessel, a. (2015). peer learning strategies in the classroom. journal on best teaching practices, 2(1), 1416. xia, j., fielder, j. f., & siragosa, l. (2013). achieving better peer interaction in online discussion forums: a reflective practitioner case study. issues in educational research, 23(1), 97-113. zher, n. h., hussein, r. m. r., & saat, r. m. (2008). enhancing feedback via peer learning in large classrooms. malaysian online journal on educational technology, 4(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/930901 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/930901 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 49-62 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee teaching english in non-english departments: empowering teacher towards improvement ninuk sholikhah akhiroh received: 18th april 2017; revised: 25th may 2017; accepted: 20th june 2017 abstract english language teaching (elt) in non-english majors already has its “home” but not its “host”. it means that the parties involved in the teaching have not been able to manage an effective elt yet. there could be many aspects related to this, yet this paper prefers to propose a solution to improve the effectiveness of english teaching in non-english majors by empowering the english language lecturer. this paper refers to the results of research conducted on the teaching of english in the faculty of social sciences that use lecturers and students as the main informant, as well as interviews, observation and document analysis as data collection techniques. the results showed that some important improvement in elt for non-english majors can be initiated by the lecturers. there are some necessary steps to do to reinforce the role of lecturers in elt implementation. they are involving the lecturer in designing or revising the curriculum, building connection with fellow esp lecturers and lecturers of relevant field of study, and activating focus group discussion among teaching team. these steps hopefully will be complemented by the improvement of other aspects in elt for non-english departments to build an effective teaching. keywords: elt; lecturer’s role non-english majors abstrak pengajaran bahasa inggris di jurusan non-bahasa inggris baru memiliki “rumah” saja, belum “tuan rumah”nya. ini berarti bahwa pihak-pihak yang terlibat dalam pembelajaran belum dapat menata sebuah pengajaran bahasa inggris yang efektif. ada banyak hal yang dapat dilakukan, namun tulisan ini memilih untuk mengajukan sebuah solusi perbaikan pengajaran bahasa inggris di jurusan nonbahasa inggris dengan cara memberdayakan dosen pengampu matakuliah. tulisan ini merujuk pada hasil penelitian yang dilakukan terhadap pengajaran bahasa inggris di fakultas ilmu sosial dengan menggunakan dosen dan mahasiswa sebagai informan utama, serta wawancara, observasi dan analisis dokumen sebagai teknik pengumpulan data. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa beberapa perbaikan penting dalam penegajaran bahasa inggris dapat difasilitasi oleh dosen pengampu matakuliah. langkah-langkah yang dapat dilakukan adalah: melibatkan dosen dalam menyusun kurikulum pengajaran bahasa inggris; membangun hubungan dengan sesama dosen pengajar esp dan dosen ahli bidang ilmu tertentu; mengaktifkan forum diskusi antar anggota tim pengajar. langkah-langkah ini diharapkan dapat dilengkapi dengan perbaikan dari aspek-aspek lain guna mewujudkan pembelajaran yang efektif. kata kunci: elt; lecturer’s role non-english majors how to cite: akhiroh, n. s. . (2017). teaching english in non-english departments: empowering teacher towards improvement. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 49-62. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341. mailto:ninuk.akhiroh@mail.unnes.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 50-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english language teaching (elt) in higher education in indonesia can be divided into two classifications, that is, as core subject (expertise subject) and as supporting subject. elt as core subject can be found in english language department, while as supporting subject (general subject) can be found in non-english language departments. this is based on the standard of content of the 2010 curriculum of higher education stating differentiation between expertise subject and general subject. elt in higher education is based on the need of each university due to university’s autonomy to design their own curriculum, it makes elt in universities vary and the variation goes wider in the teaching of english for non-english majors. the variation includes teaching aim, management, material, amount of credits, lecturers’ qualification, amount of students in a class, supporting facilities and many others (sofendi, 2008). esp teachers in their researches reveal some typical problems in the implementation of elt in universities such as the bad understanding on the nature of elt among elt stakeholders, the unavailability of qualified teachers, and the very limited materials. despite the problems faced, elt in higher education shows a growing awareness on the significance of english language for non english majors. this can bee seen from the increase of the amount of credits. many departments establish the minimum 4 credits for english language teaching which is usually divided into two classes of general english (2 credits) and specific english (2 credits). the two classes are conducted in different semester with the general english usually proceeds the specific english. globalization has made english language a necessity for non english language students not only in academic sphere but also in work competition. that is why many boards of non-english departments consider the importance of equipping students with better english by increasing the amount of credits for elt. however, increasing the amount of credits for elt is still far from achieving the teaching aim to give benefit for students in academic as well as work field. this should be accompanied by the growing quality of the teaching. one of the ways to improve the quality of teaching is by maximizing the role of english lecturers as the forefront in the teaching and learning process. in fact, the teaching of english in non-english departments has not got a good concern from the board ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 51-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of university. this condition triggers esp practitioners and scholars to do everything as efforts to improve the condition. a number of researches have been done by teachers and efl experts on the implementation of english for specific purposes (esp) in indonesian universities. floris (2008) talked about “developing english for general academic purposes (egap) in an indonesian university”. this research discussed the methodology and findings of a need analysis in egap class. kusni (2007) viewed that esp teaching does not get much attention from some related parties and thus held a research on reformulating esp teaching design in higher education. sadiq (n.d.) proposed the specific formula for teaching english to nonenglish students’ department as students’ reflection. kusumaningputri (2010) conducted a research on the challenges and solution of esp teaching in a university which focuses on the teacher, material, facilities, institutional policies and the students. amiri (2008) wrote an article on a program evaluation of esp education at ms/a and ph.d levels at science and research campus, islamic azad university, iran. most researches on elt for non-english majors attempt to know the weakness of the program for improvement, and the strength of the program for maintenance. however, the focus of the research varies ranging from the curriculum, teaching method, teacher, facilities, institutional policies etc. furthermore, being held in different setting as a case study, every research on elt in non-english departments always bring something new and unique from the dynamics of elt implementation. the researches reveal relatively similar problems in the implementation of elt in non-english departments from one university to another, that is, the program has not achieved its goal and is conducted far from the rule of esp (the teaching of english in non-english departments is called esp) conduct. although having similar problems, the effective way to solve the problems depends on the condition of each university. it means that an effective solution for one university may not work well for others. although done by many researchers, each research on esp conducted in different universities possibly reveal something unique and different from others, and thus gives contribution to the dynamic of esp teaching. this paper aims at describing the implementation of elt in nonenglish departments in one of indonesian state universities. as other ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 52-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license universities, the university set as research subject also faces problems such as the lack of understanding on the nature of esp, limited number of qualified teacher and material. formerly conducted as university general subject (matakuliah umum) under the university general subject team, elt in the faculty of social sciences is now set as subjects handled by each faculty under the term skill development subject (matakuliah pengembangan kepribadian). the faculty’s independence to hold elt brings about many consequences among which are: the faculty has to set their own elt curriculum, prepare the teachers, materials and evaluation where on the other hand they do not have sufficient personels to handle all. what is different from other universities is that esp teacher in the university set as research subject is not a lecturer from faculty of english language. the teacher is specifically recruited to teach in the faculty and under the management of the faculty. this condition influences much in the implementation of elt in non-english departments. practically all aspects related to elt in non-english department is under the handling of english lecturer in each faculty which is very limited in number. mostly each faculty has only one english lecturer having english language education background. therefore, it is interesting to know how english lecturer conduct elt classes in non-english departments with the very much burden they have, what problems they face, and what solutions can be done to cope with the problems in order to improve the quality of the teaching. lecturer’s role is set as the focus of analysis in this paper since many researches on elt in non-english majors state that lecturer always become the problem in elt implementation due to its quantity or quality. the researches also propose some solutions to the problems of elt in non-english majors which mostly involve some related parties. it is noteworthy to consider that english subject in non-english department get less attention than any other subjects since it is not a core study. therefore, the concern of the board of the faculty on this subject cannot be expected fully. instead of encouraging some other parties to start an improvement, it is better to start from the fullyparticipated person in elt for nonenglish department, that is, the english lecturer. besides, most literatures show the significant role of teacher in conducting elt since other aspects in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 53-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license elt teaching such as materials development, class management as well as evaluation mechanism are all conducted by the teacher. most authors agree that esp teachers’ work involve much more than teaching (ahmed, 2014) because of the various roles they have such as: as a teacher, as course designer and material provider, as researcher, as collaborator, and as evaluator. esp teachers’ role is a complex and responsible one than teaching general english. esp teachers should be aware of the course objectives, have a good understanding of the course content, and be flexible with learners. one important thing to know is that esp teacher is not specialized in the field, but in teaching english. some literatures show the heavy demand of esp teachers as , what is revealed in a study conducted by javid (2014) stating that english language teachers are considered ideal if they have capacity to motivate their students to exploit their latent potential to achieve enhanced learning skills. other research studies have also highlighted the heavy demand of esp teachers which is compiled by javid (2014) in a conclusion that a professional esp teacher should have the ability to get ready to teach the students from one professional field to another without spending months. unfortunately, in spite of the great importance of esp courses, in many situations, very inexperienced and untrained teachers are sometimes sent to teach esp learners. they can be either english teachers or content teachers who have limited familiarity with english or academic content (gafournia & saber, 2014). this condition is also a common phenomena in indonesian universities. due to the unique characteristic of esp courses which is the mixture of content and language learning, one important thing an esp teacher should have is the ability to cooperate with content teacher to develop effective materials. studies on the role of language and content teacher indicated that language-teaching programs cannot be separated from other academic programs, or efl programs cannot be separated from other academic disciplines (gafournia & saber, 2014). thus, esp in non-english departments and the availability of qualified teacher is a combination that should be realized in any way. this paper attempts to portray the implementation of esp teaching in nonenglish departments focusing more on the problem of teacher. firstly, this paper will describe the implementation of esp class to give description about ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 54-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the heavy load of esp teachers. secondly, it will identify the problems faced by esp teachers and lastly, it proposes possible solutions for the problem. method this paper is a qualitative study exploring data descriptively and inductively (spradley, 1997). using a case study design, this study aims to address the implementation of elt for undergraduate students of faculty of social sciences, the problem it faces and possible solution to cope with the problems, all with the emphasis on the teacher. subject of the research is general english classes and specific english classes conducted in the faculty of social sciences with the informants are english lecturer (3 lecturers teaching in 7 english classes in the period of research), student (7 students representing 7 english classes in the period of research) and the board of the faculty (two persons consisting of head of department and secretary of department). data collecting techniques are observation, interview and document analysis. observation is done once in seven esp classes implemented during the time of the research. the classes are conducted by the two departments of the five departments in the faculty of social sciences. interview is done with three esp teachers having english classes during the research period and also students attending the classes which is chosen purposively, one student from one class. interview of board of the faculty is done to know about curriculum policy. data analysis technique is done through a sequence of steps, that are, data reduction, transcription of recorded data, data classification, and drawing conclusion. findings and discussion the implementation of elt in the faculty of social sciences english courses in the faculty of social sciences are now subjects managed by the faculty. previously, the courses are included in the general courses (mku) managed by the manager of mku in university level. not only in terms of management, the curriculum structure was no longer set as mku course but as personality development course (mpk). mpk is compulsory subjects that must be taken by undergraduates. in addition to the english, the other subjects included in the mpk namely: religion, pancasila education, citizenship education, bahasa indonesia, statistics and information and communication technology. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 55-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1. distribution of the subject of english in the faculty of social sciences no. study program name of subject total credits second-half of the academic year of 2014/2015 first-half of the academic year of 2015/2016 1. history education english for history learning english 4 2. history english for history i english english for history ii 6 3. geography education english 2 4. geography english 2 5. pancasila and civic education english english english for civic education 6 6. political sciences english english 4 7. sociology and anthropology education english 3 (english for teaching and learning) english for academic purposes 4 8. social sciences education english for social sciences education english 4 source: researcher’s primary data english language courses in the faculty of social sciences is divided into two, namely the basic english by the name of the course is "english or bahasa inggris " and advanced english, by the name of the course varies according to the study program, such as english for history learning for the department of history, english for geography for the department of geography, english for civic education and english for political sciences for the department of politics and civic education, english for sociology for the department of sociology education, and english for social sciences education for the department of social sciences education. english subject english in the faculty of social sciences is taught at the initial level, that is, the first or second semester in 2 credits. some departments have english class on the first-half of the academic year, while the other departments have it on the second-half of the academic year. this setting is needed to overcome the limited number of english lecturer. the subject of english in the context of this paper is often understood as basic english or general english. it is named ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 56-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license basic english because the material covered in this course includes basic skills of language and has not been connected or applied to a specific area of expertise. basic english course is given to students throughout the study program with the same name, which is "english". as a "tool knowledge", english language course is expected to be the basis of knowledge when the english language skills is later applied for specific areas of expertise. for example, the material on "english clauses" that talks about subject and predicate, or agreement between subject and predicate will be an important base when students make their academic writing in english. therefore, the subjects of english should be given as a prerequisite to follow an advanced english course. the teaching team also bears some problems. one of them is lecturer who does not have english language education background has to teach english. based on observations, in the faculty, to assess whether somebody can teach english or not is measured with a simple parameter, namely the mastery of vocabulary. vocabulary is indeed a great asset for a teacher of english subject, but it is not the only requirement. we need to well realize that the role of lecturers in the implementation of esp is very important and their task is varied starting from teacher, collaborator, course designer and material provider, researcher, and evaluator. for a more detailed steps of what a lecturer do in an esp class, the following table 2. table 2. learning design model (bell, 1981) source: (gillet & wray, 2006) analyzing student’s performance analyzing student’s need setting aim giving feedback designing syllabus selecting learning approach evaluating implementing designing material ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 57-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based on the learning model displayed, it is known that the lecturers teaching english in the faculty of social sciences have a big task to do. vocabulary mastery is not enough, a linguistic literacy is needed. for such a big role, lecturers’ competence is very noteworthy, and the competence cannot be measured only from vocabulary mastery . if the need for proficiency in english increases, the need for competence of teachers must be improved. if not, it will be difficult to improve the quality of teaching. the lack of linguistic literacy is another problem faced by lecturer who does not have english language education background. linguistic literacy which is understood as a variety of linguistic knowledge, ranging from discourse analysis, genre analysis, culture analysis is very important in the understanding of the english language teaching (english language teaching / elt). as an international academic language, the teaching of english is growing rapidly and there are various types, among which are english for general purpose (egp) and english for specific purposes (esp). each type has their own characteristic which has to be known to be able to conduct a qualified teaching program. knowing the nature of esp becomes a must-have for lecturer of english courses in non english majors. this knowledge is the basis in preparing learning design. in addition, the nature of the esp should be introduced to students at the beginning of the lecture so that students have a clear orientation in following the lectures. therefore, teachers should first master the various concepts about esp. based on observations and interviews, lecturers still have minimal information about esp and other various types of english language teaching. this is partly evidenced by the inappropriateness of giving material. materials provided in the course of english for specific purposes class are similar with those provided in general english class. this condition is even worsened by the fact that for particular discipline at the faculty of social sciences, the reference for esp books is very limited. for example the book of english for history, the availability of this book is far more limited than the book of english for accounting for example. this condition make the lecturer resolve to teaching from textbooks which may be quite unsuitable. lecturers as course designer should be able to design materials in accordance with what the learners require. after that, the lecturer should be able to convey the material to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 58-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license style and language appropriate to the level of abilities and needs of students. evaluation of lecturers to students should also correspond to the learning objectives. all of these cannot be done without a good understanding on the concept of elt, eap, esp and various other related concepts. more broadly, the competence of lecturers as part of the organizers of esp is a central pillar for the successful implementation of esp, therefore, it should be improved. improving the quality of teacher to improve the quality of elt in nonenglish departments improving the quality of elt needs a synergy among the board of the department/faculty, the teacher and the students. the aspects to be improved are the curriculum, material and learning process, and all of them can be facilitated by the lecturer. knowing that the lecturer is the forefront in the implementation of elt in non-english departments, improving its role will be one of the most useful ways to improve the quality of the teaching. based on research results, there are some necessary steps to do to reinforce the role of lecturer in elt implementation. involving the lecturer in designing the curriculum the role of a lecturer in the elt implementation has been started from designing the curriculum. unfortunately, data from the field shows that in the process of designing the curriculum, very few of the board of the departments involved the english lecturer in designing the curriculum. some departments even do not revise the elt curriculum for the last ten years. some other departments revise the elt curriculum without discussing with the english lecturer. this missing participation affects many other aspects in the teaching since curriculum is the starting point for other aspects in elt. under the policy of the university, the task to design or revise curriculum should be done by the board of the department through a mechanism of consultation with lecturers expert in certain subject. the important role of the lecturer in designing the curriculum is to give opinions related to for what purpose the students need english, what kind of english the students need, what competence is expected, and what material should be prepared. these kinds of information are linguistically bounded, thus it needs the existence of a linguistically-literate person. although some important information on elt curriculum can be gained from various sources, the opinion of the english lecturer is more valid since he/she experiences and knows the condition in the faculty. however, due to the limitedness of english lecturer ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 59-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license availability or possibly because of the low awareness on the significance of english language for non-english department students, this mechanism is not carried out by every department. some negative results of the absence of english lecturer in designing curriculum are: there is improper set of the schedule and improper material for general english and specific english. these problems have to be solved immediately, and improving the participation of the lecturer in designing curriculum is the key solution. building connection with fellow esp lecturers and lecturers of relevant field of study besides the curriculum, the next aspect to be improved by the facilitation of the lecturer is developing good materials. there are some basic things to do to improve the quality and enrich the materials. having sufficient references in teaching is a good capital. in fact, this is one of the big problems faced by esp teachers. certain field of study does not have specific book for esp. we can find easily the books of english for accounting, english for engineering, english for medicine, nevertheless, the books of english for sociology, english for history are limited. this fact creates a difficulty for esp teacher to get the model of material appropriate for certain field of study. when there is a difficulty to access references in the form of books, another handy and catchy source of information is other esp teachers and teachers of relevant field of study. other esp teachers from other faculties can be good sparing partners to give opinion on developing teaching materials, evaluation mechanism and sharing teaching problems. in esp classes, the role of lecturers expert in certain field of study is needed to ensure a content and language integrated learning. for example in teaching english for sociology, the involvement of lecturers expert in sociology will give good contributions in developing good and elaborated materials. despite the many benefits gained from communication with fellow esp teachers and teachers of relevant field of study, not many english lecturers make use of it optimally. among esp teachers of each faculty is usually built an informal communication where sometimes problems are shared but without any real solution. a good relationship with lecturers expert in certain field of study is another aspect to be empowered although it is difficult to be established because of the limited time the lecturers have. their main activities related to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 60-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their field of study give little chance for them to involve well in other subject, including elt. high burden of teaching is suspected as the cause for the reluctance of english lecturers as well as lecturers expert in certain field of study to build a good connection one another. a good relationship with lecturers expert in certain field of study enables the realisation of content and language integrated learning. information from the lecturers can help esp lecturers prepare suitable materials, and this will be very effective to improve the quality of teaching. activating focus group discussion among teaching team one of the weaknesses of elt in non-english department is the weak cooperation among teaching team. between english lecturer of the faculty and the team member from each department, there should be regular meetings hold before, during and after the implementation of teaching in every semester. the meetings are very useful to make coordination in setting teaching schedule, discussing materials and teaching task distribution. along the semester, there should be meetings to discuss the development of class handling including solving some problems, synchronising materials. at the end of the semester, a meeting to discuss teaching evaluation and evaluation mechanism is needed. data show that the meeting hold among teaching team is very limited. coordination is usually made before starting the teaching program to discuss task distribution, and materials. time allocated to talk about material is not much. team members usually receive the materials prepared by team leader (faculty english lecturer) without having further discussion on them. in the delivery of materials during learning process, rarely do team members make coordination. sometimes, team member designs his/her own material different from the materials prepared by the english lecturer. even when they follow similar material, the implementation of materials delivery varies from one lecturer to another due to the lack of coordination among them. the conditions may lead to an ineffectiveness of teaching. therefore, it should be stopped. informal meeting among teaching team members should critically be improved to an official one which can cover many important coordinations to improve the quality of the teaching. here, the role of teaching team coordinator (in this case is the faculty english lecturer) is badly needed. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 61-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license conlusion and suggestion the policies of the institution to localize english subject under the management of each faculty has brought about some implications in the curriculum of english subject and the availability of english lecturer in each faculty. in terms of curriculum, there is a division of english as general subject and english as specific subject. the main problem of esp teaching in non-english departments is the availability of qualified lecturers who can be the proper hosts for the big home of elt. the involvement of lecturers having no education background of english language in teaching esp is the most possible solution in the impossibility to hire another english lecturer for the faculty. lecturers’ competence should be ensured, moreover, to the lecturers having no english language education background, if their help is considered the only answer to realize an esp class in the very limitedness of the “real” english language lecturers. lecturers’ competence in teaching english is very important since they are the motor generating other main components in conducting esp class namely material and evaluation. thus, improving the quality of the lecturers will be fundamental in revitalizing esp class to get closer to the learning aim. improving the quality of the lecturers can be done by improving their role in elt implementation by involving the lecturers in designing the curriculum, maximizing the use of connection among esp lecturers as well as coordination with lecturers expert in certain field of study. holding a regular meeting or discussion among teaching team member is another important step to improve lecturers’ role in the teaching. in the long term, the faculty is very recommended to hire other english lecturers. however, in the short execution, empowering the lecturers can be the most possible solution to improve the effectiveness of elt in non-english departments. references ahmed, m. k. (2014). the esp teacher: issues, tasks and challenges. english for specific purposes world, 42(15), p. 1-33. amiri, b. m. (2008). a program evaluation of esp education at ms/a and ph.d levels at science and research campus, islamic azad university. human sciences, 56, 1-28 floris, f. d. (2008). developing english for general academic purposes (egap) in an indonesian university. kata, 10(1), 53-62. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 62-62 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5341 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license javid, c. z. (2015). english for specific purposes: role of learners, teachers, and teaching methodologies. european scientific journal, 11(20). retrieved from https://eujournal.org/index.php /esj/article/viewfile/. kusni. (2007). reformulasi perancangan program esp di perguruan tinggi. linguistik indonesia, 25(1). retrieved from www.linguistikindonesia.org/images/files/refo rmulasiperancanganprogramesp. pdf. kusumaningputri, r. (2010). esp di universitas jember: tantangan dan solusi. jurnal pengembangan pendidikan, 7, 182-189. retrieved from https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.p hp/jp2/article/download/854/6 68/. sadiq, n. (n.d.) teaching english to non english students’ department at islamic university of indonesia through formula 33: students’ reflection. retrieved from www.academia.edu. on 8/11/2016 sofendi. (2008). tujuan pengajaran bahasa inggris di universitas sriwijaya. paper presented on “seminar dan rapat tahunan ke-4 bks-ptn wilayah barat bidang bahasa tahun 2008”. retrieved from www.eprints.unsri.ac.id on 8/11/2016. spradley, j. p. (1997). metode etnografi. yogyakarta: tiara wacana. standar isi pendidikan tinggi. 2010. bsnp. http://www.linguistik-indonesia.org/images/files/reformulasiperancanganprogramesp.pdf http://www.linguistik-indonesia.org/images/files/reformulasiperancanganprogramesp.pdf http://www.linguistik-indonesia.org/images/files/reformulasiperancanganprogramesp.pdf http://www.linguistik-indonesia.org/images/files/reformulasiperancanganprogramesp.pdf https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.php/jp2/article/download/854/668/ https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.php/jp2/article/download/854/668/ https://jurnal.unej.ac.id/index.php/jp2/article/download/854/668/ http://www.academia.edu/ http://www.eprints.unsri.ac.id/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 81-91 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee interactive metadiscourse and interactional metadiscourse categories of students’ international program school based on gender suhono, haikal received: 11th march 2018; revised: 27th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract the aim of this study was to develop further analyzing of metadiscourse categories in second language learners of international program school of muhammadiyah university surakarta. specifically, the researchers explored metadiscourse categories (interactive and interactional) of students‟ writing result at international program of muhammadiyah university surakarta, the differences of metadiscourse categories with regard to gender (males and female) and factor affected metadiscourse in male and female. the researcher employed hyland‟s metadiscourse model in analyzing students‟ written form which consis of 10 male and 7 female students. the results revealed that interactive metadiscourse consist of frame markers, transition markers, endophoric marker, evidendionals, and code glosses. meanwhile, the interactional metadiscourse concist of boosters, edges, attitude markers, selfmentions and engagement markers. the researchers also revealed that the category of transition marker was the highest on female students since most female students learn at outside class such as at pondok pesantren. key words: interactive metadiscourse; interactional metadiscourse; metadiscourse; gender abstrak tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengembangkan analisis lebih lanjut terhadap kategori metadiscourse pada pembelajar bahasa kedua pada program internasional sekolah universitas muhammadiyah surakarta. secara khusus, para peneliti mengeksplorasi kategori metadiscourse (interactive dan interactional) pada hasil tulisan mahasiswa, perbedaan kategori metadiscourse pada ”gender” (laki-laki dan perempuan) dan faktor yang mempengaruhi metadiscourse pada laki laki dan perempuan. para peneliti menggunakan model hyland dalam menganalisis metadiscourse pada tulisan mahasiswa yang terdiri dari 10 laki-laki dan 7 perempuan. penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa interactive metadiscourse terdiri dari frame markers, transition markers, endhoporic markers, evidendionals, dan code glosses. sementara itu interactional metadiscourse terdiri dari booseters, edges, attitude markers, self mentions dan engangement markers. studi ini juga mengungkapkan bahwa penanda transition marker adalah yang tertinggi pada siswa perempuan karena kebanyakan para siswa perempuan belajar di luar kelas seperti di pondok pesantren. kata kunci: interactive metadiscourse; interactional metadiscourse; metadiscourse; gender how to cite: suhono, haikal.(2018). interactive metadiscourse and interactional metadiscourse categories ff students‟ international program school based on gender. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 81-91. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 82-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing play a crucial role in students‟ learning process of academic activity, for instance research proposal, writing paragraph, writing summary, etc. on the other hand, writing obtrudes great defiance for novice students‟ writers. the defiance is even higher when students write in english as a foreign language, as they not only have to suitable themselves to the disciplinary discourse but also to do it in a language whose rhetoric is quite different from their mother tongue. rustipa (2014) declared that efl writing is useful to explore students organizing idea, thinking, analyze, and criticize and the second strengthens their learning and thinking. students, in this case undergraduate students have a lot of projects regarding to writing activity as they are accepted to develop their critical thinking through writing, for instance written composition. hence, the researcher should be careful to write it and the appropriate linguistics categories need to be used. written composition involves metadiscourse which associate the appropriate use of linguistic realization (al-shujairi, 2016). it represents the writer‟s effort to lead the reader‟s perception of a text. because written composition function as “advertising means” to bring the attention to the reader to read the whole text, metadiscourse is needed to help writers organize their texts, and engage readers. it is the set of linguistic resources that every language has as part of the textual metafunction for linking one part of a text to another. metadiscourse itself is discourse about discourse or writing about writing. it is a discourse which has a writer-reader interaction in the text. metadiscourse is self-reflective linguistic expressions referring to the evolving text, to the writer, and to the imagined readers of that text (hyland, 2004). the concept of metadiscourse is based on a view of writing (and speaking) as a social and communicative engagement, offering a means of understanding the ways people themselves into texts to manage communicative intentions. the researchers used hyland‟ theory because it is seen as potentially useful as it effectively characterizes the need of writers to produce good writing and this model based on the research in academic discourse, that makes the model to be more influential and more concrete and also more updated than any other models of metadiscourse. so far, metadiscourse category has been studied in different country background, for instance, allami and mirshami (2013) entitled metadiscourse markers in the discussion section persian and english master‟s theses. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 83-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license they found the differences and the similarities in the use of markers in thre categories; native english speakers, native persian speakers, and non-native english speakers. the result showed that native english writers used more interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers than native persian and efl learners. secondly, gholami, tajalli and shokrpour (2014:2) investigated metadiscourse markers in english mdical texts and their translations. the result showed that there was a ignificant difference in the amount and types of metadiscourse markers in english medical texts and their translations. further the distribution of different types of metadiscourse markers in english medical texts is not the same as their distribution in their persian translation. in the scope of metadiscourse category, especially the researchers in indonesia, studying it in international program school and related to gender were rarely done by researchers. hence, the aim of this research is to develop further analysis about metadiscourse category, especially exploring interactive and interactional metadiscourse of student‟s writing of international program school at muhammadiyah university surakarta and the differences of metadiscourse categories in gender, males and females students. the notion of metadiscourse metadiscourse in interesting filed of investigation which is believed to play an essential role in organizing and producing a written composition. the term of metadiscourse was explored by harris, in 1959 to offer a way of understanding language in use, presenting a writer's or speaker's attempts to guide a receiver's perception of a text (ken hyland, 2005). it refers to the pragmatic use of language to comment reflexively on discourse itself. metadiscourse shifts the focus of attention from ongoing communication, putting some stretch of discourse in a context or frame designed to influence the meaning and practical conduct of communication. metadiscourse is a term which describes a range of open class lexical items (words and expressions), each of which has a relatively stable pragmatic role, and whose main function is to enhance communicative efficiency. it has been important in writing instruction for academic purposes, as a way of helping both native and nonnative speakers of english to convey their ideas and engage with their readers effectively. with the growth of discourse analysis as a key tool in understanding language use, the importance of interaction in writing as much as in speech has become ever more obvious, and metadiscourse has ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 84-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license emerged as a way of bringing these interactional features to prominence. based on this view, not only do authors produce a text to convey ideation content, i.e. information, but also they want to make certain that what they express is comprehensible and reasonable. hyland‟s model of metadiscourse divided into two main categories: interactive and interactional metadiscourse. interactive metadiscourse concerns the writer‟s awareness of his receiver, and his attempts to accommodate his interests and needs, and to make the argument satisfactory for him. in this part there are five sub-categories, those are, transition, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidential and code glosse. the interactional part, on the other hand, concerns the writer‟s attempts to make his views explicit and to engage the reader by anticipating his objections and responses to the text. the subcategories for interactional part of metadiscourse are hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, and engagement markers. classification of metadiscourse hyland‟s model is based on the research in academic discourse, which makes the model more concrete and more influential. it is also noted by abdi (2011:5) that hyland‟s model is highly preferred in modern metadiscourse studies for being recent, simple, clear and comprehensive. there are two categories of metadiscourse, interactive and interactional. interactive metadiscourse interactive resources allow the writer to help the reader to correctly interpret the text by managing information flow. they are concerned with ways of organising discourse to anticipate readers‟ knowledge and reflect the writer‟s assessment of what needs to be made explicit to constrain and guide what can be recovered from the text. it consis of transition, frame markers, endophoric markers, evidential, code glosses. transition logical connectors that express the semantic relation between main clauses or sentences. but, to count as metadiscourse they must perform a role internal to the discourse rather than the outside world, helping the reader interpret links between ideas.10 examples: in addition, but, thus, and, moreover, furthermore, therefore, on the other hand. frame markers frame markers are used primarily to organize texts for readers. frame markers are a cover term for a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 85-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license variety of linguistic devices and can be further classified into four subtypes according to functions: sequencers, topicalizers, discourselabels, and announcers.13 examples: finally, my purpose, firstly, to sum up, in short, return to, in regard to, aim. endophoric markers it refers to other parts of the text in order to make additional information available, provide supporting arguments, and thus steer the reader toward a preferred interpretation. for instance evidential evidentials refer to information from other. in academic discourse, evidential markers typically take the form of citations or academic attributions code glosses it supplies additional information, by rephrasing, explaining or elaborating what has been said, to ensure the reader is able to recover the writer's intended meaning examples: called, defined as e.g. interactional metadiscourse it focuses on the participants of the interaction and seeks to display the writer‟s persona and a tenor consistent with the norms of the disciplinary community. metadiscourse here concerns the writer‟s efforts to control the level of personality in a text and establish a suitable relationship to his or her data, arguments, and audience, marking the degree of intimacy, the expression of attitude, the communication of commitments, and the extent of reader involvement (ken hyland, 2005) hedges it focuses on the participants of the interaction and seeks to display the writer‟s persona and a tenor consistent with the norms of the disciplinary community. metadiscourse here concerns the writer‟s efforts to control the level of personality in a text and establish a suitable relationship to his or her data, arguments, and audience, marking the degree of intimacy, the expression of attitude, the communication of commitments, and the extent of reader involvement. abdi (2011:167) gave example it in a sentence: it is possible that the measurement of more than one endpoint of the irritation response would be necessary to adequately assess. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 86-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license boosters this category allows the writer to anticipate and preclude alternative, conflicting arguments by expressing certainty instead of doubt. examples: in fact, definitely, it is clear that, clearly, it shows, indeed. attitude markers this category expresses the writer‟s appraisal of propositional information, conveying surprise obligation, agreement, importance, and so on.31 examples: unfortunately, surprisingly, i agree, hopefully. self mention it refers to the degree of explicit author presence in the text. this can be realized by the use of first person pronouns and the possessive adjectives „i, me, we, my, our, mine and us‟. other categories that can be used to „selfmention‟ are „the author, the writer, the author‟s and the writer‟s‟. engagement markers it markers explicitly address readers to draw them into the discourse. in other words, it explicitly builds a relationship with the reader. it means when writing, writers should really feel the presence of their readers, pull them along with their arguments, focus their attention, regard them as discourse participants and finally lead them to the right interpretations. method the researches used qualitative research because this study was focusing on the total description rather than breaking it down into variables. the research conducted qualitative research and was descriptive and explorative since it described metadiscourse categories, and the possible cause of the metadiscourse categories commonly appeared in a text. this research focused on content or document analysis. the subject of this research was 17 students that consist of male 10 and female 7 students form an international program school. the researcher used hyland‟s metadiscourse model in analyzing students‟ written form. finding and discussion interactive and interactional metadiscourse of student’s written the researcher found the type of interactive and interactional metadiscourse of students‟ written of international program school of muhammadiyah university surakarta. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 87-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the total of interactive metadiscourse was 81. the types of interactive metadiscourse of students‟ written form involve transition markers, frame markers, and code glosses. transition markers the researchers found 52 transition markers which are applied by students international program school in written composition. below some remarks appeared of transition markers: table 1. transition markers no. remarks total 1 unfortunately 6 2 however 5 3 since 4 4 because 8 5 therefore 5 6 afterward 7 7 either....or.. 4 8 so that 5 9 meanwhile 4 10 thus 4 total 52 frame markers furthermore, the researcher found 18 frame markers in students‟ written composition. bellow the analysis result of frame markers: table 2. frame markers no. remarks total 1 intents to 2 2 firstly 4 3 attempts to 2 4 aim to 3 5 focus on 3 6 then 4 total 18 code glosses the researcher found 11 frame markers in students‟ written composition. bellow the analysis result of frame markers. table 3. code glosses no. remarks total 1 namely 2 2 it means 5 3 they are 4 total 11 secondly, the types of interactional metadiscourse of students‟ written form involve hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self mentions, and engagement markers. the total of interactive metadiscourse was 47. hedges it allows the writer to present information as an opinion or plausible reasoning rather than thefact the researcher found 13 frame markers in students‟ written composition. bellow the analysis result of frame markers. table 4. hedges no. remarks total 1 almost 3 2 most of 1 3 mostly 5 4 indicates 2 5 better than.. 2 total 13 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 88-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license boosters it allows the writer to anticipate and preclude alternative, conflicting arguments by expressing certainty instead of doubt. the researcher found 4 boosters in written composition. table 5. boosters no. remarks total 1 show 4 2 in fact 3 3 explain that 2 4 reveal 2 total 11 attitude markers it expresses the writer‟s appraisal of propositional information, conveying surprise obligation, agreement, importance. table 6. attitude markers no. remarks total 1 unfortunately 2 2 appropriately 4 3 directly 3 total 9 self-mentions it refers to an explicit reference to the author(s). the researcher found 6 self-mention. table 7. self-mentions no. remarks total 1 the researcher 6 total 6 engagement markers this category explicitly addresses readers to draw them into the discourse by addressing them as participants in an argument with reader pronouns such as you, your, we. it can also be noted by obligation modals such as should, must, have to, etc. table 8. engagement markers no. remarks total 1 we 2 2 must 3 3 your 3 total 8 the differences of metadiscourse categories in gender, males and females students after conducting the research, the researcher found the differences of metadiscourse categories in male and female students‟ international program school. the students were aware of the readers‟ view when reading their writing composition. the researcher found 81 interactive metadiscourse and 47 interactional metadiscourse. to classify the students based on the gender, the researcher classified the seventeen students of the 2 level groups into males and females. males consist of 10 students and female consist of 7 students. the following table described the differences in result metadiscourse based on the gender of the students: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 89-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 9. metadiscourse n o gende r metadiscourse categories tota l 1 males (10) interactive 1. transitions 2. frame markers 3. code glosses interactional 1. hedges 2. boosters 3. attitude markers 4. self – mention 5. engagement markers 34 11 7 52 6 8 7 4 4 29 2 female (7) interactive 1. transitions 2. frame markers 3. code glosses interactional 1. hedges 2. boosters 3. attitude markers 4. self – mention 5. engagement markers 18 7 4 29 7 3 2 2 4 18 males students‟ international program school in classifying the student based on gender, especially in male students, the researcher found that interactive metadiscourse was the highest one, 52 words. while interactional metadiscourse consists of 29 words. bellow the example of male students in using interactional metadiscourse: 1) „‟the people should be able to construct their competency because it related to how the students can understand what the teachers said‟‟ (student 2 ) 2) „‟...unfortunately, the researcher don‟t do their research effectively.‟‟ (student 7 ) 3) „‟ he focuses on study magister to get a good knowledge‟‟ (student 14) 4) „‟there are many factors in contribution students‟ competence, namely learning style preference, strategy and method in learning process‟‟ on the example above is interactive metadiscourse which occurs in male students. it involved transition markers, frame marker, code glasses. hyland said that transition markers were divided into three types: addition, comparison and consequence. form the example above, sentence (1) „‟the people should be able to construct their competency because it related to how the students can understand what the teachers said’’ included in addition which add elements to an argument. in contrast with addition, comparison of transition makers argument as different. it means that it contrasts the argument. sentence (2) ‘’...unfortunately, the researcher don’t do their research effectively.’’ “unfortunately” here marks different argument between argumentative writing which is a great topic to write and the difficulty of building a good writing. then, a consequence of transition markers expresses a result. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 90-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license females students‟ international program school in classifying the student based on gender, especially in male students, the researcher found that interactive metadiscourse was the highest one, 29 words. while interactional metadiscourse consists of 18 words, for instance on hedges and bosters: a. the teachers are expected that the students should be active in learning english; b. most of the young women shelter in their neighbour; c. because your football team is better than a new team; d. new candidate president reveals that indonesian needed a local business. the factors of affecting metadiscourse in male and female students. after conducting the research, the factors affecting metadiscourse between male and female students were habitual students‟ learning process. it can be proven when the students are mostly from pondok pesantren, especially in female students. it means that female students from pondok pesantren got increment or augmentation learning english. they are always demanded to use the english language when doing communication. conclusion and suggestion the result revealed that metadiscourse in the interesting field of investiogation which is believed to play an essential role in organizing and producing of written compossition. the essential metadiscourse is when the readers filter their ideas through a concern with how the readers will take them. it is as like chain-link to make coherence of the sentence, for instance finally, firstly, the second, etc and to express logical connections. furthermore, interactive metadiscourse consist of frame markers, transition markers, endophoric markers, evidendionals, and code glosses. while interactional metadiscourse consist of boosters, edges, attitude markers, self mentions and engaggement markers. the researcher also revealed that the category transition marker was the highest on female students. furthermore, the factor in affecting of metadiscourse in gender was students‟ habit learning when the students learn at pondok pesantren. the researchers suggested to the other researchers that this study could give insight to the reader and interested in the same field of metadiscourse in different data. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 91-91 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.5505 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license references abdi, et al., (2010). the cooperative principle in discourse communities and genres: a framework for the use of metadiscourse.‖, journal of pragmatics 42:1669–1679. abdi, r. (2011). metadiscourse strategies in research articles: a study of the differences across subsections‖. in the journal of teaching language skills 3 (1), spring 2011, ser. 62/4. allami. h, mirshamsi, a. (2013). “metadiscourse markers in the discussion/conclusion section of persian and english master's theses”, the journal of teaching language skills (jtls) vol.5, no,3 .pp. al-shujairi, yasir , et.al. (2016). role of moves, tenses, and metadiscourse in the abstract of an acceptable research article. mediterraneon journal of social science. vol. 7, no. 2: 379. hyland, ken -polly tse. (2004). metadiscourse in academic writing‖, applied linguistic, 25(2), 2004, pp.156-177. hyland, ken. 2004. ―disciplinary interactions: metadiscourse in l2 postgraduate writing”, journal of second language writing 13, 2004, 133-151. hyland, ken. metadiscourse: exploring interaction in writing. london: continiuum, 2005. mehrnaz, tajalli & shokrpour. (2014) “an investigation of metadiscourse markers in english medical text and their persian translation based on hyland‟s model”,european journal of english language and literature studies, 2 (2), p.2. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 208-234 efl students’ performance and expectation towards peer response in writing classroom m. zaini miftah received: 23th september 2016; revised: 22th november 2016; accepted: 28th desember 2016 abstract this study investigates the efl students’ performance and expectation towards peer response in writing classroom. a survey research method was applied. data were collected through a questionnaire containing 20 items. the questionnaire was distributed to 12 indonesian efl students enrolling in a writing course at the english department of iain (state islamic institute) palangka raya, central kalimantan, indonesia. the findings of the study showed that the tendencies of the tasks performed by the student reviewers are asking about peers’ ideas and meanings of their essays, of the student-writers responses to peer response are paying attention to clear correction and correcting mechanical errors, and of the student-writers expectations from the peer response are commenting on ideas and meanings, providing clear corrections, and correcting mechanical errors. key words: efl students; peer response; student-reviewers performance; student-writers response; student-writers expectation abstrak penelitian ini mengkaji performa dan harapan mahasiswa dalam konteks efl terhadap respon teman sejawatnya dalam kelas menulis. metode penelitian survey diterapkan dalam penelitian ini. data dikumpulkan menggunakan kuesioner dengan 20 pertanyaan. kuesioner ini diberikan kepada 12 mahasiswa efl di indonesia pada kelas menulis prodi pendidikan bahasa inggris iain (institut agama islam negeri) palangka raya, kalimantan tengah, indonesia. sebagai hasil dari penelitian, terlihat bahwa kecenderungan tugas yang dilakukan oleh mahasiswa sebagai penyunting adalah bertanya tentang ide-ide dan makna dari esai teman sejawatnya, kecenderungan tanggapan dari mahasiswa sebagai penulis terhadap respon teman sejawat adalah memperhatikan koreksi yang jelas dan mengoreksi kesalahan mekanik, dan kecenderungan harapan mahasiswa sebagai penulis terhadap respon teman sejawat yaitu mengomentari ide dan makna, memberikan koreksi yang jelas, dan juga mengoreksi kesalahan mekanik dari esai teman sejawatnya. kata kunci: mahasiswa efl; respon teman sejawat; performa mahasiswa penyunting; respon mahasiswa penulis; harapan mahasiswa penulis how to cite: miftah, m., z. (2016). efl students’ performance and expectation towards peer response in writing classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 208-223 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5513. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5513 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5513 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 209-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction writing has always been considered as an important skill in the teaching and learning of english as a foreign language (efl) (luchini, 2010). it inspires logical thinking, pushes students to focus on their attention, sorts out their ideas, and develops their ability to summarize, analyze and criticize. it also enhances learning by thinking in and reflecting on the target language. however, most students find it difficult to compose a text in forms of paragraph or essay because the writing process requires particular strategies of which they are mostly unaware. while most efl teachers are frequently puzzled by these problems in their writing classes, they cannot find a resourceful way to arouse their students’ creativity and put their minds to work effectively (rao as cited in luchini, 2010). given this context of the situation, many efl teachers in indonesia realize that writing is a problem for their students. the majority of teachers find it difficult to help their students, and sometimes, even though there has been a thorough preparation, the activities they try to use in the writing lesson do not always work well on their students’ achievements of writing. therefore, in an attempt to introduce approaches and classroom activities that promote language learning, typically writing skills, writing teachers employ many different approaches and techniques. one such technique is the use of peer response in the writing instruction. bell (1991) pointed out that current composition theory supports the use of peer response focusing on the writing process more than the written product. it has created the process approach to teaching writing. the process approach itself benefits students greatly for the development of their writing. as confirmed by a research on the implementation of the process approach in writing classroom, it is revealed that the process writing approach with proper model procedures could enhance students’ writing skills (miftah, 2015). additionally, in response to the impact of collaborative learning theory and a shift in the teaching of writing with an emphasis on the product to an emphasis on process, peer response has gained its popularity in writing classes (nelson & murphy as cited in widiati, 2003). thus, peer response is supported by several theoretical frameworks, including process writing and collaborative learning. according to mangelsdorf (1992), peer response technique is sometimes called peer editing, peer ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|210-223 evaluation or peer review. in this activity, students do more than editing, evaluating or reviewing students’ essays. they are responding to what the essay says as well as how it says it. for beginning efl students, peer response sessions usually consist of a group of three or four students reading or listening to a peer’s draft and commenting on what they found most interesting, what they wanted to know more about, where they were confused, and so on–the types of response that naturally emerge from a discussion of writer’s ideas. therefore, the student writers use the peers’ feedback or responses to decide how to revise their drafts. about a process of reviewing, flower and hayes as cited in hapsari (2015) suggested that a review process through peer response activities, for instance, is not the final activity of a writing process. the review process may bring the writers to the new or next planning or pour their ideas into written text. thus, a review process in peer response activities does not take place only once, but it can take several times leading the student writers to produce better writings. mangelsdorf (1992) added that at beginner and advanced levels of instruction, students can use a worksheet or peer response sheet to answer questions concerning the draft’s thesis, unity, development, focus, and so forth–whatever teacher wants to emphasize for that particular focus of lesson–as detailed as possible. thus, after students complete the peer response sheet for a peer’s draft, they then discuss with their peers the suggestions they made for revision. furthermore, stevens and levi (2005) indicated that peer response or feedback is most effective when given as soon as the student writers complete their drafts in order to help them make positive changes in their subsequent work in the writing process. however, once the peer response process is underway, the writers’ perception of the value of the enterprise is likely to change if they begin to receive useful feedback (rollinson, 2005). for this to happen, however, the writing course has to be set up properly with the prior plan of grouping–peer group response and its procedure. referring the advantage of peer response in writing class, mittan as cited in mangelsdorf (1992) pointed out that peer response can provide students with an authentic audience, increase their motivation for writing, enable students to receive different views of their writings, help students learn to critically read their own writings, and assist students in gaining confidence in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 211-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 their writings, and, by discussions, it allows students to use oral language skills. in short, peer response has the potential to be a powerful learning tool or technique. the use of peer response or feedback is one means of making the function of assessments formative (askew, 2000). moreover, sadler as cited in askew (2000, p. 21) asserts that if peer response feedback does not have a formative effect on learning, then it is not true feedback. in this context, the formative effect on learning means that the student writers’ learning process using peer response is formed into a more developed process of writing typically in the revising and editing stages. to sum up, as writing teachers have begun to recognize the need to provide support for students at each stage of the writing process, the use of peer response has become increasingly popular. dealing with peer response used in the writing process, salih (2013, ) indicated that peer response has been regarded an essential feedback delivery system in a process-based second language (l2) writing classroom. the essence of collaborative process-based writing is the creation of instances of feedback by peers. indeed, peer response provides an opportunity for peers to develop criteria for evaluation and to practice giving their own written feedback and that of others. peer response can be implemented with the integrated ways through online activities such as facebook (miftah, 2014) and blogging activities (miftah, 2016). the findings showed that peer response via facebook could be implemented in writing class (miftah, 2014). other findings reported that blogging activities could promote students’ writing abilities in which the activity using weblogs was combined with faceto-face learning mode with writing instruction implementing the process writing approach and peer response (miftah, 2016). many studies have been conducted to investigate peer response in esl/efl writing classroom. some studies reported on investigating the value of peer response in writing class (mangelsdorf, 1992; tang & tithecott, 1999). other studies revealed that peer response gave positive impacts on writing skill (wakabayashi, 2008; aljamal, 2009; farrah, 2012; jahin, 2012). next studies were investigating the quality, types, and focus on peer response on l2 writing process (ting & qian, 2010; salih, 2013). meanwhile, in the indonesian efl context, some studies had been successfully investigated peer response in the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|212-223 teaching of writing (widiati, 2003; mubarak, 2009; miftah, 2014; miftah, 2015). however, studies on peer response need further exploration, specifically in the context of efl writing teaching. in the indonesian efl writing classroom, particularly in english department of iain (state islamic institute) palangka raya, central kalimantan, indonesia, peer response needs investigation. there are still questions regarding what students’ do in peer response and what they hope from peer response. the suitability between peer response and the studentwriter expectation is also the concerns of this paper. therefore, it is very much necessary to do a research investigating efl students’ performance in and expectation of peer response in writing classroom, more specifically investigating the tasks performed by the student reviewers, the studentwriters response to peer response, and the student-writers expectation to peer response. this current study is thus conducted to provide proof of the implementation of peer response related to the students’ performance in and expectation of peer response in efl writing classroom. this article reports results of a survey which is part of a broader case study on peer response in an indonesian efl writing class (miftah, 2015). therefore, specifically, this research tries to investigate the following set of questions: (1) how do the efl students’ perform in a peer response activity?. (2) what do the efl students expect from a peer response?. method in order to explore the performance and expectation of the efl students towards peer response in writing classroom, a survey research method was applied. the questionnaire was distributed to 12 indonesian efl students who enrolled in the class of writing iii course, particularly in the english department of iain (state islamic institute) palangka raya, central kalimantan, indonesia. the number of participants was chosen under the consideration that they get involved in the peer response activities led by the teacher in the writing classroom–writing iii course. therefore, all students were selected to be the participants or the population sample of the study. to collect the data, a questionnaire with closed-ended questions was distributed to the participants. the steps were that preparing the questionnaire, giving the questionnaire to the participants, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 213-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 collecting the responses, calculating the result of responses, analyzing the data obtained, and finally concluding the results by referring to the objective of the study. the data-gathering through questionnaire is done by asking the students rather than by observing and sampling their behavior (tuckman, 1999). a questionnaire containing 20 items adapted from a similar research was used for data collection. the questionnaire was completed by the students in about 15 minutes. of the 20 items, 7 items asked the kinds of tasks performed by student reviewers, 6 items pertained to how student-writers response to peer response, and 7 items investigated what student-writers expect from peer response. each question item has five possible responses – strongly agree (sa), agree (a), uncertain (u), disagree (d), and strongly disagree (sd). the informants were told to choose the items they preferred by giving a check mark (√) in the box. selecting a particular option by a respondent determines the degree of agreement or disagreement, and thus reveals how the respondents perceive the issue the statements discussed. the questionnaire was distributed to the participants after they had completed the peer response activities in the writing classroom, and this was later collected for further analysis. data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentage. they were counted into percentage and coded to classify the efl students’ performance in and expectation of peer response in writing classroom. as suggested by mckay (2008), in a survey research, coding strategy is the first thing to do. data were categorized into three categories by calculating questionnaire frequency count and percentage equivalent. they were the studentreviewers questionnaire frequency count and percentage equivalent, the questionnaire frequency count of the student-writers response to peer response and percentage equivalent, and the questionnaire frequency count of the student-writers expectation from peer response and percentage equivalent. findings and discussion the analysis of the questionnaire showed interesting findings. to discuss the data more specifically, data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed and displayed separately. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|214-223 the efl students’ performance in peer response tasks performed by the student reviewers table 1 shows the studentreviewers questionnaire frequency count and percentage equivalent. it shows the respondents’ score on tasks reviewers that had to do with the peer response activities. it shows that in responding to item (1), 25% of the participant strongly agreed and 75% agreed that they asked student writers about their ideas and meanings of their essays. the result reveals that all of the reviewers asked the writers for clarification regarding the ideas and meanings of their essays. item (2) in the questionnaire was about the students focus when they evaluated their peers’ drafts. the students were asked about if they focused on grammar accuracy correction as the main area in the peer response activities. the analysis showed that 50% strongly agreed and 42% agreed that they mainly focused on grammatical errors in the peers’ drafts. on the other hand, 8% of the participants expressed uncertainty about their stand. it indicates that most of the reviewers mainly focused on grammar accuracy correction. the analysis of item (3) in the questionnaire revealed that 17% of the students strongly agreed and 75% agreed that they commented on their peers’ ideas and meanings and extend them as well. on the other hand, 8% of the respondents remained uncertain about their contribution to the writers’ ideas development. it is said that the reviewers mostly commented on their peers’ ideas and meanings and extend them as well. table 1: tasks performed by the student reviewers statement frequency (percentages) sa a u d sd 1) i ask about peers’ ideas and meanings of their essays. 3 (25%) 9 (75%) 2) my review focuses on grammar accuracy. 6 (50%) 5 (42%) 1 (8%) 3) i give comment on peers’ ideas and meanings and extend them. 2 (17%) 9 (75%) 1 (8%) 4) i provide a set of clear correction by giving symbols. 5 (42%) 5 (42%) 2 (17%) 5) i evaluate peers’ vocabulary use and suggest corrections. 3 (25%) 7 (58%) 2 (17%) 6) i evaluate peers’ essay structure. 4 (33%) 6 (50%) 2 (17%) 7) i give correction for mechanical errors. 4 (33%) 7 (58%) 1 (8%) sa: strongly agree; a: agree; u: undecided; d: disagree; sd: strongly disagree ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 215-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 item (4) in the questionnaire explored the participants’ perceptions about the clarity of their response to peers’ writing and ideas. the results showed that 42% strongly agreed and 42% agreed that they provided a set of clear corrections by giving review symbols to peer’s drafts. for the same task, 17% of the participants answered uncertain about their correction and review symbols to the drafts. it means that majority of the reviewers provided a set of clear corrections by giving review symbols to peer’s drafts. this result suggests that the students have developed a positive attitude toward peer response activities. the table also reveals that 25% of the participants strongly agreed and 58% agreed that they evaluated peers’ vocabulary use and suggested the corrections while 17% were uncertain with a focus on vocabulary (item 5). additionally, the table shows that in responding to item (6) 33% of the respondents strongly agreed and 50% agreed that they evaluated their peers’ essay structure. on the other hand, 17% of the students expressed uncertainty about their evaluation to their peers’ essay structure. the analysis of item (7) of the questionnaire also showed that 33% of the participants strongly agreed and 58% agreed that they focused on correction of mechanical errors in the peer response activity, while 8% wasfound uncertain. in short, from overall results, as indicated in table 1, it was obvious that most participants had positive contribution to the peer response activities. most the student reviewers showed a positive statement of each item towards peer response, particularly related to the advice or review on ideas and meanings of an essay, grammar accuracy, way of giving correction, vocabulary use, essay organization, and correction for a mechanic. such finding is similar to the research finding of the former study conducted by salih (2013). the findings of the former study revealed that the feedback providers’ tendency and focus when reviewing peer drafts were in the areas of above items. however, the kinds of tasks that the student reviewers tend to do were asking about peers’ ideas and meanings of their essays. it is indicated from the total of the student-reviewers questionnaire frequency count and percentage equivalent from strongly agreed (sa) and agreed (a) to item (1), totally 100% (n=12). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|216-223 the student-writers response to peer response table 2 shows the questionnaire frequency count of the student-writers response to peer response and its percentage equivalent. it indicates the respondents’ score on the writer response to peer response on essay drafts. the analysis of the questionnaire has also focused on specific areas of writer response to peer response: rereading the ideas and meanings of an essay, correcting grammatical errors, paying attention to a set of clear correction and review symbols, checking and revising vocabulary use, reorganizing essay structure, and correcting mechanical errors (items 813). item (8) was designed to look into the student writers’ response to peer response on ideas and meaning. it is found that 25% of the participants strongly agreed and 50% agreed that they reread their ideas and meanings of an essay. there were, however, 25% of the students who chose ‘uncertain’. this result indicates evidence of the tendency of the student writers to revise their ideas of an essay evaluated by peers. moreover, in responding to item (9) about the grammar, most students paid great attention to grammar correction as there were 33% of participants who strongly agreed and 58% who agreed that they corrected their grammatical errors in accordance to the peer response. there were, however, 8% of the participants who chose ‘uncertain’. this result reveals that the respondents’ tendency to place grammar an important aspect in their essays. meanwhile, responding to item (10) about attention to correction symbols, all students gave great care. there were 33% of the students who strongly agreed and 67% who agreed that they paid attention to a set of clear corrections and revised their writing accordingly. this finding indicates the importance of response clarity. additionally, item (11) was designed to explore student writers’ response to peer response regarding the vocabulary use. there were 17% of respondents who strongly agreed and 50% who agreed that they checked and revised their vocabulary use. on the other hand, 8% of respondents chose uncertain regarding the questionnaire statement. this result really indicates the student writers’ attention to the peers’ evaluation about the use of vocabulary. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 217-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 2: the student-writers response to peer response statement frequency (percentages) sa a u d sd 8) i reread and revise ideas and meanings of my essay. 3 (25%) 6 (50%) 3 (25%) 9) i correct the grammatical errors of my essay. 4 (33%) 7 (58%) 1 (8%) 10) i pay attention to a set of clear corrections and to the symbol and revise my essay. 4 (33%) 8 (67%) 11) i check vocabulary use and revise it. 2 (17%) 9 (75%) 1 (8%) 12) i reorganize the ideas of my essay. 3 (25%) 7 (58%) 2 (17%) 13) i correct mechanical errors. 4 (33%) 8 (67%) sa: strongly agree; a: agree; u: undecided; d: disagree; sd: strongly disagree in responding to item (12), 25% of the students strongly agreed and 75% of them agreed that they reorganized ideas in the essay drafts after peer response activities. there were, however, 17% of the students who chose uncertain about the statement. the finding tells that the studentwriters were willing to reorganize their idea after according to the given feedback. next, item (13) investigated the student writers’ response to peer response regarding the mechanical features. there were 33% of the participants who strongly agreed and 67% of them who agreed that the student writers corrected their mechanical errors such as spelling, punctuation, etc. the result shows that the writers were willing to correct their mechanical errors such as spelling, punctuation, etc. to summarize, based on the findings indicated in table 2, it was obviously showed that the majority of respondents or the student-writers positively responded to peers’ feedback of their writings. even though they gave a high response in the areas of peer feedback for their drafts as revealed in each item, there was a tendency of the student writers to responses to peer response by following the clear correction suggestions and correcting mechanical errors. it is indicated from the total of the questionnaire frequency count of the student-writers response to peer response and percentage equivalent from strongly agreed (sa) and agreed (a) to items (10) and (13), totally 100% (n=12). the finding clarifies ting and qian (2010, p. 95) result that both grammar and mechanics were the most frequently revised elements that can ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|218-223 contribute to improving the students’ essays in terms of fluency and accuracy. the efl students’ expectation from peer response table 3 shows the questionnaire frequency count of what studentwriters expect from the peer response and its percentage equivalent. it presents the respondents’ score on the writer expectation to peer response on essay drafts. the analysis of the questionnaire has also focused on specific areas expected by the student writers to be evaluated by reviewers in terms of clarification of ideas and meanings of an essay, grammatical correctness, ideas development, provision of clear correction and review symbols, vocabulary use, essay organization, and mechanical corrections (items 14-20). item (14) was designed to look into the student writers’ expectancy from peer response outcomes on ideas and meaning. two students (17%) strongly agreed and nine students (75%) agreed that they expected peers to ask them about their ideas and their meanings of an essay. there was, however, one student (8%) who chose ‘uncertain’. this result reveals more evidence of the tendency of the student writers to have their ideas of an essay evaluated by peers. table 3: the student-writers expectation to peer response statement frequency (percentages) sa a u d sd 14) i expect my peer reviewer to ask me about ideas and meanings of my essay. 2 (17%) 9 (75%) 1 (8%) 15) i expect my peer reviewer to correct the grammatical errors in my essay. 3 (25%) 8 (67%) 1 (8%) 16) i expect my peer reviewer to give comment on ideas and meanings, and extend them. 6 (50%) 6 (50%) 17) i expect my peer reviewer to provide a set of clear corrections by giving symbols. 4 (33%) 8 (67%) 18) i expect my peer reviewer to evaluate vocabulary and give corrections. 5 (42%) 6 (50%) 1 (8%) 19) i expect my peer reviewer to evaluate the way to organize ideas of my essay. 2 (17%) 9 (75%) 1 (8%) 20) i expect my peer reviewer to give correction for mechanical errors. 4 (33%) 8 (67%) sa: strongly agree; a: agree; u: undecided; d: disagree; sd: strongly disagree ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 219-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 furthermore, in responding to item (15) about the importance of grammar, all participants gave grammar great attention. three students (25%) strongly agreed and eight students (67%) agreed that peers should correct their grammar. there was, however, one student (8%) who chose ‘uncertain’. this result reveals that the respondents’ tendency to place grammar an important aspect in their essays. it is worth mentioning here that during the interview, many of the respondents expressed their need for more response on grammar correction. when asked about their expectancy of peer response outcome on ideas expansion and essay development of item (16), six students (50%) strongly agreed and six students (50%) agreed that ideas expansion and how to develop an essay are an important aspect to be shared with peers. meanwhile, responding to item (17) about the provision of setting clear correction and correction signals, all respondents give great care. four students (33%) strongly agreed and eight students (67%) agreed that peers should provide clear correction symbols. this is very important in a sense that clear correction clues are deemed to facilitate revision and peer response incorporation. this finding indicates the importance of feedback clarity. this finding indicates the urgent point of peer feedback and confirms the prior research investigated by salih (2013). the prior research finding revealed when peer response is provided in an ambiguous manner, the required points of peer response incorporation might not be fulfilled. in addition, item (18) was designed to explore the expectancy of student writers regarding their use of vocabulary items. five participants (42%) strongly agreed and six participants (50%) agreed that peers should evaluate their choice of vocabulary and suggest corrections. on the other hand, there was one student (8%) who chose uncertain about the statement. this result indicates the student writers’ willingness to share ideas with peers about the use of vocabulary. in responding to item (19), two students (17%) strongly agreed and nine students (75%) agreed that they expected peers to evaluate the way they organized ideas in the essay drafts. there was, however, one student (8%) who chose uncertain with the statement. the respondent looked forward to suggestions on ideas organization and essay structure in peer response. it indicates that idea ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|220-223 development response should be received from peers. the study also investigated (item 20) the student writers’ expectation from peer response regarding the mechanical features. four students (33%) strongly agreed and eight students (67%) agreed that they expected peers to correct their spelling, punctuation, etc. this is also important for polishing essay drafts as asserted by oshima and hogue (2007), the emphasis on mechanical correction is one of the aims to polish the drafts of writing. to conclude, from overall results, it was clear that most of the respondents expected that the feedbacks tap into areas of ideas and meanings, grammar, feedback clarity, vocabulary use, ideas organization of an essay, and mechanical correction respectively. however, the tendencies of the student-writers’ expectations from the peer response are on comments on ideas and meanings, provision of clear correction, and correction on mechanical errors. it is indicated from the total of the questionnaire frequency count of the student-writers’ expectation from peer response and its percentage equivalent from strongly agreed (sa) and agreed (a) to items (16), (17) and (20), totally 100% (n=12). the findings are almost the same as salih (2013) reported in his study, but the findings are different in giving the rank in rating. salih (2013) reported that the student writers have selected grammar as the most important aspect needed to be evaluated by peers; giving it the first rank in rating. however, the results of the current study show that commenting on ideas and meanings, providing clear correction, and correcting mechanical errors are the prime areas of the student-writers expectation to peer response. conclusion and suggestion this current study investigated the efl students’ performance in and expectation of peer response in writing classroom. based on the analysis of the results of the questionnaire in this survey research, it was revealed that majority of the efl students performed and expected peer response in the areas of peer feedback as confirmed in the questionnaire items. however, there were tendencies of their performance and expectation towards peer response. first, in terms of the kind of tasks performed by the student reviewers, they tend to ask about peer’ ideas and meanings of an essay. second, there are tendencies of the student-writers responses to pay attention to clear correction and correcting mechanical ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 221-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 errors. third, the student-writers expect that peer responses are commenting on ideas and meanings, providing clear correction, and correcting mechanical errors as well. this survey research was limited only to investigate what efl students do in a peer response activities and what they expect from this activities in a writing classroom. therefore, the author is proposing the following suggestions. firstly, further studies should explore other various patterns of peer response in writing classroom. secondly, in the efl writing teaching, teachers are recommended to encourage peer response because of its power and benefits for the students’ writing skills development. references al-jamal, d. (2009). the impact of peer response in enhancing ninth grader’s writing skill. umm alqura university journal of educational & psychologic sciences, 1(1), 13-40. askew, s. (2000). feedback for learning. new york: routledge falmer. bell, j. h. (1991). using peer response groups in esl writing classes. tesl canada journal/revue tesl du canada, 8(2), 65-70. farrah, m. (20120. the impact of peer feedbacks on improving the writing skills among hebron university students. an-najah university journal research (humanities), 26(1), 180-210. hapsari. (2015). a learner’s selfregulated learning in writing. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 2(2), 120-131. jahin, j. h. (2012). the effect of peer reviewing on writing apprehension and essay writing ability of prospective efl teachers. australian journal of teacher education, 37(11), 60-84. luchini, p. l. (2010). evaluating the effectiveness of a complimentary approach to teaching writing skills. international journal of language studies (ijls), 4(3), 73-92. mangelsdorf, k. (1992). peer reviews in the esl composition classroom: what do the students think. elt journal, 46(3), 274-284. mckay, s. l. (2008). researching second language classroom. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates publishers. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|222-223 miftah, m. z. (2014). teaching writing using peer response via facebook. in erliana, s. & m. z. miftah, (eds), proceedings of 2nd international conference on english linguistics, literature, and education (elite): the multifaceted dimensions of english linguistics, literature, and education (pp. 157169). palangka raya: state islamic college of palangka raya. miftah, m. z. (2015). enhancing writing skill through writing process approach. journal on english as a foreign language, 5(1), 9-24. miftah, m. z. (2015). peer response in an indonesian efl writing class: a case study. in a. ridwan & s. fiangga (eds). proceedings of international conference on educational research and development (icerd): trends and challenges toward asian economic community (pp. 637-648). surabaya: state university of surabaya. miftah, m. z. (2016). promoting efl students’ abilities in writing definition paragraph through blogging activities. in e. m. rahayu et al. (eds). proceedings of the 63rd teflin international conference: creativity and innovation in language materials development and language teaching methodology in asia and beyond, book 2 (pp. 370-379). surabaya: university of pgri adi buana surabaya. mubarak, m. f. (2009). improving the ability of the third-year students of ma tarbiyatul wathon gresik in writing narrative text through peer feedback (unpublished master thesis). state university of malang, malang. oshima, a., & hogue, a. (2007). introduction to academic writing (3rd ed.). new york: longman. rollinson, p. (2005). using peer feedback in the esl writing class. elt journal, 59(1), 23-30. salih, a. r. a. (2013). peer response to l2 student writing: patterns and expectations. english language teaching, 6(3), 42-50. stevens, d. d. & levi, a. (2005). introduction to rubrics: an assessment tool to save grading time, convey effective feedback and promote student learning. virginia: stylus publishing, llc. tang, g. m. & tithecott, j. (1999). peer response in esl writing. tesl canada journal/la revue tesl du canada, 16(2), 21-38. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 223-223|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 ting, m. & qian, y. (2010). a case study of peer feedback in a chinese efl writing classroom. chinese journal of applied linguistics (bimonthly), 33(4), 87-98. tuckman, b. w. (1999). conducting educational research (5th ed.). orlando: harcourt brace & company. wakabayashi, r. (2008). the effect of peer feedback on efl writing: focusing on japanese university students. oncue journal, 2(2), 92110. widiati, u. (2003). training efl writing students in indonesia in the use of strategies for peer response (unpublished master thesis). monash university, victoria. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 1-14 the effectiveness of dialogue journals in improving the skill in writing narrative texts ali mukti received: 12th march 2016; revised: 22th may 2016; accepted: 28th june 2016 abstract this study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of dialogue journals technique in improving students’ skill in writing narrative texts. the subjects were the year-12 of ipa students of man 3 malang in the academic year 2008-2009. this study involved two intact groups of students. the experimental group was given weekly journal writing, while the control group followed the regular writing. at the end of the treatment, a writing test on narrative was assigned and the students’ works were scored using esl composition profile. the result of analysis using ancova indicated that not all of the mean score of writing components of the two groups were significantly different. however, the mean score of holistic aspects was significantly different. besides, students’ responses showed a positive evaluation on the implementation of dialogue journals technique. key words: effectiveness; dialogue journals; writing skill; narrative text abstrak penelitian ini dilakukan untuk meneliti keefektifan teknik dialogue journal dalam meningkatkan keterampilan siswa menulis teks naratif. subyek penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas xii ipa man 3 malang tahun pelajaran 2008-2009. penelitian ini melibatkan dua kelompok siswa. kelompok eksperimen diminta untuk menulis dan mengumpulkan jurnal tiap pekan sementara kelompok control tetap mengikuti pelajaran menulis seperti biasa. pada akhir perlakuan, kedua kelompok siswa diminta menulis teks naratif yang kemudian dinilai menggunakan esl composition profile. setelah dianalisa menggunakan ancova, hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa tidak semua nilai rerata dari tiap komponen menulis kedua kelompok berbeda secara signifikan. akan tetapi, nilai rerata aspek secara keseluruhan berbeda secara signifikan. disamping itu, siswa menanggapi positif terhadap penggunaan teknik dialogue journal. kata kunci: keefektifan; dialogue journals; keterampilan menulis; teks naratif how to cite: mukti, a. (2016). the effectiveness of dialogue journals in improving the skill in writing narrative texts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 1-14 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3444 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3444 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 2-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction teaching writing for most of efl teachers in indonesia, especially senior high school level, is an arduous task to do. in addition to spending much time and of course energy to grade students’ writing work, teachers are supposed to give much attention to prepare their students to face national exam. in this exam, writing test has only small portions in comparison to the other skills; listening, speaking and reading. viewed from the students’ point of view, writing is in fact considered to be the most difficult skill to master. this is not quite astonishing due to the very fact that while everybody enjoys talking, not so many people regard writing as something enjoyable. white (1995, p. iv) believes that the great rise in interest in spoken communication, characteristic of the past 20 years, has challenged the status of writing. an ability to speak a foreign language has then become a more highly rated skill than an ability to write in it. in a foreign language setting, a writing task is daunting: with relatively limited linguistic resources, learners will find it difficult to express themselves in a written genre. to make matters worse, the piece of writings produced by the students is relatively permanent, which makes mistakes easily recognized, crossed out and corrected by the teachers. since nobody would want their work with lots of red marks all over, this forces the students to deal with two problems at once: language, as well as psychological barriers. most esl/efl writing teachers would strongly agree with the statement that teacher correction feedback is a necessary part of any writing course. regarding language use or grammar, most would also concur that grammar correction is essential. this belief seems to be intuitively obvious and just plain common sense. a study conducted by cohen and cavalcanti (1990) stated that teachers tend to focus more on the use of mechanics (such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing) and language use (such as concord, tense, word order, articles, pronouns, and preposition) in their students' piece of writing than on the content (such as knowledge of subject, substance, and development of thesis) and organization (such as fluent expression, clear statement of ideas, and logical sequencing). gray (2004), nevertheless, reports that solid research conducted in the last 20 years has revealed it to be wrong. numerous studies have also revealed that grammar correction to second ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|3-14 language writing students is actually discouraging to many students, and even harmful to their writing ability. the use of dialogue journals, on the other hand, is like a bridge that will help students to destroy or, at least, to reduce the existing barrier in writing. when the students are given the freedom to write anything they want and are told that the teacher is going to respond to their journals individually, the atmosphere becomes less threatening. this will also lead to the writing activity with a sense of purpose and a sense of audience (peyton, 1993). furthermore, burniske (1994) says that since the purpose of a dialogue journal is to provide students with a real audience and thereby enhance their rhetorical awareness, the teacher would respond only to the content of the student's entry, not to grammatical and mechanical errors in the writing; instead, the teacher would lead by example, modelling grammatical and mechanical correctness in his/her own written responses. vygotsky (as quoted in burton & caroll, 2001) says that collaborative reflection—which is how dialog journals work—enables interaction between cognitive and communicative processes. thus, learner journals read and responded to by teachers (and in some cases, by other students) are means of collaborative learning. so even are private journals, because they incorporate writers' inner dialogues. research also indicates that some of reflective writings help all learners—and, in particular, language learners—make sense of their learning experiences (e.g., mlynarczyk, 1998; peyton & staton, 1993, 1996 quoted in burton & caroll, 2001). a dialogue journal, according to peyton (1993), is a written conversation in which a student and teacher communicate regularly (daily, weekly, etc., depending on the educational setting) over a semester, school year, or course. students, he further explains, write as much as they choose and the teacher writes back regularly, responding to students' questions and comments, introducing new topics, or asking questions. this kind of writing activity makes this technique enjoyable and thus popular as a writing technique. it can be viewed from the fact that many teachers as well as lecturers have already applied this technique in their writing classes and lots of research studies have been carried out dealing with this teaching technique. to name a few, erin gruwell, an english teacher at woodrow wilson high school in long beach, california, america as well as the founder of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 4-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 freedom writers foundation, for instance, writes in her memoir that her students are enhanced in their writing ability after she utilizes this technique (gruwell, 2007). in fact, gruwell makes an inference that a dialog journal is not only good at improving writing skill but it can also improve students' attitudes. in efl/esl context, burton and caroll (2001) say that this technique has already been proved effective to promote the writing skill of efl/esl students in some countries. in line with gruwell’s and burton and caroll’s findings, walker (2006) finds that journal writing assignments can benefit students by enhancing reflection, facilitating critical thought, expressing feelings, and writing focused arguments. journal writing can be adapted into a student's clinical course to assist with bridging the gap between classroom and clinical knowledge. in addition, journals can assist athletic training students with exploring different options for handling daily experiences. another research study conducted by liao and wong (2007) also found broader benefits of implementing dialogue journal writing (djw). this technique improved the students’ writing; writing fluency; writing performance on content, organization, and vocabulary; reflective awareness of writing and self-growth, as learners; and intrinsic writing motivation. it also reduced their writing anxiety. they added that the students held positive attitudes toward the writing project and confirmed that djw was an important tool for selfunderstanding and self-growth. they indicated that djw allowed them to consider something new; enhanced their self-confidence so that they could get along better with others; matured them through sharing their ideas, feelings, and self-perceptions; consolidated their thinking when reading their journals; strengthened their confidence in english writing; and gave them the chance to reflect on their daily lives. pedagogical implications for english as a foreign language (efl) writing instruction are provided. in indonesian setting, some research has been carried out pertaining to the implementation of this technique. cahyono (1997) did a research study aimed at knowing the effectiveness of providing journal writing in supporting the students' skills in writing english essay. the result of analysis using t-test indicated that journal writing scores of the students from the two groups were not significantly different. however, students' responses indicated positive evaluation on the application of journal writing. quite similar to what cahyono ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|5-14 found, el khoiri (2006) also reports that her students enjoyed taking her writing class very much while she was employing dialogue journals technique. in a junior high school level, sutikno (2004) conducted a study about the use of dialog journals in teaching writing at smp 5 malang. he found that dialog journals could improve students' ability in writing. the findings about the advantages of utilizing dialog journals technique mentioned above, especially those found by cahyono (1997) and sutikno (2004) have been the basis of this study. it will be interesting to find out how the result will be if this technique is applied towards islamic senior high school (henceforth ma) students. besides, there are some other considerations why this study was conducted. first, writing class seems to be dreary and even threatening to most of the students and arduous to most of the teachers. students often find red marks that are not convenient to look at in their piece of writing after being corrected by the teachers. the notice written by teachers at the bottom of their composition such as "improve your grammar!", "do better in the next writing assignment!", "watch your vocabulary use and mechanics!" are intended to encourage students to improve their writing competence. some students, however, regard these as "threats." teachers, on the other hand, are fed up with the over-and-over again mistakes that students made— language use, vocabulary, and mechanics—and need much time and energy to do lots of corrections owing to the big number of the students. second, students will have a great chance of improving their english writing competence through school media such as website, monthly magazine, as well as wall magazines which provide english corner. the fact is that, nonetheless, they hardly ever make use of these three media optimally in relation to english. it is due to the very fact that they are not accustomed to or even not confident about writing their ideas or thoughts in english. third, according to most of english teachers at man 3, most of the students especially those who are in years-11 and -12 prefer doing grammar tests or tests which contain grammar questions to other tests like reading, listening and, let alone, writing. it results in students' good score in grammar tests. yet, their grammar mastery cannot help them avoid making grammatical mistakes in writing assignments. in line with this phenomenon, clark and clark (as cited ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 6-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 in richards, 1990), state that it is not merely the linguistic organization of written discourse that makes writing a difficult skill to acquire. the process of moving from concepts, thoughts, and ideas to written text is complex. a written text, they further explain, represents the product of a series of complicated mental operation. above all, however, the idea to carry out this study first struck when the writer assessed the year-12 students' pieces of writing in the school examination (ujian sekolah) in 2007. in this exam, students were to write both narrative and descriptive texts. the writer was startled to know that some of the students were not competent enough in doing the writing test, especially dealing with a narrative text. these students got lower english writing scores than what they were expected to achieve. in fact, to my anxiety, a narrative text is one of some text types students have to learn and acquire owing to the very fact that it is included in graduate competence standard (standar kompetensi lulusan) (bsnp, 2008). all of these facts brought about an assumption that the teaching of writing at man 3 malang needed improving. to be more specific, it was essential that teachers, including the writer, needed to get introduced to a new technique in teaching writing and then apply the technique in the teaching and learning process. the word 'new' here did not necessarily mean that it was up to date or current. so long as the teachers never utilized the technique, it could also be categorized as 'new.' the technique that at last sparkled in my mind was dialog journals. although the efficacy of dialog journals has been proved by some teachers and researchers as well, it still needs further investigation to find out its effectiveness when it is implemented to ma students. thus, this study was aimed at knowing the effectiveness of providing dialogue journal writing activities in improving the students’ skill in writing. furthermore, it was also attempted to know how the students responded to the provision of dialogue journal writing. method design this research study employed quasi-experimental with nonrandomized control group, pretestposttest design as recommended by ary et al. (2002, p. 315). before the treatment was applied to the experimental group, some preliminary preparations were made. the preparations dealt with logistics, students, and personal staff or teacher. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|7-14 in terms of the learners, before the experiment was carried out, the teacher convinced them first that they were free to write anything that came up in their mind. they did not need to be worried about the grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics very much in their piece of writing. all they needed to focus was on what they actually wanted to convey or the content. to make it more secure, they were thus suggested to use pseudonym. they were allowed to use the names of their favorite artists or other famous people. on the teacher's part, he was aware of his role in this instructional strategy as a facilitator. realizing his facilitating role, the teacher tried to develop his sensitivity to the needs as well as personalities of the students. he was ready to assist students with different kinds of learning styles and problems. in so doing, the teacher was ready to begin the experiment. in the course of the treatment, each group had separate class sessions but they both had regular class and the same teaching procedure in the classroom. the difference lay only on the additional writing task given by the teacher or experimenter to the experimental group. however, the control group also had some writing exercises (homework) to be done at home. it was done in order to give the same chance for them to practice their writing skill. regarding journal writing, it is categorized as co-curricular activity since students do it outside the classroom activity (mukminatien, 1991). in this phase, the teacher asks the students to write anything of their need, interests, or concerns in the journal book given. the topics could be about the students' response to the particular lesson, daily activity, opinion on certain or current issues, hobbies, etc. the journal was submitted once a week at the end of the english class and then given back to the students at the next meeting. the teacher read the journals and wrote back, responding to the questions and comments, introducing new topics, asking questions, or suggesting ways in which they might learn from their experiences (caroll, 1994). however, there was a possibility that some students wanted their journal to be corrected and marked as if it were a formal assignment. if this happened, the teacher asked them to give other assignment in addition to the journal to them (caroll, 1994). two teachers were assigned to teach in the two classes. the two teachers were selected on the bases of the same level of classroom instruction, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 8-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 educational background, and teaching experience. one of the teachers was the researcher himself who taught in the experimental group. the treatment was carried out for 10 weeks in the second semester of the 2008-2009 academic year. it started from the first week of february up to the second week of april. the teaching of writing skill was allocated for one session of 90 minutes a week while the experiment took 1x10 weeks. the students who did not attend the class more than two meetings were excluded from the experiment. population and sample the target population for this study was the year-12 students of man 3 malang in the year. meanwhile, the accessible population was all the year12 students of ipa program. there were five classes of ipa. then, two of these five classes, ipa 2 and ipa 3, were purposively selected. it was done so simply because the other three classes were not comparable in terms of the number of the students and the sexes occupied the classes. thus, by using a lottery, ipa 2 was chosen as the experimental group and ipa 3 as the control group. the subjects in the two groups were quantitatively homogenous. the quantitative side deals with the number of the students, average age, and the average scores of their english skills covering listening, speaking, reading, and writing. instruments there were two equivalent tests used for the writing tests in this study. one was given for the pre-test and the other was used for the posttest. the first test was composing a narrative text on fable and historical fiction for the second test. the students doing the tests were to write the required text type within 60 minutes. in scoring and grading the result of the tests, the researcher collected the students' work and scored manually after administering the tests. their work was also scored by another rater, the teacher in charge of teaching the control group. before scoring the students’ works, the teachers who taught the two groups and happened to be the raters held training on how to apply the jacob’s scoring rubric. by doing so, it was hoped that the two raters had the same procedures of scoring. for this purpose, some pieces of students’ works that had been evaluated previously by the two raters were analyzed and discussed to highlight possible differences in the result of scoring. from the training, a better perspective in scoring from the two raters could be attempted. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|9-14 since the focuses of the assessment of this study were on the content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics, analytic scales in esl created by jacobs et al. is appropriate to adopt. in analytic scoring, scripts are rated on several aspects of writing or criteria rather than given a single score. analytic scoring schemes thus provide more detailed information about a test taker's performance in different aspects of writing. in addition to the writing tests, one questionnaire was used to obtain some qualitative data. this questionnaire, which was given only to the experimental group, served as additional and secondary instrument for collecting the data while the primary instrument was tests. it was designed to elicit information from the subjects under study. the information gained was chiefly about their opinions and suggestions pertinent to dialogue journals. this questionnaire comprised two parts. the first part consisted of ten questions accompanied with five options. they were (a) very positive, (b) positive, (c) neither positive nor negative, (d) negative, and (e) very negative. the students were then required to choose one of the options which they thought best in their opinion. every option had the same weighting. then, their responses were analyzed in order to find the central tendency. the ten questions are as follows: 1. do you feel happy with dialogue journals as an additional activity besides regular writing? 2. do you feel relaxed when expressing your ideas or feeling in a journal?activity carried out in class? 3. do you feel happy to know that your journal is read and responded by a teacher? 4. do you feel happy to know that your journal is read and responded by a classmate? 5. do you feel motivated to write using dialogue journals technique? 6. do you think dialogue journals technique helps you write with better content? 7. do you think dialogue journals technique helps you write with better organization? 8. do you think dialogue journals technique helps you write with better vocabulary? 9. do you think dialogue journals technique helps you write with better language use? ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 10-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 10. do you think dialogue journals technique helps you write with better mechanics? the second part was one openended question. it was supplied in the questionnaire for any comments and suggestions the students wanted to convey regarding the application of dialogue journals. another preparation dealing with implementing dialog journals that also needed considering was, beside tests and questionnaire, the notebooks which were going to be used as journals and writing prompts. the notebooks were the same notebook for each student. they were not very thick since they were used only for few weeks. moreover, the students made use of the computers available at man 3 malang to type their work. due to their literacy in the internet, once in a while they sent their piece of writing via e-mail to the teacher. the writing prompts or journal topics were also quite important. it was quite natural that not all students were highly motivated or had ideas to write especially when they had freedom to write anything they were interested in. in order to stimulate the students who were less enthusiastic or who had "i don't know what to write” problem, writing prompts or journal topics were very helpful. the topics could be formulated by the teacher (experimenter) or downloaded from the internet. some other accompanying equipment, which needed to be available as well, was instructional materials like textbooks and dictionaries. data analysis the data were analysed by using analysis of covariance (ancova) to answer the research questions. findings and discussion using the esl composition profile by jacobs et al. (1981), the researcher then calculated the result of the pretest and posttest means of the two groups as displayed in table 1. the scores above were then computed using analysis of covariance (ancova). the results of the comparison is presented in table 2 below. the finding regarding the students’ responses to the items in the questionnaire can be seen in the following table 3. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|11-14 table 1. performance on analytically-scored writing assignments of control and experimental group students writing aspects control experimental maximum score pretest posttest pretest posttest content 23.00 23.82 23.65 24.41 30 organization 14.82 15.18 14.91 15.71 20 vocabulary 13.50 13.94 13.56 14.85 20 language use 14.26 14.18 12.74 16.88 25 mechanics 3.32 3.85 3.00 3.91 5 holistic score 68.91 70.97 67.85 75.76 100 table 2. the result of ancova writing aspect f ratio f table sig. level of sig. meaning content 0.071 3.988 0.790 0.050 not significant organization 0.669 3.988 0.416 0.050 not significant vocabulary 4.595 3.988 0.036 0.050 significant language use 27.548 3.988 0.000 0.050 significant mechanics 3.755 3.988 0.057 0.050 not significant holistic sore 8.580 3.988 0.005 0.050 significant table 3. questions and percentage of students’ responses to the questionnaire item no. a b c d e 1. 44.12 50.00 5.88 0.00 0.00 2. 32.35 50.00 11.76 5.88 0.00 3. 58.82 29.41 11.76 0.00 0.00 4. 5.88 17.65 17.65 47.06 11.76 5. 32.35 52.94 8.82 5.88 0.00 6. 61.76 20.59 14.71 2.94 0.00 7. 41.18 26.47 20.59 11.76 0.00 8. 64.71 23.53 5.88 5.88 0.00 9. 41.18 23.53 11.76 23.53 0.00 10. 41.18 8.82 20.59 29.41 0.00 most of the topics the students wrote in their journals were about their personal problems like love and hatred towards their peers of different sex, as well as feelings like being sad, happy and confused, problems at home like disagreement between them and their parent(s) especially dealing with their plans after they graduate. the biggest number of them was, however, very concerned about the national exam that they were about to go through. dealing with the result of the pretest and post-test as shown in table 1, it indicates that the experimental group ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 12-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 performed better in writing narrative texts almost in all aspects of writing. however, based on the statistical data of ancova, of five writing aspects analysed, only two aspects yielded significant difference, namely vocabulary and language use whereas the other three aspects, namely content, organization, and mechanics, were not significantly different. yet, holistically speaking, the mean of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group. it is simply because the obtained f-ratio was 8.580. the critical value of f for the level of significance .05 was 3.988. thus, the obtained f-ratio (8.580) was higher than the value of f in the table (3.988). in other words, it is due to the fact that the significance score 0.005 < 0.05 while the f-ratio (8.580) > f table (3.988). it indicates that writing dialogue journals was effective to promote students’ skill in writing narrative texts. thus, the null hypothesis was rejected. the above findings were in line with what the students chose and wrote in the questionnaire. table 3 shows that dialogue journals helped them wrote with better content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. dealing with item number 4, when they were asked whether they felt happy if their journals were read and responded by their classmate, 16 respondents (47.06%) showed their displeasure. this response was not surprising due to fact that students’ unwillingness to get their journals read and responded by their peers or classmates could probably be resulted from the topics they mostly wrote. most of the topics, as stated earlier, were quite personal. hence, they may have thought that these were private. they would feel embarrassed if these matters were revealed or known by other people, especially classmates. telling these matters to the teacher indicated that, as penaflorida (2002, p.350) assures, there was a trust between the students and the teacher in dialog journal interaction. when they were asked to write their comments and suggestions about the implementation of dialogue journals as an additional writing activity, most of the students stated that they were excited and relaxed to have this writing technique and that this technique helped them write better. there were also students who wrote that writing in dialogue journals helped them solve their problems and alleviate their burden. it was because they usually expressed their feelings in their own personal journal and thus nobody helped them find solution to their problems. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|13-14 pertaining to the suggestions given by the students, one student suggested that this activity should be continued to the next generation or following class (their juniors). in fact, she recommended that this activity should be given since the first year. a student said that this activity needed to be prolonged, not only three months but one semester or even the whole year. nonetheless, another student wrote that writing journals should not be applied to the year-12 students since they had lots of assignments to do. another student suggested that teacher give corrections to the mistakes they made, not only give responses. conclusion and suggestion based on the research findings presented and discussed, conclusions are then drawn as the following. first, the descriptive characteristics of the data showed that the means of the five writing aspects of the experimental group taught using dialogue journals as an additional activity were better than those of the control group taught without using dialogue journals. hence, the dialogue journals technique employed in the experimental group as an additional activity helped improve students’ skill in writing narrative texts. second, the result of statistical analysis revealed that there were two writing aspects—vocabulary and language use—that showed significant differences, the other three writing aspects—content, organization, and mechanics—were not significantly different. holistically speaking, however, the mean of the experimental group taught using dialogue journals as an additional activity was significantly different from that of the control group taught without using dialogue journals. thus, the null hypothesis was rejected. in concordance with the findings of the research, some suggestions could be given. first, dialogue journal is a good technique that is worth implementing in teaching writing. in fact, this technique should be given since year-10. second, in addition to content, organization, and vocabulary, teachers should give more attention to language use and mechanics in teaching writing because these two aspects got very little attention in dialogue journals response. at last, further research on the application of dialogue journals should be conducted. the experimentation can be conducted more than 10 meetings and to year-10 and -11 students. the subjects could be classes or programs with low cognitive development and/or affective problems. it is because one of the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 14-14|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 benefits of this activity was that it could motivate students to both write and attend classes, and give more spirit to study. furthermore, for the sake of neutrality, the future research should not involve the researcher in teaching but assign one teacher or two different teachers to teach in the two groups. references cohen, a.d., & cavalcanti, m.c. 1990. feedback on composition: teacher and students verbal reports. in b. kroll (ed.), second language writing: research insights for the classroom (pp.155-177). cambridge: cambridge university press. el khoiri, n. 2006. dialogue journals: what they are and how to use them. paper presented in the workshop at the faculty of letters of state university of malang, february 3, 10, and 17, 2006. gray, r. 2004. grammar correction in esl/efl writing classes may not be effective. the internet tesl journal, (online), vol. x, no. 11, (http://iteslj. org/ technique/graywritingcorrection, accessed on may 5, 2008). peyton, j.k. & reed, l. 1990. dialogue journal writing with nonnative english speakers: a handbook for teachers. bloomington, illinois: pantagraph printing. peyton, j.k 1993. dialogue journals: interactive writing to develop language and literacy. eric digest, (online), [ed 284 276], (http://www.indiana.edu /eric_ rec /ieo//digests/d99bib.html, accessed on april 21, 2008) richards, j.c. 1990. the language teaching matrix. cambridge: cambridge university press. white, r. v. (ed.). 1995. new ways in teaching writing. bloomington, illinois: pantagraph printing. http://eli.tamu.edu/resources/profile. html esl composition profile ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 16-30 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effect of blended learning to the students’ achievement in grammar class arina isti’anah received: 18th april 2017; revised: 25th may 2017; accepted: 20th june 2017 abstract blended learning is believed to improve students’ understanding in learning second language. the employment of offline and online activities is expected to give better outcome than the traditional face-to-face activities. this article presents how blended learning was applied in an english grammar class and whether it significantly improved students’ achievement after the treatment. the participants involved in this research were 26 students of the the second semester students of the english letters department, sanata dharma university. a pre-experimental research was conducted by comparing the means of the participants’ scores in both pre-test and post-test. the analysis figured out that there was a significant improvement, proven by the paired t-test analysis. the p-value 0.00 was less than alpha 0.05. this research concluded that blended learning was effective to assist the students to learn english grammar. to strengthen the findings, this research also involved pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire to understand students’ responses on the use of blended learning. in the end of the semester, most students found that online activities help them comprehend and practice the materials. students’ reflective journals also revealed that blended learning was able to improve their understanding and interest in learning english grammar. key words: blended learning; grammar; pre-experimental research abstrak blended learning dipercaya mampu meningkatkan pemahaman siswa dalam memahami bahasa asing. penggunaan aktifitas offline dan online diharapkan mampu memberi luaran yang lebih baik dibandingkan aktifitas tatap muka secara tradisional. artikel ini menyajikan bagaimana blended learning diterapkan dalam kelas english grammar dan mengungkapkan apakah blended learning memberikan perbedaan berarti dalam pencapaian mahasiswa sebelum dan setelah perlakuan. partisipan yang dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa semester dua dari program studi sastra inggris, universitas sanata dharma. 26 partisipan dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini. penelitian pra-eksperimen diterapkan dengan membandingkan rata-rata nilai dari peserta dalam pre-tes dan pos-tes. hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan signifikan rata-rata dari kedua tes, yang ditunjukkan dengan analisis pasangan t-tes. nilai p menunjukkan 0.00 dan lebih kecil dari alpha 0.05. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa blended learning efektif untuk mendampingi mahasiswa belajar english grammar. untuk memperkuat penemuan tersebut, penelitian ini juga melibatkan pre-kuesioner dan pos-kuesioner. pada akhir semester, sebagian besar mahasiswa menemukan bahwa aktifitas online membantu mereka memahami dan melatih materi yang mereka pelajari. jurnal reflektif mahasiswa juga menunjukkan bahwa blended learning mampu meningkatkan kemampuan mereka belajar english grammar. kata kunci: blended learning; grammar; penelitian pra-eksperimen how to cite: isti’anah, a. (2017). the effect of blended learning to the students’ achievement in grammar class. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 16-30. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697. mailto:arina@usd.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 17-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction blended learning has been popular in language learning and teaching methodology due to the fact that this digital era enables both students and teachers to access online sources easily. it should be accepted that today’s generation is familiar with technology, hence they are categorized as the net generation. students prefer to access their phone or laptop than to save piles of papers containing information they look for. one of the advantages of having online files is that students can find out the files they have and read e-books, as an intance, more flexible in time and space. it is, then, inevitable that learning and teaching process should provide online materials and exercises to engage the students’ contexts. therefore, the use of computer asisted language learning (call) should be familiarized among different levels of education. in spite of the flexibility of its implementation, call is believed to improve the students’ autonomy. students are close with computer and internet. it means that there is greater possibility for them to be more autonomous and responsible. it is expected that students are responsible for the courses they take and perform their language competency, including speaking and writing. to be autonomous, the students should have willingness to change and improve learning strategies since language learning also progresses (godwin-jones, 2011). students’ autonomy cannot be separated from their integrative motivation to improve their language competencies. in indonesia, the use of call is not yet seen as common method in teaching and learning. it results in the students’ dependency on the teacher in learning materials. if this problem continues, the barrier on the students’ autonomy may be cultural (godwin-jones, 2011). teacher-centered learning is still common to happen in indonesia in every education level. one of the factors is the lack of sufficient facilities in certain schools. therefore, some college students who are in the first year of college still face difficulty or inconvenience when they use computer or internet in their learning processes. another challenge faced by teachers when using computer and internet in classroom is the students’ motivation which results in their passivity and the teachers’ loss of control (godwin-jones, 2011). it is also suggested that effective call needs an instructor capable of locating optimal balance of approaches, resources, and tools to meet the needs of particular ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 18-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license leaners in particular learning context (donaldson & haggstrom, 2006).the previous background motivates this research to apply blended learning in grammar class. the term “blended learning” is regarded as a new term in relation to the development of the 21st century technology (wright, 2017). there are some definitions of what so called blended learning. one of them argues that blended learning is applied using various multi-media applied in an ideal way to solve problems (keshta & harb, 2013). blended learning combines faceto-face method and the use of computer in teaching learning process (grgurovic, 2011). blended learning aims at providing effective and efficient learning experience by combining learning environment which suits the students (chansamrong, 2014). there are two approaches in blended learning: “program overflow model” and “core-and-spoke model” (bersin, 2004). in the first model, the teacher designs curriculum by integrating some media in the scheduled syllabus. each step or discussion is the follow-up of the previous discussion. to measure the whole learning, a task or test is given in the end of topic discussion (bersin, 2004). in the second approach, the instructor gives online class or webbased course. usually, the instructor gives particular activities such as delivering materials, interactivity, learning sources, and material assessment. in this approach a task or test may be given, yet not necessarily to be scheduled in the syllabus (bersin, 2004). one of the blended learning methodologies is by using moodle. ayan (2015) mentions that moodle is one of the mostly used open source learning management systems, which can create an encouraging, informative, and always renewable language education environtment. the previous statement implies that moodle is one of digital sources which can be further developed so that is suits the teaching learning purposes. in this article, moodle is provided by the university in exelsa2012.ac.id. the website can be accessed by sanata dharma university students by logging in the website using their student number and password. the information provided in the moodle is integrated with the academic information system supported by the university. therefore, the students who take particular courses are automatically registered in the moodle. the use of blended learning in various classes has been researched by previous writers. one of the research ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 19-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license observing blended learning is to figure out the effectiveness of blended learning and cooperative learning to teach grammar in thailand (chansamrong, tubsree, & kiratibodee, 2014). the research gives pre-test and post-test to the participants, 100 students separated in two different groups. it is revealed that there is a significant difference found in the posttest compared to pre-test. besides giving the test, that research also gives survey to the students to know their responses towards blended learning. it concludes that blended learning suits the students’ need and the teaching goals. similar research is done in different language skill (camahalan & ruley, 2014). the research also employs pre-assessment and post-assessment to the students. post-assessment is given after a six-week-learning process. even though the practiced language skill is writing, students’ grammar competency is also important to exercise students’ accuracy in writing. it is found that students’ writing in the post-assessment is better than previous. seen from students’ reflection, blended learning is also appreciated by the students. blended learning is also observed in relation to self-regulated learning (slr) (dettiro & perico, 2007). they observe the relation between blended learning and slr in terms of both cognitive and meta-cognitive aspects towards pre-service teachers. the research finds that blended learning offers a good opportunity to the preservice teachers to improve their slr. however, face-to-face meeting is still important to build the participants’ motivation to follow the learning process so that the use of online learning can be exercised to sharpen their cognitive skills (dettori & persico, 2007). similar research is also done by shen and liu (2011). the research figures out that students’ slr can be improved by understanding students’ context so that blended learning can be employed more effectively (shen & liu, 2011). motivated by the elaboration of the background above, this article attempts at figuring out how students’ understanding of the materials, represented in scores, are affected by the implementation of blended learning; how the students respond to the questionnaires of their experience in blended learning class; and how the students reflect their learning experience in blended learning class. method program overflow model offered by bersin (2004) was adopted in this ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 20-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research. blended learning was applied by using learning management system (lms), moodle, provided by sanata dharma university website. the lms can be accessed in http://exelsa2012.usd.ac.id/. lms was chosen as the tool to employ in this research since it provides online course management which contains learning sources such as comprehensive assessment and learning sources or materials (thorne, 2003). lms also offers various types of learning activities such as classroom based learning, e-learning, virtual learning, technology-based training, books, and videos (thorne, 2003). however, naidu (2006) argues that lms is lack of tools and capability for the development of complex cognitive and social skills (wright, 2017, p.64). since this research attempts at knowing how blended learning influences students’ understanding of the materials, lms is already sufficient to involve. in order to figure out the influence of blended learning in grammar class, this research applied a pre-experimental research. the treatment applied in this research is blended learning, which involved students’ activities outside classroom by using computer and internet. experimental research is one kind of correlational (associational) research as it aims to test a relationship between or among variables and to make predictions, which are dependent on the outcome of a strong relationship between or among variables (mackey & gass, 2005, p. 145). pre-test and post-test were involved to measure the individual students’ achievement in the beginning and the end of the treatment. thus, a paired t-test was applied to compare the means of the group’s scores. t-test aims at knowing whether the means of the two groups are significantly different from one another. it also identifies the relationship between the treatment group and its outcomes after experiencing particular method, i.e. blended learning (burns, 2010, p. 13). the participants were the second semester students of the english letters department, sanata dharma university. there were 34 students registered in the observed class which was english grammar ii, but only 26 students were analyzed in the pairedtest. it happened because not all students came in both tests. the students already took the pre-requisite course, english grammar i given in the first semester. to pass the course, the students should get 56 or a c in their final score since grammar is one of the basic skills the students should master. in addition to comparing the students’ scores in pre-test and posthttp://exelsa2012.usd.ac.id/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 21-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license test, this research also used another instrument, questionnaire. the prequestionnaire and post-questionnaire were also distributed to the students. the questionnaire distributed used lickert scale in which the students had to choose the options “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neutral”, “agree” and “strongly agree”. the questions distributed in the questionnaire were adopted from grugrovic’s previous study (2011) as follows:  i like to work on online activities to improve my grammar skill  i prefer to work on online activities for homework  working on online activities helps me with practicing grammar  i can see the connection between online activities and activities done in class the last instrument involved in this research was students’ reflective journal. the employment of this instrument aims at knowing how the students experience the treatment. journal writing motivates the students to depicts their interests, thinking and curiosity about their experience in their surrounding world (al-rawahi & albalushi, 2015). by writing reflective journal, this research could discover the students’ impression on the treatment, blended learning. the reflective journal was submitted in moodle after the given treatment. findings and discussion this part is divided into three. the first part discusses the students’ mean score in both pre-test and posttest. in addition to discussing whether the mean difference in both pre-test and post-test is significantly different, the process of blended learning during the semester is also elaborated. the second part shows the students’ responses in the questionnaires. to find more comprehension on the students’ responses to blended learning, the third part discusses the students’ reflective journal. by employing reflective journal, the students are expected to be involved in the learning process. the students’ results in pre-test and post-test a paired t-test was applied in this research so that the significance difference of the individual’s achievement can be measured. the table 1 shows the result. table 1. the t-test result group n mean tobserve ttable df p pretest 26 52.35 2.059 -7.43 25 8,8 e08 posttest 26 70 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 22-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the table 1 shows that the number of students observed in the research (n) was 26. the mean score in the pre-test was 52.35, while the mean score in the post-test was 70. the mean difference between the test was 17.5. the two-tailed significance test indicates a t = -7.43 with 25 degrees of freedom, which results in a two-tailed p-value 8.8 e-08. the number of p-value was 0.00 or less than the alpha = 0.05. the p-value was statistically significant since it is less than alpha = 0.05, meaning that the result rejects the null hypothesis. in conclusion, there was a significance difference between the students’ score in the pre-test and posttest. the students’ achievement cannot be separated from the semester’s learning process. this result is similar to the one conducted by chansamrong, tubsree & kiratibodee (2014). the average result in the previous study also improves in the post-test compared to the pre-test. it suggests that blended learning is effective to assist the students to learn english grammar. the finding of this research also supports keshta and harb (2013). they find that blended learning is able to enhance selflearning and students’ achievement (keshta & harb, 2013). the results of the students’ achievement above cannot be separated from some interventions exposed during the semester. it triggers the students’ autonomy in learning second language. this finding agrees with godwin-jones’ statement that call is able to improve autonomous learning (2011). in this research, the first intervention exposed to the students is the use of videos and powerpoint files uploaded in the lms. the videos are uploaded several times based on the numbers of topic discussion in the semester. the powerpoint files are those created by the lecturer and presented in class. observed from the students’ participation in the lms, there is a consistency between students’ achievement in end of the semester with their regularity in accessing the online materials and assignments. the table below displays the summary of the students’ percentage in completing the online assignments with their final grade. as there was not any student who got 50-55 in the post-test, the percentage in the above table is represented in 0%. the table above reveals that there is consistency between the students’ completing assignments with their results in the post-test. those who achieve higher score are the students who complete more assignments than the others. practicing grammar online regularly is proven to improve the students’ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 23-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understanding of the materials. the exposure given in the lms can help the students recall their understanding of the materials and exercise their grammar skills. thus, it creates a new culture in learning second language. the students are aware of their responsibility to access the online materials and assignments. it reflects their self-regulated learning and autonomy. table 2. the summary of students’ completing online assignments scores average percentage of completed assignments ≥ 80 90% 70-79 83% 56-69 81% 50-55 0% < 50 47% in self-regulated learning, the learners perform the course activities with confidence, diligent, and aware of their skills to master specific learning task (tongchai, 2016). table 2 above clearly displays that most of the students have become self-regulated learners. it also proves that selfregulation is the key factor for successful learning (tongchai, 2016). it happens as self-regulation learning reflects the learners’ taking control of their own learning (orhan, 2007). further, orhan mentions that selfregulation learning is closely related to motivation. thus, the students who are self-regulated learners can identify a goal to accomplish and control their behavior, motivation, affect and cognition (orhan, 2007, p. 391). this research is also in line with shen & liu (2011) who previously proposed that blended learning can improve the students’ self-regulated learning. as mentioned in the previous part, there are two main activities exposed in the lms. they are online learning sources and assignments. the picture below is the example online materials uploaded in the lms. picture 1. examples of online materials the picture 1 shows that the lecturer uploads powerpoints and pdf files for the students to download. the module is given in the beginning of the semester so that the students can print it themselves. the other files containing workbook and presentation files are also available in the lms. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 24-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in addition to sharing files in the lms, the lecturer also shares the links of videos in youtube. below is the example of the videos. picture 2. the example of online videos in lms the numbers of the videos uploaded in lms are in line with the numbers of topic discussion during the semester. it aims at providing the students an alternative source of learning. moreover, the students can recall what they have learnt in class. the exposure of the use of videos in lms is welcome by the students. besides understanding the materials, the students also practice their listening skills. the use of online assignments is also displayed in lms. there are some types of online assignments given to the students: fill in the blanks, multiple choice, and file upload. below is the example of students’ participation score in the online quiz. picture 3. the example of online assignments the lms used in this research is integrated with the academic information system in the university. the students’ names and student numbers are already integrated when they log in to exelsa2012.usd.ac.id. the regular assignments given online are proven to help the students practice their grammar skill. by practicing regularly, the students practice their linguistic performance. even though the students can work with their friends in the online assignments, their scores are assessed individually. this is to encourage them to be familiar with blended learning. the previous finding shows that blended learning is able to increase the students’ interaction and participation, as suggested by al fiky (2011) (keshta & harb, 2013, p. 213). the students’ participation during the treatment proves that they are placed in a suitable environment which can influences their motivation. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 25-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license motivation is a key of learning success since the students can control their learning processes (orhan, 2007, p. 391). the motivation is shown by their participation of the given assignments. the students have become autonomous as they have duty to complete the assignment. they consciously participate the tasks in blended learning class to achieve their goal. this research found that the most of the participants have been in self-regulated learning. self-regulated learning requires an active and conscious control of the learners’ activity in terms of metacognition, motivation and behavior individually and socially (dettori, 2007). students’ responses in the questionnaires the questionnaires were given both in the beginning and in the end of the semester. it aims at figuring out how the students show their experience in blended learning class. similar to comparing the students’ scores in the pre-test and post-test, there are also differences in the students’ responses in blended learning class. the table below shows the students’ responses in the questionnaires. the first statement to respond in the questionnaire is “i like to work on online activities to improve my grammar skill”. in the prequestionnaire, most of the students choose “neutral”, presented in 50%. on the other hand, in the postquestionnaire there are 53% of the students choose “agree”. this finding reveals that after experiencing blended learning class, the students’ learning style changes. seen from the option “agree”, there is 13% increase of those who enjoy the online activities to improve their grammar skill. the number is satisfying as the students show their interest in the class. table 3. students’ responses in the questionnaires no sda da n a sa q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 1 0% 0% 3% 5% 50% 32% 40% 53% 7% 9% 2 0% 0% 12% 20% 35% 20% 28% 42% 25% 18% 3 0% 0% 9% 7% 35% 40% 41% 33% 15% 20% 4 0% 0% 3% 5% 42% 38% 48% 40% 9% 20% no: number of statement in the questionnaire, sda: strongly disagree, da: disagree, n: neutral, a: agree, sa: strongly agree, q1: questionnaire given in the beginning of the semester, q2: questionnaire given in the end of the semester. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 26-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the result of the questionnaire above suggests that students can find the advantage of being involved in the blended learning environment as they can develop their autonomy. by practicing online, the students can save time and be motivated (keshta & harb, 2013). the students have found their motivation to achieve the goal in class. the positive outcomes shown by the students cannot be separated from their engagement of the learning environment. it is undeniable that computer and internet become the students’ part of life. consequently, students’ positive effect on learning outcomes is reflected after they experience a blended learning class (moreno, 2012). the second statement in the questionnaire is “i prefer to work on online activities for homework”. in the beginning of the semester, there were 35% of the students choosing “neutral”, whereas in the end of the semester there were 42% of the students choosing “agree”. the dominating students who choose the option also changes. in the beginning of the semester, most of the students do not show exact interest to work online activities for their homework. however, in the end of the semester, the majority of the students like the online activities for their homework. it shows that the students enjoy their learning process. in spite of the fact that the students found their motivation in learning, students become accustomed to use internet and computer to do their homework. students have created their learning styles suitable to their life. their completing work outside classroom reflects their autonomy. students have developed their strategies in order to chase their individual learnings (godwin-jones, 2011). the goal they set to learn grammar is enhanced by practicing individually outside classroom. their autonomy is represented through their position, time and place in which they are doing the tasks which refer to the atmosphere different from classroom (ayan, 2015). the third statement in the questionnaire is “working on online activities helps me with practicing grammar”. the important difference observed in this statement is the number of students who choose “disagree” and “strongly agree”. the percentage of the students choosing “disagree” decreases, while it increases in the option “strongly agree”. in the beginning of the semester, the students show that in the previous semester, they do not find any benefits to practice grammar online. it is totally different ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 27-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from their responses in the end of the semester. students who choose “strongly agree” show their high interest in the online activities in relation to their grammar skill. the result of the questionnaire above indicates that students give positive value to blended learning. this case cannot be separated from the quality of dialogue and relationship between the teacher and students (ayan, 2015) when negotiating the employment of blended learning in class. despite the lack of facilities faced by the students, the teacher provided online materials and assignments in the website provided by the university. thus, students have more access to be involved in blended learning environment. the different finding is found in the students’ option is also found in the last statement “i can see the connection between online activities and activities done in class”. in the beginning of the semester, most of the students choose the option “agree”, shown in 48%. the dominant students, in the end of the semester, also choose the same option. however, there is a difference in the options “disagree” and “strongly agree” which increase in the end of the semester. this finding shows that students still can see the connection between activities done in class and the online one. before attending the blended learning class, some students already practice online themselves. it is good that, as digital natives, the students should be able to use the online materials autonomously. the ease of browsing online materials gives them a lot of opportunities to develop their competencies. students’ reflective journal from the activity, the students are assigned to write their opinions related to the activities offered in the lms. below are some examples of students’ reflection.  i can learn the material from the video before class so that i won't be confused when it is taught in the class. i also can watch the videos to make me remember the materials.  in the videos, the speaker tells the materials in a simple way, and it only gives the important points about grammar.  the use of videos always helps me in understanding more about the lesson. they are very helpful.  there is no point if i just study based on the regular class activities. i will forget the lesson. but, the online materials help me to improve my knowledge. it gives me, in another method, more explanation.  for me the use of videos is very helpful since it can make me understand the materials better. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 28-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license observing the students’ language choice, the reflective journal shows that the students show positive responses to the use of blended learning in grammar class. the verbs such as learn, help, and improve infer that the students conduct particular actions in their learning process. the given materials provided online are proven to motivate the students exercise their grammar skill. the actions done by the students affect their cognition shown by the verbs understand and remember. moreover, the use of adjective helpful also displays clear relation between the students’ regular activities in the lms and their understanding of the materials. the previous conclusion is also strengthened by the students’ results in the post-test. the second activity is giving online assignments. the given assignments vary: filling in the blanks, uploading single file, and taking multiple choice assignments. those assignments were given in the end of each topic discussion. to motivate the students’ regularity of online practices, the assignments weigh the same as the test scores. by applying that strategy, the students are motivated to access the lms regularly. in doing the assignments, the students are also allowed to discuss the assignments with their friends even though the assignments scores are given individually.  it's good for we could be more active when we are in our home.  i think the use of videos and online assignment in grammar class are really nice. those things help me to understand the material better.  i think that it's really helpful in learning the materials. specially the online assignments, it can also help my score.  it's very useful because we don't have to study just from the lecturer in class, but because it's online assignments we can access it wherever we want.  the online material helps me add more understanding of the material given, i can learn more efficiently and can play it over and over again if i still have not properly studied it. the students’ language choice in the above journals shows that the students appreciate the assignments. the previous fact is proven by the use of some positive adjectives such as active, nice, helpful, and useful. those adjectives reveal that the students show their interest and excitement when they are given the online assignments. besides showing their interest, students show their appreciation by the verb help and the adverb efficiently. the students’ reflective journal also emphasizes the students’ responses in the questionnaires. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 29-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the elaboration presented in the above paragraphs infers that the participants can improve their understanding in grammar by means of blended learning. the uploaded videos in the lms are useful to enhance the students’ understanding of the materials. to increase their participation and learning comprehension, the videos which are uploaded before the class is also effective to apply. in line with wright’s research, the videos should be preceded by pre-online-lesson and class explanation. post-online-lesson is also necessary to follow up the students’ understanding. by doing so, teachers can spend time to discuss students’ questions and rule clarification (wright, 2017). conclusion and suggestion blended learning is suitable to implement in courses related to language skills, particularly grammar. the regular activities given online are proven to help the students exercise their understanding of the given materials, seen from the results in both pre-test and post-test. there is also consistency between the students’ achievement in the post-test with the students’ completion of the online assignments. the exposures given in the lms are proven to motivate the students to practice their grammar ability. moreover, the uploaded videos also become another learning resource for the students. referring to the students’ reflective journals, students show their appreciation to blended learning by choosing positive adjectives in their journals. on the other hand, the use of verbs in the journal also reveal the students’ practice and access to the online activities. this article suggests that blended learning be applied in other courses related to language skills. thorough interview and wider survey are also needed to enrich the present findings. the use of discourse analysis is highly suggested. references ayan, e. (2015). moodle as builder of motivation and autonomy in english courses, (february), 6–20. bersin, j. (2004). the blended learning book. san fransisco: pfeiffer. burns, a. (2010). doing action research in english language teaching: a guide for practitioners. new york: routledge. camahalan, f. m. g., & ruley, a. g. (2014). blended learning and teaching writing : a teacher action research project, 15(16), 1–13. chansamrong, a., tubsree, c., & kiratibodee, p. (2014, december). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 30-30 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee. v4i1.5697 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license effectiveness of cooperative and blended learning to assist thai esl students in learning grammar. hrd journal, 5(2), 105115. dettori, g., & persico, d. 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(2007). applying selfregulated learning strategies in a blended learning instruction. world applied science journal, 2(4), 390-398. rawahi, n., & balushi, s. m. (2015). the effect of reflective science journal writing on students' selfregulated learning strategies. international journal of environmental & science education, 10(3), 367-379. shen, h., & liu, w. (2011). a survey on the self-regulation efficacy in dut ’ s english blended learning context. journal of language teaching and research, 2(5), 1099– 1110. http://doi.org/10.43 04/jltr.2.5.1099-1110 tongchai, n. (2016, may). impact of self-regulation and open learner model on learning achievement in blended learning environment. international journal of information and education technology., 6(5), 343-347. thorne, k. (2003). blended learning : how to integrate. london: kogan. wright, b. m. (2017). blended learning: student perception of face-toface and online efl lessons. indonesian journal of applied linguistics, 7(1), 66-71. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 60-75 efl student teachers’ speaking anxiety: the case in one english teacher education program mukhlash abrar1, failasofah2, nunung fajaryani3, masbirorotni4 received: 14th april 2016; revised: 21th may 2016; accepted: 26th june 2016 abstract this present study examined student teachers‟ foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) associated with gender and proficiency differences. the participants of the study were 72 second-year efl student teachers at the english teacher education program of one public university in jambi, indonesia. a close-ended questionnaire developed from syakur (1987) and horwitz et al, (1986) was administered to the participants to explore their flsa. the results indicated that efl student teachers are highly anxious when speaking english. furthermore, the findings revealed that there is no statistical difference between male and female student teachers on flsa. on the contrary, proficiency does affect efl learners‟ anxiety wherein more proficient students seem to be less nervous to speak. key words: foreign language speaking anxiety; efl; genders; proficiency abstrak penelitian ini membahas kecemasan berbicara bahasa asing (flsa) siswa yang dihubungkan dengan perbedaan jenis kelamin dan kecakapan berbahasa inggris. jumlah peserta dalam penelitian ini sebanyak 72 mahasiswa tahun kedua pada program studi pendidikan bahasa inggris di salah satu universitas negeri di jambi. kuesioner tertutup diberikan kepada peserta penelitian untuk mengetahui flsa mereka. hasil penelitian mengindikasikan bahwa siswa pembelajar bahasa asing (efl) sangat cemas ketika berbicara bahasa inggris. selain itu, hasil juga menunjukkan bahwa tidak ada perbedaan statistik yang signifikan pada flsa antara siswa laki-laki dan perempuan. sebaliknya, tingkat kecakapan sangat mempengaruhi kecemasan siswa efl dimana siswa yang mempunyai kecakapan dalam bahasa inggris terlihat tidak terlalu cemas untuk berbicara. kata kunci: kecemasan berbicara dalam bahasa asing; bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing; gender; kemampuan berbahasa how to cite: abrar, m. failasofah. fajaryani, n. masbirorotni. (2016). efl student teachers‟ speaking anxiety: the case in one english teacher education program. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 60-75. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3619 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3619 mailto:salwa@unikama.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|61-75 introduction as a non-english speaking country, many efl student teachers might have found themselves frequently confronted by the silent situation in the language classroom and the low levels of motivation. mukminin, masbirorotni, noprival, sutarno, arif, & maimunah (2015) argued that learning english as a foreign language had been a challenging subject for language learners as they learned the complex language only at school or in college. in learning a foreign language, the learners need to accommodate both cognitive and affective features to be successful in learning the language. anxiety, recognised as an affective factor in language learning, is a frequent-observed issue which certainly governs students‟ performance (chastain, 1975; scott, 1986) and contributes to the students‟ worry and nervousness in learning process (arnold & brown, 1999; gardner & maclntyre, 1993; oxford, 1999). this problem is often seen in english as a foreign language (efl) classes, particularly in speaking modules (horwitz, 1986; palacios, 1998; price, 1991) because the learners have to think and talk simultaneously. literally, speaking is known as the process of language delivery by using speech organs, such as mouth, vocal tract, vocal chords, tongue, teeth, and also lips. in more specific terms, speaking does not only involve language production, but it also comprises information receiving and processing as it is considered an interactive and communicative process of constructing meaning (brown, 1994: burns & joyce, 1997). besides, speaking requires the learners to master both linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (nunan, 1999). in foreign language classes, it is often found that linguistic competence becomes a challenge as it is the foundation of language learning, and encounters on how to produce specific aspects of language. according to syakur (1987), there are five language components which learners need to engage with: comprehension, grammar, pronunciation, word choice, and fluency. ‘comprehension’ relates to the speakers‟ ability to comprehend the meaning as well as having the capacity to engage in a conversation (syakur, 1987; heaton 1991). it means that the speakers are required to understand and actively engage in a talk. ‘grammar’ denotes the students competence to produce well-structured sentences. heaton (1978) defines grammar as the learner‟s ability to manipulate sentence structures and distinguish them in order to arrange correct sentences in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 62-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 conversation. ‘pronunciation’ refers to the ability to produce easily comprehensible articulation (syakur, 1987). in other words, pronunciation is associated with language production. the aspect „word choice’ concerns the appropriate diction used in communication. nobody may transfer the language well if s(he)uses inappropriate vocabulary or has a limited range of vocabularies. lastly, ‘fluency’ refers to “the ease and speed of the flow of the speech” (harris, 1974, p.81). it obviously indicates that fluency is the smoothness of the talk with a reasonably constant speed and small numbers of pauses. thus, syakur‟s theory (1987) was used as the framework of this study. anxiety is “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system” (horwitz et al,1986, p.125). in line with this definition, foreign language anxiety can be assumed to be a distinct complex of self-perception, behaviour, feeling, and belief related to using a foreign language in classroom communication. since anxiety has been considered as a very important factor which affects the learning process, a great number of studies focusing in this research area has been undertaken since the 1970s. the major purpose of the studies was to explore the causes of language anxiety. young (1991) represented six potential causes of anxiety, including personal and interpersonal, learner beliefs about language learning, instructor beliefs about language teaching, instructorlearner interactions, classroom procedures, and language tests. in addition, horwitz et al (1986) claimed three influential anxiety affectingfactors: apprehension of verbal communication, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. this finding is a well-known one and is still relevant to this day in the discourse of language anxiety. in this present study, two out of three causes from horwitz have been explored – apprehension in verbal communication and negative evaluation. in foreign language classrooms, speaking is deemed essential to master as it is one of the productive skills of language. however, efl learners often express their feeling of anxiety while speaking in the target language. some researchers found the same evidence through their research findings. horwitz et al (1987), for instance, found that communication apprehension to be closely interwoven with foreign language anxiety. moreover, palacios (1998) reported that speaking caused the most anxiety among the language ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|63-75 students. price (1991) observed that the learners in her foreign language class revealed that speaking in front of the peers in the target language was the most anxiety-provoking. more and more studies (tercan & dikilitaş, 2015; çağatay, 2015; luo, 2014: fariadian et al, 2014; qaddomi, 2013; öztürk & gürbüz, 2013; muhaisen & al-haq, 2012; zhao & whitchurch 2011; cui, 2011; liu, 2006), since then, on speaking anxiety, have been conducted from many differences, such as gender and proficiency. the proposed concept on foreign language anxiety (horwitz, 1986) has seemingly inspired many researchers to carry out studies on flsa. the studies had been conducted in different sites with different perspectives as well as results. çağatay (2015) conducted a four-issue study on flsa, including anxiety level, gender, proficiency, and communication differences. a hundred and forty-seven students of basic english department at a turkey state university took part in his study. the questionnaire, 18 items adapted from flsa horwitz (1986) was used as an instrument to gain the data. the results indicated the majority of respondents experienced moderate level of flsa. to measure flsa level,the researcher calculated the total score of each participants‟ flsa and its mean score. moreover, gender playeda role in flsa in which female seems to be more anxious when speaking than male learners, whereas proficiency did not. in addition, the learners‟ flsa increases when speaking to native speakers. another study on flsa in turkish context was carried out by oztürk & gürbüz (2009). they examined the factors affecting speaking anxiety, motivation, and students‟ perception. in collecting the data, a mixed-method design was employed by distributing a questionnaire to 383 preparatory program students and interviewing 19 random students from the survey respondents. the findings of their quantitative and qualitative data are supporting each other. they concluded, from the data, that female students demonstrated higher level of foreign language learning motivation than male students. in terms of gender difference, female learners were reported to be more anxious when speaking english, especially to native speakers. in 2014, fariadian, et al., carried out gender-based flsa among iranian learners. the data were collected by administering the questionnaire to 80 efl students at ilam language institution. from their study, they concluded that male learners demonstrated higher level of anxiety ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 64-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 than female. the questionnaire used in this study was adopted from flcas developed by horwitz, (1986). however, the adopted questionnaire does not exclusively and effectively measure flsa because it accommodates other scopes, such as listening, test anxiety, and attitudes in learning english.a study undertaken by luo (2014)attempted to examine chinese foreign language learners‟ anxiety from gender and proficiency differences. to gain the data, luo supplied 8 adapted questions in relation to speaking from flcas (horwitz, 1986) to 257 learners. the results revealed that gender had a significant effect on anxiety as females were found to be more anxious than males, while proficiency difference, based on students‟ current instructional level, had not. supporting luo‟s finding, zhao and whitchurch (2011) confirmed that there was not any statistically significant difference between elementary and intermediate level of students‟ proficiency, though elementary level students, based on its statistical summary, seemed more nervous than intermediate level students in speaking english. similarly, tercan & dikilitas (2015), in their study, reported that proficiency level had not a significant effect on students‟ speaking anxiety. a contradictory result on gender and proficiency difference effect was found by muhaisen and al-haq (2012) and liu (2006). muhaisen and al-haq‟s (2012) research focused on the relationship between anxiety and foreign language learning in jordan. their finding suggested that there is no difference between the genders in flsa, but female students, on average, demonstrated more anxious feelings than males. in terms of proficiency, liu (2006) carried out a study entitled “anxiety in chinese efl students at different proficiency levels”. she uncovered that a more proficient learner inclined to be less anxious. these suggest that the findings of the studies -although the purposes, methods, and instruments are the same may not be similar to one another due to context and cultural differences. despite a great number on studies on flsa experienced by learners in different contexts (tercan & dikilitaş, 2015; çağatay, 2015; luo, 2014: fariadian et al., 2014; qaddomi, 2013; öztürk & gürbüz, 2013; muhaisen & al-haq, 2012; zhao & whitchurch 2011; cui, 2011; liu, 2006), they discovered inconsistent findings on gender affect (fariadianet al, 2014; cui, 2011; muhaisen and al-haq, 2012), and proficiency (luo, 2014). sthis fact encourages the authors to carry out ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|65-75 similar study in indonesia context since there wasonly a few studies were addressed on this issue. mukminin et al., (2015), for instance, investigated indonesian senior high school students‟ source of anxiety. it was a qualitative design research and there was no gender or proficiency differences compared. therefore, this quantitative study attempted to fill the gaps that exist in previous studies in indonesia, in particular at the university level and addressed the issue of identifying speaking anxiety in efl student teachers.the main objective of this study was to explore whether the efl student teachers in one english teacher education program at one public university in jambi were anxious to speak english or not. in line with its purpose, the present study addressed some following research questions: 1. do student teachers experience foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) when speaking english? if so, what is their anxiety level? 2. does the foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) level differ according to gender? 3. is there a significant difference in terms of foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) among student teachers according to their proficiency levels? method participants and setting this present study aimed to examine flsa in indonesian context on several differences factors, most notably gender, proficiency. gender difference was seen from male and female student teachers, whileproficiency, with regard to this study, was classified from the student teachers‟ experienced in attending english courses. in this sense, the students who attended the course(s) are categorised as more proficient students that the students who did not. the participants in this quantitative inquiry were 72 second-year efl student teachers studying in one english teacher education program at one public university in jambi.of 72 respondents, the number ofmale participants was 18, while the number of female participants was 54. the big gap difference of participants‟ number in gender was because more female students are taking the course. in addition, the reason for choosing second-year learners as respondents is because they had experienced and completed speaking modules. research instruments and measurements the research instrument in this study was a close-ended questionnaire which comprised of 13 questions and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 66-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 was written in english. the questions were constructed from developing syakur‟s (1987) theory about speaking aspects, and adapted some elements of horwitz‟s (1986) questionnaire on flcas. the first three question items concerned with the respondents‟ background, such as gender, class type, and english course experience, while the fourth of the thirteenth statements was set to question how their speaking proficiency aspects anxiety, with details q4 & q5 (comprehension), q6 & q7 (grammar), q8 & q9 (pronunciation), q10 & q11 (diction), q12 & q13 (fluency). in addition, the likert-scale with five gradations was used in constructing statements‟ options, (5) strongly agree, (4) agree, (3) neither agree nor disagree, (2) disagree, (1) strongly disagree. some of the questionnaire items are the in following table, and the complete questionnaire can be seen in the appendix (see appendix 1): table 1. example of questionnaire question item(s) s a a na /d d s d i never feel quite sure of myself when i am speaking english in my speaking class. i often do not feel confident when i use contextual words in speaking english. i am ashamed that the lecturer and/or my classmates laugh at me when i mispronounce english words. before it was distributed, the expert, a tutor, assessed its content validity. according to carmines and zeller, quoted in cohen, et al.,(2011), content validity focuses on how “the instrument must show that it fairly and comprehensively covers the domain or items that it purports to cover” (p.188). there was some revision to the questionnaire, particularly in wordings and the number of items. after that, the questionnaire was distributed to 30 random students to see its reliability. the cronbach’s alpha for these questionnaire items was found as .91, suggesting very good internal consistency reliability for the scale. research procedures in data collection after ensuring its validity and reliability, the questionnaire, then, was administered to the second-year student teachers of one english teacher education program at one public university in jambi. the instrument was distributed to the respondents with the help of the researchers‟ collages (the speaking module tutors). each tutor administered the questionnaires in his/her class after being informed by the researchers about the important points regarding the study and questionnaires. then, the result of questionnaire was sent to researchers via online. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|67-75 research data analysis the quantitative data were analysed with statistical package for social sciences (spss) 22.0 through descriptive and inferential statistics. the findings were presented in tables and illustrated in bar charts. the inferential statistical differences were tested by using t-tests. research ethical consideration regarding this issue, an initial consent letter was sent as a first procedure before undertaking the study. after gaining the permission from the site, the consent form, informing the nature and the purpose of the study, was also administered to all respondents along with a set of questionnaire as a proof of their voluntary participation in the project. for those who were not willing to participate might not complete or even return the questionnaire. another effort in relation to ethics was anonymity to protect the participant‟s identity. findings and discussion student teachers’ foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) level in general, the respondents demonstrated a high level of english speaking anxiety. this finding was based on descriptive analyses questionnaire result. the respondents were distributed 10 items of questions regarding to the speaking anxiety. since the questionnaire is a 5-graded likert scale, the total score ranged from 10 – 50. a total score ≤ 20 indicates a low level of anxiety; a total score ranged from > 20 ≤ 30 shows a moderate level of speaking anxiety; and a total score more than 30 presents a high level of speaking anxiety. after calculating the mean scores for all participants‟ total anxiety score, it was found the students experience a high level of flsa (m=30.50; sd=7.003), as shown in table 2. table 2. level of flsa level of flsa n mean sd 72 30.50 7.003 gender difference in anxiety about speaking english to determine the comparison between males and females in english speaking anxiety, an independent sample t-test was performed after the anxiety scale was found approximately normally distributed from some evidence, including skewness and kurtosis z-values, shapiro-wilk p-value, and histogram, q-q plot, and box plot results in the following tables (3 and 4) and figures (1, 2, and 3). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 68-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 3. skewness and kurtosis statistic std. error total anxiety scale mean 30.50 .825 95% confidence interval for mean lower bound 28.85 upper bound 32.15 5% trimmed mean 30.58 median 31.00 variance 49.042 std. deviation 7.003 minimum 15 maximum 46 range 31 interquartile range 12 skewness -.125 .283 kurtosis -.727 .559 table 4. shapiro-wilk kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. total anxiety scale .089 72 .200* .978 72 .253 *. this is a lower bound of the true significance. figure 1. histogram ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|69-75 figure 2. q-q plot the above tables (3 and 4) and figures (1, 2, and 3) indicate that the “anxiety scale” is normally distributed. table 3 represents z-value of skewness and kurtosis of the scale. the skewness z-value of the scale is 0.00, and kurtosis z-value is -1.30. both values show the normal univariate distribution of the scale because they are between -2 and +2 (george & mallery, 2010). table 4 presents shapiro-wilk p-value of the scale. this test also suggests that the scale is normally distributed because pvalue of this test is > 0.05 (0.253). in addition, histogram, q-q plot, and box plot figures show the normal distribution of the data. table 5. statistical summary gender n mean std. deviation male 18 31.89 7.045 female 54 30.04 6.993 table 5 shows the mean score and standard deviation of both genders. as can be seen, males had slightly higher mean and standard deviation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 70-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 scores (m=31.89, sd=7.045) than females (m=30.04, sd=6.993). thus, it explicitly indicates that there is a relatively small difference between the genders. table 6. t-test result levene’s test t-test f sig t df sig. (2tailed) equal variances assumed .004 .952 .971 70 .335 in an attempt to find out if there is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of males and females, a t-test was applied due to two different variable types, in which one is nominal and another is scale. according to connolly (2007), it is first necessary to check the statistical significance of levene‟s test for equality of variances. the variances are assumed equal since p> 0.05, specifically 0.952. in the table 3 above, the test statistic t=.971, the degree of freedom df=70 with a significant level p=0.335. the probability of value (p=0.335) is greater than 0.05, so the result is not statistically significant. hence, the alternative hypothesis is rejected which states that there is no statistically significant difference between male and female students in relation to their anxiety about speaking. proficiency difference in anxiety about speaking english in order to explore whether there is a difference between proficient and less-proficient students in english speaking anxiety, an independent sample t-test, again, was conducted since the anxiety scale was found normally distributed. table 7. statistical summary proficiency n mean std. deviation students experienced english course(s) 34 27.88 6.508 students never experienced english courses 38 32.84 6.664 there is a difference of mean and standard deviation scores as illustrated in table 7. the participants who have learned in english course(s) had lower scores, both mean and standard deviation (m=27.88, sd=6.508) than those who only learned english at school (m=32.84, sd=6.664). this result infers that proficient students have less anxiety in speaking english, on average, than less-proficient students. table 8. t-test result levene’s test t-test f sig t df sig. (2tailed) equal variances assumed .020 .889 3.188 70 .002 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|71-75 table 8 clearly displays levene‟s test and t-test results. a levene‟s test is used to examine whether the variances are equal or not and its result is initially checked before looking at the result of the independent t-test (connolly, 2007). since p-value of levene‟s test is greater than 0.05 (p=.889), the variances are regarded as equally assumed. additionally, table 8 represents three essential pieces information of t-test result which determine the significant difference between two groups (t=2.881, df=70, p=0.002). since the actual statistical significance of the finding (pvalue) is < 0.05 (0.002), a difference is found between proficient and lessproficient students in relation to english speaking anxiety. in other words, less-proficient students get more anxious than proficient students when speaking english in speaking module(s). regarding the first question of this study, the findings revealed that efl student teachers, on average, experience a high level of anxiety. this is in line with what horwitz (1986), palacios (1998), and price (1991) argument that speaking is the most provoking anxiety factor, especially in foreign/ second language classroom(s). in addition, this study supports cui‟s study that efl student teachers had comparatively high anxiety in english language learning. the result of the second research question pinpoints that there is no statistically significant difference between male and female efl student teachers on flsa.this finding contradicts the majority of previous studies (çağatay, 2015; luo, 2014: fariadian, et al., 2014; qaddomi, 2013; öztürk & gürbüz, 2013).this might result from the few total number of respondents (n=72) and a big gap of two genders‟ representation (male=18, female=54. althoughthere was no statistical difference, the finding – similar to other research results (fariadian et al, 2014; cui, 2011) – represents that male efl student teachers demonstrated a slight higher anxiety than females. this tendency is possible to happen because males and females are believed to have different abilities regarding language. gardner and lambert (1972) state that females had a more positive attitude toward the speakers of a second language, and were more motivated toward learning a second language than males. the third research question was intended to explore the difference between proficient and less-proficient student teachers in speaking english. student teachers‟ proficiency level in this study was determined by their experiences in learning english outside of school/university. those who have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 72-75|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 learned english at english courses are regarded to be more proficient than those who have not. the finding revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between proficient students and less-proficient students toward the oral practice of english. this result is congruent with liu (2006) finding in the sense that more proficient learners seem to be less nervous to speak. the reason for this finding could be the fact that the students who have learned english at informal institution(s) gain more experiences at speaking english. as skehan (1989) argues that “students at higher levels might enjoy wider repertoire of behaviours which would help them to deal with anxiety in language learning contexts more flexibly” (p.116). so, it seems reasonable that as students progressed through the experiences, their anxiety levels would gradually decrease. conclusion and suggestion this study explored foreign language speaking anxiety (flsa) and its relationship with participants‟ background, including gender and proficiency. the findings revealed that the participants experience a high level of anxiety when speaking english during the speaking learning activities. this fact could be used as a reflexion for the tutor(s) to create a more conducive classroom atmosphere by selecting appropriate methods in the module as an attempt to reduce students‟ anxiety to speak the foreign language. another prominent result of the study is that male students are more anxious to speak english than female students. to cope with this issue, the teachers may set relevant speaking topics and activities, e.g. sports, which encourage male students to speak actively and comfortably. once the students feel more motivated for a topic, they usually speak without any fears and hesitations. the final finding of this present study is that proficiency plays a role in determining student teachers flsa. the students, in the context of this study, who experienced english course(s) seems to be less anxious that those who did not. to address this matter, the teachers, again, may need to be wise and treat the students equitably by giving more chances for less proficient students to speak or pairing them with more proficient peers. this study has some limitations. the first is in terms of sample size. the sample of this inquiry (n=72) is relatively small, so the result of this study might not represent the whole population. the second is the setting of research only involved one university in jambi. it is hoped that the further ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|73-75 related study can be undertaken with a larger sample size from more than one institution (schools/ universities). therefore, the result of larger study is able to be generalised. acknowledgement the authors would like to thank dr katrina lloyd (lecturer, school of education, queen‟s university belfast, uk) for her expert advice and comments on this paper. references arnold, j., & brown, h. d. 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(2015). efl students‟ speaking anxiety: a case from tertiary level students. elt research journal, 4(1), 16-27. young, d. j. (1991). creating a lowanxiety classroom environment: what does language anxiety research suggest? modern language journal, 75, 426-439. zhao, a., & whitchurch, a. (2011). anxiety and its associated factors in college-level chinese classrooms in the us. journal of the chinese language teachers association, 46, 21-47. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 92-100 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee teachers' perspective on the implementation of communicative approach in indonesian classrooms yenny rahmawati received: 14th march 2018; revised: 7th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract communicative approach (ca) is probably the most popular approach in the recent english language teaching (elt) in indonesia. the curriculum underpinning elt in the country has changed several times, although in the last 35 years its basis has been revolving around the communicative approach. despite the fact that the communicative curriculum has been implemented for a long time, some research studies (dardjowidjojo, 2000; musthafa, 2001) indicated that it has not brought significant improvements in the terms of learners‟ outcome. the reason for this might be a number of the teachers appear to have developed some misconceptions of clt. this study is, therefore, aimed at exploring efl indonesian teachers‟ perspectives toward communicative approach in their classrooms. six participants were involved in this study in which two participants were chosen from each level of education (primary, secondary and university levels). the study employed a qualitative design by using questionnaire and in-depth interviews as methods of data collection. the results indicated that the university teachers in this study tend to have a broader view of clt, while a number of the school teachers appear to have developed some misconceptions of it, i.e. the “not” teaching grammar and the teaching “only” speaking. key words: communicative approach; teachers‟ perception abstrak pendekatan komunikatif (ca) mungkin merupakan pendekatan yang paling populer dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris (elt) di indonesia. kurikulum yang mendasari elt di negara ini telah berubah beberapa kali, meskipun dalam 35 tahun terakhir pendekatan yang digunakan adalah pendekatan komunikatif. terlepas dari kenyataan bahwa kurikulum komunikatif telah dilaksanakan dalam waktu yang lama, beberapa penelitian (dardjowidjojo, 2000; musthafa, 2001) menunjukkan bahwa pendekatan tersebut tidak membawa perbaikan yang signifikan bagi peserta didik. alasan utama hal tersebut mungkin datang dari kesalahpahaman sejumlah guru terkait dengan clt. oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi perspektif guru bahasa inggrois terhadap pendekatan komunikatif di kelas mereka. enam peserta terlibat dalam penelitian ini di mana dua peserta dipilih dari setiap jenjang pendidikan (tingkat dasar, menengah dan universitas). penelitian ini menggunakan desain kualitatif dengan menggunakan kuesioner dan wawancara mendalam sebagai metode pengumpulan data. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa guru universitas dalam penelitian ini cenderung memiliki pandangan yang lebih luas tentang clt, sementara sejumlah guru sekolah tampaknya telah mengembangkan beberapa kesalahpahaman diantaranya: "tidak" mengajar tata bahasa dan pengajaran "hanya" berbicara. kata kunci: pendekatan komunikatif; persepsi guru how to cite: rahmawati, y.(2018). teachers' perspective on the implementation of communicative approach in indonesian classrooms . ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 92-100. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 93-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction english functions as a foreign language in indonesia and as part of the national education system in the country. therefore, english is a subject taught at schools and is tested in the final examination. the current elt curriculum in indonesian schools adopts communicative language teaching (clt). this approach was introduced by indonesian scholars who studied in the us in the late 1970s and was supported by publishers, who developed a significant number of course books (the jakarta post, 1999b). the promotion of the concept of clt through elt materials has spread widely throughout the country. the popularity of clt keeps increasing as many teachers apply the concepts of clt in their classroom. however, the use of clt has also brought some concerns for teachers in their classroom practice. some problems are related to the readiness of indonesian teachers to implement clt (suwandi & bharati, 2007), while others concern about teachers‟ lack of confidence, time constraints, the lack of availability of authentic materials and the drive for exam-oriented lessons (dardjowidjojo, 2002; musthafa, 2001). communicative competence the notion of communicative competence arose as a challenge to the concept of competence suggested by chomsky (1965), who stated that competence is “the speaker-hearer‟s knowledge of his language” (p.4). he also differentiates the idea of “performance” from “communicative”, maintaining that “the actual use of language in concrete situations… in actual fact, it obviously could not directly reflect competence” (p.4). he argues that competence is associated with the mastery of grammatical rules or linguistic competence; as a result, performance acts as a sole system which has no association with competence. this dichotomy has been discussed by many researchers in the field of linguistics, such as berns (1990), brown (2007), brumfit and johnson (1979), canale and swain (1980), richards and rodgers(1986) and trosborg (1986) who opposed the ideas proposed by chomsky (1965) and who then give credit to the idea of communicative competence. they argue that there is a necessity to go beyond the narrow notion of linguistic competence to have real-life communication, as the nature of life is to interact with others. the application of communicative competence in language teaching is ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 94-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license known as communicative language teaching (clt). the idea of putting communicative competence into classroom practice was introduced by savignon in the 1960s-70s (berns, 1985; brown, 2007; trosborg, 1986). she explores the concept of communicative competence in her work in teaching english as a second and foreign language in canada (m. s. berns, 1985). savignon (2005) maintains that clt focuses mainly on how learners are involved in communication and how they maintain and develop their communicative competence. in addition, richards (2005) states that clt is “a set of principles” (p.1) which cover aspects of teaching, such as the purposes of language teaching, classroom activities and teachers and learners‟ roles in the classroom. below are the characteristics of clt synthesized from brown (2007), canale and swain (1980), hedge (2007), larsen-freeman (2000), richards (2005), richards and rodgers (1986) and savignon (2005): 1. meaning is paramount; 2. appropriateness is important; 3. various activities are used in teaching, such as games and role-play; 4. students‟ experience in using language is emphasized; 5. meaning is negotiated through discussion; 6. the four language skills are integrated; 7. authentic materials are used; 8. fun and relaxed situations for learning are created; 9. the use of english in the classroom is maximized and the students‟ native language is minimized; 10. the teacher acts a facilitator and monitor. in indonesia, clt has deemed an appropriate respond to the dissatisfaction of the previous methods, such as the grammar translation method (gtm) and audio-lingual method (alm). this approach has been a part of the indonesian curriculum for about 35 years. however, it appears that in practice the communicative approach has never really been applied. this is because the “guidelines given by the government were very structural” (dardjowidjojo, 2000, p.25). a research study on english teachers in secondary schools in java island by hamied (1997, as cited in rudianto, 2007) indicates that only 19.6% teachers stated that they used the communicative approach. this is because the teachers encountered some constraints in the implementation, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 95-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license such as lack of facilities, students‟ ability and authentic materials. method the objective of this study is to investigate the participants‟ experiences and perspectives in their interactions with their students in implementing the concepts of clt. the qualitative research employed as the research design for this study. the participants discussed in this study were six indonesian efl teachers from primary, secondary and university levels (five females and one male). two english teachers from each level were chosen. they teach at school or university in jakarta, banten, medan (north sumatera), yogyakarta and subang (west java). the data from this study were gained through observation, interviews, questionnaires, documents, and audio-visual materials. after in-depth interviews had been conducted, all data were transcribed for analysis. while reading all the data, subthemes were created corresponding to the research questions. in this process, the data were modified and reduced the potential subthemes until similar general subthemes that conformed to the research questions were found. the data from the questionnaire and interviews were used to triangulate the findings. in addition, extracts from the questionnaire and interviews were used to support the findings. findings and discussion the participants’ perceptions of communicative language teaching (clt) the data indicate that the teachers viewed clt in different ways; some of them provided a definition to illustrate the concept of clt, while some others described the characteristics of clt in understanding this concept. despite these differences, the participants from the three levels of education highlighted the idea of “communication” when defining clt. this perception is congruent with the many theories found in the field of clt, that is, communication is the intended aim when teaching using clt (harmer, 2001; richards & rodgers, 1986). savignon (2005) states that clt involves learners in communication and the learners have the opportunity to develop their communicative competence. having this concept, it appears that all of the participants had a basic understanding of clt. when asked further about the concept of clt, the two primary school teachers, however, seemed to place ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 96-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license emphasis on speaking onlythey spoke of communication as an oral process. for me, the most important thing is communication because grammar is too theoretical. (participant pt-s) according to me, the most important thing is communication and the next one is grammar. (participant pt-r) this perception does not seem to match with the existing literature on clt. thomson (1996) calls this phenomenon as a misconception of clt because teaching using clt does not mean avoiding other skills. clt is promoting the integration of the four macro skills, which means that this concept does not disregard the importance of the other skills (canale, 1983; richards, 2005; savignon, 2005). all macro and micro skills are needed in teaching english as they help the students to achieve the language competencies. even though the teachers in this study understood the concept of clt differently, the teachers from the three levels of education acknowledged that clt was important and, therefore, should be used as an approach in teaching english. they believed that clt covered aspects needed in learning a foreign language, such as communication and authenticity, which could help students achieve the learning objectives. the participants’ perceptions of the teaching of grammar table 1: the teachers‟ perceptions of the teaching of grammar statement primary teachers secondary teachers university teachers ptr pts std stt ute utv grammar teaching should be minimized a a a a d d sa: strongly agree a: agree d: disagree from the questionnaire, the teachers at primary and secondary schools mentioned that the teaching of grammar should be minimized, because according to them, communication was more important than grammar. furthermore, they contended that, based on their experiences in learning english, focusing too much on grammar was boring. they believed it would discourage students to speak in english. it appears that these primary and secondary school teachers‟ views on the teaching of grammar have been shaped by their past experiences. they also seem to believe that grammar does not support the speaking ability. when asked further about the teaching of grammar, these primary ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 97-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and secondary school teachers looked guilty as they admitted that they also taught grammar; it was seen as „a sin‟. they reluctantly explained that grammar was important. this view is in contrast to what is discussed in the literature on clt, which states that grammatical knowledge establishes the foundation of communication (brumfit & johnson, 1979; canale, 1983; hymes, 1979). furthermore, such a perception corresponds to the misconceptions developed by thomson (1996), who states that the avoidance of teaching grammar is the most damaging misconception in teaching using clt. the „not‟ teaching grammar is often associated with clt. in contrast, the two university teachers seemed to be aware of the importance of grammar in learning english. grammar, according to them, was the basic skill that supports other skills so learners could become proficient users of english. furthermore, these two university teachers argued that grammar teaching could be introduced through media, such as songs, newspapers or magazines or by using various activities, such as games, pair work or group work. again, their views on the importance of grammar seem to have been affected by the policy of their universities. these teachers explained that the focus of english teaching at their universities was toefl; the students were expected to pass a toefl test as a requirement for graduating. because of this, i assume that grammatical knowledge is given a priority in the classroom. therefore, there is a necessity for them to teach grammar. it also appears that the teachers‟ own educational background influenced their perceptions. as previously mentioned, these university teachers are pursuing their master degree in the area of english teaching; thus, it is likely that their views reflected what they have attained through their studies abroad. the participants’ perceptions of the use of bahasa indonesia from the questionnaire, the teachers in this study responded to the use of bahasa indonesia as follows: table 2: the teachers‟ perceptions of the use of bahasa indonesia statement primary teachers secondary teachers university teachers ptr pts std stt ute utv the use of bahasa indonesia should be minimized d a a a a a sa: strongly agree a: agree d: disagree the data from the questionnaire show that almost all of the teachers agree that the use of bahasa indonesia should be minimized in the english ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 98-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license classroom. only one teacher, rasty, said that the use of bahasa indonesia should not be minimized. the data indicated that opposing views regarding the use of bahasa indonesia were expressed by the two primary school teachers. savanna argued that the use of bahasa indonesia should be minimized in the english classroom. in the interview, she explained that the use of bahasa indonesia in english lessons would discourage students from speaking in english. she also mentioned that at first the students had difficulties in understanding her to speak in english, but later on they became used to it. rasty, on the other hand, stated that bahasa indonesia played a significant role in helping her students understand the materials. she added that teaching completely in english would make the students confused because her students‟ proficiency in english was low. their perception is quite the contrary to the theory related to the use of the native language in the communicative classroom. it is stated that one of the characteristics of clt is maximizing the use of english and minimizing the students‟ native language (richards & rodgers, 1986). the concept, however, needs to be questioned for the data revealed that most teachers argued that bahasa indonesia is important and should be used to explain complex materials. in addition, these teachers‟ perceptions of the use of bahasa indonesia are also supported by the act of the republic of indonesia number 20, 2003 on national education system chapter vii article 33 verse 1, which states, “bahasa indonesia as the language of the nation shall be the medium of instruction in the national education” (ministry of national education republic of indonesia, 2003). conclusion and suggestion although the concept of clt has been a part of the indonesian curriculum for about 35 years, the concept is difficult to implement. this study reveals that the indonesian teachers from primary, secondary to university levels in this study perceived some difficulties toward the implementation of clt in their classrooms. the teachers mentioned that clt is interesting and important to implement in indonesia, however, there should be careful considerations in implementing it. a number of teachers in this study confirmed some of the misconceptions reported by thomson (1996), namely that clt means teaching only speaking and the not teaching grammar. the data, however, revealed three elements that are contradictory to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 99-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the concepts of clt, as theorized by many researchers. they are: the use of bahasa indonesia, the role of the teacher and facilities. clt suggests the extensive use of the target language and restricts the use of mother tongue. however, the participants argued that the use of bahasa indonesia was important both in helping the students understand the materials and in building their self-confidence. this study has revealed some critiques of the implementation of clt in indonesian education. while the study can only represent the participants‟ views, it may indeed reflect the views of many other teachers, whose experiences would need to be addressed through professional development. whether or not these perceptions are widespread would need to be tested in a largerscale study. references berns, m. (1990). context of competence: social and cultural considerations in communicative language teaching. new york: plenum press. brown, d. h. (2007). principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.). new york: pearson education. brumfit, c. j., & johnson, k. (eds.). (1979). the communicative approach to language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. canale, m. (1983). from communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. in j. c. richards & r. w. schmidt (eds.), language and communication (pp. 2-27). london: longman group limited. canale, m., & swain, m. (1980). approaches to communicative competence. chomsky, n. (1965). aspect of the theory of syntax. massachusetts: the m.i.t press. dardjowidjojo, s. (2000). english teaching in indonesia. ea journal, 18(1), 22-30. dardjowidjojo, s. (2002). academic and non-academic constraints in the teaching of english in indonesia. in a. syahid & a. al-jauhari (eds.), bahasa, pendidikan, dan agama: 65 tahun prof. dr. muljanto sumardi (pp. 117-132). ciputat: logos wacana ilmu. harmer, j. (2001). the practice of english language teaching (3rd ed.). edinburgh gate: pearson education limited. hymes, d. (1979). on communicative competence. in c.j. brumfit & k. johnson (eds.), the communicative approach to language teaching (pp. 5-26). new york: oxford university press. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 100-100 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9881 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lichtman, m. (2010). qualitative research in education: a user's guide (2 ed.). los angeles: sage publication. musthafa, b. (2001). communicative language teaching in indonesia: issues of theoritical assumptions and challenges in the classroom practice. journal of southeast asian education(2), 2-10. richards, j. c., & rodgers, t. s. (1986). approaches and methods in language teaching: a description and analysis. cambridge: cambridge university press. savignon, s. j. (2005). communicative language teaching: strategies and goals. in e. hinkel (ed.), handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 635-651). new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. the jakarta post. (1999b, november 12). tips for indonesian english teachers. the jakarta post. retrieved from http://www.thejakartapost.com/ news/1999/12/11/tipsindonesian-english-teachers.html. thompson, g. (1996). some misconceptions about communicative language teaching. elt journal, 50(1), 9-15. trosborg, a. (ed.). (1986). communicative competence in foreign language learning and teaching. aarhus, denmark: the dolphin. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/1999/12/11/tips-indonesian-english-teachers.html http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/1999/12/11/tips-indonesian-english-teachers.html http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/1999/12/11/tips-indonesian-english-teachers.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 84-96 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee reading strategies as development model english cognition of senior high school students supeno1, imam suseno2, lubban anwari alhamidi3 received: 10th april 2017; revised: 20th may 2017; accepted: 20th june 2017 abstract this study aims to develop a model of reading strategies of english language learning which is expected to further enhance students’ cognitive abilities in english. the model reading strategies serve as a strategy to read the english subtitles via bottom-up, top-down and mixed strategies that are capable of triggering the students' critical thinking and have been integrated with development ideas from experts and linguists. the study employed a cluster random sampling of 30 schools and 900 students for the standardization of the model reading strategies as a new model that best enhance the cognitive power of english language learning. the method used was research and development, through seven steps in the research cycles. the subjects were high school students in the class tenth in special capital region of jakarta. the steps to reading development strategy that are able to improve the cognitive of students are 6 steps consisting of: overall understanding, understanding on contextual meaning, assumption of contextual meaning, look for meaning in contextual output, searching for further meaning, and returning to the main idea of our thinking. key words: reading strategies; cognition; ability abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan mengembangkan model pembelajaran bahasa inggris yakni reading strategies, yang diharapkan dapat meningkatkan daya kognitif bahasa inggris siswa. permodelan reading strategies sebagai strategi untuk membaca teks bahasa inggris melalui strategi bottom-up, top-down dan mixed yang mampu memicu pemikiran kritis siswa dan telah diintegrasikan dengan gagasan pengembangan dari para ahli dan ahli bahasa. dengan cluster random sampling terpilih sebanyak 30 sekolah dan 900 siswa untuk standarisasi model reading strategies sebagai model baru yang dapat meningkatkan daya kognitif bahasa inggris siswa. metode yang digunakan adalah research and development, melalui tujuh langkah dalam siklus penelitian. subjek penelitian adalah siswa sma di kelas sepuluh di dki jakarta. hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa reading strategies yang dapat meningkatkan kemampuan kognitif siswa yaitu melalui adalah 6 langkah strategi membaca yaitu: pemahaman teks secara utuh, memahami makna dalam konteks, berpikir dan menduga tentang makna, mencari makna dalam konteks, mencari makna lebih jauh, dan kembali pada pemikiran makna kata. kata kunci: strategi membaca; kognitif; kemampuan how to cite: supeno. suseno,i. alhamidi, l. a. (2017). reading strategies as development model english cognition of senior high school students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 84-96. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822. mailto:supeno919@yahoo.com mailto:susenoblr@gmail.com mailto:lubbanalhamidi@yahoo.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 85-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading strategies is a skill to look for information in terms of speaking ability. (2000) suggested that reading is one of the basic skills of language which has a complex activity included in it, such as thinking, filtering information and interpreting the meaning. reading comprehension is a skill acquisition generalized knowledge, which allows people acquire and realize the information obtained as a result of reading the written material. reading is a mental activity to understand what the other party told through the medium of writing. reading comprehension is a process to understand the content of reading, looking for relationships between terms, causality, the differences and similarities between the case in the discourse. reading comprehension is not a wonderful reading, but reading to know or find the idea either express or implied. correspondingly, goodman (2002) saw reading as a linguistic process, in the sense that it originated from the coded surface representation language and ends with the meanings constructed. by reading one can know the meaning contained hereinafter gain an understanding of a reading, the reader should take advantage of the information they already had, the information obtained during his life, the result of previous readings, and other information sources. perfection reading results can be achieved, if the reader is able to relate new information contained in the text with a background or knowledge belonged to it. complex process occurs in reading because of the demands of the reader able to integrate critical thinking skills, analytical, and knowledge held within the context of the situation presented meaning of reading material. the ability of combining letters into words is part of reading. in addition, the reader understands the reading does not need to identify the word-by in the reading but finding meaning from the text. by reading comprehension process will occur. reading comprehension as a process that occurs between the reader to read the text in an event. reading activities geared towards mastering the content of reading. readers should be able to master and understand the literature they read. elements that should be present in every act of reading is comprehension. reading comprehension is a set of skills for gaining knowledge, which allows people acquire and realize the information obtained as a result of reading the written language. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 86-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading is seen as an event communication between the sender and the recipient. reading is a form of communication. information and ideas were exchanged between the writer and the reader in the act of communication. the meaning is communicated and interpreted by the reader writer is reviewed, to understand the meaning of the text in detail, the reader should have a good understanding of the meaning of pragmatic manner. reading is a mental process that requires the reader to follow and understand the message from the author that much in terms of place and time. good readers think are active reader in the reading process, often predict what will happen later. type these readings using the skill in predicting, reason, question, and concluded to understand the meaning contained in the text reading. readers who have the reasoning ability as well will be able to advance understanding in reading especially when the reader has entered into an understanding associated with predicting the meaning of vocabulary based on the reading text. the 1945 constitution (amendment versions), article 31, paragraph 3 states, "the government shall manage and organize a national education system, which enhances faith and piety and good character in the context of the intellectual life of the nation, which is regulated by law". further, in law no. 20/2003 article 5, states that every citizen has an equal right to obtain a quality education, citizens who have physical, emotional, mental, intellectual, and/or social entitled to special education, citizens in remote or underdeveloped as well as remote indigenous communities the right to obtain special education services, citizens who have the intelligence and special talents are entitled to special education as well as every citizen is entitled to increase the chance of lifelong education. procedural model reading strategies are most effective when it can generate creative and critical thinking of students so that students can improve their cognition. paying attention to these issues, related to the development model of learning english through reading strategies is an urgent step to be implemented. step model of reading strategies is to formulate procedures that can evoke more critical thinking of the students. when a model of reading strategy can be absorbed, understood and applied properly, the student's cognitive power can be optimized. the scope of this study is students of senior high school in jakarta. the sample was taken through ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 87-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the sampling method purposive 5 schools; the technique of sampling is set based on certain considerations of researchers to carry out trials a model reading strategies formulated on a small scale so that not more than 30 schools and 900 students a representative number of samples to be used in the form standardize learning model reading strategies that best enhance the cognitive power of english high school students in jakarta. the goals of the study are: 1) developing an evaluation model of the procedural reading strategies in english through the button-up, top-down and mixed strategies that could stimulate students to think more critically and dynamically at the time when they read the english subtitles.; 2) to further enhance the cognitive power of the tenth grade english high school students' in jakarta through the implementation of reading strategies using the second pattern. the results of the study are a model then the results of the evaluation and development of learning english through reading strategies first in order to improve the cognitive power of english students at sma (high school) in jakarta through the application of a second model, the pupils will have the ability and cognitive power qualification so far would be more better than ever.; 3) the results of this study are also expected to influence government policy in order to improve the professionalism of teachers in jakarta as well as a positive input to the principals, supervisors, head of jakarta education department and the head office of the ministry of religious jakarta on methods of learning reading strategies in english. types of data collected in the study was a qualitative and quantitative data. qualitative data is data narrative results of interviews and field observations that contains procedural information or implementation stage that is designed to systematically modeling reading strategies that are meant researchers and students respond well when the process or after participating in learning activities. on the contrary, quantitative data obtained from the the post-test for analysis of comparative data to measure quantitatively modeling the successful implementation of reading strategies. reading strategies the word "strategy" is derived from the greek word, strategos who was a 'military commander' at the age of athenian democracy. strategy is an overall approach regarding to the implementation of the idea, planning, and execution of an activity within a certain time. it contains a good strategy to have a theme, identifying the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 88-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license contributing factors in accordance with the principles of the implementation of the idea of a rational, efficient in funding, and have the tactics to achieve goals effectively. the difference meaning of strategy from tactics are in the scope seems to be either narrower or shorter time. however, people generally often feel confused to differenciate the meaning of the two words. there are several strategies for reading that can be used to enhance students' understanding, which includes, metacognitive strategies, cloze procedure, and the question guide (kartadinata, 2006). (1) metacognitive strategies: metacognitive related to a person's knowledge on the use of the intellectual brain and conscious effort to monitor or control the use of the intellectual abilities. these include the occurrence of any metacognitive thinking. part metacognitive process determining what tasks needed to gain understanding. readers need to ask: a). is the answer that i need to express directly ?, b). is the text expressing answer with a clear signal that helps decide the answer is clearly, c). is the answer should be associated to the story?; (2) cloze procedure: cloze procedure of use also to improve understanding by eliminating some of the information in the readings and students were asked to fill it. in the execution of cloze procedure involves the removal of the letter, syllable, word, phrase, clause or sentence. cloze procedure can be used by teachers to teach reading skills, not to the test.; (3) guiding question: during the reading, guiding questions are often used to enhance understanding. students can be trained to remember the facts in a way change the fact that the question "why". questions may be submitted by the teacher guides the student or student's submitted himself while reading. meanwhile, according to klein (in jauharoti, 2009) reading strategies include bottom-up, top-down, and mixed strategies. (1) bottom-up strategy: this strategy is generally used at the beginning of classlearning, and is also used to understand the text that has a high degree of difficulty. the difficulties encountered could be a matter of language, can also be about the content of the text. and methods used in this strategy is to use the method of spelling.; (2) top-down strategy: strategy top-down is the opposite of the strategy of bottom-up, backgroundknowledge becomes a variable that is very important, because here students learn to read in a high level. background knowledge possessed by students is very helpful in understanding the text for it should be in choosing reading texts adapted to the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 89-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license level of knowledge and student residence. (3) mixed strategy (mix): a combination of execution strategies bottom-up and top-down to cover the shortfall from the previous two strategies in the implementation of the field. a teacher should not only use one strategy. teachers can choose any strategy that can be applied in the teaching of reading and its use can be performed simultaneously, which is called a mixed strategy. cognitive power an understanding of the dimensions of cognitive processes will help teachers to differenciate the thought process that are achieved by learners in a learning process. having regard to cognitive processes will be more accurate in determining the level of thinking that will be built as a result of the learning process to be performed. dettmer (2006) classified dimension of cognitive processes into eight levels of thinking, i.e knowledge (c1), comprehension (c2), application (c3), analysis (c4), evaluation (c5), synthesis (c6), imagination (c7), and creation (c8). this dimension is a continuum. the explanation of each level of thinking is explained as follows: c1. knowledge (know): the memory is also called the knowledge (knowledge). given the ability to regain knowledge relevant to longterm memory. two words are worth remembering is recognizing and recalling. recognition is the ability to find information on longterm memory that is relevant to the information presented. while recalling is the ability to recall information from long-term memory in response to the problem. knowledge that is stored in the memory is dug in as needed through the shape memory recall (recall) or know back (recognition). knowledge is the cognitive aspects of the lowest and most basic. c2. understanding (comprehend): understanding that understand the material or ideas given. meanwhile, according to winkel (2004) understanding is the ability to grasp the meaning and significance of the material being studied. the existence of this ability can be seen in the form of the ability to describe the content of the subject of a discussion, the ability to change the data presented in some form to another form. comprehension is also called to understand and in english is called learning concept, which means that when teachers deliver lessons, the students must make an idea of the content of the lesson. the description is given in a way that gradually the lessons delivered ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 90-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license picture is formed in the minds of students. work performed learners think at this stage just to sort and organize the information. bloom stated that a learner is said to have an understanding when confronted with something that should be communicated, he knows what to communicate either verbally or in writing or in the form of verbal and symbolic and can use the ideas. c3. application (apply): application is a cognitive process of how to apply a concept, principles and methods on a problem and new concrete. their thought process is stated in the application of a concept that has never faced the problem or the application of a method of working on solving new problems. measurement capability is generally used approach to problem solving (problem solving). c4. analysis (analyze): analysis is the process of thinking to elaborate a whole into parts so that the overall structure or organization can be well understood. their thought process is stated in the analysis of the principal parts or components of the base, along with parts of the relationship. capabilities are often matched by the analysis is the ability to distinguish (differentiating) and organizing (organizing). differentiating includes the ability to distinguish the parts of the overall structure in the appropriate form. organizing includes the ability to identify the elements together into structures that are interrelated. analytical capabilities are classified into three groups, namely: 1) analysis of the elements, 2) analysis of relationships, and 3) analysis principles. c5. evaluation (evaluate): evaluation or assessment which gives due consideration to the value of the materials or methods for a particular purpose. with the ability to evaluate the learner is expected to make a consideration of a statement, concepts, situations and so forth based on certain criteria. the most important element in the evaluation is to create the conditions such that learners develop criteria, standards or measures to evaluate something. c6. synthesis (synthesize): synthesis is the ability to form a coalition or a new pattern. the parts are connected to each other, so as to create a new form. this capability is one level higher than the analytical skills, because the required criteria to find a pattern and organizational structure. for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 91-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license example, learners can formulate a research hypothesis is based on the theory and the study of specific data. synthesis one level above analysis, someone at the synthesis level will be able to explain the structure or pattern of a scenario not previously seen, and is able to recognize the data or information that should be obtained to produce the required solution. c7. imagination (image): imagination is the ability to collect all the energy to achieve the goal. einstein has proved this by being able to produce so many spectacular original theory only begins with an imagination. so we can say that imagination is energy. the energy that is processed continually be manifested in what we imagine. in the daily life too, this visualization technique can be done by imagining positive things that exist in our goals. c8. creativity (create): creativity means of creativity, the ability to invent or create something new. creating is holding something new that never existed before. according munandar(in purwanto, 2005: 511-512), a new sense of creativity that does not mean the result of copyright did not exist, but a combination of something that never was into something new. creativity can be broadly viewed as a personality, the results and the process. creativity is the mental ability and various types of typical human skills that can give birth to disclosure of unique, different, original, totally new, beautiful, efficient, effective and appropriate. as examples of the formulation of indicators of competence that corresponds to this level is like "the learner is able to make a map of the concept of civic duty". the verb "make" including cognitive processes "creativity." method this study is a follow up of the results of the development of model reading strategies in earlier years that the output of research, ideas and inputs of reference can be used for students, teachers of english, and english language experts. based on the study concerning with the model of reading strategies were developed based on the top-down strategy. the top-down reading strategies are then aligned logically, studied more in depth as well as communicated with some linguists to get feedback, to get a reading model of top-down development strategy. the model was then tested in the field with ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 92-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a small sample and as a result, there is an increase in cognition. development of the model reading strategies will be enhanced by preparing a larger scale trials, especially for high school students in the tenth grade at special capital region of jakarta. the research was conducted in , 2016 and 2017. the participants of this study are the high school students, both from the state and private education institutions in the region of jakarta. as for the analysis of qualitative data in the form of data reduction, data display and verification. as husainiusman (2004), stated that 1) reduction of data, meaning the data that has been collected from the field and documented that there is in turn simplified and adapted to the focus of this study, 2) display data, which formulates the data in the matrix / graph, and thus avoided from the landfill without the categories of data and avoid overlap of data, 3) taking conclusion and verification, which is to determine patterns, models, and equations to be concluded. in this step necessary efforts categorization of data by theme or sub-themes discussed. by means of verification is expected to make it easier to pass the analysis, and in turn facilitate researchers to draw conclusions as research findings. cognitive processes that teachers will assist learners in thinking procces to reach the goal of learning so that teaching and learning will take place optimally. besides understanding of cognitive processes will assist teachers in preparing the formulation of an explicit learning objectives more accurately. having regard to cognitive processes will be more accurate in determining the level of thinking that will be built as a result of the learning process to be performed. in improving the students 'cognitive need for appropriate strategies to improve students' cognitive power. so the results of the analysis of qualitative data taken are arranged in such a way that support or provide information about the advantages and disadvantages of the methods of learning reading strategies. while quantitative data that have been collected from the results of the objective tests of students, then interprated with descriptive analysis, and then tested the requirements analysis before tested a level of significance by the t-test in the form of normality test to look at the distribution of data normality and homogeneity to obtain information similarity variance ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 93-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license between groups of students from some schools that became the object of a test model of learning. figure 1: research flow chart resources : adapted from borg and gall (1983: 775) conclusion and discussion finding based on the interview with the english teacher, thetendency of students in reading english texts is to use a top-down strategy of reading. the steps of top-down reading strategies development results are as follows figure 2. figure 2 shows the six steps strategic reading english texts that students can use. reading strategies development once taught a class of students learning english, then held the english language text reading test by asking a question that is graded based on the cognitive level set by the researchers. figure 2: development reading strategy figure 2 shows the six steps strategic reading english texts that students can use. reading strategies development once taught a class of students learning english, then held the english language text reading test by asking a question that is graded based on the cognitive level set by the researchers. the rationalization of the operation of the six-step strategy of reading english texts proves to make it easier for the reader (student) to derive the meaning contained in the english text in question. beginning with the first step the text reader understands the full text based on the ability to mean not to read / interpret each word in one sentence, then the second step readers understand the meaning in the context, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 94-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license interpreted text readers know quite a few keywords to understand the meaning in the text. the third step readers suspect the meaning contained in the text, the alleged meaning comes because the reader knows the keyword in the text. the fourth step readers look for meaning in context, meaning reader think clearly and not hastily determine meaning in context, step of reader look for meaning further and last step six reader return to thinking meaning of word to get meaning of text correct and intact. six steps reading strategy is a strategy that intact and simultaneously work quickly. so the implementation is needed habituation, because the six steps are not broken / stopped in the first step or mid. so more often applied to the english lesson, making students accustomed to apply it and facilitate students to find the meaning of the english text they read. the role of english teacher becomes very important to guide and familiarize the use of the english text reading strategy. teachers teach with interactive that is continuing to assist students in understanding the contents of reading english text. because understanding the meaning in the english text requires a fairly unique language intelligence. for students who like english lessons and accustomed to reading english text would be easy / quick to capture text messages because it has a high learning motivation. conversely for students who are motivated to learn low (the mastery of vocabulary, grammar, etc.) the need for more intensive assistance and habituation in implementing strategies to read english text. discussion the results of six steps implementation of the reading strategies to the students from the research schools’partners, and then held a reading test of english texts to measure cognitive abilities obtained the result described in the form of percentage of students who success to answer the questions. the obtained results’ proportion of correct answers as follows: figure 3: cognitif’s ability both pre-test and post-test. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 95-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the implementation of the sixstep reading strategy developed by researchers has been shown to improve students' cognitive abilities in understanding english texts. this is shown in figure 3 where the cognitive abilities of the pre-test (before the introduction of the latest reading strategy) and post-tests after the application of the reading strategy through the six tactical steps, are seen at all cognitive levels improved. the cognitive enhancement process of reading english text by teachers through the application of a six-step reading strategy helps students in the process of thinking quickly finding meaning from english text. hence, the goal of learning english can be achieved optimally. english teachers can improve understanding of the cognitive processes of students, it helps in formulating explicit formulations of more accurate english learning objectives. by taking into account the different levels of cognitive abilities of students, teachers need to be more careful in providing the frequency of mentoring and habituation in the application of the six-step strategy of reading english subtitles. so by observing the cognitive level of reading the students' english text more carefully, the teacher is able to determine the achievement level of thinking/cognitive that will be developed more optimally. in improving students 'cognitive power, there needs to be an appropriate strategy to improve students' cognitive ability from reading english text. the implementation of the six-step strategy of reading formulated english text proved to be able to improve students' english cognitive abilities. conclusion and suggestion after carefully revised the product, then enters the sixth stage is a major test with scale research subjects were the 30 schools with 30 students per school, is also possible in the test analysis carried out by comparing the control group. quantitative data used in the comparative analysis of data from the activities of pre-test and posttest. the results of the analysis were assessed on the basis of the achievement of educational goals and compared with the control group. stage seven results of trials on the scale was subsequently revised to product operations. during the trial the development of the model both in the early phase and the phase-scale trials were researchers will conduct random interviews to students, observation and data analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative. the results of the data ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 96-96 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.4822 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license analysis complement the results of the new modeling that has been run through two trials both the small scale and medium scale. in the eighth stage results from a revised reading strategies modeling product continued on a large scale test involving 30 secondary schools that are in the environment of jakarta and surrounding areas, to ensure that regional differences do not become a major factor differences in product yield modeling. this next stage of modeling nine will the last revision of reading strategies and tenth stage is part of the dissemination and implementation of the new model reading strategies. implementation of the phase 2 study year is expected to produce a model of strategic reading that can improve the cognitive abilities of high school students in jakarta. the output of the phase 2 study will be included in international seminars and published in accredited national journals. references dettmer, p. (2006). new blooms in established fields: four domains of learning and doing. roeper review; winter 2006; 28, 2; proquest education journals. early, m., & ericson, b. o. (2003). the act of readingin l. m. cleary and m. d. linn, linguistics for teachers. new york: mcgraw-hill. goodman, k. s. (2002). the reading process, interactive approaches to second language eading, ed. patricia l. carrell, joanne devine and david e. eskey. cambridge : university press. purwanto. (2005). kreativitas berpikir dan perilaku dalam tes. in jurnal pendidikan dan kebudayaan, 55(11), juli, 2005. santrock, j. w. (2000). life-span development. usa: times mirror higher education inc. winkel, w.s. (2004). psikologi pengajaran. yogyakarta: media abadi. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016, 15-28 a comparative study: australian english and indonesian complimenting behaviours atik yuliyani received: 09th april 2016; revised: 05th may 2016; accepted: 25th june 2016 abstract the present study investigates the similarities and differences between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliments. a total of 50 university-student informants participated in the study: 25 indonesian native speakers and 25 australian english native speakers. the data were collected through a written discourse completion task (dct) which consists of eight situational settings. the results showed some similarities and differences between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliment. the similarities included the fact that ability was the most frequently preferred topic for both indonesians and australians, both indonesians and australians were more likely to give explicit verbal compliment, and compliments occurred mostly from males to females. the differences were: firstly, australians used implicit compliment as their second preference, while indonesians used „no-response‟ type. secondly, australian females gave more explicit verbal compliment than the males did, whereas indonesian females and males gave almost equal amount of explicit verbal compliment. thirdly, the second most frequent positive semantic carriers were adverbs in indonesian, but verbs in australian english. key words: compliment behaviour; compliment strategies; compliment focus abstrak penelitian ini menyelidiki persamaan dan perbedaan antara australia dan indonesia dalam memberikan pujian. sebanyak lima puluh mahasiswa yang terdiri dari 25 mahasiswa australia dan 25 mahasiswa indonesia terlibat dalam penelitian ini sebagai informan. data dikumpulkan melalui instrument tertulis (dct) yang terdiri dari delapan seting. hasil penelitian menunjukkan beberapa persamaan dan perbedaan antara australia dan indonesia dalam memberikan pujian. persamaannya meliputi kemampuan (ability) menjadi topik yang paling disukai oleh keduanya, baik indonesia dan australia lebih senang memberikan pujian lisan secara eksplisit, dan pujian terjadi sebagian besar dari laki-laki ke perempuan. adapun perbedaannya antara lain: pertama, australia menggunakan pujian implicit sebagai preferensi kedua sementara indonesia menggunakan tipe ‘no response’. kedua, wanita australia memberi pujian lisan secara eksplisit lebih daripada laki-laki lakukan, sedangkan wanita dan pria indonesia memberi jumlah yang hampir sama dari pujian lisan eksplisit. ketiga, kata keterangan (adverbs) menjadi ungkapan semantik positif kedua yang digunakan indonesia, sedangkan australia menggunakan kata kerja (verbs) sebagai ungkapan semantik positif kedua. kata kunci: perilaku pujian; strategi pujian; fokus pujian how to cite: yuliani, a. (2016). a comparative study: australian english and indonesian complimenting behaviours. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(1), 15-28. doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3940 permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i1.3940 mailto:atik@uinjkt.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 16-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction rules of speaking, or speech act patterns, are different from culture to culture (cohen, cited in mckay & hornberger, 2006). they are different in the way that they are realized, their distribution, and their frequency of occurrence as well as the function they serve. these facts make it difficult for learners to realize some speech acts in general target language in terms of both communicative effectiveness and social appropriateness. in addition, these differences often lead to misunderstanding between speakers. hence, to be able to interpret what is said, non-native speakers of english need to understand the cultural values which underlie the pattern of speech. as holmes (2008) stated learning another language usually involves a great deal more than learning the literal meaning of the words, how to put them together, and how to pronounce them. we need to know what it means in the cultural context in which it is normally used. this involves some understanding of the cultural and social norms of its users. a compliment is one form of speech acts which involves such cultural issues. complimenting varies across cultures. holmes (1988, p. 485) defined compliment as “a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some „good‟ (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer”. thus, paying a compliment and responding to it can be a challenge for non-native speakers whose social values and norms are different from those in the target language culture. it is evident from previous studies of compliments this small speech event is actually far more complicated and revealing than it appears, in terms of the relation between language, society, and culture (wolfson, 1981; holmes & brown, 1987; ye, 1995; farghal, 2006). in particular, what counts as a compliment may differ very much from one society to another. in addition, the way it is realized, its distribution, its frequency of occurrence, and the functions it serve may also differ cross-culturally. in fact, these differences often lead to misunderstanding between speakers, especially from different cultural background. in order to make a comparison between the ways compliments function in english and in other languages, a study of how native and non-native speakers of english paying a compliment would benefit those in the realm of english pedagogy and crossijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|17-28 cultural communication. this study investigates similarities and differences between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliments. it is hoped that it can provide some useful information from a cultural perspective as well as information for esl/efl teachers, especially indonesian teachers. liu (1997, cited in al falasi, 2007, p. 31) later defined compliment as “an utterance containing a positive evaluation by the speaker to the addressee”. moreover, hobbs (2003, p. 249) defined “a compliment is a speech act which explicitly or implicitly bestows credit upon the addressee for some possession, skill, characteristic, or the like, that is positively evaluated by the speaker and addressee”. from these definitions, it can be concluded that to be heard as a compliment an utterance must refer to something which is positively valued by the participants and attributed to the addressee. compliments are viewed within the framework of politeness theory. on the one hand, a compliment may be regarded as a positive speech act. on the other hand, it may also be regarded as a face-threatening act (fta). brown and levinson (1987, p. 247) point out that compliments may be significant ftas in societies where envy is very strong and where witchcraft exists as a sanction. holmes (1988, p. 448) remarks, “compliments can be regarded as face threatening to the extent that they imply the complimenter envies the addressee in some way or would like to have something belonging to the addressee”. similarly, yu (2003, p. 1687) argues that “due to the fact that compliments can be threatening to the addressee‟s face as they, like criticisms, are an act of judgment on another person, many people feel uneasy, defensive, or even cynical with regard to the compliments they receive, and thus may have trouble responding to such compliments appropriately”. thus, from these various perceptions, it can be concluded that whether a compliment is a positive or negative speech act depends upon a number of factors, including context, cultural protocols and individual interpretation. systematic studies and closer investigation on the linguistic form of 686 examples of american english native speakers‟ compliments discovered that regularities exist and that compliments are in fact formulas (manes and wolfson, 1981). it is obvious that since compliments are expressions of positive evaluation, each must include at least one term which carries positive semantic load. manes and wolfson (1981) found in their study that adjectives and verbs were the two ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 18-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 most commonly type used in compliments as positive semantic loads. they found that approximately 80% of american english compliments fall into the three syntactic patterns: 1. np (noun phrase be/look (intensifier) adj (adjective) e.g. you look (really) great 2. i (intensifier) like/love np e.g. i (really) like your dress 3. pro be (intensifier) (a) adj np e.g. that’s (really) nice shoes in addition, two-thirds of english compliments use the adjectives „nice, good, beautiful, pretty, great‟. a similar result was also found in a study of new zealand english compliments by holmes and brown (1987). regarding the compliment topic, manes and wolfson (1981) found that english compliments fall into two major categories with respect to topic: those having to do with appearance (e.g., apparel, hair-do, homes, furniture, automobiles, and other possessions) and those which comment on ability. however, studies in other speech communities have shown that complimentable values vary across cultures. in the japanese society, for example, one‟s appearance, which is greatly valued in english speaking communities, is not the most frequently mentioned topic (ide, 1998). the most frequently referred topic is that of one‟s ability and achievement. in korean speech community, baek (1998) reported that compliments on a person‟s personality occur more frequently in korean than in english. therefore, it is obvious to say that with regard to compliment topic, it is closely related to a variety of cultural norms and values of a given society. comparative studies between american english and other languages have been increasingly conducted. for instance, chinese (ye, 1995), japanese (ide, 1998), korean (baek, 1998), and arabic (farghal, 2006). the results of these studies show that not all the patterns appear in american english might appear in the other languages or cultures context. there were some patterns which were more preferred to appear than others. in chinese, for example, verbs, which are frequently used in different varieties of english compliments, turn out to be rarely used. however, adjectives become the most frequent positive semantic carriers that are used in chinese (ye, 1995). these variations on paying a compliment among different languages can lead this study in investigating the similarities and differences between australian english and indonesian on paying compliments. in terms of compliments as a gender-preferential strategy, there are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|19-28 some similarities as well as differences between american english speakers and other english varieties, such as new zealand and australian. holmes‟ study (1988; 1993) on new zealand english speakers found that 23.1% of compliments occur from males to females in comparison to 16.5% from females to males. this is in line with parisi and wogan‟s (2006) study on american english which found 60.53% compliments occur from males to females in comparison to 29.27% from females to males. furthermore, holmes‟ study (1988; 1993) shows that the most popular compliment topic is that of „appearance‟ with female–female interactions complimenting on appearance 61% of the time, male– female 47%, female–male 40% and male–male, a surprising 36%. the latter finding shows male-male interactions complimenting on appearance is the difference between american english and other english varieties, such as new zealand. such a high percentage amongst males would generally not occur amongst american men. in fact, such differences can be influenced by some factors, such as a relationship between speakers. these findings can be used for this study as a reference for the australian response to compliments as well as a comparison to indonesian response to compliments. with regard to data collection, researchers on complimenting behaviours used different methods. ethnographic method, interview, role plays and discourse completion tasks (dct) have been used for data collection. dct is one of the commonly used methods. as mackay and gass (2008) argue, dcts can provide a „sound template of stereotypically perceived requirements for socially appropriate speech act in the groups studied‟. it also enables the researcher to obtain sufficient data in a relatively short period of time. therefore, it becomes an obvious choice for this study to follow as a data gathering method. since compliment behaviour varies from culture to culture, and there is little or no previous study on indonesian compliment behaviour, the present study is conducted to add to the research into this speech act. this study differs from previous studies in that it conducts a comparative study of complimenting behaviours using data from indonesian and australian english speakers. this study seeks to investigate the similarities and differences between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliment in terms of compliment strategies, compliment formulas, and compliment focus. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 20-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 1. general features of the eight dct situations compliment situation gender of complimentee compliment topic s1blouse female appearance s2cook female ability s3sneakers male appearance s4playing guitar male ability compliment response situation gender of complimentor compliment topic s5clothes male appearance s6basketball male ability s7hair female appearance s8singing female ability the following are the description of the eight dct situations: compliment s-1 blouse: you meet your friend suzanne in a mall and notice that she is wearing a new blouse today. s-2 cook: you are at a farewell party and eating spaghetti. you notice that your friend jennifer made the spaghetti and she is good at making it. s-3 sneakers: you are playing tennis with your friend david. you notice that he is wearing a new pair of tennis shoes today. s-4 playing guitar: you are having a gathering with your friends in a park. you notice that one of your friends, scott is good at playing guitar. compliment responses s-5 clothes: you wear new dress to campus today. then you meet your friend mike there. he says “hi, you look great today!” s-6 basketball: you and your friend george are playing a basketball together. then, he says: “you‟re a good basketball player”. s-7 hair: you just had your hair done. you meet your neighbour sylvia on your way home. she says: “you look great with your hair done”. s-8 singing: you perform a song in your friend‟s birthday and one of your friends, tania likes your performance very much. she then says: “you‟re a good singer, your voice is so beautiful”. method participants a total of 50 participants contributed to this study: 25 indonesian native speakers and 25 australian english native speakers. there were 12 male and 13 female participants in each group. all participants were university students, aged from 20 to 40. the indonesian native speakers were university students in various universities in jakarta, indonesia, who had learned english for at least six years. none of them had been to a foreign country. the australian english native speakers were university students in canberra. data collection instrument the data were obtained via a discourse completion task (dct). two language versions of eight situational settings with the same content on the dct, indonesian and english, were distributed. the dct employed was a replica as that used by ye (1995) with some modification. options for zero realization were also given in the dct format by providing a choice of "you do not say anything" or "you do not respond". in the dct, eight situational settings relating to two different topics were employed: appearance and ability. four situations for compliments (s1-s4) and another four situation for compliment responses (s5-s8). the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|21-28 general features of the eight dct situations are displayed in table 1. it is worth mentioning that questions on the dct in this study involve equal social status and close relationships between the interlocutors. due to the limitation of time and the large amount of the data to be analysed, it was only the first four situations (s1-s4) analysed in this study. data analysis the data were analysed by adapting ye‟s data analytical procedure in which all the data were coded and percentages were calculated for the major semantic formula of compliments, including compliment strategies and compliment formulas. the compliment strategies were categorized into four, including: no response, explicit compliment, implicit compliment, and noncompliment. according to ye (1995), the technical term no response refers to the zero realization where the respondents chose "you would not say anything". while non-compliment is where the respondents did give verbal utterances to the given situations but those utterances can hardly be categorized as compliments. for example, “are you trying to put my game off with the glame!” or “hope you don‟t get blisters from your new shoes. i‟m going to run you around today”. implicit compliment refers to those compliments which are not explicitly directed to the complimentee's appearance or ability. for instance, “it must be great to be able to play guitar. i wish i could”. explicit compliment refers to a direct positive comment in which the form contains at least one positive semantic carrier. such as, “that is a nice blouse!” or “wow suzanne i love your blouse! it‟s such a nice colour!” compliment formulas were analysed by positive semantic carriers and compliment focus (ye, 1995, p. 223). positive semantic carriers were grouped into adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. for example, “you look beautiful” or “that‟s a nice dress”. the positive semantic carriers are adjectives. in a sentence like “you play the guitar well”, here the positive semantic carriers is an adverb. the use of verb as positive semantic carriers in compliment, for instance, “i like your new shoes”. compliment focus refers to the major focus of the compliment utterance. it can be categorized into object/action and agent. object/action refers to those utterances which focus either on objects or actions of the complimentee. on the other hand, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 22-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 agent refers to the complimentee him/herself. findings based on the research questions, the results were presented into three sections: (1) compliment strategies, (2) compliment formulas, and (3) compliment focus. compliment strategies the compliment strategies were categorized into four, including: no response, explicit compliment, implicit compliment, and noncompliment. these four types of compliment responses were analysed by their overall distributions, contextual factors (topics), and gender-specific distributions. a total of 200 responses were collected, 100 in indonesian and 100 in australian english, from the compliment situations (situations s ls4). the distribution of the responses is displayed in table 2. as indicated in table 2, indonesians gave more explicit verbal compliment than australians did. indonesians gave a total of 69 % of explicit verbal compliment while australians gave only 61% of explicit verbal compliment. table 2 also shows that indonesians used „no response’ as their second preference of compliment type. on the other hand, australians used implicit compliment as their second preference. table 2. overall distribution of compliment types (%) types of compliment indonesian australian no response 13 14 explicit compliment 69 61 implicit compliment 8 19 non-compliment 10 6 total 100 100 compliment strategies are further examined by the two compliment topics: appearance and ability, and the results are shown in table 3. table 3 shows that the most frequently preferred topic for both indonesians and australians is that of one‟s ability. for the indonesians, 38% of compliments were given to the topic of ability in comparison to 31% of appearance. the australians gave 36% of the compliment on ability in comparison to 24% on appearance. results show that both indonesian and australian males and females had the same preference concerning explicit compliment. however, there was a difference in the amount of percentage between males and females. indonesian males and females gave almost equal amount of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|23-28 explicit verbal compliment. by contrast, australian females gave more explicit verbal compliment than the males did. the percentage of distribution of compliment types by gender of complimentor is presented in table 4. table 3. distribution of compliment types by compliment topic (%) types of compliment appearance ability indonesian australian indonesian australian no response 9 12 5 2 explicit compliment 31 24 38 36 implicit compliment 2 9 6 10 non-compliment 9 6 1 0 table 4. distribution of compliment types by gender (%) types of compliment male female indonesian australian indonesian australian no response 4 9 9 5 explicit compliment 35 24 34 37 implicit compliment 4 14 4 5 non-compliment 5 5 5 1 table 5. distribution of compliment types by interaction between genders types of compliment m-f f-f m-m f-m indo aus indo aus indo aus indo aus no response 1 7 4 0 3 3 5 4 explicit compliment 21 17 20 22 14 7 14 15 implicit compliment 0 5 1 0 3 9 4 5 non-compliment 4 0 3 1 3 5 0 0 table 6. overall distribution of positive semantic carriers (%) types of positive semantic carriers indonesian australian adjective 88.4 86.9 adverb 11.6 3.3 verb 0 9.8 table 7. distribution of compliment focus (%) compliment focus indonesian australian agent 20.3 13.1 object/action 79.7 86.9 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 24-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 when the gender-specific distributions were further examined in terms of the interaction between the gender of complimentor and complimentee (see table 5), the results showed similarity between indonesians and australians. for both indonesians and australians, more compliments occurred from males to females than the vise versa. in addition, females compliment other females more often than males. as indicated in table 5, for the indonesians, 21% of compliments occurred from males to females in comparison to 14% from females to males. and 20% of compliments occurred from female to female in comparison to 14% from male to male. for the australians, 17% of compliments occurred from males to females in comparison to 15% from females to males. and 22% of compliments occurred from female to female in comparison to 7 % from male to male. compliment formulas compliment formulas were analysed by positive semantic carriers and compliment focus. in analysing compliment formulas, it is only the utterances in the category of explicit compliment were examined. explicit compliment entails three types of positive semantic carriers, adjectives, verbs, and adverb. the results revealed that adjectives were the most frequent positive semantic carriers in both indonesians and australians. the percentage of overall distribution of positive semantic carriers is presented in table 6. another salient observation, as shown in table 6, is that the australians used slightly varied positive semantic carriers in their compliments including adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. moreover, verbs were the second positive semantic carriers‟ preference within the australians. however, the indonesians only used adjectives and adverbs as positive semantic carriers when they compliment. compliment focus the results revealed that both indonesians and australians gave the major focus of the compliment utterances on the objects/actions of the complimentee. table 7 below presents the percentage of distribution of compliment by compliment focus. discussion the results showed that there were some differences as well as similarities between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliments in terms of compliment types, compliment formula, and compliment focus. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|25-28 with regards to the overall distribution of compliment types, indonesians gave more explicit verbal compliment than the australian did. one possible explanation for this is that the participants background and the setting of situations in the dct in this study which involve „a friend/acquaintance‟, rather than other types of potential speakers. the factors of power and distance here are of equality and solidarity. it might make the participants feel freer to compliment. in addition, as it mentioned earlier that all the indonesian participants were university students in various universities in jakarta, indonesia, who had learned english for at least six years. they also have great opportunity to expose the western culture through movies and communication as well since people in jakarta are more diverse and multicultural. as wolfson (1981, p.118) mentioned that „a term for complimenting exists in indonesian, but it usually occurs among the educated who have been exposed to western customs‟. further finding on compliment topics revealed that the most frequently preferred topic for the indonesians and australians is that of one‟s ability. this finding is different from the results of the studies of compliments in different varieties of english where these two topics are more or less evenly distributed, with appearance slightly outranking performance (holmes, 1988). on the other hand, the finding on compliment topic in this study is in line with the results of a number of previous studies in how non-native speakers of english paying a compliment (ye, 1995 in chinese compliments; ide, 1998 in japanese compliments). the results showed that complimenting on ability is more preferred than complimenting on appearance. this suggests that a change in appearance may not be deemed as worthy of complimenting as an ability; new possessions or pretty clothes may not necessarily lead to positive comments in the indonesians and australians speech community, whereas an ability is more likely to be complimented. this further indicates that complimenting on ability is more likely to be felt as socially acceptable thus safer than making compliments on appearance. in terms of compliment as a gender-preferential strategy, the present study found that 21% of compliments occurred from males to females in comparison to 14% from females to males in indonesian group and 17% of compliments occurred from males to females in comparison to 15% from females to males in australian ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 26-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 group. this finding appeared consistent with the evidence from previous studies (holmes, 1988; parisi & wogan, 2006). considering compliment formulas, the study found that adjectives were the most frequent positive semantic carriers used by both australians and indonesians. however, australians used verbs as the second most frequent positive semantic carriers while indonesians used adverbs as their second choice. one possible reason for the absence on the use of verbs in indonesians is that unlike australians, indonesians are not very straightforward in expressing their feelings and opinion as well as their desires. in fact, it is a matter of culture. australian culture is very direct whereas indonesian is very indirect. direct and indirect refer to openness and lack of openness in expressing someone‟s feelings (koentjaraningrat, 1993). in terms of compliment focus, both indonesians (79.7%) and australians (86.9%) gave the major focus of the compliment utterances on the objects or actions of the complimentee. conclusion and suggestion this study investigated the differences and similarities between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliment in terms of compliment types, compliment formula, and compliment focus. the results in this study revealed that there were more similarities than differences between australian english and indonesian speakers on paying compliment with regards to the three categories mentioned before. however, this study only investigates the compliments between interlocutors of equal social status and close relationships. therefore, its finding will not apply to situations where interlocutors are of unequal social status and distant relationship. further research on complimenting behaviours among indonesian and australian english speakers by using different groups of informants or using different methodology (for instance, natural recordings, to see what people actually say in talking-interaction), to see if the findings of this study still hold. references al falasi, h. (2007). just say “thank you”: a study of compliment responses. the linguistic journal, 2(1), 28-42. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|27-28 baek, g. (1998). a cross-cultural study of compliments and compliment responses in english and korean. iral, 39(4), 309. retrieved march 21, 2010, from ebscohost database. brown, p. & levinson, s.c. (1987). politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. farghal, m. & haggan, m. (2006). compliment behaviour in bilingual kuwaiti college students. international journal of bilingual education & bilingualism, 19(1), 94-118. hobbs, p. (2003). the medium is the message: politeness strategies in men‟s and women‟s voice mail messages. journal of pragmatics, 35(2), 243–262. holmes, j. (1988a) compliment and compliment responses in new zealand english. anthropological linguistics 28, 485–508. holmes, j. (1988b). paying compliments: a sex preferential positive politeness strategy. journal of pragmatics, 12(3), 445– 46. holmes, j. & brown, d. f. (1987). teachers and students learning about compliments. tesol quarterly, 21(3). holmes, j. (1993). new zealand women are good to talk to: an analysis of politeness strategies in interaction. journal of pragmatics, 20(2), 91–116. holmes, j. (2008). an introduction to sociolinguistics (3rd ed.). london: longman. ide, s. (1998). sorry for your kindness: japanese interactional ritual in public discourse. journal of pragmatics, 29(5), 509–529. koentjaraningrat. (1993). manusia dan kebudayaan indonesia. (people and culture of indonesia). jakarta: indonesia : djambatan mackay, a. & gass, s.m. (2008). second language research. routledge, new york: london. manes, j. & wolfson, n. (1981) the compliment formula. in coulmas, f. (ed.), conversational routine (pp.115-132). the hague: mouton. mckay, s. l. & hornberger, n. h. (2006). sociolinguistics and language teaching. cambridge university press. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (1), 2016 28-28|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 parisi, c. & wogan, p. (2006). compliment topics and gender. women and language 29,21–28. wolfson, n. (1981). compliments in cross-cultural perspective. tesol quarterly, 15(2), 117-124. ye, l. (1995). complimenting in mandarin chinese . in g. kasper (ed.), pragmatics of chinese as native and target language (pp. 207-295). second language teaching & curriculum centre, university of hawaii. yu, m. c. (2003). on the universality of face: evidence from chinese compliment response behavior. journal of pragmatics, 35(10-11), 1679-1710 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019, 1-9 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee need analysis for developing course book for english for elementary school students with local-content values devinta puspita ratri, ika puspitasari received: 20th march 2019; revised: 17th may 2019; accepted: 28th june 2019 abstract the shifting of curriculum from school-based to curriculum of 2013 which has been regulated under the government of the republic of indonesia’s regulation number 32 year 2013 about the alteration of government regulation number 19 year 2005 about national standard of education has some consequences in several factors. one of them is on the elimination of english subject in elementary school. meanwhile, english is still badly needed in elementary school level. as a result, english is still offered in elementary school level but not as a subject. instead, it is offered as a compulsory extra curricular for students. however, there was problem in its implementation which was caused by the different materials taught while the test administered was the same. as the consequence, the target for achievement could not meet the minimum mastery criterion. it is even worse thatenglish score becomes one of the requirements for enrolling in junior high level. thus, uniformity of syllabus and teaching materials for english subject for elementary school students is deemed necessary. local values needs also to be embedded in the teaching materials to be developed as it is important in providing character education and reinforcing nasionalism for students. prior to material development, a guideline for development is required. thus, need analysis and local wisdom-based syllabus development for elementary school level becomes the focus for this research. key words: needs analysis; teaching materials; local values abstrak perubahan kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (ktsp) menjadi kurikulum 2013 untuk tingkat sekolah dasar berkonsekuensi pada berbagai faktor. salah satunya adalah penghapusan mata pelajaran bahasa inggris pada tingkat sekolah dasar. sedangkan permintaan masyarakat masih besar terhadap pembelajaran bahasa inggris di tingkat sekolah dasar. dengan kondisi seperti sekarang ini, bahasa inggris tetap diberikan di tingkat sekolah dasar bukan sebagai mata pelajaran namun sebagai ekstra kulikuler wajib. pada pelaksanaannya, timbul masalah karena tidak adanya keseragaman materi yang diberikan pada siswa padahal bahasa inggris diujikan di ujian sekolah. sehingga target pencapaian bahasa inggris tidak bisa memenuhi kriteria ketuntasan minimal (kkm). ironisnya lagi, nilai bahasa inggris adalah sebagai salah satu syarat untuk masuk sekolah menengah pertama. maka dari itu, perlu adanya keseragaman silabus dan buku ajar bahasa inggris untuk sekolah dasar. kearifan lokal juga dimasukkan dalam pengembangan buku ajar bahasa inggris untuk menanamkan pendidikan karakter dan penguatan rasa nasionalisme bagi peserta didik. sebelum mengembangkan buku ajar, perlu ada acuan sebagai dasar pengembangan. maka, dalam penelitian ini, dilaksanakan analisa kebutuhan dan pengembangan silabus untuk buku ajar berbasis kearifan lokal untuk sekolah dasar. kata kunci: analisa kebutuhan; buku ajar; kearifan lokal how to cite: ratri, d. p., puspitasari, i. (2019). need analysis for developing course book for english for elementary school students with local-content values. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6(1), 1-9. doi:10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 mailto:devinta@ub.ac.id ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 2-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the teaching of english in indonesia has experienced dynamic changes from time to time. the policy concerning the teaching of english has been altered in accordance with the amendment of curriculum. the regulation of the government of the republic of indonesia number 32 year 2013 about the amendment of government regulation number 19 year 2005 about the national standard of education affirms that the increase in quality and competitiveness of human resource has become a national commitment. the national mediumterm plan 2010 – 2014 indicates that one of the substantial core of action program in education is the rearrangement of school curriculum in the attempt of producing competent students who are capable of fulfilling the needs for human resource required for national and local growth. the consequence of that particular government regulation is on the shifting curriculum from school-based curriculum to curriculum 2013 which is believed to prepare young generation better to become more competitive in the future. further, the components in the curriculum that are altered are regulated in ministerial regulation. the shifting from school-based curiculum to curriculum 2013, which was regulated in 2013, results in several issues. one of them is the omission of english subject in elementary school. this can seen from the ministry of education decree number 21 year 2016 about the content standard of primary and secondary education which excludes english from the subjects offered for elementary school students. the attachment accompanying it only mentions that english is offered for junior and senior high school students. the reality in the field indicates that many english teachers have been recruited and many of them are civil servant. the omission of english for elementary school in curriculum 2013 has raised some effects. one of them is concerning the legal status for the teachers which further affects the process for certification and promotion. this is all because there is no slot for their expertise in elementary level of education. there are only three positions for teachers in elementary school,namely home teachers, physical education teachers, and religion teachers. another issue concerning the implementation of new curriculum is the omission of english subject from elementary school. the government has come with its confirmation that the omission of english subject is for the reason that students do not really need ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 3-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english. it somehow contradicts the theory stating that language acquisition among young learners is better. learning english for young learners is believed to improve confidence. moreover, the main function of english is for communication. young learners who master english will be more confident in communicationg with friends, teachers, or even people who are speaking english. this idea is somewhat in line with vygotsky (1962) idea which states that in early childhood, language is used as a device to plan activities and solve problems. thus, children taught english will tend to use it to get along with others and communicate to solve problems. this government policy has caused complex problems for education in elementary level. yet, due to high demand, english is still offered in elementary school as extracurricular subject. the complication adds up when english is still set as one of school subjects tested at school because the score of english becomes one of the requirement to be admitted at junior high school with the standard score of 70. this fact leaves many in question as to how the standard score can be achieved when there are no syllabus and materials available for teaching and learning process. so far, teachers of english in elementary schools used different books, handouts or students worksheets. consequently, the materials taught vary from one school to another. it causes problem since the test of english in one paticular region is made the same. as the result, the test results are below expectation because the materials taught are not in line with the materials being tested. this complex problem needs appropriate solutions which can affect many parties. one of the solutions is the development of appropriate english instructional materials to be used by all elementary schools so that the materials taught in schools are the same. therefore, this research is aimed at initiating the development of instructional material for elementary school students by doing the needs analysis and syllabus development which would later be made as referrence in the instructional material development. the materials developed would be in the form of local valuesbased books. it is designed so as it wants to reject the notion that english subject can decrease students nationalism. curriculum 2013 emphasizes character building and nationalism on students so that it might be the reason why english is excluded from the curriculum. here, local values can be defined as "ideas or values, local or local view that is wise, full of wisdom, good-value embedded and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 4-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license followed by society" (nurrahmawati, 2013). therefore, in purpose of integrating the local values in teaching english, it is expected that young learners who will be the next generation of this country can learn international language which is widely used and preserve their culture as well. thus, english books developed based on local values are considered to be able to make elementary school students learn english while still possesing strong local character and without having to lose their nationalism. prior to the development of local value-based english book, the analysis of needs should be done yo map the appropriate materials for grade 1 to grade 6 students of elementary school. for this purpose, questionnaire was distributed to teachers in the effort of developing syllabus which are crucial for the book development later. method this study employed research and development model formulated by borg and gall (1983) who state that this research design is a process done to develop and validate educational product. the steps taken are usually called as r & d cycle which consists of needs analysis, product development based on the needs analysis, field testing in the real situation where the product will be used, and revision for the mistake found and shortage of the product identified during the field testing. there are a total of ten stages in this design (borg & gall, 1983). this first stage is information collection. this can be done in several different ways. some of them are by library research and direct observation in the classroom. the second stage is identification of learning objective. then, it is followed by initial product development. meanwhile, the fourth stage is initial field testing. for this need, some instruments such as questionnaire, interview guideline, and/or observation sheet will be required. the fifth stage is the product revision done based on the suggestion from the intial field testing. the next stage is main field testing which is followed by product revision. the last stage is product dissemination and implementation. it can be done by writing journal article, attending seminar, or by publishing the product. data source and data collection technique this research involved data which was taken from the following research instruments: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 5-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license needs analysis for needs analysis, instrument used was questionnairre that was distributed to 23 elementary school teachers. this instrument was intended to collect information about the things needed to develop the english syllabus. expert validation some experts were involved to ensure that the syllabus developed were in line with the existing objectives. those experts validated the content of syllabus by referring to principles of local values. in this stage, the instruments required were checklist and interview. try-out in this try-out stage, the developed syllabus was directly applied by developing samples of the materials. this was done in order to reflect the feasibility of the syllabus to be later fully developed into books. in this try-out stage, the instrument used was checklist for the material samples developed. findings and discussion findings a questionnaire was distributed to 23 english teachers who are teaching at elementary school seeking need analysis toward syllabus and textbook with local values. from the questionnaire distributed to english teachers in batu, it revealed that all teachers responded that syllabus has important role as guidance in teaching english. talking about the importance of syllabus, the questionnaire surveyed whether there is syllabus for english course for elementary schools. 40% respondents said that there is syllabus a guidance for teachers to teach english, but 60% of them mentioned that there is no syllabus to be referred to. further, those who said that there is no syllabus for english course argued that it is needed to develop syllabus. about the syllabus with local values, most respondents, 64% of the population, said that they are familiar with it; and 36% of them said that they do not know about syllabus with local values. however, all of them agree if syllabus is developed with local values. next, about the method that is suitable to be implemented for teaching young learners at elementary schools (respondents can choose more than one option), 13 respondents chose cooperative learning, 8 respondents selected communicative teaching, 10 respondents mentioned task based learning, and 12 respondents prefered total physical response, and 5 respondents mentioned other method, they are: contextual teaching learning, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 6-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license topical syllabus, content based learning, integrated/mix method. about the appropriate materials for elementary students (respondents can select more than one option), 8 respondents chose grammar, 9 respondents chose general english, 21 respondents selected text with local values 13 respondents chose conversation, and 2 respondents selected building vocabulary. next, about the existence of english course book, 87% of respondents mentioned yes and 13% respondents said no. a confirmation toward the existence of english textbook done by interviewing the head of english teacher association; she argued that english teachers used different textbooks with different materials, therefore, it is difficult for them to measure students ability in english when they graduate from elementary schools as they learn different materials. responding to this phenomena, the head of english teacher association pushed the development of syllabus and textbook. further question in the questionnaire asking about the need of developing english course book, all of the respondents said yes and they agree of developing course book with local values. from the survey, it can be drawn a conclusion that syllabus is highly needed by english teachers as guidance in the teaching and learning process since there is no fixed syllabus for teaching english at elementary school. hence, the development of syllabus becomes the top demand to cope the problem of vacillating in what to teach in english class. bourke (2006) states that developing syllabus outline the mismatches that may occur between teachers and learners in three important domains: a) the experiential domain, b) the learning process domain, and c) the language content domain. further, local values needs to be added in the syllabus as a reference topic. to be specific, in developing syllabus, teaching method is substantial to be brought. appropriate english teaching method propounded by english teachers are cooperative learning, communicative teaching, taskbased learning, total physical response, contextual teaching, content based learning, integrated/mix method. hudelson (1991) discloses four basic principles of learning and language learning that are embedded in a topicbased/task-based approach: 1 young learners are in the ‘concrete operations’ stage of cognitive development. this means that they learn through handson experiences. it follows that in language classes children ‘need to be active rather than passive; they need to be engaged in activities of which language is a part; they need to be working on meaningful tasks and use ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 7-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license language to accomplish those tasks’. 2 in a group situation some members know more than others. those who know less can learn from those who know more. hence, children need to interact with and learn from each other. teachers too need to interact with the children in order to challenge them to go beyond their present level of expression. this kind of contextual support is known as ‘scaffolding’ (ellis,1997). 3 acquisition is a discovery process. learners have to figure out how the language works. ‘in terms of the classroom context, an implication is that learners need opportunities to use and to experiment with the new language.’ . learners must be free to make errors so they can re-structure their emerging language system. 4 acquisition occurs through social interaction. meaning is constructed jointly as learners work together and exchange messages. they need to talk to each other in order to negotiate meaning. in addition, english teachers suggest grammar, general english, text with local values, conversation, and vocabulary to be considered as materials in teaching young learners. tomlinson (2001) argues that materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking. as a field, it studies the principles and procedures of the designed, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials. as a practical undertaking, it refers to anything which is done by writers, teacher or learners to provide source of language input, to exploit those source in ways which maximise the likelihood of intake and to stimulate purposeful output. further, following to the english syllabus, english course book with local wisdom also need to be developed. in accordance, septy (2016) mentions that cultural awareness/understanding may become an important issue in english communicative competence. the ability to communicate should not disregard character values that are generated from cultural values, and this could be a determining resource in improving students’ english proficiency. besides, this cultural resource could relate to the process of character building. therefore, the culturally based resources have to be considered in selecting teaching-learning materials. then, lessons from local wisdoms, in particular, may be taken from the meaning of local legends, folklores, special places in the village, certain traditional/monumental objects, building, rivers, mount/hill, forest, and the like. the lessons from local wisdom may contain particular meaning of norms and values to understand. prior to the syllabus development, the topics for each grade are set by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 8-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teachers of elementary school in batu. the topics set are based on in the peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional number 57 year 2014 about elementary school curriculum. 1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade myself greeting and introduction integrating indonesian politeness living harmoniously gotong royong animals and plants reproduction tending animals and plants my hobby layang-layang lets play playing at playground technology using smartphone wisely my activity helping parents my chores baby sitting natural change climate in indonesia my family family tree i love my school flag ceremony environment care less plactics my experience visiting grandma healthy life doing exercise traditional games gobak sodor, jumpritan healthy environment go green water, earth and sun season in indonesia friendship honesty my environment pets in indonesia animals and plants animals and plants in indonesia energy save energy natural phenomena weather in indonesia safety travel safety earth and universe save our earth 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade togetherness selametan things around eco green park reforestation don’t litter energy conservation save water events in life birthday unity in diversity bhineka tunggal ika environmental care use reusable straw bring your own bottle me and society courtesy invetors invetor of padi gogo profession farmer health go to dentits globalization sending email every 6 months my hero kartini, diponegoro nationalism tradional clothes entrepreneurship persistent my country beautiful indonesia my body body safety community health puskesmas, posyandu my dream job tour guide indonesian history the origin of batu my school my favorite teacher my house my bedroom ecosystem tropical forest my earth climate change healthy food bring your lunchbox my environment emphaty, sympathy space exploration go to the moon table 1. topics and sub topics set for english subject for elementary school this topics will be developed into set of english instruction in the form of syllabus that later on become a guidance for teachers in teaching english subject at elementary schools. conclusion english language teaching could be suspected to open access for foreign cultures to infiltrate. this situation may create conflict with local/national cultures and values/norms of indonesia. in spite of this, it all depends on how english language teaching is viewed in the framework of national development. obviously, having english proficiency offers an opportunity for indonesians to take part in the international competition. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 6 (1), 2019 9-9 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v6i1.9908 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license as well, students are potential to develop their competitive power through which they could demonstrate their english proficiency. the most important thing to take into account is how they keep maintaining their identity and integrity reflected in their characters as well as their spirit nationalism. this relies on the development of english syllabus based on local values which is worth conducting because of the absence of english syllabus for elementary school. therefore, the development of syllabus with local values is urgently needed which is done in this research. futhermore, the development of english textbook with local values based on the syllabus which was developed is worth conducted for the next research in contributing good english teaching and learning process without setting aside indonesians students’ core culture and values. references borg, w.r & gall, m.d. 1983. educational research: an introduction. new york: longman bourke, j.m. (2006). designing a topicbased syllabus for young learners. elt journal volume 60/3 july 2006. ellis, r. 1997. second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. hudelson, s. 1991. ‘efl teaching and children: a topic-based approach’. english teaching forum october 1991. nurrahmawati, farida. 2013. strategi komunikasi pemberdayaan ekonomi perempuan madura berbasis kearifan lokal madura. jurnal komunikasi vol. vii no 1 maret 2013:1-67 issn 1978-4597. peraturan menteri pendidikan dan kebudayaan nomor 21 tahun 2016 tentang standar isi pendidikan dasar dan menengah peraturan pemerintah republik indonesia nomor 32 tahun 2013 tentang perubahan atas peraturan pemerintah nomor 19 tahun 2005 tentang standar nasional pendidikan peraturan menteri pendidikan nasional nomor 57 tahun 2014 tentang kurikulum sekolah dasar septy, a.p. (2016). managing local wisdom in english teaching materials. proceedings of iselt fbs universitas negeri padang vol 4 no 1 tomlinson, b. (2011). materials development in language teaching. united kingdom: cambridge university press. vygotsky, l. s. (1986). thought and language. cambridge, ma: mit press. * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 126-143 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effectiveness of mind mapping in constructing arguments in writing an argumentative text eva rosita, sisilia setiawati halimi* universitas indonesia, indonesia (sshalimi@gmail.com) received: 07th april 2023; revised: 25th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract the ability to compose and develop ideas in argumentative writing has become a challenge for grade xi students in a private high school in indonesia, and mind mapping is believed in the literature to be a potential strategy to overcome the challenge. this mixed-method experimental study, therefore, was designed to examine the effectiveness of mind mapping as a prewriting strategy. the study's results, which compared the pre-test and post-test scores analyzed using the nonparametric-wilcoxon signed rank test, showed a significant value in the experimental group with asymp sig. (two-tailed) 0.003<0.05. the participants also expressed their perceptions of the mind-mapping features through a questionnaire and interview. data analysis conducted using in vivo coding in this research showed that the mind-mapping elements with the most significant influence on content exploration, text structure, convenience and interest in writing, time efficiency, and thinking skills were keywords, colors, and branches. nevertheless, three participants said they did not make any progress for several reasons. the significant finding and the vast majority of positive opinions indicated that mind mapping was an effective strategy for developing ideas in argumentative writing. in further research, it would be interesting to explore how this strategy could be applied to a larger learning community by combining it with other strategies to improve learning outcomes. key words: argument; argumentative text; mind mapping; perception abstrak tantangan pada penulisan teks argumentatif yang dihadapi pelajar kelas xi di sebuah sekolah menengah atas (sma) swasta di indonesia terletak pada kemampuan menyusun dan mengembangkan gagasan. maka, kendala tersebut diatasi melalui studi eksperimental menggunakan metode campuran dengan menerapkan prewriting berbentuk mind mapping. hasil penelitian berupa perbandingan nilai pre-test dan post-test yang dianalisis menggunakan nonparametric-wilcoxon signed rank test menunjukkan nilai yang signifikan pada experimental group dengan asymp.sig.(2-tailed) 0.003<0.05. partisipan kemudian mengungkapkan persepsinya terhadap penggunaan mind mapping melalui kuesioner dan wawancara yang dianalisis menggunakan teknik in vivo coding. dari hasil analisis, diketahui bahwa kata kunci, warna, dan cabang merupakan komponen mind mapping yang paling berdampak pada eksplorasi konten, struktur teks, kemudahan dan minat menulis, efisiensi waktu, serta keterampilan berpikir. meskipun demikian, terdapat 3 orang partisipan yang mengungkapkan bahwa mereka tidak merasakan perkembangan karena penyebab tertentu. signifikansi hasil penelitian dan persepsi yang mayoritas positif menyiratkan bahwa mind mapping merupakan strategi yang cocok untuk mengembangkan gagasan pada penulisan teks argumentatif. maka, pada penelitian selanjutnya, menarik untuk melihat fungsi mind mapping pada komunitas belajar yang lebih besar dan menggabungkannya dengan strategi lain untuk mengoptimalkan hasil belajar. kata kunci: argumen; teks argumentatif; mind mapping; persepsi how to cite: rosita, e., halimi, s. s. (2023). the effectiveness of mind mapping in constructing arguments in writing an argumentative text. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 126-143. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848. mailto:sshalimi@gmail.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 127-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction in teaching writing, teachers have a responsibility to help students create a text composition by giving them explicit and systematic guidance (poch et al., 2020). it is essential to implement appropriate writing techniques to assist students in composing a text either by providing a model (keen, 2021), assigning a pre-task (johnson, 2014), or using a prewriting activity (ellis, 2021). therefore, teachers must fully understand the target audience, the purpose, and the function of the text beforehand (bachani, 2015). in indonesia, particularly at the senior high school level, which implements a national curriculum, students learn how to write various kinds of text types, which are getting more complex; one of the most challenging ones is argumentative text writing. it requires higher-order thinking skills (chen et al., 2021) as it involves a cognitive process to think analytically and to organize creative and critical ideas (aziz & ahmad, 2017). however, in general, students' cognitive abilities at this level have not developed optimally. they still have limited ideas and cannot state logical arguments. this problem was also encountered by the students in grade xi in one of the private schools in indonesia. this was identified through observation of the process and the outcomes of the writing activities. the students found that argumentative writing was difficult. therefore, this experimental study was conducted o an experimental group of 15 students and a control group of 9 students to determine the effectiveness of mind mapping as a prewriting strategy when students were developing argumentative texts. a mind map is a conceptual diagram (wette, 2017) that was first introduced by tony buzan (sbaa et al., 2022) and is often used as a strategy for learning writing (o'hara & budiyono, 2019). using the shapes, keywords, branches, line connectors, and other components in a mind map makes organizing ideas and creating a wellstructured text easier. it accommodates thinking processes by exposing relevant detailed information, organizing or clustering, and linking ideas (buzan & buzan, 2009). applying the mind-mapping strategy in writing practices improves students' ability to organize ideas and articulate them in the text (wette, 2017) because it implements an associative memory model. it accommodates the information processing in the brain and forms interconnections between neurons (swestyani et al., 2018). mind mapping enables the activation of the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 128-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license left brain, which is linked to language processing, and the right brain, which is connected to creativity. thus, mind mapping in the classroom is ideal because it balances the students' brain functions (jensen, 2008). some prior research has revealed that mind mapping is an effective strategy in teaching writing. at the high school level, it is used as a brainstorming strategy for writing various text types (riswanto & putra, 2012). when writing challenges increase, such as in argumentative texts at the university level, the mind mapping strategy can produce a cohesive text (saputra et al., 2021). writing essays with a mind map also provides a concrete structure for a specific topic, which enables students to distinguish positive from negative ideas (vijayavalsalan, 2016). the mind mapping strategy used in the teaching process has proven effective in increasing the motivation and participation of both high and lowmotivated students. a study of students learning to write a hortatory exposition in a vocational high school showed that the mind-mapping strategy positively improved students' post-test results (ernidawati & sutopo, 2017). the study revealed that applying the mind map reduced some psychological problems related to efl self-efficacy and selfconfidence in writing (alluhaybi, 2015). using the strategy in writing encouraged students to engage in dynamic idea exploration and discussion. those who previously were worried and doubtful were better at developing ideas (saed & al-omari, 2014). this brainstorming strategy impacted the students' positive attitudes toward writing (deporter & hernacki, 2005). the role of mind mapping as a potential strategy that can be applied to a classroom context was a solution to the problems underlying this research. this research aimed to determine the implication of using the mind mapping strategy on the experimental group participants' argument development in composing an argumentative text. the strategy's effectiveness was found by observing the difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the group of students who used mind mapping and those who did not. this study also revealed the participants' perception of mind mapping as an argumentative text prewriting strategy. method this research employed a mixed method approach (creswell, 2015), http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 129-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license presenting both qualitative and quantitative data. the methodology used included the research design, site and participants, data collection, and analysis. research design this mixed-method research used a pragmatic worldview as the guiding philosophy. this philosophy emphasizes that the research is problem-centered and practice-oriented and results from implementing a strategy into action (creswell & creswell, 2018). the quantitative objective of this study was to discover the effectiveness of mind mapping as a prewriting strategy and to find the score difference between participants who used mind mapping and those who did not use it. the students' perceptions of mind mapping were then presented qualitatively. the research design used in this study refers to creswell (2015). the study started by exploring prior research about using mind mapping as a prewriting strategy. then, pre-test, intervention, and post-test were conducted on experimental and control groups. the findings of the study were explained qualitatively. the experimental method applied was quasi-experimental as it used a nonequivalent control (comparison) group design because the participants came from two existing classes that could not be randomized (blair, 2016). research site and participants the study was conducted in two classes of grade xi students in a private high school in indonesia, one as the control group and the other as the experimental group. the participants came from various backgrounds, which influenced their language proficiency; for example, some students had grown up speaking english, had taken english course classes, or had even lived abroad. in contrast, some participants were not accustomed to speaking english because their previous schools had not adequately accommodated l2 learning. the description of the participants is presented below in table 1. table 1. participant description group gender proficiency level experimental group (class xi, n=15) male, n=9 female, n=5 low, n=4 intermediate, n=6 advanced n=5 control group (class xi, n=9) male, n=5 female, n=4 low, n=4 intermediate, n=3 advanced n=2 the proficiency level was based on the conversion of school exam scores in http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 130-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the previous semester, which referred to the minimum mastery criteria of the english subject. the table above shows three proficiency levels among the participants: low, intermediate, and advanced. despite the different numbers of participants in the experimental and control groups, the distribution of proficiency was balanced. the distribution of language proficiency levels was based on the result of the student's previous semester scores, whose interval was modified from the minimum criteria score for the english subject. data collection and analysis the data collected in this study consisted of the participants' mind maps and argumentative texts, the answers to a questionnaire, and the answers to an interview. the experimental group participants' mindmapping assignment results, analyzed using ohassta's rubric (2004), revealed that implementing mind mapping in the prewriting stage helped the participants develop arguments in writing argumentative texts. the argumentative texts in both groups were then evaluated using the argumentative text rubric (tucker, 2012). a rater with 15 years of experience teaching english at high school and certified by buzan supermaptm training assessed these assignments. in order to determine the effectiveness of using the mind mapping strategy, the pre-test and posttest scores of the experimental and control group participants were compared using the spss 29.0 nonparametric-wilcoxon signed rank test. this data analysis technique assumed that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test results in research involving a small number of participants. then, the closed-ended questionnaire instrument (nunan & bailey, 2009) was distributed to acquire the students' perceptions of mind mapping as an argumentative text prewriting strategy. the questionnaire was delivered through google forms and analyzed using spss 29.0 descriptive statistics. finally, additional data were obtained from face-to-face interviews with all experimental group participants. the interview was aimed to explore and discover participants' perceptions of the mind-mapping strategy they had used. the interview data were analyzed using nvivo 12 software using in vivo coding technique. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 131-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion findings the ability of the participants to create a mind map during the prewriting stage of writing their argumentative texts was analyzed using ohassta's rubric (2004). it demonstrated their skill level with the prewriting technique. the rubric's scale ranged from levels 14. level 4 represented the highest ability to create a mind map in terms of drawing a central image, exploring with adequate knowledge, selecting the appropriate keywords, using color/code/ connection, and developing a good flow of ideas. on the contrary, level 1 in the rubric represented the lowest ability to create mind maps. the participants' mind-mapping ability level, analyzed by ohassta's rubric (2004), can be observed in table 2. the experimental group participants in this study achieved level 3 in developing mind maps based on the depth of knowledge, central images, keywords, and colors/codes/ \connections criteria. they demonstrated a wide range of content development when creating a mind map. they also showed the ability to select keywords that implied their content comprehension. furthermore, the participants also created images related to the main idea and consistently used colors/codes and connections in the mind map. meanwhile, the participants achieved level 4 on the ideas flow criteria. the flow of ideas from complex to simple was stated clearly and accurately. they could connect the ideas from the center of the mind map. table 2. participants' mind map ability level part ici pan t level of mind map depth of knowl edge cen tral pict ure key word color / code/ conne ction ide as flo w s1 3 3 2 3 4 s2 3 2 2 3 4 s3 3 3 4 4 4 s4 3 4 3 3 4 s5 3 3 2 3 4 s6 3 4 3 3 4 s7 2 1 1 2 3 s8 3 3 4 3 4 s9 2 4 3 3 4 s10 3 3 4 3 4 s11 3 3 4 4 4 s12 2 3 3 2 3 s13 3 4 4 4 4 s14 3 3 4 4 4 s15 3 3 4 3 4 mea n 2,8 3,1 3,1 3,1 3,9 the participants' levels indicated that they understood how mind maps worked and could use them consistently. the participants' average http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 132-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license achievement level implied that they could create an ideal mind map in prewriting an argumentative text. however, during the practice, the participants still received feedback and corrections regarding the length of the keywords, the limited development of branches, and the color settings while creating the mind maps. thus, to determine the effectiveness of this strategy, a pre-test and post-test were conducted on the experimental and control groups. the results analyzed by spss 29.0 nonparametric-wilcoxon signed ranks test are presented in table 3. after three argumentative writing practice sessions, 11 of the 15 experimental group participants who used mind mapping in the prewriting activity had higher post-test scores, with an average increase of 6.95 points and a favorable rating of 76.50. one participant's score decreased by an average of 1.50 points, and 3 participants had identical scores as their pre-test. the control group showed different results. the post-test scores of 7 out of 9 participants increased by an average of 5.21 points and a positive rating of 36.50. the scores of 2 participants in this group decreased, with an average of 4.25 points and a negative rating of 8.50. table 3. wilcoxon signed-rank test of the experimental and control group pre-tests and post-tests ranks group pre-test posttest n me an ran k sum of ran ks experimenta l group negativ e ranks 1 a 1.50 1.50 positive ranks 1 1 b 6.95 76.5 0 ties 3 c total 1 5 control group negativ e ranks 2 a 4.25 8.50 positive ranks 7 b 5.21 36.5 0 ties 0 c total 9 a. post-test < pre-test b. post-test > pre-test c. post-test = pre-test although most participants in both groups had increased post-test scores, the experimental group participants' scores were 1.74 points higher than that of the control group. the average difference in post-test score reduction in the experimental group was 2.75 points lower than in the control group. the statistical result of the analysis using the spss 29.0 wilcoxon signed ranks test is shown in table 4. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 133-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. wilcoxon signed ranks test's statistics of the experimental and control group pre-test and post-test test statistics (experimental group) test statistics (control group) posttest pretest posttest pre-test z -2.955b z -1.663b asymp.si g. (2-tailed) .003 asymp.sig. (2-tailed) .096 a. wilcoxon signed ranks test a. wilcoxon signed ranks test b. based on opposing ranks. b. based on negative ranks. the hypothesis is accepted in the wilcoxon signed ranks test if the asymp.sig. the value is 0.05. in contrast, the hypothesis is rejected if the asymp.sig.>0.05. as a result, the experimental group statistical test output of asymp.sig. (2-tailed) 0.003 indicated that the hypothesis was accepted, i.e., that there was a significant difference in value between the experimental group participants' pre-tests and post-tests. meanwhile, the hypothesis in the control group was rejected because the statistical test was asymp.sig.(2-tailed) 0.096>0.05. this implied that no significant difference existed between the pre-test and posttest scores of the control group participants. in conclusion, it is feasible to state that the mind-mapping strategy significantly improved the experimental group participants' writing skills. the experimental group participants' perceptions of mind mapping as an argumentative text prewriting strategy were collected through a questionnaire and interviews. the two instruments had two variables that focused on how they perceived the benefits and which component of this mind-mapping strategy contributed the most to the argument development. the data from the questionnaire were analyzed using spss 29.0 descriptive statistics, and the results are shown in table 5. table 5. questionnaire descriptive statistics varia ble descriptive statistics que stion s n mi ni m u m m ax im u m mea n std.de viatio n mind map's benefi ts q3 15 3 5 4.13 .516 q4 15 3 5 4.13 .516 q5 15 3 5 4.33 .617 q9 15 3 5 4.13 .743 q13 15 3 5 4.40 .632 q14 15 3 5 4.27 .704 q15 15 4 5 4.47 .516 q16 15 3 5 4.27 .704 q17 15 3 5 4.07 .799 q18 15 3 5 4.07 .799 q20 15 3 5 4.13 .834 vali d n (list wise ) 15 mind q1 15 3 5 4.40 .632 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 134-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license varia ble descriptive statistics que stion s n mi ni m u m m ax im u m mea n std.de viatio n map's comp onent s q2 15 3 5 4.40 .632 q6 15 3 5 4.47 .743 q7 15 3 5 4.33 .724 q8 15 4 5 4.53 .516 q10 15 2 5 4.20 .862 q11 15 3 5 4.33 .617 q12 15 3 5 4.27 .594 q19 15 4 5 4.67 .488 vali d n (list wise ) 15 the questionnaire consisted of 11 questions about the benefits of mind mapping and 9 questions about the mind map components that were useful for developing ideas. the participants selected an option based on their opinion from a likert scale with options ranging from 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neutral), 4 (agree), and 5 (strongly agree). based on the average range of 4.07 to 4.67 in table 5, we can conclude that the participants generally expressed positive opinions by selecting the 'agree and strongly agree' options. the questionnaire results were triangulated with the interview findings. it was analyzed using nvivo 12 with the in vivo technique by determining the nodes and child nodes based on the words that appeared most frequently in the interviews. figure 1 illustrates the visualization of the nodes and child nodes' connection. figure 1. nvivo visualization table 6. nvivo mapping nodes child nodes participant the most effective mind map components keyword s2, s3, s4, s5, s6, s7, s8, s9, s11, s12, s13 branches s1, s9, s10, s11 colors s4, s7, s9, s11, s14, s15 the benefits of a mind map text structure s2, s5, s7, s10, s11 writing interest s2, s7 thinking abilities s4, s5 writing convenience s1, s6, s8, s12 exploration of content s4, s5, s6, s10, s11, s12, s13 time efficiency s9, s10, s11 not seeing any progress. s3, s14, s15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 135-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a connecting line in the nvivo 12 visualization indicates the connection between cases (student 1/ s1 – student 15/ s15), nodes, and child nodes. each formed connection represents a sentence about nodes and child nodes from the interview transcription. table 6 below shows the mapping of nodes and child nodes to make it easier to understand figure 1. table 6 shows the two researchrelated nodes (1) the most effective mind map components and (2) the benefits of mind mapping. the child nodes formed in the mind map components that were most effective in assisting participants in developing ideas were (1) keywords, (2) colors, and (3) branches. meanwhile, the benefits of the mind mapping strategy mentioned by the participants consisted of (1) exploration of content, (2) text structure, (3) writing interest, (4) time efficiency, (5) writing convenience, and (6) thinking abilities; however, some of them also said they (7) did not feel they had made any progress. the relationship between the two nodes in the data provided an overview of how the participants perceived the use of mind maps when writing argumentative texts. discussion this section outlines the effectiveness of buzan's mind mapping as a prewriting strategy for developing arguments in argumentative text writing. the results show how the participants implemented the strategy and its impact on the post-test outcomes. furthermore, this part also explains the students' perspective of the mind-mapping strategy. the discussion emphasizes how the research findings support or complement prior studies. mind mapping as a prewriting strategy at the beginning of the exercise, the participants first learned how to create a handwritten mind map. they developed mind maps by exploring information through various academic and popular literature on the internet. the participants in saputra et al.'s study (2021) also applied similarly and utilized digital sources to find supplementary material. one sample of a participant's handwritten mind map in this research is illustrated in figure 2. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 136-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 2. a sample of a handwritten mind map figure 2 displays how the participant first put down the main topic, followed by the subtopics. further, the branches were written clockwise to make it easier for the brain to separate similar ideas and scopes, and each group had a similar color. the flow of ideas from general to specific was represented by the shape of branches curved from thick to thin. the information became more complex and detailed as additional branches were formed. this participant's technique was close to the one that buzan introduced. as all participants had a common interest in technology, they were also introduced to digital mind mapping through various apps such as xmind and canva. the samples of xmind and canva mind maps which were created by the participants in this study, are shown in figures 3 and 4. figure 3. a sample of an xmind digital mind map figure 4. a sample of the canva digital mind map figures 3 and 4 show that the participants could create mind maps independently. although using a digital mind map was operated based on a similar principle that buzan introduced, each application had its unique features. the participants had different preferences when creating mind maps, whether done manually by handwriting or digitally by using an application. despite the difference, the benefits of both mind mapping creation methods http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 137-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license were the same; the participants used mind maps as a prewriting strategy to explore ideas that impacted text quality and time efficiency. by using the mind maps in the prewriting stage, the participants could complete writing assignments within 90 minutes. this showed that they had made significant progress because most participants could not complete their assignments on time. the most critical aspect of producing the mind maps was how the participants used them to express their thoughts on a particular topic. this point was also stated by saputra et al. (2021) that the mind map components helped students express their ideas. they generally demonstrated this ability during the mind-mapping exercise process and showed a capability to implement the mindmapping components based on buzan's procedure. mind map implications of mind mapping for argumentative text writing overall, the participants demonstrated adequate skills when creating a mind map. the experimental group participant post-test results improved significantly after using mind maps to construct arguments in their argumentative texts. in contrast, there was no significant increase in scores among the control group participants. this finding showed that mind mapping was more effective as a prewriting strategy than other methods. aligned with the experimental study by riswanto & putra (2012), mind mapping increased the participants' post-test scores. the ability to create an appropriate mind map influenced the depth of content, the direction of developing ideas, and the efficiency of time when the participants wrote argumentative texts. this affected the significance of the increased scores of participants who used mind mapping during the prewriting stage. mind mapping, as well as improving writing scores, also had a positive impact on participant attitudes toward writing. even though argumentative text writing in senior high school was considered difficult, the participants found it easier to write after they first created a mind map to write the text. as the participants were able to develop complex writing, they developed a more positive attitude toward productive skills learning (vijayavalsalan, 2016). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 138-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license participant perceptions about the benefits of mind mapping the participants shared 7 benefits of mind mapping as explained in the findings. they stated that the structure of the argumentative text was affected by the argument framework they developed in the mind map. based on the questionnaire, 46.7% of the participants agreed, and another 46.7% strongly agreed that grouping ideas on the mind map branches made writing more accessible. this finding supports vijayavalsalan's (2016) study, which claimed that mind mapping increases thinking capacity by allowing students to categorize ideas orderly and logical. the participants could better distinguish the ideas for their text through their mind map's precise structure. the keywords from each mind map branch were transformed into wellstructured text. this writing development made the participants aware of their improvement and helped them gain better confidence in writing. however, there are some noteworthy points to consider; even though mind mapping supported the text structures, specific skills were required to connect each idea. participants had to be able to turn the keywords into sentences and ensure that all information was linked together. mind mapping, in terms of content exploration, allowed the participants to express and categorize all their ideas following the writing plan. 40% of the participants said they strongly agreed, and 33.3% agreed that they came up with new ideas while making mind maps. the content exploration stage started by choosing a topic and was followed by the participants exploring various sources, mainly through technology, to search for data that would be developed in the mind map. developing well-classified and structured ideas enabled the participants to write more quickly. forty-six point seven percent (46.7%) of the participants strongly agreed, and 40% agreed they could use their time more efficiently. compared to other prewriting strategies, the clear-listed points on the mind map prevented time wasted due to a writing block. the mind map strategy reduced the participants' burden when writing texts. 73.3% of the participants strongly agreed with the statement, and 20% agreed. since a brief overview of the ideas to be developed was already available, the participants enjoyed the writing process more. it dispelled their previous thought of argumentative writing as a complex skill. in line with a study conducted by saed & al-omari (2014), the participants eventually had http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 139-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license better motivation because they could overcome writing difficulties and produce more organized texts. the findings of this study also support the results of the previous research by ernidawati & sutopo (2017), who discovered that both high and low-motivated students could use a mind map to develop ideas in writing. however, some participants in this study thought that the mind map was ineffective for them. the factors could be related to their proficiency level and learning modality. if the participants lack language skills, they are likely unable to create mind maps and prefer to develop ideas by stacking notes. participants perceptions about the most effective mind map components even though buzan & buzan (2009) stated that ideally, a mind map contained branches, pictures, colors, keywords, and symbols, this research showed that the participants only used three of the components effectively, namely (1) the keywords, (2) colors, and (3) branches. the keywords in the mind map assisted them in widening their arguments. using the keywords made developing sentences in the text more accessible, according to 47% of the participants who agreed or strongly agreed with this statement. they overcame writing challenges and could recall the sources they had read. since each word in the mind map could be interpreted from different angles, it helped to strengthen participants' critical thinking and creative writing abilities. the participants mentioned that the mind map's branches, in addition to the keywords, were essential for the creation of ideas. sixty percent (60%) strongly agreed, while 33.3% agreed that they could develop more branches in their mind maps after repeatedly practicing. the mind map's branches contained the main points of arguments that they would explain in the text. the connection between the branches and the main topic also helped them comprehend the direction of the development of their writing. the branches made it simpler to comprehend how the various components of the mind map connected. the other component mentioned by the participants as the most substantial one in the mind map was colors. the mind map had color groupings that represented a topic development. since each group of branches shared the same color, it was easier for the brain to concentrate on related claims, making the idea clusters stand out clearly. the variety of colors http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 140-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license also increased writing motivation, especially for visual learners. conclusions and suggestion the result of this experimental study provides an overview of the potential of mind mapping as a prewriting strategy when writing argumentative texts. related to the research applied, the use of mind mapping at the prewriting stage contributed to a significant impact on the post-test scores of the experimental group participants. thus, the implications of the various components in the mind map were proven to uplift the quality of the argumentative texts produced and were a good strategy for developing ideas. the participants shared their perceptions of the most effective mind map components when developing ideas and the impact felt after using the strategy. overall, most participants mentioned that they had significantly improved their writing skills, and it was easier to write an argumentative text by creating mind maps in the prewriting stage. this research also found that the participants only needed 2-3 components of keywords, branches, and colors to create effective mind maps. when using a mind map and its components, the participants practiced exploring content which involved thinking skills to organize their ideas in a clear structure. the concrete structure in the mind map helped the participants distinguish the ideas in the text. when the writing structure is presented in a systematic flow, it is easier for participants to develop their ideas, which also impacts time efficiency. due to the various advantages of mind mapping, it is recommended to implement this strategy in the classroom writing processes. it enables students to write an informative and firmly structured text. mind mapping can be classified as a student-oriented strategy because it allows students to explore the information they want to know freely. therefore, they can find and learn new knowledge independently. the participant perspectives on mind mapping in this study showed the importance of considering the application of mind mapping in writing practice. it is necessary because the participants might have their own learning modalities and preferences affecting their writing. mind mapping would be preferable among the participants with visual learning modality. on the other hand, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 141-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31848 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license participants with different learning modalities, such as auditory and kinesthetic, might choose different ways to develop ideas before writing the text. these factors must be considered so that mind mapping can be used effectively in a classroom setting by paying attention to all students' learning characteristics. if there are 3 writing exercises, the teachers can probably direct the students to create a mind map in 1-2 prewriting activities to combine various brainstorming strategies, especially mind mapping. long-term use of mind mapping has the potential to help students understand material with higher complexity. in future research, it would be interesting to test the mind mapping strategy in larger groups and combine it with other strategies to contribute to student writing skills development. references alluhaybi, m. 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(2016). mind mapping as a strategy for enhancing essay writing skills. the new educational review. 45. 137-150. https://doi.org/10.15804/tner.20 16.45.3.11 wette, r. (2017). using mind maps to reveal and develop genre knowledge in a graduate writing course. journal of second language writing, 38(58–71). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.20 17.09.005. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 160-181 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee students’ perception on the use of social media in learning english at tadulako university muh. arasy hairul*, nurhayati universitas tadulako, indonesia (arasyhairul@untad.ac.id) received: 07th april 2023; revised: 27th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract the purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions on the use of social media in learning english. the research design used in this study was qualitative research based on a case study approach, and the data were collected through interview transcripts and documents. the participants of this study were five students of the english education department of tadulako university selected purposively. the results of descriptive analysis showed that most of the students had positive perceptions on the use of social media in learning english. social media was believed to be helpful in improving students' english language skills. they stated that social media provides them with english content sources to practice their english skills, particularly listening, speaking, vocabulary, and pronunciation. moreover, social media offers a variety of english contents, allowing students to access and choose contents that they like anytime and anywhere. youtube and instagram are the most widely used social media platforms for learning english in receptive skills including listening and reading skills. key words: social media; students’ perception; learning english abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengeksplorasi persepsi siswa tentang penggunaan media sosial dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris. desain penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus. data dikumpulkan melalui transkrip wawancara dan dokumen. partisipan dalam penelitian ini adalah 5 orang mahasiswa jurusan pendidikan bahasa inggris universitas tadulako. hasil analisis deskriptif menunjukkan bahwa sebagian besar siswa memiliki persepsi positif tentang penggunaan media sosial dalam pembelajaran bahasa inggris. media sosial sangat membantu dalam meningkatkan kemampuan berbahasa inggris siswa. mereka menyatakan bahwa media sosial memberi mereka sumber konten bahasa inggris untuk melatih keterampilan bahasa inggris mereka, terutama mendengarkan, berbicara, memperluas kosa kata mereka, dan meningkatkan pengetahuan pengucapan mereka. media sosial menawarkan konten bahasa inggris yang beragam, memungkinkan siswa untuk mengakses konten bahasa inggris yang mereka sukai kapan saja dan di mana saja. youtube dan instagram adalah platform media sosial yang paling banyak digunakan untuk belajar bahasa inggris dalam keterampilan reseptif, keterampilan mendengarkan, dan keterampilan membaca. kata kunci: sosial media: persepsi mahasiswa; belajar bahasa inggris how to cite: hairul, m.a., nurhayati. (2023). students’ perception on the use of social media in learning english at tadulako university. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 160-181. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 161-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction social media is now rapidly changing the way people live in different aspects. nowadays, young adults spend much time on social networking sites to find information, knowledge exchange, and education. with the vast spread of various social media, it is utilized by educators and content creators to teach and share english lessons. teachers utilize social media to help them in assessing students or in providing supplementary english materials (lomicka et al., 2016). similarly, students also get benefits from social media because it provides them to access english learning resources. although social media is not directly created for educational purposes, it is used by many students to learn english. as a learner, studying in the classroom is not sufficient for them to improve their english proficiency. they want to expose to the english environment through video learning on social media. many accounts on social media seem to provide english lessons in an effort to make the language more pleasurable to learn. students and teachers also can form learning groups using social media platforms such as facebook and whatsapp to communicate and learn english (arumugam et al., 2019). social media is crucial in encouraging students to study english since it has a variety of elements that can spark their creativity and make learning enjoyable. students can discover words and phrases in whatsapp, telegram, and instagram english groups that help improve their speaking and writing skills for communication (hussain, 2012). english language learners can engage with native speakers using social networking sites like facebook, instagram, and youtube, as well as video-based communication services like skype and whatsapp. it exhorts educators to change their teaching approaches to be more engaging, adaptable, efficient, and studentcentered in so that pupils can develop their critical thinking abilities (asmara et al., 2019). using social media to provide courses is commonly thought to increase teaching and learning by giving students access to interactive information and better support services, such as tutoring and feedback (martnez et al., 2009). moreover, students are able to find out english learning in instagram, facebook and youtube. they can follow the accounts which focus on sharing all about english and specific content such as vocabulary, grammar, speaking and pronunciation. most of social media are provided in english language, so it assists students http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 162-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to learn english such as well as practice speaking with native speaker around the globe and exchange idea in chatting and giving comment. english learners are utilized social media to communicate to foreigner and they believe that mobile learning can facilitate them to learn anywhere and anytime (ayuningtyas, 2018). most students utilize social media because it is an interesting platform to learn which display audio visual and easily access on mobile phone. social media provides a wide range of learning model where students can learn not only limited to picture but also video and audio recording, this offers students to learn based on their learning style and promotes studentscenter learning. efl students could benefit from using social media as a learning tool to practice their english both inside and outside of the classroom (omar et al., 2012). hence, the students can learn english more convenient and easier than using other media. throughout the social media, students can develop their english knowledge and practice the skills from other people, as well as encourage students to learn independently. due to the widespread the use of social media utilizing by millennial students, the researchers are eager to find out students’ perception on the use of social media for learning english and how students use social media in learning english since they devote more time to use social media than reading english book in the library. several studies have been conducted in the same field as the present study. research social media affects learning english by alfadda (2020) that revealed that instagram offers a useful setting for immersing students in the english language and may be especially useful for vocabulary instruction. although instagram latter may be more helpful in learning, students’ interest and motivation may increase with simpler lessons. if students are not interested in or motivated to engage with a lesson then learning is not likely to occur. erzad et al., (2018) conducted a study that revealed that concerning the social media, it was found that social media use is really beneficial for students. they can learn, practice, and imitate from the video on youtube as well as learn about english songs, grammar, and idiom in which english is used by native speakers. this platform can provide them to practice their english anywhere, anytime. they consider themselves extremely fortunate to be living in the millennial era, where everything is quickly and easily accessible. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 163-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hamad, (2017) conducted a study. the results showed that the use of social media also helps students develop their motivation for learning, self-confidence, and linguistic proficiency. both their vocabulary and their oral communication abilities have improved, according to the participants, speaking and pronunciation were the two language skills that most significantly improved. because some of the films were produced by native english speakers who are also english language teachers, it provides them with an example of how to pronounce english in a way that is recognized and understandable. it revealed that there are several benefits of using whatsapp group for learning english. they are: whatsapp group can be used as a means of one of the reachable sources for learning english, whatsapp group is considered as one of the best media for practicing english in a relaxed and unstressed situation. whatsapp group enables teacher to directly address students' errors and mistakes by providing them with feedback that is helpful in identifying students' errors and mistakes in sentence formation. those findings from the previous studies showed that social media has given many advantages for the students to improve their english skill. the utilization of several platforms on social media also provide some benefits for students since they can watch, listen, imitiate, and review the video from different social media platform. however, those previous studies did not investigate the students’ perceptions and challenges toward online peer feedback practice, which made it different from this study. this study was designed to explore students’ perception on the use of social media for both self-directed study and guided study in learning english via online. method research design in this research, the researchers applied qualitative research with case study approach. according to starman (2013), a case study is a qualitative study approach that examines a single person, group, or significant example to the particular case or to offer useful generalization. furthermore, a case study aims to comprehend certain actors or groups perception of events (cohen et al., 2012). also, creswell (2009; as cited in mohajan, 2018) stated that case study is defined as a research which explores a program, an event, an activity, a process, or one or more individuals genuinely to get a depthhttp://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 164-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license knowledge about the action that we want to explore. population and sample the study was conducted at tadulako university. the population of this study was english education department students’ batch 2019. the researchers chose the students because they are social media active and have gadgets, so they have a lot of experiences in using social media for learning. the sample of the research was purposive sampling. purposive sample is "a fundamental essential of concerns to the objective of the research, (ary, et al, 2010). instruments and data collection the primary instrument used in this study was interview guideline and document. the researcher conducted interview toward several informants and combine data collection from digital document. since the study is a case study, therefore the researcher applied in-depth interview technique as the primary technique and utilized document as supplementary data source. the use of document in this research was to get valid source of research and support her research. those methods were combined to gain the detail information. interview provides an opportunity for the researcher to listen to views or experiences of the respondents for a period of time and to ask investigative questions to explore more ideas (harding, 2013). in this research, the researcher interview participants was conducted to ask 5 students as the interviewee. the questions were asked to the participants for about 40 to 60 minutes and the setting of interview was done via zoom meeting. data collection and analysis the data analyzed using qualitative method by presenting the result of interview transcript and document review. this data was analyzed based on interactive model of analysis promoted by miles and huberman (1994). there were three different types of this model including; data reduction in this part, the researcher provided the procedure of assessing the data through the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, and transforming the data. the data was gathered from the interview and documents. therefore data reduction is needed to make the data clear and easy to use. then, to reduce the data, the researcher focused on research question which is students’ perception on the use of social media for learning english. the data which is not related to it is set apart. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 165-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data display data display means an organized, compressed assembly of information that allows conclusion drawing. data display helps to comprehend what is happening and to analyze further based on that understanding. the data display in this research used brief notes and narrative text. drawing conclusion drawing conclusion is the last step of data collection which should follow data reduction and data display before (miles and huberman, 1994). moreover, in this research, the researcher starts to decide the important variables to draw in the conclusion. as a result, the final conclusion fulfilled by valid and consistent the evidence that has been collected. findings and discussion findings the researchers present research findings as the answer to the problems of study stated. students’ exposure of social media can be divided in five categories and students’ perception on the use of social media can be divided in eight categories. there are described below: students exposure of social media in this section, the researchers elaborate the data analysis from the interview and documentation. the researchers asked participants’ documentation during learning english through social media in order to check and confirm the data from interview. the students’ screenshot of learning english in social media is supplemental information as a part of this study to prove that whether they have learned english through social media. she gained the document of students’ activity learning english after the interview session. respondent 1 (ant) respondent 1 follows aarons english and kampong inggris in instagram to learn about phrases, grammar, and vocabulary. in youtube, she subscribes jenbarangan and ayn bernos to watch english conversation and learn some phrases. she spends about four-five hours per day in social media for learning english. throughout these social media, she states that she also studies how to deal with her nervousness during speaking english in front of public and get some suggestions and tips to improve her speaking skill. moreover, she has a facebook http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 166-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license group called camp confidence to practice both speaking and writing skill with member of group across the world. respondent 3 (ayn) ayn follows native speakers’ accounts in instagram who are able to speak indonesian. she learns vocabulary, phrases, idioms, and pronunciation in instagram that appears in her timeline. she watches english video and learns several phrases and vocabularies in guruku mr.d and aarons english account. she also finds out the captions in english so they know how to build up the sentences. respondent 3 (nsa) nsa learns english through instagram and youtube. in instagram, she follows kampung inggris and bbc learning english, while in youtube, she subscribes mmm english and english with lucy as a native speaker. these two accounts provide various english skills and components, ranging from speaking, vocabulary, grammar, idioms, reading, pronunciation, and listening. from those accounts, she spends about two hours to learn english and looks at other pictures to have fun. the way of her learning strategy is to watch the video and take some notes of new vocabulary as well as apply some vocabularies in daily activities. she enjoys learning from those accounts; the learning video is easy to understand as well as the video is only in short duration. respondent 4 (che) respondent 4 follows several accounts in social media such as, zenius education, english with gema, english with nab, and english with lucy. from those accounts, she learns about speaking, reading, vocabulary and listening. she downloads the video and learns by watching it. she mostly uses instagram and whatsapp in learning english due to the learning at campus is conducted via online, so most of her lecturers send the lesson in whatsapp. the way of her learning strategy is downloading the learning video in youtube then watching it and taking notes while watching. she studies english lesson not only when she has assignment but she also makes use of their time to watch youtube to know new insight. she utilizes youtube not only for learning english but also she learns a lot of things to increase her knowledge. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 167-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license respondent 5 (nra) respondent 5 states that she follows account of global english pare, bbc learning english, bebiofc and poetsribe to learn english. she learns english vocabulary, grammar, idioms, speaking, and pronunciation from picture and video in instagram. there are a lot of captions written in english, so she learns from it how to up the sentences. she plays instagram to watch videos and accidentally english learning video past on her timeline then she follows the accounts. the way of her learning strategy in learning english is by watching short video and practice using the vocabulary. she selects the interesting account then she watches the video and learns from it. she loves learning from social media because the explanation of video is simple and easy to understand. using social media in learning is a way to make her progress in every single day since she checks her social media every morning to see the notification and some information. students’ perception on the use social media in this section, the researchers elaborated the data analysis from the interview. the researchers conducted a two-day interview with the students of english education department of tadulako university. the informants are five students batch 2019 then the questions were addressed to them. all of questions in these interviews were related to students’ perception on using social media for learning english. the reason students learn english through social media the researcher asked students why they learn english from social media. ayn, che and nsa state that learning english through social media is more effective and flexible because they spend a lot of time playing smartphone to see anything on social media. learning english through social media is more simple and easy as they mostly close to their smartphone and bring it everywhere. when english learning appears in their social media then they get new vocabulary and learn from it. che states the following statement: “learning english using smartphone is more flexible and effective because we are able to learn anytime as long as we have quota internet. the english lesson usually appears in the timeline of instagram and tiktok then we learn vocabulary and speaking from it.” from the explanation above, the reason that che learns english in social http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 168-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license media is due to the flexibility and efficiency of smartphone. she can access and learn english everywhere and anytime. social media makes her easy to learn something new and it is simple to bring it anywhere. most of english learning is available in social media and can be accessed all the time once they have internet connection. besides, students nsa and ant also gave their opinion toward the reason learning english from social media. they stated that learning english in instagram is more interesting because there are many videos and pictures available. the duration of video is also quite short so it makes easy to understand the lesson. nsa states the following statement: “learning english through instagram is more interesting, there are abundant of videos and pictures available. duration of video is also short so it makes more interesting” student nsa is interested to english in instagram since there a lot of awesome video learning. both nsa and ant are keen to learn english from social media due to the interesting videos and pictures displayed in instagram and tiktok. moreover, they tend to like short duration video since it easy to understand. as young millennial, they prefer to search and learn anything in a simple way and effortless. the benefits participants get after learning english in social media. the students ayn and nta shared their experience in learning english through social media. ayn states that her english ability improved as she used to learn english applying google translate, listens the pronunciation and find the words in dictionary. after learning english from social media, she rarely uses those tools again and knows exactly pronunciation of the words from video that she watches in instagram and youtube. due to the social media, nta gets the suggestion from account aybbernos how to improve her speaking skill. ayn states the following statement: “my english ability improve during learning english through social media. i learn english words from dictionary and google translate to know the pronunciation of the words. now, i rarely use them and i learn those elements of english from instagram and youtube” after learning english through social media, ayn’s vocabulary improved as she rarely open google translate to know the pronunciation of the words. ayn and nta utilized social media not only for sharing http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 169-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license photos but also learning english. in pandemic era, particularly, ayn usually plays social media for random things. she learnt from various videos in instagram account about grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. she also interacted with foreigner from snapchat messanger to practice writing english. in short, she made improvement in her vocabulary and pronunciation. in addition, nsa, che and nra shared their experience in learning english through social media. they state that learning english from social media is enjoyable because they can watch detail explanation from video and it more easily to understand the material. there are abundant of lessons can be leant and reviewed anytime and they are unlimited to access, such as vocabulary, grammar and listening. the social media also provides the opportunity to practice speaking skill. it is truly helpful to learn english from social media. nsa states the following statement: “i can enjoy learning from social media since there are many videos can be accessed to make the lesson simple to understand. also, the videos is unlimited so many things can be learnt, such as grammar and vocabulary. we also are able to practice speaking from social media.” student nsa states that learning english from social media promotes enjoyable learning and far from boring. social media brings more benefit in improving english skill. she can learn various english skills that she likes to improve. the lesson is also unlimited to access so that she is able to learn english anytime from videos in instagram and youtube. moreover, nsa and che share the same opinion that social media has many functions. they can watch english movie with english subtitle. the english material in video is also simple and easy to understand as well as promote fun learning. in addition, learning english from social media can boost students’ speaking skill because they are able to practice speaking with english native speaker from abroad. through whatsapp video call and facebook. social media motivated students in learning english nsa as a student of english department batch 2019 explains that learning english from social media can motivate her in learning because she can watch her adorable artists from video interview. this setting of video makes her motivated in learning. the video can be reviewed anytime she wants. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 170-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license “i think learning english through social media can motivate me because i can watch video interview of my favorite artists. it motivates me in learning” there are many video accounts on social media, especially instagram and youtube, which piques students' interests in learning english. she is able to select and search her adorable artist to watch video. she learns english from her favorite artists video interview to learn the phrase and vocabulary as well as pronunciation of the words. she also can review the video when she does not catch the meaning of the interview. other students ant, ayn, nra, and che shared their thought about their motivation in learning english from social media. they state that learning english from social media allows them to learn various skills needed for their improvement. massive accounts provided in social media makes them motivated in learning english since many options are available for learning, such as picture, video, and chatting with foreigners. the video is short and easy to understand the lesson. ant states the following statement: “the social media contain the interesting videos. moreover, during covid-19 pandemic we stay at home then our knowledge is also increased because the explanation is easy to understand” ant states that she is highly motivated to learn english through social media due to the explanation is quite simple and easy to understand. abundant of videos and pictures are available on social media make them motivated to learn english. moreover, the trainer explains the lesson in simple way and makes some jokes sometimes. not to mention, pandemic situation changes students method in learning with the use of technology utilization in which they spend much time on social media. at home, they open social media and scroll the instagram directly find english lesson. moreover, they are motivated in learning english because it is fun learning videos that they can utilize to improve their english skills. it is simple and easy to use for learning. kinds of social media that students use to learn english the researcher asked the participants what kind of social media they frequently use for learning english. ant, ayn and nra, as students of english department, explain that they use several kinds of social media in learning english. they use tiktok and youtube for learning vocabulary and phrases. ant also uses facebook and whtasapp to chat with http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 171-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license friends who love english together. throughout those platforms, she is able to post her problem in english such as self-confidence and other friends provide feedback how to deal with the issue. they also shared their experience how to build mental so that they can be confident in using english. ant mentions the following statement: “social media that i use for learning english are tiktok, youtube, facebook and whatsapp to interact with friends who love english, so through these platforms i can improve my english. our chatting on the whatsapp is about posting status regarding problem that we encounter such as self-confident and how to build mental for being self-confident.” from the information above, the researchers perceived that they apply different platform to learn english from social media based on needs. they learn vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and phrases from tiktok and youtube, while using facebook and whatsapp to practice chatting with her friends. ant not only learns how to write in english but also, she gets support from her friends how to deal with the problem that she encounters during learning english together using facebook and whatsapp. furthermore, che and nsa also shared social media that they use dominantly in learning english. che frequently uses whatsapp in learning english due to the lesson given by lecturer is mostly using whatsapp. she uses instagram and youtube as well to learn english. nsa learns grammar from youtube and vocabulary on instagram then she writes the unfamiliar words on her book. che mentions the following statement: “whatsapp is a social media network that i use frequently to learn english because in the current era, the majority of learning is done online, and the instructor sends the information via whatsapp. i also use youtube and instagram to practice my english” from the information above, che chose whatsapp as a facilitator in learning english. she selects whatsapp because that platform is mostly applied by lecturer in online learning. in addition, both che and nsa are keen to apply instagram and youtube to learn difficult vocabulary and grammar to improve her english ability. these platform preferences are chosen because young millennial tend to use both instagram and youtube as daily needs. moreover, these applications promote audio-visual aided learning that makes them enjoy learning english. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 172-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students’ duration learning english through social media students’ answers are varied. a part of them learn english for about three hours or even more than four hours in a day. nra and nsa state that they spend more than one hour per day. while che and ant state that they learn english in uncertain time in a day; it depends on internet quota and assignment given by lecturer. che mentions the following statement: “i am not sure how much time i spend learning english per day in social media but usually two hours in a day. it depends on the assignment given by lecturer. if i have a lot of homework, i do not learn english but only check the notification. it also depends on the internet quota” based on explain above, che’s duration in learning english per day is varied. sometimes she spends two hours or even more than on it. it depends on the internet quota and the task from lecturer. besides, ant learn depends on lecture. she usually watches tiktok for five hours in a day once she has speaking class. method of learning in social media most of participants said that they learn english by watching video in youtube. they utilize several platforms in social media for learning english such as instagram, youtube and tiktok. che downloads video from youtube and learns by watching it. nsa learns new vocabulary from instagram and she takes note for unfamiliar words. nra started from following an interesting account in tiktok and learns grammar, pronunciation, and idiom from the video. nsa mentions the following statement: “i usually watch youtube to learn about grammar that i do not understand and then i take note for new vocabulary from instagram.” every student has their own way of learning english from social media. the way of nsa learning english is watching youtube and instagram then she writes new words and the lesson in her notebook. overall, they watch youtube and learn from it. social media account that students follow in learning english students follow several accounts in social media for learning english. they follow a lot of accounts for different purposes in learning. the majority of students follow aarons english, kampung inggris lc account in instagram. another student follows bbc learning english and english with gemma to learn about grammar and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 173-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocabulary. they tend to follow the account that is relates to their learning needs. che states the following statement: “i follow the account learn english with gema, english with nab, and zenius education english in instagram. as well as whatsapp group for online learning from campus” from the explanation above, it can be seen that student che learn english using several platforms for different purposes depends on her needs. she studies speaking skill in youtube, while learning new vocabulary and idiom in instagram. whatsapp is used for learning english in campus in which lecturer send the lesson during in this pandemic condition. social media helps participants improving their english learning most of the participants said that social media can improve their english learning. as the informants, ayn, che and ant state that social media help improving their english ability. ayn lacks of confidence to use english previously but after learning english in social media her confidence and vocabulary improved. che said that she gets a lot of academic vocabulary and it is truly helpful to improve her learning english. che’s perception toward social media is presented below: “social media helps improving my english because i always listen to english video. previously, i lacked of confidence to use english but after learning in social media my confidence and vocabulary improved” from the statement above, che can improve her english skill because she often listens to the english video in social media. previously, she lacks of confidence to use english but after learning from social media her confidence improved. ayn, che and ant said that social media help them improving their english learning. they open social media every day and find out english vocabulary displayed in picture and video of english account that they follow. then they memorize the vocabulary and try to use it in daily activities. not to mention, ayn has improved her confident in using english. furthermore, nra and nsa mention that their speaking ability improved after learning english in social media. nra claims that using tiktok is able to create english conversation video with indonesian and native speaker, such as parody, reader news and flight attendant using english. nsa states that she is able to imitate native speaker saying about something in english. by that way, she http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 174-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license can improve her english speaking skill. nra mentions the following statement: “i can improve my english because i can create english conversation video with indonesian and english native speaker like parody, reader news and flight attendant. besides, i am able to imitate native speaker saying that’s why my speaking improved.” nra improves her english to watch conversation video through tiktok. both nra and nsa share the same opinion that social media help improving their speaking skill. they have different method to improve their speaking in social media. nra learns to create video conversation with native speaker in order to improve her speaking skill, while nsa imitates native speaker saying in english then she can improve her speaking skill. although they have different application and method in improving speaking skill, they agree that throughout social media they are able to improve their speaking skill. the result is also strengthened by in-depth interview result. it is found that all students had positive perceptions on the use social media for learning english and they perceive that social media are a good platform to improve their english skill. they think that social media motivated them in learning english. abundant accounts are available in social media especially instagram and youtube that makes student interests in learning english. the researcher didn’t find students’ negative perception toward social media for learning english. it is clearly understood that social media in efl learning motivates students, enhances their motivation, confidence, develops positive attitudes towards english, and consequently supports learning. social media could be utilized to bring structured learning activities into students’ casual spaces and potentially engage learners in learning english. thus, social media might be the need for english teachers to be applied in teaching as having potential uses for learning english as well as encourage students’ motivation in learning. discussion overall, it was proved that social media could significantly enhance students’ english skill. the analysis of interview shows positive response toward social media in learning english. however, on the other hand, they slightly found several people tend to be impolite and have negative comment during learning english through social media. students spent much time on social media to learn english during pandemic. it is supported by altam (2020) who stated that students’ time duration of using social media increased during http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 175-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license pandemic since they are confined at their home and have more free time. they stated that self-directed learning more efficient than guided learning by lecturers. some lecturers lack of creativity in teaching through whatsapp. they only send the lesson link into whatsapp group without providing clear instruction. this learning method makes students get bored to learn english. instead, students understand easily the lesson taught by instructor on social media because they are able to review and watch the video. there are some benefits of using video as a teaching tool. the learner enjoyment and engagement with the video-visual are kinds of the benefits. the learners can share their understanding about the video that they have watched and discussed with their friends. social media offers a variety english content, allowing students to access english content that they like anytime and anywhere. they expose to english on social media occurs in an atmosphere where they can interact with native english speakers, read news or english lessons given by others, and watches english videos. they can practice their language in a meaningful way, which can benefit their language development. language exposure is one of the elements that define successful language teaching and acquisition, claims (kozhevnikova, 2019). students’ response toward social media can help them in learning english. they are able to improve their speaking skill, vocabulary mastery grammar, and pronunciation from watching video conversation and picture in social media (faizi, 2013). students use social media not only to learn english but also to communicate, to text to each other, to share moments, or even to upload some pictures (mismara, j., 2019). these abilities might have been developed from their interaction with friends, reading the useful english learning as well as the engagement with multimedia. social media gives students an interactive environment in which to practice their english (basöz, 2016). students in millennial era are attracted to learn from social media because it is fun, interesting, effective, simple, and informative (maulina, 2018). students prefer to learn english from social media due to the flexibility and efficiency to access it in their phone as they mostly close to their smartphone and bring it anywhere. furthermore, most of students stated that they checked social media every morning to see if there is a notification or not. as students in millennial era, they prefer learn something more practical, easy, simple and fast. therefore, many http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 176-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students use social media for learning sources. the student stated that the use of social media enables them to practice english skills because they can make discussion and communication both oral and written english. learning english using social media can improve knowledge of the students (balbay et al 2017). it is clearly understood that social media in efl learning motivates students, enhances their motivation, confidence, develops positive attitudes towards english, and consequently supports learning. thus, social media might be the need for english teachers to be applied in teaching as having potential uses for learning english as well as encourage students’ motivation in learning. despite the fact that social media has numerous advantages and that the participants consented to utilize it in the classroom, they believe that social media has certain drawbacks. using social media, while studying has a negative impact on academic achievement (raut et al, 2016). students’ concentration in studying is also reduced due to the distraction caused by whatsapp notification and phone calling. youtube and instagram are the most widely used social media platforms for learning english in receptive skills, listening skill and reading skill. in the study that students perceived highly positive attitudes, motivation, self-confidence and acquisition of the english language skills after using social media. they learned new phrases, vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing, listening and speaking on social media. several students believe that youtube music videos help them with their pronunciation since they not only provide them a chance to practice, but they also help them expand their vocabulary. more audio-visual media using sound and verbal language, can only be understood by students who have a good level of word and language mastery (nurhayati et al, 2023). the study's findings suggest that learning english using youtube while watching english song videos is more effective. the study found that youtube music videos are a useful resource for learning english bacause it promotes audiovisual learning which makes students enjoy learning english. there are several suggestions for the researcher who will research in the same field. the further researcher can conduct another study to investigate the students’ perceptions and their challenges on using social media in learning english. the further researcher can conduct another study with a bigger sample such as the whole students in a school. classroom setting http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 177-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is still the great for learning english. he thus suggested that educators include social media in their lesson ideas (muftah, m., 2022). therefore, using social media as a learning tool could aid students in practicing their english outside of the classroom (omar et al., 2012). as students still believe that social media is promising to help them learn english, teachers may still utilize social media in the classroom. conclusions and suggestion based on the result and discussion above, the researcher concludes that the majority of students in this research perceived positive attitude toward this learning model through social media. it has many advantages because social media allow them to connect with their friends easily, to discuss common interest, to talk to foreigner, to share ideas, and most of them feel entertain enough through this site. moreover, there are many functions that student get in using this site. furthermore, they can use social media for learning english to improve their vocabulary, grammar, reading, speaking, listening and building sentences in english. most of students agreed that social media provides them an opportunity to communicate with english native speaker and get exposure to the english. language exposure is one of the elements that define successful language learning and acquisition (kozhevnikova, 2019). in addition, in accessing social media, most of students stated that they checked social media on their daily basis and spent most of their time on social media especially during pandemic, but some of them cannot access social media because they do not have any data plan so they cannot access it. despite social media has many benefits and most of students use it, social media has some weaknesses for them such as they get easily distracted on their study. finally, in regarding of the data which have been analyzed, the researcher concluded that using social media as additional support for learning english bring positive impact to the students. furthermore, students’ motivation towards english language learning improved via social media. in addition, the students positively agree to apply social media as a tool for learning english. hence, the positive perceptions of the students show the potential on using social media as additional support for learning english in order to increase students’ abilities in english language learning. furthermore, the researchers hope that this research can be continued by other researcher to study deeper into this research. hence, the researchers http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 178-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license suggest investigating the possibilities of using social media for improving the english skills. the researcher also suggests to students to use social media as one of tools for learning english. it is a good platform for learning english since there are a lot english accounts to improve their english and motivation. for teacher, the researchers suggest that social media is a worth platform in teaching english. social media can be used in teaching learning process in providing various media to boost students’ improvement in learning foreign language. acknowledgements the authors thank university of tadulako, which has provided the opportunity to conduct this research, and student who has 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(2016). use of social media in education: positive and negative impact on the students. international journal on recent and innovation trends in computing and communication, 4(1). http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee https://ejournal.bsi.ac.id/ejurnal/index.php/wanastra/article/viewfile/5065/3051 https://ejournal.bsi.ac.id/ejurnal/index.php/wanastra/article/viewfile/5065/3051 https://ejournal.bsi.ac.id/ejurnal/index.php/wanastra/article/viewfile/5065/3051 https://ejournal.unisnu.ac.id/je/article/view/819 https://ejournal.unisnu.ac.id/je/article/view/819 https://ejournal.unisnu.ac.id/je/article/view/819 https://ejournal.unisnu.ac.id/je/article/view/819 https://ejournal.unisnu.ac.id/je/article/view/819 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 181-181 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license starman, a. b. (2013). the case study as a type of qual research. journal of contemporary educational studies, 64(1), 28–43. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 140-157 the application of language learning strategies of high school students in indonesia alfian received: 13th august 2016; revised: 14th october 2016; accepted: 20th december 2016 abstract the purpose of this study is to investigate language learning strategies (lls) use by high school students in indonesia. by employing a mixed-method design, eighty participants responded to the strategy inventory of language learning (sill) questionnaire for the quantitative data. eight language learners were interviewed for qualitative data. the descriptive statistics using spss was used to analyze the questionaire, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the interviews. the results indicated that first; metacognitive, cognitive and social strategies use were reportedly employed the most frequently of all strategies. second, the strategies employed by males participants are not different with those employed by females third, successful students used more strategies than those of less successful students. the interview findings demonstrated that successful language learners mostly used practicing strategies ( practice four language skills). this study provides the implication for classroom practice, especially raising teacher’s awareness of their teaching methodology. key words: gender; high school; language learning strategies (lls); successful learners and less successful learners; sill abstrak tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui strategi-strategi pembelajaran bahasa yang digunakan oleh siswa sma di indonesia. penelitian ini menerapkan metode mix-method dimana delapan puluh telah mengisi angket strategi belajar bahasa (sill) untuk data kuantitatif dan delapan siswa telah diwawancarai untuk data kualitatif. data dari angket dianalisa dengan spss sedangkan metode analisis tematik digunakan untuk menganalisis hasli wawancara. hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa pertama; metakognitif, kognitif dan strategi sosial dilaporkan paling sering digunakan dari semua strategi pembeljaran bahasa. kedua, strategi yang digunakan oleh siswa lakilaki tidak berbeda dengan yang laporkan oleh siswa perempuan. ketiga, siswa yang sukses dalam pembelajaran bahasa menggunakan lebih banyak strategi daripada siswa yang kurang sukses. dari hasil wawancara didapatkan bahwa pelajar bahasa yang berhasil kebanyakan menggunakan strategi berlatih (berlatih empat keterampilan bahasa). penelitian ini memberikan implikasi untuk proses belajar mengajar dalam kelas, terutama untuk meningkatkan kesadaran guru terhadap pemilihab metodologi pengajaran mereka. kata kunci: jenis kelamin; sma; strategi belajar bahasa (lls); peserta didik yang sukses dan peserta didik yang kurang berhasil; sill how to cite: alfian. (2016). the application of language learning strategies of high school students in indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 140-157 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 141-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction learning english, whether in the classroom setting or a natural setting, requires strategies in order to achieve the goal of learning which is to be able to use the language well. for this reason, it is the learners responsibility to learn the strategies in learning. in fact, language learners develop their own ways and use various activities to learn consciuosly and unconsciously (okada, oxford, & abo, 1996). this ways and activities or actions in learning a language was previuosly known as language learning strategies (lls) (khosravi, 2012; grainger, 2012; oxford, 1990, 2003). lls has been categorized into several classification by the experts in learning language rubin (1987), chamot (1987, 2004) and chamot and o’malley (1994); ellis, 1994; oxford, 1990; wenden 1991. one of the most comprehensive and complete classifications is the classification by oxford (1990, 1995). she first places the strategies into the two broad categories proposed by rubin—direct and indirect strategies. however, unlike rubin’s direct strategies which consist of the cognitive and metacognitive, oxford’s direct strategies consist of three parts— memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and compensation strategies. her indirect strategies include metacognitive strategies, affective (emotional, motivation-related) strategies, and social strategiesin. in this case, oxford also separates the social/ affective strategies of chamot and o`malley (1994). ) into two independent categories; affective and social. oxford’s model has been developed into questionaire which is called sill, or strategy inventory for language learning, and has been widely used all over the world to conduct language learning strategy research. sill is the preferred model because it provides a clear hierarchical organization. it also cover a lot of strategy. moreover, the categories are comprehensive, appealing, and unique (purpura, 1999). the lls categories and lls in general plays a very essential role in the language learning process. it represents one of the most critical components in language learning. lls is ―especially important for language learning because they are tools for active, selfdirected movement, which is essential for developing communicative competence‖ (oxford, 1990, p.1). furthermore, gursoy (2010) who has stated that lls can also create a productive, student-centred learning environment in which students are encouraged to be autonomous or independent learners – learners who ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|142-157 can take control of their learning (benson, 2001; dickinson, 1995; hsiao & oxford, 2002). since lls has significance role in language learning, research on language learning strategies has been conducted by focusing on several related factors, such as gender, age, performance test scores, and cultural background, proficiency level (alfian, 2015; oxford & erhman, 1995; levine, reves, & leaver, 1996; kidd & marquardson, 1996; kaylani, 1996 khosravi, 2012; griffiths, 2003; alotaibi, 2004 ; holt, 2005). one of the focuses of the learning strategies research was to exam whether the learner’s proficiency is influenced by the use of specific strategies and the strategy use by successful learners. holt (2005) conducted a study which investigated the relationship between language learning strategies and language performance for chinese students who study at universities in the united states of america. he found that there is a significant difference between proficient learners and less proficient learners. the learners with a high level of english proficiency use almost all the language strategies more often. the most common category used was the compensation strategy which includes guessing meaning from context, using synonyms, and using gestures to convey meaning if the precise expression is uncertain in the conversation. this research supported the research conducted by griffiths (2003). griffiths’ research investigates the relationships between strategy use and students’ course level. he found out that the higher the level of a language learner the more frequent their use of strategies. oxford and erhman (1995) state that proficiency has a significant correlation with the strategies used especially cognitive strategies. however, they observed that not all strategies affect the proficiency of language learning. there are several possible reasons. first, learners may not use other strategies, such as metacognitive and social strategies frequently. second, the number of use strategy used might reflect the proficiency of the student. the third reason is probably that other kinds of strategies, besides the cognitive deepprocessing behaviors, might be relatively surface-level actions that can be learned more easily, and hence are more randomly scattered among the learners which makes them difficult to pinpoint. unlike oxford and erhman (1995), song (2004) found that metacognitive strategies were most ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 143-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 frequently used by the students when comparing to cognitive strategies. furthermore, this study also showed that the more strategies the learners use, the better they score on the college english test band 4. this finding is supported by the researchers who state that the strategies the learners use are correlated to language performance and proficiency (al-otaibi, 2004; baker and boonkit 2004; chamot & o’malley, 1994; griffiths, 2003; holt, 2005; oxford and erhman, 1995). another research study which was done by oxford (1996) shows that successful language learners use many strategies, such as metacognitive, cognitive, memory, and compensation strategies in learning a language. metacogntive strategies, as explained above, include organizing, evaluating, and planning the learning. cognitive strategies involve analyzing, reasoning, transferring information, taking notes, and summarizing. compensation strategies entail guessing or inferring, and memory strategies use grouping and structure reviewing. arce (2001) studied sixth to ninth grade spanish language students. she categorized them as being successful if they scored 85% or higher in their course and less successful if they scored 70 % or lower. she found that there was no notable difference in strategy use between the two groups. arce’s participants rarely used cognitive and metacognitive strategies. this contradicts the conclusions of oxford and erhman (1995), who found among adults at the foreign service institute that cognitive strategies are used more often and have a significant correlation with students’ language proficiency. this difference may imply the importance of a learner’s age in his or her choice of and ability to use various strategies. another research focus in lls was related to gender differences (kobayashi 2002). however, according to chaves (2001), the conclusions inferred from these studies are limited. it is important, also, when studying the differences in male and female approaches to methods of learning, to take into consideration the cultural context, general human, social, and cognitive development because males and females have great amount of differences. hybels-weaver (2006) argues that females and males have different listening habits or styles of audio processing. oxford (1993a) cited in kaylani (1996) states that ―females are more interested in social activities than are males; females tend to prefer less aggressive interaction than males; likewise, females are less competitive ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|144-157 and more cooperative than males‖ (p.79). gender differences have also been observed in academic and in personal or social self-efficacy. according to wigfield, eccles, and pintrich (1996), females have equal confidence in mathematics during elementary school; whereas males are more efficacious than females in middle school. in contrast, females and males have similar confidence in the language and arts fields. females show a greater achievement in languages and display better planning and goal-setting strategies, keep better records, and selfmonitor more frequently. gender differences in learning can be minimized and even eliminated when learners use the language and seek feedback about their capabilities and progress (pajares, 2002). dreyer and oxford (1996) state that women and men use different strategic patterns. strategic patterns are the explicit plans designed to improve one’s performance. females use such strategies more often than males, particularly metacognitive strategies such as planning tasks and organizing and evaluating progress based on set goals. in contrast to metacognitive and cognitive strategies, social strategies are put to equal use by females and males. in other words, research shows no differences of social strategies used by female and males (kaylani, 1996). this suggests that both males and females display similar social conduct within the context of target language learning. on the other hand, bidjerano (2005) investigates gender difference in selfregulated learning. he found that female students used more rehearsal, organization, metacognition, time management, elaboration, and effort in learning than males. he also found that there are no significance differences between males and females in terms of peer-studying, help-seeking, and critical thinking. it is clear that females’ success in learning is based on their organization skills and their more frequent use of metacognitive strategies. a study by nyikos (1990) concluded that understanding the individual variations in completing a task, such as how one learns mathematics or a new language, is by examining identifiable groups, namely, male and female. she insists that men and women may have radically different strategies in the area of verbal learning. females commonly have strong verbal skills, including speech ability, articulation, and fluency. chaves (2001) states that female foreign language students are generally more successful than male students. these ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 145-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 studies imply that males and females acquire new languages in different manners using different strategies. in other words, language learners may use different learning strategies selectively. in fact, in certain instances, each learner has his or her own set of learning strategies and uses them differently in terms choice and regularity (chamot & kupper,1989). this differences between male and females preferences in using lls need to be investigated in another culture context. therefore, based on the learners variation in language learning presented in the background of this study, this study investigates the lls use by efl high school students in indonesia. specifically, this study was conducted in order to find out the most lls use of the sill model’s six learning strategies (oxford, 1990), to exam the differences between male and female learning strategy preferences, exam the difference of the strategy use between successful (with scores 80% or higher) and less successful (with scores 70% or lower) students, and to investigate the strategies that the students report from the interview. method this study employed quantitative analysis of a translated survey questionnaire supported by follow-up interviews. supporting quantitative data with qualitative data improves the overall quality of the research (johnson & christensen, 2004). eighty students from two high schools in indonesia responded to the the strategy inventory for language learning (sill) questionaire version 7.0 (oxford 1990). eight successfull and less succesful students were interviewed. the participant were in their third year (grade 12) and have studied english for more than five years. it is intended that the sample from each school will consist of 20 of those students scoring 80% or more which were categorized as successful learners, and 20 of those students scoring 70 % or less which were categoorized as less successful learners on each school’s final english exam from grade 11. there were 80 students in all. data analysis from surveys was done by using the spss (statistical package for the social science) version 9.0. the t-test will be used to provide a statistical comparison across more than two groups: males and females, high scoring and low scoring students (pavkov and pierce, 2003). the interview results will be analyzed by thematic analysis (seidman, 2006). the interviews were transcribed, coded by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|146-157 content and categorized into the lls theory. findings and discussion findings this section discusses the findings of the research, which are presented according the four research objectives. the most strategy use of the sill the descriptive statistics was run to find the percentagge of strategy use in the six lls groupings mentioned, the results show that strategies use by participants in this study from the least to the most in six-strategy. this use of strategies in the six categories is summarised in table 3. table 1 shows that the metacognitive strategies are most frequently used by the students. thirtyfour out of 80 students, or 43 %, prefer the metacognitive strategies. social strategies rank second at 21%. the third and fourth ranking strategies preferred by the students are compensation at 14% and memory at 13% respectively. the strategies least commonly used by the students are affective at 5% and cognitive at 4%. the use of strategies by gender t-test was run in order to find out the different of the strategy use between males and females, the results are presented in table 2 below. based on the t-test, comparing males and females, the results show that there is no significant statistical difference between strategy preferences as described in table 2. significant statistical difference is achieved when the p value is less than .05 (p < .05). table 1. strategies used in the six categories by students strategies number of students % memory strategies cognitive strategies compensation strategies metacognitive strategies affective strategies social strategies 10 3 11 34 5 17 13 4 14 43 5 21 total 80 100 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 147-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 table 2. independent-sample t test comparing average use of strategies between males and females. strategies gender n mean std. deviation t df memory male 30 3.42 .52 -.75 78 female 50 3.51 .58 cognitive male 30 3.39 .53 -.075 78 female 50 3.4 .58 compensation male 30 3.59 .58 1.70 78 female 50 3.33 .69 metacognitve male 30 3.78 .81 -.66 78 female 50 3.89 .62 affective male 30 3.2 .55 -1.18 78 female 50 3.37 .69 social male 30 3.53 .67 -1.59 78 female 50 3.76 .60 **p < .01 *p < .05 table 3. independent-sample t test comparing average use of strategies between successful and less successful students in highly regarded high school. strategy success level n mean std. deviation t df memory s 20 3.52 .48 2.59* 38 u 20 3.19 .33 cognitive s 20 3.55 .59 2.51* 38 u 20 3.16 .37 compensation s 20 3.52 .61 -.45 38 u 20 3.60 .55 metacognitive s 20 4.08 .57 2.81** 38 u 20 3.42 .89 affective s 20 3.32 .62 -.01 38 u 20 3.32 .61 social s 20 3.82 .56 1.58 38 u 20 3.51 .67 s = successful (>80 ) u = less successful (<70) *p < .05 **p< .01 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|148-157 table 4. independent-sample t-test comparing average use of strategies between successful and less successful students in less favored high school. strategy student’s category n mean std. deviation t df memory s 20 3.36 .53 -2.69* 38 u 20 3.86 .64 cognitive s 20 3.22 .54 -2.42* 38 u 20 3.65 .58 compensation s 20 3.11 .61 -1.75 38 u 20 3.49 .78 metacognitive s 20 3.76 .45 -2.24* 38 u 20 4.13 .59 affective s 20 3.04 .48 -2.45* 38 u 20 3.54 .78 social s 20 3.55 .58 -1.39 38 u 20 3.83 .70 s = successful (>80 ) u = less successful (<70) *p < .05 **p< .01 use of strategies by english proficiency the researchers ran independent sample t-tests to compare the average learning strategy uses of the successful to those of the less successful students in each school. the results are presented in table 3. the table shows the data analysis of the students from the highly reputed high school. the table reveals statistically significant differences (p < .05) in three of the six categories, that is, metacognitive, cognitive, and memory respectively. the successful students use memory, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies noticeably more often than the less successful students in this school. in fact, data revealed that metacognitive strategies were statistically significant at the p< .010 level, which indicates extreme significance. table 4 presents the analysis of data in the least esteemed high school. it displays t-test results comparing successful and the less successful students in this school. the table shows significant statistical differences ( p < .05) in four of the six categories, that is, memory, cognitive, metacognitive, and affective strategies. it is surprising that, in this school, less successful students are reported using these four strategies more often than successful students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 149-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the strategies that the students report from the interview the students interviewed used different strategies in improving their reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills as they could be seen in table 5. table 5. themes emerging from the interviews i type of reading strategy i reading magazine ii reading newspapers iii story book ii type of speaking strategy i making conversation with friends in english iii type of listening strategy i listening to english music ii watching movie iii memorize the lyric of the song iv playing game v watching english debate on tv iv type of writing strategy i ii writing diary in english iii writing new vocabulary the strategies these students use to improve their english differ from student to student and skill level to skill level. however, one interesting finding from the interviews is that one less successful language learner is much less aware of the learning strategies she used. one of the questions the researcher asked was, ―what language learning strategies can help you to improve language proficiency?‖ this participant answered, ―i don’t use strategies.‖ however, when the researcher then asked how she studies english, she answered by watching tv and listening to the radio. this participant reflects the broader trend of less successful students who were interviewed. another important finding is that the less successful learners do not use many different strategies in learning english. the successful learners answered the interview questions much more completely. they report using more strategies than the less successful learners. the findings from the sixteen personal interviews do support other sill survey research results. this also contradicts with the findings from questionnaire data in less favored high school. discussion the results of this study indicated that the most strategies use was metacognitive and social strategies. this supports the finding of most studies in language learning strategies in which the most strategy use by the language learners was metacognitive strategies (al-otaibi, 2004; baker and boonkit 2004; chamot & o’malley, 1994; griffiths, 2003; holt, 2005; oxford and erhman, 1995). this indicates that indonesian high school students prefer learning english by managing, monitoring and evaluating their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|150-157 learning and supporting language learning by making intereaction with other learners of english users (oxford, 1990). students using metacognitive strategies in their english studies usually plan, arrange, and evaluate their learning. aside from metacognitive strategies, students find many ways to use their english. students also like to learn english through interaction with other people, especially native speakers. not only do students learn the language but they also learn the speaker’s culture. this is a useful strategy in learning english since learning a language is very closely related with learning the culture. in terms of the use of strategies by gender, the finding of this study indicated that there is no significant statistical difference between strategy preferences. in another words, there were no significant values, both males and females tended to improve their learning by utilizing some mixture of all the strategies. for example, male and females tend to improve their learning by building social networks and managing their learning environments as well as being involved in the target language. the findings of this study contradict the past studies in which past studies have revealed that females tend to use more strategies than males (hong-nam and leavell, 2006; oxford, 1990; oxford & ehrman, 1995; oxford and burry-stock, 1995; politzer, 1983; oxford and nyikos, 1989). although there is no significant differences between males and females in the strategy use, the differences can be seen from the mean score of each strategy category in which females use more strategies than those of the males. reagarding to the use of strategies for english proficiency, the analysis indicated that the students from the highly reputable high school reveals statistically significant differences (p < .05) in three of the six categories, that is, metacognitive, cognitive, and memory respectively. the successful students use memory, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies noticeably more often than the less successful students in this school. in fact, data revealed that metacognitive strategies were statistically significant at the p< .010 level, which indicates extreme significance. while the results from the analysis of the data in the least esteemed high school displays that there is significant statistical differences ( p < .05) in four of the six categories, that is, memory, cognitive, metacognitive, and affective strategies. it is surprising that, in this school, less successful students are reported using these four strategies more often than successful students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 151-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the frequent usage of cognitive strategies by more successful students in refuted high school support the research of o’malley and chamot (1990) and oxford (1990). cognitive strategies are classified as direct strategies. this means that students use methods such as summarizing and reasoning which enable them to increase their english skills through many different means (oxford, 1990). examples of cognitive strategies include speaking, receiving and sending messages, analyzing, and creating structure for input and output, such as taking notes, summarizing, and highlighting. beside, cognitive strategies, memory strategies are also frequently used by the students in highly regarded high school. memory strategies are also categorized into direct strategies which means students used the strategies by involving themselves in the target language. in memory strategies, students try to recall and learn the language by memorizing the language. the way of memorizing the language being learnt can be by grouping, using imagination and employing action (oxford, 1990). the successful language learners at the highly reputed school also report using metacognitive strategies more frequently than any other strategy and was highly significant. metacognitive strategies are categorized as indirect strategies, which mean that students appear to manage their learning process and plan, organize, focus, and evaluate their own learning (oxford, 1990; borkowski et al., 1987). a student using metacognitive strategies will create learning plan for him/herself. for example, he/she may establish his/her personal learning style, then organize objectives and set goals. furthermore, he/she will evaluate his/her progress through, perhaps, self-evaluation. in term of the use of the strategies between succesful and less succesful learners, most previous research shows that successful language learners typically use more strategies than less successful language learners (song, 2004; griffiths, 2003; oxford 1996). the findings from the least favored high school are also opposite to the results found in the highly regarded high school in this study. regarding to the the strategy reported from the interview, the findings demonstrated that the strategies that the students use to improve their english differ from student to student and skill level to skill level. however, all the strategies the students use fit into chamot’s and oxford’s lls models. for example, most of the students conversed with ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|152-157 their friends in order to improve their speaking abilities. this exercise is classified under social strategies. meanwhile, the students who read magazines or newspapers to better comprehend written english must infer and summarize the content of their readings as they go and are therefore using a cognitive strategy. the students who take notes or write in their diaries are also using cognitive strategies. students report that they improve their verbal comprehension skills by listening to music and watching movies. they try to remember the conversations and expressions they hear, and, in this way, are using metacognitive strategies. so, the eight students interviewed report using mainly the cognitive, social, and metacognitive strategies. two of these type of strategies, cognitive and metacognitive had significant differences in the questionnaire data in highly regarded high school. therefore, the interview data lend support to the questionnaire result. from the interview result it seems also that students do not report additional strategies that fall outside the sill questionnaire and model. this may be because the participants of the study are high school students who have to learn at least 12 different subjects a week and thus, might not have enough time to develop other strategies. it is also likely that students do not consciously define the learning strategies they are using and therefore will not know how to expand on the process. this is because they are not taught specifically about the potential strategies they can use to study english. another reason students do not use a wider variety of strategies may be because not all efl students wish to become fluent and so do not use english in their daily lives (oxford and burry-stock, 1995). conclusion and suggestion this research explores language learning strategies of high school students studying english as a foreign or second language in indonesia. the findings show first that a majority of students use metacognitve most frequently in their learning. however, they report using all six strategies. second, there is no significant difference between male and female language learning strategy preferences. the males and females of this study use each of the strategies with a similar frequency. third, there are significant statistical differences between successful and less successful learners in the highly reputed high school. successful learners used more strategies than less successful learners, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 153-157|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 particularly memory, cognitive, and metacognitive. fourth, there are significant differences between the successful and the less successful learners in the least esteemed high school. less successful students in that school use more strategies than successful students. finally, the interview result support that cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies are use by most successful students. it can be concluded from these results that first, english students should use all strategies particularly cognitive and metacognitive strategies. less successful language students should model the successful ones and use similar strategies for language acquisition. furthermore, english teachers should include in their curriculum the idea of consciously using strategies to improve foreign language study and retention and should encourage their students to practice strategies regularly. second, the awareness of how students approach assigned tasks in foreign language study might help teachers better meet and understand students’ needs and methods of learning. at the same time, teachers may decide to introduce students to new strategies and approaches. this will expand the students’ learning potential. third, teachers also need to be aware of the strategies used by less successful students, and should model strategies that can help them in learning. therefore, teaching students how to use strategies will better meet students learning needs. however, the teaching of strategies means that new curriculum and materials need to be created. fourth, this study’s conclusions generally support previous research conducted using the same questionnaire in countries such as the usa, china, korea, japan, and saudi arabia. it is recommended that further study on language learning strategies could be conducted on the spesific skills, such as, strategy use in improving speaking, reading, writing, listening and writing. references al-otaibi, g,n. 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(1996). development between the ages of 11 and 25. in d. c. berliner, & r. c. calfee, (eds.), handbook of educational psychology (pp. 148-1850). new york: simon & schuster macmillan. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 35-49 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee multimodal analysis of tv commercials in teaching advertisement: stimulating students’ critical thinking ima kusumastuti received: 15th march 2018; revised: 25th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract advertisement has a big influence in our life as it appears anywhere each day through magazines, newspapers, radio, and even television. the advertisers use writing, visual images, speech, or music as creative and persuasive use of multimodality to promote their products. one of the attractive targets to promote their products is teenagers which are identified as people ages 12 to 17. this makes the study of multimodality in advertisement for students, mainly tv commercials, becomes important to be conducted at school. stimulating students’ critical thinking to become aware of persuasive strategies through multimodality in tv commercial is needed. this study is focusing on the analysis of multimodality namely language, visual image, and music illustration used in tv commercials and its use to stimulate the junior high school students’ critical thinking at english as foreign language (efl) classroom. key words: advertisement; tv commercials; multimodal analysis; critical thinking abstrak iklan sangat berpengaruh besar dalam kehidupan kita sehari – hari karena iklan muncul dimana saja seperti dalam majalah, koran, radio, dan bahkan televisi. para pembuat iklan menggunakan, tulisan, gambar, kata-kata, ataupun musik untuk mempromosikan produk mereka. penggunaan multimodal secara kreatif dan mengajak mendukung usaha mereka dalam menawarkan produknya. salah satu dari pasar yang mereka bidik adalah para remaja yang berusia 1 sampai dengan 17 tahun. hal ini membuat penelitian dalam hal multimodal pada iklan untuk para siswa, terutama pada iklan tv, menjadi hal yang penting untuk diajarkan di dalam kelas. menstimulasi pemikiran kritis pada siswa agar mereka peduli akan strategi persuasive iklan lewat pengajaran analisa multimodal pada iklan tv sangatlah diperlukan. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisa multimodal dalam cakupan bahasa, gambar, dan ilustrasi music yang digunakan dalam iklan tv serta penerapannya dalam menstimulasi pemikiran kritis dari siswa sekolah menengah dalam kelas pembelajaran bahasa asing. kata kunci: iklan; iklan tv; analisis multimodal; berpikir kritis how to cite: kusumastuti., i. (2018). multimodal analysis of tv commercials in teaching advertisement: stimulating students’ critical thinking. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 35-48. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 36-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction advertisements (ads) as a kind of discourse, in general, can be divided into three types; printed (such as ads in newspaper or magazine, poster), audio-ads (radio), and audio-visual ads (tv or internet). basically, advertisement is intended to communicate a certain message through the appropriate use of language, visual image, and even sound to achieve its persuasive intention to make people join, buy, or use their product or service. advertisement, in indonesia, is used as one of the sample materials of short functional text which belongs to the curriculum aspect for the ninth grade. for that reason, then, it is important for the students to know better about the advertisement, especially for tv commercials, not only from its structural text, but also from other sides such as its language, visual image, and also music illustration used to support its performance mainly in audio-visual ads. as the rapid improvement of information and technology, the students become global consumers of variety media which exist in their everyday life. they begin to get used to audio-visual information including in learning. today’s teachers begin to face the choice of current teaching learning development; textbook-based class which appear in question-answer session or authentic materials-based classes which reveal the students’ creative and communicative way of learning. karpova (1999, p. 18) affirms: “many textbooks create a climate for socially isolated learning . . . . teachers need more materials that help students to become thoughtful participants in a socially rich environment for learning and that feature everyday uses of english." it shows that there are many researchers who consider the benefits of authentic materials, including tv commercials, to be used in english as foreign language (efl) classroom. lawrence (1987, p. 837) states that tv commercials “provide a refreshing alternative to the traditional textbook”. authentic materials will be very helpful for the students to know more about the target language that they learn, not only in the form of theoretical structures but also how they are used in real life communication. the use of tv commercials in language teaching offers opportunities for students to analyze what they see, hear and read, develop ideas, and interpret the images. students may also understand what the message is trying to communicate easier and search in their minds for what they already know and compare it with what they are seeing. during the thinking process, students decide what else they want to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 37-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license know about the product, what to say about the product, and how to rationalize their opinion about the product especially in its persuasive purpose through language, visual image, and also the music illustration which the ads use. besides, the students will become aware of their own reaction as consumers. there are several ways that are used by the ads to convey its persuasive messages such as true-life messages, scientific/technical facts, comparison, life evidence, animation, personality symbol, imagery, humor, dramatization, and the combination of these ways (belch, 2012; fill; 2009; duncan, 2005). therefore, those ways that discuss above indicates the existence of multimodality which is covered by message through storytelling, attention-getting, and memorable things in which the language, picture, and also music illustration is used. the students’ critical thinking is also required during the classroom. tv commercials used in the learning process become the source of materials which can be explored by the students in order to get the deeper understanding of advertisement. critical thinking skills are the form of ability to think pensively, to give opinion proficiently, and to decide what information is reliable and what action should be taken during reasoning and problem solving as well (ennis, 2002; gut,2011). there are many previous research studies which have studied about multimodality used in tv commercials and also the role of advertisement in efl classroom, but the research about multimodality analysis of tv commercials and its use in efl classroom are scarcely found. for that reason, then, the use of multimodality in tv commercial production took the researcher attention to study about the use of multimodality analysis of tv commercials which focused on teaching ads for efl classroom. the language, visual image, and also the music illustration which used in tv commercials, especially in fast food ads, can be an interesting source of materials for the ninth grade students (age of 14 to 15 years old) to explore. besides, by using multimodal analysis, the students can be able to explore deeper about tv commercials and to stimulate their critical thinking on their opinion of tv commercials’ persuasive intention in persuading the customers. advertisement, nowadays, becomes a part of daily life. people can easily find the advertisement everywhere, such as; in newspapers, magazines, televisions, and also internet. as teenagers are the part of the attractive target of the advertisers, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 38-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the design of the advertisement itself becomes more and more creative and persuasive. lutcavage (1992) also proposed that the language which is used in the advertisement is real and modern. this makes the teenagers, in which most of them are students, attracted and affected of what the advertisers are promoted. this situation makes an advertisement, especially tv commercial, being an attractive material to be analyzed and discuss at school. in television commercials, words are often repeated in the audio and visual channels, thus providing further support (lutcavage 1992: 34). the subject matter of ads also ties in well with many common topics in language teaching, such as sports, transport, food, clothing, and environmental issues (davis 1997: 13-4). by providing a visual context, ads make it easier for learners to understand the language (davis 1997: 14). related idea is that because ads are creative, they stimulate learners to be creative (chee 1994: 155). for that reason, tv commercials can be a very interesting material used in teaching learning process, mainly in efl classroom. lawrence (1987, p. 837) states that tv commercials “provide a refreshing alternative to the traditional textbook”. by using the authentic materials like tv commercials, the students can learn advertisement in an attractive way. they are able to have a deeper understanding of tv commercials as audio-visual advertisement by using multimodal analysis. gee (1999,2011) mentions that multimodality such as speech, visual image, and also music illustration probably emerge in commercials, music video, or video games. furthermore, iedema (2001,2003) identifies multimodality as the means of showing up the significance of figuring out semiotics other than the language in use such as figure, motion, etc. kress (2010) states that picture, words, layout, music, motion, speech moving image, soundtrack, and 3d objects are modes that contribute to take meaning and therefore, multimodality can tell the utilization of modes. those matters, then, are used to analyze tv commercials and used for the teaching materials in advertisement lesson in efl. by using multimodal analysis, the students’ critical thinking is hopefully revealed. critical thinking skills are the form of ability to think pensively, to give opinion proficiently, and to decide what information is reliable and what action should be taken during reasoning and problem solving as well (ennis, 2002; gut,2011). in line with the title and the background of the study, then, two research questions are formulated as follows: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 39-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 1. how are persuasive language (spoken and written), visual images, and music illustration, as the components of multimodality used in tv commercials? 2. how is multimodality in tv commercials used to teach advertisement and to stimulate the students’ critical thinking? method the study focuses on using multimodal analysis of tv commercials to teach advertisement in efl classroom. the participants are the 9th grade of junior high school students. the researcher decides to take the data from four fast food tv commercials for analysis and uses them to teach advertisement in the efl classroom. the following are the tv commercials which are selected to analyze the data: 1. kentucky fried chicken (16 seconds). the video was published on december 29, 2017. 2. wendy’s (31 seconds). the video was published on january 2, 2018. 3. mcdonald’s (16 seconds). the video was published on april 6, 2018. 4. burger king (16 seconds). the video was published on april 23, 2018. after gaining the source of the data, the researcher watched a couple of time, analyzed each tv commercial separately and identified the multimodality used in those tv commercials. from each tv commercials, then, the researcher recorded them and divided them into spoken and written language, visual image, and music illustration. the collected data then are labeled with ads 1’s data; ads 2’s data; ads 3’s data; and ads 4’s data. based on the data which have gained, the researcher then constructs the example of teaching procedure that will describe how tv commercial is used in teaching the advertisement of efl classroom. finding and discussion findings the analysis of ads 1’s data language written text: there is only short written text at the end of the video which emphasized in the name of the product (kfc pot pie) and the price of the product ($3.99). those written texts give the people who watch this tv commercials message to be reminded of what is offered and its price which is considered as a low price for a highquality food. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 40-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license spoken text: the monologue that used in this tv commercial highlighted the product, kfc pot pie, as the valuable food with the economic price. it is purposed to build consumers’ perception that the product, with very nutritious and high-quality ingredients, can be bought only with a very cheap price. that is the reason why the last word which the narrator said in the ads is the name of the product and its price. visual image the first screen illustrates the founder of kfc, colonel sanders, who sat down in front of the hearth and had a talk with his wife about the newest kfc product pot pie. the next screen shows a kfc pot pie which is served freshly from the oven. it shows clearly how the food was made with very healthy and good quality of ingredients. on the next scene, the colonel demonstrates the contrastive value of the product and the price that the consumers should know about in a humorous way of storyboards. the persuasive deliverance message is very well distributed in this tv commercial as the colonel has very great influence for most of the people who have known kfc. besides, the healthy food visual image which uses in the ads can make the people interested to consume it since the healthy food is one of the primary needs of the people nowadays. music illustration the commercial uses instrument music illustration to build a classic atmosphere which describes a traditional food offered as the new menu in kfc. the sound of the music is very lower than the monologue brought by the colonel because they want to create an impression of what the colonel said of the new menu rather than attracted the people’s attention by using music illustration. however, the music played in this commercial successfully builds a classic atmosphere for the new product; pot pie. the analysis of ads 2’s data language spoken text: the monologue of wendy’s tv commercial only focuses on their new menu package and its price (4 for $4). the narrator gives the detail of the new package which cost only $4 for 4 variances menu which are 3 prior menus and 1 optional menu. the commercial emphasizes in a low rate of price with many variances that the customers can get in a package of the menu. the monologue is successfully communicated since without watching the image, people can easily understand the price and also the variances of the menu which are offered. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 41-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license written text: there are only two kinds of written text which are displayed in the commercial. the first one is the new menu package (4 for $4) that is written in the large font size with red color. this strategy is used to attract the people attention when they are watching this commercial. the other text is about the name of the optional menu that the people can choose if they take this package. there are several optional menus the people can choose for every package of prior menus. many variances of the optional menu can make the people curious to try every single variance until they have tried all the variances given in the menu package. visual image the visualization of this commercial is purposed to give the people the real image of the menu which they can choose with only $4. the clear image which displays one by one is aimed to invite the people to buy the menu that is appropriate with their want and needs. besides, the image is displayed in a big scale picture that makes the people have an impression that the product is bigger than the other product at the same price. many variances of the optional menus also look as if there are many products which they may get with a very minimum price. there is no actor played in the commercial. this makes the people cannot compare the real size of the product in real life. music illustration the commercial is likely purposed to teenagers as the advertisers use poprock music for the illustration. the beat of music represents the soul of the youth. it helps the commercial enhance the attention of teenagers for the product. it also builds an impression that the product is proper for the youth’s meal. the analysis of ads 3’s data language written text: the only text which written clearly in the commercial is 2 for $4. the commercial emphasizes its message in the economic price that the consumers can get for more valuable foods. there are three variances that the customers can choose based on their own taste. spoken text: the monologue describes what the customers can get with only $4. two mixes and match stuff of the bun are offered as they want. the loud excited voice of the narrator creates a very great influence which convinces every people that everything that said by the narrator is real. the repetition, which is used by the advertisers, very well delivers so ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 42-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license that the people will easily remember the messages. this builds impression for the customers to be more likely to buy it. visual image the visual image of the video is very simple. the first scene shows the customers all variances that they can choose and the text which displays the name of the product. the next three scenes illustrate the variances in details, the crunchy bun and its stuff. the last scene shows all variances and the text of the product name. since the visual image is simply set in this commercial, but it brings a very good persuasive message which can be easily seized by the people who watch it. people can understand the message effortlessly and simply take interest in the commercials. the scale of product which used in this commercials also gives big influence to the people as the scene is focused on the state of the foods that the advertiser makes it look bigger and make the product seems very tempting for the customers. music illustration the energizing beat of music represents a very fresh beginning of the day since the product is labeled as a breakfast menu. it builds people consideration that if they take the product as their breakfast, they will start their day with a fresh meal from the product and it will make their day better. the music illustration also ends with mcdonalds’ jingle which has been familiar with the customers’ daily life. the analysis of ads 4’s data language written text: the commercial starts their commercial with the name of their new products, king collections; bacon king and double quarter pounds king, which are written in the large font size to attract people attention. besides, the advertisers also use their jargon “my way”. by using this phrase, it seems like the advertisers try to convince the customers that if they do not consume this product means they are a nerd and left by the others who have consumed it. but in the middle of the scene shows a text which typed in very small and transparent font “weight based on precooked patties”. the sentence is not mentioned in an oral way or written clearly in the scene because the commercial emphasized in the bigger performance of the product with the standard price. repetition is also used in this commercial in the beginning and the end of the scene. the aim is to make the people always remember the product and its excellence. spoken text: the advertisers use a monologue that focuses on rich stuff of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 43-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the product. extra big patties which offered in the commercial become the prior thing to gain people’s attention. repetition of the product name used to familiarize it with the customers. by replicating it more and more, the customers will easily remember the product. visual image the commercial uses full-screen visual effect for the picture of the foods. the first scene shows the people two big patties grilled with plenty of seasoning as their new product is emphasized in extra big patties. the next slides still show the stuff of the burger which are heaped one by one in the very large size of scene. the big visual image used by the advertisers makes the people are able to see it clearly and being convinced to buy the product. selective editing is also used for this commercial, as the stuff heaped one by one properly on the bun. it makes the product seems exciting to see and persuade the people to consume it as the stuff made from very fresh ingredients. music illustration the relax music illustration is chosen by the advertisers to represent how the burger lovers enjoy their new product. the product is made of the double stuff of 100% beef that the customers who really like burger can enjoy the food. discussion in brief, the analysis of ads 4’s data, kfc tv commercial for the new product “pot pie”, uses multimodality components such as; written and spoken language, visual image, and also music illustration to express their persuasive purpose toward their marketing target. this commercial emphasizes its work in the value of the colonel which represents the high quality of food ingredients in their traditional food “pot pie” in a low rate of price. it purposes to persuade the target market to have such nutritious food with economic price. in analysis of ads 2’s data, wendy’s tv, by using multimodality components (spoken and written language, visual image, and music illustration), persuasively invites the target market, the children and teenagers in case, with their varied menu in one package with economic price. the visual image dominates the commercial as they want to emerge from their variances of the menu that the target market can choose. by providing a visual context, ads make it easier for learners to understand the language (davis 1997: 14). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 44-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license eventually, the advertisers of mcdonalds’ tv commercial in ads 3’s data, use multimodality components such as; spoken and written language, visual image, and also music illustration, in their ads of the new product 2 for $4. this commercial put emphasis on the variances of the stuff which represented with a very good visual image which describes fresh ingredients of the new breakfast menu. this way successfully brings an impression of the healthy menu that persuades the target market to take for their breakfast to start their day. in time, ads 4 also uses multimodality components (written and spoken the language, visual image, and also music illustration) in promoting the product. kress (2010) states that picture, words, layout, music, motion, speech moving image, soundtrack, and 3d objects are modes that contribute to take meaning and therefore, multimodality can tell the utilization of modes. visual image and spoken language dominates this tv commercial and effectively gets the people attention even persuade them to buy this product. full visual image of the product and the explanation of the ingredients make this tv commercial persuasively offering the product, particularly to the burger lovers. from all the discussion above, it is clear that tv commercials, as authentic materials for learning, have become attractive media in teaching advertisement in efl classroom. besides, the multimodality analysis which used in the learning process will give deeper understanding to the students about advertisement especially tv commercials. by understanding it deeper, the students are able to reveal their critical thinking in giving their opinion of the persuasive strategy used by the advertisers to promote their product. related idea is that because ads are creative, they stimulate learners to be creative (chee 1994: 155). for that reason, tv commercials can be a very interesting material used in teaching learning process, mainly in efl classroom. for more understanding, below the researcher includes the example of teaching procedure which the teacher may use in their learning process. tabel 1. the example of teaching procedures level : grade 9 (junior high school) overview : this teaching procedure helps students become more aware of the language and persuasive technique used in tv commercials along with its impact on their everyday life. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 45-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license level : grade 9 (junior high school) objectives :  make a distinction between information and promotion  identify the conventions of the same categories of tv commercial from different product  differentiate between illustration and reality  become aware of their reactions as consumers materials : four same categories of tv commercial from different product procedures : 1) what do the students know about advertisement (ads)? have the students write their responses based on these following questions:  what is advertisement/commercial?  why should a product be advertised?  what kind of commercials/advertisements do you know? 2) differentiate between tv commercial and information present the class with tv commercial in which the words are likely giving information and provide the students with these following questions:  is this the kind of ads or information?  why do you think so?  are there differences between ads and non-ads? present the other ads which clearly present a persuasive message. discuss it with these following questions as a guideline.  what is the difference between the previous ads?  what is the similarity?  what message are the advertisers trying to deliver? (whole class working in small group discussion and each group discuss one ads) 3) analyzing multimodality components provide the students with several same categories of ads and discuss with these questions as a guideline:  the advertisement is in fl, can you tell what the advertisement is saying?  do the words and visual image say the same thing?  is it live or cartoon?  is it the direct message or storyboard?  is there any logo/slogan which attracts attention? what are they?  analyze the color; layout, words, and music illustration. how do those elements make the ads more appealing? 4) identifying the hidden persuasive message provide the students with common strategies used in ads, such as;  bandwagon: everyone is buying it/ using it/doing it  testimonial: a famous person or authority claims the product is good  image advertising: a product is associated with certain people, places, and activities.  weasel: a promise is implied by using words like “usually” or “chance are”  omission: facts about the product are not told ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 46-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license level : grade 9 (junior high school)  repetition: saying it again and again  scale: making a product bigger or smaller  association: promising adventure, attractiveness, quality  name-calling: making the product seem better by using unpopular terms about the competition then, discuss the following questions:  mention one important thing about the advertisement!  what message is being conveyed?  which persuasive technique does the advertisement use to offer their product?  does the advertisement attract your attention? why is it so?  what would you do after watching this advertisement? 5) presenting ideas  every group present the conclusion of their discussion  for the whole class, the teacher takes a conclusion based on all presentation and give feedback to the discussion. implication this study focuses on teaching advertisement, especially tv commercials, which previewed by using multimodality analysis as the basic material for 9th grade students of junior high school. teaching advertisement is commonly conducted by analyzing its generic structure and social functions by using printed commercials such as newspaper or magazine advertisement. in fact, the students need more knowledge and understanding about advertisement itself as it becomes the part of their daily life and gives very big influence for their mindset. by using the multimodality analysis in teaching advertisement, then, will give the students more knowledge about how language, visual image, and music illustration that the advertisers set in tv commercials can be a kind of persuasive discourse which influences the people thinking and view in their life. in this way, the students will understand more about advertisement’s persuasive strategy; think critically about the attractive advertisement in which they meet in their everyday life and become aware of their decision as the consumers. conclusion advertisement, nowadays, cannot be separated with people everyday life. the rapid improvement in information and technology make advertisement becomes more creative and innovative. visual, audio, and even audio-visual advertisement like tv commercials become an important part of people life, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 47-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mainly in the decision making of buying, using, or consuming something. as advertisement is also the part of the material in efl classroom, the students should have more knowledge in that matter. tv commercials can be attractive materials to use in teaching and learning process as it contains spoken and written language, visual image, and also music illustration which can be analyzed deeper by using multimodality analysis. the students’ critical thinking is able to be explored more by using this method. by understanding more about persuasive strategy which revealed through language, visual image, and music illustration, the students will have their own opinion in viewing an advertisement from a different point of view. references belch, g. e. (2012). advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective (9th ed.). new york: mcgraw-hill/irvin, inc. davis, r. s. (1997). tv commercial messages: an untapped video resource for content-based classes. in picken, jonathan. (1999). state of the ad: the role of advertisements in efl teaching. elt journal volume 53/4: oxford university press duncan, t. (2005). principles of advertising. new york: mcgraw-hill/irvin, inc. ennis, r. h. (2002). goals for a critical thinking curriculum and its assessment. in kong, siu c. (2014). developing information literacy and critical thinking skills through domain knowledge learning in digital classroom: an experience of practicing flipped classroom strategy. computer & education 78 (2014) 160173. fill, c. (2009). marketing communication: interactivity, communities and content (5th ed.). england: prentice hall. gut, d. m. (2011). integrating 21st century skills into the curriculum. in kong, siu c. (2014). developing information literacy and critical thinking skills through domain knowledge learning in digital classroom: an experience of practicing flipped classroom strategy. computer & education 78 (2014) 160173. gee, j.p. (2011). how to do discourse analysis: a toolkit. london: routledge. iedema, rick. (2001). analyzing film and television: a social semiotic account of hospital: an unhealthy business. in srikandiati, novita m & prijambodo, v. l. (2015). the use of multimodality in “axe” tv commecials to communicate masculinity. magister scientiae 38: 151164. iedema, rick. (2003). multimodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multisemiotic practice. vol. 2(1): 29-57. visual communication, london: sage. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 48-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license kress, gunther. (2010). multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. london: routledge. karpova, l. (1999). consider the following when selecting and using authentic materials. tesol matters, 9 (2), 18. lawrence, k. (1987). the french tv commercial as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. the french review, 60 (6). 835-844. lutcavage, c. 1992. 'authentic video in intermediate. in picken, jonathan. (1999). state of the ad: the role of advertisements in efl teaching. elt journal volume 53/4: oxford university pres. copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 123-139 utilizing cooperative learning in islamic college students’ classroom abdul gafur marzuki state islamic institute of palu, indonesia (gbudiperwira@gmail.com) received: 30th june 2016; revised: 11th october 2016; accepted: 28th december 2016 abstract the research aims at utilizing cooperative learning in teaching reading skill for islamic college students. the research was classroom action research which was conducted in two cycles where each cycle consisted of planning, implementation, observation and reflection. the subject were taken from pai 5 which contained 30 students. the data of this research were obtained from the test, observation checklist, and field notes. the findings of research showed that cooperative learning was effective in developing students’ reading skill. the findings revealed that there were nineteen students who achieved the minimum criteria of achievement in cycle 1, which percentage was 63.3%. in cycle 2, it was found that there were twenty five students who achieved the minimum criteria of achievement, which percentage increased to 83.3%. both of the classical and individual achievements have met the criteria of success. besides, students were active in joining classroom activities and completing their classroom tasks. therefore, it can be concluded that the cooperative learning was effective to develop the students’ reading skill. key words: teaching; reading; cooperative learning abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memanfaatkan pembelajaran kooperatif dalam pembelajaran keterampilan membaca mahasiswa di perguruan tinggi islam. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas yang dilakukan dalam dua siklus dimana setiap siklus terdiri dari perencanaan, pelaksanaan, observasi dan refleksi. subjek penelitian diambil dari kelas pai 5 yang terdiri dari 30 mahasiswa. data penelitian ini diperoleh dari hasil tes, lembar observasi, dan catatan lapangan. temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pembelajaran kooperatif efektif dalam mengembangkan keterampilan membaca mahasiswa. temuan menunjukkan bahwa ada sembilan belas mahasiswa yang mencapai kriteria pencapaian minimal pada siklus 1, dengan persentase 63,3%. pada siklus 2, ditemukan bahwa ada dua puluh lima mahasiswa yang mencapai kriteria pencapaian minimum dengan persentase 83,3%. persentase klasik dan individual telah memenuhi kriteria keberhasilan. selain itu, mahasiswa aktif mengikuti kegiatan kelas dan menyelesaikan tugas kelas mereka. oleh karena itu, dapat disimpulkan bahwa pembelajaran kooperatif efektif untuk mengembangkan keterampilan membaca mahasiswa. kata kunci: pengajaran; membaca; pembelajaran kooperatif how to cite: marzuki, a., g. (2016). utilizing cooperative learning in islamic college students’ classroom. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 123-139 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5528. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5528 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5528 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|124-139 introduction english is taught as a compulsory foreign language in indonesia. it is implemented at elementary school up to university level. basically teaching english is focused on four language skills, namely, speaking, listening, writing, and reading. reading skill is important for the students to learn in order to get much information or improve their knowledge through many kinds of texts. for college students, they have to learn many kinds of books that are written in english ttherefore, reading as a skill needs a careful attention. students are expected not only to read the text but also to understand or to comprehend what they read. they are expected to improve their knowledge after reading books or texts. reading skill is also one of the best ways to master english. reading material serves readers with several advantages, namely: providing rich sources of vocabulary and grammar. besides, it is a practice media for readers to train their english pronunciation. however, reading english text for some students are not easy. sometimes they do not understand the content of the texts or they cannot catch the information from the texts. this happens because of several problems that must be overcome by english lecturers. the students are expected to be able to read english text with good comprehension. although some of indonesian students have learnt english since they are in elementary school, it cannot be denied that most of them are still hardly able to speak or to communicate in english. the same case is also found in the teaching of reading, which is frequently integrated with vocabulary. it is still far from the learning target. available data showed that most students are not able to answer comprehension questions based on the reading text they have read (haerudin, 2009). clemen (2000) states that reading is felt as one of the central difficulties of students with learning disability. the main objective of teaching reading is to enable the students to get meaning from the written language (pan & wu, 2013). for college students, they are expected to have standard ability to comprehend and to find information from reading text as stated in curriculum, where the students must be able to get information and understand the messages from the written text or oral text in any situation. students have to analyze and use information from some materials. based on the researcher’s teaching experience at islamic education ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 125-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 department, most students were not able to answer comprehension questions which are usually based on the scanning and skimming strategies or to read the text quickly. for example, when they were asked some questions related to the text, they could not even finish answering the questions given. the students spent much time to read reading text word by word or sentence by sentence just to answer questions. they also waste their time to open dictionary to find out meaning of difficult words. moreover, english lecturer frequently applied the teaching and learning activities which emphasized on individual work. it means that learners have to compete with their mates. utilizing cooperative learning in teaching reading was challenging. the reason was that when the researcher conducts teaching reading, the result was not satisfied and the students face some problems in doing the questions on reading; such as difficulty to determine the idea of a paragraph or topic of the text, to find out the information stated implicitly and explicitly, detail information and locating reference, it is also found out that students lack vocabulary. cooperative learning on the other hand, is the concept for working together to accomplish and share goals or the students can share the idea, the task or assignments with their peer in the group. in cooperative learning a situation where there is a positive interdependency among students’ goal attainments; students perceive that they can reach their learning goals if and only if other students in the learning group also reach their goals (johnson and johnson, 1989). there have been many researchers who claim that cooperative learning result higher intellectual achievement than competitive learning. in other words, learners can help one another in accomplishing their tasks or duties to develop their reading skill and create social relationship among them through cooperative learning. this research was focused on teaching students to find the main idea of text, the information stated implicitly and explicitly, detail information and locating reference through cooperative learning. this learning strategy helped the students to comprehend english text because in cooperative learning, the researcher provided chance to the students to share their opinion or idea in doing some assignment especially in english reading text. the objective of this research was to find out how the lecturer implements cooperative learning in teaching reading successfully. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|126-139 in addition, the result of this research can be a meaningful contribution for both lecturers of english and students. for students, it can be a way to learn and to develop their english skill generally and their english reading skill specifically; for lecturers, it can be an additional input in applying various techniques in teaching english, particularly in reading skill. method the design of the research was classroom action research. this classroom action research is designed to develop students’ reading skill through cooperative learning. the techniques were developed into more applicable model through spiral of cycle; each of which covers planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. according to kemmis and mctaggart (1988), classroom action research suggests that action research is collaborative; it involves those responsible in improving it, widening the collaborating group from those most directly improved to as many as possible of those affected by the practice concerned. this research required the researcher and the collaborative lecturer to design lesson plans; prepare instructional material and media, and implement the action plan. time and setting of the research this research was conducted at the second semester islamic education department students of ftik iain palu. its subject was students at the second semester consisting of 8 parallel classes. the classes consists of 18 up to 30 students. the subject were taken from pai 5 which contained 30 students. steps of the research here is the scheme of action research: figure 1. classroom action research scheme (adapted from kemmis and mctaggart, 1988) to conduct the research, the researcher and his collaborator began ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 127-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the research from planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. the four main activities were called stage. the steps proposed can be illustrated as follows: plan the researcher constructed lesson plan, provided reading materials, put students into cooperative learning, prepared quizzes for assessment, and provided observational sheets, field notes, and criteria of success. action the researcher presented materials, instructed students to work in pairs and in groups, and evaluated them informally. observation the observation checklist was used by the researcher to observe the students activities and take some notes or records on the process of teaching and learning. he documented action effects which provide basis for following up discussion and reflection. reflection the researcher recalled all information which have been recorded in observation, questionnaire, tasks as the activities and field notes which provided basis for the revised plan in next cycle. revised plan the researcher still continued the general purpose but he reduced strategy that he considered unnecessary or action a little bit that did not maintain the plan. procedures of data collection data collection is a process of gathering information in a disciplined and systematic way about a researchable question (bogdan and biklen, 1998). this stresses on collecting information and data as evidences in answering the research question. the researcher carried out both library research and field research. in order to obtain accurate and reliable data, the researcher carried out a field research by employing some instruments, i.e. observation checklist, field notes, and test. those instruments were used in the following procedures. observation checklist observation checklist was used to identify and to obtain data on students’ performance (they can learn cooperatively in small group or pairs to share their opinion, ideas, argumentation, understanding, and help each other) and lecturer’s teaching ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|128-139 one (teaching steps). the students’ classroom performance covered students’ response toward the teachinglearning process and problems they encountered when doing classroom task. observation checklist was done to gain data of lecturer’s teaching performance was aimed at evaluating lecturer in providing evaluation modeling to students. therefore, there were two kinds of observation checklist in this research, namely students’ classroom performance and lecturer’s teaching performance. field note field note was used to obtain data from the field/classroom. it covered all information about the research to record actual events during the observation mainly to collect data on implementation of classroom teaching. bogdan and biklen (1998) argues that field notes are written account, what the researcher hears, sees, experiences, and thinks in the course of collecting data and reflecting on the data in qualitative research. test the researcher measured student’s achievement in reading. the two kinds of tasks which consisted of fifteen items were prepared by the researcher. task i had two points for each number while task ii had one poin for each number so the total point was 20. the test was administered at last meeting of each cycle in order to know effectiveness of the technique given. criteria of success in order to have required achievement in reading and to determine continuation of cycle, criteria of success need to be previously determined. moreover, the main concept of action research suggests that an appropriate form of analysis will be through discussion of criteria as well as isolated instance of behavior (mcniff, 1992). therefore, the researcher and the collaborator determined the criteria of success. since the research was about teaching reading through cooperative learning, so the criteria of success in this research were as follows: (1) the students’ score should achieve seventy five (based on the minimum completing criteria) and there should be at least 75% students who got individual achievement at least 75 (this is taken from achievement test). (2) the students can learn cooperatively in small group or pairs to share their opinion, ideas, argumentation, understanding, and help each other and meet at least 75% from the total of the students (this is taken from observation checklist). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 129-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 technique of data analysis in classroom action research, data analysis is done through reflection. the reflection phase is the place the researcher to collect the data from different instruments, selecting, categorizing, comparing, synthesizing, and interpreting data; and it will be done in ongoing cyclical process as proposed by mcmillan and schumacher, 1993). to validate data, the researcher employed triangulation. triangulation is cross scheme of cross validation data gained from the field. it consists of three main steps to analyze data; they are data collection, data reduction and data display. it was focused on the cross check between the data obtained from different instruments that were employed in research. it was aimed at making data more accurate. the obtained data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. quantitative data were analyzed based on the students’ achievement on each evaluation phase. its result was then be correlated with qualitative data related to lecturer’s performance and students’ response in ongoing process. the information that was derived from data analysis was compared with the criteria of success. since there were three major indicators of success formulated in this research, each of item was analyzed based on fact in the field. first, the result of students’ reading evaluation and second, the result of observation which related to lecturer’s performance was analyzed based on criteria of teaching procedures designed for teaching reading. the criteria of categorizing lecturers’ performance were in form of “yes” if the procedure was implemented, and “no” if the procedure was not implemented. the categorized of lecturer’s performance was determined the “successful” if indicator was “yes” and “failed” if indicator was “no.” third, the result of students’ classroom participation was analyzed through category that consists of “low, mid, and high” adapted from bailey (2005). therefore, the qualitative data were taken from lecturer performance, and instructional document preparation, students’ classroom participation, and field notes. the quantitative data were gained from students’ result evaluation; it was analyzed through the following formula as proposed by sugiono (2007): then, the data obtained from the test was analyzed to measure their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|130-139 achievement whether they were successful or not. the following table illustrates the scoring conversion. table 1. scoring system (adapted from qoriah, 2009) point qualification level of success 17 20 13 16 9 12 5 8 1 4 very good good fair low very low successful successful failed failed failed to know the students’ success in reading, the researcher used the following formula as proposed by harahap (1992): findings and discussion findings cycle 1 cycle 1 consisted of three meetings. in the planning phase, the lesson plan was prepared based on the syllabus and the previously identified problems. the instructional objectives were used as the basic of the selection of the possible instructional material which related on the islamic topic. the students were arranged in small groups. each group was assigned to discuss their problems in understanding the content of the text during their english study period. the researcher prepared a reading text which related to islamic topic then distributed to each group, there was one text for each student to be discussed. it was decided that the scoring system was based on the individual score gained by the students in answering the questions based on the reading text correctly. in the implementation phase, the three phase technique, pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading was implemented. during the pre-reading, the purpose of the study and the instructional objectives were introduced. the students were divided in small groups so there were six groups. then each group was requested to read and discuss their reading text. in this phase, the students used dictionary to find the meaning of important and unknown words such as the title and the first line of the text. in the while-reading phase, the students were demanded to employ skimming-scanning, guessing the meaning of a word from the context, considering other sentences to figure out the meaning of a sentence, and repetition strategy. skimming involves searching for the main ideas the speaker wants to get across, while scanning means searching for specific ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 131-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 details of interest to the learner, and repetition is the strategy of reading a passage more than once to understand it more completely. then the students were asked to answer the questions based on the text. next the students’ groups were requested to present their answer from the questions based on the text in front of the class. after groups’ presentation, the others groups were given opportunity to comment, argue, or even ask questions to the presenter. this interaction was observed by the researcher, individual active participation was check-listed in the column that has been previously prepared and notes were jotted down based on the classroom situation during the four meetings implementation phase. in the post-reading phase, the students were asked to employ summarizing strategy. summarizing is making a written summary of new information gained through reading. it enables the students to grasp the original text better. the achievement of the set criteria in cycle 1 is graphed in figure 2. 0 50 100 <75 % ≥75 % figure 2. the results of cycle 1 the figure indicates that there are still quite a few students who have not passed the set criteria. the results are also presented in the percentage table as can be described in table 2. table 2. results of cycle 1 the data indicate that there are still 11 or 36.6% of the subjects who have not passed the set criteria. since the criteria of success were planned based on the individual gained score and active participation, the results of the observation on the students’ active participation are graphed in figure 3. 0 20 40 60 active % not acti ve % figure 3. the results of the observation in cycle 1 the figure indicates that there are many students who are not active during the discussion and meetings in cycle 1. the number and the percentage of the students who are not active are presented in table 3. <75 % ≥75 % cycle 1 11 36.6 19 63.3 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|132-139 table 3. the results of the observation active % not active % cycle 1 13 43.3 17 56.6 in the reflection phase, it is concluded that the criteria of success has not been achieved and that the revised plan must be prepared. consequently the research has to continue to cycle 2. the results of the reflection indicate that there must be improvement in the process of the teaching and learning procedures. cycle 2 cycle 2 consisted of three meetings. the pairs in cycle 2 were the same students as the pairs in cycle 1. in the planning phase, the revised plan, the way of topic given for each group was revised. each group freely chose and decided one topic of reading text based on their interest. the reading texts were provided by the researcher from many sources. there were five reading texts provided by the researcher in this cycle. before starting the teaching and learning process, every member of the group was assigned to read the chosen topic individually and then read and discuss the reading text in group. the implementation phase in cycle 2 was the same as the one in cycle 1; prewhile-post reading. however, the employment of cooperative learning in pre and while-reading were revised. in the pre-reading phase, the students were guided to use the title to predict the content of the text and paying attention to words or phrases that show how text is organized. in while-reading phase, the students were demanded to guess the meaning of a word from the context and skipping the unknown words and. associate to the students’ background knowledge, while notetaking is writing down key words and concepts in abbreviated verbal, graphic, or numerical form while reading. it makes students active participants in their learning, helps them organize important concepts, remember information, and becomes one of their study aids. in post-reading phase, the students were guided and demanded to summarize the main ideas of the paragraphs. the results of cycle 2 are graphed in figure 4. 0 50 100 <75 % ≥75 % figure 4. the results of cycle 2 the data in figure 4 indicate that only few students who get lower than ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 133-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 the set criteria and the ones who achieved the set criteria increased. the number and the percentage of the students who have achieved the set criterion are presented in table 4. table 4. results of cycle 2 <75 % ≥75 % cycle 2 5 16.6 25 83.3 the data in table 3 indicate that 25 out of 30 or 83.3% have achieved the criteria of success and only 5 out of 30 or 16.6% who have not passed the set criteria. the active participation of the students in cycle two was also observed. the data of the active participation are graphed in figure 5. 0 50 100 active % not acti ve % figure 5. participation of the students in cycle 2 the data in figure 5 indicate that not all of the students are active. there are still 4 students are not active. it can be seen also in table 4 that 26 or 86.6% of the students are active and 4 or 13.3% of the students are not active. table 5. active participation active % not active % cycle 2 26 86.6 4 13.3 the data in table 5 indicate that not all of the students participate actively during the classroom meetings in cycle 2 however; the students’ active participation has reached 86.6% or more than ≥75. since the criteria of success have been achieved, cycle was stopped. in the reflection of cycle 2, it is noted that the students’ achievement increase from cycle 1 to cycle 2. the improvement is graphed in figure 6. 0 50 100 <75 % ≥75 % cycle 1 cycle 2 figure 6. the comparison of the achievement of cycle 1 and 2 the data in figure 6 indicate that the students who passed the criteria increase significantly from cycle 1 to cycle 2. the same case applies to the improvement in the student’s active participation during the class meeting. the improvement in the student’s active participation between cycle 1 and cycle 2 is graphed in figure 7. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|134-139 0 20 40 60 80 100 cycle 1 cycle 2 figure 7. the comparison of the active participation in cycle 1 and cycle 2 the data in figure 7 indicate that most of the students who are not active in cycle 1 become active in the classroom meeting cycle 2. the improvement of the students’ reading comprehension and the active participation during the classroom meeting is believed to be affected by the implementation of the revised plan. discussion student’s participation in learning and teaching process assessment on teaching learning process should be holistically conducted by the researcher in order to enable the lecturer to administer an accurate judgment about the process. as clemen (2000) states, holistic assessment includes the assessment concerns about students’ participation in classroom interaction. then, qoriah (2009) adds that students’ participation need to be assessed to make sure that they are feel be appreciated every time they do their best. in conjunction to assessment on students’ participation, students’ participation in the teaching learning process can be assessed by using provided charts. it is clear that to assess or to evaluate students’ participation contributes to reduce their anxiety to lesson or any quite complicated classroom task. there was a slight difference between burden’s and byrd’s way in observing students participation and the researcher’s way. to assess students’ classroom participation, the researcher employed observation checklist. student’s performance students’ performance in the teaching and learning process was represented by their active participation during the teaching and learning process (qoriah, 2009). it was by purpose prepared by the researcher in order to see the difference in students’ performance from meeting to meeting. it is clear that to assess or to evaluate students’ performance contributes to reducing their anxiety to lesson or any quite complicated classroom task. students’ improvement the students’ improvement in reading through cooperative learning were investigated and analyzed ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 135-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 through evaluation phase of the teaching learning process (haerudin, 2009). the researcher focused on the two criteria of success in which he needed to analyze at the end of cycle. in order to provide better understanding toward the findings, the result of analysis is going to be elaborated as follows: meetings 1, 2, 3 in cycle i to analyze the three criteria of success, the researcher utilized cooperative learning, observation check-list, and field notes. the result of analysis was that from the first test of the cycle 1 it was found there were nineteen of thirty students who got “good” or “very good” score. it meant that the students’ successful percentage that got success level from the first test of cycle i had not yet meet the criteria of success. because, the percentage approach employed formula 19 x 100% : 30 = 63.3%. 19 was the number of students who got success qualification; 30 was the number of all students, and 100 is the deviation scale. on the other hand, the percentage of classroom success should be 75% of the number of students. the students’ participation in learning process was identified through classroom activities. participation as a form of learning process was analyzed qualitatively. the result of observation shows that the students were actively participating in classroom activities. meetings 1, 2, 3, in cycle 2 the result of analysis toward evaluation on cycle ii meeting 3 evoked the significant development on students’ reading. through the second test in cycle ii; it was found that there were twenty five students who got “success” qualification. it means that the number of students who got “success” from the second evaluation of cycle ii has met the criteria of success; because the percentage approach employs formula 25 x 100%: 30 = 83.3%. 25 is the number of students who get “success” qualification; 30 is the number of all students, and 100 is the deviation scale. since the number of students who got “success” qualification more than 75% of the total number of students (83.3%), so it is concluded that the criteria of classroom achievement has been achieved. meanwhile the higher score of twenty four students more than 75. it can be interpreted that it is absolutely reasonable for the researcher to judge that the criteria of success have been achieved since the criteria of success for individual students should be 75; moreover there were twenty four students who got at least 75 so the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|136-139 number has represented all class participants. it was supported by previous finding (haerudin, 2009) that cooperative learning was effective in improving students’ reading comprehension. the effectiveness of group work in cooperative learning was shown by the improvement of students’ mean score, where in cycle 1 the mean score was 8.02 and in cycle 2 became 8.62. there were 35 students (87.18%) got greater than 70 in cycle i, whereas in cycle ii, all of the 42 students (100 %) got greater than 70. furthermore, jalilifar (2009) found that cooperative learning (stad type) was effective in improving efl reading comprehension achievement. then, pan and wu (2013) who conducted a research by comparing the cooperative learning instruction and traditional lecture instruction. this experiment was implemented in a freshman english reading course, a two credit course, with two hours of instruction per week, over a full semester. seventy-eight efl freshmen taking freshman english reading courses participated in this study, with 44 participants in the experimental group and 34 in the comparison group. we employed a pretest-posttest comparison group quasi-experimental design. the experimental group received a reciprocal cooperative learning instruction, whereas the comparison group received a traditional lecture instruction. both groups were administered three english-reading achievement tests and an english learning motivation scale. the data were analyzed by means, standard deviations, t tests, and oneway ancova. the findings indicate statistically significant differences in favor of cooperative learning instruction on english reading comprehension, particularly among mediumand low-proficiency students. cooperative learning instruction also created a significantly positive effect on student motivation toward learning english reading. in conclusion, they strongly suggest teachers use cooperative learning instruction in university-level efl reading classes. in addition, bolukbas et. al (2011) found that cooperative learning was an effective way to promote student participation and enthusiasm as well as a useful technique for language learners to accomplish reading tasks in the efl classroom. as a result, the significant achievement of this research in cycle ii was caused of the application of cooperative learning technique and the implementation of some findings in reflection in cycle i, namely: (1) the lecturer needs to set the time proportionally for each of the activities ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 137-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 done. in this matter, the lecturer set the three main activities proportionally based on the content of the activities (pre-activities 5%, while-activities 80%, and post-activities 15%). the preactivities just covered 5% since in this phase the lecturer just did some short activities like asking questions to lead the students to the topic discussed. while-activities covered the biggest amount of time since this phase is the core activities and the time to apply the cooperative learning technique. and the last, post-activities covered 15% of all the time. in this phase, the lecturer did three activities, namely: concluded the material and provided the students with reinforcement, flashed back to the previous classroom activity, administered the students with homework and suggested them to memorize all the words that have been given. (2) when asking the students for turn, the lecturer should not only give a chance to certain students but also others students proportionally. the common mistake of a lecturer in the classroom activities is that, he usually does not give a chance proportionally to the students. he just gives chance for a certain student that he/she desired. this treatment becomes very crucial since it can encourage the students motivation, interest, and attention. (3) in explaining the task or giving instruction using english, the lecturer needed to explain it in indonesian to prevent to students misunderstanding. this treatment is also very important since not all the students understand what the lecturer have explained and instructed. so, after explaining and instructing them, he should confirm whether they have already understood or not. then, he translated into indonesian the explanation and instruction as clear as possible to avoid the students’ misunderstanding. conclusion and suggestion conclusion the students’ skill in reading the text had developed successfully through the implementation of cooperative learning strategy. this happened since the students had learning experiences with their teammates in sharing their ideas, comments, mutual support, and help one another in doing their tasks. implementing cooperative learning strategy could be developed the students’ reading skill. the students were able to answer the questions on their reading a text. this happened since the teaching and learning activities focused on solving the students’ problem in finding the main idea, specific information, and location of referent. the classroom environment also made the students had active ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|138-139 involvement by sharing ideas in group or team practice. comparing the result of students’ achievement in the first cycle, the students’ achievement on second cycle has significant development. this can be studied from the students’ successful percentage of reading test in cycle 1 was 63.3% be increased to 83.3% in cycle 2. besides, this method can be applied to encourage students to be active in joining classroom activities and completing their classroom tasks. suggestion firstly the students’ motivation should be triggered by changing of learning atmosphere where the low achievement of students could be encouraged to be involved in the teaching and learning activities by working with the high achievement students them they could share their ideas to other students. second, lecturers should implement cooperative learning as an alternative solution to organize the teaching and learning process. it was because such learning would facilitate the students to interact each others. beside that the cooperative learning should be applied to develop students’ social skills that has been neglected in the model of competitive way in arranging students’ interaction in the classroom. it was also suggested to the lecturers to give a reward toward the students who got the best mark such as at the end of semester. references bailey, k.m. (2005). new ways in teaching speaking. boston: mc grow hill. bogdan, c.r. and biklen, k.s. (1998). qualitative research in education. an introduction to theory and method. boston: allyn and bacon. burden, p.r. and byrd, d.m. (1995). methods for effective teaching, second edition. new york: allyn and bacon. clemen, k. (2000). the contribution of a reading passage to the teaching reading of the four language skills. kupang: fkip undana. haerudin. (2009). the implementation of cooperative learning to improve the reading comprehension ability of the third year students of sma i banawa. tadulako university, palu. thesis. harahap, n. (1992). teknik penilaian hasil belajar. jakarta: bulan bintang. jalilifar, a. (2009). the effect of cooperative learning techniques on college students’ reading comprehension. system, 38(1), 96108. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 139-139|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 johnson, d.w. and johnson, r.t. (1989). cooperation and competition theory and research. new york: edina, interaction book company. kemmis, s. and mctaggart, r. (1988). the action research planner. third edition. victoria: deakin university. mcmillan, j.h. and schumacher, s. (1993). research in education. a conceptual introduction. virginia: harper collins publisher. mcniff, j. (1992). action research: principle and practice. new york: chapman and hall, inc. pan, c.y., and wu, h.y. (2013). the cooperative learning effects on english reading comprehension and learning motivation of efl freshmen. english language teaching, 6(5), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5539/elt.v6n5p13. qoriah. (2009). improving the reading comprehension of the year eight students at smpn 3 marawola through the application of ctl. unpublished master’s thesis. graduate school, tadulako university, palu. sugiono. (2007). metode penelitian pendidikan. bandung: alfabeta. http://dx.doi.org/%2010.5539/elt.v6n5p13 http://dx.doi.org/%2010.5539/elt.v6n5p13 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 106-122 the non standard english used by women in the help movie aal inderajati1 , ubaidillah2 received: 30th september 2016; revised: 10th october 2016; accepted: 20th december 2016 abstract this research discusses the grammatical features of non-standard english that is used by women characters in the help movie and also the factors that influence it. the discussion in this research uses the theory from trudgill (1999) and holmes (1992). further, speaking formula proposed by dell hathaway hymes (1974) is also used to determine the factors that influence the use of non-standard english. the study found five features of non-standard english used by women characters; they are missing auxiliary verbs, construction words, grammatical mistakes, wrong pronouns, and double negatives. those features were found in the 108 data or conversations. the researcher analyzed those features through speaking formula to find the factors. the factors which affect the use of non-standard english are setting and scene, participants, ends, and genre. moreover, participants is the factor that mostly influences the use of non-standard english by women in the help movie. key words: black women; non-standard english; sociolinguistics abstrak dalam penelitian ini akan dibahas tentang fitur-fitur gramatikal bahasa inggris non-standard yang digunakan oleh karakter wanita dalam film the help dan juga faktor yang mempengaruhi penggunaannya. pembahasan dalam penelitian ini menggunakan teori dari trudgill dan holmes. disamping itu, teori speaking yang dikemukakan oleh dell hathaway hymes juga akan digunakan untuk mengetahui faktor yang mempengaruhi penggunaan bahasa inggris non-standard tersebut. dari hasil analisis, peneliti menemukan lima fitur bahasa inggris non-standard yang digunakan oleh karakter wanita; fitur tersebut yaitu missing auxiliary verb, construction words, grammatical mistakes, wrong pronoun, dan double negative. faktor yang mempengaruhi penggunaan bahasa nonstandard ialah setting and scene, participants, ends, dan genre. participants adalah faktor yang paling banyak mempengaruhi penggunaan bahasa inggris nonstandard oleh karakter wanita dalam film the help. kata kunci: wanita kulit hitam, bahasa inggris non-standard, sosiolinguistik kata kunci: how to cite: inderajati, a. ubaidillah. (2016). the non standard english used by women in the help movie. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 106-122 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509 mailto:aal.inderajati@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5509 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 107-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction language is a set of words that have meaning. santoso (1990) stated that language is a communication means generated and said consciuously by the important part of the human being‟s body . people use language as a communication device. as a means of communication, language cannot be saparated from social situations. language always changes to suit the times and also life. in the daily life, language is a social phenomenon that shows the relationship between people through conversation. sociolinguistics is one of the linguistics branches. according to holmes (1992), sociolinguistics is the linguistic domain that discusses the relationship between language and society . sociolinguists also try to explain the relation between language and society. the sociolinguists explain some of the factors that influence the differences of language used by people. these differences are also a result of their environment or social contexts. someone tends to put him or herself in a different language use for each different social condition. in sociolinguistics, it is known as language variations. trudgill (1999) explained that standard and non-standard are not a language, but they are the variety of english language. according to widarso (1994), standard english, as a language variety, is divided into two forms: formal and informal. the formal form of standard english is used for formal text like business letter, graduating paper, or discourse, and also for formal conversation like in a speech, seminar or panel discussion. on the other hand, the informal form is mostly used in daily conversation and it is also called as colloquialism. here is the example of differences between formal and informal form of standard english: formal : if i were you, i would accept it. informal: if i was you, i would accept it non-standard english is one of language varieties which do not have any form. widarso (1994) explained that non-standard english is commonly used by those who are lack of education. he also explains that non-standard english is different from the informal form. according to him, the informal form is used by almost all of educated people, but non-standard english is only used by people who are lazy to study and lack of education (1994). indeed, the differences between non-standard and informal form can be seen through people who use it. if it is used by an educated man or woman, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|108-122 it is an informal form. if it is used by an uneducated man or woman, it is nonstandard. most people tend to use language variation to show their social status. usually, the standard english is used by people who have high social status. it is like people who work in a big company and have high salary. then the non-standard english tend to be used by people who have low social status. in this case, standard english is also mostly used by women. holmes (1992) stated that “some linguists have suggested that women use more standard speech forms than men because they are more status-conscious than men” (p. 171). however, some women do not use standard language; the example is african americans or afro america women who use black english. african americans, also refers to black americans or afro-americans, is an ethnic group of citizens or residents of the united states with total or partial ancestry from any of native populations of sub-saharan africa. the term may also be used to include only those individuals who are descended from african slaves. holmes (1992) said that black english is heard especially in the northern cities of the united states. one of its most distinctive features is the complete absence of the copula verb be in some social and linguistic context. in most speech contexts, speakers of standard english use shortened or reduced forms of the verb be. in other words, people do not usually say she is very nice but rather she‟s very nice. they reduce or contract the is to s. on the other hand, a tribe is one of the social markers that shows the language use. people who come from the same tribe tends to use the language of their tribe, but they will change their language when meeting with other people from different tribes. similar to the black community in america, they can be distinguished from other american society not only through their physical appearance, but also through the language they use. from this language, they try to maintain their ethnicity as black people. based on the phenomenon above, the problem addressed is the influence of ethnicity and social class in the help movie. the differences are easy to find in their daily conversation especially differences in grammatical features. there are many differences in grammatical features between black and white people. widarso (1994) stated that the most non-standard english commonly used is ain‟t and another distinctive grammatical feature of non-standard english is the use of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 109-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 double negative . here is the example of the differences: non-standard english jessie ain‟t been here. jessie hasn‟t been here. standard english we ain‟t going nowhere. we aren‟t going anywhere. the first example of nonstandard english is shown by the use of the word ain‟t; the word ain‟t is the most non-standard english use. compared to it, the standard english does not use the word ain‟t but it becomes hasn‟t. the second example of non-standard english also shows the use of word ain‟t and no at the same time. it belongs to double negative as holmes explained and this grammatical features exactly doest not follow the standard rule. in standard english, the use of ain‟t and no is changed into the word aren‟t and any. from those cases, the language differences between white and black people in america become one of the interesting issues to examine. theoretically, this research will give an understanding to the readers about the features of non-standard english that show people‟s social status. specifically, this research can be one of the examples in analyzing language used by american people. practically this research can give contributions to some people including the lecturers, students, and all of the readers. 1. for the lecturers, this research study can be a reference in sociolinguistics, especially about the social class differences through language use. 2. for the students, this research study can give a better understanding of how to apply dell hymes‟s speaking approach. 3. for other researchers, this research study can be a reference to conduct further research. 4. for all of the readers, this research study can give information about variation of non-standard english in american society. the object in this research study is the help movie which was released in 2011. it was directed and written by tate taylor. it was adapted from kathryn stockett's 2009 novel with the same title. this movie exposes the differences of social class between white american and afro american. the differences can also be found in their conversation. white americans tend to use standard english in their conversation and afro americans tend ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|110-122 to use non-standard english. however, in some conversations white american also uses non-standard english. it is interesting to analyze this phenomenon because according to holmes (1992), the non-standard english is commonly used by men, but in this movie, women also use non-standard in their conversation. the purpose of this study is to describe the situation of how languages, in this case non-standard english, can show different social status. on the other hand, this study explains the important factors that influence the non-standard english used by women. this study focuses on the language used by some women characters. the eight idiosyncrasies or grammatical features of standard english from trudgill (1999) and nonstandard english grammar by holmes (1992) are used as the main theories. then speaking theory from dell hymes are used to analyze the data as supporting theory, to know setting, participants, ends, acts, keys, instruments, norms, and genres in utterances. the result of the study will show the language used by those characters according to speaking theory. moreover, this research will give some benefits for the readers about understanding the non-standard english. from the background of study above, it is clear that the analysis deals with language in social class. concerning the interest of the issue, the research questions are: 1) how are the features of non-standard english used by women characters in the help movie? 2) what are the important factors that influence the features? method this research was conducted by using a qualitative method. the type of this research was a library research which analyzes the text. the data sources of this research were the help movie. this research consisted of main data and supporting data. the main data for this research were the conversation or utterances containing non-standard english. then the supporting data were the context of those utterances to see the purpose of the characters in using the nonstandard english in the help movie. the data of this research were collected from the help movie by document technique. in collecting the data, the researcher took some steps. the first was watching the help movie. the second was collecting the non-standard english used by black women characters. then the last was listing the features of non-standard english based ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 111-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 on the theory from trudgill and holmes. in analyzing the data, the researcher divided the analysis into two kinds. the first is analyzing the classified data based on sociolinguistics. it consists of analyzing the nonstandard english. the next was finding the relationship of the non-standard english that is used by women characters using speaking theory. speaking itself is acronym of setting and scene, participants, ends, act sequence, key, instrumentalities, norm, and genre. according to hymes, the setting and scene (s) of speech are important. setting refers to the time and place, i.e., the concrete physical circumstances in which speech takes place. scene refers to the abstract psychological setting, or the cultural definition of the occasion. the participants (p) include various combinations of speaker–listener, addressor–addressee, or sender– receiver. they generally fill certain socially specified roles. ends (e) refers to the conventionally recognized and expected outcomes of an exchange as well as to the personal goals that participants seek to accomplish on particular occasions. act sequence (a) refers to the actual form and content of what is said: the precise words used, how they are used, and the relationship of what is said to the actual topic at hand. key (k), the fifth term, refers to the tone, manner, or spirit in which a particular message is conveyed: lighthearted, serious, precise, pedantic, mocking, sarcastic, pompous, and so on. instrumentalities (i) refers to the choice of channel, e.g., oral, written, or telegraphic. norms of interaction and interpretation (n) refers to the specific behaviors and properties that attach to speaking. genre (g), the final term, refers to clearly demarcated types of utterance (hymes, 1974, 52-62). it will also be used to find out the factors that is influence the nonstandard english used by women characters. findings and discussion from all the conversation in the movie, there are 112 data containing five features of non-standard english used by the characters in the help movie. it can be seen in the table below: table 1. expression features of nonstandard english features of nonstandard english frequency percentage (%) missing/lacking auxiliary verb 27 24.1% construction words 55 49.1% grammatical mistakes 15 13.3% wrong pronoun 6 5.3% double negative 9 8.0% ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|112-122 based on the table above, it can be seen that the data found in the movie show five features of non-standard english. those features are mostly used by black women in the help movie. from the table, the feature of construction words appears 55 times or 49.1%. the feature of construction words is the feature that is mostly appeared and used by the women characters in the help movie. to find out the factors that influence the features of non-standard english used by the women characters in the movie, the researcher uses speaking theory proposed by dell hymes. by using this theory, the factors that influence the features can be clearly understood. the analysis is divided based on the features used by the women characters in the movie. the analysis also shows the differences of the using of each feature. the use of construction words the researcher finds 55 conversation containing the use of construction words in the help movie. 10 data belong to the construction words that are used by white people and 45 data belong to the construction words that are used by black people. the construction words are divided into four forms of construction words. they are gonna, gotta, ain‟t, and lotto. from the 55 data, there are 8 data belonged to the using of gotta, 34 data belonged to the using of gonna, 10 data belonged to the using of ain‟t, 2 data belonged to the using of y‟all, and only 1 data that using lotto. the differences use of word “gonna” white and black people use the same construction of gotta, ain‟t, and lotto. however, the use of gonna is different between white and black people. here is the analysis of the using of word gonna: charlotte phelan: you‟re gonna look beautiful on your date tonight. eugenia skeeter: i can feel hope in your fingers. (datum 1) this is an evidence from the utterance of you're gonna look beautiful on your date tonight. the word „gonna‟ is preceded by be verb are, that is the rule of standard english used by white people. it can be seen that charlotte phelan uses construction words when speaking with her daughter. she does not use a formal form of the word gonna which is going to. the conversation above is a conversation of white people, charlotte phelan and eugenia skeeter. charlotte‟s speech can be analyzed using speaking methods proposed by dell hymes. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 113-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 setting and scene: the conversation takes place in the kitchen of charlote phelan‟s house. skeeter will be going on a date with stuart. she never goes on a date, so her mother helps her styling the hair. her mother is very excited and she hopes that skeeter‟s date will be going well. participants: there are two participants in this conversation, skeeter and her mother, charlotte phelan. both skeeter and charlote phelan are white people. ends: the purpose of the conversation is that skeeter‟s mom wants to help skeeter for her dress and make up to go on a date. she also hopes that skeeter has a boyfriend soon. act sequences: the content of the conversation is charlotte phelan really proud of her daughter who looks beautiful and she hopes that skeeter‟s date goes well. actually, skeeter already knows her mother‟s hopes. key: data obtained from the help movie shows that the way charlotte phelan expressed her hope to skeeter in very excited expression. it is because she is happy to see skeeter goes on a date. instrumentalities: this conversation is a verbal spoken directly by skeeter‟s mother to skeeter. these conversations include casual conversation although skeeter talks to her mother, she does not use formal language. norms : in this conversation, skeeter looks upset and she answers her mother hopes with such a joke. however, her mother still has a big hope for skeeter. genre: speech of charlotte phelan is an explanation form. this is a form of declarative sentences as expressed directly. charlotte explains to skeeter that she is happy to see skeeter going on a date and she hopes that skeeter will find a husband as soon as possible. from the speaking explanation above, because of the situation is not a formal situation, charlotte phelan speaks to her daughter casually. in fact, the conversation happens when charlotte phelan helps skeeter and it is a kind of small conversation between mother and daughter. from the sociolinguistic perspectives based on ethnicity, charlotte phelan uses a construction word as suggested by holmes in his book an introduction to sociolinguistics. charlotte is one of the white people in this movie and she uses a construction word gonna in her coversation. hence, the first factor that influence the use of non-standard english is the setting and scene in the conversation. this conversation happened in the kitchen so it is make ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|114-122 the situation include in casual conversation. comparing the use of word gonna, it is clearly different between black and white people. it shows in this movie in which black people do not follow the rule of standard english by using the word gonna without any be verb before it. besides, the white people use non-standard english by using be verb before the word gonna. the grammatical forms of blacks are clearly different from what are used by white people. this difference is in terms of who speaks as a symbol of their tribe. one of the linguistic forms different from afro-american tribes is the removal of verbs copula be. simplifying the consonants also a factor to distinguish between africanamerican and white english (holmes, 1992: 194). missing of auxiliary verbs the researcher finds 27 data that contain the missing of auxiliary verbs in the help movie; they are missing of auxiliary have, has, is, and are. there are 15 data belonged to the missing of auxiliary verb have, 5 data belonged to the missing of auxiliary has, 6 data belonged to the missing of auxiliary verb are, and 1 data belonged to the missing of auxiliary verb is. in the help movie, only black people omit the verb in their speech. here is the analysis of missing of auxiliary verb have used by black people: yule ma: me and my husband, we been saving for years to send them to tougaloo. we're short about $75 on one of the tuitions. mr. william: whoo! i am late. i gotta get going. (datum 2) the conversation above is an example of a conversation by yule mae as black people and her boss, mr. william as white people. it can be seen that yule may omits the auxiliary verb have when speaking with his boss, mr. william. the sentence we been saving should have an auxiliary verb have, so it will be a correct sentence based on grammatical rule. here, yule may‟s speech can be analyzed using speaking methods proposed by dell hymes. setting and scene: the conversation takes place in the dining room. yule may prepares the breakfast for her boss in the dining room while asking to her boss. participants: there are three participants in this conversation, yule may, miss hilly, and mr william. yule may is black people, both miss hilly and mr william are white people. yule may is a help who works in mr william house. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 115-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 ends: the purpose of the conversation above is yule may tells her boss that her sons have been graduated from high school and she wants to send them to the college. act sequences: the content in this conversation is yule may wants to owe money of her boss, but her boss ignores it by answering that he is late to go to work. key: data obtained from the the help shows that the way yule mae asks to mr. william is in the piteous manner. instrumentalities: this conversation is a verbal conversation spoken directly by yule may to mr. wiliam. these conversations include formal conversation because as a maid, yule may should speak with the standard rule to her boss. norms: in this conversation, yule may looks polite when asking to owe some money to mr. wiliam (her boss). however, mr. wiliam ignores her by directly leaving and going to work. genre: the speech of yule may is a request or offer form. this is a form of declarative sentences expressed directly. it is a request because yule mae asks to miss hilly for some money to pay the registration for the boys. from the speaking explanation above, yule may is trying to be polite when speaking to her boss but her boss is ignoring her. however, as a servant, she should speak formally to her boss. she also should use the proper grammar since the situation is a kind of formal situation and she wants help from her boss. hence, the first factor that influence the use of non-standard english is the participants in the conversation. yule may is the maid who is working in mr. william‟s house and she is a black people. yue may does not have a high education so her utterance does not follow the standard english rule. the second factor is instrumentalities. it is clear if the maid wants her boss to help them, they should use the standard english. from the conversation it can be concluded that black people omit the auxiliary verb in their speech. yule mae and minny omit the auxiliary have in their speech. trudgill explains that black people redundantly distinguishes between the preterite and past participle forms of many verbs, as in i saw – i have seen, or i did – i have done, where they have forms like seen or done for both (1999: 125). grammatical mistake the researcher finds 15 data containing the grammatical mistake in the help movie; it consists of the mistake of using verb do/does, are, were, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|116-122 and also the missing of s in the end of singular subject and missing preposition. there are 3 data that belong to the mistake of using do, 6 data belonged to the mistake of missing s, 4 data belonged to the mistake of using are, 2 data belonged to the mistake of using were. the analysis is as follows: minny: then she say, "oh, minny, i'm gonna give you a paid vacation." (datum 3) the datum above is one of the dialogues by minny. she is telling her story when working as a maid for white people. here, minny‟s speech is included into grammatical mistakes because she does not use a correct grammar. in her speech, the sentence “then she say” does not have „s‟ in the end of the verb say. if minny follows the rule of standard english, her sentence will be then she says. here is one of the evidences that minny as a black woman does not follow the rule of standard english grammar. minny‟s speech can be analyzed using speaking : setting and scene: this monologue takes place in the kitchen at aibileen‟s house. minny tries to imitate her last boss statement when her boss wants to pay her by a vacation. participants: there are three participants in this conversation:minny, skeeter, and aibileen. minny and aibeleen are black people and skeeter is white people. minny is doing a monologue while skeeter and aibeleen only listen to her. ends: the purpose of the conversation is that minny is telling her story and her experience when she works as a maid. act sequences: the content of this conversation is the story of the maid, minny, who is working for white people. key: data obtained from the film the help shows that the way minny tells her story is in the high tone. instrumentalities: this conversation is a verbal conversation spoken directly by minny to skeeter and aibileen. these conversations include casual conversation because they both know each other. norms : in this conversation, minny looks polite and passionated when telling her story. genre: speech of minny is a narrative form. this is a form of declarative sentences as expressed directly. minny is directly saying this sentence in front of aibileen and skeeter to express her feeling. from the speaking explanation above, minny is telling her story when she is working as a maid. the situation ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 117-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 is not formal and minny speaks casually to aibileen and skeeter. she speaks politely and in passionate way because she likes to talk about her experience in working for white people. in fact, the conversation is between black people and white people. from the sociolinguistic perspectives based on ethnicity, minny uses non-standard english as suggested by holmes (1992) . minny is one of the black people in this movie and she uses non-standard english by omitting s. hence, the important factor that influences the use of non-standard english is the participants in the conversation. minny is the maid who work for miss cellia and she is a black people. minny does not have a high education so her utterance does not follow the standard english rule. from the example, it can be known that the feature of grammatical mistakes is commonly used by women characters in the help movie especially by black women, minny and aibileen. besides they are black women, they are also working as a maid in which they do not know the correct grammatical of english language. the use of wrong pronoun another mistakes or another kind of non-standard english is the use of wrong pronoun. black people tend to use some improper pronouns. the researcher finds 6 data containing the misuse of pronoun in the help movie; they are them and their. there are 5 data belonged to the using of their and only 1 data belonged to the using of them. in “the help” movie, most of the mistakes are found in their monologue. the data below are the speech from aibileen and minny that will be analyzed using speaking. the first datum is the dialogue from aibileen: aibeelen: i know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying and go in the toilet bow before their mamas even get out of bed in the morning. (datum 4) from the monologue above, it could be seen that aibileen uses the wrong pronoun in her speech. the phrase them babies should be their babies if aibileen uses the correct grammar rule. however, instead of using their, aibileen chooses to use them. here is the speaking analysis of aibileen‟s speech: setting and scene: this monologue takes place in the mae mobly‟s bed room. aibeleen feels that her boss does not care about her babies. participants: there is only one participant in this monologue, aibeelen. aibeelen is a black people. ends: the purpose is aibeelen wants to describe her job. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|118-122 act sequences: the content of monologue above is about aibeelen‟s experience as the help. key: data obtained from the film the help shows that the way aibeelen is doing a monologue. instrumentalities: this conversation is a verbal conversation spoken directly by aibeelen. norms : in this monologue, aibeelen looks polite when she explains about her job. genre: speech of aibileen is a narrative form. this is a form of declarative sentences expressed directly. here, aibileen tells her story when she becomes a servant and takes care of white baby. from the speaking explanation above, it can be seen that aibileen is telling the story and her experience when being a help. she did many things including being a baby sitter and taking care of the house. she speaks casually because she tells her story. hence, the first factor that influences the use of non-standard english is the participants in the conversation. aibeleen is the maid and she is a black people. aibeleen does not have a high education so her utterances do not follow the standard english rule. the second factor is setting. in this case, aibeleen doing this monologue in mae mobly bedroom. through this monologue she shows that she is taking care of mae mobly who is a white baby of her boss. from the conversation above, it can be seen that black people use the wrong pronoun. it is proven by the use of they “get back into they house”and “i know how to get them babies”. aibileen and minny should use their instead of they as the pronoun. holmes (1992) also explained that a different way of speaking also looks because they are a minority group. the differences include; the use of the plural, which is used as a form of me possessive pronoun i, my, me, and also the shape of dem for they, them, their. the function of this difference is as a symbol of their identity as ethnic minorities. the use of double negative the researcher finds 9 data that contain be using of double negative in the help movie. all of the data have the same form in which the speaker uses ain‟t and no at the same time. the use of double negative is also the characteristics of black people. unlike white people that only use one negative such as i don‟t like you, black people tend to use double negative as shown in the conversation below: miss celia: i just want you to know i'm real grateful you're here. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 119-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 minny: you gots plenty more to be grateful for than me. and look, now i ain't messing around no more. (datum 5) the conversation above is the conversation between white and black people. miss celia is the new boss of minny. from the conversation above, it could be seen that minny uses the negative concord ain‟t but she also uses no in the end of her speech. based on english grammatical rule, minny does not need to use ain‟t and no at the same time. she can choose to use ain‟t or no such as i ain't messing around. here, minny‟s speech above can be analyzed using speaking: setting and scene: the conversation takes place in the miss celia‟s kitchen. miss celia is very happy about minny who does work as her help. minny also feels happy to work as miss celia‟s help. participants: there are two participants in this conversation, miss celia and minny. miss celia is a white woman while minny is a black woman. ends: the purpose of conversation above is that minny wants miss celia knows that she will be working seriously and not doing any bad acts. act sequences: the content of conversation above is both miss celia feels comfortable about minny and minny has the same feeling with her boss. miss celia and minny enjoy each other as the boss and the help. key: data obtained from the film the help shows that the way minny is in the light-hearted way. instrumentalities: the conversation above is a verbal conversation spoken directly by minny to miss celia. norms : in this conversation, minny looks polite when she says that she wants to work seriously. genre : the speech of minny is an explanation form. this is a form of declarative sentences as expressed directly. minny implicitly says that she does not want to get problems with her boss, especially white people. thus, she wants to work seriously. from the speaking explanation above, it can be seen that minny is giving a warning for miss celia. she tells her that even miss celia is happy to have minny as a servant, minny does not want to have any grateful feeling when working with white people. so, her opinion is told in casual language and she tells that she does not want to make any problem with white people even she hates all white people. hence, the first factor that influences the use of non-standard english is the participants in the conversation. minny is the maid working to miss cellia and she is a black woman. minny does not ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|120-122 have a high education so her utterance does not follow the standard english rule. the second factor is ends. it influences the use of non-standard english because minny says “i ain‟t messing around no more” in order to convince miss celia that she will work seriously. the second datum for the using of double negative is the conversation between aibileen and minny as follows: aibeelen: we can't put that story in the book. minny: we ain't got no choice. (datum 6) the conversation above is the conversation between black women. from the conversation above, it could be known that minny uses the negative concord ain‟t but she also uses no in the end of her speech. based on english grammatical rule, minny does not need to use ain‟t and no at the same time. she can choose to use ain‟t or no such as we ain't got choice or we got no choice. here, minny‟s speech above can be analyzed using speaking: setting and scene: the conversation takes place in the aibeelen‟s kitchen. aibeelen feels afraid if she put minny‟s story in to the book. participants: there are two participants in this conversation, minny, aibeelen. both minny and aibeleen are black women. ends: the purpose is that minny wants aibeelen to believe that the story about miss hilly will help them to get insurance. act sequences: the content of conversation above is that aibeleen says that they cannot put minny‟s story into the book but minny says that put her story in the book is the only choice. key: data obtained from the help shows that the way minny asks aibeelen to believe is in the serious tone. instrumentalities: this conversation is a verbal conversation spoken directly by minny in responding to aibeelen‟s statement. these conversations include in casual conversation because they both know each other. norms: in this conversation, minny looks polite when telling the bad story about miss hilly and asking aibileen to believe her. genre: the speech of minny is a declarative form. this is a form of declarative sentences as expressed directly. minny says her opinion directly to aibileen to make her believe in minny‟s opinion. she just wants to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 121-122|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 solve the problem and helps skeeter to publish her book safely. from the speaking explanation above, it can be seen that minny is telling her opinion about the book that skeeter writes. she argues that by putting her story to the book, it will make the black people safe. they would not get any threat from white people because of telling the truth about the reality working for white people because they do not treat well. minny speaks in clear voice because she wants to make aibileen believe in her opinion. she also uses double negative to emphasize her opinion. although the conversation is spoken in a casual way, minny shows her seriousness through her statement. hence, the first factor that influences the use of non-standard english is the participants in the conversation. minny is the maid and she is a black woman. minny does not have a high education so her utterance does not follow the standard english rule. the second factor is scene. it can be known that scene from minny‟s psychological setting believe that there are no other ways to do. then, the third factor is ends. it is because she believes about it, so she says the purpose to get the insurance. in sociolinguistics perspective, both minny and aibileen is using double negative in their speech. trudgill explained that standard english does not permit double negation (negative concord). aibileen and minny tend to use ain‟t and no at the same time and it makes their speech improper. they should choose one of the negatives to avoid an ambiguity and wasted words. conclusion and suggestion after analyzing the differences features of non-standard english used by the women characters in the help movie, the researcher concludes several things. from the 112 conversations containing the features of non-standard english, the researcher found five features of non-standard english used by women characters in the help movie, namely missing/lacking auxiliary verb, construction words, grammatical mistakes, wrong pronoun, and double negative. the features of missing verb used by the women character in the movie appear 27 times or 24.1%, the feature of construction words appears 55 times or 49.1%, the feature of grammatical mistakes appears for 15 times or 13.3%, the feature of wrong pronoun appears for 6 times or 5.3%, and the feature of double negative appears for 9 times or ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|122-122 8.0%. the feature of construction words is the feature that is mostly appeared and used by the women characters in the help movie. moreover, it is the only feature that is used by white women in this movie. from the speaking analysis, the important factor that influences the use of non-standard english are setting and scene, participants, ends, and genre in the conversation. moreover, almost all of the data influenced by participants. from the participants in each conversation, it can also be known the factors that influenced the use of non-standard english are education, social class, and also tribe. people with lack education tend to use nonstandard because they lack of formal education. in this movie, the black people are the people who lack of education. they work as a help for white people since they were young. therefore, they use non-standard language because they do not get a formal education about how to speak in formal and standard language, how to use the proper and good english, and how to speak to others properly. another factor that explains the participants is a low social class. it will also affect the use of language. the black people tend to use non-standard language because they never met other people except the black people and they never learn how to speak in proper grammar and standard language. references holmes, j. (1992). an introduction to sociolinguistics. new york: longman publishing. hymes, dell. (1974) language in culture and society (london: a harper int.ltd., santoso, k. b. (1990). problematika bahasa indonesia. jakarta: rineka cipta. trudgill, p. (1999). standard english: the widening debate. london: routledge. wardhaugh, r. (2006). an introduction to sociolinguistics (5th ed.). victoria: blackwell. widarso, w. (1994). bahasa inggris. yogyakarta: kanisius. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 144-155 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee interaction in efl writing class: lecturers’ reflection monalisa received: 22th september 2017; revised: 25th november 2017; accepted: 28th december 2017 abstract in writing class, producing a well-polished text passes two main stages: pre writing and drafting. during these stages, interactions take place which can be in form of learnerslearners and learners-lecturers interactions. dealing with this, two main questions should be directed towhat practices of interaction conducted during writing class and how lecturers reflect them. the data were collected from four writing lecturers of english education program of state islamic university sulthan thaha saifudin jambiwho have at least two years teaching experience. an interview conducted to each of them to explore what interactions were facilitating and less facilitating learners.the result showed that oral and written interaction were found from both learners-learners and learners-lecturers interactions.as reflected by the lecturers, both oral and written interactions made sense for the learners with particular assistances. specifically, a long written comments on the learners‟ drafts contributed better revision. key words: interaction; efl writing; reflection abstrak untuk memproduksi sebuah teks yang terpoles dengan baik, ada dua tahapan utama yang dilalui di kelas writing yakni tahapan pramenulis dan tahapan membuat draft. selama tahapan tersebut, interaksi berlangsung antara mahasiswa dengan mahasiswa dan antara dosen dengan mahasiswa. terkait dengan hal ini, ada dua pertanyaan yang diajukan yakni apa saja praktek interaksi yang terjadi di kelas writing dan bagaimana dosen merefleksikannya. data penelitian ini dikumpulkan dari empat orang dosen writing di program studi pendidikan bahasa inggris uin sulthan thaha saifudddin jambi yang memiliki pengalaman mengajar paling sedikit dua tahun. interview dilakukan dengan mereka untuk mengetahui interaksi apa saja yang dapat memfasilitasi mahasiswa dalam menulis. temuan menunjukkan bahwa terdapat interaksi secara oral dan tertulis dari mahasiswa dengan mahasiswa dan mahasiswa dengan dosen. seperti yang direfleksikan oleh para dosen, kedua tipe interaksi tersebut bermakna bagi mahasiswa dengan asistensi khusus. temuan spesifiknya adalah bahwa komentar panjang tertulis pada draft mahasiswa mampu membuat revisi draft mereka menjadi lebih baik. kata kunci: interaksi; efl writing; refleksi how to cite: monalisa. (2017). interaction in efl writing class: lecturers‟ reflection. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 144-155. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 145-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction to match the demand of academic and interpersonal functions, writing becomes an essential productive activity for english foreign language (efl) learners to develop.in their academic tasks, efl learners are very often to report for final project, articles, and thesis. in addition to fulfilling interpersonal function, they will be likely to conduct formal correspondences as providing report to supervisors and clients when they possess certain occupation in the future. having such aboveproducts are the result of complex andcognitive process which needs sustained intelectual effort over a considerable period of time.the process is recursively to have meaningful language output. therefore, it facilitates acquisition in l2 writing (saville-troike,2006, p.163). the recursive process of efl writing accomodatesproceduresin the process writing (nunan,1999,p.273). at any stage of this process, william (2005) emphasizes that second language learners need much time, more discussion, and feedback. it is in line with kim (2010) who reveals that learners could deliver their thoughts and meaning closer to the target intention through involving them in collaborative, revising group work in each stage of writing process. thus, it could be identified thatworking at any stage of process writing requires interaction among learners and teacher formanaging the input and feedback through responding and correcting. interaction in the view of of socialcultural theory may boost higher forms of thinking and complex skill. villamil & guerrero (2006, p.24) believe that a learner who internalizes social interaction with others and the external dialogue with teachers and/or peers becomes internalized, resulting in a „socially constructed dialogue mind‟.it is supported by slavin (1982) who stresses that learners who are involved in close interaction have an individual accountability to achieve shared goals. the role of interaction insocial approach is further explained by saville-troike (2006, p.106) below. from a social perspective, interaction is generally seen as essential in providing learners with the quantity and quality of external linguistic input which is required for internal processsing, in focusing learner attention on aspects of their l2 which differ from target language norms or goals, and in providing collaborative means for learners to build discourse structure and express meaning which are beyond the current level of their linguistic competence. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 146-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license therefore, interaction is viewed as a means of providing input and feedback in the recursive process of producing written works in process writing. one type of learners-learners interaction is group work in which the intentions are to get more ideas to write, to develop confidence being a writer as well. working in pair is another type of learner-learner interaction which is commonly known as peer review. it is similar to peer editor as the term used by oshima and hogue (2007,p.18). a peer editor is a classmate who reads the draft and helps to improve the content and organization. in this interaction, learners pay attention on each other‟s draft and give advice and make suggestion about how their drafts could be improved. the strength of group work is due to equal level of the leaerners so that comprehensible input is likely occur and contribute to second or first language learning(krashen & terrel, 1983). both in group work and peer review where an interaction may take place, a teacher may play different roles as an examiner, audience, assistant, resource, evaluator, or editor (harmer, 2006,p.109).such interactionsare considered quite common in classroom setting. in the process writing, interaction between teacher and learners may occur at pre writing stage, drafting, and revising. in this productive activities, teachers may respond on the learners problems of their relatively limited l2 knowledge, content they wish to communicate, context for a specific communicative situation, and cultural convention for language use. ellis (2005,p.40) reveals that the opportunity to interact in the l2 is central to developing l2 proficiency. when learners receive input and feedback relevant to their poblems in writing, they have chance to clarify and process (engaging in negotiating for meaning). in this opportunity, they acquire l2 writing. there are at least three different ways of expressing input and feedback during interaction; they are orally, written comments, and graphic devices.harmer (2004) suggests to respond orally when the teachers are involved with work -inprogress by visiting students and talking to them about what they are writing. at work inprogress stage,oral interaction commonly occurs in forms of group discussion and pair work in which each member has greater chance of offering different opinions and varied contributions. furthermore,oral response also likely occur when a learner needs a conference with the teacher at the stage of revising the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 147-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license draft. peres-amurao (2014) views that holding conference as part of teacher intervention in making use of written input will produce satisfactory final draft. the second way of providing input and feedback is through written comments or written corrective feedback. ellis (2009) identifies it as typology of written corrective feedback which consists of direct, indirect, metalinguistic corrective feedback, the focus of the feedback, electronic feedback, and reformulation. written corrective feedback is a standard method employed by most teachers to provide guidance at revising stage (karimi, 2016). harmer (2007) offers responding, correcting, and involving learners to refer to feedback on written work. what he means with responding is to say how the text appears to the teacher and how succesful she thinks it has been. there are two ways of responding: in the form of letter and by showing alternative ways of writing. then, correcting means using codes to indicate that the learners make mistakes in their written work located into the body of the text itself or in the margin. the learners are trained to benefit it. lastly, involving learners means to encourage learners to give feedback to each other. such peer review has possitive effect on group cohesion to be better at self monitoring. the last is graphic devicesin which lestari (2008) lists them into underlining, circles, and arrows. in ellis‟ (2009) typology, underlining and particular codes which is inserted to correct between two words or two letters on learners draft are included into direct corrective feedbacak. such providing written input commonly applied by teacher on learners full draft and by their peers at peer review session. those three are not always viewed possitevely. as experinced by lestari (2008), teacher‟s input and feedback are not in phrase level comment or in the form of oral comments or graphic devices, such as underlining, circles, arrows, etc., yet in paragraph level with written comments. she further explains that oral and short written comments as well as graphic devices are considered less sufficient in providing intake for the progress of the final draft. graphic devices such as underlining, circles, and arrows are received by students to be more or less a command. this situation tends to place teacher and students unequally which then limits the interactive process. one out of three ideas to make written corrective feedback efficient according to ferris (2011, p.109) is that the teacher should prefer giving feedback indirectly, focused, and verbally, not bypresenting them with codes or symbols. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 148-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license since learners often receive negative evidence on their drafts, harmer (2004) believes that it is a good idea to write down something good in the students‟ works. such response can be extremely useful and should help them to avoid mistake in their final draft. moreover, ellis (2005) identifies that the role of corrective feedback in l2 acquisition is controversial. he supports this identification by rolling truscott‟s (1999) argument out as correcting learners‟ errors has no effect on learners‟ acquisition of new l2 forms. though lestari (2008) may overlook the use of graphic devices on providing written comments, monalisa‟s (2013) experience allowedher to keep inserting them beside her long written comments on the learners‟ outlines. simply put, she fastened the graphic devices with written comment and vice versa. the learners found the contribution and interrelationship of them so that they made use of the two on their works. moreover, she kept providing oral comments specifically at the step of generating ideas. a study of practitioner‟s views on corrective feedback was conducted by alzahrani (2016). he collected the data through both closed and open ended questionnaire given to ten english language teachers who four of them are native speakers of english. the results indicate that the teachers believe in effectiveness of coded unfocused corrective feedback toward writing accuracy. however, the participants also believe that using code to mark learners‟ errors would be more effective if used selectively. chen et al. (2016) conducted a case study of university students from mainland china deal with their perceptions and preferences of written corective feedback. both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 64 intermediate, adavancedintermedite, and advanced english learners across three proficiency level. the findings showed that learners expressed a favourable attitude toward error corection. qualitatively, the participants prefered to revise their products with less teachers‟ interference. in relation to types of feedback learners prefer, a study conducted by hajian et al (2014) found that learners prefer possitive comments more than one types. most of them prefered detailed and specific comment. the above discussion motivates the author to investigate what practices of interaction conducted during writing class and how lecturers reflect them. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 149-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license methods the study aimed at having lecturers‟ reflection on the practices of interaction conducted in their writing class. the participants were four english lecturers coded as l1, l2, l3, l4with at least two year exprerinces in teaching writing. interviews were conducted around 20 to 30 minutes in the first language settingfor each of them. there were ways of expessing input and feeedback in an interaction derived from ways of reacting to students‟ writing (harmer, 2004) which are broken into pieces of questions stated in theinterview protocol.the data collected are aboutwhat practices of interactions conducted and what facilitate and less facilitate learners on lecturers‟ responding and correcting during interaction at the stage of planning and drafting of students‟ products. planning stage consists of choosing a topic, generating ideas through listing, deleting irrelevant ideas, and making outline.the process of text making, peer review, written comment and conference session are included into the drafting stage. the process of analyzing data was preceded by transcribing and translating them into english. the trancripts then were coded and categorized based on the stages practiced in process writing. to go beyond, the discussion is conducted on the basis of relevant theories and related findings. finding and discussion the findings of this study are presented stage by stage of input and feedback occured in process writing.the first information was obtained from the interview about interaction when choosing a topic. all the interviewees stated that they provided input for the learners and conducted interaction orally. they found that the learners were facilitated.  though most of learners were highly interested choosing their own topics, two or three others required me to provide some choices.(l3)  they loved my assistance for proving topics and discussed how to narrow them.(l1)  some learners showed me their topics and asked wether those were likely to be developed. even their questions were further about cultural convention for l2 use.(l4)  having their own topics did not mean they have adequate l2 knowledge to be formulated into correct phrases. they asked me for assistance.(l2) these statements show that oral interaction at the initial phase turn them into engagment to negotiate for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 150-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license meaning.during the interaction, learners got input from the teachers in terms of focusing their attention on aspect of l2 (saville-troike, 2006).teachers play their roles as assistants who help learners along and as resource persons who are available for learners‟ need on information or guidance (harmer,2004). then, situating learners to prefer their own topics is to free themselves from feeling underpressure. their familiarity to the topics is taken into account to ensure their readiness to next phase of process writing. therefore, their self confidence are built. oral interaction also occurs at generating ideas in pair or in group discussion. it was found that doing brainstorming by listing ideas promoted both learner-learner and learner-teacher interaction to make make sense of the activity as reflected by one of the interviewee below. i found that learners prefer brainstorming by listing rather than clustering in process of generating ideas. they felt free to express any words, phrases, even sentences directly and inderectly related to the topic. they felt no worry for making mistakes.i allowed them to consult with their dictionary or thesaurus. i went around helping them with suggestions; or they asked me for clarification on particular expressions. when they came into deleting some particular irrelevant ideas, each member of the group delivered their reasons based on their l2 knowledge.(l2) what author might gain from this statement is that doing brainstorming in a group through listing is considered simpler for the learners. they feel equal since no body dominates the activity. such feeling becomes significant in consructing the meaning for the work. it is quite similar opinion with krashen and terrel (1983) who indicate thatinput from their peers is likely comprehensible and contributes to second language learning as the language level of among group members are roughly equal. in additon, slavin (1982) emphasizes that the individual accountability to pursue particular goals is maintained in this group work.by allowing them to consult with their dictionary or thesaurus, lecturer trains them not to rely more on their lecturer. however, building learners independence does not mean learners are totally free from lecturers‟ supervision. therefore, lecturers keep playing their roles as an audience who responds to the learners‟ ideas, and as an assistent as well as a resource person. both oral and witten comment usually come at the outlining of the draft. these two ways of interaction at this stage are conducted for organizing ideas. this step is considered difficult to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 151-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license many learners as describedin the following.  in completing the ready made scheme of the outline,they are quite often struggling for formulating the main ideas and determined the order of supporting sentences of each paragraph. to facilitate them, i recalled their memory on the theory of how to write a main idea by asking them questions. what i found that they were not happy with more questions. as i realized it, i provided them with a model of good discourse structure of an outline. when the outline was finished, i came to respond their work by circling some misplaced expressions and gave notes at the edge of lines. some learners got the ideas on the note and were able to improve the outline, but some did not.(l1)  learners asked for clarification on the certain codes (arrows, circles) i used to provide feedback to the learners’ work. they did not want to revise their work immediately due to many graphic devices throughout the work (l3) the two statements above show that some learners may get frustrated when they are offered many questions and graphic devices. these cases are in line with ellis‟ opinion (2005) on the controvercy of corective feedback. specifically, having codes and symbol (including circle, arrows) are considered less satisfying strategies for written corrective feedback (ferris, 2011). it is supported by lestari (2008), one of whose researchfindings tend to overlook the graphic devices. some other learners, however, may benefit the graphics since written feedback available as experienced by monalisa (2013). for those who get used to such symbols, they make sense of them. as harmer (2007) states that to benefit on the graphic devices and the codes, the learners should be trained firts to use them. when the learners have revised their outline, they come to the stage of text production. almost all learners feel comfortable to do drafting individually. it is undestood that the interaction in this stage is fully between the learners as writers and the text. they process all the input given at two previous interactive activities. the input and feedback are managed in central processing stage. in this mental process, input and feedback as the new skills demand learner writer attention, and thusinvolves controlled processing. before learner writer‟ full draft is finished as the output, practices are conducted to move to authomatic processing (mclaughlin, 1987 as cited in saville-troike, 2006). as the draft is finished, learner writer conducts peer review based on peer review sheet ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 152-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license guidance. the following statements are from the interviewee.  i found some learners work better to provide feedback on their peer draft, and some others do not.(l4)  i took a look to the low volume discussion of two peer during peer review. they explained each other on the contents of the drafts. (l2)  mostly learner writers focused their attention on grammar mistake, words, and spelling in peer review. content, context, and cultural convention of the draft were neglected.(l1)  not many corrective feedback given by peer because they thought that there would be lecturer’ final respond.(l3) from the statements above, lecturers have to familiarize learners with this sheet to make sense of this activity. in order to conduct successful peer review, learner writers have to be trained intensively (farah, 2012, p.199). the learners‟ familiarity on l2 knowledge (vocabulary, morphology, syntax, discourse structure) bring them to provide respond on words and grammar; having low volume discussion between peer showed that they conducted confirmation check for negociating meaning resulted on correction of each other‟s errors (ellis, 1997);they are reluctant to respond on the content and the context of the draft. thus, learners need to be exposed to requirements of production of written langauge. to produce written language, it does not only require knowledge of l2 but also prior knowledge of content whishes to communicate, context to a specific communication, and cultural conventions for langaugeage use (saville-troike, 2006). as the draft has been revised based on peer responses, it is then submitted to the lecturers for having input and feedback. here are the information gained by the lecturers along learners‟ revision of their final draft.  a number of learners asked me to make an oppoinmant to discuss orally on the short written respond i provided.but some others prefer to work without having conference. (l1)  i found only small number of learners whose final drafts got little progress under my long written comments. in other words, most of them have better final draft .(l2)  some learners were succesfull to revise their works;some others were not. the graphic devices and short writen comment on their drafts for some learners were efficient, but not for some others.(l4)  i found that a succesful revision made by a learner whose first draft ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 153-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license considered very poor. i wrote one long good example to her. she learned better from the example.(l3) from the first case, the authormay identify two inferences. the first is that a short written respons isconsidered less adequate to facilitate better revision. in this case, learning will take place when interaction conducted in written form and orally at the same time. itis in line with one of the finding in peres-amurao‟ study (2014) in which learners need for conference to uptake of the writen comment. this result is not opposite to the qualitative finding in a study conducted by chen et al. (2016) whose participants tend to revise their products with less teachers‟ interference. the second case shows that long written comments are considered effecttive as it is supported by lestari‟s study (2008). it is reasonable, since it may possibly provide much intake for the progress of the final draft.long written comment might provide teachers enoughopportunity to generate input extensively as supported byalzahrani‟s (2016) finding on the effectiveness of coded unfocused corrective feedback on writing accuracy. as it is unfocused feedback, abundant exposures related to l2 knowledge, content, context for particular setting as well as cultural convention are more likely contributed for utilising self-repair. next, what author is able to infer from the fourth lecturer‟s case is that negotiating meaning through graphic devices and short written comments may partly take place. it might be other factors influence learning such as learners‟ familiarity to the devices or the clarity of short written comment itself.such less familiarity might direct ferris (2011) and lestari (2008) to neglect codes and symbol. in general,short written comments are typical written input of direct unfocused corrective feedback. as a result, learners may not easily solve their linguistic difficulties.a most likely learners‟ effort to revise their drafts is through acquiring the detailed and specific comment provided by teacher (hajian et al, 2014). the last case displays that modelling the draft helps learners more. imitating is an easy activity. here the teacher plays her role as fully resource. hence, it is not a surprise that is from the very poor draft appears the succesful one due to the available model. conclusion and suggestion a number of ways in interaction during writing class may turn into both facilitating and less facilitating learners ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 154-155 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8323.8323 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in producing better final drafts. oral interaction between learner-learner and teacher-learner interaction in selecting the topic bring them into engage to negotiate meaning. other interaction that promote learning is long written respond on learners‟ draft. peer review will be significant when learners are familiar with the demand of peer review sheet. to facilitate learners interaction with written response on their full draft, familiarity on l2 knowledge (vocabulary, morphology, syntax, discourse structure) bring them to provide respond on words and grammar; learners need to be exposed to prior knowledge of content whishes to communicate, context to a specific communication, and cultural conventions for langaugeage use. corrective feedback in form of grapich devices will much better accompanied by oral interaction. the graphics are also fastened by written comments. otherwise, some learners may get frustrated with the “allien” devices. other activities come into less sufficient interaction are a bunch of questions to recall learners‟ memory. too many lecturer‟s visitsinto the learners group discussion may put them underpressure. next, short written respons on final draft is not adequate to facilitate learning. the use of graphic devices and short written comments on full draft may partly promote learning. the last is long written comment in form of providing model text helps learners more. however, modelling is like imitating which does not boost critical thinking. modelling is still likely suggested to the teachers to take into account with particular teaching approach so that it may benefit learners. references alzahrani, h.f. 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(2014).the value of feedback and conferencing in the process approach to writing for filipino and thai students in higher education: acomparative analysis.tesol international journal, 9(2):18-35. saville-troike. muriel. 2006. introducing second language acquisition. cambridge: cambridge university press. slavin, r.e. (1982). cooperative learning: students teams. what research says to the teacher?washington, dc: national education asosiation. villamil, o.s.,& de guerrero, m.c.m. (2006). sociocultural theory: a framework for understanding sociocognitive dimension of peer feedback. in k.hyland and f. hyland (eds), feedback in second language writing: context and issues (21-41). new york: cambridge university press. william, j. (2005). teaching writing in second and foreign language classrooms. boston, ma: mcgraw-hill. 10 (1). * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 239-260 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee 'i didn't anticipate the weather, so i borrowed my friend's white cloak': emotional geography of efl students taking iisma (indonesian international mobility awards) exchange program ikhwan hazma zidani*, emy sudarwati brawijaya university, indonesia (ambitioner@student.ub.ac.id) received: 10th march 2023; revised: 24th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract this paper examines an in-depth narrative case study that explores the emotional journeys of two efl students participating in the indonesian government's iisma (indonesian international students mobility award) student exchange program. direct interviews with students over one month provided the source of the study's data. the study's findings showed that the participant experienced sustainable adaptation through negotiated emotional changes in their experiences as exchange students in host countries, which were anchored by hargreaves' (2001) dynamic geography framework that focuses on physical, social, moral, professional, and political aspects. such a situated practice raises the question of what preliminary preparation iisma students should undertake before travelling to the host nations and how policymakers should respond to students' emotions as feedback. this empirical data may also illuminate the function of emotion played by efl students participating in international exchange programs while finishing their studies in indonesia. key words: efl students; emotional geographies; foreign language instruction; iisma program abstrak penilitian ini menganalisis sebuah studi kasus naratif mendalam yang mengeksplorasi perjalanan emosional dua mahasiswa asing berbahasa inggris yang berpartisipasi dalam program pertukaran pelajar iisma (indonesian international students mobility award) dari pemerintah indonesia. data penelitian diperoleh melalui wawancara langsung dengan para mahasiswa selama satu bulan. temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa peserta mengalami adaptasi yang berkelanjutan melalui perubahan emosional yang dinegosiasikan dalam pengalaman mereka sebagai mahasiswa pertukaran di negara tuan rumah, yang didasarkan pada kerangka kerja geografi dinamis hargreaves (2001) yang berfokus pada aspek fisik, sosial, moral, profesional, dan politik. praktik yang terjadi dalam situasi ini menimbulkan pertanyaan mengenai persiapan awal yang sebaiknya dilakukan oleh mahasiswa iisma sebelum melakukan perjalanan ke negara tujuan dan bagaimana para pengambil kebijakan seharusnya merespons emosi para mahasiswa sebagai umpan balik. data empiris ini juga dapat memberikan pemahaman mengenai peran emosi yang dimainkan oleh mahasiswa asing yang berpartisipasi dalam program pertukaran internasional ketika menyelesaikan studi mereka di indonesia. kata kunci: mahasiswa asing; geografi emosional; pengajaran bahasa asing; program iisma how to cite: zidani, i.h., sudarwati, e. (2023). 'i didn't anticipate the weather, so i borrowed my friend's white cloak': emotional geography of efl students taking iisma (indonesian international mobility awards) exchange program. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 239-260. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 240-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction one of the leading forces influencing change in higher education is the internationalization of higher education (patrício et al., 2017; yonezawa & shimmi, 2015). having the experience to study abroad is becoming increasingly important in a global and globalized world connected each other at this time, especially for students learning foreign languages because of the opportunity to study at a foreign campus that provides an invaluable educational and cultural experience (keogh & russel-roberts, 2009; messer & wolter, 2007), ways of pursuing global careers or lifelong learning (chak & makino, 2010); bring social, cultural, economic and knowledge benefits (chiteng kot, 2014); and increase students' motivation (patrício et al., 2017). the indonesian international student mobility awards (iisma) is one of the merdeka programs independent campus learning (mbkm) under the management of the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology, which provide opportunities for indonesian students to study at host universities abroad for one semester. the indonesian international student mobility awards is one such initiative. it is a government of indonesia scholarship program designed to pay for indonesian students to participate in mobility programs at prestigious universities abroad. indonesian university students can participate (hartati & riniati, 2022). since it was launched for the first time, this program has received extraordinary enthusiasm from students throughout indonesia (budiarti et al., 2022; hartati & riniati, 2022), and they are all competing to qualify for this program so that they can gain experience studying abroad at the destination campus. similar to other exchange programs, the iisma program aims to provide study experience at foreign universities. develop students according to what they are interested in. an exchange program requires students to leave their comfort zone and quickly respond to challenges (atalar, 2019). the student exchange program will highlight and discuss international issues, covering business, cultural science, and relationships between countries. therefore, english as an academic lingua franca helps escort students to transcultural social communities (baker, 2016). nowadays, in almost every university, there is an inclusivity for foreigners to access a distinctive learning experience in certain countries. according to atalar (2019), universities would gain positive relations with universities abroad as the medium to country reputation and trade in the long run. besides, http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 241-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license international and national and institutional contexts can influence students' sojourn decisions (daly, 2011). in elaborating this, the need for graduates with global skills, international competence, and exchange opportunities may influence the students' motivation to study abroad. student exchange programs are expected to gain more advantages than regular learning programs. examining the learning manifestation's benefit for students, messer & wolter (2007) found that the students taking the exchange program will increase their awareness of cultural diversity. students are expected to be practical in perceiving the issues. furthermore, messer & wolter (2007) stated that there is a positive correlation between the students taking the program and the entry salaries. the learning method strongly verifies this by encouraging students to explore intercultural issues. several studies have been conducted regarding international students' exchange programs. those studies deal with students' cultural experiences during international programs (apriliyanti et al., 2021; baklashova & kazakov, 2016; kurosh & kuhi, 2018; sudarwati et al., 2022); stereotypes students face during international programs (bonazzo & wong, 2007; heng, 2016; ruble & zhang, 2013); the effort in preparing exchange program candidates (hartati & riniati, 2022); challenges students face during exchange programs (bin basri, 2015; chirikov & soria, 2020; crawford camiciottoli, 2010; mahmud et al., 2010; mbous et al., 2022); students adaptation (budiarti et al., 2022; wu et al., 2015); international students' attitude (yin & zong, 2022; zhai et al., 2022); the effects upon returning from international program (jonkers & cruzcastro, 2013); benefits of exchange program (abdullah et al., 2014; chiteng kot, 2014; green & mertova, 2014; markova et al., 2016). despite the increasing number of discussions about international students and exchange programs, there seems to be little study conducted in the area discussing the students' emotional geography of students while pursuing their studies abroad. the exchange program leads the student to a new environment with different characteristics than their hometown. this might evoke students' certain emotions through brand-new issues, traditions, and methods. iisma (indonesian international mobility awards) was established by the minister of education, culture, research, and technology of the republic of indonesia in 2021, and it is similar to the other exchange programs. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 242-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license within one semester, the program introduces the students to the vast industry's development, including international cases and intercultural diversity. indonesian awardees can choose up to 110 host universities, including penn state university, universidad de granada, university of pécs, and so on. international issues will be brought up through the constructed courses. thus, it somehow creates intercultural communication spoken by different speech communities that leads to perspectives as found in the form of a conceptual model (budiarti et al., 2022). hargreaves (2001, pp. 1065–1077) develops emotional geographies in education. according to hargreaves (2001), the concept of emotional geography refers to "... spatial patterns and experiences of proximity and gaps in human interactions and relationships that help create, configure, and color the feelings and emotions we experience about ourselves, our world, and one another," (p. 1061). in addition, hargreaves also defines emotional geography as "a concept that aids us in identifying the supports for and dangers to the basic emotional attachments and educational understandings that develop from forms of distance or proximity in people's interactions or relationships." the pupils' motivation is revealed by this idea, making it easier to spot the positive and negative aspects of their social interactions while studying. according to hargreaves' view, every encounter and relationship between people has five key components. it is explained that various answers are composed of multiple factors, including societal, moral, professional, political, and geographic factors. the theme of this study is based on hargreaves' five emotional geography dimensions: physical geography, sociocultural geography, moral geography, professional geography, professional geography, and political geography (hargreaves, 2001a). physical geography dimensions affect social interactions limited by factors such as the emotional closeness in relationships between students, supervisors, and other campus communities. the distance that shows this dynamic relationship is strongly influenced by the intensity of the association between students and their teachers. the sociocultural geography dimension creates a discourse of closeness or social inequality due to differences in race, culture, gender, and disability, including how to feel and express emotions that can create distance between students, teachers, and other campus communities. moral geography deals with the discourse of social closeness or inequality influenced http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 243-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license by the values and ethical norms possessed by students, teachers, and other campus communities in achieving visions and goals that may differ. the professional geography dimension deals with professional terms and conditions which affect social relationships/interactions between teachers, students, and other campus communities. every campus has professional norms that must be obeyed/followed by the campus community, including teachers and students. last, the political geography dimension deals with hierarchical power or power that causes closeness or social inequality in the campus community. iisma is implemented as one of the platforms for international student exchange. therefore, this current study sets out to investigate the emotions that occur from several factors, such as social, cultural, moral, and political. the objective of this study is wrapped into two research questions to address: 1) what emotions occur among efl students who adapt and learn while taking the iisma exchange program?; 2)how do the students/awardees face and overcome the challenges during their stay overseas?. the findings of this study may illustrate how each variation of the emotional geographies present within the learning process affects the students. the discussion would be a reference for the teachers and students as a preparation for any student exchange and study abroad program. this study also identifies the emotional geographies and how students deal with them. method research design our project's main objective is to carry out a narrative inquiry (clandinin, 2006; clandinin & connelly, 2000), in which we gathered narrative information from an efl student enrolled in an international iisma program. according to the idea that "human beings both live and communicate tales about their lives," this design was created (connely & clandinin, 2006). because of this, a narrative inquiry approach is thought to be suitable for the study. we acknowledge that narrative inquiry is subjective but that it captures the nuanced meanings found in the stories that make up an in-depth analysis of the facts (sudarwati et al., 2022), enabling researchers to construct narrative interpretations because the message is delivered more effectively during interviews when participants are engaged, articulate, perceptive, sincere, and creative. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 244-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license participants the present study was situated in an english department of a public university in malang, indonesia, which primarily focuses on two participants' emotional geographies as efl students taking iisma. two efl students participating in the iisma exchange program, known here as student a and student b, were chosen for this study (pseudonyms). the two winners are indonesian students from batches 2020 and 2019 of the english literary university of brawijaya. since they participated in the program for up to six months, the subjects are deemed suitable to serve as examples of efl students participating in exchange programs. student a decided on her second choice for iisma programs, the university of groningen in the netherlands. student a was interested in criminology and thought about attending this university. she participated in the first batch's socializing event before taking the iisma. after taking the english proficiency test (ept), she quickly decided on her sojourn decision method. meanwhile, student b is a 2019 universitas brawijaya english literature student. student b studied with iisma at the university of queensland in australia for one semester. student b chose australia over universities in europe since he learned english as a second language and didn't expect them to be rigorous. student b used ielts to demonstrate his proficiency in english without taking any courses, fulfilling the program's criterion. he tested his english language skills during his college readiness training a week before the travel. their experiences during their class in the iisma program were described into five dimensions of emotional geographies proposed by hargreaves's (2001) theory covering physical, sociocultural, moral, professional, and political landscapes. the researchers gave student a and student b a consent form to sign, indicating their agreement to have all the data disseminated to solve the issue of study ethics. in ensuring that the participant's rights are preserved and respected, the researchers also make sure that they are aware of the purpose of the study and that ethical approval has been provided. individuals have signed a consent form indicating their willingness to participate in the study and their knowledge of its purpose. we also discussed our research objectives and the benefits of reading the paper to others. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 245-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data collection in-depth interviews were used to gather empirical information. an hour was spent recording each of the face-toface interviews using a smartphone. to avoid misconceptions and to deepen the grasp of the topics this study looked into, the interview sessions were performed in the subject's native language, bahasa indonesia. we questioned them about their emotional geographies from their time studying at iisma universities during the interview. their physical, societal, moral, professional, and political emotional experiences are discussed in the backgrounds. then, we inquired as to how they handled the circumstances. the material gathered from these extensive virtual interviews was then written in narrative form for further analysis. data analysis the six steps of theme analysis outlined by braun and clarke (2006) were used to analyze the data. all researchers tried to begin with the data by getting acquainted with the participant's voice notes by repeatedly listening to the recordings. this entails carefully hearing the facts again and then emphasizing the participants' essential narratives. second, to thoroughly comprehend the shared stories, we transcribed the recordings and read the interview transcripts several times. this approach allowed us to perform "an interpretive act" (bailey, 2008). lastly, before we started coding, we examined the interview transcripts. fourth, we noted any instances of what the participants said regarding their experiences during the iisma program when we read and reread all the transcripts numerous times. the analysis at a higher level of themes, rather than codes, involves grouping the various codes into potential themes and compiling all the pertinent coded data extracts within the identified themes. fifth, after all, data were initially coded and collated, we documented a lengthy list of the various codes identified across the data set (braun & clarke, 2006). findings and discussion findings the emotional geographies of two individuals who joined the iisma program were disclosed by the current investigation, showing a peculiarity that merits discussion. the hargreaves dynamic geography hypothesis guides the results covering five emotional geographies. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 246-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license sociocultural geographies: ‘i was wearing a hijab. i got the stereotype of hijab users there.' having the opportunity to study abroad is everyone's dream, including student a and student b. the new environment evokes their curiosity to discover new insights. sociocultural aspects that are interesting exist in student a's journey. what student a got from society needs more attention. in europe and the us, the media plays a significant role in constructing the perspective toward muslims and islamophobia (ogan et al., 2013). it means that if the press brings up muslim issues, it is more likely to cause negative attitudes toward muslims. in student a's case, discrimination against her is not found. the only stigma she felt by student a deals with how others regard her. it is revealed from student a's response: excerpt 1 … i'm using a hijab, there were two of us who wore a hijab from iisma. we both at some points felt they became more careful with us. they don't really know how to interact with us, and yes, i was treated differently. they were quite watchful when having a conversation with us. i got the stereotype of hijab users there. in examining what happened to student a, stigma may vary in stages, each showing the degree of severity. stigma can be defined as four major components that reflect how people treat an object. the components include 1) distinguishing and labelling differences; 2) associating with negative attributes; 3) separating us from them; 4) status loss and discrimination (link & phelan, 2003). from this theory, the case has reached component 2, linked to stereotypes. the other students and locals might believe that people who wear hijab are "dangerous". this is the reason that might drive the other students and locals to treat student a with caution. moreover, student a, in her dormitory house, found distinguished cultures that are more obvious than what she has seen in european movies. the dwellers always carry western traditions, such as having parties and drinking. student a had been asked and even encouraged by her neighbours to join their culture. in student a's host country, cannabis or weed is considered illegal. however, the law provides a tolerance for personal use, as in coffee shops. contrary to the netherlands, any drug use (including cannabis plants) in indonesia is against the narcotics law. that is why it was shocking for student a to witness her neighbours consuming http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 247-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license weed in front of her. the response is also revealed in her statement: excerpt 2 also, in the dorm, my neighbours used to have parties and drinks, which was really obvious to me. then, i often found myself and my classmates not having common things, so awkward moments came really after. i'm fine when it comes to small talk. but, if it comes to big talk, i think i'm not gonna make it. i didn't really interact with the locals; i would say they are a cultureless country. also, weed is legal there, it was shocking to me after seeing my neighbours had it. once they brought up that kind of topic in our conversation, but it was not a big deal to me. corresponding the context within an interaction is inevitable yet challenging, especially for intercultural exchange. unlike student a, sociocultural aspects in student b are more related to language creativity in the form of jokes. the mindset and experience constructed from different norms and cultures are sometimes unmatched. in line with this, the whorf-sapir hypothesis, as cited by ottenheimer & pine in a book entitled the anthropology of language: an introduction to linguistic anthropology, inferred that the structural use, including grammar, is strongly determined by the speaker's view through the world and vice versa (ottenheimer & pine, 2018). different language systems are immediately parallel, that understanding while using them interchangeably requires consideration. that is what student b underwent in his journey in australia. it is pretty challenging for student b to get accustomed to their jokes, which are made up by their mindset, not his. there is nothing more student b felt throughout his journey regarding sociocultural geographies. a relativity theory underlies here: excerpt 3 i had to get used to their internal jokes, like "reckon." i didn't know what it would lead to. besides, since in my city there are a lot of internal students, people there didn't really treat me differently. it is probably because they are casual to meet international students. moral geographies: 'i often found clashes in that way.' moral geographies often deal with personal beliefs and ideology. as it prevails in student b, facing ideology diversity has never been easy for student b, especially when it alludes to community belief towards religion. in australia, student b found that locals http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 248-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license do not believe in god as he anticipated liberalism. in examining this serious topic, it is crucial also to understand the australian context. a thorough discussion found secularism in australia is that religion is no longer relevant along with the development of modern science(ormerod, 2010). according to the australian census, this leads to a significant number of christians falling from 71% to 64%. an ideology that separates political activities and religion (including rejection) can be defined as secularism. the secularism found by student b contrasted with his belief in a higher power. to him, it is not more than a culture shock. this ideology is depicted in his statement: excerpt 4 we know that indonesia is strict about having a religion, while australia is the other way around. once in a debate, australian students stated that they don't believe in god, they are really science-based, and to them having god seems not logical. from my point of view as an indonesian student, i often found clashes in that way. even a friend frankly spoke that religion is a scam. student b perceived it wisely as a response to the exposure of ideology diversity. student b believes that insisting on and challenging an ideology are not clever things to do. not to mention, his ideology becomes a minority there and can be risky. student b stood firm with his principal, although his surroundings were not on the same page. see further his response: excerpt 5 personally, i can see both sides, i can understand what they are saying but i still believe in a higher power. don't worry, i didn't feel cornered. i don't feel like i can impose my belief there because it's personal business. plus, i understand the way they didn't have religion class in elementary school. similar to student b, student a also underwent challenges from ideology diversity found throughout iisma. student a had interacted with some intercultural friends that could broaden her horizon towards her view of the world. several aspects, especially politics and ideology, were introduced to student a. on some occasions, several politics and ideologies might seem convincing. sometimes, it is supported with comparison and evidence. learning international politics and ideologies might cause moral panic and fear from the threat of values that have been believed so far (alexander, 2012). student a, believes that restricting herself might keep her away from bad influence and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 249-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license awkwardness in the conversation. this moral panic can be seen in her story given in the interview: excerpt 6 i got a friend from the czech. we were close as she was my criminology classmate, and we discussed many things including politics, including isis. she's jewish. then, she once told me how jewish, there, got abandoned by the nazis and they fought against it. the ideology is totally different. at some point, i was interested to discuss more about it, yet i restricted myself from being too far. i was scared of the awkwardness. also, since the students are all efl students, i often found miscommunication within the conversation from one another. professional geographies: 'instead of me seeing their offer as an opportunity, i restricted myself to sticking to my norm as an indonesian student.' this aspect allows international students to possess a set of fundamental truths, and it is undeniable that clashes often occur. sometimes a contradiction in a lecturer's perception might evoke students' inner principles. taking the student a case as an example, after the lecturer brought up the topics of the voc (vereenigde oostindische compagnie) golden era, some students in the class had to challenge and suggest terrible behavior within the colonization era towards east india and the other countries. a scholar from itinerario entitled the voc as a company-state: debating seventeenthcentury dutch colonial expansion provides the view of voc from different points of view. it is classified into the view from the insiders, outsiders, and overseas (weststeijn, 2014). monopoly, colonization, conquest, and free trade done by voc led to global polemics. this tragedy might be seen as a massacre for sure sides that can reopen the old wounds. student a preferred not to do anything except for listening. as the atmosphere's class was getting fiery, student a stayed quiet by not making the atmosphere even worse. this situation is depicted in student a's statement: excerpt 7 in the academy, there was a dutch lecturer. the lecturer instructed the students to make a project of controversial artwork in which, coincidentally, we got the picture of pieter both, governor of voc. from there, the discussion went to the voc glory age. the lecturer addressed it seamlessly. but then, the discussion was getting hotter since some students were triggered and alluded to how voc colonized banda aceh. i couldn't do anything but listen. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 250-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the norm and personal beliefs underlie student a's reaction to everything that comes into her study. although inclusivity is required in the process, as an indonesian student, student a believes that she must stick to her norm to protect herself from bad influence. the opportunity of doing such different traditions was often offered to her, but she successfully rejected it. student a knows that every action has consequences. it is stated by student a in this quotation of her: excerpt 8 they all are open-minded people. the class consists of international students from many countries. i got the story from a spanish friend, i saw her "playing with boys" each night; spanish culture things, smoking weed, and so on. instead of me seeing this as an opportunity, again i restricted myself to sticking to my norm as an indonesian student. professional geographies that infer sojourn issues transpire in student b. a story from student b's friend criticizes a specific country day as a remark to the first day colonized. it is surprising for student b to know indonesians always expect this particular day. it cannot be so different. being curious about this, student b tried to find out the reason. it turns out that youth australians emphasize how australia celebrates the first day colonized, not independent. as an international student, making a direct conclusion about this issue is complicated. he then tried to examine both sides and be as neutral as possible. it is told by student b in this passage: excerpt 9 we know that we have independence day, on the other hand, australia has a celebration day called australia day that celebrates the first day australia was colonized by the british. youth australian see this as problematic, as i first was wondering because it is their day. because i was curious, i asked them what their opinion was. turns out, they protest that day because it is the same thing as genocide and colonialism justification, recalling past nightmares. they wonder why this day is called remembrance day instead of australia day…. the form of professional geographies in student b's case is depicted as he limits himself to anticipate bad influence. although, in this context, student b claimed himself inclusive to any insights, he did not want to drag and force himself into the community, especially drug users. he remained professional because he must represent indonesia and maintain his national reputation. see this passage: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 251-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license excerpt 10 …actually, i'm wide open to anything. liberalism becomes common to them; we cannot mix up or challenge their tradition. to me, the tolerance of my own socialization stops at drugs. political geographies: 'i thought the class would mock me, but it turns out they showed me appreciation and encouragement instead.' this political aspect is not easy to experience since this alludes to the hierarchy found in daily conversation. the following order includes power and status that influences interpersonal communication. furthermore, alpatov examines the marxism theory in linguistics and posits that there is tension between social classes– bourgeoisie and proletariat (alpatov, 2000). in other words, it has led to two opposing forces in every interaction: dominant and dominated. student b felt inferior in his class as an english foreign learner (efl). this feeling of inferiority is most likely a result of his quick comparison to language performance. student b had a sort of tendency or pressure that came from himself to perform english correctly. precisely because of his selfpressure might affect his eloquence. besides, student b also experienced a different politeness theory realization. unlike in australia, in indonesia, student b must be cautious about performing appropriate language registers to address teachers. this prohibits some speech acts from being implemented in class interaction. in explaining this experience, a previous study suggested that politeness recognizes cultural variations in people's perceptions (feng, 2015). in other words, impression and perception are conditional, depending on where those two are present in which culture. student b kept maintaining his attitude towards the politeness principle until he realized he experienced a different class atmosphere. political geographies are depicted in this passage: excerpt 11 i rather feel inferior when i speak with my classmates. i had a mid-term break with my mother. i barely speak english to my mother. when i got back to australia, i hardly spoke english. it was hard to switch when you used to speak a certain language. addressing the lecturer in indonesia we have to switch our register more politely; this is not applicable in australia. the lecturer was just like my peers. at that time, i asked for a moment to construct a proper statement. i thought the class would mock me, but it turns out they showed me appreciation and encouragement instead. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 252-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license student a also underwent alpatov's premise, as she found in her interaction with european students. in the netherlands, student a interacts with locals and international students. it cannot be denied that white people are dominating western europe. white supremacy is present in their conversation and is depicted by their dominance. even worse, white supremacy and anti-blackness can reach treatment differentiation illustrated in the case of ramon and the officer (spears, 2021). as an international student, student a decided not to oppose them but to be neutral. this premise is depicted in student a's case: excerpt 12 most of them are whites. white superiority was obviously seen in front of my face. when we were talking about each independence day, one spanish friend dominated the conversation. they tend to show off their exploration. yes, an exploration! they didn't want to call that colonization. compared to them, as indonesian, my friend and i felt so small. as a response, i tried to understand, being as neutral as i could., i didn't want to oppose, to me knowing was enough. physical geographies: 'i didn't anticipate the weather, so i borrowed my friend's white cloak (miqna)' one of the student requirements of studying abroad is to quickly adapt to certain geographic conditions, especially in a country with a different climate from their hometown. these challenging aspects can be found in student a. student a's hometown, indonesia, only has two seasons: dry and wet. on the other hand, the netherlands has four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. during winter, the temperature difference was sorely noticed by student a and could reach minus degrees celsius. the condition made student a suffer from seasonal depression. a downpour of rain and a gloomy day let student a stay at her dormitory house. she did not want to drive herself to any further overthinking, and that reason fostered student a to do activities outside. hopefully, it would warm her body. these physical aspects can be regarded in her statement: excerpt 13 the netherlands has 4 seasons and i got there between fall and winter. the temperature difference was so obvious until it hit minus degrees celsius, you can imagine. at that time, i got seasonal depression, the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 253-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license atmosphere seemed so gloomy, it affected my mood. i stayed in my room for a couple of days and drove myself to homesick and other overthinking things. rainy all day long made me unproductive. i couldn't stay any longer, i thought that i had to do something. i insisted on going outside, doing activities, and warming myself. i didn't work my preparation that well, i just wore a coat, nothing more than that until i saw my friends using thermal underwear. other new things that i found here are embankments from the dam and land reclamation. just like pantai indah kapuk in indonesia. adjusting to the new environments and climate is something that every international student must endure. parallel to what happened to student a, student b also experienced a different temperature range between indonesia and australia. unfortunately, student b had not made any specific preparations for facing winter. because of his excessive sweating, student b believed that he would be fine dealing with the winter peak there. it is less wise for an overseas student not to consider any seasonal planning. a previous study examined international students in malaysia facing different cultures, climates, and care (mahmud et al., 2010). the following study has revealed that a new environment might cause a barrier from the body's response to seasonal shock, including dizziness. student b had no choice but to improvise in dealing with the unpleasant temperature. one day, student b had to borrow his friend's miqna after realizing he did not bring any coat. the story has been elaborated on by student b: excerpt 14 that is right, i arrived there in winter, but it was not a big deal to me. the temperature reached 4 degrees celsius because i was sweating easily. it didn't bother me. i brought my one and only coat, it was only worn when i wanted to. i had no specific preparation for that season actually. even though one day i guessed that the day would be sunny, i didn't anticipate it until i realized the temperature reached 12 degrees celsius. i improved by borrowing my white cloak (miqna). thank god that my friend brought it. also, it is a walking city, so i must go anywhere walking, it seems fun though. discussion as english foreign learners (efl), it is inevitable that students might find several challenges and obstacles. international students with different backgrounds and ideologies are http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 254-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license gathered in one class. because of this, language becomes a significant aspect. a lack of adaptation skills might keep the learning performance away from the accomplishment. issues in understanding the content of lectures might happen due to the unsuccessful comprehension of different phonological and grammatical structures (crawford camiciottoli, 2010). the learning activities, such as brainstorming and oral presentation, require adequate language translation skills. speaking for its existence, wordfor-word translation is not consistently necessary to convert clauses from one language to another for a better understanding. in response to this situation, some quantitative scholars demonstrated that most english foreign learners in his study are motivated to learn english further (liberman, 2020; liu & huang, 2011). the study answered that anxiety issues lead students to improve their language performance. in addition, a survey from budiarti (2022) delivered student exchange awardees analysis and revealed the different characteristics of people. instead, the students responded positively and felt comfortable doing their activities. adaptation skill becomes crucial for students' opportunity to be involved in learning. conclusions and suggestion in sum, this study investigates the overseas students' response and challenge using hargreaves' emotional geographies theory (hargreaves, 2001b). after conducting interviews with two research subjects, this study revealed that the five emotional geographies present in each student somehow affected learning involvement. the following aspects are sociocultural, moral, professional, political, and physical. both subjects experienced physical characteristics that became dominant from other elements. studying in four seasonal countries might be something challenging for them. besides, socioculturally speaking, both issues only faced culture shock that was successfully anticipated. fortunately, the culture shock between them has not gone too far and obstructed the learning process. moreover, politics, such as language hierarchy, inferiority, and physical condition, strongly affect students' productivity. these can be considered for teachers and students to organize effective and valuable preparations before departure. the fact that this study is far from flawless must be acknowledged. this study employs a narrative inquiry methodology that requires narrative data. an oral story was created through http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 255-260 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.33270 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the use of an interview. interviewing is advantageous because it uses time effectively, among other things. yet, due to their short duration, oral interviews can only tell a brief account and not a complete one. not to mention that the story may not be revealed in chronological sequence due to interruptions and the subjects' performance on that particular day. the authors propose that written narratives, such as diaries and personal notes, are more trustworthy in thoroughly describing the following investigation. more prosperous tales match the depth of 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(2022). social dominance orientation, social contact, and attitudes toward international students. current psychology, 41(11), 7707–7717. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144020-01311-0/tables/4 . http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 97-110 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee lost in translation and the crucial process of convention witriani1 , ulyati retno sari2 , fuad arif fudiyartanto3 received: 18th april 2017; revised: 25th may 2017; accepted: 20th june 2017 abstract certificates, academic transcripts, and name of institutions are such very important academic documents for any institutions, including educational institutions, which translation into foreign languages (for example into english) should be done carefully, thoroughly, and precisely. this research on the translation of such academic documents in uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta found that, although in general the translations are correct, there are many parts of the documents that have not been properly translated. inaccuracies occurs due to frequent inconsistencies in choosing the diction (or vocabulary), phrase structures, and inappropriate choices of the translation procedures. therefore, the alignment, uniformity, and convention of the translations are necessary to maintain the quality of the results. key words: translation; crucial process; convention abstrak sertifikat, transkrip akademik, dan nama institusi adalah dokumen akademis yang sangat penting bagi institusi manapun, termasuk institusi pendidikan, yang ketika diterjemahkan ke bahasa asing (misalnya bahasa inggris) harus dilakukan dengan hati-hati, teliti, dan tepat. penelitian ini tentang penerjemahan dokumen akademis tersebut di uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta menemukan bahwa, walaupun secara umum terjemahannya benar, ada banyak bagian dokumen yang belum diterjemahkan secara takurat. ketidakakuratan tersebut terjadi karena sering terjadi ketidakkonsistenan dalam memilih diksi (atau kosa kata), struktur frase, dan pilihan prosedur terjemahan yang tidak sesuai. oleh karena itu, keselarasan, keseragaman, dan konvensi terjemahan diperlukan untuk menjaga kualitas hasil. kata kunci: terjemaha; proses krusia; konvensi how to cite: witriani. sari, u. r. fudiyartanto, f. a. (2017). lost in translation and the crucial process of convention. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 97-110. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 98-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction when the state islamic university (uin) sunan kalijaga is preparing to be a world class university, the issue of foreign languages, especially arabic and english, is one of the most important elements to consider. not only because being 'go international’ requires standardization that should be achieved, especially of the services and quality of all the stakeholders, but also because of the importance of informative and reliable standards for all parties in the university. related to the standardization, except the name of the university, i.e. universitas islam negeri that has been translated into state islamic university, there are rarely official translations for institutional names (faculty, department, and other institutions) and other documents such as degree certificates and academic transcripts. each institution and department has its own translation for those documents without any legality or standard of references. even, the procedure of translation in the language center of uin sunan kalijaga an institution where the students, faculty or alumni seek for translating their certificates, abstract and transcripts is only handed over their translators (appointed by the language center) and then edited by the language coordinator either in arabic or in english language. this of course may become a problem, especially on the validity of translation of those various documents. in addition, this institution also does not have some legal translators whose work are legally and scientifically reliable and defensible. not surprisingly, a variety of translated documents at the university level, the faculty and the language center will have different form of translations terms and similar documents. likewise, the research, workshops and alignment of academic documents translation in english is so important and emergency since the goal of university is to have such an international brand or recognition. furthermore, this research focuses on problems on translation such as the result of translation of academic documents uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta, the translation procedures to be taken in interpreting the terms of academic papers of uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta from indonesian into english, and the kinds of alignment of academic documents to be used as reference in the english translation at all levels of the document. the result of this research can be used as a reference at all levels in this university and also similar contexts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 99-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hence, through an academic document alignment workshop, there is a reference english translation of all documents particularly for academic transcripts and certificates from the department to university level. theoretical framework using a language approach, catford (1965, cited in nababan, 2008) views the activities of translation and defines them as "the replacement of textual material in one language (sl) by equivalent textual material in another language (tl)", which is defined as “the process of replacing a text of the source language with subtitles target language (p. 19)”. he also defines translation as the replacement materials source language text with the target language text material. newmark (1988) also provides a similar definition, but even more clearly: "rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text", which means “to translate the meaning of a text into another language in accordance with its intended author”. furthermore, kridalaksana (1985, cited in nababan, 2008) defined translation as the transfer of a message from the source language into the target language by first revealing its meaning and then style language. according to nababan (2008), the process (translation) is a series of activities done on purpose. the translation process can also be interpreted as a series of activities carried out by an interpreter at the time he transferred the mandate of the source language to the target language. therefore, in conducting these activities, a translator must be careful because an error in one phase will cause errors in the subsequent stages. if that happens, the result of translation will contain errors and misleading. generally, according to nababan (2008) the translation process consists of three stages: analysis of the source language text the analysis of the source language text is realized in reading activities that are meant to understand the content of the text. the understanding of the text content requires an understanding of the linguistic elements and extra-linguistic contained in a text. the transfer of messages once the meaning and structure of the source language are understood, the message contained in them can be identified. the next step is to shift the content, meaning, the message contained in the source language to the target language. this process is an internal process that takes place in the mind of the interpreter, who is then ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 100-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license expressed in the target language orally or in writing. to obtain a better translation to suit the purpose of translation itself, the translation needs to be aligned. restructuring restructuring or alignment is to change the process of transferring into a stylistic form that matches the target language, reader, or listener. thus, at this stage of this alignment, a translator needs to consider a variety of language to define a style that matches the type of the translated text. they need to consider to whom the translation is intended. of the translation process, it can be concluded that the meaning is the main thing to be concerned and translated. to get the meaning, a translator must fully understand the text to be translated. after getting the intended meaning, then he translates it into another language, through the reconstruction of a language without reducing the intended meaning. this is consistent with what was presented by larson (1984) that said, basically "translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source language into the receptor language (p. 3)". it can be interpreted that the translation is a transfer of meaning of the source language to the target language. that means the main focus or concern of every translator is the meaning (meaning). larson (1984) also required every translator should be able to "communicating the same meaning in a second language (the receptor) as was communicated in the first (the source) (p. 36)". the translator is able to convey the meaning of the source language in the same meaning of target language. based on the understanding and focus of emphasis in the translation above, larson (1984) distinguished two types of translation, namely: formbased (form oriented) and meaningbased (emphasizing the meaning) as the two opposite poles. form-oriented translation would tend to lead to a literal translation / literal, while the meaning based translation will lead to idiomatic translation. in practice, in between the two poles there are still other translations models. technically, related to the translation of the smaller units, the task of a translator is to choose and use appropriate procedures in order to obtain equivalence word, phrase or sentence. according to newmark (1988), the translation procedure in a certain way is translating the sentence or the smallest unit of a language. in addition to newmark, there are other experts also offering translation procedure that vinay and darbelnet (in hatim & munday, 2004. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 101-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license procedures offered by vinay and darbelnet are as follows: method:  direct translation: (1) borrowing, (2) calque, (3)literal translation  oblique translation: (1) transposition, (2) modulation, (3) equivalence (cultural equivalence), (4) adaptation (descriptive equivalence) although there has been a theory of translation procedure, and translators attempt to retain the meaning of the source language to be delivered as precisely as possible in the target language, in practice, there is often found what by nida and taber (1974) refer to as “loss of semantic content” or deletion components of meaning (either a lot or a little) p. 106111". in this sense, the term of content or message is selected by nida & taber (1974) to refer to the sense of meaning that is preferred by larson and newmark, as mentioned above. that is, these three terms refer to the same concept, namely: the meanings (as a couple of forms or form of language). generally, according to nida and taber (1974), the problem of meaning component deletion is especially common for translation related to: (1) idioms, (2) [non/] figurative meanings, (3) shifts in central components of meaning, (4) generic and specific meanings, (5) pleonastic expressions, (6) special formulas, (7) redistribution of semantic components, [and] (8) provision for contextual conditioning. method this study used a design or descriptive qualitative strategies in order to explain with words, not numbers, translation of cases of academic texts in uin sunan kalijaga (kothari, 2004; creswell, 2009). a method of data collection was done through a study of academic written or electronic documents that have been translated into english from the agency / institution in uin sunan kalijaga. data analysis was performed qualitatively, using content analysis or careful analysis of documents (krippendorff, 2004). in addition, the contrastive analysis was also used to carefully to compare between the source language texts with a target language (willems et al., 2003). technically, after the data collection was completed, the researchers conducted a verification and coding on the data prior to analysis. furthermore, the results of the analysis were aligned in the form of workshops and focus group discussions with experts and practitioners of translation as well as linguists. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 102-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license findings and discussion analysis of academic document translation the purpose of the study is to realize a reference of english translation in all academic documents, especially transcripts and certificates from the department to university level in uin sunan kalijaga. thus, research data were obtained from academic documents, written or electronic that has been translated into english by agencies/ institutions at uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta. once collected, the data were then analyzed and verified to obtain maximum results. from the analysis, it is found that each translation indicates a lack of quality both in written or electronic academic translation. the first result showed some inconsistency of translation. the second showed some ambiguous terms in the document translation. the third result indicated grammatical problems in the document translation. the fourth result showed lexical issues, and the last final result indicated a problem of punctuation in the translated documents. concerning the inconsistency of translation, especially in the use of certain language elements in the document translation, there are several categories of the inconsistencies found in the translation of data research. the first problem is the lack of consistency in translating the islamic terms. the second is lack of consistency in translating of phrase structure. the third is lack of consistency in the choice of words (lexical items). the last is lack of consistency in the translation of technical terms. the first problem is lack of consistency in translating the islamic terms. here, translators mostly use two different translation procedures: naturalization and literal translation (word for word). with different procedures, the results will indeed be different. naturalization has a tendency in maintaining the form of origin words with a slight adjustment to the target language. literal translation, on the other hand, does not retain its original form, but turn it into the target language. thus, naturalization will produce different translations compared to the literal translation. for example madhab, sharia, da’wah, quran, hadith, tawheed, tafseer, madrasah ibtidaiyah, ushuluddin, maqashid, zakat, tajweed, infak, and shodaqoh are translated by naturalization procedures, while islamic education, tithe, and theoretical use are translated by literal translation (word for word). the second problem is lack of consistency in terms of phrase ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 103-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license structure. phrases in english should follow the existing rules, adapted to its adjectives and nouns. in the data, some improper phrases, order, affixation and diction or choice of words were found. the examples are state islamic university sunan kalijaga that should be sunan kalijaga state islamic university yogyakarta, center for language development that should be language development center, and islamic jurisprudence and the principles which is supposed to be principles of islamic jurisprudence. the third problem is a lack of consistency in the diction or choice of words. in several examples, the translators use different words to translate similar terms. it can interfere the reader's understanding, for examples, undergraduate degree and bachelor degree for sarjana; honor and cum laude honors, very and highly satisfactory, satisfactory and fair for predicate of graduation; the major and study program for majors or courses of study; undergraduate thesis and final assignment for the thesis; grade point average and cumulative achievement index's for indeks prestasi akademik (ipk); and sealed and stamped for legality the fourth problem is lack of consistency in technical terms. there are some typing errors in official documents of translation. the examples are the use of decree in certificates and academic transcripts (in fishum), typing error as well as capital letters (capitalization) in the name of the faculty and academic transcripts. in addition to inconsistency, the research found some ambiguous terms (taxa) in the translation document. ambiguity in this document due to the amount of its modifier and noun: 2 modifiers 1 noun or 1 modifier attached to 2 nouns, for examples civil law and islamic business (hukum perdata dan bisnis islam), criminal and constitutional law/constitutional law and political islam/ islamic constitutional law and political islam (hukum tata negara dan politik islam), islamic primary school science (sains mi), library science and information (ilmu perpustakaan dan informasi) which were supposed to be library and information science/studies, center for the study and caligraphy production (pusat study dan produksi kaligrafi), center for the study of art and cultural media (pusat study media dan seni budaya), introduction to sociology anthropology, and early detection on development. furthermore, the present study also found problems with grammar in document of translation. grammar issues found are the use of singular and plural forms of a word, use adjective and nouns, and spelling mistakes. social ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 104-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and humanity sciences, comparative religion/s, sociology of religion/s, islamic education for islamic primary school/s, religion and conflicts resolution studies, maqashid study and analysis strategy (kajian maqasid dan analisis strategi), center for study/the study of enterpreneuship, institute for foreign language/s, history of minority islam/ islam minority, history of islamic social in indonesia, philosophy of human being/s, cross cultural and religion psychology, qualitative/quantitiatve research method/s, laboratory of philosophy “hikmah” (laboratorium filsafat “hikmah”), university services unit >> university service units , public srevices unit/ public service units, civil servants indonesia (pegawai republik indonesia), on (date), historical philosophic approach, mathematic, introduction sistem theories, function of complex variabel/s, development of special children and teenage, advocatory, anthological hadith. further findings were related to problems of lexical or choice of words for the translation of a term. in the translation, there are some inappropriate words to be translated into certain terms. this is related to improper diction. examples found in the data are the information for broadcasting, counseling on family and society, law/legal science, islamic education, centre for gender mainstreaming and children's rights, technical implementation unit, psychology of learning islamic education, value letter/ grade for a letter grade, point/ credit for credits, value/ grade point for the number value, cooperative enterprises, ethics/ islamic mysticism, projective psychology, indonesia/ indonesian language, islamic legal principles vs. principles of islamic jurisprudence, an undergraduate degree course. the final findings are in terms of punctuation errors in the translation document. in the data, improper uses of commas and full stop are found. translators do not write a comma (,) to mention a few things that are in sequence. instead, the translators use a full stop (.) for the phrases. examples found in the data are such as the center for neuroscience health and spirituality; center for language, culture and religion (oxford comma); awarded in yogyakarta on the sixteenth of october year two thousand thirteen; alms tax and endowment. translation procedures analysis from the point of view of the procedure used, the problems of translation of academic documents in uin sunan kalijaga are generally due to incorrect translation procedure use of a unit in certain meanings. the procedure used by the translators does ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 105-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license not fit the context at hand. these errors can reduce the quality of translation since this may cause the deletion occurred or errors of meaning and structure. the following is the explanation with analysis of each case. related to the first procedure, generally the choosing of procedures in words absorption (borrowing) is often performed for special terms (jargon) in their respective areas of study courses and faculty. thus, as mentioned in the previous sections, most of the selection procedures are appropriate, for example pancasila, the quran, or hadith (which is a translation of the pancasila, the quran, and the hadith). however, there are some terms that are not accurately translated using the method of borrowing, because they result in incomplete data components of meaning or shifts in central components of meaning to the readers of the target language (english), for example, the use of the word tawheed and tafseer in academic transcript of propagation management. if only such course, english language readers will be likely difficult to understand these two terms without the help of the english term. the readers will be easier to understand if the translation of the terms is added with an english term for both, which can be written in parentheses, becomes: tawheed (islamic theology) and tafseer (exegesis). the procedure of absorbent structure (calque) is generally used for typical phrases that perhaps in the field of study or faculty, and the elements forming the words are common phrases in english. data show that the majority of the selection procedure are appropriate, for example: ministry of religious affairs, state islamic university, and islamic education. however, there are some cases of improper translations using this procedure. for example, the term civil law and islamic business are not right to interpret the terms of civil law and islamic business. indeed, in terms of elements forming phrases/ terms, diction of civil, law, islamic, business have been commensurate with the words of civil law, islamic, businesses separately. however, when the translator chooses the calque procedure and translates into civil law and islamic business, so here the inaccuracy of the election procedure occurs. in this case, there have been shifts in the central components of meaning of the source language to the target language. in terms of civil law and islamic business, word of islam is attached to both the civil and business, while the word of law is also attached to both. supposedly, in the structure of the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 106-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license english language, the term is translated to: islamic civil and business law (understood as islamic law on civil and business). the third procedure is a literal translation (literal or word-for-word translation). basically, this procedure will be appropriately used to translate the structural and lexical terms that are not much different between the indonesian and english languages. terms such as comparative religion, islam and local culture are some examples of literal translation using appropriate procedures. however, there are some cases of improper translation using this procedure, for example, the term cumulative achievement index is not appropriate to translate the term grade point average. indeed, in terms of elements forming phrases/terms, each of words of cumulative, achievement, the index has been commensurate with the cumulative word, accomplishments, and indexes separately. however, when the translator chooses the literal procedure and translates it into cumulative achievement index, the inaccuracy of the election procedure occurs. in english, the term of grade point average is more acceptable rather than academic performance index. the fourth procedure, a shift (transposition), can be done to translate the language of something that naturally does need a shift in the class word, the level of structure, or sequence of words. most of the translations of academic documents in uin sunan kalijaga that apply this procedure have been appropriate, for example, the undersigned (translation of yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini), although there is a shift from two-word adjective phrase to six-word noun phrase. however, the data show there are also some inappropriate translations when the transposition procedure is applied, for example, the term science of prophetic tradition (translation of ilmu hadis). here the translator is less proper in applying transposition procedure, with the shift from two-word indonesian phrase into four-word prepositional phrase of english. it would be better if that term is translated into a more acceptable hadith studies in english. the fifth procedure is a change of perspective (modulation) between indonesian and english, such as the perspective of active-passive or positive-negative. not many translation data of academic documents in uin sunan kalijaga apply this modulation procedure, one example is a term born (translation of lahir). but there are also cases of translation using this modulation method become inappropriate, for example, the term it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 107-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license is hereby certified that (translation from dengan ini menyatakan bahwa). supposedly, active perspective in indonesian perspective is better maintained (active) in english, so this becomes hereby certifies that, because the subject of the sentence/clause already exists (ie, the faculty). the sixth procedure is the cultural equivalent (equivalence) that is used to translate idioms and fixed expressions that are typical indonesian. for example, to translate the term islamic mysticism sufism, or quranic exegesis to translate tafsir believed was correct. although much has been correct, there are also some improper translation results when using this equivalence procedure. for example, the term islamic jurisprudence and the principles were chosen to translate fiqh / usul fiqh believed to be incorrect. replacement of islam typical terms with more neutral but incorrect would cause shifts in central components of meaning of the indonesian which bring islamic culture in the english translation. the seventh procedure is an adaptation or adjustment (adaptation), both in structure and vocabulary, in the absence of the appropriate equivalent in the target language. cultural factors probably contribute also influence the selection procedure. data show that most of the selection procedure and in the translation of academic documents are correct, for example, the phrase correct and true to the original which is a translation of the original suit. even so, the data also showed their election adaptation improper procedures, such as in the case of the translation of the term of the faculty of adab and humanities became the faculty of adab (letters). the elimination of the element of cultural studies in english translation is clearly inappropriate, while adding the letters typical to british culture is still acceptable. when viewed from the perspective of loss of semantic content that occurred in the seventh election error translation procedure above, shifts in the central component of meaning seems the most common. it is indeed very unfortunate, because the academic documents should not be translated recklessly or inadvertently, let alone to result in components deletion of meaning of the original manuscript in indonesian language. translation results alignment observing the phenomenon of the finding of inaccuracies in the translation of academic documents uin sunan kalijaga as has been described above, the researchers have conducted several improvements over the alignment and inaccuracies that have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 108-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license been found in the data. first, alignment is mainly focused on some problems that occur repeatedly, such as in the case of translation inconsistency: either in relation to the terms of islam, the phrase structure, choice of words (lexical items), as well as technical matters such as punctuation. translation should be consistent, there should be no difference in terms and others, either in the text or in academic texts. here are some examples of the alignment of the data found. in addition, the data also show that some of the translations are incorrect or inaccurate due to changes in the meaning or significance. relating to the cases, alignment needs to be done to correct them. translation inaccuracies category may include errors or inaccuracies of electoral structure vocabulary in context. here is an example of harmonization on such matters. in further detail, all documents for each academic study programs in all faculties in uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta sampled in this study have been conducted and analyzed alignment in the workshop. however, because they are quite a lot and detailed, the document is not shown here. table 1. sample alignment with consistency no. translation variation alignment 1 center for language development language development center center for language development 2 study of culture cultural studies cultural studies 3 islamic jurisprudence and the principles principles of islamic jurisprudence principles of islamic jurisprudence 4 undergraduate degree bachelor degree bachelor degree 5 honor/cum laude very/higly satisfactory satisfactory/fair cum laude highly satisfactory satisfactory 6 hadith prophetic tradition hadith 7 zakat tithe zakat (obligatory alms) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 109-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. example of coordination with correction no. wrong translation alignment 1 civil law and islamic business (hukum perdata dan bisnis islam) islamic civil and business law (islamic law on civil and business) 2 islamic constitutional law and political islam (hukum tata negara dan politik islam) islamic constitutional and political law 3 library science and information (ilmu perpustakaan dan informasi) library and information science 4 social and humanity sciences (ilmu sosial dan humaniora) social sciences and humanities 5 history of islamic social in indonesia (sejarah masyarakat islam indonesia) history of indonesian islamic societies 6 psychology of learning islamic education (psikologi pendidikan islam) psychology of islamic education conclusion and suggestion the analysis of the data shows some important and fundamental that the conclusion in this study. first, most of the academic documents studied had been translated appropriately. however, some parts of the document are still relatively widely found errors/translation inaccuracies, both in terms of structure and vocabulary, which can affect the meaning (generally occur the deletion of meaning). secondly, all the translation procedures have been used by the translator: some of the procedures are appropriate to use, but others are still improper use. third, the alignment of the translation of academic documents is necessary to maintain consistency: meaning, structure, or vocabulary. associated with some of the above problems, there are formulated some suggestions that are worth to consider. the first is the establishment of a discussion forum as a media translator. the second is the use of a standard for document translation and the name of the institution. the third is to test the translator (language proficiency and translation accuracy). the latter is a verification (crosschecking) of data with a trusted source. references creswell, j. w. (2009). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). california: sage publication. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 110-110 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6598 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license hatim, b., & munday, j. (2004). translation: an advanced resource book. new york: routledge. kothari, c. r. (2004). research methodology: methods and techniques (2nd ed.). new delhi: new age international. krippendorff, k. (2004). content analysis: an introduction to its methodology (2nd ed.). california: sage publication. larson, m. l. (1984). meaning-based translation: guide to cross-language equivalence. lanham: university press of america. nababan, m. r. (2008). teori menerjemah bahasa inggris. yogyakarta: pustaka pelajar. newmark, p. (1988). a textbook of translation (1st ed.). london: prentice hall. nida, e. e., & taber, c. r. (1974). the theory and practice of translation. leiden: e. j. brill. willems, d. et al. (eds.). (2003). contrastive analysis in language: identifying linguistic units of comparison. new york: palgrave macmillan ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017, 31-48 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee self and group initiated professional development pursuits of efl teachers nana priajana received: 18th march 2017; revised: 20th may 2017; accepted: 21th june 2017 abstract teachers‟ quality plays a paramount role in the improvement of education quality. one of the ways to ensure high quality teachers is through effective continuous professional development for teachers. this present study is aimed to explore how efl teachers develop their professionalism, particularly in terms of pedagogical and professional competencies. this research involved seven outstanding english teachers teaching at junior and senior high schools from two different areas covering one municipality and a district in cirebon. the result showed that there are two main themes of professional development pursuits of the outstanding teachers comprising of self-initiated or individual and group professional development activities. key words: professional development; exemplary efl teachers; pedagogical competency; professional (subject matter) competency abstrak kualitas guru berperan penting dalam menjaga kualitas pendidikan. salah satu cara memastikan guru untuk tetap berkualitas adalah melalui aktivitas pengembangan profesionalisme yang efektif bagi guru. penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi bagaimana aktivitas guru bahasa inggris mengembangkan profesionalisme mereka terutama dalam hal kompetensi pedagogis dan profesional. penelitian ini melibatkan tujuh guru bahasa inggris luar biasa yang mengajar di tingkat smp dan sma dari dua wilayah yang berbeda yang mencakup satu kotamadya dan sebuah kabupaten di cirebon. hasil penelitiannya menunjukkan bahwa ada dua pola utama aktivitas pengembangan profesional dari guru bahasa inggris yang terdiri dari kelompok sendiri / individu, dan kelompok. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa guru bahasa inggris dapat melakukan kegiatan profesinya yang diinisiasi sendiri dan kelompok untuk mempertahankan profesionalisme mereka sebagai guru. kata kunci: pengembangan profesional; guru efl; kompetensi pedagogis; profesional (subjek) kompetensi how to cite: priajana, n. (2017). self and group initiated professional development pursuits of efl teachers. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(1), 31-48. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597. mailto:priajana@gmail.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 32-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction professional development (pd, hereafter) in an academic setting is believed to be a means to sustain and to enhance the quality of education effectively with continuing changes. recently, there has been a great interest in the discussion of teachers and professional development by several researchers, educational practitioners, and teachers (amin, 2013; anugerahwati & saukah, 2010; hussein, 2012; khan, 2011; mustofa, 2010; qing, 2010; simegn, 2014). this may indicate that teacher professional developments along with the needs for ongoing renewal of professional skills and knowledge is seen as the cornerstone of teachers‟ professionalism and quality (lee, 2011). thus, in this sense, johnson and golombek (2011) concluded that teacher professional development is a key to improve the quality of student learning and the ultimate goal of any educational enterprises. in the english language teaching (elt) context, some scholars (chan, 2011; karimi, 2011; kasi, 2011; lee, 2011; meng & tajaroensuk, 2013; wati, 2011) investigated various programs concerning english as a foreign language (efl) teacher professional development. they examined several effective approaches to teachers‟ involvement in pd programs such as seminars, pre-service teachers programs, teachers training programs, workshops and other similar activities. their findings suggest that it is necessary for the teachers, as professionals, to keep updated and at least to maintain their professionalism in responding to new educational paradigms and trends. in response to the current needs and trends on the elt context, some researchers (qing, 2009; su, yang, & hsioa, 2010; wati, 2011; wichadee, 2011) tried to contribute by providing new insights, approaches, strategies and some practical ways concerning professional development for teachers to go along with the teachers‟ needs. according to zuheer (2013), developing efl teachers' performance dealing with many related fields and needs such as the abilities and skills becomes very important. therefore, professional development program held in fulfilling teachers‟ needs can be valuable for teachers to improve their quality. many effective strategies and activities such as reflective inquiry, individual and collaborative teacher professional development programs can be implemented to upgrade teachers‟ performance and competencies. with regard to the activities, raza (2010) stated that selfijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 33-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license directed development has its own significance in individual teacher development with his/her own specific teacher development agenda and needs. on the other hand, according to richards and farrells (2005), although teacher development activities can occur through a teacher‟s own personal initiative, collaborative pd activities both enhance individual and collective developments. thus, it is apparent then that the interacting aspects of sustaining professional development activities both the individual teacher and the collaborative activities are significant to cater the various needs of teachers in their own ways. pertaining to teachers‟ responsibility as professionals stipulated in the teachers law 14/2005 and government regulation no.19/2005, there are four main competencies that teachers are necessary to cope with including pedagogical, personal, social and professional competencies. these competencies are also in line with brown‟s (2007) concepts pertaining to knowledge and skills of good english teachers including technical knowledge (subject matter), pedagogical skills, interpersonal skills and personal qualities. these knowledge, skills and competencies are necessary to shape qualified and professional teachers. therefore, teachers are required to have a great recognition in developing their competencies due to it is part of their responsibilities as professionals. professional teachers in general must possess the required competencies to be qualified. many teachers believe that good teachers are indicated with how much teaching experiences the teachers have. however, rodríguez and mckay (2010) believed that experienced teachers are not always better than less experienced teachers yet experienced teachers frequently manage their classrooms more effectively than less experienced teachers. in this respect, both novice and experienced teachers are required to have standard competencies to be professional teachers. according to ramadhani, ancok, swasono, and suryanto (2012), qualified teachers are those who show a high commitment to their profession as teachers. the teachers are required to have the ability to take the initiative and be innovative in utilizing media of learning, must have ability to communicate clearly and pleasantly, should be able to facilitate learning process which involves planning effectively, establishing rules that are reasonable and not excessive in number, and arranging the classroom so that learning instructions go smoothly. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 34-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in the light of the previous studies concerning professional efl teachers, amin (2013) pointed out not only the factors influencing teachers, but also the trajectory of efl teachers to become professional and unprofessional. in addition, some other studies (anugerahwati, 2009; husein, 2014; kolo, 2006; liando, 2010) showed specific features of outstanding efl teachers such as the portraits of effective teachers, the best teacher characteristics, the ideal teachers or exemplary teachers of efl. the notions of the journey, the portraits, the best characteristics, and the ideal professional english teachers have provided distinct quality of efl teachers in the indonesian context. however, their professional development pursuits have been less discussed, particularly in terms of the ways of teachers conduct their competencies both individual and collaborative activities. therefore, it is necessary to look into how exemplary english teachers negotiate with their situations to sustain their current professionalism. based on the elaboration of the problems, the research question is formulated into: “how do exemplary efl teachers develop their pedagogical and professional (subject-matter) competencies in their professional development activities?” this study is aimed to investigate how exemplary teachers develop their competencies and to reveal problems and expectations in undertaking some professional development activities due to their responsibilities mandated in the law and regulation. in addition, it is believed that the exemplary efl teachers could demonstrate their sturdy commitments for their professionalism to inspire novice or inexperienced teachers and be good models worth imitating. the significance of this study is to provide new insights to the existing theories of exemplary teachers and contribute to a wider perspective on professional development for efl teachers. method this research employed a qualitative design involving 7 exemplary efl teachers teaching in junior and senior high schools. the english teachers were selected from the data of qualified efl teachers given by the education department of cirebon, the recommendation of english teacher superintendents and english teachers forum, classroom observation and some pre-determined criteria. the sites of this research covered two parts of area in west java, including one municipality and a district of cirebon. the presence ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 35-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of the researcher, as the key instrument, was very crucial. the data were collected through in-depth interviews, documentary sources and classroom observation checklists. the data also were collected from other sources such as subjects‟ colleagues, teachers‟ supervisors and the classroom observation. these various sources of data were necessary and useful in providing a measure of triangulation which is an essential component in all qualitative research studies as this adds to both the truthfulness and the reliability of the findings (creswell, 2012). findings and discussion the findings showed that there are clear substantial patterns of pd activities conducted by the exemplary efl teachers in terms of pedagogical and subject matter competencies. the categories were divided into two main themes, including institutional and non-institutional pd pursuits in the form of individual (self-initiated) and collaborative (group-initiated). regarding pd collaborative (group-initiated) activities conducted by all participants, there are two main patterns that can be classified including institutional which are conducted inside school environments and noninstitutional which are performed outside school environments. collaborative pd activities conducted institutionally can be in forms of school/in-house training (iht), communication in english with students & english teachers, informal discussion/conversation, peer observation, peer coaching, and classroom action research. from the data obtained, these collaborative activities have contributed to subjects‟ professionalism in improving their quality. thus, they can be worthy recommendations for other teachers to apply some activities that have been empirically performed by all subjects. in terms of non-institutional pd activities, the subjects shared some activities, such as getting involved actively in english teacher forum (mgmp), attending seminars, workshops, teachers‟ trainings, having language proficiency test, teaching experiences at english courses, being a coach and an adjudicator of english debate, pursuing further study, having comparative study, and implementing lesson study. in this respect, these noninstitutional pd activities conducted by subjects collaboratively showed positive impacts for teachers. these activities, therefore, can be considerable for teachers‟ professional developments in terms of pedagogical and subject matter competencies. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 36-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license concerning the institutional pd activities conducted by subjects individually, they shared few activities, including individual reading, joining online language and professional community, writing reflective teaching journals, doing self-reflecting, and writing articles in the local newspapers and tabloids. although each individual subject had different activities, the other activities conducted by other subjects could be appropriate to apply as alternative programs, such as both of the combination of pedagogical and professional competencies. collaborative pd activities performed at school contexts (institutionally) in the forms of communication in english with her students & english teachers, school iht, informal discussion/conversation, peer observation, peer coaching, and car have indicated positive impacts for the betterment of teachers‟ professionalism. although in some parts the majority of subjects conducted the activities while in other parts not, the activities can help teachers improve their knowledge, skills and teaching performance. therefore, the findings confirmed the existing theories regarding collaborative pd activities which indicate the strengths and the weaknesses of each activity. with regard to non-institutional collaborative pd activities, they were exposed to some similar pd activities. academic and professional collaborative programs were the most common activities conducted by all participants. all participants had similar experiences relating to their involvement in english teachers forum and participation in seminars, workshops and trainings. they believed that those activities have provided spaces for teachers to keep informed about the latest issues of english teaching. in addition, teachers also could discuss and share problems and solutions with other teachers. as the consequence, teachers consider this activity could maintain and develop their quality. the involvement and the participation of teachers in professional forum and academic programs could offer some benefits for their quality improvement. for instance, a shortterm learning activity such a workshop provides an opportunity to acquire specific knowledge and skills (richards & farrells, 2005) addressing issues related to both institutional improvement and individual development. in addition, workshops are a good way to stimulate everyday teaching with new classroom ideas and reflection on practice (davison, et al. 2012). therefore, because of their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 37-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license positive impacts on their professional competences, the majority of the subjects participated in some workshops obtain better teaching skills. the pd activity that most teachers took part was in-service trainings in the form of seminars and workshops. these kinds of activities were frequently provided by the local authority as regular activities. with regard to workshops, lay (2010) claimed that workshops could also help both trained and untrained teachers to be able to advance their knowledge in their teaching careers and become familiar with techniques and approaches and properly use them fruitfully. with regard to another teacher development program such as seminars, the subject perceived that attending to seminars about the current issues also have become a popular issue among the subjects. most of the subjects took participations on seminar held both local and provincial education department. however, more recent studies showed that teachers face difficulties in facilitating learning in classrooms because the in-service training courses they attend do not emphasize the importance and the effect of the techniques on language learning and teaching (al-wreikat & abdullah, 2010). in line with that study, kazemi and ashrafi (2014) revealed that there are some inadequacies inservice teacher training programs and teachers‟ expectations for instance, the topics and content of programs were not relevant to teachers‟ need so that teachers‟ need was not taken into account in organizing the program. in short, in service training that are intended to keep practicing teachers up-to-date and/or to address the issues which occur in their practical teaching should be revisited and reevaluated regarding the implementation of programs to be more relevant for catering teachers‟ needs. in terms of skills and knowledge extension programs, the majority showed similar activities such as having language proficiency test, teaching at english course, being a coach and an adjudicator of english debate and lesson study. the subject believed that teaching experiences at english course made them have richer of teaching techniques and having english proficiency test was intended to maintain teachers‟ language skill. in addition, coaching and an adjudicating in english debate has provided teachers with extra skills, particularly in critical thinking and oral communication skills. in addition, participating in lesson study could be a meaningful part of the improvement of teaching skills. with regard to lesson study, tasker ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 38-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (2011) pointed out that the goal of the exploration of student learning within the context of lesson study has the potential to promote greater teacher professional development by focusing teachers‟ collective attention on shared student learning issues, and pursue jointly constructed solutions. therefore, these activities could assist teachers not only to be more proficient in language skills, but also to be more skillful in teaching in the classroom. as the result, teachers with the required language proficiency and a specialist in elt teaching will have more chances of getting better results in the classroom (wichadee, 2011). in connection with a doing course (a formal study or a short course/comparative study) as the last collaborative pd activity, it is frequently considered the most prohibitive activity due to time and expense (johnny, 2009). based on the findings, more than half of the subjects could pursue their further studies, while the rests have not had the opportunity for continuing their study. the data obtained from analysis, taking a formal education or a short course have contributed to the improvement of their quality not only in terms of teaching skills such as classroom management, material developments but also language skills along with the cultures. therefore, johnny (2009) confirmed that doing a course is a great way to develop teachers‟ competencies since most of the time teachers focus on thinking and learning. in conclusion, collaborative pd activities conducted outside the school context are distinct from the institutional ones. non-institutional collaborative pd activities tend to be more complex since sometimes the target of the activities are general or less relevant to teachers‟ needs while institutional collaborative pd activities appear more applicable and focused on problems encountered by teachers. another difference lies on the possibility and situation in which the institutional pd activities provide more conducive atmosphere to perform with other teachers at school. the starting point of teachers engaging in professional development in one place may not be relevant to other places. on the other hand, there is a similitude in the processes whereby teachers move from one stage to the next in different contexts that appears to be supported in the research reviewed, although with different manifestations. in connection with terms of individual pd activities, much literature called as self-initiated activities. based on the research on selfinitiated activities, simegn (2014) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 39-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license revealed that teachers seemed to have higher cognition about the importance of self-initiated professional development. they acknowledge that the self-driven activities and tasks of professionalism act the significant roles in bringing about real change on teachers‟ pedagogical effectiveness and efficiency. based on the findings, there are some individual pd activities that subjects shared. the activities can be in the forms of individual reading, joining online professional community, writing articles and some reflective activities such as self-monitoring and reflective writing journal. thus, each activity contributes differently for each individual teacher. reading activities have the potential to assist in teacher development and some issues related to the result of reading raised can be learnt through sharing and discussing (pani, 2006). in addition, murray (2010) pointed out that the most obvious professional development activity for an english teacher is reading journal articles about teaching english. thus, reading journals keeps teachers informed about new trends and research developments. in similar vein, reading activities such as printed or non-printed materials by subscribing to magazine or journal are good ways to keep up-to-date with new ideas and themes of the field (davison, et al. 2012). in relation to the findings of this study, it shows that reading activity basically emerged from the individual teacher‟s interest and cognition about the field. with regard to self-directed pd activities, study conducted by simegn (2014) revealed that for reading activities, teachers tend to spend time for reading based on their needs and interest such as school textbooks, magazines and publication and other books. in relation to this research, teachers also indicate different topics on what they read, for instances teaching strategies, classroom management, leaderships and learners‟ psychology. in sum, reading activities as one strategy of professional development for teachers can be a good means to maintain teachers‟ competences. through reading, teachers can stay informed with the current matters and get some insights how cope encountered problems. in addition to reading activities, staying online and joining online language and professional become the most frequent activity that subject did. the data show that all subjects shared the same activity regarding online activities. in addition, they emphasize that online communities provide opportunities for efl teachers to be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 40-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license active contributors and participants, direct and construct the learning events for the group and create regular opportunities for enhancing the learning teaching context, and connect teachers to other professionals within and beyond their schools characterized by sustainability over time (olofsson, 2010; riding, 2001; saleh & pretorius, 2006). in similar vein, regarding the other advantages of online community, according to salazar, muñoz, fox, and lucas (2010), online and distance professional learning communities provide teachers with increased access and flexibility as well as the combination of work and education. they stated that although online environments may present different experiences compared to the traditional professional development, they can be used to build knowledge and community and teachers who participate in the program were exposed to new ideas and issues their realm. to conclude, a study conducted by wu, gao and zhang (2014) suggested that heterogeneity of community members is crucial for the sustainable and healthy growth of an online professional development community in which participants can establish good relationships among members by sharing ideas, feelings and experiences with people with diverse voices, but have shared vision of professional pursuits. another self-directed/individual pd activity that only minority of the subjects conducted was about writing articles and modules. the findings showed two subjects wrote some articles and teaching modules. johnny (2009) points out that writing ranges from short articles right through to books and keeping a diary and reflecting on teaching is a good way to start good writing. by writing some articles and modules, teachers can develop their language skills particularly such as writing skills. the last self-directed pd activities are related to reflective teaching activities conducted by teachers. mann (2005) defined implicitly that the notions of reflective practice is the view that teachers develop by studying their own practice, collecting data and using reflective processes as the basis for evaluation and change. literature show the advantages of reflective teaching activities (lundy, 2011; qing, 2009) the need to implement reflective inquiry in classroom settings and ways to improve the teaching and learning of english through on-going reflection, it also points out that experience coupled with reflection can be a powerful impetus for ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 41-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teacher‟s professional development. in addition, the reflective process could assist the teachers in understanding how to apply this knowledge in their individual teaching contexts. in line with them, according to harun and al-amin (2013), reflective teaching and action research are really helpful for promoting teachers‟ professionalism and make classroom practice effective and enjoyable. in relation to this research, the findings show that although merely few subjects conducted reflective teaching activities, they opined that reflective teaching activities can be helpful means to maintain their professionalism. reflective teaching activities can be in the aspect of self-monitoring through videotaping and students‟ feedback and reflective writing journal. those reflective activities had provided teachers to evaluate what has been done and not to be improved. to draw the conclusion, reflective teaching practice has contributed significantly to the improvement of teachers‟ quality since they have opportunities to reflect on their knowledge and instruction with the goal of improving both either alone or working with others. therefore, reflective teaching activities are highly recommended to do for the better and higher professionalism of teachers. conclusion and suggestion the findings of this research can be considerably categorized into two key ideas of how the exemplary efl teachers of two regions in cirebon develop their competencies. it shows that pd activities undertaken by the exemplary efl teachers comprise of self-directed/individual, institutional and non-institutional pursuits, either in formal or in informal situation. the first, self-directed or self-initiated pursuits, refers to individual endeavors that emerge from internal motivation, commitment and cognition of teachers. as a result, the importance of selfinitiated professional development activities appeared noticeable in many existing literatures. in addition, selfinitiated pursuits can be as comfort means to develop teachers‟ professionalism since the activities undertaken by teachers are based on their personal interests. here are some self-directed activities for teachers that show effective and helpful for maintaining and developing teachers‟ competencies. the activities are in the form of individual or independent reading, joining online professional communities, writing articles and some reflective activities such as selfmonitoring and reflective writing journal. in short, self-directed learning ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 42-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license involves personal construction of meaning, uses personal experience as the basis and stimulus for learning; and explores personal teaching practices to solve practice related concerns. in addition to self-directed activities, it can be concluded that collaborative institutional (inside school) pd activities have great potential impacts pertinent to improve teachers‟ professionalism. the collegiality of pd built at schools can provide positive atmospheres, not only for the individual teacher but also other teachers. by doing group-directed pd activities, teachers have greater opportunities to discuss and share the latest issues about english teaching. it can be concluded that collaborative pd activities turn out to be more effective and favorable than individual pd ones to improve teachers‟ quality. in this respect, the importance of collegiality and teachers support groups have contributed a lot to help teachers to improve their competencies. it reveals that exemplary efl teachers undertake pd activities institutionally in the form of communication in english with her students & english teachers, school iht, informal discussion/conversation, peer observation, peer coaching, and classroom action research (car). in addition, these activities have shown positive to development of teachers‟ competency both pedagogical and professional competencies. however, the most important issue about collaborative institutional pd activities is pertinent to the conducive atmosphere of teachers support groups and informal collegial support existing at the schools. the collaborative noninstitutional pd activities, is the most complex pursuits of teachers‟ development. the complexity of the pursuits of development for teachers is attributable to the larger spaces and multifaceted dimension. however, it also can create broad perspectives and provide various insight that may be meaningful and applicable for teachers‟ needs. sharing ideas and experiences with other teachers from different institution can be mutually beneficial. non-institutional collaborative pd activities include getting involved actively in english teacher forum (mgmp), attending seminars, workshops and other teachers‟ trainings, having language proficiency test, teaching at english course, being a coach and an adjudicator of an english debate, pursuing a further study, having comparative study, implementing lesson study. as has been mentioned previously, more complex activities can create more ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 43-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license various benefits for teachers‟ developments. therefore, these activities have made up to the development of teachers‟ professionalism. there is no recipe for professional development that works best for everyone. frequently teachers find to be an effective tool for them may not offer similar results for other teachers. techniques that teachers believe useful and meaningful today may not meet teachers‟ needs a year from now. but what is paramount is that teachers are required to discover many options for directing their own learning about teaching. then, proper customization is necessary for the success of teacher learning or professional development programs. this situation is attributable to the different needs and fast changes in english teaching realms. therefore, professional development is truly lifelong learning in which teachers are expected to keep up their enthusiasm and motivation to learn the latest issues of the field sustainably. the first recommendation is addressed to english teachers. in this respect, the english teachers are strongly recommended to consider kinds of pd pursuits because they themselves fully understand the needs based on the real condition and situations. thus, both self-directed and group-directed pd pursuits of the research findings are good models for other teachers to be worth conducting. first, teachers should be selective and critical in undertaking a wide range of pd activities since many pd activities offered are not suitable and relevant for their needs. second, teachers should be knowledgeable in applying skills and knowledge that they acquire from pd activities in the classroom and their own practices. third, teachers are required to be independent learners to develop their competencies and should be able to place themselves in collaboration with colleagues. since the institution (the principal, teachers and administration staffs) plays important roles in maintaining and developing teachers‟ quality, there are some recommendations that needs to take in consideration from the result of this research. the recommendations are as follows; first, pd activities conducted at schools such as iht trainings, peer observation/coaching, and discussion or sharing among teachers need to be evaluated more effectively and need to be extended to include the applicability and impact on teachers‟ performances and quality. second, the following up activities of teachers training and development should be made available to schools in order to evaluate and to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 44-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license measure the changes in teachers‟ skills and knowledge. third, the institution should be cooperative in providing opportunities for all teachers to access a range of pd activities related to the needs of the individual, the school and the local policy such as providing the official permissions and supports. the last, the institution should create conducive and favorable atmosphere in order to maintain teachers‟ interests and enthusiasm in developing their professionalism and quality through the collegiality built at school. literature suggests that the local authority (the local education department), schools and teachers need to be at the heart of teacher development. as the consequence, it also requires the building of „strong partnerships‟ among these parties to create good nuances in pursuits of pd for teachers. based on the research findings, some important recommendations are required to be considered by local authority. first, the local authority should be more opened and informed regarding pd activities for teachers and schools. second, the local authority and the institution must have same visions along with clear guidance for teachers‟ development in order to teachers have distinct targets to achieve. third, the local education department should occasionally invite qualified trainers and experts to make the programs more interesting and motivating other teachers. fourth, the local authority should evaluate the existence of subject matters superintendent. fifth, they should provide a greater opportunity to develop teachers‟ professionalism in form of the information about scholarships, short courses, and comparative studies and so on. sixth, the local authority should facilitate sufficient funding and autonomy for teachers in choosing pd activities appropriate to their needs. the last, they should ease the bureaucratic procedures pertaining to pd activities for the local, provincial and national levels for teachers. this study was conducted with the participation of merely seven exemplary english teachers teaching at state junior and senior schools of two areas of cirebon municipality and cirebon regency, west java. there are two main points of limitation in this study. first, this research covers merely a small number of participants of exemplary english teachers and small areas of west java or even. another limitation of the research is related to the focus of the study that covers less specific to particular strategy on teachers‟ professional development. therefore, it is highly recommended that future researchers take this present ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (1), 2017 45-48 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i1.6597 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license research study as the basis to conduct deeper and more specific research studies regarding english teachers‟ professional development activities such as individual, institutional, and non-institutional pursuits. references amin, m. 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(2011). teacher learning through lesson study: an activity theoretical approach toward professional development in the czech republic. in k. e. johnson & p. r golombek (eds.), research on second language teacher education: a sociocultural perspective on professional development. new york: routledge. wati, h. (2011). the effectiveness of indonesian english teachers training programs in improving confidence and motivation. international journal of instruction, 4(1), 79-104. wichadee, s. (2011). professional development: a path to success for efl teachers. contemporary issues in education research, 4(5), 13-22. wreikat, y., & abdullah, m. (2010). an evaluation of jordanian efl teachers‟ in-service training courses teaching techniques effectiveness. english language teaching, 3(4), 18-27. wu, h., gao, j., & zhang, w. (2014). chinese efl teachers' social interaction and socio-cognitive presence in synchronous computer-mediated communication. language learning & technology, 18(3), 228– 254. zuheer, k. (2013). developing efl teachers' performance at sana'a secondary schools in the light of their professional and specialist needs (unpublished dissertation). institute of educational studies curriculum & instruction department, cairo university. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 1-15 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee a brief view on bilingual schools in the capital of indonesia annas surdyanto received: 18th march 2018; revised: 25th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract this study aimed at providing the portraits of bilingual schools in the capital of indonesia and critically revealing the ministry of culture and education policy on bilingual schools. this study employed a qualitative case design and took place at 5 bilingual schools. the data were taken with semi-structure interview, school document, observation and related literature. there were 10 teachers participating. this study showed descriptions of bilingual schools regarding the curriculum, the teaching and learning activity, the assessment, the accessibility, the teachers, the students, and the role of environment. the data derived were then analyzed and used to evaluate the government policy on bilingual schools related to the process of teaching and learning as well as its assessment. the analysis and evaluation found out some missing alignments between the policy and bilingual school principles. they were uncontrolled curriculum development as a combination of international and national curriculum, the teacher training program provided by the government (plpg) towards bilingual school teachers, and the establishment of standardized test. this study suggested that there must be an education council specialized for bilingual schools that concerns on designing the framework of school-based curriculum development (sbcd), teacher training program and standardized test establishment for bilingual schools. key words: bilingual education; policy on bilingual education; bilingualims; indonesian bilingual schools abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyediakan potret sekolah bilingual di ibukota indonesia dan mengungkapkan kebijakan kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan di sekolah bilingual secara kritis. penelitian ini menggunakan desain kasus kualitatif dan berlangsung di lima sekolah bilingual. data diambil dengan wawancara semi-struktur, dokumen sekolah, observasi dan literatur terkait. ada 10 guru yang berpartisipasi. penelitian ini menunjukkan deskripsi sekolah bilingual mengenai kurikulum, kegiatan belajar mengajar, penilaian, aksesibilitas, guru, siswa, dan peran lingkungan. data yang diperoleh kemudian dianalisis dan digunakan untuk mengevaluasi kebijakan pemerintah pada sekolah bilingual yang terkait dengan proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran serta penilaiannya. analisis dan evaluasi menemukan beberapa keberpihakan yang hilang antara kebijakan dan prinsip sekolah bilingual. mereka adalah pengembangan kurikulum yang tidak terkendali sebagai kombinasi kurikulum internasional dan nasional, program pelatihan guru yang disediakan oleh pemerintah (plpg) terhadap guru sekolah dwibahasa, dan pembentukan tes standar. studi ini menyarankan bahwa harus ada dewan pendidikan khusus untuk sekolah bilingual yang berkaitan dengan merancang kerangka pengembangan kurikulum berbasis sekolah (sbcd), program pelatihan guru dan pendirian tes standar untuk sekolah bilingual. kata kunci: pendidikan bilingual; kebijakan pendidikan bilingual; dua bahasa; sekolah bilingual bahasa indonesia how to cite: surdyanto, a.. (2018). a brief view on bilingual schools in the capital of indonesia. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 1-15. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 2-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction prior to indonesian independence, english has never been used as a medium of indonesian discourse by indonesian people due to the lack of native speakers of english (lowenberg, 1991). different from other asean countries which had set english as a second language or additional language in curriculum, after its independence day, indonesia concerned on spreading indonesian as its national language and have converted people to become bilingual of regional language and indonesian (ho & wong, 1997). on the other hand, english in indonesia is used for international communication, knowledge of science and technology, as a modern language sources for the lexical development of bahasa indonesia (diah, 1982 as cited in lowenberg, 1991). in 1989, indonesian government specialized english as a compulsory subject in curriculum. the 1994 curriculum specifies english lesson for 180-minute periods per week in middle schools and for up to 11 hours per week at senior high schools (hill & mcnamara, 2003). nevertheless, the presence of english that is a foreign language still requires sufficient places and opportunities to enable learners to have good english skills since a successful second language learning will take place if there is a sufficient target language exposure (krashen, 1982). as it is predicted by lauder (2008) that the demand for english in the future of indonesia will increase even if the state policy makers do not meet the need, the private sector will take place to fulfill the need. responding to the needs of place and opportunity of english use in educational field, many schools emerge adopting bilingual principles which refer to the presence of two languages in a community possessing the same language. indonesian bilingual schools apply the use of english and indonesian as a media of instruction to provide more opportunities for students to use english. regarding the language policy, common type of bilingual programs in indonesia is two-way or immersion programs. it concerns on the progress of both minority and majority language (lindholm-leary, 2001). nizamia andalusia school is one of bilingual schools establishing the two-way bilingual program in jakarta, indonesia. it applies english to supply students with international language to encounter globalization era. in the capital of indonesia, many bilingual schools operate under the supervision of the ministry of culture and education. unfortunately, these ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 3-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license schools have no specific regulation that is specialized for them. the notion of equality in education has put them in a generalized school view of the government. they are treated the same way as public schools. however, it can cause some problems that can constrain the process of bilingual education. this might happen due to the insufficient information about bilingual schools. furthermore, it seems that they have no attention from indonesian government. thus, this study is proposed to provide the portraits of bilingual schools in the capital of indonesia for further policy decision. method this qualitative research has been conducted in jakarta, the capital of indonesia. semi-structure interview was delivered to 10 experienced teachers of bilingual schools. most of them were teachers who had experienced in teaching more than in two bilingual schools. in the interview, they were asked to explain about bilingual schools that they had experienced. it broadens this research not only to be based on the schools that they were teaching but also the schools they had taught previously. the interview was conducted to have a description about what bilingual school curriculum is, how teachers teach, how the government provides them a program of teacher training, and constraints of teaching and administration they have. to have a clear description of the outlook of the bilingual schools, besides interviewing the teachers, the writer also elaborated his five-year experience in teaching in a bilingual school while observing the school. moreover, the school document and website were also analyzed. some issues derived from the interview, observation, and school document were also analyzed and discussed. findings and discussion the curriculum to ease in understanding bilingual school curriculum, it is important to have a clear definition of what curriculum is. the definition of curriculum has been clearly explained by glatthorn (1987), “the curriculum is the plans made for guiding learning in schools, usually represented in retrievable documents of several levels of generality, and the implementation of those plans in the classroom; those experiences take place in a learning environment that also influences what is learned”. in other words, curriculum is an essential school document consisting of guidance for teachers, school staffs, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 4-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license policy makers, students, parents, and all school elements contributing in the teaching and learning process. bilingual school curriculum is generally a developed curriculum. according to seel (2004) “the central issue of curriculum development is to allocate the contents and methods that are seen as relevant for the challenges in the students‟ present and future life.” the data from interview and observation have given a clear description of curriculum of indonesian bilingual schools. generally, bilingual schools combine two curricula in their learning environment which are international curriculum and national curriculum. the international curriculum is applied for math, science, english lesson, ict, physical education, and social studies. the purpose is to prepare students with a good ability of english as international language to be competitive in the future. meanwhile, the national curriculum is used for civics, religion, and indonesian language. this is applied to empower the spirit of nationalism as it is listed in the rational of recent curriculum development. the national curriculum now adopts a thematic approach which requires all subjects to be integrated into one theme. it has conjoined science and social studies in indonesian language subject, and it contradicts the international curriculum which has science and social studies as independent subjects. however, it is difficult for teachers to apply thematic approach for its implementation since both national curriculum and international curriculum have different contents and approaches. the description above has delivered a question “how do these schools set the goals of education?” when these schools operate two curricula under a council that supervises based on the national curriculum only, it is really possible that there is a hidden curriculum as a medium for these two contradicting curricula as it is defined as “a side effect of an education, "[lessons] which are learned but not openly intended” (martin, 1983) “such as the transmission of norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in the classroom and the social environment” (giroux, 1983). in conclusion, bilingual educations have to stand under the right council that professionally concern on this complex principle. consideration in grading rank of schools should also be categorized and based on its special criterion. even though it is not a simple thing to do, bilingual schools need a special ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 5-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license attention that can be guidance for their existence. teaching and learning activity bilingual education is a type of education that uses students‟ native language and english in subject-matter instruction (martin & loomis, 2014). students‟ native language is commonly combined with english as medium of instruction before they are placed in completely english class. in indonesia, students‟ native language is indonesian. according to būdvytytě-gudieně & toleikieně (2008), there are three types of bilingual education. the first type is „immersion‟, this type aims at a country‟s other language (e.g. canada, belgium, ireland, luxembourg, malta, finland and switzerland) or regional language (slovenia and united kingdom). the second kind, so-called „submersion‟, refers to the integration of linguistic and culture of migrants (the linguistic minority). the third type is where the target group is linguistic majority and the target language is a foreign language of a certain country. the status of english in indonesian that is a foreign language defines that indonesian bilingual schools categorically belong to the third type of bilingual education. as the third type of bilingual education, indonesian bilingual schools apply content and language integrated learning (clil) as their teaching and learning method since it is more appropriate to be implemented instead of content-based instruction (cbi). the content or subject matters delivered in english as a language of instruction (loi) are math, science, and social studies in both learning activities and assessment. bilingual schools have various language policies depending on what type of bilingual they belong to. johnson (2013) explains that a language policy has impacts on structure, function, use or acquisition of language. therefore, a language policy is decisive for schools to be a vehicle of curriculum, goal, culture, as well as the teaching and learning process. the type of bilingual, two-way bilingual is established in its curriculum. the aim of this bilingual type is to encourage its national identity (bahasa indonesian) and meeting the need of current internationalization (english). the twoway bilingual education program concerns on the progress of both minority and majority language (cummins & corson, 1997). the twoway bilingual class uses students‟ native language and second language in particular proportion in which the development of languages is emphasized. assessment ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 6-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license generally, indonesian bilingual schools have designed their assessment as other public schools related to the implementation of either formative or summative test. formative assessment which is applied to evaluate students in the process of learning and help students to continue their achievement (brown, 2004), is delivered to students in the middle of the semester. the feedback is usually established in the next meeting as a constructive feedback for students. meanwhile, regarding the summative assessment, as it purposes to measure what students have achieved at the end of the course (brown, 2004), there is no direct feedback given by teachers to students, but the summary of its feedback is informed to parents or the representatives by teachers in report day. besides, indonesian bilingual schools should apply the national standard school exam (usbd), so called standardized test. this test is applied for particular subjects such as math, science, and social studies in the highest school grade levels: grade 6 of primary school, grade 9 of middle school, and grade 12 of high school. as students certified by the ministry of culture and education, to have graduated and certified, bilingual school students have to pass the minimum score determined by the ministry of education in this test. the standardized test is a really strange thing for bilingual schools due to the medium of instruction of the test that is not english but indonesian language. interviewed teachers complained that students frequently have difficulty when they are asked to try out this kind of exam in indonesian language. however, it is out of their school traditions in which english is always used for both its formative and summative assessments for those subjects. moreover, bilingual school students have learned subjects examined using english as the medium of instruction for years. accessibility looking back at the era of bilingual school trend in support of indonesian government, indonesia has a long controversial history of bilingual school existence. the policy of the international standard school project (sbi) (article 50, paragraph 3, of law no. 20/2003) has been caused pros and cons around indonesian people. due to the high cost and academic prerequisite of sbi students, it was adjudicated contradicting the constitution which guarantees education for all indonesian people. under the intense debate on whether sbi was appropriate to be applied, the judicial court revoked the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 7-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license law foundation of sbi regardless of its potential outcomes. despite the fact that the biggest problem of the sbi program was the high cost that absorbs large amount of indonesian education budget, bilingual schools which provide global competitive skills are still running in private sectors. indonesian bilingual schools, as it requires a high tuition fee of students, has become exclusive schools among indonesian people. generally, students who study in bilingual schools are those who are from high economic class citizens. it is an inevitable consequence since bilingual schools tends to facilitate their children with outstanding school facilities. students who enroll at bilingual schools should be ready for not only high cost tuition fee but also other additional courses to support their learning process such as english course. nevertheless, concerning on how accessible bilingual schools in indonesia, for bilingual kindergarten and primary schools, language is not an abundant for indonesian children to study in this school since research has shown that those who are not from school with english language background can finally adapt after having additional courses even though they might have low confidence at the first school phase (surdyanto, 2016). in other words, bilingual school accessibility is categorically difficult for citizens with middle and low economic class. the middle class citizens might be able to enroll their children and pay the tuition fee of bilingual school, but they have to endeavor to support either their children development or additional school programs such as study tour, cambridge esol etc. the teachers teachers in schools might be recognized as school members that are directly responsible for the success of teaching and learning. teachers‟ in bilingual schools not only responsible for knowledge transfer but also for the success of reaching school visions. as it is stated by the crowther report that „everything in education depends ultimately on the teacher‟ (central advisory council for education, 1959), the completion of bilingual school curriculum. being bilingual school teachers in indonesia is not as simple as being public school teachers. teachers of bilingual school have to possess a good understanding of particular subject matter as well as the medium of instruction used for the subject. for example, teachers who are a good scholar of department of math education cannot teach in bilingual school. they have to be able to teach ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 8-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license math in english as a medium of instruction. in reality, those who teach in bilingual schools are teachers who are good at both english language use and subject matter. these multi-demands force bilingual schools to selectively employ teachers not only based on their gpa score or bachelor degree but also their ability in both subject matter and medium of instruction. as a result, the provision of bilingual teachers is very limited since the status of english in indonesia that is a foreign language. indonesian bilingual school teachers are divided into three categories. the first is bilingual school teachers who are not from the department of teacher training and education. they have graduated from department of economy, communication, accounting, social studies, etc. who can use english to teach particular subject matter. second, those who graduated from the department of teacher training and education majoring at science, biology, and math. these two types of bilingual teachers are expert in particular subject matter, but some of them need to improve their english. the third, those who graduated from english department of teacher training and education. these bilingual teachers know well how to work with their english but they have to struggle once they are asked to teach math, science, and other subjects except english lesson. with regard to school culture, bilingual schools have their own culture that is not applied outside school areas. being a bilingual school teachers or teacher aides cannot merely rely on the ability of delivering the school materials. teachers should recognize cultures underlying the two languages applied in bilingual schools. bilingual teacher aides, however, are a bridging instrument for students between the hearts and minds of their initial culture and the target language culture (haddock et al., 2008). the students are bilingual school students really bilingual? this question needs answering to clearly shed light who the bilingual school students are, but it is essential to have an in-depth definition of what bilingual really is. the judgment towards the term of bilingual or whom can be labeled as bilingual is still misleading. bilingual in the view of strong monolingual or fractional according to grosjean (1989) is the bilingual who possess two languages in two separated and isolable competencies – so called – two monolinguals in one person. bilingual students who are linguistically ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 9-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license accidental and anomalous or committing to language interference such as borrowing and code switching are under the bilingual definition of monolingual view. meanwhile, in the view of wholistic bilingual, the bilingual is he or she whose language is not the sum of two languages but having a unique and specific linguistic configuration. grosjean (1989) explains that the bilingual has a third system which is the combination of two languages rather than two-separated languages. “because the bilingual is a human communicator, he or she has developed a communicative competence that is sufficient for everyday life. this competence will make use of one language, of the other language, or of the two together (in the form of mixed speech) depending on the situation, the topic, the interlocutor, etc.” the third system of bilingual is defined to be the creation of successful two-language acquisition and development. thus, he or she who are, in the wholistic view, bilingual can use both languages in a good communicative competence for his or her everyday life. for example, students might be good at indonesian and english and they can use either indonesian or english or both languages depending on the condition, theme, and his/her interlocutors. however, this unique ability is a combination of two-language competence that are not isolated. regardless of the monolingual or wholistic bilingual view, judgment to which indonesian bilingual school students refer to is still difficult to be determined since they come from various language background and education background (surdyanto, 2016). nevertheless, identification is still important to be conducted to see what kind of bilingual they belong to. understanding the process of becoming bilingual and the monolingual and wholistic bilingual view is important for education decision makers to avoid inappropriate implementation of policy and regulation for bilingual schools related to school language policy of both the teaching and learning process and assessment. furthermore, most bilingual school students have been able to use both english and indonesian, but it is not for all contexts. as cummins (1981) distinguished language into two contexts that are basic interpersonal skills (bisc) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp), indonesian bilingual school students are lack of indonesian language ability in the context of calp for particular subjects such as math, science, and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 10-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license social studies, but good in the context of bisc. role of environment vygotsky (1978) asserts that social behaviors have a fundamental role to influence children‟s development when they are involved. this theory, zone of proximal development (zpd), explains that children learn from their community such as parents, teachers, and adults long before they are at school. vygotsky‟s idea in thought and language describes that the growing children adopt social language and make it personal. it can be assumed that language that happens to children shapes the children‟s language development. in other words, children learn from the community around them. since parents spend much more time with their children than other people around them, parents are the most likely responsible for children‟s school readiness and social adjustment. as a consequence, they must contribute and become a model of children‟s language development. according to lin and man‟s studies (2009) on southeast asian perspectives on bilingual education, bilingual schools should implore parental commitment to support children‟s development of both languages as a requirement to enroll in english immersion program. thus, twoway bilingual programs need supports from parents to reach the highest level of language proficiency. therefore, parental involvement is very important to support children‟s development and the success of school program, it is crucial to have a clear description of parental role towards school program. in addition, reynolds and clements (2005) describe that parent involvement give significant contributions to children‟s success. the one component of parent involvement program is to promote children‟s school readiness and social adjustment. the training areas include consumer education, nutrition, personal development, health and safety, and homemaking arts with assets for materials, supplies, and speakers. it shows that parents are responsible for preparing children and helping them adjust themselves in school environment. to complete, reynolds and clements (2005) emphasize that what can impact on children‟s school success are school-family partnerships consisting of many ways to strengthen involvement. in conclusion, parental involvement is not only essential for students‟ academic achievement, but also for their language acquisition. by this fact, there is a different parent role between indonesian public schools and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 11-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license bilingual schools. for public schools, parental role on foreign language acquisition is not really essential for due to the national school curriculum that does not use english as a medium of instruction for any subjects. in other words, limited english ability will not be a significant constraint for students to have a good school achievement. meanwhile, for bilingual schools in which international curriculum is used, parental involvement is a considerable need for students to have a good school achievement since international curriculum is applied in indonesian bilingual schools. policy evaluation indonesian education today has such its own needs of globalization that private schools want to meet the needs by their own way. since bilingual schools run on their own vision, the government policy should take a look at their vision before deciding policy related to all aspects of the teaching and learning process. considering a significantly increasing number of bilingual schools in indonesia, it is important to make an accurate and appropriate regulation for bilingual schools. however, indonesian bilingual schools running with their own curriculum which is comprised of national and international curriculum. in other words, bilingual schools apply school-based curriculum which, according to bezzina (1991), can be a creation of new curricula, adaptation of existing curricula, and adoption of an existing curriculum. in order to have a non-overlapping school-based curriculum, there should be guidance for school-based curriculum development (sbcd). bolstad (2004) draws some important systemic influences of sbcd that is important factors to shape school-based curriculum: 1. the structure and nature of the national curriculum; 2. the degree of centralisation/decentralisation of school decision making 3. schools‟ assessment and reporting requirements; 4. the expected role of teachers in school curriculum development; and 5. the expected or potential role of other people in school curriculum development indonesian government should change its point of view that bilingual schools can be accredited the same way as public schools. this classic view should be immediately banned to prevent malpractice of education. unfortunately, indonesian government ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 12-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license seems to close its eyes on this phenomenon. for example, instead of providing a training for bilingual school teachers, the government mandates bilingual school teachers to follow a general training that is actually more appropriate to be addressed for nonbilingual school teachers such as teacher training program (plpg). this training might be useful for bilingual school teachers who teach using indonesian medium of instruction. for teachers who teach science, social studies, and math, they might have benefits in the aspect of material development but not in cultural aspects. in addition, the bilingual types of students should also be considered since the test uses indonesian language as its medium of instruction and it will be bias for bilingual schools that are dominated by students who are not wholisticly bilingual. moreover, the government should be aware of what kind of language aspect that bilingual students master in term of basic interpersonal skills (bisc) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp). students mastering indonesian language, however, do not exactly master indonesian language of calp. regarding the establishment of the standardized test, as bilingual school teachers affirmed that students generally have difficulties for preparing the standardized test due to the language use that is different from what they used to do, this examination is not only a challenge for students but also teachers and the school language policy. moreover, its establishment has caused not only impact on curriculum but also on teaching and learning process. however, as a fair test, assessment must be free of biases with regards to ethnic group, gender, nationality, religion, socioeconomic condition, sexual orientation, or disability (joint task force on assessment 2010). as a comparison, when blind students can work with braille or verbal guidance of teachers as fairness, why do bilingual students have to work in one language that they do not use to apply in learning math, science, and social studies? it is so important that educationists have to pay attention on. indonesian government through the ministry of education and culture has to adopt the idea of how the national assessment program – literacy and numeracy (naplan) identifies students‟ language background of english in delivering standardized test by which it distinguishes native english and language other than english (lbote). despite the criticism of its categorization (creagh, 2014), it can be ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 13-15 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.8018 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a good milestone in pursuing valid equality in education. conclusion and suggestion bilingual schools in the capital of indonesia are currently well renowned. they are getting their place in the heart of the capital citizens. this phenomenon should be responded wisely by the government. the ministry of culture and education has to immediately categorize indonesian schools based on their criteria. descriptions of bilingual schools regarding the curriculum, the teaching and learning activity, the assessment, the accessibility, the teachers, the students, and the role of environment should have been a warning for the policy makers. however, generalization of policy will not support the schools to meet their visions since they have different ways and goals. educationists should have opened their eyes to respond this changing world. references bezzina, m. 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(2005). parental involvement and children‟s school success, in evanthia n. patrikakou, roger p. weissberg, sam redding, herbert j. walberg (eds.) school–family partnerships for children’s success. new york: teachers college. pp. 105-127. seel, n. m. (2004). curriculum development, instructional design, and in-formation technology. in n. m. seel & s. dijkstra (eds.), curriculum, plans, processes of instructional design: international perspectives (pp. 131143). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. surdyanto, a. (2016) students' perceptions of the use of english at a bilingual setting based on their kindergarten language background. journal of elt research, [s.l.], v. 1, n. 2, p. 134-143, sep. 2016. issn 2527-7448. available at: <http://journal.uhamka.ac.id/in dex.php/jer/article/view/52 vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge: harvard university press. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 111-119 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee exploring inductive grammar teaching: english teacher perspectives didin nuruddin hidayat received: 8th august 2017; revised: 15th september 2017; accepted: 22th december 2017 abstract in the past few decades, the discussion of what grammatical structures to teach, and especially how to teach them remains controversial (boroujeni, 2012; ellis, 2006). this research study aimed to explore the role of inductive grammar teaching toward specific grammatical structure, i.e. the second conditional or the unreal/hypothetical conditional. in light of this, ten english teachers were involved in this study, providing beneficial feedback through their experience in english language teaching. they were given two sessions of inductive grammar teaching, and were asked to engage with the lessons and provi de feedback. the results showed that inductive grammar teaching possessed its strengths and weaknesses. one of the strengths was its ability in engaging more active participation from the students. however, a notable weakness was in terms of its lack of opportunities in explicit grammatical explanation. key words: grammar; inductive approach; second conditional sentence abstrak dalam beberapa dekade terakhir, diskusi tentang struktur tata bahasa apa yang perlu diajarkan, dan teruatama bagaimana mengajarkan struktur tata bahasa tersebut tetap menjadi isu yang kontroversial (boroujeni, 2012; ellis, 2006). penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasi peran pengajaran tata bahasa induktif terhadap struktur tata bahasa tertentu, yaitu the second conditional atau the unreal/hypothetical conditional. untuk itu, sepuluh guru bahasa inggris dilibatkan dalam penelitian ini, memberikan umpan balik yang bermanfaat melalui pengalaman mereka dalam bidang pengajaran bahasa inggris. mereka diberi dua sesi pengajaran tata bahasa induktif, dan diminta untuk terlibat dengan sesi-sesi tersebut dan juga memberikan umpan balik. hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa pengajaran grammmar induktif memiliki kekuatan dan kelemahannya. salah satu kekuatan berasal dari kemampuannya dalam melibatkan partisipasi yang lebih aktif dari para siswa. namun, salah satu kelemahan yang menonjol adalah dalam hal kurangnya peluang dalam menjelaskan tata bahasa secara eksplisit. kata kunci: grammar; pendekatan induktif; second conditional sentence how to cite: hidayat, d.n. (2017). exploring inductive grammar teaching: english teacher perspectives. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 111-119. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 112-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction robust debate over the last few decades as to the place of explicit grammar instruction in teaching a second language, either in an esl (english as a second language) or efl (english as a foreign language) setting, seems to have settled on the position that “there is now convincing indirect and direct evidence to support the teaching of grammar” (ellis, 2006, p. 87). nevertheless the questions of what grammatical structures to teach, and especially how to teach them remain controversial (boroujeni, 2012; ellis, 2006; mart, 2013). in indonesia, grammar rules are generally taught deductively (ana & ratminingsih, 2012; arifin, 2016; rusdi & hafid, 2016; wiwoho, 2016; yunita, 2016). learners expect to be told the rule before examining its application. unsurprisingly, some rules are more difficult to teach than others. one that provides a significant challenge to teaching is the second conditional, or the unreal/hypothetical conditional, as it is generally referred to in grammar books (parrott, 2000; swan, 2005). given that a deductive or „ruledriven‟ approach for teaching the second conditional has met with little learning success in the teaching experience of the author, this study examined an attempt to consciously apply an inductive approach to teaching this challenging grammatical structure. deriving the grammar rule from a richer communicative context could potentially deliver superior learning outcomes. learners can achieve an understanding of a grammar rule basically through two ways: a deductive or rule-driven path and an inductive, or rule-discovery path (thornbury, 1999). the former approach continues to be largely used when teaching english in an efl context. typically, in deductive teaching “a grammatical structure is presented initially and then practised in one way or another” (ellis, 2006, p. 97), an approach that works well for some students and some language points (harmer, 2007). in an inductive approach, on the other hand, the learner seeks to derive an understanding of the grammar patterns by studying examples of language. the student learns „experientially‟, and, through discovery, is asked to do the work normally done by the teacher or other resources such a grammar texts (harmer, 2007). an advantage of this approach is that it leads to more powerful learning. students have to make a greater cognitive effort to uncover the grammar structures themselves, and in that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 113-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license process have to activate their existing mental structures to accommodate the new (harmer, 2007; thornbury, 1999). both deductive and inductive approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. either may be the more effective teaching approach at a particular time depending on factors including the nature of the rule to be taught, the learners‟ level of language knowledge and skill, and the cultural pedagogic expectations of the learners (harmer, 2015; mallia, 2014; thornbury, 1999). the inductive approach particularly favours students who “already have a certain amount of language available to them” (harmer, 2007, p. 82), and who enjoy learning through pattern-recognition and problem-solving activities (thornbury, 1999) and are therefore likely to be skilled in grammatical analysis. for these reasons, it may be that more complex rules better lend themselves to being taught inductively (ellis, 2006). while the research on the relative benefits of the two approaches is inconclusive (thornbury, 1999; ellis, 2006), and “the theoretical and practical views on the role of grammar in language teaching are still changing ”…there seems to be an emphasis on using communicative and inductive approaches to assist learners to tap into their growing grammatical competence” (joyce & burns, 1999, p. 49). this general trend, together with the lack of success in teaching some grammar rules deductively, and the language competence of the student group, prompted the interest in undertaking this research. in considering which grammar rule to teach, ellis (2006) suggests that, in the absence of any definitive research informing the choice, a reasonable place to begin is to focus on the errors known to be produced by learners. one such example is the english conditional which is recognised as a particularly difficult grammar rule to teach and learn. in one study, esl teachers identified the conditional as representing their 5th most serious teaching problem (celce-murcia & larsen-freeman, 1999). typically, learners, including native english speakers, have difficulty grasping the more complex syntax of these twoclause sentences, and the subtlety of their meaning and use (celce-murcia & larsen-freeman, 1999; parrott, 2000). this is even more so the case for indonesian efl students because in indonesian there is only the one conditional form. the purpose of this study was therefore to teach the conditional, more particularly the second or unreal/hypothetical conditional, to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 114-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license assess whether an inductive approach would enable students to gain a better grasp of the form, function and meaning of the grammar rule. essentially, the study takes a „what happens if‟ approach (baumfield, hall & wall, 2008). method ten english teachers, most of whom had considerable efl teaching experience, participated in this study. the benefit of having such experienced subjects was that they would be in a position to provide insightful and critical feedback based on their relevant teaching experience as well as their engagement as „students‟. farrell (2001) notes that peer feedback emerging from critical friendships is characterised by the collaboration of colleagues with the aim of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning as well as improving the reflective abilities of the researcher. this critical friendship “can give voice to a teacher‟s thinking, while at the same time being heard in a sympathetic but constructively critical way” (hatton & smith as cited in farrell, 2001, p. 369). besides, peer feedback could also cover the area of critical thinking as well as supporting learner to be independent with the autonomy provided by the teachers (bijami, kashef & nejad, 2013; zhao, 2014). two teaching sessions, each 25 minutes, were presented three weeks apart to the same group of subjects. lesson plans are at appendix a, with the first session labelled a1 and the second, revised session, labelled a2. both sessions were conducted by the same teacher. following each session, the participants were asked to complete a brief questionnaire (appendices b1 & b2 ) providing both qualitative (open questions) and quantitative (their views in response to statements, on a scale of 1-5) feedback. in addition, after the first session, participants remained for 20 minutes to elaborate on their written responses. findings and discussion the summaries for the qualitative data reflect the main themes identified by participants. single statements have not been included if they showed no pattern or related only to general teaching techniques (e.g., „improve board writing‟). in summary, the overall feedback (q11) indicated that both sessions were assessed by the participants as about equally successful, with slightly fewer „extreme‟ assessments (ie fewer “very ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 115-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license strongly‟ and „disagree‟) in response to the second lesson. this was contrary to expectations, given that the second session took into account participants‟ feedback from the first. participants identified the strengths of the first session as the type of activities, the opportunity for their active participation including group work, and the authentic material. they recommended improvements in the clarity of explanations (including the introductory activity), more opportunities to practice, and a clearer demonstration of the distinction between the form, meaning and use of the first and second conditionals. this was supported by their ratings on questions 1-11 of the feedback form. most participants seemed, at best, ambivalent as to whether that the grammar rule had been clearly developed (q2), although curiously most agreed that they had been able to discover the grammar rule for themselves (q1) and that the rule and its application were clearly understood (qs 3 & 4), perhaps a reflection of their prior grammar knowledge. consistent with the qualitative feedback, most agreed that the sequencing of activities was appropriate (q5), that the activities were engaging (q6) and relevant (q7), and that the lesson was memorable (q10). because the inductive approach provides a framework for teaching rather than a prescriptive formula, its proponents can and do differ “as to how best this input should be selected and organised…[and] how and how often the teacher should intervene” (thornbury, 1999, p. 49). the feedback from this initial session therefore provided a basis for revising the input, activities and their sequencing for the second presentation three weeks later. as a consequence of participants‟ feedback and the author‟s observations, specific changes to the session included replacing the introductory newspaper excerpt with a constructed dialogue to provide controlled modelling of the second conditional, eliminating the introductory review of the first conditional as it seemed to cause confusion, and introducing the puppet story to give greater attention to the meaning and use of the second conditional. these changes directly addressed feedback from the first presentation, and were intended to provide more content from which to generate the second conditional grammar pattern to be elicited later in the session. following the second session, the overall feedback was that while half the participants „agreed‟ (but not „strongly‟) that the lesson was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 116-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license successful, about half indicated ambivalence; they neither agreed nor disagreed. this was a weaker result than that from the first presentation when eight of ten had at least „agreed‟ (and two had „strongly agreed‟) that the session had been successful. nevertheless, in their qualitative feedback participants highlighted as strengths that the lesson was interesting and memorable (with three singling out the new introductory activity [dialogue script] in particular), the level of lively student participation and the relaxed environment. this was supported by the quantitative feedback that showed that eight participants „strongly agreed‟ that the activities were engaging (q6), and eight „agreed‟ (including three „strongly‟) that the lesson was memorable (q10), particularly following the inclusion of the puppet story. however, in terms of weaknesses the participants reported that the rule was not explicit enough either in elicitation or presentation, and that its form, function and use had not been sufficiently contrasted with the first conditional, an impression supported in general by the quantitative feedback on qs 1-4. essentially half the class expressed ambivalence as to whether the grammar rule was clearly developed (q2), clearly understood (q3) and could clearly be applied (q4), while the other half „agreed‟ that it had been. significantly, unlike after the first session, no-one „strongly agreed‟ that these teaching goals had been achieved. furthermore, while the introduction of the puppet story at the end of the second presentation was considered a noteworthy improvement on the previous session, participants reported that better use could have been made of it to contrast the meanings of the two conditionals. finally, participants identified the main improvements in the second presentation as the inclusion of the puppet story, and the better organisation of activities. the project had the benefit of experienced efl teachers as participants, most of whom teach grammar deductively. they acted as “sceptical colleague[s]” (baumfield et al., 2008, p. 21), and indeed provided critical and constructive comment, expressing a distinct preference for clearer rule presentation. given that a significant factor in the success of applying a rule-discovery approach is the learners‟ preferred learning strategies (chamot, 1987; harmer, 2015; richards & lockhart, 1996), it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which the participants‟ own preferences may have coloured their assessment of the „success‟ of this session. students‟ different learning styles will always be a consideration. however “if we are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 117-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license aware of this and act accordingly, then there is a good chance that most of the class will be engaged with the learning process most of the time” (harmer, 2015, p. 50). the author agreed with the feedback that the structure of the lesson could be improved, particularly in respect of the number of activities attempted and their sequencing. several participants remarked that some activities, while interesting and enjoyable, were not exploited sufficiently for the purposes of the grammar point, and then ultimately seemed less meaningful and even confusing. the author similarly observed that in the attempt to provide variety, maintain engagement, and finish the session on time, the number of activities had been ambitious, leaving insufficient time for deeper elicitation of the grammar pattern, and for practice. students need to be allowed the time and opportunities to gain insight and generalise about the use of patterns, after which the teacher‟s development of the explicit rule statement from these insights, emerges more meaningfully and honestly (thornbury, 1999). even within the 25 minute limit , more recycling of grammar could have been built into the session allowing “for the kind of gradual acquisition of grammar that is compatible with what is known about interlanguage development” (ellis, 2006, p. 92). again both the author and participants agreed that greater contrast between the first and second conditional could have helped clarify the form, meaning and use of this subtle grammar rule. while ellis (2006) suggests that complex grammar rules generally lend themselves more readily to elicitation, it seemed that, in this case, more explicit instruction of the pattern form would have been beneficial, possibly because of the participants‟ expectations (ellis, 2002). finally, perhaps the choice of the second conditional for this lesson was too ambitious. several authors note the difficulties learners have with conditionals (celce-murcia & larsenfreeman, 1999; parrott, 2000), and the investigation of the use of „if‟ clauses in spoken corpora data reveals more than 30 patterns in use, of which the three „traditional‟ conditional patterns accounted for fewer than half of these. moreover, despite the grammatical irregularity of these patterns, the meanings were apparently perfectly understood by the participants (o‟keeffe, mccarthy & carter, 2007). this begs the bigger question of how much effort in any case, a teacher should put into teaching the fine ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 118-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license distinctions of the three traditional conditional forms. conclusion and suggestion this research study provided an opportunity to apply a different teaching approach to a known grammar challenge within in a controlled environment, to gather data, and to “achieve reflection that is both sufficiently embedded in the day-today needs of practice and sufficiently distanced from the „taken for granted‟ to be a lever for change” (baumfield et al., 2008, p. 63). certainly the inductive approach had its strengths in terms of creating interest and engaging participants; however it was also clear that eliciting a grammar rule requires careful preparation and sequencing of activities, takes time both in preparation and for participant activities, and is likely to work better for most participants if attention is also given to form as well as function and meaning. references ana, i. k. t. a., & ratminingsih, n. m. (2012). teaching english tenses to efl learners: deductive or inductive? international journal for cross-disciplinary subjects in education (ijcdse), 2(2), 998-1004. arifin, s. (2016). deductive and inductive methods in teaching tenses. journal of elt research, 1(1), 73-89. baumfield, v., hall, e., & wall, k. (2008). action research in the classroom. los angeles: sage. bijami, m., kashef, s. h., nejad, m. s. (2013). peer feedback in learning english writing: advantages and disadvantages. journal of studies in education, 3(4), 91-97. boroujeni, f. a. (2012). investigating controversies in teaching grammar: a case for the iranian high school students. theory and practice in language studies, 2(8), 1570-1575. brown, j. d. (1988). understanding research in second language learning: a teacher’s guide to statistics and research design. cambridge: cambridge university press. celce-murcia, m., & larsen-freeman, d. (1999). the grammar book: an esl/efl teacher’s course (2nd ed.). boston: heinle & heinle. ellis, r (2002). the place of grammar instruction in the second /foreign language curriculum. in e.hinkel & s. fotos (eds.), new perspectives on grammar teaching in second language classrooms (pp. 17–34). new jersey: erlbaum. ellis, r. (2006). current issues in the teaching of grammar: an sla perspective. in tesol quarterly, 40, 1, 83-108. farrell, t. (2001). critical friendship: colleagues helping each other develop. elt journal, 55, 4, 368 – 374. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 119-119 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8538. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license harmer, j. (2015). the practice of english language teaching (5th ed.). essex: pearson education. harmer, j. (2007). how to teach english. essex: pearson education. joyce, h., & burns, a. 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(2016). the effectiveness of using crossing formulas of tenses table in learning english 16 tenses at xii grade students of ma madani alauddin paopao in academic year of 2015/2016. eternal, 2(1), 96-109. swan, m. (2005). practical english usage (3rd ed.). oxford: oxford university press. thornbury, s. (1999). how to teach grammar. essex: pearson. wiwoho, a. n. (2017). grammar teaching approaches for adult efl learners: an indonesian perspective. iafor conference proceedings, retrieved from http://25qt511nswfi49iayd31ch80wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/papers/acss2017/ acss2017_36878.pdf. yunita, w. (2016). best practice in teaching english grammar to university students: deductive, inductive, or combination of both? proceedings of the fourth international seminar onenglish language and teaching (iselt-4), 435-443. zhao, h. (2014). investigating teachersupported peer assessment for efl writing. elt journal, 68(2), 155-168. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 207-2220 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the use of content-based summarizing technique in improving students’ reading skills of madrasah zana chobita aratusa received: 12th october 2017; revised: 22th november 2017; accepted: 27th december 2017 abstract previous studies argued that summarizing techniques can improve students skill to comprehend a reading text, but those studies did not address what type of summarizing teachniques and how to apply them, in particular in islamic schools context in which their studdents often study rich textual documents. through the use of the experimental method, this study implemented content-based summarizing technique (cbst) in teaching english reading skill at two state islamic senior high schools (madrasah aliyah negeri) in palu, central sulawesi. after 12 weeks teaching, this study found that students who were taught by using cbst have significantly improved their reading skill to comprehend a reading text. meanwhile, the non-cbst treatment students’ reading skill remain stable. this study concludes that the use of cbst in english reading teaching can be used as a new alternative technique in english teaching. the limitation of this study is that the treatment might not be long enough and the sample small. future research need to involve more sample and apply longer treatment period. key words: reading skill; content-based; reading technique; experiment abstrak sejumlah penelitian sebelumnya menemukan bahwa teknik merangkum dapat meningkatkan keterampilan siswa untuk memahami teks bacaan, namun penelitian tersebut tidak membahas jenis pengajaran yang meringkas dan bagaimana menerapkannya, khususnya dalam konteks sekolah islam seperti madrasah yang para siswanya sering mempelajari berbagai teks bacaan. dengan menggunakan metode eksperimen, penelitian ini menerapkan content-based summarizing technique (cbst) dalam pembelajaran keterampilan membaca dalam bahasa inggris pada dua madrasah aliyah negeri di palu, sulawesi tengah. setelah 12 minggu mengajar, penelitian ini menemukan bahwa siswa yang diajar dengan cbst mampu meningkatkan kemampuan membaca mereka secara signifikan dalam memahami teks bacaan dalam bahasa inggris. sementara itu, kemampuan membaca siswa yang tidak diajarkan dengan -cbst tetap tidak meningkat. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa penggunaan cbst dalam pengajaran membaca bahasa inggris dapat digunakan sebagai teknik alternatif baru dalam pengajaran bahasa inggris. keterbatasan penelitian ini adalah lamanya penerapan cbst mungkin tidak cukup dan sampelnya kecil. penelitian selanjutnya perlu melibatkan lebih banyak sampel dan periode penerapan cbst perlu lebih lama. kata kunci: ketrampilan membaca; content-based; teknik membaca how to cite: aratusa, z. c. (2017). the use of content-based summarizing technique in improving students’ reading skills of madrasah. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 208-220. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 209-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading skill is one of an important skill to be mastered by students in the english language teaching curriculum (ronan, 2015). most high school students have problems in reading various texts in english textbooks because they lack the specific strategies (chen & sabina chia-li, 2015). whereas in the english language textbook for high schools, in particular, islamic senior high schools, there are many reading texts that require skills and good reading techniques to capture essential information. the lacks of students’ reading skills make them reluctant to read english-text books. in addition, poor reading techniques also cause poor comprehension (kispal, 2008) and also experience difficulties in many english exams such as semester and national examinations. the success of reading skill teaching is highly dependent on the reading teaching techniques used by the teachers (hermida, 2009). there are various techniques that have been applied by teachers in teaching english reading in high schools, one of which is the technique of summarizing the reading content. summarizing technique itself has been long enough applied in teaching reading skills and it has become a tradition that is used continuously by english teachers (cahyono, 1996; cahyono & widiati, 2006) . a traditional reading technique that is commonly used in summarizing is "précis." the approach used in the “précis” is called the text reduction approach (cranmer, 1989). however, this approach does not provide students with good skills because the reduction of text content often results in the loss of main ideas in the text. as a result, this approach does not provide a good understanding of the issues developed in a reading text for students. besides, this technique is not able to provide a clear guide to what to write (content) and how to write it (form) (chambers & brigham, 1989). the new direction of teaching reading skills in english emphasizes on understanding the content only (monopoli, 2014). in other words, providing reading skills with emphasis on understanding the message in the text is better than understanding every word (harmer, 2001). one of the reading techniques that provide skills to capture the content of the subject is content-based summarizing (cbst) which is a technique of summarizing a reading text based on the main contents of the text (cahyono, 1996). with this technique, the readers will get a picture of their understanding of the reading ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 210-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license content (anderson & hidi, 1988; rivers, 1987). although the cbst is considered to be better at providing effective reading skills for english students, the application of this reading technique at the secondary school level is rarely performed and has not yet been determined to be effective. this requires a study of this technique by piloting the application of the cbst in teaching english reading skills to find a suitable teaching technique in reading skills development for high school students. in particular, islamic school students often study rich textual textual documents such as islamic history and teaching (mcdonald, 2014). the researcher expected that the use of content-based summarizing techniques (cbst) to islamic senior high school students can improve their reading comprehension and summarizing ability. moreover, it can have positive effects on the students to face the rich reading texts in their future studies. in this study, the researcher develops a hypothesis as follows; “teaching reading comprehension with cbst significantly improve students reading comprehension skill”. summarizing techniques for more than a quarter of a century, reading skills by english teaching experts are considered as one of the most important skills everyone should have. one of the important reading skills possessed is the skill of concluding a reading text. joseph, et al., (2016), for example, assert that a teacher should help students develop their reading skills primarily by making a summary of the main idea of a paragraph in a text. the summary includes important ideas in a paragraph. the summarizing technique is able to facilitate students in improving reading comprehension with a focus on meaning (chastain, 1988). the reading comprehension is better when the students also involve self-questioning during reading to monitor their reading comprehension and increases their ability to learn independently (joseph, et al., 2016). the ability to be independent in reading can help teachers to reduce their role in a reading class session. the summarizing technique referred to in this study differs from the technique of summarizing in the traditional sense. in the traditional sense, the summarizing technique is often understood as the way to reduce a reading text becomes as short as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 211-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license possible. however, the summarizing technique in this study is understood as content-based summarizing which is summarizing based on the meaning or content of a reading text. this summarizing technique is able to improve students comprehension and their summaries skill especially in cases of finding the main ideas, committing plagiarism and committing distortion (khathayut & karavi, 2011) to distinguish between contentbased summarizing technique with summarizing technique in the traditional perspective, duke and pearson (2002) have developed a procedure to guide students in summarizing a reading text. the procedure includes several steps such as; read skimming text, make a list of key points in the text, incorporate some interrelated points in a new statement, revise the key points, then re-read the list of key points, list the points and put them in order, lastly write these points in the form of paragraphs in sequence. meanwhile, hayes (1989) introduces a class procedure in teaching students how to write a summary of a reading text. the procedure is called the guide reading and summarizing procedure or (grasp). the procedure is practiced in four stages as follows: 1) prepare the students to start learning; 2) have students to read the main point; 3) help students group the main point of the subject in the text; 4) show students how to turn these main points into a good summary. carnie, sailbert, and kameenui (2004) also introduce a summary technique which resembles contentbased summarizing. the summarizing technique is called the one sentence summary. the teaching procedure of this technique includes several steps: (1). a teacher tells the students how to write the main idea, (2). the students read the reading text, (3). the teacher asks the student to mark the main sentence along with the main idea in the sentence, (4). the teacher asks the students to mention the sentencem (5). the teacher repeats the steps by working on the rest of the existing text, (6). finally the teacher asks the students to write the main idea for each paragraph. another summarizing technique is proposed by chambers and brigham (1989), which is called as the deletion approach to summarizing. this approach improves the traditional approach to summarize in the traditional perspectives which emphasize on the selection of the main idea in a reading text. meanwhile, this deletion approach emphasizes on retrieval of the original text and removes only unimportant sentences, clauses, phrases ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 212-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license or words until only the essentials remain. the process of deletion requires five steps; (1). after reading, delete sentences that are just an explanation of the main sentence, (2). from the remaining sentence, then remove all unnecessary clauses and phrases, (3). then from the remaining ones, remove again the less necessary, (4). next replace the words left with the students’ own words, (5). lastly, write back the summary. content-based summarizing technique (cbst) the summarizing technique based on the content based summarizing technique (cbst) itself is a technique of summarizing a reading text based on the content of a discourse. this model is applied based on two assumptions; firstly, a good learning skill model is a model that can summarize the past and the present and also predict the future (rivers, 1987), the second is that the summarizing activity of the students must reflect their understanding against a reading text (o’dell, 1987). in the summarizing process, some information should be included and some to be discarded. the main question is which information should be included in the summary and which is not. according to o'dell (o’dell, 1987), the most important thing in a reading activity is that students are able to understand the general meaning of the text they read, and then they have the ability to choose a little more specific information which is considered important. hennings (1991) argues that the ability of students to find the main idea is the most important skill. in this case, the main focus of teaching reading is to help readers find significant ideas in a reading text. however, teachers should understand that a student will not have the ability to read and understand content-based text if the teachers themselves are lacking on a contentbased reading strategy skills (ronan, 2016). based on above argument, the cbst emphasizes on understanding the main idea of a reading text and this main idea must be summarized. thus, cbst develops an assumption that the comprehension of a reading text can be obtained through the understanding of the main idea contained in the text itself. in this case, the main idea refers to a statement that circumscribed a paragraph (afflerbach, 1990; stevens, slavin, & famish, 1991). the main idea is not merely a topic sentence, but it includes subject lines as well as ideas in the supporting sentences. the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 213-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license procedure of implementing cbst consists of three steps: 1) students read a passage of text; 2) students then make notes which include the main idea and if necessary also include the supporting ideas; 3) the final step creates a summary based on the note. the procedures implemented in cbst provide an opportunity for students to grasp main ideas directly during reading activities. this cbst ensures that students are able to understand the contents of a text. the cbst also does not require students to pay attention to the text in detail because students’ reliance on observing the text in detail will reduce students' ability to understand the content of the text itself. this is due to the fact that what students can remember longer is the general elements, rather than more specific information. if the main idea had been understood and remembered, then the details of the text itself can also be remembered because it is included in the main idea (hayes, 1989). furthermore, cbst does not require students to identify the characters in the text and then tell what the characters do, because such strategy will prevent students from grasping the main idea in the text. this is because most of reading texts cannot be summarized by referring to the characters in it and what the characters do. instead students are required to comprehend and experience a reading text (duke & pearson, 2002). in addition, the cbst also does not require students to work in groups or spouses to produce a summary. the other specialty of this cbst is simply because it does not require a number of detailed steps before starting the reading. cbst instead directed students to get the main idea quickly after reading activities through quick a text scanning (chambers & brigham, 1989). in the application of cbst, teachers should choose the material content in accordance with the english proficiency of the students (augusto-navarro, 2015). teachers can also provide a lower-level reading text than their current class. for example, if students sit in year two then it could be a reading material designed for first-year students to avoid difficulties in syntax and semantics (brown, 2007). methods this study applied an experimental method, pretest–posttest control group research design (kılıçkaya, 2011; thomson, 2011). two classes of the eleventh-grade students of two madrasah aliyah negeri in palu were recruited. one class with 20 students ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 214-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license will be used as a treatment class. meanwhile, another class with also 19 students will be functioned as a controlled class. the school has seven classes of grade seventh students, but only two classes will be randomly selected for this study. on the first meeting, an informed consent form will be signed by the students agreeing to participate in this study. after the students signed the form, the teacher (the author herself) administered the pre-test. one class (controlled group) followed the traditional reading instruction technique and was taught by a usual teacher, another class (experimental group) followed cbst instruction. the treatment with cbst was given for 12 weeks (about three months) with 90 minutes duration each meeting. the treatment class was taught by the researcher herself but all the teaching material was consulted with the schools english teachers to maintain validity. meanwhile, the nontreatment classes were taught as usual by english teachers from the schools. prior to the treatment, a pre-test was given to experimental and controlled classes within both schools. after the treatment was completed in 12 weeks, a post-test was given again to find the students’ reading skill progress. teaching procedures similar material was given to both experimental class and controlled class, but the experimental class was taught with cbst while the controlled class was taught with usual techniques used by english teachers in the schools. in this section, the author describes the process of cbst implementation in teaching a reading comprehension text. an example of a reading text was taken from “english for islamic studies” book with the title “dwan of islam” by djamaluddin darwis (1995, p. 88). the application of cbst in the classroom was carried out in several stages. by reading the text, it is expected that students can make a summary based on the content of the text. in doing so, the students were assisted and directed by their teacher. an example of a teaching procedure is described in the following text. similar procedures are also applied to other material used in this study. dawn of islam in the beginning of islam, muhammad, the messenger, delivered his message to his family as well as to the quraysh people. with much struggle and unmatched patience muhammad managed to collect a few followers. muhammad talked to people and advised them not to worship the idols which were ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 215-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license made of stone and which could neither do them any good not bring them any harm. he called them instead to follow the religion of abraham: to believe in one god, allah, and worship only him. but non-believers went to believing in the idols and refused to accept islam. they were afraid that islam would bring them lots of enemies and make the rest of the arabs hate them and boycott their trade. if that happened, they would be in great trouble. therefore, they decided to do something to muhammad and his followers. they agreed to send a delegation to abu thalig and asked him to settle this matter once and for all. the spokesman said; “look abu talib, you are one of our leaders, we greatly honour you. will you judge between us and your nephew? tell him to stop insulting our gods, the idols, mocking our religions, criticizing our beliefs and slandering our father who taught us these beliefs. either you stop him or let us deal with him.” abu talib gave them no answer, but instead sent someone to look for the prophet and tell him to go to his uncle’s house. when the prophet arrived he saw all the important quraysh men gathered in his uncle’s house. as soon as he got there, his uncle, abu talib, said to him, “my dear nephew, these are the heads of your people and the rich quraysh men wishing to make a deal with you. they want you to stop attacking their gods, the idols and they will let you worship your god.” the prophet replied, “can i call upon them to worship somebody else who is better than these idols?” “who is that, son” “asked abu talib. “ i would call upon them to say one little phrase. if they say it the rest of the arabs will submit to them and they will rule the people of the world. all want them to say is “there is no god but allah.” based on the text above, the students are required to make a summary of three parts of the text. the first part of the text (paragraph 1) is about the prophet muhammad who began the dissemination of his teachings to his family and began to gather some followers. the second part is a summary consisting of paragraphs 2 to 4, and the third section is paragraph 5. the summary of the text is as follows: paragraph 1; muhammad started to spread his message to his family and began to collect a few followers. paragraph 2: it is about non believers who were afraid of islam. paragraph 3: one of the non-believer asked abu talib to stop muhammad's activities. paragraph 4: abu talib tried to persuade muhammad to stop his ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 216-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license activities. paragraph 5: it is about the strength of muhammad's belief. from the text above, the students, then, made notes in the form of the outline as follows:  personality : bright, patience, strength  activities : delivered islam messages to his family and quraysh people activity in spreading islamic teaching :  activities : muhammad collect followers and talked and advised non believers.  reaction : non-believers refused islam and tried to persuade muhammad  impact : muhammad did not want to stop his activities to spread islam message. the writer judgment (students): there is a combination of patience and faithfulness in prophet muhammad. he cannot be persuaded by non-muslims with the wealth to stop his activities. from the outline above, a final summary was made as follows: dawn of islam according to the writer, muhammad is a strong, patience, and loyal man. his activity at the beginning of islam was to deliver message to his family and quraysh people and collect followers. then, he collected followers and advised non believers to accept islam. the reaction of non-believers was they refused islam and tried to persuade muhammad, but muhammad did not stop to spread islam message. results and discussion in general, the average ability of students reading in english in ma negeri i palu and ma negeri 2 model palu is almost similar. this was shown in the mean score obtained by the students of both schools when the initial test given. however, the average ability of the students of ma negeri 2 model palu before the treatment was found to be slightly better, which the average initial score of the treatment class students is 46.25 and the average score of the class without treatment is 50.75. while the average initial score of the treatment class in ma negeri i palu is 43.3 and the average score of non treatment class without treatment is 49.52. although the difference of mean score between two schools is not significant, this slight difference in score indicates that the ability of ma negeri 2 model palu students in reading is better compared with the ability of ma negeri i palu students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 217-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the differences affected the ability of students to receive treatment material provided by researchers. this also affects the score of the final test of english reading skill. the author gave post-test after 12 weeks ( one meeting each week) of the treatment material was given. the post-test results show the average score of ma negeri 2 model students is still better than ma negeri 1 palu for both treatment and non-treatment classes. the average score of the treatment class ma negeri 2 model is 61.00 and 51.5 for the controlled class. while the average score of treatment class ma negeri 1 palu is 54.05 and 51.19 for nontreatment class. the result of statistical calculation of the test scores for both schools also shows that the calculation of "t-test" for each school is significantly difference between the treatment and non treatment class. the treatment class of man model palu produced "to" with 7.49 and the non-treatment class produced "to" with 0.76 which is significantly different. furthermore, the treatment class of man 1 produced "to" with 8.36 and the non-treatment class produce "to" with 0.62. the resulting "t-test" is interpreted by taking into account "df" or "db". the number of "df" or "db" for ma state 1 palu is n-1 = 21-1 = 20, while "df" or "db" for state ma 2 model palu is n-1 = 20-1 = 19. "df" or "db" of 20 and 19, after consulting with the "t" value table, either at the 5% significance level or at a significance level of 1%, it was found that the "t" or "t table" with critical value at a significance level of 5% is 2.09 for both schools. meanwhile, when the significant level was reduced at 1%, it was found that "tt" was 2.86 for both schools. by comparing the amount of "t" obtained in the calculation (ma negeri 1, 8.36 and ma negeri 2 model, 7.49) and the magnitude of "t" listed in t table (5% = 2.09 and 1 % = 8.36 and 7.49), it was found that the "to" is greater than "tt" : ma negeri 1 palu 2,09  8,36  2,84 ma negeri 2 model 2,09  7,49  2,86 since "to" is greater than "tt", the proposed nil hypothesis is rejected, which means that there is a difference in reading ability in english between before and after the use of contentbased summarizing (cbst) in teaching english reading skills. the statistics analysis show significant differences. in other words, the use of cbst in teaching reading skill within both schools has produced excellent results, comparing before the use of cbst. although the high level of reading skills is also closely related to the level ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 218-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license of vocabulary mastery in english (kameli & baki, 2013; sidek & rahim, 2015), a proper reading technique use in a reading class greatly facilitates the fluency of reading and comprehension as found in this study. this study found that proper reading techniques really help students especially in achieving short-term goals such as answering questions test which is often conducted in limited time allocation. this technique helps students for future reading purposes such as the ability to read scientific texts in higher education institutions. thus content-based summarizing technique can be one alternative technique to improve english reading skill. conclusion and suggestion this research has been carried out successfully, which finding shows that students' reading skill is improved after the use of content-based summarizing (cbst) technique in teaching english reading. some conclusions can be drawn from this research, among others: a) there is a significant difference in the score of english reading comprehension after the application of cbst in teaching reading. this is indicated by the value of "to" is 8.36 and 7.49 in ma negeri 1 and ma negeri 2 model; b) the average reading comprehension final score of the students in both schools is significantly increased when compared to before treatment (from 43.3 to 54.05 in ma negeri 1 and 46.25 to 61.00 in ma negeri 2 model). while the average score of students in non-applied cbst technique classes does not show significant progress in their reading skills; c) the average reading ability of students in ma negeri 2 model is better than ma negeri 1 students. this is reflected in the average values obtained before the cbst was applied and after the implementation of the cbst. a similar result can also be seen in the mean score of students in nontreatment classes in both schools. this study was carried out with scientific procedure, but the author acknowledges the limitation of this study. for example, the experimental session might not be longer enough, which is less than 14 weeks or four months. however, since the teaching procedure was apllied properly and according to the schools’ guidelines and the material was also validated by the teachers at schools, the author believes the result can be used as a reffence in teaching reading comprehension successfully at schools. future research need to implement longer treatment period and with various reading material to produce more validity in research. more classes ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 219-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license should also be involved to maintain the validity. references afflerbach, p. p. 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(2013). the impact of vocabulary knowledge level on http://iteslj.org/techniques/brown-cbec.html http://iteslj.org/techniques/brown-cbec.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 220-220 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6153 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license efl reading comprehension. international journal of applied linguistics & english literature, 2(1), 5. khathayut, p., & karavi, p. (2011). summarizing techniques: the effective indicators of reading comprehension? paper presented at the the 3rd international conference on humanities and social sciences, bangkok. kılıçkaya, f. (2011). improving pronunciation via accent reduction and text-to-speech software. in m. levy, f. blin, c. b. siskin & o. takeuchi (eds.), worldcall: international perspectives on computerassisted language learning (pp. 85-96). new york: routledge. kispal, a. 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(2016). why reading comprehension in the content areas is so important. retrieved 20 october 2017, from edudemic : connecting education and technology: http://www.edudemic.com/reading -comprehension-content-areasimportant/ sidek, h. m., & rahim, h. a. (2015). the role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension: a crosslinguistic study. paper presented at the 7th world conference on educational sciences, (wces-2015), athens, greece. stevens, r. j., slavin, r. e., & famish, a. m. (1991). the effects of cooperative learning and direct instruction in reading comprehension strategies on main idea identification. journal of educational psychology, 83(1), 8-16. thomson, r. i. (2011). computer assisted pronunciation training: targeting second language vowel perception improves pronunciation. calico journal, 28(3), 744-765. http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executive-summary-monopoli.pdf http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executive-summary-monopoli.pdf http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executive-summary-monopoli.pdf http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ http://www.edudemic.com/reading-comprehension-content-areas-important/ copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 192-207 a voluntary reading program (vrp) to stimulate efl reading interest erna iftanti state islamic institute of tulungagung, indonesia (ernataufic72@gmail.com) received: 23th september 2016; revised: 22th november 2016; accepted: 28th desember 2016 abstract this article explores the implementation of a voluntary reading program (vrp) which aims at stimulating an efl reading interest among indonesian efl college students. this qualitative study conducted within seven weeks to efl college students of state islamic institute of tulungagung attending a practice course on cultivating efl reading habits formally set for eight meetings. this course is intended to address a big concern on the strategy to better stimulate efl students’ reading habits. by the end of the program, through an interview done to all participants, the program indicates positive effect on stimulating the efl college students to read for some reasons. reading brings about great advantages to widen their knowledge and set awareness that reading is not a difficult activity since they can read a lot through their mobile phones (online reading). wriiten texts found anywhere, or even any ads hanged on the walls. in a nutshell, this program proves to be a good way of stimulating good habit of efl reading for efl college students. key words: voluntary reading program; to stimulate; reading interest abstrak artikel ini mengeksplorasi implementasi program membaca sukarela (pms) yang bertujuan menstimulasi daya tarik membaca bacaan berbahasa inggris bagi mahasiswa indonesia yang belajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing. penelitian qualitative dalam waktu 7 minggu kepada mahasiswa prodi pendidikan bahasa inggris yang mengikuti mata kuliah praktikum “cultivating efl reading habits” secara formal dijadwalkan dalam waktu 8 minggu. penelitian ini dilakukan karena perhatian besar terhadap permasalahan kebiasaan membaca para pembelajar bahasa inggris sebagai bahasa asing. di akhir program, melalui wawancara kepada seluruh peserta, program ini mempunyai efek positif untuk menstimulasi mahasiswa bahasa inggris untuk membaca karena membaca bermanfaat untuk memperluas pengetahuan mereka dan memunculkan kesadaran bahwa membaca merupakan kegiatan yang tidak sulit karena mereka bisa membaca banyak hal melalui hp (online reading), tulisan-tulisan yang ditemukan dimana-mana atau bahkan iklan yang dipasang di dinding. singkatnya, program membaca sukarela terbukti sebagai cara yang baik untuk menstimulasi mahasiswa bahasa inggris untuk mencintai membaca bacaan-bacaan berbahasa inggris. kata kunci: program membaca sukarela; menslimulasi; ketertarikan membaca how to cite: iftanti, e. (2016). a voluntary reading program (vrp) to stimulate efl reading interest. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 192-207 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5512. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5512 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5512 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 193-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 introduction people agree that english has been developed to be a global language because firstly it has some kind of a special statusofficial language of a countryin over seventy countries. secondly, english has become the priority in a country’s foreign language teaching (crystal, 2003), as it is in indonesia. english signs, for example, are easily found in every public building, international forum, internationalized published books, and even in ads of internationally consumed products. more importantly, with the establishment of asean economic community (aec) 2015a unity of ten asean countries which are indonesia, thailand, myanmar, laos, vietnam, malaysia, singapore, philippine, cambodia, and brunei, the role of english is getting more significant especially among the members of aec. this is because english is decided to be the formal language for business. english plays a critical role in improving productivity, boosting competitiveness and ensuring sustained job creation (chang, 2014). as written in wall street english thailand that to help improve the economy of thailand, they need to improve their english. this is due to the fact that workers with better english skills will help not only improve the economy and attract more foreign investment to benefit the countries but also make their countries be more competitive. therefore, because in indonesia english is still struggling, various innovative and practical ways of improving the teaching and learning english especially that in english education program need to be sustainably done in order to attract their interest in reading english. indonesian people know that reading is significant to improve their quality of lives. just take for example a javanese slogan stating “hurub hambangun praja” written in each entrance gate of blitar region a homeland of the first president of indonesia. the slogan shows the importance of literacy which can be simply indicated by being able to read and write (blake and hanley, as cited in cambridge assessment 2013) to build a nation. however, in relation to english as a subject, cambridge assessment (2013) further reported that literacy is not simply a set of static skills, but must involve literacy in action, critical literacy, literacy as social practice, and multiple literacy. still, the awareness of this knowledge into the fact to do reading practice is considered imbalance. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|194-207 in indonesian context, particularly efl students mostly read because of fulfilling their school assignment. it is rarely found students read for their own interest. this situation is clearly described in several articles describing a low level of indonesian reading interest (0.049% as reported by hidayat (2015) and afrisia cnn indonesia (2015). moreover, the interest of reading english amongst the efl students in indonesia is considered low (iftanti, 2012). this is partly due to the fact that historically indonesia has had an oral culture and has not yet completely built a literacy culture, but is unavoidable that indonesia has to adopt a very fast advancement of technologygadgetry eraby which young generation especially has been much involved in it. in short, it is a matter especially whoever has a great concern in building good reading culture although it is not that ease to cultivate a good habit of reading either in l1 or l2 or fl. so, it is essential to make efforts on how to stimulate an interest of efl students’ reading english and how they do real reading. one of the ways is by implementing a voluntary reading program (vrp) which is inspired by a reading log program. voluntary reading or recreational reading has an essential effect to support the improvement of the other english language skills and components. as stated by krashen (2004) that it has a powerful effect on developing reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary. free voluntary readingbook flood, extensive reading (er), which is defined as reading in quantity in order to gain a general understanding of what is read is intended to develop good reading habits and to encourage a liking of reading. (richards and schmidt, 2002). it has positive effect on l2 reading attitude which may indeed enhance the decision to read and create a virtuous circle of reading (yamashita, 2013). therefore, implementing voluntary reading to stimulate a love of reading is worthy. this program was implemented to 33 students attending a practice course namely ‘cultivating reading habits”. this course has zero credit point so that the students’ final score is indicated by passing or failing. since this course has no effect on their cumulative achievement index points, they are not totally involved in any practice courses. unlike regular subjects, this course has formally been conducted in only eight meetings. hence, the students who get much involved in this vrp program or those who have motivation to read or are ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 195-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 stimulated to read because this program can be used as the indicators of their love of reading. so that this study is intended to explore how voluntary reading program can stimulate efl college students to have reading interest in english. therefore, to know the idea of real reading practices and voluntary reading activities is helpful to conduct this vrp. reading is not only decoding words but finding ideas beyond the texts as well. through real reading, readers spent their time to purposely get something from the written symbols. doing real reading is indicated by some attributes as stated by cross (1991): (1) choice. this means that readers read not a prescribed time but they selectively read when they want or read to. (2) purpose. this second attribute indicates that readers read for a reason such as for reading for enjoyment (reading literary works), for information (newspaper, flight schedule), for knowledge (a scholarly journal or book), for curiosity (a guide book), for satisfying a need (instruction for a new mobile phone. indeed, the purpose of real reading is not to analyze the syntax or scrutinize every word. reading strategies. the approach of each reading purpose and text type is different. real readers do not read a newspaper in the same way as they read a literary work. a difficult document for instance might be read several times in order to understand every nuance. however, they sometimes read in a rush to long article just by scanning to get an especially interesting part. (4) quantity. every day, real readers read a great deal, for instance: posters, advertisements, traffic sign, personal messages, shop names, and anything which attracts their attention. they have much of that sort of casual reading all the time.(5) silence. real readers read silently in the literate societies, except for tv or radio announcers, or a on trip announcer as that on a train, stewardess, or master of ceremony who read sometimes visually, not out aloud. (6) speed. concerning the speed of reading, real readers read swiftly with which they can read a passage far more quickly that it could be spoken. slow readers often the product of schools where reading aloud was the norm. they often continue the words they read privately to the mouth. an efficient reader can enjoy a thick newspaper, reading selectively, in less than an hour. (7) context. real readers read through difficulties, coping with complex syntax and strange lexical items and getting the general meaning from the linguistic context. they do not read at dictionary at out side. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|196-207 unlike voluntary reading which is commonly done for the sake of their own interest, the standard reading procedures in reading classes often have little relationship with real purposeful reading as indicated by the above mentioned attributes. hence, cross (1991) further offers some valuable points to improve the matter. (1) it is difficult to allow students to read selectively, as they do in their mother tongue and language learners usually read when told to, not from choice. then, a teacher can increase the students’ desire to read a passage by arousing interest in the topic and the interest level of the text the teacher selects is a key factor in enhancing their wish to read and providing the students with a class or school library. (2) in term of purpose, a teacher can make class reading purposeful by setting appropriate focus tasks for the while-reading phase and any follow up. (3) concerning the strategies of reading, a teacher should cultivate the sub skills of reading and the associate reading strategies. (4) a teacher should also support the students to read more, because the more the students read, the better. (5) cultivate a norm for silent reading among the students and constantly urge them toward greater reading speeds but bearing in mind the nature of text and the task as well. (6) in relation to context, the teacher should resist the temptation to explain every new word. let the students learn to cope with passages which include lexical items and grammar structures that they have not met. a voluntary reading can be done in a school contexta school free readingwhich is also well known as sustained-silent reading. this can be defined as providing books in the classroom with which both students and teacher can read at the same time. it is not necessary for students to bring their own reading books. it is considered as gold standard for demonstrating the effectiveness of recreational reading (krashen, 2004). it is practically done by devoting a few minutes each day (about 10 – 15) to do recreational reading. method the qualitative method applied in doing this study consists of two procedures, i.e. developing voluntary reading program and assessment procedures. both steps are explained below. developing voluntary reading program (vrp) this voluntary reading program is adapted from an extensive reading program which is generally associated ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 197-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 with reading large amount with the aim of getting an overall understanding of the material (bamford and day, 1997). this program as stated by bell (1998) was established integrated into classroom teaching with which the learners would get an access to class library so that they would have a wide range exposures of graded readers. students' reading was then carefully monitored. formal and informal records on their reading practices including the books they read and their comments on they have read were also kept in reading diaries and book reports with a card file system to document the program. the reading program implemented in the present study follows the timeline for seven week reading practices with the guidelines below. 1) students select their own reading materials this step is essentially given to the students in order to select their own interesting reading materials. selfselected reading materials increase the students’ interest and motivation which will further result in nurturing a love of reading english in particular. this is because they have successfully made their reading meaningful. the meaningful reading will hopefully attract efl students to conduct a sustained reading which finally brings about a love of reading english. it is suggested to read reading materials of any typesbooks on any topics, articles published in newspapers, magazines, comic books, short stories, flyers, shopping items for examplesas many as they can during this program. students feel free on their own reading choices. 2) students select the right difficulty level of the reading materials one of the ways to attract the efl students’ love of reading is giving them chance of reading english at their own level of difficulties. this leads the students to get comfort and pleasure during the reading practice. moreover, if it is achieved, they will gradually establish a love of reading. 3) students write their reading response in a reading log in this step, the students write their reading response in a reading log assigned by the lecturer. 4) students orally report their reading activities weekly this step is done to ensure that the voluntary reading program runs as being approved by both the lecturer and the students. the students report what they have read during a week. the lecturer addresses some question in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|198-207 accordance with the students’ reading log. this is considered as part of assessment procedure which is intended to check the students’ changes on reading behavior, particularly reading interest in english. the participants of this study were 33 students of the third semester of english education program of iain tulungagung that were taking a practice course on cultivating efl reading habits. they joined this vrp for 2 months. the data which were in the form of information concerning with the progress of their reading interest were collected through interviewing the participants and taking a look at the document of their reading logs. the collected data were then qualitatively analyzed. assessment procedures in order to know whether the objective of this program is successfully achieved, it is necessary to conduct an assessment by means of interviewing the students. this program is evaluated through the following procedures: 1) pre-reading program in this step, the students are confirmed about their reading interest in english. the questions include do you like reading? if yes, how much do you love reading? those questions are distributed to all students and they respond in written. this is done to avoid from a pressing condition. 2) weekly reading program in this step, the questions addressed are aimed at asking their reading practices during one week. the students were bringing their reading logs during this confirmation assessment. the questions were developed based on the students’ reading report: a). what did you read so far?; b). did you select your own reading materials?; c). which reading materials do you like best?; d).what is the summary of your favorite reading materials?; e). how long do you read your selected materials?; f). what difficulties did you find during the reading practices?; g). what interesting things could you get from your selected reading materials?. 3) post reading program in the step, the assessment is emphasized on the result of conducting this vrpwhether the efl students’ love of reading stimulated or not. so ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 199-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 that, the question is what do you think about this program? does it stimulate your reading english? and now do you love reading because of this program?. finding and discussion pre-reading program this study found that almost all of them are not willing to and interested in reading: they do not love reading both indonesian and english materials. what they understand about reading is reading books and it is not easy to find books in their environment. it is partly because of the limited number of available books. dewi the head of ikatan penerbit indonesia (ikapi)indonesian publisher organizationas reported by afrisia cnn indonesia (2015) stated that indonesia has classic problem on reading interest and book distribution. she further explained that this is due to the fact that historically indonesia has had an oral culture and has not yet completely built a literacy culture. book publication in indonesia is moreover not in balance with the people’ needs to read. weekly reading program the finding of weekly interviewing the students indicates that the students’ interest gradually increases although it is not quite significant. this can be seen from the following description. a) what did you read so far? week 1: the students’ response toward this question is various. it was found that 18 out of 33 students (about 54.33%) read a very simple story such that written by stannard allen. this is what they can find to read and they understand the whole meaning of the text. the point is that they do read their selected materials. and what is meant by being able to read as stated in iwahori (2008) that when learners are able to recognize words accurately and rapidly, they have greater capacity for attention leading to comprehending a text. meanwhile, the other 8 students (24.33%) read articles available in their english books. this fact indicates that the students are not motivated to find any reading materials since they do not want to read. reading is not an interesting activity done in their spare time. they prefer chatting with their groups (culturally indonesia people are attached in groups they comfort to communicate with each other). hence they read what they can easily find to read, although they are not really willing to read. it is done just to fulfill this assignment. unfortunately, the rest 7 students (21.33%) did not read anything and wrote no reading diary ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|200-207 for some reasons namely they do not know what to read, how to find reading materials, when to start reading materials, and which reading materials were assigned to read. this seems that at the beginning of this program the students were not really engaged in this program and are not interested to read. week 2: in the second week, it seems that the students’ interest in reading little bit increases. this can be seen from the variety of reading materials which is not only very simple short story, but articles on social problem as well. there are 28 students (84.33%) who reported their reading activities. this shows an increasing interest of students to read. meanwhile, the rest 5 students (15.33%) did not read any reading materials and made no report. this indicates that they were not totally involved in this program. they got no punishment but they were motivated to read. week 3: in this week, the number of students reporting their reading practices remains the same28 students. the variety of reading materials is not only simple short story, texts available in their english book, and articles on social problem, but also article on sport. regardless demanding of fulfilling this voluntary reading project, there is an effort to find their reading materials. this shows slightly shifting phenomenon from reading by force to reading for enjoyment. it was also found that they read because they want to read their selected materials. accordingly, although they encounter some difficult words, they could be strategic to complete their reading. week 4: although in the fourth week there were still 3 students (9.33%) who did not report their reading log, it was found that some of the students possessing mobile phones connected to internet get much more ease to find reading materials. they read online newspapers and fairytales. moreover, they said that they were happy to be able to make use of their mobile phone as a reading source. still, many of them find some printed reading materials from the library and their instructional materials. week 5: in the almost end of the program, every student showed their reading log. again to check whether they have read and selected their reading materials, the interview assessment was done. it was found that most of them did read their own selected materials, although when they were asked to retell their selected reading materials, they sometimes could not completely do so, because to remember all the things from a text they have read sometime ago is not easy. the reading duration was getting ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 201-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 longer ranging from 10 minutes to 90 minutes. the students who in the previous weeks did not report their reading said that they actually read for their school assignment. since they thought what they did is not part of this vrp program, they did not write any report. week 6: in this week, the students’ reading activities reported in their reading log was quite different from those done in the previous week. all students were seriously involved in this program. they voluntarily select their own reading materials in english and read them. it was found that most of the students keep reading narrative text, simple short story and fairy tales. in addition, some of them read their instructional materials available in their course books. the reading duration was also getting more which is ranging from 10 to 100 minutes. this indicates that they were stimulated to read. week 7: in the last week of this vrp, all students were patiently in queue to show their reading logs and take part in weekly individual reading assessment. it is found that most of them (69%) are indicated to be stimulated to read their own various selected reading materials. it can be seen from their responses to the confirmation questions addressed to them. they had positive attitude (looks enjoy, open and motivated) during the assessment. they would honestly state “i forget that point….” for example when they could not remember the pointed matter. the reading duration was generally getting 10 minutes longer than it used to be. b) did you select your own reading materials? concerning this question, most of the students find their own reading materials. this indicates that their good awareness on finding their own reading texts. people tend to be more interested to read their own selected texts than other people’s selection. still, some other students share with their classmates. this is due to their lack of creativity of how to find reading texts and how to make use of the technology instruments such as mobile phone which is information-rich resource. what they think as reading materials is the ones which are printed and are commonly found in libraries. meanwhile, at present, students are not anymore interested in spending hours sitting in libraries to read any reading texts. this is because doing many things about making social interaction with their cell-phones such as texting, twittering, face-booking, what-apps messaging, and even playing games is much interesting. they read their friends’ messages but what they do is ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|202-207 not purely intended to read. however, willing to share reading materials among their peers indicate their effort to find texts to read and this is a positive indicator of willing to read. c) which reading materials do you like best? the students’ response to this question is that the most favorite reading materials among them are narrative texts, a very simple short story, and fairytales. there are 25 out of 33 students (75%) who like reading those kinds of reading materials. for them, such a reading type is more entertaining with which the readers are entertained and are happy after finishing their reading. they commonly do this because they want to and enjoy it. meanwhile, 5 out of 33 students (15%) like to read articles of various topics such as health, sport, religion, history and social problem. the different number of percentage is quite long. as obtained from interviewing them, it is revealed that reading those kinds of texts need more concentration to understand what is beyond the text. so that they usually read those types of texts if they need some information contained in the texts. in addition, they need to provide a certain time to understand because they believe that these kinds of texts are more difficult to understand. unlike reading literary works which they usually do for killing their spare time. this shows an ease for them to get the joy of reading. finally, there are only 3 out of 33 students (10%) who like reading other types than the mentioned above types, for instance advertisement, newspaper, movie subtitles. this is because of some states. for example in suburban areas as that in which the research was done, economically, it is not easy for them to find ads and newspapers except for those of the middle class that are able to subscribe them. moreover, at present they tend not to be too interested in such texts. d) what is the summary of your favorite reading materials? concerning this interview question about the students’ favorite reading materials, each student could interestingly tell the summaries of their own favorite selected texts. this shows that they completely read the materials they have had selected. furthermore, this indicates that their reading interest is gradually getting nurtured. e) how long do you read your selected materials? from the students’ reading log, it can be seen that at the very first time they only spend about 20 minutes at average in a day to read. it was even found that some of the students did not ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 203-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 spend any second to read anything. this is because of some reasons such as they think that it is difficult to find reading materials and they did not know what to read. they also think that it is not easy to understand english reading materials which are resulted from a very limited number of vocabularies. most importantly, they have no willing, courage, motivation, and interest in reading english materials. the problem detected from the result of the interview is that they do not like reading english nor indonesian reading materials. so, it is accepted that they could only spend some minutes for their reading activities. yet, after about five weeks to have this vrp which is like doing reading by force, most of them declare that they come to an awareness to change their classical beliefs that reading comprehension in english is not easy, it is difficult to find reading materials in english. they come to an understanding that they can start reading texts that they think the simplest and easiest ones. at the end of this program, they feel to start enjoying reading. f) what difficulties did you find during the reading practices? from the result of interviewing students and analyzing the students’ reading log, the biggest problem during reading practices is vocabulary. such a problem is considered as the obstacle to comprehend the whole text. therefore, the students did not dare to select longer text which they taught as more complicated texts to understand. in addition, they did not know strategies of reading and the way of selecting reading materials. they keep on translating the difficult words found during their reading activities. as a result, it takes time for them to completely finish reading and even this brings to their frustration to read english text. g) what interesting things could you get from your selected reading materials? what makes most of the students interested much in reading narrative texts or simple short story is that they have plot which bring the students about being more challenging to do some previewing or predicting. in addition, those types of reading materials contain moral values meaningful for their lives as well. they furthermore thought that reading short stories can make them emotionally involved, so that they would feel to be a part of the story. finally, their reading interest is gradually established. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|204-207 post reading program from this step, it was found that some of the respondents (23 students/ 69 % of the students) claimed that this vrp is helpful to stimulate their reading interest. before joining this program, they were aware that they did not have good awareness to read both indonesian and english reading materials. yet, after attending this program which they first do “force reading” to volunteer reading, their reading interest is stimulated. besides, it is found that 8 out of 33 students (24%) think that their interest of reading is not really stimulated because of some indicators. first, they did not always feel happy with their reading practice since they only did this to fulfill the passing grade of this course although this course has no credit point, but it is possible for them not to pass the course so that they have to take this course in another upcoming year when this course is offered. their reading materials were not as various as those who completely enjoy attending this vrp. the other 7 % of the students were not really involved in this program because they did not voluntarily read during the program. they only read for the last three weeks of the program with only limited number of reading materials and short reading duration (about 20 minutes every day). conclusion and suggestion the result of this research reveals that the voluntary reading program (vrp) which was conducted in seven weeks has positively affected the efl students’ reading interest. as they claimed that after attending this program, they start to be interested in voluntary reading english. what is voluntarily done by the efl students is that they do not only select their own reading materials, but they manage their own reading time as well. this indicates that they do real reading since they have set their own reading materials, their own purposes of reading, and their own reading strategies when they encountered with some problems. these clearly indicate that this vrp has brought them about interested in reading english. the finding of this research is line with some previous studies on extensive reading which proves to be able to provide readers with very effective platforms for promoting reading improvement and development from elementary levels upwards (bell, 1998). furthermore, this can also call on personal reading interest and levels and encourage both dialogical interaction and reflective thought within oneself ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 205-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 and in collaboration with peers in a virtual environment as well (liang, 2004) and the choices of the materials contribute to the participants’ overall enjoyment of reading (jone, 2010). as found in this vrp program, that the respondents have built good collaborative english readers. they do not get stuck in difficulties to find out reading materials anymore, since they can share the reading texts each others. to sum up, students involved in this program get progress in their reading from near-zero reading english texts to voluntary reading which is indicated by the increasing number of reading duration, the variety of reading materials, and reading motivation. this vrp program is then proved to be one of the effective ways to attract students reading their own selected readers. still, it is found some problems during doing this recreational program. they are the limited number of the efl students’ english vocabulary, reading strategies, and the availability of english reading texts. therefore, the results of this result might give some insights that english lecturers need to encourage their efl students to read english text through some strategic ways, such as voluntary reading program, because this program has proved to contribute to the development of students’ reading interest. moreover, concerning the difficulties during their reading practices, it is necessary for english teachers to introduce them the strategies of reading english, so that they are not anymore stagnant in defining the text. this will, at the same time, be useful to help them increasing the number of their vocabulary. references afrisia, r.s. 2015. mengapa minat baca orang indonesia rendah?. reported on http://www.cnnindonesia.com/hiburan/20150706 065957-241-64531/mengapaminat-baca-orang-indonesiarendah/, senin, 06/07/2015, 11.04 wib. accessed february 27, 2016. assessment, c. (2013). what is literacy? an investigation into definitions of english as a subject and the relationship between english, literacy and ‘being literate. a research report commissioned by cambridge assessment. bamford, j., & day, r. r. (1997). extensive reading: what is it? why bother? language teacherkyoto-jalt-, 21, 6-8. bell, t. 1998. extensive reading: why? and how? 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(1995) in cambridge assessment (2013) what is literacy? an investigation into definitions of english as a subject and the relationship between english, literacy and being literate. a research report commissioned by cambridge assessment. chang, j.h. (2014). the road to the asean economic community 2015: the challenges and opportunities for enterprises and their representatives organization. bureau for employers’ activities (act/emp/working paper; no 7), international labor organization. cross, d. 1991. a practical handbook of language teaching. great britain. wiltshire, dotesius limited. hidayat, r. 2015. memprihatinkan, minat baca orang indonesia hanya 0,049%.reported on http:// daerah.sindonews.com/read/104 0006/189/memprihatinkanminat-baca-orang-indonesiahanya-0-049-1441208938,. accessed february 27, 2016. iftanti, e. (2012). a survey of the english reading habits of efl students in indonesia. teflin journal, 23(2). iwahori, y. (2008). developing reading fluency: a study of extensive reading in efl. reading in a foreign language, 20(1), 70. jone, e. (2010). the use of comic book style reading material in an efl extensive reading program: a look at the changes in attitude and motivation to read in english in a japanese university. language education in asia, 1(1), 228-241. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.5746/leia/10/v1/a19/jones pp 228-241 krashen, s. 2004. free voluntary reading: new research, applications, and controversies. paper presented at the relc conference, singapore, april, 2004. liang, m-y., 2004. three extensive reading activities for esl/efl students using e-books. (online),(http://iteslj.org/lesson s/liang-extensivereading.html), the internet tesl journal, vol. x, no. 10. accessed february 28, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/%2010.5746/leia/10/v1/a19/jones%20pp%20228-241 http://dx.doi.org/%2010.5746/leia/10/v1/a19/jones%20pp%20228-241 http://dx.doi.org/%2010.5746/leia/10/v1/a19/jones%20pp%20228-241 http://iteslj.org/lessons/liang-extensivereading.html http://iteslj.org/lessons/liang-extensivereading.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 207-207|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 richards, j. c., & schmidt, r. (2002). longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics, (3rd ed.). london: pearson education. yamashita, j. 2013. effects of extensive reading on reading attitudes in a foreign language. reading in a foreign language. volume 25, no. 2. pp: 248–263. accessed february 28, 2016. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 127-140 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee moral values in narrative texts of english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture iwan setiawan, fahriany received: 4th october 2017; revised: 28th november 2017; accepted: 28th december 2017 abstract this study aimed to reveal the moral values in the narrative texts of english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture and also the english teachers‟ and students‟ responses at smk triguna utama, south tangerang city, related to the topic under investigation. this research used content analysis design. the data sources were the narrative texts in the english textbooks and teachers‟ and students‟ responses. the data were collected through documentation, interview, and questionnaire. data analysis procedures consisted of perusing, eliciting, coding, tabulating, interpreting, drawing conclusions and validating. the research found that the english textbooks lacked fables and gave a smaller portion to indonesian local stories. moreover, the narrative texts were dominated by the value of kindness, while, fairness was included least explicitly in the stories. these findings were supported by the views and preferences of the teachers and students. lastly, the teachers and students compactly argued that vocabulary is the greatest barrier to teaching and learning narrative text, and the effectiveness of the school‟s atmosphere in instilling moral values still needed further research. key words: english textbooks; narrative texts; moral values; content analysis abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap nilai-nilai moral dalam teks naratif buku teks bahasa inggris untuk siswa sekolah menengah atas yang diterbitkan oleh kementerian pendidikan dan kebudayaan dan juga tanggapan guru dan siswa bahasa inggris di smk triguna utama, kota tangerang selatan, terkait dengan topik yang diselidiki. penelitian ini menggunakan desain analisis isi. sumber datanya adalah teks naratif dalam buku teks bahasa inggris dan tanggapan guru dan siswa. data dikumpulkan melalui dokumentasi, wawancara dan angket. sedangkan, prosedur analisis data meliputi pembacaan teks secara cermat, pemilahan data, penyandian, tabulasi, interpretasi, penarikan simpulan dan validasi. penelitian ini menemukan bahwa buku teks bahasa inggris tersebut masih kekurangan fabel dan cerita lokal indonesia. selain itu, teks naratif didominasi oleh nilai kebaikan, sementara nilai keadilan kurang tergambarkan dalam cerita. temuan ini didukung oleh pandangan dan preferensi para guru dan siswa. terakhir, para guru dan siswa secara sepakat berpendapat bahwa kosa kata merupakan penghalang terbesar dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran teks naratif, dan efektivitas atmosfer sekolah dalam menanamkan nilai moral masih memerlukan penelitian lebih lanjut. kata kunci: buku teks bahasa inggris, teks naratif, nilai moral, analisis isi how to cite: setiawan, i., fahriany. (2017). moral values in narrative texts of english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 130-143. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 131-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction textbooks play a prominent role in teaching and learning activities including in tefl (teaching english as a foreign language) context. the school textbooks may serve a variety of functions and meet a range of objectives. they are not simply the everyday tools of the language teacher, but also the embodiment of the aims, values, and methods of the particular teaching-learning situation (wong, 2011). textbooks as teaching materials consist of innumerable things such as reading passages, dialogues, grammatical rules, activities, exercises, practices, essays, photos, tables, charts, et cetera ─ definitely the texts as well. however, textbooks often contain ideologically-oriented values, cultural biases, and social stereotypes. as richards (2001) asserted that they may distort content. many studies have demonstrated that racist attitudes, linguistics biases, gender dominance and cultural prejudices constitute part of the unrealistic view of the textbooks (ansary & babaii, 2003). some authors criticized the textbooks for providing an unnatural and inauthentic language which fails to contribute to communicative practice. for an instance, richards (2010) pointed out the advantages of textbooks as follows: a) they provide a structure and/or a syllabus for a program; b) they help standardize instruction; c) they provide a variety of learning resources; d)they can provide effective language models and inputs; e) they can train teachers and help saving time; and f) they are visually appealing. on the other hand, they have unfortunately some disadvantages as well such as: a) they may contain inauthentic language; b) they may distort content; c) they may not reflect students„ needs; d) they can deskill teachers; and e) they are expensive. moreover, texts as pieces of spoken or written language are created for a particular purpose. the purpose might be to persuade, to inform or a combination of both. the context in which the text is spoken or written is likewise influenced by our culture (beliefs, attitudes, values) and situation (what is happening, who is involved and whether we are speaking or writing). a narrative text is one sort of the literary texts. the purpose of a narrative text is, other than providing entertainment, can be to make the audience think about an issue, teach them a lesson, or excite their emotions (anderson & anderson, 2003). so, among its purposes, a narrative text can convey and instill moral values/lessons/messages to their ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 132-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license readers (anderson & anderson, 2003; rosenstand, 2006; buscemi, 2002; pharr & buscemi, 2005; benyamin, 2012). in line with that, character building or often called as character education is one of the main spirits of our national education. it is stated that, ”education is a conscious and planned effort to enhance teaching-learning activities so that the students can actively develop their potentials to acquire religiousspiritual qualities, self-control, personality, knowledge, good characters, and all they need as parts of the society, nation, and country (constitutions of republic of indonesia no. 20 about national education system, 2003).” likewise, halstead (2007) stated that teaching morality in the light of islam is a moral duty itself. morality (or ethics) is thus the main core of islamic teachings as well. in fact, our national educational system has not reached its optimum goals including the character building of the learners particularly and of the society in general. ironically, we can see clearly now our country is still facing unrelieved moral degradation of all levels of the nation — to mention a few: chronic corruption, collusion, nepotism, horizontal conflicts, religious intolerance, student brawls, illicit drug uses, free sex, sexual abuses and still many others. undoubtedly, there are various factors that influence the development of our moral values including parents, religious beliefs and involvement, peers, media, and many others (marsh, 2010). the implantation of moral values in our education is, therefore, a crucial issue. moral education can be inculcated implicitly and/or explicitly within the curriculum used in the schools. in the classroom, teachers may choose to nurture these values through the processes of perspective taking, storytelling, cultural transmission, moral dilemmas, responsible decisionmaking, service learning and community involvement (cubukcu, 2014). once more, it is an urgent need and top priority to conduct a research on (moral) value-based education to tackle all these deteriorating moral crises of our students/pupils and to enhance the quality of our national education and achieve its optimum goals. one of the real efforts is through content analysis of the textbooks, i.e. narrative texts, in particular, inculcated with the moral values. furthermore, there are a plethora of types and definitions of values ubiquitously. according to wibowo (2001), for instance, there are at least four known values that generally established and acted upon in our ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 133-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license society, i.e., moral, social, constitutional (legal), and religious values. figure 1. four types of values (wibowo, 2001) moral values were defined as having an interpersonal focus, which, when violated, arouse pangs of guilt for wrong-doing (abdolmohammadi & baker, 2006). moral values are not separated from other values. each value can obtain a” moral weight” when included in moral behavior. honesty, for an instance, is a moral value, but honesty itself is empty if it is not applied to other values, such as the economic value. loyalty is also a moral value but must be applied to the more general human values, for example, love between husband and wife. thus, the values of the heretofore are” premoral.” values precede moral stages but could receive” moral weight,” as they were applied in moral behavior. although moral values usually enjoin other values, it appears as a new value, even as the highest value (bertens, 2011). however, there are some features which distinguish moral values to other values. according to bertens (2011), there are at least four main characteristics: a) responsible, related to human as responsible people which make them feel guilty or not in deciding a moral action in a particular moral problem or dilemma — not so as are other values; b) consciouslymotivated/intended, moral values are a kind of appeal from our conscience that seriously and urgently to admit, communicate and realize promptly; c) obligatory, values oblige us to admit and act upon them absolutely and unconditionally; otherwise, we would be feeling guilty and/or reprehensible; and, d) formal, means related or connected to other values inherently. furthermore, sudarminta (2015) elaborated in more detail some prerequisites of what we call as moral values. moral values should be: a) rational and emotive, based on rational and emotional considerations as a complete human being equipped with cognitive and affective competencies — in contrary to emotivism; b) consistently logical and flexible, comprised of logical consistency and flexibility simultaneously so there are still possibly any exceptions in some certain (moral) cases; c) universal as well as particular, as an adequate moral (values) theory, these two aspects should be included as well, this is in line with the second traits above; and d) solutive, can provide a moral solution in a dilemmatic moral problem or case. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 134-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license afterwards, considering the numerous theories and concepts related to moral values and due to the plethora of moral values identified and some values that were universally accepted throughout the previous studies (such as justice, respect, responsibility, and so forth), this study focused on five basically key moral values, i.e., kindness, honesty, respect, responsibility, and fairness. moreover, their definitions and synonyms as a checklist have also been devised and applied during the analytical process. the writers argued that five prominent values are most important and relevant to be instilled particularly to the students at the secondary schools through narrative texts in the english textbooks based on the theoretical and empirical considerations. thus, this research focused on those moral values incorporated in narrative texts of the english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture in the form of a content analysis study. relating to that focus, some main research objectives could then be derived, i.e. to describe how narrative texts inculcated with moral values presented in the english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture; to analyze & identify the moral values which were frequently incorporated in them; and also to reveal the teachers‟ and students‟ responses and perspectives regarding the issue under study. methods this research used a content analysis method. krippendorf (2004) defined it as a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use. furthermore, neuendorf (2002) explained that content analysis may be briefly defined as the systematic, objective, quantitative analysis of message characters. it could be used to analyze various types of communication, e.g., newspaper, radio news, tv advertisements, books, and many other documents. besides, since this research was presented in qualitative and descriptive approach, it was emergent (several aspects may emerge during the study), fundamentally interpretive, took place in the natural setting, used multiple methods and strategies of inquiry, used complex reasoning, viewed social phenomena holistically, et cetera (creswell, 2003). the setting of the research consisted of place, time, and condition. the data collection was conducted at smk triguna utama (triguna utama ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 135-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocational high school) located on km. 2 ir. h. juanda street, east ciputat district, south tangerang city, banten province. the research was organized in grade x and xi (accounting vocational program) of the school. in addition, the primary research resource was definitely the narrative texts of four english textbooks for senior high school students published by the ministry of education and culture, i.e., bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak. afterward, the criteria of the participants whom the researchers involved in the research were those who took part in using those english textbooks and taught and/or learned the narrative texts inculcated with moral values, i.e., the english teachers and students from grade x to xi of smk triguna utama. the researchers selected 15 students (as samples) from each class (30 students in total) to answer the questionnaire sheets and 2 english teachers from both grades to be interviewed. moreover, the key instrument was the researchers since they possessed background knowledge and theoretical framework of the research. besides, the other instruments used were interview and questionnaire questions to explore and investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ responses regarding the issue under investigation. lastly, the data analysis procedures in this study involved the following steps, i.e., perusing, eliciting, tabulating, coding, interpreting, drawing conclusions, and validating (adapted from krippendorf, 2004). findings and discussion presentation of narrative texts inculcated with moral values the narrative texts of the english textbook series published by the government were presented in four text types. in total, eight narrative texts were found in the textbooks presented in those four types of narrative texts. chart 1. total frequency of narrative text types in bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x and xi firstly, they were three narrative texts in the form of folklores/folktalles, i.e., “issumboshi,” a japanese folktale/fairytale (furaidah et al., 2014b, pp. 49—51); “strong wind,” a folktale of a native american tribe ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 136-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (furaidah et al., 2014b, pp. 89—91); and “the enchanted fish,” a classic folklore/tale written by grimm brothers, i.e., jacob and wilhelm grimm, in 1812 (bashir, 2014a, pp. 3— 5). secondly, there was only one legend found in the english textbook series, that was, in bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 2. the story was about “malin kundang”, a well-known indonesian legend from padang, west sumatra (furaidah et al., 2014b, p. 64). furthermore, there was a narrative in the form of a play in the english textbook, namely bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 2, though this type of text was excluded from the analysis due to validating process as this research focus on the text in a real sense — i.e., the play presented in the form of dialogue. the play was entitled vanity and pride (bashir, 2004a, pp. 70—74). the last, three narratives were presented in the form of short stories. they were “congratulation!" in chapter four of bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x semester 1 (furaidah et al., 2014a, pp. 45—46); “letter to god,” a short story written by a mexican writer, gregorio lópez y fuentes (bashir, 2014a, pp. 92—95); and “the last leaf" is a short story written by o. henry, an american short story writer (bashir, 2014b, pp. 47—49). regarding those types of narrative texts occurred in the textbook series, from my point of view, it shows a balanced proportion of types of narrative texts appeared which emphasized on the folklore and short story genres since both types are commonly written and/or read by the readers when they look for fictive texts as (reading) learning materials and/or for fun only. nonetheless, fables which are also good and fun materials for young learners were not found at all (abrar, 2016; verner, 2016). besides, indonesian stories (e.g. its folklores or fables) should be given more proportion since the current trend in tefl (teaching english as a foreign language) that further emphasized using the local stories as the media to learn the target language. by presenting the authentic and meaningful materials, the students therefore while learning the foreign language could also effectively express their identities and culture in the target language (torun & yildirim, 2014; kilickaya, 2004). moral values in narrative texts subsequently, having discussed the presentation of the types of narrative texts, this study also tried to elaborate the moral values in those narrative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jacob_grimm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wilhelm_grimm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wilhelm_grimm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/o._henry ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 137-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license texts. in this analysis, five main moral values were analyzed to categorize all moral values which came up in the narrative texts, i.e., kindness, respect, responsibility, honesty, and fairness, and attempted to be uncovered from the stories in the english textbook series. chart 2. total frequency of moral values inculcated in narrative texts of bahasa inggris untuk sma/ma/smk/mak kelas x and xi as indicated by the data in chart 2 above, the moral value, kindness, make up the highest frequency by 59.4% (107 times) spread in seven different stories. while, three other moral values, i.e., honesty with 8.8% or 16 times, respect and responsibility share similar proportions by 13.3% or 24 times for each. they were instilled implicitly or explicitly in all seven narratives of the english textbook series under study. unfortunately, another important moral value, namely fairness, was implied only once at least implicitly by only nine times or 5.8%. though, this value is indeed an important value as well to be learned and exemplified by the students through reading narrative texts implied with it. moreover, in terms of citizenship, this value is a crucial one since the society that lacks it would not succeed (tay & yıldırım, 2009; rachels, 2003; welsh, 2014). in conclusion, all these key moral values and narrative texts which present them should be taken into account considerately by the textbook writers, users, teachers, and students, and, at best, be provided with a balanced proportion as well. english teachers’ and students’ responses regarding moral values in narrative texts the english teachers‟ and students‟ responses describing their views, perceptions and/or perspectives about the issue were attempted to be analyzed and elaborated as well in this section. according to mrs. dn, the english teacher of grade x, she usually found the moral values of honesty, autonomy/self-sufficient, courage, and hard work. while, mr. nw, the english teacher of grade xi, said that he mostly found the values such as gratitude, respect, honesty, optimism, sacrifice for other's goodness, and so forth. moreover, conversing on the selected ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 138-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license key moral values that were applied and discussed throughout this study, they thought that those are vital in educating and instilling into their students as by acquiring those morals the students can be good people and they can live well and harmoniously in the society. chart 3. students‟ preferences on the key moral values on the other hand, the questionnaires were also distributed to gather students' preferences of the key moral values that should be placed more importance among others. though in terms of values lexically, they did not express them explicitly, the researchers have attempted to look for their meanings and synonyms that matched most those key values based on the devised checklist. the results of the respondents' answers in order are as follows: kindness, as much as 72% (21 respondents); respect, 52% (15 respondents); honesty, 41% (12 respondents); responsibility, 34% (10 respondents); and fairness, 10% (3 respondents only). respectively, these results are slightly similar to those of the previous finding discussing the key moral values found in the textbooks, specifically in the narrative texts. the two moral values apparently dominated the highest and lowest frequencies of the moral values appeared and preferred; they were kindness as the highest frequency and fairness as the lowest one. regarding their methods in teaching narrative texts, mrs. dn, explained that she preferred to use (audio-visual) media in teaching narrative texts (surely instilled with morals). on the other hand, slightly different from the first view shown by the second english teacher in grade xi, he thought that discussion and question and answer were preferred best. generally, like other teachinglearning activities, there are some barriers or obstacles in succeeding to inculcate those values to the students as experienced by the interviewed english teachers. vocabulary still seemed to be the greatest barrier as admonished by both english teachers and students in teaching and learning narrative texts, and, therefore, the students felt difficult to understand the texts and to infer the moral values from them and applying them in daily lives. henceforth, the atmosphere of the school is also one of the influencing factors in instilling the good characters into their students. the good ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 139-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license atmosphere can indeed affect the success of instilling moral values and therefore create good students. conversely, the bad atmosphere cannot surely guarantee the character building of the students, but, can influence bad characters to them, and the learning objectives could not be achieved. nonetheless, good testimonies were shown by the english teachers and some students related to the atmosphere of the school in cultivating the values, there were still many factors/aspects to be investigated to assure the success of the cultivation of moral values for their students (see lickona et al., 2007). conclusion and suggestion based on the findings and discussion of the research, several conclusions could be made as follows. firstly, among the various types of narratives presented in the english textbooks (i.e., folklores/folktales, a legend, a play, and short stories), fables and indonesian local stories have unfortunately the least places in the textbook series regarding their ability and authenticity to draw the readers' interest and motivation. secondly, it was found most significantly the value of kindness in the textbook series and followed in order by three other moral values, i.e., respect, responsibility, and honesty. however, the value of fairness is included at the very least explicitly in the stories provided in the english textbooks. subsequently, the lack of the value of fairness is also evident in the perceptions and preferences of the english teachers and their students. fourth, in terms of narrative text teaching and learning process, the teachers and students in unison agreed that vocabulary is the most unrelieved barrier they encounter. the last, despite the availability and completeness of facilities and morally induced activities at smk triguna utama, it could not guarantee efficiency nor effectiveness of the moral education at the school. serious and indepth efforts have to be taken to assure the effectiveness of the cultivation of moral values. based on the aforementioned conclusions, some suggestions and recommendations could be offered to expectedly enhance the quality of contents of the english textbooks and to ascertain the success of the values inculcation to the students. the english textbook authors should provide a more proportional portion of narrative texts, particularly ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 140-143 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.5977 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the stories from indonesian rich local culture which could be meaningful and authentic teaching materials for the learners, and the inclusion of the fables should also be taken into account so the textbooks would be richer, more fun and attract students' interest. next, since the english textbooks under study were lacking in terms of the moral value of fairness, it thus should be a top priority to place more emphasis and inclusion of the stories about fairness or justice. this value is certainly needed in the context of our national and global lives. thirdly, noticing the biggest problem faced by the learners is vocabulary, therefore, students activities and assignments to improve their vocabulary is inevitable. for instance, by encouraging and instructing the 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(a dissertation at department of english, city university of hong kong). http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej858931.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej858931.pdf http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej858931.pdf http://www.tojet.net/articles/v13i4/1346.pdf http://www.tojet.net/articles/v13i4/1346.pdf http://www.tojet.net/articles/v13i4/1346.pdf http://busyteacher.org/8643-using-writing-fables-esl-classroom.html http://busyteacher.org/8643-using-writing-fables-esl-classroom.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 49-60 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee the effect of hamburger strategy on students’ reading comprehension of recount texts ismalianing eviyuliwati, cesar abi sarwan received: 15th march 2018; revised: 25th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract the study is aimed at finding whether or not the hamburger strategy is effective to use in teaching reading comprehension of recount texts at the eighth-grade students of a junior high school level called mts. daarul ma’arif in jakarta, indonesia. the samples of the study are 43 students who are divided into two groups, the experimental class (22 students) and the controlled class (21 students). the research method used is a quantitative method which employs a quasi-experimental design. the data collection is conducted through pretests and posttests. the validity and the reliability of the tests are measured by using anates. furthermore, the collected data are analyzed using spss version 23 to find the t-value, i.e. to know whether there is a significant difference of the mean scores of posttests of the two groups. the finding shows that the mean score of the experimental class is 77.27 and that of the control class is 70.00. the t-value is 2.892. in addition, the hypothesis testing shows that at the sig. 2-tailed, probability values (p) is 0.006, while alpha value (α) is 0.05. in other words, p < α, which indicates that hѳ is rejected and ha is accepted. in conclusion, the hamburger strategy is effective to use in teaching reading comprehension of recount texts at the 8thgrade students of mts. daarul ma’arif, jakarta, indonesia. key words: hamburger strategy; reading comprehension; recount text abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membuktikan apakah strategi hamburger efektif bila dipakai untuk mengajar membaca teks recount pada siswa kelas 8 mts daarul ma’arif jakarta, indonesia. sampel penelitian ini terdiri dari 41 siswa yang terbagi dalam dua kelompok, kelompok ekperimen (22 siswa) dan kelompok kontrol (21 siswa). penelitian ini adalah peneliatian kuantitatif dengan menggunakan desain kuasi-eksperimental. pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan memberikan pretes dan postes. validitas dan realibilitas tesnya diuji dengan anates. setelah data terkumpul, dilakukan uji-t melalui spss 23 untuk mengetahui adakah perbedaan yang signifikan pada rerata nilai postes kedua kelompok. hasil penelitiannya menunjukkan bahwa rerata nilai postes kelompok eksperimen adalah 77,27, sedangkan kelompok kontrol mendapatkan rerata nilai postes sebesar 70,00. nilai-t nya ditemukan 2,892. sedangkan dalam uji hipotesa disebutkan nilai probabilitas (p) = 0,006 dan nilai alpha ((α) = 0.05. dengan kata lain nilai p < nilai (α), yang artinya hѳ ditolak dan ha diterima. kesimpulannya, hamburger strategi efektif digunakan dalam mengajar membaca teks recount siswa mts. daarul ma’arif jakarta, indonesia. kata kunci: strategi hamburger; pemahaman membaca; teks recount how to cite: eviyuliwati., i., sarwan, c. a.(2018). the effect of hamburger strategy on students’ reading comprehension of recount texts. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 49-60. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 50-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading comprehension is a part of reading skills. some experts define that comprehension is an active process. harmer claims that “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. the eyes receive messages and the brain has to work out the significances of the messages” (1996, p. 190). it means, in order to comprehend a text, a reader needs to synchronize his or her eyes and brain to acquire and extract the information a reader gets in the text. it also requires a reader to connect the content schemata of reading that he or she has to the words the author has written. however, the preliminary study done at a junior high school in jakarta, indonesia called mts. daarul ma’arif, there are some obstacles that affect students’ reading comprehension. first, they lack of background knowledge about the topic of a text. it makes them hard to understand what the text talks about. second, the teacher-centred or conventional technique in teaching english also affects the students’ reading comprehension. it creates passive classroom activity because the teacher uses one-way communication to the students most of the class time. thus, the writers consider that there must be a way to overcome those obstacles in comprehending the text. hamburger strategy (karge, 2006, p. 319) emerges as the strategy selected by the writers. it is a kind of strategy that helps students to comprehend the text by creating an image of hamburger. the writers expect the hamburger strategy can get the students’ attention easily to learn reading comprehension on recount text. it can also stimulate the students’ mind and their curiosity so that their reading comprehension on recount text will increase. in addition, some studies employing hamburger strategy in english classes in indonesia had revealed positive results (aridona, 2013; suhendra, 2014). however, in those studies, the hamburger strategy is used in teaching writing, as it was originally introduced by the founder. as far as the writers’ concern, there has not been a study investigating the effectiveness of hamburger strategy in teaching reading comprehension, let alone for junior high school students. for those reasons, the writers would like to conduct a research to prove the effectiveness of using hamburger strategy on students’ reading comprehension of recount texts in 8th grade students of mts. daarul ma’arif in jakarta, indonesia. there are a lot of reading definitions. daiek and anter point out, “reading is an active process that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 51-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license depends on both an author’s ability to convey meaning using words and readers’ ability to create meaning from them” (2004, p. 5). it means reading is an interaction between both an author and a reader employing written texts or passages as the medium. without this medium, reading process cannot occur. on the other hand, harmer claims that “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes and the brain. the eyes receive messages and the brain has to work out the significances of the messages” (1996, p. 190). it means, in order to comprehend a text, a reader needs to synchronize his or her eyes and brain to acquire and extract the information a reader gets in the text. it also requires a reader to connect the content schemata of reading that he or she has to the words the author has written. in addition, blachowichz and ogle argue that comprehension is a constructive process; good readers construct the meaning from what they read and integrate the information they get to what they have known (2008, pp. 27-28). it means readers need to comprehend the meaning of a text and relate their content schemata of reading in order to comprehend the text and get the required information in it. alderson describes the schemata as “interlocking mental structures which represent readers’ knowledge” (2005, p. 33). it means, the schemata does not depend on the author, it depends on how good the readers’ background knowledge towards the text. when readers read a text, their schemata influence how they recognize information as well as how they comprehend it. however, content schemata in reading are divided into background knowledge; knowledge which may or may not be relevant to the content of a text, and subject-matter knowledge; it is relevant to the content and topic of the text. that is why comprehension always follows the reading. it means there is no reading without comprehension. reading and text are two things that cannot be separated. anderson and anderson argue, “ a text is made when words are adjoined to communicate a meaning” (2003, p. 2). there are two main categories of text: the first is literary. it is used to tell about human experiences in an imaginative way and its purpose is to amuse readers, such as narrative text, poems or dramas; the second is factual. it is used to present information and ideas and its social function is usually to inform, instruct, or persuade readers, like explanation text, discussion text, exposition text, etc. there are so many kinds of texts learned by students in junior high. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 52-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, in this research, the writers focus only on recount text. recount text is a kind of text which retells events or experiences in the past. anderson and anderson define that recount text is a piece of text that retells past events, usually in the order in which they happened (1998, p. 48). its purpose is usually either to inform or to entertain the readers. there are three generic structures of recount text (2003, pp. 24-25): 1) orientation: it introduces the participants, place and time in the first paragraph. 2) event: it describes series of event that happened in the past. 3) reorientation: it is optional. it explains personal comment of the writer to the story. besides, the grammatical features of recount text are as follows: it uses simple past tense, action verbs such as hit, jump, sit, etc., chronological connectors such as then, first, etc., and linking verb such as was, were, etc. in this research, hamburger is not a food. it is one of the teaching strategies. originally, hamburger strategy is used to write an essay. karge claims it as one of the memory-triggering devices in mnemonics (2006, pp. 319-331). mnemonics are techniques for aiding both the acquisition and retrieval of learned materials (sprinthall & sprinthall, 1990, p.100). it helps students to remember and retrieve information by forming associations that do not exist naturally in the content. in addition, beare states that hamburger strategy is one of the writing strategies to write an essay by using a picture of hamburger (2015). in the strategy, we create a picture of hamburger which is divided into three main components: top buns –it states the introduction and topic statements, the fillings –it states the arguments that support the topic, and bottom buns –it states the conclusion or the authors’ opinion about the experience, in order to strengthen the information and store it into students’memory. in fact, memory is a complex concept. it has many parts and kinds of memory. crow and crow define memory as a power of conscious to recall something (1958, p. 301). sprinthall and sprinthall (1990, p. 289), divides memory into two kinds: “when information from the environment first stores on a receptor (sense organ), there is an extremely brief moment to be held it in memory. this memory, also known as the sensory register, called iconic memory for visual items and echoic memory or acoustic memory for auditory items. an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 53-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license echoic memory lasts long enough to enable a person to piece together a series of sound whereas iconic memory begins to fade in a few milliseconds.” however, still according to sprinthall and sprinthall (1990, p. 291), generally, memory is divided into two main systems for storing the information: long-term memory and short-term memory. 1) short-term memory (stm) it can encode only about seven separate items and can hold them for only a limited time. thus, if a person were verbally given a phone number, he or she needs to hold it in stm long enough to dial the number. 2) long-term memory (ltm) the information from stm can also be processed and consolidated into long-term-memory (ltm). it has the potential for holding the encoded information for a lifetime. however, not all the information from stm enters ltm. the key to ltm storage is being motivated enough to engage in a rehearsal of the items in stm. in brief, hamburger strategy can be used as one of the memorytriggering devices by making use of a picture of hamburger in the students’ mind to strengthen the students’ memory, especially their long-term memory, in order to store the information they get from what they learnt or what they read. in order to achieve well comprehension of the text, the teachers need to know the process of using hamburger strategy in reading instruction since they will teach the students how to use it independently. originally, hamburger strategy is used to write an essay. in writing, zwiers in afridona (2013, p. 6) explains that the procedures of hamburger strategy in writing are: a) the teacher passes out a copy of hamburger model of text to each student. b) the teacher gives the students a text prompt, e.g. “why peanut m&ms are the best type of candy.” c) the teacher brainstorms the students about the topic. d) the students will come up with three top reasons why they choose peanut m&ms are the best candy. the three reasons will also be written on the top bun. e) the students write supporting details for each reason. f) finally, the students write their conclusion on the bottom bun. the students can restate their ideas, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 54-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license mention major details, and draw some conclusions. based on zwier’s procedures, thus, the writers applied the hamburger strategy as follows: a) the teacher passes out a copy of hamburger model and a recount text to the students to stimulate them. b) the teacher explains to the students what hamburger strategy is. c) the teacher discusses the three main components of a paragraph or a story: the orientation as the top bun, the events as the fillings, and the re-orientation as the bottom bun, including its grammatical and language features. d) the teacher asks the students to read the text and try to imagine it as a hamburger. e) the students will be asked to comprehend the topic of the text. f) ask the students to comprehend the events (supporting details) of a text and remember all the information in it. g) ask the students to draw a conclusion based on the reorientation part of the text by imagining it as the bottom bun of a hamburger. h. to test the students whether they comprehend the text or they still remember the information they get, the teacher gives them a test. in short, the first way in using hamburger strategy is preparing the lesson well and beginning with the explanation of the three main components of a paragraph. after that, reread the text by imagining a hamburger in order to store the important information of a text easily, including its generic structures. the last, try to draw a conclusion of what the text talks about and restates of all the generic structures and grammatical features of the text, including the important information of the text, by imagining a hamburger. method the population of the study was the 8th-grade students of mts. daarul ma’arif in jakarta, indonesia. they consisted of 3 classes, viii a, viii b, and viii c with 22, 21, and 25 students, respectively. therefore, the total number of the students are 68 students. to take the sample for this study, the writers used purposive sampling because the process of selecting the sample for the study involved a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 55-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license consideration about the quality of the sample or their mean score which had to be similar before the treatment. after conducting a pre-test to the three classes, viii a, b, and c, the writers found that viii a and viii b had relatively similar quality. therefore, the writers chose viii a as the experimental class and viii b as the control class. moreover, the homogeneity test was also conducted by the writers to test the similarity of the sample to the population from which it was taken. to do the homogeneity test, the writer used levene statistic test from ibm spss statistics 23 software. the result showed that the significance level or probability value (p) from both experimental and control classes was 0.890. it meant that the significance level or probability value (p) of the data was higher than the degree of significance of the study, i.e. α = 0.05. it indicated that the samples were homogenous. the writers used quantitative method and quasi-experimental design to conduct the study. the writers chose a quasi-experimental design because the writers did not have the possibility to sign individual students into groups randomly since it could disturb the classrooms learning. the writers taught two different classes employing two different teaching strategies in six contact hours. in the experimental class, the writers employed hamburger strategy. while, in the control class, the writers employed conventional teaching in which the class was taught mostly by using teacher presentation. to collect the data, the writers used tests (a pretest and a posttest) as the instruments of the study. both tests had been proved valid and reliable through anates. the validity values of pretest and post-test were 0.73 and 0.90, respectively. in addition, the reliability values of pre-test and post-test were 0.84 and 0.95, respectively. before the treatment, the writers administered a pre-test to both classes in order to check the extent of students’ similarity, especially their comprehension in recount text reading. in the test, the students were asked to answer 20 questions related to different topics of the texts: my first camping experience, trip to parapat, trip to situ cileunca, and at the zoo. after the treatment, the writer administered a post-test to see the students’ growing score. similar to the pre-test, the posttest also in the form of multiple-choice test, but the writers used different topics: trip to surabaya, my vacation in lembah hijau, trip to the zoo, and grandpa’s birthday. furthermore, the writers gave guided questions to facilitate the students to answer the questions. the writers also made a ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 56-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license limitation for the students to answer the question, i.e. they had to answer the questions within one hour. finally, the technique of analyzing the data of the students’ scores of pretest and post -test from both experimental and control classes were analyzed by using the formula of t-test, to test the following research hypotheses: a) alternative hypothesis (ha): “the use of hamburger strategy is effective in teaching reading comprehension of recount text.” b) null hypothesis (h0): “the use of hamburger strategy is not effective in teaching reading comprehension of recount text.” findings and discussion findings the pre-tests were administered to both the experimental and control classes to know the students’ reading comprehension ability before they were given the treatment. the study showed that the mean score of pre-test of the experimental class was 47.73 from 22 students. moreover, there were only 2 students who got the highest score (60); 2 students got the lowest score (30); and 7 students got (the most frequent score (50). meanwhile, the mean score of pretest of control class was definitely higher: 52.62 from 21 students. moreover, the highest score was 65; the lowest score was 35; and the most frequent score appeared was 55. without regarding which class is lower or higher and by finding out that 65 is the highest score of the pretest, it showed that the 8th-grade students of mts. daarul ma’arif has not yet reached a good comprehension in reading recount texts, since the 8thgrade minimum criteria of english learning targeted by the english teachers in the school was 70. the next data analyzed by the writers were the scores found from the post-test in the experimental and control classes given after the treatment finished. unlike the results of the pretest, the study showed that the mean score of the post-test of the experimental class was 77.27 from 22 students. the lowest score was 60; the highest was 90; the most frequent score appeared was 80. on the other hand, the mean score of the post-test of control class was 70.00. the lowest score of the control class was 55, the highest score was 85 and the most frequent score appeared was 70. after collecting the data of pretests and posttests, the writers conducted the normality test to check whether or not the data in which it came from the samples were distributed normally. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 57-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license based on the criteria of normality hypotheses, if the significance level or probability value > the degree of significance (α = 0.05), then the data were normally distributed. on the other hand, if the significance level or probability value < the degree of significance (α = 0.05), then the data were not normally distributed. the result explained that the significance level or probability value (p) of pre-test scores in the experimental class was 0.077 and that in the control classes was 0.113. in addition, the significance level or probability value (p) of post-test scores in the experimental class was 0.103 and in the control class was 0.331. thus, the result of normality test proved that the significance level or the probability value (p) was higher than (>) the degree of significance (α = 0.05). it indicated that the data of pre-test and post-test of experimental and control classes were distributed normally. the next step the writers conducted was the hypotheses testing to see whether or not there was a significant difference in the result of post-tests after the treatment was given. to do this, ibm spss statistics 23 program was employed, with the significance value (α) 5% or 0.05. the hypotheses to be tested were as follows. 1) if sig. 2 tailed (p) value > alpha (α = 0.05), then h0 is accepted and ha is rejected. in other words, there is not any significant difference between the mean score of post-test of experimental and control classes. it also indicates that hamburger strategy is not effective to teach reading comprehension of recount texts. 2) if sig. 2 tailed (p) value < alpha (α = 0.05), then h0 is rejected and ha is accepted. in other words, there is a significant difference between the mean score of post-test of experimental and controlled classes. it also indicated that hamburger strategy is effective to teach reading comprehension of recount texts. the spss calculation stated that the mean score of students in experimental class was 77.27 and the mean score of students in control class was 70.00. it showed that there was a significant difference in mean score of both classes. the difference mean of both classes was 7.27 points in which the mean score of the experimental class was higher than the mean score of the control class. concerning the hypotheses testing, the spss showed that the value of tcount was 2.892. the df (degree of freedom) was 41, taken from the total number of students, which was 43, minus (-) 2. furthermore, sig. 2 tailed or (p) value was 0.006. while the α was 0.05. according to the statistical hypotheses, if the sig. 2 tailed values (p) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 58-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was smaller than α (p < α); (0.006 < 0.05), it indicated that h0 was rejected and ha was accepted. discussion there is something worth an attention from the research findings above. at first, before given a treatment, the experimental class students got the lower mean score compared to that of the control class. however, after given the hamburger strategy treatment, the students in the experimental class obtained better scores in the post-test compared to the control one. it could be seen from the mean scores of the pre-test and posttest of both classes. the mean score of the pre-test in the experimental class was 47.73, while the mean score of the pre-test in the control class was 52.62. however, the mean score of the post-test in the experimental class was 77.27, while the mean score of the post-test in the control class was lower, i.e. 70.00. therefore, the mean score of post-test of the experimental class was higher than of control class. therefore, there was increasing points of the mean score in the experimental class. the mean score of the experimental class increased 29.54 points; from 47.73 to 77.27. in analyzing the t-test, if p < α, it meant that h0 was rejected and ha was accepted. meanwhile, if p > α, it meant that h0 was accepted and ha was rejected. the result showed that p value was 0.006 and α was 0.05. it meant that the significance level or probability value (p) was higher than the degree of significance (α ). thus, it indicated that h0 was rejected and ha was accepted. in other words, there was a significant difference between the mean score of the post-test of the experimental and control classes. it also indicated that hamburger strategy was effective to teach reading comprehension on recount text. the writers believed that the picture of hamburger in the students’ mind may improve their reading comprehension. it could be seen from the implementation of the strategy in the class; the students who had read or learnt recount text by using hamburger strategy had better comprehension, had better interest to read, and had better ability to recall the information in the text. it is in line with what afridona (2013) stated that hamburger strategy could be one of the attractive strategies in which it made the students fun to learn reading comprehension on recount text. she also explained that hamburger strategy can stimulate the students’ mind. the last, she argues that hamburger strategy demonstrates in fun way how the information of a text is related to each other. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 59-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license to sum up, hamburger strategy could be one of the attractive strategies in which it made the students fun to learn reading comprehension on recount text. it also stimulated the students’ memory to comprehend and memorize a text and assisted them to store the information they got from a text into their long-term memory so the students did not forget easily the information they had obtained from the text. conclusion based on the findings of the study, the writers can draw a conclusion that the use of hamburger strategy in teaching reading comprehension on recount text in mts. daarul ma’arif in jakarta, indonesia is effective. it helps the students to comprehend the recount texts and facilitates the students to recall the important information easily from their memory. therefore, hamburger strategy is applicable to teach any materials other than english reading texts. whenever the teachers have a teaching material which consists of three classifications, they can use the picture of hamburger consisting of three layers (the top bun, the fillings, and the bottom bun) as an analogy to help the students strengthen their memories. references afridona, l. 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(2006). knowing what to teach: using authentic assessment to improve classroom instruction. reading and writing quarterly: ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 60-60 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.9880 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license overcoming learning difficulties, vol. 14, pp. 319-331. suhendra, d. (2014). the effect of using paragraph hamburger strategy on students’ writing ability in narrative paragraph of the first year at m.a. darul hikmah, pekanbaru. journal of english department of teachers training and education uin sultan syarif kasim pekan baru, riau. sprinthall, n. a. & richard, c. s. (1990). educational psychology: a developmental approach. fifth edition. new york: mcgraw-hill publishing company.http://esl.about.com/od/w ritingadvanced/a/how-to-write-ahamburgeressay.htm. retrieved on december 3, 2017 at 11:23 a.m. http://esl.about.com/od/writingadvanced/a/how-to-write-a-hamburgeressay.htm.%20retrieved%20on%20december%203 http://esl.about.com/od/writingadvanced/a/how-to-write-a-hamburgeressay.htm.%20retrieved%20on%20december%203 http://esl.about.com/od/writingadvanced/a/how-to-write-a-hamburgeressay.htm.%20retrieved%20on%20december%203 http://esl.about.com/od/writingadvanced/a/how-to-write-a-hamburgeressay.htm.%20retrieved%20on%20december%203 * corresponding author ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023, 182-206 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee exploring teacher educators’ understanding of critical pedagogy and its implementation in the english reading class waliyadin*, zaharil anasy, desi nahartini uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta, indonesia (waliyadin@uinjkt.ac.id) received: 10th april 2023; revised: 24th may 2023; accepted: 28th june 2023 abstract grounded in the freire’s (1971) critical pedagogy premise stating that education should impact social change and reading words should be followed by reading the world, this study explores the experiences of english language teachers who teach english reading classes with the critical pedagogy approach. we employed qualitative research with a case study as the research design to dig into the depth of teachers’ perspectives. the data were garnered through in-depth interviews with four lecturers and analyzed following braun and clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis. the present study revealed that teachers’ understanding of critical pedagogy is not explicitly stated by defining or explaining the notion of critical pedagogy. however, some stages and components of critical pedagogy can be identified, showing that to a certain degree the teachers implement critical pedagogy in their reading classes. key words: critical pedagogy; critical reading; problematizing text; transformative education abstrak berdasarkan premis pedagogi kritis freire (1971) yang menyatakan bahwa pendidikan harus berdampak pada perubahan sosial dan membaca kata-kata harus diikuti dengan membaca dunia, penelitian ini mengeksplorasi pengalaman guru bahasa inggris yang mengajar membaca bahasa inggris dengan pendekatan pedagogi kritis. penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan studi kasus sebagai desain penelitian untuk menggali lebih dalam tentang perspektif guru. data dikumpulkan melalui wawancara mendalam dengan empat dosen dan dianalisis mengikuti analisis tematik braun dan clarke (2006). penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa pemahaman guru tentang pedagogi kritis tidak dinyatakan secara eksplisit dengan mendefinisikan atau menjelaskan pengertian pedagogi kritis. akan tetapi beberapa tahapan dan komponen pedagogi kritis dapat diidentifikasi yang menunjukkan bahwa guru pada taraf tertentu menerapkan pedagogi kritis di kelas membaca. kata kunci: pedagogi kritis; membaca kritis; pendidikan transformatif how to cite: waliyadin, anasy, z., nahartini, d. (2023). exploring teacher educators’ understanding of critical pedagogy and its implementation in the english reading class. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 182-206. doi:10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 183-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the practice of critical pedagogy (cp) in indonesian higher education must be a priority. indonesia has experienced being ruled by an authoritarian regime for tens of years. furthermore, in the post-reformation era, it is such irony since the democracy in indonesia shows regression (power & warburton, 2020). the aforementioned histories might have resulted in the alienation of critique and the suppression of sensitivity toward social issues that seemed to have penetrated the educational system (hayati, 2010). in education, the practice of the banking system of education emphasizing the knowledge capacity in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor of knowledge (freire, 1970) is undeniable and the banking system is continuing partly due to low interest and motivation of the students in the learning process (kalsoom, kalsoom, & mallick, 2020). more importantly, the development of information and communication technology not only brings positive impacts but could also bring about negative consequences on society such as spreading hoaxes and fake news so critical thinking skills should be a priority in all levels of indonesian education, especially in higher education. the alternative could be empowering education that is structured to empower individuals or collectives as the agents of social changes through a critical pedagogy approach. thus, research on the application of critical pedagogy becomes an essential endeavor to reach better education. also, it is hoped that more teachers of english and teacher educators will gain better insight into the feasibility of integrating perspectives of critical pedagogy to possibly transform the classroom, the community, and the broader society. in indonesian english language teaching (elt), cp has been introduced in academia by teacher researchers (e.g. mambu, 2009; mambu, 2011; mambu, 2018; mambu, 2022a; mambu, 2022; puspita & mambu, 2020) which has purposes not only to develop english language skills but also develop a critical consciousness of injustice (hawkins & norton, 2009). ingrained in paulo freire’s (1970) book pedagogy of the oppressed, cp in language teaching tries to transform the classrooms by basing teaching and learning on “students’ local culture”, utilizing “l1 as a resource”, students’ real-life concerns, and making learners aware of issues faced by marginalized groups http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 184-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (akbari, 2008, p.278-281). critical pedagogy in english language teaching is relevant to critical language pedagogy (clp) introduced by crookes (2021) and expanded in more detail by crookes and abednia (2022) who conceptualize three general key concepts of critical language pedagogy. the first concept is that “critical pedagogy is democratic”, and intended to lead to increased democracy in society, including “democracy in the classroom” (crookes and abednia, 2022, p.8). secondly, a critical pedagogy classroom is “dialogical”, which is generally “exploratory and discussionoriented” (crookes and abednia, 2022, p.9). thirdly, even though it is easy to define but it is difficult in many conditions of practice, “critical pedagogy is action-oriented” (crookes and abednia, 2022, p.9.). attempts to incorporate critical language pedagogy in english language teaching and language teacher education programs have been documented globally. some previous studies have proposed strategies to prepare english language teacher education programs to be critically oriented (e.g., gray, 2019; hawkins, 2004; hawkins & norton, 2009). akbari (2008) paved the way for critical pedagogy in english language teaching by delineating cp principles and proposing some areas for cp practitioners. cp was also brought to life in an indonesian elt classroom by mambu (2009) who used codes to teach english to develop both language skills and students’ criticality. gustine (2014) tried to bring critical literacy to one of the secondary schools in bandung, west java by doing participatory research with a graduate teacher student in a professional learning program. this research is considered to be successful in the sense of designing and implementing critical literacy through a professional learning program in an efl setting. the program is also successful in helping students to become more critical, tolerant, and socially aware and assisting the teacher to change his teaching practice from a “banking” or transmissive approach to one aligned with a “critical pedagogy” (freire, 1970). critical pedagogy is also worthwhile to develop students’ critical consciousness (abednia & izadinia, 2013; jeyaraj, 2019; mambu, 2018; mambu, 2022a). recently, mambu (2022a) has co-constructed a critical elt curriculum as an attempt to bring cp into life and integrated eltl with global issues, such as sustainable development goals (sdgs) to foster students’ criticality (mambu, 2022b). the previous studies show the possibility of enacting cp in elt and showcase some positive impacts; http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 185-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license however, the implementation of this critical pedagogy in language teaching and learning is not without challenges. several empirical studies which investigated the challenges of implementing critical language teaching in several settings can be identified (e.g. pessoa and freitas, 2012; lin, 2004; liyanage, 2012). although critical pedagogy was accepted by students pleasantly pertaining to their language development and critical thinking as a result of engagement in the dialogic process of critical language teaching some issues emerged pertaining to students’ positions and academic voices, the choice and the length of themes, and the conception of language as social practice (pessoa and freitas, 2012). also, liyanage (2012) discussed the challenges of the practice of critical pedagogy in esl/efl teaching in south asia including homegrown and foreign, particularly on the tension between local and international geopolitical tendencies. she further suggested that “we need to be critical of both traditional and indigenous approaches to education the modern ones in order to be effective (liyanage, 2012, p.148). to sum up, previous studies show the possibility of introducing or incorporating cp in elt classrooms and english education programs and some challenges in the implementation of cp in those settings. this makes the researchers realize that there is some area that needs to be further investigated for example how teacher educators or lecturers understand critical pedagogy and how they try to enact critical pedagogy in their teaching practice, particularly on teaching english reading. cp is timely since the indonesian ministry of education, culture (moec) has launched new curriculum called merdeka belajar (freedom to learn) with the goals to “meet the demands, current changes, and the need to connect and match with the world of business and industry, and to prepare students in the world of work” (prahani et al., 2020) instead of enacting social justice (freire, 2000). a cp approach needs to be enacted in this educational context to counter the neoliberal ideology which is lurking in the so-called “freedom’ oriented program (freire, 2000; kubota and miller, 2017, cited in sondari, 2021, p. 11). besides, research on the implementation of cp in elt needs to be extended to different grounds and contexts. little has been known about teachers’ understanding about cp and the implementation of cp in islamicbased universities which hold the unity of sciences–incorporating science and http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 186-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license religion, such as universities under the ministry of religious affairs (mora). therefore, the purpose of this study is first to investigate how teachers understand the notion of critical pedagogy. the second is to explore how critical pedagogy is implemented in the reading classroom. what follows is the description of our research method and findings by following the order of the research questions. method research design this study used a case study research design to answer the research questions. a case study is an in-depth exploration of a bounded system (e.g., activity, event, process, or individuals) based on a bounded system. the bounded system means that the case is separated for research in terms of time, place, or some physical boundaries (creswell, 1998). stakes (1995, as cited in hood, 2009) said that the case study aims to illuminate a particular issue, problem, or theory. as a qualitative study, the data collection and analysis occur simultaneously and continuously. a case study design can be quite tentative; the research questions become more solid after analyzing the first interview, diary entry, or observation (heighham and croker, 2009). there are several types of cases including single individuals, several individuals, a program, events, or activities (creswell, 1998). in this study, there were individuals including lecturers and/or teacher educators as the cases. besides that, the type of case study in this research is ‘instrumental case study’ which is intended to provide insight into a wider issue while the actual case is of secondary interest; it facilitates our understanding of something else (dornyei, p.152). we used the instrumental case study because this study is aimed at investigating a wider issue in the implementation of critical pedagogy in critical reading classes. since this research constitutes an exploratory study, the investigation is limited on how teacher educators and lecturers try to articulate their understanding of cp perspectives and how they try to enact cp understanding into their teaching practices, particularly on teaching english reading. participants the participants of this research are four lecturers of english at islamic higher education institution from four different universities and regions. based on their curriculum vitae and their story when the interview was conducted, three of them have been http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 187-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teaching english for more than ten years, and one claims to be a new lecturer. based on the informal conversation before the interview, they stated that they had experience teaching reading for some years and had moved from teaching reading for comprehension into more critical reading, as seen in table 1. the recruitment of the participants first relies on the data from the higher education data sources (pddikti) to identify their teaching experience, particularly in teaching critical reading. then, we contacted the participants via email or whatsapp which is given by colleagues who already knew the aspiring participants. all of the participants voluntarily signed the consent form for this study and were available to provide the information asked by the researchers. to keep the confidentiality of the data, pseudonyms are used. table 1. demographic information of the participants data collection technique in collecting data, we employed semi-structured interviews to elicit the participants’ experiences implementing a critical pedagogy approach in their english reading classroom. before we conducted the first interview, the guidelines of the interviews were reviewed by the expert to get feedback from the expert. then, the interview questions were piloted to someone who has expertise in critical pedagogy and has research publications regarding critical pedagogy. having revised the interview guidelines, we conducted four separate interviews with four participants. the first interview was conducted with emala in the first week of april 2022. the interviews with pak ilham were conducted in the second week of april 2022. the third interview with pak harun was held in the second week of may 2022. lastly, we interviewed pak farid in the mid of june 2022. all interviews were conducted online via zoom due to the participants’ willingness to prevent being infected by the covid-19 virus. to avoid language hindrances, we used bahasa indonesia in the interviews and it is also based on the participants’ preferences. then, the transcripts were translated into english by the researchers. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 188-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data analysis data for the study were analyzed using braun and clarke’s (2006) six thematic analysis stages, including familiarizing ourselves with data, generating initial codes, searching themes, reviewing themes, and defining and naming the themes. to begin with, the researchers tried to familiarize the participants’ responses to the interview by listening to the audio recordings of the interviews several times. then, we transcribed the recordings verbatim and read the transcriptions several times to understand the participants’ responses and interpret the participants’ statements. after that, we highlighted the important statements of the interviewees and found the code of the statements by following the theoretical frameworks, including crookes’s (2013) components of critical pedagogy and naiditch’s (2017) steps of critical pedagogy in teaching reading to capture the moments in which critical pedagogy was implemented in the reading class. findings and discussion the findings explore participating lecturers’ understanding of cp, the implementation of cp in the english reading classes, and the challenges when implementing the cp in the english reading classes. the study’s findings are presented by following the research questions and under the shade of emerging themes. teachers’ understanding of critical pedagogy teachers participating in this study were still unfamiliar with cp. this can be seen from the statements of one participant when asked about cp who said that “not yet, but if critical education, in general, is possible, for example, i know from paulo freire or educational liberation, but i don't remember specifically” (ilham/interview). from this data, it can be seen that the notion of critical pedagogy is not always recognized by the participants. however, the participant understood the theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy, especially in the lens of linguistics, pak ilhan could mention two types of linguistics: descriptive and critical linguistics. he also knew the prominent figures of critical pedagogy, such as paulo friere, fairclough, and van dijk. this shows that he has the foundation of a critical perspective of language teaching. the unfamiliarity with cp in english language teaching is also seen in the interview with bu emala. she could not explain clearly what critical pedagogy is. but, surprisingly, she could give illustrations of how she http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 189-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understood the implementation of the principles of cp in the classroom, especially in the critical reading unit. the excerpt below could be the proof as bu emala narrated: “if we see it by the definition, maybe i cannot explain it in more detail, but with some kind of implementation like i said before, i emphasize it more to my students about the implementation. ... i put more emphasis on the students that in every aspect, not only as a teacher or lecturer, not only in the educational situation but in every aspect when we are facing some issues, we are required to be critical. for example, when i was asking my students about some global issue or their neighborhood issue, will you directly face the issue based on your perspective or will you try to see it from another point of view? if you only see it based on your perspective, then you are not ... trying to solve the issue or face the issue. if you are already thinking critically, you should not stop there. you are supposed to find out the background of the issue, what is underlying the issue, what makes you … competent enough to comment on the issue, and what is your relationship with the issue”. (emala/interview) from the excerpt of the interview above, it can be understood that teachers encourage students to be critical thinkers; students need to read issues from various perspectives. they need to compare one perspective from one source to another. this understanding of critical reading is in line with wallace's concept of critical reading (2003). furthermore, teachers’ understanding of cp is then explained in another excerpt as follows. “after that, we usually will try to lead them to take their role. their actual role is not only as students but also as the agent of change. that is when i make them realize that their roles will not stop only if they are learning. students will have to make a positive influence on their surroundings, show them your competency to analyze some issues, to face some issues, how you can pass it on to others, so if some people have a little misunderstanding about the issue, … because they are just got some insights from you, or some new information, it can make them have a better point of view”. (emala/interview) http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 190-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from the excerpt, emala understands that cp is the implementation of students’ critical thinking about issues and spreading their understanding about issues to others, especially those who need insight from intellectuals. she also mentioned that students play a role as agents of social change. she believes that students should bring positive influence to society while and/or after they are learning at the university. furthermore, another teacher knows more about critical literacy than critical pedagogy. for example, harun was engaged in the topic of critical literacy in his research. he also knew about critical literacy pedagogy. according to harun, cp is a more general topic or the shade of critical literacy pedagogy. he used literary works to teach critical reading in the classroom since he is a lecturer of literature studies. i have heard more about critical literacy as one of my research projects is using critical literacy. then for critical pedagogy, i am focusing more on critical literature pedagogy. (harun/interview) pak farid also admitted that he has just heard about critical pedagogy even though he has been teaching some courses at the university, such as critical reading, listening, writing, and speaking. compared to other lecturers, pak farid is considered the youngest one and has the least experience in teaching. even though he has not been familiar with critical pedagogy, he believes that language, culture, and ideology are intertwined. he mentioned that “a person's culture can show or be illustrated by his language as well as the ideology he holds” (farid/interview). in sum, teachers’ understanding of the notion of critical pedagogy is not explicitly stated but they understand some perspectives of cp and they believe in some principles of critical pedagogy as stated when the interviews were undertaken. based on the analysis of teachers’ understanding of critical pedagogy and their belief in principles of cp to some extent the teachers in this study could be categorized as ‘critical pedagogues’, as defined by jeyaraj (2014, p. 16) as “elt teachers who draw on the foundational values and theories of critical pedagogy”. what follows are the findings related to the teachers’ experiences implementing cp in the reading class. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 191-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license how is critical pedagogy implemented in the english reading class? reading as a practice of knowledge reproduction reading has been known as a method to develop language skills as well as developing content knowledge of certain areas (rudman, 1993; smallwood, 2004). according to naiditch (2017, p.88), to develop reading ability, learners need to be taught not only to grasp information presented in the text but also to “activate their background knowledge, make comparisons and connections (analysis), and create new knowledge (synthesis)”. more critically, teaching reading should provide opportunities for students to interpret texts in multiple ways. equally important, critical reading “requires developing an awareness of how the themes that students read can lead to individual and collective transformation” (naiditch, 2017, p. 88). referring to interview data, pak ilham believes in the principle that reading is not enough to grasp knowledge. rather, it should be producing new knowledge. “i am a little bit affected by education in india. it turns out that reading is a must, especially for education in india. for instance, the teaching method is to produce knowledge, not get knowledge, not receptive, so there is synthesis there”. (ilham/interview) it is also interesting to note that pak harun emphasizes the importance of giving opportunities for students to interpret the reading texts in multiple ways as narrated in the following excerpt. “oh, yes, it turns out that interpretation is not only based on one standard. but we can also find different interpretations. … you don't have to be the same as other people are. yes, you can show the different interpretations, as long as following a logical process and academic process without having too far interpreting”. (harun/interview). connecting reading with reallife issues according to bu emala, reading is often considered a boring activity by her students, and the literacy level in indonesia is quite low, which demands her to make the reading class enjoyable. some measures were undertaken, for example by bringing global issues and/or issues related to students’ life into the class and having students discuss the issues in the class. emala encouraged students to express their http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 192-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license opinions related to what they read. as narrated in the excerpt below. “so, in critical reading, the interaction is more like a discussion… encouraging the students to always share their opinion in class. so, the class will not be quiet, instead, there will always be some discussion between one student with another”. (emala/interview) ibu emala emphasizes that teaching reading should not stop on developing critical thinking, it should also bring impact on others as she narrated in the following excerpt. “i put more emphasis on my students about how you can implement your critical thinking or implement what you have already known, what you can analyze from some issues, then what is the impact to others, after that you can share it with more people.” (emala/interview) she also asked her students to connect reading with real-life issues. any issues are allowed to be brought into the classrooms. as she narrated: “as i have mentioned before, i always ask my students to analyze some information or text, and connect it with some currently happening issues or issues in their environment. it can be … gender issue, even if it is a taboo issue, that is fine.” (emala/interview) in sum, teachers in this study have understood how to teach reading more critically and know how to make reading classrooms to be more engaging as well as relate teaching reading with real-life issues. this practice of teaching is in line with the principles of cp which emphasized reading words and reading the world as suggested by freire and macedo (1987). problematizing the texts as the practice of cp according to naiditch (2017, p. 93) texts are not always “right”. therefore, in critical reading class as naiditch (2017, p.93) suggested that “they [students] need to be taught to argue with text, to agree and disagree with the authors, to confront what is being read”. teachers need to encourage students to have a skeptical attitude (naiditch, 2017). drawing on the data from interviews with the teachers, there are several important findings on how teachers tried to encourage students to problematize texts. ingrained with critical theory, pak ilham believes that all texts have semiotic symbols and they are always meaningful. secondly, texts http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 193-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license are constructed deliberately, not by accident. “because it was an intentional construct, then it always has certain goals but i'm not saying negative, but obviously, there's power, there's the influence of the author's ideology” (ilham/interview). in a similar vein, ibu emala also encouraged her students to have a skeptical attitude toward the text. as she narrates as follows. “so, in the critical reading class, i connect it … more with techniques such as critical thinking. so, when they are … facing the text, i ask them to be more suspicious.” (emala/interview) she further explained that when she taught critical reading, she asked students to be suspicious about the texts they read. for example, she asked students to analyze who is the writer of the texts, what their backgrounds are, and why the writers wrote the texts. pak harun also invited his students to analyze the representations of muslims in the literature written by westerners. an important point was also made by pak ilham in his class. he encouraged his students to ask questions about every text, not only written texts but also multi-modal texts. and in understanding the texts, students should achieve not only comprehension but could find the implicit meaning of the texts. he did not want his students to be trapped with technical or mechanical thinking. he even criticized the learning method of teaching reading toefl, such as finding the reference of the words, and synonyms. this is because he did not want his students to be dominated by the way of thinking or the logic of the reading exercises like in toefl. he contends that “god does give our minds that are borderless and timeless even imaginative thinking, thinking is no longer descriptive but reflective” (ilham/interview). he is optimistic that students have the potential to think critically about the issues related to students’ life, education, and world issues (e.g. palestine). in contrast, students felt that the way of teaching practiced by pak ilham became more complex. they thought that the learning became more difficult. but pak ilham convinced the students that the critical approach to reading texts is important for the development of their critical thinking. humorously, he said that if you want to get a good score on toefl you just need two or three months to practice for the test, you can achieve that. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 194-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license becoming active readers by developing horizontal relationships naiditch (2017) argues that to make students become active readers, their level of reading must be elevated to become a co-writer of a text by empowering them to dialogue with texts, identify the perspective of the text, and contrast with their own. in so doing, naiditch (2009) recommended a horizontal learning pattern, “where everyone’s knowledge and backgrounds are recognized and learners’ contributions and perspectives are encouraged and valued as much as that of the teacher or the authors of a text” (naiditch, 2017, p. 94). pak ilham also argues that power relation matters in the teaching of reading. he also suggests that students should have more power concerning the teacher in the class as he narrated in the following excerpt. “the relationships i build are power relations where i give my students more power, and also more appreciation when they can construct arguments both orally and in writing.” (ilham/interview) “if our power relation is good, both the author and the reader are equal, for example, bourdieu and wodak also provide the basics for reinforcing the critical theory that the text is not as it is but the text is always constructed by three things for example from the context of the situation, there is a field, … tenor, … mood and there is also the name of the cultural context that is intertwined and the position of the author if not approached critically, usually the author will have a very strong hegemony towards its readers”. (ilham/interview) the interview with pak harun shows that he holds the principle of the horizontal relationship between teacher and student. in class, he usually calls his students a friend. this is to build an egalitarian relationship. at first, his approach is considered awkward by students; but students accept this approach eventually. pak harun felt that creating an equal relationship could increase students’ engagement when participating in online discussions even though he also thinks that students’ engagement may also be influenced by the students’ motivation. in a similar vein, pak farid who is the youngest lecturer in this study usually builds a close relationship with students. he is often involved in some activities organized by the students. in sum, creating horizontal relationships between students and teachers appears to be the principles held by participants in this study. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 195-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license observable components of cp the practice of critical reading modeled by naiditch (2017) can be an indication of the implementation of cp. likewise, the components of cp proposed by crookes (2013) could be the indication of the cp. what follows describes some observable component of cp based on the lecturers’ reports. critical content in materials and codes based on the interview with pak ilham, the data show that critical content used to teach reading is about jihad and islamic moderation. jihad is used as the critical content since misunderstandings about jihad are still happening, so pak ilham brought this into the class. also, he brought the issues about islamic moderation in the class since this topic has become the mainstream discussion among indonesian muslim scholars, even the indonesian ministry of religious affairs tries to bring islamic moderation values to the front through several programs, such as a course of islamic moderation in several universities. pak ilham narrates: “first, i chose the issues of jihad. i think that's important and we have a lot of resources now with the internet. the second one we usually use religious moderation, which has a lot of resources written in english, so it's not a literary issue, for example, classics or modern literary texts about the west which used to be common in developing language skills.” (ilham/interview) from the excerpt, pak ilham also emphasizes that he used locally made materials, not the materials imported from the west as it had been practiced some time ago. “learning english in the past was filled with western imaginations” (interview/ilham). in the interview, he said that he doesn't want to rely too much on the western idea. he was also confident with the locally made materials, especially authentic materials, such as journal articles or newspaper articles. he used journal articles, books, and newspaper articles as the codes for teaching reading. in the interview, he talked about using articles from ijims (international journal of indonesian muslim society), which is a reputable journal that belongs to one of the islamic state universities under the ministry of religious affairs. he also mentioned that other codes used to teach reading in the classroom are newspaper articles written by him in the opinion rubric of prominent http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 196-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license indonesian newspapers written in english. in contrast, bu emala used literary works, such as short stories to teach critical reading. one of the assignments for students is making a review of a short story. similarly, pak harun also uses literary works to teach critical reading. he uses literary works, such as novels, to trigger students’ critical thinking. students are encouraged to analyze the tone, and mood of the literary works. he also encouraged students to identify the representation of islam in the text they read as narrated in the excerpt. we start to introduce …how the work represents muslims, for example. is it true that we can see the characters even though they are not islamic stories? (harun/interview) regarding critical content materials and codes, some teachers in this study used critical issues that happened in indonesia. since this study was conducted in the islamic higher education institutions, the critical issues about islam were presented in the classroom. they also used codes to trigger students’ critical thinking. critical, democratic, and participatory assessment based on the critical pedagogy components crookes (2013) suggested, the assessment should be critical, democratic, and participatory. drawing on the data from the interviews, the participants to some degree show critical, democratic, and participatory assessment. overall, they suggested that the assessment should have outcomes or real work. the assessment should not assess students' comprehension of the texts. instead, they have to be able to implement their comprehension and their critical thinking skills to make or produce new knowledge. for example, ibu emala asked her students to write a critical review of short stories. the review should critically analyze the author’s implicit purposes and connect their understanding of the reading texts with the relevant issues surrounding society or their real life. she also asked her students to review the text orally in the form of a video. this is an alternative assessment to accommodate the different strengths and weaknesses of each student. similarly, pak ilham asked his students to review books in a limited number of words, like 600-900 words. students are allowed to choose their reading or pick the options given by the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 197-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license teacher for example the biography of abdul kalam, the first muslim president of india, and the power of ideas written by b.j habibie. they were assigned to make a summary or synopsis of the book they had read. not only that, they need to justify their summary with solid arguments by providing other sources or their reflections. lecturers’ self-reported challenges in implementing cp previous research finds some challenges in the implementation of cp. in this study three main challenges were also found. firstly, students’ participation and involvement in the discussion about the texts are still low. according to ilham, even though this is still an assumption, it is due to cultural handicaps, which majority of students are alumni of traditional pesantren. the power relation in pesantren is still vertical, meaning that santri always listen and obey their kyai. the tradition of conveying ideas or opinions is uncommon. he used to be a santri and he admitted that the power relation between santri and kyai (students and teachers) is unequal. “the tradition of expressing thoughts and opinions in pesantren is lacking. it's a cultural handicap because i also reflect when i was at pesantren (boarding school), i was more into sami'na wa ato’na (listen and obey). it’s very rare to give an opinion in front of the kyai. i listen more to him when reading the book and giving the syarah (explanation) of the book, so dialogue is rare.” (ilham/interview) the reason for students' passiveness in the critical reading class is due to low english proficiency. students who have low english abilities face two problems. the first problem is to understand the texts which are in english and the second one they have to deliver opinions in english. the measure can be done for the second reason for example allowing students to use their l1 when delivering opinions. however, he thinks that the use of l1 in the classroom could be a violation since the students are prospective english teachers who must be able to speak english. the students’ passiveness in the class could also be influenced by students’ low motivation and low level of literacy. they think that reading is a tiresome activity. the second challenge of implementing cp in the reading classroom is the problem of online learning. an unstable internet connection may hinder students from interacting with their peers to have dialogue. emala, harun, and farid http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 198-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license confirmed this challenge since they were conducting online learning when teaching the critical reading class. thirdly, from a personal point of view, the challenge of implementing critical pedagogy is about the perception of critical thinking. “the figures we cite that we consider critical, which turn out to be no longer critical”, said pak ilham. therefore, he suggested that we have to update our understanding of critical thinking. we need to continue seeking information, for example about critical discourse analysis. lastly, making students understand critical thinking is another challenge that can’t be denied as narrated by pak ilham. “then another challenge is to make students understand critical thinking. now i am indeed thinking about dealing with students' difficulties with critical thinking, and it seems that teachers need to make guidelines about stages such as higher order thinking skills. i will also give a limitation from low order thinking to high order thinking along with operational verbs”. (ilham/interview) discussion this section will discuss three main issues that emerge from the finding. first, teachers’ understanding of the notion of critical pedagogy will be looked at closely. our analysis revealed that teachers are still unfamiliar with the notion of critical pedagogy, especially when it comes to the definition of this notion. however, data from the interview show their understanding of critical pedagogy perspectives, especially when it is linked to teaching critical reading units. they aspire that students can develop their critical thinking when teaching critical reading. it is in line with the philosophy of education suggested by paulo freire: “the purpose of education is to develop critical thinking by presenting the people’s situation to them as a problem so that they can perceive, reflect, and act on it” (crawford-lange, 1981, p. 259). in reading the texts, for example, the ‘word’ and the ‘world’ (cf, freire, 1971). in regards to the unfamiliarity with the notion of critical pedagogy, the previous research confirms; for example, puspita and mambu’s (2020) study shows that several indicators of critical pedagogy in the classroom activities and learning process can be observed, yet teachers are not familiar with the notion of critical pedagogy. they surely implement some critical http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 199-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license aspects in their teaching but they “just don’t know what they know” (wink, 1999, p.33). second, the indicators of the implementation of critical pedagogy in reading class, including the steps of implementing critical pedagogy in the reading class and the components of critical pedagogy, are illuminated here. regarding the implementation of critical pedagogy in the critical reading course, it can be seen that teachers to some extent have implemented the steps of teaching reading by following the perspectives of critical pedagogy as suggested by naiditch (2017). in the step of teachers' understanding about reading, teachers state that reading texts is not enough to merely grasp knowledge, rather it should be creating new knowledge. in a broader scope, “studying is a form of reinventing, recreating, re-writing, and this is a subject’s, not object’s task” (freire, 1985). in so doing, “learners enter into the process of learning not by acquiring facts, but by constructing their reality in social exchange with others” (wallerstein, 1987, p. 34). the finding of this study also confirms that reading should have a connection with real-life issues. in freire’s term, it is called “reading the word reading the world”. in this study, relating reading with reallife issues could increase students’ motivation to read since reading is considered boring for some students; therefore, some measures should be taken. another issue arising from the finding relates to the problematization of the relationship between text and reader. teachers have shown their understanding of how to see texts from critical perspectives. texts always have symbolic meaning and are constructed deliberately, not by accident. therefore, all texts are not neutral, there is always intention behind the production of certain types of texts. as a consequence, when reading texts, students need to challenge the arguments conveyed through the texts. this finding reflects what has been the central premise of freire’s (1971) critical pedagogy asserting that “education is not neutral; whether it occurs in a classroom or a community setting, the interaction of teacher and student does not take place in a vacuum. people bring their cultural expectations, experiences of social discrimination and life pressures, and their strengths in surviving. education starts from the experiences of people, and either reinforces or challenges the existing social forces that keep them passive” (wellerstein, 1987, p. 33). the passivity of the class becomes problematic when teachers implement critical pedagogy. it is assumed that “the students in east asian countries http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 200-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license are submissive and obedient and the teachers are authoritative and authoritarian; therefore, the classrooms are supposedly rigid, hierarchical, which in turn makes discussion between students and teachers difficult (shin and crookes, 2005, p. 99). the data from the interview revealed that teachers in this study challenge the assumption by creating horizontal relationships with students. one teacher even claims that he gives more power to students. also, in the critical reading classroom they emphasize the relationship between the writer and reader is equal; therefore, reading texts needs to be followed by a critical approach. however, the students’ responses to the implementation of critical reading are not always good. some students in pak ilham’s class complained about the lesson since it became more complicated according to students’ beliefs. most students believe that learning a language is for instrumental purposes (e.g, getting a higher score on the test), while in critical pedagogy the goal of learning a language is not limited to achieving a high score on the test. instead, “it aims to give students a language of critique to achieve equality and social justice or effect social transformation” (edelsky, 1999; lankshear & mclaren, 1993; shor & freire, 1985 as cited in ko, 2013, p. 91). to shed light more on the implementation of critical pedagogy in the reading classroom, some components of critical pedagogy suggested by crookes (2013) were investigated. the analysis of the findings revealed that the components of critical pedagogy identified in this study include negotiated syllabus, critical content in materials and codes, critical, democratic, and participatory assessment. the aforementioned components of critical pedagogy are observed in the findings; however, the negotiated syllabus is not optimally implemented by the teachers. this is because most of the teachers have made the syllabus or the lesson plans. also, the involvement of students in constructing the syllabus is under consideration. in regards to critical contents in materials, from interview data, particularly with pak ilham, the critical contents arising in the materials are about jihad and islamic moderation. the issue of jihad is still contested and sometimes it is misunderstood, therefore bringing the issue in the classroom is important. students can understand the issue not as a dogma but through critical considerations. this is one of the obligations of educational institutions that are expected to contribute to handling controversial issues and promote public http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 201-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license understanding (k. flensner, larsson, & säljö, 2019). more importantly, the issue of islamic moderation is used as the critical content of the materials. bringing islamic moderation into the class discussion which aims to promote the moderate values of islam in indonesia is imperative since this is situated in the students’ lives. campaigning for the moderation of islam through dialogue in the classroom will be more meaningful compared to preaching in the mosque for example. by dialogue, students can reflect and act on it which results in praxis (freire, 1971). more importantly, the use of journal articles, newspapers, and books as codes in teaching reading is one of the findings of this study. from the interview data, pak ilham talked much about the utilization of locally made teaching materials. he did not rely on materials imported from the west. this is because the resources of materials written in english are now abundant. journal articles written by indonesian scholars are easy to find, even pak ilham wrote some articles in the journal and opinion articles in the newspapers. the use of authentic and local reading materials is a good decision. ko (2013) contends that authentic materials, such as newspaper articles from american newspapers are considered inappropriate for critical literacy instruction because the texts used in the class should relate to students’ lives and experiences (shor, 1992). as part of the critical components, critical, democratic, and participatory assessment is also explained by the teachers with some variations between one teacher and another. the analysis of the interview and the analysis of documentation revealed that teachers tried to implement the critical pedagogy-based assessment. for example, teachers asked students to make annotated bibliographies or make reviews of short stories. instead of giving a comprehension test in the form of multiple choices or filling in the blanks, teachers asked students to reproduce knowledge by making critical reviews of books or short stories. the assessment becomes more democratic since students are allowed to choose the books or short stories based on their interests. even so, the assessment explained by teachers has not met the assessment from a critical perspective when assessing a text and students’ reading comprehension that needs to consider what students take with them from the reading activity and how reading affects their lives (naiditch, 2017). even though the indicators of implementing critical pedagogy in the http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 202-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31853 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading classroom can be identified, the challenges in implementing critical pedagogy are undeniable. the main challenge is the students’ passivity and this is confirmed by the majority of the teachers in this study. for example, pak ilham argued that students’ passivity is considered a cultural handicap since the majority of the students in islamic state universities graduated from pesantren where the power relation between students and teachers is vertical. however, this assumption might be wrong since pak ilham himself graduated from pesantren and had experienced the culture of pesantren but now he is considered a critical pedagogue since he holds critical perspectives. shin and crookes (2005a) challenge an assumption stating that “east asian countries are submissive and obedient and the teachers are authoritative and authoritarian; therefore, the classrooms are supposedly rigid, hierarchical, which in turn makes discussion between students and teachers difficult (cf. kubota, 2001). shin and crookes (2005b, p. 133) “call into question the stereotype of east asian students as passive and non-autonomous and helps dispel the myth about east asian classrooms as rigidly hierarchical, in the same way, that the learning experience in this study successfully dispelled the stereotype that this student had about the southeast-asian workers in korea”. conclusions and suggestion regards to teachers’ understanding of critical pedagogy are not explicitly stated by defining or explaining the notion of critical pedagogy. instead, they reflect on societal issues and act on them. even though they do not know about critical pedagogy, their stories about their teaching practice show that they implement some perspectives of critical pedagogy. the implementation of critical pedagogy in the reading classroom is proved by their experiences of teaching critical reading units for undergraduate students majoring in english language education and english literature. some indicators can be mentioned, such as teachers’ understanding of how reading should be taught to grasp knowledge and create new knowledge. the reading activities should not stop in their mind but be brought to action. in other words, reading activities should be reflective and transformative. other components of critical pedagogy could be identified, such as negotiated syllabus, providing critical contents of materials, utilizing authentic materials as codes, and giving more critical, democratic, and participatory assessments. having implemented http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 10(1), 2023 203-206 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v10i1.31894 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license critical pedagogy in the reading classes, teachers face some challenges, including students' passivity and technical problems. it is worth noting that students’ passivity is not mainly due to cultural handicaps based on the assumption that asian students are considered submissive and obedient and the teachers are authoritative and authoritarian, because they are given equal power they could be active readers ultimately. also, the transformations of being plunged into critical pedagogy, particularly on the critical reading could be identified both in teachers and students; for example, the changing attitude and worldviews, becoming critical readers, and having sensitivity to social issues situated in students and teachers’ lives. even though this study has yielded significant findings from the participant’s experiences, it still has several limitations. first, the data is mainly derived from the interviews; only four participants are being interviewed. to shed more light on the implementation of critical pedagogy, observation should be undertaken. however, this study is still missing the observation as a technique for collecting data. doing interviews with more participants and on several times probably will dig in-depth perspectives from teachers. references abednia, a., & izadinia, m. 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(2nd ed.). new york: longman. http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee http://dx.doi.org/10.15639/teflinjournal.v31i2/259-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.15639/teflinjournal.v31i2/259-276 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15427595cils0202_3 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 186-204 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee stating and defending new knowledge claim: a rhetorical analysis on the discussion section of english master thesis by indonesian efl learners wasito, safnil arsyad syah, alamsyah harahap received: 24th september 2017; revised: 22th november 2017; accepted: 28th december 2017 abstract the discussion section is considered the most important section of a thesis but also the most difficult to write especially by university students. this study investigated the move-step and rhetorical pattern of discussion section in 20 english master theses written by indonesian efl postgraduate students. following the model suggested by loan and pramoolsook (2015), this study found that students constructed the discussion section according to their perceived communicative purposes of discussion section. the most noticeable feature of the section is the occurrence of move 2 (reporting results) and move 4 (commenting on results) occurring in all texts making them obligatory moves. in terms of step, interpreting results and referring to other studies in move 4 are also considered as obligatory steps. the findings of this study are useful particularly for efl students; that is to facilitate them to better understand the rhetorical structure of thesis discussion section when written in english. key words: rhetorical analysis; move; step; rhetorical pattern; master thesis abstrak bagian pembahasan dianggap sebagai bagian yang paling penting dalam tesis tetapi juga yang paling sulit ditulis terutama oleh mahasiswa atau penulis baru. penelitian ini penting untuk menyelidiki pola retorika bagian pembahasan tesis mahasiswa magister bahasa inggris yang ditulis oleh mahasiswa indonesia. mengikuti model yang disarankan oleh loan and pramoolsook (2015), penelitian ini menemukan bahwa mahasiswa mengorganisir bagian pembahasan sesuai dengan tujuan komunikatif yang mereka anggap penting. tujuan komunikatif yang paling menonjol dari bagian ini adalah ‘move’ 2 (tahapan melaporkan hasil peneitian) dan ‘move’ 4 (tahapan mengomentari hasil penelitian) yang ditemukan di semua teks sehingga dianggap wajib. dalam hal langkah (steps), langkah menafsirkan hasil penelitian dan langkah mengacu pada penelitian terdahuluan dalam ‘move’ 4 dianggap sebagai langkah wajib. temuan penelitian ini berguna terutama untuk mahasiswa magister bahasa inggris, yaitu untuk memudahkan mereka memahami struktur retorika dari bagian pembahasan tesis yang ditulis dalam bahasa inggris. kata kunci: analisis retoris; pindah; langkah; pola retoris; master thesis how to cite: wasito., syah, s. a., harahap, a. (2017). stating and defending new knowledge claim: a rhetorical analysis on the discussion section of english master thesis by indonesian efl learners. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 188-207. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 mailto:wasito108@gmail.com mailto:safnilarsyad@gmail.com ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 189-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction writing the discussion section of a master thesis is expected to be structured in a manner defined by rhetorical moves to make it easy to read and interpret. structuring this discussion around arguments can be meaningless and tends to fail in justifying the validity of the claims that can make readers difficult to understand the significance of the study. the majority of student writers find it very hard to write the discussion section because it involves complex causal, conditional and purposive argument (arsyad, 2013); this argument guides the reader from acceptance of the relatively uncontroversial data to acceptance of the writer’s knowledge claim (parkinson, 2011). however, it is widely recognized that the discussion section is difficult to write and troublesome for both native and nonnative speakers (flowerdew, 1999, 2001; jaroongkhongdach et al., 2012; swales, 1990; swales & feak, 2004). this may be because writers need to meet the cognitive demands of the discussions and have skills for writing in the persuasive and argumentative styles (pojanapunya & todd, 2011). a number of studies related to discussion section of research articles (ra) have been conducted by several investigators such as amirian et al, (2008); khani and tazik (2010); arsyad (2013); amnuai and wannaruk, 2013; peacock, 2002; holmes, 1997 and loan and pramoolsook, 2015). amirian et al., (2008), for example, investigated the similarities and differences of discussion sections in applied linguistics research articles (ras) from the perspective of the genre. the results of their study revealed that there are considerable differences across the three corpora (persian, english, and english as l2). they found that although there was a kind of universality in moves across english and persian texts, there were some discrepancies in the frequency and sequence of moves, such as the lack of a logical sequence of different moves in the english discussions written by persian writers. the marked difference, according to amirian et al., was the pervasive use of citation to previously mentioned claims and suggestion for further studies in the persian corpus that were not found in the english corpus. results also showed that persian writers tended to make stronger claims when explaining and justifying their findings and tried to validate their findings by repetitively referring to past literature. using swales' (1990) cars model for the description of the schematic structure of introduction and discussion sections of research articles (ras), ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 190-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license khani and tazik (2010) compared the generic structure of english introduction and discussion sections written by international authors and iranian in sub-disciplines of applied linguistics. the findings showed no significant differences regarding the obligatory moves in the introduction section across the two corpora; however, significant differences were found in the discussion section. arsyad (2013) also examined the genre structure of research article (ra) discussion section written in indonesian by indonesian writers aiming at exploring how indonesian writers discuss their research findings in their ras. the corpus for this study consisted of 47 selected ras published mainly in university-based journals in indonesia from social science and humanity disciplines. swales' eightmove structure (ems) model of the discussion section of ras was employed for the data analysis. from the results, the most noticeable feature occurs in terms of the absence of move 4 (reference to previous research findings) in the majority of the indonesian ras and the difference between the ras in the same discipline in terms of the number of moves found. according to arsyad, the difference in research practice and ra writing practice in indonesia is the most possible cause of the differences in the move structure. amnuai and wannaruk (2013) investigated rhetorical move structure of discussions in english applied linguistic research article published in thai and english published in international journals. they revealed that there were both similarities and differences regarding the move occurrence, move-ordering patterns, and move cyclicity. according to amnuai and wannaruk, the findings are useful particularly for novice nonnative writers by facilitating them to better understand the rhetorical structure of research article discussions. holmes (1999), form his study, also revealed that the rhetorical structure of social science discussion sections displayed some distinctive features, such as the result that there is no obligatory move. similarly, in a study carried out by peacock (2002), it was found that there was no obligatory move in 252 discussions from seven disciplines that he investigated. the only study on the discussion section of master theses written by efl students in the literature, as far as these authors are concerned, is the one conducted by loan and pramoolsook (2015). using the framework by chen and kuo (2012), they investigated the move-step structures of two chapters in 24 master theses written by vietnamese postgraduates and the discourse-based interviews with actual thesis writers ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 191-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license and supervisors. loan and pramoolsook found that the student writers constructed the genres according to their perceived communicative purposes of these chapters. moreover, the presence of section/ chapter introduction-next section/ chapter introduction-section/ chapter summary cycles tends to reflect the distinctive composition of these texts at the tesol discourse community in vietnam. as discussed above, studies on the rhetorical structures and styles on ra discussion sections have frequently been conducted by several discourse experts but similar studies on english master thesis written by efl postgraduate students have been very rarely conducted. in indonesian academic, studies on how indonesian post-graduate students introduce and defend their new knowledge claim in their thesis discussion section has been neglected while these studies are very important; that is to know how indonesian post-graduate students introduce a new knowledge claim and defend it in their english thesis. therefore, this study was aimed at answering the following questions: 1) what moves are commonly found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students?; 2) what steps are commonly found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students?; 3) what rhetorical patterns are commonly found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students? methods this study followed qualitative method for collecting and analyzing the discussion section sections. it was assumed that the results of the current study can provide useful information for similar situations and cases. this research analyzed english master thesis written by indonesian efl students of postgraduate program of english education, bengkulu university. this study involved 20 discussion section of english master thesis in the field of applied linguistics. for the purpose of identification and easier access, research thesis discussions were separately codified (d1-d20). data analysis loan and paramoolsook’s (2015) framework was used for the move and step identification because it was developed and revised from the analysis of ras in applied linguistics which was also the focus of the present study. the model consists of seven moves as shown in figure 1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 192-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license move 1: introducing the discussion chapter move 2: reporting results move 3: summarizing results move 4: commenting on results step a: interpreting results step b: comparing results with literature step c: accounting for the result step d: referring to other studies move 5: summarizing the study move 6: evaluating the study step a: indicating limitation step b: indicating significance move 7: deduction from the research study step a: making suggestions step b: recommending further research figure 1. framework for the discussion section of master thesis (adapted from loan and pramoolsook, 2015). as seen in figure 1, there are seven possible moves in the discussion section of a master thesis; some may be classified as obligatory moves, conventional and some are optional. three of the seven moves (moves 4, 6 and 7) may have smaller units of communicative purpose called steps. data analysis procedures in the processes of move identification, the following steps were followed. first, the titles, the abstracts, and the key terms were read to get a rough understanding of the research. second, the discussion section was read to identify the linguistic and discourse clues, for instance, the linguistic clues such as ‘the findings revealed that…’, ‘the findings of this study showed that…’, and ‘the analysis showed that…’ were an explicit indication of stating findings. third, the communicative units of moves and steps in the discussion section were classified as compulsory, conventional or optional in relation to the overall communicative purpose. fourth, the moves and steps were looked further at how they were ordered. finally, the common discourse patterns of the discussion section were identified following arsyad (2013) and loan and pramoolsook (2015). after the moves and steps were identified, then, their frequency in the discussion section of english master thesis was calculated in order to verify the extent to which a particular move or step was used. kanoksilapatham (2005) recommended the criteria; namely ‘obligatory, conventional and optional’ were employed for classifying the frequency of the moves and steps. if a particular move occurred in every discussion section (100%), it was categorized as ‘obligatory’. whereas the occurrence of a move ranged from 6099% was classified as ‘conventional’. eventually, if the occurrence of a move was below 60 %, the move was considered as ‘optional’. below are description and example of each move as in the above framework. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 193-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter) includes some main statements such as research questions, the aims and purposes of the study, theoretical background or established knowledge and the study’s research methodology as in the following examples: 1) the research was conducted to reveal the authentic assessment model applied by the teacher...the first research question was what authentic assessment model is applied... (m1-d17); 2) the first question in this research is how semantic mapping through collaborative...... (m1-d12). move 2 (reporting results) is used to present the results of the study as in the following examples: 1) from the statistic analysis testing, the result showed that 6.90 introverts students got very good score...... (m2-d15); 2) based on the cycle 1 and cycle 2, the students’ mean score improved from baseline data to cycle 2 (from 25.50 in baseline data to 52.50 in cycle 1. (m2-d6) move 3 (summarizing results) is to sum up the results of the study. linguistic clues like summarizing verbs/nouns/phrases such as to sum up, to summarize, in summary, and in brief are often used to identify this move as in the following examples:1 ) in short, writing helps the students to refine the ideas when they receive feedback, ... (m3-d11); 2) to conclude, from the data that was collected from the test produced a result that cori strategy... (m3-d10). move 4 (commenting on results) is to establish the meaning and significance of the research results in relation to the relevant field is the objective of this move. move 4 is considered as a central move in which the results of the study are commented on through four different steps, including ‘interpreting results', ‘comparing results with literature', ‘accounting for results’, and ‘referring to other studies’. the characteristics of each step and their realizations are presented below; move 4 step a (interpreting results) is used to address claims or generalizations based on the results of the study by the students is the function of this step. to interpret the results, the writers preferred using some words indicating either certainty or tentativeness such as seem, suggest, indicate, appear and modal verbs such as may, might, would and could as in the following examples: 1) this problem could be solved through the cooperation among students in a group... (m4sa-d14); 2)....language skills and knowledge indicated the language skills needed by students in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 194-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license accounting department of unib....(m4sa-d7). move 4 step b (comparing results with literature) is used to allow authors to compare their study’s findings with those of previous works is the function of this step. some distinct linguistic features were used to realize this step, particularly in the forms of certain words or phrases such as agree with, compare to, similar to or in line with as in the following examples: 1) the researcher agrees by frodosen (2001) that indirect feedback is very useful ... (m4sb-d11); 2) this result also in line with the studies from lewis (1997), mauana (2012) and nurmasita (2013 that teacher still lecturing in the classroom... (m4sb-d9). move 4 step c (accounting for results) is to provide readers with further explanation or give the reasons for the observed differences in findings or unexpected outcomes. this result can be used to infer that writers tend to clarify or explain the marked similarly found in their findings. the rational explanations used to realize this particular communicative purpose were highlighted by the use of words or phrases such as because, the possible explanation for, it is possible, may be caused from, can be explained by as in the following examples: 1) it probably means that by using the zigzag pattern the researchers acknowledged the function of this pattern... (m4sc-d16). 2) in supporting learning materials was contextual because almost category adjusted such as it was up to date materials... (m4sc-d5). move 4 step d (referring to other studies) is used to relate the findings of the study with those of previous works and the preferred options to comment on the results. this means that writers presented the findings which are followed by interpreting findings which are supported by referring to literature as in the following examples: 1) in exploring phase, kartikawati (2015) stated in his research that the teacher only has lack of knowledge about... (m4sd-d8); 2)...verdeber and sellnow (2008) which pointed out about mastering good oral presentation skills will also help students... (m4sd-d1). move 5 (summarizing the study) is aimed at providing readers with the main findings of the research study is the function of this move. the keywords used to signal this move were similar to those found in move 3; however, some differences were observed. the major difference is that summary or conclusive words or phrases, such as in sum, in conclusion, were commonly followed by particular statements related to overall results, while those in move 3 were followed by ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 195-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license specific results. this move is very often found at the end of discussions as in the following examples: 1) from the research findings, it can be implied that the use of peer feedback activities can help the students improve their speaking abilities...(m5-d6); 2) the researcher concluded that the teacher’s indirect feedback strategy helped.... (m5-d11). move 6 (evaluating the study) is often used by researchers to judge their studies in term of its significance, limitations, delimitations, generalizability, novelty, strengths, and weaknesses. move 6 step a (indicating limitations) is to describe the limitations of the research being conducted is the objective of this step. present simple tense was the preferred tense used to present this communicative unit as in the following examples: 1) furthermore, the small class taken as the sample used in this research becomes the limitation of this research.... (m6sa-d10); 2) on the contrary, there are some limitations of this study. first, to achieve the aim of this study the researcher has to..... (m6sa-d12). move 6 step b (indicating significance/ advantage) is to allow the researchers to point out the strengths of the study which may be significant for applications or implications is the function of this step. statements in present simple tense, relating to the significance of research conducted, such as value, benefit, advantage, essential were commonly used. the realizations of this step are shown in the following examples: 1) comparing the result of this study with other previous researchers, this study has strength. this study has not only focused on investigating the students' speaking competence but also in each component.... (m6sb-d12); 2) this research contributes theoretical and empirical finding, as consideration to the teaching english as foreign language ... (m6sb-d15) move 7 (deductions from the research) is to address suggestions concerning areas for further research or solutions to certain problems. they may as well provide implications for teaching. the move is quite often made in one or a combination of steps: (1) step a: making suggestions, (2) step b: recommending further research. move 7 step a (making suggestions) is to allow authors to highlight how the research contributes to the existing knowledge in the field. also, the researchers provide some guidelines from the research findings for the readers in order to solve the problems identified by the research as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 196-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in the following examples: 1) it is suggested that the teachers are able to use semantic mapping through collaborative learning .... (m7sa-d12); 2) in the teaching of writing for efl, it is important for the teachers to give extra attention to the extroverts and ambiverts students in writing... (m7sad15). move 7 step b (recommending further research) is to state some possible areas for future studies. this step can be signaled by words/phrases such as ‘further studies/ research’, ‘future studies/ research’, ‘more studies are needed’ as in the following examples: 1) therefore, for further studies, it should be used other kinds of genres such as descriptive, procedure, recount etc.... (m7sb-d2); 2) it is important for the further studies to analyze the coherence, thematic progression and the coherence quality in other aspects of english.... (m7sb-d16). triangulation processes this study used co-raters to check the reliability of data analysis results. the co-raters were a postgraduate student at the english education department of education faculty of bengkulu university. first, they were trained how to identify moves and steps in the discussion section of english master thesis using the checklist based on loan and prmoolsook’s (2015) framework. then, they were given five discussion sections of english master thesis randomly selected from 20 english master thesis in the corpus of the study and they were given enough time to classify moves and steps in those discussion sections independently. when training was completed, inter-rater reliability was calculated using cohen’s kappa to ensure correspondence in the identification of moves and steps. from the cohen kappa, inter-rater agreement of two raters showed a kappa value of 0.87 and 0.84 (the co-rater and the researcher respectively). it shows a strong agreement (above 81%). findings and discussion findings moves and step in the discussion section of english master thesis the analysis results are presented in the table1. table 1. frequency of moves-steps in 20 discussions section moves and steps f % cate m-1 introducing the discussion chapter 8 40 optional m-2 reporting results 20 100 obligatory m-3 summarizing results 15 75 conventional ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 197-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license moves and steps f % cate m-4 commenting on results step a: interpreting results step b: comparing results with literature step c: accounting for results (giving reasons) step d: referring to other studies 20 20 18 18 20 100 100 90 90 100 obligatory obligatory conventional conventional obligatory m-5 summarizing the study 12 60 conventional m-6 evaluating the study step a: indicating limitations step b: indicating significance/advantage 11 10 8 55 50 40 optional optional optional m-7 deductions from the (research) study step a: making suggestions step b: recommending further research 7 4 8 35 20 40 optional optional optional first, table 1 shows that some important information can be highlighted from the analysis results. first, the most frequent moves are move 2 (reporting results) and move 4 (commenting on results). these moves were found in all 20 discussion sections of english master thesis in the corpus of this study and therefore they are classified as obligatory moves. the frequent occurrence of move 2 and move 4 in the present study confirms loan and pramoolsook’s findings that in the discussion section, ‘reporting results’ and ‘commenting on results’ are the most substantial and frequent moves. in addition, this agrees with yang and allison’s (2003) study, which also showed the highest of move 4. below are examples of a move 2 and move 4 taken from the corpus of this study. 1) from the statistical analysis testing, the result showed that 6,90 introverts students got very good score...... (m2-d15). 2) based on the cycle 1 and cycle 2, the students’ mean score improved from baseline data to cycle 2 (from 25.50 in baseline data to 52,50 in cycle 1... (m2-d6). 3) most students seemed to find difficulty in understanding the contents of videos since they find difficulty in understanding .... (m4d2). 4) as stated by danan (2004), audiovisual materials enhanced with caption or subtitles.... (m4-d2). as can be seen from the above examples, in most cases authors use specific lexicons such as ‘the results', ‘show', ‘mean score' and so on to present their research results in the discussion section or move 2. in addition, after presenting the results or move 2, the authors refer to the findings of relevant studies to compare ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 198-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license or contrast them with their own findings or interpret what the research findings mean or imply and use citation to support their own interpretation. second, as seen in table 1, move 3 (summarizing the results) and move 5 (summarizing the study) were the second most dominant moves found in the discussion sections. these moves were categorized as conventional moves because they occurred inconsistently high in the study (75% and 60% respectively). to identify this move, linguistic clues used were summarizing verbs/ nouns/ phrases such as to sum up, to summarize, in summary, and in brief. below are examples of move 3 and move 5 taken from the corpus of the study. 5) in short, writing helps the students to refine the ideas when they receive feedback, ... (m3-d11). 6) to conclude, from the data that was collected from the test produced result that cori strategy.... (m3-d10). 7) from this study, it can be concluded that the students with the ambivert got better achievement that closely similar with the extrovert achievement.... (m5-d15). 8) the researcher concluded that the teacher’s indirect feedback strategy helped the students at grade xipa 1 of sman 1 bengkulu tengah in improving their ability in writing descriptive text.... (m5-d11). as can be seen from the examples above, statement of summarizing results is shown by the presence of summarizing verbs ‘in short or to conclude’. this linguistic clues originally comes from the researcher focusing on summing up the specific results of the data. in other words, summarizing results statement is as the bridge idea before organizing the information in the next move of the discussions. similarly, the authors summarized their study by presenting conclusive words ‘concluded’. then, it was followed by particular statements related to overall results. this move is very often found at the end of discussions. however, this move was categorized as conventional in the current study. third, table 1 also indicates that move 6 (evaluating the study), move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter) and move 7 (deduction from the study) are optional moves occurring at a frequency of 55%, 40 and 35, respectively. move 6 is used by the authors to judge their studies in term of its significance, limitations, delimitations, generalizability, novelty, strengths, and weaknesses. it was ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 199-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license realized by two steps of indicating limitation (move 6 step a) and indicating significance (move 6 step b). the results of the present analysis revealed that this move appeared in 11 or 55% of the discussions. both present and past simple tenses were used to indicate this move. below are examples of a move 6 taken from the corpus of the study. 9) comparing the result of this study with other previous researchers, this study has strength. this study has not only focused on investigating the students' speaking competence but also in each component ... (m6-d12). 10) on the contrary, there are some limitations of this study. first .... (m6-d12). as shown in the above examples, the authors address the strength as well as significance related to study underinvestigated. they used this move either to highlight the limitation of study or state the significances of the study in order to make one last effort to convince the reader about the study that has been presented. as stated earlier, some main statements such as research questions, the aims and purposes of the study, theoretical background or established knowledge and the study’s research methodology are included in move 1. move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter) was an optional move in this current study, occurring at a frequency of 40% in the discussion section of english master thesis. to realize this move, both present and past simple tenses in the form of active or passive voices were used. below are examples of a move 1 taken from the corpus of the study. 11) this research was conducted to describe the implementation of scientific learning approach at 10th grade english classes by the teachers of ... (m1-d8). 12) the first question in this research is how effective is fishbowl strategy to improve students’ speaking ability in general... (m1d7). as can be seen in the example above, move 1 is shown by the presence of the sentence about the purpose and research question at the beginning of the paragraph related to study. in this example, a statement about the purpose and research question indicated as the opening sentence to arouse reader’s interest and establish the focus and direction for the study. 13) it is suggested that the teachers are able to use semantic mapping through collaborative learning ... (m7-sa-d12). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 200-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 14) it is important for the further studies to analyze the coherence, thematic progression and the coherent quality in other aspects of english.... (m7-sb-d16). as shown in the above examples, the researcher address suggestions as well as some possible areas for future research related to study. the researcher recommends readers that they should meet the implication of the presented findings in order to make one last effort to convince the reader, to suggest larger studies about the evidence that has been presented, and absolutely to provide a satisfying sense of closure. moves patterns in the discussion section of english master thesis the move patterns, as seen in figure 2 below are shown through the list of moves found in the discussion section in the english master thesis of this study. it is obvious that the number of moves in each discussion section includes very various moves and steps such a peculiar ordering patterns. however, there was no straightforward linear pattern (m1-m2-m3-m4-m5-m6m7) appearing in a set of data. all discussions were constructed in various move patterns. the initial m2m4 and m1-m2 were prominently used by the writers in organizing their information in this current study, then followed by various moves and steps. m1-m2 indicated that discussion section started with introducing the discussion chapter, then followed by reporting result. the prominent patterns m2-m4, it was started with reporting results, then followed by interpreting results. thus, all of the discussion sections in this study used m2 and m4 in organizing the information. as stated earlier, move 2 and move 4 are considered as a central move in which the results of the study are presented and commented upon. the rhetorical patterns in the current study are shown in figure 2 below. pattern 1 m2 m4 m3 m6 pattern 2 m1 m2 m4 m6 pattern 3 m3 m4 m2 m3 figure 2. common move patterns in the discussion section as seen in figure 2, each pattern must have two obligatory moves (move 2 and move 4). move 2 (reporting results) was the beginning move of a cycle in most cases and was also the starting move of all 20 discussions section. however, in some cases, move 4 (commenting on results) can be the beginning move of the cycles which was followed immediately by move 3 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 201-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (summarizing results). pattern 1 in the figure above was classified as obligatory move pattern which occurred in every text. in some cycles, move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter) is followed by move 2 (reporting results). whenever move 2 (reporting results) was the beginning of a cycle, it was immediately followed by move 4 (commenting on results) which, in some cases, was followed by move 6 (evaluating the study). the pattern 2 above was classified as conventional move pattern in this study. moreover, the analysis showed that when move 3 (summarizing the results) was part of a cycle, in some cases, it appeared before move 4 (commenting on results) and was the beginning move of the cycle. the pattern 3 showed above was classified as optional move pattern in the current study. the moves are combined in various ways in a cycle; however, some orders of moves were more common than the others. in most of the cases when move 2 was the beginning move of a cycle, it was followed by either move 3 (summarizing results) or move 4 (commenting on results). in a few cases, it was also followed by move 6 (evaluating the study). the most common combination of cycles consisted of reporting results and commenting on results. discussion the first research question in this study is what moves are found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students are. as indicated in the results section of this study, the most frequent moves found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students of this study are move 2 (reporting results) and move 4 (commenting on results). these moves occurred in every text, making them the obligatory moves in these discussion sections. move 2 (reporting results) was a common move in swales (1990) and holmes (1997). also, in a study conducted by amirian et al. (2008), the move called ‘finding’ was also categorized obligatory. with the highest frequency of move 2 and move 4, these two moves are substantial rhetorical moves for applied linguistics ra/thesis discussions. move 4 (commenting on results) stands out in the discussion section of emt. this finding is consistent with some past research. for example, this move occurred at 100 % frequency in the biochemistry ras analyzed by kanoksilapatham (2005). although she referred to this move as ‘consolidating results’, its function resembled a move ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 202-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license 4. in line with this research, loan and pramoolsook (2015) also found the same frequency occurrence of move 4 in their thesis discussion section data. in addition, the commenting on the results move was found obligatory in the study carried out by basturkmen (2012) who found that the authors of dentistry preferred making comments on the results through two prominent steps (explaining result and comparing with results in literature). in addition, the finding conforms to yang and allison’s (2003) study and amnuai and wannaruk (2013)’s study in which the occurrence of this move was obligatory, and it could occur repeatedly in the discussion sections unlike obligatory move 2-4, move 3 (summarizing results) and move 5 (summarizing the study) are found in fifteen and twelve out of twenty discussion sections making them conventional moves. this current finding is different from loan and pramoolsook (2015)’s finding that move 3 (summarizing results) occurred in every text making it obligatory moves. otherwise, move 5 in loan and pramoolsook (2015) finding was fewer than move 5 in this study that makes it optional in those discussion sections. on the contrary, move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter), move 6 (evaluating the study) and move 7 (deduction from the study) are found with a low frequency of occurrence. their infrequent occurrence may indicate that few evaluations and claims were made in the discussion section by the efl students. this finding is in line with peacock’s (2002) finding that non-native english writers made far fewer claims than their native counterparts. the second research question in this study is what steps are found in the discussion section of english master thesis in applied linguistic by efl students are. as stated in the results section of this study, step a interpreting results and step d referring to other studies (move 4) were obligatory in this study. the analysis of step sequences shows that interpreting results is often followed by referring to other studies in justifying the results in their discussion section, making the highest occurrence. it means that while interpreting the results is utilized to provide some explanations on why the findings were obtained in such a way, this step is used to provide a speculation about what the findings meant. the writers tend to use their own perspectives and understandings to make sense of the findings (dobakhti, 2011). meanwhile, referring to other studies was also found in all 20 discussions. this finding confirms peacock (2002)’s finding which indicates that referring to previous research seems to be important in language and linguistics. in another way, it provides support or justification in which the researchers tended to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 203-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license simply report on the research results without interpretation similar to loan and pramoolsook (2015)’s findings, interpreting results was found in 20 discussions section of this study. this may indicate that the writers made claims or generalizations based on the results of the study. moreover, they not only presented results but also expounded their idea on the results accordingly. dobakhti (2011), revealed that interpreting results is used to provide a speculation about what the findings meant. the writers used their own perspectives and understandings to make sense of the findings. step b: comparing results with literature and step c: accounting for the result (giving reasons) of move 4 are classified as conventional steps in this study with the same occurrence. however, this is different from pramoolsook and loan’s (2015) findings that move 4-step b and move 4-step c were classified as conventional and optional steps in their studies. the frequency of this step may indicate that move 4-step b is one of the preferred options to comment on the results. also, move 4-step c occurred with notably the same frequency with move 4 step b. this result can be used to infer that the writers tend to clarify or explain the marked differences found in their finding. similarly, step a: indicating limitation and step b: indicating significance/advantage) of move 6 are less prominent making them optional steps. the writers seemed hesitant of talking about weaknesses in their studies. the cycle could reflect that the writers appeared to avoid talking about limitations as far as possible and did not allow the writers to point out the strengths of the study which may be significant for applications or implications. as amnuai and wannaruk (2013) stated, the objective of these moves (step a and step b) is to evaluate the overall study by pointing out the limitations, indicating the contributions or evaluating the methodology. the occurrence of move 7-step a (making suggestion) in the current study is interesting. compared to the other steps, move 7-step a is the least frequent step occurring only in 4 out of 20 of the discussions. the employment of such a step in previous research studies varied in its frequency. however, it is of a higher frequency in the current study compared to loan and pramoolsook (2015)’s findings, (15% and 7%, respectively). this may reflect that the writers seemed hesitant to draw inference about the results by suggesting what could be done to solve the problems identified by the research, proposing areas for further study or drawing pedagogical implication because these claims were presented in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 204-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license a separate section, namely conclusion and suggestion in chapter 5 of the thesis. this step allowed writers to highlight how the research contributes to the existing knowledge in the field. also, the writers provided some guidelines from the research findings for the readers in order to solve the problems identified by the research (amnuai and wannaruk, 2013) regarding move patterns, variations of move pattern are found in the data. this may be due to the fact that the discussion section is where the writer presents his/her point based on the research findings. the writer had greater freedom in generating the ideas which were relevant to the research conducted. this may lead to the presence of the various deviations of move structures in the discussion sections data. the rhetorical pattern is defined as ways or structure of organizing information in order to construct the relevant part with proper move structure for effective writing in the discussion of a research thesis. as dudley (1986) suggested that discussion part has the cyclic structure of the rhetorical pattern, but he has not given moves under this cyclic structure. the majority of discussion sections in a master thesis are written cyclically. move 4 (commenting on results) and move 2 (reporting results) were the most cyclical moves in the discussion section of emt. different from that of amirian et al. (2008) who state that not all moves are linearly sequenced; some of them are cyclical; each move may be repeated many times in a single text. this was in line with the concept of cyclicity of moves suggested by dudley-evans (1986) and bria & tahririan (1997). however, the obligatory move in each cycle was move 2 (reporting results) and move 4 (commenting on results). five moves, including move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter), move 3 (summarizing results), move 5 (summarizing the study), and move 6 (evaluating the study) were noncyclical moves in the data. move 7 was also of a cyclical nature. this finding supports those of peacock (2002) who also found that move cycles were frequent in language & linguistics discussions, particularly in the discussions written by nonnative writers. the moves involved in the cyclic structure in both corpora were move 2 and move 4. these two important moves were repeated in many move sequences, for example, m2-m4-m1-m2-m4; m1-m2-m4-m2m4-m7. the use of these sequences implies a style of presenting results. however, different from that of posteguillo (1999), the preferred cyclical pattern found in computer science was ‘the structure of result’ move alternated with ‘deduction’ or ‘recommendation’ moves. the cyclicity of move 4 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 205-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (commenting on results) in the present study may be due to the fact that applied linguistics is an established field where much previous research has been carried out. the sequence of results and comments which was the most prevalent pattern in the data was in the form of either reporting results interpreting the results (m2-m4sa) or introducing the discussion chapter reporting results (m1-m2). conclusion and suggestion conclusion from the results and discussion of this study, several conclusions can be drawn: 1) it was found that the most frequent moves in the discussions section of english master thesis by efl students are move 2 (reporting results) and move 4 (commenting on results), making them obligatory. move 3 (summarizing results) and move 5 (summarizing the study) were conventional, then move 1 (introducing the discussion chapter), move 6 (evaluating the study) and move 7 (deductions from the study) were classified into optional. 2) in term of steps, step a: interpreting the results and step d: referring to other studies (move 4) were obligatory, followed by step b: comparing results with literature and step c: accounting for results (move 4) were conventional. then, step a: indicating limitations and step b: indicating significance/advantage (move 6) and step a: making suggestions and step b: recommending further research (move 7) were classified as optional in this study. 3) there were obligatory, conventional and optional moves and steps found in the discussion section regarding rhetorical patterns of emt. the most prominent pattern in beginning justified the results in the data are in the form of either reporting results interpreting the results (m2-m4sa) or introducing the discussion chapter reporting results (m1-m2). there was no linear ordering of the moves found in the discussion. the most cyclical move in datasets was move 2 and move 4. in term of steps patterns, interpreting results (m4sa) and referring to other studies (m4sa) were the most frequents patterns in the discussion. suggestion there are some suggestion for consideration: 1) with raised genre awareness, writers could become sensitive to the moves and steps and the rhetorical functions and would be able to effectively establish the significance of their reported studies in these discussion sections. moreover, academic writing is not only on the content quality of the text but also the writing or rhetorical style; that is how it is appropriately and correctly written in english so that it is acceptable to read. 2) in the present study, only the rhetorical moves, steps and patterns of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 206-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2. p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license theses discussions written by efl students are analyzed. therefore, further research should compare the rhetorical style of theses discussion sections written by the same non-native writers but published in both local and international contexts. it has found great similarities and interesting differences in these discussion sections. also, future research can investigate the other main sections of english master thesis in applied linguistics and even the whole english master thesis sections. in addition, further study can also be conducted in other disciplines which employ both qualitative and quantitative methodology to find out whether they use the same or different rhetorical style in various sections of their theses. references amirian, z. et al (2008). genre analysis: an investigation of the discussion section of applied linguistics research articles. the asian esp journal, vol. 4 (1), 39-63. amnuai, w and wannaruk, a. 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(2012). a genrebased analysis of the information structure of master's theses in applied linguistics. the asian esp journal, 8(1), 24-52 cohen, j. (1960). a coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. educational and psychological measurement. dudley-evans, t. (1994) ‘genre analysis: an approach to text analysis for esp’, in m. coulthard (ed) advances in written text analysis. london and new york: routledge, pp:219228. dudley-evans, t. (1986) ‘genre analysis: an investigation of the introduction and discussion sections of msc dissertations, in m. coulthard (ed.) talking about text, birmingham u. k. english language research, birmingham university, pp: 128-145. flowerdew, j. (1999). writing for scholarly publication in english: the case of hong kong. journal of second language writing, 8(2), 123-145. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 207-207 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.6746 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s10603743(99)80125-8 flowerdew, j. (2001). attitudes of journal editors to non-native speaker contributions. tesol quarterly, 35, 121-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3587862 holmes, richard. (1997). genre analysis, and the social sciences: an investigation of the structure of ra discussion sections in three disciplines. english for specific purposes, 16(4), 321-327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s08894906(96)00038-5 2013, vol. 5, no. 4 jaroongkhongdach, w., todd, r. w., keyuravong, s., & hall, d. (2012). differences in quality between thai and international research articles in elt. journal of english for academic purposes, 11, 194-209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.201 2.04.006 kanoksilapatham, b. (2005). rhetorical structure of biochemistry research articles. english for specific purposes, 24(3), 269-292. doi: 10.1016/j.esp.2004.08.003 loan, n.t.t, & pramoolsook, i (2015). move analysis of results-discussion chapters in tesol master’s theses written by vietnamese students. 3l: the southeast asian journal of english language studies – vol. 21(2): 1 – 15 parkinson, jean. (2011). the discussion section as argument: the language used to prove knowledge claims. english for specific purposes, 30(3), 164-175 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2011 .03.001 peacock, m. (2002). communicative moves in the discussion section of research articles. system, 30, 479-497. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0346251x(02)00050-7 in amnuai and wannaruk (2013). pojanapunya, p., & todd, r. w. (2011). relevance of findings in results to discussion sections in applied linguistics research. proceedings of the international conference: doing research in applied linguistics. king mongkut’s university of technology thonburi and macquarie university. posteguillo, s. (1999). the schematic structure of computer science research articles. english for specific purposes, 18(2), 139160.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0889 -4906(98)00001-5 swales, john m. (1990) genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press, in safnil (2001). rhetorical structure analysis of the indonesian research articles. (unpublished doctoral dissertation, the australian national university, canberra australia). swales, j. & feak, c. (2004). academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills (2nd ed.). ann arbor: the university of michigan press. yang, r., & allison, d. (2003). research articles in applied linguistics: moving from results to conclusions. english for specific purposes, 22(4), 365-385. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(02)00050-7 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0346-251x(02)00050-7 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 176-190 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee enhancing descriptive writing achievement of tenth graders by using internet meme picture rita inderawati, dea nova ariani, muslih hambali received: 08th september 2018; revised: 15th november 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract the objectives of this study were to find out whether or not: (1) there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement after the tenth grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara were taught by using internet meme picture and (2) there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement between the students who were taught by using internet meme pictures and those who were not. the samples of this study were x mipa 1 and x mipa 2 with the total number of 64 students. to collect the data, each group was given pre-test and post-test of writing. the data were analyzed by using paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test in spss version 22. the results from paired sample t-test showed that there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement before and after the tenth-grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara were taught by using internet meme picture. the result from independent sample t-test of the post-test in both experimental and control groups showed that there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement between the students who were taught by using internet meme picture and those who were not as the -value both of paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test results were lower than 0.05 (0.000 < .05). keywords: teaching writing; writing achievement; meme picture; internet meme media abstrak tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui apakah: (1) ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam menulis deskriptif setelah siswa kelas sepuluh sma negeri 1 indralaya utara diajarkan dengan menggunakan internet meme picture dan (2) ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam penulisan deskriptif antara siswa yang diajar dengan menggunakan internet meme picture dengan mereka yang tidak. sampel penelitian ini adalah kelas x mipa 1 dan x mipa 2 dengan jumlah total 64 siswa. untuk mengumpulkan data, setiap kelompok diberikan pre-test dan post-test penulisan. data dianalisis dengan menggunakan paired sample t-test dan independent sample t-test dengan spss versi 22. hasil dari paired sample t-test menunjukkan bahwa ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam penulisan deskriptif sebelum dan sesudah siswa kelas x sma negeri 1 indralaya utara diajarkan dengan menggunakan internet meme picture. hasil independent sample t-test dari post-test di kedua kelompok yaitu eksperimen dan kontrol menunjukkan bahwa ada perbedaan yang signifikan dalam prestasi penulisan deskriptif antara siswa yang diajar dengan menggunakan internet meme picture dan dengan mereka yang tidak. nilai kedua t-test yaitu hasil paired sample t-test dan hasil independent t-test lebih rendah dari 0,05 (0,000 <0,05). kata kunci: mengajar menulis; prestasi menulis; gambar meme; media meme internet how to cite: inderawati, r., ariani, d. n., hambali, m. (2018). enhancing descriptive writing achievement of tenth graders by using internet meme picture. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 176-190. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 177-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction the government of indonesia acknowledges english as a compulsory subject in the daily life of education for the students of many levels. based on indonesian government regulation, no. 32, 2013, english is one of the compulsory subjects which is taught from the first year of the junior high school to the university level. as the compulsory subject, students should know several kinds of english skills, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. writing is one of the important skills which should be learned and mastered by students. according to harmer (2001), writing is a form of communication to deliver or to express feeling through written form. nation (2009) also states that writing is an activity which can usefully be prepared for work in other skills of listening, speaking and reading. moreover, byrne (1993) insists that writing as a process to get the product is influenced by some elements such as vocabulary, grammar, organization, spelling, and pronunciation. writing is the combination of letters which are arranged to form sentences or paragraph. robinnet (1983) also mentions two kinds of writing which are controlled or guided writing and free writing. controlled writing refers to activities in which are presented with a set of sentences or written text and given directions regarding ways in which these should be modified. meanwhile, free writing is writing with no restrictions which does not have to conform to the rules of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. in other cases, hadley (1993) mentions that english academic writing actually seems to the learners as the most difficult skill to be mastered which implies the ability either to tell or to retell some information in the form of the text with the correct grammar and sense with good unity and coherence. richards and renandya (2002) say that the most difficult skill to master for the second language learners is writing because the difficulty is not only in generating and organizing ideas but also in translating these ideas into readable text. due to the condition, ploeger (2000) argues that writing is the activity when people can discover what they know and feel to communicate that knowledge to the audience. the writers have ever come to some schools, sma negeri 1 indralaya utara, sma negeri 2 prabumulih and sma negeri 1 prabumulih to give the questionnaire for every student of tenth grade to ask the difficulty in studying english. the questionnaire consisted of 10 questions. then, the writers took five representatives from every class to be interviewed. the writers found that the difficult skills for them are speaking and writing based on the result of the interview. based on the questionnaire given, most of the students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara answered writing skill as their problem in studying english. accordingly, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 178-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license writers decided to conduct the study in that school and continued to have an interview with one of the teachers in sma negeri 1 indralaya utara. the teacher mentioned several problems faced by the students during the english lesson. most of the students were lack of vocabulary and did not know well how to construct good sentences. it means writing skill is the most difficult problem faced by the students. oshima and hogue (1999) state that academic writing is not easy as it will take study and practice for developing this skill. therefore, the students should improve more the capability in writing and also use the appropriate strategy to improve it. based on curriculum 2013, there is a major competence of writing skill for tenth-grade students which expects students to be able to express the meaning of functional written text and a short essay in the form of descriptive, narrative, expository, and argumentative text in the daily life context. furthermore, there is one basic competence that is related to this research; constructing a descriptive text spoken and written about a person, a place, a popular historic building by paying attention of social function, text structure, and language elements accurately, appropriately and contextually. therefore, the main focus for the first semester of the tenth grade is writing descriptive text. however, the fact shows that tenth-grade students‟ descriptive writing achievements are still beyond the expectation. for example, the research conducted by istiawan (2012) in the tenth graders of sma muhammadyah kutoarjo found that the mean result of pre-test and post-test was not too significant from 68.5 to 71.62. similarly, based on the data from the school, it was found that the students of tenth grade in sma negeri 1 indralaya utara have problems in writing. the passing grade (kkm) is 75 but most students have low-average score during doing the exercise of writing, based on the score given by the teacher, most of the students got a score between 60-75 when they did writing a paragraph or conversation text. their scores were not good enough because their sentence building was not good even there were still many errors in grammar and sometimes out of the topic. moreover, the students were also lacking the interest to write and they intended to copy some passages from the internet to fulfill their assignments. another example, muhsin (2017) investigated how tad strategy helped students write recount text through a classroom action research. therefore, the writers need any other creative strategies to make teaching writing more effective and interesting. due to solving those problems, the writers were interested in using appropriate media which focused on a kind of text; descriptive text. according to hyland (2004), descriptive text is a text which social purpose to give an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 179-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license imagined account or factual events account. hyland (2014) mentions the generic structure of the descriptive text, they are identification and description. the primary purpose of the descriptive text is to describe a person, place, or thing in such a way that the picture is formed in the readers‟ mind (hammound, 2010). in reaching the achievement of writing, there should be a media or technique used to improve writing achievement. internet meme picture is a kind of picture which is popular nowadays since 2010 especially in social media like instagram and facebook. the meme becomes viral in this internet era. inderawati (2011) states, "internet has become a part of daily lives that addresses for abundant websites. the internet helps people search for everything entailed. it can also be a powerful teaching tool, provide access to information and allow links to other learners" (p. 4). meme nowadays can be a way to express something. actually, a meme can be formed as picture, video or story which contain a joke. the term is first coined by dawkins (1976) as an example or replicator information copied in an evolutionary process, meme picture is an appropriate media which is useful to help students in writing the paragraph. internet meme is commonly applied to describe the propagation of content items such as jokes, rumors, videos, or websites from one person to others via the internet (shifman, 2013). therefore, each message of the picture can be characteristic or idea to write a descriptive paragraph. heylighen and chielens, (2008) state, "to be communicated to other individuals, a meme must emerge from its storage as memory pattern or memo type and enter its media type phase, i.e. assume a physical shape that can be perceived by others. this process may be called „expression'" (p.10). in teaching and learning process, using appropriate teaching aid to encourage students' want to study english is important. in addition to this, a picture is one of good teaching aid. pictures give more information and more understandable and attractive than words (travers in chairena, 2007). besides, the picture does not only colorful but also can give several benefits to the students while learning process. wright (1989) insists, "pictures can motivate students to take part in teaching and learning process" (p.17). it is also supported by knobel and lankshear (2006) that a concept of meme becomes something creative, like a meme online. moreover, kariko (2012) indicates that memes provide a powerful new way to combine a few things such as creativity, art, message, and humor in the internet culture. therefore, internet meme picture similar to other academic ornaments of writing such as peer assessment via facebook group which is very beneficial to enhance writing achievement (inderawati, pratama, & loeneto, 2018) is also relevant to the application of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 180-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license curriculum 2013 which focuses on the implementation of the computer, internet, and technology. in line with the explanation above, the study entitled as "enhancing tenth grade students' achievement in writing descriptive text by using internet meme picture media in sma negeri 1 indralaya utara." was conducted. in this research, the writers used an experimental method that conducted by using quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test control group design to find out whether or not meme picture was effective to enhance students' writing descriptive text achievement. this study was aimed to answer this following research questions: (1) was there any significant difference in descriptive writing achievement of the tenth grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara before and after they were taught by using internet meme picture?, (2) was there any significant difference in descriptive writing achievement of the tenth grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara between the students who were taught by using internet meme picture and those who were not? method a quasi-experimental research method and pre-test post-test control group design were applied in this research to know whether or not there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement before and after they were taught by using internet meme picture media and whether or not there was a significant difference in descriptive writing achievement between the students‟ who were taught by using internet meme picture and those who were not. in applying the media, treatment was done for 16 meetings and there were also two meetings of pre-test and post-test. the samples of this study were from tenth-grade students of natural science class of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara with the total number of 64 who were divided into two groups, namely, experimental group and control group. each group had 32 students who were chosen by the english teacher (purposive sampling technique). the english teacher decided x mipa 1 as the experimental group and x mipa 2 should belong to the control group based on their last examination score. to collect the data, both the experimental group and control group were assigned a writing test. brown (2001) says, “test is a method to measure a person‟s knowledge or ability...” (p. 384); the students were assigned the test twice as pretest and posttest. a pretest was administered before the writer applied the treatment of her study to experimental group students. meanwhile, a posttest was administered after the end of writing experimental teaching. the form of the test applied was similar, descriptive writing test. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 181-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the validity is one of the characteristics of the good study. a test should be valid to know whether there is an improvement or not. the validity is necessary because it has a function to measure whether the test was acceptable to the variables which used in the writer's research study. tuckman (1978) mentions that the validity of a test represents the extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure. in order to know whether the test was appropriate or not, the writer checked the curriculum, syllabus, and students' textbook used by the tenth graders of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara. in this study, curriculum 2013 was used to know whether or not the content of items had a high degree of content validity. after that, the writer asked for two expert judgments and also got feedback from her thesis advisors. the test items were constructed based on the table of test specifications so that the writing test had a high degree of content-related evidence of validity. brown (2001) states, "reliability is consistency and dependability of a test" (p. 386). for the reliability of the test, the inter-rater reliability was used. creswell (2012) mentions that in making observations of behavior, a procedure will be used through some stages or steps. it involves observations made by two or more individuals of an individual‟s or several individuals‟ behavior is called inter-rater reliability. the writer asked two raters to give scores of student's writing test based on the rubric which is provided by the writer. the results of students‟ writing were correlated by using pearson product moment correlation coefficient in spss 22. the test is reliable if the value is at least 0.70 (wallen and fraenkel, 1991). based on the calculation from statistical analyses, it was found that the results reliability of writing test coefficient were 0.729, 0.875, 0.741, 0.732. it means that the data were reliable. after assuring the validity and reliability, the paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test for analyzing the data by using spss version 22. paired sample t-test was used to analyze the data obtained from pretest and posttest of the experimental group. meanwhile, independent sample t-test was used to analyze the data obtained from the control group and the experimental group. after running the paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test analyses, the significance level (in the two-tailed test) was found. findings and discussions score distribution of experimental and control groups the results of students‟ descriptive writing achievement were scored with an interval between 0-100 and distributed based on five categories: very good, good, enough, poor, and failed. the following table shows the results score from both groups (experimental group and control group). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 182-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 1 presents the results of pretest and posttest of the experimental group. the lowest score of pretest was 38 and the highest score was 63. as shown in table 1, out of 32 students, 14 students got a poor category, 12 students got the average category and six students got failed category. there was no student getting a good or very good category. therefore, 43.75% of the total students got a poor category, 18.75% students got failed category and 37.5% of them got an average category. after all experimental group students got the treatment for sixteen meetings by using internet meme picture which was prepared by the writer, they were given a posttest. the highest score of posttest was 90 and the lowest score was 54. thus, most of the students were in the very good and good category. there were 7 students who got a very good category, 15 students got a good category and 10 students got an average category. it means that 68.75% of the total students got the score above 66 (very good and good category) and 31.25% got the score minimum 51 (average category). none of the students got the poor or failed category. in addition, based on the differentiation of pretest and posttest of experimental group students, there was an improvement from students' score. in the control group, the lowest score of pretest was 33 and the highest one was 63. based on table 2, there were 5 students who got failed category, 13 students got the poor category and other 14 students got an average category. meanwhile, there was no student who got the category of good and very good. in addition, 56.25% of the total of students got a score below 50 and only 43.75% of the total of the control group students got pretest score above 51. table 1: the score distribution of the experimental group table 2: the score distribution of the control group score interval category pretest posttest freq percentage freq percentage 81-100 very good 0 0% 0 0% 66-80 good 0 0% 0 0% 51-65 average 14 43.75% 15 46.875% 41-50 poor 13 40.625% 12 37.5% 0-40 failed 5 15.625% 5 15.625% score interval category pretest posttest freq percentage freq percentage 81-100 very good 0 0% 7 21.875% 66-80 good 0 0% 15 46.875% 51-65 average 12 37.5% 10 31.25% 41-50 poor 14 43.75% 0 0% 0-40 failed 6 18.75% 0 0% ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 183-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license although control group students were not exposed to the treatment there was a bit different in their percentage of posttest score. as the explanation from the table above, there still 5 students (15.625%) got the failed category. meanwhile, 46,875% out of the 32 students from the control group or 15 students could reach the average category and 12 students got a poor category. it means that there were 27 students who got the score above 40. the mean score of pretest from the control group was 48.34% and the posttest was 47.97% after the students‟ score of the control group was calculated, the writer could draw the conclusion there was a little improvement in the control group. it could happen because at the same time those students also learned from their teacher although they did not get the treatment they were able to take the knowledge from their teacher explanation. but overall, the improvement was not so significant because there was no improvement in the mean between pretest and posttest of the control group. normality and homogeneity of the data before doing the t-test, the normality of the data was checked by using one-sample kolmogorov-smirnov test. based on the result obtained, the significance values in two-tailed testing from pretest and posttest of the experimental group were .218 and .383 meanwhile from the control group the pretest and posttest reached .409 and .236. it can be concluded that the data were normally distributed since all of the significance values were higher than 0.05. homogeneity test was done in order to find out whether the sample groups from the population had a similar variance. the data are homogenous if the significance value (2-tailed) is higher than 0.05. therefore, the levene's test was applied in order to check the homogeneity of the sample groups (experimental and control group). table 3: test of homogeneity of variances test levene statistic df1 df2 sig. posttest eg-cg 1.766 6 24 .149 pretest eg-cg 4.285 7 21 .004 pre-post eg .976 7 22 .473 pre-post cg .274 6 24 .944 from the table above, the result of the homogeneity test showed that the significance value of pretest and posttest in the experimental group was .473, it means that the data were homogenous. the significance value of pretest and posttest in control group was .944 and the data set was homogenous too. next, the significance value of posttest of both experimental and control groups was .149 it was higher than 0.05, it means that the data were homogenous as well. meanwhile, the significance value of pretest of both ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 184-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in the experimental and control groups was .004 which is lower than 0.05, it means that the data were not homogenous. sometimes, inhomogeneity could happen, azwar (2010) describes, “the assumption of homogeneity of variance can be ignored without a large risk as long as we have the same number (n) in each sample” (p. 4). the result of the paired sample t-test after the result of homogeneity was checked, t-test (paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test) could be applied to continue the data analyses. based on the result of the paired sample t-test in the experimental group, the mean score of the posttest was higher than the pretest. the posttest was 71.63 while the pretest 48.53 with the mean difference was that of 23.074. the standard deviations of pretest and posttest of the experimental group were 7.405 and 10.594. the standard error means were 1.309 and 1.873. since the p-value (sig-two tailed) of the experimental group was less than 0.05 (.000 < 0.05) and t-obtained was higher than t-table (15.491 > 2.040) so the null hypothesis (h01) was rejected and the research hypothesis (h11) was accepted. therefore, there was a significant difference between the pretest and posttest result of the experimental group. meanwhile, the result of paired sample t-test in the control group showed that the mean score of posttest was 47.97 and the mean score of pretest was lower than that of the postest (48.34) with the mean difference was .375. the standard deviations of pretest and posttest of the control group were 7.128 and 7.137. the standard error means were 1.260 and 1.262. since p-value (sig-two tailed) of the control group was higher than 0.05 (.795 > 0.05) and t-obtained was lower than t-table (.262 < 2.040), it could be indicated that there was no significant difference in pretest and posttest of the control group. table 4: paired sample t-test group test mean mean diff std. dev std. error mean t df sig. (2-tailed) exp group pretest 48.53 23.094 7.405 1.309 15.491 31 .000 posttest 71.63 10.594 1.873 cont group pretest 48.34 .375 7.128 1.260 .262 31 .795 posttest 47.97 7.137 1.262 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 185-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the result of independent sample t-test in order to answer the second research question, the writer compared the result of the posttest in the experimental group and control group by using independent sample t-test. the result shows in the following table: table 5: independent sample t-test group me an n std. devia tion st d. err or me an t d f sig. (2-tai led) experi mental 71. 63 3 2 10.594 1.8 73 10. 476 6 2 .000 control 47. 97 3 2 7.137 1.2 62 10. 476 6 2 .000 based on the table, the mean score of posttest of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group (71.63 > 47.97). since the t-obtained (10.476) was higher than the t-table (1.999) and the -value (sig-two tailed) was less than 0.05 (.000 < 0.05) the null hypothesis (h02) was rejected and the research hypothesis (h12) was accepted. it means that there was a significant difference in posttest between the students who were taught (experimental group) by using internet meme picture and those who were not (control group). there are some points to be discussed based on the findings above. first, the writer obtained the results of the pretest and posttest in the experimental group to find out whether or not there was any significant difference before and after the tenth grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara were taught by using internet meme picture. the mean score of pretest and posttest of the experimental group had increased after the students were exposed to the treatmett (internet meme picture) from 48.53 (pretest) to 71.63 (posttest). the experimental group got 16 meetings of the treatment. by doing the treatment, the experimental group students' achievement in descriptive writing had increased. it could be seen from the process of learning and teaching. the students had understood how to write descriptive text well in the third day of the treatment until the last treatment. their score of the pretest to posttest had improved. in the pretest, the students' score was in the category of failed, poor and average only. whereas, the posttest result of their score was in the average, good and very good category. it means that there was an improvement. the improvement itself was significant. in other words, the experimental group performance was better in posttest after they were treated by using internet meme picture. based on the results obtained, there was an improvement only in the experimental group while the control group was not. however, the control group had not an improvement in their score. it could be seen from the pretest and posttest score (48.4 to 47.97). there was a little improvement in some students‟ scores of the control group but the mean score of the posttest was lower than that of ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 186-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the pretest. in other words, the progress of the control group was not as significant as the experimental group. based on the findings above, it could be assumed that the improvement also happened because of the influence from the way the writer taught by using the media applied. internet meme picture was an appropriate media. it is relevant to the statement of wright (1989) that using pictures in teaching and learning process can make students to be motivated and take a part; therefore, the internet meme picture is able to motivate students‟ want to learn english writing. furthermore, travers (in chairena, 2007) states that pictures are more understandable and attractive than words and gives retentive information too. internet meme picture is a kind of picture which was used to help students in generating the ideas and easing the students to find the word adjective from the picture showed. second, during the process of learning, the writer found out some students did not know exactly how to write in english well. especially in writing descriptive text. the students were lack of grammar, vocabulary, and the generic structure of the descriptive text. according to hyland (2014) the generic structure of descriptive text which are: identification and description. based on the result of this study, the writer found out that some of the students were confused to start the paragraph. they were confused for both, to describe the characters of the topic and to write the sentence grammatically. those students were lack of adjectives vocabulary. they couldn't find an appropriate sentence to describe their topic in the part of the description. thus, in the pretest result, most of the students did not focus on one topic. for example, one student chose the topic to describe her mother then she actually should describe her mother only about the characteristics and appearances while that student just described her mother in the past. moreover, in the first and second day of treatment, some students still did not focus on one topic although the media had applied. they did not pay attention fully to the pictures. as a result, what they wrote were out of the picture topic. as the explanation before although in the first and second meeting they still did not understand but on the third day of the treatment they began to understand how to write correctly. the writer always guided the students with some stages. first, the writer gave brainstorming; the writer asked the students to tell some examples of adjectives. they had to categorize some adjectives and made the opposites too. after the students were familiar with the kind of adjectives, the next stage was imagining and generating. before the process of imagining was done, the writer explained the purpose and the generic structure of descriptive text first. in teaching writing, it's very important to explain the purpose, generic structure, and language feature in order to ease ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 187-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license them and to make them more focus on the topic (fajri, inderawati, & mirizon, 2015). then, the writer guided the students to take part in imagining step, those students were guided to observe the picture given in that day. firstly, they were asked to observe the picture based on the appearance side for example: how did it look like? how was it? was it beautiful? was it tall or thin? secondly, the writer guided the students to find the adjectives of the object based on the characteristic side. it could be gotten from the caption of the picture. as usual, each meme picture contains a message which gives a joke or humor sense but in a unique way, it can be a happening tragedy or bullying someone/something. to be communicated to other individuals, a meme must emerge from its storage as memory pattern or memotype and enter its mediotype phase, i.e. assume a physical shape that can be perceived by others. this process may be called „expression' (heylighen & chielens, 2008); therefore, a caption in a meme picture could describe what a subject was. for example, there was a meme picture of a man with a smile and his thumb. the caption was "first day work, very excite". then, after the students were asked to observe the adjective by his appearance, the writer asked them to guess what that man's characteristics were by that caption; the students could find if that man was a diligent man, loyal and high-spirit person. after getting the adjectives from several sides, then all students could generate their descriptive writing well because they did not only do writing but also „play' with their imagines. it is in line with knobel and lankshear (2006) that a concept of meme becomes something creative for example a meme online. memes combine some points like art, creativity, message and humor in one frame in the internet culture (kariko, 2012). so that, because of the experimental group students everyday in that time always given the treatment, at last, they understood how to write well. in each meeting, the students were asked to write a descriptive text with variance topic or picture, therefore they would be more innovative and creative in enhancing their ideas. conclusion and suggestion based on the previous explanation, the writers concluded that teaching the tenth grade students of sma negeri 1 indralaya utara by using internet meme picture was effective to improve descriptive writing achievement. the data showed that the score of the students in the experimental group was significantly improved after treatment. it can bee is seen from the results of statistical analysis. therefore, they know how to write correctly in grammar and meaning and teaching students by using internet meme picture media is a good choice to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 188-190 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.7666 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license improve students' descriptive writing achievement. there are some suggestions to be offered by the writers to the teachers, students, and other further researchers. first of all, due to the weaknesses of the students during the teaching and learning process, the writers would like to give some suggestions to the teacher. it's a must actually for the teacher to find an appropriate and effective strategy or media to make students like writing and to improve students' writing. besides, the teacher also should focus on students' sentence building. most of the students did not even know what the grammaticals are. they also often make an error in identifying kinds of part of speech. thus, the teachers should also give motivation to the students. obviously, most of the students are creative, so it's a challenge for the teacher to enhance students' creativity. it's really important to make students get impressed to what they learn. secondly, to the students. the writers suggest that should keep their confidence in learning english and the students should not be afraid in doing writing or learning english especially in doing writing. because, without confidence, the effort is not worth. besides, the students should also keep doing practice. they should keep on upgrading their vocabulary knowledge and the rule of sentence building. the first step is „understanding the word', after that everything will be easier. practice makes perfect. that‟s a fact. the last part is the suggestion for further researchers in the next day. the writers hope that this study can be a consideration to fulfill students' achievement in learning english. the writers also suggest that the next researchers should optimalize their mind to look for another good and appropriate strategy or media to improve students' writing achievement. in other words, the writers really suggest to the next researchers to apply this media to other english skills (speaking, reading or listening) or the next researchers can also try this way to the same skill but for the different text, such as narrative text, recount text or other text. references azwar, s. 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(1989). visual materials for the language teacher. london: longman. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 191-203 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee assessing students’ understanding towards critical reading and its impacts towards their lives rentauli mariah silalahi received: 25th august 2018; revised: 28th october 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract critical reading was not a new term for university students but the levels to how students understand it and how it could help them develop in many aspects had seldom been studied. therefore, this study tried to explore the levels of students’ understanding towards the meaning of critical reading, what possible problems could be present in the implementation, what activities could be carried out for practicing critical reading, and what benefits critical reading could bring to students’ lives. this study; conducted by survey questionnaire, was focused on it students who had just finished a reading course and were indicated not in favor of reading. from data analysis, it was found that the it students did not know well that critical reading required interpreting and criticizing, did not realize potential problems in implementing critical reading and was not aware that critical reading practices could help improve their academic achievements. keywords: critical reading; levels; understanding; interpreting; criticizing; analyzing abstrak membaca kritis bukanlah sebuah istilah baru untuk mahasiswa tetapi masih jarang dilakukan penelitian terhadap tingkat pemahaman mahasiswa terhadap makna dari membaca kritis dan bagaimana dengan membaca kritis dapat membantu mahasiswa dalam banyak hal. oleh karena itu, penelitian ini dilakukan untuk melihat tingkat pemahaman mahasiswa terhadap makna membaca kritis, terhadap masalah yang mungkin muncul ketika melakukan kegiatan membaca kritis, terhadap contoh kegiatan yang dapat mengembangkan kegiatan membaca kritis, dan terhadap manfaat dari membaca kritis terhadap kehidupan mahasiswa. kajian ini, yang dilakukan dengan metode survei kuesioner, difokuskan kepada mahasiswa it yang baru saja menyelesaikan mata kuliah ‘membaca’ dan yang diidentifikasi kurang berminat dalam membaca. dari kajian yang dilakukan ditemukan bahwa mahasiswa it tersebut tidak mengetahui dengan baik bahwa membaca kritis membutuhkan kemampuan untuk menafsirkan dan mengkritik, tidak menyadari berbagai macam tantangan yang muncul dalam pelaksanaan kegiatan membaca kritis, dan tidak menyadari bahwa dengan membaca kritis mahasiswa dapat meningkatkan prestasi akademik mereka. kata kunci: membaca kritis; tangka; pemahama; menafsirkan; mengkritik; menganalisa how to cite: silalahi , r. m. (2018). assessing students’ understanding towards critical reading and its impacts towards their lives. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 191-203. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 192-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction this study was conducted in one of the information and technology (it) universities in north sumatera, indonesia. students in this university seemed to be very rare to read books or make reading as a habit while as university students they should have undeniably made reading as a mandatory activity because lack of reading might result in low academic performance (ahmadi & bajelani, 2012, spector-cohen et al., 2001). in many occasions, students preferred playing games with their gadgets; mostly with mobile phones to reading books. the phenomenon was even getting worse when students who repeated courses as the result of failing the courses in the regular semester still preferred playing games to reading books even in the test term. there had been many approaches done by the university to tell students stop playing games and start reading and other useful activities, yet the notice seemed to be ignored continuously. that very critical issue pushed the university to make a new regulation which stated that students found playing games on their gadgets during office hours would be fined for a certain amount of money. yet, it was still seemed to be ignored because after the new regulation was announced, there were still some students who were caught playing games on their mobile phones during office hours in their classrooms. the other significant problem was the students’ very limited ability to argue critically towards a text. there were some occasions where students were tested for their ability to do critical reading and to respond critically towards what they had read, but most of the time students seemed to be silent and could not give their genuine critical ideas and comments. it would be an indication that students had not been engaged in reading in their academic life. there were also times when students were not able to write critically towards what they had read and had tendency to simply copy and paste what they read (the author’s exact sentences) to the paper for writing assignments. they were not able to connect the information they read to what they had known before about the text and to what they personally felt about the text. it seemed that being critical readers was still far from the students’ main menu. therefore, this study focused on students in expectation to find their levels of understanding towards critical reading and its impacts towards the students’ lives. this would be the very basic study that would initiate further researches for in-depth analysis towards all possible factors that influenced the levels of students’ understanding. in order to practice critical reading, students should firstly be motivated to have reading as a habit. in reality, as observed in majority schools and universities in north sumatera, indonesia, it was very hard to find ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 193-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students who were fond of reading; students were rarely seen to hold and read a book if not for a test. it was also a rare occasion to see students stayed in the library and read books if not for assignments. therefore, the main problem to deal with is actually making reading as a habit. but implementing critical reading may also become the solution to motivate students to have reading as a habit. overall, it can be quite inseparable and interrelated (zigo, d, moore, 2004). reading critically is mostly needed in university level though it may also be possible to be trained from early years like primary schools because a habit acquired from an early age will most probably remain and become better afterwards. looking at the indonesian 2013 curriculum, it seemed that the critical reading ability had already been trained from primary schools (prihantoro, 2015) but it seemed that students had not been well impacted by the curriculum. reading meant understanding, interpreting, analyzing, and criticizing texts (oliveras, márquez, & sanmartí, 2013, p. 887). however, a reader’s ability to understand, interpret, analyze and criticize a text depended on the reader’s knowledge of the given text and the context and culture embedded in the reader’s knowledge (pitchers & soden, 2000 cited in oliveras et al., 2013). it was very obvious that a reader’s critical reading skill was inseparable from his/her personal experiences and cultures and that the word ‘reading’ itself carried along the task for being ‘critical’ in it. on her paper, lee (2016) boldly claimed that being critical was being able to expose one’s opinion freely but still with ability to connect the personal ideas to some related facts presented in the text. critical reading was not only about reading passages, but it could also be done for visual text. when reading any text either a non-visual or visual text, someone’s personal evaluation towards the text might be influenced by his/her background knowledge related to the text. it would open up a window of differences between one reader to the others because the subjective point of views of one reader was different one to another. the following diagram tried to map the definitions of critical reading as discussed above. diagram 1. what critical reading there were many ways for implementing critical reading in classrooms yet the essential norms should be well maintained. the norms referred to the meaning of the critical reading itself that it should involve ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 194-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license active interaction between the reader and the text in which the reader should apply the critical skills like interpreting and analyzing towards the text. davies (1995 cited in tomitch, 2008) mentioned that critical reading activities should meet these criteria: the texts used were authentic materials (texts that were not purposely written for classroom use; such texts could be found easily in everyday life), the reading task should contextualize reading (the reader should see the text from different perspectives both from the author and reader’s social life), text should be approached with some ready frameworks in the reader’s mind (readers might have some personal perspectives towards the text), readers should be given space to do analytical approach towards the text (to acquire more coherent and accurate meaning of the text), text should be able to make readers interact with the text (readers should bring into the text his/her previous related knowledge and background), and text should be able to make readers interact with classmates (changing and discussing opinions about the text). tomitch (2008) further suggested the use of pre-reading task that motivated students to talk about the text without reading the complete text like reading the title only. the process of a critical reading activity according to tomitch would involve pre-reading activities in which the pre-reading task would enable students to link their background knowledge and experiences to what they read, to freely give opinion and to raise questions. the pre-reading task would certainly be followed by main task which meant that after all assumptions were made, the students were then invited to look at the complete reading text thoroughly. afterwards, the students compared the assumptions they made before reading and their understanding after reading the text. by the end, the students were able to analyze the author’s purposes in writing the text and gave final opinions that could be just the same or probably quite different from the author’s. another author that suggested some comprehensive critical reading activities came from albeckay (2014). the study skills albeckay (2014, p. 177) suggested that could become recommendations to other efl classes were ‘distinguishing facts from opinions, identifying the author’s purpose and tone, making inferences, making evaluation, and analyzing the text.’ meanwhile, albeckay (2014) structured the class meetings into three sessions from teacher giving a complete clear instruction of the theoretical analysis of what was learnt and making the students think aloud then grouping students to help each other for the reading assignments and finally requiring each student to work individually to produce his/her own thought for the remaining reading assignment. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 195-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the other researcher that also had good ideas on how to conduct critical reading activities were duran and yalçintaş (duran & yalçintaş, 2015). some of their recommended activities that might be doable to other efl classes were like questioning the knowledge offered from the text, sorting out the main issues raised in the text, finding out the similarities or differences between the author’s opinions and the reader, analyzing text that included scrutinizing facts and imaginary thoughts, defining the objective and subjective goals of the text, and determining the author’s purpose in writing the text (duran & yalçintaş, 2015). diagram 2. some recommended activities for critical reading practices the three authors’ recommenddations for critical reading activities were motivating and doable, yet there were some that were overlapping from one author to the others. therefore, for this study, the recommendations were then mapped into more logical and efficient activities but still maintained its originality and did not lose its meaning as shown on the following diagram 2. looking more critically on the three authors’ genuine opinions on how to carry on critical reading activities that had been mapped for more clarity and avoiding overlapping, it seemed that the critical reading activities supported the theory of learning as content which meant that ‘learning was seen as the behavior exhibited as a result of the learning’ (jarvis, p, holford, j., griffin, 1999, p. 9). in the end, the students who were trained to do critical reading would have greater possibility to be ‘responsible and autonomous learner’ (ur, 2001, p. 3). students who were responsible and autonomous meant they consciously knew that they should be active and do some efforts to understand their lessons, work with their teachers and peers for more understanding, be responsible for their mistakes and used their free time wisely to learn more and work on their mistakes and weaknesses (ur, 2001). indonesia seemed to still work on how to implement the 2013 curriculum appropriately in all levels of education as there were some limitations and weaknesses like limited access to facilities, teachers’ lack of abilities, and time constraints for completing the syllabuses on time (ilma & pratama, 2015). these might also be possible problems in indonesian reading classrooms in trying to apply the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 196-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license recommended activities for critical reading. actually, these kinds of problems might not be specific to indonesian context but to the whole world because other researchers like duran & yalçintaş (2015) pointed some problems like time limit for classroom meeting, too much activities, and students’ limited ability to argue critically as the main reasons that hindered the accomplishment of the target for critical reading practices in primary schools in turkey. yet, with more time and longer period of practices, those visible problems might be minimalized if not omitted. however, it should be well understood that it was still very difficult to apply the critical reading test into classrooms that targeted students to pass a certain test like toefl and ielts. these two tests could be classified as having closed ended reading test that did not give any chance for the test takers to freely analyze and give comments about the reading texts. but testing was only for specific occasions and life was a different story. in real life, people can argue, repeat, evaluate, analyze, and negotiate meaning, therefore critical reading is more to life skill than to rigid academic tests. the following diagram was provided to clearly point out the possible problems as discussed before: diagram 3. possible problems in critical reading classrooms even though akin (akın, koray, & tavukçu, 2015) did not elaborate the real practices and procedures conducted in the critical reading classrooms, they mentioned some positive impacts resulted from the process. besides getting a higher academic score, the benefits were also about getting students motivated to read for comprehension and encouraged to develop communication with other students which might help them start making meaning from their reading texts because they commented and evaluated the text by giving their personal opinions. lee (2016) emphasized how the critical reading was not only a classroom demand but also a long life lasting requirement. when students got used to reading critically, they would most probably be engaged in whatever they read. being engaged was the desired outcome for students because that would help students be able to cope ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 197-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license with their lives intelligently as an individual and social person and it was in congruence with what (gambrell, 1996) mentioned that engaged readers would tend to be more motivated, become knowledgeable and socially interactive and be strategic in terms of balancing skill and will to read. as a result, a reader would be able to get the meaning of the text and to construct new knowledge that might be useful for his/her life (oliveras et al., 2013). those possible positive impacts on students’ lives were drawn on the following diagram 4. diagram 4. possible benefits from critical reading practices having stated the related references, it is important to note that this study only assesses students’ understanding towards the theory and practices involved in critical reading and the results of this study are expected to give contributions to the teachers to take necessary actions based on the findings. this study research questions are formulated as follows: 1) what is the it students’ levels of understanding towards critical reading?; 2) what is the it students’ levels of understanding towards the kinds of activities that could help implement critical reading?; 3) what is the it students’ levels of understanding towards the possible problems that might occur in doing critical reading in classrooms? and; 4) what is the it students’ levels of understanding towards the benefits of doing critical reading for their lives?. method this study was a descriptive type of research since the study tried to describe the students’ understanding without aiming at changing it although the study eventually tried to ‘provoke changes in the education world’ (coe, r., waring, m., hedges, l. v., arthur, 2017) and the data collected were through survey questionnaire. the focus of the research was a group of it students, aged between nineteen to twenty one years old, who had just completed a course in reading. there were initially a total of 60 students who had finished the reading course and all were invited to participate in the questionnaire, yet only 46 students returned the questionnaire within the 2 weeks given time. although the student participants were heterogeneous; male and female, the study did not facilitate findings based ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 198-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license on gender in order to fit into the research purposes. the tool used for data collection was survey questionnaire which was designed using a five point likert scale with designations from strongly agree to strongly disagree. the respondents were asked to rate the items to what they believed to be true and their perspectives would be well expressed by the degree of their agreement. by using the likert scale survey questionnaire, the author would be able to define the tendency of the students’ perspectives either towards negative or positive impressions because the greater the score, the more positive the attitude and vice versa (wiersma, 1969). the students’ responses were considered positive only when they chose strongly agree to agree. data collection was conducted using technology because the time and place constraints in conducting this study. although gorard (2006) claimed that this method of collecting data was not actually a very good method of collecting data for gathering opinions, attitudes and explanations because it closed the possibility to collect ‘in-depth personal responses’ (burton, d., bartlett, 2009), the constraints made it the only possible way. the use of technology in this term meant the ‘technology based’ (gorard, 2006) method in which the questionnaire was sent by ‘computer-delivered’ tool (coe, r., waring, m., hedges, l. v., arthur, 2017); the google tool for survey questionnaire. this data collection method which promised anonymity was the most effective and efficient way compared to other research methods and through this method, the questions could be written for specific purposes (opie, 2004 cited in burton, d., bartlett, 2009). there were four sections in the questionnaire that invited students to give their opinions about critical reading. the first section was about students’ understanding about the meaning of critical reading, and the second section was about students’ perspectives on what activities could contribute to implementing critical reading. move on to the third section, it required students to give opinions on what possible problems might occur in the process of implementing critical reading, and finally the fourth section was trying to know the students’ perspectives on the positive impacts of conducting critical reading activities. all items presented on the questionnaire had been modified and molded by taking into considerations all literatures quoted for this study. findings and discussion the survey questionnaire was finally collected from all respondents in two weeks after the request email consisting information about the study, consent form and questionnaire was sent to all respondents. after that, the data collected were analyzed to see the percentages of students’ agreement to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 199-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license each item and category. the analysis involved ‘describing and explaining what the results showed in relation to the respective research questions’ (burton, d., bartlett, 2009, p. 80) although it was only by seeing the numerical numbers. the analysis was carried out following the questions already constructed in the beginning of this study as it would directly answer the research questions appropriately and the percentages shown on the table were only for the ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ columns because it would better express the tendency for positive agreement. table 1. students’ levels of agreement towards the meaning of critical reading critical reading means strongly agree agree neither agree or disagree disagree strongly disagree understanding text; 5 (10.9%) 25 (54.4%) 15 1 0 interpreting text; 2 (4.3%) 22 (47.8%) 23 0 0 analyzing text; 9 (19.6%) 26 (56.5%) 12 0 0 criticizing text; 2 (4.4%) 20 (43.5%) 24 1 0 table 2. students’ levels of agreement towards activities that could help improve critical reading activities that contributed to implementing critical reading strongly agree agree neither agree or disagree disagree strongly disagree do pre-reading activities before reading the complete text (like discussing the title of the reading passage before reading the complete text); 3 (6.5%) 20 (43.5%) 23 0 0 make use of the authentic materials like newspaper, magazine, etc; 2 (4.3%) 29 (63%) 14 1 0 sort out the issues raised in the text; 3 (6.5%) 25 (54.4%) 18 0 0 distinguish facts from opinions found in the text; 3 (6.5%) 26 (56.5%) 17 0 0 question the knowledge offered from the text; 3 (6.5%) 25 (54.4%) 19 1 0 identify the author’s purpose and tone; 2 (4.3%) 30 (65.2%) 15 1 0 find out the similarities and differences between the author’s opinion and my opinion; 3 (6.5%) 21 (45.7%) 20 2 0 work in groups to enable students to have discussion and exchange ideas; 11 23.9%) 24 (52.1%) 11 0 0 make inferences which means to take a conclusion on the basis of evidence and reasoning; 2 (4.3%) 27 (58.7%) 16 1 0 table 3. students’ levels of agreement towards problems that might be encountered while practicing critical reading activities possible problems encountered when implementing critical reading strongly agree agree neither agree or disagree disagree strongly disagree limited time; 4 (8.7%) 22 (47.8%) 19 1 0 too much activities; 1 (2.2%) 15 (36.6%) 23 7 0 lack critical ability; 3 (6.5%) 11 (23.9%) 25 6 1 target to pass a test; 1 (2.2%) 18 (39.1%) 22 5 1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 200-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 4. students’ levels of agreement towards the positive impacts of critical reading possible impacts of conducting critical reading activities strongly agree agree neither agree or disagree disagree strongly disagree higher academic score; 3 (6.5%) 21 (52.2%) 21 1 0 motivated to build reading habit; 5 (10.9%) 23 (60.9%) 17 1 0 improved peer communication; 3 (6.5%) 32 (76%) 11 0 0 ability to make meaning from text; 4 (8.7%) 27 (67.4%) 15 0 0 more knowledgeable; 7 (15.2%) 31 (82.6%) 9 0 0 ability to cope with life intelligently; 3 (6.5%) 26 (63%) 17 0 0 improved critical thinking skill; 10 (21.7%) 21 (67.4%) 16 0 0 students’ understanding about the meaning of critical reading it was obviously shown from table 1. the data that not all students understood the meaning of critical reading well (oliveras, márquez, & sanmartí, 2013, p. 887) because half of the students did not know that reading critically would involve interpreting and criticizing text. meanwhile, it was a good indication that most students at least knew that reading critically meant analyzing test as 76% of the students gave agreement to that statement. the significant number of students giving a neutral answer indicated that they were actually not realizing and probably never gave a thought of the importance of critical reading in their reading practices. students’ understanding on what activities can contribute to implementing critical reading these findings interestingly shown from table 2, that more than half of the students understood that those activities listed were good examples that could be done in order to evoke their critical thinking skill (tomitch, 2008) as sixty to seventy six percent of the students agreed to seven kinds of activities mentioned. there were possibilities that students had done such activities. however, half of the students did not understand that pre-reading tasks and finding out differences or similarities between readers and author’s views towards a text were good examples of activities to provoke critical reading. students’ understanding on possible problems that might be encountered in doing critical reading in classrooms these findings clearly indicated shown from table 3, that there was a big number of students who did not realize the problems that could occur while implementing critical reading in classrooms (ilma & pratama, 2015, duran & yalçintaş, 2015) as the number of students who disagreed were more compared to the previous findings and there were two students who strongly disagreed to the possible troubles that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 201-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license might happen in carrying out critical reading activities. the number of students who agreed to the given statements was only thirty to fifty six percent and that was not a reliable number for a good level of understanding. again, there was a possibility that students had limited experiences on practicing critical reading. students’ perspectives on the positive impacts of conducting critical reading activities these findings interestingly indicated shown from table 4, that more students were aware of the benefits they might get if they practiced reading critically (lee, 2016, akın et al., 2015). seventy six to eighty two percent of the students knew that critical reading practices would help them improve communication among peer students and make them more knowledgeable while sixty to sixty seven percent of the students agreed that critical reading could help them make reading as a habit, make meaning from text, improve critical reading skill, and improve ability to cope with life intelligently. on the other hand, it was also an interesting finding to know that half of the students did not understand that critical reading could help them achieve higher on academic performances. conclusion and suggestion the students’ levels of understanding towards critical reading was very poor because they were not aware of the importance of criticizing and interpreting when they practiced critical reading. it was still very likely that students would take for granted whatever they read. the other weaknesses of the students were their very limited understanding towards possible problems that might happen while doing critical reading activities and their unawareness that by doing critical reading could help improve their academic achievements. looking at the levels of students’ understanding towards critical reading, it was quite possible that they were still unable to be responsible learners and have self-encouragement to be autonomous learners (ur, 2001) which should have given precious impacts on their academic achievement. there could be many causes contributed to the students’ lack of understanding about critical reading and the benefits of practicing critical reading to their lives; academically or non-academically. therefore it would be a good idea to do a further research to find out what exactly happened in the course delivery such as whether students were clearly taught and trained to do critical reading, whether they were encouraged to read as often as possible, whether the students might refuse to do critical reading for various reasons like having no intrinsic and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 202-203 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.9532 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license extrinsic motivation (gardner, 1985) whether they had too much demand from other major courses in the university that made them give the least priority to learn english courses as they were not major courses, whether the teachers got difficulty understanding critical reading itself, and whether the teachers had different purposes in delivering the course that had do to with the course curriculum. references akın, f., koray, ö., & tavukçu, k. (2015). how effective is critical reading in the understanding of scientific texts? procedia social and behavioral sciences, 174, 2444–2451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro. 2015.01.915 albeckay, e. m. (2014). developing reading skills through critical reading programme amongst undergraduate efl students in libya. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 123, 175–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro. 2014.01.1412 burton, d., bartlett, s. (2009). key issues for education researchers. london: sage publications ltd. coe, r., waring, m., hedges, l. v., arthur, j. (2017). research methods & methodologies in education. london: sage publications ltd. duran, e., & yalçintaş, e. (2015). review of the critical reading education in the primary schools1. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 174, 1560–1566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro. 2015.01.788 gambrell, li. b. (1996). creating classroom cultures that foster reading motivation. the reading teacher, 50(1), 14–25. gardner, r. c. (1985). social psychology and second language learning: the role of attitudes and motivation. london: edward arnold. gorard, s. (2006). quantitative methods in educational research: the role of numbers made easy. london: mpg books ltd. ilma, z., & pratama, r. k. (2015). transformation in indonesian language curriculum: pros and cons between ktsp 2006 and curriculum 2013 in indonesia. proceedings of internationl conference on trends in economics. humanities and management, 146–148. jarvis, p, holford, j., griffin, c. (1999). the theory and practice of learning. london: kogan page limited. lee, c. 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(2001). designing eap reading courses at the university level. english for specific purposes, 20(4), 367–386. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-49 06(00)00019-3 tomitch, l. m. b. (2008). designing reading tasks to foster critical thinking. ilha do desterro a journal of english language, literatures in english and cultural studies, (38), 83–90. ur, p. (2001). learner autonomy. cambridge: cambridge university press. wiersma, w. (1969). research methods in education: an introduction. toronto: allyn and bacon, inc. zigo, d, moore, m. t. (2004). science fiction: serious reading, critical reading. english journal, 94(2), 85–90. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018, 62-80 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee using the think-pair-share strategy to increase students’ active involvement and to improve their speaking ability muhammad lukman syafii received: 15th march 2018; revised: 25th may 2018; accepted: 28th june 2018 abstract this study was designed to increase students‘ active involvement and to improve their speaking ability using think-pair-share strategy at muhammadiyah university of ponorogo. the study was collaborative action research. this study was conducted in one cycle consisting of five meetings using the following procedures: planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. the data of the study were collected through the observation checklists, field notes, and questionnaire. the subjects were 26-second semester students of class a. the increase could be seen from the number of students who were categorized as actively involved from only 7 students (29%) in the preliminary study to 20 students (78%) of 26 at the end of the study. the improvement of students‘ speaking ability could be seen from the increasing number of students whose average score was 3, from 7 students (29%) of 24 students in the preliminary test to 17 students (65%) of 26 students in the final test. therefore, this strategy is appropriate for the students to increase their active involvement and improve the speaking ability. key words: think-pair-share, active involvement; speaking ability abstrak penelitian ini dirancang untuk meningkatkan keaktifan dan kemampuan berbicara mahasiswa dengan menggunakan berfikir-berpasangan-berbagi di universitas muhammadiyah ponorogo. penelitian ini merupakan penelitian tindakan kelas yang bersifat kolaboratif. penelitian ini dilakukan dalam satu siklus yang terdiri dari lima pertemuan dengan menggunakan prosedur sebagai berikut: perencanaan, pelaksanaan, pengamatan dan penghayatan. pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan menggunakan lembar observasi, catatan lapangan, dan kuesioner. subjek penelitian ini adalah 26 mahasiswa semester 2 kelas a. peningkatan keterlibatan aktif mahasiswa dapat dilihat dari meningkatnya jumlah mahasiswa yang termasuk dalam kategori aktif yang pada saat penelitian awal hanya 7 mahasiswa (29%) menjadi 20 mahasiswa (78%) dari 26 mahasiswa yang masuk pada saat hari observasi pertemuan terakhir. peningkatan kemampuan berbicara mahasiswa dapat dilihat dari meningkatnya jumlah mahasiswa yang memiliki nilai rata-rata 3, dari 7 orang menjadi 17 orang. maka dari itu, strategi ini sesuai bagi mahasiswa untuk meningkatkan keterlibatan aktif dan memperbaiki kemampuan berbicara bahasa inggris mereka. kata kunci: berfikir-berpasangan-berbagi, keterlibatan aktif, kemampuan berbicara how to cite: syafii., m. l. (2018). using the think-pair-share strategy to increase students‘ active involvement and to improve their speaking ability. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(1), 61-80. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 62-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction nowadays, english has been increasingly becoming the medium of communication in every aspect of life, particularly in education domain. as a result, many people learn english as the endeavor to face the global demand. the paramount purpose for them in learning it is to be able to speak. they consider that speaking is the most crucial language skill among other skills. according to ur (1996), speaking seems intuitively the most important: people who know a language are referred to as speakers of that language, and many if not most, foreign language learners are primarily interested in learning to speak. in indonesia, english is a foreign language (widiati & cahyono, 2006). for indonesian people, english is learned after they mastered their first language. gebhard (1998) states that english as a foreign language means that english is studied by people who live in places where english is not their first language; english is only taught as a school subject. for this position, many indonesian people, including students, find several problems in mastering it. they consider that english is as quite difficult to learn and even they think that it is the most difficult one to master. the appropriate learning strategies, particularly in language learning, will result in students ‗success in learning (awang et al., 2013). it means deciding which learning strategy that suits best for students is essential. however, many english teachers, particularly efl teachers, do not realize this (meyer, 2012). for instance, traditional grammar-translation teaching method and textbook oriented teaching practice are still very popular to be used in language classroom for several years (exley, 2005; faridi, 2010; meyer, 2012). teachers will mostly rely only on students ‗textbook or translate the grammar into l1 rather than connecting it with context related with the students ‗surrounding. this condition will eventually cause less students involved in the learning process (meyer, 2012) which will eventually result the learning process become ineffective because they do not learn language by experiencing them (banegas, 2011). moreover, the recent learning style that is used in typical language classrooms often focus to make students able to pass the exams, without considering whether they are able to use the language or not (exley, 2005; meyer, 2012; hosni, 2014). also, most materials given rarely require the students to speak, or if it does, it fails to keep the interaction going in the class, hence, the students tend to keep quiet and shy in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 63-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the class (meyer, 2012; hosni, 2014). teachers mostly focus on elements or materials tested in examinations, such as reading, grammar, and vocabulary, which make students environment to speak limited (meyer, 2012). environment also plays an important role for students to learn a language, including english (febriyanti, 2007; meyer, 2012; hosni, 2014). for instance, learning english can be easier for those who live in english speaking countries, or at least in countries where english is used as a second language. however, learning english can be challenging if the learners are dealing with the fact that english is considered as a foreign language, where people are seldom to use the language for communication, such as in indonesia (febriyanti, 2007). it means the opportunity that students get to communicate using english is very limited. this condition is even worsened by teachers who are most likely to use l1 for class management (hosni, 2014). the use of l1 to teach foreign language will only devalue the foreign language as a mean of communication, which results in demotivating students to use english (febriyanti, 2007; hosni, 2014). additionally, dealing with the fact that most schools in indonesia have a lot of students in one classroom may also demotivate students to speak using english. as a result, students will indeed tend to speak using their mother tongue as they do not see any value to speak using the foreign language (hosni, 2014). the difficulties in mastering english as a foreign language may be triggered by various factors. those could be from the english language itself, or from the learners themselves, or possibly from the learning process itself. obviously, the role of the teacher also plays a crucial effect (nunan, 1999). for indonesian people, english is a complex language for it contains various patterns, the unique spelling, and pronunciation. it is said that english is badly spelled (literaryresearch, 2001). focusing on the language learners, the characteristics of the learners‘ personality give beneficial help in gaining the success of learning english. lightbown and spada (1999) state that other factors, known as learners‘ personality characteristics, such as intelligence, aptitude, motivation, and attitudes are generally considered to be relevant to language learning. the learners with introvert character and having low selfconfidence probably feel great difficulty in practicing their english, while the extrovert ones will practice their english confidently. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 64-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in gaining the successful learning process, the environment where the learners learn english probably plays a significant role. dulay, et al. (1982) suggests that exposing the students to the formal environment would just focus on the conscious acquisition of rules and forms. it may restrict them to be able to communicate naturally and effectively. while exposing them to the natural environment where the focus of the learning is on the content of communication possibly appears to enhance the development of communication skills. the objective is to make the students able to communicate in english fluently and accurately through various activities, contexts, and situations at muhammadiyah university of ponorogo. since their first semester, the students are encouraged to speak english through various teaching and learning activities. based on the data of the preliminary study derived from the interview with the teacher and students, classroom observation and questionnaires, it was found that there are several problems they encounter in their speaking class so that the result is not satisfactory yet because of some reasons. many students still have problems in expressing their verbal language that their speaking ability was poor. based on the data from their speaking score in the preliminary test, it was found that out of the 24 students joining the test, only 7 students (29%) achieved average score 3 which is considered good. the score used range from 1 to 5. one of the problems that seem to restrain their speaking is lack of selfconfidence. based on the result of the questionnaire, it was found that the majority of the students still feel reluctant, nervous and shy to speak, especially when they are asked to speak in front of their friends knowing that they are heterogeneous—coming from different characters, the background of education and families. it seems that they seldom cooperate with one another. this condition also affects their active involvement during their speaking class. very little of them are willing to ask for clarification to their teacher, respond to or answer the teacher‘s instruction and question, do the task given by having an active discussion with their peer/group, help or ask for help from each other and answer their friends‘ question actively. it was found that out of 26 students, there were only 7 students (27%) who were categorized as active students. think-pair-share (shortened as tps) strategy is one of the cooperative learning methods that encourage http://www.teachervision.fen.com/pro-dev/cooperative-learning/48531.html http://www.teachervision.fen.com/pro-dev/cooperative-learning/48531.html ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 65-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license individual participation. the strategy is designed to influence the students‘ interaction style. it was first proposed by frank lyman and his associates in maryland university in 1981 (ledlow, 2001). think-pair-share is as an effective way to make various atmospheres in the classroom discussion. its assumption is that all classroom discussions need management to control the whole class and the procedure used is enabling to give the students more opportunities to think, to respond and to help each other (trianto, 2007). its purposes include providing ‗think time‘ to increase the quality of students‘ responses. they become actively involved in thinking about the concepts presented in the lesson, they become more critical and willing to participate since they do not feel the peer pressure involved in responding in front of the whole class. this tps consists of three phases. the first phase is thinking phase. in this phase, the teacher poses one openended question or challenging problem related to the lesson. then, the students are asked to use several minutes to think of the possible answer or solution individually. the ‗think time‘ incorporates the important concept of ‗wait time‘. it allows all students to develop answers. this is important because this ‗thinking time‘ gives students a chance to start to formulate answers by retrieving information from long-term memory. it becomes a powerful factor in improving their responses to questions or problems. by having this phase, the students are triggered to develop their thinking skill or critical thinking. raghunathan (2001) states that thinking is as the highest activity of a man. the benefits of developing thinking ability are manifold. by developing one‘s thinking skill; one can make achievements, can become successful, can shine in social life, and can attain emotional, social and economic maturity. the second phase is pairing phase. this phase is as the following actions after the thinking activity. in this phase, the students are asked to be in pair with a cooperative group member or neighbor sitting nearby to discuss what they have thought. this is important because students start to construct their knowledge in these discussions and also to find out what they do and do not know. ibe (2009) states that this activity could force the students to use their metacognition to examine their thinking, analyze their position, and explain their point of view to their classmate. in this paired interaction, each of the students reveals his/her personal answer or solution to be united with his/her pair. normally, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 66-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license time allotment is about four or five minutes to do this phase. the merit of this phase is to provide the opportunity to the students to help each other with the cooperation in solving the problem given that eventually, their social quotient improves. in addition, tsui (in nunan 1999) states that this phase also can be a solution to overcome reluctant students since they have the opportunity to rehearse their responses in small groups or pairs before being asked to speak up in front of the whole class. the third phase is sharing phase. in this phase, the teacher solicits the pair to share the answer or the solution to the whole class. the other pairs may give a comment or additional input to others. ibe (2009) said that by asking them to share the information with the entire class, students would be able to evaluate themselves while gathering information from other classmates. the teacher would also have the opportunity to evaluate the students‘ understanding based on the content of the discussions. in this case, the students are much more willing to respond after they have had a chance to discuss their ideas with a classmate because if the answer is wrong, the embarrassment is shared. also, the responses received are often more intellectually concise since students have had a chance to reflect on their ideas. eventually, this can enhance the students‘ confidence to speak publicly (arends, 1997). there are several studies focusing on the implementation of learning method, particularly on think-pairshare strategy. wafi (2011) made the study on using the think-pair-share strategy to increase students’ active involvement and to improve students’ speaking ability at islamic university of malang. the result shows that students, who have the opportunity to work cooperatively, learn faster and more efficiently. they also have greater retention and feel more positive towards the learning experience. besides, they become more active in involving themselves in the teaching and learning activities (new horizon, 2005). pattiiha (2006) made a study on improving the implementation of the learning of beginning reading among the second-year students at sdn sumbersari by using the think-pairshare strategy. based on her findings, she concluded that it could be applied effectively to improve the implementation of the beginning reading at the planning, implementation, and evaluation stage. in addition, buharsa (2008) also made a study on improving the reading ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 67-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license comprehension of the second-year students of mtsn sanggau through the think-pair-share strategy. based on her findings, her students‘ reading comprehension gradually improved. the use of think-pair-share increasingly helps and motivates the students to gain a better understanding of the text. another study conducted by juhari (2009) on improving the reading comprehension skills of the eleventh graders of ma darul lughah wal karomah kraksan probolinggo through the think-pair-share strategy. based on the result of his study, it was found that his students‘ average score in reading improved and their active participation was increased. the number of students who shared, asked and answered questions were increased. this occurred since the strategy encouraged students to share ideas, asking questions as well as answering questions between pairs. with any previous studies on improving speaking ability using the think-pair-share strategy, this study would like to implement this strategy at muhammadiyah university of ponorogo as a solution for the problem faced by students in their speaking class. he believed that the strategy will be more powerful when it is implemented in such class since, in the pairing and sharing session, the students will automatically need oral language to do the sessions. they will automatically use several utterances related to asking and giving an opinion, saying agreement and disagreement, giving objection and addition, and the like. also, in elaborating their ideas, they will automatically improve their speaking ability. method the design of this research was the classroom action research. it took two cycles each of which has four meetings. this design dealt with coping with the problems found in the classroom. the research step was started from the problem found by the teacher in his/her classroom. latief (2009) states that classroom action research for english learning is aimed at developing a certain instructional strategy to solve practical instructional problems in english classroom. this research is designed to apply the think-pair-share strategy to solve the problem in speaking class. in conducting this action research, the researcher collaborates with one collaborator. the collaborator is the lecturer who teaches in the speaking class. based on the agreement, the researcher acted as a teacher implementing the think-pair-share strategy and the collaborator acted as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 68-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the observer. there are 26 participants in conducting this research. the instrument used in this study before conducting the research, the researcher prepared the research instruments such as observation checklists, field notes, questionnaires, and speaking test. those research instruments were used to observe and record the data during the process of implementing the think-pair-share strategy. the observation checklists there were two kinds of observation checklists used in this research. the first was used to observe the students‘ response toward the teacher‘s instruction in each meeting. this observation checklist was consisted of five items completed with columns to put a check and write comments. the observer, through her observation, put a check on each item and wrote comments as well. the second observation checklist was used to observe the students‘ involvement during the teaching and learning activities in each meeting. there were 5 indicators provided in the observation checklist; they were (1) asking questions for clarification frequently, (2) responding to and or answering the teacher‘s instruction and questions, (3) doing the task by having active discussion with his/her peer or group, (4) helping and or asking for help from each other, and (5) answering their friend‘s question actively. the observer, through her observation, put a check (√) on each indicator. from those indicators, the observer then categorized the students into four categories: the first category was very active (va); it was for the students who met all of the five indicators. the second was active (a); it was for students who met four of the indicators. the third was active enough (ae); it was for the students who met two or three indicators, and the fourth category was not active (na); it was for students who met one or none of the indicator. then to achieve the criteria of success of the students‘ active involvement was gained from the result of the percentage of very active added by the percentage of active (va + a). field notes field notes were used to observe everything happened, which was not covered in the observation checklist, during the teaching and learning process in each meeting. the observer made notes on the problems encountered to both the teacher and students. it could be notes on students‘ difficulties during the lesson such as ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 69-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license vocabulary, grammar and the like. the field note was also completed with observer‘s comment that the observer might write any comment related to the teaching and learning activities in each meeting. the questionnaires the questionnaires were used to gain the data from the students‘ personal judgment on the implementation of the strategy and its benefits they experienced. it consisted of 15 questions which were divided into two domains; question numbers 1 to 9 related to students‘ responses to the use of the think-pair-share strategy and the benefits in improving their speaking ability while question numbers 10 to 15 related to students‘ involvement toward the teaching and learning activities using the strategy. in dealing with the questionnaire, the researcher gave one questionnaire to each student and asked them to put a cross (x) on the column ―yes‖ or ―no‖. in addition, the questionnaire was completed with empty blank that the students might write down their opinion and comment or suggestion about the strategy. speaking test the formula of computation used was the whole scores the students achieved in each element were added and then divided into 4 and its result became the final score. and the criterion of success used in this research was if 60% of students achieved average score 3 which is described as good. the collaborator, who was equipped with those research instruments, observed the researcher and students in the teaching and learning activities during the implementation of the strategy. the design of action research used in this study was a cyclical process adapted from the model proposed by kemmis and mctaggart (cited in koshy 2007). it consists of four main steps: planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting the action (see figure 1). report unsuccessful ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 70-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1. adapted from the model proposed by kemmis and mctaggart (cited in koshy 2007: 4) findings and discussion findings the data analysis the number of participants, students‘ active involvement the data attained from the observation checklist for students‘ involvement was different from each meeting. there were 26 participants in this study. in the first meeting, there were only 2 of 26 students (2%) who were considered as very active students. it was indicated by their accomplishment in reaching all the five indicators. there were 4 students (16%) who were considered as active since they accomplished four of the five indicators there were 8 students (31%) being considered as active enough and there were 12 students (47%) who were not active. for this meeting, the students‘ involvement seemingly did not show any significance. reflecting analyzing the data collected, determining whether the action made has been successful or not. the data was analyzed qualitatively observing observing and monitoring the implementation of think-pair-share strategy and collecting the data needed. the collaborator conducted the observation. planning preparing the procedure of think-pair-share strategy, designing lesson plans, preparing research instruments (observation checklists, field notes, and questionnaire), training the collaborator on how to use the research instruments, and deciding the criteria of success. implementing conducting the planned procedure of the think-pair-share strategy; the researcher conducted the teaching based on the planning. it was conducted in five meetings. successful stop report unsuccessful revised plan preliminary study it was conducted to identify the problems in the speaking class and to gain the factual data. it was conducted three times by having interviews with the kaprodi and teachers, having classroom observation and interviewing students, giving questionnaire to the students, and having the preliminary test. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 71-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in the second meeting, the students‘ involvement showed better compared to the first meeting. based on the data from the observation checklist, it was found that 6 out of 26 students (24%) were considered as very active. there were also 6 students (24%) who were considered as active, 6 students (24%) were included in active enough and 8 students (31%) were considered as not active. for this meeting, there were only 48% of the students who were considered in the active involvement as stated in the criteria of success which was 75%. so, the students‘ active involvement did not meet the criteria for success. however, it showed significantly better compared to the result of the first meeting. in the third meeting, after learning from the previous meetings, the researcher conducted his teaching activities more meticulous by giving them more motivation, attention, and control. as the result, the students‘ involvement showed better than the previous ones. in this meeting, there were 2 students absent due to a health problem. so, there were 24 students joined in the classroom activities. based on the data gained from the observation checklist for students‘ involvement, it was found that there were 7 of them (30%) who were included as very active students, 9 of them (38%) were considered as active, 5 of them (21%) were active enough and 3 of them (13%) were considered as not active students. from the data, the active involvement achieved 68%. in this meeting, the result of students‘ involvement still did not meet the criteria for success. it needed 7% more to reach 75% which was stated as the criteria for success. in the fourth meeting, of the 26 students, all of them took part in the teaching and learning activities. based on the data gained from observation checklist for students‘ involvement, there were 8 students 31%) who accomplished the five indicators that being considered as very active students. 12 students (47%) were considered as active, 3 students (11%) were active enough and 3 of them (11%) were not active. from the data, it was found that the number of students who were considered as active in involving themselves in the teaching and learning activities achieved the criteria for success. it was proven by the percentage of very active students (31%) added by the percentage of active students (47%) achieved 78% which was more 3% than the percentage of criteria of success which was 75%. another data was based on the observation checklist for students‘ responses and field notes. from the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 72-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license data, it was found that the teacher was good at engaging the students in the activity that the students showed their enthusiasm. the thinking time was working perfectly and most of the students were actively involved in the discussion by using english. very few of them were using bahasa indonesia. the sharing session was also done well since each student got the opportunity to talk and express their ideas. the domination of the strong students was also less. it is shown in table 1. the findings above were also supported by the result of questionnaires. the questionnaire used consisted of 15 questions with two optional answers: ―yes‖ and ―no‖. those 15 questions were divided into two focuses: questions number 1 to 9 relates to students‘ feeling towards the strategy used and their speaking progress. the questions number 10 to 15 relates to students‘ involvement in the teaching and learning activities using think-pair-share strategy. the questionnaire was distributed to the students after accomplishing the fourth meeting. all of the 26 students took part in filling the questionnaires given. based on the data from the questionnaire, for the first question was about students‘ feeling toward the strategy having been used; it was found that 26 students (100%) gave positive response toward the use of the thinkpair-share strategy. they felt happy with the use of strategy in their speaking class. the second question was about their motivation to speak english during the use of the strategy. of the 26 students, all of them (100%) felt motivated to speak english. the third question was about their confidence—whether their confidence increase or not through the use of the strategy. from 26 students, there were 23 students (89%) felt more confident to speak english and 3 of them (11%) felt their confidence was not increasing. table 1. students‘ involvement during the teaching and learning process in cycle one where: va stands for very active a stands for active ae stands for active enough na stands for not activ meeting first meeting second meeting third meeting fourth meeting categories va a ae na va a ae na va a ae na va a ae na students 2 4 8 12 6 6 6 8 7 9 5 3 8 12 3 3 % 8 16 31 47 24 24 24 31 30 38 21 13 31 47 11 11 total percentage of va+a 24% (6 students) 48% (12 students) 68% (16 students) 78% (20 students) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 73-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the next question was about the benefit of thinking time in helping the students to be able to speak english. there were 25 students (96%) got helped by the giving of thinking time and 1 of them (4%) did not experience the benefit of the giving of thinking time. the fifth question was about the benefit of pairing session in helping the students to find the answer or the solution of the question or the problem is given. of the 26 students, there were 25 of them (96%) found that the pairing session very helpful for them to find the possible answer of the problem given and there was only 1 student (4%) did not get the help from the pairing session. the sixth question was about the giving time to work in a pair in helping the students to be ready and more confident in revealing their ideas. of the 26 students, all of them (100%) found that working in the pair was really helpful to make them ready and more confident to reveal their ideas. the next question was about the benefits of sharing session. 23 students (89%) agreed that by giving time to share, they felt easier to reveal their ideas and 3 of them (11%) found that they did not get the benefit of the giving time to share. the next question was about whether the students still feel nervous or not when they present or share their idea with the whole class. of the 26 students, it was found that 18 of them (70%) still felt nervous when they were asked to present or share their ideas to the whole class and 8 of them (30%) found that nervousness was no a problem from them. the ninth question was about their english progress. 23 students (89% of them) confessed that their english got more progress and the rest 3 (11%) found their english did get any progress. the question number 10 was about the students‘ attitude toward their teacher about questioning for clarification. there were 9 students (35%) answered that they often ask a question for clarification to their teacher while 17 students (65%) answered that they seldom ask a question for clarification to their teacher. the next question was about whether the students respond to their teacher‘s instruction and questions; from 26 students, 24 of them (93%) gave response and or answer to their teacher‘s instruction and questions, while 2 of them (7%) did not give response or answer to their teacher‘s instruction or question. the question number 12 was about whether the students did the task given by having an active discussion with their peer/group. there were 25 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 74-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license students (96%) confessed that they had an active discussion with their peer/group when they were given task and only 1 of them (4%) did not have active discussion towards the task given. the 13th question was about whether they helped or asked for help from one another. all of them (100%) helped or asked for help from one another. the next question was about whether the students answer their friends‘ question actively. from their answer, it was found that 18 of them (70%) gave an answer to their friends‘ question actively and the rest 8 (30%) did not answer their friends‘ question actively. and the last question was about a general question whether the students felt more motivated and active in involving themselves in the learning activity in the classroom. from 26 students, all of them (100%) confessed that they felt more motivated and active in involving themselves in the learning activity in the classroom. the students’ speaking scores in having this on-going assessment, the collaborator assessed the students by focusing on some students in each meeting. first of all, the assessment was focused on the lower students— referring to their speaking score attained in the preliminary test which achieved under average 3. it was conducted so because it was quite difficult to assess them and more time was also needed. in assessing them, the collaborator observed the students who were focused on when they were speaking during the pairing session and obviously when they were in sharing session. in the next meetings, the collaborator gave the lists to the researcher about the students to be focused on. then, the researcher focused on the listed students by pointing them to be representative of the group or the whole class to present or share their ideas with the whole class during the sharing session. in the last meeting, both the researcher and collaborator really focused on the very low students in they endeavor to gain the fix speaking score. there were 8 students (students number 6, 7, 15, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26) in that meeting; the researcher becoming the teacher gave the each listed students with questions. it was like an interview but conducted towards the whole class. based on the data from the students‘ final speaking test, of the 26 students, it was found that there were 17 of them (65%) achieved average score 3 and there were 9 students (35%) achieved underscore 3. comparing to the students‘ speaking score attained in their preliminary test which there were ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 75-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license only 7 students (29%) who achieved average score 3 and there were 17 students (71%/ who achieved score under than 3, the students‘ speaking ability improved that was indicated by their final score. in their preliminary test, the students who achieved average score 3 were only 29% meanwhile there were 65% of students who achieved average score 3. in terms of categorizing the students‘ speaking ability; there were five categories for their speaking ability. the first category was an excellent speaking ability which the grade scores 5. of the 26 students, there were any students whose speaking ability was categorized as excellent since their score did not achieve 5. the next category was very good which grade scores vary from 4 to 4.9. for this category, there were 5 students who achieved score average 4; two students (number 2 and 25) achieved score 4.25, two students (number 1 and 23) achieved score 4.5, one student (number 3) achieved score 4.75. the third category was good which the grade score 3 to 3.9. students whose speaking ability included in this category were 12 students; five students (number 4, 5, 9, 13, 14) achieved score 3, two students (number 8 and 16) achieved score 3.25, three students (number 10, 17, 22) achieved score 3.5, two students (number 11, 12) achieved score 3.75. the next category was a fair speaking ability which the grade scores 2 to 2.9. there were 9 students who included in this category; two students (number 20, 24) achieved score 2, three students (number 15, 19, 21) achieved score 2.25, three students (number 6, 7, 26) achieved score 2.5, and one student (number 18) achieved score 2.75. the last category was a poor speaking ability which the grade scores 1 to 1.9. for this category, none of the students was included in this category. table 2. the comparison of score between the preliminary test and final speaking test preliminary test final speaking test categories excell ent very good good fair poor excellent very good good fair poor score weight 5 4 – 4.9 3 – 3.9 2 – 2.9 1 – 1.9 5 4 – 4.9 3 – 3.9 2 – 2.9 1 – 1.9 students 3 4 17 5 12 9 percentage 13% 16% 71% 20% 45% 35% total percentage of students with average score 3 29% (7 students) 65%(17 students) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 76-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license related to field notes), students encountered several problems that restricted their speaking. those problems were in terms of their limited vocabulary mastery, fluency, pronunciation, and content. since the topics of the discussion given were quite difficult for them, the difficult vocabulary items were found such as penyuluhan, razia, memberantas, daerah terpencil, pandang bulu, pendidikan seumur hidup, mencontek, bocoran, keguguran, cacat fisik, cinta tak harus memiliki, kesan pertama begitu menggoda, and gengsi dong. in terms of pronunciation, the students seemed to get difficulty in pronouncing the words ―suitable, swimsuit, pageant, although, knowledge, honesty, taught, and thought. they pronounced ―suitable‖ as ―swiitebl‖, swimsuit as swimsuwiit’, pageant as pegnt, although as olthoug, knowledge as knolij, honesty as honisti, taught as taugh, and thought as though. they also troubled in pronouncing suffixes ―ed‖ for regular verb past forms and ―s/es‖ for plural or verb1. they pronounced laughed as laughd, kissed as kissd, needed as need, and many more. it seemed that they did not know that suffix ―ed‖ could be pronounced into three pronunciations—/id/, /t/, and /d/. in terms fluency, many of the students frequently used ―emmm‖ when they hesitated or thought of the words they wanted to say even for the javanese students, they twisted to say in their l1 ―opo or iku lo‖ instead of saying ―what or i mean‖ as their way to make their hesitation subtle. it seemed that they did not have any idea about strategic competence and also fillers expression as the solution to gain better fluency and to decrease their hesitation. another problem they encountered was the use of expressing agreeing and disagreeing, asking and giving an opinion. they often said ―i am agree‖ instead of ―i agree‖, are you agree with me‖ instead of ―do you agree with me‖, and ―what your opinion about….‖ instead of ―what is your opinion about…‖. discussion the findings of the study revealed that the good procedures of implementing the think-pair-share strategy in teaching and learning of speaking consist of six major steps: (1) arousing students‘ motivation, (2) activating students‘ background knowledge, (3) posing a problem/question, (4) giving students ―thinking time‖ to think of the possible answer/solution, (5) asking them to be in pair and discuss the solution with ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 77-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license their pair, (6) asking them to share the answer to the group or the whole class. this was related to cooperative learning (cl), an instructional strategy which focuses on student, called student oriented. this method is based on the relationship between motivations, interpersonal relationship towards working cooperatively to cope with the problem of learning. it involves a small heterogeneous group working together toward a common goal. in this method, the students work together in four up to six-member teams to master the material initially presented by the teacher (slavin, 2006). in addition, the findings of the study indicated that the think-pairshare strategy was successful in increasing students‘ active involvement and improving students‘ speaking ability. the increase could be seen from the number of students who were categorized as actively involved from only 7 students (29%) in the preliminary study to 20 students (78%) of 26. the improvement of students‘ speaking ability could be seen from the number of students whose score achieved average 3 were 7 students (29%) of 24 students in the preliminary test, while in their final speaking score were 17 students (65%) of 26 students who achieved average score 3. kagan (in ghaith 2003) states that cooperative language learning has been proclaimed as an effective instructional strategy in promoting the cognitive and linguistic development of learners of english as a second language (esl) or english as a foreign language (efl). its procedure is designed to activate the students through inquiry and discussion in a small heterogeneous group—the members are varied whether from the sex, ability and social background. by having a small heterogeneous group, the students are expected to be able to accept their differences to maximize their own and each other‘s learning (johnson & johnson, 1991). conclusions with the research findings, it can be concluded that the think-pair-share strategy has proved very effective to increase students‘ active involvement and to improve their speaking ability of the second-semester students of muhammadiyah university of ponorogo. the steps of the implementation of the think-pair-share strategy are divided into three activities. the first is pre-activity which covers (a) arousing students‘ motivation by having several games, (b) activating students‘ background knowledge by showing some pictures or playing video, (d) asking them several questions related to the pictures or video given. the second is whilst activity; it covers (e) posing an ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 78-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license open-ended question, (f) providing time to students to think about the possible answers, (g) assigning them to sit in pair, (h) asking them to discuss their own answer with their pair, (i) asking them to share their answers to the group or to the whole class. the third is post-activity; it covers (j) giving feedback to the discussion, (k) asking the students to draw a conclusion, and (l) giving them follow-up activity. the findings of the research prove that the think-pair-share strategy has been successful in increasing students‘ active involvement and improving their speaking ability as well. so, it is advisable to implement the strategy in coping with the problems found in their speaking class. references arends, r i. 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(2006). educational psychology: theory and practice. (8th ed.). boston: allyn and bacon publishers. trianto. (2007). model pembelajaran terpadu dalam teori dan praktek. jakarta: prestasi pustaka. mailto:helen_ibe@yahoo.com http://clte.asu.edu/active/usingtps.pdf.%20)%20accessed%20on%20may20 http://clte.asu.edu/active/usingtps.pdf.%20)%20accessed%20on%20may20 http://literacy-research.com/?p=207 http://literacy-research.com/?p=207 http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/cooperative/front_cooperative.htm http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/cooperative/front_cooperative.htm http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/cooperative/front_cooperative.htm http://www.psychology4all.com/thinking.htm http://www.psychology4all.com/thinking.htm ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (1), 2018 80-80 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i1.7679 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license ur, p. (1996). a course in language teaching: practice and theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. widiati, u. & cahyono, b. y. (2006). the teaching of efl speaking in the indonesian context: the state of the art. bahasa dan seni, tahun 34, nomor 2, agustus 2006. wafi, a. (2011). using the think-pairshare strategy to increase students’ active involvement and to improve students’ speaking ability at islamic university of malang. unpublished thesis. malang: state university of malang press. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017, 165-184 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344. this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee a model of an online reading comprehension summative test for college students sofa1, gunadi h. sulistyo2 received: 14th october 2017; revised: 18th november 2017; accepted: 24th december 2017 abstract there is an emerging phenomenon in some universities including stkip pgri jombang regarding a compelling need of a test that can replace the existing paper-and-pencil based reading comprehension test, which is conventional, impractical, and time consuming. to fulfill the need, a model of an online reading comprehension summative test was developed, involving a number of essential micro skills of reading. the design of the study was educational research and development (r&d), involving 100 subjects in the try-out stage. the instruments used were interview guides and questionnaire. based on the tryout analysis, the reliability was .779, in which thirty one items were categorized as valid items. for the ease of scoring and the balanced number of the indicators under interest, only 25 items were included in the model test. based on the students’ questionnaire, more than 80% subjects responded positively. the final product of this research was a set of an online reading comprehension test kit that includes the blueprint, the test (in form of paper and screenshot of the online version), the answer key, and the instruction to access the online test. key words: online summative test; reading comprehension abstrak di beberapa universitas termasuk stkip pgri jombang, muncul kebutuhan penting sebuah tes yang bisa menggantikan tes membaca berbasis paper-and-pencil sebelumnya yang konvensional, tidak praktis dan memakan banyak waktu. untuk memenuhi kebutuhan tes yang bisa mengatasi masalah tersebut, dikembangkanlah sebuah model tes membaca sumatif online. desain penelitian ini adalah penelitian pengembangan, yang melibatkan 100 subjek dalam tahap try-out. instrumen yang digunakan adalah interview guide dan kuesioner. berdasarkan analisis butir soal, nilai alpha atau reliabilititas adalah 0.779. 31 butir soal dikategorikan sebagai butir soal yang valid. untuk kemudahan penilaian dan keseimbangan jumlah indikator yang diinginkan, hanya 25 butir soal yang digunakan dalam model tes. berdasarkan kuesioner mahasiswa, lebih dari 80% subjek merespon secara positif. produk akhir dari penelitian ini adalah satu set online reading comprehension test yang meliputi kisikisi, tes (dalam bentuk kertas dan screenshot versi online), kunci jawaban dan instruksi untuk mengakses tes online. kata kunci: tes sumatif online; reading comprehension how to cite: sofa., sulistyo, g.h. (2017). a model of an online reading comprehension summative test for college students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4(2), 168-187. doi:10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 169-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction reading is one’s inevitable daily needs. sulistyo (2011, p.20) states that on one occasion, we read for information; on the other for enjoyment. this implies that reading comprehension plays a critical role in our daily lives. to reading teachers who are concerned with students’ competence to read for information or knowledge through reading activities, there is a compelling need for them to always find an appropriate way to teach their students and to assess their reading comprehension with a greater attention as the ability to read is an important asset one must have on any occasion, let alone, in the digital era. reading (critically) is believing; it is the window through which abundance of information is accessed. a test is a subset of assessment (brown, 2004, p.4). further brown (2004, p.4) states that a test is prepared administrative procedures that occur at identifiable times in a curriculum when learners muster all their faculties to offer peak performance, knowing that their responses are being measured and evaluated. in this way, learners are required to demonstrate their optimum competences elicited through tests in the form of manifest language behaviors. to develop a good test, there are several criteria that need to be not only known but also fulfilled satisfactorily as a test is a set of data collection instruments that should function properly if accurate information about the learners is to be observed optimally to avoid the so-called gi-go effects – garbage in garbage out impacts. the first is validity. gronlund and linn (1990, p.47) state that validity refers to the appropriateness of the interpretations made from test courses and other evaluation results, with record to a particular use. it means that the result of the test should be meaningful, appropriate, informative, and useful. the second is reliability. brown (2004, p.20) states that a reliable test is consistent and dependable in terms of the scores yielded by the testing procedures. if we give the same test to the same students on two different occasions, the test should yield about similar results. the third is practicality. djiwandono (1996) states that practicality means something to do with the test administration, scoring, interpreting of the test results, even with the financial factors of the test administrations. practicality may be concerned with economy in terms of resources, time, and energy. in line with the idea of djiwandono (1996), gronlund and linn (1990) emphasize that there are some considerations that ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 170-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license can be used to see the practicality of the test. the first is the use of test administration. for this purpose, the direction should be simple and clear, the subtest should be relatively few, and the timing of the test should not be too long. the second consideration is timing required for administration; it deals with allocated time to do the test. the other consideration is the ease of scoring which includes the clarity in the directions for scoring and simplicity in the scoring key. the following consideration is cost of testing which is important in selecting a test. the last is economy. gronlund and linn (1990, p.103) explain that testing should be relatively inexpensive and cost should not be a major consideration. one of the types of tests that a teacher almost certainly needs to make is an achievement test. there are two types of achievement test: they are formative and summative tests (brown, 2004, p. 48). a formative test aims at measuring the extent to which students have mastered the learning outcomes of a rather limited segment or instruction, such as a unit or a textbook chapter (gronlund & waugh, 2009, p.7). a summative test or it is also known as summative assessment aims to measure, or to summarize what students have grasped, and typically occurs at the end of a course or unit of instruction (brown, 2004, p. 6). popularly, the test that is mostly and continually carried out by classroom teacher is a summative test to know the students’ mastery of the course. so, as it is crucial to know what the students have grasped, the concern about the summative test in reading needs to get greater attention. nowadays, considerable attention is paid to the nature a test as a part of three partite functions of assessment: assessment of learning, for learning, and that as learning. earl, katz, and wncp team (2006, p. 55) state that assessment of learning refers to strategies designed to confirm what students know, demonstrate whether or not they have met curriculum outcomes or the goals of their individualized programs, or to certify proficiency and make decisions about students’ future programs or placements. it is designed to provide evidence of achievement to parents, other educators, the students themselves, and sometimes to outside groups (e.g., employers, other educational institutions). it means that assessment is a crucial tool to show the students’ learning mastery of the lesson based on the curriculum applied and further to decide what fits them in the future. assessment of learning is in other words on the students’ side. on the other hand, earl, katz, and wncp team (2006, p. 29) also state that assessment for learning occurs ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 171-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license throughout the learning process. it is designed to make each student’s understanding visible so that teachers can decide what they can do to help students progress. in this part, teachers should investigate the students in the way they are studying, their problems, etc. to later find out the way to solve them and help them to understand the lesson. assessment of learning is in other words on the teachers’ side. the last is assessment as learning. earl, katz, and wncp team (2006, p. 41) have stated that assessment as learning focusses on students and emphasizes assessment as a process of metacognition (knowledge of one’s own thought processes) for students. it means that in the process of learning with their own understanding, students can do self-assessment to make sense of the information and use it for new learning under the guidance and the direction of the teacher. assessment as learning in other words involves both the teachers’ and students’ side as well. supporting the ideas above, further sulistyo (2015, p.5) states that assessment then implies an ongoing monitoring process on students’ learning applied as soon as the teaching learning process begins, continuing up to the end of each class session. it informs teachers about their teaching effectiveness, students’ learning progress, and even feedback on the level of implementation of a curriculum. as such, assessment is inseparably aligned to instruction. further he also states that in a way, if carefully planned and implemented accurately, assessment can provide teachers with a source of useful information to reflect their teaching practices. it means that teaching cannot be separated from testing; they are linked to each other. test results provide an important basis for the teacher to better design their teaching so that the teaching delivery can boost the students’ performance in learning. in recent days, reading from computer screens is becoming more and more common in human daily life as the amount of reading material available from online is rapidly increasing. this phenomenon has been seen in the field of language assessment such as computer-based tests (cbts), computer-adaptive tests (cats) and also toefl. as stated by sulistyo (2009), for instance the advances in computing technology also boosts the presence of the new version of toefl, the ibt in 2005 which has been a significant shift from older toefl versions of computer based toefl (cbt for short) as well as paper-andpencil based toefl (pbt, henceforth). this ibt version, as its name indicates, makes the functional use of information and communication technology (ict). it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 172-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license means that the internet in testing is already in broad use and it can support and optimize the assessment. one of the proofs that it is in fact quite important is that the growing demands of the services or software in online testing which increases year to year. mason (1998) and weisburgh (2003) (as cited in hricko & howell, 2006, p. 4) said, “the availability of assessment software to address these tasks is leading to assessment services becoming one of the fastest growing software niches, both in the corporate and in the educational markets.”. regardless the rapid growth of the demand in this area, development and implementation of this new mode of testing is currently in its initial stages. therefore, sufficient empirical data, which would allow researchers to look into the soundness of computerized language tests with regard to construct validity and fairness, are yet to be available. stkip pgri jombang is one private university in operation in jombang, east java. in this university, the rapid use of the internet network is also increasing but not yet functioned in the best way. online assessment is in fact very helpful to not only students but also the lecturers to be the media in assessing processes. as pallof and pratt (2009, p. 3) put it to say, “the convenience of working online has proven to be very attractive to students and instructors alike.” further, lynch (1997) (as cited in millsap, 2000, p. 4) found that subjects responded more honestly on computer-administered tests than on paper and that the testretest reliability was comparable for both groups. this means that online assessment offers convenience more than the traditional one in the now era. in this university, in the reading comprehension 2 class, a substantial problem emerges. the test of the course is held by using a face-to-face interview to make the students explore more, to minimize the cheating, and to simplify the test. this face-to-face test is time consuming since with total students of forty has spent six hundreds minutes (10 hours) to assess student reading comprehension. a more efficient yet accurate and reliable test is then needed. the choice is an ict-based test. by using an online test, the teacher can manage the time in the computer and score student reading performance in the test more quickly. in addition, online assessment is cost effective as lecturers do not need to copy the paper test to the whole students. as it has been said by dowsing, long, & craven, (2000), weisburgh, (2003) (as cited by hricko & howell, 2006, p.11) that “it has been proposed that one of the main advantages of using assessment software over manually assessing ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 173-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license performance is primarily the savings in cost and time”. in addition, computeradministered testing benefits include rapid up-dates, random item selection, test item banks, and automatic data collection and scoring (millsap, 2000, p. 6). practicality will also improve since the manual scoring will not be carried out by the lecturer like paper and pencil tests. as weisburgh (2003) (cited in hricko & howell, 2006, p.11) said “scoring and evaluating tests used to take a lot of manual effort, whereas software can dramatically reduce, or even eliminate, the manual effort, and results can be instantaneous”. by all the facts elaborated above, this online test has huge possibility to be lower in cost. another weakness point to be discussed is about the existing reading comprehension test is that the questions are in the form of oral questions, which implies impracticality of administration. furthermore, these questions do not completely represent the indicators in the syllabus as the questions are only about the content, the generic structure and feature of the test and text building. the test only covers one type of text while the students must know all genres. this fact may lead to invalidity i.e. inaccuracy and error test results because of the teacher’s subjectivity or tiredness. by having an online test, the problems will be solved as krug (1989) reported that in an estimated ten percent of hand-scored objective tests, errors of one point or more in the final score were made. computerized test administration ensures accurate test scores (as cited in millsap, 2000, p.16). studies on the use of technology in testing have been conducted. a study by sawaki (2001) aimed to examine the comparability of conventional and computerized tests of reading in a second language. the study used a survey design by a large sample as the subjects of the research. the general trends found in this study indicated that comprehension of computerpresented texts is, at best, as good as that of printed texts (sawaki, 2001, p. 49). the second study was conducted by noyes and garland (2008) that investigated whether computer and paper-based tasks are equivalent. a survey design was conducted by reviewing literature and research. in the study, it is indicated that in some cases, paper and computerized tests were equivalent, but in some cases they were not for example in the form of the test. in addition to this finding, achievement of equivalence in computer-based and paper-based tasks poses a difficult problem. it is probably influenced by the test takers’ confidence in using the computer, and other psychological factors. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 174-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license both studies basically state that computerized and paper-based tests cannot be said equivalent, but now in the year of 2017, it is very possible if they are equivalent or even computerized test will be more effective as people can see some of schools have conducted the computerized test (and the online one). even now in senior high schools, the national examination is held online, too (unbk or ujian nasional berbasis komputer). teachers certification as well as lecturers certification is also conducted online. it means that online testing is broader in use, becoming more popular and offers more benefits despites its technical challenges. based on the context described in the previous section, the problem to be addressed in the present study is how can a model of an online reading comprehension test be conceptually and empirically developed to replace the existing test. the present study is therefore an attempt made to conceptually develop a set of an online reading comprehension test and empirically validate the reading comprehension test. furthermore, the developed product is significant to replace the previous time consuming and non-effective test, to get the students’ achievement score in the end of the lesson and to be a model for test developers (and/or lecturers) to develop a similar test for other reading courses (reading comprehension 1, reading comprehension 3, and extensive reading) or also other courses in general. methods the design of the test development model was adapted from sulistyo (2015, p. 106). to meet the need of the present r&d research, some adaptations were carried out, so the model of the online test development used the following stages: conducting needs assessment, creating content specification/blueprint, blueprint expert review, prototype writing, prototype review, test installing, test and ict expert review, try-out, item analysis, final form/publishing the final form. the test installing or on-lining the test was carried out after the website namely www.sotaki.com was ready. the stages were logging-in as the admin to start the creating of the online test, creating the course to name the course which is reading comprehension 2 course, creating the test to name the test which is summative test 1 and 2, creating questions to provide the questions, type of questions, the options, the texts in form of images, key answers and the score, test setting which includes timing and score viewing, http://www.sotaki.com/ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 175-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license users adding to input the user of the test in the database, publishing to bring the test online so it can be accessed by the students enrolled the course, the last is result exporting to take the data easily for later use. data in this case refers to the students’ names, scores, duration, timing and others in the excel format for later use in the item analysis stage. the name of the computer program utilized was chamilo version 1.9.10.2. the design of the needs assessment was qualitative. the instrument was interview to one reading comprehension 2 lecturer. it was about how the lecturer previously conducted the test, the form of the test, the reason why choosing certain form of test, the material included in the test and the availability of later online reading test for the students. after the information was gathered, the activity of collecting and preparing appropriate passages in various genres for the material in the body of the test started. three test and three ict experts were invited to review and conceptually validate the products. the instrument used was in the form of questionnaire. in the test expert review, it was focusing on the items, the instruction (wording), and the construction of language test. the analysis was qualitatively carried out since the date got was in form of description. in the ict expert review, it was focusing on the easiness of the instruction, the loading of the questions, the ease of the navigation menu, the readiness of the font and the user interface generally. the subjects of the tryout involved were 100 students of stkip pgri jombang who had finished their reading comprehension 2 course. the decision of choosing the subjects employed simple random sampling. latief (2012, p. 183) states that simple random sampling technique is the best technique in assuring the representativeness of the sample from the accessible population. it fits the needs of the samples since all students have an equal chance to be the representativeness of the sample. the try-out was carried out within two sessions to minimize the subjects to get tired. a set of questionnaires is also addressed to the subjects. it is about the ease of the instruction, the ease of the questions, the time allotment, the suitability of the test and the material given in the class, the easiness of the texts, the length of the texts, the number of items and the level of difficulty of the items. after conducting the informal tryout, the process of analyzing the test’s result by using software called ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 176-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license iteman 3.00 was carried out. the reliability is shown by the alpha score, which ranges from 1.00 for perfect reliability to 0.00 for completely unreliable (ary et al., 2002, p. 261). the item validity can be known by the point-biserial correlation coefficient or symbolized by r-pbis coefficient. it is a statistic used to estimate the degree of relationship between naturally occurring dichotomous nominal scale and an interval or ratio scale (brown, 2001, p.13), if the coefficient is > .2 it is categorized that the item is good. item difficulty is shown by the proper correct score (category easy range >.7, moderate range between .3-.7, and difficult is < .3) (brown, 2001), item discrimination is presented in p-bis coefficients. the categorization of the item discrimination is shown below. table 1. item discrimination categorization index range interpretation ≥ .40 very good .30-.39 good .20-.29 fair ≤ .19 poor (adapted from djiwandono, 2011, p.230) the effectiveness of distractor is important to be known as brown (2004, p. 60) notes that the efficiency of distractor is the extent to which (a) the distracters “lure” a sufficient number of test takers, especially lower ability ones and (b) those responses are somewhat evenly distributed across all distractors. the efficiency of distractor can be known by the positive of negative value in p-bis key in each item. if there is a positive score of the efficiency distracter it means the distracter should be reviewed or changed. findings and discussions findings the results of the development have been known after the research was carried out in stkip pgri jombang. the result of needs assessment it was found that the previous test was not practical, time consuming, and the material was only few than what it should be tested. the other fact from the interview was the availability of an online test in recent days has become a trend so that the availability of a model of a reading comprehension 2 summative test is needed to be carried out. the test characteristics based on the syllabus of reading comprehension 2 course, the course intends to measure several micro reading skills that follow: identifying topics, identifying main ideas, identifying specific and detailed information (explicit and implicit), understanding the organization of ideas ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 177-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in texts, identifying reference, identifying vocabulary to derive meaning, identifying writer’s tone or purpose and evaluating expressions in context. based on the indicators stated in the syllabus then the item indicators can be used as a basis to develop test items. sulistyo (2008) distinguished three domain of skills in reading, they are word attack, sentence attack and text attack skills. based on the syllabus of reading comprehension 2, all these three skills are included. the level chosen is advocating the ideas by crawley and mountain (1995, p. 104105) as follows: literal and inferential. the critical level is not included since the level of the students is intermediate and the critical level will be beyond of the scope of the competences for them. in the test, the literal level has 40% out of 100 items since it easier, inferential level have 60% out of 100 items. this percentage is taken for the inferential level dealing with inferring implicit information from the text which is more difficult but fit to the students’ level. so, based on the percentage, there are 40 items in the literal level, and 60 items in the inferential level. in this present study the passage theme is mostly those dealing with education, literature, science, life, and entertainment. they range from 212-495 words since the average students are still in the low level of intermediate. although the biggest number is 495 words but the passage is in the level of 8th which means it is still standard in terms of the level. the readability of the texts that were used is calculated by using fleschkincaid formula. the result can be seen in table 2. table 2 the result of flesch-kincaid reading ease scores and its interpretation no the genre of the text flesch-kincaid reading ease score estimated reading grade interpretation/ description style 1 narrative (the necessity of salt) 73.6 8th standard 2 recount (edgar allan poe) 54.5 high school students fairly difficult 3 spoof (goat jumping into deep hole) 97.7 5th very easy 4 new item (tectonic earthquake sparked, mt. merapi’s recent activity) 51.1 high school students fairly difficult 5 descriptive (macquarie university) 44.5 college students difficult 6 report (a museum) 41.4 college students difficult 7 explanation (how was the earth 46.1 college difficult ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 178-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license no the genre of the text flesch-kincaid reading ease score estimated reading grade interpretation/ description style formed?) students 8 procedure (how to make candles) 81 6th easy 9 analytical (opportunity in the global financial crisis) 39 college students difficult 10 hortatory (should not bring mobile phone to school) 67.1 8th standard 11 discussion (the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning) 48.3 college students difficult 12 review (2012 film) 56.2 high school students fairly difficult 13 news item (strait of malacca still not safe from pirates) 57.2 high school students fairly difficult 14 hortatory (why should wearing a helmet when motorcycling) 56.9 high school students fairly difficult 15 analytical (death penalty) 68.1 8th standard 16 explanation (how does body react to the heat?) 69 8th standard 17 discussion (pro and con of computers for students) 65.1 8th standard 18 review (twilight) 53.6 high school students fairly difficult 19 narrative (the colossal ufo) 79.3 7th fairly easy 20 recount 88 6th easy 21 report (dolphin) 56.8 high school students fairly difficult the result of expert review there were two domains of experts in the validation stage. there were test experts and the ict experts. the test experts did validation twice, the first one was about the blueprint review validation and the second one was the online test or the product itself. blueprint review based on the feedback from the three experts, the inputs were about the level of skills, the numbering of the items, the grammar, the order of the item indicators, and title for the texts and record for number of sub competences to be rationally balanced. test review the inputs were the running of the try-out which should be divided into two sessions to diminish tiredness of subjects which can influence the result, the readability, the order of questions based on paragraph, and the language mistakes. the last was about the sources, quality of options and ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 179-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license grammar, the level of difficulty and face validity checking. suggestions from the three ict experts were about the type of passage format, the attractiveness of the test, the use of auto-save for the saving, and the interface. the result of item analysis based on the iteman analysis, it was found that the alpha reliability of the test was .653, which was categorized as acceptable and fair. the next analysis was item difficulty, which result is shown in the table 3. table 3. the results of item difficulty analysis index range category item number % > 0.7 easy 9,11,18,29,34,38,45,46,51,52, 56,57,60,69,72,87,88,90,94,97 20 0.3-0.7 moderate 2,4,5,8,10,13,15,16,17,20,21,23,25,26,2 7,30,31,32,33,35,36,37,40,41,44,48,50, 54,55,61,62,63,65,66,68,71,73,74,75,76 ,77,78,79,80,81,82,83, 93,95,100 50 < 0.3 difficult 1,3,6,7,12,14,19,22,24,28,39, 42,43,47,49,53,58,59,64,67,70, 84,85,86,89,91,92,96,98,99 30 table 4. the results of item discrimination analysis index range interpretation item number % ≥ .40 very good 9,16,18,27,30,32,36,38,44,45,46, 64,70,74,78,83,85,90,92,94,95,97 22 .30-.39 good 8,11,15,24,35,41,49,50,53,62, 63,65,66,72,75,87,100 17 .20-.29 fair 1,4,6,12,13,23,26,29,33,40,48, 55,60,68,73,80,84,89,99 20 ≤ .19 poor 2,3,5,7,10,14,17,19,20,21,22,25,28, 31,34,37,39,42,43,47,51,52,54,56, 57,58,61,67,69,71,76,77,79, 81,82,86,88,91,93,96,98 41 based on the result shown in the table 3, there are 20 easy items, 50 moderate items, and 30 difficult items. in order to know how good the item in discriminating the low and high ability students, the analysis of item ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 180-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discrimination was carried out. from the iteman version 3.00, the result is presented in the table 4. there are 22 items categorized as very good items, 17 items as good items, 20 items as fair items and 41 items as poor items. regarding the item validity, based on the result in the iteman, the item validity is shown in table 5. from the result shown in the table 5, it can be seen that there are 31 items categorized as valid items and 69 items categorized as not valid items. these 69 items were dropped from the product and only 31 valid items were used. the last analysis was the effectiveness of distractor. based on the data from iteman result analysis, there are 32 items which have suggested answer keys. these 32 items were dropped from the products and they were items numbers 2, 7, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 31, 39, 42, 43, 47, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 67, 71, 73, 77, 79, 81, 86, 91, 93, 98, 99. the 31 good items were run to the iteman 3.00 to be re-analyzed. the reliability is shown by the alpha score, which score is 0.779 and it can be categorized as good and can be used as the items in the test. the next thing is item difficulty, as shown in table 6. there are 8 items categorized as easy items, 17 items as moderate items and 6 items are difficult items. table 5 the result of item validity analysis index range item number % interpretation r > 0.2 8,9,15,16,18,27,30,35,36,38,44,45,46,49,53, 31 valid items 62,64,65,66,70,74,78,83,85,90,92,94,95,97,100 r < 0.2 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10,11,12,13,14,17,19,20,21,22,23, 69 not valid items 24,25,26,28,29,31,32,33,34,37,39,40,41,42,43, 47,48,50,51,52,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,63,67, 68,69,71,72,73,75,76,77,79,80,81,82,84,86,86 88,89,91,93,96,98,99 table 6 the result of item difficulty analysis index range category item number f % > 0.7 easy 2,5,11,13,14,26,28,30 8 26 0.3-0.7 moderate 1,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,12,17,19,20,22,23,24,29,30 17 55 < 0.3 difficult 15,16,18,21,25,27 6 19 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 181-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license from item difficulty, then the item discrimination has also run, the result has been shown in the table 7. based on the result, 25 items are categorized as very good and 6 items are categorized as good which means that they can discriminate the students well. related to the item validity, all the 31 items are categorized as valid items and later for the easiness of scoring and the balanced number of the indicators under interest, the used items are only 25 items. the result of students’ questionnaire analysis to gain the information about how the online test worked for the subjects’ point of view, questionnaires with 10 multiple choice items and 2 essay questions were distributed to the 100 subjects. the result of the subjects’ answer is presented in the table 8. the typical format appearance of the product of the present study is presented in the figure 1. table 7. the result of item discrimination analysis index range interpretation item number f % ≥ .40 very good 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15, 17,18,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28, 29,30 25 81 .30-.39 good 1,9,16,19,20,31 6 19 .20-.29 fair ≤ .19 poor table 8. the result of item validity analysis index range item number f % interpretation r > 0.2 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,9,20 21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31 31 100 valid r < 0.2 not valid ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 182-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 9. the result of students’ questionnaire no questions often seldom never sum f % f % f % 1 before this test, how often have you been doing this type of online test? 5 5 46 46 49 49 100 very easy fairly easy very difficult 2 are the instructions easy to be understood? 42 42 56 56 2 2 100 very clear fairly clear less clear 3 is the way to answer the question clearly written? 65 65 33 33 1 1 99 very easy fairly easy very difficult 4 generally, are the questions easy to be understood? 10 10 63 63 25 25 98 very enough fair less 5 is the time allocation enough? 10 10 49 49 41 41 100 6 generally, what do you think about the instructions to do the test? 97 % subjects said that the instructions are clear, simple and easy to be understood. 3 % said that the instruction is too many, but still it is clear. very suitable fairly suitable less suitable 7 is the test suitable with the material given in the classroom? 30 30 64 64 6 6 100 very easy fairly easy very difficult 8 based on the text difficulty level, are the texts easy to be understood? 5 5 50 50 44 44 99 too many fair less 9 based on the number of the items, how are they? 34 34 65 65 1 1 100 too long fair too short 10 based on the lengths of the texts, how are they? 40 40 56 56 3 3 99 very difficult fairly difficult easy 11 based on the difficulty level generally, how are they? 16 16 81 81 3 3 100 12 generally, what is your opinion about this online reading comprehension 2 test? 86 % subjects said that the online test is good, interesting, effective, practical, has less chance of cheating, fun and do not need to open the page too often, go along with the era, but 14 % subjects somehow said it also makes the eyes tired, the time is less and it is difficult. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 183-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license figure 1. final summative test online ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 184-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license discussion the result of needs assessment has revealed all the problems in the previous test, which is considered to be impractical. this online test is practical since it is easy in administration, easy in scoring and interpreting the result. the previous test is time consuming while this online test is time effective. the previous test covers only one genre while this online test covers all of the genres. the additional benefits of this online test are that this online test is cost effective and up to date. all the result of the needs assessment indicated that the online test has fulfilled the theory of criteria of a good test elaborated above by djiwandono (1996) and gronlund & linn (1990). this online test is also has the advantages as what previous study by noyes and garland (2008) elaborated for example the richness of interface, accessible at home, less error in administration, online scoring which is greater in accuracy and less human error, and cost saving. singh, rylander & mims (2012) also support the increase use of the internet. they said that as preferences for online learning increases, mostly due to the convenience and flexibility it offers students, universities find themselves increasing the number of online format courses to meet the growing demand (p.96). coiro (2014, p.12) added that there are many opportunities when students do learning activities online, such as question, wonder, and think more deeply about things with puzzle games, creating digital products , it also offers time for students to practice questioning, locating, evaluating, and synthesizing information collaboratively with a partner or in a small group (coiro, p.16). based on those facts, it is argued that the test in the present study can overcome technical problems in the previous tests ever developed. as the items analysis was run, most of the items, the 69 items were invalid items, which should be dropped from the test. this means that only 31 items can be saved and used for the test. the reliability that is shown by the alpha coefficient is .779, which can be categorized as good. the coefficient demonstrated that this scores generated from the test are consistent and reliable across measurement to show the real student’s performance. the result indicates that this online test has one more quality of a good test in terms of reliability as explained above by brown (2004). the questionnaires show that most students respond positively toward the online test. most of them respond that the test instruction (the instruction to operate the test and to answer the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 185-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license question) is generally easily understood which means the instruction is clear, causing no bias. they also respond positively that the questions are easily understood. the time is sufficient which means that the texts, the questions, and the time allocation are proportional to their level. the result is in line with what stated above by gronlund and linn (1990) about practicality and zandvliet and farragher, (1997) as cited in noyes and garland (2008, p.1369) about the advantages of computer testing. the material used in the test are suitable which means the test does not cover the material that was never taught in the classroom. a number of the subjects (44%) stated that the passages are difficult, which possibly because some students are actually in the lower proficiency level while this test is designed for the intermediate ones as it is stated in the syllabus. this fact also could be a reason behind the nonoptimal alpha score. the last is about the subjects’ opinion. although few subjects say that the online test makes the eyes tired, mostly they say that the online test is good, interesting, effective, fun, practical, minimizing the chance of cheating. they also think that they do not need to open the page too often, and the test goes along with the ict era. this means that the availability of this online test overcomes the problem emanating from the previous test used. conclusion and suggestion the conclusions comprise the strengths and also the weaknesses of the product of this research. related to the strengths, first, the product of this research can be a model of an online reading summative test in stkip pgri jombang. second, based on the try-out stage, it is shown that some items of the proposed test are valid and reliable. the product of this research is packaged into one part. it covers the blueprint, the test in the paper printed form and the screenshot of the online version, the answer key, and the instruction for access to the online test. as the product has strengths, it also has weaknesses. the final product of this test only consists of 25 items due to the elimination of the non-valid items. the reading level is not in the precise percentage as this study suggested. this product has no construct validity process to reveal the psychological quality of the students. in addition, this study is still at the automaticity process from the paper-based format to the computer-format one. some suggestions are presented after completing the whole processes in conducting this research. this online test can be a model for other reading ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 186-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license courses and also other courses in general in conducting tests since it has been validated. this product can be an insight for the effectiveness of an online reading test in enhancing students’ reading motivation with better qualifications for example random setting. and as this research had limited subjects (only 100 subjects), it is suggested that future researcher can have larger subjects to gain more reliable and valid result. further, although low, but as this test still open the chance for the students to do the cheating, so the researcher will be working on the online test in randomized options. this attempt is hoped to not only diminish the cheating action but also increase the students’ independence and self-esteem. references ary, d., lucy, cj., & asghar, r. (2002). introduction to research in education. (sixt edition). belmont: wadsworth. brown, h.d. (2004). language assessment: principles and classroom practices. white plains: pearson education. brown, h.d. (2007). teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (3rded). white plains, ny: pearson education. brown, j.d. (2001). statistics corner: questions and answers about language testing statistics: point biserial correlation coefficients. shiken: jlt testing & evlution sig newsletter. 5 (3):13-17. retrieved from http://jalt.org./test/bro_12/htm on 12/12/2013. coiro, j. (2014). online reading comprehension: challenges and opportunities. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publi cation/277897021_online_reading_co mprehension_challenges_and_opport unities on 5/9/2018. djiwandono, m.s. (1996). tes bahasa dalam pengajaran. bandung: penerbit itb djiwandono, m.s. 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(2000). comparison of computer testing versus traditional paper and pencil testing. published dissertation. denton: department of http://jalt.org./test/bro_12/htm%20on%2012/12/2013 http://jalt.org./test/bro_12/htm%20on%2012/12/2013 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277897021_online_reading_comprehension_challenges_and_opportunities https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277897021_online_reading_comprehension_challenges_and_opportunities https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277897021_online_reading_comprehension_challenges_and_opportunities https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277897021_online_reading_comprehension_challenges_and_opportunities ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 4 (2), 2017 187-187 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v4i2.8344 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license philosophy university of north texas. noyes, j.m. & garland, k.j. 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(2015). efl learning assessment at schools: an introduction to its basic and principles. malang: bintang sejahtera. stkip pgri jombang. (2010). syllabus of reading2. jombang: english department. http://ijbhtnet.com/journals/vol_2_no_1_january_2012/12.pdf%20on%205/9/2018 http://ijbhtnet.com/journals/vol_2_no_1_january_2012/12.pdf%20on%205/9/2018 http://ijbhtnet.com/journals/vol_2_no_1_january_2012/12.pdf%20on%205/9/2018 http://sastra.um.ac.id/ copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016, 171-191 the voices of preservice efl teachers on the implementation of teacher educators’ flipped classroom in designing and developing paci model effendi limbong received: 12th september 2016; revised: 22th october 2016; accepted: 28th desember 2016 abstract this research investigate pre-service efl teachers‘ voices toward teacher educators‘ implementation of flipped classroom combined with facebook throughout tpack that can be observed by pre-service efl teachers during their teacher training program. this study employed phenomenology of semi-structure interview and document e-portfolio projects of eight pre-service efl teachers. this research revealed although not all participants were unfamiliar with flipped classroom, this approach to combine with facebook as media to upload e-portfolios of previous pre-service efl teachers and various website links to design and develop paci model was effective and efficient in understanding the content of paci model before they have face to face classes. the significance of this study is useful for preservice efl teachers to witness the use flipped classroom combine with facebook to extend the use of technology for being self-discipline and self-directness to design and develop paci model throughout the tpack framework in supporting them to be 21st future teachers. key words: tpack, flipped classroom; facebook; paci abstrak penelitian ini mengungkap pengalaman para calon guru terhadap penerapan kelas terbalik dengan menggunakan facebook sebagai media oleh dosen dengan tpack yang dapat diamati oleh para calon guru selama mengikuti perkuliahan agar nantinya dapat mereka terapkan. dengan menggunakan phenomenology semi interview terstruktur terhadap delapan calon guru dan menganalisa hasil unjuk kerja berbasis portofolio elektronik. penelitian ini menemukan walaupun tidak semua calon guru terbiasa dengan pendekatan kelas terbalik, penggabungan metode ini dengan facebook sebagai media untuk memasukkan materi ajar dari internet ditambah dengan hasil kerja mahasiswa sebelumnya berbasis elektronik portofolio untuk mendesain dan membuat materi ajar berbasis teknologi dengan menggunakan powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, dan internet (paci) efektif dan efisien untuk difahami dan diterapkan oleh calon guru sebelum mengikuti perkuliahan dan meningkatkan penggunaan teknologi untuk belajar mandiri, mendesain, dan membuat paci model berdasarkan tpack untuk menjadi guru abad 21. kata kunci: tpack; flipped classroom; facebook, paci how to cite: limbong, e. (2016). the voices of preservice efl teachers on the implementation of teacher educators‘ flipped classroom in designing and developing paci model. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3(2), 171-191 doi:10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5511. permalink/doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5511 http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v3i2.5511 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|172-191 introduction many teacher educators and researchers have recently turned to flipped classroom methods (bergmann & sams, 2012). they change the pedagogical model by flipping their classrooms learning situation, from face to face teaching to web-based method through videos or recordings of the teaching (evseeva & solozhenko, 2015a; hao, 2016; hao & lee, 2016; wilson, 2013). according to bergmann and sams (2012), a flipped class refers to the process whereby ‖…that which is traditionally done in class is now done at home, and that which is traditionally done as homework is now completed in class (p. 13)‖. the teaching and learning processes in the flipped classroom often use multimedia lectures that have been recorded (o'flaherty & phillips, 2015), and uploaded to the web, so that students can view them out of class and at their homework (bergmann & sams, 2012) to give students knowledge and skills prior to attending the face to face sessions. providing students with access to online videos, audio recorded materials, multimedia and internet links about the specific lessons outside of the class encourage the students to gain prior understanding and knowledge about the lessons before they come to the face to face classroom (strayer, 2012). the study by evseeva and solozhenko (2015a) reported that through the flipped classroom, the students‘ motivation and academic performance increased because this method promotes students‘ selfdiscipline and self-directness. o'flaherty and phillips (2015) revealed that the flipped classroom makes higher education students into lifelong learners by becoming familiar with 21st century skills. for the teacher, the flipped classroom offers pedagogical efficiency and effectiveness as teachers‘ roles dramatically change in the classroom because they are no longer the sole sources of knowledge and skills, and presenters of information. instead, they become more tutors and facilitators (evseeva & solozhenko, 2015b; o'flaherty & phillips, 2015). in the flipped classroom, educators have to provide multiple activities outside of the class that can be facilitated through a range of technological resources to support face to face instructions in class to enhance students‘ achievement. with the help of technological resources, students benefit from the outside classroom exercises and activities because they can allocate their time and pace their online learning to meet their learning styles and needs (bergmann & sams, 2012; o'flaherty & phillips, 2015). ―finding or creating effective content for a flipped classroom is the first step in ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 173-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 thinking outside the box‘ in the flipped classroom (muldrow, 2013, p. 29)‖ and it is not an easy job. o'flaherty and phillips (2015) underlined that although many educators and students have access to numerous online teaching tools and learning trustworthy links, ―teaching and learning is not all about the technology (p. 85)‖. by requiring students to understand the lessons before the face-to-face interaction, their familiarity with the content allows higher-order thinking and interactive problem solving in the face to face sessions (see & conry, 2014). the flipped classroom is a focus on student-centered rather than teacher-centered. it is a form of learning with students‘ active participation in small group problem solving and self and peer evaluations (kim, kim, khera, & getman, 2014; o'flaherty & phillips, 2015). however, there is the danger that educators in reviewing their curriculum may not fully understand the pedagogy of how to effectively translate the flipped class into practice (o'flaherty & phillips, 2015), as it requires ―… both teachers and students to ―flip‖ the way they fundamentally view education (webb & doman, 2014, p. 54)‖. therefore, it is crucial that the appropriate principles of the flipped classroom design are understood before implementation. few studies have selected and used facebook as medium to upload the teacher educators‘ materials. loving and ochoa (2011) showed that the facebook can be a vehicle for enhancing learning. in addition, facebook can be used to engage in classroom-related collaborative activities: arranging study groups, learning about course processes, asking each other questions (lampe et al., 2011). research is needed to explore the use of flipped classroom by using facebook ad a medium to upload the lecturers‘ videos, audios, and electronic-portfolios and other materials about the content of the lessons in to support and discuss the problem solving during face to face classes throughout technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework (angeli & valanides, 2008; koehler & mishra, 2006; niess, 2008). also, few studies have explored how pre-service teachers connect the tpack framework in designing and developing supplemental technologyintegrated teaching, learning and materials with the powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, and internet (hereafter, paci model) (limbong, 2017) in the flipped classroom. the use of the flipped classroom to support face to face classrooms is particularly scarce in indonesian universities. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|174-191 this study therefore aims to address the gaps by addressing the following specific research questions: (1) what were the pre-service teachers‘ voices when the teacher educator used the flipped classroom method on computer application course. (2) how did pre-service teachers connect all materials in the flipped classroom in designing and developing paci model for teaching english lesson? method the context of the study this study was conducted in english study program, faculty of teacher training and education at mulawarman university in samarinda, indonesia. the english department study program has technology courses in three semester. they are computer literacy in the second semester, computer application (ca) in the third semester, and computer assisted language learning (call) in the fourth semester (englishdepartmentstudyprogram, 2009). this study was conducted during the computer application course. the pre-service efl teachers enrolled in computer application course have been equipped with certain knowledge and skills in operating software such as powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, filmora editing video, windows movie maker, windows operational system, social media (i.e., youtube, facebook, twitter), and the knowledge and skills to search and download any educational sources and materials from the internet to support their learning. in addition, the computer application also covers additional softwares such as photo story, scratch, sparkol video scribe, and powtoon. the pre-service teachers needed to complete two projects. in the first project, the pre-service teachers had to design and develop supplemental multimedia to provide explanations of the specific grammar point they selected to focus on. the second project was to follow up the first project by creating exercises or quizzes to evaluate the learners‘ understanding. the intervention of the study in order to efficiently provide the pre-service teachers special competencies development, new modern teaching methods and education technologies, the teacher educator and also as the researcher in this study used the facebook to uploaded varieties websites links, flip videos, videos, audios recording, electronic portfolios (electronic projects from previous classess), and supporting materials such as handouts, books, and summary of journals for preijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 175-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 service teachers in learning activities in the flipped classroom in the three technology courses. the teacher educator adopted and modified the nine design principles of the flipped classroom (kim et al., 2014) to follow the pre-service teachers‘ educational route (bezukladnikov & kruze, 2015) and the tpack framework (koehler & mishra, 2006) to support face to face classes on computer application course. the methodology and theoretical framework the tpack framework was employed as the strategy to combine the three basic knowledge of content knowledge (ck) with pedagogical knowledge (pk) and technological knowledge (tk), to create another three knowledge of pedagogical content knowledge (pck) (shulman, 1986, 1987), technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), technological content knowledge (tck) and at the end create the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack) as the basic function to make teaching and learning more effective and efficient (koehler & mishra, 2006). the tpack framework is the extended of the pck framework (shulman, 1986, 1987). according to shulman (1986) pck deals with ‗‗the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others‘(p. 9)‖. while koehler and mishra (2006) define pck is concerned with the representation and formulation of concepts, pedagogical techniques, knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn, knowledge of students‘ prior knowledge, and theories of epistemology (p. 1027). tck is knowledge about the manner in which technology and content are reciprocally related (p. 1028). tpk is knowledge of the existence, components, and capabilities of various technologies as they are used in teaching and learning settings, and conversely, knowing how teaching might change as the result of using particular technologies (p. 1028). figure 1. tpack framework (koehler & mishra, 2006). tpack is an emergent form of knowledge that goes beyond all three components (content, pedagogy, and technology) (p. 1028). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|176-191 the powerpoint, audacity, camtasia, and internet (paci) model the knowledge and skills comprises of four knowledge and skills of paci model. these four knowledge and skills cannot be taken separately. the content or lessons that are designed, selected, and created by using each of these software are combined to produce a video multimedia for teaching english lessons. in this research, the specific lesson was grammar. its purpose is to make supplemental multimedia of the paci model to make the presentation more attractive and efficient by producing a video with varieties of texts, colors, sounds, instrument, animation, graphics and so on. the users, particularly educators and learners may create their own multimedia by using the paci model to help them to understand the specific lessons better (limbong, 2017). figure 2. the model of paci (limbong, 2017) the participants selection and interview techniques the computer application course was attended by 120 students. eight pre-service teachers were willing to participate and were able to be interviewed. the participants were 2 females and 6 males. their names in this study were all pseudonyms. this study used the semistructure interview (bryman, 2012; donley, 2012; punch, 2005; seale, 2002) to assist researchers in gathering comprehensive information from the participants‘ experiences to interpret and describe their own experiences toward the teacher educators‘ implementation of flipped classrom. the interviews were digitally voice recorded one by one with approximately 30-40 minutes. in order to acquire a deeper understanding of the meaning of the interviewees‘ experiences (creswell, 2012), the interview was conducted in different time and days. thematic analysis was employed after transcribing in order to identify, analyze, and report patterns (themes) within data (bryman, 2012; cox, 2008; saldana, 2009). phenomenology qualitative study this study is a phenomenology study which underlines ―a study of lived, human phenomena within the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 177-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 everyday social contexts in which the phenomena occur from the perspective of those experienced them (titchen & hobson, 2005, p. 121)‖. phenomena comprise the pre-service teachers‘ experiences (titchen & hobson, 2005) on the use of facebook to deliver the video or lecturer‘ voices and electronicportfolios and other materials about the content of paci and tpack in flipped classroom to support and discuss the problem solving during face to face classes in computer application course. findings and discussion some categories and subcategories were compared and contrasted in order to answer the research questions posed. understanding paci model and tpack framework through flipped classroom all psts agreed that they were still not familiar with the flipped classroom when the teacher introduced it on the learning contract in the first meeting as they just experienced it on technology course. they have never experienced flipped classroom methods on previous classes. however, they all agreed that the flipped classroom was useful to enhance their understanding to design and develop the paci model to develop the paci model according to the theory of tpack framework to teach english-based lessons. irawati explained: ‗the flipped classroom was like a new vehicle for me to reach my destination faster than before. i could download the materials from the websites and electronic portfolios of previous students‘ project and saved them into my laptop and watched them anytime and anywhere and practiced them with my own learning style‘. similarly, raiendi expressed his experiences: ‗i learnt the theories of tpack framework and to learn paci model at home first by following and practicing the links provided by the lecturer and other friends on facebook. i had a lot time to practice this knowledge and skills before i came to the class.‘ the findings depicted that the flipped classroom was effective method to use in uploading content of technology course (muldrow, 2013), view the materials at home before the face to face activities (bergmann & sams, 2012) and benefit to all preservice teachers for having ample of time to discuss the problems related to their project during the face to face activities, and the teaching and learning processes were being active (strayer, 2012) and faster. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|178-191 facilitating pre-service teachers with flipped classroom to learn paci model and tpack in computer application all pre-service teachers agreed that their knowledge about technology can be learnt not only from teacher educator in computer application course, but also through technology. two pre-service teachers commented: ‗i learnt the content of computer application course, not only the face to face class, but also on my mobile phone. i was able to rewatch the materials from our facebook. so, it was interested to have the flipped classroom. i did not waste my time to do click and click to learn to operate the softwares in the face to face.‘ (ningsih). irawati echoed similar views: ‗i could see other classmates‘ links in helping me to know more about paci model. i directly contacted my group for having discussion about our project through facebook instant message‘. the findings described that technology has flipped the situation, time and environment in teaching and learning. implementing the flipped classroom pushed the pedagogy environment and the flipped classroom leads to collaborative and cooperative activities (bergmann and sams, 2012). supporting and modeling tpack framework through flipped classroom and face to face teaching and learning all pre-service teachers asked for more time to understand and practice the tpack framework for making teaching and learning effective and efficient in the face to face. below are some statements from pre-service teachers. komari‘s statement: ‗tpack framework is not easy to understand. many videos, websites, and other sources have been provided by teacher educator and other friends in flipped classroom, but i still need the teacher educator‘s assistance in helping me to understand its theories into my teaching rather than theoretically‘. one participant expected the model from other teacher educators: ‗i hope all lecturers may model the tpack framework in all courses in this teacher training program so that i could see and practice the best way to make my teaching better with tpack framework. we need more models from all lecturers, not only from computer application course‘ (raiendi). this study revealed that all materials that had been uploaded into facebook in the flipped classroom can ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 179-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 support the face to face instructions as a tool that facilitates renewal in teacher education programs (lee, 2008) and the flipped classroom may be implemented to increase pre-service teachers‘ understanding as long as the teacher educator modeled it appropriately (koh & sing, 2011a, 2011b; limbong, 2015a, 2016; teo, 2009). inconsistent internet access issues in the flipped classroom the lack of availability of the internet access in campus area was the main challenge for all pre-service teachers in the flipped classroom when they selected varieties of animation to be inserted into their paci model. although the majority of students had internet data on their mobile phone, they were unable to download the materials due to insufficient internet quota on their mobile phone. to overcome the problem, often they asked the materials from other pre-service teachers who had downloaded and saved the materials into their own external harddrive. consequently, not all pre-service teachers may instantly get the materials before the face to face classes. in addition, pre-service teachers experienced were also sometimes unable to access the links provided by teacher educator and other pre-service teachers in campus area due to low internet connection. as a result, few of them were unable to instantly get involved in the discussion activities in the face to face classes. two pre-service teachers‘ voices were quoted below. ‗i should learned the materials before came in to face to face class, but i could not learn these materials directly due to slower internet at campus. as a result, it was ashame and i lost my selfconfidence when i could not give the ideas to my classmates when we had problems into our group‘s project of paci model, agung.‘ similarly, efflin added, ‗other friends have uploaded the links into facebook, but i could not experience the links to learn camtasia as it took time to download it because the internet at campus was so slowly‘ the internet access was vital for pre-service teachers to understand the materials of paci model and tpack framework in the flipped classroom before they attended the face to face classess. this finding is in line with previous study that the teacher educator needs to consider about the technology infrastructure (eickelmann, 2011), and evaluate the social presence of providing familiar and accessible technologies so that the clear connection between in-class and out-ofclass activities can be achieved (kim et al., 2014). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|180-191 to answer the second research question, the researcher played and watched the participants‘ projects together with the students and asked some questions about their experiences in connecting all materials in the flipped classroom in designing and developing paci model for teaching english lessons with paci model throughout tpack framework. supporting pre-service teachers’ understanding the content knowledge through the flipped classroom approach few participants still had lack of experiences to unpack the the content of efl courses, such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and features of efl language of grammar and vocabulary knowledge into paci model. however, the flipped classroom facilitated participants to reduce these issues. ‗it was hard for me to select varieties animation pictures into my powerpoint slides and make them matching to my english lessons because i learnt few english courses and contents during last two semesters. but i was able to improve my weaknesses through the website links that upload by lecturer and other classmates on facebook, suryanto.‘ similar voices also delivered by ningsih by saying ‗my efl knowledge and skills have been starting from semester 1 to 2. it was difficult to put them all into my paci model. our facebook helped me a lot‘. from the data above, several preservice teachers faced difficulty to translate the content knowledge when they designed and developed the paci model. it can be understood as they enrolled the computer application in semester three which means that they have not learnt courses related to english teaching methods yet. as a result, they still had lack of knowledge and skills to translate and connect the listening, speaking, reading and writing into paci model that led to mismatch varieties pictures, animations, sound selection into their paci model projects to explain the english lessons. scholars have underlined that insufficient english knowledge of grammar, phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon of the language as well as speech functions in the spoken language, and rhetoric in written language (e.g. brown, 2007; larsenfreeman & anderson, 2011; nunan, 1999) can inhibit the language users and listeners to understand the language itself. however, these issues can be reduced through the flipped classroom by uploading and providing multimedia ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 181-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 on facebook (akcaoglu & bowman, 2016) as it may directly model the learning target used through video (lonergan, 1984; mayer, 2009). facilitating pre-service teachers’ selfconfidence the technological knowledge through flipped classroom approach all pre-service teachers were confident to learn the paci model and other softwares as they had watched the electronic portfolios, videos, and audios not only from the links uploaded by the teacher educator in the flipped classroom but also from classmates. three pre-service teachers voiced their technological knowledge improvement below. ‗i am now able to learn the software in details. i just realized that those software could be used as supplemental teaching and learning, not only during the computer application course but also later on into my teaching‘, komari. ‗overall, i had self-confidence on how to operate varieties of software that can be used to teach english lessons. by knowing the software deeper, we may modify it to fit to our teaching instruction‘, raiendi. from this data, it could be underlined that the self-confidence (adamy & boulmetis, 2006) to master the software of paci model and other softwares have been accomplished on computer application course. all the pre-service teachers experienced out side class activities in the flipped classroom through learning by doing (grabe & grabe, 2001) to implement and experience self-learning to support collaborative learning in the face to face activities (webb & doman, 2014). this study is linear with previous studies which underlined the increase of students‘ academic achievement by using facebook as medium to communicate and interact between teacher educators, pre-service teachers, and other pre-service teachers to solve the learning problems (espinosa, 2015; kurtz, 2014; loving & ochoa, 2011; miron & ravid, 2015). improving pre-service teachers’ pedagogical knowledge through flipped classroom approach majority pre-service teachers had insufficient knowledge in connecting the pedagogical knowledge into their paci model. general concerns were provided. for example, ‗i learned less teaching approaches, methods, and techniques in two last semesters that inhibited me in designing and developing my paci model‘, efflin. ‗knowing our students‘ learning styles, characteristics, and their prior ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|182-191 knowledge were important variable when we designed and developed our paci model. we know them, then we know our appropriate pedagogy selected, and it is better to improve it through the materials not only the text, but also the multimedia‘, agung. these findings described the crucial pedagogical knowledge for teaching and learning english lessons with technology. to make our teaching better, we have to know the way how to select appropriate teaching strategies to match with our content knowledge and role model and examples (koehler & mishra, 2008; shulman, 1986, 1987). these model and examples can be provided through teachers‘ model and ict roles (jaipal-jamani & figg, 2015) in the flipped classroom. combining the flipped classroom and face to face classes in developing pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge all pre-service teachers agreed that how to make the lesson fitted with the learners‘ characteristics such as young and adult learners and learners learning styles into paci model were the most difficult exercises. they also faced difficulties to represent the english lessons and how to teach them appropriately on their paci model. they still need real practice in the face to face class rather than watching the visual links on facebook. as two preservice teachers indicated: ‗so far, i have learnt few pedagogical approaches, methods and techniques from my previous courses. it was the most challenge for me to design and develop my paci model, and all materials helped me on the facebook, but i want to see the practices in the face to face classes‘, irawati. these findings clearly explained that unfamiliarity with teaching efl approaches, methods and activities inhibited pre-service teachers to design and develop their paci model. previous studies have concerned with these issues (harris & hofer, 2009; koehler & mishra, 2008). particularly in the efl context, van-olphen (2003, 2007) argued the importance of preservice teachers and in-service efl teachers about teaching the target language, while (brown, 2007; larsenfreeman, 2011) stressed the crucial roles of teaching approaches and methods to be mastered by efl educators, not only theories but also practices based. therefore, the roles of technology (tck and tpk) to model the abstract concept is important (angeli & valanides, 2008; jaipal-jamani & figg, 2015). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 183-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 combining the flipped classroom and face to face classes in developing pre-service teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge all pre-service teachers agreed that due to lack of content and pedagogical knowledge, they struggled to understand pedagogical content knowledge. however, when they designed and developed their paci model on technological pedagogical knowledge in the face to face activities, with the assistances of teacher educator and other classmates that they achieved less modeling in the flipped classroom, their technological pedagogical knowledge improved. ‗it was difficult to connect my content, technological, and pedagogical knowledge into my pedagogical content knowledge. but when i had involved in discussion during the face to face classes in designing and developing my paci model, my technological pedagogical knowledge was better. we discussed some strategies to connect our ideas on facebook, but not all of us involved, ningsih. the findings revealed that during the discussion in the face to face classes, all participants were involved to discuss the content, technological, and pedagogical content knowledge. while in the flipped classroom through facebook, few participants were active to participate. discussion is the foundation for creating the technological pedagogical knowledge and could be learnt together when designing and developing the paci. the teacher educator‘s model in the face to face classes was the key solution to model the tpack (koehler & mishra, 2006). in other words, if teachers see and understand how technology can affect the content to be represented, they are more likely to integrate it into their teaching (lee, 2008). combining the flipped classroom and face to face classes in developing pre-service teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk) all pre-service teachers were capable to implement their technological knowledge into practice. they were able to expand their technological knowledge into matching varieties animations, motions, colors, music instruments and clear narrations recorded into english lessons. they were also capable to repurpose the other functions of software to match with english lessons. however, the issues on how to change their pedagogical practice with technology when they designed and developed the paci model arose. similar voices were quoted below. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|184-191 ‗selecting and repurposing the animations, pictures and sounds that related to my english lessons by clicking all the functions of software to fit them all into the way how i explained my content into my paci model challenged me a lot. to model them all, i need role model not only from multimedia on facebook, but also face to face classes,‘ raiendi. this study revealed that all preservice teachers were able to select, modify, and implement the appropriate animations, sounds, colors and animation gifs to represent their english lessons in paci model. however, all of pre-service teachers were incapable to represent those animated or motion of objects into their pedagogical to integrate with paci model. lin, chen, and dwyer (2006) have suggested appropriateness multimedia and motions selection can be represented related to the specific english lesson and instructions that may increase the learners‘ processing the information about the topics and stay longer in the short term memory. in other words, the technological content knowledge of pre-service teachers was sufficient during the computer application course to increase their competencies to translate the english lessons with technology, for example the use of facebook modified the way teacher educators presented content to the students that lead to shape and change the teacher educator and preservice teachers‘ teaching and learning practices as a result of the use of ict (lee, 2008). in addition, the pre-service teachers had experienced an increase their competencies to refine the purpose of the basic functions of varieties offline software to make their english lessons easier to understand. these findings explained that ‗knowledge of contentappropriate technologies and competence with content-appropriate technologies‘ were implemented appropriately (jaipal-jamani & figg, 2015; jamani & figg, 2013). modeling technological pedagogical content knowledge through flipped classroom and face to face classes all pre-service teachers still have insufficient knowledge to implement tpack in designing and developing paci model. they were still incapable of arranging the dynamic relationship between content, pedagogical, technological knowledge to create pedagogical content knowledge, technological content knowledge, and technological pedagogical and content knowledge into their paci model. some comments were provided below. ‗i would say technological knowledge could not stand alone. i ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 185-191|copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-039000 need to master my content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge first then my technological knowledge would be useful to design my paci model. hence, i have to learn the tpack framework model through multimedia and specifically from face to face activities. i need to see the tpack implementation into practice‘, khanif. ‗i hope i could see the model from all my teacher educators, not only from this computer application course. we only had 14 weeks to learn all the theories and to practice them into our paci model. so far, i taught the model from the multimedia on facebook. i still need to see and experience the tpack framework within our teacher training program‘s curriculum‘, raiendi. the data clearly showed that all pre-service teachers realized that understanding tpack can be from technology in the flipped classroom. however, most importantly by putting sources of technology into practice in the face to face classes and activities (harris, mishra & koehler, 2009) practices and models (jaipal-jamani & figg, 2015; jamani & figg, 2013) should from all lecturers and courses. all preservice teachers expected teacher educators both model and teach the use of technology-based methods during their teaching training program. all teacher educators need to facilitate, guide and model the integration of tpack framework into practice. the findings of study related to previous studies which stressed the importance of role model from teacher educator to unpack tpack framework during teacher training programs. bowman, 2000 in hughes and scharber (2008) underlined ―modelling was gravely important, as pre-service teachers need guidance and support to make important connections between course material and technology applications (p. 94)‖. therefore, teacher educator is an important agent to explicitly track the development of pre-service teachers‘ technological content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and tpack for suitable selection and decision for technology integration (bowman, 2000, cited in hughes & scharber, 2008). multiple studies have stressed the important role model from the teacher educators during their teacher training programs. all teacher educators have to facilitate and provide real examples of tpack framework in practice (angeli & valanides, 2008; chai et al., 2011; jaipaljamani & figg, 2015; koehler & mishra, 2006, 2009; limbong, 2015; 2017; lu & lei, 2012; niess, 2008; teo, 2009). ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 3 (2), 2016 copyright © 2016, ijee, p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390|186-191 conclusion and suggestion during the computer application course, the use of facebook as a medium to upload all electronic portfolios and website links in the flipped classroom to support face to face classes is valuable approach to facilitate and support the face to face classroom to enhance pre-service teachers understanding the tpack framework from theory into practice by designing and developing paci model. the tpack framework is illstructured and difficult to understand. therefore, the teacher educators and teachers may use the flipped classroom in combining with facebook to facilitae and support pre-service teachers to experience, discuss, analyze, and determine how they interpret, apply, and analyze the various aspects of the theory the tpack into teaching and learning practices. references adamy, p., & boulmetis, j. 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(2013). the flipped class: a method to address the challenges of an undergraduate statistics course. teaching of psychology, 40(3), 193-199. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018, 143-164 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) available online at ijee (indonesian journal of english education) website: http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee rhetorical structure analysis on introduction chapters of english master theses by indonesian postgraduate students indah afitah pujiyanti, safnil arsyad, arono received: 28th august 2018; revised: 28th november 2018; accepted: 28th desember 2018 abstract this study is aimed at investigating the rhetorical structure of introduction chapters of english master theses written by indonesian postgraduate students and identifying the frequency of communicative moves and their constituent steps as well as finding how the students justify their research projects reported in their introduction chapters. the research design was mixed method research combining quantitative and qualitative method. twenty introduction chapters of english master theses were taken from two different fields; english language education and applied linguistics, and they were analyzed using checklists. the results: (1) three moves and fifteen steps are found in the introduction chapters of master theses and three newly identified steps other than those specified in bunton‟s are also found in the corpus of this study and (2) three moves are considered obligatory moves, seven steps are classified as obligatory, four steps are conventional and seven steps are optional. further, the majority of indonesian postgraduate students tend to rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap found in the literature. this study concludes that the move and step model suggested by bunton (2002) and modified from swales‟ cars is effective enough to capture the possible rhetorical structure of introduction chapter of master thesis written by indonesian postgraduate students. keywords: rhetorical structure; move analysis; genre analysis; introduction chapters; master thesis abstrak penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan pola retorika bab pendahuluan dalam thesis bahasa inggris diantaranya mengidentifikasi bagian pendahuluan yang memiliki moves (tahapan), steps (langkah), dan menjustifikasi pentingnya penelitian dilakukan. desain penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode campuran (mixed method) yang menggabungkan kuantitatif dan kualitatif, dan instrumen utama yang digunakan dalam menganalisis data adalah instrumen ceklist. data penelitian ini diambil dari dua bidang thesis yang berbeda; pengajaran bahasa inggris dan fitur linguistik. hasil dari penelitian ini: (1) tiga moves (tahapan) dan limabelas steps (langkah) ditemukan dalam bab pendahuluan thesis pada penelitian ini. selain itu, ditemukan juga tiga steps (langkah) baru yang tidak ditemukan dalam pola bunton (2002); (2) tiga moves (tahapan) dikategorikan harus/wajib ada, tujuh steps (langkah) diiklasifikasikan harus ada, empat steps (langkah) boleh ada, dan tujuh steps (langkah) boleh tidak ada. selanjutnya, mayoritas mahasiswa pascasarjana indonesia cenderung secara retoris menjustifikasi proyek penelitian mereka berdasarkan pada celah (gap) yang terdapat dalam penelitian-penelitian terkait terdahulu. penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa pola tahapan (move) dan langkah (step) yang dikemukakan oleh bunton (2002) dan dimodifikasi dari pola retorika swales yakni creating a research space (cars) cukup efektif digunakan dalam menggambarkan struktur retorika bab pendahuluan pada thesis yang ditulis oleh mahasiswa pascasarjana indonesia. kata kunci: struktur retorika; analisis tahapan; analisis genre; bab pendahuluanp; thesis how to cite: pujiyanti, i. a., arsyad, s., arono. (2018). rhetorical structure analysis on introduction chapters of english master theses by indonesian postgraduate students. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5(2), 143-164. doi:10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 144-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license introduction currently, rhetorical structure of particular chapters in master thesis has been intensively investigated (e.g bunton, 2002; dong, 1998; dudley & evans, 1986; kwan, 2006; loan & pramoolsook, 2014; manan & noor, 2014; shirani & chalak, 2016; thompson, 2005; wuttisrisiriporn, 2017). these studies have examined how different chapters of master thesis in diverse disciplines were written using genre-based approaches. the purpose was for identifying predictable presence of rhetorical moves and steps embedded in a wide variety of text types particularly in a certain chapter of master thesis. a large number of studies have investigated the organisation structure of particular chapters in master theses and dissertations including: introduction on ph.d. dissertations have been conducted such as by bunton (2002), dong (1998), swales & najjar (1987), thompson (2005); literature review (kwan, 2006); discussion (dudley-evans 1986: 135); conclusion (dudley & evans, 1986); abstracts in conservation biology and wildlife behavior (samraj, 2008). although there have been a remarkable numbers of investigations applying the rhetorical structure on particular chapters of master theses, but only few studies which focused on investigating introduction chapter (bunton 2002, 2005, dong 1998, dudley-evans 1986: 135, hyland 2004, kwan 2006, loan & pramoolsook 2014, , shirani-chalak 2016, swales 2004, wuttisrisiriporn, 2017). a study conducted by bunton (2002) investigated the genre analysis of 45 ph.d. thesis introductions. it was built based on his own erlier study (bunton, 1998) that analyzed the overall thesis structure of 21 ph.d. and m.phil. theses. he adopted swales‟ cars 1990 model to investigate the generic moves structure and steps of the introduction chapters across eight disciplines. he found that all introductions had sequences of text identifiable as the three moves in swales‟s (1990) cars model: establishing a territory (t), establishing a niche (n), and occupying the niche (o) and he proposed 10 newly identified steps in the third move to introduce the present research; defining terms, indicating a problem or need, method, materials or subjects, product of research (eg)/model proposed, chapter structure, research questions/hypotheses, theoretical position, application of product, and evaluation of product. one of the latest discourse analysis studies on introduction chapters was conducted by loan & pramoolsook (2014). they employed the modified cars‟ model by bunton (2002) to analyze the rhetorical structure of introduction chapters of 12 master theses from the three universities in the south of vietnam. they found that three moves; establishing a territory, establish a niche, and occupying the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 145-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license niche and 15 out of 24 steps described in bunton (2002) were employed by this group of non-native english writers, although they had little or no formal instruction on how to write this genre. last, they found one newly identified step in a separate section headed namely chapter summary. a study conducted by shirani-chalak (2016) on 40 master theses introductions written by efl learners from iran found that three moves of the introduction section; (a) establishing a territory, (b) establishing a niche, (c) occupying the niche were followed exactly in iranian efl learners‟ master theses with a high degree of distribution; move 1 presents 70%, move 2 presents for about 65% and move 3 presests 82.5% and therefore, these three moves were categorized as an obligatory moves in introductions of master theses. finally, the latest investigation on comparative rhetorical organization of elt thesis introductions composed by thai and american students was conducted bywuttisrisiriporn (2017), he found that both thai and american master students followed the moves and steps proposed in the framework proposed by bunton (2002) to construct their introduction chapters rhetorically. the results showed that 274 move occurrences were identified in the asi (american student introduction) corpus and 284 move occurrences were realized in the tsi (thai student introduction) corpus. all the studies above investigated master theses focusing on introduction chapters written by native speaker (ns) students and non native speaker (nns) students in which the text are written in british, american, australian, vietnamese and iranian. the studies mostly found that there were similarity of the move employment used by these two groups of students. both ns students and nns students used all three moves stated in framework of cars model; establishing a territory, establish a niche, and occupying the niche and they provided the use of various steps to accomplish each move. in spite of those similarities, the studies carried out on introductions written by non-native speaker (nns) indicated that most nns writers are more likely to follow a similar structure of thesis introducion. they tend to follow the instruction of thesis guidelines from their universities and also conform thesis introduction components formed in theses available in their libraries. in contrary, the studies carried out by native speaker (ns) student writers which focused on comparing some various disciplines found that the way rhetorical structures of introduction sections of master theses vary across disciplines. this is due to the reason that native speaker (ns) students may not prefer to use a rigid structure of thesis in their local community. however, the similar studies on english master thesis written by indonesian postgraduate students have ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 146-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license been very rarely conducted. as far as the author is concerned, there is no published research reported on investigating the rhetorical structure of introduction chapter of english master theses written by indonesian postgraduate students in english education. thus, this is the rationale for the study; in particular,it is aimed at investigating how indonesian postgraduate students organize their introduction chapters in their english master theses.the primary questions addressed in this study are as follows: a) what generic moves are found in the introductions chapter of english master theses written by indonesian postgraduate students?; b) what moves and steps are obligatory, conventional, and optional found in introduction chapters of master theses written by indonesian postgraduate students? ; and c) how do indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their english master theses on introduction chapters? method corpus of the study this research is genre-based study and can be categorized as mixed-method study. the data of this study were taken from 20 introduction chapters of master theses written by indonesian post graduate students majoring in english, particularly from university of bengkulu, indonesia. applying stratified sampling technique, the theses introductions were selected from two different fields. ten were from students who had concerned in english language education field (edu) and the remaining ten theses were selected from applied linguistics (apl) field. the distribution of introduction master theses from those two fields represents the distribution of master theses available at english education study program at university of bengkulu. the theses were generated during the years 2016-2017 and selected based on purposive sampling technique. only the theses written during this period of time were selected because generic structures are subject to variation across time and the selection of these theses is intended to reflect the current practice of thesis writing written by indonesian postgraduate students as non-native english speaker (nnes) students on english education. the decision about the number of 20 thesis introductions included in the corpus of this study is that with this size of corpus the thesis introductions can represent the rhetorical style adopted by the authors in writing their introduction chapters. this is also because according to pett (1997) and salkind (2004) as cited in corder & foreman (2009) the minimum requirement for the number of text to be included in a quantitative or qualitative analysis is 20. in addition, ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 147-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license another reason for selecting 20 introductions was also made based on the assumption that this present study focuses on only one discipline (english education) so that the number of 20 introductionchapters is acceptable (see loan & pramoolsook, 2014; p.64). this is also due to the review of the literature revealed that dudley-evans (1986) investigated only 7 master theses, loan & pramoolsook (2014) analysed only 12 master theses, samraj (2008) analysed 24 introduction chapters across three disciplines (an average of 8 each), while bunton (2002) identified the structures of 45 introductions across 8 disciplines (an average of 5.5 introduction/a discipline). data analysis since this study concerned with genre analysis, the researcher employedchecklists containinga conceptual framework as the main instrument in analyzing the data. the conceptual framework employed for analyzing the introduction sections of theses was drawn from bunton‟s (2002) modified cars model of swales (1990) for ph.d dissertation introductions as shown in figure 1. it was used as a reference framework since bunton (2002) accomplished the swales‟ model by distinguishing and adding 10 new steps to the cars model. another reason for selecting bunton‟s modified swales' (1990) cars model is that, it has been the improvement of the most comprehensive framework for analyzing the introduction and many other researchers have applied it successfully and extensively (loan & pramoolsook, 2014; wuttisrisiriporn, 2017). figure 1. modified cars model for thesis introduction from bunton (2002) often present occasionally present move 1: establishing a territory steps 1: claiming centrality 2: making topic generalizations and giving background information 3: defining terms 4: reviewing previous research move 2: establishing a niche steps 1a: indicating a gap in research 1b: indicating a problem or need 1c: question-raising 1d: continuing a tradition move 3: announcing the present research (occupying the niche) steps 1: purposes, aims, or objectives 2: work carried out 3: method 4: materials or subjects 5: findings or results 6: product of research/model proposed 7: significance/justification 8: thesis structure research parameters counter-claiming chapter structure research questions/ hypotheses theoretical position defining terms parameters of research application of product evaluation of product data analysis procedures the processes of identifying the communicative units or moves in the introduction chapter of master theses, following dudley & evans (1986) and loan & pramoolsook (2014), goes through the following 5 steps. first, the ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 148-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license title or section headings, sub-titles, and key terms in introduction chapter of each master theses were read to get a rough understanding of the content of each introduction. second, the whole introduction chapter was read to get better understanding third, the introduction chapter of each master theses was read again to look for the available discourse and linguistic clues, such as specific lexicons, discourse markers, formulaic expressions, particular lexical items and cohesive markers. fourth, the possible communicative units in the master theses introduction were identified by using linguistic and discourse clues and by understanding and inferring from the text. fifth, the common discourse structure of master theses introduction was identified by employing the framework of revised cars model suggested by bunton (2002), then the frequency of their occurances were classified to distinguish whether moves and steps employed in the introduction master theses were adequately qualified to be regarded as obligatory, conventional, or optional.referring to kanoksilapatham (2005), if the moves occured in all master thesis introductions they were categorized as obligatory, then if they occured between 60-99% of the master theses introduction they were categorized as conventional, but if they occured less than 60% in the master theses they were categorized as optional. triangulation analysis an independent rater involved in this study was an english teacher who has good capability in english and she is in the final semester of magister program at english department of education faculty of bengkulu university. the co-rater was trained how to code the text into its possible communicative units or moves with the use of research instrument as previously explained in order to assure that the co-rater clearly understood how to code the master thesis introduction chapter. then, the co-rater was asked to identify the possible moves in a sample of randomly selected introduction and if any miscoding act occured then a discussion, negotiation and clarification was held in order to reach an agreement between the researcher and the co-rater. last, the co-rater worked independently to code sample texts (25% of the entire corpus) randomly selected from the 20 introductions. inter-rater correlation analysis results showed 88,2% agreement.it shows a strong agreement (above 88%). finding and discussion the genericmoves found in introductionchapters of english master theses the data analysis results revealed that the generic moves found in introduction chapters of master theses are as presented in table 1. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 149-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license tabel 1. the generic moves found in 20 introduction chapters of english master theses moves ed u (n= 10) ap l (n= 10) t ot % categ ories m -1 establis hing a territor y 10 10 2 0 1 0 0 obliga tory m -2 establis hing a niche 10 10 2 0 1 0 0 obliga tory m -3 occupy ing the niche 10 10 2 0 1 0 0 obliga tory as can be noticed in table 1, all introduction chapters of master theses adopted three substantial moves proposed by bunton (2002), namely: move 1 (establishing a territory), move 2(establishing a niche)and move 3(occupying the niche). the presence of these three moves in all introduction chapters have made them obligatory and confirms the finding of previous study on this definite chapter (loan & pramoolsook, 2014), which also showed that all three moves in bunton‟s (2002) modified cars model occured in their corpus. this result implies that all graduate students of both edu and apl fields employed all these three moves to construct their thesis introductions or to introduce general perpectives of their studies to the readers. the possible reason for this is probably in the guideline of thesis writing provided by the university these three moves are necessary required or stated to be obligatory, therefore, all graduate students have to follow this thesis instruction guidelines as well as thesis introduction components constituted in theses submitted to the university such as section headings, subheadings, and even feedbacks from thesis supervisors. this implies that if one student does not address these three moves in his/her thesis introduction it will be categorized incomplete. an interpretation of the finding is that the feedbacks from thesis supervisors and examiners during the prosess of supervision or examination have a great effect on an arrangement of thesis introduction organization. when one student writes incomplete thesis introduction chapter, his/her supervisor or examiner may have to advise him/her to complete it. it can be infer that the writers of master theses have been advised by their supervisors or examiners to include extensive information related to the topic under research by adopting these three moves in their introduction chapter in order to demonstrate their knowledge of the field and justify their claims toward topic of the research being investigated. this finding is compatible with loan & pramoolsook (2014), in which the twelve introductions of vietnamese students in tesol had all three moves in bunton‟s (2002) modified cars model. they explained by the fact that these students followed the guidelines ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 150-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license provided by their universities. this result is also in line with wuttisrisiriporn (2017) who compared the introduction chapters of ma theses in elt (english language teaching) written by thai students to those written by american university students. he found that the entire asi (american student introduction) and tsi (thai student introduction) corpora adopted all three moves shown in the analytical framework proposed by bunton (2002). he stated that thai students are more likely to follow a similar organization of thesis introducion as well as thesis supervisors‟ comments. similarly, this result conforms the finding of the study on analyzing introductory sections of 21 ph.d theses written in spanish conducted by salom et al. (2008),these moves occured in every introductions text with different cyclical patterns and making them obligatory moves in ph.d thesis introductions. the analysis results of this study found that the way to introduce the field of study or the background information related to the research topic and establishthe niche for the current study conform the guideline of theses writing provided by english postgraduate study program of bengkulu university, in which each introduction is realized by some sections headings. the generic section headings employed in these introduction chapters showed the field of the research (move 1), the niche of the current research would occupy (move 2), and the announcement of the present research (move 3). move 1 and move 2 as well as all of their steps were recommended to be completed in the section heading of background of the study. while move 3, the way to announce the present research, was accomplished in almost all generic section headings except background and roadmap of the study; research questions /hypotheses, research objectives /purpose, significance of the study, definition of key terms, and chapter structure. the following are examples of move 1, move 2 and move 3 occured in the corpus of this study: example 1 : the ability to write in english effectively is becoming increasingly important in today’s modern world since the communication through language has become more and more essential in such for education and work world.lately, technology and internet are mostly needed by some people or students. [m1-s1, edu9] example 2 : there are very few research with similar topic conducted in ...however the aspects of the both variables were not investigated. [m2-s1, edu6] example 3 : the purpose of this study is to improve students‟ speaking ability...[m3-s1, edu8] example 1 is coded as a move 1(establishing a territory). the research statement of thesis edu9 in example 1 ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 151-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license clearly opens the introduction. in this example, the author briefly claims thatthe research topic being presented ‘ability of writing through technology and internet’ is quite important and significant. the second example is coded as a move 2 (establishing a niche). in this example, the author clearly states that there is a gap of knowledge left by previous studies in the field using contradiction connectors of „however‟ or ‘but’. the last example is coded as a move 3 (occupying the niche). in example 3, the author tells explicitly what the present research is about by stating the purpose and/or the significance of the study. clearly, the use of deictic center lexical item (this), in conjunction with the formulaic expression the purpose(the purpose of this study), is used to state the objectives pertaining to this particular study. the feature of these three moves in the corpus of this study is similar to the three-moves progression described by loan & pramoolsook (2014), where there was no move cycle occured in their introduction corpus. this implies that all three moves follow in a single progression; the beginning move of move 1: establishing a territory (establishing the topic), followed by move 2: establishing aniche (justifying the present study), and concluded by move 3: occupying a niche (describing the present study). this is where the authors previewed previous research, and then pointed out gaps or problems or raised questions, and finally went on to announce their own research. compatible with this moves feature, dudley-evans (1986) remarked that the writers of thesis introductions seemed to lead the readers from very general to specific topics in a narrative style. therefore this made the section of the background of the study which was accomplished by move 1 and move 2 in these introductions the longest, the length of move 1 and move 2 in these introductions is more than half that of the whole chapter, then it followed by move 3 which had relatively shorter length; occurred only in approximately one or two paragraphs for each section heading. classification of steps in introduction chapters of english master theses the second analysis in this study is on identifying which steps are obligatory, conventional, and optional found in introduction chapters of master theses. the result of identification and classification of the steps employed by the writers of graduate students in both fields of introduction chapters ispresented in table 2. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 152-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license table 2. frequency of steps found in moves in introduction chapters of master theses moves steps f tot % categories edu apl move 1 1: claiming centrality 2 9 11 55 optional 2: making topic generalizations and giving background information 10 10 20 100 obligatory 3: defining terms 6 4 10 50 optional 4: reviewing previous research 6 10 16 80 conventional move 2 1a: indicating a gap in research 4 9 13 65 conventional 1b: indicating a problem or need 10 10 20 100 obligatory 1c:solution* 8 2 10 50 optional move 3 1: purposes, aims, or objectives 10 10 20 100 obligatory 2: work carried out 0 2 2 10 optional 3: method 4 3 7 35 optional 4: materials or subjects 1 0 1 05 optional 5: significance/justification 10 10 20 100 obligatory 6: chapter structure 8 4 12 60 conventional 7: research questions/ hypotheses 10 10 20 100 obligatory 8: defining terms 10 10 20 100 obligatory 9: parameters of research 10 10 20 100 obligatory 10: chapter summary* 8 5 13 65 conventional 11: roadmap of the research* 6 1 7 35 optional as indicated in table 2, there are 15 out of 24 steps described in bunton (2002) and three newly identified steps were found in the corpus of this study (see table 3). the most frequently used steps or obligatory steps found in introduction chapters consist of 7 steps (step 2 of move 1 or making topic generalization and giving background information, step 1b of move 2 or indicating a problem or need, steps of move 3 purpose of the resarch, research questions/hypotheses, significance of the study, limitation of the resesarch/research parameters and chapter structure). the presence of these seven steps as obligatory steps in the corpus of this study is probably because in the guideline of theses writing, these seven steps categorized as the main aspects that should be included in composing introduction chapter of master theses. it is also quite noticeable that the students tends to follow a common writing pattern of completed theses submitted to the university. as commonly known, new thesis writers are likely to apply a repeated pattern of those theses submitted. below are the examples of obligatory steps realized in move1, 2, and 3taken from the corpus of this study: example 4 : lately, technology and internet are mostly needed by...the available of internet connection helps the lecturers and others educators...by using ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 153-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license technology and internet as a media, students will enjoy and interest in the learning process. [m1s2-edu6] example 5 : beside that, the students’ speaking is not comprehensible, because the content of their story is not relevant to the text, it‟s mean they didn’t comprehend the text, and sentences are not well organized. [m2s1b-edu5] example 6 : the result of this research could be used in the ielts preparation writing classes to help the writers.[m3s7-apl17] example 4 is coded as a step 2 (making topic generalization and giving background information). in this step, the author uses a reference of time „lately’ and simple present tense verbs „helps’, ‘will’ to generalize the topic of the research. the application of these two linguistic features in this move reveals that the statement being presented depicts the topic generally known or accepted statement in the field. example 5 is coded as a step 1b: (indicating a problem or need). this step is shown by the presence of some negative statements like „not comprehensible’, ‘not relevant’, ‘didn’t comprehend’ ‘not well organized’ and ‘not able to’. through these negative statements the author obviously states some problems as the main obstacles faced during the first observation. example 6 is coded as a step 5 (significance/justification). as illustrated in the example, the author addresses the usefulness as well as significance related to the study under investigated. the phrase „the result of this research could be used’ is employed by the author to state the value of the research and to make the importance of the finding explicitely. related to the conventional steps found in the corpus of this study, table 2 shows that there are 4 steps realized as conventional adopted by indonesian postgraduate students in organizing their introduction chapters, including; step 4 of move 1 (reviewing previous research), step 1a of move 2 (indicating a gap in research), step 6 (chapter structure) and step 10 (chapter summary). step 4 of move 1 (reviewing previous research) was often realized in the introduction chapters of both fields edu and apl. this is compatible with studies done by bunton‟s (2002) and loan and pramoolsook‟s (2014), step 4 was observed as conventional as it played an important role in this study; to refer to previous studies to state the research gap or to continue the study they were conducting. this step often followed by step 1a of move 2 (indicating a gap in research) inintroduction chapters. in contrast, step 1b (indicating a problem or need) was the most substantial step in this move since it occured in all introductions of the corpus in this study. ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 154-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license the occurrence of step 1b (indicating a problem or need) tend to be more frequent than step 1a (indicating a gap in research). this reversed result revealed that edu students seemed to avoid employing step 1a to establish their research niche but they prefered to use the other steps (i.e step 1b). this probably because the communicative purpose of step 1a is to illustrate a gap after reviewing some related previous studies, therefore demonstrating a new gap in their present research (step 1a) could be a very difficult task for some graduate students. moreover, these graduate students were in the status of a novice researcher, therefore some of them seemed to avoid employing this step but using step 1b instead to establish their research niche. the contrastive occurance of these two steps was compatible with the finding of loan & pramoolsook (2014) in which only few writers adopted step 1a in their thesis introductions; step 1a was realized only in a small corpus. in contrast, the occurance of step 1b was more substantial that the vietnamese students preferred realizing step 1b in their introductions. chapter summary is one of three newly realized steps other than those specified in bunton‟s (2002) model, it served as one of the final sections where some writers summarized their thesis introduction chapters. as conventional step, the occurance of this step is not compatible with the finding of loan and pramoolsook (2014) and wuttisrisiriporn (2017) in which this step was found as optional in their both corpora; occurring in 2 asi thesis introductions and in 5 tsi thesis introductions. however, another similarity appeared as conventional step was chapter structure. the interesting point to be discussed here was the difference in the step of chapter structure between bunton‟s model and in this introductioncorpus. chapter structure was categorized as „occasionally present step‟ and occurred as a part of an early move to occupy the niche inbunton (2002). however, in this corpus this step appeared at the very beginning of the chapter with no heading, it opens the introduction by showing the organization of its content or section headings. below are the examples of a conventional steps realized in move 1, 2 and 3: example 7 : those previous researches indicated there was a dominancy of teacher in the classroom...[m1s4-apl12] example 8 : there are very few research with similar topic conducted in...however the aspects of the both variables were not investigated. [m2s1a-edu6] example 9 : this chapter presents about the background, the research question, the objective of the research..[m3s8-apl20] example 10 : based on the description above the writer conducted a research entitled “the effect of subtitled animated cartoon video on students‟ ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 155-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license reading comprehension and vocabulary mastery at sdit al-hasanah bengkulu in 2015/2016 academic year”. [m3s8-edu6] example 7 is coded as a step 4 (reviewing previous research)of move 1. in this step, the author reviews previous relevant studies by stating „those previous researches indicated..’and then identifies the limitations of the finding/s or the inexistence of information on the same topic before using contradictory discourse markers to explain the need for the present study. the author clearly describes the function of contextualizing his/her study and demonstrating its connections to certain previous studies. example 8 is coded as a step 1a (indicating a gap in research) of move 2. as illustrated in the example above, the author employs some linguistic features such as „very few research‟ and „were not investigated‟ to show that there is „a gap‟ between the previous related researches and the present research. in other words, the author implies that the research project conducted give new or different information on the same important topic, and therefore it is necessary to read. the presence of contradictive discourse markers „however‟ adopted by the author in example 8 above is to convince readers that the information given before and after the marker is different or contradictory. example 9 is coded as a step 6 (chapter structure). it is categorized as one of conventional steps realized in move 3. as shown in the example, in this step, the author begins his/her introduction by indicating how the chapter contents are organised. in some cases, most of the authors started their introduction chapter by summarizing the chapter structure using some linguistics clues such as: presents,.. includes,.. covers. example 10 is a newly identified step in move 3, step 10 (chapter summary). as can be seen in the above example, the statement of summarizing the chapter is shown by the presence of summarizing phrase „based on the description above’. this linguistic clue originally comes from the researcher focusing on summing up the specific information of the present research, including; the tittle, the setting, the samples, the time, the technique or method and particular skill or ability involved in the present research. in some other cases, the authors summarized their study by presenting conclusive words ‘concluded’, then it was followed by the appearance of roadmap of the study. this step is oftenly found in the last paragraph at the end of introduction chapter. different from the conventional steps discussed above, table 3 indicates that there are 7 steps categorized as optional found in the corpus of this study, including; step 1 of move 1 (claiming centrality), step 3 of move 1 (defining ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 156-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license terms), step 2 of move 3 (work carried out), step 3 of move (method), step 4 of move 3 (materials or subjects),andtwo newly identified steps solution and roadmap of the research. in this corpus, step 1 (claiming centrality) was categorized as an optional step. the writers used this step to claim that their current studies are quite useful or relevant to the field of research interest. but apparently, it seems that indonesian graduate students from english education field neglected to employ step 1 (claiming centrality) in their thesis introductions. the adoption of step 1 in this current research corresponds to the finding of wuttisrisiriporn (2017) where the step 1 (claiming centrality) was observed as an optional step as it not significantly occurred in the asi corpus and tsi corpus. it was also in line with the work of loan & pramoolsook‟s (2014) in which none out of 12 introductions of vietnamese tesol master‟s students employed step 1 (claiming centrality) in composing their introductions. most students rarely used references to support their claim in the first paragraph of introduction and therefore most introductions are started with a very general or unrelated statement (arsyad & arono, 2016) similarly, step 3 of move 1 (defining terms)seemed to be neglected by students from both edu and apl fields. it was compatible with several studies e.g. bunton (2002); loan & pramoolsook (2014) in which step 3 was failed to show up in their corpus. this is probably because the students of both fields tend to define specific keyterms in move 3 in a separate section heading entitled definitions of key terms and the defined terms were often clearly enumerated in a paragraph of text. the other optional steps in move 3 are (work carried out), step 3 (method), and step 4 (materials or subjects). these moves appeared to play an insignificant role in thesis introductions. these steps were labelled optional since they were used to provide minor information of thesis introductions. the realizations of step 1 and step 2 in the present study correspond to the work by loan and pramoolsook (2014). the occurances of those three steps in move 3 are in line with loan and pramoolsook‟s (2014) finding in which method and materials or subjects was also found as optional steps. these steps might not be required to be stated in thesis introductions. however, it is possible to add one or more of these steps to support the topic being reported. the last new optional step other than those specified in bunton‟s (2002) is roadmap of the research. it is a chart of reviewing related previous studies to describe the field of their research in which they relate the previous studies conducted to that of the present study. it shows that the research of present study was quite differ from the previous research and it was oftenly adopted to strengthen the use of step 4 of move 1 (reviewing previous research) ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 157-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license andthe step 2 of move 2 (indicating a gap in research). the roadmap of the research was enclosed at the end of the background section after chapter summary. finally, since the corpus of this study belong to english language education and applied linguistics disciplines, some steps in bunton‟s model such as materials, product of research/model proposed, application of product, and evaluation of product which are in the science and engineering theses were not found in this corpus. below are some examples of optional steps realized in move 1 taken from the corpus of this study: example 11 : learning english latelyhas experienced increasing challenges and pressure along...[m1s1-edu6] example 12 : ‘semantic mapping’ is a visual strategy for vocabulary knowledge by displaying...[m1s3-edu2] example 11 is coded as a step 1 (claiming centrality). in this step, the author claims the importance or interest of the topic by employing some linguistic features including; present perfect tense (has experienced), and lexical items, adjectives or adverbs expressing „importance‟ or „popularity‟ (lately, increasingly,important). as shown above in italics, the author clearly states „latelyhas experienced increasing challenges and pressure‟ to discuss the importance of the topic in the real world or by stating the current activity in that area of research. example 12 is coded as a step 3 (defining terms).as illustrated in above example, the author defines a key word„semantic mapping is...‟ in order to share the common understanding of particular concepts to the readers. similarly in some cases, some authors employ some linguistic features such as active or pasive voice of simple present verbs or tobe such as: is, are, means, defines, is defined as, to realized this step in in their introduction. below is the example of an optional or newly identified step in move 2: example 13 : to solve this problem, the teacher can use one technique for enriching students‟...[m2s1c-edu2] example 13 is coded as a newly identified step „solution‟. this is an optional step in introduction chapter of master theses. as shown in the example above, the language feature that is mostly employed by the author is „to solve this problem...’. as shown in the example above, the author proposes a particular technique, method, system and or improved models as solutions to overcome some problems faced during the observation of the research. the following are the examples of optional steps realized in move 3: example 14 : in identifying the problems, two activities were carried out, namely observing the english teaching learning process ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 158-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license at the classroom and interviewing the english teacher and students. [m3s2-edu8] example 15 : it was designed by using descriptive qualitative and quantitative(mixed method) research design. [m3s3-apl17] example 14 is coded as a step 2 (work carried out). this step indicates the work done. it is shown by the presence of the sentence „two activities were carried out‟. these refer to the works or aspects that fall inside the scope of the thesis and previous requirements including observation and interview. example 15 is coded as a step 3 (method). as shown in the example above, the author adopts this step by explicitly stating „was designed...mixed method research design’ and employing the verb in passive form – was designed). it is possible to apply not only past tense but also present tense to describe the method discourse segment because the interpretation of the method propositions can be clearly recognized by the co-occurrence of research activity verbs and passive constructions. the way indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their english theses on introduction chapters the third question in this research as stated in the research question is how indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their english theses on introduction chapters in terms of the steps of move 2 (establishing a niche). based on the data analysis result, there are two types of justification reasons for the research, the first is research based on knowledge gap and the second is research based on problems. the analysis of the result is given in tabe 3 below. table 3. the distribution of justification reasons for the research no type of justificati on f to t % ed u ap l 1 research based on knowledge gap 4 9 13 65 2 research based on problems 8 1 7 35 total 20 10 0 table 3 shows that the most dominant reason for justifying the research in indonesian master theses introductions is research based on knowledge gap. this type of justification realized in 13 (65%) theses introductions. this result indicates that the authors are trying to convince readers that the findings of previous relevant studies have some kinds of limitation or the results of previous relevant studies are inconsistent or even no or very few studies have been conducted on the topic. an interesting point can be noted here that majority of indonesian postgraduate students tend to ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 159-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap. it implies that most graduate students justify their research project by pointing at the limitation, inconsistency or nonexistence of previous relevant studies and therefore the present topic of their research is necessary. in other words, the majority of indonesian authors seem to prefer justifying their research project based on knowledge gap rather than based on problems; this is probably because the students have access to read research articles of international journal therefore they may have been quite familiar with rhetorical style of the introduction chapter of international journal articles. another possible cause is the influence of the supervisors and examiners during the supervision or examination process has great effect for graduate students in arranging their thesis introduction organization. the following is an example of author‟s justifying research based on knowledge gap taken from the corpus of this study. example 16 : most researchers identify a potential total of five moves in the rhetorical structure of abstract...(p.6) however, the comparative study on various groups of writers still rarely done especially research article abstract in applied linguistics. this is the rational of this study that is to investigate the similarities and differences on move structure of abstract written by...[apl12] in example 16 above, the author reviewed previous relevant studies and then identified the limitations of the findings or the inexistence of information on the same topic before using contradictory discourse markers to explain the need for the present study. as illustrated in the example 16 above, the author uses not only a contradictory discourse marker ‘however’ but also lexical negation of „still rarely done’ to introduce the rhetorical attempt of indicating a gap of information or to show an inexistent of previous relevant studies. another type of justification found in indonesian thesis introductions is research based on problems. as seen in table 3above, this type of justification realized in 7 introductions or 35% of the corpus of this study. the example of justifying research based on problems is given below. example 17 : speaking is the most difficult part for the students when they learn english. these may be caused by the limitation of...(p.3). in this research, the researcher is interested to use board game in teaching speaking skill. the writer assumes that board game is a method that can encourage...[edu8] ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 160-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license in example 17, the author justifies the research project by referring to the problems explained in previous paragraphs then followed by his assumption ‘assumes’ of proposing a particular technique as the solution of those problems. thus, the author did not refer to what other researchers had claimed, done or achieved in order to be continued or improved. as shown in the example, the author is just simply saying that he/she is interested in investigating the topic. theway of justifying the research project based on the knowledge gap in this current research confirmed the finding of previous research on genre-based analysis of the introductions research articles by indonesian academics conducted by arsyad (2013), he found that most indonesian writers tend to rhetorically justify their research topic using step 2 (indicating a gap) of swales‟ (1990) cars model. according to arsyad, the indonesian writers seem to prefer justifying their research project using step 2 (indicating a gap) rather than using step 1 (counter claiming) because the indonesian ra authors tend to avoid critiquing other people or pointing at the weakness/es or defect/s of previous relevant studies as logical reason for the present study. because critiquing other people, as remarked in keraf (1992), is considered culturally impolite in indonesia as eastern culture, especially toward those who are older and from higher social and economic status. most of them are considering that this is not an ideal attitude especially when writing an academic text because the main purpose of academic text is to find and express the truth which involves evaluating what others have mentioned in their texts. the current finding of this study also compatible with swales (1990) who states that justifying a research project or activity was done by pointing at a gap found in the previous relevant studies or in current knowledge about a particular research topic. according to swales, this is usually done by negatively evaluating or critiquing the results of previous studies in order to create a space or gap to be filled by the present research. similar comment has been made by hunston (1994), who says that research article writers have to consider two important reasons to conduct the research project in their introduction in order to be more convincing and persuasive. first, there should be a knowledge gap left from previous relevant studies and second, the knowledge gap occurs in an important topic. although these two claims are equally important but they were expressed through different ways. the existance of rhetorical work for „the gap of the research‟ in the niche establishment in this study was also found by wuttisrisiriporn (2017) who claimed that the gap of the research was realised in all introductions of 30 tsi (thai students introductions) corpus and considered as an obligatory step; it ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 161-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license was used as an attempt to justify the need of further research and, consequently, the pertinence of the topic under study. however, according to wuttisrisiriporn, the absence of the rhetorical step of „counter claimming‟ in the corpus of his research; as also similarly found in this study; was because the authors tend to avoid giving direct criticism of weaknesses in previous research; it might not be a common practice. it seems to be a common norm that criticizing others‟ works by pointing at their weaknesses or defects and getting the advantages of them is considered improper in the thai culture as well as in other cultures. therefore, these cultures may reflect the writing habits of the authors. conclusion and suggestion from the result and discussion of this study, it can be concluded that the generic moves found in the introduction chapters of master theses were three obligatory moves of bunton‟s framework including: move 1 (establishing a territory), move 2 (establishing a niche)and move 3(occupying the niche). there are 15 out of 24 steps described by bunton (2002) and 3 newly identified steps were found in the corpus of this study. 7 steps are obligatory, 4 steps are conventional and 7 steps are optional. in terms of the way how indonesian postgraduate students justify their research projects reported in their introduction chapters, it can be concluded that majority of indonesian postgraduate students rhetorically justify their research project based on the knowledge gap. they frequently used this step, instead of the others, to convince readers that the findings of previous relevant studies have some kinds of limitation and therefore their present study is necessary to conduct. since this research was conducted on a small corpus of indonesian master theses, it is necessary for further studies to include bigger corpus and conduct the research on other chapters of master theses in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of how this academic genre is written by this group of non-native english speaking writers in indonesia. it is also interesting enough to investigate rhetorical structure of graduate master theses across disciplines as disciplinary variations exist in each specific genre. since the finding of this study explained the majority of indonesian graduate students in justifying their research projects by indicating a gap or limitation, inconsistencies or nonexistence of previous relevant studies and none of them critically analyze the finding of related previous studies or employing step 1d (counter claiming), indonesian writers must modify their introduction rhetorical styles especially in justifying the research by addressing step 1d (counter claiming) or pointing at the weaknesses or defects of previous relevant studies. the findings of this study also have drawn significant implications for efl ijee (indonesian journal of english education), 5 (2), 2018 162-164 http://journal.uinjkt.ac.id/index.php/ijee | doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15408/ijee.v5i2.8423 p-issn: 2356-1777, e-issn: 2443-0390 | this is an open access article under cc-by-sa license lecturers as thesis supervisors and learners. due to the fact that most master students have been facing difficulty in writing their graduate research, the lecturers are hopefully able to recommend a good rhetorical arrangement of moves and steps to their students in order to successfully compose their master thesis introduction chapters. therefore, this study is expected to trigger the students‟ awareness as 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